Thank you! I’ll check it out.
Vic don’t tease us like this
I can only get so erect!
Are you talking about your space elevator?
Bahahhahaha
I find this game very interesting but the single hardest thing about it for me is stomaching the backstory. Somehow you manage to exist on whatever world for however many centuries and bootstrap yourself back up to industrial levels of technology with absolutely no knowledge of the world around you or it’s inhabitants??? Even with the “you know the map layout” option it just makes no sense whatsoever. Almost anything else would have been better: one-way warp gate trips. Parallel universes! Anything.
Back around launch I started writing an AAR (since abandoned, never posted) where the backstory was that I was the bumbling son of a galactic ruler, who sent me to this random planet with no info, to prove whether I could ever rule and be a worthy heir. So the world existed for centuries, but it was new to me.
I like that idea, but doesn’t the very beginning of the game bely this by talking about your ancestors, etc.? Been a while since I fired up a new game (and it’ll be a while until I do again)…
Have you read the rest of the backstory, with the weird emperor that becomes a delocalized authoritarian shadow entity or whatever? IMHO it’s best to just make up your own fiction: it’s after the apocalypse and you’re just emerging from a complete information blackout and you have no idea who or what else has survived. Any former knowledge is just a rumor not worth repeating. Or whatever.
I started to read it but my eyes soon glazed over.
It goes on for quite a while and develops several different ideas… none of which come into the game at all beyond the title. (I also think English is not their first language, which doesn’t help, but I won’t hold it against them.)
There’s a quote from some game design luminary to the effect of “the game designer should not have more fun than the player” (i.e. don’t dream up a complex system if it’s not fun to play with) and I think this game is exhibit A. Or maybe it’s the exception that proves the rule? I’m genuinely happy that they seem to be having fun making the game. I love it so much and I’m happy to throw $10 to the DLC even though it doesn’t actually add all that much.
Ha! There’s an old joke about how “Looked like you guys were having a lot of fun up there!” is what people say to stage performers when the audience is nonplussed. It sure looks like the Shadow Empire guy is having a lot of fun up there!
I agree with the above comments. Really, I just want a hex war game that allows me to play a global campaign on random maps. I can live with the backstory because I like expanding and building.
I do have to spend a considerable amount of time generating a planet though because I just want a terran planet, not some low-G ice-scape filled with chlorine and absurd temperature ranges.
I looked forward to the airplane update but discarded it because of how the atmosphere prevented planes from working without a stupid amount of trial and error. That, and the awful interface for using them.
I’m now trying the oceans DLC and frankly I have no idea what it means. Woohoo! Some other faction to create more dilemmas for me!
The diplomacy section is also pretty lame. I can finally (with the luck of the draw) place an embassy in another nation’s land. Can my embassy staff tell who that nation is at war with? Perhaps give me some ideas about the factions within that state since I can support different factions? As far as I can see, the answer is no. Could I perhaps negotiate travel over their territory to attack someone else? Or maybe use their transport system to supply my troops? Of course not. Anyone who blocks my path on the continent must be subjugated.
Despite all this, I still play because for what it is, it’s the best out there.
Despite the shitty graphics in event splash screens, losing battles at 4:1 odds, random spikes in unhappiness and shitty leaders who stick to me like tar-babies whom I cannot fire without the right cards; I still really enjoy the game.
I wonder what Shadow Empire + Space would even be? A modern day Emperor of the Fading Suns ?
We kind of already do.
And hopefully this year we get Alliance of the Sacred Suns finally.
That doesn’t really have planetary stuff like EFS or GR.
Ah right
Did Battlegoat ever improve over the years. I remember being rather underwhelmed with the original Supreme Ruler all those years ago. They managed to stick around making variations of that though so someone must like it. It might work better in a sci-fi setting instead of having something like Illinois and Iowa fighting over oil.
Ive been enjoying Galactic Ruler at least.