Slitherine Announces Gladius - Relics of War

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 :-)

Me too. Too few 4x games play with alternate mechanics to the “1 thing produced at a time” mechanic of Civ. so it’s nice to see it in a Civ-like game. I didn’t even think about building 3 right away, but then this all occurred to me after I had my latest base up and running. I assume squares with +production% are very valuable so I was rerolling games until I started with some.

Loyalty is there, as is Morale (@tomchick is mistaken, although I think Space Marines are supposed to be a lot less mentally fragile than Imperial fodder). I’m not clear on all of the benefits of Loyalty, yet. But there’s buildings that give it (it’s like a t5 tech to get it though). the Chalpain has a loyalty producing mechanic as well.

As for ore. . .yeah I haven’t seen a use either. I’ve been farther up the tech tree than you. There’s much better vehicles coming (although nothing can scout the way the bikes can).

I’m not sure how often promoted marines will hold up. I still have a habit of losing squads even when I am trying not too. But there are some upgrades awaiting you on the tree (e.g. bolter damage) as well as artifacts that can help (better healing/move/site/etc).

Marines do not use ore or food, those resources do not exist for them. They use a blanket resource called “requisition”.

Which could be a significant advantage, but they’re fortunately limited to a single city (just to clarify). I really like the faction design in this game.

For Space Marines the Ore and Food resources are combined/altered to one called Requisitions.

Each point of Loyalty provides a straight 2% bonus or malus to the production of all your resources. Loyalty decreases mainly through population growth and increases from certain buildings as well as the ‘Recaf Leaf’ special resource. When highlighting a resource stockpile on the HUD the last entry shown on the ledger is the loyalty adjustment you currently enjoy/suffer.

It took a while to wear that faction down, but once I did it was mostly mop up.I made it to tier 9 and built a bomber before the end, but didn’t get to use it. So now I’m torn between trying Imperial Guard yet again, which would give me a sense if winning was due to a lucky start or better play, or trying a different faction.

Also as Space Marines (or I guess I should say Spece Mehrines or however the grognards spell it when they’re trolling) don’t forget to plop down extra Orbital Whatsits so you can build builds faster to in turn build troops faster. Most crucial.

I’m finding the Guard easier than the Marines right now.

Leman Russes are tough, and good protection for a line of Basilisks, which facilitate holding the ground.

Guardsmen are expendable, although they do get healing, which is nice. You can pump those out quite nicely, and the damage adds up.

I just figured out how edicts work for the Imperial guard. Delicious. They’re done by city, so you can ramp up production of infantry in one, and vehicles in another,

Plus, having more than one city (I’m on 4 now) allows for a strong economy.

Specialise your cities and you can pop out many troops once everything is in full flow.

I’ve been playing on medium maps, normal speed, and for me the Marines are easier,as they can rush the map with captains and infantry before their weaker economy hits them. On larger maps I suspect things would be different.

Apologies if discussed before, but is there a campaign or just skirmishes?

There is no campaign or set of linked missions. Its purely skirmishes on randomly generated maps with no carryover between games. The closest this game gets to any kind of story is the Quest system which you can follow during any game if you have it enabled.

Now that i understand the game a bit better i find myself playing it like an extended WH40K tabletop skirmish. Instead of a set number of points with which to field an army it uses the 4X infrastructure to control the drafting of troops over the course of the game. But otherwise i find myself moving armies around just like in tabletop games. Finding good terrain with my units in cover and clear lines of sight the enemy has to advance through, combined arms groups, leaders and healers, etc.