Ebenezer

I'm surprised AI War never appeared in this episode, even for criticism, considering it was designed as a game to be played with friends against the computer.

I'm glad to see they're moderating their forum so actively. I've really enjoyed Caves of Qud, though I'm terrible at it and hadn't reached the part with the far-future Nazis. Good luck on your tenure with Freehold, vagrantscout!

I was surprised that Steel Division turned out so well-regarded in this show: not that I thought it was bad, but that I only played a little of it before getting distracted by other games. Even if the show's lack of spirit showed what an underwhelming year it was, it did at least convince me to give Steel Division another shot. Despite its clunkiness and Eugen's usual charmingly garbled documentation, I really enjoy it as a skirmish game.

It's the hot new thing, and it obviously isn't finished. Last I checked, you couldn't even change the scroll speed, which, like the inability to create a circular patrol route, is bizarre. I'm not sure the campaign which the developers promise for release will be, or can be, as interesting as the skirmish game, unless they make it a strategic campaign in which you have to expand into new provinces and defend them, just as you expand your base to new choke points and then fortify them in the tactical game. It's very light and it's a pleasant enough way to pass time. I guess it's popular because it's a new variation on the tower-defense idea, which has been out of fashion long enough for people to enjoy it again.

I finished Wolfenstein: The New Order last night. It was good. I thought it was funny that the last level's hallways full of soldiers were harder to get past than the various giant robots you fight as the story comes to the end. The end of the story itself doesn't scream "I smell sequel!" but I'm sure I'll enjoy The New Colossus when it comes out.

I liked this episode. Recently I got into AI War: Fleet Command, an absolutely huge game in which a single match can take 10 to 15 hours. It's a game of multiple sittings, in other words, but if you construct your defenses poorly, then at any time, one of the two AI players can send a small strike force through your defensive turrets and destroy your home command center, defeating you. This is a pretty unsatisfying way to lose compared to the huge, protracted battles which characterize the endgame. Losing in Hour 14 because you lunged for the AI's beating heart and missed is more fun than losing in Hour 10 because you didn't expect a Raider Mk. IV to slip through your turrets. I load a previous save when there wasn't a real fight, but I accept it when there was a struggle, because the latter makes for a better story, and it's easier on my ego to recognize that my bad strategy led me to lose in that particular way.

I don't know whether anyone has brought this up, but it sounds like the wrong episode is embedded on the various pages for this show. What should be a discussion about Sid Meier's Gettysburg is instead an interview with the designer of A Force More Powerful and XCOM: Enemy Within. It's a pretty good episode, but not the one that's supposed to be there. What's up?

Hello! I'm new to the forum, though I've listened to various Idle Thumbs podcasts, particularly Three Moves Ahead and Designer Notes, for the past few years. I like gaming, posting, and posts, though I've tried to read more books recently - turns out building a gaming computer can be bad for your reading. Hope to have a good time here!

This was a good episode. I'm surprised the Rise of Nations campaign didn't come up. Various panelists over the years have praised it as a solid RTS campaign, and it would seem to fit the bill as a dynamic campaign. It probably would have fit the part about Eugen's concern not to create a skirmish mode by another name.