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Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Astroclassicist posted:

That's a rather unfair view of Greek navigational skills - though ancient ships could sail against the wind to an extent, everyone prepared to sail with the wind behind them.
Thus ending up in Egypt is not unreasonable given the prevailing winds of the Eastern Med - and why traders returning to Greece went along the Levantine coast before crossing back to the Aegean


Nevermind that their penteconters were primarily oar-powered rather than sail-powered, even with sailing ships it would be a remarkable feat of bad seamanship to go 600 miles southeast when your goal was to go directly west. Doubly so when you're crossing a sea like the Aegean where you can stop at an island every couple of hours for directions or shelter from unfavorable winds if you want to. Triply so when a foolproof land-hugging route was available (Which of course is what the Persians did with their huge fleets). Quadruply so when you're setting out with between dozens and hundreds of other ships going in the same general direction.

But that's a mythical story anyway, so it hardly tells us anything about their real skill or lack thereof.

For that I'm going to rely on Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, Xenophon, and indeed every other ancient Greek source I ever read who ever talked about sailing and seamanship. They all agree that most Greeks were bad sailors prior to the Persian wars and that knowledge of this lack of skill shaped their tactics in those wars. Thucydides goes into a lot of detail about which states in Greece had a substantial navy or seafaring tradition at the start of the Peloponnesian War. Only 3 have a serious navy, and the Athenians completely outclass the other two in skill. The Spartan side continuously discuss their own lack of sailing skill and need to acquire some. The Athenians consistently thrashed them in open sea engagements and are defeated only when they get penned into small areas- just like the Greeks did to the better Persian sailors during the Persian wars. Plutarch's sources about the era agree. Xenophon talks about sailing only briefly, but so does he.

So from these sources we can see that according to the Greeks themselves- as well as to the outcomes of their battles- most Greeks states did not start to be naval powers or have much sailing skill until the era of the Persian and then Peloponessian wars.

Which, as I said, was a roughly 1000 year period from the supposed time of the Odyssey.



Darkest Auer posted:

Part of that is that basically everyone has hated/feared/despised sailors since the dawn of time. The sea's a dangerous place and how can you trust someone who voluntarily goes to foreign and strange places? If you're at all interested in how naval trade developed and influenced the world I highly recommend The Sea and Civilization.

Anyway, I'm very much enjoying this LP and the history chat in the thread.

I don't know about everyone. There were some cultures where sailors were respected. But it's definitely true that many cultures despised merchants and sailors. Attitudes about all kinds of crafts and professions varied with time and place a lot though. Like we usually think of blacksmiths as having been respected and prominent members of the community- and surely in any sensible society they would be- but in some places they were considered dirty and in others they were thought to be bad people who probably practiced witchcraft.



anilEhilated posted:

I like the way this mission actually lets you train some reinforcements, giving you some more illusion of strategy. Too often the walky missions in RTS games turn into puzzles where the only way to win is finding the intended path through enemy forces.


I have mixed feelings about it. WC3 was amazing at doing these kinds of missions well and had a mix of ones that were truly fixed party and ones where you got some resources to buy more troops on the way. Both can be very well done, but I generally preferred the fixed party ones in those games. Particularly because they typically made you do sidequests to get more troops, which is more interesting than buying them. My favorite videogame that I ever made is a limited resources to buy troops WC3 map though.

I think this game struggles with its fixed party missions. A lot of them are borderline unlosable and thus basically cinematics. But the ones where you CAN buy troops like this one often feel too linear to me with no side content to explore or interesting stuff to do. Plus you still have the same old problem that it's all about momentum and if you do badly in an early battle you're going to be crushed in the next one.

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Poil
Mar 17, 2007

Oh, it's perfectly possible to lose on the fixed party missions. :v:

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Poil posted:

Oh, it's perfectly possible to lose on the fixed party missions. :v:

Fair enough, I exaggerated. Still, a lot of them require only rudimentary tactics.


Silvergun1000 posted:

Just want to chime in and say I'm loving this LP so far and watching you take this game apart is a delight.

You mentioned you love Warcraft 3, would there be any merit to you doing an LP of that at some point? I have no idea if the campaign is a reasonable challenge on the hardest difficulty or not, but I have fond memories of that game as well and it would be great watching somebody as good as you take it apart.

Thanks!

Actually, one reason I wanted to make this LP is as a stepping stone to doing one for WC3 at some point in the future. I want to be skilled at making videos before I try to tackle my very favorite game.

But that's WAY too far in the future for me to be thinking about. AoM:EE has more than 50 total missions, so I'm going to be at this for a full year at my current pace. And my current pace may or may not be feasible. I started off thinking I'd try once per week and see how it went. I'm finding that making a good video takes me about one week worth of preparing and one week worth of actually making the video though.

Furthermore, the amount of free time I have available could change a lot. I got back into LPing because I had both a temporarily easy work situation and a breakup that freed up time. In the next few months though I will hopefully have a new job, quite possibly move, and of course anything could happen in my personal life.

Some of those things could obviously decrease my amount of free time, but some could actually increase it. When I get a new job, I will probably get a new computer and it may even be a desktop for the first time in my life if I have a new place- both of which would mean I have fewer technology issues and don't need to spend 4-8 hours actually processing the video and countless others trying to get various software to work in the first place. I will also of course not need to spend a bunch of time interviewing, writing cover letters, etc. A different living situation would almost certainly mean much more flexibility in when I can play and record for that matter, which would help a ton. And I'm nearing the end of 2 of the D&D campaigns I've been GMing, with the third having probably become infeasible. Since these are two campaigns of great creative significance to me, it will be quite satisfying to have them done and I won't feel much of a need to run more for a while. For that matter, I'm close to finishing several other creative projects and also finally getting all my belongings and all my files organized, which has been another project.

Oh, in a sudden change of plans, one of my cousins will be visiting me all weekend so I won't have a new video for this Monday.

Silvergun1000
Sep 17, 2007

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

Melth posted:

Thanks!

Actually, one reason I wanted to make this LP is as a stepping stone to doing one for WC3 at some point in the future. I want to be skilled at making videos before I try to tackle my very favorite game.

But that's WAY too far in the future for me to be thinking about. AoM:EE has more than 50 total missions, so I'm going to be at this for a full year at my current pace. And my current pace may or may not be feasible. I started off thinking I'd try once per week and see how it went. I'm finding that making a good video takes me about one week worth of preparing and one week worth of actually making the video though.

Furthermore, the amount of free time I have available could change a lot. I got back into LPing because I had both a temporarily easy work situation and a breakup that freed up time. In the next few months though I will hopefully have a new job, quite possibly move, and of course anything could happen in my personal life.

Some of those things could obviously decrease my amount of free time, but some could actually increase it. When I get a new job, I will probably get a new computer and it may even be a desktop for the first time in my life if I have a new place- both of which would mean I have fewer technology issues and don't need to spend 4-8 hours actually processing the video and countless others trying to get various software to work in the first place. I will also of course not need to spend a bunch of time interviewing, writing cover letters, etc. A different living situation would almost certainly mean much more flexibility in when I can play and record for that matter, which would help a ton. And I'm nearing the end of 2 of the D&D campaigns I've been GMing, with the third having probably become infeasible. Since these are two campaigns of great creative significance to me, it will be quite satisfying to have them done and I won't feel much of a need to run more for a while. For that matter, I'm close to finishing several other creative projects and also finally getting all my belongings and all my files organized, which has been another project.

Oh, in a sudden change of plans, one of my cousins will be visiting me all weekend so I won't have a new video for this Monday.

Fair enough!

Also, I went ahead and read through both your Fire Emblem LPs and wow, you really showed those games who's boss! I'd never actually played 6 or 7 (Sacred Stones was my entry into the series) so I might have to go back and try them. That and finish Fates one of these days. You'd mentioned you really hated Awakening, care to elaborate on that a bit? Given how much thought you put into this stuff I'd be interested to get your take.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!
One thing I want to do in the nearish future is redo the earliest couple of videos since those were mainly meant to be practice anyway (and I certainly don't want people's first sight of my playlist being that huge Dxtory watermark!).

Which provides another reason to ask now as I'm entering the next stage of the story whether there are any things people wish I would do differently or improve on or do more of?

Cassa
Jan 29, 2009
I think your videos are a pretty fantastic demonstration of breaking this game over your knee.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!
A thought occurs as I edit the next video: I've been trying to preserve the sounds of my mouse clicks (and sometimes even to add replacement clicks back in where I had to delete some of the originals) because I figured it would seem strange not to have any.

If people don't like them though, I could remove them.

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

Melth posted:

I've been trying to preserve the sounds of my mouse clicks (and sometimes even to add replacement clicks back in where I had to delete some of the originals)

Please leave them out.

Slaan
Mar 16, 2009



ASHERAH DEMANDS I FEAST, I VOTE FOR A FEAST OF FLESH
Yeah, mouse clicks aren't important. Don't bother putting them back in

my dad
Oct 17, 2012

this shall be humorous
Same.

CommissarMega
Nov 18, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER
I never even noticed any clicking :downs:

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Poil posted:

Please leave [clicks] out.

I'll cut them out of the next video.

For now, the new one is up! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PPsJ3yQQZU

my dad
Oct 17, 2012

this shall be humorous

Melth posted:

I'll cut them out of the next video.

No need for that either. It's just not worth the effort either way. :v:

Smiling Knight
May 31, 2011

Knew it was going to be a sweet video when I saw it was only 13 minutes. Nice!

The Ioklos villagers "digging" is a great way of building tension. I was sure the mission was effectively timed when I was a kid.

Also, one sad thing: you beat the mission so quickly that you missed the attack on Ajax's base! IIRC, it gets hit with an earthquake and either an underworld passage or a roc airdrop.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
This LP is consistently amazing. This map usually takes me 40+ minutes.

I honestly never noticed the mouse clicks so if they're there they feel pretty unintrusive and IMO don't need to be specifically added or removed.

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

That is fast. :stare:

AJ_Impy
Jun 17, 2007

SWORD OF SMATTAS. CAN YOU NOT HEAR A WORLD CRY OUT FOR JUSTICE? WHEN WILL YOU DELIVER IT?
Yam Slacker
Love the speed of that. :allears:

Don't worry about the clicks.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Smiling Knight posted:

Knew it was going to be a sweet video when I saw it was only 13 minutes. Nice!

The Ioklos villagers "digging" is a great way of building tension. I was sure the mission was effectively timed when I was a kid.

Also, one sad thing: you beat the mission so quickly that you missed the attack on Ajax's base! IIRC, it gets hit with an earthquake and either an underworld passage or a roc airdrop.

Oh yeah! I believe it's a bunch of meteors. I remember that happening when I played it months ago, but I went too fast every time this week to see it.

bennyfranks
Jun 23, 2005

IGNORE ME!

Leave in clicks that make a message in Morse Code as a fun easter egg!

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry
Whoa, dang. Are you going to have an underground adventure next?

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Glazius posted:

Whoa, dang. Are you going to have an underground adventure next?

More like underworld if memory serves. :getin:

Level Seven
Feb 14, 2013

Wubba dubba dubba
that blew.



Megamarm
Don't bother removing the clicks, I kinda like the sound of stuff being microed to death. You are making this look so easy.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Glazius posted:

Whoa, dang. Are you going to have an underground adventure next?

Several! Both completely different types of missions too!

Lynneth
Sep 13, 2011
I have no strong opinion on the clicking - I barely notice them. No need to bother putting extra ones in, though.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Silvergun1000 posted:

Fair enough!

Also, I went ahead and read through both your Fire Emblem LPs and wow, you really showed those games who's boss! I'd never actually played 6 or 7 (Sacred Stones was my entry into the series) so I might have to go back and try them. That and finish Fates one of these days. You'd mentioned you really hated Awakening, care to elaborate on that a bit? Given how much thought you put into this stuff I'd be interested to get your take.

Just noticed this. I'm glad you liked those LPs too! I don't want to de-rail things into Fire Emblem discussions, so I'll try to keep this fairly brief instead of going into as much detail as I'd like. There are going to be some spoilers scattered ahead though, so be warned. First of all, I definitely recommend 7 to anyone who enjoyed 8. And indeed to anyone who likes strategy video games at all. It's a little more difficult but the music is arguably even better, the colors are prettier, the story is longer and more complex, there's more strategy, there's vast amounts of replayability and hidden content to find, and the list goes on. I don't recommend FE6 to anyone. It's a sloppily made game, unpolished, and was unpleasant to play through.

Awakening though is an abomination. The character design is ridiculous. We have cavaliers in armor that looks half like an old sink and half like some kind of Saw trap, knights with what look like jet engines on their backs, shamans in giant capes over some kind of weird full body pantyhose thing over brass bikinis, and even sillier things. There was a gradual slide from FE7 where people wore things that actually looked like (fancy) armor and clothes down into increasing silliness before Awakening, but Awakening took it to a new level.

Further, the "characters" get no characterization. Prince Chrom is dull and uninteresting compared to Eliwood, Hector, Lyn, Eirika, and even Ike. He has it better than most people in Awakening though. Most people just have a single stupid 'trait' or quirk which the game beats to death in lieu of ever giving them more than a few sentences of background or personality. Gaius likes candy. No one can see or hear Kellam (even though he's a huge guy in giant clanking armor and is often talking to them). Frederick takes his job seriously. Maribelle is prissy. Miriel uses needlessly complicated words because we all know that's how smart people talk. Now I'm being a bit unfair here, a few people have more than one trait. For example, Vaike is a braggart AND an idiot. Even when characters DIE they usually say something ridiculous that's just another callback to their one trait. Gaiaus for example will whisper "suuuugaarrr..."

The villain is one of the most ridiculously flat and uninteresting I've ever seen. Even the Demon King, who is basically just a generic force of evil, at least gets some fun characterization. And Lyon makes up for his flatness. But the villain of Awakening is just another generic evil god with no motive, no personality beyond wanting to kill everyone for no reason, and not even a backstory. All his henchmen are arguably even worse. He eats their souls and promises them nothing but death and misery, yet whole countries serve him devotedly and try to bring about the world's destruction for no reason.

To spice things up, we DO start with a generic FE evil king invading the protagonist's homeland and also get a pointless interlude with a generic warlord trying to conquer everything though!

The worst part about the characters though is how the women are handled. For WAY too many of them, the one personality trait they were given is obsessing over Chrom or the (default male) player avatar. Or some other trait which makes sure they stay sidelined and spend all their time fawning over the men. For that matter, their outfits look not only silly but often are absurdly revealing too. And the official artwork for many of them is gratuitously fanservicey and has them in contorted poses to show off their breasts and their rears at the same time and so forth. Here's one example: https://serenesforest.net/wp-content/gallery/awakening/large-art/Olivia.jpg. Let me say at this juncture that I'm not some kind of prudish opponent of sexuality in video games or fanservicey character designs or something. I think that's out of place in a serious game, but I won't make a fuss about it as long as it seems balanced. For example, WC3 had a race of beautiful women fighting in bikinis, but they also had a race of incredibly ripped shirtless guys, so it didn't really seem to be objectifying the women in particular so much as just being fanservicey in general.

To put it bluntly, I think Awakening is sexist.

Oh and to add insult to injury, they did artwork in a similar style for many characters from past games too.


Now the setting. Generic good country worshiping good god. Generic evil country worshiping evil god. There's a cursory attempt to add depth by having had good country attack bad country in the past, but the attempt fails because bad country is trying to destroy the world anyway and thus totally deserved it. Generic northern barbarian country. Generic Japan-inspired country. The end.

This game is supposedly set in 'Akaneia', the setting of FE1, sorta 2, 3, 11, and 12. That is a load of bovine excrement though, it doesn't fit in that setting at all. Besides the geography being totally different even. For one thing, the evil world destroying god of Awakening was supposedly fought by Marth, the protagonist of FE1. Uh uh. Marth never fought anything like that. He fought some minor evil dragon and then lived happily ever after. For that matter, there was never any mention of said evil world destroying god being on the loose in any Akaneia games, nor was he mentioned at all in 2 where one meets actual gods of that setting. You would think the existence of a city-sized evil god whose mere roar is said to be death to most people in the world and who raises giant armies of undead abominations would have been mentioned if he was part of the setting, particularly since Awakening said he had free reign till Marth stopped him. So I mean, IntSys SAYS this game is in Akaneia but it doesn't even make one iota of sense.


The story. Full of holes does not even begin to describe it. At the start of mission 2 a giant portal opens in the sky and there's suddenly a huge volcanic eruption and earthquake pouring lava across the land. The portal is eventually explained. No one ever talks about the volcano from nowhere again except for one sentence in the next chapter. Why did that happen? What does it mean? If it means nothing, why was it even in the game?

Then there's the completely unnecessary time travel nonsense. Time travel stories are almost always bad unless they're very clever. This one is not clever, so the result is that nothing really makes sense. It was just shoehorned in to justify having the characters' children be playable characters. There were so many better ways to do that- like in FE4 where the children were playable because of an actual plot twist. Heck, you could have just had a two-part story with a time skip. That would have been cool. But instead they gave us time travel gobbedlygook.

The story is in 3 parts. First is a generic bad country invades good country. The turning point of this is a mary sue character kills herself and all the bad people are moved by how pure and good she was and mostly decide to stop fighting. Well until the next part when they're all evil again. Also, the clearly dead character is recruitable in DLC later on for nonsense reasons.

Second, pointless interlude with a generic invader from across the sea.

Third, the actual story. Evil god comes back despite protagonist efforts, several boring battles are fought, and then you get your holy weapon and beat him the end.

I'm not even going to get into all the ways the story doesn't make sense upon closer inspection here since that would require too much spoiling of details. Suffice it to say that the villain is an idiot, so are the heroes, and there would be no plot without that.


What about gameplay? Well some of it will be familiar to you since you played 8. There's a world map you can walk around on with random enemy spawns on it for infinite grinding XP. Nothing fun like the Tower of Valni or Lagdou ruins though.

The difficulty is awful though. Anything less than Lunatic becomes trivial quickly, but Lunatic and Lunatic+ start off as pure luck and then later also becomes trivial except for enemies spawn-moving, which just makes it guess and check. Kinda like FE6 but ten times worse. In the early levels of Lunatic, all your characters will be killed in 1-2 hits. Even your Jeigan can go down in one since many people carry super-effective weapons to beat him, but it's best to avoid using him anyway. Now if you're very clever, you can find strategies that will beat the extremely challenging early levels. And that's a lot of fun if you're into hard strategy games like I am. EXCEPT that you're totally at the mercy of luck! Every enemy will be running a 1-4% chance of a crit. If they crit, you're dead. Even your Jeigan. To make things worse, YOU will be running a 1-4% chance of a crit. And if YOU get a crit while on defense, you are also usually dead because that means an extra enemy will be able to walk into that now-empty space and kill you. So once you figure out a strategy, you often have to restart over and over until no one gets a crit. Or an unlucky miss.

Speaking of such things, previous FE games already had unnecessary amounts of luck but Awakening is just stupid. On any given fight later on you have luck to:
1) Hit
2) Crit
3) Activate each of your skills
4) Have your partner maybe attack
5) Partner hit
6) Partner crit
7) Partner activate skills
8) Have your partner maybe block
9) Dodge
10) Not get critted
11) Sometimes enemy skills
12) Hit again
13) Crit again
14) Activate each of your skills again
15) Have your partner maybe attack again
16) Partner hit again
17) Partner crit again
18) Partner activate skills again

This is not even getting into stuff like Brave weapons or skills that cause additional attacks and thus additional luck base calculations. The result is that damage is completely unpredictable before long, which completely screws speedrunners for one thing since you might kill 20 enemies or just 1 on the enemy turn based on luck, but also makes it really hard to predict if your units will even live or die unless you have them unequip all their weapons so they can't accidentally get chipped down by 20 people who they unexpectedly killed.

Speaking of skills, they're broken. No FE game has been this exploitable since FE4, and even that game took some smarts and foreknowledge.

There are bigger problems though, a lot of the new mechanics kill nearly all strategy. Previous FE games always had a problem that it was often easier to funnel all XP to a couple of units who got incredibly pumped up and ran over the enemy with no opposition than to actual field an entire army and use strategy. But there was always a price to be paid. You'd stop gaining XP fast and eventually hit 20/20 and stop growing at all, at which point the enemies started becoming more and more dangerous. Not anymore. Now you can put yourself back to low level to keep gaining XP fast without losing much in the way of stats, and to keep right on grinding stats up until they're at their incredibly high caps and nothing can scratch you.

But it's worse than that. The new pair-up mechanic also discourages strategies and fielding armies and using formations and whatnot. Instead of fielding 8 guys, just send out 4 guys who actually fight while wearing your other characters like a pair of pants to get stat boosts. Instead of blocking for your fragile guys, just have them become an invincible piece of equipment attached to your godlike superstars who wade through the enemies with even more ease.

Plus they took out rescuing, which was the foundation of most interesting maneuvers. You CAN do some little tricks with Pair-Up, but they're not as interesting.

Oh and I know I mentioned this before, but it cannot be emphasized enough: the enemy attacks on the same turn they spawn (often with super-effective weapons), and thus you are going to be forced to restart as guess and check until you know who appears and when.

I could go on, but I said I'd try to keep things brief. Let me just conclude by saying that Awakening is a bad enough game that I never intend to buy another FE.

Melth fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Mar 3, 2017

Emperordaein
Jul 1, 2013
It's a shame that Awakening soured you on the series so much. I'm not sure if I should say to reccomend Fates or not. On one hand, it was a huge step up gameplay wise from Awakening, with alot of the more abusable stuff from that game being nerfed (Pair Up was reworked to be way less powerful, and now running on stricter rules) and made more interesting, new mechanics to the franchise that were at least interesting, and a return to the more intricate, tight map design from the older games in Conquest. On the other hand, the story is so much worse than Awakening in almost every way. To the point where it felt like the biggest obstacle for enjoying Conquest for me.

Going back to Age of Mythology, i'm really happy that I will soon be able to play the game again! Since I acquired a Surface as a hand me down, which I plan to use to play AoM on. I've tested it on Age of Empires II HD, and it ran fine enough, plus the Mac version was able to run on my old 2008 Mac Book (Which was the Vanilla version that didn't even come with The Titans), so hopefully it should be able to run a 2002 game no problem. It's been such a long time since i've played the game, and I can't wait to try out the new Chinese civilisation.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

Emperordaein posted:

It's been such a long time since i've played the game, and I can't wait to try out the new Chinese civilisation.
It's... uh, not well done. I am looking forward to getting there in the LP though, that campaign keeps bugging out in new and exciting ways every time I attempt it.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Melth posted:

Also, the clearly dead character is recruitable in DLC later on for nonsense reasons.

And despite her being amnesiac and pretty clearly brain-damaged, the male PC can marry her and have a kid with her. >_>


Just as well that Age of Mythology doesn't have a love interest for Arkantos, knowing how mythical depictions of romance tend to go. The Percy Jackson novels have maybe the best depiction of a mythical god of love I've ever read - Cupid is an rear end in a top hat whose bow is a weapon of war and he has a more than passing resemblance to Thanatos, the personification of death.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Cythereal posted:


Just as well that Age of Mythology doesn't have a love interest for Arkantos

You mean you don't ship him with Athena?

Technowolf
Nov 4, 2009




Melth posted:

You mean you don't ship him with Ajax?

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Melth posted:

You mean you don't ship him with Athena?



Arkantos has a grown son whose mother he never mentions, so I figured he's a widower. From the way he's described, Arkantos is probably pretty up there in years.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Cythereal posted:

Arkantos has a grown son whose mother he never mentions, so I figured he's a widower. From the way he's described, Arkantos is probably pretty up there in years.

His wife was killed by pirates. Possibly he had some other children who were killed (or maybe kidnapped or something) as well since the description says that the pirates 'killed his wife and left Kastor as his only heir'. That might just mean his wife is no longer an heir though.

And he's 44 while Kastor is 14 according to their descriptions.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Melth posted:

His wife was killed by pirates. Possibly he had some other children who were killed (or maybe kidnapped or something) as well since the description says that the pirates 'killed his wife and left Kastor as his only heir'. That might just mean his wife is no longer an heir though.

And he's 44 while Kastor is 14 according to their descriptions.

Ah, never looked that closely at their bios.

And seriously, I am pretty glad Age of Mythology steered clear of putting a love story into this game. Classic myth tended to have some very... different... ideas about love and relationships than modern Western sensibilities prefer.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!
Just recorded two videos in one day, so I'm feeling productive! I should be able to stick to my fortnightly update schedule and get a buffer of extra videos built up so that crazy real life shenanigans don't throw me off again. And I'll be redoing the first tutorial mission for this Monday like I talked about.

Samovar
Jun 4, 2011

I'm 😤 not a 🦸🏻‍♂️hero...🧜🏻



Melth posted:

You mean you don't ship him with Athena?

I am disgusted with the lot of you. You shouldn't ship Arkantos with anyone.

You should trireme him.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Samovar posted:

I am disgusted with the lot of you. You shouldn't ship Arkantos with anyone.

You should trireme him.

You and your anachronistic alternate history! We should pentekonter him.

my dad
Oct 17, 2012

this shall be humorous

Melth posted:

You and your anachronistic alternate history! We should pentekonter him.

Serious post:

Ancient Athenians loving loved ship-related sex metaphors.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

my dad posted:

Serious post:

Ancient Athenians loving loved ship-related sex metaphors.

Did they now? I've read a lot of Athenian stuff, but mainly histories.

my dad
Oct 17, 2012

this shall be humorous

Melth posted:

Did they now? I've read a lot of Athenian stuff, but mainly histories.

It was talked about at some point in the Ancient History thread in Ask/Tell.

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Emperordaein
Jul 1, 2013
So I finally got a brand new copy of Age of Mythology through Steam after all these years, I took Tale of the Dragon for a spin and... Um... Okay, is that first mission supposed to be unfair, unfun, and just kind of terrible? I played this on Moderate by the way.

(I'm hiding this in case Melth doesn't want this campaign spoiled. I'll hold back on my detailed thoughts about Tale of the Dragon's campaign if he wants it kept under wraps)

Because they expect you to be defensive when you're barely able to scrape together resources to make an army to fight off the huge swarm of spongey, high damage myth units they keep throwing at you with useless heroes. Or losing because they decide to attack piles of dirt that make you lose the mission if they get destroyed and you didn't notice because they're attacking somewhere else on the map. Or them ripping your Navy and Fishing Boats to shreds, because the devs decided that what an already bulky Myth unit needed was the ability to freely cross bodies of water. Or you being given Scout Cavalry with the line of sight of an Age of Empires II KNIGHT. Or one time when the game glitched and started me on the first age requiring me to waste time and resources to build back up to it, getting my defenses up after losing most of my soldiers AND THEN LOSING BECAUSE THEY DESTROYED A GODDAMN DIRT PILE.

Hell, even the Civilisation tutorial is just cheap. Who decided it was a good idea to show a minute long, unchanging battle just to display what the Heroes and Monks do? This is just sloppy all around.

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