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double nine posted:On the topic of Total Annihilation, I feel it needs to be mentioned that it had a soundtrack which can be summed up as 'Jeremy Soule at his most bombastic self' and it was baller when combined with massive battleships throwing plasma slugs across the map, or simply have a large convoy of mobile missile launchers firing simultaneously. the TA soundtrack always reminds me of the WC2 one. i suppose neither is afraid of strutting its stuff that's not to say they're the same though https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_f8UFv_Ytc
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Oct 1, 2018 04:53
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Relax Or DIE posted:Yeah, I played a lot of Civ: ToT as a kid. If I recall, you had 3 different scenarios that used the 'stacked' maps: Default Civ 2 with an Alpha Centauri map in case you want to end the game by grinding through an alien civ, a sci fi one that covered 3 planets and orbital platforms around the starting planet, and a fantasy one with land, ocean, sky, and underworld. I think only the fantasy one really worked, as the different civs would start in different areas and determined your access to units that could move between the different maps. The Alpha Centauri mode was just a slog tacked onto the end of the normal game, and the Sci-fi one was neat but snowballed even worse than normal Civ because whoever got to the 'upper' maps first and claimed territory had a huge advantage. I never really played the sci-fi mode, so I can't say what the specific problems were with it, but I did play the extended and fantasy modes a lot. The extended mode, as you say, was just a bit tacked on to the end of the game where you'd also have to conquer Alpha Centauri. I feel like they really missed an opportunity there by only having one alien civ, because it might actually have been more interesting to have essentially two games going on at one time that join up near the end, but what they actually did was put one civilisation on a map by themself, so that player gets a huge advantage. It can actually be kind of fun to play as the aliens and conquer the Earth, but it's not the game you'd expect to be playing based on the concept. The fantasy mode is absolutely awful though. You had four world maps: surface; underground; underwater; sky. The first problem is that they didn't match up at all. You'd only be able to go from the surface to the underwater map at the shore, but there was no guarantee that the underwater map would have traversable terrain at the right location for that to work. Going from the underwater to the surface was even worse as you could only travel from an underwater mountain to a coastal tile. The underground made more sense, because you can obviously have underground lakes and there is land underneath the ocean, but it would have been a lot cooler if the maps matched. The sky obviously didn't need to match, but they made the weird decision to keep the "ocean" concept, so you could only travel to the sky map if you were directly underneath a cloud or you were controlling a unit that was able to cross oceans. You mentioned that the different civs started in different locations, and that was a cool concept, but it also made some much, much more powerful than others. The Humans, for example, as basically stuck on the ground. They have very few units that can travel to other maps and those they have are not very good. The Butoes (bird-people) start in the sky and can also easily get to the surface but are almost completely locked out of the underground and underwater maps. This means that they can basically colonise the entire sky map unopposed but never conquer anyone who lives below the surface. The Stygians (undead) quite early on get a unit that treats all terrain as roads and can travel to other maps from any location (as long as the tile they're trying to travel to is traversable and unoccupied) and is also good in combat. So on one end of the scale you've got the humans, who are basically hosed from the start, and on the other end you've got the Stygians who are just going to win. There's also a built-in fantasy scenario where, instead of the normal victory conditions, you have to prevent an ancient evil from awakening to destroy the world. It has a human-designed map and different goals for the civilisations so it actually works a little bit better, but not a lot, because it still has the massive issue of different civs not really being able to interact with each other properly.
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Oct 1, 2018 05:11
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Ein Sexmonster posted:I'll do an effortpost for supreme commander if people are interested. That game still has a special place in my heart and no other game has replicated the sheer insane scale and style of that game. I would love this. As much as I loved RTS games when I was growing up (cut my teeth on the original C&C, Dark Reign, etc.), total annihilation kind of passed me by and then when supcom came out I didn't have a super computer it needed to run at the time. Years later I bought it and burned through the campaign in a weekend, and I'll still start it up a few times a year just to have a big throwdown with the AI. Nothing has come close to matching it in all the weird stuff you can do in that style, be it a massive artillery forward base, a stealth blitz on the enemy commander, battleships, nuclear subs, nuclear deterrent races, or gently caress it, I'll just build a Monkey Lord or land battleship (which is also a factory) and march it down your goddamn throat.
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Oct 1, 2018 06:54
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Jossar posted:Would it be worth importing my writeup of Age of Empires 2 here? That thread's probably going to get lost to history and since it's tangentially relevant i'd prefer if it lived on in some form in a more general thread. In either case, I might consider writing up some of the old Impressions Games city builders. I'm catching up on the thread right now but I'm putting a section in the OP linking to effort posts, so yeah do it. I'm also putting a section in for free games, so keep posting those!
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Oct 2, 2018 18:36
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OP is updated. Jossar is thread MVP for effort posts. Please check my links for dumb mistakes and stuff.Firos posted:Rome 2 is the best TW game don't @ me. It's not even the best historical TW. Don't get me wrong, Shogun 2 is starting to feel a bit clunky, but it's still an awesome game to play, and if you tire of it, you then load up Fall of the Samurai and just mow down hordes of sword wielding maniacs with tons of guns.
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Oct 2, 2018 19:04
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Funny thing is, I only used Union screenshots for the actual battles in commemoration of that campaign. That is the Confederacy difficulty select screen, but if you were playing as them, the troop buttons would be in brown/gold rather than blue.  (Links seem to work and descriptions are well done.) I have a few of the TWs, mostly the outdated ones, but for some reason I can't seem to get myself started on Shogun 2. Even though a lot of people say it's among the best of the historicals, I just keep going back to the original Rome whenever I want the TW experience, rather than trying something new. Jossar fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Oct 2, 2018 |
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Oct 2, 2018 19:18
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Would anyone be interested in a Myth 1 write-up? It's not grand strategy but it was one of my favorite games for a long while and I've always felt it was underappreciated.
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Oct 2, 2018 21:41
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bloodychill posted:Would anyone be interested in a Myth 1 write-up? It's not grand strategy but it was one of my favorite games for a long while and I've always felt it was underappreciated. I would be!
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Oct 2, 2018 22:55
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We're here to listen, and honestly i've been finding really neat things i'd never heard about before from people talking/doing LPs in this forum (like Warlords II), so add another interest count.
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Oct 3, 2018 01:18
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Jossar posted:Funny thing is, I only used Union screenshots for the actual battles in commemoration of that campaign. That is the Confederacy difficulty select screen, but if you were playing as them, the troop buttons would be in brown/gold rather than blue. Honestly setting is 60% of TW. If you're super into Rome era and just don't really care about Japan that Shogun won't do anything for you. I've been told napoleon is fantastic but I just hate lining up gun lines. Kind of ironic that I played Dwarfs so much in Warhammer
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Oct 3, 2018 01:51
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Luminous Cow posted:Honestly setting is 60% of TW. If you're super into Rome era and just don't really care about Japan that Shogun won't do anything for you. I've been told napoleon is fantastic but I just hate lining up gun lines. Kind of ironic that I played Dwarfs so much in Warhammer Empire is still one of my favorite Total Wars for exactly that reason.
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Oct 3, 2018 03:58
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Cantorsdust posted:Empire is still one of my favorite Total Wars for exactly that reason. I miss empire's ability to have like 3 militia in an army with no general for public order
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Oct 3, 2018 23:08
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Jossar posted:We're here to listen, and honestly i've been finding really neat things i'd never heard about before from people talking/doing LPs in this forum (like Warlords II), so add another interest count. Where is the warlords II lp? I'm not seeing it.
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Oct 4, 2018 03:32
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CountFosco posted:Where is the warlords II lp? I'm not seeing it. Probably because I found it from diving into the depths of the ancient past. If you have Archives, it is located here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3447741&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1
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Oct 4, 2018 03:35
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I'll post this here too in case anyone here wants to join: People usually up at 10PM/11PM (Eastern US), but I'll probably start around 9PM. I'm going to try to play routinely on Friday nights for a while. (Discord link again)
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Oct 5, 2018 21:39
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Someone on the TA Universe forums wrote up an economy guide that should help anyone just getting into the game. It's for the Escalation mod, but it should pretty much apply to vanilla too. https://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?p=758949#post758949
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Oct 9, 2018 20:00
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I posted this in the game recs thread because I didn't know this thread exists, and no one there answered me, so hopefully someone here can help Is the battle for middle earth 2 possible to play multiplayer nowadays? And does it still hold up?
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Oct 10, 2018 00:57
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ninjewtsu posted:I posted this in the game recs thread because I didn't know this thread exists, and no one there answered me, so hopefully someone here can help There's a community-made patch (last version is about a year old) that keeps everything running, balanced, and up to date: https://www.gamereplays.org/battleformiddleearth2/portals.php?show=page&name=bfme2-patch-1.09
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Oct 10, 2018 10:56
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Jossar posted:This thread is bad as it makes me want to not actually play games, but instead just sit and write up descriptions of them. Closest modern equivalent is the excellent Ultimate General: Gettysburg and its successor Ultimate General: Civil War. The former is a very deep multi-scenario remake of SMG. The latter takes that concept but extends it to the whole civil war, with a very slightly dynamic campaign. They are both tons of fun and pretty much unmissable if you liked SMG.
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Oct 10, 2018 11:53
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Has anyone played Frozen Synapse 2 yet? How would you evaluate it?
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Oct 14, 2018 20:04
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Looks like work on the RA2 mod for OpenRA's come along further than I though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TOiFOgsxDk
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Oct 14, 2018 22:43
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double nine posted:Has anyone played Frozen Synapse 2 yet? How would you evaluate it? Good, if having a bit of a rough launch.
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Oct 14, 2018 23:16
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God I haven't played command & conquer in so long. I had a ton of fine LAN matches with zero hour back in the day. Chinese nuke general owned hard
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Oct 15, 2018 01:19
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Luminous Cow posted:God I haven't played command & conquer in so long. I had a ton of fine LAN matches with zero hour back in the day. Chinese nuke general owned hard I loved zero hour. It's one of those games I used to replay regularly. I think I still have the disks around somewhere. That's also one of the last real LAN games I ever played and it was pretty great to team up with friends against some AI opponents.
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Oct 15, 2018 01:34
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there's not a lot of rts out there with set pieces as good as destroying the dam in generals
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Oct 15, 2018 15:46
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I notice AI War 2 is out. I did enjoy the first one, but Arcen games was pretty famous for questionable design decisions in their later games, so I'm a little cautious. I remember the first game used to have a bunch of active goon players, has anyone tried the sequel yet?
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Oct 18, 2018 21:13
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So I'm playing SM's Alpha Centauri for the first time ever. Civ II might still be my most played game given how much time I spent on it as a child so I took to the basic engine really quickly and easily (though I really, really miss being able to do diagonal moves with numpad 7/1/3/9). My mind is absolutely blown at the moment, so far Alpha Centauri feels deeper than Civ VI or even V with the expansions, it has a staggering amount of content and (seemingly) stuff going on. I love the storyline that plays out when you build certain buildings / interact with planetary lifeforms and the writing is honestly maybe the best in any game I've ever played. I started out as Lal and have played defensively colonizing and terraforming my home continent, despite everyone else declaring war on me and invading with mind-worms because I wouldn't give them my dope credits and technology, I'm doing pretty good. However, I have like half the settlements the AI has. I don't know if building tall is a legit strategy in this yet, but I'm probably only doing well because I'm on the normal difficulty mode and am used to Civ games. I'm definitely ahead tech and military wise but I'm concerned I'll be outpaced when the Spartans conquer the rest of the Gaians. I was thinking about starting over now that I actually understand whats going on with mechancis like research, ecology, and terraforming (holy heck there are so many options and they all matter) and thus having a much more efficient start but I'm enjoying loving up and losing things from time to time while I keep moving forward with this neat psychic worm thing. Am I right in thinking its worth beating for the story before I try to nerd min max my way through a game?
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Oct 21, 2018 18:08
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 SALE ALERT Supreme Commander and Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance are on sale on Steam for $3.99! LINK
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Oct 22, 2018 20:19
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there's a new rts out, called king of the world, based on the old warcraft 3 risk maps. i bought it and tried for half an hour to get a game going, and saw 0 other players. don't bother
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Oct 26, 2018 23:00
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Its a shame the black and white games weren't better. World building with some god elements splashed in and accompanied with a fun animal companion is a great premise.
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Oct 26, 2018 23:24
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It's got a sci-fi spinoff sequel coming out next year but you should really give Age of Wonders 3 a shot now because it's an amazing game that a lot of people slept on. Age of Wonders 3 is the latest in the Age of Wonders series. There were other games before it but I never played them and who knows if they're good or not. I don't. This game is good though. It's a lot like the now-ancient Master of Magic. You're going to do 4X building and exploring and conquering and capturing mana nodes and all of that good poo poo, but you're also going to choose a race and a class for your main character. This 2 degree axis means that you can be the more stereotypical wizard elves or the warrior humans, but you can also be the goblin dreadnaughts (tank and steampunk guys) or the halfling druids or a dwarven rogue or anything in between. Class not only affects your main hero but also the kinds of buildings you build and units you can produce bring in to battle. Battles are turn-based hexmap affairs where you play against a surprisingly decent AI to eke out the advantage with the units you have. Unlike Warhammer: Total War (a game I am currently very in to) it's much harder for the computer opponent to run away and prevent you from engaging with it, so you'll have more interesting and even fights. Your heros will level up, you'll find magic items, you can become friends with dragons and then build dragon units and command a fleet of dragons to go gently caress up a guy. It's good poo poo. Each class also has wildly different ways of affecting the main map. Mages can summon up powerful and interesting units right to the board, the dreadnaught can enhance their building's productivity, the warrior can get big buffs so even their chaff-y frontline units own bones. Rogues can buff their units and reduce enemy happiness to get an economic advantage. There's a DLC that adds halflings and jungle maps and one that adds the necromancer class. The necromancer is very different from the other classes and I recommmend loving around with it. Because of the wild customizability of the classes the races take a tiny step back. They still make a big impact, especially earlier in the game before you've customized as much of your army, but they're not as wildly disparate as the races in Warhammer: Total War I or II. Despite this you'll find that you're constantly finding new ways of thinking about fighting as you change up your strategy with different class/race combinations. Some of them are more powerful than others but none are truly broken. There's also a PBEM option so that you can play with your friends. There's still an ongoing tournament community fighting today. If you like Warhammer: Total War but want a different type of combat that's a little more x-com and has more of a focus on unit abilities this is your game. If you want a 4X with big stacks of units and high customizability you want to play this too. It's not shy about being a war-focused game, unlike say the endless series of games, which means that it's quite good at delivering interesting combat challenges. It's also on sale for really cheap a lot of the time - look for it in the upcoming steam sales. There are some degenerate strategies at very high levels of play. I suggest you don't look them up unless you want to spoil some of the game for yourself. You don't have to do them to beat the very hard AI - they're really there so that tournament people can high-five each other. There's a campaign but I never played it. I find campaigns in these kinds of games to be boring compared to the sandbox mode, which in this game is very good. Especially with the "portal control" objective added in later patches, which gives a kind of king-of-the-hill showdown near the end game, perfect for big army match-ups that allow your end-game units to have something interesting to do instead of just slamming through low-tier enemy garrisons. If this sounds familiar it's because Total War: Warhammer II basically exactly copied it (which is good. It's a good way to keep these games moving later on.) If you like it I recommend checking out the Age of Wonders: Planetfall thread on here, which is about anticipating the next release, which will have an x-com-y cover system and carry over the class/race customization factor but now in space.
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Oct 26, 2018 23:38
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Anyone know some good Napoleonic era strategy games?
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Oct 27, 2018 01:16
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VostokProgram posted:Anyone know some good Napoleonic era strategy games? Napoleon: Total War 
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Oct 27, 2018 01:54
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Impermanent posted:It's got a sci-fi spinoff sequel coming out next year but you should really give Age of Wonders 3 a shot now because it's an amazing game that a lot of people slept on. This game is insanely good and I will do nasty nasty things to get to play it with another human
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Oct 27, 2018 02:59
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Thank you for making this thread! I really think that the 8-bit series is super underrated. I heard good things about Tooth & Tail, do you guys think it holds up still? I know that the shelf life of games these days is pretty low.
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Oct 27, 2018 14:33
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Tooth and tail is fun, haven't played mp though but the campaign is good. Story is bleak as gently caress though
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Oct 27, 2018 17:21
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Zedd posted:Napoleon: Total War Is the emoji meant to imply that this is actually a bad choice
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Oct 27, 2018 20:48
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i didn't care for tooth and tail at all. the campaign was way too easy, the gameplay too simple and having every map be procedurally generated is a major turn off. plus the multiplayer was dead
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Oct 27, 2018 23:25
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Yeah, my brother bought and returned it, said it was way too simplistic.
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Oct 27, 2018 23:35
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VostokProgram posted:Is the emoji meant to imply that this is actually a bad choice It gets mixed opinions from total war fans. If you like the period enough then you should like it. Battles tend to be simplify to to just getting everyone on line and shooting because of the AI. I rarely bother trying to turn flanks, rarely use cavalry except to counter enemy cavalry, just stretch my lines out and then spend the battles telling my artillery where to shoot. I like it but I’m willing to accept the simplifications of the tactics from the period. The actual Napoleon mini campaigns aren’t bad because they force you to move and work with limited resources instead of turtling and building up super armies like in other TW games.
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Oct 28, 2018 00:05
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