ilitarist

@spacerumsfeld, perhaps it's about a lack of English language background. I've enjoyed your comparisons to reality but I had to understand basic rules of tabletop air combat by tidbits. Like the fact that changing course works in specific ways and hit calculation involves heavy math. I also didn't know what is trick-taking game. It was still interesting to listen a real pilot talking about tabletop air combat.

When Bruce said they'll explain things for people not familiar with air combat games I hoped it wouldn't fly over my head. But it did.

Sad to see Game King to be so objectively wrong. Constant progress in a strategy game is boring. It's not so bad in EU4 cause gameplay changes with new unlocks; in the beginning you're looking for any way to grab some land and by the end you manage truce timers for another war with your rivals as well as grabbing all the smaller countries with Imperialism CB. But still EU4 becomes boring if you had mastered it; I treasure setbacks when they happen. Civ is bad in that regard as you guys have said, if you don't progress you just lose, especially on higher difficulties where AI gets a head start instead of greater boosts to contend. Good strategy gives you stories and comebacks, let's you deal with a bad hand, allows handling new unexpected threats. Even Stellaris is good about it presenting you with an end boss scenario, powerful guardians and other things like that. When you talked about XCOM and Dankest Dungeon I had Battle for Wesnoth pop up in my head. It had a bad case of save-load syndrome: most of the time your hit chance is around 50% and even the most perfect setup can result in 0 damage to the enemy. Losing high-level units may cost you a campaign - so, just like in Panzer General you can reload till you get what to do and dices roll your way. Games like that feel like an excercise in patience. XCOM in theory has lots of tools to help you deal with bad situations - upgrades that can save a dying soldier, improvements to a new rookie soldiers etc. Still in practice it doesn't work as an Iron Man experience unlike, say, Massive Chalice (underrated game! Though it has a problem with a spoiler final battle that should have been explained before it started) where your people are supposed to die of old age after 3 battles or something. Good episode, by the way.

One important point: very many people hate timers for some reason. I often see reviews for some games mention that timers ruin the game for them. You can often see it in Panzer General style wargames, where AI is a passive defender and your ability to just bomb it with long range attacks is limited by turn limit. I even see mods sometimes to remove those limits. Good example is Fantasy Wars/Elven Legacy series: the game is a series of missions, sometimes you have side missions or choice between the two. Each mission has an objective and a turn limit, and it's usually pretty low. Plus there are always optional objectives: some ruins to explore to get gold and artifacts, some allied units to save or just simply towns to capture for gold. The game turns into a puzzle where you have not just to understand how to capture an objective (usually siege a town or travel to a specific point) and not just to do it in time but also to visit all the locations with artifacts and units to stay on curve, or at least those that are useful to you. Obviously there's no way to complete a map properly on your first try cause you have to know what locations you have to visit in what order. So if you look at negative reviews for the game - very, very many of those mention turn limit as if it's something that harms the game instead of turning it into a beautiful puzzle. Naturally there are many other issues people find but it's the most repeated besides "it's a bad game". I think for many people XCOM2 had the same problem even if they are lost in other criticism - XCOM2 is much bigger game so people have many other things to complain about. Indeed. And there's where the game lies to you. It's structured as a game you can complete on your first try, it has all the fancy movies and drama and stuff. As Rowan said it presents itself as a grand adventure, more like Dragon Age than Civilization.

I'm too intrigued. Couldn't ever get into XCOM2 even though I quite liked XCOM1. Lacked some sort of emotional connection - I'm no longer defending Earth, I'm fighting in some sort of sci-fi land. And the difficulty is turned up to eleven, it's like I'm supposed to already know all the system beforehand if I'm playing on Normal. Or maybe I'm too attached to Iron Man as it seems to be the right way to play a game like that. And now I'm waiting for the expansion. Have some warm memories of Massive Chalice which was a simpler and shorter game but still felt right on Normal Iron Man first try.

There's another type of meta-campaigns which are more of an RPG system: linear ones with optional side missions. Often see those in wargames like Fantasy Wars. The idea is you get an opportunity to get an advantage for main missions. It was done really well in Infested Planet - you had a clear set of missions you have to complete to win the campaign plus you had various side missions, more like skirmishes, where you could switch to a more straightforward mission structure and get some resources for the next mission. I think it's a perfect system for a singleplayer campaign as it offers dynamic difficulty that doesn't feel cheap: when the campaign is too difficult you just do some of easier side missions, start the next main mission with some advantage and you win. Meanwhile hardcore players can ignore those sidemissions. Another point: metacampaigns are often a result of players thinking they want more. Every damn RTS forum has lots of people moaning they want bigger maps, more contenders, no unit limit. Obviously, it breaks most games - it usually destroys balance by turning late-game advantages into most-of-the-game advantages and turning everything into a multihour slog. Meta-campaign gives this gigantism some sensibility. Especially the one like Rise of Nations which seems to exist to give you a feeling of one long map with a constant cyclic development.

True, riadsala, true. I too was disappointed when it was obvious guys clearly missed or misunderstood some things. Podcast format doesn't work as review and it's at it's best when it's a work of love. There were some great episodes born of extended play. One of the best episodes, Rome 2, had Rob playing Rome 2 long enough to read a book!.. And it's always a good listen. Rob and others mention some games they're still playing and I'd be glad to hear what they now think of, say, Total War War Warhammer or maybe Stellaris, or Europa Universalis for the tenth time. In a week we'll have 6 months without dedicated EU4 show!

It does give you much more interesting choices, mostly in tech tree. Politics mostly happen to you - when you fight you get more militarists, when you integrate people and trade you get pacifists, but it's all subtle and hardly will really affect your decisions. Spending lots of influence to get the party you want to be represented is a form of choice, yes. Systems are also much more interesting. And terraform features are mostly late game and aren't that good so I think guys exaggerate when they say that your empire becomes homogenous.

Those portrait packs are of uneven quality. E.g. basic "European Person" pack is fine, but compare it to basic "Muslim" pack. Celtic faces are OK but Indian or, say, Persian are so-so. But even if those were good there's so much they could do wit 3D portraits. They could at last make people of varying sizes and proportions. They could model genetics. They could add facial expression or camera angles or lighting to define characters. They could still portrait packs in a form of clothes/hairstyles/cosmetics/jewelry packs. Compare it to wargames and boardgames. Even smaller number of people enjoy those things, I think. Still you have bunch of episodes on them. It's either that or no episode at all. Because those are games our hosts are playing anyway. And Patreon is not nearly enough to make them devote their time to cover everything.

Good points on UI and expansions. We may hate the way Paradox are not exactly honest about the game being updated and playable even without expansions or the way feature creep is real - but still they update their games. Based on feedback! Other studious updated their games too. But, say, Amplitude had dumb UI/gameplay problems identified on alpha stage for every game and many of those problems still carry on as if devs do not actually play their own games that much. It took Paradox 5 years to update "Help me killing a character" plot message with actual link to a character you're asked to kill - but they got there. Still CK2 has fundamental problems with UI and basic gameplay principles so it's mindblowing to me it was able to become popular as a roleplaying experience. Really the basics of the game are less suited for character-driven game than, say, any of Total War games. You always have map taking 60% of screen even though map is only rarely important. You only see a single character at a time and it's in a small window. Characters sort of do not have a physical position in a world: they can teleport instantly and at the same time you can't send them anywhere manually. Up until the last update one of the most important things for characters - desicion panel - was inadequately small and hard to use. And so on. Frankly it feels like a mod for a strategy game with character in it from some modder who really likes characters. I wait for the day they rebuild Crusader Kings from the ground up. Then we'll play the game we're describing when we talk about Crusader Kings 2. And maybe they'll add half-decent 3D character generator. On the other hand they probably won't: Paradox will sink without selling 2d face packs.

Great and rutheless episode. Attila is still the only real Total War game I could get into. But I remember Rome having all those... traits. Creating characters. Context dependent. Character who fought Greeks could become Greek hater or Greek lover. Governor of a city with Academy could become interested in philosophy. The ones without a job became drunkards or deviants. Still remember some characters. No game since had captured this feeling of characters. Not even Crusader Kings where characters feel just too random, formulaic and at the same time parameters do not seem to affect that much. Maybe EU Rome had some of that with real personal ambitions. And it seems Medieval 2 has it. Maybe worth a try.

Glad you had some fun with it. And reminded most of us why we never will have any fun with it..

I'd love to have games like that on PC. Mindgames, betting, bluff, strategy. But the only thing that ever felt close was playing Armello with friends. Even then it feels like everything is decided by luck, there's no long term strategy, bluff or hidden agenda involved. When I read AAR for 4X games it looks like those things are happening there. But I rarely play 4X game where it is even remotely the case. Because most 4X are overloaded with mechanics and there's nothing to strategize and plan and manipulate once you've learned basic rules. I've even made a game that tries to distill this betting spirit of 4X - wasn't really good, but at least it tried. Maybe those games are hidden in wargame genre? Couldn't get even in Unity of Command.

Does Fraser really think WW1 was the only unpleasant war and that WW2 didn't have trench warfare? As for trench warfare it was less prevalent in other fronts and I see Battlefield 1 tried to expose those. Strange they didn't get to Russia/Austria&Germany theater of war. Didn't have time to implement biggest WW1 army (Russia) as well as 3rd biggest (France).

Wish I had this passion for that theme. When you talked about Ultimate General Gettysburg once I've asked for a way to get into the conflict. Bruce Geryk recommended reading The Killer Angels and I liked the book but still couldn't really care about the war itself. So couldn't many people, it seems, cause Wikipedia only has English and French versions of an article about that book and there's no Russian translation so I've read it in English. And that's not an easy read. Still was a good listen, even if I'm not into wargames or ACW. Thanks.

It must be a taste thing like a Pepsi/Coke or something with Europa Universalis 4 and Crusader Kings 2. I like the idea of Crusader Kings 2 but don't understand how can it be played once the novelty wears off and you see most of the events. All of the characters are so similar and it never matters who does what, and the game is still constructed like a strategy game so you're playing RPG in a strategy shell and neither works good. You get a simple strategy with a war suddenly ending cause someone died because of random event and then you get event chains that are only slightly dependent in an obscure way on character traits but usually are just random templates grabbing random characters and creating narrative from there. But Europa Universalis 4... That's the game. I haven't gotten to HoI4 yet only cause it won't be as good as EU4. Trying to trick myself into getting into HoI4 by converting grand campaign from EU4 to Vic2 and HoI4.

I'm really glad you all liked Total Warhammer that much. Because this is a series I'd love to love and half of my posts here are about all of them being a disapointment. Maybe not Shogun 2 because I couldn't get into it because of a seemingly boring premise. But I love Attila. Just bought it on this steam sale. Unlike every previous Total War game that had no real explanation as to why everything goes to hell (except maybe Napoleon) this one has a strong and understandable narrative. In Rome 2 even when I was a british tribe conquering Britain I was still asked to go conquer half of the world because that's what the game is about. Attila asks me to survive first and foremost. It gives me a crumbling empire and makes me wonder if it's weak enough at the moment so I can strike. Even when playing as side show patched in Garamantes (North African berbers) I seemy local flavor and state of the world affecting me. And the other eternal problem of Total War is solved: it tries to tell me that this is the battle as it has happened but I know that all of those great battles where ten times bigger. Now as it's a late antiquity and everything is crumbling it makes sense that armies are small and skirmishes decide fates of nations. ...And EU4 is still the game of the year. Still waiting for Stellaris which is supposed to come out soon. It's supposed to be like a Victoria 2 in space. It will be great!

The biggest appeal of Total war Warhammer over other Total War games is... Realism. Other TWs show me realistic representations of history and I know it doesn't work like that, Borodino had more than 3000 people. And they make empire management simultaniously overcomplicated and not authentic. No such problems exist when the game is about elves and demons instead of legionaires and elephants. WH40K as it seen in Dawn of War still remains a greatest setting for RTS game. I think Creative Assembly became too aware of how uneasy at is so in Company of Heroes 2 it's still WH40K but there they had no obligations for Games Workshop so they've added some reflections on the setting. Hope DoW3 will be great. Still, hope is the first step to disappointment, as the good commissar said.

Hello Bruce. Recognizability is just one of the factors. Those wargames about Russo-Polish wars are ignored in most of the Eastern Europe. Just as, say, AGEOD's Revolution Under Siege. Because people here do not care about wargames. They care more about good Nam movie like Full Metal Jacket than obscure complex game about Russia you can't play without reading manual. There are thematic preferences, yes. For some reason people in Russia like postapocalypse and fantasy. There are also genre preferences, people all over Eastern Europe like turn-based strategy games but usually not wargames.

I should probably only read Rowan's reviews for everything cause he highlights dxactly my problems with games but faster and more witty then I do. How can I stalk him? Anyway, some points I'd like to expand. Civ indeed has this inherent problem of the actual game is not what you might think or what AI may think or what winning conditions imply. You still have military path and it's a zero sum game included in cooperative solitaire. I prefer peaceful play and recently saw my friend who isn't fan of strategy games playing civ6. He ignored most of the district stuff, went wide and built military. He conquered 3 civs till the medieval era and after that it was clear there's no point in playing afterwards. You still can decide much simpler game that brings you obvious victory instead of mastering complex rules in hope no one beats you to the finish. I am peaceful player and I try to play against AI on even grounds. Civ AI doesn't know when to go to war and it's a common problem of 4x genre. Even worse, on lower difficulties AI won't go to war. This is why Civ always felt to me more like Anno games than Paradox games and districts are a logical step in direction of a citybuilder with fighting. Civ is stuck between trying to be aplike Hearthstone - elegant strategy where you try to do your best with a hand you've been dealt - and Dwarf Fortress - similation with tons of options that you should enjoy as a journey instead of destination which comes couple of hours later than an actual victory. I've recently played boardgame 7 Wonders of the World and it is what Civ should eventually become: a game with only point victory, but it has several different types of snowballing paths and very much about interaction with other players and predicting their strategies. Clarity and AI are another thing. I still regard Civ4 as the best Civ because me and AI played the same game and AI looked competent and logical. It was predictable, yes, but it is how it should be ina game that is otherwise as complex as Civ. Of course, Civ4 was much simpler and didn't have victory conditions as complex as 5 or 6. You always played a conquest game and when conquest stalled or didn't work out you aimed for one of the closest victory conditions, usually spaceship. Such multitude of ways of competitions is deadly to AI in Civ5 or 6. And diplomacy is the most obvious place when it fails. As well as districts. As well as districts. But anyway, clarity! I likeEuropa Univeraalis series more than Crusader Kings. In CK all the character stuff seemed like a sideshow to map painting. You never saw character stuff affect anything more than small bonuses to military or their health and chance to die. In rare occurances you cared about character morals when you'd want to involve them into plot. But this week I saw developer talking about how there's default behaviour for AI and how traits affect it. Typical person only attacks when has at least 20% military advantage, but some traits give characters additional courage. Dishonest people care less about agreements and so on. The thing is I've played hundreds of hours in CK2 and never noticed. It would've certainly enrich my experience if I'd known that certain relations with certai n rulers insure they'll never attack or something. EU recently added traits like that to rulers and those explocotly say how they affect AI. Hell, even Master of Orion did obvious traits. It turned obscure random AI decisions look like a pattern. Civ4 had that similar to Master of Orion plus each leader had his explicit favourite things. Civ5 had tons of stats for each leader but for player it only looked like Monty and Shaka are dicks. Civ6 tries to have very explicit preferences for rulers. And it fails. Kinda like CK2. They have an agenda. But the also hav tons of hidden parameters. In the end they all feel the same. Going against their agenda is just faster way to the confrontation. Unlike Civ4 leaders they play to win. Sorry for so dense wall of text, the podcast was THAT thought-provoking.

Same happened for me with Anno. Great games, and I'd probably get Anno 1404 on GoG, but next Anno games have useless online features and require you to always be online and connect and all that. Last I checked UPlay worked horribly in my country, I literally had to wait for 5 minutes to load the game (main menu, not the game itself) just because it tried to connect to UPlay servers, and that's after Steam launched UPlay client which wanted to update and show me ads before giving me the damned game. I wouldn't be suprised if UPlay games are pirated 10 times more than other games just cause people want to get rid of this UPlay crap. Ahem, Endless Legend. Just as Rob, I'm having problems forgetting it's a 4X game. I probably shouldn't regard it as such and try to find optimal ways to victory. Perhaps I should play without victory conditions apart from time so that I don't feel the pressure, kinda like in paradox games. You have a very complex 4X game and you have to see a very complex narrative interconnections in the story, you have to find meaning in each turn - at least it's how it's supposed to be. In reality I just click through turns waiting for pieces to fall in place for my masterplan. I like Dungeon of the Endless much more. It too has sort of narrative but it's more of RPG party of ragtags uniting for the common goal. It's a simpler story. And gameplay is not as complex as in 4X games. Plus it's finely tuned so that when you lose you know why you've lost, not in a typical 4X way of suddenly realizing you lost 20 turns ago.

I couldn't get into AI War. I played just 1 full game of The Last Federation and couldn't start another. Yet I bought all expansions and some other Arcen games. Those are games I like to like. And I went and backed AI War 2. Good luck!

Here's an tablet game for you: Desktop Dungeons. It's a puzzle-RPG with a great replayability and scaling difficulty. It took me around 50 hours to beat "official" campaign - though it was on PC and I've probably alt-tabbed from the game. But you won't unlock many of the player classes and items and dungeons and gameplay mechanics. The best thing is it's short, a single self-contained session can take 10 minutes or something, and it's not connected to metagame the way, say, XCOM is, so you just win or lose and forget about it. It's not cheap but there are no microtransactions. Also when you register your game you can syncronize it with web-version and play it on PC.

I didn't like Banner Saga 1. There's something self-contradictory in this gameplay. It's sort of iron man as I'm not supposed to replay my story decisions, but it's clear I'm supposed to replay every battle till I get how to do it. I admire battles having symmetrical systems unlike, say, Fire Emblem which is similar otherwise. Still it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But it reminds me of Fantasy Wars/Elven Legacy games. Those games had the same basic premise: you move through a campaign with a persistent party, sometimes switching to another one. But it had a twist in that story decisions were performed on a battlefield itself. You could send someone to explore ruins or kill some goblins or whatever and you got unique units or items or gold. Gold was the only resources. It sounds like a typical for an RPG encounter but the battles there were even more restrictive than in Banner Saga: you where always on timelimit and to get most gold or special awards you had to complete scenarious ASAP. You really had to sacrifice people and leave unclaimed resources due to mechanics, not just a scripted story. Sadly it was too puzzle-ish for its own good and you could really shoot yourself in a leg by ignoring optional stuff or sacrificing too many units.

Ah, it was before I've discovered this podcast. Anyway there was HD version since then and new expansion. Even if they don't care about expansion they can talk about it again comparing to new games. And I could easily listen to new thoughts about Alpha Centauri (they didn't have a show about it since Beyond Earth), Company of Heroes, Civilization (they certainly can talk about it forever) and so on.