/vst/ — gladius pandora zephon

>gladius
kinda garbo. cuts out everything from civ 5 except fighting, which it does not improve much upon and in fact makes worse by trivializing tech and resources and by giving every faction one top tier ground unit and one top tier air unit that make the rest obsolete. rush to endgame, blob, and click whatever two enemy factions are still around. it also has a very stupid but very powerful quest system which does not actually allow for normal interaction with it, since it just spawns big armies on top of you when you reach milestones -- you either disable or cheese it, nothing else can be done with it. the buffed up barbarian system also has zero scaling or meaningful interaction and does basically nothing but randomly cockblock you in the early game.

i really wanted to find a reason to like it but there's just nothing there.

>>2426597
You're exaggerating but honestly not by much. The skull dlc for one is definitely cancer.

>make the rest obsolete
Depends on your faction and how many p2w dlc units it has available/enabled by you. If we're talking primaris jank then sure, you have no reason to build regular marines. But if we're talking say IG or tau their lower tier units are perfectly viable entire game. Couple of valks with missile squads will delete cities let alone any unit in one turn for example.

>>2426597
>cuts out everything from civ 5 except fighting,
For me it's a plus, there's a fuckload of other 4x that have a dozen systems you need to keep track of, which leads to more menu clicking than commanding armies.
You still have to balance economy, research and upkeep, but armies in Gladius can grow to gargantuan waves of units fast. Though as a wargame it's okay but could be a lot better, hero implementation sucks.

>>2426597
>which it does not improve much
what do u mean, its 100x better than civ5 "combat" lmao

>>2426607
the disregard for terrain and the extra movement seemed to make mass air better than anything else by leagues. good stats, alpha strikes anything, can't be outmaneuvred, can exploit local superiority, can get multiple times more units into the battle etc. i played xenos with all dlcs (unpaid for). just stomped.

>>2426630
>For me it's a plus
Same. Has that FFH thing going for it with heroes too.

>>2426644
ymvv depending on difficulty and how much turtling you do. I mean if you're going to sit in a corner for 100 turns and build a doomstack then sure but if you poke them earlier you can have some pretty fun scraps. And when there's a fuckzillion + 1 orks coming your way you're rarely in position to spam end turn and tech up.

>>2426607
How on earth do you make Tau work? It feels like all their units are absolute dogshit due to the Drone Tax. Seeing a Brass Scorpion nearly oneshot my Riptide was as shocking as it was infuriating when it first happened

>>2426738
Same as guard I suppose. Either mechanized with Hammerhead heavy with support construction drones and infantry hitching a ride in devilfish or mostly infantry crawl supported by kroot and fireblade cadre. Focus on killing blow or patient hunter basically.

Or just spam nova suits if you can afford it, that works too.

>>2426586 (OP)
It's enough fun in first half of game. Second half? Too boring, pretty sure winner can be calculated in excel table.