The Viceroy

Beware: This is essentially an economic management game with light combat. If this is not your thing, do not buy. Other than that, I recommend the product. It reminds me highly if a more strategy based version of The Last Federation. The graphics aren't exactly nextgen, but they work for what they are meant for, the music is a bit repetitive but not obnoxiously so. You don't play these games for visual and audio input though. The management aspect is very complicated and indepth, with quite a few things constantly affecting one another, and sometimes it becomes a bit difficult to track. Especially since it doesn't show you the effects of most changes you do until the next turn. I would like to know if, for example, moving a citizen from unspecced production to specced production will help the district/planet or not. Some more feedback before passing a turn would be helpful. I've had multiple times where I've had 6-7 districts drop a wealth level from merely moving 2 citizens in the districts. Also, one minor thing: the citizen allocation. A feature I wouldn't mind is some sort of auto-optimization. As for the GUI, it could use a few tweaks and new features. Right clicking in the district list to go to planet list, right click again for system. Maybe click the money up top for quick policy access (in addition to the already existing policy button.) Also: Buttons. Nothing fancy needed. Simply having the 5 menus up top actually have a little border and maybe some subtle graphics would look alot better. Finally, the voiceover is a tad on the quiet side and could really benefit from subtitles. In summary: a quite decent management game that have some nitpicky problems.

I would love to recommend this game, but in its current state of development at a $20 price tag – I cannot. Despite being called a full release, it is very much on par for a late early access title. Let me break it down: The Good: - Interesting and novel approach to an economic management game. - A plethora of strategic and engaging choices on how to develop your territory. A Steady learning curve – though a primer on early rebel management would be nice (lost my first two territories to rebels). - Decent graphics, varied and appealing art/icon style. - Active Developer. Browse the Community page, and you will see several replies by the Dev. May he can redeem this title. The Bad: - Oh. God. The crashes. In the 20 or so hours I have put in already, I have had 10-12 crashes and lost 4 different saves. BACK UP YOUR SAVES! - The Balance, once you master some of the more advanced mechanics, the underlying mathematical model goes crazy. With a little ingenuity, you can get 6-800 Levels of Influence from the TUTORIAL mission, which immediately skews the game into even crazier imbalances. - Very shallow combat system (though I suspect it’s not a core feature). - Get an autoclicker, and save yourself the Carpal Tunnel diagnosis. This game needs a serious UI/X rework. Expect to spend most of your play time mindlessly clicking through badly optimized interfaces. I’ll check back in after a few weeks, maybe I’ll be able to swap this review to a positive.

I can't recommend this game at the moment even though I love the idea of the game. The game crashes on the weirdest things, and once it crashes, the game does not allow you to open itself unless you delete all your saves and start on offline mode (because it seems there is steam save on this game). I'll give this game more chances, but unless the game breaking bugs are fixed, there's no content to actually play.

It's fun for the first few hours hours, but it's not worth twenty bucks In the game, you rule over a territory that has recently had a disaster befall it. You win by maxing out your people's wealth and removing "mortality" (death rate), ignorance (having a negative balance of the game's research points), and misery (have too few "hapiness" points in your systems), then leaving your territory to do the same thing in another one. The entire game is based around building "upgrades" in your planets to increase your people's stats, and the "challenges" in the game function exactly the same as the upgrades, but they give a detremental effect rather than a positive one For example, one upgrade gives +1% population growth. ALL OTHER population growth upgrades increase pop growth at the exact same rate, and all "challenges" that have to do with population growth decrease it by 1%. How do you get rid of the "challenges"? You research a tech to nullify them, then you have to pay to remove the challenge- in the exact same manner you build the upgrades. All techs give you acess to one new upgrade (none of which do anything unique), the ability to nullify one challenge, and a 1% increase in productivity in one area of your economy. You get more tech points by building upgrades and changing your policies (they are functionally just sliders) Your early game territories have 3-4 solar systems in them, each with 2-5 planets, each planet with 1-11 districts. Upgrades and challenges exist in each "layer" of a solar system- they effect the whole system, a whole planet, or a single district. To build an upgrade, you go into the desired level you wish to build it on, then you click and drag the upgrade onto the center of the screen. So if I wanted to increase my pop growth by 1%+ in a solar system, but I only have tech that lets me build on a disctrict scale, I have to click and drag up to 50 times! Roughly 1/3 of the upgrades exist on the district scale, so most of the time you play will be taken up by clicking and dragging. In the late game, expect to start your turn, click and drag for 5 minutes, get tired, save, come back, and then click and drag for another five minutes before you can end turn. Unless the devs add a way to "mass upgrade" several district at once, don't play this if you would rather not develop complications in your wrists. EDIT: Since writing this review, the UI has been upgraded to include a "mass build" funciton. It is still, however, clunky and irritating to use, and the game gets stale just as fast as before. Every new territory you rule over has its own unique challenges. However, these are all solved in the exact same way: research tech, then click and drag to nullify it. After you figure out how to "max out" a territory, you realize that the solutions for each set of challenges are almost exactly the same. Focus on maxing out a single planet's money-making stats, set your policies to get max income, and then proceed to max out the rest of your territory. Once you 'solve' the game and 'beat' one territory, it becomes a horrible grind with NO replay value. You can get 'promoted', but all that does is increase the size of the territories you rule over. Which means you have to click and drag EVEN MORE to win! It proports to have a sophisticated econ system, but it's incredibly simple. There are three types of goods- biological, industrial, and cultural. The people of your planets make money directly proportional to how many goods they produce- this money is then divided between taxes, support for rebels, and consumption (which increases your people's wealth stat). How good a solar system is at producing each one depends entirely on the upgrades you have built in it. Because upgrades exist for productivity on each 'level'- solar system, planetary, and district, the only course of action is to max out productivity of one type of good for the entire solar system, and let it import the other two. There is a cost to import goods, but it can be completely nullified by- suprise suprise- clicking and dragging upgrades onto the district, planetary, and solar system levels. To fight rebels, you click and drag ships onto your fleets, then click and drag the weapons you want on your ships onto your fleet, then click and drag your fleets onto the rebels. There is a combat system, but you have so little input that you'll end up auto-resolving every battle ( all you can do is click and drag your ships into different starting positions on the map) If the UI was less atrocious, this game might be fun in short bursts. But as it stands, I don't reccomend it.

+Very Depth management game +Skill for your leader improve with each game + Map start small and get bigger +Low Cost +/- Early game Repetitive once you know how to earn money tips : go feodal and full monoculturalism for money for the first turn after assigned tech and get those taxes up and if you manage policies well you will end with state economy with multiculturalism (monoculturalism when high level with lot of districts ) and lower your taxe. to simplify this : you start at the medieval age with low tech and got problems and you must end at utopia communism (ultimate capitalist) without corruption if possible i will do the same too in democracy 3 :D - Hard to learn if you are a noob in macro economics you need then the manual - They should add like eu4 some hovering text to get some previsions for the next turn and add some automation with some buildings cause to find the best profitable district to upgrade first take some time. +/- Simple battle tactics 7/10 Minor defaults but else seems good for management game like capitalism 2 (now capitalism lab) P.S : It's not a 4X due to no explore and the one to exterminate is rebels which is your other side of the coin. And this is a heavy micromanagement game so dont expect to stay less than 1min per turn. And the time i took to finish the 3 big missions (main campaign) is 44h so if you run only one faction due to all other are the same except starting tech and social class. So max time you will finish this game at 100% is 264h average. (v1.02)

I'm doing a [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGlq1jxBSAw&list=PL2PwBeOdWDvXbxm6U2JIYgec7BuUhm-5S&index=1]Let's Play of this game,[/url] and have now completed my first territory successfully. For reference, it took about 2hr30min to beat that territory, the smallest in the game, though I can easily see it being completed more quickly or lasting much, much longer depending on how you want to play the game. The game is very complex and has a steep learning curve, but a lot of the fun in playing it comes from trying to figure out how everything works together and then making things more efficient. CONS The biggest problem with the game is the lack of any sort of real tutorialization, meaning you will probably struggle until you understand the basic gameplay mechanics through trial and error. There is a manual and an extensive in-game encyclopedia, but these don't really explain how to play the game so much as they hint at the actual purpose behind game mechanics. Combat is not very fleshed out, not that this game is meant to be about combat, but you have the option to auto-resolve or command your ships in a fight, the latter choice allowing you to position them before a battle. The audio is entirely forgettable, which is unfortunate in a game where you spend large amounts of time contemplating options on single screens. The graphics are competent but definitely not the focus. PROS On the positive side, the game features a very deep and interesting lore, mostly delivered through the tech system (which is also high unique and is implemented very well). It gives a lot of ACTUAL depth to the administrative process (more than any other game I've seen) and provides you with all the information you could want to govern in the way you like. If you like the Democracy series, some of the older political sims like Shadow President, or grand strategy in the vein of Victoria 2, this game will be perfect for you. Even city-builder fans (especially of the older Sim City games) should be able to enjoy this game, as it is fundamentally a game about managing people and a government from the desk of an administrator. If you've never played any of those games before, I can say that if you enjoy economics or puzzling out the best, most efficient way to do something, you will really like this game.

Great economic game, simple to play hard to master. Played a few games now and not ones did i complete all 3 of the challenges from one of the portals most i got 2 out of 3. So you got great replay possebiltys. To starting players: You dont got unlimted turns, every turn you get 0.1 burcratic overhead and every improment cost 0.1 buratic overhead per district, reductions on bucratic overhead excluded since 1.1. This is what the whole game is about a race agiant time and your own improments.

Very unique take on the "decadent empire" narrative that underpins a lot of the best Sci-Fi epics like Asimov's Foundation and settings like WH40K..The game seems daunting at first due to the complexity, but if you dive in and just mess around for a while, it's pretty easy to pick up as long as you're willing to fail and restart a few times, and experiment with the mechanics. The manual is there if you need details, but the early game is very forgiving and the time investment is low enough that it's fine if you mess up and learn by failing. The persistent "Viceroy" RPG-ish element is one of the things that sets the game apart, and sometimes the best way to "win" is to not actually go straight for promotion, but to collect influence points to "level up" your Viceroy so that when you finally do go for the promotion, you have the skills and bonuses that will let you take on the extreme difficulty of the larger territories. It forces you to think more broadly about your overall playstyle/strategy as opposed to just fixing one territory's problems. This game takes 4x strategy games where they need to go, someplace different that isn't just MOO2 all over again. The non-sale price is very reasonable considering the amount of entertainment I've gotten out of it so far, so if you see it go on sale, don't hesitate to snap this one up, because you're guaranteed to get your money's worth. Thumbs way up for this one!

很难说是否应该推荐这款游戏。我是原价进的，20 刀对这么个游戏来说有点贵，如果是 5 刀左右就很值了。我觉得很多人是玩不下去的，但是我自己玩进去了，很喜欢，所以还是给一个推荐吧。 下面说说这款游戏到底在玩什么。看明白后，你应该能判断是不是你的菜： 这是款科幻色彩很浓的游戏、如果你能看明白里面的文字，乐趣会大很多。我的单词量很小，所以一开始玩的时候查了很多字典，头都要晕了。当然玩进去后，其实大部分文字都不用看，只关注界面上特别颜色标注出来的系统数值加成就好了。弄懂规则后，其实没有什么语言障碍。 它其实是一个菜单游戏。你在游戏中要做的就是各种升级：出科技、建建筑、造飞船…… 然后观察这些升级对经济系统造成的变化，努力把你的辖区治理的更好。一切都是在菜单上完成的。但他又不是一个放置游戏，一切升级都是只要钱够了立刻就能点出来，下回合就生效，没有建造时间。会玩后，游戏节奏挺流畅的，我就是鼠标加键盘玩的飞快。注意：用方向键在各星系中各星球里的辖区间导航比在大地图上点来点去方便的多，那个星域图在熟练操作以后就是个多余的装饰。 和一般无脑放置游戏不同，并不是研究出一个科技或建筑，无脑升上去就够了。每个回合你的收入是非常有限的，所以能干的事情也很有限。如果你不仔细考虑的话，很容易陷入恶性循环。 下面就我玩了 10 个小时左右的粗浅理解，谈一下整个游戏经济系统是怎么运转的： 首先人口是一切的基础：游戏每局开始会为每个区域设置一个初始人口，然后根据增长率来迭代计算下回合的人口。增长率有正有负，由富饶程度确定。当人口超过该区域容纳极限后，拥挤度会导致负增长率惩罚，以保证人口不会超过极限太多。而各种科技以及建筑，还有系统设置的初始负面 buf 均会影响增长率和拥挤极限（提高或降低）。 人口的数量决定了经济的总量以及科技规模，当然其间的影响比例又和各种科技以及负面效果相关。经济体量联合税率会转化为你可以动用的资金，它还会受官僚腐败程度（由你的能力以及科技、建筑的数量决定）的影响；税收是发展的经费来源，但它会根据人民的快乐度按比例分给你和叛军使用。所以在你发展强大的同时，叛军的力量也会同期增加，你需要用军费开支去支撑一个和叛军匹敌的舰队。 科技的规模也和经济总量相关，当你的科技规模变大后，你可以研究更多的科技。但一旦经济规模减少到不足以支持科技规模，要么你要选择遗忘一些科技，要么就受到贫困的惩罚（削弱你的个人影响力）。 贸易水平决定了人们制造的产品流通的效率，可以增进富饶程度，以及带来更多的收入。而在不同的富饶水平下，人民会在不同阶级间流动，导致游戏内三大类物资（工业、生物、文化）的生产效率的不同（留下了供玩家手动调整的空间）。 这是一个需要极度微观控制（你可以单独对每个星系下每个星球上的每个区域升级科技或建筑）的经济游戏。同时又提供给玩家一些宏观政策的调整手段（税率、发展偏好等），而宏观调整对微观层面的影响是非常复杂的（即使公式并不复杂）。游戏的经济环境建立在一个复杂的的系统上。很多参数会相互影响，以至于说明这些关系的文档有几十页之多。这种复杂度导致了一开始你只能凭感觉玩，“升这个东西是不是会好一点”这种探索感会持续几个小时。即使慢慢的搞明白后，靠心算也很难简单的判断出每个回合的最佳策略。 在游戏里，你作为一个总督，你要做的是在有限的人口/经济规模下，怎么面对各种难题。每一小局游戏开始，系统会随机对你的辖区下各种负面 buf ，让辖区的经济系统处于崩溃边缘。如果你不做出合适的对策，那么辖区的状态一定是越来越糟的：人口下降、经济衰退、科技退步、叛军林立、你能做的事情越来少，直到帝国崩溃。其实你并不需要让一切都好转起来良性发展，只需要尽量在发展过程中争取到一些政绩增加个人的影响力，一直到个人影响力发展到顶点时，把烂摊子一甩，回首都述职（升官并提升自己的能力）就可以了。然后你会被派到新地方，开始新的一局。 每个小回合辖区人民都会提两个（随机）小目标让你完成，这种政绩工程一定能增加你的个人影响力，但未必符合你的长期规划（如果你真的想长期经营）。你要有所判断，如果无脑去完成这种小目标，玩起来会很轻松，且短期个人影响力增长很快，但是长期很容易让经济跨掉。一般说来，每局开局你都应该审视你的辖区的具体情况（每局都有所区别、这是游戏的重玩价值所在），考虑好真正的问题在哪里，规划好要点出的科技，把要做的事情排出大致的优先次序。一边适度的完成部分不那么离谱的小目标，一边实施大规划。 btw, 这个游戏是有战斗系统的，但真的很简陋。我大部分时间里都不主动打仗，被迫战斗时，都以绝对兵力优势去自动战斗。似乎手动战斗除了战前准备外，只能布置一下飞船进入战场的初始位置。这部分没有细玩，不做评价。我觉得战斗系统本身也不是这款游戏的设计重点。

Solid and interesting game that's a bit of fresh air, in an often stale and itirative genre. Any reference to 4x style games is misleading however - this is strictly a management game. Exploration and Expansion are non-existant. Extermination is relegated to an arbitrary phase of 'whack the mole' of whichever enemy ship/fleet that spawns every two turns. Exploitation is where it's all at. Some of the other reviews that label it as a beaurocrat simmulation aren't far off, And if you're expecting anything but a management style game, you're likely to be sorely disappointed. That said, though, this game scratches an itch most devs have not reached for in a long time.