ilitarist

You weren't there when our boys cast ice storm on those frostlings and all perished, Rob. You weren't there. Peculiar episode. 1993 was probably a good game but I don't see why you chose it to talk about strategy gaming. I suppose Master of Orion casts a long shadow (though as you've noted MoO2 has a bigger influence) and SimCity is a classic, but other than that you talked about some wargames and sport games. Rowan brought JRPGs into the discussion and that sounded interesting but there was no one to continue the discussion. I didn't get what all those wargames were and was especially confused about Fields of Glory. Because recently you've talked about Field of Glory 2 and that was a turn-based classical era wargame. And FieldS of Glory is real-time strategy about Napoleonic warfare. Huh. I also felt you don't really want to talk about MoO specifically, probably because you talk about it indirectly all the time anyway, but also didn't say much about SimCity. I only played the very first one and don't know what's the SimCity 2000 deal, why is it important. In general the podcast felt very superflous when you talked about strategy, Doom and Myst discussion were the meat of the episode. Nothing wrong about that, just looked like you're forcing yourself to talk about other things as if you have to. Also a little story about Alladin! I grew up in the 1990's in ruins of Soviet Union. Gaming was outdated and pirated to hell back then. You were lucky to get NES, and it wasn't official one, it was one of those things, unofficial clone of NES clone. All the cartridges were pirated of course, I don't think it was even possible to get a legal console game back then (only by the end of 90's you could get a legal officially translated version of contemporary game). So we got our pirate cartridges and as I later realized many of them were Chinese unofficial ports of games. Thus I played both Genesis and SNES Alladin on my NES. I think it had half of sprites the game was supposed to have, Genesis one had view size dramatically reduced. Both had lost half of the levels. SNES Alladin had ended half way in, just after a magic carpet level. Genesis lost some levels in the middle so you could sort of have a full story. Graphics looked even great for NES. But then there was unofficial bootleg one, ported from SNES. And it looked much better than official Genesis ported one so I never suspected that the game was unofficial one.

Good podcast. It has a lot of phrases like "feature creep". But not enough. I'd argue that CK2 was made obsolete - it has UI of a grand strategy game, not of RPG, and expansions did little to fix it (made intrigue window better and added more in terms of focuses). It always needed more universal systems providing flavor like Stellaris - something more than 3 types of appeals in the end of diplomatic messages. It needed a better economy/reations model for you to do something apart from waging war. Meanwhile EU4 on release was great. It had a unifying vision and potential for growth. It was full of working systems explaining the world. Yes, parts of the world were extremely boring to play - but they still worked in a common framework and they still had mechanical support. National Ideas are good example: on release few countries had them but they clearly where made as a mean to add uniqueness to each country, even if they're not that noticeable from the outside. But then their DLC model had got in a way. This elegant twist of mechanics did not get deeper, it got disjointed mechanics slapped on top of it. Things like parliaments, estates and factions of all sorts look like they're duplicates of the same idea but they don't interact at all. Few big systems that actually affect gameplay on a big scale (like development and institutions) are spread across patches and DLC making DLC-less version a monster and also preventing devs from properly enhance or fix those systems. So it's sort of good that they switched to regional features. More focused approach allows such small changes (and they can't do other kind of changes properly with current DLC model) to sort of work - after all, those 3 government buttons are kinda simplified estates, they even share the name sometimes (see Russian Boyars). Still even that is... ugly. It feels like feature creep in its ugliest form. Those government systems are not expanding existing mechanics, they exist outside of said mechanics, that's like spaghetti code. When they added National Ideas to every country it was an expansion; those government types and other features feel like you've missed some sort of patch that implemented global government system and this DLC is only supposed to make it more interesting for specific countries. Sad!

Funny story. Tried to play Duelyst today. I even had an account a long time ago. The game told me I have to link the account to Bandai Namco account. Bandai Namco bought the developer company. So I tried to do it. And I can't. Turns out Bandai Namco does not allow for accounts for many countries. They just cut them off - not even like Android apps that are not available in story but you can still use (Nintendo does that). They check IP and just refuse to register you without any proper explanation, it looked like a generic overloaded server error. I went to check the forums and turns out they claim there are some legal problems and there were few players in some countries so they violently cut them off. Most noticeable country was Russia. It indeed got the law that you have to store Russian citizens data on servers on Russian territory and it seems they've concluded that it would be too much bother to do that. However, lots of other countries are cut off including my own Belarus. They also blocked new accounts from China. China! I didn't spend any money on that F2P game but I've checked if they gave any refund to affected paying customers. They didn't. And for some time Steam allowed you to buy stuff for the game while you couldn't run it. That's a very curious behavior on the part of publisher. Meanwhile some of Bandai Namco games, like Dark Souls, work just fine.

I understand Troy's love for PvE last stand games. Those are strategy game that actually have a story, an arc behind them. You're always trying to be ahead of the curve. Even if it's not hard the last wave is the biggest one you see, there's an excitement. All of the tower defense games, Infested Planet, That Starcraft 2 Mission, XCOM (more or less), many military city-builders. Because all those grand strategy and 4X never work in terms of ending. For every Civilization game that end with a dramatic spaceship start from a besieged city you have a hundred games that have actually ended with a small fight on turn 350 and win through science or culture after 50 eventless turns. And if it was a multiplayer game than everyone will probably realize what's happening around turn 360, write "gg" and leave. Or those Total War winning condition. If you ask me to have 50 provinces than I've become the unstoppable juggernaut when I had 20; my 50th province won't be Rome or Judea or whatever, it will be Somewherestan in a middle of nowhere which I'll casually capture mopping up remains of some broken empire. Again, in Paradox games the game end when you decide it ends so they have that advantage (until Stellaris came and made actual winning conditions the most boring thing). Saw a good counter-example recently. Disciples 2, an old game in style of Heroes or Warlords. Its campaign is basically PvE. You have to get to a specific point and usually murder some strong army. There are other factions on the map but they sort of don't have any objective, they're just there competing for resources. The capital of any faction usually has insanely powerful guardian, you can't hope to beat it without something spectacular. So your strongest army beats their strongest army and depending on difficulty level they can produce new ones but never as strong as the ones you've beaten because units in this game levelup. So no one can lose until you win: you need to levelup powerful armies to reliably beat whatever comes out of enemy capitals even after they're humiliated. And then you plunder the map to get artifacts and potions to get enough strength to fight mission objective. Usually you don't have lose objective and thus loss becomes anticlimactic and the game in general feels like busywork. You know what happens every time after 2 mission and most of it is a grind. Seems like controlled environments like this tower defense are the best answer to strategy game story structure problem.

I think Rob greatly underestimated Age of Wonders 3. In some episode he mentioned that Endless Legend was the only truly great 4X of later years and I'm quite surprised by it, especially with EL being broken and unpolished in so many ways. AoW3 was rough when it came out but now it's one of the best 4X people do not notice. It's also similar to TW Warhammer so try it if you burned up on this. What differentiates this game is the character each map has - it's full of important structures that make you want to place cities as if you were playing Civilization. It's randomly generated landscapes are memorable and important. You can modify them by end game climate change spells. You fight neutrals in their huge monster dens and incorporate them into your powerful cities. Expansions added 2 new victory types - Seal control (basically have to keep strong monster spawn points for a long time; the idea is that even scratching an army sitting on those points makes it vulnerable for neutrals to take over) and sort of Diplomacy victory (you have to become the most popular guy with couple of races - not playable factions but races like elves and cat people - and build wonders for them). It has deep tactical battles. It has lots of competitive elements like global quests and diplomacy contest and global spells - usually 4X is all about fighting or allying but here you can get into a war of magical attrition. Try it now that it's a final version.

The problem with pirates is that it means you are pushed into a militaristic way early on AND AI can't do anything about pirates. As someone mentioned when you beat pirates you now have a great fleet and other factions are probably still struggling fighting off those guys. So military victory practically begs to be won.

Now won't be a good time. Waiting for 2.0 patch looks like the right idea.

It's always nice to hear Doctor Bruce warmly greeting you. Dominions is still Dominions I understand. I'm glad it exists.

hexgrid, ES2 is much better in that regard. Maybe too good in fact. There's so much choice it doesn't feel like there are important ones. Plus exploration is much more important and random. Feels more like Civilization 5 where you're reacting to the environment. Maybe more so due to resources. There are 2 of those in early game and you'll probably only find 1 of those nearby and it would mean you'll concentrate on specific ship modules, for example. As for tech they did good. There are few linked techs and you always have a lot of choice. There are techs you take no matter what but no tech you're required to take ASAP. Most of undoubtedly useful stuff is turned into tech tiers - i.e. after you research N techs of specific field you get bonus like better detection of anomalies, defensive buildings, economic upgrades etc.

Surprised by universal acclaim of Endless Legend. The game is gorgeous and innovative but, like Endless Space 1, it felt like a basis for a great game. And they never delivered. Those maps are beautiful but they never made them functional: I could only look at them in schematic mode, and even then it's hard to see anomalies and many features. UI is broken in many regards. AI is bad. But you're right about solitaire feel being one of the biggest problems. It feels more like a simplified Anno game sometimes than a 4X. Or a Colonization game where you rarely care about other colonies. It's a common problem in 4X games that you don't care about other people other than the size of their armies, but here they're complete black box. At least they have personalities. But you don't care about their resources (it's more convenient to trade on the market), you don't have about their tech outside of the power of their military (and it's mitigated by the power of military not being as defined by tech as usual, ground troops have separate pseudotechtree, many modules are found through exploration), combat plays by some arcane rules so it's hard to do something about countering their armies apart from adjusting your kinetic/energy attack/defense ratio. Those huge dividing quests sort of help, as well as special planets - those are nice, those give a galaxy some structure. Still, even in Civ5 I often think "this guy sells me Ivory and it helps my happiness so I have to maintain those relations". I don't think there's anything apart from military considerations forcing me to maintain peace. Maybe few of those political bonuses. They were supposed to add something to help this, but I rarely saw those agreements. The most interesting interactions with other empires come when you get several of those planets and you get lots of new citizens with a specific ideology. And their quests start to trigger. So when Cravers attack you it may also mean that you'll have to somehow handle that planet eating population, keep them from spreading, send them to frontier or something. It's more interesting than Stellaris where it's rarely beneficial to move your populace: here it's a huge part of the solitaire. My other problem with ES2 (as well as EL) is what Rob mentioned - even when systems work they feel like systems. You don't get the feeling of progress. It's a narrative story, your people are changed by the quest story and inclusion of new people with different ideas. There's no feeling of progress or change with the times. Techs are interesting and unlock new stuff like market trading or planet destroying, the economy goes into a singularity phase so you have to change your playstyle... But it's boring compared to Civilization or Stellaris where you feel everything changed. Really only numbers change. In Stellaris you may end up with genetically modified race of galactic overlords facing interdimensional invasion. In ES2 you fight other people same way on turn 200 as on turn 30 but with bigger ships and numbers.

Fantastic episode. Nice to hear Troy. I'm glad Rowan and TJ had brought some sanity asking to explain what the game is before talking about; also asking if it's playable today. I've heard some heretical laughter after TJ mentioned that Rise of Nations is better than Age of Empires 1 and 2. This is not something that can be tolerated. RoN is love, RoN is life, it made all the other RTS obsolete including Civilization.

Not even listening to strategy game podcast can shield me from sport games. "I work with engines for living" "I think average gamer will easily understand that engine management game unlike the game about hockey" - Michael, with a straight face

I'd like to thank Consul Kaiser for bringing a connoisseur humor to the podcast. Also Rob & Troy description of all those autogenerated battles reminded me of a possible perfect game mode of daily challenge. The one where you turn on the game every day, get your new tactical puzzle and see how dumb you are compared to real cool dudes. I think that's what Dyelist had done but I didn't like that game in general that much. Also there was something like that in Desktop Dungeons but it wasn't a good fit for that game.

Right, you're better not mix strategy games.

Liked the music and the story of the game. But I don't really dig this pixel-art. It looks exactly like a budget thing. And there's no nostalgic feel or anything about this game. Don't like it at all. Only played the campaign and it felt like I do not learn anything really. I reroll the map till the script gives me something that is winnable. All the choices are made for me and after I see what each unit does the game plays itself. I can only move my army forward. Sometimes I move artillery alone and spot targets for it. That's it. I don't get it. Maybe I don't get tactical RTS in general. I love Rise of Nations but it's all about economy. I love XCOM and it's all about war but it's tactical and turn-based. Oh well. Can't see this game really becoming a hearthstone: even though mechanics are simple it all seems... uncontrollable. Too much mechanical skill. EDIT: Also, Sacrifice is a very different game. There your character has various spells and it doesn't have map control focus.

Rowan is spot on about schizophrenic games not knowing if they're supposed to be savescummed or ironmanned. I don't like Darkest Dungeons that much but they're right about making XCOM clone with clear iron man goal. XCOM2 has infuriated me with it not being sure if its iron man or not. I've completed XCOM1 once on classic and then on normal Iron Man, and normal Iron Man felt great - intense, rewarding. Then I tried XCOM2 and was utterly humiliated. Devs idea is probably that player has to complete it once without Iron Man and replay on Iron Man. Because you have lots of things you can't anticipate: some missions may have sudden boss fights and those bosses need special tactics - see the Matrix hydra thing which clones itself after getting damage which will definitely screw you on your first try. On the other hand lots of mechanics only make sense in Iron Man - those mimics are useless once you replay mission and know where they hide, and you don't need all those abilities that help you suffer less from losses. And in empire building games there are sometimes very few ways of restoring after a lost war, like in Total War you either constantly expand and win every battle or enter a death spiral. Glad some devs know they have to make a choice. About guard AI: Dishonored had guards who noticed their colleagues are missing. They took over patrols so you couldn't just remove a single guard who interferes with your plan.

That was a very nice work at the end by the Wizard in the end. Praise! Praise! I still play Armello from time to time with friends and it looks like a boardgame properly developed to be played on PC in multiplayer. LoW does not, so I'll listen to Fraser here.

Funny how you say it's the first time TW factions feel really diverse. Because IIRC you've said something like that about Attila and it was an important selling point. There it was probably mostly in grand strategy, not combat. I.e. Romans start overextended, Huns can never settle, Eastern Empires know how to run a country. Later they've added some DLCs that felt very... forced. Like Picts who were guerilla fighters. Makes sense probably, they didn't use that blue paint for nothing, didn't they? But then there are Slavs who... Use poison?.. And build Wonders?.. And before that they really tried it in Empire with all that dynamics of Europe VS Natice Americans VS Indians. They even released special DLC about Native Americans, but when you played as Europeans those natives were doomed and you got that very experience of advanced armies with their pretty troop line smashing traditional armies. I haven't delved into Warhammer yet but even the best TW game I've played - Attila - felt relatively boring in combat even when strategic layer was fun. Mostly because inherently all those battles are won or lost before they've started. I rate this episode 10 out of 10 for mentioning Rise of Nations but subtract 3 for continuing bullying of brave game journalist Fraser for his subjective opinions.

You talked about colonization, but not about the actual Colonization game. Sad! I think it worked really well as player VS environment survival strategy. You wouldn't lose because of lack of food or anything but Natives could be more or less managed (they never attack first) and other contenders are rather passive. And then your country is put to the test in a giant confrontation. Maybe that last part was the problem because for most of the game you weren't properly challenged, only in the very end you realized how hard had you screwed up.

And as far as I can see this podcast is American and about the situation in America. Developers are from Germany and they have a very different history of ethnic problems.

Can't find it now. But anyway, the article itself was a political essay about modern Stalinism and not much else. It discussed young Russian Stalinists and it only used the term "gamer thought process" as a clear description. Of course it didn't imply video games are to blame for young people political views, he mostly blamed passing of times. Before recently Stalinism in Russia was associated with nostalgic old men. But as the article argued for younger people who didn't live in USSR Stalin's murderous industrilization is similar to Peter the Great's murderous militarization or Caesar civilizing France, just some statistics about deaths payed for the greatness and progress. Games only slightly help you imagine a dictator as rational and righteous figure who decides to make some sacrifice for the greater good. Also, Paradox (and other historical games) have this problem of really wishing you to do historical stuff even if it wasn't rational or realistic at the time. Ethnic cleansing is at least optional and rarely required. But, say, Hearts of Iron 4 has lots of things that happened in reality due to irrational thinking or dumb luck. Like Hitler's adventure in Munchen - it was a huge gamble in reality while in game it's almost automatic. Or AFAIK if you don't do Stalin's purges you risk civil war breaking USSR and leaving it ripe for the taking - so HoI4 basically agrees that Stalin was not a paranoid maniac but a wise politician. @Rob Zacny, I remember you saying you like when the wargame makes you think the way generals thought back then and forces you to go the same seemingly futile road (like throughing troops into the grind in WW1 Verden) but sometimes games portrait irrational decisions or unlikely coincedences as rational pre-determined events. Which feels wrong.

Oh my, those Battle Brothers texts look like narrator from Darkest Dungeon is going through his edgy teen phase. About reactionary auditory: a funny thing. I've recently read some Russian political analyst who discussed political backwardness of Russia youth - all that USSR nostalgia and stuff. He explocitly called one of the reasons as a "gamer mentality". Strategy games often represent inhumane choices as valid and necessary measures. Totalitarian dictatorship is just a set of bonuses that is useful when you have to fight lots of wars. It's easier for modern young men to see Stalinism as "effective play" - the country lost several millions people but it helped to get ready for war, and most games like Civilization or Hearts of Iron try to represent this as a right strategy in those circumstances. Of course such influence can't be that important. But after playing dozens of games where liberal democracy is just some trade bonus and totalitarian dictatorship gives you more troops or something - strategy gamers are probably more open to idea of everything is "balanced" in reality as it is in a game.

I remember ridiculous attacks on Witcher series for only having white European populace. This was dumb because those people missed how Witcher cleverly talked about racism between people who looked identical to us (Nilfgaardians and Northerners literally use the same models while hating each other) or racism against white European dudes with wrong shape of ears. AFAIK Battle Brothers do not do anything like that so it's not as ridiculous to ask them for representation. But if your position is that requests for representation are themselves ridiculous than the best course of action seems to be just ignoring it. Can't have a discussion when there's only a statement.

Entertaining. Nice to hear Troy.

Why? What stops you from having single-player generals the way they were before? At least in Shogun 2 MP had big differences from SP and it was ok.