Sponsor: T-hawk
Opening Date: Monday, October 22, 2012
Duration: Six Weeks
Map Script: Maze, 1 tile spacing
Game Speed: Normal
Difficulty: Deity
Civilization: Dutch
Leader: Willem of Orange
World Size: Standard
Opponents: Six
Victory: Any except culture
Options: No Random Events
Scenario: Time for a shot at Deity difficulty. Just Win, on an unusual map.
The map is a Maze script, with land and water forms each 1 tile wide. This presents the AI some difficulty, and you can outwit them with smart city placement and skillful boat navigation. Your leader and civilization should be well suited for this challenge.
It is Normal speed, but this is a major event scenario and worthy of the Epic appellation. The map is hand-selected but completely unedited, so a victory can be considered a true Deity triumph.
Scoring: None. Just win. Winners listed in random order, losers ranked by the interestingness of their report in defeat.
Closing Date: Monday, December 3, 2012. Reports due by the end of Tuesday December 4, your local time, for official results.
"With long experience of government and administration, the authoritarian people of Obama are unsurpassed in controlling people and trade."
-Creative Assembly
Buy Shogun 2 today! :P
But seriously, the OBAMA faction? who knew :P
Its either some sick joke or an AWESOME coincidence ... but can it be both?
anyways, not only that, but the Obama faction is DLC, further emphasizing the faction's existence and making people have to buy it seperately, meaning that it was MARKETED separately ...
given the nature of the Obama faction's description, I wonder if it was marketed towards Obama supporters or Obama criticizers ...
Personally? I think it was marketed towards Bill Oreilly fans :D
That looks about right for a ridiculous title. Now, this is me and Sian's spoiler thread; be warned, here there be many ravening hungry mouths.
On to the game. I'm a little reluctant to start talking about leader and civ choices since we don't know about bans or other restrictions yet, but I guess we might as well. Here, an important factor for me will be comfort level. I do not understand how best to employ all traits equally. In fact, I should probably say that despite being successful on a high difficulty level against the AI, and having read a fair number of single- and multi-player game reports specifically to learn how others do it, I play Civilization very differently from most of the expert players. For me, the game is not about whipping out units and infrastructure and then growing my cities back as fast as possible. I've always found this unintuitive and preferred to build naturally, though lately I've been trying to force myself to whip more. I also don't really specialize my cities - I much prefer every city to pull its weight in terms of beakers and hammers. I have never run a State Property economy, and while I've tried a specialist economy, mostly I prefer just to cottage-spam (that, at least, is normal). Wonders such as Stonehenge and the Pyramids are always incidental and never an essential part of my game plan. Finally, I don't like mounted units! Maybe multiplayer will change that.
The above isn't meant to suggest that I'm unwilling to change my ways, or that I think they're better, just that it would probably be best for my first multiplayer game to stick to what I know reasonably well (unfortunately, this does not include water-heavy maps!). Thus, I plan to run a cottage economy if at all possible and not to rely on getting any wonders, though with your help, Sian, I think I should probably try and whip more. This suggests immediately to me that Industrious would not be an overly useful trait for me to have, while Financial (predictably) would be the best one possible. Organized is also high on my list, for the cheaper buildings which are all very important, and the cheaper civic upkeep can't but help, especially for natural production with Organized Religion and both production and beakers with Bureaucracy. Creative would be nice to pop borders, but maybe that's too little reason to pick a trait. I might also want a military trait: I'm worried militarily because I'm untested against human opponents and because I have a terrible tendency to skimp out on defence. The first thought in terms of leader that came into my mind was actually Ragnar (Agg/Fin). I like the versatility he offers as well as the mind games that choice might play with opponents - is he going to rush or boom? Hannibal (Cha/Fin) might be okay too, especially if I go ahead and just build the dang monuments to pop borders. Or I could go all economy and play Darius (Fin/Org) or Zara Yaqob (Cre/Org) - I don't really want to play Willem as he's too well-known as one of the top dogs.
Those are my initial thoughts on leaders; I think I'll save my thoughts on civs for now as they're not as well-developed and I really need to go do some schoolwork. Anyways, I don't really know who I'm writing to in this thread other than Sian, but I hope that was interesting. Talk to you later,
Thought we could use a separate thread so we can discuss settings just for our game
Undecided Questions:
* Start everyone with a scout? Or normal warrior/scout based on hunting tech?
Map
* Snakey archipelago similar to pbem17 (but not duplicate of)
* Make naval strategy as important as land strategy
* Enough land that Astronomy is not the One Right Choice
* Land connection between all starting capitals
Diplomacy
* AI Diplo - among other things, this includes no renaming units, no typing in the chat or trade screen, and no using cities / resources to try and spell things
Other Bans & Settings
* Map size - lots of land to expand to or relatively cramped? I think i would like land to expand, but capital's close enough that you can have early game wars.
* Difficulty - any strong opinions here? Prince is probably fine, maybe monarch if we don't have a toroid.
* No Nukes
* No War Elephants
* No Spies
* No Huts
* No Events
* Played on BtS
* No Barbs
* No tech trading
* Blockades only with ships that have strength > 8 and movement > 4. (I'm assuming that means no frigates)
* No wonder bans (all wonders allowed)
Turn order
1) Pindicator - Victoria (FIN/IMP) of Sumeria
2) Ichabod - De Gaulle (CHM/IND) of India
3) Regoarrarr - Isabella (EXP/SPI) of Mali
4) Ruff - Sury (EXP/CRE) of England
5) scooter - Lizzie (PHI/FIN) of Carthage
Civ / Leader picking
You can have 5 points.
4: FIN
3: EXP, ORG, India, Inca
2: SPI, IND, CRE, Vikings, Dutch
1: PHI, Holy Rome, All other Agriculture civs
0: IMP, CHA, AGG, PRO, All other civs
starting the thread to get my starting pic if and when it comes. Let's see how many posts I can spot the rest of the field before I start actually posting in here....
I realize Dark Souls is old news, but it only came out for PC a couple months ago, and I just got it a couple weeks ago. I really liked it, so here's a review for people who might be convinced to get it. I should note that I haven't played anything similar to it, so I will probably spend inordinate amounts of effort describing something when I could have just said "it's like X".
Introduction
Dark souls is an action RPG by From Software, a Japanese company. The view is third person 3d, and it was designed for consoles, so it uses a limited number of controls. The game is challenging, and combat is just involved enough to be really exhilarating. The game is ripe for trying out different styles of play.
Combat
The focus of the game is the combat, which I find quite fun. Your basic options are attack, strong attack, shield up, parry, and backstep. Some combinations of these have additional effects, like a jump attack; and attacking in particular conditions causes you to do cool things, like backstabs. You can also lock on to enemies, causing your camera to track them and making combat flow more naturally. Typically you are fighting one, or a couple, enemies at a time. Overall, fighting is really fun, and you feel like a badass.
Various weapons become available to you throughout the game, and they have slightly different movesets and animations. For example, your basic sword has a slashing regular attack and a thrusting strong attack. Spears can do their basic attack without causing you to lower your shield. Larger weapons might do more damage but have slower attack animations. The scimitar has a cool slash + backflip retreat move. And different weapons have different combinations of base damage, and scaling from stats (strength/dexterity/intelligence/faith). Additionally, you can upgrade your weapon(s) of choice, potentially adding elemental damage, making them enchanted (so they do magic damage and scale with intelligence), just plain improving them, or some other options. You also have choices for armor (which gives you percent reductions against various damage types, and poise, but also weigh varying amounts, and can reduce your maneuverability), and a variety of shields to choose from. Most but not all shields block 100% of physical damage, but varying lesser percents of magical, lightning, and fire damage. They also have different stability values, which affects how much stamina you expend to block an attack with it. Attacking also takes stamina - strong attacks use more - but it regenerates quickly (or slowly, if you're holding your shield up). A large part of combat is being careful about your stamina. If you get hit, you'll lose a decent chunk of your HP, and depending on the poise value of the armor you're wearing, you may or may not get staggered and be unable to act for a few moments. Getting hit sucks.
Similar mechanics apply to your enemies: some of them are heavily armored and don't seem to stagger for anything, while others are easily dispatched by a quick series of attacks once you get the first hit in. Some enemies have armor that protects greatly against slashing attacks, so getting thrusting or fire attacks off on them, for example, is better. Each type of enemy has their own set of moves, and after fighting them you'll start to know their windups, and be able to anticipate what they will do.
In addition to melee weapons, you can use bows, sorceries, miracles, and pyromancy, many of which have good range. If you are a magic user, the limit on spellcasting is not mana, but rather you only get to use a spell X times between bonfires. But melee combat feels like the heart of the game.
One negative thing I will say about the combat: circling around single enemies looking for a backstab while avoiding some of their attacks feels a bit too effective.
Game Philosophy
Bonfires? Those are like save points, but let me backtrack a minute. Dark Souls has a stated goal of being "rewarding" and a reputation for being difficult and punishing. I would put it like this: they took the old philosophy that video games should be challenging, and applied some modern game design principles to it while holding on to that core belief. To digress: many modern games are fairly easy, following kind of a movie-like structure, where you are railroaded through a series of encounters, and if you fail one, then that actually didn't happen, let's reload to a previous save point instead and see what really happens. And to be honest, Half-Life 2 (which follows this philosophy as far as it can go) is one of my favorite games. But I have to say, reloading from past saves really takes something away from a game, and mastering a skill can be fun as long as it's not too frustrating. So to end the digression, the designers of this game apparently wanted to have players master things, without being too frustrating. So here's the deal:
There are no past saves you can load. Anything you do, you have done. If you kill an NPC, that NPC is now gone. If you die, you die. BUT. In this game, the premise is that you are an accursed undead - someone who comes back to life at the last Bonfire you rested at each time you die. (This is why the game doesn't immediately end. ) So you learn to accept that being killed is not the end of the world. However, when you die, you do lose your accumulated souls (which are money and XP combined... or I could say, you spend money at a bonfire to level up) and humanity (which are a valuable status increase which raises your resistances, damage of some weapons, and random item drop rates). If you manage to make your way back to where you died before you die a second time, you get them back, but otherwise they are just gone. I think this part of the game is brilliant, because it really raises the tension and makes you truly afraid of dying (instead of just annoyed at it, which is much less fun), but ultimately everything you lose is fairly easily replaced.
Going with the challenging theme, Dark Souls also has quite a few secret-like things, such as illusory walls, or particular weaknesses of enemies. There are usually ways to figure these things out, like being able to see that there is a room there, and there must be SOME way to get to it, or trying out different weapons against a tough enemy. But additionally, since not figuring out what the hell is going on isn't fun, there are hints. Specifically, there is an item you get early in the game which allows you to leave messages (from a limited list) on the ground of the game world for other players. And people use it, either to be nice or because if someone rates your message up, you get a small reward. (Some other people use for trolling, for example by writing "Try jumping" in incredibly dubious locations, which adds to the fun.)
So all these things that make the game easy enough and not too annoying are built directly into the game, and are integrated thematically. What else is there? Well, you can ask for help. One thing you can spend humanity on is to "reverse hollowing", which makes you look human instead of undead, and lasts until the next time you die. While in this state, you can summon some NPCs, and other online players who have left their summon sign on the ground, into your game, to help you against the enemies (or more likely boss) you are having trouble with. Amusingly though, there is a drawback to this state as well: it allows other players to invade your world as a hostile phantom who's trying to kill you for a small reward. I hate it when that happens, but I have to admit it adds some delightful fear, and doesn't ruin the game. (Plus you will often have someone helping you, while the invader is alone.)
Story and Setting
The worst thing I can say about the story (apart from some questionable grammar in the English translation) is it's very vague. You have to actively seek out information, for the most part, and I'm not entirely certain that there is a specific reality the designers had in mind, or if they just threw out a bunch of cool stuff that seemed to be mutually consistent and allowed for multiple possible "interpretations". That said, I love the setting. It's very dark, the NPCs have personality, and it felt fairly free of storytelling cliches. (Though not free of resemblances to earth mythology.) Also, it's a bit morally ambiguous. It really feels like a full and strange world.
The level design is amazing. There are many areas to explore, and they are all connected. Often you unlock additional connections between areas in the course of exploring them, that let you get from place to place more quickly. You really get to know the areas. Different areas feel incredibly different from one another.
How the enemies work is this: they are pre-placed on the map, as an integral part of the level design. Most enemies respawn when you die or rest at a bonfire, though some of the stronger ones don't. Similarly, most of the important items you can pick up are just placed on the ground in various specific locations, or drop from specific (non-respawning) enemies.
Interface
The controls are fine, but the presentation of important mechanics information is lacking and a bit frustrating, forcing you to look some things up online. I'd say the odds they had a professional UI designer are dubious.
PC Version issues
This is a console port and they did a really bad job. There is no option to change the resolution from its atrocious default, and the mouse control is very wonky. However, enterprising fans have fixed these problems in unofficial patches. Look them up in the steam forums for the game and just install them right away.
My Opinion
This is the RPG I've been searching for. It's rough around the edges and does a mediocre job of explaining things, but you figure it out. And once you do, it's so fun to control your character. It literally makes me want to jog everywhere and do random backflips in real life, and possibly take up swordfighting. It's also good training for being persistent in the face of failure.
Some Advice If You Play It
Be aware that just because the game lets you do something doesn't mean you should do it. For example, at the beginning of the game (after the tutorial area) you have access to some really hard areas that you should save for quite a bit later. Exploration, and determining the nature of the enemies you find, is an important part of the game.
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![[Image: electoral_precedent.png]](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/electoral_precedent.png)
) So you learn to accept that being killed is not the end of the world. However, when you die, you do lose your accumulated souls (which are money and XP combined... or I could say, you spend money at a bonfire to level up) and humanity (which are a valuable status increase which raises your resistances, damage of some weapons, and random item drop rates). If you manage to make your way back to where you died before you die a second time, you get them back, but otherwise they are just gone. I think this part of the game is brilliant, because it really raises the tension and makes you truly afraid of dying (instead of just annoyed at it, which is much less fun), but ultimately everything you lose is fairly easily replaced.