Shadow Empire

[devoncop]

The problem with too much happyness is that your people will become hard to recruit into your army when the time comes you need to expand it rapidly.
The people have become complacent and self indulgent by that time. It'll cost you heaps of money to get an army going because people will not want to quit their great lives.
Its a cool aspect of the game, but a frustrating one for a warmonger lord! 😂

At that point you bump up recruits salary and sign up bonus and slightly cut workers pay.

Voila !

The pacifists suddenly see the attraction of a career in the military  :)

[JasonPratt]

Not really a gameplay gripe, but my eyes sort of crossed when I saw how the Corps and Armies were organized. Brigades are made up of battalions -- okay, fair enough. Corps are made up of......regiments??! What. the.... And Armies, of course, are made up of divisions.

At that point I had to just accept that the OOBs are given flavor descriptions that don't interact with each other. This organizational group is made up of small units. This one is made up of medium sized units. This one is made up of large units.

[ArizonaTank]

Not really a gameplay gripe, but my eyes sort of crossed when I saw how the Corps and Armies were organized. Brigades are made up of battalions -- okay, fair enough. Corps are made up of......regiments??! What. the.... And Armies, of course, are made up of divisions.

At that point I had to just accept that the OOBs are given flavor descriptions that don't interact with each other. This organizational group is made up of small units. This one is made up of medium sized units. This one is made up of large units.

It bugged me a bit as well...I actually went in and changed the names

[JasonPratt]

What's weird is that we all know the designer knows about proper nesting OOBs; and the game design is based on an engine which can use proper OOBs; and the gameplay would definitely benefit from generating proper OOBs.

So I'm left super-confused about how these Armies and Corps and Brigades are supposed to relate to each other. They're all under command of one Supreme HQ at a time, fine, but... sigh.

[-budd-]

Doesn't much bother me, I'm to busy dealing with sand worm like things and slavers ;D

[Yskonyn]

The OOB 'issue' made me scratch my head as well. Probably took away much more time than neccessary. Indeed strange its like this with the history of titles from Vic.
But if there are already a few of us mentioning it we might as well post it over at matrix. Perhaps we can get an answer on the why or get it on the 'to-do' list of Vic?

[Black Robin]

Doesn't much bother me too..!

[W8taminute]

Oh come on guys.  Everyone knows that a Corps is made out of regiments.  Just like a 16 ounce cup of coffee is made out of 50 gallons of liquid.  I mean really... ;D

Just wanted to comment about the game being harsh.  In some ways I kind of like it as it has forced me to come up with some adaptations to my original strategy.  But only because I had a semi decent military.  I was lucky but I can see how just starting a new game can quickly end with how harsh the ai can be sometimes. 

Knowing what I know now should better prepare me for the next game whether it is harsh or not. 

I will say this though, the harshness that Shadow Empires visits upon you is much easier to understand than the harshness that Advanced Tactics was.  At least for me anyway.  I seem to click better with Shadow Empire.

[Father Ted]

Just wanted to comment about the game being harsh.  In some ways I kind of like it as it has forced me to come up with some adaptations to my original strategy.  But only because I had a semi decent military.  I was lucky but I can see how just starting a new game can quickly end with how harsh the ai can be sometimes. 

It's a new genre - roguelike4x

[devoncop]

Oh come on guys.  Everyone knows that a Corps is made out of regiments.  Just like a 16 ounce cup of coffee is made out of 50 gallons of liquid.  I mean really... ;D

Just wanted to comment about the game being harsh.  In some ways I kind of like it as it has forced me to come up with some adaptations to my original strategy.  But only because I had a semi decent military.  I was lucky but I can see how just starting a new game can quickly end with how harsh the ai can be sometimes. 

Knowing what I know now should better prepare me for the next game whether it is harsh or not. 

I will say this though, the harshness that Shadow Empires visits upon you is much easier to understand than the harshness that Advanced Tactics was.  At least for me anyway.  I seem to click better with Shadow Empire.

Agree with this 100%.

I never could "get" ATG...not only was its UI very unfriendly but it seemed sterile in some way.

The personality just oozes out of every pore with Shadow Empire and the mechanics are complex but very very logical.

Many players have noted how they have solved an apparent conundrum by suddenlt working out why why out of the game a factory wansn't working to capacity for example and finding out when back in game that checking the inputs into the factory that one or another was deficient. It rewards logical thought.

No higher praise in my book.

[ArizonaTank]

....

I never could "get" ATG...not only was its UI very unfriendly but it seemed sterile in some way.

,,,,

+1

I really wanted to love ATG...but UI was just so cumbersome. And yes, it was sterile.

SE has a much better UI...but it is not perfect either. SE UI not always intuitive and takes some getting used to.

SE is definitely a more "personal" game than ATG. SE does pull you in.

One aspect of SE I like is that you only have indirect control of many aspects of the game. You really depend on an AI run private sector businesses to supplement your efforts. So making your little nation safe for business is a key to success.  You don't control them directly, so you can only set the table and wait for them to come to dinner. This reminds me of one of my favorite games: Distant Worlds Universe.

[bobarossa]

I loved ATG and see at lot of it Shadow Empire.  You guys who say it was sterile never played the mods.

I played one game of SE on Beginners to see how the game worked and then restarted with a harsher world and normal difficulty.  Started with 3 large enemy armies within 3 hexes of my city.  Happiness dropping fast due to danger.  Fallen to last place on % of planet I've explored (and thus the hidden bounties for exploring).  Finally beaten two of the armies and can now start exploring.

[al_infierno]

ATG is one of my all-time favorite games but I just don't see myself returning to it because of the heaps of QOL changes in SE.  It was a bit of a clickfest, but the basic counter shuffling wasn't too bad once you got a feel for the rhythm of it.  However, it was never fun for me painstakingly assigning replacement soldiers and individual vehicles to dozens of divisions while simultaneously marching Engineer companies around the map to build improvements -- all the while juggling manual research decisions and analyzing just how much supply you need to produce this turn without getting too big a surplus that it's wasteful of your IPs.

Blegh.  The fact that SE more-or-less automates all this has me never looking back.

[bobarossa]

The later versions of ATG had automated refilling of units. 

[al_infierno]

Really?  I recall always having to manually send dudes on trains from my HQ to the frontlines.  Hmmm.  I guess I never quite figured that mechanic out.