A new round of this game just started, they tend to last a year or so. I posted about this on the Dwarf Fortress Forums and I realized this might be a better place with its space theme and love of Gal-Civ.
This is perhaps the most unique of the space browser games and I've played dozens. This game is all about working together towards very long term goals. It is free and can be played less than an hour a day at non peak points of action.
Your goal is to manage colonies, research new technology with a complex technology generator that creates as many as 1million new blueprints a round in 80 different categories and gain for your faction a majority of the population in the universe.
The current round has 4 factions plus the Lost for advanced players. I am in Caeleth, I was outcast with my whole empire by some drama queens but we are in the process of reintegration in order to avoid a costly war.
Although normally the game is not that large player wise I have assembled a team of new players who are active to play with.
The game universe contains 100000 planets and well over 10000 systems although even in a long round many won't be reached even by probes much less by colony and war ships, even using wormholes.
I and my empire are prepared to teach new players the ropes and provide support and science and resources to make fleets. The first month or so has minimal combat, mostly shooting down probes but later on it can get quite intense.
I figured you guys might be interested in having a sub empire of Sins/Stardock players who work to fight the regular war-facts players.
My empire has an offsite chat at:
caeleth.chatango.com
for more effective communication.
Here is a short guide I've written for this round for anyone who wants to play:
For colony settings:
Government: Democracy
Religion: The Ascension
Income Tax: 15%
Wealth Tax: 0%, for the first few hours anyways
Local Laws:
Mandatory Recycling
Minimum Wage
Legalize Narcotics
Martial Law
Ban Contraceptives
Development Setup: high-tech industries
Button: Make Capital
Buildings:
200 Entertainment Facilities
50 Hospitals
200 Police Stations
Demolish Buildings:
10 farms
1 research facility
How to scrap useless starter fleet for money and get 4000 extra population:
Click on your expedition fleet
Hit roster and add a second shelter hope form your colony using the left pointing arrow
Hit cargo and unload 4000 population with right pointing double line arrow
Click roster and disband fleet
Disband your enforcer fleet the same way
Click on your colony, click shipyard, click ship junkyard and scrap all ships for 38million credits and a 60k credit upkeep drop
Go to highscores, click on The Illumination, click on mandated
Use drop down to select defense treaty
Go to recruitment in The Illumination and hit recruitment and apply.
Some cool features include creating chains of fuel stations called warpnets to travel across the void to new galaxies or to move ships millions of kilometers above the galactic plane to avoid surveyor nets alerting the enemy to your presence.
Individual players can fleet 50000 ships of several types and battles at the faction homeworlds can reach as high as 300000 ships.
Well that's certainly an interesting reply. You've never seen one of my massive walls of text before eh? I'd say this one is a medium punch to the face.
It just seems ... overwhelmingly cool. I don't have near enough time to dig into it the way I'd like but it certainly is intriguing. I just am surprised something as interesting as this exists at the scale it does. Very intriguing.
The main issue is that it always lacks players, most players have been around for years and years and there are only about 100 semi-stable ones.
Also it lacks consistent updates, its maintained by volunteer staff. The owner leaves it up even though it doesn't make money but he rarely works on it.
Making a game of that particular type myself, might check it out in a bit, always good to get inspired by what others have done well and avoid what they have not.
Pretty easy to avoid their problems. Use modern programming practices, don't leave the game with half the features half done.
I also am involved in a game in a similar situation, so I cannot fathom why I would jump into another one
Sadly these games reach a point where it's likely impossible for them to regain a sizeable player base, so the question to a new player is do you want to hitch your wagon to a dying horse.
Well, in this case for me the question is so I want to play a game that has what this one has, and the answer is yes. Then I ask if there is anything else I can play that has those things and the answer is no. Sad times.
I have known about this game for a number of years now, the one thing I really liked about it was the innovative research system. A model that should be used in a good space TBS or two.
Interface is retardedly bad. I saw many in the last 20 years, this one is one of the worst. Manual is below average too. No tutorial. Seriously, Civilization I was released 22 years ago and people still make games that are not up to standarts of Civ I. Of coruse it has no playerbase. Strategy games are about making decisions, if this game is THAT user-not-friendly, who will play it?
By the way, why not Urban Centralization in a starting colony?
http://www.war-facts.com/wiki/index.php?topic=Development+Indexes
As i understand, it's a waste of time to try to research anything when you just started playing in already existing universe.
That post is pretty old. Tech is actually ideal for growth as well as science for complex reasons. Plus you may eventually catch up.
You could pick something else and it wouldn't matter too much I guess. Urban is pretty bad in the current round though.
And yeah the interface is an original from 2003 more or less. I'd fix it but they wouldn't let me near the code and can't be bothered to do much themselves.
Have you ever played http://www.astroempires.com/
I found it at the top of google search: mmo + strategy + persistent
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