The Gaming Den

darkmaster wrote:

Manxome wrote:Also, my overall experience (at least on higher difficulties) has been that I can easily grow faster than the AIs, but I still get crushed if they decide to make a massive surprise attack against me before (roughly) the renaissance era. This is probably partly because I pathologically over-invest in growth at the cost of defenses, but I'm pretty sure a large chunk of it is that the higher difficulties give the AI players mostly starting bonuses instead of growth bonuses.

I think you're probably just bad at the game, because Civ 5's combat is super easy, the combat AI is entirely incompetent and literally all you have to do if you get caught with your pants down is cash rush a few units and proceed to destroy the entire attacking army.

I've done that many times, and it'll stop an opportunistic attack, but not a serious one. The computer sucks at maneuvering and you can exploit that to enormous advantage in small-scale fights, but if they launch a sustained offensive they're eventually going to reach your city and turn it into a numbers game. When the computer shows up suddenly with 12 units, gold-buying one or two defenders is not going to save you, especially if they have an edge in tech.

Having recently won on the highest difficulty level, I am reasonably confident that (1) the higher difficulty levels definitely revolve around giving the computers starting bonuses rather than growth bonuses (e.g. they've got 2, sometimes 3 cities when my scout first meets them 10-20 turns into the game), and (2) I can't be that bad at the game.

And I never said Civ 5 was better than Civ 4 for newbies, just that I personally enjoyed it more. I haven't played Civ 4 recently enough to even guess how they compare from a learning-curve perspective.

Okay, this is a mobile game and the graphics are insanely ugly... but everyone who has ever even remotely liked a deck building game should get Dream Quest.

Koumei wrote:If I wanted to Zerg Rush, I'd just play a Real-Time Strategy. Already I'm regretting the expenditure, but I'll just cheat like a motherfucker and start the game with assassins, succubi, void walkers and your mum.

So clearly I need to amend the search query: are there any games that fulfil the above criteria and reward you for settling down, exploring a bit for resources, developing your cities and making the best units rather than running ahead with Zerglings in the first three turns?

Was reminded of this comment recently while playing Pandora, which is clearly drawing inspiration from the Civilization series (particularly Alpha Centauri), but has much less pressure to build cities as fast as possible because population growth is on a global track rather than on a separate track for each city.

You do still want more cities eventually (partly for habitat space, partly for territory, and partly so you can build additional copies of buildings with population-independent effects). There's a clear phase when the AIs will start aggressively building cities on every tiny strip of unclaimed land anywhere on the planet, but that phase isn't until more than half-way through the game.

Civ5.
I usually win with no more than 4 cities because i tech up and simply roffle stomp everything with way OP units . .

I've been playing Invisible, Inc. It's a turn-based stealth strategy game.

It's in early access right now on Steam, so I'm not sure what the final product will look like, but it's pretty fun right now.

Is that the one which kickstarted as Incognito? That looked good at the time. I'm glad it turned into something playable.

Laertes wrote:Is that the one which kickstarted as Incognito? That looked good at the time. I'm glad it turned into something playable.

I think so. The cracking servers that you use to hack things are called Incognito.

I feel like it's how Shadowrun should have been made. The hacking feels a lot more of a natural part of a run instead of a separate mini-game.

I think I'm becoming a bigger fan of RPG/Rogue-like fusions where you do a lot of procedural generation of challenges.

I may be planning to pick up a 4X game to sink some hours into and Steam is pushing, among other things, Endless Legend in my face. Anyone know anything about how it is now, this long after it was released?

MGuy wrote:I may be planning to pick up a 4X game to sink some hours into and Steam is pushing, among other things, Endless Legend in my face. Anyone know anything about how it is now, this long after it was released?

I've been playing it the whole time. My take on it is that it's a beautiful game that will start to bore you about 100-200 hours in. Whether you want to keep playing it depends on how you feel about the 4x genre in general.

It's a weird thing. Very beautiful games and games that are very replayable don't seem to intersect.

150 hours or so seems like a worthy investment considering I get considerably less hours out of normal console games for 60 or so. What's good/bad about it in your opinion?

MGuy wrote:150 hours or so seems like a worthy investment considering I get considerably less hours out of normal console games for 60 or so. What's good/bad about it in your opinion?

I like that it's pretty, that the tech tree makes you want to skip over techs and not be a completionist, and that the quests can mix up your overall strategy.

The problems are that the tactical depth tends to bottom out pretty quickly, that the midgame and endgame tactics are basically the same as the beginning game, and that a stack of doom basically wins the game.

I asked a friend about it, it was on my "maybe" list and I saw he'd bought it. He said it's a good game, but mostly for multiplayer, so if you just want single-player it won't hold you for too long.

Koumei wrote:I asked a friend about it, it was on my "maybe" list and I saw he'd bought it. He said it's a good game, but mostly for multiplayer, so if you just want single-player it won't hold you for too long.

Single player is what I'm looking for. If it can't entertain me when I'm on my lonesome that'd be a deal breaker.

It's not exactly fitting, but I recommend King's Bounty (2007). Scantily clad princess from the add-on aside, it's a very good rpg with Heroes of Might and Magic style battles.