/civ4xg/ - Civilization, Stellaris, Endless and 4X Games General

Pretty much this. I remember people not budging from 4 until 5 got expansions, and I'm sure the same will happen again.

>I remember people not budging from 4 until 5 got expansions
A lot of people refuse to budge even now, the change was huge. It was like, I dunno, the S2 -> R2 gap. A lot of people will stick to S2, Empire, Napoleon, and the pre-warscape games, because that's just how big of a difference was between the two titles.
VI needs to be fixed and needs to be fixed fast just like R2 needed to be fixed (CiVI isn't that bad but the idea is the same), but V is just better right now. In almost every way.

>get to choose chapter
>only 3 actually work
>one of them is the Ultrasmurfs
fuck I feel cheated

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Bane?

Some really good detail on these things

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I still think 4 is superior to 5 too. It has the best artstyle of all civ games too. Bright but not overtly cartoony.

Personally Civ V's artstyle was good for me too, and I really like hexes.
I just fucking wish they could somehow add hexes to Civ IV and make it perform better
Then I could play C2C with hexes

I really hated all the shit brown and pastel of 5. Sure, the art deco menus look great but the game itself looks like a fucking ogre swamp.

I actually didn't like the menus.
To give an example of my aesthetic taste, imo the best windows design was Windows 2000 with their hard edged grey menus.
I didn't really like the brown and pastel but to me I'm talking about the models, somewhat more 'realistic'.

Kek. They knew!

Loads of Dreadnoughts

>I remember people not budging from 4
we're still here

Iron Curtain.
Well, kinda.

get with the times, grandpa

Where my Cybran at?
Is the online community even still alive?

I think it is, yeah. I have a Steam friend who still plays it once in a while.
I'm too shit to compete or even coop with him.

Monkeylords all day every day

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>31 000 HP
Kyaaaa.

too bad they never saw combat

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Remember that's combined health.
5000~ HP is still pretty good, though.

Stellaris question: Any have experience with using energy siphons? I'm curious as to others thoughts about its effectiveness.

Never used anything except your chosen weapon group/tachyon/kinetic batteries. Research is far too useful to waste upon gimmick weapons and 99% of the times you want to research economic techs anyway so you can turtle up and build your galaxy-reking doomfleet without tanking your research.

Rolling

Roll

Stellaris isn't fun, you lied.

Who said it was fun.
Just because people enjoy it doesn't mean it's fun.
Hell, it doesn't mean it's good.
I like Stellaris though.

I have studied 3 systems and the fuckers aren't done with the first research projects yet.

Don't play on normal speed and build shit while you're surveying. Stations, homeworld buildings, all that stuff. Clear debris if you have to.

Play on super fast and also actually build shit instead of just surveying

>get tempted by federation play
>form one with 2 of the 3 blobs thanks to some agressive as fuck advanced start AI
>awakening on our doorstep
>instant war on us
>one blob stalling the FE advance like a motherfucker with his 30 K fleet
>got 50 K building like a madman
>third blob doesn't give a single shit and has his 80 K in orbit of his capital doing fucking nothing
they tricked me again

>decide to play Stellaris after not having played it for a while
>make custom avian species
>xenophile
>militaristic
>go for Military Republic government
>decent game going on for about 10-15 years
>stumble across my first precursor anomaly/artifact
>oh yea-
>Cybrex

At this point, I honestly think the game is fucking rigged. This is the 7th in a row I'm getting the Cybrex.

spooky

Nobody likes empires who invade primitives for some reason.

I tend to get worm people who think they live in the matrix. I don't know if it is rigged.

look at these traiterous fucks

Fucking turncoats. Kill them. No mercy.

Blue Lasers
and still as ineffective as before

>Flashlights
>Effective
>Ever

ROLLING

do you mean FA or SC2? FA is active as fuck on FAF.

>blue lasers
REEEEEEEEE

Red lasers 4ever

Well Firestorm over Kaurava makes them somewhat effective
But only against trash infantry like itself
anyway I´ve run out of screenshots and am tired as fuck
Everybody have a good night

>that scale
Jesus...

SupCom is just post-everything when it comes to power levels and scale. Literally a single robot creates armies out of the planets crust within hours in the lore.

>SupCom
>high powerlevel
Come on mate

Did a 20 hour playthrough in MP with a friend.

Did a war with a Fallen Empire in the end where there was a lot of cat and mouse.

Two things I've learned after this long game.

1. Kinetic Weapons are awesome, especially Flak Artiellry and Giga Cannon fleets.

2. Wormhole drive sucks when it comes to large fleets,
Warp Drive is so much better for both speed and range because In the start my fleet tends to get caged behind enemy lines after peace.

>enemy outnumbers me 3-1
>he declares war on me
>run laps around his empire, destroying mining and research stations
>if you loiter in the fringes until his doomfleet is in the inner solar system it takes him a super long time to chase you after warping out
>none of this really matters anyway because it gets boring long before it becomes effective

War is always boring as shit in stellaris.

it's a little more interesting fighting human players because they'll actually shift fleets and ship designs around to counter you, as well as making smaller fleets to go around destroying your infrastructure in response

it's still pretty boring though

>1. Kinetic Weapons are awesome, especially Flak Artiellry and Giga Cannon fleets.

Energy weapons used to be king simply for particle lances.

You could legitimately do nothing but spam autocannons and particle lances with some strong point defense back when the game first came out and you'd melt most fleets.

Since they restricted lances to XL weapon hardpoints they're pretty shit, (though, so is the giga cannon, you can swap that out for more kinetic artillery and get more DPS and more flexibility).

Current weapon balance is neutron torpedoes and kinetic artillery with auto-cannons and point defense as far as I can tell.

Fucking insane, dude. The smallest T1 scrub is as tall as a tree. And a tree is fucking huge, at least on Earth.

At least it means that nukes are up to scale. No wonder the guy who dropped it on Hiroshima went crazy.

>other FE just south of the fed goes guardian of the galaxy after i shut down pretorhyn invasion
>40 years of warring 2 awakened, sometimes at the same time
>finally managed to snatch the core worlds of one
holy shit this turned out better than expected

High armor pen i valuable vs fallen empire fleets and some the swarm
they reach over 90% dr from armor

FEs awakening is possibly the best thing in Stellaris right now, alongside discovery. It encapsulates the sci-fi feel perfectly. A giant and ancient galaxy, full of terrors, dangers, relics and mysteries. Ancient aliens, abusive precursors, so infinitely advanced you can barely even understand their strange minds.

And they are coming back.

Feel the same way. I love it when FEs start awakening and that "oh shit" feeling where a challenge might actually appear. It's great.

damn straight
too bad once they've been dealt with nothing really happens anymore
i would really love other events like this for the later parts of the game

Once someone hates you in Civ, is there a reason to not kill him?

>Playing Civ V or VI when you have EL and Civ IV with mods

Pleb

Well, you get maluses if you expand.

What's EL and why is Civ IV so big of a meme?

That said, are there hot leaders on modded IV?

>What's EL
Probably the best fantasy-based 4x out there.
Made by the same devs who made endless space and the game takes place in that same universe, take it as you will.

>decides to try Dragonshard
>manage to murder the enemy hero (I guess)
>get rushed by 4 giants dudes
Whut

I wanted the name... anyways I found it, thanks.

I need something to forget about Stellaris.

Endless Legend.

Enjoy the best fantasy factions ever created in any game ever, user.

EL was pretty boring for me after the first game

Does anybody else get the impression that the "unhappy" leader animations in Civ VI are practically designed to be as infuriating as possible, to encourage you to declare war on them?

EL with all DLC has too much menuing, which doesn't bode well with simultaneous turns.

Maybe, their losing scenes always make me hard.

Ole' Philly is just too animated to dislike, even if you're on his bad side. King Kongo can bugger off with his reverse-evangilsm though.

I didnt even know there are others until i came here

How do i level my researchers to 5 stars without waiting 9001 years

survey systems is the fastest way to level them, next try assist research, I find that to be quicker than leaving them in a actual research slot

Okay, I got it. It's pretty clever, actually. Each unit is actually a captain, and upon upgrade, can get a little helper to fight by his side. At level 2, he get one, at level 5, he get four.
You're limited to, what, twenty captains, but if you upgrade them, you can quickly go very high. But at the cost of a reduced versatility. And healers are shit.

It reminds me a bit of Star Ruler 2, with fleets being reduced but not always destroyed, and being able to quickly recover.

yeah but they nerfed survey exp by almost half this update

Survey should give any experience anyway.
>durr I watch over planets from space
>I suddenly know how rockets work

by that logic none of the stuff scientists can do should give experience.

>hurr im shining a flashlight on a planet
>i suddenly can help other people figure out how to shoo away large animals, build a better coil gun, and build a new power plant

yeah it's dumb but so are you.

Also, gold and exp is quite easy to get. Dragonshard is a little harder.

I'll try Act of War High Treason next, I found it on GoG.

>That said, are there hot leaders on modded IV?
This is important, all the previews I found were made for ants.

Hey, guys, Stellaris question here.

Which is better, the Direct Democracy government, or the Theocratic Republic government?

The first is Individualist/Materialist and gives happiness + increased leader XP, the second is Individualist/Spiritualist and gives happiness + additional food.

Both get access to the Galactic Stock Exchange (empire) and the Hyper-Entertainment Forum (planetary), but Direct Democracy gets the Research Institute (empire) while Theocratic Republic gets the Symbol of Unity (planetary).

stellariswiki.com/Government_types#Direct_Democracy

stellariswiki.com/Government_types#Theocratic_Republic

Which would you say is a better choice overall?

I could see Theocratic Republic (and its enhanced form, Transcendent Republic) being one of the better ways of keeping your conquered xeno pops in line (happiness + negative ethics diversion) but their reliance on a planetary building kind of puts a damper on that.

Does the sector AI build planetary uniques, or is that something that I'd have to do myself?

>+ additional food.
I don't think that is worth it over the +15% leader XP

But depending on your empire the -15% ethics divergence from Transcendent Empire could be really good. But I still prefer Irenic Democracy (+4 core systems) or Subconscious Consensus (+10% happiness +30% leader XP) as I like to keep the least amount of species as possible.

Pretty sure sectors build uniques, whether they build the right ones is another question though...

Don't forget that Spiritualist gets you Psionic Jump Drives, not to mention all of the other psychic technologies.

Personally, I don't think ethics divergence goes well together with individualism, because the whole point of individualism is that it doesn't really matter much if your pop's ethos diverges. And Ethic's divergence seems to be almost pointless for keeping the conquered peasants in check since they already start out with different Ethics.

I once did a game with alphamod and the ethics+government rebuilt, and went for one of those hive mind -50% divergence full anti ethics divergence things. Ended up with most conquered planets being around -70 divergence or so. After a decade, the effect was that "some" of the pops "might" be less fanatical in one of their previously held beliefs. So in normal play, I don't think it's feasible, low ethics divergence is mostly a preventative measure. Once you conquered pops that don't have your ethos, it doesn't really matter if you're positive, so it's best to embrace them for who they are. It's current year after all, diversity is your strength. So from a pure gameplay perspective, I'd go with direct democracy.

Ethics divergence is more important if you really need to keep your Ethos, e.g. if you want to have militaristic slavers. Especially if you're going the xenophobe route, because that means you can't purge or enslave your main species, so not a single one of them can be allowed to step out of line.

If you want to keep conquered pops in check, the only good method is happiness or slavery. So I tend to play the game either as a utopian paradise, or full on authoritarianism.

Whoa, thanks for chiming in!

I appreciate the insight!

Great game
plays kinda like a better and more realistic version of C&C Generals