Love AI War and/or Tidalis? We could really use your help...

[Mithror]

How do the sales fair with deals like the Steam Sales?

I would have loved to buy a gift pack and give it out to some friends. Think it would be nice to increase awarenes amongst them. Only... These sales might not be so good if you want to actually make money, I guess?

I'm definitely trying to persuade them to get into the game though. It's not much, but it's something!

[keith.lamothe]

There's actually a steam promotion currently on that includes Tidalis:

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/6791/

I think I can objectively say that it's an absurdly good deal

[Mithror]

I know, I bought it =)

[Entrenched Homperson]

So... I bought the game and Zenith, and got my friend to buy it, and 2 of his friends bought it. It is soooooo much fun to play at night after work. Thanks alot for a great game! I will continue to spread the word of mouth. I mean if 20 people got 4 of there friends to buy this game.... *Does some easy math* thats 80 people, which is 3200 dollars! Idk what your operating costs are, but seeing as how easy it is to infect your friends with at least a purchasing interest in this game, word of mouth seems really powerful.

I described it as the "Most powerful AI eva, it's all emergent and it uses REAL strategy. Like it's supposed to take 16 players to beat!"

Granted after having played the game this isn't a totally accurate description, but it's still a very powerful emergent AI (Which I love to think about as I play and encounter new strategies. Having an AI the intentionally waits for you to overextend yourself and attack from multiple points is very engaging in SP, which is all I have gotten to play so far other then a few casual games with some friends.

So go brag about this GAME! Really! It's really good and I always like to support indie developers. Alot of good indie companies I've followed have been crashing this year, it's been hard for alot of people. I do my best to help these great games, and especially in the case of this one.

Grats Arcen, on an amazing creation that will be played for years to come!

[x4000]

Thank you!

[keith.lamothe]

Thanks very much for the support; welcome to the forums

I described it as the "Most powerful AI eva, it's all emergent and it uses REAL strategy. Like it's supposed to take 16 players to beat!"

Haha, not quite.  It actually just gets more stuff the more players you throw at it.

but it's still a very powerful emergent AI (Which I love to think about as I play and encounter new strategies. Having an AI the intentionally waits for you to overextend yourself and attack from multiple points is very engaging in SP, which is all I have gotten to play so far other then a few casual games with some friends.

Chris has done a remarkable job on the AI, I'm often surprised by what it pulls on me (all the more surprised because I've seen the actually rather simple individual rules that produce the behavior).  When I add something new it tends to be something more "traditional" (as opposed to emergent) like the Hybrids in CoN or the exogalactic-strikeforces in LotS (though TZR can get them now too through the "Broken Golems - Hard" minor faction), but the "main AI" actually tends to adapt to the presence of those very well.  Recently I was testing the end-game of the LotS campaign and had a massive wall of Spire city defenses and capital ships that could easily have taken down the (rather large) exogalactic armada being thrown at it, OR could have reasonably taken the mass of about 2000 AI threat ships stalking me from the other side of the wormhole... but when said stalking group went through the wormhole at the exact same moment as the exogalactic strikeforce (because the firepower balances tipped), they were able to blast their way through.  And I totally did not tell them to do that

Of course, nothing reloading and using an EMP warhead couldn't fix, but I digress.

[Entrenched Homperson]

Replayability...

on a Grand Scale.
 

[keith.lamothe]

It definitely has that.  And if you get a little too used to the normal game, LotS has Defender Mode and the Fallen-Spire campaign, both of which provide rather different experiences.

But even just the AI types, bonus ship types, minor factions, options, etc of the base game are enough to keep someone occupied with new stuff for a while.

[Entrenched Homperson]

I'd love to see a mode where your ship cap was affected by capping star systems. I'd love that I find myself with a whole lot of wasted power, and having a little increase to ship caps every system would be kind of cool. IDK how you would handle losing systems and the effects to the ship cap. Probably the same way as brown outs.

Also Grid is ridiculously hard. It's all I play ><

*Likes simple maps* *Vines nearly gave him a seizure* 

[keith.lamothe]

I prefer Concentric maps, both aesthetically and challenge-wise

[zebramatt]

I prefer Concentric maps, both aesthetically and challenge-wise

Aye.

Although the mazes are pretty entertaining too.

[Entrenched Homperson]

Just bought the 2 other expansions last night, even bought a key for the beta . Maze is awesome, but it takes away a tiny bit of the atmosphere.  The real strategy comes from making decisions as to where to expand/scout/raid etc.  Maze is rather straightforward, but I found myself drawn to it alot. All in all I still like Simple because it has a very chaotic and "This is the situation your in, figure it out" quality. Very organic.

I wish we could tinker with our own map algorithms. That would be awesome.

I love finding simple maps where it's basicaly a bunch of islands connected by small bridges. That way I can plan separate mini campaigns to take each of them, and have few borders with that AI unless I choose to attack a star cluster.

I love Spire and Neinzul, but I still find myself coming back to Zenith.  I think the way you guys to license keys and the ability to turn of and on the expansions is really cool. Sometimes you just want the original, other times you want ever AI faction enabled (and consequently get steam rolled ),

Glad I stumbled upon this great game developer while browsing the internet!

[motai]

i just wanted to mention one of the big stumbling blocks i have had is in the matching and multi player experience. i have had these problems with many games of the genre civilization and master of orion especially. civ 4 got it right and civ 5 got it mostly wrong. but still i would recommend a big push in cooperation with steam or someone to host a game internal host/matching service to find players. i know you have well supported irc forum but presonally and for many gamers out there irc is not my thing and reasearching ip address loopholes thru firewalls is really not fun. so that my 2 cents and hope to see a matching option sometime.

[Oralordos]

I believe that the reason that there is no matchmaking in-game is because each game takes so long so matchmaking with random people wouldn't be so good. One needs to arrange play-times in a game like this.

[motai]

with some of the new modes like defender though its something to consider that a more available matching system could help the player base learn and enjoy the game more. i was more thinking of training games in the 10-30 system range that wouldnt take the longest but would help players learn. and screen into groups that would play longer games at scheduled times.