Mister Adequate has talked before about a little game called Endless Space, but we’re going to talk about it again because it’s just that good and because it was also just officially released!
Like any true 4X, Endless Space takes a little bit of time to get used to. You’ll need to give yourself an hour or so to get used to the UI and how things work, and then you’ll probably need another several practice games after that to figure out how to not languish in last place in the score chart (hint: just focus on money, industry, and expansion.) But if you’re willing to work at it and get past all of that, then you’ll soon find yourself faced with a very solid and polished space 4X in the vein of Master of Orion and Space Empires. The races are wonderfully inventive, the tech tree is a delight to navigate, and on the lowest graphics settings it will run on most computers. It’s very easy to find yourself sucked into the “One More Turn” mentality with this game, a true sign of a good turn-based strategy.
I Google Image Searched “space ponies” and found this.
Overall this is a game that is well-worth playing for a variety of people: longtime 4X fans will find themselves right at home, and people new to the genre will find this a challenging but rewarding gateway to the genre. It may not be Master of Orion 2, but it might be the best homage to it thus far.
If you keep up with what Paradox talk about you may be aware that they just recently announced a new project, first codenamed Project Reagan and since revealed to be a Cold War-era game by the team who made HoI2 offshoot Arsenal of Democracy. Now, as long-time readers may be aware I have a particular interest in the Cold War or more specifically the aspect of nuclear warfare and policy within it. To this end I’m going to write up a nice long post detailing my thoughts on this development!
At the core of the Cold War, and thus things that need to be executed well in this game, are two concepts. The first is the whole espionage, diplomacy, proxy war side of things. The second is nuclear policy, strategy, brinkmanship, and potentially, war. Neither of these are things that have been tremendously well-implemented in the main so it will be interesting to see whether the AoD team can live up to this challenge.
If the consequences of nukes are only “GAME OVER, and no you don’t get an animation of a mushroom cloud, we don’t reward failure.” then it’s not actually going to be very much fun. It was a valid design choice for Balance of Power, but I’ve got both academic and gamer objections to the idea of ending the game the moment someone presses the red button. Just because nuclear brinkmanship worked out the way it did in our world does not mean it always had to do so, and this needs to be reflected if the game is going to be anything except a history show.
The problem (And this is something that Pox as well as other games always fall down on) is that you really need to model negotiations, both formal ones like the SALT talks and “Comrade Premier, there’s a single American nuclear weapon flying in. It will detonate in the remote Urals. What do we do?” red-phone hotline business. There needs to be the opportunity for deceit – there needs to be the opportunity for back-and-forth – and there needs to be an intensely personal element to it. When you talk to the President about said incoming nuke it matters enormously what you, as the Russian Premier, think of him. If the two of you have good relations and you believe him sufficiently honest, that’s going to demand a much different reaction from thinking he’s a gung-ho senile old capitalist snake who has been itching to wipe out Moscow. As it stands of course the system is Send an Offer -> Other Guys reject it -> Two weeks later bribe Other Guys -> Two weeks later Send the Offer again. That barely cuts it for any of their existing games, it sure as shit won’t cut it in a conflict which should very often play out without full-scale war and where the outbreak of full-scale war itself should provide a massive imperative for emergency negotiations to stop it, because everyone knows where it could very quickly lead.
Also, what’s a Cold War game without storing up trouble for the future?
The question of nuclear targeting policy, and nuclear use policy, is of vital importance. In real history the USA’s policy was to keep European forces relatively weak, weak enough that they couldn’t really hope to stop a full-scale Soviet invasion (this changed as time passed and NATO technology developed much faster than Soviet tech did, and by the 80’s this would have just led to a lot of ruined Red tanks). They also made explicit that they would not rule out first-use of nuclear weapons. The whole thing was a bluff, brinkmanship of the highest order. Perception is more important than knowledge, and your leader’s personal beliefs on the Other Guys is vital. Another issue in the targeting policy side of things is that targeting policy occupied a huge amount of thought on both side. What do you aim at? How much do you devote towards everything? Is your policy to try and wipe out the other guy’s ability to nuke you? To simply ensure your own second-strike capability, so even if every last person in Russia is dead you can still destroy the West? Do you target population centers, or only warfighting centers, and does the distinction even matter? So on and so forth, and nothing about the outcome was predetermined, of course.
It will be interesting to see how East vs. West tackles these issues, if indeed it tries to at all. It’s been a long time since there was a real Cold War game, and longer still since one that took a shot at tackling these sorts of issues. A good Cold War game could be the most tense gameplay experience since the original Silent Hill made us shit our britches. We’ll have to wait and see.
(PS for one view on what nuclear policy should be, you could do worse than to read Colin Gray’s paper Victory is Possible.)
No, not the Lady Gaga song, as great as it is. No I’m talking about Jihad Sultans 2 Crusader Kings 2. Let me set the scene for you guys.
Using the Character Creator I began as a German-culture Christian in Gao, and quickly expanded to take the surrounding lands and form the Kingdom of Songhai. So far so good, but then my male line seems to just end and I have nothing but daughters for like 50 years, and despite the continuation of expansion at first I’ve been struggling to keep things together. Why? Because my country is full of FAITHLESS BACKSTABBING MENDACIOUS FRAUDULENT TWO-FACED DOUBLE-CROSSING PERFIDIOUS RECREANT TRAITORS, THAT’S FUCKING WHY!
I’m so mad. I try and be a nice, benevolent ruler. But people keep rebelling and that necessitates tyranny to keep the land together – which of course makes people dislike me further. There should probably be a fear modifier for a consistently victorious tyrant because I always manage to find a way to win, whether it’s by attriting the other guys to death in the horrendously bleak deserts of Africa, taking loans until I can afford the mercenaries needed to win, or through the sheer luck of capturing the leader of a rebellion in battle.
My current Queen, Queen Luna I of Songhai and Ghana, is only 35 years old and she just put down the “Third War to Depose Queen Luna”, the “Second War against the tyranny of Queen Luna” (Caused by people who you try to arrest or revoke the titles of saying “Nah bro” and revolting instead; but I only tried to imprison them because they were involved with other revolts!), and some random attempt at independence by some podunk no-account count of Povertania, West Africa. Oh and then my still-pagan neighbors in Tarkur took a shot at me and I had to cede some territory because it was in the middle of one of those other wars.
Why is there never a vassal swarm in my DEFENSE?
Twenty-two years on the throne and already in this mess. And furthermore thanks to not having ANY SONS EVER ARGH I don’t have people I can hand landed titles out to any more; so here I am sitting pretty with a ton more provinces than I can administer and nobody loyal to give the damned things to. Mom tried that with Duke Valerian II and he got outmaneuvered by Dukes Emich I and II, the latter of whom ended up with ALL THE DUCHIES. Which meant I had to fight 3/4 of my country simultaneously because Emich II was all “Oh ho ho ho I’m not going to settle for that oh no I’m Petyr Fucking Baelish, Littlefinger big ambitions, time to betray the daughter of the woman who gave me power in the first place!” So now my country is a ruined hellhole, going from the most prosperous and powerful Christian state outside Europe to an impoverished, contracting realm with no money, no manpower, and no loyal vassals in the space of twenty years.
So there’s a pretty big mod for EU3 known as Magna Mundi, whose objective was among other things to make handling your country internally a trickier, more involved affair that required attention and thought, rather than mere afterthought. Well, so successful was this mod that they set out to license what they needed from Paradox in order to make it as a standalone game. Now this has worked well before, as we can see in Arsenal of Democracy and Darkest Hour (The latter of which I consider the definitive version of HoI2, in fact), and Magna Mundi the Game (MMtG) aroused plenty of excitement on the Paradox forums.
And then it was cancelled. And they didn’t beat around the bush when they announced it, either. Take a look at this;
“We have seen this project drag on and the code we have gotten has not shown significant improvement for many months. Some old and known problems persists and new ones appear with each delivery.”
Paradox’s executive produce Mattias Lilja then added this;
“Lack of trust; the leadership of [Magna Mundi developers] Universo Virtual has given a sunshine version of the project to Paradox and reacted with irritation and anger when we have pointed out obvious problems with the deliveries. It has come to a point where they claim the project is done, and the game is ready for release – despite the many critical issues found and reported on our end.
Internal strife within the MM team; we have gotten information from members within the MM team desperate to save the project whom report to us that the project lacks active leadership. Key personnel in the project see what Paradox sees but instead gets silenced by the UV leadership.
All in all, these are not circumstances under which we can work with a team and it will now stop. At this point we have no more news than the above.”
Wow! That’s pretty uncompromising stuff there, and there seems to be little reason to doubt them. What do they stand to gain by cancelled, after all? Ubik – the lead developer of the MMtG project – is meanwhile infamous for his hardheadedness and refusal to consider when he’s making a mistake. He is now threatening legal action against Pox, and nobody can quite see what leg he thinks he has to stand on. But he provides much entertainment!
So we really fell off of the bus with updates here, haven’t we? Sorry about that. We got, um… distracted by our visit. On the plus side we both have all sorts of new blog ideas now, and we shall return you to your regularly scheduled blogging in very short order.
Fillies and gentlecolts, we’ve got something we need to talk about. There’s a game on the horizon known as Endless Space, a 4X game that I had previously heard of but only kept half an eye on. Well as it turns out it was very recently put up on Steam and pre-ordering, as is becoming something of a norm for games from non-major publishers, gives you alpha access.
To bluntly not put too fine a point upon it, the alpha is as good as most gold iterations of other games. It is incredibly smooth, clean, and lovely to use. It obviously still needs work, but even as a late alpha game it seems to be entirely playable and thoroughly enjoyable so far, and I’ve been playing it for a couple of hours solidly now. As regular readers will know by now both Pike and myself are ardent fans of the 4X genre, playing stupid amounts of Civilization for example. Pike rates Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri as the single best game ever, and I rate it in my top three. And on the SMAC note, Endless Space has a very pleasing quasi-homage to SMAC in the tech tree icons.
There is ONE game Pike would consider better...
Endless Space hits the usual list of items that a 4X should, the whole 4X part of it that is, but it’s doing so in a way that is clear and making a lot of sense, providing a sense of rapid, but controllable buildup as you discover new technologies, unlock new buildings, and acquire new resources. In many ways it also takes after MoO2, for example in letting you colonize planets within a system once you’ve got one colony in it, without the need for new colony ships. Building your infrastructure is also a curious affair; you choose an area for each individual planet to focus on, like enhancing farming or being a trading hub, whilst you build your more typical improvements on a system-wide basis. It’s an interesting hybrid as a solution to the problem of the appropriate scale on which to handle this side of the 4X genre and so far I have to say it’s a fairly effective one; systems are the main basis of your empire, but your planets are still more than just completely interchangeable or indeed entirely invisible subunits; they have their own character and you can influence this.
Combat is the part of the game I’m not yet 100% sold on, though I’m not sure how much remains to be done there I hope there’s a little tweaking. It plays out as a video, rather like GalCiv 2’s combat scenes, but in ES you have the ability to choose actions for each of the three phases of combat; for example you can choose to deploy nanobots to repair your ships, to divert all spare power to weapons for a risky offensive, and the like. It’s a sound idea and could be a great halfway point between the full control of, say, Homeworld and the completely hands-off nature of GC2, but I think a few more options are needed in the early game to really ensure this works, and combat needs to be a bit more… I’m not sure exactly, visceral? It feels a bit like it lacks in impact. Still, it’s a commendable effort that is, as with everything in this game, very well presented.
Yayyy overviews of space!
There is also the standard 4X element of ship design, and this seems like a very good effort with a wide and increasing array of options as you progress through the tech trees; there’s not a huge amount to say except that there are no complaints whatsoever from me.
The thing that’s really getting me into this game, however, is the sheer level of polish that is present. As I’ve said it’s an alpha, but it acts nothing like one in most regards. Everything is fast, clean, smooth, obvious, and I actually turned the tutorial off because the screens and their tooltips provide more than enough information anyway. The music is atmospheric and suitably grand as well. Never underestimate the power of a good interface and a solid atmosphere – it’s the difference between a good game and a classic one, and it can make even a mediocre game enjoyable.
It bears mentioning that Theme Hospital has very recently become available on Gog.com and I urge you all to purchase it at your earliest convenience. I did and have barely been able to put it down since, it is if anything even better than I remembered it being.
Theme Hospital is the sequel – after a fashion – to Theme Park, two of the games Bullfrog put out in the 1990s during their golden era, a short but incredible catalog that I’m not convinced any other developer has ever matched; Populous, Syndicate, Magic Carpet, Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper; it’s a truly illustrious list of games that are not only classics, but that in some cases defined and defied genre. In Theme Park your job was, as the title suggests, to construct a profitable Theme Park. Theme Hospital is obviously a preposterous notion, but that gives a good indicator of the humor at the game’s core. Your job as manager-god is to design, staff, and run a profitable hospital, dealing with such absurd conditions as Bloaty Head and Uncommon Cold, keeping your staff and patients happy (And alive), and coping with the sometimes rather restrictive layouts you are given.
The gentleman dressed as Elvis will die ON THE SPOT if his shrink gets it wrong.
It’s a management game of the kind that became so widespread in the years after Theme Park/Hospital and Railroad Tycoon were successful, but make no mistake, this is the genuine article. We are not talking about Waste Management Facility Tycoon here (though you do need to build toilets), we are talking about an exceedingly clever, enjoyable game that gets challenging fast, all with a strong streak of humor running through it, from the perfectly bored tannoy announcements to the amusing descriptions of staff.
We’ve been going for about a year now (Huzzah!) and in that time I’m sure you’ve become familiar with the content of this blog, because said content is eminently predictable (it is a blog about spergy strategy videogames). Still we’ve all got surprises up our sleeves, I am sure. For example, the game I have been playing a lot of this past week?
Football Manager.
Picture: Pike's face when I told her this.
Now I suppose I should clarify that I’m not a Sports Guy. I’ve never been a big fan of sports, and that’s largely because no matter what I try I’ve never been very good at sports. Partly because I’m blind in my left eye, which messes my depth perception right up and means anything like baseball and tennis is right out, and partly because I’m just crap at them anyway, so they never held much interest and I developed my interests in other directions. Yet I got a little bit of an itch, the idea of management like FM provides is… appealing.
I should further clarify that Football Manager is still a game about sperging over spreadsheets, and you could probably say it’s “strategy” inasmuch as you have a bunch of goals (Ha!) and you must concoct and execute long-term plans in order to meet them, all whilst opponents are trying to stop you. Nonetheless there is no arguing that tone and content matter greatly, and this game definitely doesn’t contain the slaying of monsters, nuking of foreigners, or militarily-enforced agglomeration of foreigners into the Glorious Worker’s Republic of Transcascadia. No, this is a game of spherekick (As opposed to handegg). But damned if it’s not compelling! I’ve just come away from a string of defeats and finally yelled at my team, locked them in the locker room after the last game, and then drew up a new formation, new first XI squad, and new training regimen for them. The first game since these changes is just underway and it’s gripping me. More than most games do, even in genres I very publicly adore.
Of course, sports games of the more typical kind have one great strength, which is multiplayer. Great as many games are in that regard few things compare for small-scale, couch competitive gaming, as a game of Virtua Tennis, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, or John Madden. In any event this really detailed side of things is hugely fun, much more than I would have guessed when I caved into a strange hunch and gave it a shot.
Readers, tell us in the comments about any games you’re a fan of that people around you might not expect!
