I don't have the DA expansion yet, but I'm thinking about it and reading all of the reviews on it. Everyone seems to like the mitigation of the colony rush strategy that works so well in DL. Although I suspect we still try to colonize as many planets as possible in the beginning. How is that different in DA?
Been a while since I played Dread Lords, but there's little difference in the need for an initial colony rush. However, the economy is tighter in DA. Engines are more expensive and speeds are lower as well. Colony modules only hold 250 instead of 500 colonists. It will take some adjustment, but it's still the same idea. You'll still want to get out as many colonizers as you can as soon as you can. There is a trick in getting around the higher cost and lower speeds, build a fast colonizer on a planet with high production, then build cheap slow colonizers to colonize surrounding planets from a seed planet. There's also the setting for extreme planets, in other words, planets that need techs researched before they can be colonized. This setting has a big impact on how the game plays. If you set the number of extreme planets to rare, colonization will play out more like Dread Lords.
The main thing I found that the extreme environments do is to create the possibility of a phased colony rush (or multiple rushes, depending on how you look at it). It basically makes you have to decide when to make the major investments necessary to start expanding into new habitat types, at least if you're a long-game fan like me. It might be moot in shorter games kind of like CraigHB says.
I don't vary my map settings very much, and I've still had games where the later rush phases played out very differently depending on proximity to the neighbors, early wars, rushing for resource nodes, etc. 'Small' differences can matter a lot, like whether you have the Korath near you on the map and when they get around to using spore ships to attack you. On Immense maps, I'm often still planting extreme colonies well past turn 100 and a few times I've seen a Korath empire actually strong enough to startle me by taking a big handful of my tender new worlds in very short order. (Mostly my fault for not keeping a closer eye on them, but that's a different discussion.)
This is the second time in as many days this has come up. I have never seen an extreme planet slider in DA. This is what I see.
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dj...if you like DL, DA won't disappoint you...eventually.
Aha...and I see a ZYW setup. Grown tired of the big games, Jack?
Oops, my bad. Extreme planet density is a TA feature. It's been a while since I played DA as well.
Graig raises a good point. Perhaps I should go straight to TA?
If you're still having fun, don't rush yourself. You'll get more bang for your license buck that way.
Been playing this game off and on since Dread Lords was released. Took me a while to get a handle on the unique tech trees in TA. You won't waste your time playing through the expansions. There's lots of strategies to explore as you play each one. But, do get Twilight eventually, it's got some great features over DA. Also, each expansion ratchets up the difficulty so you might find it frustrating jumping from DL to TA.
Not yet. But a new friend is encouraging me to broaden my horizons.
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