Michael

I think that one of the reasons that I am enjoying Hearthstone so much is that I'm purposefully avoiding the meta. There's only so much room in my brainmeats for planning, researching, reading, competitive talk, stream-watching, and metagaming. Right now, Dota2 fills up all of that. Sometimes I wonder if I even enjoy it, but that's a discussion for another day. I don't play WoW, but I did play a bunch of Magic back in the day. I haven't really picked up a CCG since, though I really enjoyed Spectromancer. I wish that game had caught on more than it did. With Hearthstone, I sit down and play a game. If I win, hooray! If I lose, oh well. I'll tweak my deck (I love deckbuilding), earn some new cards, and put it away for a while. I can even play a game or two while feeding my daughter a bottle. It's a neat, compact package that gives me some satisfying game time. It's getting harder and harder for me to find the requisite 45 minutes to an hour of completely uninterruptible gaming time to play Dota2, but Hearthstone is satisfying and always around. Also, though I've grown a thick skin playing Dota2, I can't stress enough how awesome the limited communication is in Hearthstone. I really enjoy that aspect of it.

Have I got news for you! It's already in the works...

It's a Wordpress powered site, which conveniently auto-generates feeds and works well with most RSS readers. Plugging just the url wargamespace.com into a reader like Feedly will do, but you can also get the direct RSS feed here http://www.wargamespace.com/feed/. That works for any WP site.

I'll leave it up to Bruce as to whether he wants to let that cat out of the bag... but I will tell you (so that you're not surprised when you hear Rob and Troy this week) that Bruce's Vietnam series will run every other week. The other two shows are already recorded but we figured we would spread things out a bit.

That seems to be a recurring sentiment - the good news is that we're in the planning stages for a "wrap up" show for the Winter of Wargaming.

It's from GalCiv3! It's titled "Menutheme" or something similar, but it's a reprise of the theme used throughout GalCiv2. I've always liked the Galciv2 music and was very pleased to hear that theme in the alpha when the game opened. I thought it would be a nice touch open and close the show with the theme, so in it went. GalCiv2 is one of my personal favorites, probably because it hit me when I had just discovered Civ3 and was getting into the 4x genre. I liked the quirky robot and I've never minded "lasers 3" -- I don't feel like my play experience would be vastly expanded if some bit of lore was tacked on to the fact that my lasers were upgraded. I like putzy work like ship building and I LOVE tech trees that force you to make decisions by going down certain paths at the opportunity cost of neglecting others. So while I get why all those things bug some people, GalCiv is firmly in my wheelhouse.

I was pretty happy when I found that. Also, I was russian to find something to write while posting this episode and the puns were low-hanging fruit. I think I got them all out of my system at once, so we'll be set for a while.

Fun 3MA fact: There was already an episode titled "We Built This City" from 2011. I was not aware of this when I named and posted the Banished show. We've got so many episodes that I'll have to start checking the titles to avoid future Jefferson Starship-related naming mishaps.

Hello listeners, The Three Moves Ahead crew will be revisiting the classic SSG game Korsun Pocket for an upcoming episode (most likely in January) as a part of Rob and Bruce's Winter of Wargaming. Digital or boxed editions are currently available at Matrix Games. The digital download is on sale for $20 until early January. We are not affiliated with Matrix but it looks like one of the few places to acquire the game. Find your install discs or grab the game from Matrix and see what you think. This is a heads-up post - I will link to the discussion thread in the 3MA Episodes sub-forum when we post the show in January. If people like the idea of knowing these games ahead of time I can make sure we give notice before going over classic games in the future.

I loved GalCiv2 and am incredibly excited for GalCiv3. I will lobby to get it in as a topic. I don't know what the crew's opinions on Homeworld are but I can bring it up when have a planning meeting.

I think there were a few great points in this episode, especially those commenting on the impact of a game's forum or online community. When I enjoy something I often feel the need to research it and learn all the interesting bits. What often comes along with that are game-breaking exploits and complaints about how "broken" something is because of some perceived imbalance. (I've often thought that the best way to enjoy a Civ game is to avoid the core Civ community.) It's something I especially see on wargaming boards. I can think of a few titles from Matrix that I've enjoyed quite a bit, blissfully making my way through the game while not noticing anything particularly off. When browsing those boards, however, all I see are "THIS GAME IS UNPLAYABLE UNTIL XX BUG IS FIXED". Well, I guess those AA values were a bit off, but I think the game still played fine. My game-breaking internet moment was in Plants vs Zombies. I put a fast 60 hours into that game until I went online and saw the "unbeatable" survival mode layout. I built that exactly once, closed the game, and haven't opened it since. (And I'll probably never touch PvZ2 but for other reasons.) I'm also looking forward to Soren's game as I think economic simulators are incredibly interested and under-represented.

I've been watching The International this year and it's been an enjoyable experience for someone who has a superficial knowledge of the game. Regarding come from behind victories: Na'Vi came back huge their final match against Orange:

It's the latter - I usually listen to the pre and post-show chatter while I'm getting things set up. I've put in quite a few musical bits for my own amusement but I doubt the panel has heard them all. Occasionally something will tickle me so much that I'll make sure they hear it, such as the hip hop intro from what I think was the iPad show. The only time something was specifically requested was when Bruce asked for "hobo music" in 221. Since I do all that in post production the panel won't hear it unless they go back to listen to a show that they just recorded, which I don't believe happens often. Sometimes I wonder if Rob ever heard when I purposefully did a bad cut of him saying "Michael Hermes is great" at the end of a show. I had a good laugh at that one.

It said I didn't have access and had to send a request to view it. (Also I had missed that you posted it.)

Here's a link to the presentation in Google Docs. I have it set to "Public" so hopefully everyone can get to it.

Neckbeards rejoice! Unity of Command is now available for Linux. You can get a download link directly from the developer or install it easily through Steam for Linux. I had some issues with font rendering on Xubuntu, but recently wiped my laptop and installed Lubuntu, Steam, and UoC with no issues at all.

I would also pitch The Operational Art of War 3 as a good step up on the complexity scale from Unity of Command. I'm plaything the heck out of both of those games at the moment.

I would also suggest playing a game or two with all of the expansions turned off. They add more units and complexity.

The game definitely has a steep learning curve and "unique" graphics. Admittedly, neither are really helpful at hooking the casual passer-by. I've yet to meet someone, however, who was unhappy with what they found on the other side. There is a demo available via Steam and the developer's website, so that might be your best option. And while Arcen is a great dev and really deserves our ducats, it's no secret that the game will be pretty deeply discounted in the winter Steam sale. I know! I wish we had Chris for a few more hours to talk about everything I had in mind, but we had a limited amount of his time and therefore had to focus. It's a different game since launch, and we thought it would be interesting to talk about what's changed along the way and why. I do like the new expansion, though. There are a few other games that I think would be interesting to "check in" on. Hearts of Iron III is another 2009 release that's changed dramatically since launch and had a lot of great features added. I haven't picked up the latest expansion yet, but it was review pretty favorably over at Wargamer.

Now that I have a shiny new iPhone 5 I've been diving into the world if iOS strategy games after years of Android. I'm really, really liking Neuroshima Hex, which was mentioned earlier in the thread. The tactical play is surprisingly deep - I've been playing for about two weeks and still learn new things every round. I haven't picked up any expansions yet, but probably will soon. I'm also eyeballing the board game version as an impending purchase.

Heard and understood. I sat down to edit this episode with the intent of trying to keep it accessible, but our panelists were so deeply knowledgable that it was in-depth from the start. If I had edited out all the really esoteric bits it would have been about five minutes long, so I left almost everything in. Feel free to take my name in vain, at least until the next show.

Now that I've seen what's possible, I've figured out what my perfect, just-for-Michael game is: All the best parts of The Operational Art of War and Unity of Command. Having played from tactical/skirmish up to strategy/grand strategy, I have the most fun at the operational level. If I could get the depth, scenario flexibility, and gameplay of TOAW and mix that with the brilliant interface of UoC I would be a happy camper. TOAW had a great update in 2011 that refreshed it and added some modern niceties but I've never been crazy about the interface. UoC has one the best interfaces I've ever seen, but as it's still relatively new it has scenarios that are limited to one front of one war and no scenario editor. (I'm sure more will come with time.) Maybe UoC will eventually become that game, or maybe TOAW 4 will happen someday. Maybe someone else entirely will create a new game and we'll get to TOAW what Panzer Corps was to Panzer General. In the meantime, I'm perfectly happy to play both. edit: Oh yeah, and since I can be picky there should be an option for either the snappy UoC unit graphics and NATO symbols.

I was going back and forth on Unity of Command but after seeing the temporary price drop and the enthusiastic endorsements by the 3MA hosts, I finally picked it up. I think you can get it for $17 for a little while longer from the developer. unityofcommand.net

Very nice, what's your toolset? Looks like Unity, which language did you pick?

I found myself agreeing with Mr. Banks on many of his points. To me, 4X games are not hindered by a lack of flavor text or plot; that's not what I am always personally looking for in those games. I suppose it can be nice to have, but in my mind it's criticizing a race car for not having cup holders. Having dropped more time into GalCiv2 than almost any other strategy game, I can say that I'm comfortable with: "Laser I -> Laser II -> Laser III". I don't believe my enjoyment of the game would change if they were to instead say: "Flognosticator -> Antimatter Beams -> SuperiYority Ray" and offered some flavor text about how they scammed the tech from a drunken Iconian scientist. I just want more powerful lasers, dammit. I recently put about 10 hours into Sins: Rebellion, and honestly I wish their tech tree had a little less flavor as it's sometimes hard to find what I'd like to build when moving from race to race. One specific point you made "If you get rid of that stuff you are not playing a game, you are manipulating a system." - I'm okay with that. I'm not looking for the Platonic ideal in every strategy game I play, and I'll usually glom onto the main conceit or core concept that a game is pushing even if it's lacking elsewhere. If I'm looking for rich plot, stirring narrative, and plenty of flavor I look to other games and other genres. Let's call a spade a spade, I say - it's okay to have a game that's about pushing sliders and making numbers go up and down. Sometimes that's all I'm looking for. Finally, I think it's somewhat presumptuous to claim that Cory "just doesn't understand" what the podcast is about. His points were well made, and in my opinion it's great when someone really enjoys a game and is enthusiastic about it.