Balance in War Worlds, Walkovers in Civilization 5

Tags

Civ5, war-worlds

My continuing efforts to find the right balance, and the right way to play, for War Worlds have taken a new turn.

I realized that playing the game is to an important degree, playing the sitrep.    This tells you what happened in your empire, so it tends to make you think you should never miss an entry.     This is what I think was driving me crazy about the game – I was pursuing keeping the thing empty, and making sure never to miss anything, going back many levels if required.    That’s not the real fun – the real fun is expanding your empire.

If I end up quitting, that’s the place where you definitely lose the game.    Do you lose if, say, some of your planets aren’t producing ?   Nope.     I need to depend more on my bank balance, than making sure I’m definitely building fighters everywhere for “free” defense.    I’ve banked $76 million to date, and it shows no signs of slowing down.   Add to the analysis the obvious fact that I have no active neighbors, and it’s even more clear.

I’ve spent the past week clearing out the sitrep one screen deep.    I am sure I’m missing reports.    But so what ?    I am catching a bunch of them and continuing fighter production, and anything I miss related to expansion is dealt with by reviewing the map.    And it seems to work – if I have time to spend, I sitrep first, then dig into the map.

Civilization 5 games continue.    My game with Shaka Zulu became a walkover and a domination win.    I decided to up the difficulty level one more to Warlord and try that.     But first, I dug through the list of achievements for other ideas about ones to earn.    And I noticed there were some related to the Civil War scenarios.

I’ve not played a lot of scenarios in the game, to date.    The Civil War one is nicely balanced and fun.    The goal is simple – take Richmond, or take DC.    Depending obviously on what side you get.     I wasn’t given the option to select it when I started the game, but I took Washington as the Confederates and got my next achievement.    I liked the game and will have to try it a few more times, probably on higher difficulties.

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A week of Civving

Tags

Civ5

I have rediscovered the wonders of the Civ 5 game.     I started and stopped a bunch of games and goofed around before completing a game with Ramhkamaneneeadandang and discovering better how to abuse the City States for fun and profit.     I had also forgotten how huge the Terra map is.     That is a work of art and incredibly hard to end up using much of the world with.    Now, imagine playing with 20 city states and only two oppenents ?    I ended the game by Tourism Victory and none of us had colonized the “Brave New World”.

There was something about this game in prior iterations that felt a tad unfinished.    This is gone now.    We’ve got fully fleshed out religions to found, which may have real names but are just various collections of bonuses now.     Tourism provides a different kind of cultural victory, more amenable to larger empires.     It’s not surprising that after many years the game is now displaying a nice polished touch.

My vague memory from years ago is that I never did well with the game with a large number of opponents, and that’s where the fun really is – the map should be full.     I’ll go ahead and share the settings I’ve decided on for games.

• Terra Map – because it’s fun.    So are the other ones so this could change.
• Huge Map.    Game is simply more fun with a lot of territory.
• No Barbarians.    They just irrritate me or the other AI players, or are there to exploit.
• No Ruins.    Talk about an easily abused mechanic, and I can’t resist abusing.
• New Random Seed on Reload.    This used to be a problem in that you just reload your game and try again after losing any combat.   With the load times on the current Civ 5 iteration, I’ll enable it and reload if combat or the early war really goes that badly.   Doing it once or twice is not really abusive.    The boredom penalty eliminates the abuse.
• Chieftain Level.   Still working my way up in difficulty.    Given how long the games last though, I’ll be lucky to move up at all.
• Eleven AI players.   For a total of twelve active players.    That seemed fitting, and is working well in my current game.
• Wet world, default for other parameters.    Desert and plains get de-emphasized this way which is good.   Jungle is emphasized which is a bit annoying but still OK, that’s what workers are for.
• 24 City States.    I think you can double that if wanted.    I might play around with this number.

Fearsome and not cartoony. Nice.

My latest game is as Shaka of the Zulu, and being played true to form.     I shall be an expansionist warmonger, and win either by conquering the world, or by the Space victory.     I started out and found my first neighbor is Gandhi, and clearly the first target when playing a warlike civ.    Especially when looking at how outnumbered I got him.

Four cities to one. Time to secure one flank.

When enough units were built, he got eliminated quickly.  I had enough units to crush him before he could build himself out of new-empire status.   Gandhi as a peaceful builder can bury you.

That’s Delhi in the middle. My son called it the “Giant Diaper”

He’s gone.

Next I got a request from Pocatello of the Shoshone, to go to war with Turkey.   Why not ?     I had heard that the idea was to stay on the AI players good side by agreeing to these kinds of requests.     My army moved south and got into position, and was ready after the ten-turn delay.

The war got me two additional cities, and the peace agreement got me two more, as the AI Ottoman was left with Istanbul and one other small little burg.    But the AI “Good Side” was hard to find – Pocatello (#3 in power empire behind my #1) hates warmongers and now is guarded, and won’t trade with me.    Most other empires are the same.    Well.    You can’t expect to keep everyone happy if you fight a lot, but I thought my erstwhile ally would retain some friendliness.    The only one who liked me was…… The Ottomans.    They were considered “Friendly” even though I took half their empire, perhaps because I agreed to trade after the war.

Little good that got them.    After waiting long enough that I had dealt with my unhappiness problem, Istanbul was mine and two AI’s were down.

Currently I’m expanding out and eating up the emptier spaces on the map in my area, maintaining two good relationships with City-States and working on a third, and moving up the tech tree to enable Caravels and eventual cross-ocean colonizing of the new world.     Will I go to war with another neighbor, Egypt, who can be crushed with ease ?    I’m not sure, but probably.    Trying to build up better relations with the Shoshone by converting them to my religion, but we’ll see how well that goes.

Egypt in Yellow, Shoshone in Brown.

Interrupting our regular deep introspection with a brief note about playing many games at once

Tags

Carmageddon, Civ5, Fallen Earth, Mafia II, Steam, war-worlds

And for the past week I have spent my energy on many different games.      Many.    Different.   Games.

War Worlds expansion continues.    The north corner of my “square” is getting better defined, and as I continue to move it southwards I get closer to having a large area being worked north-to-south.     I still have my ships moving in that direction all along the loose line from Inkdium to what is left of Curufin, and have passed 6.5 million population.

Mafia II turns out to be quite a bit of fun.    The game is advertised as a shooter, which it is in a certain sense, but I have a much stronger feeling of being inside a Mafia movie instead.    Taking care of the family, and business, and crushing those you don’t know under your bootheel.    So far I’ve gone from rags to riches, to rags, twice.     I assume I’ll end up with riches again but it’s a scripted movie game so who knows for sure.

One thing driving me crazy about Steam is the screenshot method.    When I take a screenshot, it gets saved in some crazy numerically-named folder deep in the folder tree.   This has more or less sapped my desire to get screenshots during the games, which is silly, but I have to be honest with myself.   I want to find it two or three deep in a clearly marked folder, and anything else just doesn’t work for me.     Now, what it works well for is publishing screenshots on your Steam feed, but otherwise, meh.    This is why there’s no images in this post.

I now have the “Pre-Alpha” version of Carmageddon, which is a lot of fun in a limited sense.    I can take out pedestrians and race the other crazy personalilties, just like 20 years ago when the game first came out.    It needs work, no doubt, and I’m waiting for additional updates.    I was misinformed thinking that the game was finished and ready to play.     And so the excruciatingly long lead time for my initial Kickstarter investment continues to tick off.

I have reached Level 23 in Fallen Earth and moved on to S2 – The second map, where there be many factions and the large city of New Flagstaff.   I’ve done some adventuring, but I decided to catch up on my tradeskills.    I now have an ATV as well as my horse, and I’m currently working on making my last Ballistics book before I hit 90 skill, which is the next point at which I can unlock more recipes.    I’m running low on materials (finally) and at some point will need to go out and do some more harvesting.    With 7 red chips (7 million total, I believe) and nothing auction-wise to spend them on, I am buying plenty of Scrap Paper, Pens, Scrap Lead, and Weak Botanics to continue the tradeskilling spree.

I have only three tradeskill slots given that my premium has expired.    This is encouraging me to log in for a few minutes at a time, whenever I know I should be done making whatever was last in the batches.     Then I set up an additional 3 recipes and quit the game.     Play some more War Worlds, etc, then when the time is right head back into the game.  Planning to rinse and repeat until I’ve done everything I can with tradeskills.     So far, the only limiting factor is collecting salvaged wood – I know where to collect tons of the level 1 materials, but I need a bunch of salvaged wood as well.     I’m sure I’ll figure it out later.

Having bought the latest expansion whose name escapes me, I went ahead and fired up Civilization 5 again.     This time I am Ramkhameneanang or whatever the Siamese leaders name is, on Warlord level with Terra map and no goody huts.    I am doing OK and trying to get the hang of the new artistic winning method.    Without the goody huts the game is significantly harder, but more fun, and we’ll see where I end up when it’s all said and done.    A win will tick off another achievement, and Civ5 always has the advantage in that it’s easy to interrupt.   Now looking forward to Civilization : Beyond Earth.

I’ve pretty much finished the good parts of Flatout 2, and plan to start the next game in the series which is Ultimate Carnage.     Quick races when you can squeeze them in are pretty good, and easily shareable with kids.

What happens when you die IRL ?   Good question.    But I now have my failsafe plan in the event that I should pass away suddenly – IRL friends (2 of them) now have the keys to this blog and are supposed to post to it.    I think about Jeff Freeman every so often, and his amazingly fun blog which has disappeared after his passing.  I do want all my regular readers to know if I disappear suddenly, why.    Not that it’s expected, but you never know.

And with that, back to Real Life outside gaming.

Like I needed another Tier 1 tank

Tags

Civ5, World of Tanks

The Chinese are here.

This tends to happen with new tanks doesn’t it ?

The first tank in the Chinese tree is the NC-31, which is apparently a french design that China made in its early tank program.    The tank is slow, powerful, and packs a wallop.   I instantly liked it.

After blowing 400 gold to 100% the crew, my next mission was to elite the tank.    Of course, at Tier 1, this took a mere three matches.     Next question is, what skills to give the two man crew.     Camo is usually a good bet, but I think I’ll hold off on selecting one until I have more matches with it.

8.3 also contains the great artillery nerf.     I was pleased to find myself having a fantastic match, however, with my Priest despite the nerf.    Not playing artillery enough to really feel the difference – but it’s noticeable that matches have less artillery pieces.    Are we that upset with the nerf we’re going to refuse to play ?

Post patch had some fun matches, but did not manage a wholesale “Slaughter the new tanks” match in my MS-1, which I was hoping to do.     Perhaps sometime this weekend, as you can expect the phenomenon to continue on Friday and perhaps later.

I have been playing a lot of Civilization V, which helps account for my lack of World of Tanks progress.    On the other hand, I decided to eat my words and start playing the VK4502 B.     The only way I’m going to get that Tier 10 gun is to drive the thing and eat the credit losses.    Maybe the 3x special for the weekend will help, and I do get to relax mostly over the course of the weekend.      Will be driving the Jagdpanzer 4 for credit earning potential.    While I could buy myself a Tier 5 scout for 50% off – I have too many tanks already, and not enough time to play them.

And as a public service announcement, when you see someone type o7 this is NOT someone calling you gay.    They are saluting you.     The epic troll and the guys who let me believe that would be on my hit list if I could actually remember their names.

“Why, no, I haven’t played Minecraft for awhile….”

Tags

Civ5, Minecraft

Gods and Heroes is now out for Civilization 5, but I’m planning on skipping the expansion for the moment.   It’s pretty clear that one of the best ways to be frugal for Steam games, is to wait until they’re on sale and then buy.    I can wait.    I am way past that age where you need things *right now!*

Instead, it was an innocent remark that started me back to Minecraft : “Dad, how come you aren’t playing your Minecraft game ?”     My boy continues to become the master of the game, while I’m Civving.    So I sat down with him and started to play out my game.

I went exploring in the big canyon I had uncovered, dug some more tunnels and came out to the big lava pit.    The bottom of the canyon has a big pool of lava sitting at the bottom.    And guess what came up behind me ?   Creeper !    Boom, I am dead and all of my important stuff, which I was carrying, is thrown into the lava from the blast.    I decided I was done with that game.

Restarted, and am enjoying playing in a less directed fashion.   The game works best when you simply go out and do things.    I explored east; I tried to explore North and couldn’t pass the jungle terrain, so I carved a path/tunnel through to the next biome.    I spawned close to a very large canyon and got Iron from it immediately, then proceeded to clear a space and develop a wheat farm, and do a bunch of fishing.     Then I went exploring and started digging deep into the earth.

I’ve found some gold, redstone, and blue rocks which I plan to dig out tonight.    Yes, blue rocks.   I am not good enough at the game yet to be able to tell the difference between diamond and lapis lazuli.    If I harvest them, I’ll find out.    And in the meantime I enjoy the experience of asking “How do you build an XYZ?” and having my son tell me.     That’s my boy !

The Last Week

Tags

Civ5, Saints Row 3rd, World of Tanks

Over the last week gaming has been :

Civilization 5 – enjoying myself trying to unlock more steam achievements.    What’s especially nice about that, is it encourages a variety of playstyles.   I’ve won my first battle on a duel map, and played a lot of civs that I haven’t previously.    Currently working on the Earth map, with the Arabs, and not sure I’ll be able to get the win.

Civilization 5 has one big irritant – screenshots are saved in tga format.    This means I need to play around and figure out how to ram tga’s into something that WordPress can read, before I can do any proper blogging about my fantastic and unique exploits.

But last Saturday, there was a sale on a game I had wanted to pick up but missed – Saints Row 3.    Bought it for a mere $18 and am very glad I did.    It’s a true sucessor to GTA Vice City, an open world where you can do whatever you want, go around and collect things, and take over the criminal empire.

Oh, I know.   There’s plenty of games since Vice City that have done that, but I never liked San Andreas because of the ghetto theme, and GTA IV I could never get running which really turned me off of Rockstar.     This is a real blast to play, but probably not very bloggable.

Saints Row has one….. problem.    I really don’t want the kids seeing this one.    I mean, they’re too little still as far as I’m concerned for the violence displayed.    So it’s SR3 at night and Civ5 or Minecraft during the early evening.

Right now, I’m back at World of Tanks.    Haven’t been motivated enough to play most of the week, but am taking advantage of the special at the moment and still moving forward.    No real progress to note, therefore.

Having a lot of fun, and enjoying a weekend to decompress after an awful workweek.  Play happy everyone !

Moving forward, or stuck in the past ?

Tags

Civ5

Right now I’m feeling a strange sense of …… I’m not sure.

I have been keeping up on technology for years; during my 20’s and 30’s I was *on top* of everything related to the PC / Internet / Gaming sphere.   This started waning after that, where I instead attempted to keep my “finger on the pulse” of things.    An encyclopedic knowledge only works for single guys in the industry; by this time I had gotten married and settled down.

I’m thinking I’m not even on the pulse anymore.    Rightly so to some degree – family comes first.    But I’m looking at where I am today and what I’m into :

• I’m up with whats happening with World of Tanks.   Congratulations, one niche game which is *only* one year old.    (What I’m wondering is if I’m getting an invite for the community gathering, and I’m guessing I was not selected.   Crash the party time !).
• Kickstarter sure is interesting, in all the gaming projects getting started there.    Welcome to 2010, dude.
• Minecraft is OK.   It’s mostly fun because of all the conversation I get out of my boy about it.   Today, we started a looseleaf notebook on the game, which features his notes on all the important recipes.   This is a great thing for him to do, because it builds the right skills.    And anything we can talk about together is always good.
• Civilization 5 is getting the most playtime from me.   Why ?    Funny thing that – have you heard the “Anticipate” ringtone on an Iphone ?    My wife selected that as her text tone, and it seemed to just work on my subconscious until I found myself loading it up Tuesday and playing.    Sure wish I could figure out which game version it was too, but the sound just sticks with me.
• Steam.   Boy have I resisted this one – copyprotected games tied to one account through a service that I frankly don’t have any trust in.   And yet – it’s clearly never going away, and less obnoxious than other schemes.   Today a sale comes up (Saints Row 3 around $17) and I find myself tempted to buy and expand my library, despite the risks given the not-perfect nature of software on my network.    Welcome to 2004 dude.
• I just cut loose with $15 for the Carmageddon Kickstarter project.   Talk about old software – the developers have mostly stuck together however, and are planning an updated game for 12/31/2013.      Certain to be a graphics update only, and not a game I can let the family look at.     Welcome to the ’90s now.

Perhaps I’m getting a certain sense of maturity – which is odd for a middle aged guy playing PC games.     Perhaps it’s getting out of touch – to the degree being “in touch” requires most of your energy.    Perhaps its inevitable nostalgia – I’m sure someday, everyone reaches that point where the only good stuff is the old stuff.   Whatever it is, I’m not sure I like it.

A cookie for whatever reader can identify the specific “Anticipate” ringtone civilization link.

On funding of PC games, with a smidge of progress updates

Tags

38 studios, Carmageddon, Civ5, Kickstarter, Minecraft, World of Tanks

All continues well in the World of Tanks – matches are played and tanks are ground up.   I have an extra 2.5m ready to buy a VK4502A but will hold off until I elite some of my vast holdings of tanks.    And I finally had enough, burned free XP, and I don’t have to drive the flaming WOLVERINE any more

Minecraft continues to entertain, in a shared experience with my boy, who can talk about it for an hour in his stream-of-consciousness way.   He actually exhausted me with it last night, and I had to go sit on my bed and relax for 15 mins after being treated to his analyses & questions for half an hour.    My game is most about collecting resources and hoarding food.   His game is trying not to lose his house (again!) and figuring out if zombies can break through windows set into the side of a hill.

I brushed the dust off of my Civilization games as well.   At release I only played half-a-dozen Civilization 5 games before quitting with the vague complaint of “It’s not fun”.    Will be finishing this game I started last night, and after taking out Ramses I hope I’m successful.      There are a ton of achievements on Steam I haven’t yet earned !

Read more about the 38 studios implosion and got to thinking about the many problems inherent with PC games.    I don’t own a console, not since the ’80s at least, and apparently the bigger companies who make games get their money from them.     That’s fine to a certain degree.   I remember PC games bringing in the big money, and I didn’t like what it did to the industry.    Now it’s a more specialized/boutique industry and that suits me just fine.

In a vague sense I’ve heard about Kickstarter for several months, but I read about a project last week that made me think a bit more about the service.     If you – like me – aren’t exactly aware of it, Kickstarter is a methodology for coming up with a project idea, and getting crowd funding.    Your project has to hit on the entertainment/art end of the spectrum, which game software is a natural fit for.   You state the amount that needs to be pledged (Like, $1,000) for your project to be accomplished.    If you hit that level, the donors are charged and you are expected to do your project.    If not enough is pledged (Like, $800 only) then no money changes hands.

It took me awhile to figure out Kickstarter the company’s angle – it’s not prominently displayed on their website.     If your project is successful they get a 5% cut.     Your project also pays credit card processing fees of between 3-5%.   So they take a 10% max cut of funded projects, and it seems reasonable to me, not ideal but not exorbitant.

Look at this project ! Haven’t thought about Carmageddon in years.

I read the project description and everything placed onto their page by the Stainless studios guy (Nobby).   What a hysterical and twisted guy.   Probably part of the 80’s generation like me.   I love the whole idea of an updated Carmageddon, and the money going to the development team instead of a publisher.       At this point, I feel good about giving Stainless $15 and hoping for a good game.

For a contrary view I googled “how much does kickstarter charge” and this nicely written post was about tenth from the top.  I do think they’re probably a bit of a pricey service, but with any overpriced service a competitor usually comes along.

With PC gaming being a bit more niche, less so aimed at you damn kids out there, and more at the grumpy young adults/ middle aged, how can you expect to get the games developed that YOU want to see ?   Well – I mean – that *I* want to see ?   This strikes me as a pretty good way to go about it.    Why wait for angel investors and play a big money funding game, ala 38 studios ?    Maybe start with the right core team and see what you can get via previous work or by having a famous developer or such.

Carmageddon Reincarnation is slated for a Feb 2013 release.    This is the game I hid from small children and only played in the dead of night, with a maniacal grin on my face and understanding the whole comedic angle of the game.    But the pixelated mess you see when running it on modern computers just didn’t work for me.    Now, an updated version with 3d support ?     Let’s see what they can put together.