I decided to dive into a standard game after playing the introduction a couple weeks ago. The space marines seem to be a good faction to start with since you’re limited to a single city. Seems perfect for learning to keep the different resources in balance. I kept the default setup vs 3 AI on medium difficulty.
The AI and I had some nice back and forth over a resource node we both wanted. I had fewer units, but they were leveled u. Like others mentioned, the Ai does a good job rotating out their damaged units. I really needed to make a concerted effort to either push through or swing around to finish them off - and I couldn’t always do that.
Eventually I got the upper hand and started following the quest line. I was making good progress - wiping out on AI and completing quest objectives until I got slowed down because I didn’t realize one of the mechanics. When my city didn’t have anything to produce I figured I may as well grab a tile, Well, after I grabbed a ton of them I noticed my influence income tanked. Turns out each tile has a 1 influence maintenance cost. I also didn’t realize that population uses the requisitions (is that what it’s called?). My economy tanked. Dudes in tanks stormed my city and my army was a distance away.
I managed to get people back and had a slug fest and slowly drove the enemy out. Now I also noticed that when your city takes damage, there is a destruction penalty attached to the resource production. Between my first mistake and now this one, it took me around 50 turns to get things humming along nicely again.
That was when the enemy showed up with a bunch of huge tanks - baneblades I think. They were nasty. I fought off the first wave and thought maybe I could pull through. I completed some more quests and produced more units - then another wave rolled in. A bigger wave. I had just fallen too much behind.
I wish I could know how it would have turned out if I didn’t’ screw up. The Ai did a nice job of positioning units and made use of their artillery - which had some crazy range compared to my units. The game is good, but with the constant war it is a little exhausting too.
I’d like to see the quest lines for the different factions. I wonder of I should only put in 1 AI instead of the default three. Maybe the game would end too soon though and I wouldn’t get to the end of the quests.
I’m finding the Necron cities super-tough to crack. Even with Basilisk support my (leman russ) tanks just can’t stay in the fight long enough against Monoliths in cities to take them down… adding air units now to try and increase the damage output, plus a strategic withdrawal to try and draw the monoliths (there are two) out of the city…
My impression is that you need to either try to win by conquest or win by quest line not both. The quests all mess up whatever conquest strategy you’re carrying out on the main map. I don’t think it really matters that much how many AIs you’ve got out there if you’re not actually trying to conquer them. Although I probably wouldn’t go with just one AI.
I’ve never actually finished a full quest line though. The closest I’ve come is after I finished a conquest victory as Space Marines, I thought I was close to finishing the Space Marine quest line so I triggered what I suspect is the final battle. Unfortunately all my forces were almost the entire way across the map from my city and while I came very close to fighting my way back to the capital, I didn’t quite make it.
I’ve also played various parts of the Orks quest and same thing — random bad guys pop up in unexpected locations on the map leading to real problems for your overall strategy.
On a somewhat related note, I was playing coop with a friend and he had the Lord of Skulls DLC. That was really something. That almost wiped out my capital city when a certain unit showed up since I wasn’t expecting to have something show up in my back areas and had almost nothing there to defend.
I was playing coop with a friend (he was Space Marines and I was Imperial Guard). We played against 2 AI Orks teamed up and 2 AI Necrons teamed up. It was his first game of Gladius. We wiped out everything except a single Necron city. But it was on a peninsula with only a 3 hex wide entry to the city. We kept on grinding on it and at the point we stopped playing because he had to go to bed, it was chalk full of Monoliths. My Leman Russ’s including a Tank Commander backed with Basilisks and his Terminators just couldn’t manage to get through.
My initial conclusion was we needed to get some air units (I would have had the lowest tier IG aircraft in another few turns, if we hadn’t had to stop playing) or some Land Speeders, which he hadn’t researched. However, by the time the city was full of monoliths, I’m not every sure that would have been sufficient. Those things are huge damage sponges and put out a decent amount of hurt too.
The AI kept on cycling its wounded units back and forth, and we couldn’t do that because of the narrowness of the peninsula which was also wooded and limiting our movement rate and our ability to backup infantry with ranged weapons behind them. So while our units got ground down to dirt, his units would get rotated in and out and leveled up on their kills.
I was surprised that the Terminators didn’t hold up as well as I remembered. Necron Praetorian were quite capable of putting some serious damage on them. Maybe I’m more used to working with leveled up Terminators.
The levels are a big deal iirc, it’s +10% / level beyond 2 or something like that. I’ve got a city fairly close to the Necron, so we’re both rotating units though sometimes a unit of guardsmen get’s surprised and then shrug. I’m bringing up a Commisar with the ability to add armor penetration to adjacent units, I’m going to see if I can pair him with the 3 basilisks and see what difference that makes.
I found Commisar with Basilisk worked pretty well, but the timer on that skill is something like once very 4 turns. WIth each Monolith soaking up more damage then we could put out in a single turn, we needed some way of getting at the units the AI cycled off the frontline.
Now that I think of it, I had a Psyker that I should have given the ability to see hexes out of Line of Sight (IIRC that’s one of their three skills and I didn’t take it because I figured it was useless). Alternatively if my friend had gotten the Space Marine Orbital Recon tech, particularly when combined with either the Basilisks or Space Marine Orbital Strike, maybe we would have had better luck.
I replayed the Space Marine campaign and it went well. Again, the game managed to create some places where I fought with the AI several times trying to get control of an area. I took out the Orcs and got to the doorstep of the two other factions. Once I got to the final chapter I fell back to my city and killed enemies as they showed up. It was a pretty easy finish. I wonder if that was because I had beaten down the AI so they didn’t have much to come at me with.
I think the quests added some nice direction and narrative. I’m not sure I will enable them if I play as the space marines again, but really enjoyed playing that way for my initial play through.
New Patch along with AI changes they’re changing how cities work in combat:
That City Tiles now obstruct vision seems like it could be a huge change. If it blocks line of sight to and from the city center, that would reduce the ability to hit the city center with both infantry up close and ranged units behind them.
Also I’m not sure what “City tiles now provide ranged damaged reduction not only to allied units. City damage reduction is still only affecting allies” means. Does this mean City damage reduction for melee affects allies but ranged is for everyone?
Seems like this will make city assaults grindier as it will be harder to get units in line of sight to attack the center, but if you can get attacking units into the city they’ll get ranged damage reduction against the city center and any defenders.
I think Slitherine should hire Bush to rewrite their song “Glycerine” as their theme song, then put it into heavy rotation on the usual formats. Step 2: Profit!
Why yes, I am some kind of PR genius, thank you very much.
This was easily my 2018 4X GOTY. If they keep feeding in high quality content I can easily see this being a 40k TBS competitor to CA’s Warhammer series with a fraction of the budget
I played the Introduction (tutorial) mission last night for 4 hours (read a lot of the excellent Compendium!) and give it an enthusiastic thumbs-up! Its base building mechanics are unique (can’t think of a game that has it; it’s like Warlock’s on steroids), and the RPG-lite elements are well done. Most importantly? Random features littered on the map for units to claim make me squee!
2018 was a strong year for TBS IMO but this was the best TBS in a strong year. And, bonus, I can look forward to likely multiple DLC factions this year.
After the Tyranids, what do we want next?
Personally, I want Chaos Traitor Space Marines, but I also look forward to Eldar, Dark Elder, and Tau. I’m not sure if they will do this, but I’d like more Imperial variants too: Sisters of Battle, Adeptus Mechanicus (with Titans!).
Well if you liked squad based TBS, the related title Warhammer 40k:Mechanicus is fantastic. Between Mechanicus, Battletech, and this it was a great year for TBS.
