DukeofChutney

Why are we not doing Warlords podcast? Warlords III Darklords Rising is one of the best strategy games ever made, a pity it doesn't work that well on 64bit. I have replayed large chunks of it recently on my old laptop and too my surprise (i was 12 when i first played this game) it holds up really well and has a surprising amount of strategic depth.

This is, in my view, the big problem in 4x game design. What is the game i am playing? A lot of the problem is psychology. no one complains about war in risk because its expected being the only option. How obvious is it to the players that they must fight? here is how some board games approach the problem; Eclipse; starts players far apart, by the time they reach each other and have the military capability to really kick off the game ends. Also the game heavily front loads the vp awards to early game activities. End game war therefore doesn't really count for a great deal. Dune; It is a pure war game, but It locks the alliances eliminating backstabs. It teaches a critical lesson for conflict game design. Don't give the players complete freedom. Allow them to attack only under certain conditions in the game. Clash of Cultures; still has the problem but does some good things; makes armies very slow, makes military strength very easy to estimate based on board position (you won't get surprised). Twilight Imperium (, i only played 2nd ed). You start with big ships so feel encouraged to use them. The victory condition is composite, you need techs, planets and economics, which means you have to balance military with tech and economy. Therefore everyone accepts the war. Colonial Europes Empires of Seas; War is abstracted to the point where it isn't represented on the map but is done through a series of die rolls based on resources. The winner takes one vp from the loser. In this game warfare is actually a pretty poor investment. I think in simulating or abstracting limited war imposing limits is a good idea. Limit war to certain locations on the board, safe zones and danger zones etc. or limit it to certain time periods and phases. Twice in a game perhaps there is a council of nations, players vote, then there are maybe two turns of war, then the war is over. This could have serious consequences for players, but each player starts the game knowing that this vote and war could happen. It also due to the voting prevents the one military player getting the others, but the big group of players beating on the one leader is possible. A time limit on war combined with slow movement of forces makes players focus on limited objectives. Keep the comprehension complexity low, and the game needs to communicate what kind of game it is as clearly as possible. When we play clash of cultures people get miffed when their cities get burnt. I think this is because so many research and building options are given and military seems like such a small part of the game.

The human resources side of it is quite interesting. It is similar to my experiences in Planetside 2, although on a bigger scale. The sister outfit to my outfit, called RockPlanetShotgun will run 100 players + in a coms channel with a company level command structure. They do it pretty well with split comms and such. I definitely understand far better from commanding in this game (the most I've ever commanded is about 30 people). Its not just a matter of having a good strategy, its a matter of people skills. Can you get 30 dudes with guns to do what you need them to do. Discipline is hard to achieve, but some of the commanders i know do it very well.

the only current downside to Airland battle is that most of the big games are empty and the privately hosted games are few. When Red Dragon went live the community moved over pretty rapidly. I haven't bought Red Dragon yet (and will probably wait for a sale), but AirLand battle is a good game. It is very hardcore though, i suck at it but i can hammer the AI.

I'm definitely interested in a series on a similar subject. Part of what made this series so good was that both the hosts and the guests had a personal perspective on the subject matter, and that perspective mattered. I come here mostly to listen to game analysis and discussion but i like a strong human experience element to it as well. I guess this will be harder to replicate because Vietnam was an emotive subject for many involved and is still within living memory. I also liked the discussion that carried between interviews, particularly around victory conditions, could the US win? These two threads made the podcasts feel much more like a series of connected episodes. I'm not sure what topics would work best. I don't think the series necessarily has to be historical. I do think the designers have to have faced some similar design decisions and gone in differing directions, and i think the designers need some sort of personal perspective on the subject matter. some easy marks might be; WW1 - its under represented for a long time. It is emotive, there are different views on the history Colonialism and how it is represented in games - this allows you to do both PC and board formats quite easily and lighter games. Its emotive. ACW, napoleonics, Romans, Sengoku Japan etc all could be done but i think its harder to find a focus in such broad topics as what the games on these topics are trying to represent is much more varied. You could do the Peloponnesian war though, i think there are at least 3 games on the subject that deal with it at a similar scale including designs by Craig Besinque, Tom Daigliesh, Mark Herman and a Spanish euro game design.

sweet, thanks

This is a really interesting interview. John has a very clear and interesting opinion on the history and his game. Are you going to look at the forth coming Fire in the Lake by GMT games at all? I'm sure either Mark Herman or Volko would gladly talk about it, also you could get any of the other COIN game designers. I have not actually played any vietnam strategy games. I think the only Nam game i've played is the PC shooter Vietcong, which is more of a Hollywood approach to the war. I do however have a copy of VPGs Korean War sitting around.

why do people like series in board games and not on video games? One reason is rules. If i buy a new SCS, OCS or C&C game i don't have to learn that many new rules. On a computer I don't have to learn the rules, but i do get to explore them in game. If the rules are the same in each game its less things to explore. In board games this cuts the effort buy in, on computer this is less game space for some.

i didn't like Sword of the Stars although i recognise its achievements. It breaks the mould in a number of ways, first of all by only having 3 races that are not customisable but are very asymmetrical at a fundamental play level. Its also a very streamlined game design and the AI is good. I didn't really like the fleet battle system much or the aesthetic of the game.

Good topic. I'm a really big fan of space 4 x game, but i do share most of your problems with the genre. I've never played Masters of Orion, instead i started with Ascendancy. Nearly a decade later i played GalCiv 2, and whilst it was good i was amazed at how little the genre had advanced in so many years. The first issue i have with space 4x is that each X is essentially a gating mechanism for the next. The big extermination battle of the late game is only interesting if you've done a good job of micromanaging your expansion (both in terms of planets and tech), exploitation and before those exploring. Whilst many wars in the real world might be decided before they start, we're far more interested in the decisions made in fighting them. My experience of 4x games is that often when my bubble meets another alien bubble one completely runs through the other because they did the first 3x's better than the other, and the last x, warfare is sort of redundant. This snowball effect is largely the result of the games currency/resource base being the same as its victory points. Planets generate more power and also the means of winning, so the player with the more/better planets has more potential to grow in power. If you play with a bigger galaxy this problem is exacerbated. My second issue is drama. Many 4 x game create the premise for an epic and then reduce it to a spreadsheet and a map. When i first bombed a city in DEFCON i thought about it the rest of that day, when i wipe out billions of people in a 4x game a number changes and then a colour, theres no emotional content, little drama. Some of the games do deliver space battle drama, but since they make you repeat the same battle about a dozen times every hour this quickly wears thin. The big decisive battle appears to be rare in 4x games. I'd agree on the geographical issue. I think this could be fixed. The main way you could make the geography more interesting is by making the really important resources a greater vulnerability. If you look at historical wars and strategic writings you see talk about centres of gravity and vulnerabilities of the enemy etc. In space 4x, when im planning on invading i generally have two options. Option A is go straight for their homeworld, Option B is just start eating away at the closest border. Most of the time there isn't much difference between attacking one world or another. If i knew that attacking the two systems in my enemies empire that generated 80% of the fuel for their fleet, then that would suddenly make the war much more focused and strategic. Most space 4x games don't create massive vulnerabilities in each faction for players to fight over. Theres no reason from a scifi point of view, why you couldn't have a supply system like the one you get in Unity of Command. I agree with the general conclusion. We need designers to start designing a new space opera game. The same 4x cookie cutter is getting very dull. There is so much that could be done with space. The place to start is to make the empires and players much more limited and vulnerable in terms of what they can do and how they related to each other in the game space. edit (btw my 4x fan credentials are many hours in; GalCiv2, Space Empires 4, Star Ruler, Endless Space, Ascendancy, Sins of a Solar Empire, Distant Worlds). As for a Warhammer 40K 4x, it would have to break a long way from the formula. The races have vastly different objectives and ways of working, to the point that some don't even value planets the usual resource of the 4x universe. You wouldn't necessarily have a tech tree, and colonisation again would be very different if even in the game. They don't even all do territory in a traditional sense, then theres a vast difference in economics etc. Could be really awesome though