Hey, can you try something? I'm curious. In a 6-player game against five hard AIs, after a few turns, with the map displayed, bring up your multitasking tray. Does it smoothly animate in terms of sliding up to reveal the icons, or does it seem to pause halfway through? Other things to try, drag back and forth on the slide to pass bardoes it seem to "catch" every now and then and not keep up with your finger?
To preserve battery and to avoid the overall experience problems that just one poorly behaving app can cause, iOS doesn't let background applications run at all except under defined circumstances. VOIP, music apps, and so on are allowed to run under certain conditions. Other apps (like games) are given a limited amount of background processing time to handle saving state and shut down after which the OS allows them no background time. And of course your built-in apps, like mail, installing or upgrading apps, and so on are allowed to run in the background. Games can certainly be choppy if you're running App Store upgrades in the background.
Its choppy on my iPad 2, though I think only the zooming in/out. I find it hard to zoom to a scale I want.
I'm playing on a 64gb iPad 3rd generation. The game runs flawlessly. The only complaint i have is that during multiplayer when other players are taking their turns, I can't access any of the info displays to strategize. It's as if the UI is frozen. Of course I can't watch the other players do their thing, but that's all.
The two games couldn't be more different. Alien Frontiers is a simple and fun worker placement game based on the dice you rolled. I really enjoy it as once you start buying tech to modify your rolls a world of strategy suddenly opens up as you start annoying opponents by blocking them off So aside from having dice and a SciFi theme the games are total opposites.
I really can't decide whether or not I should buy this. On the one hand, I'm pretty bad at 4X games, mostly due to only attempting some of the more difficult ones and never really finding a good entry title. But I'm also interested in them. I want to learn how to play and work my way up in the genre. This seems like a fairly good introduction, but I'm concerned the board game element makes it less of a "real" 4X and I think maybe I'd be happier playing something with no real end point in sight, as I enjoy being able to invest time into games and slowly build up from scratch. Is this just going to end too quickly and leave me confused the entire time? I'm not sure there are any other 4X games on iOS that have really caught my eye (though do I know of them) so Eclipse could well be my only choice. Plus, I saw the TA article and checked out the screens... high res!
I'm pretty sure you'd enjoy it. Every time I play I like it 100% more as I start to unravel what does what. So as you say you WANT to learn something this is something to really get your teeth into. If you get stuck you can always get answers on here anyway - that's half the fun. Games are short by Civ type games standards but that's a wonderful thing in my book. I hardly ever finish a proper game of Civ and by the time I go back I've forgotten what I was doing so tend to start again, and never get to the end. Those games drag on too long for my spare time these days. This is perfect. As Plynx said every decision matters. It's the same logic and goals you'd have in a more 'grand strategy' affair but condensed down into a burst of more involved gameplay. Really nice model and approach IMO. The other nice thing with shorter games is you can try a few things out quite quickly in separate 1v1 games whilst learning (a game maybe 30 minutes) but if you add more opponents then the games do take longer. I won my first game today. Monoliths and 'culture' victory so you don't have to play full-on war if you don't want to, but I was on 'pacifist' setting so I could be wrong Overal seems finely balanced game where the balance of power can change suddenly so those 9 rounds are a real line in the sand to plan around. If its worth it for you I can't say but it's one of the best "higher" price apps I've bought and it has the rare privilege of being on my dock bar now, it's that good
MidianGTX, I think this is a great place to cut your teeth on deep 4X strategy. The game is fantastic and won't leave you feeling confused (a few minor details like pinning ships and how the reputation track works aren't described in game, so you can read the board game rules I linked earlier in the thread for those). In fact, I think it makes the results of your choices very apparent. Although the game is limited by turns, it's not really short to play. You'll likely spend an hour or two on a single game, and you'll be given about as many interesting choices to make as you would in a more traditional 4X game.
Thanks guys, I'm seriously considering picking it up now. I've just gotta see how my funds appear after Ace Patrol and Frozen Synapse
Just got some crashes. Both time as Planta, in Round 1, after exploring several hexes and eventually trying to influence ones without ancients. Going back and resuming makes it crash again.
I've never successfully completed a game with Planta without having an unrecoverable crash. There seem to be problems with their second exploration action. In the meantime while we wait for an update I recommend playing the other races.
Yes, there's a problem with Planta. You can work around it by not exploring when there's just 1 sector left.
I know this has been mentioned before, but I can't seem to grasp the entire 9 turn limit concept. I'm really afraid of this cap. Also is this deeper than Starbase Orion?
What would you suggest otherwise? It could go on forever (or not long enough) with a "capture a certain amount of territory" ending or point threshold. The specific turn ending builds it to a conclusion that's often very confrontational and intense. Not always, but many times... And knowing when it ends forces a different kind of strategic development towards that ending.
It's 9 Rounds. Each round consists of many turns. During your turn you will take 1 action (Expand, Influence 2 Sectors, Research, Upgrade, Build, Move) You confirm your move by passing play to the next player who does the same. Each action you take and sector (the hexes) you control increases the influence bar. The higher the influence bar the more money you must pay at the the end of your turn for upkeep. At some point you will not be able to take any more actions due to it's cost and then pass play to the next player without having taken an action. The other players will continue taking actions and on your next turn you'll be allowed to react (lesser versions of Upgrade, Build, Move) to your opponent's movements for an action. Once a full circle of all players taking no actions and passing has happened the Action Phase is officially over. Then you move to the Combat Phase Then comes the Upkeep Phase where all players pay for their upkeep or deal with going bankrupt and losing sectors to stay in the game. Technically there is also a Cleanup Phase to remove pieces from the board but obviously that doesn't apply to digital games. So don't let 9 Rounds scare you away as there is a lot of action happening in each one.
If you're afraid this game is short - don't be! It's long But you always know when it will end and your goal is not to conquer everything, but conquer more than others. But we've been asked multiple times for adding a 'Conquer It All' mode, which would let you play until there's only one species left standing.
While I'd like to see such an addition, it seems like you'd be opening up a can of worms by adding that. The only way to make it fun would be enabling custom rules of all sorts - someone could dance around indefinitely, dodging your two dreadnoughts forever. You'd have to enable bigger fleets, then more moves, then less influence impact, and basically deconstruct the game, turning it from perfectly streamlined 4X on roids to cookie cutter 4X with Eclipse as the source material. But who knows, really. It could work. On an unrelated note, how about the addition of a random race button? I've never been a fan of picking my enemies.
Yes, we'll add the random race button. Also this endless mode would be an option, not the default mode.
