Rob Zacny

Polygon's Danielle Riendeau joins Rob and Troy to talk about the long marches and difficult decisions in Banner Saga. Well-marked spoilers are present between 30:58 and 38:26. Listen Here Read Danielle's review of Banner Saga at Polygon.

Rob and Troy go deep into Roman history to talk about the expansion to Total War: Rome II - Caeser in Gaul. Has Creative Assembly turned their trimreme around? Listen in to see if Rob is less irate and hear Troy drop the best sound bite in the history of the show. Alternate title: You've Got Some Gaul Listen to it here.

This is a critical point. Rome 2 is a return to the bad old days of Rome 1 in some key ways, when battles were decided quickly as the AI came headlong into the player's position. It's much better now, because the AI can dress a battle line and use formations, but the fact remains there's not really a dance of units in Rome 2. Once two armies get near each other, they almost magnetically attract and smash into one another. And yeah, at that point, the legionaries do great because they just wear down the enemy. Even if their position sucks, they don't panic until they've killed a lot of enemies. Heck, a lot of times they fight to the last man. Rome 2 tries to solve this by making them a really expensive unit, so you don't have TOO many of them. But they're so cost efficient that you might as well spend the extra money and just count on them to grind through the enemy.

@Gormongous - Yeah, it took a bit to adjust to the way Banner Saga wants you to wear an entire team down, not lone targets. Which I guess kind of solves something that bugs me a lot in tactical RPGs, which is that they tend to become about ganging up on one target and snowballing to victory. It took me some time to adjust, but it's quite clever. @MikeO - Tom Chick made a similar point at QT3 and... I just think you're both nuts. I don't know why, but for some reason I find this UI really readable and easy to use. It is tough in dense traffic, but not so much that I've ever had an issue. Just a reminder of how differently people can react to UI.

Julian, Bruce, and Rob sit down to discuss their favorite things from 2013. Rob and Bruce look forward to a Winter of Wargaming. Bruce and Julian argue about Waterdeep. Listen

Andrew Groen and Taylor Cocke join Rob to talk about the eSports scene in 2013. The crew discusses how the different games have evolved and where they'd like to see eSports go in the future. Link to episode 244

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