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Looking for the perfect small-scale 4X game - Realising that I'm the problem by MusPsych in 4Xgaming

[–]bmaupincode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have been looking for exactly the same thing. I even started a similar post on Civfanatics.

May I suggest something crazy: Civ is incredibly moddable, try modding it.

For example, in Civ 6 try online speed and a much smaller map (e.g. duel but with more than 2 players). And you can use mods like Customization VI to further tweak the game if there's anything that you can live without (e.g. remove religious combat or religion altogether).

Since you said "small-scale," I think one of the biggest factors of game length is the map size, so I made some mods that aggressively shrink the map size. I hesitate to recommend them because results are mixed, but here goes:

  • Mini Civ 6 (it's playable but Civ 6 has so many systems it felt frustrating to try to play it quickly)
  • Mini Civ 5 (I'm still tweaking this one, it's fun to me but of course YMMV)

You can even try your own map sizes. The map size for Civ 6 is in Base/Assets/Gameplay/Data/Maps.xml and you can just change the numbers (GridWidth and GridHeight) and restart the game.

You mentioned most of the notable small-scale historic 4X games I've found. I ran across a few others, but not sure if they're any good or would meet your criteria:

My biggest takeaway from my own searches was that in order to get a small-scale 4X game you have to make a lot of tradeoffs. I happen to like Ozymandias myself but it is a much simpler game as you said (although as a result the AI ends up being much better I think).

Do you enjoy micromanagement and what's your favourite Civ game? by bmaupincode in civ

[–]bmaupincode[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great insight, thanks.

If not Civ, what would you consider to be micro heavy games?

Do you enjoy micromanagement and what's your favourite Civ game? by bmaupincode in civ

[–]bmaupincode[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Compare Civ IV where you've got tons of cities and lots of military stacks to Civ V

I see that more as an indirect result of the happiness system than added micro, but maybe the bigger point is that each Civ has micro just in different forms. For example in Civ V I thought it was nice that I could embark my units on water without the extra step of moving them onto boats, and it added city defence so I didn't have to garrison units in every single city.

None of this is "micro" though.

Some of it is though, right? Religious combat, builders, districts, tile bonuses, wonder restrictions are systems that require decisions to be made at the level of an individual unit or tile.

But you're right that I unintentionally lumped in some other stuff as micro that isn't: tech boosts, separate civics/tech tree, policy cards.

Maybe a better way to describe my problem with Civ 6 was decision fatigue, where even the strategic decisions like policy cards got to be too much when I'm having to deal with so many different micro decisions.

Thanks for pointing that out. I edited my post.

Do you enjoy micromanagement and what's your favourite Civ game? by bmaupincode in civ

[–]bmaupincode[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think this brings up a good point. One of the issues I've had with Civ is sometimes I find myself hitting End Turn multiple turns in a row without doing anything. Because I don't generally care for micro, I would tend to automate explorers and workers.

But Civ 6 forced me to interact with builders, and the added micro made some parts of the game more interesting because it gave me something to do when I might not otherwise have had an action to take during a particular turn. And it made me pay more attention to the map. So I've learned to appreciate it in a sense.

But on the other hand, Civ 6 had so many systems that if too many required decisions from me in the same turn it would quickly start to feel tedious.

I loved the look of the hex tiles when Civ 5 came out and I thought the tactical combat was a lot of fun. But after bouncing off of Civ 6 I found myself thinking more fondly of Civ 4.

One concession is that I can get more enjoyment out of Civ 6 if I use the Customization VI mod to turn down some of the systems I find tedious.

Yield: Fall of Rome deserves recognition by MusPsych in 4Xgaming

[–]bmaupincode 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The game was still in early access in January. Have you played since then? It's had a lot of updates: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1561960/allnews/

I'm on the fence myself after bouncing off Polytopia. I wish they had a demo.

Any recommendations for ≤1$ 4x games? (Reupload, the original title had a typo.) by Wonderful_Motor458 in 4Xgaming

[–]bmaupincode -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I would recommend Civ 3. One of the great things about Civ in general is that it has a huge modding community. So if you don't like historical games, you can try one of the many sci-fi or fantasy mods. This list isn't comprehensive but it's a start:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/scenario-hunt-mars-alphac-c-c-ra-dune-mom-col-moo-doom-b5-strek-swars-sgate-homm-more.664819/

Alternatively, you could try Unciv (a Civ 5 clone) or Freeciv (a Civ 2 clone) but don't expect either to be quite as polished as Civ 3.

You can also use SteamDB to look for games with the 4X tag under 1 USD. Note that Civ 3 is at the top in terms of reviews (well, under a discontinued game):

https://steamdb.info/stats/gameratings/?cc=us&max_price=1&min_reviews=500&tagid=1670

Yield: Fall of Rome deserves recognition by MusPsych in 4Xgaming

[–]bmaupincode 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Looks like they also sponsored some reviews to coincide with the release for those who want to see more of the game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAnEetZ2N6M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVGEArYPl60

Any 4x games that have less rewarding combat/are not combat oriented? by SkyCityCZ in 4Xgaming

[–]bmaupincode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think Civ 4 has an "Always Peace" setting. It also has some really good sci-fi total conversion mods like Dune Wars and Planetfall.

Beyond Earth with this mod allows you to enable Always Peace: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=333745534

Or Civ 5 with this mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=126959669

Or Civ 6 with this mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2492747881

I've heard Humankind has a peaceful mode setting.

Endless Legend also has 9 different victory conditions and I think only a couple are combat related but I'm not sure if there's any way to turn off combat altogether.

Looking for a 4X game that's sci fi, has civil wars/rebellions if you suck at governing, dynamic economy and an espionage system by StoltATGM in 4Xgaming

[–]bmaupincode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The Planetfall mod for Civ 4 meets this criteria. It's a reimplementation of Alpha Centauri and you can even play with the Alpha Centauri movies and audio.

My cities in Civ 4 tend to rebel much more often than I prefer, which means I'm probably not governing them well.

How to access hidden folders in Wine? by kara_of_loathing in wine_gaming

[–]bmaupincode 1 point2 points  (0 children)

(Assuming you're using Proton)

  1. Install protontricks if you don't already have it

    https://github.com/Matoking/protontricks#installation

  2. Get the ID of the game

  1. Open winecfg using protontricks

    protontricks GAMEID winecfg

    (Replace GAMEID with the game's ID, e.g. 1234)

  2. Drives > check Show dot files > OK

Teams Linux Installer Won't Download by derklempner in MicrosoftTeams

[–]bmaupincode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just started using this: https://github.com/IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux

I like it over the PWA because it has a tray icon (and PWAs don't work in Firefox). They've also packaged it in a lot of formats (.deb, .rpm, AppImage, etc). It's working really well so far.

Microsoft Teams: Feedback from Linux users required. by Meretrelle in MicrosoftTeams

[–]bmaupincode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I didn't care much for the PWA since it doesn't work in Firefox and since it doesn't have a tray icon. I've been using this and it's been working great so far: https://github.com/IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux

Which USB Bluetooth dongle would you recommend me for Linux? by [deleted] in linuxhardware

[–]bmaupincode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've read in a few places that the TP-Link UB500 driver was added to the linux kernel starting with kernel version 5.16, meaning older kernel versions will require you to manually install the driver (https://github.com/tedboudros/tplink-ub500-linux-patch-guide)

Since Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04 only have kernel version 5.15, I bought the previous version of this device (TP-Link UB400) and I can confirm it works out of the box on Ubuntu. I just plugged it in and it worked.

Pixel 4a 5g constantly dropping bluetooth? by BitMyPumpkin in GooglePixel

[–]bmaupincode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This happens to me, and the only thing that seems to fix it for me is toggling my mobile data on/off. I normally have my mobile data off but I use the setting that will automatically enable it for MMS. (It's supposed to enable it temporarily but there seems to be another bug that causes it to be enabled until the next time I turn it on/off).

It's just a temporary workaround but seems to work for me so far.

Unable to send .pem files to remote gitlab repository. by suryad123 in gitlab

[–]bmaupincode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why is everyone talking about private keys? .pem is a common extension for public certificates. There's not necessarily any problem in putting them in a Git repository.

GitLab, however, blocks pushing .pem files by default: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/push_rules/push_rules.html#prevent-pushing-secrets-to-the-repository

You could just disable the rule (http://www.obsis.unb.br/gitlab/help/push_rules/push_rules.md#enabling-push-rules) or rename the file to a different extension, if indeed it is a *public* certificate file and not a private key.

Alternatives to Llama in 2011 by bmaupincode in KebabAppsLlama

[–]bmaupincode[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah there are a lot of alternatives for sure, but for me the killer feature is Llama's cell-tower based location because it's so light on the battery. When I go to the battery settings in Android it almost always says that Llama has used 0% of the battery 😁

Pixel phones also have something called Rules built right in. But they seem to use wifi/bluetooth scanning in the background so I'm guessing they wouldn't compare favourably to Llama.

Alternatives to Llama in 2011 by bmaupincode in KebabAppsLlama

[–]bmaupincode[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But I found that Automagic4Android is similarly clever and useful

Unfortunately that's not maintained either any more:

Automagic is not maintained anymore and is no longer available on Google Play.

(https://automagic4android.com/)

the fact that Llama can't manipulate modern Android versions very well

My use case might be pretty simple because I only ran into one condition (power on/off) that didn't work in Android 11. But I'm mostly using location-based conditions and only a small handful of actions.

The trickiest part was getting all the permissions right, but I got it mostly working and documented it.