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

[AgentFransis]

Been playing this like mad, this shit is too addictive (though as usual I probably played too much and need to take a break). First game was a clusterfuck as can be expected and was abandoned shortly. Second game I just won on regular. Was fairly easy but I think I got lucky with my starting position/planet.

Light tanks ended up doing 90% of the work, they are crazy good (it was a mostly arid plains world). I gave a good commander a tank brigade and blietzkrieg stance and ran over everything. Even in the late game when they had polymer armor tanks I couldn't kill you can still just encircle them with fast tanks and make them surrender. Bikes were also very nice in the early game.

What bothered me was that the AI seemed way too passive and hardly ever counterattacked. Just kind of sat there or tried to retreat. But then he tried attacking one of my battalions of somewhat outdated light tanks with something like two brigades worth of tanks and infantry and got completely mauled. I think I just got my combat modifiers so high that he knew it was hopeless (plus a lot of that force was probably at low readiness and morale).

Also tinkered with aircraft a lot but couldn't make anything that seemed useful until I got thopters, jet engines and a bunch of applied science research. Then I fielded some decently effective anti-armor medium thopter bombers. But even then they still couldn't kill polymer tanks so they were pretty superfluous (maybe with missiles they could but didn't research them).

 

[Beowulf]

Light tanks are useful even into the late game, if you can give them 100mm polymer armour and light laser guns. Unless you are sitting on a bunch of resources and can field heavier tanks without your energy and oil production collapsing.
From what I see the highest anti hard weapons for planes are rockets, that heave around 700 heavy attack on my unoptimized thopters, I'll see how far I can get, but yeah, that's not that much - my light tanks got >1000 hp by that point.

For real tank killers you should invest in walkers, they have +50% attack for tanks. And can also use laser guns and polymer armour.
Planes range depends on atm pressure/gravity ratio.

 

[AgentFransis]

I actually got to 1575 hard attack on medium thopters with 500kg (x10) precision bombs but against 1600~ hp vehicles running around I never saw them score an actual kill. Rockets are more efficient per weight but precision bombs do a lot more damage overall, if you can lift them.

I get the basic idea about aircraft design but in practice you need to click through the design menus dozens of times until the computer stops saying no. He should really rework that process into a single screen with some sliders and instant feedback.

 

[Beowulf]

I actually got to 1575 hard attack on medium thopters with 500kg (x10) precision bombs but against 1600~ hp vehicles running around I never saw them score an actual kill. Rockets are more efficient per weight but precision bombs do a lot more damage overall, if you can lift them.

I get the basic idea about aircraft design but in practice you need to click through the design menus dozens of times until the computer stops saying no. He should really rework that process into a single screen with some sliders and instant feedback.

One screen with drop-down list for each component.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

and sliders for planet creation.

 

[oscar]

I haven't played in a while but good commanders seemed to eventually matter more than tech or terrain. Crap commanders will get their ass kicked even with numbers and better equipment on their side so it's worth grooming promising talents for it.

 

[luj1]

I have to try this, looks delicious

 

[Somar]

Does anyone knows how do we merge units into a mult-unit formation? Whenever I use "raise form" to create a mult-unit formation it comes out of the city where it is created separated into singular units.

 

[AgentFransis]

You can't merge units except by creating battlegroups using the Transfer/BG button (meant for GR units and has penalties for normals). You either raise an independent formation which will be battalion/brigade/division size all in one unit or you can raise a formation with an OHQ which will have 5 battalions/brigades/division units under it. It's always better to use an OHQ if possible since commander and stratagem bonuses can be very strong and multiple small units give much better flexibility than one thick unit (that's why I always use OHQ brigades as the bulk of my forces).

 

[dehimos]

A guy has created a mod using Emperor of the Fading Suns: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4931935

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Just won the first game that I started on release and finished after 52 hours. Some pretty ebin shit, the game ended with a huge 1 vs 1 planet-wide fight against the last remaining major regime which had slightly lower tech level than me (started the game with the lowest tech level possible and finished at about 6.7), but had significantly larger army than me when the war started. In the end I steam rolled with better tanks, but hillariously enough, I successfully spamed the "Start rebellion" cards and managed to kick off huge uprising behind enemy lines, the rebels in the end became a new minor regime after taking two zones from the enemy. The rebels became a problem for me too, since some of them moved to my territory and messed with my supply lines, so I had to chase them around with some second rate units - felt kinda like US arming muslims against USSR and then being surprised they dont like me either lol.

Some thoughts:
- AI is OK, but sometimes does pretty stupid things (for example in the game the enemy moved most of his army to attack my distant border - we owned the planet between us at that point so we had two borders with each other - while leaving his capital city fairly open to my attack
- AI also seemed fairly bad at dealing with unexpected threats such as the rebelion (enemy fought rebels before I went to war, but when the war started he focussed pretty much solely on my units and allowed the rebels to fuck his supply lines and even take over whole zones in the end)
- AI didnt seem to good at designing tanks (they focussed on making tanks with howitzers only, which were were good against infantry, but my own tanks with 105 mm high speed guns were rofl stomping them)
- I found the rocket artilery and especially long range missile launchers (the SCUD-like ones) to be amazing, they significantly outrange standard arty, demolish cities with ease and even 2-3 independent batalions of them can severely fuck up enemy unit concentrations (both inf and armor)
- Logistics is a massive pain in the ass, but at least it works equally for everyone, once the enemy supply lines got blocked and his capital city got wrecked it was pretty awesome to watch his massive army collapse throughout the planet, my own armored units were just barely operational throughout the war too, often with 10-20% supply levels - shit was tough
- Towed AT cannons are pretty great and cheap weapons that should not be underestimated

I played on a frozen planet with no indigenous life (everyone had to wear an enviro suit to survive outside), so I guess I will try some jungle fighting next. Anyway, great game - possible the best planet based 4x out there at the moment. I hope the dev will make a full space empire game in vein of Emperor of Fading Suns one day, it would be fucking amazing at this level of complexity. A W40K mod for this would be sweet too (though the game pretty much is W40K in the Age of Strife/Unification Wars/early Great Crusade as it has tech priests and stuff like that).

 

[Alienman]

https://www.gamebillet.com/shadow-empire

30% off here, and you get a Steam key.

Thinking of getting it myself, been going through some videos and reading stuff here. Just wondering two things. Is total conquest the only way to win? And how is the roleplaying aspect of the game?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

yes.
none. some larping maybe, but pretty fast you'll be making choices for the sake of numbers and numbers alone.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Theoretically you could make an aliance with another major regime (there is a card called Victory Pact for that) and share the planet with them. You can also use diplomacy to eventually annex minor regimes, so you could win by making friends as well.

In practice however, while setting up friendly relations with other regimes is fairly easy, you need to go through a lot of steps for aliance/annexation (opening relations, exchanging embassies, various trade and scientific cooperation deals, non-aggression pacts and security deals) and even friendly regimes can refuse your proposals for upgrading your relations (this probably depends on the profile of the ruling faction in comparison to your political profile, you can manipulate faction politics of other regimes, but again that is complicated, time consuming and might not work out the way you want).

Once you survive the highly dangerous initial phase of the game when even minor regimes can fuck you up, using brute force seems to be the most efficient way of dealing with others. This is where the roleplaying can come in I guess, you can try being a benevolent peace maker, though that would certainly make for a complicated playthrough. Diplomacy and intelligence are fairly complex as it is, but the true focus of the game are economy, logistics and combat.

The internal politics of your regime offers some RP options too (you can go full on democracy with universal right to vote or full authoritarian), but I generally tried to make decisions that would not end up pissing off the important members of my cabinet (people can resign or even start an uprising if you go against their beliefs too much) or ruin my budget (ie. I was OK with raising wages in response to strikes if I had cash to blow, but would send in the troops to bash some heads if I needed money for something else).

The personalities and interests of your cabinet members can end up being pretty cool and memorable - like I had this genius (capability V) blond girl heading my Military Science Council, who would constantly push for democracy and eventually ended up proposing a full political system reform and on the other hand there was my secretary who kept getting pissed off every time I did something non-authoritarian. It took some balancing (and financial "gifts") to keep them both on board the whole game.

One more thing that I would like to see flashed out a bit is the actual victory screen. You are basically told that you won and that´s it, it would be great to get some statistics or even some Fallout style slides at the end.

 

[razvedchiki]

everytime i read about jaegers i wanna grab my moisin.

 

[AgentFransis]

Been reading some detailed combat reports. A few points worth noting:

1) APCs (and maybe other heavy units, need to check) can actually cover your infantry and take hits for them.

When an infantry subunit (can be from a different unit) is targeted for the first time in a round there's a 50% chance that an APC will take the attack instead of it. Mechanized infantry is a lovely thing, as you may already know.

2) Whenever a subunit is attacked it counterattacks. This is limited by some unclear rules. I've seen an infantry subunit counterattack twice a round and another only once. A counter attack is like a regular attack with an extra -50% modifier but without the attack startup penalty if there would normally be one.

3) All modifiers are multiplicative.

In this screenshot my APC blows up a French APC equipped with polymer armor (1739 hp against hard attack) using it's heavy assault laser (482 hard attack). Normally this would have slim chances of succeeding but thanks to my excellent brigade and supreme commanders my attack increases to 1720 (x3.5) even after the hefty negative mods. In case someone is confused - the final attack and defense (this is hp) values are then randomized between 0 and the value to reach the final-final values.

This goes to show just how ridiculously impactful a good commander can be and how important it is to put your units under OHQs. Further more this shows the SHQ commander also has a strong impact on combat performance (skill high command +117% in the screenshot) while the common wisdom was that the SHQ commander only affects readiness recovery and maybe acts as an operational commander for nearby troops (the above battle is nowhere near my SHQ).

This also explains the weird value under commander bonus in the graphical combat display: it's simply a multiple of all modifiers relevant to the battle. That includes the hp and attack/defense mods even if some only apply to certain units like infantry and tank tactics. So the number is meaningless beside a general indicator to how good your commander is.

 

[Alienman]

How do you add OHQs to divisions? I have not figured that one out yet. I got one unit that has a leader, but how I did I don't know, it came out so messy, and it's limited to 1000 inf unit for some reason.

 

[AgentFransis]

How do you add OHQs to divisions? I have not figured that one out yet. I got one unit that has a leader, but how I did I don't know, it came out so messy, and it's limited to 1000 inf unit for some reason.

You can't add OHQs after the fact but have to raise formations with OHQs. In the raise formation window click the "with OHQ" checkbox in the top right. Then you can raise a multi-unit of one of the OOBs (order of battle) you know. This gives you an OHQ and five smaller units under it, to which you can attach up to two more independent units (using the unit admin button -> change HQ). Note that the OOBs are rigid and predefined and need to be discovered and operationalized by the staff council before you can use them. This thread documents all currently existing variations: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4839875

 

[Sinilevä]

Good game, but there are some irritating things:

- Characters. What's the point of having so many attributes and skills for the characters? This seems redundant. They are randomly generated. You can't affect or influence them in any significant way and it's a pain in the arse to figure out whether a particular character is good for a job. It would be much better if it was a system similar to CK2 with 5 main attributes, then it would be clear right away in which field this character could be good. How do you even get good characters? All I ever have are those cards, like "young unskilled leader" or "mercenary" and they always give some shitty characters.
- Pretty ridiculous that diplomacy only works through cards. Why can't one simply open the negotiations? All that card business in general doesn't look too hot.
- They couldn't have made logistcs any more confusing. The best approach seems to be to just build railroads everywhere.
- Technology discovery works in a weird way. Spent good chunk of the game without basic tech Solar Power, while economic counsel was discovering some advanced tech down the line. Almost lost the game, because was running out of power.
- UI was forged in hell by satan himself.
- The turns take forever. Good thing is, that alt-tab works so you can do other stuff meanwhile.
- Can't create your own troop compositions or merge the existing ones.
- Oblivion portraits.

 

[AgentFransis]

Good game, but there are some irritating things:

- Characters. What's the point of having so many attributes and skills for the characters? This seems redundant. They are randomly generated. You can't affect or influence them in any significant way and it's a pain in the arse to figure out whether a particular character is good for a job. It would be much better if it was a system similar to CK2 with 5 main attributes, then it would be clear right away in which field this character could be good. How do you even get good characters? All I ever have are those cards, like "young unskilled leader" or "mercenary" and they always give some shitty characters.
- Pretty ridiculous that diplomacy only works through cards. Why can't one simply open the negotiations? All that card business in general doesn't look too hot.
- They couldn't have made logistcs any more confusing. The best approach seems to be to just build railroads everywhere.
- Technology discovery works in a weird way. Spent good chunk of the game without basic tech Solar Power, while economic counsel was discovering some advanced tech down the line. Almost lost the game, because was running out of power.
- UI was forged in hell by satan himself.
- The turns take forever. Good thing is, that alt-tab works so you can do other stuff meanwhile.
- Can't create your own troop compositions or merge the existing ones.
- Oblivion portraits.

- Characters. Well, there are 3 main attributes (4 including capacity). Some of the skills are indeed somewhat underused/not very important but most of the skills are used somewhere. It's a complex game and the characters can do a lot of different things so it makes sense for the characters to be complex as well. As you learn the game you can tell at a glance what a character is good for. Every skill also has a tooltip telling you what it's used for and when assigning a character to a job the game will give you a suitability score as well.

Skills improve from use basically, or more accurately when characters use skills to do their jobs they gain xp which they then spend on improving the skills they use. You can help them with certain stratagems that give xp or boost certain stats. You get better recruitment cards from the interior council but it's still always a casino. Mercs are actually quite often pretty good, but expensive. You also get new leaders from your factions periodically.

- Diplomacy: yeah fair enough. But the cards in general are a pretty interesting system. It's there to increase the randomness of the game and to limit your options. It allows for the game to give you different actions based on what organizations you set up, which regime profiles you went for, cults active in your empire etc.

- Logistics. It's complex but makes sense once you understand it. Read this: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4922110. Rail is mainly for connecting your cities. Operational logistics and connections to assets need trucks.

- Tech. Just part of the randomness. If you want to discover a specific tech before moving on then invest more into discovery before unlocking the next nodes.

- UI is actually pretty good once you get used to it and know where everything is. Most of the actions and info you need are usually just a few clicks away. There are some obvious issues of course. Like model design (especially for aircraft) and certain parts of the UI being laggy. And defining zone borders is really annoying.

- Turns. Yeah, big problem. Playing on a large map now with four other majors and turns take at least five minuts.

- Orders of battle. Yeah I don't like it either. It's been discussed extensively on the forums and maybe Vic will change it.

- Portraits. Use this mod by our resident silly nose artist dehimos.

 

[Sinilevä]

Logistics. It's complex but makes sense once you understand it. Read this: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4922110. Rail is mainly for connecting your cities. Operational logistics and connections to assets need trucks.

Thanks. That logistics manual was helpfull. It seems like logistics works like water controlled by the valves. A little bit weird concept, but it is what it is. Let's say you have 100 trucks in the city and 4 roads going out of the city. The road to the east needs the vast majority of the supplies, the road to the north needs a little bit and the rest doesn't need any. If you don't manually block the trucks from leaving the city in the direction of south and west you will end up with 25 trucks leaving in each direction, even though they are not needed there. Did I understand that correctly?

Pts means truck or train points(logistical points), but what does pull points mean?

Skills improve from use basically, or more accurately when characters use skills to do their jobs they gain xp which they then spend on improving the skills they use.

So if I get a character with CAP IV-V but unskilled is it a good idea to assign him to any job hoping he will become better and better at it?

Portraits. Use this mod by our resident silly nose artist @dehimos.

Haha I installed that. This is way better than the original.

 

[AgentFransis]

Yes exactly, it's network flow with pipes of unlimited capacity (just be grateful Vic didn't go full autism and give roads a capacity limit! Now that would be !!FUN!!). In a vacuum the points spread evenly in all directions yes, but pull points tell the network where logistics is needed and it will do it's best to satisfy all demands. So if you have nothing at 3 ends and a city at the fourth end that requires 100 logistics then all points should go to it. Pull points are generated by assets (which don't consume logistics weirdly, they just need it flowing over them to function), cities and units. Usually you want more than the minimum amount of points going to your troops and cities (or even just some random location) to allow for things like strategic movement (unit teleport via the logistics network), upgrades and recruitment so you want to control excessive branching with traffic signs or use custom pull points.

Regarding CAP IV-V leaders: sure, but depends on a lot of factors. For one things those guys are very rare (CAP V is extremely rare, you might not see any. CAP IV you can expect to get maybe 3-4 in a long game). I try to reserve these for military command since there are a lot of military skills and they usually need to be learned and because having good commanders is very important. For council directors it's usually possible to find a guy that's already reasonably skilled and for governors skills don't matter too much (depends on what regime policy you want to push. Meritocracy requires a lot of investigation rolls in city unrest events but then you can just get a good advisor and assign him as needed).

Besides skills it's also very important that you can keep your leaders happy. A 100 relations council director with no skills will give as much of a bonus as a decently skilled 50 relations director. For governors it's almost the only thing that matters since a 100 relations gov gives a +25% bonus to public production with only the agriculture skill giving a bonus to food production and others giving minor benefits to the population and used occasionally in events. For commanders I'm less sure but I think happiness also affects skill rolls (but anyway, who wants to give armies to people that hate him. This isn't the Roman republic here). Basically just look at the relations tooltip and it will give you the breakdown. You want guys that mostly agree with your regime profiles and ideally have a job suitable to their ambition (job prestige goes gov->ohq commander->shq commander/advisor->director). Sometimes you'll have a guy that mostly agrees with you but strongly disagrees on one issue. That's fine, you can take the occasional hit to the relationship and it will go back up over time or just throw him a bonus when needed.

 

[Harthwain]

Regarding the Order of Battle - it makes sense, in theory. Big part of Napoleon's and German successes during WW2 was how their forces were organized, which had great impact on their mobility, tactics and effectiveness. I liked that in Hearts of Iron 4 you had to invest experience to modernize your army (which required doing some actual fighting, thereby modelling the learning-by-doing approach), instead of allowing for making the best meta-combination from the get-go.

 

[AgentFransis]

Not saying it should be free, can be some kind of OOB design process done by the staff council. Current system is just a mess with a thousand of tiny OOB variations that clog up your recruitment screen, most of them suck and still a lot of possible formations are absent. I hardly even bother with any of them right now, usually just keep (mechanized) MG infantry until the end.

--

Speaking of end, finally finished my large forest and mountains planet game. Had a sea to my west and a friendly major to the east to I spent 100 turns slowly pushing through the creature and nomad infested forests. Then I build some mech infantry and walkers and ate the major to my west in 12 turns exposing a massive planet long border with the on-paper top dog major. He wasted no time and declared war almost immediately so I dropped a 100MT nuke on his capital and blietzkrieged him with mech infantry to win the game 4 turns later.

The AI is not very good at keeping his army up to date. We were all at late game tech but the first major fielded a combination of heavy combat armor+laser foot infantry and a bunch of useless early game tanks when I was coming in with walkers and battledress mechanized. The second major again had hordes of same shitty infantry that were barely a speedbump to my mechanized forces, this is despite him having all the techs and a massive industry and even having a few regiments of fully end game tanks... on the other side of his empire. This is on hard difficulty too. It should hopefully be better on the beta patch along with the turn times.

 

[madhouse]

Would you recommend this at the full price?