Vesperan

Ottomans or Castille are good first play through countries - provide a relatively easy ride of things. But its the sort of game where you just keep learning. With only 235 hours under my belt I feel like I'm only just becoming intermediate player. What I would like to see in EUIV is to have more built in mechanisms that generate instability and break up large empires over time. Its just weird that you can have continent spanning empires that are fundamentally stable for centuries with no/low amounts of autonomy in regions. I haven't played in a while, need to get the latest expansions. Got side tracked by Hearts of Iron IV and now the Witcher 3...

Well, feel free to come to Wellington, New Zealand for a gaming session. But I'm somehow doubting that I am living in one the big clusters of your listeners..

No not really. So I started playing Invisible Inc - which is the polar opposite given nothing at all is left to chance. And it is fantastic. One of the best games I've played in ages. I do want to go back to Chaos Reborn though - I enjoyed the game (and oddly, the writing of the journals), but I'm going to have to start the campaign over again so that I can steam roll the battle I got to. That battle was/is impossible to beat it if you happen to lose it the first time, as you then start it at a two creature disadvantage, and that particular map was completely featureless (flat).

Heh, I nearly asked a backer question along the line of this show. My personal peeve - games that give the AI an advantage through wall/map hacking. The biggest culprit: Company of Heroes. The single player campaign was not so much the D-Day invasion with its bold attacks out of Normandy as it was building the maginot line every 10 meters - so as to stop the Germans finding the one single gap in your line and slipping through to assault your production facilities. I found the production facilities entirely emersion breaking too.

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but I just started playing this. Well, just started trying to play this.. All I remember from the show was that Troy had issues with the random number generator, and wanted to see the numbers. I don't want to see the numbers - I want to kill the numbers. I want to kill that random number generator. And I only have four hours of total game time under my belt! I'm doing the single player campaign on Chaos Mode (I can see the new Law Mode in my future..) and it is totally infuriating to see the enemy rattle off spell after spell (and pretty damn good ones too!) while I fail 80% rolls turn after turn. For match after match. It's at the point that I'm literally rage quitting the game on multiple play attempts, which is something I have never done - even back in my younger Counterstrike days! So I get that its a random chance thing - thats ok, mostly. But the campaign itself actively punishes you for losing.You travel around and collect up some mercenaries (creatures you can start a battle with) and win some battles - all good. And then you lose - thats fine too. Except now there are no mercenaries for me to collect, the clock is ticking and... the enemies are getting reinforcements? And new enemies are spawning? So the game just got harder to punish my losses. Thanks a million designers, way to make want to play again. So I'm off to play something else now. Will try Law Mode later, when I've forgiven the game somewhat.

Oh god no it has a ship designer. I think the last one of those I properly enjoyed was Master of Orion. The original. When it was first released! Alpha Centauri's was passable, and Gal Civ 1/2 weren't that bad... except that the AI couldn't play that scissors/paper/rock design style at all.

Haven't listened yet, but I'm amused that Michael is talking. Forum posts not withstanding, I've regarded him as something akin to Ben (if there is a 'Ben') from Dan Carlin's Hardcore History/Common Sense podcasts: a mute figure standing at a bank of audio mixer controls.

Just wanted to say that I really enjoyed the episode despite never playing a (board) war game in my life. The descriptions from everyone really brought the game and how it worked to life.

Sorry I had a pretty good guide at one point but evidently did not keep the link. It fell into the 'automate lots and then scale it back' side of things. In the end the time investment to understand/get good at the game was too much for me. Its still install, just.. I can't be bothered investing hours to understand what to do again to play it. Also - pirates! Bloody awful.

A good conversation on the episode, but I was left a little luke warm Prison Architect. I only did a few prisons - but intend to go back. I felt they nailed the pace between expansion and ability to pay for expansion - the grant system worked and kept you just going. Building everything worked great, with a couple of quirks. But there were some bugs and system failuires (about a month after "release") that killed it for me. In no particular order: 1. The integrity of my main prison (which was essentially a donut with a fence around it) failed as guards just started letting inmates slip out.. randomly. Inmates just started walking free. Noone seemed to care. 2. The workshop just didnt seem to work - it would full up with inputs, but I could never train anyone there let alone make anything. 3. The courses didnt seem to have sufficient throughput. For example - parole. Is it possible at all to get inmates through this on time? With a hard limit on the number of wardens and copious time and space allocated for it, I still had a huge back log - and nothing I could do. Googling it revealed that the answer seemed to be exploiting a game flaw by firing/hiring wardens while paused or something. The final issue for me... I lacked an end game. I built it, it worked, it was profitable and... thats it. It would just run fine with little input from me sans the above bugs/system issues.. I was aching for a disaster button. Unleash a fire, Godzilla, alien, earthquake - the usual suspects! So I built a few prisons, shrugged and played something else.

Rob - I have emailed it through again.

Just finished the Q&A and loved it, but did you answer all questions received? I missed mine (sent 23 Nov) - but I was also juggling a baby and things at the same time, so I had to stop/start a few times. Sorry. I feel like I'm becoming a trouble maker as I keep having minor issues. On the up side, the 20-30 seconds issue seemed to resolve itself.

Thanks Rob. I'm listening to the Q&A now (loving it), but on the technical side have had a couple of technical issues. On an Android phone I have downloaded Soundcloud fine and have an account, but it doesnt accept the URL when I click on it in the email (and then the "Open in SoundCloud Android" link). No major issue as it sounds/works fine in the in browser player.. except for the massive lag between clicking play and hearing anything (20-30 seconds over local wifi on top of fibre optic). I am in New Zealand so expect some lag for random international things - but damn! 20-30 seconds is more than enough time for connecting and caching a decent amount. It would be almost enough time to download the entire thing!

I support the idea of the Q&A session being available to all. I'm paying the $5 'premium' (compared to the $5 base support) more to support 3MA than any reward. And from a practical perspective my phone automatically notifies/downloads episodes for me - and I don't know how the Q&A will be distributed as limiting it that tier of subscribers means it will have to be behind some sort of wall? Easier just to make it a free for all. In terms of the number of emails coming from Patreon/3MA - I am happy with the current level. I find them useful for the polls etc, although not so much for the release of new episodes as my phone does that anyway. I wouldnt mind the occasional general update, as necessary.

I'm afraid all I have to say is that the game sounds interesting but not compelling. Bit of a nothing comment. I have a technical query for Michael though. I download and listen to 3MA using Podcast Addict on Android. For some reason episodes over the last couple of months get to the end of the file and then just stop, and it doesn't move on to the next item in my playlist. While this is probably a Podcast Addict fault, it only happens with 3MA (I listen to about a dozen podcasts) and only with recent episodes. Its just a minor annoyance, but I wondering whether there was something you've changed at your end recently?

I was luke warm about Legacy of the Void but I'm warming up to it after this show. I especially like the sound of the co-op stuff... but as a near-complete online loner (and with bugger all gaming time available) I doubt I will ever actually play that mode. One thing that interests me is that Legacy of the Void sold 1 million copies in a day. This surprised me - with the Starcraft 2 doom and gloom I just didnt expect such a large number. Not that I'm really paying that much attention though. Also, with the number of games on the go at any point (for any Starcraft 2 version) being in the tens of thousands I just feel that a lot more people want single player rather than multiplayer. At least for Starcraft. Restores a bit of hope for me for story driven campaigns in general..

I find myself agreeing with a lot of what is being said here. I've spent the last several months with something lacking for gaming in general, and for me it is the lack of compelling story driven single player campaigns. I don't think this is something specific to the RTS genre though. The types of games I am interested in seem to be emphasising multiplayer or a sandbox style where you have to create your own story. Thats great as far as it goes (for example, I love EU IV), but sometimes I want to held by hand and told a story. Quite often I look at my Steam library and go 'meh' because there are just no great stories for me to find there. I find it odd that I look forward to Telltale's Games pick a path style Walking Dead games. With respect to the RTS genre I am going to agree with Biz - I get a bit frustrated with the micromanagement style that has come out of the Starcraft style of games. Just today I reinstalled Starcraft 2 and damn - I know what I want to do (I watch SC2 tournaments!), but achieving it in the time provided is impossible without serious practice that I am not going to give. It is not strategic at all. I would love to see a modern Kohan style game that pairs back the micro so that once the armies are engaged you have only a few choices - add more troops or retreat. A game where the real battle is the positioning and preparation - professionals study logistics, not tactics. EU IV has a bit of this, but it is too abstract. I can't see such a game eventuating though. And as much as I loved how the Kohan games played, their campaign stories sucked. So I dont see Legacy of the Void as heralding the end to an RTS era, that particular ending happened a few years ago. Legacy of the Void is just very, very late to the party.

Thanks guys, keep up the good work. Question: any timing on the Q&A session as yet? Also - how will those sessions be distributed?