Shadow Empire - Mad Max meets Operation Barbarossa

Games
844

You can’t really write about Shadow Empire without talking about logistic. Since this post is going to be a bit of shaggy dog story, feel free to skip it.

There are a zillion quotes about logistics.
https://www.military-quotes.com/forum/logistics-quotes-t511.html
my fav is Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics."

Shadow Empire is by far the deepest dive into logistics I’ve seen in a wargame, in fact, is probably even deeper than games like SimCity, Transport Tycoon or the various Rail games.

Like Tom, I found the experience both fascinating and frustrating. The game gives plenty of tools to see the bottleneck, available logistic points, previews of the next turn. Still, it is frustrating to not be able to understand why you can’t build a farm next to your new growing city, to keep your people from starving (turn on emergency food is the short answer). I’ve just dabbled with rail lines and not even explored high-speed rail, much less air transportation. So I’d be interesting to hear what people think of them.

Here is my shaggy dog story about logistics. 18 months ago, I meet an air force colonel Bill. Bill, was retiring and want to start a new career at a startup. Bill had a pretty impressive-sounding job, head of logistics for IndoPacific command. He was responsible for delivering everything from baby formula, to bunker buster bombs, to about 1/2 million people, and more than 1/2 the world. Now Bill was a bright guy, an Academy grad, detailed oriented, very nice. But he was not a charismatic inspiring leader type. I was really interested, in the basic question, how the hell do you figure out what planes and ships to send what stuff. He answer was kinda of disappoint "we run a bunch SAS and SAP, MRP programs plus a lot of customer software and the computers figure out. 2020 was lousy time to be looking to join startup most of whom had their world turned upside. Bill did find a job at startup, albeit a 25 year old startup, with logistics challenges even bigger than the US armed services. Amazon, not surprisingly snapped him up and I’m pretty sure he’s is involved in the recent purchase of a lot of land in Oahu by Amazon.

The point of the story, is that while professional army do study logistic. What you really want to do rather figure out what’s where you should build your supply and truck station to ensure that you can feed your army is you hire guys like Bill.

The logistic challenge puzzle that SE present are interesting, and sort of satisfying to solve, but at the end of the day, I don’t think they make that fun of a game.

845

Fwiw, I think that 8 and 9 do next and previous unit

846

Thank you, I guess that’s it. I assumed that the SHQ being sited in the city would be sufficient for it to access anything the zone produces. I also just found this nugget buried in page 76 of the manual, in the section about the items tab:

Any excess Items not needed for the Zone Inventory will be sent to the SHQ.
The number will be yellow if not all Items could be sent back (for example due
to lack of Logistical Points between Zone and SHQ

I’m guessing the next time I play a turn and I look at the items tab I will see a yellow ‘out’ number for food.

847

It’s a bit like captaining a steampunk engine to somewhere very far off. There are lots of levers to pull and dials to twist and pressure-type guages to monitor, many of which unmarked. The discovery is definitely part of the joy. Incidentally, who would have predicted 20 years ago that not providing full instructions was going to be a major part of the computer games industry? But which 4X game have you (plural you) played where your plane design is affected by the planetry atmosphere? I was just baffling myself because I couldn’t get a recon aircraft to fly beyond 10 hexes, which was signficantly less than my last playthrough and then, duh, I realised. It’s the atmosphere. So now cannot approach an enemy zone / army etc in the way that I did in my last playthrough. Which is another way of saying one of the great genius developments in this game is the planetry development is massively important. Yes really annoying if you get a seed that’s instakill but hey, utterly joyous to know that your models and your resource generation and hence your tactics & strat are going to actually have to respond to the procedural development. Personally I’m doffing my cap, even if as per many of these types of game the AI’s resistance crumbles the more powerful you become.

848

I do really like that how viable airpower will be in any given game is dictated by the planet, and that the game still gives you technology paths to overcome that, such as rocket engines. However, the design screen just can’t handle making any of those air complexities clear to the player, so designing aircraft is just a major headache.

849

For anyone who cares, the ‘out’ number was not, in fact, yellow despite the fact that a lack of logistical points must be the reason not enough food is getting to the SHQ. But that’s the least of my worries. As it happens, I think the problem is that I built a railroad out to two of my farms (out of pure desperation I think) without realising that there needs to be a rail head somewhere along the line.

Except…now that there’s rail along that road, no truck points are being sent up the road, so I can’t get the LPs to the rail head to build it! I’m not sure what I can do about it, but I’ve used the traffic lights system to temporarily block all truck points at the city except for those going in the same direction as the rail. Hopefully that will force the LPs there for the rail head to get built.

The logistics system in this game is something to behold…

850

I am attracted to and repelled by this game in equal measure. I’ll probably pick it up once my anniversary coupon from this year rolls around and I stick it in my cart to marinate until the inevitable summer sale.

Hmm, how good is Old World at this? People are saying some very unkind things about the AI in this game, so a “tad” more competent is not saying a lot, it seems.

851

It really is a pain in the ass but you might find this guide I found on the matrix forums helpful in designing air assets.

The manual also mentions that if air pressure > gravity then thopters are the way to go.

852

Well it’s been a while since I’ve played since I’ve played Old World I fully intend to play a lot more once Old World hits releases. Also to be clear I’m saying the tactical AI, not the strategic is competent in both games. In particular the AI in Shadow Empire will cut supply lines, make attacks at good odds, withdraw from bad position, seek out defense terrain and form a line with units. The tactical AI in Old World will do all of that and more it is able to conquer cities given ~3-1 odds . Something that that Civ V and Civ VI failed to be able to do.

853

I’m about ready to give up on this fucking game. I’m sick of food not getting to my SHQ with no explanation. The logistics system is over-engineered to the point of insanity and it’s really spoiling an otherwise brilliant game.

854

Do you have a save uploaded anywhere that we could take a look at to see if we can help?

855

Thanks, I truly appreciate the offer but the point I would make is that even if I did understand what’s going wrong, the logistics system is still far too much and not something I want to deal with. I think I should take a break from the game, maybe try again in a month or so and see how I get on then.

856

@Paradroid Have you tried the simplified logistics? It’s in setup somewhere.

857

Still, if you find the energy, let me know if you do upload it? If nothing else, it might be a particular circumstance that Vic can be pointed at

858

On sale for $22 at Game Splanet. Probably the price that will get me to finally buy in, although I am predictably Still Waffling.

859

What?! I loved this game except the mystery puzzle that was logistics. This could be a just the thing i need to restart the game!

860

This game is sitting on my steam wishlist. Currently I’m holding off, since I have a few other games that I bought on sale and need to explore (and also I’m not quite sure about complex TBS, since I generally prefer RTS). Meanwhile, I see quite some talk over logistics and AI. As i’m currently playing Hegemony 3, another game with some logistics/supply focus, is anyone here on the forum able to compare this aspect of the game to Shadow Empire? That might just turn my opinion around in one or the other direction… :-)

861

If you’re hesitant on the complexity, you should probably stay away. Shadow Empire is really the deep-end as far as turn-based strategy games go. I love it to pieces, but I don’t want anyone being misled about what it’s all about. Logistics from Hegemony is kind of a jumble in my brain across the series, but I assume it wasn’t all that different in 3 than in the other two. I recall logistics being important but pretty straightforward to deal with, which Shadow Empire very much is not straightforward. It has about a dozen resources moving across a transport network with capacity and bottleneck concerns at the hex-level.

862

I think the game is approachable if you play on a small planet with a few number of majors and minors. It also helps to keep your asset building in check because having too many of them will clog your logistics network as they attempt to send resources back to SHQ. Build primarily in your capital and build assets in other cities as needed - at least that’s what I gleaned from from the matrix forums.

863

Hey, thanks for the assessment. So yeah, logistics in Hegemony are important but also somewhat streamlined, i.e. you don’t have to deal with individual resources all the time. You can send them from one place to another if you want to, and it certainly hepls in some situations, but otherwise the game will try to automatically distribute them (I think things were changed quite a bit for Hegemony 3 vs. its prequels). It also seems to have fewer resources than Shadow Empire. If you say I have to manage dozens of resources individually and per hex - ugh, that sounds more work than play :-) But I might still try this game one day, I guess on a small planet it should be manageable (as JMR pointed out). Thanks again.