Slitherine Announces Gladius - Relics of War

I’ve been playing on Huge maps with 8 AIs lumped into 4 AI teams, on Average difficulty. This means the AI teams who survive the initial blood bath will have large armies but not necessarily an insurmountable advantage. I find this pretty fun and challenging, although both the turns and the games are pretty long.

Edit: with me as a single faction facing 4 teams who have two AI players each, so me vs 2v2v2v2 AIs.

Tyranids feel really crappy, I guess there are some buffs coming for them, but man.

I like how Carnifex has a cannon the size of a house that does like 3 damage with no AP. You can research at tier like 5 an extra weapon that literally does 1 damage. Your early game is guardsmen that are scared to be alone with no nades or range.

Everyone says the only chance is make only Lictors and Zoanthropes. Your heroes are good, but every other unit is basically garbage.

Agree. As far as I can tell a balance pass is needed. I get the idea that they are a fodder and swarm race, but no AP kills them against any kind of armor. Carnifex and its upgrades should be better. Research upgrades in general should be better and come with some armor pen for monstrous creatures.

It is silly the number of upgrades that are not nearly as good as they sound. “An extra melee attack” you say? Great! What do you mean it is just for a mutant baby hand that sticks out of my back? Why isn’t it another of the same attack I already had?!?

Even worse, they’re not very good at swarming for the most part, imo. Only the Hero that spawns Termas really lets them do it. It’s not like Horma/Termagaunts are cheap really. They’re basically Guardsmen without grenades or range that cost… about the same amount, maybe more if we’re honest.

All the monstrous units seem off in general, but Carnifex is most noticeable. Thing has like 7 techs to upgrade it and half of them do basically nothing. Then it dies to AA guns.

Honestly the whole damage system still baffles me half the time. I’ve just learned what works, looking at the numbers never seems to make much sense.

Unlike, for example, Civ VI, the game takes into account the number of members still alive in a unit. Have you seen this page detailing how damage is calculated?

No, I get that. I suspect it’s some interaction with accuracy, but often things that are supposedly counters to other things… aren’t. And things that shouldn’t counter things, just do.

Of course comparing stats is such a pain, I’ve gotten to where I just memorize the interactions more often than not. But it still feels weird how so many units don’t do what you’d think they would or do so much beyond what feels like it should be their capabilities.

Seeing IG AA guns mow down my Carnifexes and Predators just feels off, especially when so many “anti-armor” weapons do similar or even worse in some cases.

I think levels is probably part of it, since from what I’ve gathered a level is enormous in capability jump, but after a while your eyes just glaze over them, or least mine do. I think some sort of chevron system would probably make them stand out more, but small white numbers always look like small white numbers and after seeing a bunch of them my brain just filters them out.

Also Lictors are stupid OP. There is no reason to make much of anything else.

They kill everything easily, ignore overwatch and are fast as hell. They don’t take damage all that well, but neither do anything else really, so that isn’t much of a downside. Of course Tyranids have basically no anti-armor units other than them, so… meh. Playing a game with like 4 units is kind of dull, hopefully the patch will even out the playing field a bit, but currently it’s a game of “tech hard to Lictors, Zoanthropes and Hive Tyrant and then roll over everything”.

Hmm. Not sure what to say here. I’ve only been playing at Hard level, but had no problem rolling over armor with nids using Raveners, Zoanthropes, Heroes, etc. At low levels I just sorta powered through it with Tyranid Warriors iirc.

Raveners become my regular troops after a while. Lictors are fantastic but came a little late in the day.

v1.2.1 Open Beta

Lots of Tyranid balance changes/fixes.

Seems like they only really buffed Haruspex. Which is fine, it needed buffing, but that’s the only real change I see.

Quasi-nerf to IG vehicles, which was probably needed and makes sense since Basilisks at 4 and LeMan’s at 5 was waaaay too early.

Edit: Also seems to be missing something along the lines of: “Orks will no longer build only Mek Gunz forever and ever.”
My last 3 games Mek Gunz were basically the only unit the Orks had. A couple wagons, maybe one infantry or a plane and 30 Mek Gunz.

I feel like the base synapse radius of 1 tile is too low; at the very least the Tyrranids need a base synapse radius of 2, and then they also need buffs to certain units, specifically in the area of armor piercing.

The tile radius issue is both a balance problem also a player annoyance issue: with a radius of 1 (other than the Hive Tyrant) combined with the fact that the vast majority of 'Nid units need to be adjacent to the enemy to be effective, running a swarm tends to be an exercise in finicky unit positioning and micromanagement.

I’m OK with the swarm idea, but let me build a bigger swarm with less micro, with synapse units spaced more broadly. And also give me some GD armor piercing abilities b/c otherwise the 'Nids, frankly, are lame to play, IMO.

I have zero problems with the Tyrannids as they are right now. The limited synapse range means that you have to keep your army together, which also means that you’re unlikely to ever be caught out in the open by the enemy. One of the larger units (I forget the name) basically allows you to pump out more squads every turn when out in the open, so you can even reinforce your army while away from base. (The latter is ideal for whittling down the enemy while your siege units take care of their city, and you’re not moving around much.)

Also: use malanthropes. Like all the time. They’re great when it comes to scouting out the enemy.

To me, the Tyrannids play exactly as I imagined they would.

Yeah, there really need to be units with Synapse range of 2. Or an upgrade or something.

Why not train more synapse creatures? It seems to me that’s how the game is supposed to be played: a large swarm that consists of clusters of non-synapse units grouped around one or two synapse units.

Mostly because it’s annoying with an army that’s almost entirely melee?

I mean it doesn’t matter much currently because Zoanthropes are one of the only two units you’ll ever really make anyway.

Grabbed this on sale Friday and have really enjoyed it this weekend. It’s similar enough to Civ that I only did about a half our or so of the tutorial thingy, took a break for chores, then jumped right in. I’ve played a few games but never more than an hour or two before starting over. Each time I know enough to feel like I’m making progress and not doing something stupid, but I still learn new little things and then eventually start over with this knowledge. So far really impressed and don’t miss the diplomatic side at all. The research tree is deep enough while being streamlined. Very much worth it so far, especially on sale.

Nothing beats Rescue on Fractalus for the C 64. :)

I did pick up the Tyranid DLC recently and have been playing with them. Really enjoying mulching *gaunts to accelerate building construction/tech up and then applying Hive Tyrant lead swarms to my problems…

Chaos Space Marines coming June 20th.

Has anyone played recently, I know they patched the Tyranid DLC so it was a more balanced faction.

Also it looks like the new Chaos Marine dlc is 28% off if you own all the other game content.