Has anyone else been keeping an eye on this? It gets released tomorrow (Friday). From what I can tell it’s a game of real-time diplomacy and turn-based combat, where you play the last of some alien race trying to coerce 8 or 9 other civilizations into forming the federation of the title, either through cultivating friendship and loyalty, conquering the holdouts, or staying in the shadows and playing “let’s you and him fight”. It seems to borrow pretty heavily from Drox Operative (at least in terms of look and diplomacy).
I like the idea, and the inter-species relationships appear to be quite complex, but without a lot of randomization I don’t know how much replayibility it will have.
I just started playing it yesterday and I’m liking it. There will be a good amount of randomization, from what I understand. I’m gonna try and put a video together tonight, but we did do a podcast about it a while back too if that helps.
That’s what I always walk away with. However, since I am the sort of player that almost always goes for a diplomatic victory (when available) in my strategy games, this could be right up my alley. I suspect I’ll enjoy it more than their other titles.
I spent about an hour with it this morning. If the real-time element makes you nervous, don’t be.
The strategic game is largely menus and charts, and the game auto-pauses whenever you open one up, so the real-time aspect is inconsequential. The only time the clock is running is when you are waiting for a decision to be implemented (and the menus tell you how long that will take in both game time and real time) and when executing combat moves. There may be a way to turn auto-pause off, but why would you want to?
I’m finding combat tougher than in the videos. Without a shield that recharges, I haven’t even survived the second tutorial mission. Either I’m doing it wrong (likely) or I really suck at the combat (even more likely). I’m going to try a couple of ideas but if they don’t work may have to dial the combat down to Easy (there are separate difficulty settings for the combat and the strategy layer).
One thing I really like is that just as in AoW 3, the game puts all the information you need at your fingertips. The benefits and drawbacks of each mission you can select, and which weapons are most effective against a selected target. There appears to be no guesswork in the game.
The tutorial isn’t a separate section, per se. Different elements of the game are slowly unlocked and explained as you play (I just unlocked research and the tech tree, for example). I think it’s based on the amount of time played, or it could be the number of completed missions. I’m not really sure. There is an option to turn the tutorial off and start with everything unlocked in future playthroughs.
I started another game and am doing much better. I realized that it’s not enough to see which weapons do the most damage to which targets, you also have to be aware of the weaponry and firing arc of enemies you will be coming in contact with. Turns out I was flying into the arc of some platform that fired missiles that were one-shot killers. I am an idiot. Also, now that more of the strategic layer has been opened up to me, I can see this game is a lot deeper than it would appear in the earlier videos.
One thing I can’t figure out is how to delete or change a move in combat after plotting it. Everything I try just seems to execute the original move.
You can right click to step backwards through the moves you’ve made. So if you shift left click to set a waypoint, then left click to set your movement to the end of your range, you can right click to cancel back through that and redo.
Yeah me too. Also, how is the music? Arcen has had awesome music in its past games, even though I did not find the games very interesting themselves.
Well, the idea behind the games is usually pretty damn awesome, but the implementation is usually lacking (AI War not included, but I never could understand it)
