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1- Star Wars : Empire at War - After all those years still imho best strategy in Star Wars universe.
I have tried Awakening of the Rebellion mod on Empire side. Despite an unfinished feel it was really great, absolutely great. First off the AI is really hard compared to vanilla and there is lots of epic space battles. (In vanilla i rarely could force AI to fight ).Secondly they got rid of all the imho silly artilery units so its all down to capital ships and fighters, proper Star Wars style. There is tons of new capital ships for the Rebellion and Empire.
A short video of a battle recorded long time ago: : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g57gce6BOUY&t=276s
PS I thought then that the Mod was dead , but apparently it just got a second life with a new team, must try the new version.
2-Sins of a Solar Empire:
I tried 2 mods:
a) Star Wars: Thrawn's Revenge II: Ascendancy : mixed feelings here. On one hand its really ambitious , lots of changes. On other something felt off for me. Maybe as i understand because it wasnt a finished version.Also its the expanded universe after Episode VI stuff, so I wasnt as enraptured , no classic settings.
b) Sins of a Galactic Empire - this i was for some time in love with. Really cool , lots of options, it had a slower feelng then vanilla SOSE which i liked more. Really good. I understand tough thats its developement is ended, so no new stuff incoming.
3- Gal Civ 3
Havnet tried any real mods but i had lots of fun with a race created by ReishiMu called "Galactic Empire - Star Wars". I mixed it though with ships designed by Omnibus, I preffered them. All in all ofc its only appeareance but i had lots of fun with playing as Empire with this package.
Try imperial civil war for Star wars empire at war or republic at war. Though both make the AI cheat heavily during galactic conquest to make the game epic.
There's also men of war star wars mods, but I don't think they're finished yet?
https://www.reddit.com/r/4Xgaming/comments/6e9eaw/star_wars_4x_options_in_2017/
I have expanded on that original post for this thread. :)
I seem to keep coming back to Star Wars themed 4X and strategy experiences.
So I kept reading about folks being disgusted with Empire at War and going back to 1998's buggy release titled Star Wars Rebellion. Seems it has some finickiness with modern OSes especially Windows 10, which is acceptable considering its age.
Though this game now has an almost cult status level today with its fans...I never really paid it much attention back then. Instead opting for the Red Alerts, X-Wing and Tie Fighter space sims, Starcraft, TA, Quake, etc. Now this game has my interest, and from what I've been told on Reddit and from research...the combat sucks as much as it always has. Clunky and more hassle than enjoyable. The rest of the game though is supposed to be solid, and the mechanics something other games should strive to recreate.
Almost seems like this game could use a rehash blended with EaW-style space combat and maybe something a little different for ground combat.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/441550/STAR_WARS_Rebellion/
I'll have to give it a go, but now I have a copy and it has been added to the list of games to play. I look forward to it and hope I can look past the combat to enjoy the rest of it. That will be a challenge as I prefer good combat...but some games like GC3 have shown me that 4X's can do well enough in other aspects to stay entertaining.
Anyways, I've been really enjoying some select Star Wars themed mods for the following games. I am only going to focus on the mods I enjoy the most. All of these games may have multiple SW mods, feel free to donate your thoughts on those or compare against what I have presented. I'm hoping to spread the knowledge of these mods so users can enjoy these titles as much as I have.
Game: Polaris Sector
Mod: Star Wars Alliance http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-polaris-sector-alliance
Utilizes content from other games and mods, is the biggest mod for PS and boy does it add and change a lot content-wise. Nomada, the author, reports this is the closest he could get to a SW Rebellion experience with a game mod. Albeit with PS game mechanics.
So far I'm finding it to be quite fun, but I also enjoy PS vanilla. Still eagerly awaiting the next patch release announcement, this is a hidden gem of a 4X for folks that enjoy a wargaming focus with some more in-depth tactical combat in contrast to the current scope of 4X titles where combat is ho-hum.
There ship design is important, and has a somewhat entertaining mini-game of design. Something between Stardrive 1 and Tetris. It works well here, where other games like Stellaris or Dawn of Andromeda offer mere modules and specific slots...in PS you have zones and blocks. It works well to give you a quick break from the rest of the game.
The pacing of Polaris Sector is nice, and has been tuned here to run in hours instead of days for the smallest time frame. The SW theme is baked into the game throughout and done at a level that really shines with PS and how it plays.
Not having played Rebellion, I am not sure how close to the claim the creator of this mod is...but I can assure you it is well worth a go.
The attention to detail and numerous changes make this mod quite sizeable, at 5.3GB. Worth every byte IMHO, and while I am just sinking my teeth into this one after waiting a while to give it a try. A MUST TRY if you own Polaris Sector. If you don't own Polaris Sector, this might be a good reason to.
This is probably my favorite when I have more time to sit down and pay attention, and want the 4X empire feeling while still having good tactical battles. I fear the more time I give it, the more time I'll get lost in it...well I don't fear that...my wife might though! XD
Game: Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion
Mod: Star Wars Interregnum http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-interregnum
This is one of my favorite mods for SoaSE and has been for some time. 1.90 compatible. Requires the E4X mod, which expands on SoaSE to give it more 4X flavor, but this game and mod surely keeps the action at the forefront and it is so beautiful to watch!
The mod works quite well in quenching my thirst for dominating the galaxy as the empire. Having different flavors of the empire is also a nice touch. The attention to detail here works quite well, and the SoaSE play style really lends itself to gratifying battles in Star Wars themed goodness.
There are other Star Wars mods for Sins, but frankly this one does the trick for me and does it so well I stopped trying any of the rest. Still being updated, still being developed, and has been a great experience along the way.
This one is my most played SW mod, and I've always enjoyed SoaSE. While I do wish there were campaigns and stories here, with these mods you don't need one as much. While there could be some better use of various 4X mechanics, it does seem the development of this mod is very much moving forward and still has quite a few changes to give us. Definitely a game and mod to stay tuned with.
Game: Star Wars Empire at War Gold
Mod: Empire at War Remake (for FoC) http://www.moddb.com/mods/empire-at-war-re
This one I just heard about and it was recently released. I am amazed at what they pulled off with such an old game engine. Now this game is supposedly a sort-of successor to SW Rebellion...some agree, some don't. I have no experience with Rebellion as said above, but what I've seen of Rebellion this doesn't seem to be quite the same focus and goal...but sure there are some similarities.
Either way, I enjoy EaW, vanilla, modded, whatever...its age is showing and its fun factor has faded in recent years. And ground combat...sigh. I guess if looked at and treated as a 4X rather than RTS, ground combat is above average...but meh.
Anyways, this mod doesn't change ground combat yet... but what it does change it does an excellent job of. Units, skins, effects, content, etc...is all very impressive so far for a new mod for such an old game.
The mod works best with the GoG version of the game, but is do-able with the Steam version of the game if you get the correct executable for FoC. No matter which version, the executables need the 4GB patch. There are plenty of posts and instructions to easily accomplish this.
I haven't tried a lot of other mods for EaW yet...only a handful and some were fun, some weren't what I expected, this one totally surprised me and now I'm having this and Polaris Sector w/SW Alliance battle for my time as I find both quite fun. This one is pretty damn challenging at the moment in Galactic Conquest, the dev just said today (as I was typing this post) that they plan to re-launch Empire and Rebellion campaigns.
So far it is very fun, challenging (at least for this gamer), and looks quite frankly amazing for what it is.
I do keep coming back to this one the most right now. The space battles are great, and the pacing keeps it fun for my more limited time. The challenge is there for me, and it runs so nicely on all my systems. Even with the mod, the game shows its age...though I tuned the interface section of the control scheme to allow for WASD panning, since I didn't use those hotkeys original assignments. Too bad you can't set a pause key here but it really isn't necessary to use often here.
Those are my big 3 at this moment, I have tried SW mods for Stellaris as well, but I just have trouble getting into that game. I do want to try a SW mod for DWU at some point, but I gotta finish my current playthru before I do anything.
What are you guys doing with these games?
What Star Wars-themed mods are you playing?
What's your thoughts on the mods I'm using?
Cheers!
I dont mind cheating on pasrt of the AI, its pretty standard/
Star Wars Rebellion
I was a huge fan of it in the day of my youth:).In fact i think this was the first game i played online mp (aaah the days of 115kb/s) IT was pretty good. What was unique imho even to this day was the importance of heroes, whom you could send on "quests' against the enemy , with various targets. Yuo could put admirals to enhance fleet strentgh. There was even a really cool twist with Luke Skywalker Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine. Basicly if you managed to pinpoint Palpatine and send Luke with proper support on mission to confront him, Luke would grow immensely powerful .(Cant remembner if he would then become Jedi knight or Jedi Master).However if Darth Vader was also there, Luke would nearly for sure become captured.It was a never ending game of deception and spying adn really injected into the strategy game a ever living and important heros story. The space battles, tough bad for today, were actually awseome for me in the past:).
However the game had a few problems:
1- Single plaer AI was awfull. And i mean awfull. All the tricks i described above made sense only in mp, you didnt need it in sp.
2- The fighters were seriusly overpowered. In med late game basiclly who owned more fighters won the battle. Capital ships were defensless against them. I hated this imbalance.
PS People who disdain EAW and praise Rebellion imho are same category of nostalgic/elitist guys who hated the new Xcom in favour of the orginal. While they are quite different games and Rebellion did some stuff better (specially heroes part) , EAW imho did so much better in many many aspects
Game: Polaris Sector
Mod: Star Wars Alliance http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-polaris-sector-alliance
I loved Polaris Sector and i was seeing posts by Nomada about his mod. I admired his enthusiasm but i was a bit wary becasue for me he was trying to do stuff with Polaris that imho Polaris wasnt suited too. Also he was one person and it takes a lot of work to balance and test a game of this scope.But if you praise it so much , i will give it a a try.
Game: Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion
Mod: Star Wars Interregnum http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-interregnum
Havnet tried that one, will do.
Game: Star Wars Empire at War Gold
Mod: Empire at War Remake (for FoC) http://www.moddb.com/mods/empire-at-war-re
I only saw a video of this mod, looked very pretty. But I didnt like the fact that the arrtilery in space ships seemed even more powerful then in Vanilla. Also i tought it is yet in early developement?
Stellaris
I only saw some video of a mod that adds tottaly different ships for the empire, along with huge Super Star destoryers. It looked very interesting, but again i have to wonder if someone has actually balanced it with the game , seemed like a huge advantage.
Besides im a bit burnt out on Stellaris . Im used to long 4x games, but Stellaris , to finish it, just takes an obscene amount of time. I have finished some time ago a loooong campaign and it will take time before i feel like playing Stellaris again.
Winning the game requires figuring out the sabotage system, if you can figure it out, you can sabotage every single facility the empire\rebels will ever have. The only time you can't is if there is a general on the planet and a significant military presence (or Vader, you can't fuck with Vader). The problem is that the mission systems are both micromanagement intensive and too opague for anyone to know if they're going to fail or succeed. Some missions that should be auto-repeated like recruitment simply aren't and require you to come back to that planet and reassign it again. That said, the idea of using heroes on missions and keeping a roster of heroes doing things (and they have established lore) was revolutionary compared to MOO2 where a leader was just assigned and it's almost as if they were never there. If there's one thing Empire at war is missing that would make it guaranteed better than Rebellion, its that there's few opportunities for special forces operations in Empire at war.
The AI is terrible, all it does is turtle and make winning the game a pain in the ass (It's fleet building skills are awful). Every planet they have will have 2 or more shield generators on it and a orbital battery (At least two shield generators are required to prevent a planetary assault with ground troops, the shields themselves take a overwhelming force in orbit to destroy via bombardment and the orbital battery will cause ship losses regardless of how powerful the force involved is).
The game has terrible balance issues. Fighters are really powerful that is true. Two X-wing squadrons will kill a Imperial Star destroyer with no fighter escort. However there exists multiple ships that kill fighters in the game and are very durable. The Rebellion is actually OP because they have so many strategic bonuses that its not even funny. They have the hilariously broken Nebulon B-Frigate, first to be researched, quick to produce, has weapons that are good in every category and will cost for cost, beat everything the empire has to throw at it. Tie defenders will take heavy casualties taking on a fleet of nebulons. The only thing the nebulon B-frigate is terrible at is bombardment but it has two hangar slots to take fighters and all fighters add to bombardment. A swarm of nebulons + fighter complement will easily beat anything the empire has to offer even with Tie defenders. The rebellion has access to multiple diplomats and Han solo makes travel times for anyone coming with him much much shorter (meaning there is going to be some super fast blitzing of sabotage missions).
The UI was awful. It had nothing to indicate whether or not you had vision at a planet or not. Sometimes you are informed when a planet switches allegiance other times you are not informed at all. Getting intel on a planet is easy but micro intensive as you have to click an espionage unit and then send them to the planet (and you had to do that for every single planet of interest). I think if there's any 4X that will break your wrists, its this one.
As for which game is better. Obviously EAW is better in every way. EAW has basically all the same mechanics except espionage missions (there's sabotage missions, but they're almost entirely worthless and exclusive to certain heroes and units). EAW does have balance issues (rebel corelian gunship, kills everything well, can boost out of danger, immune to deathstar, eats star destroyers for breakfast). All the mechanics are more polished and have less bloat (you don't have to click 5 buttons just to tell battle group 1 that they should engage fighters).
@Firestorm
Looking at the XCOM 2012 and X-com ufo defense, these two games are radically different. XCOM 2012 takes 20 GB while the other takes 20 mb (EAW takes 4GB, rebellion takes 500mb). Ufo defense has base and staff management, inventory management and multiple bases and large squad size with gunplay that can result in basically every unit in the game being killed in one hit and involves ballistic physics. XCOM 2012 has one base with no staff management (beyond soldiers), no inventory management, and gunplay that arbitrarily makes a mail box as good as a wall of sandbags and has no ballistic physics (missing a point blank shot is entirely possible whereas its basically impossible to miss all 3 shots at point blank in Xcom ufo-defense). I would wait before calling X-com ufo defense fans elitist nostalgic people as XCOM 2012 is definitely not a build up on ufo defense's mechanics.
Regarding X-com i dont want to turn ths thread into Xcom orginal us Xcom 2012 fight. Lets just say imho if you start playing it for what it is, not wanting it to be orginal Xcom, its tacticly quite a deep game and even the strategic game , while obcviosly very limited in scope, becomes important and requires thinking. For me it was critical to move to impossilbe difficulty level to appreciate it, because on classic i didnt need to really think much to win.
And i still think there is a certain category of gamers who wont really try a new game with a good will , who somehow feel that praising old games and ridiculing the new ones makes them cool and superior.
Star Wars Rebellion
Thanks for your take on this one...I'm looking forward to giving it a fair shake one of these days!
> PS People who disdain EAW and praise Rebellion imho are same category of nostalgic/elitist guys who hated the new Xcom in favour of the orginal. While they are quite different games and Rebellion did some stuff better (specially heroes part) , EAW imho did so much better in many many aspects
Much agreed! Frankly if we could get the good stuff from Rebellion and good stuff from EaW into a modern game engine, we'd have a very solid SW themed 4X to dig into!
Game: Polaris Sector
Mod: Star Wars Alliance http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-polaris-sector-alliance
PS is a good game, and between UFNV and Nomada I gotta say I enjoy PS vanilla and PS Alliance Mod quite a bit. I do praise this mod, it isn't going to change the world...but it does give a solid 4X experience with Star Wars flavor, and it seems to work quite nicely.
Game: Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion
Mod: Star Wars Interregnum http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-interregnum
Interregnum is a very solid offering, I don't and haven't played any other SW mods since I installed this one. Still being developed but has been a great experience for quite a long time IMHO.
Game: Star Wars Empire at War Gold
Mod: Empire at War Remake (for FoC) http://www.moddb.com/mods/empire-at-war-re
I only saw a video of this mod, looked very pretty. But I didnt like the fact that the arrtilery in space ships seemed even more powerful then in Vanilla. Also i tought it is yet in early developement?
You know I'd have to go back and play vanilla to compare. I will say that the space battles feel more fun than I remember EaW vanilla being and they're definitely more fun to watch. This mod is still early in development yes...but I'm quite impressed with what they ahve for it so far. I should try Thrawn's Revenge sometime soon...as I know that's kinda the go-to for EaW...but I'm really enjoying this one.
EaW Remake has really been my go-to because I can hop in for an hour and get lost in it. Though like last night...next thing I know its 3AM and I gotta be up at 7!!!
That being said, it doesn't totally change the EaW experience...but what it does change feels good so far! There is still tuning and additions needed overall...but frankly this is well worth playing.
Stellaris
I have tried some SW mods for Stellaris...I should look at which ones...but I just can't really get into Stellaris at all. Maybe it is the slow pace of it.. I feel it is more the way the war aspect doesn't do it for me...from battles to warscore...just not my cup of tea I guess. Hoping they can fix those in the future to make them more fun and involving...I love a good battle in any game...but Stellaris just makes it no fun for me. Lots of others disagree and I'm glad they can enjoy it! Thankfully I have the other games above that are more enjoyable for me. :)
I meant to thank you in my last post and clearly forgot to do so. I really appreciate the points you bring up on Rebellion and EaW.
Is there anything SW themed that you prefer? Have you tried the Polaris Sector mod? I'd be very interested to hear what you think about it.
Although its just Age of empires with everything shooting guns (except for the futuristic battering ram lol), Star wars galactic battlegrounds is actually really good because its mechanics are sound and well polished.
Haven't tried the polaris sector mod unfortunately. I'm really just waiting for men of war mods to be done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9d4z5Ji6bg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9f-_WkqJUI