Legends: leave your impressions here, pls!

[jezwhywhy]

finding abandoned ships is there an option to turn it off?     sometimes i think it might make tech progression too easy 

[Gelatinous Cube]

ORIGINAL: jezwhywhy

finding abandoned ships is there an option to turn it off?     sometimes i think it might make tech progression too easy 

I think you'll always find a few, but by turning off the original DW story-lines you can disable the massive debris fields.

[Crinshaw]

This is a very fine game. I just bought it last week but I have only started playing because my daughter keeps dragging me back to play Lord of the Rings Online with her. I can't pass that up. I now have a couple hours of stops and starts and must say that this in not like any 4x space game I have ever played. It is very approachable at any level.

[the1sean]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

After discussion with the other mods and some research, we were able to confirm through further research without any remaining doubt that you are indeed a sock puppet for the banned user Ravinhood. Creating a new account to get around a ban is a violation of forum policies. Your new account has been banned as well.

Regards,

- Erik

Erik, thank you. His off-topic tantrums and belligerent attitude were getting old.

[nelsonlee_slith]

the impovement of AI is great

the NPC subsystem is great too though I think it can add more pics and characters........maybe there will be a great moder later

and after all I hope there will be a planet-construction-sub system(maybe just like the Heroes of Might & Magic III),it is not comfortable when the whole planet pic are covered by dockyard and other buildings,and also it must be cool when when see a pic of your planet with many beautiful buildings such as a wonder....

[MrCali]

I bought Legends yesterday after purchasing Distant Worlds and its first expansion earlier in the year. While I enjoyed the first part of the series, I was slightly put off by having to micromanage all of my defense fleets throughout my sprawling empire while also simultaneously managing at times multiple wars with enemy empires. I didn't feel that automate did a good enough job, for example sending a fleet from one side of my empire to deal with a threat that a fleet next door could take care of. I really wished there was some way of limiting certain fleets to certain sectors, etc.

I have to say I'm loving this new fleet posturing system with Legends. It is exactly what I was wishing for. That, on top of having borders and the vectoring make this game a complete package now. I only got to play for a couple of hours last night, but I had a blast and I'm greatly looking forward to this evening.

So basically I registered strictly to say great job guys, keep up the good work.

[Astax]

I love this game! It has gotten so much more depth through the expansions, I only wonder how far we'll go! 

[Fetrik]

ORIGINAL: Astax

I only wonder how far we'll go! 

To the stars and beyond! [:D]

[Data]

Where no one has gone before, that's for sure.....boldly.

[adecoy95]

just some quick first impressions from the end game of my first game of legends. settings are something like, max pirates, max difficulty, aggressive settings for empires. i stayed peaceful more than i would have liked, but i was still getting the hang of all the new things in the game.

as you can see from this picture, my empire is extremely large compared to others from colonization. but it is one of my main focuses throughout my games so its to be expected i suppose.



i made it a point in this game to leave the ancients alone, because their home world is just way too good. but it did not matter in the end, while i am not certain what kind of bonuses the ai get on very hard, i am unsure if it is enough. i found this interesting, the other empires are so far below me most of them dont even have bars.



money seems to come a lot easier in legends, most likely because of the stats leaders can obtain. yes i am playing securians, and yes my closest ally, the dyhaat, performed a hostile racial takeover it seems. currently, trying to maintain fleet admirals and troop commanders is more than a little tedious, the bonuses are good, but i find myself annoyed that i have to redeploy troop commanders after i perform an invasion.



manual tax rates is still the best way to go. this needs to be addressed somehow. it might not be the only reason, but it is defiantly a step towards making the ai more challenging. currently the tax system impacts the rate at which worlds populate by extreme amounts. this picture demonstrates the difference somewhat. while these worlds are not too similar in terms of quality and such, its important to note that the 50% tax rate puts the other world at 56 times less growth rate. the difference is so extreme, that by the time the game ends, that world could not even hope to be even remotely developed. all for the measly 9k the owner is gaining for this loss. i would suggest a new system that allows the worlds to grow to proper sizes before it gets taxed into oblivion like it is now.



some other quick feedback points.

the game is crashing occasionally, but i am playing the beta patch so i suppose it is to be expected. it seems to happen the most during end game when its trying to gather data in the menus and becomes crashtastic from all the data.

the new energy to fuel converters are really cool and very powerful, but there needs to be a new base type for them that will work in the menus for stars along side the research and resort base buttons.

i like the way subjugation works now, it is much more interesting and rewarding, its also interesting how much you can demand from an enemy with a "or we will attack you" threat right after they vie for peace with you, if not a bit exploity (i once got something like a 300 million trade value for making this threat).

i havent used ambassadors much, but i have to say, the level of relationship you can obtain with them is really high, im currently something like 250+ in relations with my closest ally the dhyuaat.

[Webbco]

interesting points about tax rate adecoy, I concur with your idea about getting colonies more developed...wonder if this ties in with Ashbery's opinion about spheres of influence not growing quick enough at new colonies?

[adecoy95]

do you have a link to his opinion? i cant find it in the thread, thanks!

so i just discovered that you can increase tax rates beyond 50% in legends, i don't even know what to say, and before you ask, all my worlds are still happy 

[doomtrader]

Hi,

First of all I would like to tell that this is really not my genres, both for sci-fi and real time.
However I decided to buy DW with both addons.

I've go trough the tutorial which was fine and present me all the basics how to handle the game.

So I started a new game as humans, with pretty low tech etc.
The game looks and plays nice, but after couple of hours I realized it's playing almost by itself. Maybe it's just me but I've got the feeling that I'm not deciding about anything and that most of the units are not listening me. Been able to fund couple new colonies and as soon as the Sol system has been founded I decided to colonize it too. Unfortunately it was already occupied. So the war started.
I have sent everything I have got and easily took all planets except one. And what was most irritating I wasn't able to conquer it until the game ends (some different civilization wons the game).
I've been trying to send all my ships against enemy and sometimes they didn't listen my orders and sometimes they been just wiped out. I have built couple hundreds of them but still nothing and I didn't know why. Thats the point. I'm not sure is a fleet of 500 vessels is large or not, but it caused me a lot of problems.

I think I'll start the game again in some small galaxy with as little enemies as possible.

For sure I think the game is worth all the money and is a must for anybody who likes 4X games. Go for it. The Galaxy awaits you.

[shunwick]

Me Like!

Best wishes,
Steve

[KnighHawk]

Bottomline - Good game, pretty fun, could be great and worth it once more of the kinks are worked out.

2 more cents - In the short term focus more on cleaning up what is baked in already (crashes, weird ai anomalies\bugs, edge cases,regressions), bit less on new complex features (though the ship design stuff did need addressing - props for that once it's cleaned up more).

[jseah]

I bought and played RotS for a bit and gave up after I couldn't trigger the storyline; I've come back again just a few days ago after getting Legends.
Some of these are valid even to my experience with RotS.

So...

The leaders give a nice personal touch to things although I find they don't seem to affect things too much except for the diplomats. Perhaps I haven't been paying enough attention though.

The AI still doesn't cope well with Teekans, my favourite race. =) Secure steel and polymer, then chuck out colony ships and grab everything. Watch your income and strategic value reach impossible heights.
Super-epic-empire-from-nothing starting conditions: 1400 stars, ring, 5 AIs, abundant colonies, highest tech cost, highest pirates, highest space creatures, lowest independents, independents cannot form new empires, no victory conditions (storylines still there)

Started pretty ok, did the standard micromanagement to secure a steel and polymer supply then did an initial colony expansion. Ran into Humans and Securans, relations cool but ok. Ran into Ancient Guardians, meh. Did not try to steal tech from them to avoid breaking game.

Cut forward...

year 2790, Galaxy fully colonized, basically by me. Natural trade keeps the Boskarans and Dhayuts happy despite -30 covetousness; they refuse FTAs though. =( I send one agent to blow up their mining stations. I have ALL the wonders and maxed out the mining, trade and colony infrastructure (brown) techs. Trade sanctions with the dinos lifted and relations repaired with hefty bribes, eventually get FTA. Both world destroyers, both super weapons, all mine. Most of the debris fields are also mine. Never bothered to disassemble (too cheesy). Have 2 Korrabian spice, 1 zentabia fluid, 1 loros fruit, only uncontrolled-by-me superluxury source is the Ancient Guardians.


Year 2828 (now), Shakturi not turning up. Shields tech done, sensors done, lasers done, missiles done... what do I have to do to get them to turn up? Galaxy fully explored and colonized, I have literally *everything* despite having fought exactly zero wars. Reputation at Heroic, especially after I stopped bribing pirates (I didn't ask nor want them to attack, I just want them to leave me alone for a bit so I can colonize in their system).
My colonies are still growing happily, although everything in the initial colonization rush is at max pop. Net income at +9 million and still growing (albeit slowly), military and civilian spending has long ceased. Total military strength is something like ~100 cap. ships and 300-400 carriers. I set carriers to 20% and the AI is using size 550 carriers as patrol boats... it likes to put carriers patrolling gas stations for some reason.

I have 'adopted' a fleet, gave it the best admiral and watched it play whack-a-mole with the pirates. Heh, the giant superlaser beam is totally worth it... when it hits.
To spice things up, I used the game editor to spawn a silver mist on a Securan colony and watched it chew on a triple defense base / med. space port combo. It ate the planet shortly afterwards and grows to 1500hp!! I sent my adopted fleet (which was hanging around outside the system) to try whacking it; you know, looking for a fight.

Turns out, Silver Mist AI needs improvement. It likes to go after fighters for some reason and can't catch them. Turns out, when each fighter has about 20-50% chance to deal 1 damage, 350 fighters nukes the silver mist into nothingness in a bare few passes. Turns out, a fleet of 8 custom-built carriers (basically fighter bays and engines, +essentials) are pretty damned scary when microed. I didn't even get to test my superbeam vs silvermist.
In a hypothetical universe (save branch), I declare war on the dinos and the fleet of 8 carriers wipes their entire homeworld defense. Large spaceport gone in three passes! Microed to keep out of range and with the superbeam capital ship for escort (to blow up their reinforcement fleets)


Also, the AI mining / gas mining station distribution is very sub-optimal. Likes to build worthless things at start (seriously, the only thing you need at the start is steel and polymer, everything else is secondary), and focuses too much on your homeworld area in the exponential phase. If it would focus on getting steel and polymer to Sol after I colonized it, the 30-strong constructor fleet I built could have turned Sol into a forward colony-producing base. It's not like my homeworld needs the help when there are 20 sources of steel and polymer each within 1.5 sectors range. As it was, I was colonzing about 2 colonies per week so I was ok with it, but I did notice that high population colonies aren't prioritized for resources like they should be.
Perhaps that was why the AI lost all the colonization rushes. I micromanaged the mineral sources early on to have lots of steel and polymer to stamp out colony ships non-stop. The AI doesn't seem to do that. Even without the "all roads lead to Nabuu" effect, you can tell solely from the (lack of) size of the AI empires where my homeworld is.


I also miss the discipline of the previous versions. Ships like to do their own thing even when they have player orders. I can't figure out how to turn down the engagement range to zero; if I'm micromanaging a fleet, I do not want it gallivanting off to chase some pirate coming through. Waiting at the gas station is for a reason, even if beyond the comprehension of the AI...

[SecuransRule]

Of course I can't imagine playing the game without Legends. Like any great RPG game, I love having 'pet' heroes that you watch over and groom for great things, and I definitely get annoyed if they get killed. It would be nice if the heroes had different graphical representations (like Age of Wonders 2), but this is a minor quibble.

I would also add that ambassadors can be a godsend. I recall one game where I wanted to attack a faction on my eastern flank. The trouble was, I had a hostile and potentially troublesome faction on my border to the north that was likely to object to my expansion plans. What I did though was send my most experienced ambassador to the northern empire, and as a result they never uttered a word of complaint while I carried out my war further south. This was very cool and actually quite realistic, and sort of like Obama sending Hillary Clinton to a trouble spot. [;)]