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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1052 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 20, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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..hotly anticipated.. by whom?

These games have gone to shit. Civ 5 was only so,so. They're not even trying. You should have a fricking globe. You should have good AI. None of that is present.

You should have good AI.

This is the most unbelievable choice by far to me. The ai genuinely plays like a 5-year old and needs to cheat its ass off to present even a mild challenge.

Civ 5 in multiplayer was a 9.5/10 experience for me. Single player is straight up tedium in comparison.

Do you have better strategy game recommendations?

Similar to Civ:

SMACx if you haven't played it, go play it. The graphics is a little rough but I think you can get used to it. The game itself is excellent, almost unsurpassed. Check if there aren't mods that fix AI, iirc there are some, the vanilla game has uneven AI that can be exploited. This mod is probably good.. Good writing & memorable leaders. Some quotes even made it into the real world iirc. Not the ones linked but I swear I saw certain phrases outside of the game context..

Endless Legend. It's kind of like Civ V/SmacX except it has quests and researching or even stealing a tech makes all further research more expensive. Units stack, are pretty customizable and battles are tactical but not that long. Factions are truly asymmetric, unlike in Civ with significant differences in playstyles due to different abilities. The only downside I know is that there's really no religion / cultural layer to the game. AI is good on normal difficulty, to lethal on higher difficulty settings due to cheating.

Less similar:

Age of Wonders 2 +(Shadow Magic DLC). Hard to describe it, it's like a mix between Heroes of Might & Magic and Civ. Supposedly a remake of the old Master of Magic games. Every player in the game controls a wizard, whose magic can affect the entire map. In addition to the classic 4x resources, there's mana. You don't have to control mana sources but it's massively beneficial, as it allows casting and maintaining enchantments of ..units, cities, or entire map regions. If you're a water-magic based swamp civ, you can turn your entire domain into a literal swamp, hindering everyone's movement but yours.. etc. In addition, there's 3 underground layers of the map and certain units can tunnel through soil (but not rock).

AoW 2 is notable for having a religious system that actually matters and it's not just a few % modifiers .. you have to take your God into consideration. IIRC you need to build a temple to do so, then it starts. So If you worship a War god, war & genocide gets you in his good graces. He will grant you war-related boons... it's not very deep but it wasn't all that deterministic and was a pretty nice touch. E.g. if a War God commands you to destroy a city, and you don't do so because your impious ass cares about diplomacy, well..

Master of Orion 2 -needs dosbox, only 640x480 is a classic 4x game. Pretty much like simpler Civ except tech are exclusive - in most research tiers you have to pick 1 of 3, so there are trade-offs to make and combat is godly because it's done using starships and these are designed using your known techs and then the fight itself is iirc initiative & turn based. Ship design is about twice as complex than Stellaris and the turn based combat is pretty fun. Even with it, it's nowhere near as time-intensive or tedious as Stellaris, even a huge map can be finished in ~12 hours.

Endless Space 2: the economic / research system is pretty similar to Endless Legend,but it's a space based game. The combat is a little disappointing bc you can't control it, only select tactic to be used. So it's like Stellaris. Very stylish game.. Also disappointing: the blurbs/concepts for various economy-related techs are seemingly very low effort and nonsensical on second look. Sseth has a video on it.

Sometimes it feels like Alpha Centauri was the last time they tried anything truly revolutionary with the formula. I should really play it again and refresh my memory. I remember it was the singular instance of being able to design my own units, do any sort of serious geo engineering, have floating cities, seriously need to worry about the local flora or fauna, etc. Many of those features haven't been seen again. I can't recall the last Sid Meier 4X game that let you create custom units. Even the spiritual successor, Beyond Earth, didn't.

Unit design is in Endless Legend. It doesn't have geo-engineering though...

..neither floating cities, though a DLC brings in ocean control & resources.

Unfortunately, the AI in Alpha Centauri is still kind of bad. It will forward-settle 5 tiles away from your cities like a complete imbecile and all the AIs band up together if the player ever gets strong.
Plus, you don't really get to choose between econ/tech/military. If you do, the ginger bitch will declare war and invade you with 50 units as soon as mathematically possible.

My favourite part of the expansion was how war crimes against the aliens suffered no diplomatic penalties.

So you could play as a respected democratic society that upheld human rights, and still load up your units with chemical weapons and gas alien cities.

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