Yeah, you can always use the verify file integrity function in steam to reverse something like this. I installed the pymous cards and the UI thing (and I think the map sans icons?) although I was not really sure what the UI mod changed, honestly. They’re all pretty subtle.
Thanks. Okay, I’ll give mods a try.
The UI mod changes some colors to highlight tabs and buttons. The base UI has a more consistent color scheme and sometimes it’s hard to tell which part of a tab is active.
Oh, thanks for the info on the mods. I installed the map graphics one this weekend when I realized that my roads were costing me insane amounts of resources because I didn’t realize I was literally building them through mountains.
I’ll check out the others too.
Super Bowl and work sidetracked me a bit since Saturday, but I’m very much still enjoying my first game. Up to Turn 80-ish. Our accomplishments pretty much stop at “not dead”, but I’m using it as an “Okay, now let’s see if I can figure out (some system).” I’m tempted to restart to see what a second game would be like, but I really want to understand the basics of logistics, how to design and produce units, and have a better understanding of card play first.
In case it helps, I’ve watched the first 3 episodes or so of this eXplorminate playlist and am finding them helpful. The pace is very deliberate but it’s been helpful because he explains his thinking as he’s making decisions.
As Richard Feynman once said about Shadow Empire: “I think I can safely say that nobody understands the logistics system”
I’ve started another playthrough myself. It’s incredible how much the starting conditions influence things. In my previous game I had fuck all, and was surrounded by factions who all instantly declared war on me. This time around I’ve only met two factions and only one of those seems to hate me, and I actually have - gasp! - rare metals!
Ha! Yes, I did notice that the eXploriminate guy said something about “wanting to figure out logistics” and he’s obviously played a fair amount of games.
Watching his first video, where he sets up the world and conditions, and then just chats about what type of game it potentially will be based on planet and alien life conditions was eye-opening. I mean, it really does sound you can get almost anything with your starting position.
I think this is both my favorite and least favorite thing about this game. It’s fantastic how differently the start can play out, each new game is an adventure! But it’s annoying that an unreasonably high percentage of those adventures will very quickly end in failure pretty much regardless of what you do.
Okay, so I’ve played maybe 5 hours of this game, so it feels a bit odd wishing for a feature. But… it feels like it’d be helpful if there were a difficulty rating generated with the start, to let you know if it’s hopeless. Or maybe that is a feature that’s buried somewhere in the gazillion reports you get with each game?
That’s why I exclusively play siwa class small sized planets with a moderate temperature. There really isn’t enough information for you to understand how extremes can affect the game.
I’m very ambivalent about his attempt to develop a naval module given how useless the air module has been.
This is a good point. I found the air design infuriating and simply ignored it as a result. All it needs is a marginally useful UI…
I’ve started playing a PBEM with a friend. This is my third or fourth restart, and this time around I feel like I understand things well enough to know what I’m doing (more or less). Also I wasn’t immediately involved in wars with five other factions. As a consequence I’m enjoying it a hell of a lot more. It also pays to really look through all those reports you get. For example, I’d never really paid much attention to the strategem generation report before, but now that I have, I can see how my low BP production is really hurting my chance of getting strategems. And lest we forget, strategems are (bizarrely) the only way you can make several important decisions like adjusting tax rates.
The manual, I find, has all the information you need, but laid out in a really weird way. I’ve stopped trying to find specific information in it and instead just started reading it back to back as often as I can stomach it. Kind of like revising for an exam. The information is slowly dripping into my overwhelmed brain.
I’m so glad I gave the game another chance. I knew it has the potential to be a masterpiece, and now I think I’m finally on the way to declaring it so.
I agree, there’s a great game here, if you have the patience to find it – and the patience to read the manual.
I wonder if there’s a linguistic version of the uncanny valley. Vic’s English is pretty good, but I wish he’d hire a native speaker to edit his manual from start to finish.
I made a thing. :-)
This new Steam Guide goes into detail about how combat is calculated in Shadow Empire. It is aimed at new players, to give them a better sense of how a unit may perform, or anyone interested in a deeper dive. I wrote it to help me understand combat better, and after I saw so many people ask the same questions.
I wrote the guide, and some people on the War of the Worlds discord helped me refine it. For example, it took a while to reverse engineer the simplest way to describe the math the game uses to compare Attack vs Target statistics to determine a hit.
The guide is here:
Or in the Steam client browse to Shadow Empire (Store page) → Community Hub → Guides → Most Recent and then click into “Combat Basic Training by milspec”
Hope its useful to someone at Qt3. :-) And let me know if you have feedback…
Wow, that looks great! Well illustrated which always helps. I intend to delve into this (once I finish Distant Worlds 2).
This is now 75% off at GOG–$10. Should I get it?
It is worth it at full price. Yes!
YESSSSSS
Brian Rubin’s response:
Where did they get this footage of me?