Crashed for me in about five seconds.
Thanks for trying it out. At least I know it isn’t my machine. I didn’t think it was, but thanks for confirming it.
We just had a weekend LAN party with 6 players and this was one of the games we played the most. It was 6 coop vs the AI. We vary from slightly below average to terrible but we could beat 4 intermediates(below normal) and 2 normal AI players. None of the complaints that are listed above bother us in the slightest, we just make balanced armies and the pace of the game suits our skill level. Good game Stardock !! Next winter I want to talk the group into Off-World Trading Company.
@robc04 there is a mobile T2 jammer that is vital to have in all armies.
That would be useful! I don’t think it was available in the campaign though. Glad you and your group had lots of fun playing this together!
I clearly wasn’t meant to play my first skirmish game on normal AI difficulty. It quickly outpaced me - I think it had 3 or 4 times the number of regions I did after 10-15 minutes. Once it started to attack me I just started bleeding out until I was no longer.
Yeah, the AI is quite good! I got my butt kicked numerous times by the AI on Normal before I was finally able to start getting some wins. Even so, it’s still a real dogfight for me and it still manages to kick my butt periodically with a surprise move I didn’t expect.
It really is a great comp-stomp game. Well, it’s oftentimes not the comp that’s getting stomped, but you know what I mean. :)
I passed that save game link to the dev team so they can check it out. Thanks for posting. :)
Thank you for investigating!
Haha yeah, normal will squish you good if you’re not pretty experienced with the game.
Basic tactics to make your life easier:
- Put your factories on repeat
- Remember F1 cycles through idle engineers (and there’s a little button in the lower left that tells you if you have any)
- Shift-click build orders to queue up a bunch of stuff for your engis
- Put your factories on repeat
- You can shift-right-click a bunch of Generators to tell a group of units to go capture this, then this, then this, etc. Works way better than using attack or move for expanding
- Once you can afford the radioactives, put an engi on constant Quantum builds (the Archive or Relay, depending on faction) - you can never have too many Quanta, unless it’s keeping you from building cruisers or something
- Put your factories on repeat
Really appreciate all the discussion here, guys. I’m shying away from defending the game or arguing with folks who don’t care for it, because that just seems tacky and misguided, but those posts are very helpful as well.
Good list, Adam. However, you forgot one bullet point:
-Avatars are the bees knees. They are the best thing since sliced quanta.
Seriously, they are probably 90% of the reason I play Substrate.
Thanks Adam, I can definitely see where those things could help reduce needing to keep clicking or remembering to do stuff. There are definitely times where I have a surplus of resource income and realize I hadn’t been building any units for a little while because I’ve been focusing on other things.
Avatars are pretty bossy bosses, it’s true. Artemises, though…
We’re having our Tuesday stream at 9pm ET tonight with Escalation. We’ll be giving away some keys on the stream also. :)
Any dlc keys?
I’ll put my 2 cents in on what is right wrong with Ashes and the follow-up. Keep in mind I can ask questions of Stardock directly wherein most drive-by purchasers (who got Age of Empires in droves) will not.
--------- the not-so positive ---------
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As has been mentioned the re-releases are awful confusing and I’ve personally disliked them every time SD used them. Never said anything because I figured I was alone in feeling that way They’re confusing and couldn’t understand why they didn’t just do DLC for continuity. Then a year or two after being done with the game release a “gold version”.
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Price is not a factor for me. I just put it on my credit card and gulp when I open my next bill. But all those other titles are much cheaper and that makes mass purchasing in droves easier to attain.
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As mentioned before the fact the units float. Reminds me of an air hockey table. This is a serious RTS but it makes it look more arcadey since nothing has legs or treads. It took me a long time to figure out the yellow discs on the sides were actually ducted fans.
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As mentioned before it is sometimes a bit hard to discern what units do what. I had this same problem with Total Annihilation.
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“Substrate” immediately makes me thing of sandstone layers or dirt. When coming back to the game after hiatus Substrate makes me thing of something to be mined as a resource - not a race. I think I kinda understand why the dev’s named it for the higher meaning it has, but 99% of people won’t. Kids in Earth Science will be especially confused.
---------- the excellent -----------
- Stuff firing all over the place at once.
- The AI is awesome.
- Graphics are gorgeous.
- Amazing lighting.
- Campaign is better now.
- I LOVE the radar map. Brilliant execution.
-------------- other -----------------
Personally I can’t stand going back to Age of Empires vs. a game like Ashes. The animations in AoE are too janky and… holy cow. I think I just realized why everything floats in Ashes… no walking animations. Cuts down on cost to make units in the animation department and allows more units on the screen because of less overhead.
Perhaps, but it doesn’t seem to be a problem in Planetary Annihilation, not even when all you churn out are bipedal bots (with walking animations)?
I love PA, but man those units are ugly and basic. They have treads and legs, but sacrificed textures and polygon count for it.
I don’t know; I quite like the cartoony design. It’s crisp and clear, whereas Ashes tends to look a lot muddier to my eye. But de gustibus non est disputandum. ;-)
Escalation v2.03 went out today with a variety of balance adjustments, fixes, and more. :)
Full changelog: http://forums.ashesofthesingularity.com/481347/Ashes-of-the-Singularity-Escalation-v203-changelog-Released-126