Armada 2526 continues the great tradition of space opera games. You guide your race from its first interstellar journeys, until it becomes a mighty galactic empire.
Along the way, you'll explore the galaxy, conduct research, diplomacy and trade, found new colonies, maneuver mighty star fleets, and fight epic battles.
Although the game is complex, and the possible strategies endless, powerful help and advisor features help you get up to speed quickly.
Features
* Turn-Based Strategy Map - The strategy map shows the portion of the galaxy where the game takes place. Here you'll maneuver your fleets, manage your colonies, and grow your empire. The emphasis in this part of the game is thinking and planning, so you can spend as much time as you want planning your strategies, and issuing orders. When you're done, hit the "end turn" button, and your orders will be carried out simultaneously with those of other players.
* Epic Space Battles - Battles can be epic affairs with more than a hundred ships on each side. They are presented to the player in their full majesty via real-time 3D rendering with glowing energy beams, shimmering shields, and spectacular explosions.
The action is real-time, both to enhance the visual spectacle, and to introduce elements of tension and pressure; however, the emphasis is firmly on tactics and maneuvering formations, rather than frantic clicking on individual ships, and you always have the option of pausing the battle to issue orders.
Planetary assaults are especially intense with ship to ships battles, ground battles and ground to air battles all taking place simultaneously.
If the attacker doesn't complete the conquest quickly enough, the battle will continue into the next turn, giving each side the chance to throw in reinforcements.
* Diplomacy - With so many players, you need a full featured diplomatic system. In Armada 2526 you can negotiate offensive and defensive alliance, non aggression pacts and trade agreements.
Trade money, technology, colonies, ships and information. You can issue threats and ultimatums, or ask for favors. Friendships can be made and trust earned, or your reputation can be ruined by bullying and not honoring agreements. Negotiations proceed by a series of offers and counter offers.
Hard bargaining can drive the price down, but being generous builds friendships. During negotiations, you see an animated view of your counterpart, so you know who you are dealing with, and how they feel.
* Technology - There are many different technology items to research. The game system encourages you to specialize in particular areas of tech, so as you expand and meet new players, you will find that they have radically different capabilities. Many of the technologies are disruptive, and force you to radically alter your strategy and tactics to utilize them, or to cope with the lack of.
You may for instance concentrate on building the biggest and best navy in the galaxy, and then watch in dismay as your ships flee from and opponent who has mastered the psychic arts, or are outmaneuvered by an adversary who has specialized in stealth or hyper space technology.
You may have turned your planets into fortresses, but this won't help if they are infected by nanobots that eat defenses from the inside out, or if your opponent is impolite enough to drop an asteroid on your favorite colony.
* Powerful AI - The artificial intelligence routines have been created by an expert in the field, to provide AI players that are both worthy adversaries, and opponents that are fun to play against.
The A.I. has been built into the game from the beginning of development and updated to take advantage of new game features as they are added, giving the developers the maximum time to polish its behavior.
This is in contrast to many games, where the AI is tacked on at the end of development. Of course the same powerful routines developed for the opponents, are also available to assist the player in managing their empire, and to offer game play advice.
* Supports Large Universes and Many Players - Space is big, really big, and conceivably contains many sentient races and nations. Armada 2526 has been designed to cope with a large number of A.I. players, and to handle a large enough area of space to accommodate them.
This means you'll continually be finding new allies or trading partners, and always wondering if there's some powerful unknown enemy lurking just beyond the next star system, making for long lasting truly epic games.
However, the standard scenario is a rather smaller and can be finished in a reasonable amount of time, but with 12 different races, still offers plenty of replay value. You can also set up smaller games, including 2 player games that give an almost "chess-like" feel to the encounter, and are suitable for hot-seat multi-player play.
* Streamlined Economic System - Managing your empire is an important part of any strategy game, but can become a chore if too much micro-management is involved. Armada 2526's system is designed to let you make the major decisions about the development of each colony, without having to micro-manage every little detail. This way you can manage a large empire, play the game in a reasonable amount of time, and concentrate on strategy.
Each colony develops by building various facilities. These add to its military construction abilities, economic potential, or research priorities.
The number of facilities that each colony can operate is limited by the population, so players need to choose which areas each colony will specialize in. Choices can be changed, but at a cost..
* Strategy and Intelligence - Peaceful coexistence is a good thing, but makes for a pretty dull game, so the game-play emphasis is on military strategy and intelligence. Fleets maneuver against each other, seeking to force or avoid a decisive confrontation, or to pick off a weakly defended planet.
Intelligence gathering is vital. You must know when to fight, and when to retreat, which fleet is the main thrust, and which the distraction. Try to divine the enemy's intentions while disguising your own.
Technology and infrastructure can give you an edge in the information war, but only a bold and cunning admiral can exploit it.
* Game-Play Driven Development - Although Armada 2526 has glorious sound and graphics that inspire and immerse the player, the main focus is providing a great game play experiences.
Whereas the majority of games created today develop their graphics engine first, leaving game play and AI to the end of development, Armada 2526 has been developed "game-play" first allowing it to be tested refined and polished while graphics and sound are being added.
Screenshots
The game will be released in December. And it's quite possible this will be my personal game of the year, perhaps it'll even go down as one of the best 4x games of all time. Time will tell, although I can't wait till December now.
Epsilon: Game is great btw, I love it, so far it's a definite goty. It's remarkable how much has changed since the beta, stardock have been working their asses off, and it shows.
I just hope there's a storyline campaign. Sins of a Solar Empire disappointed me in that department. I lack the imagination to make one up while playing a skirmish.
MOBO: Asus P8Z77-M CPU: i7-3770 Cooler: CM Hyper 212 EVO GPU: Gigabyte GTX 980 4GB MEM: 16GB Kingston HyperX Beast 2133Mhz SSD: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB HDD: WD Black 3TB Sata 6Gb/s CASE: Corsair Carbide 330R PSU: Antec HCG 620W Semi-Modular
Looking good! Haven't really followed the development lately, but still waiting for this quite anxiously. Really tried to like GalCiv 2, but something about it just kept putting me off, so hopefully this'll fill in the space 4x gap.
This game looks pretty amazing, to be honest. Looking forward to giving it a play, never would have heard of it not for this place. And it's exactly the kind of game I'd like to play right now. Anyone know the price? I can't seem to get info on how much this bad boy is supposed to cost.
Epsilon, is that your copy? If so, what are your impressions if you care to share them? Thanks.
Fake edit: Oops, never mind. Just read your post (or one of your admirers, haha!) over at the developer's website.
Sertorius wrote:
Just be careful to your ass while surfing on the net and NOTHING will happen to you.
Seems pretty interesting and I sure do lub my 4x. Since I always preferred MOO1 to MOO2 I doubt this will beat out SotS for me personally though, but it will surely keep me entertained if it lives up to its premises.
Well according to the people who have played this, it's a worthy heir to Master of Orion 2, which to me sounds too good to be true
But some of the people who have it now are also on the freeorion boards, so they would know I suppose
If you're in USA you can buy the game at gamestop now, it's been confirmed released in Texas - of all places.
Well this is a 170x170 "large map" notice the minimap in the top right corner...
The maximum size maps are 1000x1000 but that can be further increased with modding and it also comes with a map editor.
The game is very moddable, all the values can be changed and even added to. So you can create entirely new races, if the 12 thats there isn't enough.
But also entirely new techs and ships.
It looks pretty small to me. If you're still using a 15" I guess it's big.
Small!? Are you fucking crazy? I count something like 30 planets on that screen alone, and judging by the minimap there are something like 4x4 screens that big on the whole map which puts the number of planets well above 400. I'm not even sure I'd ever want to play with "Huge" map size if there is such a thing lol. Edit: Yeah, if that's 170x170 and maximum map size is 1000x1000... Man... That's insane! Like what? 10000 planets?
Last edited by Mental_Hippie on Sat, 21st Nov 2009 19:59; edited 1 time in total
It looks pretty small to me. If you're still using a 15" I guess it's big.
Small!? Are you fucking crazy? I count something like 30 planets on that screen alone, and judging by the minimap there are something like 4x4 screens that big on the whole map which puts the number of planets well above 400. I'm not even sure I'd ever want to play with "Huge" map size if there is such a thing lol.
Signature/Avatar nuking: none (can be changed in your profile)
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
