Rob Zacny

Campo Santo's Nels Anderson joins Rob, Rowan, and T.J Hafer to talk about the Crusader Kings 2 Sons of Abraham expansion and why it speaks to so many people outside the traditional grand-strategy sphere. Listen

Rob, Fraser Brown, and TJ Hafer have come away from Blizzcon feeling like Blizzard is more of a strategy studio than it's been in years. Listen

Soren Johnson, Ryan Kuo, and Michael Hermes join Julian today to talk about iOS asynchronous board gaming. Neuroshima Hex is the star of the show and leads the panel to other recent additions such as Eclipse and A Brief History of the World. Listen

David Heron and Rowan Kaiser join Rob to talk about the Enemy Within add-on for XCOM. Listen

Soren Johnson joins Rob and Troy to discuss the meaning of the RTS format, why the traditional genre definition is too narrow, and his new studio. Listen

Rob and Troy field some listener questions, revisiting space games, and whether they prefer more abstraction or more theme. Listen

Julian Murdoch and designer Rob Daviau join Rob on vacation to talk about playtesting, feedback, and making games work. Listen

Everything changes in this Very Special 2-hour Three Moves Ahead event. Rob, Rowan Kaiser, and Fraser Brown gather to talk about Rome and destroy a grave threat to the Total War series. But then the next morning they realize they've gone too far and they're all like, "What have we done?" But nothing will ever be the same again, they've been marked forever. Listen

This would be a valid, if self-righteous and passive-aggressive, observation if our complaints overwhelmingly focused on AI and PC performance. But they don't. So thanks, but no thanks for your condescension. And until everyone playing games is required by law to know how to code and to have shipped a game, I could not possibly care less how hard it is to make a game. Somehow, lots of developers manage to make great ones that don't get beaten up on this show. Creative Assembly didn't. If you want to listen to people who "deserve" to have opinions about games, I highly recommend Jon Shafer's Game Design Round Table. Jon and Dirk might meet your expectations.

Rob and Troy discuss how rebellion and discontent have been represented in strategy games, and why they can be so crucial. Listen

Idle Thumbs' Sean Vanaman and former Escapist editor Tom Endo join Rob to explain the appeal and hurdles of Dota 2 and lord management. Listen

Ed Beach and producer Dennis Shirk sit down with Rob to discuss their thinking behind Brave New World, and making a better Civilization V. Listen

PC Gamer's TJ Hafer and Gamesbeat's Jason Wilson join Rob to discuss Europa Universalis IV. Spoiler: they loved it. Listen Jason's review TJ's Review

Did you stick with EU3 through all its expansions? I feel like some of these improvements, like army management, showed up by the end. But they are more effective AI allies now. And the retreat mechanic really made wars feel less like a game of whack a mole. Siege is much clearer now too, you're right That's nice to be able to see what controls the progress of a siege.

You know, Paradox play around a bit with the lag-time between decisions and execution. Diplomats and merchants take longer to get where they are going depending on how far it is, but by and large everything happens instantly with a button press. And I think that's almost how it has to be. Time-dilation in sci-fi can be really interesting, as anyone who read The Forever War can attest, but in a game, it couldn't just be another detail layered into the design. The game would pretty much HAVE to be about the passage of time, I think. Ditto EU IV can't really model the delay in information reaching the capital without shattering the simplicity they've worked really hard to attain. But I WOULD love to see a game that, right from the start, was about the difficulty of managing sprawling empires against the constraints of communications and travel technology. Again, I'd refer back to the show we did on A Few Acres of Snow, which the is about the French and Indian War but which the designer admitted was envisioned more as being about interstellar conflict. That game is entirely about anticipation and lag between intent and effect. And it's one of my favorites.

Rob, Troy, Fraser Brown, and Rowan Kaiser talk about the latest Civilization expansion. Listen

Tom Chick joins Rob and Troy to talk about campaigns in RTS games, particularly StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm. Listen

Bruce and Tom join Rob for a late-night chat about Wargame: AirLand Battle, Cold War tactics and politics, and Rob's overwhelming awfulness at this game. Listen

Evan Lahti joins Rob to talk about Red Orchestra 2: Rising Storm (a totally LEGIT strategy topic). They discuss why it outstrips Heroes of Stalingrad, how it does faction design right, and the role of asymmetry. Listen

Relic's Quinn Duffy and former Relic producer and friend of the show Shane Neville join Rob to talk about Company of Heroes past and future. Listen

Rob talks to the Paradox brain trust of CEO Fred Wester and VP Shams Jorjani to discuss publishing, Paradox's approach to the business, and whether reviewers are the enemy. Listen

EU IV lead Thomas Johansson and freelance writer Joe Robinson join Rob to talk about their recent adventures with a massive EU IV multiplayer session.EU IV lead Thomas Johansson and freelance writer Joe Robinson join Rob to talk about their recent adventures with a massive EU IV multiplayer session.EU IV lead Thomas Johansson and freelance writer Joe Robinson join Rob to talk about their recent adventures with a massive EU IV multiplayer session. Listen

3MA Producer Michael Hermes and GWJ editor Erik Hanson joins Rob and Tom to talk about Victoria II: Heart of Darkness. Rob is reconsidering some of his earlier, harsher views on Victoria while Tom argues that it is a towering achievement of game design that speaks to real-world politics in a way few others have ever attempted. Listen

So I think we have a tendency to elide thoughts when it comes to Civ because we talk it so much on the cast. But I should have been clear: Civ's management of settlements is way, way more involved and varied than what you find in a lot of space 4Xs because the geography is more varied. And that's become even more true since natural resources became a part of the series. If you really want to wring every last efficiency from your empire in Civ, you really have to start hand-placing a lot of the improvements and workers. And you're rewarded for that. If you really know how to develop a frontier mountain city for both border defense and military production, you've got to fight a lot of pushback from growth penalties and a lack of arable land. Even my ideal city location (a on a river emptying into an ocean bay surrounded by flatland, then a ring of hills) is probably going to be stronger if you specialize it and train it in a certain direction. By comparison, I think the majority of space 4X games have much thinner colonization and development mechanics that leaves things feeling "samey" much faster. That's not to say every game should be doing what Civ does. But I think it's a problem when a game forces you to continually engage with a task that is too simplistic. So Sword of the Stars 2 was my first SotS game and... well, you know. If you say it's worth checking out, though, I'll take a look.

Tom Chick and Rob talk about the rise of early access programs, whether it's a good thing, and what it means for their work. Listen