Distant Worlds: Universe

Zloth

I smell a... wumpus!?
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Well it's the thought that counts I guess.

The developer is know for never selling the expansion cheaply. Their excuse was their game is niche product so the fans will pay anything to play them.

I may buy the complete edition at some time in the future if I feel like it.
 
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The BGM sounds like it was ripped straight from Star Wars. (2nd Steam video) :)

Has anyone here played it? If so, what was your impression?
 
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Yeah, I wrote it off, too. People have said it's really good if you get all the expansions but that pumped the price up so high that I couldn't justify it. Well, maybe there will be some new reviews with this expansion.
 
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Well, I went ahead and got it, and I'm having a really good time! Easily the best time I've had with a sprite(?) based game in eons.

It's got ALL the basic stuff you can put in a 4X game: espionage, diplomacy, ship design, space critters, and pirates. Lots and LOTS of pirates. You can even play as a pirate! The big thing that's different, though, is the sheer scale of it. Your galaxy can have a thousand+ stars and those stars each have multiple planets.

To handle all that hugeness, the game has tons of automation options. In other 4X games I'll only automate parts of the game that I really don't like - if that. In this one, I'm just picking out one or two things I do like and automating the rest! That's been pretty helpful for learning the game, too.

There's plenty of stuff on the web about how the game works - though I decided to just start reading the manual to see how it played.
 
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I've heard that this is one of the best games of its type ever made, from several reliable sources. That price though. And Slitherine & Matrix fool themselves if they say that this is a "niche game that needs to be sold at a very high price". While 4X games are not exactly mainstream, they are not super-niche either, as evident by the fact that there are plenty of 4X space games on the market right now, and they seem to be doing pretty well.

Anyway, wishlisted for now, might buy on a good sale.
 
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I've been on the fence about this one over the weekend. I am a 4x fan, although more a traditional turn based one. I'm just not sure whether this one is overly complex and will make me lose interest quickly as a result (like Dwarf Fortress does).

The automation parts does sound interesting. I generally don't like the combat parts of these games and prefer building/expanding/economics. I'll have to decide fairly quickly for first week discount.
 
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One of the things that sold me on the game is that you can set up a galaxy with nothing but rather passive races and pretty much avoid war completely while concentrating on trade and exploration. Something it's not big on, though, is development of planets. You can put some facilities on them but don't expect to be placing every factory and entertainment building down.

"Overly complex" is a bit of a loaded term. I haven't caught the game being complex just for complexity's sake yet but I'm still very much a n00b.

Oh, and something I did forget: no multiplayer. None. Zero. You can still be creative by, say, saving off a game as soon as it loads up, mailing it to a friend, and then see who does the best with it but there's no official multiplayer at all.
 
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Ive put dozens of hours into all expansions so I got this one for 9€ with discount. This is perhaps my favorit 4x space strategy. The civillian economy adds lot to the immersion. Its like a sims of sort. And you need it to grow your empire.

There is lots of AI in this game. You can run almost everyhting by yourself (except i.e civillians) or give some or even all of the tasks to AI.

The game is full of challenges and the AI can put up a fight.

Space sector has good coverage of this game:
Closing Thoughts

Distant Worlds has come a long way since the series’ inception in 2010. In my opinion, the game didn’t start well. But, CodeForce and Matrix Games redeemed themselves with the release of the first expansion, Return of the Shakturi. And, by the second expansion, Legends, Distant Worlds became a great experience, the best space 4X experience since Galactic Civilizations 2, in my opinion.

Shadows, the third expansion, brought, among other things, the pirate gameplay and the very important PreWarp experience, which made possible to have the experience of developing from a very, very humble beginning, where exploring and exploiting a star system seems like a galaxy in itself. This was a very cool addition in Shadows.

Now, new players have a lot to experience with Distant Worlds: Universe, but also a lot to learn. This isn’t a simple game. Distant Worlds is very complex and as deep as can get while still being approachable to a large audience. The UI has improved dramatically over the expansions, especially in the second one (Legends), which made things a lot easier. There are ingame tutorials that help you get started, but reading some parts of the manual will most probably be required.

And, if you want to master the game you’ll need to consult the ingame encyclopedia frequently, and perhaps make a few visits to the game’s forums to ask some of the veterans there what something means or is used for (oh, I know because I did that a lot myself!). So, you’ll need a while to get a hang of things.

And, the game’s scope can be quite huge. Of course, you an setup a galaxy as small or as big as you like, but there will be a lot to do still. You can automate certain aspects of the game at first and then progressively turn that automation off, when you feel you’re ready. So, the game can feel quite daunting at first. But, the learning curve is totally worth it, in my opinion.

http://www.spacesector.com/blog/2014/05/distant-worlds-universe-launched-and-first-impressions/

The BGM sounds like it was ripped straight from Star Wars. (2nd Steam video) :)

Has anyone here played it? If so, what was your impression?

Deep in this games galaxy its possible to find something like the planet destroyer ship in star wars. It must of course be repared first and fueled and that takes really long time.

Reparing or scavenging ships of past empires is just one thing you can do in this game. Usually some destroyer or capital ships that are more advanced than what you have at the moment.

Ive never fixed the planet killer but Ive destroyed one since the was chance that another empire could have salvaged it.
 
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I went through my normal 4X progression with new games. Read a good hunk of the manual/do tutorials, start a game in easy mode, and get crushed horribly. Read some more, start another easy game, and trip myself up because of a few missed concepts. Start a third game on easy and dominate.

It does seem to be smart to do a custom game as your first game despite what the manual says. That lets you set the pirate population to 'very rare' which is a huge help. The pirates in this game aren't like the barbarians of Civilization - these guys are actually MORE advanced than you are!
 
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In some cases Ive just payd money to pirate factions to keep them away while I was trying to build a decent security fleet and fortify my bases. They can even be helpful if you ask them to harass your neighbour empires.
 
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