Slitherine Announces Gladius - Relics of War

Have you guys tried out the Devestator Space Marines yet? B/C I looked at em and was like “eh, another flavor of Space Marine.” Then I built one and I was like “eh, it moves really slowly and has crappy accuracy if it moves and fires in the same turn.” And then I actually deployed one in a good spot in a big battle with lots of enemy armor and… the baby Jesus cried. It was a beautiful thing. It’s like this: the Devestators do roughly twice the damage to heavy armor that a Melta Grenade does, and Melta Grenades are nasty, AND the Devestators can do that every turn they don’t move.

It’s a great example of a combined arms unit: in many situations, Devestators are not so hot. But in the right circumstance, with the right mix of friendly forces and targets, it brings a tear to my min/max eye.

Devastators are great, except that the AI knows Devastators are great. It seems to focus fire on them. Mine don’t seem to hold up that well. Maybe I need to do a better job of ensuring they are very well protected.

I use a triple line of Devastators with an Apothecary (healer unit) to wreak major havoc. They are my primary anti-armor units as well as what i use to kill city capitals.

I REALLY do not like enemy units turning ‘neutral’ when i kill the faction. It’s really annoying to lose an army group AFTER defeating an enemy.

Sexy!

I am torn. On the one hand i do want to get this because it’s been a while since I’ve had my over the top space genocide fix (DoW3, to be precise, and that was…well it was what it was).

On the other hand, £30 asking price, for what is, consensus says, a warlock/Civ 5 skin…

Well, it’s way better than Civ V by virtue of the fact that the AI has an inkling of how to play the game. That said, I think it’s more interesting mechanically across the board.

So, I am enjoying myself. in my durrent game, i pushed intot he centre, saw orcs and another SM group fighting, got sandwiched, retreated. I started in the west. I then realised I hadn’t explored much to my south, and lo and behold a huge necron force showed up.

Hard fought battle, kicked them out, drove them south, and am cautiously advancing.

Seems like 2-3 devastaors set up properly, with Assault or Tactical marines as a shield, will work wonders in defence, so I;m slowly mocing that defensive line southwards, winning attrition against a necron!

The other nSM and Orc are smashing into each other, and I have discovered the north west has been unexplored, so I will clear out the indies there an claim a few of those sites.

My economy seems solid, with 450 req and 25 per turn.

600 energy and +10 per turn (I suffered energy loss for a while bevcuaise some indie Imperial guard, linked to the SM quest, ran riot for a while).

Not huge numbers, but I do have about 10 units ion the field, and my city is producing nicely.

I’m only now bringing tanks etc online. Should be interesting. i’m hoping to use them as spearheads, i.e. they advance, and my line of devastators does the damage.

So far, I’m enjoying myself very much.

i had to stop my current game because the gf came round, and it’s dinner time, but I want to conjtinue playing.

High praise indeed.

Damn, you guys made me add another game to the wishlist. This wasn’t even on my radar.

I pushed through my Imperial guard game till the final quest arrived. Here’s a tip- if you play the Imperial Guard, turn off the quest line because it’s bullshit.

This game is remarkably similar to Warlock but I also find differences. Playing warlock, you could get by with fewer units; deploying them in multiple areas and spreading cities quickly in their wake. With Gladius I found that you need one major point of effort because combat is less brutal. Units can frequently take multiple hits before they retreat for repairs. You need a solid system of reinforcements and reserves to hold the line before reaching the tipping point where you either run away or break through and annihilate their weakened second line.
City spamming isn’t really an option either since they take so long to develop and don’t really offer much defensive benefit.

I’m looking forward to seeing if there’s much difference playing the other three factions.

If you did well with the Imperial Guard, you’re going to find the other three factions an easy romp. My experience playing Imperial Guard after Space Marines and Necrons was OMG these guys are crazy fragile and do no damage to anything. I can’t believe my units are getting torn apart by a single unit of Kroot Hounds. That was followed by “what? my guard unit has just been taken over by an enemy unit and now is under someone else’s control”. I’m not entirely sure why that never happened with my Space Marines or Necrons, other than their morale is a bit higher.

I didn’t get that far in my little experimental Imperial Guard campaign. But from what I saw, Imperial Guard is playing a different, much harder game.

Is this game from the Pandora team?

yep, sure is (says he who bought it, and only then realised it was 64bit and he can’t play it)

Precis of thread:

TGB: it’s a bit meh, here’s my discount coupon
Evil Steve: man, I thought Pandora was good, I’ll buy into this with that coupon. Thanks TGB! Oh, I can’t play it.
Various People: this game is GREAT!
Tom: this game is FUN!
Evil Steve: why don’t you all give me paper cuts and pour lemon juice on them

Those are the Enslaved doing that to you. They guard every artifact*. They’re also part of the Imperial Guard storyline, which might be the part Peter was calling “bullshit”. It’s certainly not, uh, entirely fair. Suffice to say it brought me game to a screeching halt. :)

One of the superpowers of Space Marines is that their morale can’t be lowered and they can’t be mind controlled. Because they’re Space Marines. I think the necrons are similarly immune because they’re undead space robots, and everyone knows you can’t demoralize or mind control an undead space robot. Duh.

-Tom

* Sorry, Warhammer, my people are no longer beholden to the Queen of England, so I’m not spelling it “artefact”.

My name is Tom Chick and I approve this message.

-Tom

I have tried a few different approaches with the Imperial Guard, none of them have worked: (playing on medium difficu!ty.) push forward and defend key locations or play more defensively in connect my cities up in a sprawl, emphasize infantry or emphasize tanks, Heroes or no Heroes Etc. Typically I make it to turn 60 or 70 okay, losing very few troops if any , and then one faction shows up with a much much bigger Army than mine. Loyalty seems to keep me from expanding past three cities, and when I go tank heavy I really need a lot of ore. Does everyone have a general outline or guide with benchmarks on how many cities and troops to have by various turns?

Eh space marines can be mind controlled.

Those enslavers have caught me out a few times.

This game is so much more fun than endless grinder (legends) ever was.

Forgive me for what is likely a restating of something from earlier in the thread, but I finally unwound the mysteries of production as it pertains to SM (build multiple producer buildings to raise capacity in that queue).

I haven’t played the other races so I’m guessing this isn’t the same for everyone.

I thought it was quite the elegant solution.

In my current pmaythrough, I build req, energy, claimed a 3 space tile, put down 3 barracks.

3 turn devastators, which is how I won the defence of my citadel against the Nekron horde.

I was pumping out soldiers faster than they were dying, and the Nekron on the offensive couldn’t keep up, even with his magic self heal, which uses influence iirc.

I really like this system.

I’m gearing up now to clear another 3 space tile and put in 3 factories.

I am however wondering if I could possibly 1 turn marines, and if they’d be viable late game, upgraded etc.

So far I’ve only used the 3 marine types and 1 biker.

I wasn’t impressed by the biker but the upgrades and the early potential research and production of the bikers inclines me to think one could rush them out and cause damage, raiding into enemy lines and then running away.

I have to ask, I’ve seen people discuss ore and loyalty, but for space marines I haven’t seen these used.

Ore is for vehicles I assume?

And I saw loyalty is a limiter to imperial guard city expansion, but how does it work for sm?

I’ve seen:

Requisition
Energy
Research (I like how it’s easy enough to parse what effect research has on your research points. I don’t like the research interface. I saw on some forum or other that the scroll button is on the bottom?)
Influence (used to claim new tiles, recruit heroes and drop fortresses )

Anything else I ought to be aware of?

I’m genuinely looking forward to playing more of this.

I like, so far, how they’ve taken the quest lines introduced in endless legend, and used that to provide some sort of framework to explain what’s going on. It’s too early too say if it makes sense or if they’re totally fun, as I’ve only managed to get to the start of chapter 2 of the space marine quest line, but I sincerely hope more 4x games experiment with quest based victory conditions, e.g. end a game of age of wonders by awakening the elder dragons.

Bonus points for the first game to implement branching choices and emergent storylines during a single map (as opposed to a campaign) as in go the full rpg route. Would be very challenging to pull off but could be the next big thing.

I also like how, again based on marine game play so far, different city tiles have different pros and cons.

Tile 1 has 3 building slots but tile 2 boosts req by 20%.

I’m looking forward to planetfall because it seems conceptually similar except that “tiles” there will be whole sectors (tiles, or hexes, will still exist but not so much in regards to city building. )

I’m hoping (but not expecting :() that cities in planetfall get unpacked from the hex, occupying multiple hexes and that enemy occupation of a particular x shuts down whatever is happening in that hex, but the central hex is the keep which needs to be captured to occupy the city itself (although I suspect sectors will accomplish the same thing. )

Come to think about it, the city management of gladius is almost precisely what I wish listed for a future AoW game, which is probably why it resonates with me.

In a way I’m glad my expectations for this game were less than zero because I am having a total blast right now.

Edit: predictive text and fat fingers phone disclaimer.

Ptffpd!

Those are the Enslaved doing that to you. They guard every artifact*. They’re also part of the Imperial Guard storyline, which might be the part Peter was calling “bullshit”. It’s certainly not, uh, entirely fair. Suffice to say it brought me game to a screeching halt. :)

That invasion was pretty easy to deal with. I had a few vehicles who were mid-way to reinforcing my army and they were the mobile counter to the problem. The final step in the scenario is a bit more gob-stopping. Let’s just say that I don’t like timers on my missions.

As for tips for Guardsmen, I found their engineers to be invaluable. Their ability to heal 8hp of a vehicle per turn allows you to rotate whatever is being focus-fired on with a freshly repaired vehicle each turn. I pushed pretty hard and early against one AI and farmed it pretty hard, making sure that most of my units levelled up quickly. The long range artillery is also very, very handy.

Yes, I’ve been using engineers to heal and buff. Trying again this morning, and my starting location was ore rich, and isolated and defensive, so I got three cities down before making contact with another faction. I think I’m doing well but let’s see if they unleash a tidal wave of Doom :-)