Just wondering what peoples' thoughts are on the most recent total overhaul of the game. I haven't bought the megacorp DLC yet, but I did play a multiplayer game with a friend that did, and I was pretty impressed. Much as I detest tedious micro, the new planet management system is light years ahead of the old one, and represents a much more realistic pace for colony development- no more outpopulating and outdeveloping your homeworld in twenty years. The main issues I've seen so far are poor balancing between raw materials, market balance, and finished goods, and AI. Since nearly all finished goods require minerals exclusively as an input, you get constant mineral deficits and a market that places more value on minerals than the goods made from them.

As for the market, the demand/pricing mechanism is poorly implemented, so you can exploit it for infinite money. Say a good costs 1EC/ea, you put in a bulk purchase order for 10,000 units. You pay 1EC for each of them, but after the order the sell price is boosted to 2EC. You can then immediately dump everything you just bought, selling each for 2EC. They could (and probably will) fix this by considering the price of each unit individually based on whatever formula they use for calculating market demand.

Finally, the AI completely shits the bed with the new administrative cap mechanic, and ends up decades behind any competently managed player empire in both economy and technology. But then I suppose poor AI is nothing new for Stellaris.

Issues aside though, I feel like with this patch, Stellaris has finally taken its place as a worthy successor to the classic Master of Orion 2.

I really like playing Civ5, when a city is behind a mountain, if properly guarded, it's nearly impenetrable.

A strategically placed city on choke points can be a shield of your whole empire. Enemy settlers or scouts can't access a vast majority of land. Also people have fun with canal cities with trading routes shortcuts, etc.

However games like civ5 only have mountains, the river tactics is weak, historically many battles were carried over river and controlling a bridge is vital.

Are there any games that focus on terrain tactics? I think combined with some aspects from Tower of Defense, the game can be quite fun.

I know games like Total War where terrain plays an important role, but it's more campaign focused. RTS is too short-lived.

On reddit I post the occasional AAR (after action report) for Victoria 2 on the ParadoxPlaza sub. I was just wondering if there was any interest in me posting those here as well, since vic2 is a little obscure and it's entirely possible I'm the only player here out of our active users.

Kickstarter

Demo (via GOG)

Xenonauts 2 is a sequel to 2014's Xenonauts, a turn-based tactics game inspired by the original Xcom games.

I've never played the older games but I'm in love with the Xcom reboots, so I'm definitely keeping a close eye on his one. Any other Xcom fans here?