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Grand Strategy Arcen's The Last Federation - 4x in space from Ai War's creators. Out now!

Mortmal

Arcane
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
Messages
9,185
I'd advise people to "try the demo" *cough*, before they buy. I don't see the game appealing to every strategy fan. Some people won't like the combat. It gets extremely chaotic, and at times even boring if you are under/over powered. There's no auto-resolve. Now, that can be mitigated by not fighting, and choosing other options but I can see people not liking the combat system.

Another element that might throw people off is that it's extremely data heavy. There's a lot of text and explanation throughout the game. A ton of figures and numbers thrown at you. If you are the type that likes solving problems and thinking about numbers and effects for several minutes before deciding any action, then you will be right at home. If you get frustrated by not having transparently good/bad choices available you might not like this game. For instance, in a game of chess, there might be three or four "right" moves to make at any given time(sometimes just one, but you get my point), whereas in this game it feels like there are dozens of choices and sometimes none of them feel like the "perfect" one because time marches on and you're always missing out on something.

It's a really interesting approach to a game I think, especially because you as a player cannot control everything. Things feel very muddled at times, and sometimes you feel powerless even after making some "good" choices. It's like being the ultimate "neutral" ambassador in a game of Diplomacy, except that if you screw up all your deals then the other players start sending assassins after you.

This sounds quite great. Also, I don't think you will find many people on the Codex who dislike a game for being too complex.

You could be surprised.. Theres not so many codexers reading the substrategy forum .
Even if torrenting indies will grant you a special place in hell, I think koolnoodles is right , try it before buying, this game is like most arcen game, an UFO, there's simply no other game like this. Also it may requires a bit of patching too, my game is slowing down a lot at the end. This wont be for everyone .
 

Mortmal

Arcane
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
Messages
9,185
Well, it looks interesting enough. Thanks for the info guys. Although, now I'm conflicted between buying this or waiting for the Wealth of Nations DLC for EU4.

Dont bother waiting for that DLC unless you want to make a donation for Paradox. Im a huge fan of all things made by Paradox but their DLCs for EU4 are not worth buying at all, you get the important stuff for free anyway.

if they release it in the same state as raja of india , wait a few months.
 

Destroid

Arcane
Joined
May 9, 2007
Messages
16,628
Location
Australia
It's uhh.. I think I'll give it another go around, but it's not as interesting as I had hoped. Probably it would be quite difficult to get a win without any of the races dying, but through an entire game I never once was actually challenged by the combats on normal, and I found I was just grinding enemy fleets for credits, for lack of a better way to get them in any reasonable time frame. I won my first game with 4 aliens surviving in the federation.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,269
Managed a win with all 8 races alive at the end on my first go. No one really started wars, I initially just raised relations by trading technology around, then I figured out that stations are a huge influence cheat (capture an undefended station for -30 influence, outsource it for 60 months for +30 influence with any race you like), allowing me to rapidly gain high influence with everyone even while building up a large money stockpile by attacking their fleets for money. When it came time to form the federation I just visited every world and they all joined in the span of a day. So... yay?

It all seems...very thin and experimental. Like someone decided to make a game around giving water to people in FO3 until they forgot the fact that you nuked megaton were an evil slavemaster race. I'm assuming wars would break out quicker on harder difficulties (the Burlust kind of did... something once in a while), but it never felt like races really reacted to what I did (like, getting mad at me for gifting their foes all of the research I just stole from them). And it seems like the only way to "lose" is by choosing to form the federation too early, but there is really no reason to do so.

The space combat was OK at first, but literally nothing of value is added or changed to it throughout the game, so eventually it's just a horrible grind every time you need to destroy stuff for cash after the first hour or so. Nevermind the "capture x" missions which are literally just you cloaking, running to the target, then spamming your clear-bullet abilities for 3 or 4 turns. You'll do those like 50 times over. Once the tutorial unlocks everything there is no additional depth to the combat other than researching +% ship stats buffs at the exact same instant every other race gets +% ship stats buffs.
 
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Destroid

Arcane
Joined
May 9, 2007
Messages
16,628
Location
Australia
Yeah I didn't take over any stations until later on. They are also very cheap to defend. In my game the aliens were quite pro-active about killing each other, I had to work a bit to keep the pacifist furries alive.
 

kenup

Scholar
Joined
Jul 25, 2013
Messages
134
Codex 2014
Well, it looks interesting enough. Thanks for the info guys. Although, now I'm conflicted between buying this or waiting for the Wealth of Nations DLC for EU4.

Dont bother waiting for that DLC unless you want to make a donation for Paradox. Im a huge fan of all things made by Paradox but their DLCs for EU4 are not worth buying at all, you get the important stuff for free anyway.
Yeah, I know. CoP sucked. On the other hand, it will depend on where the 2nd Trade Capital feature will be( as well as if DS2 is worth buying or not). And I didn't buy the India DLC for CK2 and was without internet for a month; so now I'm trying to catch up.
 

Zewp

Arcane
Joined
Sep 30, 2012
Messages
3,568
Codex 2013
I love it so far. I only spent about three hours with it last night but I was also only planning on spending a few minutes with it.

I guess I'm not far enough in yet to make a good call on whether it stays good/interesting, but I enjoyed dicking around with the races early in the game. As an example, I helped one of the warlike races with a few research topics that increases their warship production and next thing I knew they were regularly attacking the peaceful barn-owls.
 

lefthandblack

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2006
Messages
1,287
Location
Domestic Terrorist HQ
I love it so far. I only spent about three hours with it last night but I was also only planning on spending a few minutes with it.

I guess I'm not far enough in yet to make a good call on whether it stays good/interesting, but I enjoyed dicking around with the races early in the game. As an example, I helped one of the warlike races with a few research topics that increases their warship production and next thing I knew they were regularly attacking the peaceful barn-owls.
I felt the same way about it on my first play and played it the same way. I was cackling maniacally as I went around starting wars and selling captured pilots as slaves. The problem lies in the fact that there is no way to win that way. I slogged it out for about eight hours on one game trying to find a way to meet the win conditions before I finally abandoned that game.

There have been several beta patches since then and I've updated and tried it out every time. It was actually better before I patched it. If you don't find a way to jump through the games set-in-stone hoops and form the federation, the races will just up and form an opposing federation and then it's pretty much game over.

To anybody thinking about buying this: You might want to wait a while.

While it has some charm, it's kind of like> Listening And Following Directions: The Game.
 

Zewp

Arcane
Joined
Sep 30, 2012
Messages
3,568
Codex 2013
Well that's a shame. The premise sounded very promising.

I guess that's the case with a lot of Arcen games. I remember I bought Skyward Collapse last year because I thought the premise sounded amazing, but the actual game wasn't as much fun.
 

lefthandblack

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2006
Messages
1,287
Location
Domestic Terrorist HQ
Wait so you cant "form" a federation by conquest of opposing races?
Nope. Not as yet. That's what I was going for on my first game. There is a race that is your stereotypical chaotic evil villain types, I sidled up to them and sabotaged everyone else thinking it would be an easy win for my first game. The game ended up being a stalemate between that race and the only other remaining race. They beat on each other for hours with no result before I gave up and quit.

It turns out that specific races will only ally with other specific races and only if certain conditions are met. If at any time a hostile alliance forms, the only way to get rid of that alliance is to kill all but one member; keep in mind that you don't have any direct control over any military assets apart from your own ship and you can see how broken that is.

The beta patches have made some dramatic changes each time (and not necessarily for the better), so who knows where it will end up.
 

Destroid

Arcane
Joined
May 9, 2007
Messages
16,628
Location
Australia
Your own ship can crush fleets at a pretty high pace though, the battles aren't difficult on normal, no matter how big the fleet. It is rather tedious though.
 

Destroid

Arcane
Joined
May 9, 2007
Messages
16,628
Location
Australia
They've put in a auto-resolver for the battles and improved and expanded a few of the options for actions on planets, they are moving in the right direction and skipping the combats avoids a lot of the tedium in the game (and cuts down the play time drastically).
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,269
The auto resolver is definitely a good addition. Still... aside from giving a race a minor temporary research lead, and donating a single manufacturing station to build ships (can only donate 1 apparently), there isn't much you can do to help them win their wars other than grind fights for them. The planetary environment and stuff that you can change takes forever for you to make an appreciable difference with, and sometimes the race itself just doesn't give a fuck and lets their own planet go to -500 medical condition because they are stupid. It would take like 100 years for me to fix that for them.
 

Destroid

Arcane
Joined
May 9, 2007
Messages
16,628
Location
Australia
The auto resolver is definitely a good addition. Still... aside from giving a race a minor temporary research lead, and donating a single manufacturing station to build ships (can only donate 1 apparently), there isn't much you can do to help them win their wars other than grind fights for them. The planetary environment and stuff that you can change takes forever for you to make an appreciable difference with, and sometimes the race itself just doesn't give a fuck and lets their own planet go to -500 medical condition because they are stupid. It would take like 100 years for me to fix that for them.

The game isn't about fixing their planets, it's about getting them in the federation.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,269
Yeah, but if your races are fighting another race you have to win. The only way to influence their winning beyond battle spam is a minor tech bonus or improving their planets.
 

lefthandblack

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2006
Messages
1,287
Location
Domestic Terrorist HQ
The building improvements added in one of the patches made getting the races into the right state to federate with each other easier. I managed to finally win a game and then was like "Meh." I haven't felt the desire to touch it since. There needs to be more to do than grind alliances once you have found all the super ship tech.
 

JudasIscariot

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 19, 2009
Messages
2,001
Location
IV Republic of Polandia
Serpent in the Staglands Codex USB, 2014
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15670.0.html

TLF-promo-image2a.png
 

Azira

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Nov 3, 2004
Messages
8,521
Location
Copenhagen, Denmark
Codex 2012
Game's on sale on Steam right now. 9€ (55% discount)
The DLC is on for 6,29€ (10% discount)
 

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