/civ4xg/ Endless, Stellaris, Civilization, and 4X

>and then I tweaked his nipples like this and his sauce squirted out.

What the hell is that?

>pajeets

But we already have ghandi

Governors from the civ 6 expansion, more or less Firaxis' attempt at something like heroes from Endless games

>Sherlock Holmes villain
>Acromegaly inbred chinese columbus
>a guy who ate a bowling ball
>random mobile game badass
>smug E.T
>the level of excitement when playing civ6 personified
>Yzma

>tall hexagon
>square
>triangle
>rectangle
>giraffe impersonation contest

>copy tileset
>copy heroes
Can they start by copying good taste, artwork and music if they're going to be blatant copycats?

I don't even play any of these games.

>Yzma
Christ so I wasn't the only one thinking it.

it's a shitty copy that will be devastating to the game. Why?
Governors are something between CivV social policy trees that you can tie to a single city
this implies that some of them will be significantly better than the others. This reduces the possible gameplay styles, because you will get 1 early so you'll get the one that will boost your capital the most. Furthermore they don't level up with time, but with specific social policies - meaning one way of developing culture tech tree will dominate over another, just to level up the best governor quickly to level 3 to unlock the best government building.
Those governors being city-bound and not giving an empire-wide bonus will ensure that you wont have viable strategies centered around at least some of them. For example the militaristic one seems to be nearly useless and a loosing strategy to choose. Why level up someone that protects you from another civ instead of the guy who will give you more science and will assure your technological dominance?

what I'm trying to say is that civ6 games already plays the fucking same each and every time because of how pushed you are to do every shitty eureka quest and because of changeable policy slots. Now you will have another system in which you'll pick same fucking option each and every time with another illusion of a choice.

...

...

>civ vi is getting worse because it's trying to copy endless legend
>stellaris is getting worse because it's trying to copy sins of a solar empire

lel

I bought Stellaris when it came out but just got back into it. Any tips for me? I always feel like I fall behind my stellar neighbours.

I won't lie, I got sad the first time and still keep getting sad.

reminder
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1221844082

>explore basic shit
>have fun for a couple hours
>realize literally thats all to the game and you will be repeating the same shit forever

Dont ask for advice, dont look for tips, let the magic last for a couple hours longer.

Literally the biggest wasted potential of the decade.

If it's anything like other Paradox games, it's just gonna get better with every update. I feel like it was underwhelming too, though. Expected more depth from the game when it released.

user, I...

>biggest waste of potential of the decade
you are like big babby
watch this
yes, but why should someone bother with a retail game when it only has a chance of being good a year or two down the line, when the amount of extra content required to make it good has inflated the cost of the game by double or more

Reminder that hypermemes usually result in your science ships getting boxed in after about an hour so once the next patch goes live the exploring part of the game will decrease significantly

>better with every update

Holy shit you're either naive as fuck or an immigrant from paradox plaza

Stopped playing stellaris myself. but from what I hear it's not getting better, it's getting worse. modern paradox has this problem where he thinks he "knows better" and tends to ignore most criticism and treating their audience as stupid plebians

>Spore
why do you remind me of this user

That's what happened with older Paradox games, at least. Well, the ones I played.

Fuck, man. I just want Stellaris to be good. On paper, it's the game I've been wanting my whole life.

>naive as fuck
yeah, maybe... I just want the game to be good. I like it well enough but there are a lot of glaring flaws

I don't get it. I was around for Spore, I wasted couple of dozen hours in Creature Creator, just never got the full game after hearing it's meh. So I thought "oh, well", and moved on with my life.
Was there REALLY such a potential for this game? People are constantly treating it like a disappointment of their lives

personally I still like it but it could've been a lot better

good news, it's getting worse

what happen

i think that a game that promises too much and you can see it coming from miles away is better than taking a great game with innovative features and gutting those features to fill me with rage, pic related.

i have a cracked stellaris utopia version 1.5
is there a way to update that normally or do i have to torrent 4gbs to get the latest version?

There was a lot of potential because it was marketed as fully fleshed out for all five of its stages when, in reality, it was only even half fleshed out for one of its stages.
It was a lot of fun to play for the very first time and see how it went, but after that it was basically all the same.
Really disappointing. Could have been 1000x better if the dev team buckled down.

It was supposed to be an evolution simulator grand in scale. Starting with a tetris minigame building up DNA from blocks of protein. Guiding your creatures through multiple animal and tribal stages with actual depth and gameplay till the galaxy becomes your oyster and you can guide and control evolution on a grand scale yourself, like running a dozen instances of SimEarth at once. They even wanted to have the possibility of mechanical and silicate lifeforms, or weird shit like aquatic spaceships with giant aquarium spacestations.

Which, in your opinion, is better? BW1 or BW2? I only ever played 1.

It was supposed to be a complex tool for messing around with the evolution of organisms and societies. Instead we ended up with an overly childish mess that's really just a collection of extremely shitty minigames ripped off of far better games, the creature creator is fun to mess around with but even that was wasted potential if you look at early footage of the game and how it changed.

>spore
>this decade

Stellaris will never be good because the dev team seems to be focused on making it a shitty 4X game rather than a comfy empire-managing roleplay experience like their other games. Somehow they don't realize that they'll never be able to compete with games like ES2 or MoO because of how fundamentally flawed the mechanics are.

>exploration is the best part of the game, the galaxy truly feels gigantic, ancient and full of wonders and secrets
>fuck it over on purpose

What the FUCK are they thinking?!

>planet building is boring and shit
>empire building is boring blobbing, who the fuck feels rewarded if red mana ticks for 450 a month instead of 150
>ground combat is a joke
>space combat is pointless doomstack smashing
>no fleetbuilding, plasma cruisers rule everything(atleast its less retarded than naked corvette spam)
>diplomacy is nonexistent
>no espionage
>no meaningful trade
>no challange, once you get your core of 8-10 planets its on autopilot to victory 30 hours down the line
>the AI literally cant play its own game, enemy capitals have working unimproved tiles in the 2300s
>planets are samey and boring
>races are samey and boring
>way not enough events and questlines
>actively punished for expanding through retarded modifiers on research and unity, the best way to play is to stay small and vassalize the galaxy
>tech trees are way overcrowded and random
>leaders feel pointless and weirdly implemented
>purple mana in general feels like that
>sectors, do I need to say more?

Entire game plays like some unreleased alpha

1 is good, 2 destroyed much of what made original game special.

Important part of your post is "older Paradox games"

>actively punished for expanding through retarded modifiers on research and unity, the best way to play is to stay small and vassalize the galaxy

This is the stupidest thing. Why would you try to limit wide play when tall is so awful in Stellaris? The only reason tall is even at all close to viable in games like Civ/Endless is because your cities/systems can scale near infinitely and cities can take a long time to upgrade, so tall players get the advantage of fewer but individually more powerful cities whereas wide players have weaker cities. But in Stellaris, bringing a new planet to its maximum potential takes about 30 minutes at most, and because population has such a small limit there aren't any planet population based bonuses in Stellaris which is one of the best things about tall in other games.

I don't mind games not having proper support for tall playstyles but why would you limit expansion so heavily in that case? If they want to make tall vs wide balanced then they need to buff tall rather than nerf wide, not needlessly restrict the only viable playstyle.

>On paper, it's the game I've been wanting my whole life
moo3 was bad because it had poor execution but good design principles
stellaris is a wan fascimile of a 4x. it doesnt even have good design principles

how the hell tall is viable in Endless Space 2?

>that op picture
What the fuck

I haven't played much ES2 but EL had plenty of tall support even if wide was still the superior playstyle. Does ES2 not have a tall-focused faction like Cultists/Allayi? I thought the trees were supposed to have that niche.

Never played any MoO, only played Space Empires.
Yes, I'm a poor/retard fag.

Don't remind me user. ;_;

tall fucking shitters get out

At least the terraforming in Spore was kindafun.

every system in ES2 ranges from 1 to 5 planets, and their sizes put a population cap on the system. A 30 pop system is a big one. It's also not that hard to have your system fully upgraded so all it can do is to convert industry to other yields or make ships.

This comes naturally from the shitty, boring, unfun planet/empire building. How the fuck they could possibly think that covering a boring and samey planet in power plants/labs/mines and then just pressing +1 is fun? Why cant I actually diversify my planet with wonder and unique buildings and stuff like in other games? Why cant I have industrial hellholes, robot mining planets, giant population centers, hidden research moons full of dangerous shit and planets ringed with factory orbitals?

The funniest thing in the entire game to me is though, how you cant colonize barren planets, not even with robots even when you have the power and technology to build dyson spheres and ringworlds.

Tall isn't a meme. Games generally don't have the mechanics to support a tall build because of arbitrary limitations. The games that do try to support tall builds have arbitrary rules that artificially empower those builds. Look at modern and early modern history, nearly every nation is build tall by 4x definition.

I agree user.

>trying to shake up this power block in the galaxy by ushering in a crisis
>Researched jump drive, synthetics, even trying to get the shroud monsters to say hello
>Nothing so far
What gives?

If your system gets fully upgraded you are probably not doing a good job balancing science and industry

some system upgrades are significantly worse than building ships to get more systems by conquest in the early game.

Well.
I guess playing with my Americans friends will now be impossible.

>Look at modern and early modern history, nearly every nation is build tall by 4x definition.
no, i dont think thats true. you can draw enough examples to show a difference.
like habsburg spain vs elizabethan england.
empire of russia, and maybe even ottomans could be considered "wide" strategies

Yes, and that makes a fully upgraded system even less likely

I'd play with you if only there was something worth the effort.

Imperialism, modern or otherwise, relies on colonialism for sustenance. Only "tall" countries are those that relied on offering unique services to the empires (Venice, Papal States, Switherland, etc) or socialist nations that often exported resources to their periphery to improve equality within them, and even they often engaged in imperialist tactics for various reasons.

he was talking about endless legend, not ES2
the closest thing to a tall faction in ES2 is the vodyani; it's entirely possible that they'll add a faction that can play tall reliably down the line, similar to the community-designed automaton from ES1 that could stockpile industry and generate interest to help rival the industrial power of larger empires, as well as getting a unique tech down the line that provided a shockingly high FIDS% bonus, but was divided by the number of systems you owned

explain prussia or scandanavia

>prussia
You mean the country that expanded at an extremely rapid pace, using german and baltic and part of polish territories as subjects eventually forming the german empire? That prussia? What's tall about that?

>scandanavia
What do you mean by scandinavia? The calmar union, where Norway and Sweden were used as subjects to the danish crown? The swede empire, that was broken once russia stopped it's attempts at expansion and taken away duchy of finland from them?

Both your examples show that for you tall means size on the map rather than pattern of development, that is an entirely stupid way to look at empires in my opinion because obviously more prosperous rich european provinces make for better colonies than some shithole half way around the world.

>tall means size on the map
yes.
it means a small size and at least parity with realms of bigger size.
that is literally tall gameplay

>tall faction in ES2
There really isn't one. Trees and vodyani aren't so much "tall", as in working to develop territory they already own, but rather slow to expand.

You could call that tall if you must, but really I don't think it is as they don't get, afaik, any special bonuses for staying small.

Again, much like with the historical discussion it depends on what you mean by tall vs wide. If you just mean "not taking up much space on the map" than yeah, vodyani and trees are tall, but if you mean actual mechanics to support staying compact, I don't think there are such in ES2.

In EL you have cultist and their interaction with minor factions making them a truly "tall" civilisation, with Drakken being on the edge because for them expanding is a rather questionable exercise but they still need to expand
>parity with realms of bigger size
Never happened. It's the old sparta problem, your spartans can be as awesome as they wish to be, but they will simply be crushed under superior size, the only options they have are expansion and death. Few pick death, but many are forced into that choice.

>that is literally tall gameplay
That's your definition of it, and I already said why I think it's stupid.

I meant that all discussion about wide and tall is bullshit because those terms arise from arbitrary rules set in games. For a game to have fair development it would need the possibility to have near infinite economic development potential for smaller territories. All those "wide" countries are mainly rural countries with societies based on land and an economy build on owning land. I was referring to modern indusrialized nations like the nations in stellaris/es. Imperialism like in the 19th century was only possible after the economic powers of the new industrialized allowed them to conquer large parts of the world. The russian and spanish empire were quite sparsely populated exept for the "heartland".

Prussia was able to form germany thanks to it's industry and railways not because it was wide. As for scandinavia, sweden was only relevant during the Stormaktstiden and faded away after that because low population = low industrial potential.

>but they will simply be crushed under superior size
except greeks won and persia lost

With the Steam winter sale next Thursday. I'm gonna buy Stellaris. Considering all the changes coming with the 2.0 patch(its not even explored expansion features yet)

Is it worth playing now or should I wait for 2.0?

Precisely. A smaller higher developed region be it economically or demographically is what in 4x would be difined as tall. But in games this is mostly simulated with higher tech.

tallfags get out

what other definition of wide gameplay is there other than large territory with lower average output?

>play game as cute butterflies with syncretic evolution dumb lizards
>fanatic militarist, xenophile, later drop fanatic for egalitarian
>just trying to make the galaxy a better place, maybe unite it under one flag if I have to, uplifting races left and right to be my little niggas
>surrounded by no less than 5 fanatic purifiers and devouring swarms
>well fuck, let me scout around, maybe find some allies further in the galaxy
>bump into 4 hegemonic imperialists, 2 despotic slavers and even a metalheads
>srsly you guys
>fallen empire wakes up, its the xenophobic one
>the religious one follows suit, war in heaven starts
>try to stay netural at the edge of the galaxy
>subspace echoes
>fucking REALLY
>using the mod that lets several crises happen
>all the jump drive shit salvaged from the war in heaven triggers the unbidden
>the galaxy is such a clusterfuck they last long enough for the aberrant and the vehement arrive
>finally manage to subdue my neighbors and beat off some of the prets, maybe I can build up a bit now
>machine consciousness event fires(about 5% chance of all three crises happening)
>all my gorillion droids powering my mines rebel
>entire galaxy is ablaze as doomstacks fuck eachother up
>even managed to spot a running 4way battle between prets, a FE, the aberrant and a slaver empire
>I turned my galaxy into 40k
>realize I'm actually having fun playing stellaris

There is no better feel then to have the doomstack moving towards your capital get intercepted by another doomstack and then THAT doomstack get intercepted again and then warp in to mop up everyone to reverse engineer something better than your tier 3 railguns.

development is correlated with tech level. i dont see a problem

>Prussia was able to form germany thanks to it's industry and railways not because it was wide
Your point? It's precisely as I said, if you have an empire, that is successful, it expands, rapidly, because those industries need someone to sell their shit to and someplace to get resources, including human ones, from. And those railways are a grand way to transport those resources.

Rome at some point too was just a fucking village. I don't see people calling the roman empire "tall".

At which point it started expanding to maintain the advantage it gained trough superiour tactics. It didn't stay small after it's victory, now did it.

>It didn't stay small after it's victory
it grew slightly larger. but it didnt overtake persia ever

You can't anymore. Net neutrality is over, so you gotta pay more, goy.

>it didnt overtake persia ever
Alexander would like you to study his conquests.

not greek, and alexander is a classic example of wide strategy

I just mean that in 4x tall is often a research advantage rather than a higher concentration of people economic development. It would be better to have less restrictions on demographic and economic development because wars would be more detrimental to growth. A tech advantage doesn't dissappear overnight after a war. While centuries of development could be lost if the economy would be hit in a more realistic way.

By 4x definition Rome could be considered tall because at the hight of it's power the pinnicale of it's economy was the city of rome. This was the result of policies like not having to pay tax when living in rome. Thanks to these policies rome became one of the biggest cities in the ancient world. But as the western part of the empire declined constantinople's economy and population boomed. In history you see shifts in socio economic development which are sometimes the result or the cause of changes this is poorly represented in 4x by tall vs wide.

>Alexander the Great
>not greek

You know at some point in discussion with people like you it becomes clear that I'm wasting my time, when it happens I always wish it happened sooner.

>Rome could be considered tall
Yeah, and Russian Federation could be considered tall, by that logic, because most of it's economy is focused in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg.

>I just mean that in 4x tall is often a research advantage rather than a higher concentration of people economic development.
refer to 4x games are highly abstracted, but even most of them have some kind of infrastructure that needs to be built after knowing the tech in order to exploit the tech.
i really dont see a problem with the design principle, maybe there can be small details to fill in but thats it

>I'm wasting my time
fuck off already then

There still is a differente with the russian empire because it had other economic zones and foreign trade. Trade in the roman empire was almost solely directed at rome the had to build a second harbor town to accommodate to rome's trade needs.

Vicky II is in my opinion the only game that has some decent form of regional development that gives a better division of wide and tall.

tallfags absolutely BTFO

Just watched the Rise and Fall live stream, and I'm pretty underwhelmed. The point where I really lost respect for it was when they transitioned from the Medieval age to a Renaissance golden age, and one of the special golden age policies they could select gave +4 great prophet points. The streamers mentions that those great prophet points are for founding a religion if you don't already have one. This shows that great prophet points still do nothing after a great prophet is created, yet are still accumulated and new means to generate them still exist past the point where they could ever be useful. The devs still don't realize that the timing for getting religions is not what they think it is. Every religion will be found on nearly every difficulty level by the Renaissance age.

Slop game.

>There still is a differente with the russian empire because it had other economic zones and foreign trade. Trade in the roman empire was almost solely directed at rome the had to build a second harbor town to accommodate to rome's trade needs.

I don't think we are hearing each other - by the logic you are using all empires could be considered tall because getting shit from the periphery to benefit the center is precisely what empires is all about, and if that's not wide, nothing is, the only thing that's different is shape of the centre, not any principal difference like between, for example, Switzerland and France or Byzantium and Venice.

Tall, as I see it, is practice of maximally developing territory you already posses, but in order to do so you need a way to gain resources that isn't colonialism, or you need a centre willing to sacrifice improvement of their lives for the sake of the periphery. The former is extremely rare and does not create traditional empires, the latter requires socialism or similarly altruist doctrine as a foundation and is very difficult to maintain because people tend to be selfish and, unless carefully managed and successful, either centre, the periphery, or both can start getting imperialist ideas of their own wanting to go back to the old way of doing things. Not to say that wide empires never develop periphery, rather that it only happens when it's politically, economically or strategically expedient to do so and is by no means default state of affairs.

Every empire that is usually brought up as example of "tall" empire, be it japan, prussia or something else, always tried to expand the moment it get's an opportunity to do so, and slides into irrelevance or outright destruction if it doesn't.

The reason the cultists in EL are such a perfect example of a "tall" empire is that they follow the "unique service" model. Offering their cult to the minor faction and getting resources in return.

Oh fuck me, I thought that was from Civ Revolution or a mobile game

Humanoids cream api when?

never fuck creamsteam

>there are no tall empires because a "traditional" empire needs to expand territorially to accrue resources
thats probably the narrowest definition ive come across. there have been mercantlist empires that were relatively small in territorial size but through trade and other financial shenanigans gained major wealth and power.
your argument is basically, "empires cant trade"