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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3820 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 10, 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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I'm looking for a strategy game that is BIG. Stellaris kinda scratches the itch, but I've played the hell out of it too many times. I want the sense of massive armies movies, and not just fighting battles, but fighting wars.

There seems to be a glut of strategy games lately that are on a small scale with a few dozen people or a hundred or so people fighting. I'm not entirely opposed to a game like this, but they often just feel so tiny. I don't like having to care about individual units, but so many games seem to make that a selling point. They Are Billions is a "smaller" scale game that I still find enjoyable, because at least the scale of your enemies feels massive. I'd be happy playing that game again if there were maps that were five to ten times larger, as it currently is you are failing on the harder maps if you don't cover the entire thing with defenses by the end.

AI War is an asymmetric RTS where armies/fleets scale into the thousands/tens of thousands. I can vouch for the original game being quite fun, but I haven't tried AI War 2.

There is also Planetary Annihilation (:Titans), an RTS played across one or more planets (yes, spherical maps), which is intended as a spiritual successor to Supreme Commander which is mentioned below. The micromanagement there feels more finicky than in AI War, but the graphics and feeling of scale are vastly better and I would still consider the game to be an underrated gem (hobbled by the typical Kickstarter project issue of having been half-baked at initial release).

Shadow Empire: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1154840/Shadow_Empire/

It's a turn-based WW2 wargame turned into a post-apocalyptic sci-fi 4X. The standard unit of geography is the hex with an edge length of 200km. Unit and population sizes are downscaled to keep it manageable, but you're still going to manage hundreds of thousands of people (with 100 being the smallest unit) in a regular game. An average campaign will take you upwards of 50 hours.

Game looks good, I'm surprised that I haven't heard of it until now. I wonder if I have it ignored on steam for some reason.

It is a very niche game that demands a lot from the player. It's neither pretty nor streamlined. The UX is tolerable but far below par. You really have to want to play this game to get your fun out of it.

That said, if you do commit, here's a shameless plug of my guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3195937264

https://store.steampowered.com/app/204880/Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire_Rebellion/

Sins of a Solar Empire.

Galaxy scale space combat RTS with plenty of mods. Can zoom from individual ships to fleets to galaxy without ever leaving real-time gameplay. Factions are cool and pretty distinct.

Great game, I'm hoping the second one that they have announced is as good as the first.

I didn't know there was a second one coming out!

I want the sense of massive armies movies, and not just fighting battles, but fighting wars.

It's nothing close to that, but Distant Worlds 2 is a interesting Stellaris alternative.

Economy/trade involves large numbers of ships going places, see any screenshot from the game. Target rich environment for pirates/raiders. Empires feel a significantly more 'alive' than your typical Paradox game. You have a lot of options as to how much of economy and other aspects of the game are automated, but some automation enabled is the expected way to play.

It is not quite polished and balanced enough, doesn't live up to its potential, but the one campaign I played was worth it.

Supreme Commander Forged Alliance feels pretty big by RTS standards (it invented strategic zoom), you routinely field armies with hundreds of individual units and a bunch of superweapons. It is basically a full-scale war - land, air and sea. Micro is still important but macro is much more important.

Ever tried the Total War franchise? I love Warhammer 3 the most, given that it's got faith, steel and gunpowder, all good for shooting up barbarians.

But there are more historical ones, in pretty much any setting you desire. The campaign gameplay might not be as complicated as Paradox games, but seeing thousands or even tens of thousands of soldiers clashing and bleeding has its own charm. I'd recommend Rome 2, Shogun or Three Kingdoms if the Warhammer series isn't your thing.

I've played most of the total war games. The later entries in the series I've enjoyed less. Maybe I should spin up one of the old ones.

Second the Three Kingdoms recommendation for historical TW. @cjet79 mentioned he doesn't like the powerful lords and heroes in Warhammer, which 3K does have kinda... but you can play in "records mode" which is more realistic. And I think that 3K just plain nails the gameplay more than any other game, even Warhammer. The campaign layer is the best in the series, with the diplomacy/espionage/family relationship systems. And the battles feel great too. The terrain can be interacted with (like you can set forests on fire), the cavalry feels super satisfying to use, and the leader duels are super cool and thematic.

I think it's a shame that CA dropped 3K like a hot potato, because it's some of their best work by far.

I've played total war 3k a few times, pretty early on. Meant to come back around to it after it got more fleshed out, and then ya CA abandoned it.

Master of Orion 3 it's the biggest strategy game I've ever tried. It bogs down hard once you get about 30 turns in.

This is probably not what you want, but "Remnants of the Precursors" is a MoO1 adaptation with a number of flavor-retaining enhancements. I think the largest galaxy I ever played for a while was something like 50,000 stars and 500 empires, but it's possible to go up to over 500,000 stars. The game interface can be made to work crudely at that scale (but it's open source and allows mods), and at some point your machine may grind to a halt between turns, once there are enough large empires. But it was a fascinating experience.

It felt like I was an orchestra conductor, shifting the pressure and direction of expansion. And it was very much in keeping with the grabby aliens theory: my empire was surrounded by an ever-expanding wave of scouts, followed by a wave of colony ships and guard fleets, and here and there actual battle fleets, all pulsing out from factory worlds on the rim of the developed core, with dozens of turns before they get close enough to the front to even be pointed at an enemy. (The deep core of my empire being too far away, and thus devoted to research and taxation.) I no longer cared about individual ships, it was more about how best to allocate the ones that had arrived at the frontline waypoints this year. When a new serious threat emerged, I had to do some long term balancing, figuring out what technologies and resource base they had, whether my fleets could defeat it in sufficient numbers or if I'd need a new design, which of my existing ship designs could afford to be scrapped, whether all my other ongoing conflicts could stand the loss of a class of ship, and so forth.

Eventually, as I expanded along the spiral arm of a galaxy and into the body and reached the dense core, I found that I was too late. Instead of being 1-2 orders of magnitude more powerful than the empires I'd been encountering, a Meklar empire had taken over the core and had expanded so much that, although I still had a slight tech lead (Psilon pride), my size graphs were indistinguishable from 0. Alas, then the game started taking too long between turns on my 10-year-old laptop. But it's been a number of years, and the game engine has improved substantially since then.

Victoria 2 and Crusader Kings II and III are also good options.

So…did you play Hearts of Iron IV? Same engine as Stellaris, but much more focus on war and war production.

The smallest thing you’ll control will be air wings with dozens of planes. Troops are organized at the division, army, or theater level rather than as squads. That means strategic maneuvers like rolling over the entirety of Belgium to get at Paris. You’re also responsible for equipping them, which means asking questions like “can I afford to switch my production lines to this new tank design?” or “why the hell are there no rifles in all of France?”

It does a bunch of stuff that really sells the scale. The simulation isn’t nearly as sophisticated as War in the East or Shadow Empire, but in return you get something which just feels enormous.

Edit: you mention being cold on WWII below. Oops. At least HoI4 has outrageous mods! Alt-history, Cold War, Fallout (though that technically reduces the scale). Ponies. I think it’s the perfect engine for a Star Wars game, and I know there have been attempts, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard one praised.

Gary Grigsby's War in the East 2

I was really tempted to play this after reading this logistics guide. It just seemed so crunchy! But when I read more about the metagame, I got the impression that it led to some weird strategy. I’d been hoping the model would result in something closer to the historical strategy.

Game looks kinda interesting, but I doubt I'll make it over the steep learning curve.

You seem to be describing the Total War series.

What about other Paradox games?

Wargames from Matrix/Slitherine might also scratch that itch. I would recommend Strategic Command or War Plan, if you're into WW2.

I maybe should go back and play some old Total War games. The Warhammer ones have been leaving me unfulfilled. I don't think I like the magic spells that were added for battles, and the single units that are powerhouses.

I have no particular interest in WWII, but it does seem like the genre of games I'm interested in are all set in that time period.

Divide and Conquer (LOTR) mod for Medieval II was tons of fun.

Shogun 2 is probably my favorite of the historic games it's very different from the modern ones (single settlement, all factions have basically the same units, the economic model makes population explicit etc).

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