Star Ruler 2

[Anguille]

Pfft.  Read the rest of the review.  Diplomacy is a hell of a lot deeper than, say, the card-based combat you get in Endless Space - and what's more, it makes more sense.  How many 4X games have you played in which diplomacy consists of "propose treaty X with player Y and sweeten the deal with just enough gold to get the slider to reach the tipping point"?  Oh, and how many of them have AI players which then go on to renege on the treaty five minutes later anyway?  Diplomacy is, historically, spectacularly weak in player vs AI 4x.

Here is the wiki article.

I've always been happy with diplomacy in Master of Orion. What you say about Star Ruler 2 sounds good....now, if only i had the time to play the first one who's been on my computer for years ::)

[Anguille]

Ok...it's been released on GOG...one more reason for me to get it.... O0

[Martok]

Ok...it's been released on GOG...one more reason for me to get it.... O0

If you do, please let me know your thoughts.  I've managed to resist picking this one up so far, but I know your taste in 4x games run very similar to mine, so if you like it, odds are good I will too.  (And the fact it's available on GOG made my resistance go down just a little bit further...)   

[Anguille]

Ok...it's been released on GOG...one more reason for me to get it.... O0

If you do, please let me know your thoughts.  I've managed to resist picking this one up so far, but I know your taste in 4x games run very similar to mine, so if you like it, odds are good I will too.  (And the fact it's available on GOG made my resistance go down just a little bit further...) 

I will. Truth is i still have to learn Star Rulers 1....i found the learning curve fairly high and didn't found the time to get into it yet.

[Huw the Poo]

Thanks Huw, maybe my expectations were off playing Star Ruler. I am used to other games like Distant Worlds where territory is established when colonizing a single planet in a system. I enjoyed Star Ruler otherwise and am interested in this one.

I can add a bit more now, after another evening's play.  When you colonise a single planet in a system, your territorial boundary automatically envelops that system and it's "yours" for the purpose of resupply etc.  However other empires can do the same thing...they will own the system too.  So if you want to completely lock an empire out of a system you will have to colonise every world...but as I said earlier, you'll want to do that anyway in order to exploit those precious resources.

It's the best of both worlds as far as I'm concerned, but I thought I'd tell you just to inform your buying decision a bit more.

Edited to add:  The diplomacy system is crazy (in a good way).  Propositions are made all the time, and they're usually accompanied by a flurry of voting.  You spend accrued influence points to play cards and influence the outcome.  Influence is generated by your empire, but certain resources, buildings and events can increase the generation rate.  Oh, and here's another thing.  How do you get those cards in the first place?  By spending influence!  There's a relatively fast-moving "market" of influence cards, with cards getting cheaper to buy the longer they're available.  Do you spend 10 influence on a must-have card but leave yourself without enough to play it until you've generated more, or do you wait for the price to come down and hope you can nab it before someone else does or it disappears from the market?

And here's another thing!  Want to sway a vote but don't have the influence or cards?  Simply offer something in return for someone else to use their influence!  For example, say you need three more "yes" votes to see a proposition you like pass, but you can't vote.  But you have money, or research points, or fleets or even worlds you aren't using...you can offer them up in exchange for x number of votes. :)

It really is quite something.  I'm normally one to kick arse first and ask questions later in 4X games, but I'm getting quite hooked by the diplomacy of Star Ruler 2. :)

[Huw the Poo]

I haven't been able to play this much so far but I did manage another hour last night - and it certainly helps being able to chat with the developers and other players in real time in-game!  Some more observations, then.

Money.  This is generated by your worlds, as you'd expect, and higher population means more cash.  In Star Ruler 2 money is available in the form of a budget which refreshes every three minutes.  So as a cycle begins you might find you have, say, a million quid to spend on things such as ships, buildings etc.  Now here's where it gets different.  Any money left unspent at the end of a cycle goes into one of several pools - research generation, influence generation etc.  Basically, the less you spend, the more goes into this resource production.  It's something you have to get used to, but once you do, it's pretty simple and quite fun too.  The budget panel also shows you how much money you'll have at the beginning of the next cycle, depending on current forecasts.  You can even borrow money from the next cycle, although if you put yourself in the red it will affect population growth.

Ships.  I haven't even touched the designer yet, but here's what I know about ships in general.  When you order the construction of a ship, you generally order a flagship.  When it's built you then assign its support ships.  Think the core/escort/screen mechanic we see in naval warfare games.  When you fill the support slots, the flagship will then build its fleet as long as it's in the vicinity of a planet with available labour to build the ships.  You can also set fleets to auto-build as necessary (to refill slots after battles) or even auto-refill from planets that have their own support ships.  Building a flagship is not undertaken lightly, at least in early game.  A flagship costs a lot of money, takes a not insignificant time to build, and has hefty ongoing support costs.  However they add the most firepower to any fleet and are usually the last ship to go down fighting too.

Research.  I haven't looked at this much yet because research is expensive early game (or, more likely, I'm just not managing my empire efficiently yet). What I can say is that the tree is fairly large and has all sorts of tech.  As far as I know, any tech can be unlocked by investing accumulated research points into it, but all or nearly all of them have alternative unlocks such as cash payment.

I will add more as time goes on, and I'm very much still in the early stages of learning the game.  There's an in-game wiki available along with the aforementioned IRC chat, and also an excellent tool to allow you to import ship designs from other players without having to leave your game, which is excellent for people like me who want to skip designing stuff and get on with playing.

My opinion remains that Star Ruler 2 is very good.  The only thing I can think of that is potentially off-putting to some people so far is the early land-grab.  It's irritating to scout a good planet, only to return later to colonise it and discovering someone else has claimed it (although I've been playing in pretty cramped games thus far, something I could easily change).  There are the usual conquest options to claim the planets you want, and there's even an "annex planet" diplomacy action which I understand does not lead to war if successfully played.

Edit: I'm going to start a game with only one opponent and a large galaxy in the hope of having a lot of time and room to learn how to manage my empire.

Oh and one last thing about colonisation.  I was correct, before, to say that I might have been missing something.  Colonisation costs both money and population.  You can select which planet leads a colonisation effort or let the game decide for you, but whatever you choose, it costs money as well.  Not a great deal, but enough to put you in the red if your finances are dire.  Colonisation tends to take around three minutes, depending on how far you are from the target, and shows as its own expense in the budget panel until it's complete.

[Huw the Poo]

Managed another couple of hours this morning, starting, as I'd planned, a new game with two other empires and 100 systems to give plenty of leg room.  I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.  So without further ado...

Research.  I haven't looked at this much yet because research is expensive early game (or, more likely, I'm just not managing my empire efficiently yet).

Yep, I wasn't managing my empire efficiently.  This time I kept a close eye on my budget at all times, never putting myself in the red, and spacing my construction projects far enough apart that I always had money going into research generation.  As a result I've been researching plenty.  Techs seem to fall into three broad categories: immediate bonuses, ongoing bonuses, and "other".  Using economics as an example, I could unlock a tech that gives an immediate 500K cash boost or one that gives a permanent 150K income.  "Other" techs are those more commonly seen in other games, like +10% weapons effectiveness, stuff like that.

Something I haven't mentioned yet is artifacts.  In this latest game I built a couple of scouts and set them to auto-explore.  On their journeys they found a lot of "Remnant artifacts".  I gather the Remnant are some long-dead alien master race who left behind autonomous defenses, same old bollocks you get in every space 4X.  Anyway, the Remnant fleets are always guarding artifacts.  When you blow up the silly fleet you can investigate the artifact.  These things do all sorts of things, like enabling you to spy on distant systems or opening rifts to other parts of the galaxy.

Along with Remnant artifacts you'll find other miscellaneous stuff throughout the galaxy.  One of the more interesting is a proto-world which can be kickstarted into a fully-formed world.  All of these things cost energy, which is one of those resource pools you can allocate budget to.

Oh yeah, more points about economy.  While it's true that you can focus unspent money toward one of the major resources, they can also be improved independently, albeit at a reduced rate if not the object of focus.  Your worlds will autonomously construct buildings, initially cities to accommodate people, but eventually things like generators which will add to your energy production.  Thus, over time, you'll start generating these resources even if you aren't focusing them.  You can indirectly influence what kind of buildings are produced by employing "pressures".  I haven't quite figured out how these work yet, but I understand that one way of generating a pressure is to import something.  If you import plastics for example, a tier 1 resource (meaning you need a planet that produces them levelled to level 1 or higher), you will generate a Labour pressure, making the world favour buildings such as factories (produce labour) and warehouses (store unused labour).

Additionally, you can directly order the construction of specialised buildings (and other things) on your worlds.  Such construction requires the aforementioned labour resource.  An example of this would be a hydroponics thing which confers a natural (but unexportable) food resource.  You see, in order for a planet to level up it needs various resources depending on its level, as explained on this wiki page (this is the same wiki you can access in-game).  So all planets begin at level 0, at which point they can export their starting natural resource, be it food, water or something else.  To get to level 1 the planet will need a water resource and a food resource.  Level 2 requires additional food and water along with a tier 1 resource, which will mean importing such a resource from a developed world.

There's a hell of a lot to this game and I could write pages and pages.  That wiki is under development currently but will give a fairly decent overview.  Later posts from me will concentrate on what it's like to actually play rather than going over the mechanics.  Feel free to ask questions!

[undercovergeek]

aar? with like explanations of why what and where

ah go on, go on, go on, go on

[Huw the Poo]

aar? with like explanations of why what and where

ah go on, go on, go on, go on

OK Mrs Doyle!  Not a full-fledged AAR, but later I will post what happened in the first couple of hours of my latest game. :)

[undercovergeek]

wooo hooo - im wavering

[Huw the Poo]

OK so here's how my latest game has played out so far.

You always begin with a level 1 world so you can colonise straight away (level 1 worlds have a base population cap of 3bn and it costs 1bn to colonise).  I immediately set my budget focus to research and built a couple of scouts and set them to auto-explore.  There were two unclaimed worlds in my system with a food and water resource between them.  I could have immediately colonised them and queued their resources for my homeworld; however my homeworld also needed a tier 1 resource to get to level 2, so instead I found a world which has such a resource and queued the food/water for it instead.  Before long it was colonised, at level 1, and exporting its tier 1 resource to my homeworld.  It was then a simple matter of finding two more worlds with a food and water between them, and my homeworld was level 2 and starting to make me good money.

The game makes it pretty easy to accomplish these kinds of goals by the way.  When you right-click a planet to colonise it you can also select "auto import to level 1".  As soon as it's colonised, any surplus resources you have are immediately exported there.  The interface even has a section showing where your surplus resources are, and whether any of your worlds have any queued up to be imported.

Then I turned my attention to the research screen as I was slowly accumulating those lovely research points.  I picked a tech that granted an ongoing cash boost - invaluable in the early game.  60s later it was done and the money was rolling in.  I built my first orbital station - a commerce centre.  I was hoping it would boost trade or something, but in fact it does something different.  It operates like a kind of black market.  I can use it to buy influence, labour, or a couple of other resources instantly, with a cooldown of three minutes.  You can also use them to import/export goods between systems that aren't in the same contiguous territory.

This actually came in handy straight away, because meanwhile my scouts had found a proto-planet.  It cost 500 energy to "activate" but I wasn't producing any energy at this early stage, so I used my orbital to buy what I needed.  Presto - the proto-planet became a colonisable world complete with native resource.

At this point I was caught with my trousers down.  I'd been using my flagship, a heavy carrier, and its fleet of support ships to supplement the scouting using its FTL engines, and a Dread Pirate chose that moment to invade my home system.  The pirate concentrates on civilian vessels so it started plugging away at all my little merchant ships.  Oh, and it also blockaded my homeworld, affecting production.  In an earlier game I encountered this guy and he was really powerful, but luckily he wasn't in this one.  I swiftly ordered my fleet back home and they made quick work of the rotter.

I decided I wasn't going to be caught out like that again, so I built my next orbital - a defense station. Your planets can have their own support fleets but I don't know how powerful they are so I thought a nice big gun in space would surely help.

I'd discovered the other two empires by now so the diplomatic games began.  I've found that sometimes diplomatic actions just happen spontaneously ("event x was started by 'the galaxy'").  These are slightly different in that a yes or a no vote results in two different effects, usually with the largest contributor to the winning outcome reaping the benefit.  But of course the other empires were playing their own cards as well, trying to get various bonuses for themselves.  At one point one of them proposed "investigating" the other.  The vote passed and we had full sight of his empire for ten minutes. :)

And that's more or less where things have been left for now.  I'll update later when I play more.

[Huw the Poo]

By the way, for this latest test game I'd set the AI to passive, meaning they'd never declare war on me, to allow me to get to grips with the game.  I've just quit after colonising as much of the map as I could without expanding into the AIs' territories.  In that time I managed to get two worlds to level 4 with the attendant enormous network of level 0, 1, 2, and 3 worlds in support.  I'd also researched maybe a quarter of the tech tree.  I think I've got at least a solid understanding of the basic mechanics now.

However one thing I still haven't really looked at is ship design, something I always loathe in these games.  Fortunately being able to import player-made designs makes things easy (not that I've done it myself).  Also you can do all the usual copying and upgrading of existing designs.  I did experiment in one way - I copied a battlecruiser design and played with the size setting.  The stats (hull strength, DPS etc) all increased with size even though I didn't touch a single component.  I believe that there are three basic elements to ship design: placement of core modules, zoning, and placement of additional items.  I think that you place a core module - let's use a FTL drive as an example - to enable that functionality on the ship.  Then you draw out a zone (this is all done in hexes) to determine the relative power of that module - in this example, how fast the ship travels at FTL speeds.  Last, you place additional modules to suit your needs, like extra armour plating and so on.

Anyway.  Gameplay is always going to consist of probably at least 50% building your empire through colonisation and expansion.  Scout the surrounding systems...locate the resources you need...colonise the planets...import those goods...place specialised buildings on planets to boost things like production (with limited landmass available on each planet, these choices are meaningful)...build orbital stations of different types to confer defensive advantages, build mining outposts etc...plan system defense (which you can do in some detail as there is a wealth of options available for this, from designing the composition of support fleets through to placement of orbital cannons and land-based defense networks).

A good 10-15% of the game will be spent on the diplomacy panel, either responding to various propositions and treaties or starting your own.  And the rest of the game will be spent waging war with your neighbours.  You can set the size and shape of the galaxy you play in as well as decide against whom you will be playing and various other options.  I'm not sure whether there are any victory conditions other than conquest, but you can form alliances so I assume team victories will count.

The one aspect of the game I haven't seen at all yet is megaconstructions.  I gather that ringworlds are serious resource-producers, and titans are presumably ungodly beasts; the megaconstruction options are all at the edges of the tech tree.  I'm looking forward to seeing them in action!

There are still some gameplay elements I haven't mentioned either, like FTL energy which must be generated and stored, which has an impact on reckless fleet movements (sub-light travel between systems is perfectly viable, it's just slower).  There's moon colonisation, terraforming, mining, and undoubtedly other things I've forgotten about.  If you've looked at screenshots, that UI is deceptively simple.  Some effort has gone into making it unobtrusive where possible, and it belies the depth of the game.  There's a lot to learn.

I've written a lot about Star Ruler 2 (and I hope I've informed some buying decisions), and played more of it in a couple of days than I expected to.  That's because I think it's rather good.  Certainly easier to get into than its predecessor but retaining the same spirit.  I think a lot of love has gone into its development.  Also I think it speaks volumes that the Steam forum for the game, instead of the usual endless whining about how x is broken and "clearly this game was released too early", is instead filled with people discussing its various mechanics, asking for help with problematic situations in their games, and sharing tips.  The small amount of criticism is nit-picking, for example "if one of my worlds is about to be annexed I'd like a warning" (people then go on to explain the various different ways the original poster should have known it was happening).

Literally my only complaints are that the tech tree is slightly underwhelming (although large) and the documentation is a bit lacking.  I really like Star Ruler 2 and I think it'll be my go-to space 4X for quite a while. O0

[Dread Rlyeh]

Another game I've had since early access but was waiting to play.  It has some very interesting ideas (detailed in previous posts) and I like the balance between automation (auto built support ships, pressure producing structures on planets) and micro.  The Flagship/support ship distinction and implementation helps to provide an epic feel.  I'm looking forward to the massive battles involving hundreds of ships vs most 4x early game sparring involving like 5.  I love what they have done with ship and planet naming, ie, it is an event using cards that provide bonuses. 

Lots of potential in this one, the pieces are there I think.  The question will be how this all plays out with the AI, progression of technology, etc.  It is possible you might have a little too much too soon wrt the ship chassis.  Right off the bat you can build a Battleship if you so desire, though that is going to impede your economic expansion.   In the majority of games you have to unlock new technologies and generally will progress through being able to build larger and larger ships.  Here, is it only the titan you are initially denied? 

All in all, at this stage, I have to say I'm more excited about this game than any 4x in recent memory.  I do wish they had some veterancy/officer system though.  That idea has been around forever and with good reason:  even if the actual effect on gameplay, strategy, and depth is minimal, I find it increases immersion and helps keep a player interested in their troops.  The naming/quality system does fill this void to an extent.       

[Huw the Poo]

Another game I've had since early access but was waiting to play.

No need to wait any longer. ;)

[Dread Rlyeh]

Another game I've had since early access but was waiting to play.

No need to wait any longer. ;)

Yeah, I've been digging in a bit and am liking the feel of the game so far.  Thanks for the detailed posts, they helped bring this back to my attention.