Episode 201: Best of the Guests 2012

[Rob Zacny]

Okay, we're not picking favorites among our guests from last year, but former intern Soren Johnson and designers Jon Shafer and Dave Heron were our most recurring guests in 2012 and it seemed like a great time to hear them weigh in on their favorite games from last year. Perhaps inevitably, a fight breaks out over how to classify FTL. RIP Soren. It wasn't a strategy game, but we can all agree it was pretty good. You'll be missed.

Listen

[FuriousDave]

I'm saddened to hear the Battle of the Bulge hasn't been selling all that well. I picked it up this weekend, and it really is quite a gem. I got my iPad earlier this year and there hasn't been that many great strategy games. Most of the purchases I've made over the past year were card and board game conversions.

I'm curious if there isn't much of a market for these types of games on iOS, or if there may be a growing niche market that is just not aware that these games even exist. There are not a lot of ways to get news about the release of such titles to the target market. Pocket Tactics is the only web site I'm aware of that focuses on deeper iOS strategy games.

Interestingly, Touch Arcade just posted their review of Battle of the Bulge yesterday. I wonder if it has caused much of a bump in sales.

[andrewdoull]

Regarding your RIP Soren comment, the roguelike community is willing to supply an infinite number of Soren Johnsons who will be pretrained in procedurally generated death trap filled mazes prior to arriving on the show. As a bonus all* come with a free amulet of Yendor.

If you are interested in the above offer, please sign below:

_________________

[*] Actually a disconcertingly small percentage, but a tiny fraction of infinity is still infinity.

[sclpls]

I'm never totally clear on when these podcasts are recorded, so perhaps this was prior to the Second Wave release for XCOM, but my understanding is that that update addresses Dave's complaint that he never has to make difficult choices in terms of inventory. For example, you can have settings where equipment is lost when agents die, and there are settings that make nations stingier about providing money, etc. It doesn't address the more pressing problem of campaign variety, but hopefully we'll see some major expansion come out in 2013.

I think I was defending Endless Space the last time it was mentioned on a 3MA episode, but now I need to offer a mea culpa, I've found myself pretty bored with the game at this point too, and the last couple of times I've played it I found myself bored, and more interested in playing Civ 4 or 5, or Alpha Centauri.

Overall great list, and encompasses exactly what I've been playing a lot of this year, except for CK2, a game I love in theory, but in practice feels like too much of a passive experience for me to really get into.

[anpd]

Great episode as always. You guys briefly mentioned Call to Power 2, what is it about that game that people dislike? From what I have seen they did some neat things, public works and the way they handle combat.

[Flynn]

FTL is certainly much more a strategy game than it is World of Warcraft!

I don't mind the pausing at all because even in the slowest possible run, when you pause at every opportunity, the game only goes perhaps 2 hours. There is only so much you can do while paused.

[riadsala]

Was surprised to see Sins:Reb getting rated so highly in terms of strategy game of the year. I can't compare it to XCOM and Unity of Command, as (shockingly) I haven't played them yet, but I have played Sins:Reb. Sure, it's a great game. But it's a bit poor in terms of actual strategy, as the titans have really screwed up the balance. You just have to have a read in the official forums. In strategic terms, I found Rebellion to be a big step back from the previous versions of the game. That isn't to say building a titan and sending it out to lay waste to the alien scum isn't fun, but as we've learnt from Tom Chick, we're not allowed to use that word.

Maybe Sins:Reb can be thought of as an action-strategy game, (in the same way that Skyrim is an action-rpg ). As, like Rob said, the main attraction is giant ships and bigger explosions.Endless Space is a much much better strategy game. It just isn't as approachable and spectacular.

[Sorbicol]

I think Dave nailed the main issue with XCOM - the strategic level to the game. Not so much with equipment (curiously I couldn't equipment my soldiers with everything they wanted straight out of the gate, I usually had to wait a couple of missions before I'd collected all the resources) but "build satellites before assaulting the base" part - that was the only strategically important part of the game for me, because once you were through the alien base level you'd have enough satellites up and benefit from the global panic reduction not to have to worry abou losing any more nations. At that point you were never in any danger of losin the game, so a lot of the tension was lost.

As for Endless Space - got this in the steam sale and I'm enjoying it a lot, but it does feel a little "lite" as it were. I think the abstract nature of the combat is part of the problem, it's just numbers. It feels like it needs something a lot more substantial.

[sclpls]

Part of the problem with Endless Space (and this is part of the problem with the 4X space genre in general I think) is a problem of map design. In a Civ type game you have different terrain (mountains, water tiles, etc.) that will alter some of the strategic choices you make. In the space 4X you just move from nodal point A to nodal point B. The consequence of this is that even though you have different victory conditions in Endless Space, your strategy ends up being the same regardless, which doesn't help the game in terms of making it feel like it is just numbers.

[Jon Shafer]

Part of the problem with Endless Space (and this is part of the problem with the 4X space genre in general I think) is a problem of map design. In a Civ type game you have different terrain (mountains, water tiles, etc.) that will alter some of the strategic choices you make. In the space 4X you just move from nodal point A to nodal point B. The consequence of this is that even though you have different victory conditions in Endless Space, your strategy ends up being the same regardless, which doesn't help the game in terms of making it feel like it is just numbers.

I really think that making a 4X game that isn't bland is a pretty tall order. You really have to work hard to weave meaning and narrative into the typically-dry mechanics. Civ has the advantage of our familiarity with history so we can imagine much of what's not actually there.

In contrast, space games have much less to piggyback onto. Sins of a Solar Empire works because big interstellar battles between starships has entered our collective conscience through Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. But no one really knows (or thinks they do) what it feels like to run a galactic empire.

Unless you have a very evocative subject matter or really go the extra mile like Alpha Centauri, many players will inevitably end up scratching their heads and asking themselves "so... why am I doing all of this, anyways?" Strategy games obviously need solid mechanics, but that's really just one piece of the puzzle.

- Jon

[Procyon Lotor]

Re: X-Com Expansions: Firaxis games (or, at least the Civ games) have always been vastly improved by subsequent expansions. Civ IV was much better once Beyond the Sword was released, and Civ V was made much better by its expansions. Given that track record, I am hopeful that we are only playing "vanilla" X-Com, with the real prize coming down the pipe.

[Sorbicol]

I worry the fundamental structure of XCOM means that the scope of any future expansion is going to be limited. I think all they can really do is add another campaign, which is a shame as I think it exposes what XCOM lacks over X-COM - that feeling that it is game, not a simulation. Plus, as was mentioned in the podcast, they have to consider the nature of console expansions too.

I think a sequel would serve the game better to be honest. Maybe with steam workshop support for the PC release to let the community play around with it and see what they can come up with.

Jon - Regarding space 4x games I'm always slightly bemused that SMAC is referenced so much as an example of "how to make a space 4x game immersive". Fantastic though it is, I've never considered SMAC to be a 4x game, it is basically Civ but set on a different planet set in the future. It's a completely different setting to one where you are colonising a galaxy as opposed to a single planet.

As for 4x with "flavour" I always think that Sword of the Stars does it best, taking the track of very different modes of expansion for each of the different races, and some variation in the techs for those races. To me that's how you would go about adding flavour in a space 4x. You can't plum history to fill the backstory, but in a true alien encounter each race should be using vastly different technology to counter each other, and that should the story - how do you communicate and how do you best/ally with another civ? I know from a game design point of view that's a massive challenge, but it SotS it works - at least for me. When you throw in the galactic menaces in that game as well, I think they add a massive amount of flavour to that game and really make it a very enjoyable experience, despite the glaring flaws in it otherwise. Those menaces are the only real proper Aliens (not human race facsimiles) I've really encountered in a game - races with their own goals and own methods who don't really bear you ill will but will flatten you just for being I the wrong place at the wrong time. I would love to see a space game that would let you play a race like that who's goals and objectives are not "colonise as many planets as you can and beat everyone else".

Too many 4x games suffer from the problem that all the races are different but actually are all the same - One of the major flaws with Elemental too, as I am sure you are aware.

[riadsala]

Too many 4x games suffer from the problem that all the races are different but actually are all the same - One of the major flaws with Elemental too, as I am sure you are aware.

As long as you can avoid, well, the SMAC style factions. They work well in SMAC, and is part of what the game is about. But in general, I dislike designing factions/races around different victory conditions. Oh, this is the science race. Oh, this race is culture orientated. It's taking options away from the player and making the sides different, but one-dimensional. Also, I don't really like the underlying creationism/pre-destined approach, when traits and goals are designed and fixed. Far more interesting (to me personally) are games in which these system for faction-differentiation develop during the course of the game. For example, in the old Civ games, all factions started equally. But by the mid point of the game, they all had the potential to be very different from one another (certainly true for civs controlled by human players. less true for the AI controlled civs, but the potential is still there) depending on what had happened during the game. The strength of your side is influenced by in-game decisions rather than what side you select before you start playing.

Which is why I agree with Sorbicol on SotS. Not my fav strat game by a long way, but some if the ideas to creating different races are fantastic. In fact, I would love to see a semi-offical SotS-mod for Endless Space. Just taking movement, which is usually a simple mechanic, creating really interesting differences

[tomchick]

Great episode, guys! It's always nice to hear the folks who make games talking frankly about games.

However, I want to take issue with something Soren said about Battle of the Bulge being not suited to asynchronous multiplayer. There were various murmurs of agreement, so you guys obviously couldn't hear me yelling at the podcast. But I disagree pretty strongly. It's true that many wargames are long drawn-out exercises in moving chits and waiting for something to happen, which can be a really dull PBEM or asynchronous experience, and that feels true of Battle of the Bulge at first.

But part of the genius of the design is how much of the detail is streamlined and abstracted. As with XCOM, the result of this approach is that there are fewer choices, and a corollary of this is that they're therefore more meaningful. It's hard to talk about Battle of the Bulge without using the term chess-like and I find this perfectly suited to asynchronous multiplayer.

For example, have a look at Bruce Geryk's analysis of the first couple of turns. He suggests a move called the Longville Lunge, and it reads like a discussion of the opening moves in a chess game. And because there are dice involved, Bruce can't quite solve it with math, try as he might. There are no moves in Battle of the Bulge that don't matter, and because of the way the game measures time (you never know how many turns there are, or who will get the last move on any given day), there is a degree of suspense in every move. It's downright cat and mouse at times. This makes for some of the most compelling multiplayer asynchronous play I have ever seen on the iPad. And I'm not even a wargamer!

Anyway, sorry to hop up on a soapbox, but since you couldn't hear me yelling at the podcast, I had to come here instead.

-Tom

[biz]

I find it absurd to pretend that XCOM is a strategy game while FTL isn't...

xcom is just some minor battlefield tactics that you optimize by playing in a boring way (take baby steps + overwatch. repeat for 50 hours). there's nothing happening at the strategic layer

[Gormongous]

xcom is just some minor battlefield tactics that you optimize by playing in a boring way (take baby steps + overwatch. repeat for 50 hours). there's nothing happening at the strategic layer

Yeah, I wince a little to hear some aspects of XCOM's design praised, when it definitely has a "right" way to be played from a gameplay perspective. At the strategic level, there's a single optimal path up the tech tree, unless you're counting false decisions like "research guns then armor, or armor then guns?" At the tactical level, the game rewards ludicrously conservative play that is deeply unfun, in that there is no disincentive besides the player's own boredom not to move the entire squad forward an inch at a time, preserving a perfect overwatch net. Those two elements ruined the game for me during my third playthrough on Classic Ironman, and I haven't checked back since.

It was great to hear Crusader Kings II brought up again though, even if most of the podcast members are looking at it in the rearview mirror. It actually seems like Paradox is trying to address the pacing issues with the way the Muslims, Factions, and Republics alter the core game, but I don't think it's in the right direction. All of the new features, the Republics especially, play at a breakneck pace, which means more is going on at all times, but really that just means that the player is pausing ten times as often. If Paradox wants to keep the player better engaged, I think they might be better off finding a way to present decisions in a way that doesn't force the player to pause the game and have a good think every time the dialogue window comes up. I'm incredibly experienced at the game (Steam says 357 hours, that can't be right. I did have it running at the lowest possible speed in the background while I studied for my doctoral exams over the summer...), and I still have to spend ninety seconds clicking through windows and lists to make sure my German duke wants to have a fling with this specific milkmaid the game presents to me. I don't know how, but that really should be a shoot-from-the-hip decision.

[Tim James]

I have to quibble with the discussion about Battle of the Bulge as well. Someone mentioned that there's not enough to do on each turn. Although you can only make one move, I agonize over it a lot like midgame tactics in chess. I easily spend 3-4 minutes on it like any other "chunky" asynchronous multiplayer game where I have a lot of moves to make each turn.

Then just when I think I'm ready to move, I remember some other quirk of the situation that forces me to change my plan. And I waste so much time staring at the map while I wait for my opponent. It's just like staring at a chess board.

I was also very skeptical about the number of turns per day. I thought it would take forever to play a game. It's still quite slow if you can only trade one turn with your opponent. It helps if you can throw a few back and forth each night. At least it's playable, unlike, say, a 4 player game of Le Havre on iOS.

I'm sorry to hear about the sales numbers, if that's true. I'm going to head right over to their forum and make a suggestion.

[Arathain]

It's sort of fascinating to me that so many people bounced off Infinite Space (although many liked it). I tried it out during the free weekend a little while back, and I found it perfectly competent, and perfectly unengaging. I can't imagine how frustrating that must be for the designers. After all, there was clearly some considerable effort to include colour. I thought the art for the various factions was quite lovely, and some of the faction descriptions intriguing (Horatio, a race of clones of one wealthy person- brilliant!). The planets that made up a system could have all these different properties- this one plants with interesting properties, this one has a strong magnetic field and that one has unstable geology. It made a difference in game, in terms of some numbers going up and down. And yet... meh. Yet Sword of the Stars, which has even blander planets and some similar systems in game can hold my attention for hours at a time, and I really feel the differences between the races.

It seems so arbitrary, and even the panelists seemed to have a hard time nailing down what the crucial element really is.

I was reminded of something from an earlier cast about FTL- that when we daydream about space we imagine ourselves as adventurers and spaceship captains- Han Solo and Picard- but never as some nameless galactic emperor. Yet so few games give us Firefly episodes and so many have us pushing economic sliders.

[Sorbicol]

Space 4x games are really about 2 things - expanding your empire and big spaceships blowing the crap out of each other using ever more exotic weaponry. If you abstract that side of the game too much then I think you on to a loser. As unwieldy as the space combat in SotS is, it does work on a visceral level and offers at least some level of strategy (if you know how to play it properly)

Endless space (i prefer the name Infinite Space though!) suffered very badly to me because it abstracts space combat to a pointless card game. It's a shame because I think the rest of the game works really rather well. I'm also reminded of playing Battleship Gothic (Games Workshop's very short lived attempt at a spaceship combat game set in 40k) when I play games like this. It was a turn based tactical boardgame, with the different ships of the different races really working very different tactical options (heavy weapons platforms of the Imperium, hit and run tactics of the Eldar) over a grid board. Some like that adding tactic flavour to a strategic base game (bit like XCOM I suppose, or what Fallen Enchantress attempts to do) should work really well in a space 4x game, yet I've never seen a game that tries it out.

[sclpls]

While I don't agree with SotS being a particularly interesting strategy game (it's been awhile, but I don't remember it working for me when I played it) I think all your other points are pretty right on. I actually like the cards in Endless Space (I also play a lot of board games, so I think those sorts of things don't bother me as much as a lot of PC gamers), but I don't think it was implemented particularly well either.

One thing that just occurs to me is that pretty much every 4X space game ever always switches to a battlefield screen when combat occurs, and I wonder if that is doing anyone any favors. Maybe, contra Tom Chick in episode 202, space is where you really need hexes most of all.

[Arathain]

"Endless space (i prefer the name Infinite Space though!)..."

Oopsie. Stepping on Weird Worlds toes there.

[Arathain]

Didn't Flotilla so a little bit of that Battlefield Gothic thing? Ships have momentum, facing matters, that sort of thing. I played the demo ages ago, but I don't quite recall.

Both Galactic Civilisations do the hex thing. Combat is fully abstracted and takes place on the main map.

[cornchip]

Outstanding episode still worth listening to four years later.

 

Tying together the SMAC and Civ discussion, it seems like SMAC was successful in part because it had seven very strong characters developed by the novella, all the quotes, the characteristics of their factions, diplomacy text, etc. I don't think this approach has been repeated, but just as the panelists wondered why no one really goes after Civ, it should be possible to go after the heart of SMAC, the characters, rather than the peripheral characteristics as Pandora and C:BE did.