Gaizokubanou

Sorry to disappoint those who share the hope with Rob in that tech in HoI4 will change... the last 2 installment of the series used this flat global tech as well. The idea is that different nations get to different level of tech at different time. Like, not everyone is meant to reach 1942 tech tank in 1942, and that's how tech leads are meant to be represented in previous two installments of this franchise. Edit: Just finished it. Totally agree with the thought on how historical accuracy is getting the player to feel like they are in the shoes of the appropriate decision makers. It was bit hard to follow through board game examples because I play none so I have like zero reference point in trying to make sense of board game examples :x

I agree with you, ilitarist, about how maps actually ends up working but also agree with Gorm that even this kind of janky strategy game context (or really good RPG style of Warhammer fantasy variants) is way better than not having anything. About the army size though, just want to point out that armies are huge defensively and are still pinpoint tiny offensively... which for the most part just means hostile entities are huge but friendlies are tiny so you can 'stack' them in the map. Which would be irrelevant if CA allowed people to stack armies with more than 20 units... Personally I think something of EU or Civ style of strategy game is too much, but maybe something on the line of RTK11 would be perfect and much better fit for TW games than what TW games have now. RTK11 had a good mix of 'narrow corrider' to give meaning to locations but then also had open fields in between where you could exercise battle maneuvering. Also the strategy layer was like, character focused and simplified version of CiV scenario. Just lite enough to be accompanied by TW style tactical battle, but just heavy enough to be interesting on its own.

You are too kind, we had long time to ponder and rewrite our opinions here, much easier than recording for podcast~ <3 BTW how many of you guys use sabotage + auto resolve 'exploit' in TW games? IDK if it existed in older titles but I figured it out in Shogun 2 and it always kinda kills the final 1/3 of the game (oddly enough, also made civil war lot more palatable cause it was lot easier to deal with) for me because I'm one of those player who is always compelled to pursue the most optimal known path. Basically the exploit is from Shogun 2 and on (maybe in previous titles too but IDK), you can have agents that can cripple enemy army's move. This also deactivates their capability to reinforce nearby allies. And the way auto resolve works in recent TW games heavily favor number over quality after some tipping point. So what I do is... get like 2 ~ 3 stack of CHEAPEST units possible, and just chain sabotage auto resolve to pick any armies apart 1 at a time with auto resolve. This is how I beat legendary difficulty for both Shogun 2 and Rome 2 (TWCenter first for Egypt legendary clear hoooraaaaahhh).

Basically TW should just learn from Civ games. Oh my dream~ Civ + EU + TW... it would either be the best or worst abomination.

New beta patch is out and it's already looking so much better. Finally +1 diplomat and leader for empires... used to get those from special buildings so it was much needed. Also appreciating the 3 way split of admin efficiency so that we get 20% lot earlier.

Hmm that sounds like great explanation for why Shogun 2 worked and why Rome 2 felt really floppy. So final verdict on Atilla for you is average, ok I think I'll pass on it then~ I hated the zeal-authority-cunning stats from Rome 2 so much, so to hear that it's still in it.... arrgh.

I didn't play any of those games, but I did play Kessen and Kingdom Under Fire, but both are console exclusive so it's very hard to play them now. Kessen is more pure tactical battle game, while Kingdom Under Fire is this weird but amazing mix of TW-lite battle with character action game (!) that was just unbelievable at the time. Like, think bit of dynasty warrior except how you controlled (unlike in DW where they just kinda sit still) your army actually mattered. Oh wow, Warhammer: Dark Omen, bringing those memories back I was too young and stupid (and wasn't capable of reading English) to properly play those games then! :x

So what do you guys think of how it worked out in Shogun 2? Fall of the Samurai has everyone shooting so not much there to talk about in melee combat. But as I described, my experience of Shogun 2 I didn't want my melee units blobbing so that I can pull them out easier if necessary and yari wall (which packs the units in much tighter and kept cohesion) worked very well... didn't feel like bunch of individuals running around doing their own thing, but is that just my own experience? Like, what were you guys' experiences with Shogun 2 which uses this same engine but gets much less flak (probably because game was overall much more finished and polished) about its combat? Also is this really warscape engine's fault? I seriously doubt this feature is something that's so hardcoded in that they would need to overhaul the engine. More likely, CA probably wanted this regardless of goofy overall larger battle problem so that it looks nicer (fancy animations finishing up properly) close up. Like, it's easily fixable but they don't want see it as a problem because the tradeoff (uninterrupted animation sequence) is something they priotized and is mutually exclusive (if damage overrode animation, units would drop dead without visual cues (and I recall exactly that situation happening in older TW games, one of reason why I totally buy your explanations Gormongous cause in Rome/M2 I recall seeing soldiers just dropping dead from unseen attacks)), if that makes sense. Sorry it's just my pet peeve talking about game engines (the underdog complex from using Gamemaker lol) because I see them as much more capable than its games lead on. Like when discussing engine problems, I would consider more technical problems like texture loading in UE3 to be engine problem... thing like this (animation > damage vs damage > animation) seems much more likely to be a conscious design choice.

If both games did the same trick then I'm quite surprised by how much ball they dropped in Rome 2 cause in Shogun 2 it completely fooled me cause yari wall was awesome and for all I knew, it was simulating what it should have just fine. But in Rome 2, I saw those cracks that you mentioned (I guess it helped that yari ashigaru had no secondary weapon to switch to like that lol) and while I didn't know the details, stuff like that (along with crap ton of other stuff Rome 2 got wrong) kinda destroyed the magic for me. But man, Shogun 2 was... like it's the only TW game that I actually completed multiple times without heavy modding (then again, it's partly cause lot of total conversions didn't make it past M2). Most mods I used for Shogun 2 were few skins and just doubling the unit size, which is pretty freaking amazing how well that game's battle scaled with 2x the bodies to make the clash last little longer. And to me Shogun 2 felt like a pike and bow/shot game. A fast one, but still very pike centric and hence unit cohesion felt important and well represented. Edit: Sooo any updated thoughts on Atilla? It's still on sale for a bit longer so I might grab it if you have change of mind after hearing the podcast but if not, I'll probably pass cause it sounds like battle system is still pretty unsatisfying.

I feel like I read this exact paragraph in TWCenter a year ago... and it kinda bugs me a bit (forget history for sec) because in Shogun 2, yari ashigaru lives and dies by having good unit cohesion via yari wall and for good half of the game, bulk of your melee forces are yari ashigaru (one of few reasons that makes Oda absurdly good)... so to say that Shogun 2 is fought in 'individualized' fashion just smacks completely untrue to my experience :/ So like, you said loose formation comes with penalty... does that mean yari wall formation gives hidden stat buff? Because it clearly works wonders.

Anyone here remember how in original Rome, you could migrate population via building army of peasants then disbanding them on another city? IDK why but I really miss doing that... What I also don't miss is the 3 gold chevron peasant rebel stack :x About the combat and game engine, Turrican, I think you are way over estimating what vanilla Rome engine was capable of, and blaming flaws of Rome 2 and Atilla on the engine when it's poor design issues. Shogun 2 had far better battles than Rome 2 AND Rome (I went back a year ago, it was atrocious, memories of complete overhauled mods gave false impression of the vanilla version) with older version of same engine so I think clearly the game design (regarding to combat) is at fault here. Like, I agree something is terribly wrong with Rome 2's battles, just that the cause is probably balance/design rather than technical. I'm pretty sure they can recreate exactly how battles happen in Rome in Warscape engine, but they just don't want to. On the topic of battles in TW games, Gormongous, you mentioned that the 'execution' animation ruined the battle... hard to do a direct comparison (cause AFAIK, you can't just disable those?) but what makes you think that is more than just visual flavor? Cause I've yet to seen any instance of few lone elite infantry holding off mobs of cheaper units in Shogun 2 at all.

Same lore but game is so different and meant to exist separately aside from flavor so I would count it separate.

So few more days have past, anyone have updated thoughts? Still feels very EU4-ish, except that decentralized regions like HRE become pain in the ass to conquer later in the game and minors remain lot more sturdy, both of which I like but my WC desires also hate.

Kim Phan became esports manager but that was right when SC2 was stagnating so it was kinda dubious as whether she was promoted or was sent to the front line to take the blame :/

@Valorian Endymion, I'm around 1620s~ in my Russia game so I'll get to see what happens with colonial nations in my own game later when my discovery expands into Americas~ So far my game has been pretty... similar? Except I'm having slightly easier time as Muscovy cause getting Novogrod early through war was easier cause their provinces seem to cost less... Oh and Burgundy is still somehow alive and fighting against France, which made France a whole lot weaker.

Emphasis added by me. That line really hits some of my feelings in regard to so many of EU4's troubled update history and some of its problematic designs (fuck monarch points seriously (I love you EU4 and Paradox, it's just the monarch points))... I mean technically every game is about setting up restrictions for the player to navigate around. That's what rules are. It's fundamental to game design. But something about EU4's patching history felt really more in my face about what I can't do more than just ordinary game rules. Is it the complexity of the game that make certain tertiary rules harder to accept? I don't know for sure but all I know and definitely agree with are expressed in that emphasized sentence. Onto the specifics, I just flat out ignore province improvements most of the time. I only spend monarch points there AFTER tech, ideas, coring and other nation wide stuff - stability, war exhaustion, inflation - has been dealt with... which is to say, almost never unless I score some really good leader as powerful western nation. Again, fuck monarch points. Tech and coring (and stability, sometimes) is sooo important to this game that having other stuff share same resource always make it a non decision. If they wanted to give a real option to spend monarch points, it has to be way more scalable than spending 50+ points for one base stat increase to a single province. Or make monarch points more scalable (adviser slots go from 1 ~ 3 depending on government rank? OMG that would be SOOOO GOOOD) so that Monarch points aren't drip fed to players anymore so we are actually incentive to spend them elsewhere. All this being said, EU4 + Common Sense still plays like EU4 to me so I'm very much enjoying it after coming back from like 6+ months of break (so I skipped previous 2 DLCs as well, got them all in the sale). EU4's model of DLC/expansions are really praiseworthy for this IMO I really hope I see something like that consistently so that WC doesn't boil down to killing Castile and Portugal before 1500s.

20 hours?

Interesting and cool podcast! Just got Common Sense myself and spent a day on it so far so I'm still collecting my own thought on it, but initial impression wise I'm very impressed.

HoI's fighting is good and is completely different from EU4's fighting. I agree EU4's fighting is kinda blend... so I'll note two major differences and how those affect the overall fighting. First, unlike EU4, your entire border should be filled up with units. Second, every unit needs supply route or else receives huge combat penalty. Combine those two and what you get is a game where you are trying to find weakpoints in enemy front, attack it with armor and aircraft to punch hole in enemy's front to encircle your enemies so you can cut their supply route. Very basic concept but given how since both you and your enemy are trying to accomplish this, the front line can be quite dynamic and is IMO very very very engaging. Again, the best bits (and where most of functional 'game' is at) of HoI series is actually lot closer to Unity of Command than EU4. The problem is getting to this step that I'm describing. Game is very dense and overloaded so lot of new players just get stuck long before they get a taste of this. Sounds like Rob got stuck on just getting big enough army, and it wouldn't surprise me if almost all the guests in that meet up were too tangled up with complexity of the game (most of which is not needed at all) to get to this juicy mobile warfare that I'm describing.

How many of us here are not Caucasian? And/or with history of immigration/extended stay to completely foreign culture?

I say get the base game only and try it out. If you like what you see there, get Common Sense (maybe hold off on this one for next year's sale???), Art of War, El Dorado, Res Republica, Wealth of Nations, Conquest of Paradise. Ignore everything else cause it's super trivial (unit graphics are like, least recognizable thing in a game like this). BTW so last night I got CoH2 stuff, so installing that right now~

It is specific to WWII... when the game works as intended The above example is the game's inability to handle non Axis aggression, which is design mistake, nothing intentional IMO.

If you are minor and you border a hostile major, without friendly major directly supporting you yes you will die fast. Eastern front is good showcase of contrast of this rule where Romania and Hungary don't just die to USSR because Germany is talking the bulk of the fighting, so you actually get to play as a small army group and it's kinda cool. You will probably hate the answer to that second question... as a minor in 1936 starting date, it is possible to play the game almost like a EU4 game because AI can't handle non-German/USSR aggression well. Famous and popular example of this is players basically going on rampage using Hungary without joining any faction... Here is Estonian example of such. Let the beauty and tragedy of that map soak in my friends.

So recent minor update re-balanced torches... you now burn one when entering a room. So a torch will give you 25 light but full hallway (including entering new room) is now about 30. Simple, but effective change at making the game more interesting.

Thanks Bjorn, looks like I'll have to download Origin again and check out the pricing~