What's the best 4x galactic colonization game with the most in-depth or expansive ground-invasion mechanics?
Space battles are fine and all, but I really like the idea of planetary bombardment and invading.
4X Galactic Games
What's the best 4x galactic colonization game with the most in-depth or expansive ground-invasion mechanics?
Space battles are fine and all, but I really like the idea of planetary bombardment and invading.
Stellaris has ground invasion and planetary bombardment, it's not very interactive. It's the game that gives you everything but at the cost of it not being detailed enough. For example you can drop troops on a planet to conquer it but other than how man troops you commit to taking it, you have no control. It's like risk. Usually whoever has more troops wins unless one side has a great tech advantage.
They have plans on revamping ground combat in one of the next updates.
They don't need to revamp anything because that's exactly what generals do during invasion, assign how many troops, designate when to invade, how to invade, and sit on your cosy chair while bloodshed occurs until the results show up on your desk.
Patton didn't.
It's fricking boring though.
For the record, I don't mind automated combat, but I want depth to it, involving types of strategies or automated options for launching invasions. Having full-blown RTS-style battles is overkill, but having the choice of different troop types, vehicles, and tactics is perfect.
Stellaris is perfectly fine as the "baseline" 4x game, it's like the starter kit or introduction game for 4x genre
Either Endless Space 2 for at least having manpower and rock-paper-scissors as additional aspects of an invasion along with being able to choose the nature of the invasion and factions that are better or worse at it among a few other things to make it somewhat involved, or that ancient game a few keep jacking off about because it reminds them of Warhammer 40k and you can move oil barrels across planets or whatever. Forgot its name. Emperor of the Sun or something.
Emperor of the Fading Suns, it's okay. In single player the AI has universal warehouse and can access commodities regardless of blockade. Kind of ruins it if you're stuck doing SP.
What an amazing game, but I fricking hate the micro and fighting against endless trash units and he stupid AI and the easy win condition that invalidates >90% of the game and the useless church and....
Unfortunately it's just quite undercooked and solving these requires basically designing an AI that's capable of planning out the movement of goods and not fricking up its own economy, let alone dealing with blockades. It's not quite trivial.
>the useless church
Really? I thought it was quite buffed with the newest patches.
>the easy win condition that invalidates >90% of the game
Also think that's not quite fair.
do not listen to paradrones its for sure is not Stellaris
They're making a new Imperium Galactica, I think.
Star Wars Rebellion kind of has that, although it's a super-dumbed down 4X game.
The only 4x Space Sim you will ever need. You just reminded me of it, OP, thanks. Going back to spend another 500 hours in it.
>download the User Guide for Space Empires 5
>it's 300 fricking pages
Awesome. I love reading novels before I get to play the actual game.
At first I enjoyed your sarcasm but then I remembered where I am.
Are you unironically defending a game that has a manual that's the equivalent of a college textbook?
>zoomer incapable of learning anything that can't be presented in a tiktok
Uhuh...
>mountain blade
>complex
>57 hours
Shiggy diggy
There, is that better?
>moving the goalposts
Mate, I'm kinda high right now so I gotta ask: Did you unironically try to present M&B as a complex game to prove a point, or is this just my brain going mush?
>he's never played M&B multiplayer
>the most complex video gaming there is
NGMI
Actual PhD student here, it isn't the equivalent of a college textbook.
Manuals are a reference, you don't read the whole thing in one go. Read the beginning then start playing the game, go back to it later when you have questions.
I'm interested, could you elaborate more on what is great about this game? Thanks
Aurora has what you’re looking for, OP. You build your army from the ground up, first by designing individual units with researchable weapons, armor, and size, then by building army formations with those units along with a chain of command. Ground invasions happen mostly automatically. You can also specialize your units with with training for fighting on specific planet types, eg desert, jungle, low gravity, etc. Unfortunately Aurora is a notoriously autistic game that takes a lot of effort to learn, so ymmv, but imo worth it if you regard Stellaris as babymode and want to really get into the weeds on something more complex.
its always the same for me
>download aurora, some gary grigsbys shit or C:MO
>watch like two tutorials on youtube
>notice im too stupid or get bored after 30 min
>uninstall
happens every other week
I'm personally a huge fan of Shadow Empire despite the clunk, but it only has planetary combat which is probably the best one could've out there (think Hearts of Iron III but sci-fi)
Master of Orion II.
Its not the most involved mechanic, but you do conquer planets by dropping troops on them, and you get a little animation where both sides fight and in 20+ years I haven't ever gotten sick of watching my mech-suit dudes marching across some radioactive hellscape murdering civilian defense forces.
In tactical space combat you can target the planet itself to destroy planet based defenses, and buildings.
After the combat phase you have the option of invading, bombing the planet clean, or waiting.
>in 20+ years I haven't ever gotten sick of watching my mech-suit dudes marching across some radioactive hellscape murdering civilian defense forces.
based MOO2 enjoyer
>After the combat phase you have the option of invading, bombing the planet clean, or waiting.
Or nuking the entire planet if you have the stellar converter.
> tfw it donut include all the time invested in the ol Zendar era