Matrix Games Forums

Hi,

I'm trying to figure out if I should invest any more time in playing Shadow Empire. I've played two games, the first ended within an hour or so, the second I've been playing steadily for well over a week. I just don't know if the gameplay is that compelling once you begin to lose interest in the neverending administration of your Empire. About half-way through my current session there have been no real challenges. The last real problem I dealt with was the space monsters cutting the supply lines between my SHQs and causing real logistical problems in a kingdom that relied on constant moving stuff between them to balance things out.

Since then it has just been turn after turn of slowly building up my army and fighting off (well, not really fighting *off* - more on that below) the two largest empires on the planet. Each turn I generally almost run out of money (down to about 1K or so) but by waiting a turn until the "markets" get better, or playing a card or two I'm all good.

Meanwhile the opposing empires, despite their larger sizes, never launch an attack, they just sit there. Eventually I build up enough logistical strength to encircle their armies and destroy them. No counter attacks, no challenge. They just sit there, get encircled, and lose. There is an occasional one stack attempt at break out (not really, but that at least makes it sound exciting).

At this point in the game one of the empires (which is "fighting" with the other - although that seems to go very slowly indeed) is about to collapse, and I'll probably get 85% of its territory and at least 70% of its productive capacity. At that point it'll just be more of the same while I slowly choke to death the last empire capable of putting up a real fight.

While I like the complexity of the game I'm really wondering what is going on underneath the hood. The political system, both internal and external, seems complex - but nothing ever happens. The foreign affairs component has been a dud. I never got any diplomatic traction and the one empire I was developing relations with finally, and unexpectedly, declared war, but never sent in the shock troops I was expecting. The net effect was that they basically declared war and waited for me to knock the sh-t out of them until they sued for peace. Meanwhile, the other empire, which was also at war with me, never took advantage of my "two front" disadvantage. They patiently waited until I had beaten empire 1 into submission and we had ended the war and then obediently waited for me to build up overwhelming strength, now they have just rolled on their back and exposed their soft underbelly without suing for peace.

Meanwhile the economic side of things just rumbles along. I essentially go through a 3-5 turn sequence of having a bunch of cash due to the market, 2 turns of ok, 1 turn of 'oh sh_t' and then some good luck or card appears to bail me out of certain bankruptcy (not really sure what would happen at that point - but thankfully haven't found out).

I *get* where the game could be great. But my experience is less than great at this time. I've figured out the *many* inconsistencies and usability issues with the interface. Am avoiding the consistent crashing when I try to access the stats menus (which I haven't been able to use, and seemingly don't matter that much for something like 30 turns). I found the "minimize" button in the config menus, but have also found out that the game crashes often after being minimized for a while. Meanwhile the "AI" (I hesitate to call it *intelligent* because it has shown no signs of being even moderately so) has failed to produce anything surprising on the military, political or economic side. The decisions seem pretty random and weighted to make sure I never really have to deal with any serious problems.

Should I continue to play?

Thanks,

Dan

At what difficulty are you playing on?

Although to be honest, I have found than the biggest challenge its to survive the first 30 turns and build up your private economy, after that it usually becomes very easy. What you could do to spice things up its play with a Nemesis AI and select the option to create multiple minors and make it so every major starts with 2-3 armys, by doing that, you're also giving an advantage to the AI and unless you're playing on Easy/Normal they will be aggressive with you and wont hesitate to deploy multiples armies with tanks, APCs and arty (or that was my experience in the latest games).

Or, you can try to play on multiplayer, its a lot more slow paced but its night and day fighting against humans instead of the AI.

The biggest (only?) challenge in this game is getting the various systems to play ball with you in the early stages.

IME the AI is poor. I have seen no evidence of anything better. Even with it ignoring most of the things that make the game complex for the player, it still can't keep its own house in order let alone attack someone else's.

I think you're right: there really isn't much going on under the hood.

Play multiplayer, the game really shines in MP.

I bought SE on release but haven’t even installed the game yet. Just by reading various posts and threads in the forum I get the notion that the game is not yet in a state to be playable in single player. Hopefully SE will be developed further and not only as a MP game.

It's a lot of fun but yes, the AI is pretty weak. My next outing will be on Extreme and we'll see if it's better. My last run on Hard I also selected nasty critters (whatever that setting is called) which did provide more of a challenge, although they are fairly static (you can send 6 spies to the zone and see where they all are, even a zone that covers 33% of the planet). At least the nasty critter setting slows down your offensive capability quite a bit.

After getting 50% VPs, I kept at it to see how certain things would develop. The next biggest major never attacked, nor did any of the others, although you'd think they would if you were approaching 50% VPs (minors will attack and then get steamrolled). I'm at the point where I got the black bottleneck spokes of death around my SHQ and am trying to figure that out (level 4 rail and level 3 truck--which are clearly not enough). I created a new SHQ but that ended up not helping. Anyway, great game with a ways to go before it's a classic.

Cheers,
CB

the MP seems extremely slow.

I can play a dominions game with 20 players, and have 1 turn every 24 hours.

Shadow Empire with 4 players must be 2 turns/week. There could be some change in the rules to make the turns WEGO, but I doubt it will ever happen.

ORIGINAL: zuekamo

the MP seems extremely slow.

I can play a dominions game with 20 players, and have 1 turn every 24 hours.

Shadow Empire with 4 players must be 2 turns/week. There could be some change in the rules to make the turns WEGO, but I doubt it will ever happen.

??? Idk with who you play, but on the unofficial discord server we play at least 1 turn per day (unless a player gives the heads up than won't be able to play for x days due IRL reasons) and when possible (mostly when players are from the same continent) we play 2-4 turns per day