im loving the game, i cant wait to see what its like with multiplayer

I love It it any MOO type game is an instant buy I am trying to figure out how/when an outpost turns into a colony

Nosferatiel wrote:
Can we get a list of his ghostly bookshelf titles, then? XD

Yes. Please.

yarpirate0920 wrote:
Well you can tell him that he's doing the same thing for my bookshelf. This is one of the best 4x experiences I have ever had, and I've played a TON of 4x games. I'm also following StarDrive and thankfully you two are different enough that I'll be able to play both games. However, I have no idea how I'm going to find enough time to do so! I'm still flabbergasted that I am playing a game clearly worth $60 but only paid less than half of that. I hope you guys have a ton of success and get to make more games to line that bookshelf.



It's so cool to see the amount of people viewing this forum go from around 4 at a time to 15 around the time of the announcement a week ago to a staggering 250 at release.

Heh you and I are in the same boat lol. loving this as my TBS and Stardrive to eplace my RTS distant worlds with non 2002 graphics lol

So in terms of depth & replayability, how does this game hold up against say, Galactic Civilization II? Obviously people have only played 100 turns and it's still in Alpha stage but what're your first impression overall about the depth of the game?

I can see the UI and the technical stuff (and immersion) are working great(which is phenomenal for an Alpha game) but I'm always concerned with the depth & strategic choices that matter in the long run in 4x games....it's the main reason I play them.



For instance SE5 has incredible depth & replayability but below sub-par UI and a technical & performance nightmare. GCII has less depth but way better at anything else (except combat) and thus end up a better game. To me ES has half (UI, immersion, technical stuff) in, but I need to know the other incredibly important half (Depth & Replayability) before I make up my mind and pre-order.

Seems fun so far... but i would rly like it if i could find some gameplay tips/tricks somewhere, as i'm rly new to these games and would like to have a general idea what to do.

All i've done is playing a newbie round for testing and exploration purpose, it lasted like 250~280 turns i think, then i won by Wonder Victory

Its great fun! Absolutely recommend it to anyone wondering if to buy it.

Its awesome, cant wait to play the final product.

This game reminds me allot of ascendancy, which had some problems with being to complicated but this game seems to really strike a nice balance between Complexity and simplicity so far. Love the graphics, really adds to the immersion. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys strategy games.

For Alpha, it seems very very nice. Now with some tweaks here and there and I'm ready to vote this to be game of the year.



Only thing so far that I pretty much hate is the real time combat thingy. I want to be able to zoom in and rotate around my beautiful ship myself Time limit decissions rub me the wrong way too, they make sense for the multiplayer but I don't see the point against AI.



Overall, I wouldn't hate amplitude if they completely redo it in the final product..

I have only played 50 turns on a medium sized galaxy with 3 other AI players. First let me say that this alpha version is incredibly well done - no crashes so far. It does really remind me of Civ, but still has its own unique feel to it. I am looking forward to seeing how things continue to play out in my next 50 turns. I am also happy that I decided to pre-order this game.



Here are some things that I felt need to be addressed:



1) There should be the ability to choose the type of empire/government you want to play - this would adjust which types of winning strategies you are likely to play towards.



2) Approval ratings should show how they are trending (ie. positively, negatively or neutral).



3) Fleet movement should not happen until you actually push the end turn button. The way it stands now, I select a destination and then the fleet immediately conducts its first movement stage - then doesn't move again until you push end turn a second time. After that it works as expected - push end turn and fleet moves. As it stands now, if you make a mistake on where you want to send a fleet, you cannot correct it (I mean before you actually end the turn).



4) When the tool-tip hovers over an outpost, it would be nice if it also told how long until the outpost becomes a colony.



5) During battles (when you select to manually play), there should be some time allowed to actually read the battle cards before having to choose one - like pausing for a short period of time. I found that I had barely looked them over before I wasn't able to actually choose one anymore because the battle had begun.



6) I somehow acquired a research tech that I wasn't actually researching - not sure if this was a bug, or if I acquired it from something that happened in-game (I believe that I had just colonized a 3rd planet in a solar system at the same time as I was advised of this research advancement).



7) In the System View screen, I could use the side arrow (left side of screen) to move "back" to another system that I owned (eventually coming full circle and returning to the original system), but I could never move "forward," as the arrow was always greyed-out.



8) Like some others have mentioned, it would be nice if when a fleet arrives at a destination, you get an icon for the event showing up just above the end turn button. This would be especially useful for colony fleets.

Tobinius wrote:
I have only played 50 turns on a medium sized galaxy with 3 other AI players. First let me say that this alpha version is incredibly well done - no crashes so far. It does really remind me of Civ, but still has its own unique feel to it. I am looking forward to seeing how things continue to play out in my next 50 turns. I am also happy that I decided to pre-order this game.



Here are some things that I felt need to be addressed:



1) There should be the ability to choose the type of empire/government you want to play - this would adjust which types of winning strategies you are likely to play towards.



2) Approval ratings should show how they are trending (ie. positively, negatively or neutral).



3) Fleet movement should not happen until you actually push the end turn button. The way it stands now, I select a destination and then the fleet immediately conducts its first movement stage - then doesn't move again until you push end turn a second time. After that it works as expected - push end turn and fleet moves. As it stands now, if you make a mistake on where you want to send a fleet, you cannot correct it (I mean before you actually end the turn).



4) When the tool-tip hovers over an outpost, it would be nice if it also told how long until the outpost becomes a colony.



5) During battles (when you select to manually play), there should be some time allowed to actually read the battle cards before having to choose one - like pausing for a short period of time. I found that I had barely looked them over before I wasn't able to actually choose one anymore because the battle had begun.



6) I somehow acquired a research tech that I wasn't actually researching - not sure if this was a bug, or if I acquired it from something that happened in-game (I believe that I had just colonized a 3rd planet in a solar system at the same time as I was advised of this research advancement).



7) In the System View screen, I could use the side arrow (left side of screen) to move "back" to another system that I owned (eventually coming full circle and returning to the original system), but I could never move "forward," as the arrow was always greyed-out.



8) Like some others have mentioned, it would be nice if when a fleet arrives at a destination, you get an icon for the event showing up just above the end turn button. This would be especially useful for colony fleets.

1) you can for now choose out of United Empire, Cravers, Horatio, Sophon and Hissho for playing. Custom faction generation was announced to be implemented.

5) You can read the battle cards before actually going to battle. When selecting a fleet in the galaxy screen, there's a battle options or so button on the upper right corner of the fleet menu, I think.

Nosferatiel wrote:
1) you can for now choose out of United Empire, Cravers, Horatio, Sophon and Hissho for playing. Custom faction generation was announced to be implemented.

Yes, I realize that, but that to me is selecting the race/species you want to play - which would effect how your empire plays out. I think that you should also be able to select a type of government you want to run your empire - this too could be affected by the race you decide to play (ie. adjusting different parameters of a particular government).

Nosferatiel wrote:
5) You can read the battle cards before actually going to battle. When selecting a fleet in the galaxy screen, there's a battle options or so button on the upper right corner of the fleet menu, I think.

Thanks, didn't know that - I will check that out once I start playing again.

Long have I waited and hoped for a new game of "Masters of Orion", "Space Empires" or "SM's Alpha Centauri",

but remakes or new adaptions of these titles never came out.

What has been presented in the meantime could not reach the high expectations

of these classics, although some were entertaining.

And now here comes a game that seems to wrap it up in one title,

with smooth graphics and slick gameplay,

including what was best with all the old classics.



The "Just another turn" feeling kicks in immediately and I want to play for hours on end.

Just played it for the first 2 hours - and got to say that I am impressed. I wasn't really happy with most 4x-space-games after MOO1+2 as I felt that they focused too much on the spaceship-battles and often had very tedious controls. Finally we got something with simple controls again, where a new player does not feel totally lost and doesn't have to run through hours of tutorials before he finally finds out that the game wasn't worth the effort. Good balance between planet-micromanagement and overall empire-management as well. And the game being an alpha already feels more finished compared to some games I recently bought at their release.

Just played 50 turns of my first game - so far I am very impressed considering its only in alpha.

I have only really done the initial building up of my empire, about to attack my first AI enemy as I left it so I'll just comment on a couple of minor things that bugged me on that side of things.



1) Colonies take forever to turn from outposts to true colonies - I have sytems that have max pop and every upgrade built, churning out ships for my fleets that are still outposts which feels a bit wrong. At turn 50 I have 10 systems, half of which are fully developed (for my current tech) but only my homeworld and my very first system are considered part of my empire proper.



2) Moving population from planet to planet is a bit clunky, especially as the view keeps rotating the planets as you mouse over them - plus and minus icons above each planet for pop might work better with an idle pool for unallocated (unallocated could even become entertainers like in civ to boost system morale). Also I have noticed that my pop gets randomly reallocated without any governor AI once in a while, couldnt figure out what triggered it.



3) Notification for when a ship reaches its destination would be nice as others have said. Also ships seem to move after you hit end of turn unless you manually tell them to move, several times I found myself telling a ship that was moving to move again because I knew it would still have range left after reaching a system to move further and didnt want to waste the extra distance.



4) A GUI scale option would be nice, I play on a TV quite a distance away from me and cant read the text if I put on 1080p so had to lower the resolution to make the text readable.



Overall though, very good so far and looking forward to getting to trying out the combat.

FluffyBunny wrote:
4) A GUI scale option would be nice, I play on a TV quite a distance away from me and cant read the text if I put on 1080p so had to lower the resolution to make the text readable.

I would like to see this too.

Really well done for an alpha. Its a fun enjoyable game as it stands ... cant wait to see the future.

Its quite amazing that this is an alpha build of the game. Hopefully as development continues it will just get more polished. Well done Amplitude

So far so good, although I'm having trouble with my research queues recently. I accidentally queued up something like forty techs in one game and couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get rid of them. A "cancel all production/research" button on the research screen/system view would be really helpful, for when you need to quickly change what you're doing.