Shadow Empire | Minos Tribe | Ep. 001 - Setup and 1st Turn on a Desert World 

Haha right! It can be a difficult game but if you persevere you can sometimes fight through a bad start

You cannot be in trouble in turn 1 unless you are playing on the hardest difficulty.

Game is quite boring. If you play on hard the AI never does anything even until turn 150 like I did unless you do something. Even if relations are bad. And if you fight a war the enemy AI has a scripted advantage that gives them basically unlimited ressources so they can pump out as many units as they want. Dont get me started on the suddenly appearing gisnt garrison armies. Gsme is ridicilously bad and stupid in singleplayer. Only in multiplayer it really is good and fair. I wish they developed a proper AI for the singleplayer snd not the scripted and lazy bull they got now Also the diplomacy and every foreign actions depending on cards is also annoying

I had one my favorite gamer moments with this game. I created a society based meritocracy. Farmed leaders till I got a 5 with 50 intelligence. Gave him GR tech till he became a demi god. Bastard staged a coup and took over

​@@AbuHajarAlBugatti Tell us you're bad at Shadow Empire without telling us you're bad at Shadow Empire. 😂 Yes, the AI cheats (duh) but not the way you're describing with free unit production. It is all documented in the excellent manual (if you had bothered to read)... you just got massively outplayed and then came to YT to tell on yourself 🤣

It's one of my favourite games, up there with Conquest of Elysium

Its great until you realize what a non-active and useless and overscripted mess the enemy AI is. Diplomacy for example is absolutely useless. You can filly ignore that aswell as counter espionage. And if you never attack you will never be attacked even at turn 150. and when you attack the enemy can spawwn huge armies out of nowhere to make the gsme harder. Even if you cut off logistics it doesent matter. While it can cripple your own entire playthrough

Yeah, there's also this new card that basically increases the volume of a mine's resources that further makes water trivial to come by. I'm not quite sure why that card is there, I'm considering a house rule not to use it as it seems kinda broken on top of everything else.

@@battlemode Oh so that card is new! I didn't recognise it in my recent games. You could make the house rule specific for ice as it is handy if you find only one deposit of oil in your territory. Saying that I still need to catch up on this series so maybe you're fine without.

@@battlemode there is a new setting in the game that lowers resource amounts...

Ah that's great, glad to hear it! I'm hyped to play this one

It's one of those games that "if you get it, you get it" and so many people are put off that it doesn't have the same visuals and UI that other modern 4X do. That is exactly what drew me to it lol

Do you think its worth it for someone who likes Dominions to play this?

It's funny , I did use white for a long time and never realised there was white text with a brigade number identifier, but grey is probably a good bet, thanks!

Nice tip! I'm assuming you cannot do this if you just start with militia?

@@TanakaRisingSun it works no matter what - 'unit color' is the base color for all your units, so if you choose white, the color of it's HQ stands out better

@@OznerpaGMusiC I found the buttons but I don't think you can change the color unless you have an army. There is no change color button for me in the unit administration box. I start the game with militia not army.

@@TanakaRisingSun you are right, it has to be a non-SHQ HQ

Depends on the start in my experience. If you are surrounded by hostiles and your models suck, economic council ain't gonna help you. I think Economic Council is a little greedy as a first council unless you are sure you are safe from an early attack, and even then you can lose a lot of troops to weak nomads

@@battlemode 100% true, depends on the situation of course. My thought is that Econ have 8 techs in Basic Techs to fish through, and odds are you will discover all the ones you don't want before the ones you need lol. Democracy you can get away with slower Econ research, but Meritocracy you need a lot of those techs to pump up your QoL

It's probably the most popular game I play on the channel, by a long way too

I think Das tends to play Shadow Empire over on Twitch more than RU-vid, but I may be wrong there.

I want to play Colossus one day but it'd be too long for a Let's Play. And Moon was always brutally difficult, right from the re-release beta, I know a few people that went into that thinking it'd be an easy way to learn the game lol

I don't remember this class. Is it from the DLC?

@@edersonnico its from a recent update - it might be beta, but it'll show under "additional". It works with or without DLC.

Been a while!

Welcome to the channel, this is a good series, probably my best, I hope you enjoy it!

Yep I play on slowest AI speed. (or should be, I'll check that now...)

wtf u on about mate

@@whitefox25 u wot?

Yeah! Here we go!

Thanks! Much appreciated :)

Cheers Eddie, good to see you!

Enjoy!

Right, it was partly designed to be a way for people to avoid having to fiddle with the city management if they didn't want to. I love the simulation side of things, particularly how you can indirectly affect it in various ways

Welcome on board!

Man, I need to play ROTP again, it's such a great game!

@@battlemode Indeed! And your videos made me love it, I am yet to play it, and being a developer I appreciate what Ray did so much! Such a great project and great community 😉

Thank you, and welcome to the channel. Check the comments on the videos as there's a lot of great info from other players.

I tried them a few times and found them too disruptive. I strongly considered playing them this time but the v1.25 changes are enough new content this time. I might try one of them next time

@@battlemode Thanks for explaining. I personally think they give a lot of extra flavor, especially if you not only play the game as a war game.

@@battlemode curious what you find disruptive about them? I actually found using them made the game easier as you get tons of bonus add ons for your military units I was swimming in them...

Cheers Jim! Happy to see you!

It's one of the finest strategy games ever made, and probably the most complex game I can think of. Dominions is also complex but that's due to the billions of combinations of possible plays that can be made because of the almost endless content in it, but Shadow Empire is probably three or four times more complex in terms of the sheer amount game mechanics there are in here.

@@battlemodewell not really the same 2 strategies win you every game. You maybe didnt have so many hours in the game to really understand the sadly quite bland system. Just build up as many cities ad possible, fully ignore the diplo and counter intelligence funds, first put anything into weapon and economy development, ignore and just please the Ministers(loyalty is all that counts in the game, the rest is just useless cosmetic numbers), then build up army as quickly as possible, do several drafts snd just keep population happiness at the bare minimum before revolts occur and then just steamroll the enemy with scouts combined with artillery and AA infantry. Mass artillery basically wins every battle without much losses at all Game was exciting in the times you need to understand it. But then the stupid AI and the super simple battle system really ruined it for me

Save your time its barely worth it. Maybe try but only as long as you get to learn the game

Glad to have you on board! It's been a wild ride, best series I've ever done I reckon.

@@battlemode Tension from the start! But I have many episodes left so exited to see how you'll manage to get out of the first war =)

Lol!

I'm sure it'll find some way to kick you in the balls no matter what! But glad you're watching! Thanks ;)

Thanks! Much appreciated :)

Hope you enjoy it!

This series is a bit hit and miss as a tutorial but if you do want anything explained, please ask in the comments and one of us will help you out!

Definitely set yourself aside two or three hours for your first go at it. It's likely the most complex strategy game on the market, and requires a real investment of time to learn well. But if you set it on Beginner (highly advised) much of the game's more complex systems are either automated or can be ignored until later, once you're ready for them. You should give it a try when you're ready for it, it's one of the best games ever made IMO.

You know it!

Yup that's a great strategy on some maps for sure. I'm more inclined towards Meritocracy because I can't really handle the bad leaders you get with Democracy, but I do switch things up with each playthrough. I like Commerce early as it will eventually build a strong economy, unfortunately you will be dealing with low credits until you can get some Enforcement in.

I love commerce early. It's helpful when IC and metals are tight but you still need to kickstart the civilian economy and get the standard of living up.

Right, and each planet even within those planet types are going to be very different based on the random nature of their generation. v1.25 really changed things there, environmental hazards are way more serious and affect gameplay properly now, and the water stuff too.

I don't get frustration so much as demoralisation. I enjoy being beaten by a game if the following are true: a) the game was fun even while losing b) the game did something interesting that caused me to lose c) I learned something

Haha thanks!

I think humans would adapt fairly quickly! You're gonna enjoy this series, it's been the wildest one I've ever recorded, thought I was gonna lose it at one point.

The debate about a first council will rage on, but the correct answer is "it depends" :D

@@battlemodeWell, with Model Design you can immediately upgrade the Infantry to Carbines or get a second Model of something to roll for a better Structural Design or try to rush Light Tanks or something. None of that seems as appealing as working on padded envirosuits, rifles and solar power.

Man that show was so good

@@felix34ever1 and shadow empire gives off same vibes

Haha!" It's quite a monster yes, still ongoing although I'd say it's probably about 2/3rds of the way through IF I'm not defeated earlier.

@@battlemode and its still 60 hours

I also like them. There's that Dune thing, and also the scarcity is attractive. I'm still thinking water is too abundant, particularly with that new card that replenishes the mine stocks, I'm considering banning myself from using that card but I'm not gonna make a decision until I've played it more.

@@battlemode I'm the player that like more of the economic aspect of the game. With the new update you can't extract water as easily from lakes and bodies of water. There was a remarkable playthrough where most of my income came from selling water from a big lake inside my territory and a major was trying his best to get a share of that market by invading me. Little moments like that that make shadow empire awesome!

It is a great problem haha! We're in a golden age of gaming for sure.

Haha nah, there'll be no danger from a friendly regime like that. Attacking them early is risky as you don't know what your other neighbours will be like. I've gotten tied up in a quick war before and had slavers roll in and there was nothing I could do about it, and with a YT series there's no reloading of game saves

@@battlemode if you say so. I might also be speaking from always using the aggressive diplomacy option

It's been an equal mix of wonderful and harrowing!

I didn't actually mean to use the new ones in this playthrough, I forgot to disable them :D I do quite like them though, so I'm not that bothered. The old ones were so bad but they grew on me over the years.

@@battlemode new ones scream ai to me. Old ones are pleasing early 20s jank

Yeah I think that was basically what happened to me too

Me too. Got stomped in 3 games right at the start. So i put 1 army in every time.

Thanks a lot, I hope you enjoy the videos

@@battlemode Only as long as U have fun making them. :)

Incredbly rough but can be fun to play less surround and pound and more reletlessly shell with artillary

@@Ericshadowblade and remember,if your units do not break through its because of their lack of fighting spirit

I like high mountain percentage games

1440 desktop resolution with the resolution scaling set at 3/4 resolution (150% DPI). Previously the resolution scaling setting was really slow but an update about two years ago fixed it so it's silky smooth now.

On this difficulty I prefer to have enough troops to cover my battle lines and the buggies are expensive, I've had too many games where I've lost because I got rushed early

I don't dislike them, I just prefer to focus on the gameplay that's already in there, especially considering I've yet to play a game through in 1.25 and it's is so different now.

Read the manual and check DasTactic's Shadow Empire guide series. Alternatively, just play it on Beginner and blunder your way through, make some mistakes and learn. It's a very approachable game once you dive in as much of the detail is automated until you want to take control of it.