Shadow Empire - planetary conquest from Advanced Tactics/Decisive Campaigns dev

It is pretty easy to achieve on siwa class planets

 

I remember some people mentioning Emperor of the Fading Suns in the comments of the earlier devblogs - Vic replied that if he made a sequel he would consider expanding the scope to involve more planets.

 

there is, if you choose the right planet types..the guys video shows how too I linked

 

You make it sound awfully, awfully tempting.

 

Super tempted, but I am deep into ATOM RPG and I have a daughter now, and she does have a lot of gameplay time, though mostly helping her grind XP.

 

The manual seems to be available for free
https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/PDF/SE/Shadow_Empire_manual_EBOOK.pdf

 

You guys are really daring putting this title in one line with Alpha Centauri and Emperor of the Fading Suns, just when its barely on exclusive release.

Manual looks gorgeous. Its one of the better looking piece of documents I ever look at (not really read yet).

its look like typical hex wargame, with overly complex excel layer above. not sure if this would be fun (Panzer General, Star General - those are fun games). I see tons use of militia :/ . Hope the access to unit would be fast (I want plasma tanks!).
its quite a big SIM-game with managing your commanders. Im not very fond to memorize which secretary like coffee and which prefer when its not raining.

any way 35 pounds? Its min 2 weeks of grocery (if I buy cookies lavishly) for me - i will wait like 10 years, to give it a shoot.

Interesting thing, this game is made by 1 person Victor Reijkersz (plus herd of vultures):

 

I've read the lore part of the Manual today and it sounds interesting although not ground breakingly innovative. I'm wondering if the whole Shadow part has any effect to the gameplay on certain planets.

 

In a comment he said his inspiration was Traveler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_(role-playing_game)

 

Yeah, this is a very time consuming kind of game. Frankly, I also shouldn't have considering the workload at my hands, but this is basically the kind of game I always wanted to exist. I seem to not be the only one, however, so I would think this game is bound to achieve success - If You join the hype train later, likely You will get a more polished product

Well, let us not forget what is realy the subject of comparison.
EOFTS was a glorious mess, with wonderful layers of complexity, many mechanics and boatloads of flavour, half of which outright did not work properly. It had potential to be the best Sci-Fi game ever, but was not.
Alpha Centauri surely is the classic, and has fantastic factions and interaction with the enviroment - for that alone a candidate for the best Sci-Fi 4x, but the base is the same CIV, with rather simplistic board-game derivative mechanics that we have seen everywhere and a rather non-exciting combat (but unit designer is cool)
Out of those two, I decided to compare SE to EOFTS - the comparison to Alpha Centauri is warranted to some extent, but I would refrain from doing so - not because SE lacks in any department, but it aims for something completely different.

So, for the sake of clarity and to make up for my stoking up the engines of the hype train, I will name some of the downsides
- SE has nothing special going for it graphic's wise - irrelevant for me, but I think could have been done better on a budget
- UI is very hard to understand and navigate - I watched some LP's and have countless of hours in other strategy games, but I was getting lost at times - maybe it is inherent to the game's complexity, maybe it is my own defficiency, or a fault of design
- Have not gotten to that point, but I can see how with time alll of the decisions and micro may bog You down
- It has wargame roots and uses fronts for AI calculations - means turn resolutions sometimes take a lot of time (and I have not gotten to late game yet)
- You have limited control over many things (which I consider good), but also over Your start. Technically You have 3 choices to make up Your political profile, but You can end up with people in the cabinet, or even whole political parties that absolutely hate everything to do with the political agenda that theoretically defines Your regime.

As a side note and answer to Your question Lagi - most start with militia as it is arguably most fun, but You can start with developed regime, up to 2 regular armies and higher tech levels (not to mention even in early game You can find equipment from before the collapse)

 

How is the AI handling all of it?
It is one of my main issues with complex games: They usually are too hard for the AI to grasp, and too long to play against other humans.

 

I guess no one has really played enough to see but DasTactic was saying that it's pretty hard and he had the game since the beta.

 

From what I have seen from following LP's and my game, the AI is on a decent wargame level.
It certainly understands the concept of cutting You off the supply lines, and cutting off Your expansion (and the fuckers do it constantly).
On a more complex level it is hard to tell, but as an example - my territory had a natural border formed by a mountain range with one, forrested pass. Just beyond that pass I had an oil rig, and just beyond was the border of a hostile minor regime. I had 3 militia squads holding the pass in a frontline, one entrenched in the hills where the rig is located. At some point the forces of the AI came, formed a front and attacked the rig from 2 sides, managing to push my militia off. It was the weakest spot in the line, as other squads held in the mountains. And AI seems to understand that as it is perfectly happy to just force me off my oil rig, sit in there entrenched and has absolutely no will to bash its head against my defences, lose readiness and potentially troops.

Let me say this, I think AI will have its issues and sometimes struggle with more complex situations. But it certainly is not one the braindead 4x level that plagues otherwise great games (endless legend for example).
If we are even able to have a discussion of how 'good' is it, that is a set of values above the usual pitiful 4x standards.
But, game's pricey, I don't want to misrepresent that - if I find anything, both positive or negative in my playtime - I will be sure to report back

 

Omg, my heart , i need both a pacemaker and new pants. Was about time we get something like that. Not only we get new d&d rpg , but now we are getting a smac too...
Hope it's really true

 

That studio made one wargame already, and they learned from experience. So AI would murder your supply line just fine.

At least from what I seen on videos.

 

They made 3 games, but it's a constant evolution of the same idea (hex wargame with strategic and grand strategy elements), seems that Shadow Empire is the next iteration.
There was a list somewhere in this thread of what game mechanics the AI is not using. I'll see if there's a list of those somewhere in the manual.

 

Yay or nay, and when will it be out on Steam?

I am mildly tempted. Looking at the manual now. I could just boot up Dominions 5 again though if I want to play strategy.

 

I decided to get this to support the developer and it seems very unique. Those faces are ugly but whatever I can live with it. I used the wargamer coupon for 20% off. Wargamer20 is the code if anybody is interested.

Anyway the Codex Confederacy has begun as a free market state:

 

Let's hope DasTactic autism kicks in and he makes some great graphical and UI mods like he did for Distant Worlds Universe

 

He already made a custom symbol for his flag so I wouldnt be surprised if he did more.

 

I eventually took the game, because supporting unique vision et all.
I don't know how it will hold up in the long run, but it is really cool so far:
I attacked a minor nation after some of their people asked me to come to their help, getting two free insurgent units in the process, but then, my army fought very far from its supply base, and I started losing soldiers en masse due to starvation and desertions, as the neighbouring alien bugs started to attack me from another side.

Given how asymetric the game is, and how harsh the environment is, the game can do without a very strong AI.
Exploration is also pretty cool: I discovered a shield unit, a nuke launcher, and enough energy rifles to equip 2 battalions.
You are also constantly starved for resources: I could not get my supply depot up in time because I don't have enough production capacity because I lack the workers to do so, but I'd lack the food and water to get more workers.

 

Is it true that this game is better than smac?

 

Only a few hours in but definitely seems to live up to the hype, having a really great time. I can also see how different planet types could lead to a dramatically different game.

Manual is required reading however. The UI is pretty good but there are a lot of mechanics under the hood here to wrap your head around.

 

It certainly feels deeper and the combat is more enjoyable since smac is a civ game after all. I don't think anything can rival the presentation of smac though although Shadow Empire is pretty neat with the random map generation and the general feel of the game. If someone mods in some better portraits and stuff it will work even better.

 

The portraits are directly exposed as graphic files, but eyes, noses, hair are separate from the face, which could make the uncanny valley effect difficult to avoid.

The game is very different from SMAC: you control less settlements, but there are more management and organisational decisions to make. Combat is also much better.
Also, SMAC was not a post apocalyptic game, so the feel is very different (SE early game is all about the difficulty of getting basic things up again after all). It was also easier to get a big picture of what you were doing and where you were headed in SMAC (partly because of how similar it was to Civ2), while SE is a bit more confusing.

But regardless, it would also be hard to compare Master of Orion 2 with SMAC, but that doesn't mean one of the two should be skipped.