Yesterday, having nuked Charlemagne and his hordes of knights and musketmen, Pike and I began a new game of Civilization IV. We thought we’d take it easy with this one, so we only had ourselves and two AIs, and one continent for each one of us.
Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out that way.
Rule Britannia
This is… unusual. I had actually been under the impression that unless you really screwed around with the mapscripts, a start like this was essentially impossible. Pike’s start was a bit better, but still on a small island. Nonetheless we decided it would be fun to forge ahead rather than restarting with a new world. We were both within sight of the continents we were supposed to start on but, although she has spread like a plague, I have elected to remain in this single city. Now that I’ve got Moai Statues (Which provide production from water tiles) and some Great People, London has become a terrifically productive city.
The less said about the unpleasantness with Byzantium and Ethiopia, the better. I’ll just let Pike fight them while I hide in my walled, hilltop island city with my protective, charismatic leader.
Have you ever had a game present you with an unorthodox situation? Did you roll with it, or just find it annoying? If you carried on, how much impact did it have on what you did?
Okay guys, gather round and I’m going to tell you a story about a Civ IV game that Mister Adequate and I played. It went something like this:
Starting as early as I could I built up this massive, massive army over the course of several in-game centuries. I wish I could tell you exactly how big the stack was, but I can’t remember the details, only that it was huge and contained dozens of catapults and at least a score of swordsmen, axemen, and crossbowmen. It was just ridiculously imposing.
I then spent 80 turns sending the freaking thing across the map to Mister Adequate’s base. 80 turns, because for whatever reason the map we were playing on was completely covered in mountains so it took forever to get anywhere.
Eventually, though, my massive military was parked outside of one of his outer cities. At which point I informed my dear partner over voice chat that if he didn’t give me all of his tech, I would destroy his city.
He was quiet for a while, I think out of utter shock, and then asked to see my army so he could make an accurate assessment of the stakes. I agreed and inched my army a bit closer to him.
This is where I noticed two things. Firstly, he was playing a Protective-trait leader, so he had extra defense built into his cities by default. Secondly, the march across the map had taken SO LONG that he’d just finished researching Feudalism by the time I got there and was upgrading everyone to Longbowmen, which– for those of you who are not familiar with Civ IV– are incredibly effective defensive units well into mid-game.
And I made a big mistake here. A BIG mistake.
Namely, I voiced my dismay at these two facts. In other words, I was betraying a bit of insecurity on my end.
So you know what Mister Adequate did?
He said, and I quote, “Come at me, bro.”
Just like this.
I quailed here. I could hear a bit of panic in his voice, and so the thought crossed my mind that maybe he was bluffing, but then I got scared. He did have longbowmen. He did have a Defensive leader. The city I was standing next to was on a hill. And the guy I was playing against does actually have a master’s degree in this sort of thing. (No, really, he does.) And the game’s built-in combat odds estimation wasn’t telling me a whole lot, either.
And what if he had his own massive army, hidden in wait somewhere? Waiting to strike once my own army was demolished?
So I… said never mind and backed off. Actually, I had a new plan, because I was researching gunpowder at that point and figured that soon I could upgrade my units and try again. But we quit the game for the night not long after and I never got to that point.
That’s when he laughed at me and told me that he had been bluffing and I probably could have taken at least a couple of his cities easily.
Drats. Foiled again. :(
I’m not the only one who has made stupid mistakes like this, right? D:
It refers to FFVII, and specifically to a challenge of playing the game with the following conditions:
Initial Equipment – You can never change a character’s armor or weapons from the stuff they come with.
No Accessories – You can never use accessories. If a character comes with one equipped, it has to be unequipped at the first opportunity.
No Escaping – Obvious.
No Physical Attacks – does not just refer to “attack”, but also to anything that is a ‘physical’ type attack, including items such as Grenades or command materia such as 4-Cut.
No Limit Breaks – take a guess.
Command Materia Only – You can only use command materia. And obviously quite a few are ruled out by other rules.
You can’t actually do this challenge from the start of the game, because you have no way to hurt enemies until you can start learning Enemy Skills. In essence, it’s an “Enemy Skills Only” play. Anyway, it’s an extreme example – my point is to highlight how a self-imposed challenge can add life to a game, or possibly change it entirely. I’m good – very good – at FFVII, but I sincerely doubt I could do this challenge without tearing my hair out until I’m as bald as Dr. Robotnik.
Who is, incidentally, the greatest villain ever.
I have done other challenges in other games though. Sometimes games encourage something in particular, but don’t necessarily require it. You can usually shoot or slice your way through what is ostensibly a ‘stealth’ game such as Metal Gear Solid, Tenchu, or Hitman. Playing through stealthily is usually better rewarded is all. Imposing the challenge on yourself can make things a lot more exciting though. Sometimes this is a fairly loose arrangement for me – such as only ever going to war in Europa Universalis when I have a realistic casus belli and suchlike. Sometimes it’s a bit more extreme, like the time I played Civ IV and was not allowed to have more than one military unit per city (Funnily, happiness problems were larger than military ones for the most part). I can be especially enjoyable in more freeform games such as Dwarf Fortress, where there aren’t any real tangible objectives in-game, and making your own
In RPGs, because I grew up on some truly spergy, grinding-centric games, it’s really hard for me to limit my levels or anything. But I did a Pokemon play where I only used my starter Pokemon, that was interesting when I came up against stuff he was weak against.
Are any of you fans of particular challenges? Have you played through anything with challenges? Do you have any particular ones you’d recommend to others to enhance their enjoyment of an otherwise-completed game?
I love all sorts of video games but I make no secret of the fact that strategy games are my favorite. RTS, TBS, 4X, Grand Strategy, Tactics– I’ll eat up just about anything that falls under the big strategy umbrella.
It may seem like a bit of an odd genre to someone who doesn’t spend a lot of time in it. You’re managing not just one unit or character, but several; oftentimes you’re managing whole bases or countries as well, and winning or losing frequently comes down to who can get the biggest and/or most advanced army first. Defeating an enemy isn’t something you do by way of pressing certain button combos, rather, it’s something you do by way of planning and math.
So I was wondering why I prefer these types of games so much, and I think aside from the standard “I just plain like the style of play” answer, a lot of it just comes down to the fact that every single game is completely different. If I were to play through an RPG, it would be pretty similar each playthrough– the storyline would be the same and the characters would all follow the same growth and would say the same things. You’d run into the same enemies. Sure, lately there has been a lot of experimentation with multiple endings, different choice paths for the hero, and etc., which is adding a lot of variety to a a genre that has traditionally been very linear, but in my own personal view, nothing really tops a strategy game when you’re looking to sit down for three or four hours and have a game with a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT OUTCOME than the last three or four hours you spent on the same game last time.
I don’t know if this is more evident anywhere than in Paradox games like Europa Universalis 3 or Hearts of Iron 2, where the possibilities for total global domination by Sweden or Inca or the Confederate States of America or something is entirely possible. Mister Adequate is the one to go to if you want hilarious stories like that.
And then there’s SMAC, where you might play one game where it’s all seven of the factions duking it out for domination the entire time and then this is followed immediately by a game where everyone dies in the beginning except for you and one other team.
Or maybe something like this happens:
Honestly I just wanted an excuse to upload this and show off.
I have only seen this happen once so far. I mean, I hope it happens again, because it’s pretty darn hilarious, but Miriam is usually willing to fight to the bitter end, so seeing this happen was new and seriously amusing.
SMAC does another great thing where each three or four hour game involves a self-contained story, which goes a bit differently depending on how you win, what order you tech things in, and et cetera. Every SMAC game plays differently. As does every Civ game, and every Hearts of Iron 2 game, and so forth. I love it, and that’s what continues to pull me back in and keep me playing even after I’ve dumped days of playtime into these games already.
Yup.
What are your favorite genres? Why do you love them so much?
This is the culmination of a Civilization IV Let’s Play I’ve been doing; here are Part One and Part Two.
Where were we? Ah yes! Caesar had just declared war on me! Again!
So Caesar sends his stack at Coventry, which I’d retaken several turns prior. I’d moved most of my reinforcements out of there, due to years of peace and assuming I’d be good. Famous last words, I know. It was very quickly down to Caesar’s stack vs. one single Redcoat. Who put up a good fight, by the way, due to my huge tech advantage, but eventually Caesar nabbed it back. What happened next can probably best be described as a game of Coventry Yo-Yo, as I took it back, and then he took it back, and then I took it back again. That poor city. It’s like it’s really Poland or something!
MEANWHILE IN ARRETIUM, it’s Caesar’s trebuchets vs. a big pile of my machine guns, which I’d just finished teching and which I was now hurrying like fist of the North Star. Yeah, that didn’t go so well for him. I guess you can give him points for being plucky, or something.
So about this time everyone voted for me to be in charge of making votes and stuff. So obviously, I asked everyone if they wanted to declare war on Caesar and help a guy out. I mean, wartimes are funtimes, right? Right? …Bueller?
Chickens.
Okay, I’m alone on this one then. Which is okay, because I’ve got a little stack full of Redcoats and Artillery and Caesar is still using, like, swordsmen and stuff.
Notice he's still making trebuchets.
I’ve also got a Great General named El Cid, who apparently was a famous historical leader at some point and only moonlighted as a Final Fantasy character. Kay, sounds good.
I went and mopped up the Roman empire. Rome fell, some other cities that I can’t remember fell, and finally even my formerly peacenik fellows got in on the action and soon everyone was just eating poor Caesar up. While this was happening, I was nonchalantly building the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program on the side. You know, just for fun.
Anyways, Caesar quickly got down to having about, oh, one city left. Which is when this happened:
And you know, I felt bad. I really did. So I made peace with him. A couple of turns later, Sitting Bull took his last city and his entire civilization was destroyed. We’ll always remember your salad, bro.
Now that the war was over, it was time to focus on more important things, like building a spaceship. Despite having the Apollo Program finished in 1928, I wasn’t quite teched up enough to start building spaceship parts yet, so in the meantime I built dozens of ICBMs, just in case. Hey, the best offense is a good defense, right?
And so the decades went on. I was still waiting for enough tech to start building my spaceship. I was starting to get antsy about it, too, knowing that with the Time Victory option enabled, my time was limited. And then this popped up onto my screen:
I looked at it. I thought about it. Caesar was gone and all of the other civs LOVED me. All I had to do was press that button and I had a Diplomatic Victory in the bag. Game over. I win.
And I thought about it… and my cursor hovered over the button…
And so the game continued, mostly uneventfully other than having to stave off other civilizations’ frequent trade offers of clams or rocks for my uranium. Finally, though, I was able to start building spaceship parts, and I started to do so, but it was just about that time that an ominous little countdown appeared in the top right-hand corner of the screen:
100 TURNS LEFT.
And you know, for a game that was ending up remarkably peaceful now that Caesar was gone, this was possibly the most nerve-wracking part of the game yet. I had 100 turns to beat the clock, build a spaceship, launch it, and land safely on a faraway planet.
Bring
It
ON.
And so I built a spaceship, piece by piece. Times were good in the Glorious English Empire by this point; cities from other countries were seceding left and right so they could join up with me, I was exploding with culture to the point that I worried I might accidentally end up with a Culture Victory, we had tech, we had Wonders coming out our ears, we had so much money that I didn’t know what to do with it, we had a huge stockpile of nukes in case anyone decided to do something funny in the last second, we had Al Gore building the Internet for us in Warwick, and that Diplomatic Victory box kept popping up and I kept declining it.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, I launched that freaking spaceship.
There are a bunch of crazies aboard; I sure hope they don't split into different ideological factions and cause issues once we land.
And then, ten turns later…
Aww yeah, it feels good to be a gangsta.
Ahhh, what a great game. I had dominated in just about every fashion: scorewise, techwise, diplomacy-wise, culture-wise (I had two cities with Legendary Culture by the end, and four of the world’s top five cities were mine), and I got the spaceship. What sort of accolades would the score screen give me? Surely I had to be somewhere up toward the top with all those historical strategic greats…
...
…oooooor I can sit around at the bottom and be Warren G. Harding, I guess. Yup, looks like the game had the last laugh.
Now what about that spaceship, you may be asking? Did they reach Alpha Centauri safely? What happened to them? Well that, my friends, is a story for another day…
So where were we? Ah yes. I was building a nice stack of rooty-tooty-point-and-shooties and a couple of catapults thrown in for good measure (that part of my tech is apparently lagging woefully behind.) And it was here that the game decided to bestow a little present upon me– this quest:
So, let’s see here. They want me to build a bunch of musketmen, and also have the Taj Mahal and be operating under the Vassalage civic.
…guess who was in the middle of building a bunch of musketmen, had just recently finished building the Taj Mahal, and had switched to Vassalage for the war?
Needless to say this quest was finished very quickly, and although I was tempted to go with the mysterious Golden Age of Muskets as my reward, I opted to go for the free upgrades.
So... what, exactly, would a "Golden Age of Muskets" entail?
So things were getting pretty interesting here, let’s see if I can give you the long and short of it: Monty is still acting suspiciously nice, Sitting Bull still has a vendetta against the world (and keeps asking me to help him kill various people, which I keep politely declining), the English people are enjoying their cultured lifestyle as I tech music, theatre, and literature for them and build them all sorts of wonders– we even got Picasso as a Great Artist, and I promptly sent him to go dump a bunch of cubism on Warwick’s unsuspecting head– oh, and Caesar has called in the cavalry.
Cute little stack there, son.
He proceeds to attack York, which actually ends up being a very close battle– too close for my own comfort. It was time to retaliate. Quickly I rounded up my little stack and took out the rest of Caesar’s, and then made for his closest city: Arretium. I took it easily, but we did sustain some losses. Alright then, England, I know I’ve been giving you music and crap and preparing you for a future of top hats and monocles and tea, but it’s time to take a little time-out tech up for some ADVANCED rooty-tooties.
So I started teching up to Rifling. I figure that once we’ve got that, we’ve got everything in the bag. Meanwhile, I’ve got enough of my stack left to retake Coventry, which I’d lost some time ago. This was right about the time that Sitting Bull decided to give me a present. See, a little while back he’d randomly won the Apostolic Palace election somehow (seriously, how did he get those votes? He’s been at war with pretty much everyone), and now, he decided to use this power to initiate a vote to get everybody to declare war on Caesar, whether they wanted to or not.
"War on the Infidels" - sounds like a metal band or something.
So Monty is at war with Caesar, Sitting Bull is at war with Caesar for the second or third time this game already, and I’m on my way to retake Coventry with my little stack. Caesar’s no slouch, though: he’s got units and new armies running all over the place and sniping at my poor little musketmen from afar, picking them off one by one. Still, despite being a bit of a tough fight, we came out of it victorious.
Also, the veterans had promotions coming out their EARS.
Now that I had two towns from Caesar, I figured it was about time to call it good and bunker down a bit and get some upgrades going. See, this is about the period of time when England’s special units really come into play, with those Stock Exchanges acting like a bank on steroids, and with Rifling giving you access to Redcoats, which… well, aside from being an upgraded version of a Riflemen, have got some seriously sexy uniforms.
I'd hit it. And not even with a pitchfork!
So, Caesar and I made peace. It was pretty cool. There were some kerfuffles elsewhere on the world, between the other Civs, but I was content to sit around and build and tech and upgrade for a while and switch to the Emancipation civic just to make everyone mad (for those who are not aware, once someone in the game switches to Emancipation, ALL populaces in the game get angry about not having it until they have it, too. So if you’ve got it first, it’s unbelievably hilarious.)
You know those silly Let’s Plays and Action Reports that people who are funnier than I am are usually really good at writing? Where someone will detail their game, play-by-play, and somehow it’s nearly as enjoyable as playing the game itself? Yeah. I’ve always enjoyed those, and so decided to try my hand at one myself. This is potentially a disastrous idea partially because I doubt I am funny enough to pull it off, and partially because I’m sure I’ll end up being thoroughly embarrassed either by a game where I randomly get slaughtered, or worse, a boring game where absolutely nothing happens. But hey, it might be worth a shot, right? And if all else fails I can always just… NOT publish this post, right? Or at least not make anymore?
So. My inaugural game of choice is Civilization IV. Because I’ve played it long enough by now that I at least have an inkling of what I’m doing and thus am less likely to fail miserably in a public and most embarrassing fashion. That’s the plan, at least. (Watch now as everything goes wrong.)
It's like I can really hear the theme song playing! (Maybe because it's playing in the background as I write this.)
GAME RULES: Five civs, on a standard size map, for elbow room. All victory possibilities enabled, to spice things up (usually I disable all the “lame” victories like Cultural or Time.) I’m playing as Churchill, who is quite possibly my favorite civ. Not just because you get to play as Churchill, which is pretty great, but also because man, those unique units/buildings and those freaking traits. The only downside is his lack of Creative and thus lack of serious amounts of fun with borders, but I’ll live. Barbarians on; come at me bros. No tech brokering, though, and no vassal states, because those are cheap. Choose religions is on, just for fun.
LET’S DO THIS.
ALL DOSE POIPLE. ALL DOSE RESOURCES.
So first thing’s first: awesome starting area and they were even nice enough to put my Settler on a hill for me. And to top it off: a goody hut right off the bat with another Settler, allowing me to go plop down a second base right away! Surely things can’t get better, can they?
…they can. Stone. One tile outside of my new base.
Okay, guys, let’s stop and I’m going to tell you about typcial my Civ IV strategy. It goes something like this: Beeline for the Pyramids, which is a wonder that opens up a bunch of civics that you usually wouldn’t get until later in the game, and also increases your chances of getting Great Engineers, who can speed up buildings and also research tech for you. Once you start getting Great Engies, you can quickly build more things that give you MORE Great Engies and this is how I usually end up with a big ol’ tech lead and often a cultural lead as well (have I mentioned that I’m a Wonders whore?) Snagging the Pyramids first is crucial for this, and while I can usually pull it off, having stone early on seals the deal.
So, happily, I started building things up to snag me some of that delicious stone.
Then… then we get to turn 11. “Christianity has been founded in a distant land.” Well crap. This is usually a bad sign. The civs who jump for that religion tend to be, ah, how shall we put it? A bit zealous? Overly fanatical? Nah, still not quite the words I’m looking for. How about… completely and utterly insane? That sounds about right. (Meanwhile, Judaism has been founded in York. I’d add something to that statement, but it’s pretty funny as is, honestly.)
Alright, let’s scout around and see what we’ve got, then. Sitting Bull. He always seems to hate me for some reason that I can’t put my finger on, but on the same token he usually doesn’t attack unless provoked and just sits there in the corner silently hating you, so I think I’ll live. Julius Caesar. Invited me in for salad. Bro potential. Suleiman. He tends to stick to himself and avoid everyone. Not bad.
…
…
Montezuma's default state.
…aaaaand Monty. And he’s already mad. This is gonna be a fun game.
So there we are. I’m ignoring everyone for now, though, since I’m just buzzing away here in jolly old England– I’ve hooked the stone up to my two cities and am going to have both the Pyramids and Stonehenge about fifty turns into the game. Just to spite everyone else, I queue up the Great Wall next and have it done before we even hit turn sixty.
That was fast.
Things continued to go really well. My next project was to queue up some scouts and figure out where the ocean is, because the Great Landlocked Nation of England is just not gonna fly. So I went ahead and did that. The ocean is, as it turns out, not too far away– on the other side of a random desert, but eh, I’ll live. I founded a new city over there and continued plugging away. I snagged the Oracle within seconds of queuing it up and thus got my free tech. London celebrated We Love the Prime Minister Day in freaking 1240 BC. I got a Great Spy which I promptly sent up to our pal Monty. Sitting Bull converted to my religion. I was building wonders in mere handfuls of turns. And to top it all off:
Yeah, you jelly.
Yup. Tesla. Not that it makes any difference beyond being a randomly generated name for your Great Engy, but come on, it’s FREAKING TESLA. I always consider it a bit of a good luck sign when I get one of my favorite historical boyfriends.
Life in England was pretty blissful for a while until London got mad at me for their city being too overcrowded, so I did what any caring and just Prime Minister would do. I sacrificed several thousands of my citizens to build The Hanging Gardens. Hey, they didn’t complain about overcrowding after that. And then it was back to building and teching.
Now by this point, the world was pretty clearly split into two religions. You had Sitting Bull and I sitting around being Jewish, and then everyone else was Christian. So far, no conflicts… yet. With something like this, though, it’s bound to happen (have you seen Fiddler on the Roof?) so just in case, I made some extra archers in each of my cities.
After that things started to go terribly smoothly– too smoothly, for a game with Montezuma involved. Nothing really exciting happened… some Barbarians showed up and then turned around and left; I did some trades; I got some wonders; I got Great People up the wazoo; and I snagged Liberalism (and thus another free tech) in 980 AD, which is pretty darn early by most standards. Score-wise, I was leading by an insanely silly margin at this point: I was close to tripling everyone else. That stone at the beginning of the game really went a long ways.
Just look at all those delicious techs along the top there. Mmmmmm.
SO THERE I WAS. It was 1000 AD and the people of England had Universal Suffrage, Free Speech, and Free Religion. And, um, Slavery. But hey, you can’t have it all, right?
I started to get a little worried. Was this game really going to be this easy and boring? Was nothing going to happen? Would I end up winning some sort of Diplomatic victory before the second half of the game? Would this be the most boring blog post I’ve written thus far?
I shouldn’t have feared: Caesar declared war on Sitting Bull. And then promptly turned around and told me to give him techs, or suffer the consequences. Now this pleased neither Pike nor Gaga, and honestly I was itching for something to happen at this point, so I told him where to stick it. So Caesar declared on me. Excellent. Suleiman turned around and declared on Sitting Bull. Finally things were starting to pick up a little! Wunderbar.
Caesar then proceeded to toss a big ol’ stack at Coventry, my newest city and one which happened to be sitting right on the Roman borders. I sort of expected I was going to lose it as collateral damage when I told Caesar where to go, and lose it I did. No big deal; there was nothing important in that city anyway. Instead, I just focused on bulking up defense in other, more important cities. This was easy to accomplish: I could build pretty much anything in London in a turn or two.
Things continued to get interesting. Caesar derped around for a bit– not sure what his plans were, but he certainly didn’t seem to be a threat anymore after taking Coventry. While he tried to decide what to do with his handful of horse archers and chariots I idly started researching a little tech you may have heard of.
*whistles innocently*
Sitting Bull then showed up begging for help in his crusade against… well, the world, apparently, since as it turns out he’s the worst enemy of literally everyone in the game at this point. I considered this for a minute, and realized I could probably handle it, but I wanted to put it off just a bit longer while I teched rooty tooty point-and-shooties, as we call them here in Churchill’s Glorious Republic.
Meanwhile, Caesar’s anemic army had decided to show up again and was now marching around in my territory, generally making a big fancy show and not doing any damage at all before finally turning around and leaving, but not before destroying a farm in a rather petulant display, presumably just to scare me.
The disturbingly quiet Monty finally started showing his face around this time as well, asking me for favors and techs. Feeling rather full of myself, I decline most of them. He’s getting slightly cross, I think.
Meanwhile, our buddy Julius has (finally) gotten himself another big ol’ army and sends it right at York. His entire stack is promptly destroyed by my longbowmen, and I’m cooking up a little present of my own: a stack full of musketmen.
By this point, international relations all around are continuing to decline. Sitting Bull hates everyone but me, and our own tentative pact is pretty thin. Monty isn’t happy with me because… well, he’s Monty and to top it off I’ve been a jerk to him this entire time, just to taunt him. Even the normally laid-back Suleiman is starting to get annoyed. And Caesar, well…
...somebody's mad at me.
He’s not too happy either.
What’s going to happen next? Total Global English Domination (it’s like it’s really real life in the Victorian era!)? Everyone else turning on me? Monty building up a surprise army that he’s been hiding from me this entire time? Englishmen everywhere renaming Caesar Salad to Liberty Lettuce?
So the other day I was playing Civ IV, because apparently I’m still desperately addicted to it, and I was playing a single player game and I decided to bump up the difficulty by a notch. You know, jump up from “Noble” to whatever is just above Noble. Prince, I think?
It seemed like a sensible thing to do. I’d played up through the ranks– Settler, Chieftain, Warlord– and each had been a reasonable ramp up in difficulty level and finally I’d landed on Noble, which is the game’s default “average” difficulty level. And I could beat the game on Noble with few issues, so why not tune it up a notch? It makes sense, right?
So, fairly confident in my own abilities, I started up a game on Prince.
…within about ten minutes I knew I was going to have some problems when all of the other AIs were mysteriously doubling my score, and then by about twenty minutes in I was cheating via the World Builder because all of the other AIs were mysteriously tripling my score.
Needless to say I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the outcome!
My reactions before the game started and shortly after the game started.
I think the reason why this happened is because the Civ IV AI is built to pretty much act the same regardless of difficulty level. The easier difficulty levels are “easier” because they give you bonuses in terms of your population’s happiness or health (and, on Settler at least, the civs seem slightly less likely to declare war on you), and the higher difficulty levels… well I don’t know, they give the AIs crack or something. It feels somewhat “false”, regardless, and reminds me of ten years ago when I’d play Starcraft for hours on end and you were always reasonably certain of what the computer was going to do so it was easy to exploit it (You knew there was always going to be an initial attack of zealots or marines about ten minutes into the game, and then another group of the next tier of units at about twenty, and etc.)
I’d like to play a difficult Civ game against an AI that isn’t just “the regular AI but CHEATING”. I think there are mods that improve the AI; I’ll have to look into those.
Anyways! Your stories about ridiculously hard AIs or difficulty levels?
We’ve all done it. Hooked a Game Shark up to your Game Boy to give yourself a Mew and a few hundred Master Balls and Rare Candies. Used Power Overwhelming, Operation CWAL and Show Me the Money in StarCraft. Typed “imacheat” a dozen times into SimCity 2000 to give yourself millions of dollars.
…well, I’ve done all of those, at least.
You KNOW you wanted him too.
I just finished a rather fun game of Civilization IV wherein I used the World Builder to give myself a massively unfair advantage. I gave myself several dozen Great People right from the start, resulting in a huge leg up on tech, building, and money. Once I had done so, I proceeded to play a mostly “normal” game, except that I had nukes and the Apollo Program by the mid-1700s, a full two centuries before I can usually snag them if I’m playing at my best. (Well, I also wasn’t afraid to drop a Globe Theatre on the heads of a city that showed any sign of unhappiness. Nor was I afraid to give myself a bunch of Factories early or rifle through other civilizations’ pockets for their unique buildings. BUT. OTHERWISE. NORMAL GAME. *shifty eyes*)
It was a lot of fun! However, a great deal of that fun came from the fact that I was already very familiar with the game and knew I could win normally, and it was amusing to speed up that process.
Which brings me to my next point: I don’t tend to use cheats when I can’t win. Rather, I use them when I can win but want to add some spice to the game. Once I beat Pokemon, it was fun to do it again but with that legendary Mew. Once I was already decent at Starcraft, but couldn’t be bothered to finish a particular game the “normal” way, it was fun to wreak some havoc. And as for SimCity 2000…
…
…okay, I used to have SERIOUS money problems with that game. So, maybe that’s my exception to the rule– I’d cheat just to make that one playable. I’ve learned a lot since then, though! I actually make money in SimCity 4! Legally! No, really!
It's true, but I really can't blame Twilight for being somewhat dubious.
So how about you guys? Do you cheat often? Did you have a Game-Sharked-Mew just like I did? (Because really, how many times did we try to use Strength on the truck behind the S.S. Anne? And how much Lemonade did we give to the thirsty girl on the Celadon Department Store roof? ALL THE KIDS AT SCHOOL SAID WE WOULD GET A MEW AND WE DIDN’T. You can’t blame us for branching out, now, can you?)
So I was thinking the other day, and thought it might be fun to do a post about some of my all-time favorite games. I mean, I talk about “OMG THIS GAME IS AWESOME, I LOVE THIS GAME” so often that I may as well have several dozen favorites, but I decided to challenge myself to narrow it down. This’ll be tough for me, but let’s see how it goes.
1. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
This is, hands down, my all-time favorite game of all time. Are there better games from a technical standpoint? Yes. But this game shall always hold a special place in my heart for being the first game that grabbed me both in terms of gameplay and story, and for showing me what video games can really do as a medium for both.
Genre-rise this is, as the name would suggest, an RPG. It was made by Square back when they were Squaresoft and still making games for Nintendo. They made it in between making Final Fantasies VI and VII, and it shows– the game and many of its little nuances (billions of unnecessary items or ridiculously superfluous magic spell animations, anyone?) have a very vintage Final Fantasy/Chrono Trigger feel.
The game combines this classic RPG gameplay with a need for almost rhythmic timing for button combos, and when you toss what was, at the time, the deepest storyline twelve-year-old Pike had ever seen before in a video game into the mix, you get a game that has really stood the test of time and hammered itself into my mind as a firm favorite.
Also, Geno. Best. Character. Ever.
2. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Remember how Super Mario RPG did it for me by combining good gameplay with a good story? Yeah. This game did the exact same thing.
This entry on the list probably doesn’t come as a big surprise to anyone. There are plenty of people out there who didn’t like this game as much as most people did, but very few people will deny that this game had something going for it, something that captivated the better part of a generation.
About a year or so back I replayed the first half or so of this game and was pleased to see that it’s still just as captivating now as it was back then. And even those huge blocky polygons couldn’t change that.
3. StarCraft: Brood War
Longtime RTS players will frequently point to a Command & Conquer game or, more often than not, Age of Empires II as being the pinnacle of the genre. And you know what, those games were great. But for me, there is one king of RTS and that king is StarCraft.
I don’t know if there has ever been a strategy game where the races/factions were all so very different and yet so very balanced. If there is, I certainly haven’t played it.
StarCraft is sublime. Easy to learn, insanely difficult to master, with strategy layers that I swear are endless. I’d just play games over and over again, trying different strategies or trying to refine a previous one. Back in the day, I’d load this game up in the morning and play it until night. Twelve or thirteen hour StarCraft marathons were not a rare thing for me.
Funny bit of trivia for you though: I’ve never played through the story mode. I just played multiplayer or (more frequently) custom games against the AI.
(P.S. Yes, I also like StarCraft 2, but frankly I consider that game to mostly be just a graphical upgrade of the original StarCraft, with a couple new units tossed in for flavor. So the original gets my vote here.)
4. Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword
I know, I know. I’m super behind the times and didn’t start playing this until recently. And yet it’s already on my all-time favorite list. Biased? Nope. The game is just that good.
Yes, I was mad.
Let’s see, what’ve we got here. Nuanced strategy, a whole bunch of different ways to win each game, a crazy learning curve that will have you learning new things about the game months after you’ve started playing, a mix of history and humor, Gandhi nuking the stuffing out of you, and above all, fiendishly addictive gameplay. Yup. This is the best 4X game of all time. Every time I play it, I remember why I fell in love with it in the first place.
5. …uh, yeah, this one is up in the air.
Okay, you’ve got me. I have no idea how to narrow #5 down to just one game. I’ve got a bunch of candidates. Depending on mood, time of day, and the thickness of my current pair of Nostalgia Goggles, I’d go for Dig-Dug, Yoshi’s Island, Super Mario Bros. 3, Banjo-Kazooie, Goldeneye 007, Halo, Pokemon Gold, Final Fantasy VI, Metal Gear Solid, or The Oregon Trail. Or probably several others that I’m forgetting. One of these days I’ll sit down and figure out a definitive Number Five, but today is not that day.
Alrighty then! Your guys’ turn! Top five favorites?
