ZEPHON has finally released. Discuss.Favorite Leader?Favorite Affinity?
>>1892128Haven't played enough to know which one I like the most. I've played enough to know I like it though. Cool setting and it improves some of the stuff that was wrong with Gladius.
Is the interface and quests still are brutally utilitarian as in Gladius or did they add some flavour to the clicking?
I just noticed that all the unit upgrades have a visual change. Love it when games do that.>>1892139The quest screens are better. Rather than a pop up, the quests cover the whole screen with a bit of art and a couple of choices. The UI is identical to Gladius though which was identical to their previous game. They definitely do these on the cheap, but they are getting better each time. This one even has voice acting and audio barks for units.
>>1892141This isn't the world we knew This isn't the world we knew This isn't the world we knew This isn't the world we knew
>>1892146GET OUT OF MY HEAD
>>1892128I played the demo and enjoyed it but most likely I'll wait until sale to get the full version. What leaders are there even available in the game? I remember in the demo there was a commander, an aristocrat, an AI robot with focus on building one megacity and a triad of Maiden, Mother and Crone. I enjoyed playing the commander the most. Be it because he was the most straightforward or simply because I played the most with him.
>>1892141An example of the quests now.
>>1892128I already played gladius
>>1892149-Fallen Soldier-Tribunal-Emulated Mind-Honorable Aristocrat(A fatso)-Untold Prophet(Looks like a kid with leukemia, kinda creepy)-Rogue Operative(cyborg woman)-Practical Romantic(Stalkeresque dude with a big heart)-Heartless Artificier(haven't played that one, but asian woman focused on producing shit)
>>1892163What's your favorite so far?
>>1892128how much bigger are the pc requirements compared to gladius?
>>1892181Double.
Oh look another civizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
>>1892128>Favorite Leader?Emulated Mind>Favorite Affinity?HumanBut I think it's bs that factions can dip into multiple affinities. Makes them feel less unique.
>>1892223Retard
>>1892128Enjoying it so far, just wish there was more unit & tech variety. But if Gladius is anything to go back that’ll come in the future. Also criminal the game doesn’t have a unit model viewer in the compendium.Also also I really wish units garrisoned in bunkers could fire from them, adding their weapons to the bunker’s.Game could use more active effect capture points. Like capture this and it gives control of some turrets in the area. Capture that and it periodically spawns and patrols units in the area. Capture the other thing and it lets you call in artillery or an ICBM.Could do with buildings for your cities that add to or expand it’s weapons.Curious to see what they do for future factions & tech trees.Custom maps would be nice.Would like if I had more options to turtle.
>>1892237Yeah I avoid dipping except to grab bunkers as emulated mind
>Maps should be bigger>ZEPHON(outside of it's titans) is 2weak and losses to ayys constantly>Gibb us 1-2 unique units per leader>Affinity should force you into the specific techs/path, or at least make cyber and voice opposite of each other, so you can only pick smth like full cyber and some human but no voice techsYes, I know about the mutators but cmon
>>1892246Getting a research penalty to the other affinities that stacks with each one you get of another affinity would be a nice fix, but with how uniform each faction feels right now I think you’d end up in the wrong direction of everyone feeling too limited.
>>1892246Maps should be way bigger, and the Ayys should be nerfed. Those fucks became the strongest faction early by taming the npcs and then made peace with all their neighbours so I'd be crushed if I even dreamed of taking them down.
Do units inside a bunker die when it gets destroyed?
It's a pain in the ass that engineers are your coloniser too. They're stuck in your main production queue because of it when I want to have them churning out so I can build bunkers and support my vehicles.
>>1892264Buy reavers then
>zephon weakI didn't get that, anchorites got btfo for meprobably because I took out one of their cities early, but doesn't that just show you can shift the balance? plus I think the ais took out one of zephon's
ze phon?what is ze phon?
>>1892264>>1892398>play prophet>turn the first neutral reaver you see>expand before turn 10>???>profit
>wall of tanks and artillery pushing back the horrors of the night
>>1892508Yeah finally starting to push back as Humans feels great. You get so many upgrades for your tanks as well.
post some screenshots
I liked how early units are the backbone of your forces for 2/3s of the game. I like militia spam + few vanguard supports.
Chieftess is so tsun.
>4 player match>Spawn near 2 ZEPHON cities>Struggle fighting them for most of the game>Finally get some tanks and arty and push out and destroy them>Develop power armour >ZEPHON and Acrin go to war>2 players side with Acrin>ZEPHON is weak as shit because I beat 2 of his citiesI got fucked. I like how hard the game is. It feels like a struggle whole the way through.
>>1892525Mad how so many try to shill games but forget the basic requirement to actually show it.
>>1892801Love the art though. And seems like even the defeat text is specific to your leader.
>>1892610AINT NO SUCH THING AS SAFE NO MORE
>>1892801Why did you not shovel everything into the zephon alliance?
Wow, it’s dead huh.
>>1892877Wanted to try the independent route and I felt really strong at the time.
>>1892840I'M NOT DYING TODAY
I'm starting to get a hang of it now. Playing emulated Mind. The basic cyber infantry seems really good. Feels like the strongest start I've had yet. I was able to take a Chieftess city and wipe out one of the other players with just them, although one of them was in range of my capital arty. When I tried with just militants or the dog riders, they just got wiped out by the city.
>>1892128I didn't think that I would like the game as much as I have. The improvements from Gladius might be small but they have had a pretty big impact on the games enjoyment. Biggest worry is the fact that the factions are only nominally different. That being said since most factions are predisposed to one of the specific techs then I think that it should be fine. Kinda reminds me of AOE 2 with how you only get small changes but they can have big impact on the way the game plays.
>>1892992Being able to dip into unit pools kills the game imo. Players will quickly find meta builds so leaders will pretty much all end up with the same comp with just a few differences. Really bad design choice.
You can't escape meta to begin with. Especially if you're going to play one some lmao autism difficulty level where you need to be 200% efficient with your every action.
For those of you who have sunk in a good chunk of time, how asymmetrical are the factions? When I played the demo it seemed like you could kind of research techs of the opposing ideologies no problem, which to me reads as "everything is just gonna end up feeling the same". Asymmetry is a big thing for me in these kinds of games, so if it has that done well I'd definitely be interested in picking it up
>>1893231This is from the perspective of default game speed/escalation settings:You can't really do everything, especially to any good efficiency, in a single game since pretty much all higher tier stuff are gated behind different higher tier resources. You won't have time to build your economy to support everything at once or even research them all before shit hits the fan.That said any leader can choose to do anything they want and if you pick balanced progress at t4 you're barely even penalized for going off-affinity either. But again the main constraint is time. You want to be advancing to higher tiers so beyond general fast good stuff research from t1-3, I would advice against picking more than the bare minimum at each tier. There are 12 different production buildings (other than construction yard) you can focus on (maybe 13 if you count influence as a special case) and I'd say you can feasibly focus on at most 3 of those in a single game. And by focus I obviously don't mean making a single operations building to get a few scans going.If you're trying to be jack of all trades your economy will be spread too thin and/or you won't be far enough in tech. Lacking either of those means you're gonna be shit on by titans both player built and zephon/acrin ones.Now whether there will be a definite meta that pigeon holes everyone into one strategy, I can't say yet.
>>1893231>>1893254Yeah I have to set the escalation to slow because the game ends before I even get like halfway through the tech tree. It's also made me that research buildings are non-negotiable.
>>1893256If the map size is above tiny pretty much everyone except tribunal (labs suck and run contrary to their gimmick) and maybe emulated mind (can abuse network splitter and data hack for massive research gains later and don't need fast engineers) should research and make at least 1 lab in the first few buildings if only to get engineers on a decent pace.It's quite reasonable to have your own titan or two out by default escalation on top of a dozen t6+ units. 3 early cities with decent loyalty, outposts, a few trade agreements and a couple of research labs should get you there in time. The hard part is usually the economy. Foreseeing the incoming bottlenecks in time and not unnecessarily hoarding resources to just sit in there for nothing. Sure you can concordat band-aid fix your problems but it'll always come at a premium.
>>1893262I haven't gotten to titans in any match yet. Played 2 so far. First was Medium, 4 players, Normal speed Voice game and I got to their big ogres with cannons before the war and Acrin AI just did the rest for me. 2nd was this one >>1892801 Medium size, 4 players, slow speed humans. Similar thing, except I was on the wrong end of the Acrin AI.This cyber game I'm playing though feels a bit better. Like large map, 6 players, slow speed Cyber and 55 turns I feel pretty comfortable with my tech. But we'll see.
Played as Aristocrat, Soldier, and Prophet so far. Aristocrat was the easy pick for my favorite leader, just a fat fuck so totally stuck in the past he doesn't have a shred of pessimism about the nightmare humanity is in. Soldier really grew on me, just an all around swell guy. As for affinities I went with Human (aristocrat), Ayy (prophet), and Ayy dragoons into Human vehicles (soldier). My hunch that the dragoons would be amazing with the fallen soldier was 100% correct, fleeing into the bleed to regenerate double what they would normally makes your army both hard to pin down and extremely quick to recover. Even though I haven't tried cyber yet I think human has to just be the best affinity by far, they have a simpler and faster economy that doesn't need to fuck around with an extra resource and in mid/late game their best units have shared upgrades including one that lets them launch missiles from ten tiles away.>>1893231I'd say there's a decent amount of asymmetry between affinities. You start the game with techs related to your ideology already researched, so you have to put yourself behind if you want to do an off-ideology build like I did with using dragoons as Fallen Soldier. After the first tier of research off-ideology techs come in later tiers as well, so players sticking true to their leader's guns will be rolling out their advanced units earlier if you don't heavily invest in tech. On top of that the leaders each have technologies unique to them and their abilities can push you towards different playstyles. Was a lot of fun realizing that the aristocrat's ability to rush construction with influence also applies to nuclear weapons.
I have no idea what I am doing, but I very like how the game ramps up the combat after an hour or so.
Hero limit of 1 per type is gay as fuck
>>1893292Yeah, at least you don't need a specialized building to get them.
>>1893292>he doesn't cheese dreameaters to spawn multiple hero units
>>1893279I'm loving the battles in it. Was going south to invade a faction and got flanked by a different one, and now we're having a massive infantry grind against each other in this pass.
>>1893367Also really liking the Cyber Mummy drone carriers.
The Fallen Soldier didn't deserve this shit.
>>1893713Didn't deserve to be the strongest faction?
>>1893725To be strong matters not if your victory is meaningless.
>the commander unit is just colonel quaritch with a chainswordBased department?
>>1893743Not with these miniguns. They just look so dorky.
>>1893743Human faction units definitely deliver on the promise of deleting alien horrors with weaponry they can't even fathom from miles away.
>>1893750Machine horrors, too! You're not a Zephoncuck, are you?
>>1893753Once we've snipped off their weaponry we can use the rest of the robots as toasters.
I really hope they take the only good idea that Beyond Earth had and make hybrid paths with their own unique aesthetics where you need to take a few techs in both to unlike powerful combined techs mid to late game. So Voice+Human, Voice+Cyber, Cyber+Human.
>>1893830yeah the hybrid system in BE was fun. I know this isn't really comparable but if anyone here has played AoW4, how is this compared to that game?
>>1893834Not very similar at all beyond the basic 4x structure. They are both more focused more on combat for 4x games though, but very different approaches to combat. Zephon and this dev's other games feel more like traditional wargames with 4x mechanics attached.
How do Voice dudes deal with early Zephon choppas? You build a bunch of militias or something?
>>1893904I think they are only hovering, not flying, right? You can just wack them.
>>1893904You can build those dark vassaels from their vehicle building or get the whisperer of goldrauch hero. Alternatively go for a valkyria if you can wait.
>>1893904The worms at tier 3 I think absolutely murder them but that's early-mid I guess not truly early
>Crank difficulty up to very hard for my first cyber game>Spend the first half of the game pounding my head against an acrin city protected by a chokepoint totally filled with rough terrain>Get to the other side and find the honorable aristocrat has dozens of militia and has overrun the south side of the map through sheer girth of unitsIt has to be totally random what the AI researches, any decent decision making there would have him churning out assault squads by now.
>>1894454Wrapped it up by assassinating the last big fucker. In my other games all my heroes just died to the titans, but the robot units shit out so much damage the fleshies were running for the hills.
>>1893904>>1893906>>1893944>>1893965The real answer here is to go all in on influence early game and either find&ally anchorite ASAP, buy a bunch of acrin remnants to do the heavy lifting if you're tribunal or just use words as prophet to get something that can deal with them.
>>1893830Good news for you anon, the devs personally asked everyone in their discord server about the DLCs. Someone brought up hybrid units and they were cool with it. Some others also wanted hybrid units.>>1893904If they're neutral, just don't attack them and they won't do you in. If they're ZEPHON's, try to buy units from either Chieftess or Anchorite. Barring that rush for the worms in tier 3 and you will utterly delete the Hammerheads(in fact worms delete every grouped up unit but die to a slight breeze)
>>1894749
>>1894747>buy a bunch of acrin remnantsWait you can buy stuff off Zephon and Acrin? Damn, I never even bothered doing diplomacy.
>>1894749>>1894750Fucking awesome. Yeah I'm really enjoying this. A bit cursed because these dudes churn out DLC that's not really worth the price for what's in the DLC. But if you get a bunch of them on sale it's okay.
>>1894753That's what getting support means. You buy their units with influence. Couldn't be more poorly worded.
>>1894753yeah, chieftess too. You can request support even before ally but it's probably not worth it save for one exception. You can actually buddy up chieftess really early, buy a reaver and expand way before you'd get to t3 for engineers. It'll cost you more overall but having 2nd city up and running before possibly even before turn 10 is very much worth it.
>>1894758>>1894760Probably just me being stupid then. I always just go full aggressive and attack them which doesn't really get you much except for experience.
>>1894755Aside from the unit packs which to this day I still detest I'd say their faction packs for 40k were genuinely good at fleshing things out. I am glad to see the idea of Hybrids though.. I miss BE and it seriously needed another expansion.
Having more fun than I expected since I was curious about how well they would be able to make the game system stand up on its own divorced from using 40k as a guideline for factions and units, even if upwards of a quarter of the roster is a gladius unit with the serials filed off. Definitely feels like I'll probably have escalation pace set to something slower because by the time turn 100 rolls around which is where it triggers on normal it doesn't feel like you have that much time to explore the map or fight any proper wars. The separation of general quest and the endgame pace settings is a welcome change from gladius especially with how they seem to have more variable outcomes and fun bonuses that will show up again later though I'd like it if we could get clearer information of what those settings mean on the turn timer.
>>1892398I...I never thought about that...
>>1894749>4 new units in each packSlurp
>>1894749are they happy with sales? the amount of reviews for that game seems tiny
>>1896202They just posted this earlier today, sounds like they're happy. I imagine they're expecting it to sell steadily over the years like Gladius.
>>1896202>>1896233This is a little depressing. Really shows how well the 40k setting sells whatever it's attached to when Gladius' all time pick was over ten time this. Hopefully it just chugs along and gets some word of mouth slowly and a steady stream of buyers.
>>1896233>>1896272Also I just noticed they got funded by EU, so at least they probably got their money back.
>>1896272According to steamcharts Gladius had only about 500+ players until about 2023 where they had a spike of 10k before going back down to about 900+. 2024 it went to 11k but has since stayed around 1k. Honestly Zephon isn't to far off from Gladius regular player count which is almost double of Gladius starter amount. If I were them then I would be pretty happy too.
>>1896326>Gladius released to 3k.
>Learnt you can turn off your buildings by accidentally turning off my construction yard for 10 turns and not being able to figure out why nothing was buildingJust gonna bin that game, but now I know I guess.
>>1896326Gladius has had a couple of events. I think it was in a bundle at some point and maybe even given away for free or something. There were also a few big marketing pushes for it a couple of times where all your WH40k content creators played like one game of it and never touched it again.
could I deconstruct buildings in gladius this entire time and I'm just retarded or is this a new feature
>>1896326>>1896331the big spikes are probably from free weekends I remember them having a couple timesprobably coincide with warhammer months
>>1896272I remember more than 1000 players at launch and during this weekend
>>1896399It is new
>>1896434they even gave base game for free atleast once on steam
Did they fix unit balance? Or does the strategy for midgame onwards still look like picking a single unit and making as many of it as possible?The biggest problem by far in Gladius was that once you picked up research for a unit with good armor and decent armor penetration it would outperform the same resources of other units against pretty much every possible target.Unit balance seemed decent in the demo, but this problem didn't tend to show up in Gladius until later into the game.
>>1896647This problem is somewhat solved on two fronts, that you research actually worthwhile units at a decent pace mid to late game and that lategame units require more advanced resources you have to dedicate new buildings to creating. You'll have to balance these new resources between nukes/black holes and units as well. That said, I think the human faction does devolve into just spamming mechs and heavy infantry anyways as they've got the simplest economy and orbital dropping removes the need for speed.
>>1896647You can spam just one unit and have a decent success but usually you'll have better success spamming a frontline and a back line unit or throw some operations in the mix. There's some great support units as well such as voice's disciples which are a massive force multiplier in just small numbers but practically useless when spammed.Spamming stuff that requires only basic resources from t1-5 is rather straightforward but building an economy that can spam t6-10 stuff at full efficiency is pretty difficult. Usually after accruing some upkeep there will be downtime and you'll want to use that to build lower tier stuff again.
>>1892128>all Human Affinity leaders are men>all nonhuman Affinity leaders are women and childrenWhat did they mean by this?
>>1896770Paternal Autocracy is the only way to survive crisis?
>>1896770Funny ain't it. Humans, fallen soldier especially are the strongest too. Also every AI commander loves the fallen soldier too for some reason.
>>1896770Not only that, white or white-passing men.While the non-human affinity leaders are Slavs (the tribunal) some young Latino boy(?), Asians or a fucking ZEPHON-ised AI LARPing as a cancer patient
>>1896806You forgot the negress
>>1896807She's mixed at best. Quadroon at he most.
>>1896806I think the Romantic is an arab, not sure. Some redneck I talk to tells me the soldier has a southern accent and the same phenotype as him
>>1896813Romantic is an Algerian.
>>1896811One dropShe's a kween
>>1896813As I said, white-passing. Guy is Assad-tier as far as Arab complexions go.
>>1896806the chong lady speaking in light chinglish was a welcome surprise in current year
>>1896880Yeah she cuteI like that she's a total scumbag as well, reminds me a bit of Revy
>>1896884>>1896880The aristocrat is even more over the top, he's got the most aggressively germanic accent you'll ever hear. I like how ZEPHON is characterised as a realistically schizo AI too, I think I heard him say "Farewell,delicious critters" as a freudian slip.
>>1896899The Aristocrat is one voiceline pack away from sounding like The Major from Hellsing.
Is this game fun in singleplayer or is it one of those games where single player is just barebones and meant for MP play?
>>1897002I've only played these games singleplayer
>>1897002>>1897015I had to boot it up just then to see if it even has MP. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone playing these games MP. I imagine they are better in MP but I'm pretty sure it's designed for SP though.
gladius actually had kinda active MP and you could pklay it even on pirate version, i guess thats why they didnt release on GOG this time :/
>>1897026There's entire mechanics like transports and some abilities such as disciples' teleport that AI can't handle at all.
>>1897027I love those "GOG release plx" posts on steam forums when it's patently obvious people are just asking for a version they can pirate easily kek.
>>1896700>>1896719Thanks for the info. It sounds like it's not entirely fixed, but just being able to feel like I'm not wasting my time even looking at half the units in my roster will be a big improvement. Might grab it and give it a shot.
>>1897120>implyingnot everyone likes to rent games and be on mercy of steam launcher and that fat fuck Gaben, the game is on torrents from day one, if somebody knows where to find pirate gog version they know where to get it from torrents
>>1897120its made extra funny by how there was a rip up the moment it was released it just wasn't as low hanging fruit as a gog copy
>>1897215The fact that GoG is trying to shove everything into its own launcher and that CD Projekt is flatlining things they touch. Steam continues to win.
>>1897273the fuck are you blabbering about you fucking schizo, unlike steam who shoves their shitty DRM in every game while you can launch games on GOG without launcher. Zoomers are retarded and got used to getting fucked in the ass by corporations to the point they fanatically defend them, you have no idea how much people hated Steam, it was a massive precedent which opened floodgates with Valve requiring you to make an account and download launcher to play HL2.
>>1897273Galaxy is barely alive and they stopped pushing it actively for awhile now. Enjoy your rental service while gaben is still kicking though.
how long will it take to get a decent list of all the choice consequences
>>1897778Just bee yourself
Voice feels so dogshit. How do you even play them? The zombie spawners and worm guys early? I always feel behind with them and their units are so fragile.
>>1897904Just build administration complexes on rivers early on. Units bought with influence from neutrals can carry you through early-mid until you get to your t5-6 units such as orolos, hunters or swarm. Other than Dark Vassaels+lairs, you don't really want to spam anything else from voice early on unless you really want to play for species containment.
>>1897904I've had success spamming dragoons for early map exploration, using their free abkluths to take the beatings and their mobility to flee from any bad fights and heal up in the bleed. Seen people swear by the worms. I'd generally recommend with all factions just focusing on one type of unit producing building per city in the early game if you want to constantly churn out units, less tech to research out of the gate.
>>1897904Vasaels are pretty great for intro tech unit. Oroloses, Orolosi or however are you supposed to call them barely do more damage when they don't move and often do slightly less with no morale debuff when they do.
>>1897904Station your dragoons in bleed when they're wounded, tame ablukths when you can to get some meatshields to lead a frontal assault(They actually have good sustain with both regen and bleedwalker). Worms are fucking awesome because while they die in one hit they also utterly delete any infantry you'll meet. They also melt hammerheads and with their tunnels can flank like assholes. Cr'la disciples don't need line of sight to attack and have 10 armor pen on their weapon, they can also deal even more damage in exchange for self damage, buff their allies and make enemies take way more damage. Phenaris Hunters I haven't tried(apparently they can clone), but Phenaris Epicureans can deal over 20 damage to literal titans on a regular basis.Like the other anon said, Dark Vassael is very tanky. I haven't gone into their monsters much yet but I hear they're not too shabby. Hero wise the whisperer is a great healing if you saddle her with some trauma kits or Arks of Goldrauch, can scout anywhere on the map and can summon a deformity up to level 9 when her skill is max level. Elect of Uzhodai meanwhile is a beefy asshole that gets tankier the more he's surrounded, hits hard and gets to literally teleport.Like >>1897948 said, you should build several of one type of unit producing building, you'll be able to get a fast war machine going(Going from 6 turns a unit to 3 turns is not a joke, do it)
So what's the verdict?
>>1898501Fun but I don't think it's going to have much in the way of legs compared to something like Gladius.
>>1898502Is that the power of having the 40k name attached?
>>1898544More like power of different factions that has unique playstyles. Also zephon didn't even move that far from Gladius, especially in its map, it is still fucking shit and tiny even on biggest possible setting which is especially noticeable because of all the neutrals sprinkled around.
>>1898544No, it was literally given for free
>>1898552Having to actually contest for territory is a good thing.
>>1898552The duality of strategy gamers, there's a thread on zephon's steam forum where people want the game to be MORE dense and crowded.
>>1898552I desperately need a setting that shows what tile gives what. Everything fucking blends in together! It's actually quite difficult to tell at times what tiles even have god damn units.
>>1898719ctrl+z
>>1898719the visibility in that game is ASS, i tried to turn off the fog and postprocessing but it makes game look horrible i also gained 0 fps by doing it.
>>1892237It dabbing into mixed affinities even generally worth it though?
>>1898884Sometimes you're surrounded by so many tiles affiliated with one affinity or the other it would be a waste not to split.Voice/Human seems to be pretty good while Cyber doesn't really need anything from the other affinities.
>>1898884>play romantic>get dark vassaels and lairs, also a little bit of influence>spam lairs around your cities>grab your reallocation research>meatgrind your endless deformities into whatever production you want, you'll never need more than 1 of any production building yet everything you want comes out in a single turn anyway>play tribunal>go human vehicles and hymn of decay>expand aggressively>see everything within 12 range of your aggressive city and bombard the living shit out of everything with vanquishersthere's a few heavily synergistic strategies to start with.
>>1898785I hope they'll address this in the future, this is my main complaint
Has anyone taken a look at the modding tools yet? Any potential for really cool stuff?
>>1896777Chieftess doesn't really like his Leave No Man Behind. Women and their problems again.
The Introduction scenario is way too easy and over too quick to actually teach anything. It was such a cakewalk I utterly failed medium difficulty by just trying to do the same.
>>1899283I won the introduction easily yea, but won my first medium difficulty game by allying all the factions kek
>>1899120You can edit most of things with notepad and porting new models was possible with Gladius already, this shouldn't be any different. Gona tinker with a few things myself. Shift the balance a little bit.