General Crespin

I absolutely love listening to you talk with people who have been around for decades. Is fascinating and evocative in a way that makes me think of standing in the used book store browsing the stacks and chatting with an old timer. Thank you for all of the effort. I always enjoy your episodes.

As much as I enjoy Rise of Nations, the second game we got from Big Huge Games is the RTS that stole my heart. The myopic camera makes gameplay so frustrating over time, but in small doses I can't get enough of the unique style. The thematic difference between each of the three nations captivated me. The clockwork soldiers and steampunk merchants of the Vinci, the mystical castles and soaring dragons of the Alin, the flying stone temples and stomping stone giants of the Cuotl. The way each nation played differently was a lot of fun. The sound design and soundtrack were similarly styled to Rise of Nations and worked just as well. The camera that could be freely rotated. I wish BHG had not been so strongly focused on attempting to build a competitive scene. StarCraft 2 was announced in May 2007, a year after Rise of Legends' release in May 2006. Perhaps BHG felt they had an opening. I've never seen anything approximating a post-mortem. Rise of Legends inspires and fascinates me the way Morrowind does. The unique world, the history only hinted at in passing. It feels like BHG really could have had something great- again!- if they had taken their time to iron out gameplay and technical issues, opened up the game to the community and modding scene. I was a participant in the HeavenGames strategy gaming community from before Rise of Nations was announced until well after BHG moved on from Rise of Legends The failure of Rise of Legends to succeed has always rankled and tonight I needed to vent. I needed to remember.

The backlog is totally worth working through if you have time!

All this talk on changing the map, and no mention of the Earth 21x0 games? As I recall you could do quite a bit in there.

Galactic Battlegrounds was my first Age game. I put hundreds of hours into it, and a friend and I still play now and then. I think because of that, AoK never did anything for me. Anyway, I *loved* this episode. Great show, I passed it on to a friend that plays AoM (also with his wife!), and he loved it. I think you may have a new listener. One question I do have, is that expansions often bring enhancements to the base game, and patches for the expansion will fix bugs in the base game. Does Titans do anything like that? IE, is it worth installing Titans just for patches and bug fixes for the three main civs, and having a gentlemen's agreement not to build Titans?

I'm out of gaming except for what TMA talks about or is discussed in IRC, but listening to this I think I need to add WAMOTA to my Steam wish list!