Thank you for this superb tutorial

[Zephkiel]

Total sarcasm.
putting new player against Necrons that just re vive themselves over and over is a sureway of not getting a sale. 2/2 tuto lost because by the tiem i understand the build system and how to pump unit they are already at my doors with like 5 units. Nice to see that the fortress thing does nothing too, wow, way to go space marines.
They are totally broken, i dont even know how you can give free regen in a game where it's the most scarce ressource.

[Jey]

It's ok to not be good at something from the beginning.
Once you beat Necrons, everything else will seem way easier :).

You could also ask for hints on how to proceed. It's a bit hard to give advice.

I'd say "Get your fortresses on requisition outposts" and "Produce units, there's no economic victory so your eco is just there to produce enough resources to fuel more units." as well as "It's ok to have negative income resources as long as you don't get a negative stockpile" should be three generic pieces of advice that newcomes need to learn.

Note that it has already been pointed out that facing Necrons wasn't the easiest task for a total beginner and Astra Militarum or even Orks might have been easier (but without the agressiveness).

[kellorkleft]

It probably doesn't help that every guide I read about the Space Marines say that 90% of their roster is trash after the early game, and your best bet is to ignore tactical marines, ignore assault marines, ignore land raiders and tanks, and just spam terminators and apothecaries when you get to that point. Also that your economy is fragile and needs to be focused on very specific avenues to avoid falling behind or gutting itself.

Sounds like a lot of fun. Great way to open people up to the game.

[Grotzel]

I'd take that with a grain of salt. Sure, if you NEED to play optimally at all times and yearn to vanquish the hardest AI or pro players, you might want to consider that advice as gospel.

But that's more or less standard for a lot of strategy games. You HAVE to play this way and forget all those useless units if you want to be good.

In my opinion, that's not a great way to play anything - I tend to ignore all the 'THIS UNIT IS TRASH, HALF THE ROSTER IS TRASH AND YOU MUST RUSH AND MASS PRODUCE THIS' stuff. It is booooooring and unnecessary unless a game's balance is completely broken - I usually love to produce supposedly 'weak units' in games and see for myself if they are really that bad. I still manage to play just fine at hard difficulty - which, in Gladius, is actually not a particularly high difficulty.

To be fair, it also seems to be a pretty widespread opinion that you can play with basically anything and win on lower AI settings (pros, of course, more or less annihilate every AI opponent while they are drunk, have all hands tied behind their backs and are fast asleep).

Finding some sort of guide - or searching for specific topics in the forum - is not a bad idea, because the tutorial tends to skim over certain details - though you CAN actually find a good deal of useful information if you re-read the tutorial tips and hover over stuff to get the pop up help.

The tutorial certainly could be far better, though - but that shouldn't frighten you off a game. If you struggle, search for specific stuff you are struggling with or a basic guide. Gladius actually is a fun game and once you've gotten into it a bit, not THAT obtuse. Also: Space Marines are boring! Play Orks! And install the Too Many Voices mod! :)

P.S.: Try replaying the tutorial. It actually IS pretty easy if you learned to manage your city a little - at least how to produce units -, use cover against ranged attackers, try to retreat and heal wounded units and explore carefully. Don't send a single space marine troop in the middle of four kroot hound packs sniffing around and expect to triumph.

By the way: if you bring enough firepower and focus on them you can kill necron warriors in one turn. Even if you don't - they won't be able to regenerate enough to survive if you keep focussing on one target before moving to the next. Getting advanced units or other research can help, too.

[TemplarGR]

Originally posted by kellorkleft:

It probably doesn't help that every guide I read about the Space Marines say that 90% of their roster is trash after the early game, and your best bet is to ignore tactical marines, ignore assault marines, ignore land raiders and tanks, and just spam terminators and apothecaries when you get to that point. Also that your economy is fragile and needs to be focused on very specific avenues to avoid falling behind or gutting itself.

Sounds like a lot of fun. Great way to open people up to the game.

Most guides written for this game are trash. Sorry but that is true. Too much bad (or outdated) advice by mediocre players who think they are pros. And unless you are playing at impossible ai difficulty or vs a very good human player, every unit is viable and useful.

[IDDQD]

Originally posted by kellorkleft:

It probably doesn't help that every guide I read about the Space Marines say that 90% of their roster is trash after the early game, and your best bet is to ignore tactical marines, ignore assault marines, ignore land raiders and tanks, and just spam terminators and apothecaries when you get to that point. Also that your economy is fragile and needs to be focused on very specific avenues to avoid falling behind or gutting itself.

Sounds like a lot of fun. Great way to open people up to the game.

Unless you want to play in some tournaments, stop tryharding and just enjoy the game. I've been playing Gladius for a long time and haven't heard that Tactical Marines are trash until now. I don't really care what others think about every unit. I prefer to judge units myself.

[Jey]

I mean I don't know what guide says 90% of the Space Marine roster is trash.
Unless they meant "Don't bring tactical marines to a Scythed Hierodule fight". In which case, yeah, most of the SM roster is bad for facing a T10 unit, but that's to be expected of any faction.

[Zephkiel]

Originally posted by Grotzel:

I'd take that with a grain of salt. Sure, if you NEED to play optimally at all times and yearn to vanquish the hardest AI or pro players, you might want to consider that advice as gospel.

But that's more or less standard for a lot of strategy games. You HAVE to play this way and forget all those useless units if you want to be good.

In my opinion, that's not a great way to play anything - [...]

Yes and see below

Originally posted by IDDQD:

Unless you want to play in some tournaments, stop tryharding and just enjoy the game.

I tried. Despite the game telling me to explore the UI etc etc the necrons from the tutorial went banging at my door at turn 25 at the latest on my 2nd try, and it was like turn 15 to 18 on the first try. Considering the time to have a building runing + units going, it meant that i already have some optimised build order, tech order, ressources management and what units to do to hope defeating them.
it was a miserable experience and it was only the tutorial. wich mean the rest will keep being the same.
If it's meant to be played with no leeway every time even on the easiest difficulty, then it's no fun (because it will probably mean doin the same thing over and over with almost no variance) and i'd rather go to others games.
Also it's not helping that it seems from my limited point of view that snowballing is a real thing, and that due to how slow it is to constitute forces, it seems even harder to get back up once you suffered a loss, wich seems in line with other thread i've read here or on reddit.

Well, thank you for the demo.

[Grotzel]

Hmmm ...
I'm still thinking that you are overestimating some problems. It is very easy to miss some of the core concepts, but they are not really that complicated. Though unfortunate that your experience remains miserable, it's good, that you were brave enough to try again. :)

Sounds like you are done with it, and - after trying twice, I can understand that.
However, should you be grit your teeth and persist - for the Emperor ... or Gork ... or Mork - I'm sure people here would love to throw some good solid starting advice your way - beyond build orders, because what you probably need is more basic information. Depending on your gaming history (what other strategy games have you played?), you're probably far closer to grasping the game than you think.

Though I'm curious just what your gameplay experience was like.

What did you manage to build in 25 turns? Did you get a handle at the economy? What did you research? Did you have trouble exploring - as most newcomers do ... because they miss key concepts like cover protecting from ranged damage, the number of figures in a troop affecting their damage (wounded units are poor fighters, fleeing to a safe location and resting to heal is key - if you don't want to keep replacing units) ... and that attacking neutrals tends to attract their buddies.

Did you actually encounter the AI or perhaps accidentally finish a quest ( don't know if those are active in the tutorial) and trigger a new one, that spawns enemies?
If the Necrons indeed showed up by turn 25, what did they show up with? A scouting party or even a small force, perhaps accompanied by a lord, should be relatively easy to defeat with the help of your city (the city itself has a good attack and the tiles around it you acquired can give cover to units), provided you have units left. A solid help for your forces, by the way, would be to research the hero building (perhaps not the first research and arguably not the best first building to produce - but easy to do long before turn 25) and produce your first hero - the one for the Space Marines is quite sturdy and powerful, especially once he levels up.

[Falaris]

You don't even have to have any enemies here. If you want an easy game to explore the units and such - and the neutrals provide a decent punching bag the first time you play anyway - you can, just set up a game with no AI factions.

A note on difficulty.

When you set up the game, the 'easy/hard' setting only sets the default difficulty ratings for you and your opponents. To have more control with it, note that the 'titles' under the faction card determines how much bonuses and/or penalties they get. It goes, for space marines, from 'Neophyte' to 'Emperor'. Similar for other factions. Perhaps unusually, 'emperor' does not mean hard. It means getting a TON of bonuses. (levels and loyalty). Neophyte means getting ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, also for enemy factions. You have total control of how difficult you want it to be, and whom you want to fight. Change it from Necrons to orcs or something if you prefer.

Difficulty is entirely in your own hands here, as long as you set the game up yourself. I would also recommend turning OFF quests, for your first game; handling your empire is sufficient challenge.

[IDDQD]

Get one AI in the same team as yours and a couple AIs on their own. Discover different units and game mechanics on your own pace, while your ally deals with enemies.

[Bokouli]

Indeed, tutorial sucks

[Rok]

Thanks for the feedback.

I've been thinking of having the player play Necrons in the introduction, or play Space Marines just against neutrals (no Necron opponent). Would you have preferred one of those setups?

[Zephkiel]

Honestly, idk. it's your job, not mine, to put it bluntly. But if i'd have to choose, keep the SM as the played faction, they are the core identity of 40K after all.

On another note :
- When the most recent answer in the thread is to not do the tutorial but a game with no AI, you know that something went wrong

- I've scoured multiple threads before giving up and like 18647% of them have a ranking wich is like necrons are the super easiest, followed by SM, then it goes down quickly. it wouldn't matter if the game was not so snowbally and if the power curve of each faction would be adequate to such difficulty adjustement in their maangement, but well, it's not the case and according to those same thread, it's just harder for the same result of the easier one. There is a serious balance issue at first glance

- I still tried a 3rd tiem and i spawned literally next to the necrons. He was like 3 full movement away from me. I discovered this much later because i began exploring in the opposing direction (lol), and it seems that this time, it was him that was cucked with a ♥♥♥♥ setup for a town, and was literally surrounded by 2 imperial fort.s there should be less variance about starting location (i guess i can be lessened when choosing larger maps), he literally lived what i had to go through during my 2 first attempts.

Again, thanks for the demo.

[Flashback]

I just got into this game, pretty much a newbie in any tile based games.

But I found the Introduction mission very well done myself - hand off enough that its not in your face and still giving enough hints along the way.

My main enemy throughout it was the 'native xeno' population, with the Necrons being only a minor annoyance.

[Jey]

Originally posted by Zephkiel:

- I still tried a 3rd tiem and i spawned literally next to the necrons.

Originally posted by Rok:

I've been thinking of having the player play Necrons in the introduction, or play Space Marines just against neutrals

It's hard to say if it's just a plain exaggeration, but this "spawn literally next to the enemy" sounds like not enough landmass.
Maybe landmass should be on default at high or even very high instead of medium (if that's not already the case?)