>>1892128
Haven'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.

>>1892139
The 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.

>>1892141

This 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

File: 1459259856373.png (1.26 MB, 1100x1315)

1.26 MB PNG

>>1892146
GET OUT OF MY HEAD

>>1892128
I 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.

File: 20241110204236_1.jpg (501 KB, 2560x1440)

501 KB JPG

>>1892141
An example of the quests now.

>>1892128
I 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)

>>1892163
What's your favorite so far?

>>1892128
how much bigger are the pc requirements compared to gladius?

>>1892181
Double.

Oh look another civizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

>>1892128
>Favorite Leader?
Emulated Mind
>Favorite Affinity?
Human

But I think it's bs that factions can dip into multiple affinities. Makes them feel less unique.

>>1892223
Retard

>>1892128
Enjoying 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.

>>1892237
Yeah 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 techs
Yes, I know about the mutators but cmon

>>1892246
Getting 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.

>>1892246
Maps 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.

>>1892264
Buy reavers then

>zephon weak
I didn't get that, anchorites got btfo for me
probably 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

File: surprised-mime-looking-at(...).jpg (27 KB, 612x408)

27 KB JPG

ze phon?
what is ze phon?

>>1892264
>>1892398
>play prophet
>turn the first neutral reaver you see
>expand before turn 10
>???
>profit

File: 1587485832146.png (1.67 MB, 800x960)

1.67 MB PNG

>wall of tanks and artillery pushing back the horrors of the night

>>1892508
Yeah 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.

File: 20241112002411_1.jpg (1.03 MB, 2560x1440)

1.03 MB JPG

>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 cities
I got fucked. I like how hard the game is. It feels like a struggle whole the way through.

>>1892525
Mad how so many try to shill games but forget the basic requirement to actually show it.

File: 20241112003813_1.jpg (522 KB, 2560x1440)

522 KB JPG

>>1892801
Love the art though. And seems like even the defeat text is specific to your leader.

>>1892610
AINT NO SUCH THING AS SAFE NO MORE

>>1892801
Why did you not shovel everything into the zephon alliance?

Wow, it’s dead huh.

>>1892877
Wanted to try the independent route and I felt really strong at the time.

>>1892840
I'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.

>>1892128
I 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.

>>1892992
Being 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

>>1893231
This 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
>>1893254
Yeah 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.

>>1893256
If 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.

>>1893262
I 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.

File: Gluttony.png (4 KB, 438x26)

4 KB PNG

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.

>>1893231
I'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

>>1893292
Yeah, at least you don't need a specialized building to get them.

>>1893292
>he doesn't cheese dreameaters to spawn multiple hero units

File: 20241112222926_1.jpg (1.02 MB, 2560x1440)

1.02 MB JPG

>>1893279
I'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.

File: 20241112223450_1.jpg (797 KB, 2560x1440)

797 KB JPG

>>1893367
Also really liking the Cyber Mummy drone carriers.

The Fallen Soldier didn't deserve this shit.

>>1893713
Didn't deserve to be the strongest faction?

>>1893725
To be strong matters not if your victory is meaningless.

>the commander unit is just colonel quaritch with a chainsword
Based department?

>>1893743
Not with these miniguns. They just look so dorky.

>>1893743
Human faction units definitely deliver on the promise of deleting alien horrors with weaponry they can't even fathom from miles away.

>>1893750
Machine horrors, too! You're not a Zephoncuck, are you?

>>1893753
Once 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.

>>1893830
yeah 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?

>>1893834
Not 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?

>>1893904
I think they are only hovering, not flying, right? You can just wack them.

>>1893904
You 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.

>>1893904
The worms at tier 3 I think absolutely murder them but that's early-mid I guess not truly early

File: Zephon_oEwEpWWjKy.jpg (554 KB, 1920x1080)

554 KB JPG

>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 units
It has to be totally random what the AI researches, any decent decision making there would have him churning out assault squads by now.

File: Zephon_Ju27oPNIR0.jpg (548 KB, 1920x1080)

548 KB JPG

>>1894454
Wrapped 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
>>1893965
The 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.

File: devs lol.png (115 KB, 1786x406)

115 KB PNG

>>1893830
Good 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.
>>1893904
If 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)

File: hybrids.png (32 KB, 895x115)

32 KB PNG

>>1894749

>>1894747
>buy a bunch of acrin remnants
Wait you can buy stuff off Zephon and Acrin? Damn, I never even bothered doing diplomacy.

>>1894749
>>1894750
Fucking 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.

>>1894753
That's what getting support means. You buy their units with influence. Couldn't be more poorly worded.

>>1894753
yeah, 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
>>1894760
Probably just me being stupid then. I always just go full aggressive and attack them which doesn't really get you much except for experience.

>>1894755
Aside 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.

>>1892398
I...I never thought about that...

>>1894749
>4 new units in each pack
Slurp

>>1894749
are they happy with sales? the amount of reviews for that game seems tiny

File: steamwebhelper_05AoZldmQU.png (205 KB, 797x339)

205 KB PNG

>>1896202
They just posted this earlier today, sounds like they're happy. I imagine they're expecting it to sell steadily over the years like Gladius.

File: Zephon players.jpg (16 KB, 812x162)

16 KB JPG

>>1896202
>>1896233
This 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
>>1896272
Also I just noticed they got funded by EU, so at least they probably got their money back.

>>1896272
According 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 building
Just gonna bin that game, but now I know I guess.

>>1896326
Gladius 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
>>1896331
the big spikes are probably from free weekends I remember them having a couple times
probably coincide with warhammer months

>>1896272
I remember more than 1000 players at launch and during this weekend

>>1896399
It is new

>>1896434
they 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.

>>1896647
This 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.

>>1896647
You 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 children
What did they mean by this?

>>1896770
Paternal Autocracy is the only way to survive crisis?

>>1896770
Funny ain't it. Humans, fallen soldier especially are the strongest too. Also every AI commander loves the fallen soldier too for some reason.

>>1896770
Not 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

>>1896806
You forgot the negress

>>1896807
She's mixed at best. Quadroon at he most.

>>1896806
I 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

>>1896813
Romantic is an Algerian.

>>1896811
One drop
She's a kween

>>1896813
As I said, white-passing. Guy is Assad-tier as far as Arab complexions go.

>>1896806
the chong lady speaking in light chinglish was a welcome surprise in current year

>>1896880
Yeah she cute
I like that she's a total scumbag as well, reminds me a bit of Revy

>>1896884
>>1896880
The 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.

>>1896899
The 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?

>>1897002
I've only played these games singleplayer

>>1897002
>>1897015
I 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 :/

>>1897026
There's entire mechanics like transports and some abilities such as disciples' teleport that AI can't handle at all.

>>1897027
I 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
>>1896719
Thanks 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
>implying
not 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

>>1897120
its 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

>>1897215
The 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.

>>1897273
the 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.

>>1897273
Galaxy 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

>>1897778
Just 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.

>>1897904
Just 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.

>>1897904
I'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.

>>1897904
Vasaels 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.

>>1897904
Station 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?

>>1898501
Fun but I don't think it's going to have much in the way of legs compared to something like Gladius.

>>1898502
Is that the power of having the 40k name attached?

>>1898544
More 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.

>>1898544
No, it was literally given for free

>>1898552
Having to actually contest for territory is a good thing.

>>1898552
The duality of strategy gamers, there's a thread on zephon's steam forum where people want the game to be MORE dense and crowded.

>>1898552
I 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.

>>1898719
ctrl+z

>>1898719
the 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.

>>1892237
It dabbing into mixed affinities even generally worth it though?

>>1898884
Sometimes 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 vanquishers

there's a few heavily synergistic strategies to start with.

>>1898785
I 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?

>>1896777
Chieftess 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.

>>1899283
I won the introduction easily yea, but won my first medium difficulty game by allying all the factions kek

>>1899120
You 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.

>Wot's the worst that could 'appen?
>...
>Oh roight. We doie.
Some of these voice lines are alright.

>>1892128
>Only playing ash old dusty white men....

The game needs a black male leader

>>1900030
>I'M NOT DYING TODAY
>I'M NOT DYING TODAY
>I'M NOT DYING TODAY
>I'M NOT DYING TODAY
>IT WAS US OR THEM, AND IT WASN'T GONNA BE US
It really does have an rts feel

File: steamwebhelper_xyZClI3UuH.jpg (199 KB, 829x1246)

199 KB JPG

>>1900042
Sorry buddy, there's just no room in the game for more leaders.

>>1900067
It even turned out the fat white aristocrat is a good guy afterall, I was surprised

>>1900202
I generally like it how it is a grimdark setting but the leaders are not just comically evil caricatures as they often are in grimdark settings.

>>1900202
>experience the best of what mankind had to offer
>wants to recreate this for everyone else
fallen soldier x aristocrat, name a more iconic duo

>>1900714
>>1900202
It's interesting how every human leader are genuinely human people and generally paragons of what's good in mankind despite what they're sometimes forced to do, meanwhile all the cyber leaders are fucking insane, a psychopath and a scumbag while with Voice you got a schizo witch cover and a very creepy child messiah.

>>1900718
people who gave up their humanity and who submit themselves to high powers cannot overcome the human spirit and fast rocks

>>1900728
The first Cyber leader didn't do it intentionally. It was forced upon them. The rest however..

>>1900955
Chinky bitch isn't bad either.

>>1899283
I believed it was just a normal game with preset easy settings so I started another game with a faction I actually wanted to play

File: UuzKrXU.png (546 KB, 922x854)

546 KB PNG

>>1900042
Heartless Artificer is my strong black lady Techno-Sauron.

>>1900718
It makes sense, only schizoids would stomach the eldritch abhominations or the cyber horrors like the flying corpses

give me all the synergies for every faction

>>1892128
It's just another example of a shallow and souless 4X sci-fi game, isn´t?

>>1901792
Nope, these guys embrace the wargame aspect of their games, so it feels more focused than shallow.

Judging by the reviews it's just a rehash of Gladius. You rush top tier units and shit them out as fast as possible because everything else does not compare.

>>1901859
Good luck having economy with no caches or outposts and surviving a competent early push.
It's very possible to get wiped out by t1-2 tech of any affinity.

>>1901859
I find t1-t2 unit very solid if you combine all the skill. The problem with them is that they are quite fragile to later unit. The problem I have is probably late game "titan" fest, it caught me off guard and still don't know what to think about it

>>1901895
>>1901892
The game is just fundamentally incomplete if half the unit roster or more is a total writeoff as soon as you get top tech. AoW3 and Galciv 4 are much better at this.

>>1901902
They're not, most units work better when used in a specific function, specifically tier 2 and 5 units. Human has Missile Troopers which when buffed can actually deal decent damage to Titans with 3 range and also has Medics that heal really well and can give a literal permanent defense buff to biological units. Cyber has the Marauder which also does decent AP and hovers over terrain while their tier 5 is a sniper that can mark targets for everyone to get +2 accuracy when shooting them so they stay useful all game. Voice has the worms who shred infantry and debuff units with -2 armor while their third unit is a force multiplier who can debuff enemies and buff your own guys.

I'd say the units that get obsoleted would be the first infantry you can make(although they still be used as disposable,cheap and easily fodder in a pinch) and your first AP option in some capacity, since you get a new elite mainline infantry later on. Third unit and vehicles(or monsters) all have something to give throughout the game, although I hear plangeant orolos is bad for its tier.

>>1901902
>The game is just fundamentally incomplete if half the unit roster or more is a total writeoff as soon as you get top tech
>AoW3 and Galciv 4 are much better at this
Holy shit did we play the same AoW3? They made Planetfall basically as a response to how bad top tier unit spam in AoW3 was by letting you improve low tier units. They did similar in AoW4. 3 late game was horrid for it. Just big summon spam by you or the AI.

I think Zephon is somewhere in the middle. It's hard to get the economy to spam end game stuff in Zephon, so you usually end up with a handful and the rest is mid tier spam. At least that's how it's been for my games.

>>1901956
In AoW3 the bottom tier units are by far the strongest on the roster for a human player. How often have you played it? By the time you actually get the top tier units for your hero's spec there can be so many t1 and t2 units on the field it's pointless. You go super wide with city numbers in AoW3, so you're rarely ever going to have more than 3 cities getting top tier.

>>1901960
That's funny you say that because I see opposite complaints about AoW 3 actually, where the endgame is literally just tier 4 spam. That's compared to Planetfall where you almost never see them because they take an eternity to research and also cosmite upkeep.

>>1901960
>>1902007
I don't know, triumph (and many players) seem to have completely misjudged the 'problem' of aow3 high tier spam
why is using better units bad, especially in a game where verticality is important? you can't bring multiple stacks in when clearing a wonder so you want it to be as strong as possible, and even in a single battle you can only use a limited number of units effectively due to bottlenecks or other terrain features
it's natural that people want stronger individual units because force concentration is a thing
they autistically insist on having unit tiers, even in planetfall
and then 4 went completely sideways and forces you to go all or nothing on upgrading units of the same type for whatever reason
their design choices seem so arbitrary at times

>>1893167
IT WAS US OR THEM, AND IT WASN'T GONNA BE US

how do you deal with loyalty when you want to spam cities? is spamming cities not ideal or do you just ignore the loyalty penalty?

>>1902664
I don't know if you can spam cities. 3 seems to be the max if you don't want loyalty to spiral.

>>1902664
>>1902668

Let me teach you how to play the game anon:

Step 1: Settle in a good spot, preferably next to an outpost with a forest next to it(will explain after)
Step 2: Research labs
Step 3: build barracks, then when labs are done researching build them in the forest(like 2 of them)
Step 4: Once you're on tier 2, research xenobiology labs to gain even more science from labs in forests
Step 4:Rush engineer then construction yard in research
Step 5: That done, build an engineer and settle him in a good spot, usually I use the second city as my resource city.
(You can also go for specimen containment and decide to kill as many neutrals as possible to reach tier 3 faster)

Basically, you want to get your second city as soon as possible because the default building produces some of everything. To deal with the loyalty penalty you build more holo theaters. If you're going for 3 cities you make another engineer pretty much immediately after the one you rushed because it'll take a while for that city to really start paying for itself.

Each city is a cumulative -6 to loyalty, so the optimal amount for most leaders is 3. Untold Prophet, thanks to some of his techs, can go for 4 and even 5 and still have it be viable, generally though, for most you'll want to either go for 2 or 3 cities that will do everything. The game very much favours playing tall in general. The construction yard is also so you can build shit in a reasonable time frame inside your city instead of spending 6 turns per building.

>>1902672
On larger maps (medium+) I'd generally agree although multiple construction yards may not be necessary depending on how you plan on handling loyalty penalty since you'll quickly get bottle necked by population growth without trees. I guess you could spend your excess production on engineers for tuning/repair if you're playing mechanical.

How early do you guys settle?
I scout around for ~3 turns to try to find some chokes.

>>1904797
Why. Turn 1 of course.

>>1904797
>I scout around for ~3 turns to try to find some chokes.
A chokepoint to put your city on? So less potential tiles? Dunno about that senpai. I just dump it next to whatever natural resource outpost the game has given me.

>>1904797
turn 1 always

File: 1729198077588872.jpg (116 KB, 1076x1160)

116 KB JPG

Love playing this game but it feels so oppressively dark. The artstyle is amazing but it feels so heavy. Whenever I finish a session I feel like playing something like Worldbox or Slime Rancher afterward.

I also get jumpscared by the plague event every time.

>>1906713
I find it to be very uplifting, because I go independent and win.

File: image_2024-12-03_105253016.png (71 KB, 196x269)

71 KB PNG

>>1892152
The Acrin and the Anchorite. Fuck em. You get this quest? Open Fire.
The other factions will call you cruel - but between humanity and the Acrin? The Acrin spent three fucking millenia crossing the stars on a fucking accusation from "The Voice". That shit heated extra dimensional whisper that proclaimed that somehow Terra and it's children would be such an existential threat to their species they created an eldritch civil war on their own homeworld that drove themselves to the edge of extinction before they fled to the stars at degrees of .c until they got here and found their enemy didn't exist.
And what did they do? They damn near wiped us out, and in doing so opened up our pristine Earth to horrors beyond imagination. The Bleed. The physical manifestation of the voice, the void - raping our virgin planet.
Billions dead and our biosphere - one we were actually starting to repair from our own fucking hubris, tainted forever.

The Anchorite though? He proclaims he wants fucking peace. A pacifist alien leader that almost killed their own species, damned their homeworld and then damned ours too.

Fuck them. Kill Acrin whenever you find them. Burn the bleed wherever it sprouts. If you have to turn too and ally with the machine then so be it, at least Zephon and the AI's it bore originally came from the human mind.

"But machines should not speak with the voice of man" blah blah fucking blah. Come back to me when entire families have been devoured by Abkhan who should never have left their Dreys, or the bleed has rendered entire fields sterile. Worse still the perverse conglomerations of human flesh and worse that the voice has "touched". Everything that has come from the Acrin and the Anchorite is a perversion.

Rip the voice and it's cultists out at the root. Burn the bleed with nuclear or fusion fire. Stab, shoot and sunder Acrin wherever you find them. To much of our glory and soul has been lost to the alien already.

Humanity or Death.
Humanitas seu mors.

>>1902664
Gladius meta used to be going for 3 cities, but that's because building extra cities usually means having to wait more and more turns until your new city's production is getting to a satisfactory level. For the first 1-2 extra cities built your economy is getting boosted because of the raw resource production given by the headquarters, but afterwards the total amount of production lost due to the loyalty loss becomes greater than what the additional headquarters would provide, plus the increasing costs of making new cities. Only a few factions could afford going for more than 3 cities, it was one of the main Tyranid gimmicks, two factions had heroes that granted 6 loyalty to every city when sufficiently leveled.
ZEPHON is mostly the same, just go for 3 cities, personally I make the HQ the unit-producing city while the other 2 produce resources, but you might want to build unit-builders in the extra cities if you're getting pressured.

Why do cyber units feel like shit compared to human units except for the XCOM floaters? I just wanted to play cyberpunk hackerwoman but I'm not sure I can deal with this unit roster

>>1907150
they're fine. Tier 8 arty is chef's kiss

>>1907207
I haven't gotten that far yet, but the Ishim enforcers and the Chayot exterminators feel extremely weak compared to militants and the crusader tanks

>>1907242
I had the opposite experience, lmao
My units got melted until I managed to do a counter-push with the help of Chiefess

>>1907150
They don't feel like shit, they just have somewhat different utilities, like how Ishim Enforcers are tanky and have a strong self-heal to force someone to waste even more turns trying to kill them, or how Hashmallim Hosts are actually support units that passively increase the accuracy of nearby friendly units. Most of the actual high-damage units are in the higher research tiers.

File: 1731350621436696.jpg (178 KB, 1024x1024)

178 KB JPG

>>1906866
>I go independent and win.
Teach me your ways.

>>1907037
Yes I too hate the V*ice and the alien.

>>1907242
Chayots are the cutest things ever and I have fun with them. Seraphim also shit on Acrin titans to my profound satisfaction.
... ... ... Hello...?

>>1896233
Nice to hear, didn't even know about this game but the screenshots felt really familiar
been following ProxyGames since some of their first games, and they've always made decent strong balanced strategic titles
really underrated devs finally getting known

>>1896326
game was given for free at some point
i have it and for sure i didn't bought it

>>1907545
humble bundle?

>>1907635
nope, i think it was give away on steam

>>1907635
no there was free weekend or something if unlocked you got BASE game for free, no dlcs

My game crashes every time I try to kill an abkluth unit and it's seemingly due to it attempting to contact Steam and failing. Obviously the game cannot contact Steam because I pirated it but this might also happen when Steam is in offline mode.
>(0) SteamAPI_ISteamNetworkingUtils_SetGlobalCallback_MessagesSessionFailed
>(1) [0x00007FF669AF4EE5] public: void __cdecl proxy::distribution::steam::UserStats::setUserStat(class std::basic_string<char,struct std::char_traits<char>,class std::allocator<char> > const & __ptr64,int) __ptr64
>(2) [0x00007FF66953B338] public: virtual void __cdecl zephon::gui::UserStatsController::onMessage(class zephon::world::NotificationOccuredMessage<class zephon::world::UnitKilledNotification> const & __ptr64) __ptr64
The "send usage statistics" checkbox is toggled off too.

>Soulless UI
Pass

File: 1727293004618442.jpg (90 KB, 717x717)

90 KB JPG

>Play a Human units only run with Fallen Soldier
>Fucking hell this is so much fun, Vanquishers are good, Crusaders are good, Atlases are good
>Play a Cyber units only run with Emulated Mind
>Fucking hell this is so much fun, Chayots are good, Ophalim are good, Seraphim are good
>Play a Voice units only run with Furtive Tribunal
>Wow everything just kind of sucks except for Epicurans, even the ground titans and air titans feel underwhelming

Christ alive, who actually mains Voice? How do you possibly enjoy it?

>>1908143
This could be a problem with the crack itself too but if it crashes when Steam is in offline mode or there's no internet connection then that's bad
>>1908163
Dark Vassael can create a lair that can summon several deformities, it's deceptively powerful

>>1908166
Admittedly yes, but you can't move the lair and I only found them really useful for clutch defences or parking one outside an enemy city.
I prefer Cyber drone spam honestly.

>Killing units as Romantic crashes the game now
Welp, there goes my save

If I get the city bleed tech, do enemies still suffer the adverse effects of bleed in my cities?

>>1908213
They should.

>>1908143
Use 1.0.1
1.0.13 - 14 - 15 is bad.

Btw, wtf with this 15 min timer?

>>1908262
Apparently there is a fix for it and it was a crack-only issue, so my bad about that
The 15 minute timer is an anti-spam measure for IPs with no cookies that weren't seen before, the site now has that to prevent rapid spamming by ban-evading shitposters

>>1908163
iok swarms and hunters supported by disciples eat everything alive

>>1907105
What's the rough build order of early units to engineers to expansion? Also is a second crane or whatever it is worth it in a city? Everything seems slow as fuck to actually build.

>>1908614
You always gotta start off with a research lab since it's pretty much what you need to get more tech, ideally you'd rush until you get either construction yards or engineers. Two or three construction yards per city should be good.

Completed the tutorial, who should I play as next? Why do the aliens no longer follow the voice?

>>1910095
Rogue operative if you want to go cyber is a safe pick; her 'can move after attacking' ability is nuts and lets you correct all sorts of positioning mistakes you can make whilst learning units. Otherwise Aristocrat as he is just Human tech but is very flexible in playstyle and his ability to rush any construction and buy resources for cheap lets you quickly react to many problems the game throws at you. Also he's actually a cool dude.

The Acrin still sort of follow the Voice, just not the Prophecy they originally listened to - their culture and species is still heavily dependant on the Voice and its power to survive (especially now that they are stranded on Earth and nearly extinct). They are trying to stop using it now though, as their only remaining leader hated it from the start and kept telling everyone it was going to end in disaster (which you can find out if you get the Time Machine event, among other things) - especially when his people lost half their population just trying to decide if the Prophecy was true or false (it both was and wasn't, and now they are stuck in a time loop, because the Voice is itself incomplete). Basically, they are having a religious schism about it... again.

>>1910385
Y'know, maybe this voice thing wasn't such a good idea...
Still I gotta ask, what if I want to try out Voice affiliated faction? Like two of those, weird

>>1910863
The Furtive Tribunal is way easier than the Prophet, but their gimmick is nothing spectacular (although it does help a lot with early scouting, and if you upgrade it it helps defensively). Now, circumventing their effective ban on labs can be tricky at game start, so you should just research the 'get research from killing neutrals' and use their gimmick to find and kill everything you can until you have enough influence production to start buying-out tech on the regular. Prioritising researching the upgrades to their influence-to-research skill as soon as you can.

The Prophet gets to 'spam' cities (up to 5-6 depending on circumstance) but due to all population of his needing both influence and food as upkeep has to keep the cities small for most of the game, so it becomes a difficult balancing act.

We really need a third Voice faction.

In general, voice is harder to play that human or cyber, as all the good units are glass canons with low defences but decent HP and you need to spam unit/faction abilities to make them good (ALWAYS get the cult priests, the 50% damage buff and teleport they get are insane). Voice also gets no healing units with exception of their first hero, who has to hurt herself to heal others, so dipping into human tech to get medics if you can afford it is a good idea. Also, their transport unit, while mediocre, does give moral regen to all adjacent friendly units, which can be huge in nasty engagements.

It still feels weird that Voice didn't get a third. It's the weirdest race so they'd need something a little more out there.

File: 1701186316253781.gif (2.49 MB, 720x403)

2.49 MB GIF

>Click end turn
>New turn starts-
>LOUD HORRIBLE SCREECH
>Horrifying image of woman's face melting off appears

I really hate this if I can be real with you guys. Like seriously truly I hope the devs at least do something about that screech whenever the event drops.

>>1911182
They're confirmed for the first DLC IIRC.

>>1910904
It's not hard to keep your cities at 3 or above loyalty to cancel out the influence upkeep with their t1 research and at t6 you can go above and beyond with one more extra holo theater per city to completely reverse it and produce influence instead.

>>1892152
>beksinki inspiration
i will now buy your game

File: 1728635808839217.jpg (218 KB, 1000x1117)

218 KB JPG

>Reading the final Deep Statement

GOING INTO SPACE
MATHEMATICS
QUANTUM MECHANICS
THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE
IT'S ALL THERE
LIFE IS FIERY WITH ITS BEAUTY
ITS INCREDIBLE DETAIL
TUNING INTO IT
THEY WANNA SHUTTER YOUR MIND
TALKING ABOUT DIMENSION DREAMS
I'M NOT THE KING OF CONSPIRACY
I'M THE KING OF REALITY

>>1907150
Following up on this, after completing a game with Rogue Operative I can safely say that the Cyber unit roster is based, especially the Kriterion Annihilators(my beloved). Also I tried playing non-fallen soldier humans and realized how fucking squishy militants are compared to Ishim Enforcers and have gained a newfound respect for them

>>1912586
Non missile militias are just plain shit. No reason to make them the moment you can make missiles.

>>1912619
Really? Even with the grenades, more health, and 7 units?

>>1912635
Nades are shit. This isn't Gladius. Bigger squads is the only upgrade worth researching for unit that is not worth making to begin with.

Cyber>Human>Voice
This is a factual statement.

>>1916118
t. Zephon

>>1916147
Zephon is an ally to humanity.

>>1916661
>mechanical tendrils typed this post

I'm trying to play this on my pc, but my "vram" keeps running out.
I thought I'd be good since ck2 runs fine.
Shit game.

>>1916973
that game melts my gpu and doesnt really look that good, its marginal improvement over gladius (already unoptimized unity game) with billion of post processing effects and massive loss in clarity, i wouldnt even mind if you could just turn that crap off but it looks horrible then and doesnt really change anything in performance.

>here once more
>the troops, city gate, silence, cutting
>you live again, again, again
>unkillable you
>the inanity of this loop
>you giggle
>almost
>just another war to get through
>another life

>>1916973
>>1916980
The default FPS limit is uncapped, you gotta go into the settings to cap it

My games seem crazy face paced even on slow escalation.
Considering it comes down to zephon vs acrin forming factions is surprisingly hard.
Trying to tard wrangle the ai into not declaring war on every single other player or at least making peace before their relationship are in the gutter is way too hard.
I'm retarded but getting a good economy going seems pretty hard too. For every filled tile I need to build a holo/housing/power tile so getting actually productive buildings is super slow for such a fast paced game

>>1918525
It's rough and slow if you try to build economy in vacuum without any additional researches or terrain bonuses. Construction yards help with the speed. There's a lot more room to build other stuff when you build energy on energy tiles (or swamp/arctic with research). Housing can be eased with t6 research and/or using various production buildings that also give pop cap. Loyalty doesn't have to be minmaxed and some other buildings also help with it. With aforementioned,you can build probably double the amount of buildings per holo/housing/power required. Power deficiency can also be supplemented with features and/or concordat trade.
In the end the real cap to your growth will be population growth speed and for that there are three things you can do if you're not playing artificer. 1. Grab the t4 research, 2. build housing proactively so that you always have at least 5 free to maximize growth and get no penalties to growth.
3. be lucky and find flesh trees.

Can I be the horrors and devour humanity, or is this just a generic "humans fight the evil invaders" kinda game?

>>1918603
>Can I be the horrors and devour humanity
honestly the whole point is for humanity to become side casualty in an AI vs ayyy war
majority of the leaders have affinity with non-human tech
(there is still independent route for the endgame but the game actively punishes you going for it with no actual benefits, just extra challenge)

>>1918349
I'm amazed there are still people who don't know to immediately check for this, though at the same type it's a mistake to allow that to be an issue by default.

>>1918603
None of the leaders outright have that as their goal but voice tech is effectively using said horrors and hoping they can continue to control it.

>>1918617
>>1918622
Well that's disappointing, nonetheless appreciate the answers.

Can AI actually use transports or human orbital drops?

>>1918719
I remember them doing it in Gladius but not so sure here.

>>1918719
I don't think they can use either of them. Sure they can build transport units but not actually use them for transporting. Same goes for all other teleporting abilities as well.

The diplomacy feels too exploitable for both the player and the AI. The second I sign a cease-fire with an opponent they just walk their armies straight through my frontlines without a care. Since there exist no borders they can just walk up to your cities and forward settle wherever they please. Meaning you either let the AI walk all over you or flank their armies for an effortless backstab.

Is this rts?

>>1919141
no its 4x

File: ne comprando.jpg (76 KB, 623x485)

76 KB JPG

>spend 86 research to gain 1 research per turn
even if I went for some crazy build with 3 +influence buildings it would take 30 turns just to pay the investment back am I missing something?

>>1919494
No, it's pretty much garbage and the only reason to take it is if you have nothing else to take on t4 and just want to advance to t5.
Still not as bad as the upgrade for that research at t9.

File: valkyrie.webm (3.89 MB, 960x540)

3.89 MB WEBM

I love these little worm fellows. First you puke them for -2 armor against all following attacks. Then two blood-hurls makes them waver for 17% more damage taken and the cyborg guys finish them for massive damage.

I was surprised the AI didn't retreat it's hero on half HP, it's usually quite good at avoiding deaths.

If I enjoyed Gladius, will I also like this game? Or if I played Gladius, it makes no sense to buy Zephon? From gameplay videos, it appears to be pretty much carbon copy, unless Im missing something.

I love the voice lines for the human bomber.
The pilots seem genuinely scared of the amount of firepower they have

>>1919494
I think you do want a number of influence buildings for that character anyway to throw out the +research ability on cooldown, and extra influence can be traded (at a shit rate) for other resources. But even with multiple of them it feels like pretty mediocre returns for a tier 4 tech.

I keep getting access violation exceptions, is this normal?

>>1920238
it's been a while since humans had devastating air power, they were scavenging, scared rats until recently

the game really slows down a TON after an hour on a large map, even 30 minutes.

I think it's a memory leak, they need to fix that because large maps are unplayable.

Noob here.
Is there a weapon type in this game? I don't meant that as just visual.
Like bullet, blade weapons good against flesh unit but explosive good against armor but bad against flesh.

>>1921722
There is armour pen but not race specific damage/weakness
https://www.reddit.com/r/Zephon/comments/1h363jq/understanding_zephons_damage_calculation_system/
The in-game compendium is a pretty good resource

>>1921805
Thanks man.

File: Reaver Invasion turn123.jpg (2.14 MB, 1920x3236)

2.14 MB JPG

>Reavers attempting to raid The Tribunal in three turns
welcome, my sons, to the flesh machine

Story wise, I understand that Zephon is something of a skynet but what about the Acrin? They don't seem like the alien who open up portal on Earth and caused the apocalypse, more like they came after that.

>>1921971
>the keev
fitting

>>1922708
The Acrin worship the Voice and by following it's teachings were living a pretty great life on their homeworld, seeing the Voice as an embodiment of all life. Then the Voice gives them a new Prophecy commanding them to go to Earth and genocide everything there to stop 'a threat to all life'. As peaceful people, the Acrin are hesitant on stripmining their whole planet to build spaceships to carry their entire population across the galaxy to perform genocide - this leads to civil war and kills half their population or something. They form a new council to follow the Prophecy (one of whom still was against the whole plan, and tried to convince everyone else to stop listening to the Voice). They then go to Earth and kill 90% of humanity, assuming humans are the threat to all life. Turns out the threat was in fact Zephon... who only came to exist because the Acrin killed humanity and made it sperg out and fire every nuke and kill-satellite humanity had made, shooting down all the Acrin spaceships before they could finish killing Earth. Now only the 'pacifist' Acrin leader remains, yelling about how stupid the others all were and trying to get his remaining people to survive on Earth, in an even more dire state than they put humanity in. He is still seething about getting 'tricked' by the Voice, because time-loop fuckery is now occurring and he knows it.

tldr: Acrin did everything wrong and have only just realised that. They are very sorry (but might still do it again depending on who you side with at the end).

Being conscious of the loop happening must suck.

>>1922890
Can't wait for us to actually get Acrin as either a faction or a leader.

What is the Voices end goal?
Get humies, ayys and beep boops stuck in a timeloop war forever?

>>1918617
>(there is still independent route for the endgame but the game actively punishes you going for it with no actual benefits, just extra challenge)
Not exactly true, because the victory condition is different - and IMHO easier.
As an independent, you don't have to keep one of the titans alive, so you can truly focus on just surviving while they kill each other.
Joining a side is only good if the outcome is obvious.

>>1923268
I haven't reached all, or even most, of the endgame dialogues yet but from what I've read the Voice and its various gods are just Dreams of a cosmic horror that has no real way to communicate with the world. Essentially, it's just watching as visions, magic, and even monsters seep into our universe by its pure proximity without any real hostile intention.

File: 5375999.jpg (186 KB, 1080x1920)

186 KB JPG

>>1892152
>Humanitas seu mors
I may create a modded faction of human cyborgs that are mindfuckingly pro Zephon and genocide everything that is not humanity, something between Skynet Terminators and the Helghast on ketamine.

Black and red and wants everything dead.

>>1920124
I love and recommend both games.

Has anyone tried an entirely cross-affinity playthrough? As in, specifically avoid using your affinity in favor of another affinity?

I just noticed that picking up the T4 tech Balanced Progress gives a massive research discount - large enough that even with cross-affinity techs being bumped up a tier they're still significantly cheaper than their on-affinity counterparts.

E.g. the T6 infantry tech costs 143 research. Cross-affinity has that get bumped up to a T7 tech costing 176 research, but when you add the 33% discount from Balanced Progress the cost of that tech drops to 117 research - cheaper than researching infantry of your own affinity.

I'm wondering if there's a significant downside I'm missing to doing this, because it seems like you can save a lot of research doing this. I think I'll try it out next playthrough.

>>1920124
no and no

Downloading now
How is the pacing compared to Gladius?
I vaguely remember late-mid game getting slow and sloggy which generally happens with Civ like games.
The theme and posts kinda remind me of Civ Beyond Earth too, which I liked.

>>1927932
It feels a bit slow, but I think the devs had that complaint in mind, since there's a big "finale" event after so many turns where shit hits the fan to help end the game. At least, I think that's the intention.

File: lookatthetopofhishead.jpg (1.19 MB, 1440x2153)

1.19 MB JPG

Fallen Soldier on Ultra Hard difficulty, he's been boxed in by a reaver city all game on his peninsula begging for help

File: endgame.png (1012 KB, 1627x939)

1012 KB PNG

You guys weren't kidding, they definitely made late game fun.

>>1928365
>that chokepoint
>only has militants
holy kek
if only AI was capable to actually adapt and get vanquishers or something

>>1928365
Terrain generation always seems to love making thin strips of land and peninsulas cut off by water, then smacking down a faction in the corner. Never seems to go well for the AI.

>First game
>Fallen Soldier
>Beat back the endgame hordes
>Next 2 games as cybe and voice get completely wrecked by fishmans giant walking cunt faces
Are siege guns really the best counter for them?
I even had Cyber Titans getting one shotted by those fuckers.

>>1929648
If you're cyber I'd get some of those -accuracy ops to throw on them. -50% damage for 3 turns costs 10 chips and is very handy against high-threat targets throughout the game.

Voice can also get a -50% accuracy operation, but you need to get a unit into melee range and sacrifice it, plus it's more expensive to research. I don't know if it's worth it. On voice I used medic implants + the atramentous aura operation for 37% invuln damage reduction but you could also cross-research cyber just to grab their operations building.

Also note the biological titans don't have the AoE of the cyber titans and primarily do insane single-target damage. Titans are a bad matchup there. Some cheap junk to hold the line and tank hits will do a lot of work.

About bonus from building your base near the outpost, how does this thing work and what kind of bonus do I get? Do I have to build my base connect to the outpost or within 1 tile radius?

>>1929786
The "within city" bonus or whatever? I believe it's a percentile bonus to whatever resource the outpost gives as a flat number (+chips/+X% chips). Think you need to expand a hex directly on top of it, like you do for normal hexes. Won't have any building space, but will give a bonus. So at the start you need to settle next to it, but later expansion techs let you grab ones further out.

File: Fallen Soldier Ultra Hard.jpg (222 KB, 1626x1136)

222 KB JPG

>>1928365
>>1928474
>>1928484
in hindsight he still ended up as the most powerful AI player, even with missile troops unlocked at turn 124. His base is practically unbreachable in the early game, it's impossible for him to get sandwiched between factions like the witches got threesom'd this game. With +60 Loyalty outposts are irrelevant for resource-generation.

File: Acrin spaceship.jpg (800 KB, 1920x1080)

800 KB JPG

>>1929786
The outpost automatically gives a +20% resource bonus to the terrain surrounding it, in this case boosting the Arctic tiles from +20% Research to +40% Research. Connecting it to a city then gives an additional +20% Research bonus to the entire city.

I embarrassingly forgot to annex the outpost throughout this entire game, letting me reload a save and trying it out.

How am I supposed to survive the event when ai and ayyyy both send their über monsters?

>>1932264
Get 3 city economy up ASAP and then you'll have multitude of ways to handle them, mostly t6+ stuff but if you're playing human, massing missile teams and tanks can do the job. I once managed to wipe 3 Acrin Titan's out the turn they spawned by dropping a dozen nukes on them.