Rob Zacny

Three Moves Ahead 572: Forever Games

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Three Moves Ahead 572:

Three Moves Ahead 572


Forever Games
This week, Len and Jon discuss the concept of the Forever Game: the strategy game you could keep playing from now until the end of time. Do they even really exist? What has come closest for us? And has the trend of continuous development brought them into existence only recently?

Civilization, Dwarf Fortress, Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis 4

 

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This was a great topic! It reminded me of that game of Civ 2 where the guy was stuck playing a forever war for 10 years. 

 

 

Paradox games are definitely games that stay on my computer and I will keep coming back to. Same as Total War games - TW3 with Immortal Empires and mods is enough to keep me going for a long, long time. 

 

 

 

 

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I thought I better get my thoughts in before people get distracted by the release next Forever game contender from Pdox,

 

Really enjoyed the rabbit hole the episode took me down - lots to think about around what allows certain games to transcend their era and remain playable years (and even decades) after release.

 

Looking back at the games which have approached Forever game status for me, i ended up thinking about two things - the difference between 'Classics' (most from the pre-Steam era) and the more recent ''Continuous development' style of game - (aka the recent Paradox style), and whether strategy or simulation offer better prospects for achieving Forever game status.

 

Clearly many great games from the 90's (Colonisation,  Master of Magic, Theme Park to name a few of my favourites) are design Classics, which had their lifespan cut short by rapid tech changes, but when revived for modern tech remain enjoyable, installed and occasionally played.

 

More recently however games such as Vicky2, HoI 3, CK 2 & Stellaris have sucked me in to their orbit - Stellaris (1,600 hrs) Vicky 2 (pre-steam) in particular I've found to be hugely engrossing both to play but also to mod and tweak. Sadly however my feelings for both have eventually soured. My enjoyment of V2 became blighted by my awareness of economic bugs (hugely profitable factories not paying workers...) and poor AI (all of France's armies ending up in Africa rather than near Germany...). I may return to Stellaris, but have become increasingly frustrated by the combination of poor AI, missing mechanics -'hello politics & rebellions' and the increasing content bloat - which means the game now feels too complex and baroque to mod to my satisfaction. The poor AI in particular is a concern, because it leads to a very predictable game experience, where all the challenge is to survive the 1st 50 years (where difficulty bonuses outweigh AI derpiness) and leads to a very predictable game plan  (land grab, turtle, tech up, dominate) - only occasionally broken by a well timed/positioned crisis.

 

I cross my fingers that Vicky 3 will be the third time lucky, but sadly suspect it will be another Paradox Avocado, ripening from bugs and placeholder content in the beginning to underpowered AI and bloated with poorly integrated mechanics at the end of it's lifecycle - hopefully there will be a period in the middle where it is the Forever game i've been dreaming of since I first booted up Civilisation and caught the strategy bug.

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My forever game would likely be Minecraft.  It has enough variety and creativity to get by.

 

For a strategy game?  Don't really play strategy games much anymore.  Maybe Civilization 2, Master of Orion 1 or - an old PBeM game called VGA Planets.

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I think Dominion 5, with its multi-player and conquest of Elysium, makes the island list.  The games are on their 5th edition and have built on their iterative game play.

 

Shadow empire with it's planet generation.  I have 200 hours in and just played on the base game sawi* earth planet.  You have possibly thousands of hours of game play in there. 

 

I agree with the comments above that the P games get a little bloated for me.  I love war hammer total war; it would probably run fourth.  

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