Gave it a good try but unfortunately i dont enjoy it. AIl rounds kinda played out the same.
AI sits in their base, collects points like crazy and aspect is always at the top of the leaderboard. There is no conflict, noone ever attacks each other.
Even in endgame everyone doesnt care, whether i had the wincon unlocked or someone else, nothing.
Half the wincons dont work anyway and AI is only a threat if i let it cheat, they play dumb and either feed units into mine by parking them right in front of me or summon stack after stack because they get infinite recources it feel like.
Taking out any faction is such a slog, but its the only way to beat some AI.
Whatever those anchor wearing frogs are smoking they always have more of everything at all times, double or triple so on higher "difficulty", which translates to "more recourses on anything, less upkeep etc.".
How convenient that the game doesnt tell me how much they cheat either, there is just some vague description about how higher difficulty is for players looking for a challenge.
Which, to be fair, is the same formula all other 4x games use.
What i dont like how the tech tree is identical for everyone, some slight variation because some buildings have different names and effects but thats about it. It makes no sense.
Why can necrophages learn how to build a dam, they dont even have hands except the big one.
Is he building all the dam?
Why do they get tech towards better farming or trading or whatever like everyone else? Why to they even BUILD farms to begin with? Would love to see the lore behind that.
The bugs plowing their fields, building windmills and stuff. It makes no sense.
I thought they were meant to be a plague, consuming everything on their way.
If they were more of a threat the kin race would maybe be more viable too, playing a defender with noone thats actually aggressive is pointless.
They have nothing going for them, all they do is build garrisions to waste time until their eventual downfall after like 20 turns of waiting for walls to crumble.
There could be changes to the icons and different names instead of the regular farm/mining camp etc.
Something thats more thematic, it breaks immersion immensely in my opinion.
Aliens playing farmers and miners, i thought space was more diverse then this.
There are so little classes in general, i feel the necrophages should be much stronger individually if they are the only ones that actually fight / get bonuses for fighting.
They would be much more interesting that way, have them be a threat and remove the silly diplomatic tree as well.
Feels weird having nice talks or the option to compliment them, befriend even tho they should be hostile to everyone.
Maybe bribing could be a thing, feed them population so they ignore you, or have them focus on someone you dont like (aspects mainly), use them and be used by them instead of playing house.
Unless i dont get the lore right, maybe they are more civilized then their intro cinematic makes them out to be, who am i to judge on appearances.
The smaller villages were interesting for like the first 30 minutes, but they quickly lose their appeal.
Every round i played i would just annex them by doing their quest or destroy and ignore them, then not bother anymore, its not interesting and once annexed they dont do anything either, just taking up space.
I know they give some slight bonuses but really, its not engaging at all. Not a fun mechanic.
I also dont like how the faction leaders just look.. boring. The only one that looks cool is the necrophage, everyone else looks uninteresting.
The game would benefit from some faction creator like Age of Wonders has, they dont even need fancy animation or anything. Some sliders, some units that i get to configure and "character" settings for AI, whether they are good/evil, aggressive/passive.
The community could do the rest, they just need the tools to do so.
The current state of the game is very bland, very little variety in how games play out.
There seem to be changes coming to diplomacy and how enemys "remember" you doing something bad, but i dont think that will change anything about my complaints with the game.
