I've been playing a lot of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_the_Stars recently. It's awesome, turn based strategy at a solar system scale. Each species has a different method of traversing the stars (some expand slow but defend well, some expand fast but defend poorly is the gist of it). Was wondering if anyone had played it and fancied starting up a game / giving advice. I'm still at the getting beaten by Easy AI stage... You can buy the collection for £14 on Steam, or £7.50 on Amazon. I am not sure but I think the Amazon version is DRM free.
Tried it once, exploration and managment part is alright but battles are downright horrible, you can do very little tactics wise and side with better tech / bigger numbers always wins. Still waiting for Homeworld 3
I love 4x games and am generally decent at them, but couldn't get past that stage and gave up. Couldn't keep up on a macro level in terms of colonizing and economy.
Yes, yes it is. I believe you cant buy digital copy anywhere so you have to rely on unofficial distribution. Homeworld is a brilliant series you need to at least give it a try.
I'm reading all this as no-one being interested in a game of SotS, but definitely up for some Homeworld 2?
I love the first SotS, played a lot of it with friends in my college days. You can always set the game up for Teams and give yourself an AI bodyshield, err, buddy while you learn the ropes. Most of our little group that played would start the game by pumping 70-85% of our money into Research. You can do this with the little slider in the top left. Our strategies often diverged from there. I would focus on economy and production (preferring the better technological races, the Humans, Morrigi and Liir), researching heavily in the Industrial, C3 and Biological trees to develop a small but efficient base of operations; thus primed for galactic domination it was easy to shift my attention to better weapons and engines because of how productive my worlds typically were. It's a strategy of convenience, in that it doesn't work very well if you're under siege from turn 10 onward, so you may have to adapt a more offensive strategy. You can win a battle with better technology just as easily as you can with bigger numbers. If you're getting demolished in most of your battles, pay attention to the after-battle reports -- they tell you how well your ships and weapons are doing, and what your opponents are using to beat you. You can then tailor your research and ship designs to counter their strengths; Reflective Coating can help a lot against laserboats, Point Defense is a must against missile barrages, etc. This link is to the actual SotS wiki, which has a ton of useful information.
Awesome. I've been reading the wiki a lot. As Hivers I must needs take a 2 or 3 turn hit on research to pump out the necessary Gates to establish a foothold by turn 15 before there's no space left. What I really want is some kind of interactive tech tree that lists pre-requisites. For example, I knew I needed to research Fusion to open up options, but it was 28 turns of research (at nearly full budget). I'm pretty sure there is research that would make it more accessible, just not sure what. Or is research purely based on number/size of colonies? Also, if you research Fusion and DON'T get access to shields or cloaking from it, how do you get those techs?
Well the tech-tree is slightly randomized and a little different for each race so there's no guarantee you will ever get access to certain techs, and you definitely won't have access to all techs in any given game. As a general rule, the more your planets are able to produce, the more money you have for research. This means more planets, and can also mean more efficient planets. Hivers are a different breed, that's for sure. A friend of mine played them almost exclusively and his plan was twofold: Ramscoops (so your gates don't require fuel) and a galaxy's worth of gateships. When we'd play allied games with him, space (all of it) would turn whatever his civilization's color was as he sent one gate ship to every planet he could see all on the same turn.
I've also never gotten the grasp of this game, I wasn't getting stomped by AI, but it would seem like by turn 1000 I just wasn't getting anywhere and felt like I was doing something wrong. Back as a wee lad I played Master of Orion, which undoubtably helped inspire this game, and I guess I had too many preconceptions about game pacing and game play to succeed at this out of the box.
I'm only playing Hiver, which are the most different race as far as I can tell... on turn 75 of a new game, hope it doesn't go to 1000...
