The leader limit was such a total relic of their older games. How in the world do you have a galactic empire spanning dozens of worlds and billions of beings, and yet you can only have a total of 12 scientists/admirals/governors/generals?
One of the youtube reviewers posted some problems with the game on reddit, which he has since deleted since it effectively broke the review embargo. I’m not sure about the etiquette of posting stuff that they’ve taken it down, but the gist is that the AI and late-game performance issues seem to be a bit worse than I was expecting, even given the fact that the initial release is inevitably buggy.
The main issue to me seems to be very very low AI fleet strengths even late into the game, which sort of removes them as any kind of threat. Hopefully fixable in the near term, but I guess we will find out soon? Perhaps it also has to do with the particular circumstances in that game. I haven’t had time to watch LPs but other people have seen strong AI fleets.
Depends on the nature of the issue. One weight being off can have a massive cascade of problems, which is why I have all the sympathy in the world for AI devs. Hopefully it’s a bug where one of those weights got set incorrectly and the AI was chosing not to invest in fleets or had some other hangup. If it’s "The AI has no idea how to handle the new economy and there’s a litany of bugs’ then we’re probably going to be in for a ride.
Wiz’s response gave me the impression this wasn’t something they’ve been seeing a lot of internally, so maybe it was a bug in the Youtuber’s individual game state. Guess we’ll find out shortly!
Good Grief. There is so much different about this game, I didn’t even really fully grasp it, and I doubt I do even yet. On a whim I watched this guys “primer guide” to the upcoming free 2.2 changes. I recommend it, lest you be caught completely unprepared.
Having watched this I’m not fully certain I’m really pleased with the new layers of complexity. I like them in theory, I like that pops have jobs and that crime is a thing that’s tracked, the changes to trade, the changes to piracy, that stuff. But I’m worried about how easy it looks to shoot yourself in the foot by accidentally building another X which takes jobs away from Y that you didn’t know how desperately you needed those jobs in place. This is the kind of game I never save the game or reload, and I can easily see myself getting frustrated learning the ins and outs.
I guess I’ll find out after work tonight…
I watched that until my eyes glazed over. It certainly looks like they upped the complexity, and in spite of what they have said it looks like way more planet micromanagement to me.
This looks much more interesting for a player compared to the childish tile game, but its hard to imagine it scales well for either a player or an AI.
I like it. The only additional micromanaging I see is trade routes, but that’s offset by the elimination of tiles.
I think it’s more than “is this more or less complex/micromanagey?”. The change in the economic model has allowed them to do really cool things, like Trantor or Coruscant city worlds, Hive Worlds, volcanic and toxic worlds rich in resources, etc. The new model allows planets to be vastly more interesting than what the tile system offered, IMO.
In terms of complexity, I honestly feel like the economy needed some. Before it was just Minerals + Energy (research I guess, if you can include that). That’s pretty basic, and the tile system was either A: match the tile resource with the corresponding building or B: fully specialize into mineral/energy/research world, ignoring this.
Being able to expend some mental energy on fine-tuning your civilization and economy I think is going to be a good thing, at least in theory. Stellaris received rightful criticism that outside of flying around and attacking other races, there often wasn’t a whole lot to do or focus on.
Guess I’ll find out later tonight how “in theory’ vs " in practice” works out for me, but I’m looking forward to it. :)
I am as well, I don’t want to give the impression I’m not happy with the changes, but I know me and I worry I won’t really click with this stuff for long enough I bounce off of it. However, I have a strong feeling the early game will ease me into what looks like footage taken from the late game, and said footage is probably what made this look worse than it is. I don’t blame the video, he explained things well, and he stressed a lot of this was more complex looking than it actually was.
But I like my 4X games to be a little bit abstracted in many ways, and dealing with pops moving from one job to another and suddenly finding I have a shortage in something because of it, and trying to get them to demote down sounds kind of like a nightmare that I’m sure to run into…
And as mentioned, I am worried the AI will trip over these new systems. Let alone we haven’t even talked about how Hive Mind or AI species will work, and the AI will need to play them differently. Or MegaCorps, there are at least two types (one is a crime syndicate) and that stuff seems awesome but can the AI play it? I hope so. And if it can, won’t that be super freaking impressive?!
Looks like MegaCorp is out now. And here I am stuck at the office for another 6 hours.
Sometimes working remote has advantages. /me watches 513MB download progress.
I’m already scouting new systems!
I have 8 hours tomorrow to play this, and I’m excited!
I like it so far. I have no clue how the AI will handle the new systems, but I like playing with them. I’m a little confused about the breakdown of Amenities on the world-details screen, but that’s a minor thing. In general I like the new resources. Reminds me a bit of Distant Worlds now.
Also, I haven’t played in a while, and I was pleasantly surprised that the ship-designer seemed fun. (Usually I hate ship design in games like this.) I like having several different “section” templates.
Are you experiencing much in the way of lag or low frame rate?
Care to sum it up? No urge to watch a 15 minute review.
He felt unless you plan to play MegaCorp empires a lot that it wasn’t worth the money even though some other features were good. If you are planning on a lot of MegaCorp empire play then it’s good.