Valorian Endymion

Yeah I too waited a lot begin divided between Civ:BE and EL, but after reading some reviews and watch a couple of videos, I did choose EL and later tried the demo of BE. I felt that at least the demo of Civ:BE is a very good game - I mean it does work well, but lack a more vibrant personality, which does mean it lack one: I too noticed the flavor in the text - but is almost like to grounded in a negative way - think of the concept of how factions rather that begin static they develop toward something, its amazing idea, and they could make it more vibrant somehow - from what I read and understand the text did chance to fit the affinity, but never goes much beyond that it don´t appear to fully explore how crazy things are getting (another strange thing, leaders do chance to reflect their affinity, but you can´t see how your own leader is looking like). Same is the aliens, they are ok, but I felt they could be bigger? sure the Siege Worm are huge, but they missed such chance to thrown in a really Kaiju or exotic style monsters. Even some giant robot do look timid. On the other hand, Endless Legend is full of personality, might no be perfect but is amazing game.

Amazing show! FFT is among my favorite game (in fact I love tatical jrpgs), so many memories hearing you guys talking about it. I think is acessible game, just might require of a bit of will and lots of time. Just to add a few more jrpg tatical game titles to Hexgrid list: - Langrisser/Warsong - Suikoden - Last Remnant - Battle Moon Wars (not a official, game, but a doujin made by fans using the universe of the anime/game series of Fate Stay Night). Its curious to see how tatical rpg which almost died in the west (for very uknown reasons), until xcom enemy unknown, somehow survived and flourish in Japan, where they take quite unique ways - one of which was the combination of tatical rpg with visual novel narrative. About FFT history (maybe some other games too), there is a very interessing link, I might be wrong, but FFT and other game share a lot of elements with three classic epics: the Heike Monogatari (The Tale of the Heike) - which tell the history of the rise and fall of the Taira clan and its conflict with the Minamoto during the Gempei Wars. The main theme of the tale are the impermanence (in case the Taira believed their power was eternal), fatalism (its very tragic tale, almost everybody dies, even the heroic Yoshitsune, dies by order of his own brother, even if the Minamoto clan win, they didn´t last in power) and karma. It was written in a period which Japan faced endless conflicts (and people did quite believe the world was coming to an end) after enjoyed during the Heian period a long peace also a moment where power shifted from the burocracy and aristocracy to warriors.. by the way the book is amazing, a bit slow to start but a must read. The two other ones a chinese epics, which I haven´t chance to read, it would be The Romance of the Three Kingoms, which too also had very tragic themes and ending - again many heroes, even Liu Bei (the ideal ruler) dies, in the end the kingdom of Wei "wins" and they where somewhat the "villians", there is another epic the Margin Water (aka Suikoden) which is about a group of 108 outlaws (linked to the 108 star of destiny, a taoist concept) that fight against the corruption of the goverment and later against enemies of the emperor. Lots of movies, animes, games, novels, television dramas drawn from this books and other ones too. They where often generational tales (with lots of characters) with tragic elements. Troy commented on the character design - there is a lot of emphasis in this games on making the character very distinctive and unique (something I really like in this games), often in other game they might have unique voices and even larger sprites akin to Visual Novels, not forgetting backstory and gameplay elements. This is huge difference from some western games which often you can´t tell one character from another. To be fair, I confess that while playing Shining Force II I didn´t need to bat a an eye to find each of my party members, but while playing XCOM (the first game) I once in while, after I got the last armor, it start getting confusing how was how and I even start to care slight less if someone died (while I would replay a battle if someone died in Shining Force II even if it was easy to ressurect someone).

Amazing show! About Lords of the Realm: - Fun thing, in Lords of the Realm I, you kind have a "disk one nuke" (aka winning strategy) with Sheep. I mean, you could sell wool at such high prices that you can afford very early on mercenaries and this gives you a very early game advantage, you could easily take several counties. In the second game they removed sheep. - In both games you had to buy weapons for your troops, it was slight strange buying chain main and swords to my knights (but not the horses) (edit I just remembered, that you had to buy horses too) it was quite fun. However because of the sheep and wool, if someone and you could afford mercenaries, the other side unless they also could field mercenaries, they would be in huge problems, since they need weapon and people to to have any chance to survive, and early one this quite hard. - I like more siege in Lords of the Realm I, where you had more detailed control of how much of your soldiers would look for supplies and how many would build or operate siege engines. At each turn you decided what each siege engine would do while the other side decided if they will hold fast or give up, it was slow since with several assaults and barrages. However it was very rare to you become besieged. - Got to agree about the battle on Lords of the Realm II, most times I found out that attacking caused way to high casualities, unless you take time to go all way around the enemy and attack from behind (they didn´t react much) which somehow caused much less casualities. - There is another Impressions game, which quite use the same model of economy - Lords of Magic, it lack the whole farming part, but you had to assign people to different things in your capital. - Yep the third game was a disaster from what I heard, it take very long time in development too - when it finnaly released, games such Medieval Total War I and Stronghold I had already been released which make the situation for Lords of the Realm III even worst, since it meant you had even less reason to try it. Stronghold - I have to absolute agree about how wall look made of paper. It often resulted in strange situations, where you still have an archer in top of something that once was a all but now could be described as a "column" in the middle of nothing connecting to nothing. Or you have a archer firing at the swordsman as the wall beneath him slowly vanish and eventualy he and the swordsman are at the same ground. - One first game, you didn´t had lions, but bears, and believe me if you run in one of them early one you would be huge problem, even your lord was quite weak to it. - Talking about lords, I remember them begin quite fragile in the first game, which was good and bad, since losing them was rather easy. - Agree again on the game begin way to fast - even if claimed that different troops had different roles it was very hard to control or even noticed anything. - Also I have to agree about the game not begin sure of what kind of tone would like to have - in one hand you had all those medieval clichés of dark ages plus lot of torture devices which kind suggest something, but you got all those comic character with names such as "rat", "pig", "wolf" and personalities to match which kind feel like strage a comedy or fairy tale thing. I don´t understand why they haven´t made like Lords of the Realm, which each character had a real titles and personality to match, but feel much more natural and coherent with the tone and theme of the game. Small curiosity - there was a another game called Stronghold, this one did by SSI with the D&D license it was curious city build with first person view (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stronghold_%281993_video_game%29) Age of Empires: - I agree with Rob how the game allowed you to build a amazing castle, shame thay you can´t put archers in the walls. Also due how rts works you often didn´t have much time to build the exact way you wanted.

I am really curious for this game, I haven´t made my mind between Endless Legend or Beyond Earth. - About Techs: In the beginning of the cast, it was said how vague/confusing the Endless Space tech tree is, and I had to agree - there is two reasons I believe: one is the naming of each tech due the use of technobabble that often mean nothing and fell really vague. This appear to be a very trick thing to use/write, I have seen works which used fake words to great effect, but I wonder if the volume of names that might cause a problem. I can´t avoid to remember old crpg that instead having descriptive names on the spells (like "fireball"), they got things like "halito" or whatever is. Because of the number you couldn´t avoid to get really confused. The other is the often their position which can helps confusion - it take me a while to figure the large ship hulls are in the exploration/expansion part of the tree and not in the military. Still is a lot less confusing that the Galatic Civ II tree which I still have no idea where medium hull are or what unlock it XD (later I did find it). also I got to agree with hexgird about the "optimal path" issue on techs on Endless Space. I cannot avoid but wonder, while sometimes civ got criticised by use of concept such "great man", "barbarians", ect.... it uses does use it in way that make it the game really intuitive and acessive, more that others of its genre. I wonder too how Beyond Earth will deal with that. - I got to admit, at first Endless Legend Factions didn´t no catch me (looking some screenshots), I am a bit suspicious of games try to have "too different" factions/races/ect ... as it often it feel flat, but after I watched some of their video intros for the factions they got me a bit more.

Very good episode! While I haven´t played the The Sims 4, at least playing the previous titles (which I did all of them), I do felt the same about how after a while I does feel that overcome the initial issue of limited resources don´t take much time. Still I can understand that on ground of avoiding excessive micromanagement, that would limit the player on what could be created or expressed. Other thing I did found is how at least on The Sims 3 (at least I could remember, could be wrong) the world, since you could not visit the neighbors and public shared spaces, felt more alive and natural. Before that wasn´t hard to just create a empty box filled with sims to interact with your main sims (since you wouldn´t see the inside anyway).

1) What is the historical movie that most get you angry due mistakes? On the same note, there is also a movie that you know that is really wrong, but can´t help but enjoy it? despite everything. 2) I believe that at least once you guy did comment about some Total War clones, like XIII Century, but I am curious of what you found about it. 3) There is one game (or a genre) that you can´t not play for some reason (or just don´t know about it well or have time or anything) but you truly one day want to give a try?

Very good episode, I too loved this episode and would really like to see more. On games about the WW1, well while not exactly about the WW1 Valkyrie Chronicles It´s a jrpg/tatical game, the player does take the role a commander of a militia unit of "Gallia"(a neutral country) which is under attack by the "East Europan Imperial Alliance" (somekind of Prussian empire) which is already at war against the "Atlantic Federation" (the allies), the game draw the visual strongly from WW1 (mainly the uniforms) while the plot is somewhat WW2. It´s worth to mention that it does mention themes such prejudice and persecution in a rather well way, with the Dracsen, a people which is often target of hate and at one point, the player does even go free Dracsens from a concentration camp. To be fair there is a lot of anime and manga which is either around WW1 (and some featuring it, but in a rather fantastic way) or imagine a alterntive story where the Meiji Restauration didn´t happened or even Perry didn´t go (or was kicked out by giant robots, I swear there is a anime about this) so Japan wouldn´t join in either the WW1 or WW2. I guess one reason why we see so few games about WW1 is that it´s very hard to proper model the change in way battles where fought, from the early large scale movements to the trech warfare, add to this the difficult to proper represent the number of troops and terrain size, without going to using hexes, counters, ect...which make doable, but I guess some game developers due the desire for more graphical kind of game would avoid it. But on a curious note, Call to Power II, and I don´t know if was a accident or designed that way, did make its WW1 units have very high defense but lower attack, in fact their attack was lower that the Victorian age units! This often could let to stalemates as attacking anything was very hard and often cause several losses. But most time this became quickly a frustration, as you end bringing in your old Victorian units to see if anything changes (small note, there wasn´t a WW1 tank in the game).

Another reason why some people reject the wonder victory in age of empire might be because it felt, as a "winstate" not very well contextualized or clear, in sense that player might felt cheated. About the conflict between players which don´t enjoy the combat and those which enjoy: I think the issue isn´t much the combat itself, but rather that is difficult to have a game where both systems don´t became to overwhelming to control at the same time, and as you guys said in the RTS episode, this kind became the problem for RTS and much like Troy said, as the when multiplayer became more common and the gameplay changed to became more about the "technical perfection" which conflict with the way some player like to play. One reason of why military often can overtake a game is the lack of restriction and consequences, since is often just there. No doubt, one of the great trick which Paradox has pulled is how wars work in their games, where costs, consequences, along with the other mechanics such as casus belli and war exhaustion make every war unique in objectives and consequences and duration. Add to this the fact that in their games, due the intentional lack of a "winstate" and other mechanics that give to the player and AI some space to breath and to recover in case of them begin defeated. While losing a war in other games is quite fatal and often the easiest way to win if the military mechanics aren´t very well made. One exemple would be some rts, where due lack of any kind of morale, diplomacy, routs or anything else, make numbers weight too much, once someone have lots of units, the other players have no hope to win if they didn´t play the same way. Soren said that would be hard to have samething in Civ (and in others too) and I can understand that, because this kind of restrictions or limitations, if not very well made they can fell very heavy handed or arbitrary.

I am really divided if I should bought Red Dragon or not. In on hand I would like to see and play with the extra armies, but then there all the other stuff which isn´t appear to be working very well or missing...Like Tom Chick said in his review, I almost which there was a way to some how add this armies and some features in Airland Battle. About the huge amount of units in Wargame, I got to agree that after a certain point and if you aren´t really familiar with the modern militar terminology it does get a bit confusing, I had to read the almost 200 pages guide on Steam which Fraser mentions to figure out some important stuff, such that there is some anti radar missiles which I wasn´t aware, or that autocannons cause such damage to morale or how to use infantary (most time I had only anti-tank or anti-helicopter infantary only). Still, most time the icons they use do their job very well. I might add one more thing about the challanges of having sea battles? aside from their role, another issue is that range of the weapons is very long, so much that you need large maps to avoid ships of one side snipe the other before they even had a chance to do anything. Fall of the Samurai sea battle in multiplayer where really annoying because of that, as long someone show up with Ironclands the other side, most times, had no chance at all, specially with the earlier ships, because Ironclads range was so large that they could hit ship in the other side on their deployment zone. To be fair, even in Sea of Japan map, the which was that biggest map, the only thing that changes is that this take slight time to happen the side with Ironclads had only to move a bit before firing and the other side was helpless trying to getting near. I got to agree that a Napoleonic themed game using this engine could be fantastic, as long units didn´t die that fast like in Airland Battle, maybe a sci-fi theme could work to, given their engine ability to deal with missiles and explosions, how about some giant robots bashing each other and exchange barrages form a pistol range?

I have been playing AoW III and I am enjoying it a lot. But I do agree with the points about the strategy par in AoW III, however, the thing is: strategy part in AoW wasn´t really that deep even in the original games, true it does more to get building done, but also it was just a matter of time until your towns grow enough to build anything around 1 or 3 turns. Build the Pioneer unit, never made much sense to me even in the first games, you almost don´t need to build new town in majority of the olders maps (except in the campaign, where there is a couple of moments where you must do it). Also in the older games you only need to take mines and other structures, they don´t even need be around the town. In AoW II and Shadow Magic, they introduced the whole system of Wizard Towers, where you can only cast spell inside the area covered by them, but as the game unfolds, this didn´t matter you all ways end covering all ground you need. Now towns do have this new radious around them, which I enjoy, careful position of cities appear to have greater weight and also you don´t need to spam towns. Another change that I loved is the return of your general as active hero, since AoW II your main leader as reduced to "stay inside a town with Wizard Tower and don´t answer anyone knocking in the door", now it´s more like AoW I, with him or her running around with the other heroes and units. Fun Fact, at the same time tha AoW II was moving your main hero away from battle, Heroes IV as literally taking you heroes out of their tents and high horses and putting them on the field (but it didn´t work very well for HOMM). The improved customization options for the visual of character is amazing and had more options that I would have expected. On the level up, they are following similar way to the original games, expect that back there you had to choose between four random abilities or improvement of +1 to a main attribute, and now you do have more options to choose, still I agree that improvements could be done here. Curious thing is: in the original games it was rather easy to build a overpowered hero, just get Chaining Lightning (mass stun) and the abilities to Double Strike and Lightning Strike (or anything that causes stun) this does not appear to be the case anymore. Heroes do appear to get powerful, but not so much like in the other games. One thing that I really like in AoW, it was their visual design, which, like it was said on the podcast, have that colorful and classic fantasy themes and AoW III does manage to keep that feeling and theme very well. While I liked Warlock, I never enjoyed much the background or characters.

Congratulations on the 250 show! Final Fantasy Tactics actually could be a good potential show... Got to agree about Matrix game begin hard to find, I mean, I heard about them (and Pandora) but I never found them (or know where to find) or their website until a couple of days. I could understand reservations about steam or the difficult to get there (due the bizarre behavior of greenlight) but Gamergate is could be a option...

That "feature", while very impratical, did make slight sense in shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai, where taking control of a gun could be helpful (in one of the historical battle, using this could speed the thing a bit, since you hit ther towers in castle more fast) and at least using the gatling gun was quite fun. But again, it was impratical, since you could not control or see what going one while you are on this mode. Which is the same problem with Rise and Fall hero system, taking control of a hero in Dynasty Warrior style was a nice idea on the paper, but while in this mode you couldn´t control anything. I just wonder if CA is thinking abount somewhere down the line to do something like this... (well they already tried it with Spartan and Viking). In Rome II, does not help much or make much sense. They also "improved" the first person view mode for units, to be fair, for sword infantary units it´s quite cool, you see the commander rising his sword in the air while turning his head toward his men leading the charge, for the other units was quite like "meh", the elephants where a huge let down, archers in top of them just stand there while in this mode, instead of using their bows. By the way, I too read de Bello Gallico and wonder if instead CA created campaign divided as each chapter (or each campaign begin a couple of chapters), much like they done withe Napoleon. It would allow to a more focused design and more unique battles and situations.

I think I know why terrain are getting more flat... One thing that plagued early days of the Fall of the Samurai (later one they fixed it) was the "Line of Sight" bug, by some strange reason, terrain could break unit line of sight, even is there wasn´t anything really between the unit and its enemy. You would order the unit to fire, but instead, it just moved toward the enemy until it got very very close or entered in melee. Uneven terrain (like cliffs, steps, elevated terrain, depressions) increased this issue, I remember a couple maps where that used to happen, you put units, but depending of the position, they just won´t fire or some others where, without much clear reason, they would fire. Flat terrain make easier to avoid this, still is a strange, slight lazy solution. But, if Rome II was really rushed, I could understand they taking such path to avoid even more issues. Also I can see rough terrain causing Camera issues and too much woods/cover making seeing the units very hard (let´s remember their focus on visual of the units). In King Arthur terrain was so wild (which wasn´t bad), that sometimes you can´t really tell what´s going on, because combined with that you got the bad camera controls, I remember one battle, where you rescue Gwenavier, the terrain was so covered in woods and with such mountains, that it made very difficult to control and play it since I had to zoom out it a maximum (despite all of their work on the units, textures, armor design, camera controls and terrain forced you to zoom out so you won´t see most of that). I don´t see much a problem with using satellite scan or whatever CA is using, but they need to tweak that data more, change a few things maybe... because it still better that having the same battle in same map over and over again (this happened to me with King Arthur) but sure I agree with Rob and Troy, that some well planned and designed maps/battles could be a good change.

That would explain, is just I did know about that and by playing fm1 and fme I rememberd a couple names such the sieger rifle, piz missile launcher ect... Maybe, at least for a while, back there, a game like that, on the pc would have the advantage of begin the few only more classical turn based tatical games until the xcom revival for the pc (now in my humble opinion, still a even good window for release a good port of one good tatical jrpg/strategy or anything like that, given the genre revival). Also it would avoided much of the players backslash that the changes which FME and later Syndicate and XCOM suffered when they announced their fps versions suffered. On consoles might not made much different at all, as the genre survived there quite well and even maybe take a different ways. Not sure if would work with Robot Taisen in the pc, while I love the idea, I can imagine other players avoiding it, on the other hand, FM maybe could do it (more realistic and more close to battlemech aesthetics)

Really? Never heard about that, I know only FM1 which had only a fan translation, so maybe its rather a mistake or a joke (I know another case where a fan translation, put something that the original game did not had), because weapons appear to have normal names (I did a quick check at a faq). Anyway, I was really thinking of how much Front Mission Evolved became very generic (both plot and gameplay) due poor westernization, which was not really needed given the fm universe is fairly outside normal jrpg troopes and visuals, also it was predate the whole "let's pick a strategy game and turn it on a fps" that didn't work very well in the long run (I am thinking on what happened to syndicate/bureau on pc). One can only imagine that in another universe, had they released a default tatical game with robots, they might have instead predate the xcom revival of the genre.

I agree, the close (at least I know, I might missed a good title or two) we got was Empire Earth (but it take to long to get the right epoch). But for turn based at least the console got the Front Mission (the turn based jrpg game, not that fps thing on steam that look like someone watched too much Gundam 00 but failed to understand what made Gundam fun, oh I could write a lot on what Front Mission Evolved westernization killed the game). To be fair, even C&C Red Alert 3 missed a very good chance to have some real and huge mech showing up... (I still can´t believe, that with a whole faction build up on japanese pop culture stereotypes, but they didn´t have a giant robot made of other five vehicles...) Given how much technology improved, a RTS with some real mech punching each other (or karate kicking each other in space) is doable and could be awesome. By the way, after listening again to both episodes about Wargame and reading again Tom Chick´s review of Wargame Airland Battle, I bought it. Luck that while I missed the when it was on sale on steam, Gamersgate give me a second chance (with around 66% of discount). You guys are so right about the game, it´s really good. I was a bit afraid that would be like World in Conflict (which while not bad, the "God Powers" as Tom Chick point and fast pace, ruined the game for me), but Airland Battle is fantastic.

Maybe another reason why rts are dying (or not) its that given how much graphics and technology improved is very hard for a large company justify a traditional rts game with lower graphics (how rts used to be and in comparsion to other games), but if they up the graphics that most times mean going 3D and building a AI which really understand the 3D element is very trick without any experience on the genre (or even when you have experience) also this mean going away from what rts used to look like. Sure, games such Wargame and others can do it, but look what happened to Rome II even with all CA experience. On the other hand as Hexgrid pointed, indies might be able to do it, they have more acess to resources and tool that before and they can make a traditional rts, nostalgia might help that too, since its easier for the graphic design, which mean more focus on other elements. Now, about Rome II - right now I am about to uninstall it, while it got a lot better, I still missing something, I guess it was like Rob said in previous episode: it´s soulless. Troy also hit right on about the reduction of the henchmen and other stuff characters used to have. I support the theory that it was rushed, a couple of day before release, they made a very weird statement about how they would offer extra support in the early days after the release... My pet theory is that one) The game was too large too ambicious two) they got to rush it out. Let´s see what next CA might do, I mostly expect that something akin to shogun 2 in quality and focus, it they learned the lesson, as they did before - and maybe we see CA working with that Warhammer IP.

Crusader Kings success and it reach far beyond the expected fan base might be due a couple of reasons: One thing that often plague Grand Strategy games and 4X is that due scale things get very abstract (in case of space 4X, often due poor race design, everything became not only abstract, but "alien" in the bad sense of the word*) and because of this, thing get very distant and impersonal. Also, "people" does not appear much in such games, despite the fact we have such huge amount of works, books, essays, movies, ect.. about what famous leaders, generals did or not, or what their role in something was (like the many works about Ney´s role in the charge of the French cavalry in Waterloo), we often don´t see that much in games, at best we assign "admirals" or other thing but the don´t have personalities or interactions, they are just "bonus".(space 4X love to do that). Now CK2, manages to avoid this traps in quite amazing ways, you have this immense and active "cast" of characters and the game all about their interactions (even without a single line of dialogs they get very personal and grow as time passes) something we often see only in some jrpgs/jstrategy/visual novels games, which also often are much about having a large cast of character interacting with each other, some epics (CK2 remember me a lot of the Tale of the Heike) and historical novels/dramas/books (like the Cursed Kings trilogy). Another thing, and it something I was thinking about the episode about the State or RTS, might be that despite begin a rather complex game, like all Paradox games, it does not have rigid "Winstates" or require any "technical perfection" to play it, this allow for th eache player to figure how to play it in their own rhythm, and the setting make for ok for you to commit mistakes (something that other game (or the other players) might not forgive in different cases) this could helped new players. And the smaller focus too. Now about some funs stories: In old game I played with the William the Conqueror. I was able to win England, but I did commit some mistakes along the way, like upsetting the remaining saxon nobles by removing their titles and giving to much power to my allies, but while William was alive, things still in manageable, but when he died, the throne passed to his son, which was not like his father, those begin his struggle to live under his father shadow and trying to keep things in one piece. For while he did, we was good as his father, but one wrong marriage, of his sister with the mighty Duke of Buckingham prove to be a mistake. The idea with that marriage was to keep the duke in line, but his wife was ambitious, and him too. Things start to spiral out of control as more and more vassals start to rebel and plots came one after another, while the French King was clearly planning to retake Normandy. The king armies and mercenaries run from one place to another, until coffers became empty and then Buckingham rise up in rebellion forcing the king exhausted to give up the crown or lose everything. He lose the crown which goes to the Buckingham´s puppet, but that gives William´s son enough breathing space, as most vassals stop to rebel and the few lasting ones could be crushed. Later one, while Buckingham and his puppet fight against each other, William´s son swear loyalty again to the King of France, which saved him from a potential war and take way many lands and vassals from England. In another game, I noticed that one daughter, married to the King of Bohemia, which already had a son from a previous marriage, on her own set up to murder his child, so the throne goes to her child. * Note: some 4x races designs, often to me appear to be only superficial "exotic" without any deep or reflection ingame, which mean great ideas often wasted. Take the creatures which live inside gas giants in Master of Orion 3, on the surface the concept looks great, that it until you notice, that this race play exactly like all other and due some bizarre reasons, they even build farms (why? how?) or could became Monarchy (how creatures which live inside gas giant have concept of bloodline, nobility and titles?). Even better, another race was of intelligent cristal, again on concept looks great. But ingame, they play and behave exactly like everybody, which bring a lot of questions, like how or why they build ships and how can you board one of them? I mean, like how your guys can fit inside their ship? (if memory don´t fail me, you can board ship in mmo3, but I could be wrong). Funny fact to remember, Master of Orion 3 races where designed to be more "realistic" because the art direct believed that the old races where too "silly".

Might I add two more thing about manuals? Due technological limitations (mostly storage limitations) older games could not have all the needed text ingame, they had often, specially in case of rpgs to have spells, class, weapons and even dialogue in the manual because they could not fit in on those old diskettes (5 1/4 and newer ones). Today, there is almost no reason to leave any info in the manual, since all could be easily ingame and storage isn´t a problem in most cases. Also, today most games came in boxes of the same type and size which no doubt make easier for production, logistic and shop organization, but they can´t fit in a huge manual. Back, each game would came in a boxes with different types and sizes. I wonder how much trouble that could cause for production, organization and logistics. At least for me, while I was placing my old boxes in shelf I had problem with one game or another which didn´t fit in.

I believe the greatest barrier to Warcraft IV it the fact that given that WoW is a on going story, there is the question where in the timeline they would put War IV - they can´t put ahead, since it would limit future expansions for wow and maybe even given spoilers. Past, either before WoW or Warcraft I-III is a option and maybe is a bit more easy to fit in, but somehow you know how the game would end, after all it can´t change how WoW or what happened between each Warcraft (if memory didn´t fail me or I did read some wrong material, another problem is that in universe, the time between each Warcraft was very short, something like a very few years, less that a generation). Sometime, I wonder the if relationship between WoW and Warcraft isn´t similar to what happend with the Ultima (rpg) and Ultima (online) where the online version was the only one which survived of the original franchise.

I think its a very good theory. The only game which managed to do that very well was the Settlers I and II, but the game had a much different pace, more slower and relaxing that most RTS and as more about city building. That allowed for a more complex way to handle resources without overwhelm the player. While I never played Knights and Merchants, I often heard how people said that the complex resource management often was quite tiresome, since you also had to do a lot of stuff. oh, yes. Most RTS had that, but you never really need it anyway or even made any difference. Even Cossacks, which was about XV century warfare, had them, but you never really could use it, since the game pace was so ridiculous fast (it was almost like someone playing a video in fast-foward) that you couldn´t move you regiments in any strategical way, at best you would to massive selections and thrown them at the enemy (I know, that somewhat you do in Total Annhilation, but it worked very well there, while in Cossacks, if felt strange and even historical innacurate). That remember me of Empire Earth I, where you could spend resource improving invididual units. But first, the game never tell you about that (Take me a while to figure that out) and hardly made any difference, and again the pace of RTS game, and the lack of way to see which units you had upgraded or not, made difficult to keep them alive or even remember they existed. Another issue, the "invisible bonus" where you told that now you have 0,0002% when doing something, but while you almost won´t notice, the community in multiplayer will make a huge issue of about that...or maybe the problem is, that the game never tells you when a bonus kick. This affect a lot of space 4X, where each race have a lot of bonus, but they all felt exactly the same. Talking about Empire Earth... the first two games managed to combine Civilization elements and RTS elements very well, later Rise of Nations (maybe Rise of Legend too, but I never played) pushed this forward even more, I believe that this was the limit of how much stuff you can thrown in. But a classic exemple of disaster was Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War. I remember how back there, when it was released I was quite hyped to it, due begin a fan of Empire Earth I. But in the end they never sold the game where I live and I could only test the demo, it was huge let down (to be fair, I didn´t liked Empire Earth II too, I didn´t even bother with the third game) so much that I didn´t complain anymore the lack of sale. Anyway, here is the deal: Rise & Fall tried to combine RTS with Dinasty Warrior style of gameplay. You would play RTS style, with heroes, but you can assume direct control of said heroes (for a short time, you had a stamina bar, once it end you back to the rts, to remain in hero mode you had to find more stamina potions) and play a hack and slash game. It was a nice idea on paper, but in reality all that Rise & Fall became was a bad RTS and bad Dinasty Warrior clone (it simple lacked everything that make Dinasty Warrior fun, such the charismatic characters, the colorful designs, the over the top themes). Poor controls, lack of feedback (it was very hard to tell when you blows are hitting the enemy or not) and clashing design decisions: because overall the game was trying to be accurate, but the heroes felt out of place, it was strange seeing Cleopatra running around with small knifes mowing down Roman Legions or seeing Caesar using a longbow or calling for air strikes from catapults. Again, say what you will, Dinasty Warriors, innacurate and fantasy like it is, at least its quite honest and manage to make its elements coherent. And if memory didn´t fail me, some DW game came with ingame enciclopedia telling a more accurate version of the events in the game. But the issue is that in hero mode you can´t manage your units or building so effective you lose control of everything (I don´t remember what happened in game, did everything freeze?) begin thrown from one mode to another was confusing. To be fair, the idea of taking direct control of a unit is quite cool, and I would love to see that in Sins of Solar Empire as was suggest in another podcast. I believe it would work very well, because such minigame combine more with sins pace (there is a lot of time that we can spend just looking at the game amazing graphics, a minigame there won´t hurt). But there, didn´t work since all the stuff you most keep track in a RTS.

Amazing podcast! Troy´s fantastic point about the conflict between how the player could play the single player campaign in anyway (and because of this with greater sense of self-expression and agency) against the demands of the multiplayer (where community and the efficiency-driven style of play was imposed over the player, which had less self-expression and agency) also remember me one thing: The demand of total different play style along with "optimal strategies" (and maybe exploits, but they aren´t the same) lead some players to a general fear toward RTS and multiplayer. Some people (specially ones which played classic RTS, but no other strategy games) often complain how they where playing at their on rhythm until they where overrun by other players with more units (this fear often get the image of the zerg rush or the priest in AoE 1,2 and their "wolololo"). Another issue, is that while in single player you would have a larger self-expression and agency at the same time that "optimal strategies" even if they exist, they only affect you if you wish (In Skyrim I could forge hundreds of Iron Dagger to rise my Smithing, but only if I wish) but in multiplayer things change: you might be forced by the game (if its poorly made or balanced) and community (in MMOs often you could be reject by clans and party if you character isn´t using the latest optimal build) to play in a total different way that might have much less agency or self-expression. Another point not related: there appear to be a fine balance between much stuff a player must do and react in classic RTS. If you try to insert too much stuff the game could collapse. For me, the best case of this issue if Cossacks, the game already runs at a ridiculous speed, but the fact that you must form regiments manually is really annoying - "recruit lots of individual units, recruit standard-bearer, recruit drummer, form regiment, watch them all die at speed of light, repeat again" all of this while lots of things are happening in the game.

About the question if a game could became fun again after a problematic release, I got to agree with Troy and Rob about Rome II, I felt almost the same now (after some initial more defensive stand on the game). While Empire, despite all flaws, I played a lot (I finished a campaign even before the patch 1.5 which was the last major one), I haven´t touched much Rome II... only a brief to see how patches have improved (and to be fair, performance is a lot better) but still... No doubt CA might can release a good game again, they managed it before and I still have high hopes for what they can do with the Warhammer Fantasy IP (well, now CA can use all fire they ever dream to use with Bright Wizards). Anyway, this issue is more complicated when the said game belong to a quite unique genre or subgenre, since there isn´t another game you could try. I felt this about late Heroes of Might and Magic and Disciples titles...now while Ubisoft maybe isn´t hitting on the right spot (HOMM5 was a nice welcome back to the more colorful design of HOMM2 and they got close with HOMM6, but Ubiplay ruins everything), Disciples on the other and is pretty much dead now (shame, I forgot to send a question what about you guys think about the Disciples III...). Total War too, the previous (Napoleon and Shogun) games have raised the bar and other clones or inspired games don´t are the same thing.

Actually, Shogun 2 appear to take much inspiration from japanese samurai movies, like Heaven and Earth (Ten to chi to) (by the way, its a great movie) or even Last Samurai, but this cinematic inspiration does not clash with design (it does with accuracy) but still combines somehow with the samurai movies aesthetics. Shogun 2 is really worth, aside from what gorilla pop, said, I can only add the very good expansions, agents work great (maybe except monk, never used much them). It was the Total War game which I played most (around 271 hours) even the multiplayer avatar campaign is fun (but very unbalanced).

From what I remember, it´s fine for the grand campaign, mostly because Darthmod don´t change or introduce too much new mechanics like other mods - for most part, its balance AI (in battle and in the strategy mode), increase the size of units and add some new effects. It does came with some helpful setup tool so you can adjust some options.