I am familiar with Pandora, that's actually one of the main reasons I wanted to skip Gladius. How can someone make an almost exact copy of SMAC and still manage to make it boring is beyond me...

Then perhaps I'll skip those two for now and just get Final Liberation. I appreciate the feedback.

Nope, I have been away from Gog for a few years.

Thanks! That was a nice read. Most of the best games are still not on Gog... and Gladius, Sanctus Reach and Chaos Gate are rated pretty poorly. Shame, but that's more or less in line with their rating and reviews on here.

As a side note, this was in the related articles ^_^ https://www.pcgamer.com/best-40k-books-novels/

I'll throw another one into the Space Marine hat, and I reviewed it, but I'll give you caveat emptor on it in that it is solid, but it does drag on a bit to where it can be repetitive in combat and environments. Too many cutscenes for my tastes. The boss fights also suck. It looks good and plays well and if that's all you're looking for, all is well. Be sure to grab it for the $10 it goes on sale for and not the $40 SEGA wants to gouge you for.

If you enjoyed the original X-COM and want something similar in the Warhammer universe, Chaos Gate fits the bill. Otherwise, move on.

I actually like Pandora, but they really messed up the diplomacy and factions (more generally, everything related to writing suffered greatly from the comparison with Alpha Centauri). The good news is that in Gladius there is no diplomacy, and the factions back story is already written in WH40K lore.

The final result is a game that is much better than Pandora in my opinion, much more focused on pure gameplay. And they kept what is to me the biggest selling point of Pandora: the ruthless AI making it one of the very few really challenging 4X. While it is relatively easy to master a Civilization game, I do not think I will ever be able to win reliably at Gladius in the highest difficulty levels.

Writing is one of the main gripes I have with it... the other one is gameplay as a whole. The AI is not particularily smart (heck, early on most factions tend to leave their capital completely unguarded, if you're lucky you can just swoop in and if you survive the counterattack it's game over for them), but it's apparently omniscent, very aggressive and has the nasty habit of ganging up on the weakest faction as soon as it smells blood (usually the one unlucky enough to spawn surrounded by everyone else).
Then there's the odd way population growth is handled, the randomized tech tree that can either aid or leave you royally screwed, the slow pace made even slower by the "xenos events" and so on and so forth. It could have been a very decent SMAC reboot with just a little extra polish and care, but oh well.

Anyway, Gladius' price dropped by €10 yesterday and I'm downloading it right now. Wish me luck. :P

In Gladius, the pop growth is per city and mostly a static value: it is not tied to any resource, and will usually keep up at the same steady rate as long as you remember to add buildings expanding the population limit. There are some terrain features and faction "edicts" that can give boosts to it. Pops are now used to man buildings, not to gather resources. Resources are produced from buildings, and the terrain gives boosts to some types of resources.

The tech tree is static and fully visible, with very few prerequisites. It's closer to a tech "table" with levels you unlock by researching two techs of the previous level. All techs are unique (no more improved version of a previous tech) but there are less of them (10 levels, with something like 5 techs in each level).

The slow pace is still there, the map being even more hostile than in Pandora. You will struggle before even meeting your opponents. The random events are now tied to your faction quest (that can be disabled in game options), and usually less impactful than the full invasion added in Pandora: Eclipse of Nashira.

If you enjoy it even only half as much as I do, you won't regret your purchase ;)

If you just want to kill stuff (and of course you do, as that's what WH40k is all about), then Necromunda: Hired Gun. It's a Doom-style shooter. Not as popular as Space Marine, but just as good in my opinion. It has a passable story. Not as long as I would have liked, though you can keep playing random missions after the story is complete.

Only just started looking into WH40k stuff after watching a detailed timeline of WH40k from start to current day situations . Have played the Dawn of War and Space Marine games before - i am wondering about the books though - Are there any people would suggest to newbies which start from the beginning, and also are there any books which concentrate on the Custodians/Astartes (Space marines) relationship?

I would start with looking up any prices before i would show any interest in wh 40k books.... I mean i once had the nerve of looking, just added some random wh search query in the kobo store.
Man....... the prices, they were outright.... you know. at least 10 euro's for a 2-3 hour read episode, like uhu...
Might just as well start with collecting pieces and use the original paint.

Having a quick look - 80% of the WH40k novels seem to fall within $20-30AUD price range. Im talking novels only. there is a handful which seem to be $40AUD+ - not sure why. Anyone know of any of the novels which has stuff im looking for?.

If you're interested in "naval" tactical battles you could try battlefleet gothic.
Personally I'm not a fan though; I found a lot of the missions to be pretty tedious and it outstays it's welcome pretty fast.

Apparently the second game is a lot better but I haven't played it.

Dawn of War is a classic. Dawn of War II is popular but I don't really like it that much. They abandoned proper base building for a weird esport system where you build up a very small army and mash the retreat button when the fight isn't going your way.

Well, at least in multiplayer and retribution. The thing about DoW II is that the campaign is more of a tactics game than a true classic RTS. You have small teams of specialized units and characters that you can kit and improve through great. Chaos Rising's campaign is actually pretty good because you get a lot of build variety and a whole corruption mechanic to play with.

Retribution tried going back a little to classic RTS, but they didn't go the whole way and just had you building units from a single structure that you don't even build yourself. The campaign is pretty repetitive too; it's pretty much the same for all factions.

Space Marine is a decent action game.

Gladius was a disappointment for me. They locked a lot of the unit variety behind pay walls, the Lord of Skulls spawns right next to your cities way too often just to screw you over, and all you have to do to win is just to complete your factions questline, which can range from easy (every base game faction except guardsmen) to obscenely difficult (guardsmen).

For a 4x game you really don't have that much play time. You can probably complete all base game factions in less than 50 hours.

haha. Yeah, and Dante is very 40K-ish in its coming-of-age over-the-topness, as you could say the protagonist becomes an adult and burns through his edgy phase in the most edgy way possible :P

I have no idea about Eldar books but The Horus Heresy series is a good place to start, even though it can be tricky to recommend due to its length and inconsistent quality (that's why the abridged youtube lore videos are more often than not, less daunting and better storytelling devices). That said, in a way it's really interesting to see how the lore has been woven layer by layer throughout all those years and novels (and authors). My recommendation would be to definitely check out some lists online of which books are worth it and which ones are not if you still want to keep diving into them after reading or listening to the first three.

I haven't read or listened to them, but regarding Custodes lots of people swear by Valdor: Birth of the Imperium, The Carrion Throne, and the Watchers of the Throne series. Besides those, you might also enjoy The Master of Mankind from the Horus Heresy novels.

Space Marine and Space Hulk. Space Hulk have some DLCS, but all of them are free.

I enjoyed the short story collection Fear the Alien, particularly the excellent Faces by Matthew Farrer. It features the Eldar Harlequins, a faction I wasn't really aware of before. And while I'm always fairly sceptical about the quality of game franchise books, I was pleasantly surprised how atmospheric and well written that one is.