Rob Zacny

Episode 403: Survival Strategy

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Three Moves Ahead 403:

Three Moves Ahead 403


Survival Strategy
Survival: it's what separates people from animals. How far we've come from punching a tree until it explodes into logs that we can craft into workbenches. What began as humble topiary assault spread through time, Asia, and eventually into strategy games. This week, Rowan, Critical Distance's Zach Alexander, and Troy "Surely I can trade my encyclopedic knowledge of show tunes for food" Goodfellow get together to talk about survival strategy games. From half-RPGs to city builders, game devs like cramming a food clock into any game orifice they can find and the result are normal strategy games with the added fun of starvation and disease.

Rimworld, Banished, Dwarf Fortress, Oxygen Not Included, Rogue, Nethack, Skyrim, FTL, Sunless Sea, Minecraft, Spelunky, S.O.S, Survival Kits, Jurassic Park: Trespasser, Rebuild, Atom Zombie Smasher, Impressions Games, SimCity, The Settlers, Children of the Nile, Majesty, Tropico, Aven Colony, The Sims, Baldur's Gate, Crusader Kings 2, Fallout Shelter

 

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Who let the guest get away with saying Dwarf Fortress was released in 2008?  The switch to 3D (z-levels) happened in 2008, the initial release was in 2006. The later release date messes a bit with the timeline as offered in the show.

 

Otherwise an interesting episode. I especially liked Troy's callback to the "is the Sim's a strategy game" argument from a constellation of hosts far away and long ago.

 

Keep up the good work.

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You talked about colonization, but not about the actual Colonization game. Sad!

 

I think it worked really well as player VS environment survival strategy. You wouldn't lose because of lack of food or anything but Natives could be more or less managed (they never attack first) and other contenders are rather passive. And then your country is put to the test in a giant confrontation. Maybe that last part was the problem because for most of the game you weren't properly challenged, only in the very end you realized how hard had you screwed up.

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I enjoyed the episode but I feel like it didn't have the focus of some other shows about "topics".  I like that the pod takes time to look at the landscape from time to time on how genres have changed.

 

One huge miss was not talking about tropico 2 in more depth.  When I play rimworld I feel that tropico 2 has a huge influence on the game.  You could only get workers by raiding ships, pirates couldn't do any work and were prone to mood swings.  

 

I really think that it is a game that deserves a remake since it was such an experimental concept.  It's worth playing for an afternoon to see how broken it is and how it's an interesting path not taken.

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On 8/24/2017 at 11:11 PM, Marchettus said:

I enjoyed the episode but I feel like it didn't have the focus of some other shows about "topics".  I like that the pod takes time to look at the landscape from time to time on how genres have changed.

 

One huge miss was not talking about tropico 2 in more depth.  When I play rimworld I feel that tropico 2 has a huge influence on the game.  You could only get workers by raiding ships, pirates couldn't do any work and were prone to mood swings.  

 

I really think that it is a game that deserves a remake since it was such an experimental concept.  It's worth playing for an afternoon to see how broken it is and how it's an interesting path not taken.

Tropico 2 is definitely the odd game out of the series, given the different period and mechanics. Good point!

 

Pirates are usually pretty awesome, though. 

 

Honestly, survival strategy could probably be its own podcast, given the popularity of survival mechanics. 

 

Also, there goes the 85 hours I spent on Dungeon of the Endless when I was doing archaeological fieldwork and living out of a motel room with only my laptop. 

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First episode I'm listening to after a decent break but turning it off after hearing cutler scraping plates at 18minutes.

Will never understand why people think that eating while recording a podcast is a good idea.

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No.

 

This is habitual behaviour on this podcast.  Recording from what sounds like a kitchen, eating while podcasting, if you don't have time to both eat and podcast at different times then don't podcast.  You don't see news anchors stuffing their face on TV or radio personalities chewing while on air.  This is the sort of thing that separates the podcasts worth listening to from the ones that aren't. 

 

Sound quality is everything and distracting or disgusting background sounds are a detriment to that quality.  If a guest has a terrible mic, that's the breaks and understandable, but the inclusion of completely avoidable background sounds? No thanks.  I'm actually starting to support a few gaming podcasts on patreon but as long as this sort of thing continues on 3ma I will never support it.

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Well, we do the best we can. If a few plate clinks bother you now, you'd be pretty enraged by the things I take the time to remove every week.

 

While I'm sorry there have been some instances that did not live up to your expectations, I hope the hundreds and hundreds of free hours of entertainment we provide can make up for it.

 

Quote

This is the sort of thing that separates the podcasts worth listening to from the ones that aren't. 

 

Sorry to see you go. Bye!

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22 minutes ago, cornchip said:

I like the idea of Rob being the Brad Pitt of podcast hosts, eating while recording every chance he gets.

 

Not to mention his rugged good looks and charisma.

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On 12/21/2017 at 4:27 AM, Jason McCullough said:

Strange People Online continue to blow my mind.

It's unbelievable isn't it?

 

The only thing more amazing than the weirdoes that occasionally pop up out of the woodwork is the hosts' grace in dealing with them. Kudos, Michael.

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