GROUP EVENT [Aug 3, 2023] Strategy Night (Discord)

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Strategy Night will focus on strategy games that can be completed in a few hours. Although grand strategy games (ex. Crusader Kinds and Stellaris) will not be included here as part of this regular scheduled event, they may take center stage as part of a semi-annual or seasonal event.

Strategy games that our group usually plays:

We will plan for 7pm EST right now, but the time/date is negotiable.
What is best in life? Crushing your enemies! Embrace your inner armchair general and join us!

IMPORTANT: Some of these games are entirely FREE (or have free content) to download so be sure to check our Strategy subforum for details.​

Not seeing a game here you want to play? Check out our Recommended Game List, our Announcements subforum, and our Events Calendar for common games we play. Also, if you think you have a good idea, please share it with us! We are always looking for feedback on how to improve the Skjaldborg!
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Historically, we never were able to get any traction with the Civ series because games would take too long (somewhat similar to Stellaris, but the latter seemed to have more staying power). There was also the ugly business of Civ V having spyware attached to the game. I'm willing to try again, but I can't officially recommend the game as a community activity until we show some consistent results.

AoE II might be a better option due to being cheap and games are easy to finish in one sitting.

 

The Stellaris game is progressing. We will see it through to completion, but what games do you want to focus on for Wednesday after the campaign is complete? I'm looking for feedback from everyone.

 

Yeah, sounds good. I should be ready to go for our next Stellaris session (Day 6 I think?) by Sunday. Still unpacking boxes at my new place. Once we get the campaign out of the way, I'm looking forward to us jumping back in to Supreme Commander

 

During our last monthly meeting, we talked about how Stellaris has really failed to deliver on meeting the demands of the Borg. While Stellaris is a great game, its general time requirements and poor stability in MP games has left much to be desired for. In response, we talked about a potential replacement for planned community events. A game that stood out in poarticular was Endless Space 2. It is currently on sale for a deep discout on both Steam and Humble Bundle. Here is what I have to report from our playtests this weekend:

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Just a quick recap review on what the game is about:



So here's my honest review about the game and how it compares to Stellaris:

1) How does the game play?

In all honesty, there is a ton of similarities between the two games. It is actually a shorter list to talk about how they are different than how they are similar, but just to cover the basics, here are some of the highlights of their similarities:

• Both offer everything you would expect in a grand strategy game; all the economics, politics, warfare, and resource management you would want.
• Both give players the option to tailor their own factions how the player wants them (both cosmetically and functionally).
• Both allow for large scale maps with many different factions to discover and interact with.
• Both allow for full access to all DLC as long as the host owns it all.

But here is how they distinguish themselves in gameplay:

• Unlike Stellaris, Endless Space is turn based (the latter has advantages in terms of MP stability that I will get to later).
• Endless Space has a greater degree of roleplaying elements including hero units that players can level up over time with unique skill trees.
• Open market trading is a bit more developed and informative in Endless Space (commodity price histories, greater number of unique resources, etc.)
• The scale in Stellaris generally dwarfs Endless Space; even the smallest galaxy in Stellaris still has ~500 systems in it. This is far more than Endless Space.
• Fleets battles are smaller in scale, have greater tactical flexibility, and are more cinematic in Endless Space.
  
• Endless Space has a greater number of ship types with individually more detailed functions while Stellaris ship types are fewer in number but more modular.
• Compared to Stellaris, ground battles have a bit more polish in Endless Space.
• Endless Space AI seems to handle the factions of absent players much MUCH better than Stellaris; generally speaking, you have far less to worry about if you miss a session in an Endless Space 2 campaign.
• A bit biased here, but worth mentioning that Endless Space has literal space vikings, known as the Vaulters.

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2) How much will it cost me for the full experience?

As mentioned previously, both allow for only the host of a game to own all the DLC to have full access to all the game's features. Both also come with a ton of free content

• The Stellaris bundle sells for around $72.
• The Endless Space bundle sells for around $60 (however, it is worth noting it is currently on sale for around $32!)

Basically, in regards to getting what you pay for, both offer roughly equal price points.
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3) How do these games fit in with the Skjaldborg community as a whole?

As mentioned previously, Stellaris is a great game, but has really failed to hold up well in our community events in two distinct ways:

• Stellaris becomes almost unplayable for some people in the late game (just too much data needing to be calculated). We have experienced too many desynchs and disconnects to finish games in a reasonable amount of time.
• Partly because of the latter, your average game takes too long to finish.

By comparison, Endless Space partly addresses both these issues by just being far more stable to play with a group. I understand that many here love Stellaris, but as of this post, the game is just too unstable (or too data intensive for people's internets) to reliably play online for most people. However, despite Endless Space's advantages, I'm still hesitant to declare it the clear "winner" in this comparison.

There is one persistent problem with Endless Space that plagues ALL 4x titles: the game is just too damn long. We've played one game on "fast" settings for approximately 12 hours over this weekend... which got us to around turn 60... and we are still barely into the middle of the game. To put that in perspective, the game considers a "fast" game to take approximately 150 turns. If six hours a day gets us through about 30 turns, that means it would take roughly 30 hours to complete a full game on "fast" settings ("fast" is the fastest you can have). While this is still roughly shorter than your typical Stellaris experience, it is still WAY too long for a large community event. Most people just can't devote that amount of time. We should NEVER expect that level of commitment from our community for one of our events.
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IN SUMMARY

So what does all this mean? I have carefully considering the merits of both games. I love both of them for their own specific flavors of the "space empire" strategy genre. Which is why it saddens me that I honestly cannot continue to recommend either one for official Skjaldborg events. Nevermind the instability issues of Stellaris, it really comes down to the fact that we cannot reliably get people to show up in large numbers for the amount of time these games demand. The same goes for ANY 4x title. They are simply asking too large a commitment from our members at this time.

Now before anyone gets upset, don't get me wrong; if some of you want to organize a play group of members to play one of these games, I wholly support it. However, I cannot in good conscience say to the community as a whole "We are planning a major event with this game and we ask that everyone take part if they are able. Please go buy this game at your next earliest convenience so you can take part. Etc." As a leader of this community, that is where my focus lies and that is where it will remain until we find something more consistent beyond the FOTM and F2P stuff we dabble in. I think it is very unreasonable for me to ask the community as a whole to support this kind of game when it is so difficult to consistently organize for a large number of players. I am sympathetic to everyone's limitations in both time and money and that is why I've come to this conclusion.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

So where does this leave us? Currently, only Trev, Ben, and I have been able to consistently show up for our Stellaris sessions (although a few others have expressed interest, but can't due to scheduling). As far as the current campaign goes, I will leave it up to those who are still interested in the campaign to decide if we continue playing it out. I'm sure members of our community will continue to play Stellaris and Endless Space for some time to come, but I will no longer be making an effort to organize any 4x games for the community as a whole until more consistent numbers can be found. Warlord Wednesday will continue, but my plan is to focus on strategy games that are easier to complete in a single sitting.

P.S. - if there isn't a huge push to continue the current Stellaris campaign, we will move on to what a lot of people have requested: more Supreme Commander (among other things). I still have some custom maps on the back burner that will add to the variety there.

 

Yeah, I'd like to at least finish that. Outside of that, I might pick up Endless Space 2? But... ehhhh. It's probably great, but there's only so much time in the day.

 

To be fair, Stellaris is a pretty "slow" RTS game. It doesn't really punish players for being slow in their decision making like Starcraft and C&C games do.

That being said, I'm down for playing either on the side of everything else we do.

 

^A group of us playing a match of CoH2 last Wednesday.

ANNOUNCEMENT!
HUGE sale for Warlord Wednesday games until Feb 11!

Age of Empires 2
Battlezone: Combat Commander (2018)
Blood Bowl 2
Company of Heroes 2
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Endless Space 2
Satellite Reign
Sins of A Solar Empire: Rebellion (MP currently disable)
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance
Tabletop Simulator (Magic the Gathering, Battletech CCG, Cards Against Humanity, etc.)
Throne of Lies
WH40K: Dawn of War Dark Crusade
WH40K: Dawn of War II​

 

From what I can tell, online multiplayer for Sins of a Solar Empire no longer works. If anyone knows how to get it working using some software juju, I would be interested in trying to get it working again.

Until we get it sorted, SoaSE will have to be pulled from our playlist.

 

Anyone who is a fan of Warhammer 40K... hell... anyone who is a fan of strategy games
absolutely must try this with us:

DoW Ultimate Apocalypse!

• New units!
• New FACTIONS!
• Bigger maps!
• BIGGER armies!
• MOAR DAKKA!

https://www.moddb.com/mods/ultimate-apocalypse-mod/downloads/ua-thb-v1885-full