WE FACED A STARK CHOICE ALTER OUR BODIES OR PERISH
Asher Lee
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Ian Brooks
What would be the best 4x to start for someone that never played anything of the genre?
Asher Torres
Post more ES2 space battle webms.
Matthew Gutierrez
Stellaris is super easy but maybe not the best game because Paradox are cunts
Jason Ross
my computer is too shit to run the space battles properly the webm is from an user last thread who made it from the preview for swarm missiles
Adrian Bennett
Isn't it, like, terrible? I have heard about that and I don't find hard to believe after playing HOI4.
Aaron Gonzalez
what's that edgelord's name again? I remember only getting him once from an event
Carter Torres
Probably an Endless or Civilization game. Maybe Endless Legend or Civ 5.
Nathan Morgan
Even at absolute lowest graphics?
Aaron Ortiz
I'm trying to play a Spiritualist empire in Stellaris right now.
I had the opportunity to research Psionic Theory once, but I skipped it. Will it come back into the research options eventually?
I also researched Genome Mapping (just gives growth +10%). Does that "lock you in" to the Biological Path, or can you still get Psionics?
BTW, my new Society scientist has the "Maniacal" trait, which supposedly increases the chance of Psionics appearing by 5x, plus I'm Spiritualist, which increases the chance by 2X for a total of 7X.
tl;dr: Do you get the chance to research Psionic Theory more than once?
Matthew Parker
>I'm trying to play Stellaris don't
Nolan Morales
Faster game speed = easier Vodyani Set the galaxy to high # minor factions & low # pirates.
Easton Nguyen
>tl;dr: Do you get the chance to research Psionic Theory more than once? yes, techs are recycled but psionics is rare tech so it may take some time before space RNG Jeus will love you again.
James Richardson
>pirate this little thing >if i reload the game unlocks are gone >theyre bound to Steam achivements and not saves You cheeky smartasses >going psy Horribly underpowered one unless you go full Slaanesh. Did anyone ever go full Slaneesh in mp only to try domination before clock runs out?
Lincoln Perry
That's what armour is mate. Armour shouldn't heal unless its repaired by a specialised piece of equipment. Shields should recharge based on your generator.
Its like this in every sci fi game. Fucking Star Wars: Empire at War had this in 2006 and to date still has the best space combat in existence. >those physics >that strategic takeout of hardpoints on ships and stations and seeing it float away into space. >that strength vs weakness system that can easily wreck your force if you don't take notice. >those space terrain effects
Actually I think Star Trek:Armada 2 had the armour/shield mechanic aswell and that was way back in 2001 it even had the space terrain effects aswell with nebulae,asteroid fields,black holes,wormholes etc. How far away is 2.0 "Cherryh" lads? Late January? Mid february? Announcement of expansion in December?
1.9 is next week but its been confirmed its simply bug fixes and implementing the cosmetic DLC pack.
Owen Brooks
Samhane Haligtide or something similar from the quest Tales From the Dark Season, if memory serves me well. I'm pretty sure it is/was a woman.
William Scott
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Angel Thomas
Stellaris DLC's usually have 3 months of DD's. We have 5 DD's related to 2.0 of a total of 6(Humanoid pack doesnt count as 2.0) released so far and 12 required at least with Synth Dawn it was. My bet is announcement on the 14th or 21st which is last day of work at Paradox until 2nd week of January). stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Developer_diaries SD had 12 related to it pre launch and 3 for roundup of features and patch notes. Release in late February and at latest start of March. We can guess release date based on when its officially announced.
Adrian Brooks
I might have to go full Slaanesh just to kill a ravenous hive and do the galaxy a favor.
How does the AI in Stellaris build such huge fleets without getting energy drained?
I've only survived so far because I have defense pacts with strong allies.
Julian Butler
reminder to always purge 40k babbies wherever they are found
Evan Bell
I bet knife ear posted this By being a dirty cheating alien degenerate obviously
Connor Davis
>starts playing ES2 in the middle of the video accurate
Jack Ward
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Isaac Smith
>haven't met aliens yet
Joshua Martinez
>haven't met aliens yet >already xenophobia propaganda This is whywe're awesome.
Nathaniel Allen
How do you know we haven't? You could be friends with one. ;)
Ryder Gray
>haven't met aliens yet Also >far lefties sucking alien dick GAS THEM PLEASE
Hunter Ortiz
Who are you people answering to? There's no post here.
Jace Evans
>gif Japan was a mistake
Carson Morris
>exploring the galaxy one hop over minding my own business >meet vodyani >two turns later they ask for 90% of my dust I don't think you understand. I don't give a shit about the church. And I have the bigger guns.
Christian Bennett
>mercenaries and heroes in EL are always so expensive you can barely afford them with every bit of dust you have
what is this hyperinflation shit?
Ryan Thompson
>meet Vodyani/UE/Cravers >two turns later they ask for 90% of my dust Every single time.
Noah Martinez
they do this because you have a smaller fleet than they do at the time of the demand
Owen Jones
>being poor Wew Want me to ban you from the market?
Jaxon Cruz
In late game it's the opposite, heroes' cost goes up more slowly than mercenaries and hiring heroes will be cheaper than buying normal units. Inflation in EL is much less prevalent than in ES2. It's also actually dreary as fuck if you want to be optimal since you'll be microing level ups of countless heroes. ES2 has a similar issue, though to somewhat lesser extent due to recruits mostly coming through the Academy now, but it's still time consuming.
Why don't they just implement a max hero limit like in ES1? Increasable with tech and perhaps as deed or quest rewards.
Gabriel Hill
How do you replenish fleet manpower? Do you have to be in a hangar?
Jace Ortiz
desu your max heroes should be based on your # of systems
Adrian Garcia
You just need to orbit a normal system that you own (not black hole, asteroid field etc). I'm not 100% sure but I think orbiting your owned system if it's inside enemy influence sphere doesn't count. Hover over your fleet to see their stats. Beside their current manpower number it should say how big percentage of manpower they're going to replenish the next turn, provided they're orbiting a proper system.
As a side note there also exists a Hissho law you get from collecting 50 of their pops that makes your ships replenish manpower outside your own influence zone as well.
Zachary Hall
what i fucking hate is taht they disregard the fact taht i have 2 times more planets and can manpower saved up to shit out a fleet 3 times bigger than theirs in 3 turns
Lucas Hernandez
Civ V if you like alt-history Endless Legend if you like fantasy Alpha Centauri or Endless Space 2 if you like space
Dylan Wood
Civ V Gold Edition that is, with both Gods & Kings and Brave New World. Don't make the mistake of getting only vanilla Civ V. It's only good in the complete package with the expansions.
Jordan Wilson
Cool new missile update for stellaris.
Gabriel Howard
G&K and BNW are garbage though. vanilla is GOTYAY.
Christian Brown
Bad post
Zachary Baker
>tfw
Camden Howard
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Wyatt Howard
When I played Sophons for the first time and chose the science path in their quest the game happened to choose Auriga as the planet which I had to send probes to in order to find a "drone" or whatever. I was hyped it was going to be Opbot, but apparently the game had just chosen the planet randomly.
Julian Rivera
Why the fuck are the missiles doing a curved trajectory in fucking space?
Anthony Sanders
>riftborn sit on a crossroad >I make them a gift for good relations >they shoot down a civilian ship
Charles Allen
organic """gifts""" are icky
Samuel Scott
>gift lol cuck
Christopher Johnson
you know what to do user
Grayson Hernandez
Fucking trapezoid I'm going to gift twenty metric tons of warheads up your colony you're going to understand what it means to start shit.
Daniel Diaz
Why do AI in 4x games always reject diplomatic offers unless they're hilariously lopsided?
Nolan Ward
They are just grumpy because they are cold on their planet. go, warm them up
Josiah Johnson
Are you retarded? You think they would turn 90°?
Jaxon Hughes
Because they are not your friends
Jaxson James
>I make them a gift for good relations
Charles Johnson
Every missile or kinetic cannon round that misses will keep going through space forever until it either hits an asteroid field,a planet,a moon or a spacecraft belonging to another species.
10,000 years down the line, that misfired rocket could wreck some poor bastards day. Please think before you fire and check your targeting reticules. That is all.
Landon Jackson
because slavs jack off to SRAM footage
Ethan Kelly
galciv 3 ai is diplomatically reasonable. it can be bribed and bullied, and it will even surrender to their allies if they are about to get overrun by an enemy.
Xavier Myers
>being scared to fire upon your enemy because you might miss and might hit something 10 000 years later with a chance of 0.000000000000000000000000000000001% and losing the battle get the fuck off my ship
Asher Jones
The dinosaurs died because of people like you.
Juan Davis
your people died because of people like you
Jeremiah Phillips
In space you never miss, you just take a little longer to hit something. The dinosaurs just got incredibly unlucky.
Now if only Andromeda could've had even one iota of charisma as that man had tearing those two marines a new asshole had, we might've had a more entertaining game.
Asher Sullivan
Me again. Just recently started researching Psionics. The Maniacal scientist paid-off.
Jace Diaz
Macross maneuvers trick point-defense.
Juan Lee
Depending on their speed and direction, it's possible they'd just escape the galaxy entirely In which case they might still swing by a few rogue stars or even another galaxy before heat death
Jayden Turner
DED
Jack Cook
I don't understand what the squadron modules do in ES2.
Jordan Gutierrez
In AoE2, how do you play in FFA's?
Do you pick one of your enemies out and try to finish them off completely before moving to the next target? Or do you weaken several enemies to reduce their threat to you first? Or do you sit back and turtle while everyone else dukes it out?
I'm having trouble with a group of friends because in an FFA, I'll weaken two of them but then the third in the pocket position will turtle hard and the remaining forces of the other two will join up and try to wear me down together
Do you just try to keep a low profile so people don't see you as the #1 threat, or do you go balls to the wall and deliver the killing blow on people asap?
David Morris
>playing Civ 5 >zulus start to my left and keep expanding that way >aggressive fucks keep pissing people off, but with me trading him Shaka asks for friendship and I accept >during mid game he sends missionaries my way >oh hell naw >coverts my naval city, tell him to fuck off, he apologies >literally circles around to my capital and does it again >fucking nigger >I convert his capital and he gets uppity, I denounce him >Shaka insults my army and empire when I have rifleman and he still has chariots >roflstomp his armies and buttfuck his capital to oblivion >sues for peace, screw that I'm taking you back to stone ages >take over 3 cities but can't find anymore, and everyone hates me already >dozen turns go bye, Shaka comes back for peace and I accept >nearing end game and Shakas been taken out, I stumble upon his new city he hid at >liberate him and he thanks me >immediately turn around and destroy him again
Don't trust nigs, in Civ 5
Noah Nguyen
>Don't trust nigs could've left it at that
>FFA Why the fuck would you play FFA lmao Scoutrush the guy closest to you with 2-3 scout cavs and 2-3 archers, just harass his villagers you don't need to actually do too much damage. Then boom.
Nolan Mitchell
wololo
John Phillips
>finally have some spending money >sales already over FUCK
Nolan Price
>when I have rifleman and he still has chariots Why play at all if you're going to play on the easy difficulties
Christian Watson
They're RL friends so I'd rather not outright cheese them, it would probably just make them not want to play with me anymore Is FFA seen as a pleb game mode or what? They also chose conquest as the victory condition this time because I won by Wonder the first time we played and they couldn't bring me down even ganged up
What are your favorite game modes and victory conditions?
Ayden Lee
I just got the game a week ago m8, also it was King my man not hard at all but I'm working my way up Also >playing on Pangea with 11 other civs >10 turns 2 bar jams are performing a pincer attack on my capital, top and bottom >next turn a 3rd barb comes in from the side N-Nani?!?!?
Xavier Edwards
>I'd rather not outright cheese them I don't think archer rushes and scout rushes are considered cheese strategies, those are fairly standard rushes. If you just don't want to feudal rush, learn to fast castle and use double-armor knight rushes.
>pleb game mode No it's just super disorganized and all over the place so it doesn't work well for 'competitive' play. >conquest Honestly anything but Conquest is fucking cancer. Byzantines, Britons, Chinks etc. can turtle the shit out of their wonders far too easily to break through.
>favorite game modes Standard Resource start Random Map w/ normal reveal, 300 or 500 Population, Random Map Type, Random Civilizations
Caleb Phillips
>If you just don't want to feudal rush, learn to fast castle and use double-armor knight rushes.
I might try this. They're very very very passive players who never attack until mid-imperial or post-imperial age, but I always try to bring some aggression at around castle to at least teach them to not turtle so goddamn much. Maybe I could work up to feudal age rushes by first executing some castle age rushes, and then when they're starting to get better at defend against those, I'll bring out the feudal rushes and maybe even dark age rushes.
I will force them to stop turtling goddammit it's super annoying to deal with and results in extremely long and boring games.
What's some other advice you could give me to try to break them out of that turtle playstyle, or at least punish them heavily for it to discourage it in our games? Something I seem to have trouble with is late game economy. I boom very largely in the early and mid game, but I guess I'm not quick/assertive enough in taking control of farther away stone and gold sites, so my late game econ suffers for it a bit. When do you start branching out from your base and setting up gold/stone camps far away in the map? Feudal? Castle?
Austin Parker
I only tower or outpost near those places, I don't run that far until I have to because it's usually a shit idea that'll get your villies killed if the enemy is doing anything close to competent scouting. How many villagers do you have by endgame (should be 115-140 under 200+ pop cap)? Are you not making enough villagers? Are you building more town centres asap after hitting Castle Age, to pump out more villagers? Usually as soon as you hit castle it's building TC / Castle / TC in that priority, but preferably all at once. You can also have a few squads of hussars or some shit just roaming, if they're not escorting their miners, which they aren't, then you can slaughter them wholesale once you find them. Grab relics, obviously, they're a gamechanger. Also, rams are godly at soaking up ranged damage, just have a few rams existing, put in say Champions or some shit, and move them forward *along with* melee units running at the enemy frontline. The autotargeting AI means that archers like to fire at rams to literally no effect, while you can kill them off because they're busy attacking something with 200 pierce armor.
Henry Price
They for some reason like to play with 400 pop limit (which I dislike, I prefer 200 for some reason), and I am at around 110ish villagers by endgame. I have zero concerns about food and wood by this point, but what kills me is the slowed down mining of stone or gold, leading me to need to rely a lot on trash units that only cost food and wood to replenish my forces after skirmishes
Right after hitting Castle I do try to get two extra TC's and a castle and try to keep any TC churning out villagers at all times, but in this last game for example, by the late game I felt like I had so many villagers and so little gold and stone left that it felt pointless to make more past what I had (110ish).
For some reason I've been terrible with relics. There's this one guy who always grabs all three, unfailingly. Are their locations randomized? (In the named maps like Arabia for example) or are they fixed? Maybe my scouting just hasn't been stellar, because I always come up short.
I'll try to use rams more often, I underutilize them currently. I never even garrison them, which I suspect is a horrible blunder. I'm also rather bad at siege. I'm never sure whether I should be going for Mangonels/Onagers, Scorpions, Rams, or Trebuchets. Any clarification on that?
Brandon Garcia
Also, why do you like 300-500 pop? I come from other RTS where 200 is the norm so I guess the only reason I dislike such high pop limits is because every unit seems to matter less. But maybe I'm just suffering from a case of bad opinions there. What do you think?
Jordan Brown
I wonder when your friends are going to hate you. Unless they're new they sound like they just don't want to play on the level you do.
Jacob Ortiz
They're new, I am too I mean, we all played it as kids of course, but never in a multiplayer setting
Past 115-140 there's no point in more villagers, yeah.
>are their locations randomized Yes, more or less.
>I never ever garrison them Rams are only passably useful in actually killing buildings, due to their susceptibility of getting gangraped by knights. What they're good for is actual large scale battles, where you throw them in front into the range of archers as a 'first wave', then send in everyone else. Archers tend to fire at the closest few things, so they love to attack rams if you send them in first - and they'll keep attacking those rams. If you garrison them, a combination of champions and halberds 4:2 is pretty good.
>mangonels / onagers / scorps These guys are antipersonell, they're rubbish at taking down buildings (mangonels are OK but they're not great). If you use them then you need to mass them - Chinese Scorpions or Celtic Mangonels in numbers exceeding around 15-20 with sufficient escorts are a fucking nightmare to deal with. Mangonels are also fair in dealing with swarmed archers or whatnot if you keep them in the backline until about 5-7 seconds into a fight, ergo where the moshpit is chaotic enough that the enemy is probably not going to kill your onagers before they get a shot off.
Remember to use monks, they're the difference between a close battle and an overwhelming victory after the fact - 40 v 40 might end up with you having 25 guys left at an average of 20% HP, but with monks, you'll end up with just 25 guys.
>slowed down mining of stone or gold You're using the market right? And sometimes by endgame there's none left, you enter what's known as the trash phase of the game where halberds, champions, skirmishers, and hussars are actually the bulk of your army.
>why do you like 300-500 pop Mostly because it allows you to have decent-sized armies. Under 200 population rules the size of your army is limited by villagers, but over 200 population the number of villagers you 'need' doesn't actually grow anymore.
Samuel Jones
As far as actually smashing stuff, it depends on the potency of the "guards" so to speak. Rams will actually make far quicker work of most towns than trebuchets as they do absolutely massive area-of-effect damage to buildings, but they have zero range, so if there's still plenty of people or you're in a moshpit, that's no-go. If, on the other hand, you're trying to smash through walls, towers, etc. - the usual turtle suspects - then rams can do wonders when properly protected. Trebuchets are slower, but they're much easier to guard - the britons have a very standard 30 longbow 10 cavalier - 1 trebuchet ratio going on and it beats most things fairly handily if you micro.
Noah James
>I might try this. They're very very very passive players who never attack until mid-imperial or post-imperial age I have a friend who's like this. I've been found dumbfounded by his inability to mount any attack until he's in Imperial, while I'm concerning myself with how I can do the most damage possible while I'm getting to Castle. I've marched armies around his wall foundations and then went to town. Another time he turtled hard but for some reason wasn't scouting and let me build a castle basically on his doorstep. I was playing Japanese and at Imperial so that was basically it for him.
Adam Evans
The flipside of this is that a competent turtleboomer is terrifying to deal with once they're up there.
Gabriel Parker
There's still the issue of map control. I wasn't letting him mine. The map was kind of in my favor. It was Archipelago and I ruled the seas. I shouldn't have been able to get a beachhead on his island at all, honestly. A few minutes and a two-pronged assault later, he was done.
Daniel Sanders
Right well in that case he was just a shitter desu
Ayden Hughes
So let me get this straight, rams should mostly be used as kinder surprise eggs basically so that when the AI targetting kills them champions and halberds pop up on top of them, while your main army has been peppering them from afar + they're getting pushed by normal infantry? And when there's less people they should be used for actually killing the buildings? And when you mean area of effect damage with buildings, when does that kick in exactly? Just on small sections of walls adjacent to the one I'm hitting?
When do you use Mangonels/Onagers and when do you use Scorpions? Which are better for which scenarios?
Which upgrades are the most important for monks? Should I be mass producing them? Any ratio I should aim for with them? I do try to incorporate them (and they helped hugely against a Persian turtle friend that kept throwing War Elephants at me when I attempted to siege him which I countered by mass monk conversion
Yes, I'm using the market, but maybe not as much as I should be. Even when you flood the market with food and wood and they're basically worth nothing, do you still keep selling it? Or is there some mechanic where the market re-estabilizes after some time?
I guess you're right about the pop thing, I hadn't seen it that way. AoE2 surprisingly seems to play very differently from other RTS, it actually allows for far longer games if the players go for it, with the whole concept of 'trash' units.
Also, do you have different control groups for every different unit type, or do you mostly mass them into infantry/ranged/cavalry?
+Bonus: I seem to really enjoy playing as Mayans, but the lack of Cav really hurts me in the trash phase because of no Hussars, so I have to start relying on only Skirms and Halbs. Should I be aiming to win the game asap withe Meso civs, or is it basically the same as with everyone else?