Khan Khomrad

The more I hear Bret Devereaux talk, the more he sounds like Dr. Bruce.

Looks neat.

What I'm hearing is that Hell Let Loose is a WWII GvG where you can randomly match with other players. Sounds interesting.

Spot on. Yes, please.

Michael Hermes is back! Huzzah! What I got away from this episode is that someone finally managed to make Age of Sail combat interesting while at the same time falling for the common design flaws of career campaigns.

Glad to see that the Shadow Empire episode is finally here. Edit: And Tom Chick is back, after a long, long time.

Great podcast, as always. Wargaming is something that I never did but always was interested in so I love to listen and re-listen the episodes where Bruce interviews wargame designers. Also, where are the links that were mentioned in this episode?

I find it quite interesting that when approaching the subject of stereotyping civs the panel agreed that this isn't good and sadly happen too often but then went on to talk about how fantasy races fall into stereotypes and how this is ok and can even help games. And herein lies one of the differences of making a game like,say, Age of Empires versus a Warcraft: historical games have to wrestle with the possibility of misrepresenting people, which can lead to a lot of headache nowadays, while fantasy games can comfortably make use of tropes and stereotypes without fear of people complaining about it -- and, if they do, they will most likely just say that so and so is cliche.

I really hope Troy brings up Praetorians (the game) as a point of comparison because their description of Mobius instantly made me remember Praetorians.

I grew up with RTS like WC 3, Age of Empires 2 & 3 and AoM. I'd always take the time to read through the manuals while the game were installing both as a way of killing time and learning how the game worked. Another part of the joy of reading them was seeing the alpha-beta screenshots that were included with them that had precisely 0 to do with the finished product (WC3 when explaining itens shows a print where all the icons are wholly different from the finished product; AoM when explaining the interface has wholly different icons, age names and units models, just to give you an example). This is what the historian in me misses from modern games more than anything else -- glimpses into the game development that used to be released alongside the finished product. Nowadays we do have manuals, of sorts. Instead of the Good 'ol books that came with the game we have either in-game documentation -- which leaves a lot to be desired, like with the Total War encyclopedias -- or wiki pages that were either created and maintained by the players or the devs -- like how it is with EU 4's documentation. The problem now is that, with games being ever evolving, the wikis by default erase older versions of the game out of existence and maintain only the newer versions (yes I know you can see a page's history but to me that is more akin to archaeology and cataloging changes). This may be related to the change in documentation or not but I distinctly remember having to smash my head against many brick walls in EU 3 where important mechanics weren't explained in-game at all and I had to go hunting for them in one of the manuals (which only superficially explained them, but tat least they did.) while EU 4 does a much better job os explaining stuff in-game, while at the same time omitting vital information for the player that can either only be found on the wiki or is only presented in very specific situations.

Got it!

I really enjoy this format of Rob and Troy picking two movies that are thematically related and talking about them. I wonder if you guys will get around to cover Kagemusha and Ran one of these days. Funnily enough one of the best castle siege games out there is Nobunaga's ambition: Sphere of Influence. In that game sieges are all about beating your opponent's army while still having enough men to besiege and take castles, or outmaneuver armies and capture castles. That and the Hegemony series. I'm afraid there aren't many other good castle siege/defense games out there, unfortunately. P.S: So, at the end Rob calls Leana T. J Hafer (her former name). This makes me wonder if: A) this episode had been recorded and edited a while back and was only just released for whatever reason, or B ) Rob mistakenly called her by her former name and they left that in.

I wasn't expecting the joke on the description at all. Well done.

What a plot twist that would be after what they said on the 500th episode lol

What a show! I'm really happy with how this episode turned out. There is so much I'd like to comment, but I'll be brief. Bruce's voice seems to be missing at the 2 hour 14 minutes mark. After Rob introduces him there is this weird and awkward silence. The episodes I re-listen to the most are the ones that don't address any specific game, like the movie analises, the ones focusing on how games address some topics (like the episode touching on religion, as Troy said), the book reviews, the X year in review and 3MA after dark. I absolute adore the history lessons, hearing the stories that each panelist has to tell and how much knowledge of past games you all have. Sometimes I wonder what is going on with Tom Chick and Julian Mordok. Its been a long, long time since they've last been in the show. Really happy that you guys did something special for the 500th episode as episode 400 came and went, as did some other important marks without any fanfare. So here is for another 500 episodes!

I always find this sport related episodes oddly amusing. As someone who is only interested in Wrestling and no other sport, I can't imagine myself watching two wrestlers duking it out online via WWE 2K19 or whatever other wrestling game. It would be incredibly silly and no different then watching two youtubers playing the game. Can't imagine t being too different in regards to other sports, even those --like F1-- that have good sim games. Recently I've been thinking a lot about the decline of physical attendance and the increasing viewership that can't make it to a live event or has no interest of doing so when they can just watch online (paying or for free). This seems to be the case with the majority of the sports, both large and small. This could also be good for the E-sports scene if the "real sports" try to diversify into the E-sports scene or take a more serious approach on how they license their brands to Video game companies.

The episode link's don't redirect the listener to this thread, but instead just to the forum. It is always a joy to have Fraser as the host. In fact, I like seeing the regulars taking the position of host once in a while as their different personalities end up creating very different shows. And, of course, they all are specialists in different tittles so it makes sense to sometimes let someone else more knowledgeable than Rob lead the discussion -- like when Doctor Bruce Geryk interviews a boardgame designer. Going on a tangent, that last point reminds me how long has it been since we had non-indie devs on the show like Soren Johnson or the good folks at Stardocks.

Troy's nicknames are back, yay! Haven't listen to this episode already, but I'm certainly looking forward to it. I must have played Master of Magic way back in 2010-2011 and I'm not even sure how I came across the game. It was one of those slow holidays were you don't have much to do and you just install a random game that you've came across without nothing much about. I was pleasantly surprised by the graphics and how I was able to stumble my way through it without needing to open the manual (which I didn't had, so...). I do recall not understanding the battles but also not needing to as the battle AI was very basic and, to me, the best part f the game was growing your town(s) and marveling at the graphics. Edit: Talking about the lack of episodes, I saw that Rob reviewed DOOM: Eternal, which leads me to believe that in the next episode we'll have Rob, Julian and Tom Chick discussing this new, hot, strategy game and how come it is a strategy game. Hint! Hint! it makes heavy use of resource management and resource allocation.

Hail Michael Hermes, The Sound Wizard! After a long--well deserved--holiday from the podcast, he is finally back! Can't wait to see what nicknames for Troy Goodfellow he has in store for us. On a technical note, I found the intro to this episode to be very odd. It's almost as if the first two or three minutes of the show are missing and it cuts directly into the show itself. Nothing major, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Now, about the games. The only one from the list that I knew about was Circle Empires (not to be confused with Cliff Empire) and I've pondered long and hard if I should buy that game or not. From what I've seen and from the discussion on this episode, the game reminds me a lot of the flash rts' that I used to play back in the early 2010's. They were, by necessity, smaller, less complex and invariably 2D pixel games that took between 5-15 minutes per session. I used to enjoy this sorts of games a lot, but nowadays I find myself to enjoying games that require wiki diving for the mechanics or long periods of study more than simple games, even tough my time available to play games is decreasing with each passing year. That said, Death Crown looks amazing and I'll most likely give it a shot based on this episode discussion of it.

Fraser's comment about how building the Pyramid in Pharaoh seemed like a monumental task is what I truly love about city builders. Another Sierra's game that did this pretty well was ZEUS: master of Olympus as you could build temples devoted to each of the major greek gods. Some temples were easier to build then others but all of them required lots of infrastructure before you could start building them and the Zeus Stronghold was both a monumental task and an incredible sight. Emperor: rise of the middle kingdom improved on this aspect allowing having more varied great works of architecture and engineering. And that's why I think the Anno games from the 2000's are some of the best city builders of all time. They all have great end-game "wonders" that take a heck of a lot of infrastructure and resources to set up. They are the pinnacle to building a well run and efficient city.

The Dominions series is also great when it comes to emergent narratives. It is a great game for After Action Reports and Role playing (and may very well be the best 4X RPG series ever made) and allows for some crazy strategies and battle plans. The series used to be discussed a lot on the earlier days of 3MA, but as time went and the core panel changed, Dominions fell to the wayside. Nowadays only Bruce, Troy and Hermes will bring it up once in a blue moon.

Already listened to this episode thrice. This and the Black hack down episodes are among my favorites. I find Rob and Troy's take on historical movies to be quite interesting and thought provoking.

Really? That is very interesting. This reminded me of the Blood release that Russia got where they changed Caleb into Lenin, did some Russian VA and plastered the hammer and sickle everywhere (even on the weapons). I suppose that censorship is most interesting when the product is changed by the addition of new content. Oh, by the way ilitarist, I was taken aback when you said that your mother tongue is Russian. I know some Russians in real life and on the web and it isn't very hard to notice that they aren't native English speakers and writers, mainly for the lack or improper use of articles, which is also something that I notice when playing Russian (and some other Eastern European games) games that were localized into English. Hell, even Орел и Решка's english subtitles have this problem. So, what I'm trying to say is that you write quite well in English. Well done.

Agreed. I like facing off against competent AI players in general, but I dislike having to face AI's that are too good in singleplayer RTS missions. As an example, Age of Empires II on any difficulty higher than easy has it's AI micro their ranged units which can be a pain to face off against in the campaigns because they usually have the numerical advantage and can afford to micro each and every single ranged unit. In practice this means that you will either rush or turtle with castles and then slowly pushing. It just becomes a huge war of attrition. I think Battle Brothers nailed how to make a good dumb AI. Each different faction and enemy type has a set of behaviors that they will always follow. They are all predictable -- from the lowly Zombie to the mighty Knight Errant-- and by learning how to counter their tactics you can face off against bigger numbers and still have a tense but fair battle.

First time I heard about this game. Sounds interesting and worth giving a try. The way that the panel described the gameplay loop and how the consequence of your actions are presented reminded me a lot of King of Dragon Pass. I feel like the panel has been talking more about politics in the games than they use to, but that might just be me having a better ear to notice it coupled with how everyone (not only in the USA yay!) keeps bringing politics into all sorts of discussions. After all, Troy has been talking about how games portray their subject matter and hidden agenda since the show's inception and maybe even before that.