When do the Tyranids come out? I want that. Badly.
Oh! Is it still on sale???
The Steam sale goes until the 27th.
And the sale at Matrix (where you can get Steam codes as well as direct downloads) will run until January 13.
http://www.matrixgames.com/store/701/Warhammer.40,000.Gladius.-.Relics.of.War
Any guesses as to how well it runs on an XPS 13 laptop? I realize it’s just a strategy game but it looks so pretty.
I would be surprised if it didn’t run well on a modern laptop. It’s turn-based. The maps and unit counts are not huge, and the animations are limited. The map looks nice but it’s just a set of repeating palettes. Certainly nowhere near the resource monster something like Total War is.
Ooh, the bug faction! I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with this in Gladius. The guys at Proxy have done a great job with their asymmetry so far, and I’d love to see them push it even further with Tyranids.
Hey, Warhammer nerds, I have a serious question. How come there are no Skaven in 40k? I assume there’s some continuity with regular Warhammer because of the orks, and aren’t the eldar really elfs? So why isn’t there a 40k rat faction?
-Tom
Because the only real connection is a sorta jokey connection- it’s not too serious. There’s duplicate characters here and there, chaos demons mostly, but there isn’t a real attempt to merge the two. In some earlier 40k editions it is implied that the fantasy world is out there buried in an eternal warp storm and therefore unreachable by anyone outside the Gods and their followers.
And hey, the Skaven were born on the Warhammer Fantasy world! They actually have a pretty cool backstory, told in the vein of a fable.
They kind of explored that with the Hrud, who were going to be 40k Skaven, but I don’t think it ever got further than some fluff pieces being written. Who the hell would play the Hrud.
I played the introduction on a laptop with an i7 4600U @ 2.10 / 2.70 GHz / 8 Meg RAM and inter integrated 4400 (or maybe 4600) video. It ran fine. I do think the map was pretty small for the introduction though in case that matters.
It runs on my Blade laptop just fine if that helps. There are also setting to reduce I think if it chugs.
One extra thing I like about it is little battle area’s form and terrain can be held. You can also oftem survive if you are willing to retreat. So when to trade ground becomes a decision.
There seems to be a lot of very well balanced decisions actually. Not sure whether the tech and build decisions are part of that just yet.
There’s a lot of TBS goodness this week, with expansions for both Battletech and Battle Brothers, but I’ve gone back to try the new patch and Reinforcement DLC on Gladius, and have had some good fun. The AI is better, the building strats are better due to the tighter city radius, and the new units add some decent options.
Due to the better AI, I actually had a game go very deep, with myself as the Orks facing off against an Alliance of 2 Imperial Guard factions plus a separate alliance of 2 Space Marine factions. (I often set up the map to face AI alliances, for the challenge) One of the Space Marine factions from the beginning of the game was crushed, mostly by me, with some help from the IG, and the Necrons expired off-screen (probably from the IG).
By the mid-game, the 2 IG factions were pressuring me and by the late game had driven me back to my home city. However, I had teched up and had 3 Barracks spewing out Gorkonauts, which allowed me to hold.
However, what really saved my bacon was when my non-allied but co-belligerent Space Marines showed up, rocking their new Land Raider super-heavy tank. The Space Marines hit the IG from the side, breaking their assault, and then I returned the Space Marine’s favor by attacking them unmercifully in Gorkonaut v. Land Raider action:
I was able to verify, for science, that although the Land Raiders are a match for the Gorkonauts at range, when the Gorkies close in for melee, put a fork in those Marines.
This led to a nice counter attack against both types of humie scum:
That broke the attack and turned the game. The rest is mop up.
Excellent game; I haven’t been pushed that hard by an AI in a 4X type game in a while.
ORKS 4eva.
Better to ask what happened to the space dwarves. Or perhaps better not to ask. [Looks around nervously]
https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-GB/Grendl-Grendlsen-Squat-Bounty-Hunter-2018
Squats are back! At least one of them is anyway.
Can’t believe this game only takes up one gig.
Nice write up. The game is a special blend of RTS at TBS speed, but add in the AI improvements and you have an amazing treat that I’ve sunk a lot of hours into.
What difficult and map settings did you use? I seem to be getting too much water, wire weed, and hills in small or medium maps which seems to paralyze the AI if it gets too choked.
I used standard settings for terrain, large maps (not huge), and then I tend to organize the 5 enemy AIs into a couple of 2-AI teams, plus a single AI on its own team, and me on my own team. I tend to stick to the standard difficulty, relying on the double-AI teams to provide some challenge. Turn times can be a bit slow on the large maps but I find the AI doesn’t get choked off and I typically find at least one of the 2-AI teams ends up putting up a good mid to late game fight. Those settings I chose to try to give a longer, deeper game, with some challenge at the end, but not insanely so.
I picked this up in the sale and am digging it, though missing my tabletop army (Eldar).
For moving around larger maps, is there any movement bonuses other than that one artifact and chopping forests/wire-weeds to make a path?
It depends on the army. Necrons pretty early on in their tech tree get the ability to zap around to any city on the map. Space Marines get the ability to move from their capital city anywhere on the map via drop pod (but once they’re out there, there’s no easy way to get back). Also late in the tech tree Space Marines get transport aircraft that can carry infantry (including IIRC heavy terminator infantry) quite quickly with no concern for the underlying terrain.
I’m not sure about Orks or Imperial Guard.
HThe game which spawned the question is an ImpGuard one, guardsmen walk I guess…