Ok, I played some more games. For reference I'm on normal difficulty vs Xilmi on Starfield.
I had some thoughts:
Starting spawns and planets are too random.
One game I started cornered with only 2 planets and two empires on my borders. This forced me into a 50 turn battle of extinction and just left me hopelessly behind after winning. On the same settings in a new game I was basically gifted 1/4 of the map and basically won by default with only one war needed.
You can also start with as few as 2 planets or have tons of habitable planets near by. Starting relics or rich planets are also huge boosts. The only thing that seems to be guaranteed is one habitable planet nearby.
I get the game is meant to be a bit unbalanced with starts to keep it interesting, but I think it swings too wildy and I often restart if a start is too easy or too hard. I think it'd be better if empires were more evenly spaced out and the starting areas were standardized a bit more (eg. two good habitable planets, no modifiers).
The other issue I just ran into was cloaking. Maybe I'm just not good at the game, but it was incredibly obnoxious dealing with the AI once it unlocked cloaking. I don't mind it's effect in tactical, but on the strategic map it basically makes planning or tactical moves impossible. I have no way of knowing the AI's fleet amounts, where they're at, or if they're preparing an attack. I'd prefer it didn't have any effect on strategic, or at least there should be a way to counter it. I can't even see the fleets bombarding my planets.
Maybe it could reduce the info to only the # of ships, but you wouldn't know their designs on the strategic map.
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Topic: Remnants of the Precursors, free Master of Orion 1 remake (Read 48641 times)