Yes, GalCiv2 is generally considered one of the best strategy games of all time and I enjoyed GalCiv3 as well. I haven't gotten around to playing the newest one yet.
Lebo44
Chieftain
Interesting fact:
Stardock Entertainment, the developer of Galactic Civilization series, is also responsible for production management of ARA: History Untold. One more reason to try this Civ 7 competitor.
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This is true. I have about 7,000 hours in EUIV, playing since day 1 almost 12 years ago - I had played some EU3 before. The over 10 years of support and new DLCs made the game immensely replayable and popular over that span - it still is. For an already deep strategy game, each DLC - well most - provided a ton of updates, enhancements, and new features that significantly altered gameplay, strategy, and tactics, keeping the game fresh for fans. A good example is playing as the Byz and having to find new ways to overcome the immense disadvantage they have against the Ottos. Other major enhancements came in the later stages such as mission trees, including branching historic paths for some major nations such as England going colonization route(i.e., traditional) versus an Angevin path with its own separate mission tree. Another example is the Teutonic Order, with a more traditional Prussian path vs a Horde path with a more Eastern focus.
My issue with the DLC is that, imo, the retail price point was exorbitant and restrictive - some upwards of $20. In addition, the cosmetic dlcs (unit skins, cultural flavor, map stuff) were not simply bundled with the DLC expansions, costing an additional $5 or so. (Actually, that is a major peeve of mine with DLCs in general and where real milking persists) Retail, EUIV is upwards of $400.00 to grab everything, but the sales have been pretty good, and I've paid a fraction of that as well as ignored most of the skin dlcs.
EUV looks like it will be successful, but I will probably avoid getting sucked into it for some years, especially as EUIV is still plenty enough for me. I have so much yet to achieve with it.
(Note: Paradox started offering a monthly subscription service for EUIV in which you get the whole kaboodle to play with. It's a great and cost-effective way to start playing it, if you haven't yet, as you can stop and start any time)
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Gori the Grey
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Can the pause button and ability to slow down time make EU effectively turn based? I need turn-based. I relish being able to take as much time as I need with my planning in strategy games.
That's part of why I find Civ relaxing: I can take all the time in the world to plan my next turn.
That's part of why I find Civ relaxing: I can take all the time in the world to plan my next turn.
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Yes. It is tick based, and you can play so slowly that you could technically pause every tick. Yet, I prefer to pause for almost every action I want to make, but run on speed 3 or 4 (out of 5). There‘s not necessarily an action to perform at every tick.
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EUIV is technically rts, but ..yes...you can pause and slow the game down to a crawl. A lot of actions/decisions are made in pause mode, then ..like Siptah..I will run at 3 or 4 most of the time... sometimes at 5 if nothing major is expected for a while (still quite easy to maneuver and analyze things at that speed, but you do not want to use it usually in war or at critical times. A good example of running at full speed is you have countries like Bohemia and Hungary that start the game with interregnum - Bohemia is not very long, but Hungary's is like 15 years, I think - where one can't declare war - there is plenty to do, but things can be managed at full speed. I slow the game down to 2 when at war, especially a difficult one that requires a lot of decisions/actions to ensure success. Also, you will have alert popups for various types of notifications that can be set to auto-pause the game. You can set these to your liking. For example, an important one for me is to have the "diplomats returned" pop-up autopause so that I can immediately set them to their next task. Another good example is when an army arrives in a province, as that auto-pause can be crucial to winning battles and taking advantage of terrain advantages. Those are the tip of the iceberg, really.
You can take as long time as you want. Space to pause, and you can do everything you want while the game is paused. It's much more relaxing than turn-based to be honest. It's the best of both worlds.
King Flevance
Deity
I have mostly played GC2 and some GC3. (I have not played 4 yet.) I would recommend them as they are very comparable to civ and the ability to customize a civilization is extremely awesome. (But can be very time consuming -but does reward that time investment IMO.) But you can just grab a civ out of the roster and go and even makes tweaks as you feel necessary.
They offer a great atmosphere like Stellaris but with a familiar "civ" style design. There are unique aspects and mechanics but it feels very reminiscent of civilization.
Does anyone remind the civ7 dev reasoning for not including them? I remember somebody somehow has once known that, and that it seemed kinda irrational (not surprisingly).
I don't think so. Yes, with pause you can take as much time as you need to think, but in my opinion that is still a very different feel from a turn based game.
Gori the Grey
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How so, uppi? I think the main thing I need is not having my own decisions hurried. What else would be missing?
Lebo44
Chieftain
My experience - you don't need to hurry at all. But sometimes there is tons of stuff happening in the same time (for example - big wars) so you need to stop the game quite often if you aim to execute orders perfectly. It might be tiresome and unnecessarily drag the game.
I mean yeah, I honestly think it's really absurd to suggest that any RTS game with the active pause is essentially the same as turn based strategy game "bc you can pause and do everything paused every moment". It's not about the user interface, real time vs turn increments impact EVERYTHING regarding the structure and flow of strategy games, from the smallest detail to the largest picture. Real time is not "just turns but 40 000 instead of 400 of them", those orders of difference in the games' units of time completely change everything about the kind of the games they are and the dynamics and processes of the world they simulate and the player's experience.
For starters, the scale. The smaller the units of time are, the bigger the world can be and the more complex dynamics it may enable. There are many reasons for this, but the most obvious one is loading turn times. In Pdox games the split of the game's processes into an extremely big amount of very very small time units enables the engine to simulate hundreds of AI countries actively operating in the same time. All their processing is spread over a lot of ticks, thanks to the vast majority of AI players not doing any active decisions on any individual tick of time (in case of EU games it's one day inbetween 400-500 years). But you can't have hundreds of AI players in the turn based game, because then you would go insane waiting for those five hundred EU4 AI managed countries to make all their decisions, one country and AI player after another, every time a comparatively enormously big unit of time passes. I'd treat the above as the benefit, since this wonderful feeling of being a small part of a truly gigantic world, a true GLOBAL SCENE, a breathtaking complexity, has always been motivating me to play those sorts of games - it also makes just watching how the world outside your control unfolds, the AI written history of the world, very entertaining (I have "played" a ton of sessions of eu4 in the passive observer mode, just checking every now and then to discover crazy plot twists in the AIs Alternate History).
Conversely however, the biggest problem of such time structure is how much harder it is for such games to design entertaining peacetime mechanics that don't feel like "push a button, wait x time for a loading bar to fill, congrats now you have +5% to whatever". In the 4X turn based games the units of time are so few and so big that you can relatively easily design a game in such a way that every turn is filled with interesting decisions and "minigames" even if they player is not waging any wars. A ton of my civ5 playthroughs have been very pacifist and yet very interesting. Different Pdox games deal with the problem of making 40,000 "turns" of peace interesting better or worse. The best is either Crusader Kings or Victoria series, with their dynastic/internal politics and economy/internal politics systems being massive enough to constantly call for attention. Stellaris was initially bad with this problem but got much better over time, offering a lot of peacetime toys and activities. EU series in particular have it worst due to their inherent "geopolitical" focus, its specific historical era and its extreme cultural diversity not givingg much room to any very specific political or economic systems (not to mention the lack of Stellaris' fantasy toys). For me the strongest weapon EU games have had against this problem has been simply the entertainment I got from just watching the AI-vs-AI world events to unfold in the meantime of my own actions.
Honestly if EU5 releases to the critical and popular acclaim it may be the nail in the coffin regarding my personal attention to Civ7 for a very long time, until some massive changes and improvements. I have spent a very long time yearning for some new AAA budget "global civilization simulator", as in "a massive historical strategy game with a ton of historical cultures building alternate world history", and Europa Universalis is the second best franchise to cover this desire after the Civ series. Sure, it covers "only" 400-500 years, between late medieval and early industrial periods, but the sheer staggering epicness of the way it covers those "mere" few centuries made it rival Civ vibes for me.
For starters, the scale. The smaller the units of time are, the bigger the world can be and the more complex dynamics it may enable. There are many reasons for this, but the most obvious one is loading turn times. In Pdox games the split of the game's processes into an extremely big amount of very very small time units enables the engine to simulate hundreds of AI countries actively operating in the same time. All their processing is spread over a lot of ticks, thanks to the vast majority of AI players not doing any active decisions on any individual tick of time (in case of EU games it's one day inbetween 400-500 years). But you can't have hundreds of AI players in the turn based game, because then you would go insane waiting for those five hundred EU4 AI managed countries to make all their decisions, one country and AI player after another, every time a comparatively enormously big unit of time passes. I'd treat the above as the benefit, since this wonderful feeling of being a small part of a truly gigantic world, a true GLOBAL SCENE, a breathtaking complexity, has always been motivating me to play those sorts of games - it also makes just watching how the world outside your control unfolds, the AI written history of the world, very entertaining (I have "played" a ton of sessions of eu4 in the passive observer mode, just checking every now and then to discover crazy plot twists in the AIs Alternate History).
Conversely however, the biggest problem of such time structure is how much harder it is for such games to design entertaining peacetime mechanics that don't feel like "push a button, wait x time for a loading bar to fill, congrats now you have +5% to whatever". In the 4X turn based games the units of time are so few and so big that you can relatively easily design a game in such a way that every turn is filled with interesting decisions and "minigames" even if they player is not waging any wars. A ton of my civ5 playthroughs have been very pacifist and yet very interesting. Different Pdox games deal with the problem of making 40,000 "turns" of peace interesting better or worse. The best is either Crusader Kings or Victoria series, with their dynastic/internal politics and economy/internal politics systems being massive enough to constantly call for attention. Stellaris was initially bad with this problem but got much better over time, offering a lot of peacetime toys and activities. EU series in particular have it worst due to their inherent "geopolitical" focus, its specific historical era and its extreme cultural diversity not givingg much room to any very specific political or economic systems (not to mention the lack of Stellaris' fantasy toys). For me the strongest weapon EU games have had against this problem has been simply the entertainment I got from just watching the AI-vs-AI world events to unfold in the meantime of my own actions.
Honestly if EU5 releases to the critical and popular acclaim it may be the nail in the coffin regarding my personal attention to Civ7 for a very long time, until some massive changes and improvements. I have spent a very long time yearning for some new AAA budget "global civilization simulator", as in "a massive historical strategy game with a ton of historical cultures building alternate world history", and Europa Universalis is the second best franchise to cover this desire after the Civ series. Sure, it covers "only" 400-500 years, between late medieval and early industrial periods, but the sheer staggering epicness of the way it covers those "mere" few centuries made it rival Civ vibes for me.
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Pausing is a natural and inherent part of the game. Allows you all the time you need for making decisions, gathering info, etc. Heck, when I first start a game, I'm probably in pause for a good 10-15 minutes making all my opening moves and decisions, sometimes even more in difficult starts, before even progressing a day. As the game progresses and as you get more experience, you will be more comfortable keeping the ticker going for longer periods, but pauses will always be essential. So it is not TBS, but it is not like a Starcraft RTS quick twitch type experience at all. You set your own pace entirely. Try watchin' some YT vids to get a feel for it.
(Finding a decent YT LP that shows the opening thought processes ...I think this one below is good. He is talking to his audience here, and it is not a tutorial, but he is basically going through all his opening decisions and actions based on the situation his nation has starting out - in this case, Sweden. All this on day 1, Nov 11, 1444):
^^^edit: this guy is okay..I've not watched him before but most of the big eu iv dudes I watch to cut out the minutiae for a better watch experience. However, when learning you need to watch LPs that provide a fuller experience, as the tiny details do matter, especially early. He does a good job explaining what he is doing here, and though he is doing this for an audience, this is very much the type of thought processes experienced players go through at the start. (though I don't agree with some of the things he does, the game offers a ton of different ways to play it..there is no one strategy at all)
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Well something new has happened in Civ player data. Number go up! Peak today was up 0.3% on the highest peak last month. So the sale and/or the patch (but probably the sale) has managed to drum up a slightly larger player base for this weekend than the post patch weekend of July.
Now I guess we'll see what the drop off is like in the next month and whether the next post patch player spike can continue the trend of growth or whether this was just a sale led blip for now.
Now I guess we'll see what the drop off is like in the next month and whether the next post patch player spike can continue the trend of growth or whether this was just a sale led blip for now.
Gori the Grey
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Thanks, to everyone who answered about EU. I did watch the video.
It convinces me that I could play the game. I understand all of the other differences you mention, Krajzen, but the pivotal concern for me is just are my own decisions hurried?
I one time got a free sample of a RTS: Majesty. (as a CD in a breakfast cereal, if I remember right; could that be possible?) That's not a kind of game I'm good at at all or have fun with at all: where part of my success is a function of how physically fast I act, and where a ton of stuff is happening in the game that I have to react to. I just get overwhelmed.
EU looks fun.
It convinces me that I could play the game. I understand all of the other differences you mention, Krajzen, but the pivotal concern for me is just are my own decisions hurried?
I one time got a free sample of a RTS: Majesty. (as a CD in a breakfast cereal, if I remember right; could that be possible?) That's not a kind of game I'm good at at all or have fun with at all: where part of my success is a function of how physically fast I act, and where a ton of stuff is happening in the game that I have to react to. I just get overwhelmed.
EU looks fun.
I think the main difference is that a turn-based game will always prompt you: It your turn now, time to make some decisions. A real-time-with-pause game will not prompt you, instead you have to actively interrupt it when you think it is time to make decisions. Which may result you in missing the moment when you should have interrupted. Not that this is bad, just feels quite different. A big advantage of real-time-with-pause games is that if there is nothing to really do, you can just let it run. Turn-based games will prompt you, even if there is nothing to do but press "end turn".
Also, in turn based games, movement is usually more discrete, while in real-time-with-pause it is more continuous. You often can change your mind one in-game day later and reverse course. This does change how you think about and play the game.
Gori the Grey
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Ok, that's an interesting difference to learn about. I might make heavy use of the automatic pauses that lymond mentions, so that an important decision-point doesn't slip past me.
I noticed in the video how he set things up the way he wanted, and then went off pause to just let battles play out for however they took. That would feel a little different than turn based.
But the big thing I saw was that he was having to make lots of choices: can I afford to suffer this disadvantage to get this advantage? And some of them felt to him as though they were close calls with no clearly right answer. So that appeal of a good Civ game looks like it would be there for me.
I noticed in the video how he set things up the way he wanted, and then went off pause to just let battles play out for however they took. That would feel a little different than turn based.
But the big thing I saw was that he was having to make lots of choices: can I afford to suffer this disadvantage to get this advantage? And some of them felt to him as though they were close calls with no clearly right answer. So that appeal of a good Civ game looks like it would be there for me.
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