"Lost Empire" 4xTBS : any word of mouth?

Yup - I'm playing Lost Empire - bought it over Gamer's Gate and so far I really like it! Its a bit of a mix of the tech tree from SE4 and the UI from galciv2 - and the races are utterly grotesque like in the old MoO2. The UI could do with some work tho, but the game has a really nice atmosphere - and a scary AI, and a huuuge complicated tech tree if youre into that sort of thing.

The game is very lowprofile - only 35 or so people in the forum on the web site - but the devs are answering lots of questions and seem dedicated - they already fixed some small issues with vista so the game runs on vista now.

Thats all I can say right now, just played it for like 4 hours so far - Ill get back to u with more feedback later

Woops wrong link above - this is the link for the web site for LE.

Anyways, go check out the forum, there u can see how the other folks react to the game...

Yeah, Ive been watching the forums...I actually gave the LE website link out in my OP. But theres virtually no activity on the official boards...maybe two owners posting with any regularity, and very little information available on the game otherwise. I know its low profile and they had some sort of snafu with Strategy First (their original distributor), but I'd really expect to see some more activity for a new game, so I'm still a bit leery.


The ship design aspect looks interesting...all sorts of functionality to research and add. Judging by the "fighter bays" component visible in one of the screenshots, and the references to one race's expertise in stealth technology, it seems you could make cloaked carriers....(*casts sideways glance at stardock*).


However, it seems there are no options for cosmetic customization, even as simple as color schemes or pre fab looks, so youre stuck with the kind of underwhelming ship designs as seen in some of the screens. [Edit] Evidently, based on my query into visual customization, they put a "ship skinning" feature on the to do list for an upcoming patch. Thats either hot air, or some of the most eager to please devs I've seen . We'll have to see.


I like their talking points about the expansive "multilayered" tech tree...Ive been wanting a 4xtbs game where you could really have entirely different technological philosophies amongst races...In Civ and GalCiv you always end up with more or less the same thing at different stages of development. This could all just be hot air though...it seems a pretty difficult proposition to balance all those techs and make all the different combos as viable as the others.


How does the AI seem? Any AI can be challenging if it doesnt have to play by the same rules as the player. I asked about the "cheating" factor and never got a real answer from any dev. And its not like there are so many posts they didnt see it. [Edit] Actually, to be fair, they did get back to me with a "we'll get back to you" response.

The story behind Lost Empire is similar to that of the origin of Galciv. The first game came in 1990 and was made by a company called FLP, and was a good competition to the old VGA planets back then. That game was just called Pollux (v1.26 was latest).

The new Lost Empire has a simpler game play than the original, but are more streamlined and imho better. You dont _just_ have figther bays, you also got clones. You dont _just_ got stealth ships, you have 2 ways of achieving stealth. And you have counter measures to detect enemy stealth ships.

During the development of the game, the developers found that this game can be played in a lot of different ways, making the game last for a long time. There is a story in the game that you discover as you explore the univers, getting you bonuses along the way.

The AI IS quite scary, it is based on fuzzy logic techniques, which gives varied game play. It seems to be rather good and tough to beat.

Most of the game was designed and programmed by a single guy and that was recognized by the D3Expo show with a nomination for the "Best game of the year 2006" only losing to Hitman4. At that time, the game wasnt quite finished though, so it couldnt have won. Im not sure something like that has ever happened?

You also ask about other "skin"s. The game is highly mod-able and open in the design, so people can replace the existing ship designs with their own. You can also edit the game setup, names of races, stats etc. You can even put a new skin on the interface, although, it does come with a seperate skin for each race.

I can see on the Paradox site, that it is now the 3rd most sold game they have, better than their own hyped new Europa Universalis 3 (which I can recommand btw), so Im guessing there will be a site or two who would like to review it in the coming time.

-Mitara

OK, I played the game some more now - and I must say that I really like it. Have played it for like 16-20 hours now and I have tried 3 of the 7 playable races so far - and are really lots of differences to how one can play them plus how one can play one race because of the way the science tree works. That is really nice. What Im really looking forward to though is the Chi Lung-race. Its sort of a dragon race which actually eats the population of the planets they own - so that means they have to attack all the time to have enough population. Havent tried them yet, but they say some nice stuff about them on the forum. Im still only playing the game on medium because the AI is sort of hard to beat on Hard (which they normally arent in 4x-games which is kinda sad) - and that is very cool.

However, Im looking forward to trying the game with some friends next week in multiplayer - I wonder how thats gonna be. You can play on a really huge starmap, so I think a good game with 8 players might take like a whole weekend.

Well I can definately recommend the game - though theres no way to make cosmetic changes to your spaceships yet. The dev team is quite responsive in the official forum though, and I think they might include such a feature in a patch if enough players want it.

Wow, that game might be really good for me! Some of the screenshots kind of remember me SW Rebellion (there seem to be heroes and ground forces/defense).

The problem is that I don't even find the time to play GalCiv2... damn..

Thanks for the input guys!

However, is there anyone who hasn't joined the site within the last 20 days thats playing this game? I'm not saying anything, but you know how the web hype thing goes. Some input from some members who didn't join this site right around the release (or the day before) of LE would carry a lot of weight.


I know...I'm a suspiscious bastard...

lol - Im scanning all forums on google to see what people say about the game cause there has been so little information on it and no reviews yet - so I wanted to discuss the game with someone - thats how I found this forum - dunno about the guy above though, he seems to know a vastly more on the game than I do, lol.

Well check out this forum if you want a guys take on the game - he is very thorough:

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=36316

I just saw the paradox home site. This game is now up in the Top 2 best selling games they have.

Somebody mentioned Steam. Why? I want it totalgaming.net instead (no I dont work for Stardock...)

Why'd you prefer totalgaming over steam? is totalgaming a better place to buy games from?

Perhaps because when buying games available on TGN, internet connexion is required only for downloading the game (nothing to do to play in an offline mode) and you choose when you want to patch the game

  

I guess it depends about what kind of games you want to purchase

 

its personal. I like the guys at Stardock, they are good people.

There's nothing wrong with Steam as far I as I can tell, but any program that restarts itself on the windows startup(with no way to turn it off, at least I couldn't turn the automatic startup off), and wants unchecked internet access, is annoying. I ended up uninstalling it and HF2 just because it was too intrusive for me. If I want steam to be active, I'll run it. Otherwise, I don't want an automatic program or a box telling me to sign in every time I boot up my comp.

You just uncheck the "start with windows" option in the properties tab, then it'll just start when you fire up a game that needs it. It's still a little obnoxious that you can't even run your game without it, but at the end of the day it's not as bad as some of the other draconian copy protection schemes that have been implemented. TGN, however, is definitely less of a pain.

I have this game... and ugh! It is a really good game, but it is not much for me. Game standard map has 5000 solar systems! It's mroe a game of exploration Plus there are no real hard limits with a game of this magnitude. You basically do what you like, and that's really hard for a mini/maxer like myself. I tend to prefer game swhere I know I have done the outermost possible on a turn and that I tweaked soemthign jsut a bit so I get +1 to somethign on that turn to be more efficent. In that game trying to do this would make your head explode.

I got the game as well. Its so cool. So many things to figure out. Im gonna spend all my game time with LE for quite a bit time in the future. The AI rocks, just havetn been able to beat it yet.

Mitara, you are saying "The story behind Lost Empire is similar to that of the origin of Galciv. The first game came in 1990 and was made by a company called FLP, and was a good competition to the old VGA planets back then. That game was just called Pollux (v1.26 was latest)."
Do you have more information about Pollux, or do you now if it is available for downloading or purchasing?

No im afraid I dont, I just remember playing it back then. It was before the internet, so players joined in games through BBS instead. I have tried to search for it, but no luck.

Hmm I am wondering when there'll be some reviews of lost empire. I am playing it and its great - one of my favorite 4x-games during the past few years, but it would be nice to see what the game reviewers would say about it.

I read on the LE forum that they were going to be coming soon, so Im keeping an eye out as well

Maybe Frogboy will review it

They just made a patch - its 1.03 now and they fixed this AI bug where the AI sometimes build ships with no weapons on. This is their patch list:

Fixed for patch 1.03 Beta:
- Absorption shields and fire shields now works against planet missiles
- Orbital mining available, only when correct tech is researched
- Wrong Version number on main menu no longer shown
- Soil Enrichment now work
- Prospecting science now works
- The turn countdown is no longer incorrectly shown
- Miner Job for leader now works correctly
- Farmer job for leaders now work correctly
- The AI no longer keeps building ships with ZERO beams, missiles, fighters or drones.
- Winning conditions were saved incorrectly causing them to reset, this has been fixed
- [Fleet management] You can now merge entire fleets by simply dragging the fleet icon to the fleet you want to merge into.
- You can now design 5 Colony ships
- Low level beams weapon sciences no longer disappear late game
- Sciences in the Hull equipment category no longer disappear late game
- Sometimes invasions failed under certain conditions, this has been fixed

I am waiting to see what they say about AI cheating...answers slow in coming, so still waiting.

Who knows if it is cheating, I noticed that noone has been able to figure that out yet, in my book that is pretty awsome.