So I’ve mostly found that all the nonmilitary victories in 4X games tend to blend together. Most of the time it’s “get ahead of the snowball curve, then pick your vic” and it’s just about whether you’re building Radio Towers or spaceship parts or whatever.
So as long as there’s an eXploit victory available, I’ve never been all that fussed, personally.
Curious what victory conditions others have enjoyed!
Yeah, I don’t disagree – alternative victory conditions are often weak. Old World has done a good job on this. I haven’t played in a while, but I recall it had a mercy-rule of sorts. Also, Shadow Empire doesn’t require complete domination; if you’re ahead by enough, you win.
@Left_Empty I sorta bounced off Slipways. I just felt I was doing one thing over and over. I suppose I should give it another chance.
@DoubleG I agree that planets in ISG could be differentiated more. Supposedly one of the expansions does add a new dimension to this; I just installed the first DLC, so we’ll see. Even in vanilla, though, I find planets distinctive than in most games in the genre. Maybe it’s just the planet-view screen, where the desert sounds windy and the swamp feels swampy. (That screen could do a better job of showing us what’s built where, but the list top-right does the job well enough.)
Still, planets essentially produce only so many different kinds of stuff, so from a birds-eye view, they do seem a bit samey. Not sure what the solution is to that; maybe more unique resources found planetside, a la Distant Worlds?
I thought it was kind of funny that for a few elections I was within about 40 votes of winning, and then as we grew even bigger I started getting less votes. Then I got someone to become an ally and we got the alliance victory.
Planets have limited space for buildings so you must choose among buildings and once you max out that’s all she wrote. Unlike MOO2, there is far less micro for planetary development. A real plus IMO.
Oh that’s great to hear. I severely dislike the “build everything everywhere” design. Presumably there are some interesting choices to be made here and room for specializing your planets?
Yeah OW does all right with its very Euro-board-game approach. Honestly I still think the best 4X endgame ever made is Total War Shogun 2, though the hard and predictable trigger for Realm Divide is a little silly.
it does, but it’s one of my favourite things.
Where do you find that information? I’m still learning the game (only played about 30 turns so far) but I haven’t come across that.
I really like the exploration system. Exploration is one of my favorite X’s, and I was originally bummed to see how small the maps seemed to be, until I discovered there was more lurking beneath the surface.
One difference from MOO seems to be that the color of a star is not necessarily an indicator of the kind of worlds you’ll find there.
In the system view, you can hover over the size of the planet to see “Infrastructure capacity”. In the colony view, look for the “Infrastructure” section, the number on the right is total capacity. Each level in infrastructure gives you one building slot, plus you can get an extra three slots by spending those infrastructure levels on one of the civil engineering specializations.
In the colony view’s “Construction Projects” section, the number on the top right will tell you how many slots you have unused.
The infrastructure level of each planet indicates how many buildings you can build. It’s in the top left of the planet screen. On my screen, this number is a tad small and hard to see, which goes to my earlier grumbling about small fonts. In addition, in the production section of the planet UI, middle-left, there’s an icon showing how many construction slots you have. Typically you have only 1 or 2, if that! Infra level often caps at 5 or 7, so that means just 5 or 7 buildings.
The color of the star has some correlation to planetary types in ISG, doesn’t it? At least, the tooltips for stars imply as much.
There also is a place right above the construction selection that tells you how many slots you have free.
I should have read the post from @Spock first
Edit: I just realized I tagged @DoubleG on this reply, when I intended it for @Sonoftgb . Sorry about that.
And I should have included a helpful screenshot, the way @vyshka often does! Here you go, @Sonoftgb. This is one of my most developed planets, and yet it has an infrastructure level of only 5, and no free construction slots. I constructed only 5 buildings here.
Unless you’re fully dedicating a smaller planet to shipbuilding I’d recommend always grabbing these guys on the right of Civil Engineering. That gives you extra slots, which would let you have 8 buildings on a small planet.
On that note – the bonus production you get empire wide by completing the Civil Engineering or Aerospace Engineering trees is huge, but you need at least 6 infrastructure levels to get it. That makes medium or bigger planets way more valuable than small or tiny ones because they can never get this bonus. I found it’s best to settle them last.
That’s a good insight! I hadn’t thought of it.
So I won my first game with a score of 810 – but that wasn’t good enough to get me in the Hall of Fame. Who are these leaders in the top 10? I recognize one name from an event, so I suppose they are AI targets for us to beat?
Yeah, before I do anything I try to decide if it is going to be a ship builder. If it is then I go for the full aerospace, and on the others I go for the civil engineering set. I might throw in one of the planetary engineering ones as well, otherwise I rarely touch those unless it is a crap planet.
I did terraform/eco a huge desert planet into a terran gaia world last night. I’ll post the stats when I boot up windows later.
I didn’t realize this was of any interest when I built my bundle, alas, so I’ll be exiting the thread again but I just wanted to note that the game (Steam key) is in this Fanatical build-a-bundle, 3 for $15 minimum. Graveyard Keeper and maybe Beholder 3 or Academia seem like the most immediately germane pairings for strategical folks but there’s also MGS V, Chronicon, and a Metro remaster pack among other things.
https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/diamond-collection-build-your-own
do those bonuses stack or can you only get one of each?
They stack, and the bonus is applied regardless of your slider settings. To give an idea of how powerful this is, here’s a building under construction on a new 2 pop colony:
That +43 comes from my base production (buildings, labor from my two pops, asteroid shipments, etc) and only if I set the production slider to 100%. That +125 comes from the bonus from other planets, and it applies even if I set production to 0%. This building will take 3 turns either way, so on this planet I can afford to put my slider 100% to infrastructure, and unlock another planet’s bonus a little faster.
wow! Thanks, I really need to work on Getting those bonuses on more planets
One other point about income. Be selective about hiring leaders, especially ship leaders, unless their abilities exceed their higherinf cost and upkeep
so far all the battles ive had have been small scale, few ships and only a few ship types. has anyone seen the ai use bombers, or try to board? how big a map do I need to see it use Titans? Also, do different species tend to build different ships?
