OMG!

[SpaceGameJunkie]

#9919

Y’all, this is such an amazing game! So glad to see you’re covering it.

[dr_st]

#9924

Isn’t it spelled “Ascendancy”, though? 😛

[SpaceGameJunkie]

#9926

Hah, you’re right, good catch!

https://www.mobygames.com/game/257/ascendancy/

[Mike]

#10391

I never even heard of this one before but it looks neat. Is it available for sale anywhere today?

[SpaceGameJunkie]

#10392

Sadly no, you’ll have to acquire it from your friend in England.

[TigerQuoll]

#10598

I’ve done the tutorial, and I have to say I like a lot of the concepts. It does a lot of stuff that I’d always wished MOO and MOO2 did. And making combat just a part of regular gameplay on the regular map is a nice touch too.

Considering I don’t really play 4x games for the challenge – I just like exploring, building my empire, and then flattening everyone when I’m powerful enough – I feel like the dinky AI isn’t going to bother me.

[SpaceGameJunkie]

#10600

Yeah, it sounds like you’ll enjoy the best parts of this game.

[pointer]

#10601

Ascendancy has high highs and some not so high lows. A guilty pleasure of mine, definitely worth trying.

[SpaceGameJunkie]

#10602

Man, I just loaded up the game, and it’s like all my muscle memory came back. I need to read the manual to remember what all the things do, but it’s like riding a bike.

[jan0sch]

#10631

One of the games I replay a bit from time to time since the release. But usually not to finish because it gets too tedious later on. I must have beaten the game with mid size galaxy and above one or two times but that was “just work” in the end.

But it still has great atmosphere and is fun for an hour or two. 🙂

[TigerQuoll]

#10633

In my first game I got a little too comfortable in assuming just how stupid the AI would be. I declared war on one of my opponents, sent my whole fleet through a long star lane to their homeworld, and en route they took over half of my systems, and it autoscrapped most of my fleet!
I reckon I’ll play one more game, but jan0sch was right I think. After a while building up my planets just started to feel monotonous.

[pointer]

#10634

I’d say late-game tedium is Ascendancy’s biggest issue. I’ve since learned that if I aim to finish a game, it’s better to select the smaller (vacuous/sparse) map sizes.

Also, while there is a (not great) auto-colony manager, the purely mouse-based interface annoyed me enough to make Autohotkey helper scripts to add some useful hotkeys, mostly for building. If someone’s interested, I can share them (some assembly required though).

[jan0sch]

#10635

Yes, especially with bigger galaxy sizes it becomes a real drag. Just an example: Sending a fleet halfway or completely through the galaxy has to be done system for system.

With a small galaxy and the right starting race choice you can always strife for a quick win by invading the home worlds of all others. Alternatively settling >= 2/3 of the planets.

There used to be an AI patch flying around but it didn’t do much in that regard. If anything the computer players felt more aggressive afterwards IIRC.

The thing we missed most back in the day was a multiplayer mode. That would have opened a whole new world especially in regard to the weak game AI.

[butterburp]

#10636

L.O.L. side comment: At first I thought that thing in your avatar was a watermelon or a green fart.

Now returning attention to the topic at hand. (p.s. Autohotkey rocks)

[Cas]

#10662

This is a fantastic game. Indeed, it only gets challenging when you’re new and discovering how it works. Then, you quickly find the technique and it’s more about wanting to play through it and “live” it until you finally succeed. It’s still worth it.

The best part is, of course, the beginning until you get developed and you find who else is in the galaxy, make enemies and alliances. Later on, the war gets very slow. The problem is that, in order to remain competitive, your best choice is to never skip a frame if you can exploit it. So when you have hundreds of worlds, it takes a long time to advance a single day.

I have dreamed of a real-time version of this game, ideally, also multiplayer, many times. One game that’s real-time and has some resemblance in Endless Sky (that I sometimes play in my PC on GNU/Linux), but it’s also single player.

I discovered Ascendancy when the game was already some 15 years old. I wish I had known it when it just came up!