What's your take on these games?
>gladiuskinda garbo. cuts out everything from civ 5 except fighting, which it does not improve much upon and in fact makes worse by trivializing tech and resources and by giving every faction one top tier ground unit and one top tier air unit that make the rest obsolete. rush to endgame, blob, and click whatever two enemy factions are still around. it also has a very stupid but very powerful quest system which does not actually allow for normal interaction with it, since it just spawns big armies on top of you when you reach milestones -- you either disable or cheese it, nothing else can be done with it. the buffed up barbarian system also has zero scaling or meaningful interaction and does basically nothing but randomly cockblock you in the early game.i really wanted to find a reason to like it but there's just nothing there.
>>2426597You're exaggerating but honestly not by much. The skull dlc for one is definitely cancer.>make the rest obsoleteDepends on your faction and how many p2w dlc units it has available/enabled by you. If we're talking primaris jank then sure, you have no reason to build regular marines. But if we're talking say IG or tau their lower tier units are perfectly viable entire game. Couple of valks with missile squads will delete cities let alone any unit in one turn for example.
>>2426597>cuts out everything from civ 5 except fighting,For me it's a plus, there's a fuckload of other 4x that have a dozen systems you need to keep track of, which leads to more menu clicking than commanding armies. You still have to balance economy, research and upkeep, but armies in Gladius can grow to gargantuan waves of units fast. Though as a wargame it's okay but could be a lot better, hero implementation sucks.
>>2426597>which it does not improve muchwhat do u mean, its 100x better than civ5 "combat" lmao
>>2426607the disregard for terrain and the extra movement seemed to make mass air better than anything else by leagues. good stats, alpha strikes anything, can't be outmaneuvred, can exploit local superiority, can get multiple times more units into the battle etc. i played xenos with all dlcs (unpaid for). just stomped.
>>2426630>For me it's a plusSame. Has that FFH thing going for it with heroes too.>>2426644ymvv depending on difficulty and how much turtling you do. I mean if you're going to sit in a corner for 100 turns and build a doomstack then sure but if you poke them earlier you can have some pretty fun scraps. And when there's a fuckzillion + 1 orks coming your way you're rarely in position to spam end turn and tech up.
>>2426607How on earth do you make Tau work? It feels like all their units are absolute dogshit due to the Drone Tax. Seeing a Brass Scorpion nearly oneshot my Riptide was as shocking as it was infuriating when it first happened
>>2426738Same as guard I suppose. Either mechanized with Hammerhead heavy with support construction drones and infantry hitching a ride in devilfish or mostly infantry crawl supported by kroot and fireblade cadre. Focus on killing blow or patient hunter basically.Or just spam nova suits if you can afford it, that works too.
>>2426586It's enough fun in first half of game. Second half? Too boring, pretty sure winner can be calculated in excel table.
>>2426778The easiest way to end a drawn out game on a big map is usually to backdoor cities with a fast strike force good against buildings while bulk of the army is occupied.Considering any damage to a city causes % production malus, I feel like harassing cities should be higher priority than killing units. Though most of the game you just try to claim and defend good positions for yourself.
>>2426738Success in battle earns breeding rights.
>>2426597hard agree about the quest system but playing the version they were giving out for free, with no extra dlc units my army comps were pretty diverse. i also had fun with the barbarian system. yeah it does cockblock you but it's fun to have to be careful and know if you stretch yourself too thin the random creatures will punish you.>>2426778this was what ultimately killed the game for me and kept me from coming back. it's fun for a while before you learn the ropes but when you understand the game, every match feels the same. somehow the ai doesn't end up creating interesting scenarios in end game, like it does in civ. every game by the time i met another player it was either the only player left or the second to last one
>>2433669>played without dlcGrim.
>>2426586How do I make sisters of battle work?
>>2434828if I remember correctly their air, tanks and end game big robbuts were bretty good
>>2434828I haven't played vanilla since forever but their core loop is anchor around a hero or at least Imagifiers for damage reduction (with Hospitaller support) and then either use their obscene alpha strike jump infantry or Immolator/Rhino delivered Retributors or Celestians. Do not pick a fight at range and expect to win. Do not make your vehicles the main focus since no tech marine or equivalent, Hospitallers only heal biological units + short range = pain.So, blob infantry , use heroes and support to heal them and stack defensive boons and watch out for his vehicles which you ideally hunt with your flanking planes or HK missiles from your not-rhinos.
>>2426586>tfw prefer the setting of Gladius but everything else in Zephon is so vastly superior I can't enjoy Gladius anymore
>>2426586they're very kino ngl, ruined a lot of other 4X's for me with how slick they are in terms of gameplay and UI
>>2433620Shiet, I want a model like this
>>2426586>pandoraTheir first steps, sadly the balance is out of whack, ai is retarded in a boring way, wildlife is just civ barbarians on steroids and the rng is fucked>gladiusLicensed werherm bullshit, taught them how to monetize with dlcs and not much else>zephonPandora 2 the rebeninging, balance still out of whack and already applying what they learned from gladius with a 4th dlc on the way
>>2441369Unironically I'm other way around. Love the post apoc horror setting of zephon but gladius is so much more enjoyable to actually play.
>>2426586Pandora's AI is so hyper lethal I find it closer to fighting a human opponent than an AI, especially on the higher difficulties. At the high difficulty, the game is closer to a competitive match, diplomacy is more an afterthought as the AI certainly doesn't care about it if it thinks it can defeat you, which it usually can unless you are extremely optimal in your economy. Despite that, Zephon is the game I enjoy the most, even if the AI is not as lethal.
>>2426586As a 40kfag, it was not made by 40k fans, and any attention to the lore is barely even skin-deep. Turend me away from the game, I pirated it and felt scammed.
>>2426586I liked the combat, I liked the Barbarians breathing down your neck day one (I wish more games did it but without the ridiculous scaling that it tends to have in Civ).I have no idea why they made the other games though, Gladius is fine as a 40k slop but as a standalone thing it makes very little sense and just feels weird.
>>2442207any other game with scary ai? I heard about ai wars 2
>>2442899Zephon has a competent AI, so does Gladius, but its not as lethal as Pandora's from my experience, unless you pump the AI settings so they get more free food/resources.AI Wars and its sequel are built around an asymmetric AI so they are both a significant challenge. I'd suggest the 2nd game over the 1st.Remnants of the Precursors has a super competitive AI setting that plays hyper-optimally. There are several different versions of the AI, so you can have a setting where the AI is basically another human who wants to kill you, or it plays mostly optimally but still role plays as the species its playing as. Galactic Civilizations 2 was mentioned several times to have a good AI. I never played it so I can't attest.The guy who did the Pandora (and I think ROTP AI) also did work on a game called Astro Protocol, which I also believe has a strong AI, but I've not played it as well.
>competent AIStop bullshitting people faggot
>>2443018This. Let's not kid ourselves, when you give AI +25% attack/hp (level 6 units) and +100% research/resource gain/production speed (100 loyalty bonus) and maphack you'd expect them to always completely curbstomp a player through sheer force but turns out they're well retarded enough to still be able to lose. And not just to gimmick strategies like turtling until you can nuke their cities but simply against competent unit composition and basic tactics.
>>2443749That's just the thing, they're not asking for an AI that is strong due to better stats, all games have that, they're asking for an AI that plays something like a human opponent. I have no idea how many of his listed games are like that, but some games DO behave better than others.
>>2443749Sheer force works against them when 1upt is in play unless they stumble on a dlc unit deathball by accident and happen to shuffle them your way. I'd just like it if the AI was capable of using abilities or adapting what they build based on what they're seeing.
