Distant Worlds: Universe - space 4x done right - May 23 Release

[tbrass]

How is the combat? Are there some incredibly close battles? Does the "balance of power" stay pretty even on the higher difficulties, or are close battles pretty rare where it's more or less just moving your forces from one system to another to get whatever you want?

How long does it take to become combat ready? Can you be a warlike race and succeed? Is there anything to prevent you from just taking over the entire galaxy once you've started steamrolling?

These are all kind of the pitfalls of the average 4X in my experience. The diplomacy, base building, and ship crafting is all okay, but if the battling is lackluster, and if the game is won before the fighting even starts I just consider it a huge waste of time.

I set my current game to resemble the known galaxy of the 2nd book in Asimov's foundation series, with multiple species ;-)

A vast empire in the galactic core, and a prewarp civilizations around the periphery and incredibly strong pirates throughout. I am playing as one of those prewarp civs, with a very warlike race.

There are a few shifting alliances (I am not involved), and I have tried to gobble up a few of my neighbors. The Galactic Empire, though... they are really kicking butt, at the center of a massive trading alliance and growing organically.

I think it is quite possible that they will accomplish their racial victory goals (galactic trade volume, happy citizens, etc.) before I can do mine (based on conquering enemy homeworlds, enslaving or exterminating population, etc.), and then it'll be a question of overall population/territory to determine a "winner."

There is another little guy on the other side of the galaxy that has also achieved its racial victory goals, but is not territory heavy enough to pose a threat to either the empire or to me.

In short - the balance of power is constantly shifting, but remains challenging throughout the game. Oh, and you can set the difficulty level so that it scales if, and only if, you are the #1 player. So if you are tooling around on normal, but manage to sneak into first place, expect the game to become more challenging.

[zespri]

How is the combat? Are there some incredibly close battles? Does the "balance of power" stay pretty even on the higher difficulties, or are close battles pretty rare where it's more or less just moving your forces from one system to another to get whatever you want?

How long does it take to become combat ready? Can you be a warlike race and succeed? Is there anything to prevent you from just taking over the entire galaxy once you've started steamrolling?

These are all kind of the pitfalls of the average 4X in my experience. The diplomacy, base building, and ship crafting is all okay, but if the battling is lackluster, and if the game is won before the fighting even starts I just consider it a huge waste of time.

I set my current game to resemble the known galaxy of the 2nd book in Asimov's foundation series, with multiple species ;-)

A vast empire in the galactic core, and a prewarp civilizations around the periphery and incredibly strong pirates throughout. I am playing as one of those prewarp civs, with a very warlike race.

There are a few shifting alliances (I am not involved), and I have tried to gobble up a few of my neighbors. The Galactic Empire, though... they are really kicking butt, at the center of a massive trading alliance and growing organically.

I think it is quite possible that they will accomplish their racial victory goals (galactic trade volume, happy citizens, etc.) before I can do mine (based on conquering enemy homeworlds, enslaving or exterminating population, etc.), and then it'll be a question of overall population/territory to determine a "winner."

There is another little guy on the other side of the galaxy that has also achieved its racial victory goals, but is not territory heavy enough to pose a threat to either the empire or to me.

In short - the balance of power is constantly shifting, but remains challenging throughout the game. Oh, and you can set the difficulty level so that it scales if, and only if, you are the #1 player. So if you are tooling around on normal, but manage to sneak into first place, expect the game to become more challenging.

So there is no real combat in any shape or form in the game?

[tbrass]

Sorry, I got caught on the Balance of Power idea and didn't focus on the core of the question.

Combat is fairly fast paced -- not nearly as fast as AI-War, but more hectic than the turn-based mechanisms of TLF. In late game, you may start to see battles between giant super-star-destroyer type vehicles and it becomes a slugging match. Battles are definitely close, and I find myself tactically retreating when my opponent has a surprising new tech in hand, but combat has never been a primary focus of my games.

That's not to say it can't be. You may want to try playing as a pirate. More tactically oriented, as I understand it.

Re: how long does it take to get combat ready - It all depends upon how you set up your game. Again, I set myself up as a prewarp civ. I needed to discover warp tech before I could build an unarmed scout ship to look at new stars. You could start with level 1 (of 7) tech, go with AI designed ships, and be warlike right out of the gate. It all depends upon your playstyle.

[topper]

I blame you guys for me getting this. I rarely buy a game at more than 50% the normal price (but this game kind of was heavily on sale if you consider the included expansions). And it is a $50 game too!

In a couple hours of play I can already say this is the best 4x that I have seen so far. It has all the depth in the worlduniverse, but allows you to pick and choose exactly what you want to micromanage. I clicked through the first 2 tutorials and then went right into a starter game with most of it semi-automated, and it is really great!

Maybe it is my familiarity with 4x games, but the learning wall complained about on Steam is just really not a problem. To begin you can just act like a manager, only dealing with the important notifications that come across your desk. Then you can take more full control of just the aspects you enjoy.

[Mick]

I like a lot of the ideas of the game, but unfortunately it's far too easy for the human player to HUGELY exploit the mechanics of the game. Not even talking about huge micromanagement type stuff here. Setting colony taxes to zero has the absurd effect of giving your populations massive growth. There is not even much of a downside in doing so, because many expenses can be offset into the private sector (which effectively has infinite cashflow since their expenses never really compete with what they'll actually use).

I can still enjoy it, but some of the automations pretty much have to be left on if you don't want to feel you are playing in a cheat mode. In particular, tax rates and ship design.

[Billick]

I like a lot of the ideas of the game, but unfortunately it's far too easy for the human player to HUGELY exploit the mechanics of the game. Not even talking about huge micromanagement type stuff here. Setting colony taxes to zero has the absurd effect of giving your populations massive growth. There is not even much of a downside in doing so, because many expenses can be offset into the private sector (which effectively has infinite cashflow since their expenses never really compete with what they'll actually use).

I can still enjoy it, but some of the automations pretty much have to be left on if you don't want to feel you are playing in a cheat mode. In particular, tax rates and ship design.

Yeah, 0% tax is hugely overpowered right now.  I saw they are changing the way it works next patch so that it doesn't affect population growth as much.  It'll be interesting to see if this fixes the issue.

[Shrugging Khan]

So I tried it.
The writing's still caustically cliché'd crap, the graphics are nothing to talk about and the UI is horrible.
The AI is fairly solid in that it's actually capable of taking care of things, but then again pretty shoddy because it does so very badly - Ship designs make little sense (but handling them manually is a chore), very cheap opportunities for great profit (e.g. by building research stations right away, rather than when bonuses are found) are ignored, and diplomatically it sees nothing wrong with isolating itself from the entire world, empire settings be damned.

The combat is worthless. Looks and feels like a crappy flash game, with opaque mechanics and no apparent tactical possibilities.
There are no interior politics other than tax rates. Sure, you can shuffle around a few leaders or change your government type, but that's really just a matter of picking a set of boni.

But oh, let me come back to the writing!

• Standard alien race set: Humans, Reptiles, Furries, Insects, Women. Also, INSECTS ARE EVIL. Surprise!
• Binary race attributes: Peaceful, intelligent and trustworthy or combative, stupid and backstabbing.
• MYSTERY: Obviously evil alien race turns out to be evil. And Nazi Germany. SHOCKING.
• MYSTERY, the 2nd: Obviously evil alien race...IS EVIL AGAIN. And yes, that is supposed to take you by surprise.
• MYSTERIOUS MACHINE RACE: "We have a warning for you. A great evil may return to the world...surely you've never heard of it. It's insectoid nazi germany, yep. You never would have guessed.".
• Special historical campaign: "Freedom-loving races" (that's the term they use) VS Axis of Insects. And yes, it really is called the Axis. Guess which ones are ever-so-slightly stereotyped as the bad guys, and whose government is called "Way of Darkness".
• Seriously, let me rant about the race roster again - it's basically a cheap knockoff of MoO; all they'd have to do is add the silicoids and some mussels and it'd be hard to tell them apart.

So yes, congratulations on actually having a rudimentary private sector (though it really doesn't do much) and an AI that actually is capable of handling all the aspects of government, however badly it may do so.
As for the game as a whole or as the sum of all other of its parts - no way in hell should anyone pay 50 bucks for this.

[Billick]

So I tried it.
The writing's still caustically cliché'd crap, the graphics are nothing to talk about and the UI is horrible.
The AI is fairly solid in that it's actually capable of taking care of things, but then again pretty shoddy because it does so very badly - Ship designs make little sense (but handling them manually is a chore), very cheap opportunities for great profit (e.g. by building research stations right away, rather than when bonuses are found) are ignored, and diplomatically it sees nothing wrong with isolating itself from the entire world, empire settings be damned.

The combat is worthless. Looks and feels like a crappy flash game, with opaque mechanics and no apparent tactical possibilities.
There are no interior politics other than tax rates. Sure, you can shuffle around a few leaders or change your government type, but that's really just a matter of picking a set of boni.

But oh, let me come back to the writing!

• Standard alien race set: Humans, Reptiles, Furries, Insects, Women. Also, INSECTS ARE EVIL. Surprise!
• Binary race attributes: Peaceful, intelligent and trustworthy or combative, stupid and backstabbing.
• MYSTERY: Obviously evil alien race turns out to be evil. And Nazi Germany. SHOCKING.
• MYSTERY, the 2nd: Obviously evil alien race...IS EVIL AGAIN. And yes, that is supposed to take you by surprise.
• MYSTERIOUS MACHINE RACE: "We have a warning for you. A great evil may return to the world...surely you've never heard of it. It's insectoid nazi germany, yep. You never would have guessed.".
• Special historical campaign: "Freedom-loving races" (that's the term they use) VS Axis of Insects. And yes, it really is called the Axis. Guess which ones are ever-so-slightly stereotyped as the bad guys, and whose government is called "Way of Darkness".
• Seriously, let me rant about the race roster again - it's basically a cheap knockoff of MoO; all they'd have to do is add the silicoids and some mussels and it'd be hard to tell them apart.

So yes, congratulations on actually having a rudimentary private sector (though it really doesn't do much) and an AI that actually is capable of handling all the aspects of government, however badly it may do so.
As for the game as a whole or as the sum of all other of its parts - no way in hell should anyone pay 50 bucks for this.

I don't think anybody's playing this for the writing or the graphics.

[Shrugging Khan]

Then why are both even in there?

IMO games should just do without certain things if they've no intention of getting them right. See Dwarf Fortress (no graphics), Star Ruler (no writing) for example.

[Castruccio]

Sorry to necro this thread guys, but now that this has been out for a while do people have any definitive opinions of it?  I have been thinking of purchasing it, but it's way too expensive to buy on a whim.  Has anyone played a full game or two of it? 

[Toranth]

Sorry to necro this thread guys, but now that this has been out for a while do people have any definitive opinions of it?  I have been thinking of purchasing it, but it's way too expensive to buy on a whim.  Has anyone played a full game or two of it?

A bit rambling, but here's my mini review:  Played a bunch when it was released, and my final opinion is "Meh."

It is a real 4x game, and much higher quality than a bunch of the other games that have been released in the past few years (Endless Space, Pegasus), and while it may not have Samurai Space Bears, it is at least a completed game with solid professional support.

The interface is OK to awkward.  Some of the things you can do are excellent, like marking planets for colonization and having the governors handle the construction and dispatch of the necessary ships.  Some of the things you need to do, like manage fuel depots, are supposed to be done automatically, but aren't, and the interface provides very little capability to handle it manually.
The AI in general is a problem.  It automates much of the low level stuff that usually drags down the fun of a 4x game, especially towards the end when you have 100 planets, but it does so poorly.  I spent a lot of time cleaning up after my already optimized AI build plans that it was almost easier to do everything manually.

In combat, the AI was very stupid again.  It auto designs ships (that are terrible) but allows you to design your own!  But then once designed, you still need to perform the manual upgrades every time you get a new tech or shrink a component or something.  Feedback is not good, some sometimes measuring the actual effectiveness of a design is difficult.  Some ship designs just work poorly in AI hands - for example, I found Carriers to be amazing powerful in human hands.  But when the AI used them, it would somehow be massively less effective, so I had to micro every fleet battle that game.

The diplomacy was mostly good.  It was broad, and could involve a number of ways to influence other races.  Those races also had their own relationships and strife, and could undergo rebellious planets or civil wars that found new empires (just as it can happen to you!) which was nice.

The historical scenario was interesting.  It wasn't supposed to be a surprise, really, because the normal game already reveals everything that happened back then, but it was fun to play it out myself.  Unfortunately, again, the AI was way too stupid.  At one point, it had crushed my fleets and destroyed several of my planets and was within range of depopulating my homeworld, then it stopped and went away, giving me enough time to research and build all the special stuff I needed.

All in all, meh.  The AI is not good.  The interface is awkward.  The automation needs to be gamed to work well (limiting designs the AI can use, never researching certain techs until way late, etc).  But the diplomacy was good (if not TLF level), and the general game mechanics worked OK.  I don't regret buying it - I did put 100+ hours into it - but I'm not sure I can really recommend it, except as "The least bad space 4x choice we have in the modern era".

[topper]

That is a great review Toranth, and I agree with all of it, especially that it is"The least bad space 4x choice we have in the modern era".

One thing I would add is that the AI you are mentioning is the same AI for both your enemies as well as the optional AI control of various features of your own empire. For all the good and bad, you actually have a lot of control of what you want (or don't want) to micromanage through turning on automation of different features.

That said, it is pretty easy to dig into the game with full automation on and simply play the parts you find the most fun. When you get deeper than that level and try to manage more things yourself is when the clunkier aspects of the game start to detract from the experience, since it becomes obvious that the automation (and enemy) AI is pretty suboptimal and can be destroyed easily through micromanaging everything.

[Castruccio]

Ah, I see.  All great insights guys.  You probably just saved me 60 bucks, although I do wish there was something good from Matrix (historical or space) to replace it with.  For now I guess I'll wait and see how some of the big fantasy 4x's in development turn out: World of Magic, Endless Legend, etc.

[keith.lamothe]

I really enjoyed the game a few times, and if you can get it for a price you're ok with then I heartily recommend it as "a game every strategy gamer should experience".  I don't regret the price myself since it's partly research for me, etc.

But I didn't keep playing it because I found that once I'd figured out how to work with the deliciously complex economic system (mainly in the sense of building up sufficient production of the right resources) and to control everything manually in a way that didn't bog me down (which involved re-enabling some targeted automation, but not letting the game play for me) ... well, the AI just can't keep up when you play well, really.  At least that was my experience.

But the journey up to that point was Quality Fun.

[Castruccio]

Apparently there is an AI Improvement mod that might be of some interest to you:  http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3647528