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Grand Strategy Grand Strategy in Space Tittle?

Misconnected

Savant
Joined
Jan 18, 2012
Messages
587
well okay. Idont play se5 beyone the 2hours demoing the game, so I will take your words for it. I did play the shit out of SE4 , so I say Space Empire 4 fit what the OP want. it's grand scale strategy AND micromanagement AND tactical battles.

Grand Strategy and 4X games aren't the same thing. I'm trying and failing to think of the definitive way to state the difference, but generally speaking the micro in GS games is far less important (in fact several don't really have any), while the macro is far more important. The traditional 4X explore & expand concepts generally also either don't exist in GS games, and if they do, they're vastly different from what you'd expect in a 4X.

I guess in a sense 4X games are all about the game, while GS is more about the feel. At least in the context of reasonably modern video games.
 

DramaticPopcorn

Guest
Recently been getting an inclination to play some grand strategy IN SPACE! Since I've no experience with the genre other than Civ and MoM (do they even count?), I'm wondering what my esteemed colleagues can recommend.

Things I'm mainly looking for are planetar conquering, varied technological (social - optional) research with most advancements remaining VIABLE at least situationally (i.e. no totally good and totally bad trees) throughout entire game; multiple races with their own perks and flaws; competent and not cheating A.I.; at least some way to control your forces in battle (or all the RNG shit to the minimum). Guess that's about it. Any suggestions?
 

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
22,507
Well move your funds 7 years ago, and pay me. I did stuff like that.

Otherwise you are out of luck.
 

Malakal

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 14, 2009
Messages
10,266
Location
Poland
I, for one, liked MoO3. My only complaint is that the game actually played by itself and if you could automate fleet movement you would not even be needed.
 
Joined
Dec 28, 2012
Messages
6,657
Location
Rape
Space Empires 4, Distant Worlds.

Later isn't that much about you controlling your fleets/armies in battle, but it's probably the best 4x to come out in the last years.
 

Grinolf

Arcane
Joined
Mar 6, 2013
Messages
1,297
I remember having some fun with Haegemonia back then. But I am not sure how well that game will hold up now. And there wasn't any campaign for alien races, so you could choose only from two sides in human ciwil war, but middle and late game would play very similiar no matter who you choose in the begining.
 
Joined
Mar 3, 2010
Messages
8,820
Location
Italy
i loved moo3 because even with its shortcomings it's the only game which makes me feel i'm actually commanding a space empire, not some cities. in. space.
and btw, its shortcomings are not that many, i've seen worse, much worse.
 

KoolNoodles

Arcane
Joined
Apr 28, 2012
Messages
3,545
When MoO3 came out my entire family played it, I was about 14 I think. We had all grown up on MOO and MOO2, and of course loved both. Everyone hated it except for me, and I actually managed to finish a couple games. I think the comment about "commanding a space empire" ring true. It really feels that way, which is partly why I looked past all the obvious flaws. The only other games that have come close for me would be the Sword of the Stars ones. They are also buggy messes(well, two is right now). Distant Worlds was okay briefly, but ended up feeling stale and weird. Never liked SE/GalCiv/Endless Space, etc. as much as just playing MOO2. I liked StarDrive a lot and thought it had a ton of potential, but the dev abandoned it recently and it's very unfinished.

To paraphrase a classic sci-fi book: The Space Strategy Game Is A Harsh Mistress
 

Space Satan

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
May 13, 2013
Messages
6,216
Location
Space Hell
In terms of gaming experience MoO3 is not a harsh mistress, it's a mistress with spiked strapon and without lube.
 
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
2,951
Warning - incoming rant.

I tried MoO3 when it came out and thought it was awful, a huge let down for a sequel of my favourite game. But I also played the game a few times since. Every couple of years I convince myself (mostly after playing MoO2) that it could be fun, it really could. I am always proven wrong. The game is still a mess even with everything the modders could have done for it. Here are the good sides of the game - first, it is really, really big. Lots of stars, lots of planets, lots of technologies, it's great for players that want long games. Also, I like the concept of starlanes because it allows you to clearly define core and border worlds. It even starts off interesting - stars to explore, planets to colonize, a large tech tree to work on.

Now for the bad sides. I get that they wanted to put a bigger focus on macro management, fine. But did they really have to make micro management so insanely annoying to do? Why the fuck are there only three slots on the two build ques every planet has? Why is there no simple auto build function like there was in MoO2 that wouldn't mess with economy sliders, build troops and ships I don't want and actively try to bankrupt every planet that has increased maintenance by building unnecessary buildings on it? Did they deliberately try to make it a pain in the ass to control what planets are doing? If so, good job. Once the number of colonies grows to over a hundred trying to make them do something makes me want to smash my head into the monitor.

The "tactical" combat, oh boy. It's just blobs of ships shooting at each other in real time without even the ability to pause. In an impressively bold move they managed to gut everything that made ship combat great in MoO2 and make it look much, much uglier at the same time. Individual ships are meaningless. Hell, armadas are meaningless. When fighting a mid or late wars you and the AI just send wave after wave of armadas at each others. Waves that the AI can apparently pull out of his ass and keep them refitted with new tech (where refitting ships is of course impossible for the player). Before this game I could never believe that commanding thousands of ships into battle could be so dull.

And those are just the big things. Many of the previous races have been killed off simply because the designers didn't like the way they look. Now they all look ugly as hell because the game artwork is just awful. Fuck, the whole game is much uglier than its predecessor. User interface in particular is ugly as hell, overly complicated and gives next to no information about what various options actually do. I have a sneaking suspicion that the answer for most of them is "not much". It's almost impossible to trade tech. Leaders die like flies. Your people automatically colonize every rock they like, no matter how useless it is to you, quickly inflating the number of colonies and there is no way to stop this. You can no longer choose the tech you want, leading to imbalanced research because getting what you desperately need is now simply a matter of luck. What the fuck is the point behind all those task forces anyway, does anyone actually use anything except armadas in wars? And how does that work anyway, do ships get fed-exed across the galaxy to where you create a task force?

Fuck, it's like someone went over every single part of MoO2 and looked for ways to make things more complicated while at the same time taking all the fun and charm out of it. Economy, research, ship design, war, diplomacy, spying, everything. And they killed the franchise doing it.
 

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