|
Tooth and Tail is a streamlined RTS by the makers of Monaco, a co-op heist game. Players take on the role of one of four different factions as they decide who is going to end up on the dinner table. It's available on both PC and PS4 at $20. The factions are for the most part strictly cosmetic. In multiplayer, players draft a pool of six units in secret, with all units being available to all factions. The story mode digs into the lore of each faction, giving you a different perspective on each angle of the conflict. If you want to get a better idea of what the multiplayer scene looks like, I've been streaming some of my play. Here's a short video https://www.twitch.tv/videos/175359030 that gives you a quick overview. If you have any interest in the RTS genre but have struggled to engage the multiplayer scene, this is a very distilled, streamlined RTS experience that provides a lot of fun in a bite-sized package.   The Commonfolk are led by Hopper, a one-armed rebel who came into power by giving up her arm to feed her people. She pushes for democracy and seeks to put the decision of who gets eaten to the people.  The KSR serve as the secret police of the nation, led by The Quartermaster. They seek to reestablish rule of law and quell the revolution in the wake of the Tsarina's murder.  The Civilized are led by Archimedes, a quasi-religious figure. One of the founders of the lottery system to decide who is eaten, it's implied that Archimedes is corrupt as none of The Civilized are ever selected for the feasting table.  The Longcoats are led by free-market capitalist Bellafide. After his son was taken by the lottery, he raised a private army and inspired rebellion against The Civilized with the aid of Hopper. So is this game good? It's complicated, but yeah. The game is designed around you using your single commander as a 'rally point' for units. You can command all units en masse or select one unit type to advance. Commanders can scout without fear as they regenerate quickly, have a high HP pool, and respawn shortly after death. Bad Things The procedural map generation has some issues, the terrain layout is inconsistent in the advantages it provides. The mission layout for story mode is tedious, occasionally you have to spend a couple minutes wandering around looking for who you're supposed to talk to. Not a huge amount of variety in units. No control groups. The design allows players to use a gamepad, so there's little opportunity for micro in commanding your units. Good Things The multiplayer is good! The lack of asymmetry means that everyone is on an even playing field. The unit drafting for multiplayer is interesting and affords a decent amount of variety in the strategy you employ. There's a low barrier to entry. If you were overwhelmed by Starcraft multiplayer, you're going to have a much easier time getting into Tooth and Tail. The individual scores for each factions are all awesome. When the procedural maps are good, they're really good. Games are quick, expect to spend no more than five to ten minutes on a given game. You should have no fear of buying this on console. There's a solid amount of single-player content if you have no interest in multiplayer. I played through the entirety of a day and beat three of the four faction campaigns. Units Units are divided into three tiers and emplacements, which I'm not going to go into because they're boring. Farms Farms are the basic production unit, available in a square formation around any friendly gristmill(your base). Each farm is manned by a pig with an attack of 1, affording you a slight bit of protection against early attacks. Tier One Distillery Brothers: Drunk squirrels with handguns. They're low damage, but have decent range at 4 tiles. They can best abuse high ground and do work if you have a front line. Nomads of the North: Little lizard fellas with ushanka. It seems like they're the go-to rush unit despite being the same cost as the squirrels. They have worse range but better damage output. Morning Light Croakers: Toads with dynamite strapped to their backs. Can't hit ranged units, explode in a wide AoE when they reach an enemy unit or structure. They can quickly devastate small units or structures if they can manage to get in range. The Volunteers: Pidgums with healthpacks. The birbs are a flying unit and can't be hit by melee attacks. Healing can stack on an individual unit up to nine times with multiple birds. Units don't heal unless left undisturbed in friendly territory, so these guys can be useful. Building them too early can be a mistake though as they lack any offensive capabilities. Engineers for Hire: Moles with thick ole' hammers. They are one of two units that can be built anywhere on the map. With high health and strong damage against buildings, they're most effective as tanks or sappers. Unlike every other unit, moles are one and done. Normally when constructing units, you create a burrow that continually produces them at the cost of food, but not with moles. Tier Two The Freight Union: Ferrets with mortar cannons. They have the best range in the game(with commander vision) and are awesome for taking out structures. However, their attacks can be dodged and they do nothing against air units, so you have to play carefully when using them. The Trench Gang: Chameleons with clubs. This is the only stealth unit in the game and they're a little odd. They have decent damage and with their HP pool and stealth you can disengage effectively to recover after a short engagement. Burst fire is most effective against them. Wing Demons: Falcons with machine guns. These are the only flying units that can attack both land and aerial units. They do great burst damage with a short reload time. They are the best unit in the game at abusing level geometry, but have trouble with static emplacements. The Glorious AFB: Skunks with gas grenades. The AFB does best in long term engagements, as they shoot gas grenades that do damage over time as long as enemy units remain within that space. Skunks are probably the best way of shutting down big groups of squirrels or skinks, but will get absolutely torn apart by Wing Demons or lizards. The Tooth Collectors: Just some loving snakes. These guys are best against emplacements or mid/late game units as their attacks stack DoT against their target. Kind of a waste against most tier one units. You can hit and run best running these boys. Tier Three Inmate 43B: Essentially just the heavy. The badger has the best DPS in the game if you give her minigun time to rev up. Uncle Butter: A boar with a flamethrower. Best HP in the game with a devastating AoE attack that can tear through structures and weaker units. Unfortunately, he can't do poo poo against aerial units. Kasha, Farmhand: Someone's deviantart OC. Kasha has a sniper rifle that can outright ace almost anything outside of tier 3 units and structures. In order to use her effectively, you have to be handy with your micro and get her to pick off enemy units while staying out of range. Can be quickly overwhelmed without support from other units. The Matriach: Just a really gross owl. She spits out 'wretches,' hosed up little mice that run into combat and another six spawn immediately upon her death. General Advice Queue up a farm and start exploring immediately. Don't just find your enemy's base, find every point of entry and look for your next expansion point. Start building units ASAP. Lots of games are decided within the first two minutes, don't wait and build out all your starting farms because there's a decent chance you'll be dead before they finish. Don't neglect expansion. If you both held on through the early game, this is where the game really opens up. Get that second gristmill and then start producing better units once you can actually sustain them. A single T3 unit can decide the entire game, easily. If you have a huge surplus and time to produce them, go for it. Experiment with different drafting strategies. There are a ton of ways you can approach each game, find what works best for you. Think about your angle of approach when moving towards the enemy. Ideally you want to destroy their warrens so that they don't have anything to stop you, but people won't always build in a way that allows you to play this way. When building your warrens, you have two approaches. Either set them up so that your starting farms provide some defense, or build them so that the enemy has to walk through your gristmill to get to them. Generally losing a farm is tough, but losing a warren can be the end of the game early on. If there's enough interest I'd be happy to set up a steam group. Somberbrero fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Sep 29, 2017 |
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 05:49
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 03:24 |
|
|
i've been thinking about buying this game and playing ti with some friends. how does it compare to age of empires 2? how friendly is it to people who don't play much rts?
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2017 02:32
|
|
|
ninjewtsu posted:i've been thinking about buying this game and playing ti with some friends. how does it compare to age of empires 2? how friendly is it to people who don't play much rts? It is much much faster paced than AOE2. It's designed to be played with keyboard and mouse or with a controller. Games can be finished in as little as 5 minutes. Once you get the hang of it games can take longer, but the farms only have a set amount of food they can produce before they go fallow so you are forced to expand or lose ability to produce units.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2017 05:58
|
|
|
ninjewtsu posted:i've been thinking about buying this game and playing ti with some friends. how does it compare to age of empires 2? how friendly is it to people who don't play much rts? As someone who just got back into aoe2 a while ago, it is much easier to approach. It's very easy to learn 'build orders,' they hardly exist since most of what you're doing is either in response or anticipation of your opponent. It's great for casual co-op because games are exceedingly fast. Rather than focusing on long-term base management you're generally looking to fight over land quickly.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2017 06:36
|
|
|
This game owns. More people should play it. And they should play me, or we should get some goon 2v2s going, because this game owns.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2017 23:31
|
|
|
Zillions magazine posted:This game owns. More people should play it. And they should play me, or we should get some goon 2v2s going, because this game owns. It's extremely good. My laptop is out of commission for two weeks and I'm considering buying it on PS4 just so I can play during that time. Squirrels v. Nomads: I think nomads are straight better unless you have a map where you can abuse high ground? Squirrels counter toads better but that's not super important imo. Badger v. Fox: man, I feel like Kasha is a murder machine for literally everyone but me. Each shot is important and it's easy to waste her utility. I think she can turn games around, but i've switched back to Badger just because she's much harder to gently caress up.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2017 00:31
|
|
|
They just nerfed Kasha, but she still feels strong if your positioning is good. My deck lately has been squirrels/toads/pigeons/snakes and then either kasha badger or owl, depending. Usually transition into mass pigeons/snakes midgame, grabbing an owl or two because the pigeons keep it alive so well. Still pretty low on ladder but constantly playing people at rank 20 or so, which is kind of annoying considering I've been playing ranked for all of 3 hours. Squirrels are just flat out the best t1 unit, and you run toads into countering lizards. Snakes/pigeons owns, too.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2017 14:26
|
|
|
i like the basic concept of the game but i think they shot themselves in the foot by not having proper factions (like each has their own units and balance) and actual maps.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2017 01:54
|
|
|
Groovelord Neato posted:i like the basic concept of the game but i think they shot themselves in the foot by not having proper factions (like each has their own units and balance) and actual maps. I mean, balancing for asymmetrical factions would increase the scope of the game massively and also probably create a worse multiplayer experience? The multiplayer is really good due to drafting, it creates its own system of checks and balances. I am trying Toads, Squirrels, Pidgeons, Ferrets, Falcons, and Badgers. You lose your rush potential but it essentially ensures you make it to midgame. I am very embarrassed to admit I just discovered there's a retreat option so I've been trying Kasha too now that I can actually use her. Badger seems a little stronger overall. Edit: I do have to say, gently caress the maps. Somberbrero fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Oct 3, 2017 |
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2017 02:11
|
|
|
i really don't like the drafting system. i'd rather have some factions with their own units.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2017 02:13
|
|
|
bought this game today, it's really fun the drafting system is really cool, it's like you make your own faction. some units seem really useless though? the healing pigeons never seem to accomplish much of anything
|
|
#
?
Nov 17, 2017 04:36
|
|
|
ninjewtsu posted:bought this game today, it's really fun pigeons are super useful! otherwise your units only heal in your own territory, they allow you to really press an attack. they're also dangerous because you have some units that put out tremendous damage in long engagements that your opponent wants to burst down, which is much harder when you have nine birbs healing them. i wouldn't even build a t3 unless i had at least 6 on hand, otherwise they're just going to get dumped on immediately and you're out another 180 food. badgers in particular want them. man this game owns.
|
|
#
?
Nov 17, 2017 09:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 03:24 |
|
|
every time i try to bring them into a fight they die immediately so i guess i'm doing something wrong but trying to micro things in this game is kinda clunky so i'm not entirely sure what to do about it
|
|
#
?
Nov 17, 2017 10:36
|
|