PhilBowles
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2011
- Messages
- 5,333
As of the last expansion, Sins has a whole suite of victory conditions, including diplomatic and science (the latter basically works like Civ V's Utopia Project: research a certain number of techs to unlock a victory tech) - as a nice homage there's even an Orion victory condition (beat the advanced alien defenders to capture the artifact planet). Yes, it's still reliant on combat at heart, but that's the impression I have from ES as well (it was of course also truer of Master of Orion than it was of the equivalent Civ games of the day).
I'll start my next ES playthrough at a higher difficulty, but the above describes my general approach. It took me longer to get the hang of Civ V at Prince than ES on Normal, although I'll admit this was due to the early rush; nothing in the strategic game posed a challenge at that difficulty, making it simple once the rush was held off. Maybe it's just the lack of this early rush in ES that made the game so easy in the early stages, but I suspect there are other issues that contribute: the lack of coordination among AI players, their apparent failure to research terraforming techs early so I have the choice of the best systems (it's a shame that, unlike MOO and Distant Worlds, you can't have dual ownership of a system, with different factions on different planets). At equivalent levels of Civ, the AI will expand and form alliances.
Perhaps it would help if ES didn't feel so simply functional - yes, the elements are much the same as in many other games, but so far at least I'm not really finding the immersion necessary to grind for extended lengths of time, and play in essentially the same way I play other strategy games, and still feel engaged.
This would work if there was a shortage of terrain of each type, and at least be more interesting if the decision about what is optimal less clear-cut. When you have planets that provide 10 science and 0-2 of everything else, you're not presented with much complexity in decision-making. You basically never need to focus on planets with good food production, since exploiting a world for food until it reaches its population cap can be done anywhere (ironically, other than being easy to colonise, Terran planets don't seem to be of much value - I imagine when terraforming is discovered there's a tendency to "terraform" towards less hospitable planet types), since Alien Grafting is an early tech and can grow your pop to maximum quickly. This also makes the different planet types feel less like terrain being explored and more like different game 'levels' - the harder planets to colonise are harder because they give more bonuses (this is not the case in, say, Master of Orion games; although harder to colonise worlds include the types most likely to be mineral rich, colonisation decisions are strategic - a key benefit of colonising a world of a difficult type is that you can get that lebensraum before your rivals, and may be protected from invasion).
I played this way and went down the terraforming route (which for some reason also contains the Craver hull technologies, as well as superior engine types).
I see also what was meant by the poster who said the cards seem largely cosmetic - you are never going to beat a fleet with substantially superior MP, or lose to one with much lower MP, regardless of card choice. I did quite like the cards my hero got if only for the graphical effect of the whirlpool card and because it finally made the hero system feel as if there was some character to it.
Not sure what the good reasons against it would be - it would be nice if there was an option in set-up for 'Unique races'. Of course I could just set one of each in my set-up decisions, but then if I want to play a random faction I may not end up with the missing race.
