How?
Please follow the following steps!!
Step One: Open and log onto steam
Step Two: Go to STORE and purchase the game
Step Three: Go to LIBRARY and select the game
Final Step: Click on the green PLAY button
No need to thank me, you are welcome!!
How for reals...
All joking aside, for those of you wanting more of my blinding brilliance, below
are some of my thoughts structured in the following sections:
Resource Economy
Cities
Combat
Zephon has many similarities and differences compared to other 4x games, just like
any other 4x games.
But most notably to me that I can think of are:
Rushing unit is unavailable for all but one factions
Very inefficient market exchange rate
Customizable heroes that has no plot armor and dies for real
Economy
Every 4x gamer is backed econ... So uhh lets talk about econ.
Impacts of No Rushing (Aristocrat excluded)
There are many resources in Zephon, just like any other 4x games.
But what makes Zephon economy diff is that units and buildings cannot be rushed and
resources can't be traded efficiently, resulting in a economical priority similar
to starcraft:
If a lot of resources are in your bank, they aren't being used. If they aren't
being used, they are not helping you.
Saving up resources, generally gold, can be a valuable thing in most 4x games for
reacting to unpredictable situation. This is because the ability to rush units
enables the quick exchange of resources into a sizable force for a city in need.
The lack of that simply means lack of benefits to saving up large amount of
resources.
While a moderate saving can be reasonable to account for potential fluctuations in
production (such as outposts being captured in war), resources should be expended
and units should be constantly made until upkeep + repeating construction cost
approaches income.
However, there are some exceptions:
One partial exception is when you field many units with skills that may cost
resources to use (such as Hashmallim Host & engineers), in which case you may want
to save some associated resources in times when you want to spam these skills.
Regardless, these skills still have cooldown and will still have a limit to your
overall expenditure.
Another exception is science, which you can benefit from regardless of how much you
over produce. However, while some tech directly impacts your resource gain and
combat performance, others doesn't always immediately translate to combat
advantages. Science also becomes less useful towards end game when impactful
technologies for your strategies are already unlocked.
The last partial exception is influence, where it could be saved up moderately to
buy items for heroes, use global skills, as well as exchange for other types of
resources. However, the practical expenditure of that per turn is limited, since
skills have cool down, heroes can be fully equipped, and resources income and
expenditure can be currently in balance.
Overproduction of influence can be unhelpful as well, as the same resources
invested into building influence generators to buy the resource needed can be used
in building the actual building for the resource you needed. Example: Admin centers
give ~6 influences versus Mineral extractor gives ~5 minerals (which would cost 10
influences)
The ratio of influence to resource is:
2 influence to 1 for tier 1 resources (food, mineral, etc.)
4 influence to 1 for tier 2 resources (algae, chips, etc.)
Idk influence to 1 for tier 3 resources (Cores, Echos, etc.)
While influence acts like gold, the lack of ability to practically expend them
quickly + poor market rate their limits applications.
However, all of this obvious does not apply to our influential landwhale, who can
potentially whale his way to victory.
Impacts of Poor Exchange Rate
Since the market for selling resources is very inefficient, at a ratio of 4 sold to
1 bought. Selling resources should be avoided. A balanced overall production for
needed resources is recommended.
This is especially true for our AI friends, who is stuck with a single city for
potentially half of the game, unable to specialize their city for specific exports
based on terrain. For other factions, however, cities should ideally be specialized
based on their terrain.
Resource Uses
Lastly, here is a list describing what each of the first 2 tier resources are for:
Food => for population upkeep to continue to grow and humanoid infantry production
(given sufficient housing)
Mineral => for building buildings and units
Algae => for unleashing inner demons that should be exterminated on sight
Chips => for building your friendly mechanical neighbors
Influence => for buying resources, items, using global skills, and making heroes
You probably don't need much algae or echos but wants a lot of chips/cores if you
are a mechanical main like me, and vise versa if you love to summon and unleash
your inner demons instead...
Cities and stuff...
Cities can produce because of production. These are "resources" that cannot be
stored and are wasted if nothing is queued. Hence the scale of your production
should try to match your income, unless you are in a rush to liquidate your
resources (you saved too much...)
City's production and resource generations are affected by 3 things:
Loyalty => -2% per negative loyalty, +1% per positive loyalty
City Center health % => scales accordingly: if it is at 0.1 hp ~= nothing produced
Population => If below number of buildings, ~population/ # of buildings
One of the semi confusing things for beginner may be that their city building
production is always 6. This is because the 6 production comes from constructor and
you need to build multiple constructor to raise production. This is a research
unlocked in the early mid game.
More factories, barrack, etc = faster the units are made, unless you are out of
resources to make them...
Loyalty
Basically what makes holo-district a requirement for most. Each additional city you
have beyond the first will also create a -6 loyalty I think... The maximum penalty
you can get is -50%.
Because of this, theoretically you can ignore loyalty and spam engis/busters,
forward settle, and zerg the world. Buildings would be half as effective but who
cares if you have twice as many cities than everyone else anyways (as long as you
can afford the rising mineral and influence cost of settling cities)... (I never
actually tried this so feel free to lmk how it goes..)
