/civ4xg/ - Strategy/4X General

This thread is for all strategy games that do not have their own thread, focusing on 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate).
tags: /cbg/ /rtsg/

>Stellaris
- FAQ : pastebin.com/abGgZJnT (suggestions/feedback welcome, reply to OP with them)
- The Development of Stellaris gamasutra.com/view/news/274018/Postmortem_Paradox_Development_Studios_Stellaris.php
- WIP Ship Design Guide for 1.5.1 pastebin.com/2QWUPKSh
- Another Ship Design Guide for 1.5 reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/61nolh/ship_equipment_load_out_for_141_15/
- Wiki stellariswiki.com/Stellaris_Wiki

>Endless Legend
- Manual cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/289130/manuals/User'sManual.pdf?t=1413562467
- Wiki endlesslegendwiki.com/Endless_Legend_Wiki

>Endless Space 2 soon.

>Civilization
- Fix for Civ IV BTS XML errors: dropbox.com/sh/ljdms8ygix2btcs/AACC_IGIy7zAkomwA6S4DJp3a?dl=0
- Civilization Analyst (Civ VI, Civ V, BE) well-of-souls.com/civ/index.html
- Civ V Giant Multiplayer Robot - multiplayerrobot.com
- District Cheat Sheet hydra-media.cursecdn.com/civ6.gamepedia.com/2/29/District_Cheat_Sheet.png?version=07510f0f43d7188e00e7046c90360dba

>Alpha Centauri
- Essential improvements pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri#Essential_improvements
- Official short stories mediafire.com/folder/cn11q7nqa00te/Alpha_Centauri

>Last thread:

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=2Uxk70BjH68
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

>no spider
Shit OP/10

Took the liberty of removing "- D.I.C.E. Summit 2016 - Civilization 25th Anniversary Panel : youtube.com/watch?v=h65FXaJHbhE" from the OP because it's a pain to let it in.

Fuck, my post got cut off.
Mean to continue to say that fighting them and my old rivals who joined in on the fun was the only time in Stellaris that I fought a long term war.
Where production was what ultimately mattered.
Not one doomfleet vs another doomfleet deciding the entire war unless you're so far ahead you can just shit another two hundred battleships out of your ass in parallel production.

Yeah, your first game is always special in your own imperfection. Trying your hardest, even unconsciously cheesing the game just to survive while you make mistakes left and right - that's a really special feeling.

5th for suddenly being the bad guy even though I did LITERALLY nothing wrong.

>OP is RTS for some reason

>At least it's a good RTS

>floating mass
>floating mass with T3 production everywhere
>floating mass with T2 extractors
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU

My bad, have your daily spider.

>being a backseat gamer
>ruining gaming communiites by demanding perfection instead just lol'ing at the noob and seeing how they grow

You are the cancer wrong with video games, especially strategy games. kys.

Oh, you needed to be next door to your friendly empire if you want them to Feddie up with you? I didn't know that...

Then again, there was this really militarist expansionist Hive Mind in between us (which is one of the reasons we got along so well), so there was really no free space to make a bridge between us without warring it.

Was more how the end game challenge shaped up to be fought, more than just the specifics of the first game. The only issues of it being played at launch were lacking research, ship designs and actually using sectors. None of which really shaped the game. If I was properly efficient not much would have changed.

First games are memorable but not always that good. Not even always the most memorable in general. For example, I'd played most factions in Endless Legend before I played the Broken Lords.

Then I played the Broken Lords.

Let's say in a hypothetical 4x game you have the ability to really up the culture/luxury of a single system in your empire, or maybe a few to a limited degree. A sort of high happiness/culture playstyle.

What should be the benefit of doing this? Should it make some sort of hyper productive population, or some kind of special bonus, or just help qualify for a victory condition?

> Walls
> Transports
> Cybran T2 PD
> air pad
> T3 shipyard
> Generators on forward positions
> No Mass storage
> Floating mass
> No radar
> No engis
> Unclaimed shipwrecks
> Stealth towers

>minmaxing when the game is already won

I'm not taking his fun away from him, merely lacking comprehension of how fun can be had that way.
The 4xgen should be able to empathize more than most, the screenshot captures the late game of civ games where you're committed to ending the game but you're just fucking mashing the end turn button because there is nothing else to do. It feels like work at that point.

I'm not saying he should be capitalizing on his naval dominance(as he has t3 naval factories up uncontested it obviously isn't an issue), or pushing with cybran's cheap t4 or telesniping or something like I automatically assume the game should only be played as multiplayer ladder is.

It's just that floating resources in such a situation without showing us anything is just so bland and uninteresting.
They could be spamming meme units, they could get a good screencap of the nuke they just fired, or how good their tower defense is.
But it's just a screencap of the game being played poorly in a specific way that I just can't see anyone enjoying.

Not everyone remembers to take screenshots in the middle of action. If you have some, feel free to post them.

Ah, I;ve known that feel for too long now. That's why I've put off starting Stellaris until just a month ago. I know how games are nowadays - shit at the start, but """"promising"""". Well promising doesn't cut it anymore, and I want a full game experience on my first playthrough. And boy was I pleased. Fully modded stellaris 1.5 as my first game. Very nice indeed. There are still some major bugs this long after launch, as you can expect from a Paradox game, but the mod community is actually impressively active in that they even make fixes or workarounds that no problem seems to be insurmountable.

I highly recommend my approach to everyone, so you can save yourselves the ~1 year of heartache of having a game with great -potential- squandered because it was released too early, as well as maximize your initial enjoyment (and total) of the game as a whole.

Concentrated decadence would stimulate most economies surrounding it.

Distant Worlds' resource system I can see being the best example.
Your dozens of mining colonies and hundreds of mining stations are a lot more valuable when one planetary metropolis is buying -THAT- MUCH STUFF.

Unfortunately happiness and population and hard currency are all attached together as the most bland, empty and abusable part of the game in actual Distant Worlds.

>be relaxing in my empire just researching and chill
>suddenly fanatical purifiers declare war on me
>defend myself and protect my galaxy by wiping them out
>somehow I'M the bad guy

If you consider that group participation trophy to be a """""victory""""" then don't ever talk about about losing.

That's fine, but if you do forget I don't see why you would try and fill the void with poor screenshots instead.

>"if you don't play MY way, you're shit"
Lol okay.

It's how you wipe them out.
If you have "good" ethics, you should've shot them full of cuck enclave holes.

> tell user to git gud by pointing all the things he's doing wrong
> Suddenly I'M the bad guy

>expecting a game made by swedes to be good
I can think some fanatical purifiers on earth that people wont even consider removing, even while their own cities burn

>a guy whines about a boring screenshot
>tell him to post a better one
>"omg i can't believe you just said that!!!"
>somehow I'M the bad guy

The thing is they do consider it.
But they consider the fire too small.

All the meme immigration is never going to be a history defining problem.
It isn't the sort of thing that the patriotic brownos actually think it is where they can suddenly appear as 51% of the population.
It'll just get worse and worse until people do eventually decide to deal with it. And little will have been lost before that point is reached.

You're dealing with two different people there my dude.

> spitroast user for posting RTS in a 4x general
> Sitbg

>didn't even bother reading the OP
It's sad to see how that general went to shit the moment /gsg/'s rejects arrived.

What, you mean something like Rebel Galaxy? Freelancer? The X games?

>They want to rework how borders work so you only start with one system, then build a frontier outpost over a system to claim it. THEN colonize it or whatever
>They want Hyperlanes to be the default FTL then have other types to be research. Wormholes overhauled to sling shotting you across the entire galaxy.

Thoughts?

>Thoughts?
I'm getting a refund.

imo they should stop fiddling the base game mechanics and release these things as mods, so people can use them *if they want to*.

The only things they should release as mandatory updates are bugfixes.

Cybrans are classy as fuck, but they're also really shitty. Their Hive building makes them really good at turtling, but Supreme Commander is really good at avoiding turtling.

>shittypaintedit.png

Tedious and miserable.

Developer intended experience >>> shitty player desires.

Players will gladly keep old, bad, outdated mechanics when a clearly superior one exists due to nostalgia or simply stupidity. The developers know the game a lot better then you do and can make a much better experience then you ever could. You should only consider modding after literally thousands of hours of handcrafted content you've experienced, and even that should be just to keep things fresh.

Or steal the game options menu they're using in half their current games.

So this is what a fundamentally wrong opinion looks like. We should archive it so that future generations can study it and learn from its mistakes.

Im not sure if your joking or not but this is paradox. The same developers that released hoI4 without a functioning AI because they think people play that game multiplayer exclusively. EU4 has continued to recive updates that are focused towards a better multiplayer experience I dont trust those swedes.

Kind of dumb desu.
Frontier outposts are for grabbing space resources. Planets are for pops and ports. Each has their place and don't need to be homogenized.

Latter is an improvement as long as you can still work with just one without penalty.
Hyperlane is the most generic, but jump drives are kinda the direct successor to warp drives and wormhole makes sense for similar late game crisis evoking shenanigans.
The change wouldn't affect the game much.

Most of the time I discussed borders and their impact in Stellaris was before launch. It would be different, if better I'm not sure. But a big change that isn't really necessary.

But yeah as somebody else said, they have a lot more to fix before changing anything else.

Though again changing the drives like that would be low effort which is fine.

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

You've got it entirely backwards.
I'm basing this mostly off FAF balance but that is still built on the base game without altering anything like the different buildings available.
Cybran is an aggressive faction. UEF is the turtle faction.
UEF have a T3 point defense. Cybran T2 point defense is the worst in the game.

The hive isn't really for turtling, but for booming. The two are related but quite different.
You'll build hives in team games where you're protected by others. If it's a 1v1 or something, even if you play defensive, other eco options have more priority. And your best defense is building units.

Playing defensively does actually have the advantage in supcom.

You can't hide in a corner and turtle that way, because the enemy will dominate you with that much more map control.
But if you have an only reasonably smaller control of the map than your opponent, and they push on you, you can easily have the advantage.

Reclaim is incredibly important.
If you attack the enemy and your attack fails, you just gave the enemy a fuckton of a free mass.
They can then boom with it and win with the extra luxury harass/assassin units they can afford while their defense line still holds.

what do you mean frind
denying forced integration would be intolerant

>people complain that the game becomes tedious at the end
>make early game slower to compensate

>Now nobody will see how tedious the end game is because they will never finish the early game!
>Sven you are genius!

Really roasting my almonds M83.

default going to hyperlanes isn't too bad, as long as you can turn off the fucking hyperlane grid. that's seriously the only reason I won't use it

requiring a frontier outpost is ridiculous, though

How is the new MoO?

Does anyone else play with the AI Combat computers mod?

L-Missile/Kinetic arty destroyers are extremely OP with max thrusters, afterburners and the 100-distance hit and run computer.

I do just because it lets me actually use battleships as walls instead of ineffective artillery.

I use it to keep my carriers out of trouble, so I can equip them with nothing but enough power to keep the lights on, keeping the costs down by avoiding any weapons/shields/armor.

>thinking I wouldn't notice the spider
pssh... too easy...

>And now, to celebrate our fifth sphere of expansion and our complete dominion over yet another sapient species, to the esteemed admirals of our imperial fleet, I present to you, our latest carrier design!

youtube.com/watch?v=2Uxk70BjH68

lol

I ran a three-class fleet with mostly flak battleships, plasma 60-range cruisers and L kinetic destroyers.

It's amazing how few losses you suffer when the enemy's trying to bring down battleships first instead of last.

Does flak actually shoot missiles? I've tried running flak before but I noticed that missiles kept blasting through my screens anyway.

I've only really seen proper Point Defense and Fighters shoot down missiles. Never flak.

I don't tend to see explosive damage in combat reports, even when I'm fighting enemies with missiles, so I assume it's working.

>Cybrex precursor
>Complete the quest 2230
>Ruined ringworld right next to my capitol
Holy shit this is fuckin great only slightly dampened by the fact next patch I could had repaired this oh well still breedy gud.

Should future 4x games feature memetic victory conditions?

That's already Civ's culture victory.

I just lost the game , or won it not sure

Started invading an enemy planet and sending fleets somewhere when the
"THIS IS THE MESSAGE THAT SAYS HOW YOU WON" thing popped up

all planets , pops are missing and there are no buildings in the planets I used to live in and my empire is no longer in the contact list or as a Enemy of neighbor empires

anyone had this happen before ?

Yeah It's a pretty common bug, no idea what triggers it.

FUN FACT:
Everything in this game is completely deterministic.
Try saving the game right before a space battle for example, then let it happen and don't issue any commands.
Reload the game, don't touch anything again. It will happen exactly the same every time. All the evasion rolls and such are not rolled on the moment, they are completely deterministic.
Just like the real universe if you could save and load.

"Total Victory" war goal completely eliminates an empire. Don't know how to get it normally.

Your empire contracted a severe disease that insta-kills your people and spreads at the speed of light.

The war was far from being over though
i had +14 war score or something like that

well , time to go for food and start another

That's just the rng seed, I bet. Try this instead:

Save the game before a space battle. Note how it ends. Reload/ Let the game run for a short time like a month while you fiddle around with your empire or something. Try again.

>spreads at the speed of light
then it would take years to go between systems you dip

Actually, the disease spread to user, and then, when he zoomed out to view his entire empire, spread back inside into every one of his worlds at the speed of light all at the same time..

>Just like the real universe
We wish.

It happened to me after I invaded a certain planet. Seems like some bugged planets cause it, because after I reloaded the save before I invaded the planet, and stopped myself from invading it, I didn't get the bug.

are you using mods ? i was using the spider armies from the mod that adds more modifiers to planets

dont know if the planet i was invading had a modifier or not

Someone give me a decent name for a megastructure ascension path finisher.

I'm jury-rigging Master Builder to be a fourth path opener, then adding a finisher that increases speed/reduces cost by ~50% of what Master Builder gives - but also removes the restriction on simultaneous megastructure construction.

Starchitect

It actually happened on a planet that had the modifier from Colonisable Home Systems.
But then a few wars later I invaded some planets with the same modifier without any problems, so not exactly sure. Still deleted the mod, just in case.

You're fucking with me.

These ideas are TERRIBLE.

>tfw can't think of an interesting bio for my fanatic spiritualist crusaders so i just write down "Have you heard the good news?"

Is Distant Worlds very difficult to learn? I want something that is in-between Stellaris and Aurora 4x.

Why the fuck is it so expensive?!?!?!?!

Wiz has posted a page of patch notes on his twitter. What do you guys think of things so far?

Automate everything except taxes.

Set taxes as low as possible.

You have now won Distant Worlds.

You can put everything on auto/ask your permission. So you can learn slowly or you can have some fun and put like everything on auto and just focus on like building and war. The main cons are the logistical part of the game are a near nightmare and main pro is you can have a fleet of star destroyers. Just pirate.

why didn't you link them

Sorry, I thought I did.

>human traits are a 'balance' change
>makes them even shittier than before
It's not like it makes them any more or less realistic than they were before, since we've met zero actual aliens to compare ourselves to.

Just let the swedes indulge in their self-hatred. We can always just create our own human species anyway.

>Can now terraform inhabitable planets
Thank god.
>Warp nerf
Damn
>World shaper ascension unlocks atmosphere manipulation
Is that implying I cant get that tech without that perk? If so terraforming got nerfed a bit.
>Master builder buff
Sweet
>Planetary survey corps nerf
Kind of upsetting but it was crazy overpowered so ok.
Overall ok doesnt seem to address some of the real problems of the games but some nice quality of life changes.

>Make PSC even more mandatory as your third Unity expenditure but less penalizing as the game goes on

That's aight

>Ironman now saves quarterly instead of monthly

God bless

Adaptive makes sense at least since humans have shown to flourish in preety much any conditions only the artic really eludes us. The main problem is there is no real reason for humans in game to not be able to settle preety much every planet in the game that anyone else could. I mean we can colonize continent ones but not savanna planets? We fuckin came from terrain like that. Still your right we have nothing to compare to for all we know all other alien life is way way way better at adapting to any conditions then us and for all we know humans are fuckin strongmen of the galaxy and should be considered strong Earth is actually on the highest point gravity can be and have complex life develop we are pretty sure.

>warp nerfed
but why?
>humans nerfed
Why even bother?

I started a game with 6 Advanced start AI on a huge galaxy with 5 FEs. So far the Unbidden showed up and the weakest NPC empire smashed their portal within the year of spawning. There's still the Abberant to deal with but wow that was underwhelming.

How are humans nerfed?

Adaptive is pretty shitty when you won't hit the happiness limits early and terraforming becomes dirt cheap.

Wasteful makes you have less minerals forever.

Adaptive is even less useful now that you can terraform inhabited planets.

Humans lost Quick Learner because of 2016 and Trump being elected. That's the reason they gave during the stream.

To be honest I actually though you needed to have a border over a world to colonize it first anyway. I think it's a better system but it needs something like Endless space being able to send out probes or maybe Egalitarian empire's can claim a territory then sell it off to other empire's like habitable worlds, or make habitats a more early game tech.

In fact I wonder of there's a mod that let's you build really shitty, like 2-4 size habitats, near to the early gane that could be upgraded later. I actually don't know how size works with habitats now because I never get that far.

>minmaxing your traits on a RP-oriented race
wew

Charisma/Repugnant won't affect happiness anymore, only empire relations?

Lame.

I might actually drop the game if they make colonization any more of a chore.

How would we get enough influence to expand?

It would slow the game to a fucking crawl.

Not like that part of the trait ever mattered anyways.