Actually, I know it looks weird and you’re totally right to point it out, but that one was intentional!
-Tom
Helpful! Thank you!
Yea no kidding lol.
@tomchick
So this went from “don’t care at all”, to “holy cow this must be amazing must check out!”
I played this for about 6-7 hours and I’m really loving it. I played a full game (4 players, medium, normal speed) to around turn 165 or so and beat it as the Space Marines (though the graphs tell me it was close), and that took about 4.5 hours. My next game was a 1v1 game on a small map with the Necrons and boy are those guys fun! That was much shorter, of course. Now on my third game (again a 4 player medium map on normal while I learn the factions a bit) and I’m playing as Orks and they are also a lot of fun.
I think once I wrap up an Ork and then Imperial game, I’ll start jacking up the difficulty and doing something crazy with the setup, like huge maps with tons of players and a massive FFA or something. Such a fun game. Beer and pretzel is a fantastic way to describe it - but also sort of soothing and enjoyable to be playing at the same time.
And I really dig the music, too.
Three mentions of F-U-N in one post, oh man oh man. Gonna bump this to the top of my wishlist. :)
Pull the trigger already! :-P
I’ll be curious if this has a Chick Parabola element to it as the few negative reviews all sound exactly the same, “bored after first couple playthrus”.
Doesn’t every game ever have a chick parabola though? I mean, I can’t think of a single game I didn’t eventually get tired of and move on.
Games like this (RTS games, light-weight strategy) will always wear out their welcome faster than, say, a meaty RPG or a grand strategy game that takes a while to get into sure, but you get out of them what you put into them. If I get a dozen hours of out of this that’s pretty cool to me, and something I could dip a toe into as the years go by (and hopefully they expand on what they have here).
Sure. This isn’t an incredibly deep game where you’re still figuring things out a hundred hours into the game. It’s a more limited/focused game than something like Civilization or Europe Universalis, but I find it to be very good at what it does. It’s a great war-focused turn-based game with excellent tactical combat and a light strategic layer binding it all together.
I’ll probably enjoy a victory or two with each race, then up the difficulty with my favorite race for a couple times, then set the game aside and consider it worth the money.
If I ever didn’t buy a video game because I knew some time down the road I’d get bored of it, I’d never buy video games.
For sure, but I do think there is something to be said for games that appear to have interesting mechanics but fall apart quickly once you’re no longer distracted by the “ooo shiny!” phase. For example in a strategy game it might appear like you are being faced with some interesting decisions to make but once you get a bit of experience with the game you realize none of your choices really matter and the game’s entertainment value plummets off a cliff.
I think there’s a difference between eventually being done/bored with a game and a game which isn’t very good and falls apart quickly, if you know what I mean.
It does not have a Chick Parabola!
The Chick Parabola has nothing to do with boredom or fun. It has to do mainlyl with AI. The idea is that you’re really into a game as you learn it. That’s the upward trajectory of the parabola. But the more you learn it, the more you see the AI sucks and is incapable of playing the design, and therefore the less you like it. That’s the downward trajectory of the parabola. I suspect the model was established in a discussion about Civilization V.
The AI in Gladius has its limitations, sure. But it’s perfectly capable of playing the game as designed and more importantly, it’s perfectly capable of presenting a challenge even after you’ve learned all the game’s systems.
-Tom
ohhhhhhhhhh. That doesn’t happen very often.
That discussion (IIRC) was about Civ 4, actually, which is funny because it’s obviously even worse in 5.
I have to say that has a lot of appeal to me even though, I’ve never gotten into the WarHammer universe.
Are there difficulty levels or are some faction just much more challenging to win at?
The game indicates factions that have different starting difficulty (the Imperial Guard are hard, as their infantry are rubbish and they don’t have access to vehicles), but I’m not aware that some factions are designed to be harder to win with than others beyond that.
So are there difficulty levels that say increase the speed of the AI’s building troops?
There are, yes. I believe you can handicap yourself and give bonuses to the AI, but I don’t have the game in front of me right at the moment.
Yes. There is both a generic difficulty setting (which impacts the AI) and then under Advanced Game options the usual 4x toggles/sliders/etc you might expect that can further impact gameplay. E.g. amount of wild life (if you thought Rampaging Barbarians was hotness wait till you see this; as it is a Warhammer game it is naturally meant to be played with max wildlife), or tweaking the # of resources you can come across. There are deeper implications there as well. As the factions are asymmetric, there are faction specific settings. Space Marhines just build a ginormous city (you can build outpost things to claim far away resources and you will be doing this a lot but they’re not very safe). But Necrons have specific points they can build new Pyramids on, and you can tweak the # of those points that spawn. Further handicapping or empowering yourself/the AI.