Summary
Rob, Ben, and Drexy all sit down to discuss the first paid DLC for Shadow Empire, Oceania, the first eXpansion for Galactic Civilizations 4, Supernova, and why they enjoy strategy games above all other genres.
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— Music by Karl Casey of Whitebat Audio —
Well said all on describing what you like about strategy games.
You can make up whatever you want, but it’s to prevent spam.
I just found out about this. I’ve been waiting for the big promised update after the reviews bombed of Galactic Civilizations. I am very annoyed about this! Was this not supposed to be a big promised free patch that fixed all the issues and complaints that makes this game….less than fun? Epic Games is giving a discount for purchasers of Galactic Civilizations, but this is greed at its finest rather than owning up to your failures and correcting them: in other words, taking responsibility. Sins of a Solar Empire II looks no different than the first, so I agree with you about no longer supporting Stardock. The first Sins of a Solar Empire is one of my best real-time 4X games that I still play to this day (and launching it and getting the Stardock launcher(just…why…) is why I came here to look up Supernova!) I do not expect it, but I’ll ask Epic for a refund anyway explaining why; I’ve not even launched Galactic Civilizations yet since the mediocre reviews and eXploriminate telling us that a huge overhaul patch was coming. If not a patch and a separate game, original owners should be provided the game for free (see Larian and Divinity Original Sin I and II). That is how you get happy customers and build a fan base…
I like naval units in Civilization V and they definitely add a different strategy to Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. Actually, I almost always want to play Civilization V with water so that navy is part of the game.
PLEASE don’t support Stardock anymore. I feel like they’ve played you. They are selling a patch to people who supported them for years of EA. Also, why do you need my email address?
In the US we do say the “I” in “Oceania” 🙂
Otherwise it would be “Oceana”
For naval units in Shadow Empire, I could see creating logistics convoys that constantly travel back and forth between two ports. You could decide how many transports and you could add military ships to travel with them. Maybe boats with MGs or cruisers with multiple high-velocity gun turrets. I don’t think we need a ton of different naval chassis, but a couple that have multiple gun turrets would be fun. Perhaps a carrier that can carry a single wing up to a certain size. Maybe medium aircraft. Perhaps you could also have a Siege, Raid, and Blockade mission. I’d say perhaps ships not assigned to a mission would defend their home port automatically, so I don’t think a Defend mission would be necessary. You’d also need a way to re-base them.
I wanted to make a request for future reviews, but on the aspect of Paradox, and now its emulators(RIP Amplitude), advancing the strategy genre, I wholly disagree. I loved Sword of the Stars for all its problems, but this “open world grand strategy” nonsense is braindead gaming to me. I once watched Stellaris play itself for hours (and I do not play even on Normal settings in strategy games on the first run!) with no input from me: it was not needed. So my request is: can you be upfront how open world and grand strategy the games you review and speak about are? Can you also mention how good or bad the AI is without resorting to excessive cheating(I hope this improves with actual AI out in the wild)? I originally came to eXplorminate seeking actual strategy games that forced me to think and be challenged like the best of games of yore, but the items that Paradox and others put out are definitely not it.
I’m wholly disappointed in the Age of Wonders series (Planetfall was worse than III) and reading between the lines of the reviews, it sounds like Age of Wonders IV just pushed further down the line of decreasing the challenge aspect or improving the AI (giving an AI greater and greater cheat powers is not improving it). I do not need to customize facial hair in a strategy game and I really don’t care about that. Yes, I do love RPGs also, with strategy, real-time and turn-based, and RPGs being my staple genres, but strategy games these days need to focus more on the mental challenge to the player rather than throwing out more meaningless customization features and blowing off programming good, or dare I hope excellent, AI. Maybe I’m in the minority or something.