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man I love the Egyptians. I'd play Isis every scrim I do with my friend if it didn't get stale for both of us.
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Apr 12, 2017 14:13
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HannibalBarca posted:man I love the Egyptians. I'd play Isis every scrim I do with my friend if it didn't get stale for both of us. Laser crocs 
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Apr 12, 2017 15:12
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I hate the petty nuisances of the Egyptians. Sucky villagers who take forever to build anything, no way to speed up favor generation, tons of cluttery buildings you have to put down, worthless classical units, etc. Priests are definitely an amazing unit though- particularly for Ra. Ra's priests will pay for themselves in no time.
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Apr 12, 2017 17:30
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Cythereal posted:The Egyptian campaign also varies up who the patron god is a lot, between Isis and Ra. Even the help notes that the Ra/Set thing was probably a clash of early cults that then got turned into this massive thing afterwards. Much like the Egyptians themselves, the Egyptian part of the campaign up to and including it's gods, is basically doing it's own thing. Bloodly fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Apr 12, 2017 |
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Apr 12, 2017 17:48
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And now for something completely different: I'm about to buy a new laptop and I'm currently trying to figure out what features I want. I've been having trouble figuring out the relative importance of more RAM, an SSD, and different video cards for performance (in both gaming and I suppose in making LPs like this). Any recommendations about that? Edit: Another different question: what would be the best way to record an iphone game? I've been a long-time fan of the Sonny series and just got the new one that came out and I've noticed there are few to no LPs showing how to do Legend runs. Melth fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Apr 12, 2017 |
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Apr 12, 2017 18:29
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Can't really advise you on video cards and so on, but surely the Tech Support Fort is the perfect place to ask questions like that one. My only advice would be to make sure you get at least one USB-C port (two would be better, but I don't know if you'll find a laptop with two USB-C ports at this point), since it looks like it's actually going to succeed -- and therefore you'll need the USB-C port once it becomes the most common connector for external hard disks and so on (probably not this year, but I'd guess in 2018 or 2019, you'll see USB-C hard disks everywhere).
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Apr 12, 2017 19:23
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Won't they make adapters for them? Sure you only get the old speed and such but it should still work, right?
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Apr 12, 2017 19:29
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Alright, thanks for the advice guys, I'll be making the next episode with my new computer when it arrives.Bloodly posted:Even the help notes that the Ra/Set thing was probably a clash of early cults that then got turned into this massive thing afterwards. They did base it on a major Egyptian set of myths of course- in which Ra was also weirdly uninvolved now that I think about it. It's Isis, Horus, and Thoth vs Set mostly.
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Apr 14, 2017 14:48
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I just discovered a brilliant (and amusing) way to beat the next chapter which may well top the current record time once I've refined it.
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Apr 15, 2017 23:48
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Actually, since it was brought up, what are the difference between the villager units of the different civilisations? I mean, with the Norse and Atlantians it's obvious, but I never thought they'd have different resource/building rates between Greek and Egyptian villagers.
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Apr 16, 2017 03:08
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Emperordaein posted:Actually, since it was brought up, what are the difference between the villager units of the different civilisations? I mean, with the Norse and Atlantians it's obvious, but I never thought they'd have different resource/building rates between Greek and Egyptian villagers. Egyptian laborers are slower at everything, but faster if empowered. Also, the difference between farming and other sources of food is smaller for Egyptians, encouraging them to transition to farming sooner. Norse and Greek are nearly identical; Greeks gather gold microscopically faster. Atlantean citizens are more than 2x as good at everything. Exact stats here: http://aom.heavengames.com/gameinfo/howitworks/villgatherrates. Super exciting for the Egyptian part! The maps get really fun here. Although I'm worried Melth is just too good, and so we'll not have time to appreciate them.
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Apr 16, 2017 03:14
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Norse actually have a separate gatherer that's better at mining gold and worse at everything else, just to pile more fiddliness on top of building with their infantry.
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Apr 16, 2017 04:26
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quote:but faster if empowered. It's not a direct speed boost, mind you. It's just the Pharaoh makes them more efficient via their 'generate extra resources on drop-off' part of Empowering. Also those numbers and that page have the implication: Priest Empowering via Ra is equal to Pharoah empowering'. But the Priest info on that same site states Priest Empower is half as effective, so those values come down a little. Ra's Pharaoh also come up a little in that case, as it's 25% vs 20%.
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Apr 16, 2017 04:26
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wiegieman posted:Norse actually have a separate gatherer that's better at mining gold and worse at everything else, just to pile more fiddliness on top of building with their infantry. Unless you're playing Thor, in which case knock yourself out.
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Apr 16, 2017 04:28
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Smiling Knight posted:Super exciting for the Egyptian part! The maps get really fun here. Although I'm worried Melth is just too good, and so we'll not have time to appreciate them. I do worry about this too. It would be nice if someone were to do a more casual playthrough alongside Melth's insanely good strategies.
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Apr 16, 2017 07:00
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Carbon dioxide posted:I do worry about this too. It would be nice if someone were to do a more casual playthrough alongside Melth's insanely good strategies. There's lots of those around where they take like 2 hours on every mission actually. A few of them have pretty good commentators too. I think there was one called MajorFoley who was good. And MajorSloth or something like that? Oh and gathering rates are REALLY complex. You guys have covered many but not all of the details. There are also numerous contradictions on the various AoM sites (particularly about Ra empowering as you guys mentioned) and there have been a bunch of changes over the years. The gathering rate upgrades are also weird and some of them are partly bugged. To try to give a summary though: 1) Fishing ships are identical for the Greeks, Norse, Chinese, and Atlanteans. 2) Egyptian fishing ships are inferior, but they have this weird perk that they can build docks, obelisks, and eventually lighthouses. But they do so at a TERRIBLE build rate which makes it completely inefficient. 3) Greek Villagers, Chinese Peasants, and Norse Gatherers are basically identical. Except that Norse Gatherers can't build anything. 4) The Norse also have a unique unit called Dwarves. Dwarves are great at getting gold but TERRIBLE for food and wood. Also, they cost gold instead of food to train them and they train very slowly. 5) Thor's Dwarves are contentious. They're a bit cheaper, which is nice. Supposedly they don't actually suck at getting food and wood, but actually they ARE still inferior at wood and will become inferior at food too when upgrades are factored in. 6) Egyptian Laborers are slightly bad at everything. 7) People often say that Pharaohs (and priests for Ra) improve Laborer gather rates by Empowering buildings. That's technically not true (and the difference can matter). The Laborers don't actually work any harder, but 20% extra resources are created ex nihilo whenever a Laborer drops some off at a building which is Empowered at that instant. There are all kinds of ways you can theoretically game this system, but I don't want to get into the complexities of this right now. Oh, Ra's Pharaohs grant 25% more resources. Ra's priests grant 15%. Sons of Osiris grant 20% for everyone. 8) Comparisons to Atlantean Citizen are really complicated and contentious. Citizens cost 3x as much as other races. They're about 3x as tough, but they only gather and build about 2.5x as well and they walk REALLY slow. So that's a sucky deal on the face of it. One perk though is that they don't need any drop off points. That saves a tiny bit of money and also makes their effective gather rate slightly better. How much better is impossible to calculate. For gold it's basically no help at all since anyone can just slap down a drop-off point right next to a gold mine. Compared to a newb or lazy player who doesn't build new drop sites often enough the bonus for food or wood could be substantial, but for skilled players it's nearly no bonus at all. 9) Atlanteans can also turn Citizens into Hero Citizens. These gather and build a tiny built faster, but they cost truckloads of resources (including more population) and thus are a very bad deal for most purposes.
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Apr 16, 2017 19:41
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Melth posted:8) Comparisons to Atlantean Citizen are really complicated and contentious. Citizens cost 3x as much as other races. They're about 3x as tough, but they only gather and build about 2.5x as well and they walk REALLY slow. So that's a sucky deal on the face of it. 
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Apr 16, 2017 22:25
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Poil posted:On the contrary, that is very much possible to calculate. The youtuber Spirit of the law has done a ton of those kind of videos for Age of Empires 2. You just need to set up a lot of tests. Testing != Calculation 
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Apr 17, 2017 00:30
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WarpedLichen posted:Testing != Calculation Indeed. Try not to get any of your empiricism on my Aristotelian deductions on the way out, Poil! In seriousness though, the reason this stuff is still debated is that a lot of this stuff really is untestable- at least to the kind of exactitude demanded by a game which secretly decided that Norse gatherers should get .90 gold per second whereas everyone else gets .91. To give an example: it is not at all efficient or feasible to build a granary drop site next to each one of a bunch of huntable animals as you kill them, so you have to content yourself by putting one or two in the middle of the herd at the time your villagers arrive. But huntable animals move in a random walk and thus tend to diffuse further and further from their starting cluster at an unpredictable rate as the game goes on- it's for that reason that Odin players are always supposed to promptly find a bunch of huntables and cast Great Hunt on them immediately while they can still all be hit by the AoE. The upshot is that the later in the game you are, the less efficient your hunting drop sites will tend to be, and thus the more of a hidden edge the Atlanteans have. Another example is decay. Animals which have been killed lose some of their gatherable food every second. One uphot of this is that for hunting/herding food but NOT for other kinds of food, there is another cost to time spent walking to a granary besides the wasted time alone. Which again gives a sneaky advantage to the Atlanteans which we can't calculate for several reasons including randomized distance from drop sites but also other factors. For that matter, the best way to prevent animals from wandering further from your drop site is obviously to just kill them all immediately, but that's conversely the worst thing imaginable for purposes of minimizing decay. Anyway, you may decide none of these things matter to you, but they ARE part of the game and part of why I said the true advantage or disadvantage of Atlanteans can't be calculated exactly.
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Apr 17, 2017 02:49
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You don't play Atlanteans because you did a bunch of boring math, you do it because building drop off points is loving stupid and they took it out of AOE3 for a reason.
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Apr 17, 2017 04:35
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Or you're used to Rise of Nations.
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Apr 17, 2017 04:55
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wiegieman posted:You don't play Atlanteans because you did a bunch of boring math, you do it because building drop off points is loving stupid and they took it out of AOE3 for a reason. Indeed, they don't really add much but nuisances to the game. That's true in most RTSes that have them that I can think of. As usual though, I think WC3 did something much better with them. The amount of strategy that went into various drop-point guarding tactics and base layouts and so forth in that game and the sheer number of raid tactics and counter tactics it created were remarkable.
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Apr 17, 2017 06:43
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Melth posted:Indeed, they don't really add much but nuisances to the game. That's true in most RTSes that have them that I can think of. As usual though, I think WC3 did something much better with them. The amount of strategy that went into various drop-point guarding tactics and base layouts and so forth in that game and the sheer number of raid tactics and counter tactics it created were remarkable. One reason I enjoy Supreme Commander so much. When your only resources are mass and energy, no drop-offs are needed. Act of War also had a pretty unique spin on it, one of your main sources of cash was capturing enemies.
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Apr 18, 2017 02:15
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There was one obscure RTS whose resource system I liked, Warrior Kings, though it wasn't actually that well done; I liked the idea more than the execution. Basically, you'd build up a fortified main base with walls and stuff, while your workers gathered resources and returned them to outlying villages, which would then send carts with those resources to the main base. There was more to it too, like buildings you could build to make your villagers more effective, warehouses that acted as alternate drop-off points, the fact that carts could be stolen and more. It was a nice touch of realism which hasn't been attempted often, possibly because it's hard and it shows in that the game itself wasn't that great. Oh yeah, and you had to take fragile supply wagons with you or your ranged units would run out of ammunition and their rate of fire would plummet.
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Apr 18, 2017 07:55
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Boksi posted:There was one obscure RTS whose resource system I liked, Warrior Kings, though it wasn't actually that well done; I liked the idea more than the execution. Basically, you'd build up a fortified main base with walls and stuff, while your workers gathered resources and returned them to outlying villages, which would then send carts with those resources to the main base. There was more to it too, like buildings you could build to make your villagers more effective, warehouses that acted as alternate drop-off points, the fact that carts could be stolen and more. It was a nice touch of realism which hasn't been attempted often, possibly because it's hard and it shows in that the game itself wasn't that great. Oh yeah, and you had to take fragile supply wagons with you or your ranged units would run out of ammunition and their rate of fire would plummet. So basically it added a logistics system to the game? Huh. Honestly I always preferred the Command and Conquer style of "send out gatherer to resource patch, gatherer is weak point for your economy" rather than anything super convoluted or significantly to many resources. Of course it was always funny when you blew one up and saw the technician standing there, then heard his little saturday special go off as he tried to kill one of the beefiest units in the game (your harvester).
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Apr 18, 2017 08:06
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This is a really interesting LP, it's fun to see the all maps basically dissected and solved like a puzzle rather than fighting a battle. Anyway, the best RTS resource system is clearly Dawn of War, where you gain money by attacking and taking territory. There's no period where you have to wait to build up your army before attacking, because attacking IS how you build up your army!
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Apr 18, 2017 11:40
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Enchanted Hat posted:This is a really interesting LP, it's fun to see the all maps basically dissected and solved like a puzzle rather than fighting a battle. I'm glad you like it! I haven't played that game so I have no idea how well the idea works in practice, but it sounds like it could lead to a so-called rich get richer mechanic where a person who gets ahead once will almost always win. Which is a pretty common problem in a lot of games of course.
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Apr 22, 2017 04:00
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The new video is up and it's one of my best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7Yjv0C4Buw
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Apr 24, 2017 21:12
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I don't think we'll get the full taste of the awesomeness that is AoM random name generator until the Hersir. But hey, at least the teleport god power is actually good for something else than transporting amounts of units guaranteed to achieve nothing at all.
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Apr 24, 2017 21:33
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 Well. I was not expecting THAT strategy.
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Apr 24, 2017 21:35
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You can trade the giant sword for a really strong guardian... or what's in the box.  Could you also attempt to run up to the wall and sneak teleport the sword in behind the defenders? Or is that too risky?
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Apr 24, 2017 21:38
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Impressive. Also, elephants are hilarious in this game when facing Cyclopes.
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Apr 24, 2017 21:55
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Samovar posted:Impressive. Also, elephants are hilarious in this game when facing Cyclopes. Yup! I was looking around hoping to find a good video of Cyclops picking them up and throwing them, but there don't seem to be any outside of long Greek vs Egypt matches. Minotaurs can also headbutt them 50 feet and so forth. Sadly, Ajax can't do a thing to cavalry (or to archers that are just big like Chariot Archers apparently). Kastor CAN throw Chariot Archers though (instant-killing them). Alas, even he still can't throw cavalry. Poil posted:You can trade the giant sword for a really strong guardian... or what's in the box. :P If I understand what you mean, then I find that that doesn't work very well. You'd take casualties and it would almost certainly be a good deal slower too since you'd have to maneuver VERY carefully to avoid heavy enemy fire. The bigger problem though is that the enemy actually has Isis monuments all over their base. Which means you can't use god powers in most parts of it. That's the reason I didn't do a faster stunt like have Amanra jump the wall, run straight for the guardian to get line of sight of it, and then teleport the sword bearers right onto it. anilEhilated posted:I don't think we'll get the full taste of the awesomeness that is AoM random name generator until the Hersir. The teleport god power is AMAZING! The uses are only limited by your creativity in both the original version that only affected 50% of enemies and the new one that does 100%.
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Apr 24, 2017 22:56
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Elephants count as normal units for those abilities?  Also I had forgotten just how much the AI loves to have inconvenient Isis monuments.
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Apr 24, 2017 23:05
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Melth, you're doing a multi-cultural blend of ancient gods' work.
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Apr 25, 2017 01:43
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Hah! That was a great way to beat the mission. I liked the distraction you set up, too - I guess if the swordsmen try to run through the enemy army they don't make it.
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Apr 25, 2017 03:43
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Broken the game on your knee again, good job. I really look forward to watch the tug of war mission, I love it.
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Apr 25, 2017 13:56
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Angry Lobster posted:I really look forward to watch the tug of war mission, I love it. There's a possibility of some complications with that. I'm starting a new job completely across the country in a week or two, and the place I'll be staying won't have internet access when I first arrive. I've planned ahead by already uploading the next video so that hopefully all I have to do is change it from private to public in two weeks, but I might or might not even be able to get an internet connection long enough to do that that day.
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Apr 25, 2017 16:29
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The way I cheesed this mission was by having Amanra hop the gate into the base and sloooowly chop up everything inside without activating their AI by sending somebody to the town center.
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Apr 25, 2017 16:46
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Is it really cheesing when it takes longer than a regular playthrough would, though? I mean, it's Amanra. She tickles.
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Apr 25, 2017 18:08
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