Episode 340: Hegemony 3: Clash of Ancients

[Rob Zacny]

Three Moves Ahead 340:

Hegemony 3: Clash of Ancients

The Patreon backers have spoken, and the listener's choice game for January is: Hegemony 3. Rob and Troy "I can tirones my own sandals, thank you" Goodfellow take a good, long look at Longbow's latest entry in the Hegemony series. What does it bring to the table? Does it bring enough new content to the table? Whose table is this, anyway? Join us and lament the loss of your burning farms.

Episode 340: Hegemony 3: Clash of Ancients

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[ilitarist]

 

It's a sad thing this game still lacks something to make it Total War for those who actually like strategy games. Or AGEOD for those who don't read manuals.

 

Also it's very hard to understand what is this game about from the show. Even if it is realtime or not. The fact there's one transient map with everything on it would be a Shyamalan twist if you try to see videos of the game after listening to the podcast. Frequent problem in 3MA actually, I'm often not quite sure what are those games about. Of course 3MA is more about deep analysis but intro overview wouldn't hurt, would it?

[riadsala]

Also it's very hard to understand what is this game about from the show. Even if it is realtime or not. The fact there's one transient map with everything on it would be a Shyamalan twist if you try to see videos of the game after listening to the podcast. Frequent problem in 3MA actually, I'm often not quite sure what are those games about. Of course 3MA is more about deep analysis but intro overview wouldn't hurt, would it?

 

I think this is something of a more recent problem? At least, I'm more frequently finding myself thinking the same thing. Bruce and Tom are usually pretty good at backing up a little to explain things to people who might not be familiar with the setting (or, at least, that's my impression. I could be completely wrong!)

[Gaizokubanou]

Impression I got is, it's like Koei's RotTK or Nobunaga games (supply supply supply) but with revolts that tie in with how low your supplies are overall (which is something I was trying to work on damn) and less focus on characters?

 

Is that a fair assessment Rob/Troy?

[Leoreth]

 

It's a sad thing this game still lacks something to make it Total War for those who actually like strategy games. Or AGEOD for those who don't read manuals.

 

Also it's very hard to understand what is this game about from the show. Even if it is realtime or not. The fact there's one transient map with everything on it would be a Shyamalan twist if you try to see videos of the game after listening to the podcast. Frequent problem in 3MA actually, I'm often not quite sure what are those games about. Of course 3MA is more about deep analysis but intro overview wouldn't hurt, would it?

 

I think this is something of a more recent problem? At least, I'm more frequently finding myself thinking the same thing. Bruce and Tom are usually pretty good at backing up a little to explain things to people who might not be familiar with the setting (or, at least, that's my impression. I could be completely wrong!)

 

I noticed that too, but I am not sure if it is something that needs addressing. Sure, sometimes you need to look up external sources to get a general overview of what they are talking about, but then again I am capable of doing that. There is already enough content out there that walks me through the feature set in a comprehensive way (like all of conventional video games journalism). I'd prefer if 3MA takes their time to focus on the aspects they find interesting and worth talking about. In those cases they usually provide enough background to understand what they are getting at. I agree this particular episode might have been light on that, but then again we had a couple of Hegemony episodes already and as they said, little has changed.

 

And I also had to laugh at Troy's comment on Veii. He really has great comedic timing.

[Troy Goodfellow]

Ugh, sorry about that. Yeah, real time game. We've done the previous two Hegemony games, so I guess we forget that not everyone has listened to all of them.

 

Will do better in the future. Thanks.

[seamus2389]

Tom Chick would not be happy to know I am at currently at 334 hours of COH2 90% of which is playing the soviets online. It has one clear superiority over COH in that snipers are only invisible in cover as opposed to all the time which was annoying as hell in COH.

 

Rob/Tom point about Philip II being the first person to practice realpolitik in the West is a really interesting point I never considered till early this week when I was reading Robin Fox Lanes book on ancient Greece and Rome and  he made a similar point. The more I read about Philip II the more fascinating a character I find him to be mostly because of his diplomatic wheeling, dealing and blackmailing. Also reading Lanes book also had me thinking about how long and drawn out wars were and Rob/Tom point that it was cause it was really hard to stick a knock out blow was something I never thought of before.

 

I just finished re-installing  the first Hegemony to finally check out the Peloponnesian war. Played through Philip II twice with slightly different settings.

[Troy Goodfellow]

Rob/Troy. Not Tom. Oh god, not Tom.

[micabytes]

If you haven't played it, you should definitely try GMT's "Sword of Rome" boardgame. It's probably the best game about this period that has been done so far, and it does it by having each side with sharply distinct powers. The Romans win by colonizing, which increases their ability to raise armies and can eventually make them (almost) unstoppable. The Gauls are hugely mobile and gain victory points from raiding, so unlike everyone else in the game, they're not very concerned about holding land. The Etruscan/Samnites (one power in this game) are a major thorn in the side of everyone else - the Etruscans can bribe enemy armies to blunt enemy offensives, while the Samnite heartland is inhospitable and difficult to conquer. Greece has superb generals and superior technology (best siege cards), but has to pay heavily to maintain their military strength (representing the difficulties of mercenary armies and commanders such as Pyrrhus), as well as face the most dangerous of the independent minor powers in the game in Carthage (the Volscii and Transalpine Gauls are the other minor powers in the game). Each side requires a completely different strategy than the others, but the game (in its 4-player format) is finely balanced -  although some powers are definitely easier to play the first few times than others.

[SamS]

I always find the first dozen or so hours of the Hegemony games to be the best part of the game. The part where you only have a few cities, don't have long supply lines and are engaged in a long war of attrition with your neighbours until the balance finally tips in your favour. This stage in H3 in particular was incredibly difficult, but really rewarding. Once you get up to 10 - 15 cities however Hegemony becomes a chore in economic management and - as you note in the podcast - never ending whack-a-mole. I'll happily play the first part over and over with different cities, but I could not think of anything worse than trying to conquer all of Italy.

[riadsala]

I noticed that too, but I am not sure if it is something that needs addressing. Sure, sometimes you need to look up external sources to get a general overview of what they are talking about, but then again I am capable of doing that. There is already enough content out there that walks me through the feature set in a comprehensive way (like all of conventional video games journalism). I'd prefer if 3MA takes their time to focus on the aspects they find interesting and worth talking about. In those cases they usually provide enough background to understand what they are getting at. I agree this particular episode might have been light on that, but then again we had a couple of Hegemony episodes already and as they said, little has changed.

 

 

It depends how you listen. I usually listen to podcasts while on the train, or walking to and from the shops, so looking up background for a game isn't really convenient. Sure, I agree they don't need to walk all the listeners through all the mechanics.. i wouldn't want that! But at least a loose description (turn based? real time?) just to give the listener a loose frame of reference in which to interpret the following conversation.

Sometimes, they miss that out completely. It would be like talking about Hearthstone for an hour without mentioning that it's a card game!

[Jason McCullough]

I haven't played any of the three; which is the "best" mechanics wise, you think, to jump in?

[RdeBorn]

I don't really think you guys addressed how massively far this game has moved from the first one, really. Like, Philip of Macedon and Gold were really lean games where your resources were inherently limited by your territory, supply lines were absolutely everything. Hegemony 3 kind of has moved diametrically away from that with the stockpileable gold and wood resources and the upgradeable resource points. Like, in Philip of Macedon the only things you can do are rearrange your supply, take the extra resources you need or plan a fight better or replace workers with slaves.

In Hegemony 3 waiting for lumber is essential to get the better resources, upgrading your civics and saving gold so you can buy slaves and improve your income, colonising to free up your garrisons, improving your unit types is both important and kind of trivial (I just picked up the improved barracks as I moved on). I didn't really find starving out enemies was that valuable because the supply lines basically weren't as directly important as in the first game. Meanwhile the naval game is so much less valuable because you don't really have the islands to work on.

Basically, the change from finite to not precisely finite resources has really changed the series and the move from the perfectly constructed Greek map to a slightly weaker one hasn't really worked for me. I don't think it's a bad game and a lot of the innovations were interesting but I think it's a lot less focused and compelling than PoM or Hegemony Gold. That said I couldn't stand Rome because the AI couldn't handle sandbox and the campaign was really awkwardly paced if you messed up a battle and this is a big step back up for me.

Also, unanswerable seaborn piracy from miscellaneous rebels was no fun playing as Tarentum compared to the definable villainy of Athens in the first game.