[Impirion]

To the best of my knowledge, Steam doesn't use many resources, and it also doesn't affect the game you download at all, it is simply a delivery system for games. Have you had the problem multiple times? and have you tried one version after the other to check that it is just the legal one being affected?

[cerveza_fiesta]

hmm....no.

I'm getting a new compy pretty soon though so it will cease being a problem within the month.

Summer isn't for video games anyways.

Summer is for PROJECTS.

[Gothos]

there's this game I found a few months ago - "Galactic Civilizations II". basically it resembles Civ in a way, but it's set in space and you get planets instead of cities. the game can be played very simply, or can get extensively complicated, and the power to set it up either way is in your hands - you can customize pretty much ANYTHING for a custom campaign, I've never seen so many various options that actually also do changes that you can see very well. size of the map, density of stars and planets, are they scattered or clustered, how many rival races? what races are they? you can even make custom races for every player in the campaign, you can set up your bonuses to various aspects of your empire like technology, military, fleets, social order, loyalty, etc... you can even align your civilization to "good", "evil" or "neutral" which does more than just give you a pretty icon, it actually can give you access to alignment-unique buildings, technologies and improvements and bonuses, also races of the same alignment will like you more. you've got many possibilities of action in diplomacy. you've got many ways to victory - you can just conquer everyone, or maybe you want to expend culturally through spreading your influence and taking over worlds this way? or perhaps you want to forge a galaxy-spanning alliance? the technology system ensures that a race won't be great at everything and focused research towards specific goals from the start is a strong tactic. it also makes trade really lucrative instead of just hastening the inevitable...
also, the playground is never still. there are random events that can range from a volcano exploding on one of your planets (it may sound pretty boring, but little stuff like this gives you options to act accordingly to what alignment you want to be - say, in example, you can evacuate the local populace and loose the most creds, evacuate only the immediate surroundings for less creds, or just let the peasants die for no cost; some options can give strong bonuses, so the evil way is pretty tempting sometimes!) through galaxy-spanning phenomenons like warp drive stopping working and galactic council votings and resolutions in the likes of taxing the stronger empires, setting up a trade guild, putting embargos on evil empires or even choosing who will house a galactic prison, to side factions spawning, sometimes as a set of planets that rebelled against several factions to function as a seperate state...
the game is lush, and there are many, many options to make it last very long. try it out if you can.

[Sir Thursday]

My problem with GalCivII was that it felt empty to me. They tried to add lots of flavour by making the races distinctive, the AI strong and putting in lots of random events, but because the options you had for building up planets were very limited and the actual practical use of the volume of space you controlled outside of the inhabitable planets you controlled and the special resource thingies was nil, it didn't feel anywhere near as immersive and fun to me as those of the Civilization series. And that feeling manifested itself as a feeling of emptiness. I should have bumped the AI up a few levels of difficulty before ceasing to play it, I guess, but I didn't really enjoy the games I did play with it so I ended up stopping.

Of course, that complaint might not resonate with everyone.


Sir Thursday

[Gothos]

I had a rather rough start with it, but after some time I actually got to know what I want from the game, and through that set a proper campaign up, check out all the civs, development... while it's not exactly Civ, it's the best I've see of games that want bring Civ into space...
now, WTB Master of Orion IV or something

[cerveza_fiesta]

@Gothos,

Had many a game of this when it came out. I never actually won a millitary victory though. I did the research-until-transcendance, political and influence victories, but I was never able to manage my economics well enough to maintain a planetary assault-grade fleet without my credits going in the red permanently.

Never got the emptiness feeling...mostly because the ship-builder makes it all worthwhile.

The game is severely missing one thing though: Tactical combat. The computer-controlled battles are complete bullshit for such a nicely designed game AI-wise.

[Gothos]

aye, true enough, that.
I did win a military victory though. several times. it aint that hard, but it does take concentrated effort - the technology for invasion and stuff is rather expensive and it's a major commitment.
as for cash, I do hope you always kept all your systems covered in max-grade economic starbases and always kept all possible trade routes up to the furthest systems possible, right? remember to always terraform (neutral civ is always best for colonizing, since they get all the researched terraforming applied straight away... evil is tempting though ) and make sure to not neglect monetary buildings on planets...
anyway, it's possible. you don't even need a giant fleet, just pick the right equipment to counter what the rest of the galaxy is doing and research, research, research! pays to have bonus logistics, hitpoints and morale for your civ too.

[cerveza_fiesta]

I guess that's the thing. I research, but it always seemed more bang-for-buck to research the diplomatic tree. Having the ability to keep others off your back is pretty useful, but by the time you research deep enough to do be a good diplomat, you might as well just win that way.

I probably just never found the proper combination in the research tree to balance my economics, military and researching ability. Starbases are something I always underused though...maybe I'll have a go at that again. ♦

[Tapper]

Anyone else who bought Hearts of Iron 3 online?

For the ones waiting for reviews first:

The good:
* I'm very impressed with the management component. Research, diplomacy, spying, supplies, research topics, building & composing units - it all feels very smooth and elegant and runs marvellously - elegant, deep, and easy to tweak/adjust.

* The game is huge.

* Combat is fast and furious. No longer ages and ages of waiting while huge stacks slug it out.

* The Theatres and generals can be depended on to maneuver well and not take crazy risks, at the least, when your commands and goals match their size and composition. This makes reorganisation after achieving a goal very important, and also makes sure that you as a player have to really consider what groups you send after what goals.

* no CTDs, which is a first for a Paradox game.

* research and building now go hand and hand, the first strengthening the second, and builds coming faster and faster and cheaper the more you produce of a certain type.

The bad (what is broken):
* the tutorial is written to amuse much less than inform, and it fails at both accounts. The last is a given with Paradox, but still....

* seeing (Communist) China overrun Manchuria and Japanese Korea in 1937 to then bottle up the Japanese on Japan itself without resources for 4 games in a row ain't fun. At first I thought it was the AI, then took up Japan myself, and got my ass handed to me despite pitching my state of the art artillery supported divisions with air support against their backward underfed militia, and still I was losing 2 of my guys for everyone of theirs. This seems to be a problem of the 1.1 patch. As Germany, you'd do better in wooing China than invest diplomatic efforts in Japan.

* there is no way to get supplies to an army that is in poor terrain. Producing more than enough supplies doesn't alleviate this, nor can research compensate adequately. The only thing that works is building infrastructure, which is a huge pain in the butt as it takes ages and IC and naturally, you want to spend that time on divisions, ships and planes instead, not to mention that building infrastructure doesn't do much good when your guys are kicked out of the region before the roads are finished. This screws with the whole Theatre approach, cause your commanders rely on concentration of forces.

* the game uses up an insane amount of RAM... over 1 GB for what is essentially 1 big spreadsheet. Map movement becomes sluggish when in the middle of war spanning a theatre the size of Poland or North-East Africa.

* air support is frikking expensive, meaning you'll only build aircraft when your economy is running on full war potential and you don't need divisions for a full year. If you start out with few or no fighters and bombers, you have a problem, at the least up until 1940.

* more so than usual, due to the way the economy is structured in the game, you'll do next to nothing between 1936 and the moment Germany invades Poland (which may not always happen, either...) if you're playing an ally. As Britain, I had to send spies to destabilize my own government and lower its neutrality for the better part of 18 months to actually be able to churn out 2 divisions and a few destroyers at the same time. The Germans meanwhile took advantage of my spies doing that by gleefully sabotaging my research, and since their economy is running full-tilt I bet they'll be in Dunkirk before my divisions even board their ships to land in Calais, much less allow for an evacuation.

The Ugly (or what is on my wishlist):

* The theatre system is great. It absolutely is.

The sad thing is that you can't create theatres by yourself - and if you can, I haven't found the means yet. You can prompt the game to re-define theatres, but it will not do much if it doesn't see a strategic necessity by itself.
So, the most you can create for tasks you as a player consider to be important, is an army group. Which isn't a big issue, but army groups do not get to announce their needs in your production screen, that's reserved to Theatres only, so you have to click open several screens locally to find out which HQ (armygroup, army, corps) needs what kind of assistance. Which is a pain if you have just created several army groups for your intended invasion of Spain and Portugal from Gibraltar, as well as army groups in India and near Ethiopia.

* Forget historical grouping. Not a big issue for me, but if you want to recreate the exact composition of a certain Task Force, too bad boyo, if HQ wants a different composition, it will group your 2nd Indian Infantry with the 1st Highlander Regiment and undo all your painstaking, hour-long micromanagement of putting the 2nd Indians with the 5th Indian Infantry and the Highlanders with the Coldstream Guards in less time than it takes to snap your fingers. HQ is always right, even if you say it's wrong. Expect your fleets to be broken down into tiny groups of 4-7 ships, too, instead of having a massive Home or Mediterranean Fleet, you'll get nameless escadrons.

* George V lives in 1937 and still King of England. Heads of State are not replaced.

Overall:

If you loved HoI 2, you'll be amazed by 3. It is a much better game, the scope is impressive and the ideas and implementation of them are mostly perfect. However, it still has massive issues - the most glaring for me being the Japan-being-overrun problem in the Far East and the lackluster first few years as an ally. Hopefully, they'll fix the first soon and increase IC a bit for the allies in 1936, too, allowing for a trickle of builds.

[Beliar]

So is GalCiv II better than Masters of Orion III? God i loved MoO3 and i've never been able to find a space stratagy of a similar scale since.

Tried my hand at stardocks latest stratagy, the RTS conversion (solar empire or something can't remember name of it now) but i just couldn't get into it.

[Tapper]

Beliar, on Aug 10 2009, 03:31 PM, said:

So is GalCiv II better than Masters of Orion III? God i loved MoO3 and i've never been able to find a space stratagy of a similar scale since.

Tried my hand at stardocks latest stratagy, the RTS conversion (solar empire or something can't remember name of it now) but i just couldn't get into it.

I personally hated MoO3 with a passion because I felt it just crept forward, couldn't really feel the difference in gameplay per faction and I didn't trust my governors. I quite liked GalCiv myself, though I didn't manage to find the road to military domination either. GalCiv 2 has a lot of different buildings and techs per race that do make a difference, imho.

[Beliar]

i'm bouncing around from many different games (and TtH) right now but you recommend i give it a go once i'm burned out from my current collection of games?

[Tapper]

Beliar, on Aug 10 2009, 04:02 PM, said:

i'm bouncing around from many different games (and TtH) right now but you recommend i give it a go once i'm burned out from my current collection of games?

aye, I'd recommend playing it if you can pick up a cheap copy and a few of the expansions - I wouldn't buy it nowadays for near the original retail price, if there's nothing else you want to pick up .

[Gothos]

aye it's better than moo3, tho I ultimatey woud place moo2 above it (briiant game, moo2).

oh and starbases are reay crucial. starbases, quick colonization, territory... it pays off. remember that for a looong time at the start nobody even has the planetary invasion tech, so it's a race to colonizable planets. take as many as you can, it's the base of might. also, in the long run, quality doesn't mean that much with all the terraforming techs...

[cerveza_fiesta]

anybody tried that civilization: Revolutions game for consoles?

I know strategy + console = Massive fail.........most of the time

but I've read really glowing reviews for that game and that it overcomes a lot of the common drawbacks to strategy gaming on console.

Never had the heart to rent it though, cause a week aint enough to really get into a strategy game for me.

Its cheap now though, probably just buy it to try it soon.

[Tuberski]

Beliar, on Aug 10 2009, 08:31 AM, said:

So is GalCiv II better than Masters of Orion III? God i loved MoO3 and i've never been able to find a space stratagy of a similar scale since.

Tried my hand at stardocks latest stratagy, the RTS conversion (solar empire or something can't remember name of it now) but i just couldn't get into it.

So you are the one.

MOO3 was a steaming pile of crap.

I heard there were some mods that made it playable, but I couldn't stand MOO3.

MOO2 is still the best Space 4X game.

Master of Magic is the best 4X game, period.

[Obdigore]

cerveza_fiesta, on Aug 14 2009, 09:57 AM, said:

anybody tried that civilization: Revolutions game for consoles?

I know strategy + console = Massive fail.........most of the time

but I've read really glowing reviews for that game and that it overcomes a lot of the common drawbacks to strategy gaming on console.

Never had the heart to rent it though, cause a week aint enough to really get into a strategy game for me.

Its cheap now though, probably just buy it to try it soon.

Have it, pretty entertaining.

The Aztecs or whoever it is that heals after successfully winning a battle are far and away the strongest race choice in the game.

[cerveza_fiesta]

sweet. I might start looking for a copy of that then.

I really like strategy but it fails so hard on console usually....plus my computer sucks balls so I'm pretty much stuck with shooters and older strategy games I've beaten 100 times.

Is it a lot like civ?

What are the modifications to make it not fail on console?

[Obdigore]

because civ is turn based hex placement, there really isnt any modifications needed besides getting a good control scheme, which they did.

[cerveza_fiesta]

good challenge too?