I love Stellaris but...

[Haldurson]

This is described as a grand strategy game, and my current favorite game is Stellaris, which is also labeled a grand strategy game. I'm curious if someone could talk about how they are similar and how they are different.

Furthermore, I tend to have problems with many (but not all) RTS and action games -- I have little hand-eye coordination and problems tracking moving objects on a screen because of a physical problem focusing quickly enough with my eye muscles. And I see in the video scenes of lots of tiny ships fighting one another and it makes me feel like I might have a similar problem to other RTS games, but in spades, with this one. Anyone care to either reassure me or confirm my suspicions on this issue? It doesn't bother me in Stellaris because you don't really micromanage combat in that game. Is it the same with AI War 2?

[la_nague]

the ships do a good job of managing themselves, you manage which ships to build and in which system to place them.

In combat you mostly care about positioning of parts of the fleet (arty at range, tar them with close ranged fighters etc). The game can be as slow or fast as you want. The ships can manage their own targets, they calculate that themselves.


Compared to stellaris this is much more combat focused, you dont really develop any planets or manage populations etc. In this regard its more like the tradition RTS games, but in a grand scheme.
Also you fight against an AI that already took over the galaxy, basically the contigency won for now. It does not crush you because it has other things on its mind, so you have to be careful about what to do, its not a planet colonization grab like stellaris.

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

I can't comment on Stellaris, and obviously I come with built-in bias, but let me shed some light on the hand-eye coordination thing.

Basically, I built the first AI War to play with my dad, who isn't a super-clicker, either. And this game carries on the same general design philosophy. He sits there and kind of crosses his legs and lazily holds the mouse, thinking about what he's doing and clicking as needed, and he's plenty good at the game. Not phenomenal in the sense that he could play on difficulty 8+, but he plays at a solid 7, which is what I prefer to play at, too.

Anyway, what makes it that way? Basically, your ships can be put into various "modes" that will have them either hang out in one area, or wander freely on a planet, or follow some track you laid out for them. And then while they are doing what you told them to do POSITIONALLY, they will do what they deem best in terms of shooting anything and everything in sight. Their targeting is quite sophisticated, enough so that we have to run it on a non-blocking background thread instead of inline with the simulation.

They crunch the data about what is around, choose what is best to shoot, and do so. If they are making suboptimal choices, then ideally that scenario is brought to my attention and I can fix it, versus you needing to babysit and micro what they shoot. I'm aware at the moment of a couple of cases where units that have debuffs are not prioritizing their debuff as much as they should, and are instead focusing more on damage. So that's one I need to fix up, but it's not a terrible case.

It's not that the game plays itself -- but you have to think in terms of larger decisions. The choice of where to move your units, broadly speaking, is very important. Put your V-Wings forward, because they have a slowing effect that keeps them away from your glass cannons. Your concussion corvettes are those glass cannons, and have a lot of range; so hold those back. Put ambush turrets right by the wormholes to enemy territory, on your side of the wormhole. Put most other turrets further back. Etc.

None of that requires fast clicking, and in fact if you try to micro the ships it's probably not really optimizing all that much. When it comes to your decision-making, most of that involves where to deploy what forces, and when. What targets to go and capture, what to hold and what to let go, etc. Grand-strategy-wise, that's a lot of what we mean with that: basically you're thinking about the forest quite a lot, and not fiddling with trees and bushes constantly.

Hope that helps some, at least! I'm sure others will chime in soon.

[ZEBEAST OF SLAVIC TERRITORIES]

Adding on to what nague said, at lower difficulties you won't need any micromanagement, you can just move your fleet into the AI's solar system and order them to pursuit where they will just fight everything. This will let you get used to the mechanics of the game.

However, at higher difficulties (the really insane one's, >7) micromanagement becomes more important, although the game really eases you into this. Also the micromanagement is nowhere near as complicated as in a game such as Starcraft.

What is more important is your grand strategy/plan. How are you going to get the resources you need without invading too many planets and ticking off the AI? How are you going to get to that technology you need on the other side of the galaxy without losing your entire fleet? Stuff like that.

[Haldurson]

There are players who prefer building tall over wide in Stellaris, but I get your point. Thanks. It's definitely something going on my watch list at least, if not my wish list. It sounds like something that I'd be able to play, which was my main concern. What I mostly enjoy in Stellaris is the vast freedom you have in designing your race and civilization, including the possibily of doing great either as a peace-loving pacifist, contrasted with a rabid xenophobic machine race bent on annihilating all life in the galaxy, to a hive intelligence, all the way to religious zealots, plus all of the random events and stories and quests that you can get caught up in. The way you describe it seems more like a war game or a 4x game, than an actual grand strategy game. What grand strategy features are there then? Is there diplomacy? Random events? or what? What choices do you have beyond where you build and send your ships?

/edit Thanks for the comments. Based on what you are telling me, and my experience in board games, this sounds more like a straight strategy war game, with an intense tactical level, rather than what I usually think of as a Grand Strategy game. Still not sure that this is for me, but as I said, it's on my watch list. I tend to dislike straight war games.

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

It's definitely a military game, not a grand strategy game in the sense you're describing. There is no diplomacy or similar. You might enjoy our game The Last Federation, though, as that is very much more in that direction.

This game does have some kinda-indirect diplomacy in the loosest sense in that you can cause other factions to either help or hinder you based on your actions near them, but it's not remotely the sort of depth you're looking for.

I think that people have various definitions for grand strategy -- Tom Chick was the first to give the AI War first game that monicker, and it kind of stuck. In this sense, you're managing a complex multi-fronted war over the span of 9-13 (or more) hours, fighting a guerilla war against a far superior foe. And making use of all sorts of various potential goodies that you can capture... but each goodie comes at the price of the enemy becoming more aggro'd and thus more likely to kill you.

I can't really liken it to much else. Stardock was going to make a game vaguely inspired by the first AI War, but they wound up going a different direction. Nobody else has made anything like it. I'm honestly not sure it's quite what you're looking for; I can't tell if you'd like it or not, based on your preferences with Stellaris.