It’s not a new demo. It’s the same one they released at Next Fest.
Well, I am really excited.
It has a very similar premise to the first book of a sci fi trilogy I loved: The Three Body Problem.
The unique premise, grand strategy gameplay, and heritage of the devs are all the ingredients you need for a fantastic game. I hope they succeed in bringing it all together.
I bought the book, in preparation for Monday! :) Thanks for the suggestion!
Get ready for a crazy ride!
An interesting impressions video. It sounds like such an awesome and unique game. Every problem he lists seem fixable too!
Real-time combat? Pfui. Interest declining.
I am theoretically interested, much like I am by Crusader Kings and Grisby’s WITP. But it’s probably similarly a game that I could never get into. let’s plays might be fun to watch though.
Not realising you lost the game 10 hours ago is the thing that kills these games for me.
And it’s out!
Surprised to see this as #2 on steam right now, good on the dev team. Also surprised the price is as high as it is for an obviously indie game. The one thing holding me back isn’t the rough UI but how much time games seem to take to play. Will see what happens when the latest HOI IV expansion comes out tomorrow and make a call then.
Uhoh. Early reviews not good.
I tried the beta and quickly noped out. I want to like this kind of game, but there are way too many moving pieces buried in a dense UX.
Uhoh. Early Access. Phooey!
Some of the negative Chinese reviews are amusing, if you Google translate them, their big complain is that Taiwan is not part of China, lol.
I didn’t even see those. They should be banned.
I think it would have been better if they had left out all the earth political/diplomacy stuff and just made it a game about fending off an alien invasion by upping earth’s space game - colonizing/industrializing space and building ships/fighting space battles. There’s just too much there.
Fascinating and ambitious game, but be aware that in its current state it seems to have pacing issues.
The early game is the Earth political maneuvering, with the midgame adding in space colonization. But the board settles on Earth quickly and the space part takes a really long time to get going. This is when the game’s agent placement works against it – I wanted to skip forward in time, but I had to stop every few weeks to give my agents uninteresting busywork.
I really got into nibbling around the edges of the servant/protectorates networks of control, detaining their agents and stealing all their orgs, etc.
Funny, but not very deep. And it’s far too hard to get at larger states, although I guess if you can boost persuasion heavily with orgs (which I havent done) it might be easier to build public opinion.
The world does seem to be gradually going to war though, some of the other AIs are being very proactive about attacking the servants holdings (the protectorate have India so noone is messing with them).
I think the big issue is the control cap, which works similar to Crusader King’s demense limit.
I get why it’s there, you don’t want somebody to run away with the game before the other systems kick in. But the initial cap is small enough that aggression doesn’t pay off for you or the AIs. In my game, half of the control points are in lockdown because the AIs keep overextending themselves. It’s just been a lot of turns where my agents can’t do anything consequential, beside buff themselves with new orgs or repair minor damage to my national fences.
All that said – I do like that this is a game where you can recruit Hezbollah and send them to Iceland to flamethrower alien plants.
The control cap does loosen dramatically though, as you get more admin and more orgs(*) and improve your councillors and tech that increases the multiplier. Also there’s a clear heirarchy of how good nations are so it’s about focussing your control on the good nations and forcing your enemy factions into the less good ones.
When you are at the control cap there’s still a lot you can do to harass the opposition without actually assuming direct control.
One lovely AI thing I’ve noticed - if the servants or protectorate get to pick tech they will tend to try and pick very expensive tech to block earth’s tech advancement.
I do agree that the councillor stuff can easily get tedious. They could happily double the effect of a lot of council actions and half the frequency of mission assignment.
(*: Amusingly the IMF and CIA are two of the best orgs to improve your capability to secretly control other nations :) )
I’m listening to 3MA pod about this, and it sounds absolutely wild how many games they smushed into one! Something I’ll probably never play, but enjoy listening to stories about.
Slight story spoiler (?): The premise kinda reminds me about the Three Body Problem, all the different ways humanity could choose to face the fact aliens are on the way