derbius

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About derbius

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  • Birthday 03/08/1966

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    http://davidbrake.org/
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    derbius

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    St John's Newfoundland

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  • Favorite Games
    Overwatch, COH2, Frozen Synapse, Age of Wonders 3, Stellaris

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  1. Could we please have a list of the games discussed on the episode - even just to get the spellings of the games right so I can find out more?
  2. So there really is no way for me to interact anymore unless I stump up with Patreon and get on the Discord?
  3. Now I really want to know what the unworthy not a competitor 3 hour advertisement podcast is that was casually mentioned! If understandably Lynn Rowan and Luke don't want to say maybe somebody else can fill me in?
  4. Your reactions collectively were also mine largely but I wish you had spent more time talking about Ardennes assault which was excellent and if it had been simply adopted to the new theater might have made a good game better. I can see how the designers thought they would make it a lot richer but then succumbed to scope creep. I am still hopeful they can do a paradox and refine it into something good. The other two things I would make more of is that particularly in the single player campaign skirmishes the enemy is normally so much more powerful at least so far ( and at the same time tactically clumsy) it seems impossible even with tactical pause to play a nuanced mobile game. Instead, it almost always seems to degenerate into spotting the enemy and pulverizing him with artillery and/or smoke. And lastly I would have made more of the disappointing fact that the factions are not more distinct with the possible exception of the fun way the DAK is tuned to recycling enemy vehicles and repairing their own. ( the second time I played Gazala the key to my eventual success was grabbing and repurposing an Archer tank destroyer).
  5. I got pulled into this game after a free weekend and found it to be captivating. I hope you will revisit it soon. I am finding my fellow players approach the game with a good degree of seriousness, and I think you under-emphasize just how beautiful and therefore immersive the maps and animations are (at least on my new mid-high end PC). I have been playing WWII games and shooters for about 35 years, so I clearly need a game which I can enjoyably play even with sub-par reflexes and vision. Also, the fact you don't really know what is going on overall generally lets you believe that your own side is working as a team as long as your squad is, which makes victories all the more satisfying!
  6. This episode finally helped me understand what concerns me about most city and civ sims. It's not that they hide ethical problems from users, or fail to measure them, it's that there's almost never a way to optimize around making the world better! If you make people you are simulating miserable it's a problem because it bugs you personally or because it messes up a different goal that is measured and valued in game. But you generally can't try to run your empire to make you and your neighbours happy because when happiness is measured it is nearly always in terms of "is your population happy enough" not to revolt or to stay adequately productive. I can't remember a game scenario that prompts you to try to make the happiest nation - you generally can't even track that kind of information comparatively like you could wealth or prestige. And what if you want to get more complex - maximize human flourishing (happiness * education?) Make as many people happy as you can while protecting anyone from being too miserable? Give people more equal life chances? In principle this kind of thing could be roughly modelled using the "pop" model in Victoria 3 and similar but there seems little interest in doing this. So far in the Victoria 3 developer diaries the slave trade and opium wars for example are things you might want to solve as a mission ("journal") or because of effects they have on other systems. But you can "succeed" in what the game measures without tacking either. (I expressed some concerns about ethics in computer games when Victoria 3 was announced in a blog post last year at greater length).
  7. I wanted to hear more about the ethical dimensions of the way Paradox titles nudge you towards certain ways of judging your own "success" - ie how seeing things through a state lens tends to conceal the effect of your actions on the people that surround you. It's perhaps more excusable pre-Victoria where you could argue that the state made little or no claim to work to the benefit of its people but is harder for games like Victoria 2 and the upcoming 3. I was pleased to see that Dr Devereaux did dig into this in a recent blog post which goes into more detail than I did in my own post on the subject back in May when Victoria 3 was announced. I hope you will invite Dr Devereaux back to explore these details in more depth when Victoria 3 gets close enough to ship to see how these dilemmas are treated in the game - ideally with a Paradox rep as well!
  8. The announcement of Victoria 3 and the way this grand strategic "sandbox" game seems to focus on the colonial period from the colonizer's POV caused me to go off on a bit of a rant. I hope I am wrong about the way it's going to go but regardless I would like to hear from the 3MA team and if they can have the PDX folks talk about how history can/should be taught/used in strategy titles: https://blog.org/2021/05/values-in-video-games-victoria-3/
  9. Three Moves Ahead 522: Suzerain

    Finished a playthrough. Thanks for encouraging me to try it out. I can understand the temptation but you should have tried harder to avoid spoilers - the podcast was full of them by the end - or at least put a warning up front saying "if you want to play through this and you should we will be talking about a number of key plot points"...
  10. Three Moves Ahead 522: Suzerain

    I have really enjoyed playing this so far. Like any semi-scripted game there is the odd time when the dialogue options don't allow you to finesse things the way you might like to or the game seems to "forget" your actions (I tacked centre-left on most things but my lefty VP seems to think I won't get socialist votes. But once in a while there's a real whopper - like this: A drop of 2/3 in GDP over three and a half years? My head would have been on the end of a pike months ago...
  11. Three Moves Ahead 522: Suzerain

    There was some understandable ambiguity over what countr(ies) the game is based on by the GOG description at least suggests it is based on Turkey (which makes sense). Though I definitely see how it also relates to many other countries...
  12. Three Moves Ahead 521: Shadow Empire

    I could never get into Dwarf Fortress but as a big 4X fan and wargamer you guys may have persuaded me against my better judgement to try this again after bouncing off the demo in bafflement. It seems like a sort of Dwarf Fortress in space? Are you trying to get the designer on to the show? I'm sure talking to him would be a fascinating episode whether you approached it as getting him to explain some of his design decisions or even just talking about how he ended up making this quixotic labor of love.
  13. Game mechanic I continue to be baffled by your love for Crusader Kings. Fundamentally, this is a game which you would think would require a robust diplomacy engine and yet I sounds to my astonishment that there is no way at least in the default scenarios to set up formal treaties, to threaten or even to do duchy swapping Etc. All I have to work with aside from brute force is marriages and dirty tricks. I can't even easily find out which of my neighbours or potential enemies dislikes which of the others so I can set them off against one another. Why isn't this even in the reviews?
  14. Haven't listened all through yet but I am guessing you may not have mentioned that this is turning up on Xbox GamePass on the Xbox this month? It would be interesting to do an episode on how/whether these subscription services (and Epic's free games) are enhancing games' findability....
  15. The excitement so many people show about Crusader Kings 3 still baffles me. I really want to get into it but I find that very obvious gaps are hugely frustrating to me. Doesn't it bother anybody that you don't have any diplomatic options with nobles & kings outside of your court that don't involve either intermarriage, hooks or war? At one level the game seem to be largely about the inter-personal but there is no option for even simple horse-trading (stop messing with my vassal or else, trade you this duchy for that one, I will marry your daughter for 500 gold - that kind of thing). Was that impossible in Crusader Kings 2 also?