/4xg/ Strategy and 4X General

Imperium Galactica :^)

git gud, bajoran scum

Does Stellaris even have good combat?
Literally a deal breaker of all Paradox games.

What's that one actually good space GSG?

the combat is equally bad as their other games for completely different reasons
essentially you just want to have shields ready and more military power than the enemy fleets
if you don't have shields, you shouldn't even be waging war

But that's wrong. Shields are literally worse than nothing at all since they increase the price so much.

that doesn't really matter when i'm already constantly capped
did you think i built all those power plants just for fun?

You know that the naval limit is more of just a naval suggestion, right?

i'm talking about energy/mineral cap

Right, still just two death stacks slapping dicks, that was all I needed to know really.

any 4x gook games? Im surprised that I havent found any.

didn't LOTGH have a game? no clue if it was 4x or rts though, + i'm sure it was never translated

well technically it's two healthbars for every shield in your fleet (assuming you have shields, otherwise only one healthbar)
it all boils down to having more military power and better technology than the enemy
if you're even, then you're gonna have to start mass producing armies and taking his planets with them while you're occupying his fleets with your own

every ship in your fleet*

Is Stellaris still shit?

There have been a lot of LOTGH games.
gineipaedia.com/wiki/Legend_of_Galactic_Heroes_video_games

No idea of anyone has attempted translations on them.

Seems it. Unless you plan to spend the entire blob simulator not conquering people.

its 2 steps forward 1 step back

Nice elitism and projection

Tell someone what a "moba" or "roguelike" means, too.

Cheaper ships still lets you build more though. Eventually I just have 4-6 separate fleets of cruisers that are ~30k strength who have their own armies following them and go from world to world taking each over. Whole giant universe can be conquered in 30 years or so.

yea, but them i'm likely to lose more in battles
if i'm thinking in the long run, with shields i hardly ever lose ships considering that i'm usually the strongest military in the galaxy
that way i don't have to spend a ton of minerals, by the time i'm done building a ship i've got enough minerals to build another one

Endgame corvettes have 90% evasion chance.
Cruisers rule the gravitational waves in the midgame and then start getting weaker in the lategame. Battleships are supposed to tank a lot but are really only viable for their obscene range and are usually ironically the first to go in a fight past the midgame due to being unable to evade for shit.

HELP

The problem is that I can flick around and change my sectors when I first set them up to see how things go then suddenly not be able to do it because I'm all out of influence and either have to fucking wait for it to recharge or reload the save. I'd accept it if there was an undo button that refunded everything but as it stands it's a cost for nothing.

You can transfer stuff from one sector to another without a penalty. Just can't remove it entirely.

Spray some bugspray on it and see if it reacts.

Any general tips for GalCiv 2? Picked it up in the Humble Bundle and I'm enjoying it, but I feel kinda lost

I usually see my Cruisers taking the hits first before my battleships. Then again I build all my ships with obscene range first than damage second. Gotta go full on LOGH with my ship designs.

First release corvettes were OP as all fuck with their near 100% evasion and torpedoes were OP as all hell too because of their range, 100% hit rate and shield pen, plus the fact that none of the AI ever built flak. Now though I keep hearing people say that kinetic is best though stat-wise it's just middle of the road on everything. Pretty sure corvettes are still OP though.

They seem to have them but they hardly ever get translated. Now, I know little of 4x games but wouldn't stuff like Alicesoft's Sengoku Rance and the the Dai-Series, or Koei's Nobunaga's Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms count as such?

The "Nobunaga's Ambition" series

The stars are humanities birthright!

Artillery battleships are the way to go. They deal obscene amounts of damage with the super weapon mounts, especially when you get the arc thrower that completely ignores everything, armor and shields. As for corvettes, they're pretty helpless against bomber/fighter swarms. Battleships also, due to the retarded way the formation AI works, tend to stick to the back of the formation, while cruisers are the first to go, with destroyers and corvettes mixed together in between. This coupled with the battleships relatively long weapon range usually means you won't lose them at all if you have a large enough meatshield department.

...

butterlord clearly doesnt count as a paradox game, i'm talking about their ck2 clones

Eh, I kinda like Stellaris, but it's so easy and generally meh. Have they fixed Civ 6 yet?

I played the only one for PC and it was a tactical game were you played missions from the story up until yang gets married. The game gives you a limited amount of ships, but lets you use captains you have unlocked. It was fun. I dont know how I manage to trick games for windows to let me play it.

so does anyone have a download link for the utopia dlc for stellaris? i don't want to lose my current save by reinstalling the whole game just for a dlc

Have you tried raping it?

i got bad news for you

Played some SMAC over the weekend. I wanted to both revisit SMAC, replay as my fav faction The Spartans, as well as change up my go-to strat (I usually play the turtaling leave-me-alone-to-my-research white tower academic or the ALL OUT FUCK YO FACTION TOTAL WAR type).
This time I took a precautionary, "don't start shit, won't be shit" kind of style, focusing on early game expansion similar to The Hive (get as many outposts built as quickly as possible, grabbing the best environmental spots available. I broke away from the typical Hive strat in that I don't build super close, dense megaopolises and have minimal formers doing work rather than an army of Bore Hole drillers). It worked really well, I was able to expand out and take the entire large island/small continent I landed on without any competition, giving me the southern fourth of Planet. I should have moved to a naval focus more quickly, in fact as soon as I realized I was on my own, but the gap I left myself allowed the U.N. to establish a large foothold in the north. Shifting my economy from one of super hardened defense (all unnecessary, I'm alone on an island and nobody is even attempting to gain a foothold) to a naval power was a waste of time, so instead I started building troop transports and the best rovers I could with a moral bonus (on top of the command center and being Spartan to begin with).
This proved to be the right choice. I was able to sneak on one colony pod to establish a toe-hold on the main U.N. continent up north. With that single base I was able to steadily run rovers up with 3-4 troop transports running in shifts. The steamrolling began, with each base taken being held long enough to get the drone riots under control, establish a defensive unit, then move The Stack of Doom to the next town. The U.N. forces, like typical liberals, couldn't defend themselves in the slightest. I eventually quit taking his calls until we met face to face (how's that pain sphere working out for you, Lal?). However, while I was busy dealing with what was at the time the largest threat to my empire on Planet, that little sneaky bastard Yang was up to his own little campaign.
The son of a bitch had been playing the other factions against me almost the entire time, with only the Green Party hippy lady being my ally (the fucking parallels, man. I half expected Deirdre to start calling for a recall on the Planetary Governor vote over her 2% of the total vote). Stupid University thought they could harass me (and while I was engaged in a war halfway across the planet, they kind of could, I detest multiple fronts) but The Believers fell quickly to The Hive, emboldening them and pushing their reach and influence that much farther. Now The Hive is almost as large as me overall, and from their own conquests their military is actually larger than my own at the moment.
I will have to, of course, inform Morgan, Deirdre, and anyone else that is left with ears to listen, that this existential threat in the form of The Hive is simply too great to tolerate, and that for the good of Planet, nay, the good of mankind itself, this threat must be eliminated.

Nigger it's going to break your saves regardless.

Just like that one jap flash game. It didn't like it.

Mathematically speaking in a straight up fight - you're boned. He'll outproduce you, he doesn't care for money and thanks to free fortifications your moral equals out.

Are planes a thing yet? How about missiles? Those cheap-ass cruise missiles are amazing at wiping chinkstacks hidden behind perimeter defense. What's your difficulty level?

Its funny how Civ6 got a very brief mention on Holla Forums and then promptly succumbed to irrelevance after launch. For good reason.

It's not even all that bad, just lacking.

What are your thoughts about Endless Space, I got it cheap (one buck) compared to its sequel?

I started to playing it for a few of hours, it's one of the first X4 I've touched before, but I feel that there should be more deep when dealing with planets and battles, they feel like I am playing a RNG Game, more than a strategic one.

Well for one, the first one is already finished. But, it is older and already lacks a few features that the newer one has planned. Also amoebas are horrible little shits.

How so? Combat in that game is very dependent on hard counters, for example your two tier higher missiles won't count for shit if the enemy is loaded with PD and you have next to no shields against his lasers. Also certain advanced tactics are almost uncounterable.

The leaders are OP as all hell.

I am playing the red guys because they just colonize and shit (straight forward) , but I haven't tried the alien races.

So pick the "strategy" and see if just counter the "strategy" of the opponent, like calling rock, and hoping for AI to call paper. ???????????????????

Is your keyboard broken? Anyway, when you take into account the range preference for each weapon, the targeting style and shipsize used, the dozen or so initially available tactics or all the unlockable ones you do get more influence on the outcome. It's also really bloody hard to lose when your hero outclasses theirs by ten+ levels.

As for tactics used by the AI if he's stacked with close range drivers chances are that he's going for one of the few tactics that help him close the distance and not something completely unrelated because he rolled a 0-9 instead of a 10-22. It's on you to get good and recognize what you need to research or use to best counter him. Or just reach the point where you can finish a couple of battleships per turn and steamroll his ass.

Jesus tapdancing Christ, rule34 on SMAC? You made my morning, user.
Perhaps. Yang might outproduce me, but my superior training and morale do really make a difference in a firefight. If I can get a small amount of momentum going and at least keep Deidre and Morgan off my back if not on my side then I think I can get the ball rolling with a stack of doom.
I researched flight and the sneaky yellow bastard stole it from me. He's already got a small Air Force built. Missiles are a good call. Luckily, right now I left off just after the destruction of the U.N. and Deidre is in alliance with me, Morgan is chill and just wants the E, and I'm currently in a truce with Yang. I've got an eastern base in The Northern Territories that is the closest to The Hive and that will make a nice staging point for rovers and missiles. I thought about taking a small amount of time to try and expand or at least solidify my holdings before moving forward, but I worry that gives him more time to expand beyond what I can catch up to.
embarrassingly low

Great I never noticed there was a Stellaris thread here
Should I suicide? Am I just not made for strategy games?

To play tall you still need to secure and deny territory otherwise youd get boxed in and reamed.

I played a tall game recently and I managed to get to the midgame with only 3 planets, and the only reason I expanded to 5 was to secure borders.

fuck the research, conquer everything and build a ton of military ship
enemy tech doesn't matter when you outnumber them 10:1

No, Koei's Strategy Series are Grand Strategy Games, there is little to no exploration to them.

I'm surprised you didn't see it before. Is terraforming a thing? Forcing him across a narrow sea helps a ton if you're the only one with amphibious, and it's also great since taking out a transport also splashes all those chinks that need no swimming lessons. Also muh sensors. post a map?

Go for anything you can get with research speed or points. Researchfag unity branch especially.

Would that make Europa Universalis a 4X? :^)

The tradition that gives you a fraction of your monthly research for every surveilled celestial body is hilariously nice (Planetary Survey Corps in the Research tree).

Agressively expand with Frontier Outposts to secure resources and the deny the enemy potential colonies. Going Fanatic Xenophobe + Interstellar Dominion + Nationalistic Zeal + Full Supremacy tree gives you YUGE coverage for every colony/outpost you build.

I enslaved two ayy empires before getting bored shitless and dropping the game.

Too bad autosurvey is broken as fuck.

Yeah, while it's no longer EVADING HOSTILE FLEETS EVADING HOSTILE FLEETS EVADING HOSTILE FLEETS EVADING HOSTILE FLEETS now the ships loving jumping into enemy territory to get murdered by stations. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away I guess.

But what about muh Pacifist Unity Bonus

DAS THA BEST PLAN
Mo' DAKKA iz bettah dan shinny dakka!

Also, does The Guild count as 4x?
I got bored with firing cannons in the first one, gave the 2nd one a try with some mega modpack loaded with fixes. It's okay I guess.

I started with a weavery. Making clothes for poor people for now, all my money went for a bigger house and titles.
Started in Venice, and the titles I bought let me put a weavery on two other towns nearby. After a while I ditched the clothing because poor people don't pay that much. Switched to making worker safety gloves in all towns.
From the ammount of money that's pouring in, I think workers smashing their figgers must be a real problem. Well, not anymore thanks to Velucio's Imports.

I also spotted 2 diferent weaveries from other Dynasties and we can't have that. I managed to get elected into a politic job that lets me send a guy to "inspect" businesses. One of those weaveries is gonna get inspected everyday until it goes bankrupt.
The other weavery is still a problem. They're actually competing with my superior quality gloves. I think I'll buy another title and diversify my workforce by buying an advanced mercenary outpost. I still need to climb up high enough to command the town guards and tell them to go patrol the woods while my mercs set that weavery on fire.
For now, the only thing that gave me a smile was finding out who the fuck stole one my carts early on and getting them to pay a fine in court.
The next year my wife accused some whore of some serious crime, but the dumb bitch is so retarded she couldn't convice the judges. Serves me right, and I learned my lesson. Already got evidence on a guy that pillaged a building. If he gets elected mayor (he's trying but everyone hates him, I wonder why, duh) I'll blackmail him for my own advancement. Otherwise, I'll try to get to judge, have my wife accuse him after I change the law to "Severe" and see if I can get heads rolling.

I remember some years ago the game being so broken that I managed to accuse a guy of killing me. Twice.
He was sentenced to death, but before the punishment was carried out, I got him in court again and acused me of insulting me. So he first paid a heavy fine and THEN died.

Having a member of your family being judge is fun.

i feel like there's not enough punishment in these
i can just murder everyone in the government and become mayor by virtue of there being literally nobody else left

Yeah, you'd think that "Imperial Reputation" could sink and the emperor sends troops to fuck with you or something.
That'd be actually nice.
Would give you a better to reason to build those stupid watchtowers. Those things are seriously bugged, even with the fixes I got.

Rule34 is interesting like that. Sometimes your brain just doesn't make the connection, that some random ass 4X game from 1999 would have hentai drawn of it…I mean, wtf? I wish I could meet those artists IRL and buy them a beer. I feel like we're likely cut from the same cloth.
I tend to avoid it as much as possible, since Planet gets seriously pissed about the unlooked for facelift and FUCK YOUR FUNGUS.
If I could goad him into a war in my southern territory, yes. Currently though, there is enough open space left for him to expand I'm not sure he would (although he might, I did check the "more aggressive AI" option during setup). Plus, I've already got the norther territories from defeating Lal which are either on the same continent or adjacent to his, that'll be a smart place to put sensors I think.
At work currently but can do when I get home. assuming the attempt doesn't bork the video drivers, this game can be touchy

I haven't played SMAC for a few years now but goddamn, I'm reinstalling just for that.

I remember the very first game I did and won. I was blown away by how the Planet worked. Sure, it looks like simple mechanics when you look at it from a gameplay perspective, but when you don't know about it, the very first time you see the planet responding to your actions, the lore tidbits when you research shit tieing to it, the other factions warning you, the…
Oh fuck it, it was fucking magical. Like the game wasn't a dumb "move bigger stacks onto smaller stacks to win" 4X like every other piece of shit I've played in the last couple years.

Then again, the first time I played SMAC was right after trying Beyond Earth, thanks to a suggestion here on Holla Forums. The difference is fucking abysmal. How could they have fucked it up so much, goddamn I was pissed but happy I found a game that good.

Muh nigga.
Yeah, Planet was brilliant on a number of levels. 1st, man vs man vs environment is a great plot to begin with. 2nd, Planet itself is an interesting as hell character. 3rd, it also fits in very deeply with the philosophy the game sneaks in. How many other games out there quote fucking There Spoke Zarathustra and deal with a planet sized meta-consciousness?
Yeah, SMAC and Civ 4 were the high water mark for me.
Attempting to reach a broader audience, unfortunately.

See, the things is, I enjoyed Civ V. It's not as deep as the others (got better with the expansions, but never reached Civ 4, I miss corporations) and was more limited in scope, but it was an interesting spin.
I personally enjoy playing diferent things, not the same old. So I still managed to have fun with it.
Still kept Civ 4 installed, that one is NEVER leaving this harddrive.

Heck, I even kinda-liked Civ 6. The district stuff is enough of a change to make it interesting enough to warrant playing 4 to 6 games. More if there's expansions.

But Beyond Earth was an especially bad plate of hot shit. Half the problem is the fuck-ton of +1 bonuses to every minor shit you do.
It reminded me of playing D&D 4th edition and having to keep a paper sheet nearby to keep track of all the +1 shit that wears off in 3 turns anyway.
Then there's the progression, absolutely pathetic, the barely inexistent role of the Planet and the retarded AI.

That last one was the straw that broke the Mindworm's back. I can have fun with any piece of shit game that at least does something new. But I can't deal with terrible AI. It's just not fun.

And then I gave them a permanent ceasefire by unistalling the game.
I was already getting angry because of how satelites worked, it was fucking stupid and clearly ripped off from Endless Legend Pain Mages "Arcanas" that by the way, work much better and actually do interesting shit and meaningfull decisions.

I've been waiting for years for someone to take Ruthless.com (pic related) and remake it in a full on cyberpunk 4x, but after that little run-in, I think I'll keep that game installed and never ask for anything again.

An artificial sea between your clay and his is great at controlling his (probe) incursions and a waterbase next to the land is completely immune from land troops unless they have a transport, a hover or amphibious. Also, I hope you're building your sensors.

I'd just add how supply crawlers are the worst gamebreakers out there, especially since armored crawlers project a ZoC and armored jet crawlers serve as surprisingly effective bunkers-on-demand.

Who AoW here?
Also would there be any interest in Multiplayer?

I doubt you'd appreciate my wraith heavy approach.

Probably not, but I would play regardless

I only ever played it on lan and pbem but in theory hamachi or the like would work. I'd suggest making a pasta and a dedicated thread, and maybe you'll snag enough fags for a full game.alternatively try aow.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=1122 and see if anyone's still alive

And the friendliest advice I can give you is to ban the undead and high men.

Then you were playing it wrong. In 4th Ed, you had exactly two different durations for buffs: until the end of you next turn, and until the end of the encounter. Debbufs were the same, except there was also (save ends), which is perfectly self explanatory. If anything, it was easier to track buffs/debuffs than on past editions, because you didn't had spells with duration like 1 round/level, 1 minute/level, 10 minutes/level, and 1 hour/level, with Extend Spell on top of that to further confuse stuff.

I'm torn about AoW 3.
For the record, Shadow Magic is still the best one in the series.

On one hand, I can play Sorcerer, start combat with 6 Abominations and finish the fight with 6 abomination and 6 new units in my army. Give me half a dozen battles and I turn the tables hard enough to stapple them to the ceilling.

On the other hand, if you pick a large map with tons of cities, you end up researching everything before you even explored half of it. Last large game I played (7 AI + me) had me finish the research tree with only 2 players being eliminated. Pretty sure the other's weren't too far behind me.

It's a neat game, but it only works on small maps since the math doesn't really work in lategame for large maths.
Also, if you don't start close enough to your oponents, there's barely any conflict at all.

It's not the duration. It's the ammount of buffs.
I remember a cleric casting a bunch of shit and we had 5 diferent buffs/auras from him alone. Coupled with 2 from a ranger (I think) and then a boss that applied another 3.
It's not that each buff is complicated/hard to keep track.
It's that it's hard to keep track of them all.

It also reminds me of WoW and other gear-grinding MMOs, where you pick two or three stats for your "build" like Vitality/Spirit/Strength and then "farm" them by collecting two dozen diferent items that each give +23 to STR, +12 to STR, +17 to STR and shit like that.

I'd rather have few BIG numbers than tons of diferent numbers. If there is a need to have tons of smaller numbers, kindly hide them away and simulate shit in the background like Dominions does for instance.

Hamachi does work, I've played with a few friends on it a month or so back.

I can't say I have much experience with the third game, I only put in a few hours on a pirate copy right when the game came out and dropped it because it didn't feel that great. and the music is only good in AoW 1

Most temporary buffs were power bonuses (they don't stack with themselves), so you wouldn't really need to keep track of too much stuff. I distinctly remember being much easier to keep track than, say, 3rd Ed bonuses (the cleric alone has things like Divine Favor, Shield of Faith, Bless, Magic Weapon, and other buffs right from level 1)

Well, I'm not gonna claim 3rd edition wasn't a clusterfuck.
Maybe it's because we eventually got used to the clusterfuck.
Also, having some specialized char sheets helped keep track of it.

I'm comparing it to the 5th edition, which I like a lot.
You either have advantage or disadvantage for buffs. Works much, much better.
yeah, I know about the SJW shit. Who gives a hoot, disregard their modules and use the rules.

How about slow, haste or time diluting effects like imprison? :^)

I'm not. Never finished more than a couple of missions and I doubt I ever will, I mean I appreciate what they went with but it's like they got rid of all the cheese. Walls, special damage effects, overmap terrain shenanigans, immunities or otherwise overpowered shit like invisibility, balistas.

Smaller one direction battles aren't my thing either.

I assume it works fine with the pirate gog version?

Yeah but you wouldn't use or even memorize most of those unless special circumstances.

Well, I liked the 3rd game because of the class/race combinations.
My favourite is still Elven Dreadnaught. You can have elfs with muskets and flametanks setting fire to forests and that's pretty cool.
You could also have Orc magicians, and dragons tribalistic dragons that lived in harmony with nature.
It's dumb combinations like this that end up being fun.
Also, undead can be undead of any race. Actually, one of the best games to be a necromancer too.
It just lacked all the charm Shadow Magic had. Besides the endgame problem I mentioned (that can be mitigated with smaller maps) I can't really tell you what I don't like about it. It's just not right for some reason.

That faggot is always the biggest problem
I've found the ideal solution for deal with him is to drop a planet buster on every single city he has

I think all that shit is still there man. Or are you complaining about the lack of them?
Walls are kind of useless unless you got a lot of ranged shit defending them. They do stop a mellee-centric army from murderfucking your archers for 3-4 turns, enough to kill half of them with the height advantage. They also give you a good reason to bring teleporting/flying units.
Not sure what you mean with special damage effects, but each element has diferent effects and debuffs associated with it.
And there's plenty of Overmap shenanigans. You can kill off their population from afar and even destroy an approaching army. Or make your armies fly, terraform and other assorted shit.
But this gets compounded by the "large maps" problem I mentioned: if you play on a very large map, you can expand with no resistance for 150 turns, and at most you're casting buffs on your cities. Why burn an enemy city when it's halfway across the map?
You don't even see enemy armies until much, much later unless you go out of your way to be a dick to them.

Nah, it's not. Walls were a motherfucker in 2/SM even if you didn't have a moat and they're the stuff of nightmares if you did or played 1. Elemental effects don't do shit compared to what they used to, for example cold in AoW had a 2 or 3 turn freeze effect.

There's barely any terraforming needed. Flying, floating or special movement like mountaineering is mostly pointless, and raiding or the whole scorched earth gameplay is a joke with the domain auto capture. I don't remember, can you even buff troops outside of combat in 3?I do know they nerfed all the siege engines

Is Worlds of Magic any good? I saw some screenshots the other day and i caught my eye, but I couldn't find it for torrenting and I'm not purchasing it unless I'm sure it is any good.

I've got 31 hours clocked in on Civ 5. 92 hours on Civ 4 and that's just the Steam version I bought after I felt guilty playing 100+ hours of the pirated version
Fucking kek.
How the hell have I never heard of this?!
That sounds awesome.

Sensors and this. This is happening. I'm re-naming the easternmost northern former U.N. base "Forward Basecamp 3e69b4" after you, mate.

But user, that's an atrocity! KEK Trump vs Xi
Attached is an almost completely zoomed out map (I'm black, Deidre is green, Yang blue, the one yellow dot is Morgan. I assume that's Africa) as well as a zoomed in shot of Forward Basecamp 3e69b4.

The Guild is more of a city builder really, but it has a very specific combination of rules that dont really fit in any category.

Naturally, the faction colors are always the same. And there's going to be a shit ton more blue if you don't shore up the western or the eastern continent bank

No wonder the planet hates you. And try to limit the number of ports you build, most SMAX water yield buildings work just as well but you'll usually get an extra turn to prevent flood/wormtide/blitz. As for sensors try building a base on top of one and see what happens.

And thanks a lot. I always wanted some occupied neoparjeets shitting on a street designated after my actions.

I don't know what you're talking about since it's obviously a racing sim.

Yes, that's the version we used and it worked without a hitch

Holy fucking shit why can't I remove my fucking robots? I can't just disassemble them and I can't purge them and I can't even set their rights. I'm sure you used to be able to. It looks like my only option is to colonize some planet, move all my robots there, give it away to some other lesser species, declare war on them, then bomb the shit out of the planet so all the pops die and then claim it back as part of the peace deal. Holy shit they're not even sentient. It's easier to kill off an alien species than a fucking robot I BUILT MYSELF.

Jesus I only have two planets and don't have any good ones around to plant more guys on. Maybe it's because I don't like colonizing planets that aren't the one I picked first off. No real reason for that other than muh purity. Then again I just attack and vassalise every non-advanced start ayy I find then use their ships to attack more people until I have most of the galaxy under my belt come mid game.

any tips other than "uninstall" before i begin my first stelllaris game?

Choose your FTL type wisely, and don't make a beeline for the dangerous techs until you're prepared for robots and spehss ghosts

Also, if one of your science ships talks about a "horizon signal" make sure you investigate ҉immediately, for what was will ҉be an҉d what will be ҉was

The only good ayy is a dead one.
Also make sure the FTL type is locked to either hyperlane or whatever the gate one is. The beginner type of hyperlane is absolute garbage strategy-wise.
That and closing and restarting the game will temporarily fix the memory leak problem all paradox games have if you're getting unbearable lag after a while.

beginner type of FTL I mean.

Spoilers.
Just keep the synth pop under 5 robots and choose AI rights, 5% chance of bad things happening. That one is really really easy.
Spess ghosts on the other hand

I played Civ VI at its release, have they done any significant improvements yet?

Any space strategy games about managing a ship and crew?
Something like FTL, where you pick your crew and their jobs and where to go but it's up to the crew to do their job to fulfil your orders, but without the rogue-lite elements of FTL.
Kinda like what the Football Manager sim is to FIFA.

Haven't played a 4x game before with the exception of Master of Orion 2 back in the day, which I love.

Thinking of getting into Civ. Can someone tell me where the Civ games rank in relation to each other? Please include Alpha centauri too I guess.

Civ4 was the last real Civ. 5 and 6 are both for babies and brocken as fuck.

One step forward, two steps back. Barbs are now so numerous they can spawn 5+ units before you even uncover your first camp. Production is still slow as fuck and everything still takes ages to complete. The AI is slightly better at defending itself but due to the barb spam its not unusual to have one or two get destroyed very early on. Diplomacy is as schizo as ever.

Yeah, the faction color breakdown was for anyone else who isn't as familiar with SMAC. like anyone else gives a shit about me and my 20 year old game but whatevah
I did not realize that they offset eco-damage, damn. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the next best time is now.
I typically build ports because A) a bit of role playing (human beings populate coasts more than other terrains IRL) and B) naval warfare.
Did that, did I miss something? What am I looking for here?
I'll pass an ordinance for a designated shitting street, mate. Right next to the Children's Creche.
I only had about 15 minutes to play last night, but Deidre got off her stupid hippy space-weed smoking ass long enough to share her world map with me before dragging me into conflict with Morgan directly after Yang tried to shake me down for half of my energy reserves. Fucker thought I'd go for it too. IDGAF. Morgan isn't going to do shit, Deidre isn't going to help but at least she isn't against me, and I've decided to out-Hive The Hive.

Go Civ 4 and never doubt your choice. Try out SMAC at least once, esp if you like Sci-Fi.

God, fuck the Unbidden. I haven't seen the Prethoryn spawn in forever because some dipshit AI beelines Jump Drives and invites the dumbfucks asap

Building a base on top of a sensor doesn't remove it, giving you the benefit of a sensor of your base tile. Beats building a Geosynchronous Survey Pod (assuming you play SMAX with the original factions).

HOW DO YOU LIKE MY SHIELDS NOW, YOU COMMUNIST FAGGOTS

also that map of cardassia is outdated, i got it wrong i guess

Hope you like fungus noodles and wormbuns for lunch, dinner and breakfast. I'd fuck Deidre over and use gas (needlejets)Alternatively raise the water level and see if he can swim

Forests give you a double bonus in relation to the planet pissed off factor, once when you plant them and on a per turn base for just having them in your territory. They're some of the best tiles short of monoliths and special resources before the caps are lifted, and also cost effective and improvable with tech. River energy bonus works on them, too.

Harbors are probably a ciV conditioning.

He is and it's debatable considering you can't replace them once destroyed by air raids or bombardment. Which is obviously much more likely to happen than a probe team taking out your GSP. Now, using rivers instead of roads.

You're making me want to reinstall birth of the federation.

Alien Crossfire with original factions.

I'm quickly learning what a damn scrub I am at this game, or maybe just out of practice.
How did you know that from the screen shots I posted?
I felt like I got pretty lucky with the number of monoliths on my starting continent too.
What would be the point in fucking Deidre over? I'm already in vendetta with Yang, which I want more or less, and Morgan, which I don't want yet. Why take on 3 at once?
Raising water levels is interesting, I am Planetary Governor after all.
In an interesting turn of events, I am now about as equally powerful as Yang, and Deidre has pulled her weight, taking one of his bases before even I could (Great Clustering, right on his main continent).
My formers are working on raising up a land bridge to bring over all my Rovers (hardened marines that eat Mind Worms for breakfast from The Great U.N. cleanse), and anything I can't take by force I plan on sinking into the ocean. While they spend 12 turns doing that, my remaining troop transports are moving into position as a backup plan. I'll need them to get to Morgan unless I want to do another land bridge trick, and I've identified an area to attempt that.
If all goes well against Yang, I'll just steamroll over Morgan and somehow manage to piss Deidre off just enough along the way to break off this sisterhood pact and pick up a vendetta.

I give a shit. I just have nothing insightful to say, my Alpha Centauri skills are weak.

Why wouldn't you fuck Deidre (over)? She's sandwiched between your clay, she'd be easier to handle than Yang. if you switch from shit tier GREEN to FREEM she'll go into red anyway and you can't level the chink-field with atrocities without her getting pissed.

You're past the point of diplomacy and playing nice being relevant. Gaian Anschluß, when? Next time try thinker.

You're shitting me! I fucking love FFH

:')

Cause she's currently my pact sister, and I'm already at war with two other factions. I don't want to take on all three at once, that's literally everyone left on the map. I'm a pussy?
My thinking is: there is only one real threat to me at this point in the game, Yang. Deidre is tight enough with me I can keep her on the DL to save for last. Morgan has been non-aggressive this entire game, and is pacified with the increased trading decision I made right after taking Planetary Governor. Worst comes to worst, he attacks me and I've got two fronts (same as Yang right now). But he could stay focused on Deidre, or stay relatively neutral, or give me a chance to buy him off. I'm not pissed off at him enough at this point to dismiss that outright if I need to buy time. So that's three out of four cases where I'm ok with what he's doing, a chimpout seems unlikely to reach me until I'm ready to deal with him.
Yang, at this point, is already teetering in first place. Deidre, by just taking one base, has shifted our relative power relationship to be very quite balanced just between our two factions. Yet another reason to keep her on my side for now, honestly, because the two of us as one unit united are larger and stronger than Yang. She's my left punch jab while I wind up the haymaker right. I don't even need a KO, I just need to get him reeling, off his momentum enough to build my own. Then steamroll. If that works, keep the momentum going right over Morgan, who I will ignore if I can, meaning he can't get out of our vendetta unless I want to. Add in some random atrocity near the end to piss off Deidre, and when she's last, weak, scared, and I've consumed every other faction on Planet, she'll understand which philosophy is supreme.
WWII metaphors get difficult here, I'm like a militaristic Australia that took the UK and am now facing Mother Russia who has taken Eastern Europe, and Western Europe is on my side, all while Africa is worried about shekels.

/vee/ whats the most autistic x4 for autistic people that masturbate to micromanagement and spreadsheets? I want to experience myself the ULTIMATE AUTISM

How do you guys like my Nguni empire? Nooga Bubachuk just put the finishing touches on the black Statue of David, which is really going to help my cultural output though seeing as my people created pyramids and founded Judaism, it's not like I need the kudos. I wish I had saved the shot of the diplomatic incident when a Nguni stood up his German bride.

Oh, and carthage has only one city which is the northmost gold dot on the left continent.

I pirated Civ 6 on release haven't played since don't plan on every playing it tbh, just wondering if there's been a new patch and if it's made it any better.

Aurora4x

What mod?

If you enjoy Stars!, elevate yourself to Aurora.

I dislike that anything above the Talent gives you a century less before forced resignation.

Badmouth anything you want in AoW2, but not music.

I almost never play these games to conclusion but I really wanted to stomp these fallen empires shit in after fucking with me all game once they awakened. My crisis event started on other side of the galaxy obliterating anyone not in my axis.

Got a domination victory before I even got to the unbidden. Everything in red is me, everything by red is vassal.

Love the new expac, if the next one is this good game is going to be great.

What the fuck lad

Aurora

AoW 1 ost is far better, there is no comfiness in AoW 2/SM ost.

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLYYYYYYYYYYY FUCCCCCCCCCCKING SHHHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT I AM GETTING A MOTHER FUCKING ERECTION THANK YOU

150k is standart in the late game.

FYI current AI is literally broken and falls into a starvation spiral, avoid playing Stellaris till its fixed.

And here is another reason to keep Deidre strung along, I need her votes. Till she broke our pact! I guess terraforming towards her island was…a bit too obvious? Too forward? She tried to vote me out as Governor, the nerve!
Yang has fallen. Morgan is next. Deidre is nervous. MAKE PLANET GREAT AGAIN

Is there any reason to have your food stores higher than the minimum other than for dick waving?
Also fuck fallen empires. The mushroom xenophiles next to me keep asking me to hand over my population for them to anally probe and put in zoos. I swear to god I'm going to paint the entire galaxy gold when I get the chance.

Unless your autism level is high enough to map out every base beforehand, you just shit out forests everywhere while teching to hybrid forests. 3/2/3 tiles are nothing to scoff at. Sprinkle a few boreholes in as soon as the hybrids are up and you're set for the game. Your economy will be strong as fuck and the planet will fuck everyone else before you get its fungal dick

Well one time I managed to sell food in trade for shit so maybe not setting it to minimum isn't such a bad idea

Good thinking, I have started shitting forests out while stomping through Hive territory. Really chomping at the bit to go home and finish off Morgan and get started fucking Deidre.

You're playing with your food by this point.

Yeah, but gotta finish cleaning up Planet until they cave or are gone. I'll go until the final victory is declared.

Stop wasting time and play higher difficulty on extra large trueplanet map. Do it faggit.

There's a similar face in harvest moon: a wonderful life, where the barn exit to the field is

:^)

Change pacifist to militarist and we have a deal.

So…..Stellaris is slowly becoming worth a playtrough?

It was always worth A playthrough. Its just not worth more than a couple.

With what settings you play on AI Empires and Habitable Worlds, i never manage to find a number i like.

Basically space slut. I like that

Anyone play Imperium Galactica?

I recently played through it and I am mixed.
One/Two playthroughs? Yeah, but not more than that.

It still has massive pacing issues (like most 4X games that aren't AC), where you either have tons to do, or very little, just waiting for shit to happen.
Wars are fucking exhausting and annoying, since you gotta escort transport fleets, micromanage your shit a fuckton or you will get destroyed, only to be further annoyed by stuff like an AI refusing to give up in spite of all his fleets/spaceports getting crushed, or defensive pact members getting 3 war declarations at the same time.

What bothers me the most is how bad the endgame is, Awakened/Fallen Empires or the always-spawning Unbidden are retardedly difficult to beat alone, and the AI will never ever really help you, even if they have to as a vassal.
There aren't ways to really catch up to them in terms of technology and all you can do is outproduce them somehow, which tends to be insanely difficult on small and humanly-manageable maps.

The mega structures are also painfully disappointing, they require lots of resources and their benefits/impact is minimal, as by the time you can build them, the game is usually long over and there is nothing more to do.
Space-Habitats are completely useless because of how small they are, have no space port and usually don't let you construct planet unique buildings on them on top of having extremely little border projection.
Dyson Spheres cost a fuckton of resources and time to build, but by that point you already won, have a balanced energy economy and have no way to take real advantage of it.
Orbital Science Stations are useless, since to build them you need to already have completed the entire science tree.

Its eh, maybe mods will fix it in a year, for now stick to Alpha Centauri until the stars grow cold and weary, and our thought turn again to the beginning.

I forgot to shit on the diplomacy, which is abysmal in Stellaris.

You can't false flag, you can't pay empires to go to war for you, you can't spy, the mechanics aren't there at all and interaction is absolutely minimal.

They try to balance it out with events, but it isn't enough at all.

I still can listen to if for hours and don't get annoyed. I would give much for better music in Master of Magic, the rest (except the AI) is at least good there.

That sounds very realistic

Somehow I never get past 50k, though I managed to punch the Unbidden in the groin with a 40k fleet.

Diplomacy is shit in the way of vassals being next to worthless, allies worse than worthless because you need their approval for wars. Tributaries are a trap since you only get 25% rounded down but are saddled with a massive truce if you ever do decide you had enough of their expanding and would rather kill them.

There are no ticking wargoals and there's no notion of war exaustion so the only way to win a conflict is to repeatedly send your blob to smash into his blob while ensuring that your blob is somewhat nastier.

Espionage doesn't exit, sectors are broken by design, land warfare is retarded to the point of mods being necessary to make lethal bombardment any lethal. There's no trade, no civilian ships or pirates other than what the game starts with. The society management is a joke and you're bound to see 80% of the events within the first two hours. Colony development a joke and survey a chore.

It's not worth for more than a couple of hours. At best.

Going heavy on battleships helps.

Oh I see. I often see it as an unnecessary inflation of power, since BBs aren't as face-wrecking as mass corvettes, despite their bigger numbers. But then again, needing to replace these little buggers after every battle gets tedious.

Nah, I'm finishing this up. Then that sounds like a plan
Morgan has fallen, although it did take slightly longer than expected. He had time to prepare. While I was waging war on him I also happened to let my relationship with Deidre go from Pact Sister to Truce to Vendetta. Whoops, shucks! Good thing I built a land bridge to her area with MagTubes while we were still BFFs.
She really didn't like the part where I cut his holdings in half. She was uncomfortable watching me quickly consume his smaller, western half. She was downright squirming when I had him down to his last three bases. She knew true fear when I wiped every Morgan citizen and base off of Planet during my last push of that campaignDay of the rope!RWDS

The whole fleet power grade is very arbitrary though. Like that one fag above said I both killed fleets twice my combat rating and lost to those I should've crushed.

You must dissent.

lolwut. I can beat an insane FE on a tiny map after 100 years.

Habitats are literally the only good megastructure because you can spam them and get all of your energy and research from them

So ini fixing Stellaris's shit sector system: should I just bump up core worlds and ignore them all together, or should I negate their influence costs and neuter there AI, allowing me to have a single leader influence multiple worlds, but also put up with that 75% multiplier flavored as buracracy or whatever?

Why they just didnt system AI? Its a not a fucking PvP Boss from Unreal 1999.

Post empires.
I just found out that the cocks I was at war with were actually someone else and all the fighting was with the guy they had a defensive pact with. Fucking hell that big grey blob in the middle there is supposed to be mine not the little fucker at the bottom. Never trust an ant-eater.

Honestly sectors only seem worthwhile to shelve systems you've already completely built up but at that point there is nothing left to do so why even bother in the first place. Definitely remove influence costs though jesus I can't get over how shit an idea that was to have in the first place. Nothing is really lost by removing sectors altogether because of how retarded the AI for them is.

You forgot Deviant :^)

Theres mods on the workshop for that.
Theres also mods that fix sector and enemy AI.

Allow me to spoonfeed your ass:
stellaris.smods.ru/

That improved AI doesn't work, the link's in the OP and he didn't ask for help. He asked whether to straight up mod them out or reasons why not.

Which is retarded because people already did that.

Unlike "spoonfeeding" someone who never asked for it or doing a quick text edit instead of scouring steam for mods that don't fix the problem any better? My bad.

Unbunch your panties, laddie.

In what galaxy do you ((need)) a dedicated mod to change one digit in a unprotected text file and why do you believe you should get a free pass for promoting such base faggotry?

The question of why and how far you should change it leads to gameplay discussion, including potential ways to play around it or how badly it could destabilize an already snowball effect prone game. Or in short a more pleasant way to interact than wrangling with your attention seeking.

In a galaxy where reinventing the wheel when someone else did it already is generally a retarded idea.

Done, Deidre is still suffering in her pain sphere. She won't last long.
Time for extra large map of planet on a higher difficulty.

Yes. When the stockpile of a sector is full your income from it goes to 100%. Just enable respecting tile ressources and disable military station building and colonization.

You stupid bitch. You stupid, fucking bitch. I can't believe how dumb you are, jesus christ, i can't believe how fucking dumb you are you are the dumbest motherfu

kill yourself already

later. it took me way to long to test it but yeah, it doesn't work like that. fag.

For someone looking to branch out from EU4 and CK2, what's the next step up? Hearts of Iron? Victoria?

it does for me you cuckold

Youre better off in the /gsg/ thread fam.
But in general Victoria II is the go to game after EU. HoI is a whole another animal.

user please.

The official color of the imperium is golden, you heretics.

Green iz best boss sir

One question: why aren't you playing in the widescreen mod?

Nostalgia, and I've never heard of it.
New game started.

pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri#Widescreen_resolution
The wiki page is outdated, there is a 1.08 version of PRACX available here:
alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=14308.0
No registration needed for download.

(checked)

it's the greenest of them all you 'ERETICK

I picked gold, the best colour. I have the diplomatic view selected which shows me as green, my vassals as yellow, rivals as orange, closed borders as red, and neutrals as grey.

kosher / 10

...

Always play with tech stagnation m8
The games research is much too fast without it

Appreciate it, but I'm gonna stick with vanilla cause reasons. lazy

NO CHAIRMAN NO!

I dunno, I was wiping the map before I even had hovertanks in my last game. This time around I want to specifically not go military, which means transcendance is an option, which means climbing the tech tree to the top. So…nah, not this round, although I considered it. I rarely go diplomatic or economic.
Conqueror Marr has made planetfall. We can sense in the Manifold that H'minee and his weak followers have also survived, although we have yet to sense them directly. We have quickly taken a large section of the northeastern continent of this planet, and met a strange yet distinctly intelligent creature. "Cha Dawn" she calls herself. She may yet prove worthy to our Cause, as she has some obvious latent manifold manipulation ability. Curious.
Another set of these "humans" who calls himself Domai fancies himself as some champion of the working class. Curt and smelly, he is a disturbance to the manifold itself. Conclusion: eradication with vengeance.

Goddamn it, user. We really need to start hosting games again

S U B H U M A N

Alien Crossfire is "vanilla" to me. I meant no mods, just what the CD installation gives you. I'm playing the GOG version for ease of use
Forgot to grab a screen shot before saving last night.
Cha Dawn has declared vendetta. Foolish. Attempts to contact us after we took her first base: declined.

Cha Dawn is a young boy

A HD resolution mod changes nothing in the gameplay. SMAC with PRACX is arguably more vanilla than SMAX in its any appearance.

Not even mentioning that only cowards prefer vanilla to AI-fixing mods.

Fuck me, I honestly did not know that. All the more reason to wipe the fucker off Planet Fucking hell, Holla Forums, you're yet again making me feel like an idiot at/about this game.

Yeah, yeah, I'll get around to it. lazy, I told you

I've been playing the "vanilla" AI for 20 years, it kinda is what it is at this point. Widescreen mods I can make concessions for, AI changing would be too far imho.