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Author Topic: Shadow Empire - what say you?  (Read 42486 times)

Huw the Poo

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Reply #180 on: March 17, 2022, 11:23:55 AM
Kepihome! The second zone is called Kepihome!

Anyway. Agri farm finally built. It was down to 0.1 turns on the last turn which is really annoying, because I had to use a whole extra turn to finish it which means waiting another turn to actually get anything out of it. But that, along with an increase in public spending, will hopefully really start to improve quality of life for my little pops and encourage them to er....be fruitful and multiply. I want some tax revenue!

I'm starting to build railways all over the place now. It helps that you get a discount if you build them along existing roads. The supply you get from a railway is absolutely massive and will easily keep me going for quite a while. I'm starting to expand in three directions a lot more easily than I ever could before, and it might even be time to start thinking about a third zone.

Onto military matters. 1st Inf is still spread comically thin and I really don't have a handle on formations, models and things yet. The good news is that my scientists are catching up with Geek's; we've "discovered" rather a lot of tech at this point, and now I just have to research it all. I might divert the lion's share of BPs to my military research council, although that will mean irritating the directors of the other councils. But needs must and all that. The bad news is that when it comes to making a new brigade I really don't know what I'm doing, and just as bad, it will take a long time to recruit enough soldiers if I don't want to deplete my zones too much. So the highly-anticipated second brigade is still a long way off for now.



Undercovergeek

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Reply #181 on: March 21, 2022, 12:46:41 PM
Coupla turns later…….

Research has taken a decidedly unwanted turn - although random to a degree, I understand you can’t move on until a certain amount of discoveries have been researched, but all my discoveries lately are in applied aerodynamics - better airframes, better engines, better fuel consumption - don’t want any of this and I’m trying to find a way to steer me back to good old armour and billets

The economic research went wild for a bit giving me advanced discoveries whilst ignoring the starter ones I need to increase quality of life - hospitals, barracks, unis, but barracks came up recently so I hope we’re getting back to basics there

I can research a very murderous medium tank with side skirts and high velocity guns but I’ve still seen nothing near me but indigenous life forms and infantry so I’ll hold off - infantry can be turned into gas powered ammo bearing, combat armoured, rpg wielding bad asses so that could be a thing next

I’ve got great strat cards all over the place but with things as they are they don’t need playing yet - I have a stack of recruit senior and recruit talent cards that will lead to some great leaders but at present my 6 guys are either excellent or sacking them will lead to such disturbances in morale it’s not worth it yet - I do have a guy with intelligence 70 and war 50 who would be a great commander for SHQ but the current guy is the prime minister and he has a lot of MPs further down the food chain - I’ll wait until I fire up the spy council for him but that means taking a fraction of the BPs away from the research so it’s another back burner for now

To the map - my empire is huge but apart from my capital and recently taken aurora the surrounding enemies have borne no capitals just more territory - it’s a very long trek by dirt road from one end to the other - so far the strategy of a supply dump and truck station every five or six hexes is working and supplies are reaching where they need - it’s time to start thinking about a zone or two at the end of some of these super highways

Currently every unit is west or south and I have had a unit of unknown origin or skill heading from the east at top speed straight to my capital - it took a few turns to notice him coming and it’s too late to send anyone back east even the tanks so I bought an independent division - 100 units of infantry and plonked it in the capital, Seattle - the last preview turn I sent to huw saw the enemy stop in its tracks - I like to think it was a case of ‘f&@k - turn around!!!’

Once I’ve gobbled up all the new real estate west and built a zone there for border protection I’ll go east again and kick their ass



Undercovergeek

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Reply #182 on: April 11, 2022, 04:23:37 PM
ok, long time no update -

game is back on after the move hiatus

Ive finally reached the southern tip of the map and am heading east along that border just grabbing free land - im surrounded now by about 5 free folk factions but none seem to have any cities so reaching my borders is a real test of logisitcs - so far the 6 hexes/supply depot/truck station x2 and then a zone seems to be working - supplies are been pushed along nicely and ive created a new zone west called Cannon and have expanded further enough to start the next lot of depot/stations

my infantry are nearing space marine potential, extra sensors, rpgs, gas powered explosive ammo but i was missing combat armour - i hadnt realised padded envirosuits were a pre requisite so ive researched those and switched the priority back to discovery

all kinds of research has happened in the name of resource gathering - i can deep mine for water, fuel and metals now without actually having to find those resources but im not particulalry short of any right now - basic discoveries to increase the QOL of my people are all in place, unis, barracks and hospitals

Priorities now are heading east, building a zone there and equalising all the infrastructure in the zones, my capital has industry 3, beauracracy 3 - aurora has 2 and 2 and cannon has 1 and 1 so ill bring everyone up to the same level

I have a brilliant covert operative to place into the spy council - it occurs to me instead of randomly looking for empires with a capital to steal i can send out my many spies to see what the enemy has - the rolls are always critically high granting my double spies in the regions so theyve all been sent out this tuurn and well see what happens next



Martok

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Reply #183 on: April 12, 2022, 02:42:40 AM
Incidentally, it appears a pretty juicy update dropped on Friday while I was gone.  Looks like Vic put a lot of AI work into this one: 


https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10617&t=382595

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1154840/announcements/detail/3182364231128995290



Quote
Changelist for 1.11
-If AI has been collecting lower quality models after making replacements. This has been addressed and now its SHQ is going to directly deploy the unneeded ones (for repl.troops) in new units.
-AI is now only replacing troops now with newer models if XP is at least 40 as the whole idea in the first place was to retain the XP at the front (and sending the new troops to the older version equipment)
-Some minor AI algorithms concerning replacing troops revised.
-In some cases there will will now be less requests to hire a faction candidate.
-Fixed a crash during “flak front processing” message (starfry)
-Fixed occasions of faulty nato counters in history screen
-Reduced Flak production for AI some further.
-Fixed eternal loop in human-human PBEM game (mroll)
-Fixed small glitch with Battlegroup formation from SHQ
-Fixed issue with Strategic Movement caused in earlier v1.10.X open beta
-GPU accelerated in-game DPI scaling added which should speed up a lot playing the game with DPI scaling enabled.
-The DPI scaling done by the GPU is sharper than the previous DPI scaling done by the CPU.
-Sped up the scrolling speed by using shifting direct memory copies within the same map bitmap
-Sped up the scrolling and map clicking speed by not recalculating or redrawing the windows that are overlaid over the map and separating the underlying map drawing and the overdraw (making cache-ing possible).
-Fixed bug with Advice window after end turn (Voker57 / thomas)
-Fixed bug with receiving a new leader with a regime profile above 100
-Finetuning Militia equipment improvement in games that last hundreds of rounds (hyveltush)
-AI work done on quality of tactical level movements.
-AI work done on reducing the tendency of giving ground in general.
-AI work done of making super aggressive regimes less likely to completely overextend
-AI work done on making the AI more likely to invest more in its current military than in its future military (by economic expansion) if threatened a lot.
-AI work done on making the AI wait a bit longer before constructing bigger units instead of more units.
-AI work done on reducing buying of Flak gun units/replacements at some points. And in general stop buying (much) replacements of troops we have less need of.
-AI stops playing some (often) stupid Stratagems on its OHQs
-AI improved OOB raising order (less chance to stay stuck in infantry formations only)
-AI improvements to moving to correct part of a frontArea
-AI improvements with entrenchment
-AI improvements with encircled troops
-Fixed an issue with Free Folk increasing way too much in some circumstances
-Fixed an issue with a savefile getting to large due to extremely large high node logistical network (game will prune some data now if its logs get too big)
-Fixed issue with Zone assignment upon rebel unit placement during turn (decision result)
-Fixed crash at start of turn calculations with trade (volker)
-Fixed an anomaly with the sliders on some systems
-Fixed an anomaly in the trade reports
-Fixed category of forced sales from private to public in the reporting
-Fixed an anomaly with scientific cooperation (not getting tech points from partner)
-Fixed rare crash during elections with a class-based voting system in place.
-You can now set import & export tariffs on the non-aligned regimes. Can be handy if you want certain items not to leave your Zones or to make a little extra buck!
-Fixed a rare issue with private asset doubling public asset that was delegated
-Fixed a bug with disappearing air units after artillery attack on them
-Fixed an interface glitchy state after asking research decision to a director in the case where no research fields were actually available.
-Fixed crash due to an misconfigured AI Regime SHQ inventory (Alex)
-Fixed glitch where you were not paying PP for Zone Merge
-Fixed ZOC ghosts in multi-player game where one human player has resigned
-Truck/Rail/HS Rail Station higher levels now have reduced upkeep workers*
-Rail/HS Rail Station higher levels now have reduced construction round for higher levels*
-Truck/Rail/HS Rail Station higher levels now have increased truck/rail point production*
-Some cards like Eager Industrialist will no longer cause double Asset Type to appear when playing on a Zone where the lower level Asset Type in question is in construction.
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"I like big maps and I cannot lie." - Barthheart

"I drastically overpaid for this existence." - bbmike


Martok

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Reply #184 on: April 12, 2022, 02:44:25 AM
Very cool, geek.  Sounds like things are coming along swimmingly.  :rockon: 


"I like big maps and I cannot lie." - Barthheart

"I drastically overpaid for this existence." - bbmike


Martok

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Reply #185 on: April 12, 2022, 03:32:06 AM
Gah.  I completely forgot to post this interview last week that this nice fellow Peter had with Vic: 


https://www.matchstickeyes.com/2022/04/03/shadow-empire-interview-with-victor-reijkersz/



Sounds like more work/development is planned for Ocean planets...  :D 



"I like big maps and I cannot lie." - Barthheart

"I drastically overpaid for this existence." - bbmike


Martok

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Reply #186 on: May 18, 2022, 03:47:12 PM
Vic gives us a hint of what's to come: conflict on the high seas? 


https://www.vrdesigns.net/?p=2144



"I like big maps and I cannot lie." - Barthheart

"I drastically overpaid for this existence." - bbmike


Undercovergeek

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Reply #187 on: May 18, 2022, 04:20:24 PM
Very nice

I’ll update the aar soon



bayonetbrant

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Reply #188 on: June 28, 2022, 09:55:59 PM

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++

Random acts of genius and other inspirations of applied violence.
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Six Degrees of Radio for songs you should know by artists you should love


Martok

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Reply #189 on: June 29, 2022, 04:02:50 AM
You beat me to it, damn you.  :P 


Seriously, though, it's good to see him still working on the game.  Even with barely scratching the surface, I'm always amazed with how apparent it is the depth & complexity Shadow Empire has. 


"I like big maps and I cannot lie." - Barthheart

"I drastically overpaid for this existence." - bbmike


bbmike

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Reply #190 on: June 29, 2022, 08:30:35 AM

"My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplace of existence."
-Sherlock Holmes

My Own Worst Enemy


Martok

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Reply #191 on: June 30, 2022, 05:33:05 AM
Yeah, I noticed that as well.  I'm starting to wonder if the man ever sleeps. 



"I like big maps and I cannot lie." - Barthheart

"I drastically overpaid for this existence." - bbmike


Martok

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Reply #192 on: July 07, 2022, 05:57:28 AM
Vic updated the current beta.  Slower planetary orbits allow for some interesting game-setting options. 


https://twitter.com/VRdesigns/status/1544335559778344961



"I like big maps and I cannot lie." - Barthheart

"I drastically overpaid for this existence." - bbmike


Martok

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Reply #193 on: July 30, 2022, 03:34:11 AM
A re-roll button hadn't even occurred to me, but that's brilliant.  Thank you, Victor! 


https://twitter.com/VRdesigns/status/1550429551465041920



"I like big maps and I cannot lie." - Barthheart

"I drastically overpaid for this existence." - bbmike


Martok

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Reply #194 on: July 30, 2022, 03:37:29 AM
Oh, and for anyone who enjoys truly epic-length AAR's, check out these two guys' MP game!  :o 


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GuRW1RNXJmk-mm8QmOx8VEO67QhKINbr-CEY9-zU9Q4/edit



"I like big maps and I cannot lie." - Barthheart

"I drastically overpaid for this existence." - bbmike