Shadow Empire - Mad Max meets Operation Barbarossa

We have a result, assuming it works!

Tommorow we should have an open beta patch published.
This patch includes a major speed-up of the 200% DPI setting.

Nice!

At this point, my biggest frustration is the map.

  1. I am surrounded by minor factions and non-aligned segments of land. There is a tab that shows this as a sort of a mini-map. But the information is not readily apparent on the main map, and if there is an overlay to accomplish this, I have not found it. (Admittedly, I can sometimes overlook the obvious in an interface.) All I see are faint dotted lines separating unlabeled areas. Not really very helpful.

  2. Specific hexes have on-map labels like Habas Alps or Cargo Vessel or Pons… but nowhere do I see information about the significance of that. Even the hex where I constructed a mine, I see an icon, but clicking on that hex I see weather, I see terrain, but not the answer to the important question, “What is this?” The assets for the entire zone are available, but not for the particular hex. I gotta be missing something, right?

So I read the manual & linked AAR & then spent a few hours playing yesterday…

… and I really don’t understand what’s going on most of the time.

It’s incredibly ambitious but also feels like a shambling pile of over complexity & the exact opposite of an elegant design. Why are there, for example, so many nearly-overlapping kinds of currencies and points? Fate points, logistical points, action points, political points, industrial points, bureaucratic points, research points, bonus points. It’s endless and I honestly don’t think i’ve remembered or listed them all!

Hopefully I’m just overwhelmed & frustrated by the huge design and will start to understand it a little better on future attempts. But wow this is not what you’d call approachable & who can even begin to tell if the AI actually knows how to play the game?

Gary Grigsby meets Derek Smart so far.

Diego

Box quote!

  1. The maps are only as accurate as your intel (spies) or what you have personally unveiled through moving units. It’s pretty chaotic at first but will make more sense as you get better details. Sending Spies to neighboring areas is a great way to get information (including the areas entire map).

  2. When you click on a hex, in the lower right (just left of where the temp/rain/scav/recon points are listed) you have 5 vertical buttons (selected, hex, every asset in zone, public assets, private assets, delegated assets) that let you filter what is shown. The first button will limit what is detailed to just the exact hex you have selected instead of showing every asset in the zone. After you have found the asset just click it to open a detailed info window.

@Vormithrax I was curious about your take on @dgallina’s view. I’m on the fence about grabbing this and trust your opinion.

I can confirm that the game design is hugely detailed and complex but it does make sense once you get familiar with how/where the information is presented. There is just a LOT of it to learn/consider. It’s easily one of the most information dense games and interfaces i have ever encountered. Just about anything you see on screen has an info popup or is a button or filter for more details. There are also scores (not joking) of reports you can review (no you don’t really have to) for extreme details of exactly what’s happening behind the scenes for all the points-math should you really want to know.

Vic (the designer) is also very open to suggestions and provides fixes quickly. When i was previewing the game and ran into problems i would email him the save and he would usually have a fix compiled and sent back to me within 2-3 hours.

Narrator: The AI didn’t know how to play the game.

Think about it: “Human-computer chess matches showed the best computer systems overtaking human chess champions in the late 1990s.”

Computer chess was in development for 40 years before then. The most brilliant minds in the entire world were working on it for 40 years.

Chess has 6 different units, one kind of terrain, and no tech tree.

One of the points of over-complexity in games like this is to obfuscate the rules to the point that you can’t tell that the AI doesn’t know how to play, and you never get good enough for it to matter.

The final section of the manual is “5.18. AI rules differences” which details exactly what/how the AI differs from the player in regards to game systems, complete with a handy chart (majors, minors, non-aligned factions). I don’t yet have a firm opinion on the ability of the computer to provide a ‘competent’ challenge. I’ve seen good and bad decisions/behavior from it tactically and strategically so far and don’t have enough mid-end game play yet to provide an informed opinion.

I will be playing Shadow Empire on Twitch for the next few hours if anyone is curious or has questions. https://www.twitch.tv/vormithrax

I am continuing a game (Siwa planet, Normal-Large size, on Regular difficutly), on round 32, and have just kicked off a war with a Major to my north.

A Wargamers Needful Things review:

Thanks you, particularly in regards to #2. (You have to click on assets and on a hex for those 5 vertical buttons to appear, but that is sooo useful.)

As to #1, my comment had more to do with visibility than accuracy. I love the fact that you are looking at best guesses in many areas of the game, and that it is up to the player to spy or recon or whatever to improve quality of info. What I am less crazy about is that as I look at the map to make moves (whether to attack or to allocate units for defense) that it is not readily visible which major or minor you have a border with, along each section of your frontier. It’s color coding I would have liked to see.

Nonetheless, my overall impression at this point is very positive. For a game this complex, it is relatively possible to proceed to learn the game. I have been stymied far more by many other games.

The borders change colour once you have a defined relationship with that regime (from the start with Majors, once you’re at a defined war or peace with Minors).

A white border is “uncertain” and can be pushed back and forth by your units.

After reading thru this thread, watching some of @Vormithrax twitch, and noticing a 20% coupon from Wargamer I decided to jump in and get this. But the Matrix store doesn’t like any of my cards and/or addresses (we’ve moved in the last few months and our current address isn’t in a few databases we’ve experienced) and won’t let me make the purchase saying it can’t be fulfilled for me and to contact BlueSnap. Is this a known thing with this store and is there something easy I’m missing? If not, I’ll just wait for Steam release I guess.

I was able to use Paypal, do you have that option?

I have a paypal account but I haven’t used it in ages so I’m not sure it’s even active anymore. I may check that. Thx

Bluesnap can get antsy with cards…

PayPal or drop Slitherine/Matrix support a line seem to be the best workarounds

Did you make sure to have enough Currency Points? First you need to build a Mint. This can be accomplished by having enough Supply (both A-type and B-type, OR corn) and Ingots. You’ll need to have already built Roads from the Quarry you’re mining the Ingots from, of course. Play the appropriate Stratagem. Then, five terrifying randomly-generated CG faces using 1995 graphics technology will appear on your screen. Click the one that corresponds to your Fund Council. Then take a Vote, unless it’s Winter, in which case you’ll need to wait until Spring (your guys don’t like to vote in the cold). Post here when you get to that point and then I’ll let you know how to get started.

And if that whole process doesn’t appeal, then maybe reconsider how you’d feel about the game.