Shadow Empire | Steam Release - 01 - Start & Setup

[@whitefox25]

can you maybe share with us your notes to do every turn could find it helpful due to so much that has to get done its easyy to forget stuff

[@TortugaPower]

Hi SaicaFox, sorry for the big delay. I think I should pin this to the intro video to help others: 1. Decisions 2. Trade 3. Assets and construction 4. Check city happiness 5. Strategic cards 6. Build roads 7. Raise Form 8. Move units / military 9. Repl. Troops

[@jsthecanuck6804]

i hope in the future there's a 40K mod, this feels alot like something planetary governors would do in fact a huge game like this could fit the 40K scale and it'd a breath of fresh air

[@justinmangus567]

already had some thumbs up, but im gonna +1 this also. 40k warhammer universe overhaul YES PLEASE

[@thewolfpack5290]

Game is sadly very mod unfriendly.

[@BlueTemplar15]

The game *already* basically goes from Fallout to Warhammer 40k. Fallout mod plans : www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4954814

[@rzu1474]

Empires never have ONE reason for collaps. And with an interstellar one there could easily be 200 different things that all put pressure on it

[@Bill_Garthright]

There's a superb - and very detailed - history in the manual. You learn exactly what happened and... what might happen again. I thought it was fascinating.

[@kristiankepley5944]

What happened? I don’t have it and know where to get it. What’s a brief summary?

[@superduck-chan6230]

​@@kristiankepley5944 Evil emperor palpatine nano machine cloud

[@kristiankepley5944]

@@superduck-chan6230 Ah

[@BlueTemplar15]

1:47 - There's a detailed backstory in the beginning of the manual, even going back to the Terran Empire and even to our own days ! ---- Though AFAIK historically the usual order is Republic => Empire => collapse, while in SE it's rather Empire => Republic => collapse, but OTOH the Terran Empire was basically left in the dust / forgotten by the Republic expansion to the other star systems, and also the historical republics didn't have a Terran ~~God-~~ Nanocloud-Emperor too super-intelligent for its own good plotting to overthrow them (and in this case succeeding a bit *too* well) !

[@RiffZifnab]

Tortuga: "I'm going to try and keep these episodes to under 40 minutes" Me: [giggling] Tortuga: [ends at 35 minutes] Me: "Well I'll be. Well done Tortuga." (:

[@rbfishcs123]

me: reads riff's comment riff: ignores my comment me: comes back a few days later to post another comment riff: "WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" me: "just making small chat" riff: "we do NOT make small chat around here." me: *giggles*

[@RiffZifnab]

@@rbfishcs123 I'm offended, I would never ignore a fellow Tortugaite, and I absolutely will make small chat. (: My week was only mildly stressful, so that's a win. I managed to fix a problem on Friday and that feels good. I hope you had a passable week and made some progress on whatever mountain lies before you. -Riff

[@basketcase289]

Every time I watch you start a Shadow Empire game I think "who needs Goldilocks when we've got Tortugilocks here"

[@TortugaPower]

It'd be a lot easier if there were only three choices, rather than infinite.

[@boomboomf2268]

I would like to say that population, and alien life it tied to stuff like rainfall. So high rainfall will increase both the pre and post apocalypse population, and increase the chances of alien life being on land and there being forests and stuff. Edit: Also (and I am just handing out tips) 414mil is pretty low pop prewar. A high pop planet will have the prewar pops in the billions, and zones in the hundreds prewar. With 400mill ruins will be pretty scattered and likely there will be only a couple megacities. edit 2: regarding councils one of the great things about this game is that which council to start with is very situational. Like for example if your unit models are bad it might be good to go with a model design council to start. Also holy crap! You started literally bordering another major. The guys that tried to sell you slaves are slavers, which are super hard to deal with early on, and they have no city to take and start with a bunch of buggies and tanks, and lots of units in general. For the future it might have been worth it to buy the slaves to make the slavers like you more. Also Docile AI is always a good investment of early FP as it has quite good punch in the early game.

[@TortugaPower]

Welcome back, Dmitri. I'll try to keep up with your comments/feedback/advice again this series =)

[@boomboomf2268]

@@TortugaPower Might do, I'll certainly be watching them, though cause of the time crunch with school right now I may not be able to pay as much attention as I would like. I was interested by the checklist you mentioned going through, and that seems like a really good way to keep track of what to do each turn.

[@BlueTemplar15]

11:01 - Yeah, forests gonna forest if there's enough water, you would probably need to re-roll for a more arid ( and/or worse temperature ?) planet ?

[@BlueTemplar15]

21:08 - Well, you would pick first Interior Council depending on how bad your starting leaders are (and depending on their strengths - since you want at the very least a good Inventor for that Economic Council), and how close you are to unlocking Regime Feat Stratagems that give better Leaders. (Also, depending on whether you have a Prospecting opportunity in your nearby hexes (Metal Mine !) which you forgot to check... though IIRC your governor might stumble on that too ?)

[@BlueTemplar15]

21:41 - Well, no, the 1rst choice actually results in a +1 over your preferred Profiles ! 21:50 - It says "Do you buy and set free the slaves *to increase our population* ?" right there !

[@hreade5283]

Fantastic to see another SE video series from you, I signed up for the beta after watching your earlier vids and have been a huge fan of both this game and your channel ever since. Just wanted to stop by to let you know you don't need to wait for the decision to add a new council to your empire. Just call your Secretary and chose the NEW ORG option for 2pp. You can do this maximum once every turn and create the councils whenever you feel they are most appropriate, rather than waiting.

[@BlueTemplar15]

Yeah, though if you *do* wait, you'll get a PP discount on the councils.

[@KevlarIlluminati]

Hiiiiighway to the, DANGERZONE!

[@Baleur]

Not throwing any shade on you, but i find it really weird how EVERY lets player of this game keeps re-rolling to get a goldilocks perfect planet. To me, the joy of these games is just watching in horror at the monstrosity the game generates, perhaps 1 reroll per category just to gamble, and then deal with the challenges that faces you. Adapt and overcome. Thats the fun and replay value for me.

[@BlueTemplar15]

Yeah, I prefer playing that way too - (except on my 2nd game as I wanted to explore the open farming and rain mechanics - it's surprisingly hard to roll an Unclassified, "Drop me in a game now!" planet, and get a starting position with viable (xeno)open farming requiring water) - but a sad thing is that with the "Drop me in a game now!" setting you won't get the Planet Details reports from exploring the planet, and not even after winning the game !

[@Bill_Garthright]

You were wondering about the reason for the empire's collapse? There's actually a detailed - _very_ detailed - history in the manual. I love it! It's probably more thought out than in many science fiction novels. And it provides a hint of what might show up in our games (though I don't know if that actually happens). I don't know how much of this series I'll watch, just because I struggle to find the time for everything, but I'm very interested in the new stuff the developer has added. And I enjoy the thinking that goes into this. (In other words, you needn't try to speed up your game on _my_ account!)

[@Ericshadowblade]

The planet and history generation is my favourite part of the game i could spend hours rolling different worlds just to learn about them

[@Nodjia]

just happened upon this, very interesting game design. I really like how detailed the world generation is and how the turns work. Side note: that life form is a real one, coelacanths are fish.

[@BlueTemplar15]

No such thing as "fish" ! :p

[@dennissvitak148]

I love your videos..and I gotta be honest. Taking an hour per turn, like you did in the prior series, was ... brutal.

[@warspite1995]

Thanks for the video Tortuga! I brought game now its on steam, and i am finding it hard to get into!

[@WadeStar]

It would be cool if you could destroy forests. Not just with engineers, but like if too much artillery fire took place in a hex, it would eventually level the forest. But I think forests are sort of binary right now. They're either there or they aren't. It'd be a lot of work to make them slowly diminish with damage (like assets do).

[@OrnluWolfjarl]

I think open-air farms will eat up forests over time, but I'm not sure

[@WadeStar]

@@OrnluWolfjarl I'll watch for that to happen. I need to watch for how it affects savanna too.

[@OrnluWolfjarl]

@@WadeStar I definitely saw it happening in my game now. I have a suspicion that Cloud Forests are immune to this however, as when you try to build a Farm building on top of them they say "Can't build, because terrain is too arid for farming". Regular forests are definitely being converted. It's still super slow to happen, and you have to build the farm building in the middle of the forest so it doesn't randomly expand into grasslands instead of forests. It won't really be a great way to eradicate them for an upcoming battle, unless you plan it ahead of time (like 10-15 turns)

[@WadeStar]

@@OrnluWolfjarl Well, in reality you shouldn't be able to eradicate forests anyway unless you're using nukes so I'm ok with it taking a long time. It's interesting though. I bet even cloud forests will get replaced if the humidity is right for farming.

[@BlueTemplar15]

Forests aren't binary : there's multiple levels of vegetation going from sand dunes to cloud forests.

[@katastrofa025]

Wow, that's actually a nice video! most of others just doing tutorial, for every their video about this game, so every video is like 90% talking, without doing a literally anything, and only 10% is doing at least something, it's just trash but not an walkthrough. Gladly at least someone playing in this game, not just talking about it.

[@drakuelvaltuk733]

I'd go Machine gunners, build a wall around you borders with them, they are cheap and have great soft defense, once you secure your borders, you can focus on economy and build up your real army, to hit whatever goals you have. A good strategy, I learned watching edmond.

[@Freezezonian]

I'd be interested in seeing ships in the game mostly because then you could have water worlds or archipelago worlds. Then you fast track helicopters and alter the save file so an enemy island chain is called Bungelin Bay.

[@BlueTemplar15]

Latest update added a couple of more "watery" planets (though no ships yet).

[@jonny-b4954]

@@BlueTemplar15 Sounds like he might be setting up to bring in ships then

[@Dark-Taboo]

Hmmm...maybe we will see a 'Highway of Death' like the one created on the road from Kuwait City to Safwan, Iraq. Now that would be immersive story telling.......

[@igncom1]

What kinda army you gonna go for this round? As there are a lot of options that strictly speaking aren't all that great but make for lots of fun variety! I'd love to see lots of bikes and buggies and "battle wagons" over more standard fare infantry-artillery-armour. Go full gear head and swarm the planet in diesel!

[@Bill_Garthright]

Buggies are easily my favorite unit. They're surprisingly strong, and they're _fast._ And as far as I'm concerned, mobility is everything. I was always disappointed with bikes, though. But then, maybe my design wasn't very good. Unfortunately, I never play a game long enough to become really _good_ at it. :)

[@FinnishJager]

Very interesting start!

[@housecapulet106]

Great intro to this game and great channel, Tortuga. I would have made all efforts to encircled Salzburg and keep them in a small territory. :)

[@fermun]

Oh hey, Oriana is my cat's name. She's extremely cuddly and will purr and love on you for hours and hours but will not hesitate to start biting and scratching if you do something foolish, like move her off of your lap so that you can stand up.

[@TortugaPower]

I'm trying to make a metaphor about our in-game situation from this: don't move at all and we'll be fine.

[@fermun]

@@TortugaPower lol, I can't say my cat is prophetic, but if she was then the solution would be to make it nice and comfortable where you are and go slow while heading out of your comfy spot, then do as you will when you're free

[@BlueTemplar15]

@@TortugaPower 30:47 - You're not making a 2nd Recycling Facility to get as much metal as you can ASAP (and getting more IPs) ? So I guess that you've decided to hold the line waiting for better troops instead of invading the Major ASAP ? 32:22 - Why would you have a recruit sign-up bonus even though you haven't maxed out the max recruits per turn ? (Also, you'll probably need a LOT of recruits with a Major next door !) Also, why would you care about reducing your population since early on most of it will be unemployed anyway ? For the same reason, you probably don't want your private economy wasting their credits on buying Free Folk.

[@LeoPanther]

Alright, time to watch another chill TortugaPower Shadow Empire series.

[@Shaunus82]

Looking forward to playing this game soon, but, if I have a start like you have had, I will definitely be restarting. That really sucks having a major right next to you, but looking foward to seeing how you cope with it.

[@oldcrowbalthazor]

"Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth" -Henry David Thoreau Well, Tortuga. its time for you to rewrite that poem.

[@housecapulet106]

Beautiful

[@OutboundFlight87]

Finally. Some delicious release

[@fargoretro]

I'm not super into grognard games, but this looks amazing! Subbed

[@Bill_Garthright]

I'm not a wargamer _at all,_ but there's a lot more to this game than that. In fact, you can play it... well, not _entirely_ peacefully, since there are always going to be marauders, wild animals, slavers, mutants, rogue AI, etc. which you'll need to defend your population against. But you can very definitely play a diplomatic game, if that interests you (as it does me). If you make friends with another major regime, you can become allies. When I played it, some months ago, they wouldn't help me in wars, or anything like that. But their total of the map and their population were added to my own for the purposes of the victory condition of the game. (You can share research, too.) And making friends of minor regimes is even better, since they will join you voluntarily, at which point you get all of their land and all of their military units added to yours, plus their leader becomes the governor of your new province. With a good diplomat, you can race across the world, convincing the minor regimes that you're their best bet for survival. I really enjoyed that, because I tend to play the 'good guy' in these games, anyway. (Note: You can't expand _too_ rapidly, because you need logistics to all of your new territories. And when you take over a minor regime, every marauder and wild animal which had been leaving them alone for the whole game, suddenly press on -their- your borders. Heh, heh. But again, you've got all of their militia for defense, so - as long as you've got logistics there (i.e. good roads and railroads) - it's not a big problem.) It ended up that I didn't go to war with _anyone_ until the game was nearly over. (At that point, a very weak major regime stupidly attacked me.) Of course, as I say, I needed a military to fight disorganized enemies. There's plenty of danger, still. But I concentrated on making my people happy and my economy strong, rather than on becoming a warmonger. Long story short, there are different ways to play this game, depending on what you like to do, yourself. I like that!

[@evilsix6149]

Been waiting for an updated playthrough!

[@f4uxp4s]

Thanks for this playthrough!

[@kurimu2392]

"I cant think of a planet generator that is better than this" Well someone may have not heard about Songs of the Eons in development right now.

[@ALEXANDER1318]

Dwarf Fortress.

[@BlueTemplar15]

6:55 - Yeah, also in Alpha Centauri high elevations block rain and if you want to get fancy about it you can literally starve your opponent by raising a mountain that will make all the water rain on your side rather than his. Or sink their coastal cities by raising the water levels via pollution or a space geo-engineering project.

[@CasterMedicus]

This game with a "user interface" would be nice :-)

[@CptEggman]

Amen

[@SimulatedWarfare]

Hast du das game schon im Visier bzw. was dazu schon gesagt auf deinem Kanal? Wäre top !

[@Caratacus1]

Oh wow Tortuga and Wadestar are both doing SE. It must be good then!

[@TortugaPower]

Yes, Wadestar has pretty deeply involved in this game for a while, so I imagine he has some polished content. (DasTactic too)

[@Caratacus1]

@@TortugaPower Excellent news. The fact that you are both getting involved with the game has prompted me to buy it. You're two guys I trust because you play a game until you fully understand it and - very unusually - actually know what you're talking about 👍

[@justinmangus567]

good stuff, im on the fence bout this game, so watching videos to get my feel an read on it, i do like x4 games, i have alot of em, but this has alot going for it so seems a bit overwhelming, gonna learn from you :) lol

[@ErnyLeyvaUlloa]

Me too, i think I'll go with this is too much without a tutorial guiding me, I'm out

[@BlueTemplar15]

@@ErnyLeyvaUlloa The manual has a tutorial (Chapter 4 - How To Play) with plenty of screenshots : www.matrixgames.com/amazon/PDF/SE/Shadow_Empire_manual_EBOOK.pdf

[@timedraven117]

The Galactic Republic collapsed because of the "Shadows" and the fact that they could no longer realistically expand, so ambitious people the "Shadows" would target could no longer be sent out to entertain themselves so civil war.

[@bengigi8680]

Its funny you describe dnd but disable the zeitgiest function epochs. Thats one of the bigest storytelling in game i like. Having these subtle natural movements that are molding people on the planet. Movements beyond our control but interaacting. History can be seen as a series of these movements seemingly almost beyond humanity, impacting humanity

[@willynthepoorboys2]

Help was induced.

[@teapartycar]

Törtüga!

[@colinrynne9648]

This game looks like a mix of red faction, fallout and Oregon trail!

[@HappyHands.]

Don't forget the Shadow empire of B5

[@BlueTemplar15]

SE's Terran Empire is close enough !

[@FortTell]

6:45 About detailed planet generations: see Songs of the Eons, very far from release but they try to sim pretty much everything from seasonal rivers to Ice Age effects sote.miraheze.org/wiki/Roadmap

[@mustangbeauty4]

Wish I could buy the game. Seems like my kind of game tbh.

[@CamoflagedTumbleweed]

Do they have a way to enter a seed for a planet or see the seed for a planet? Battle brothers has a system like that and while i appreciate this planet generation is more complex, it’d be great to follow along with a you tuber or allow friends to play the same map. 🥦🦖

[@brandonmyers1527]

where did you get those unit counters? I only see NATO and the default ones in options.. Will look if mods

[@BlueTemplar15]

They're the default ones ?

[@BlueTemplar15]

29:20 - Yeah, but you won't *need* those High-Tech parts for a long time ! And early credits are also worth much more than late credits ! (Same comment about overbuying Machine Parts, though that might make sense, as early on you'll usually be too strapped for Metal and Industrial Points to Workshop them yourself. EDIT : Also, yeah, you got plenty of them from exploration caches, though that's probably not something that you can *count* on ?)

[@jimdee5319]

More shadow empire please.

[@OrpheusOverdrive]

Are you familiar with an old game called Empire of the Fading Suns? If not then never mind but if so does this game compare? I keep getting a strong Empire of the Fading Suns vibe from watching slices of play.

[@BlueTemplar15]

Yeah, I heard that there's a lot of similarity. No wonder that an Emperor of the Fading Suns mod soon popped up ! www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4931935

[@SuperSeagull12]

Can you export/import a planet seed?

[@uncletimo6059]

basically ATG..... with a layer of BS on top so a great game then ;=)

[@CaptainHelion]

There is Salzburg my home city!? And even as major? Can have a port? 100/10 local patriotism. And then as Theocracy? Notalgia 100.

[@BlueTemplar15]

Yeah, lol, I've also seen Castelnau, which is a small town down the road from here...

[@Leverquin]

what is that sun resourse and how you get more

[@BlueTemplar15]

Fate Points. Increasing your 3 Regime Levels, conquering Zones, playing those negative red Stratagems.

[@galkanftw]

4x strategy games need to improve by a LOT.This is not the era of MUD gaming or the 80's 90's,we should be seeing great graphics,great gameplay and to be actually walking around the world instead of looking at 2D pictures and dialogue screens like a MUD. These genres are or can be great fun but i need to see AAA studios making these games.I don't even care for the top sellers because they still look like games from the 90's and look like low budget games.

[@Arynkows]

@TortugaPower for even more detailed planet generation look up Song of the Eons

[@Johan_g]

Nice :)

[@Sp4mMe]

Anyone know what AI taking longer turns actually does? And what simplified logistics simplify?

[@Luzertof]

Simplified logistics: Doubled the strength and lengths of Logistics Network. Longer AI turns: Better AI scripts at the cost of longer rounds. This should result in better AI decisions, therefor makes the game harder.

[@JoelC724]

turns take long, is that normal ?

[@dichebach]

Spent 20 minutes getting really irritated cause when a new turn rolled up none of my units would move. That pane where you select the unit mode was getting me. This is the type of game you've got to take slow.

[@NurkePL]

Pronounced See low Kanth

[@adamorick2872]

Way to picky with your environment. Harsh terriegn is half the fun

[@ratatoskr1069]

Really like this game, but what really annoys me is that you cant just pick your preferences freely upon planet creation. Why is that? Why this annoying slot machine system right at the start of the game?

[@eddieballgame]

Latest update 1.06.05

[@jonny-b4954]

I'd love to play it but I can't stand "card" based games. That really disappointed me to see. This was looking right up my alley too.

[@giolerfan3552]

I think a tortuga is faster at starting a game - trying to check out this game to see if it is interesting - spent 50 hours waiting for it to be set up and having no clue what you are talking about. ughh