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Okay last update was about unfair in how you beat that  How long does it generally take you to find out about AI behaviour in a particular mission before you start abusing the minutiae?
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Apr 26, 2017 15:20
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Dinictus posted:Okay last update was about unfair in how you beat that There's this piece of advice from the 36 Stratagems that was always my favorite: Steal Passing Goats A lot of this stuff is just me taking an unexpected opportunity while playing conventionally. Like with the slinger platoon at the beginning. I still don't fully understand their AI, but when fighting them for the first time I saw a mass of slingers coming and thus did the smart thing and sent my heroes to tank them. But they skipped the heroes. I ran my archers back to let my heroes get free hits while they chased, but they didn't chase the archers either. Instead they ran to a particular spot and THEN turned to fight. So it was immediately clear that next time I should block that spot and get free hits on them with everyone. Sure enough, that let me take them down without them getting even one hit in. Or in the more dramatic example you're probably thinking of, my first attempt was just to teleport in the swordbearers and sneak to the guardian. It turned out the whole enemy army intercepted them so that didn't work. Next time I sent in Chiron too but had them run along together with Chiron in front to try to aggro the enemy. That worked messily with a lot of micro but Chiron had taken heavy damage by the time I had control of the guardian, so he went down a few seconds later. I took a guess that the enemy army came charging once something got attacked inside their walls, and thus decided to test that by having Chiron look for a target to attack before the town hall. I figured the enemy would chase him relentlessly as they usually do and I'd have to lure them to the Guardian and just try to survive while it killed them (but with a lot more of an HP buffer this time). Unexpectedly, the enemy de-aggroed from him when I ran him back, making it easy to keep him alive. With a bit of refinement, the result was the zero casualty speedrun you saw. There were a few more takes than that because I am the Fred Astaire of strategy and always start the dance over from the beginning if anything goes wrong, but that's basically how it went.
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Apr 27, 2017 01:39
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Amazing stealth insertion there. That was quality.
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Apr 27, 2017 03:11
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Juuuust squeaked in this video before midnight eastern standard time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HSin_I5iEU My attempt at driving across the country for my new job is on track to finish with zero casualties!
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May 9, 2017 04:52
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Just had to think with the way that they refer to it and knowledge about Egyptian mythos... The myth that this is built around is just plain drat weird. And technically Isis had to recreate the phallus she used to impregnate herself, so it wasn't just missing. Calax fucked around with this message at 06:14 on May 9, 2017 |
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May 9, 2017 06:11
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Melth posted:Juuuust squeaked in this video before midnight eastern standard time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HSin_I5iEU Huh. That was surprisingly straightforward and easy. Doesn't give you much chance to show off, alas.
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May 9, 2017 07:27
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The only hard thing about this mission is the ambush at the pass on your first run when you don't know about it. One kind of neat thing about it is that while the enemy controls the cart, they send weaker amounts of reinforcements than if you control it.
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May 9, 2017 08:15
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The anubite ambush looks really cool when they all jump in. Wheeeeee.
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May 9, 2017 09:13
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This really bears repeating, but the animations and the voice acting for this game are really really good for an RTS. And considering this game's from 2002, the animations despite the lower quality models really are emotive. That said, the Priests, do they have unique appearances based on the prime god in the Pantheon? Maybe I didn't notice before, but while you played under Set, your Priests had these black face masks not unlike Set's camel head.
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May 9, 2017 18:02
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Dinictus posted:Maybe I didn't notice before, but while you played under Set, your Priests had these black face masks not unlike Set's camel head.
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May 9, 2017 18:22
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anilEhilated posted:I thought Set had a crocodile head? Sobek's the one with the crocodile head.
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May 9, 2017 19:49
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Aw, you missed out my favourite part about that legend! Namely, Horus defeating Set by castrating him with his bare hands.
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May 9, 2017 20:39
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Samovar posted:Aw, you missed out my favourite part about that legend! Namely, Horus defeating Set by castrating him with his bare hands.
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May 9, 2017 21:23
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There's a lot of weird sex in Greek, Egyptian, and Norse mythologies that this game wisely skips over. Egypt's may be the strangest of the lot.
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May 9, 2017 23:42
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But the weird sex thing is part of the good, honest fun of learning about those things. Well, except when they get rapey which is disturbingly often.
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May 9, 2017 23:55
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What if all mythological struggles were periodically broken up for sportsball and kart racing, but nobody ever wrote it down because it all seemed so obvious after those Egyptian fellows spelled it out?
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May 10, 2017 05:20
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Glazius posted:What if all mythological struggles were periodically broken up for sportsball and kart racing, but nobody ever wrote it down because it all seemed so obvious after those Egyptian fellows spelled it out? This is often weirdly close to the way it is, although few myths are quite as strange as Horus and Set taking a quick break from trying to kill each other to have sex. At least some of their bizarre competitions may have been intended to be comedic though. Melth fucked around with this message at 05:57 on May 10, 2017 |
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May 10, 2017 05:38
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anilEhilated posted:I thought Set had a crocodile head? No Set's head is of the Set animal.
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May 10, 2017 06:05
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Glazius posted:What if all mythological struggles were periodically broken up for sportsball and kart racing, but nobody ever wrote it down because it all seemed so obvious after those Egyptian fellows spelled it out? Also, the Aztecs may have put a certain damper on it.
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May 10, 2017 12:04
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Cythereal posted:Also, the Aztecs may have put a certain damper on it. Not sure I understand
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May 11, 2017 00:31
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Melth posted:Not sure I understand The Aztecs had a ballgame that was also a religious ritual - the winning team would be sacrificed to the gods. 
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May 11, 2017 00:36
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Cythereal posted:The Aztecs had a ballgame that was also a religious ritual - the winning team would be sacrificed to the gods. I thought it was the losing team who got sacrificed.
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May 11, 2017 00:40
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Hunt11 posted:I thought it was the losing team who got sacrificed. Eh. I've heard it both ways. But tbh, most of the accounts of Aztec religious rituals we have are from Spanish conquistadores, who are... probably not the most unbiased observers of Aztec religion. Aztecs would make a neat addition to an Age of Mythology 2, though.
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May 11, 2017 00:47
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Cythereal posted:Eh. I've heard it both ways. It might be hard to give them enough human unit variety. It was kind of a key plot point in history that they had no cavalry of any kind for starters. People have been talking for 15 years about wanting to add the Aztecs or the Celts or (before the expansion actually did it) the Chinese or some other favorite pet civ to this game though, so I'm sure someone has already thought of a solution for that. In my opinion, a sixth group wouldn't really add much to the game. This may be because they had my two pet civilizations from the beginning. I also don't think there's really a lot of room for a sequel, but I would be delighted to see further refinements and rebalancing of what we already have and maybe a new side campaign or two like The Golden Gift. Regarding the ball game, I have also heard it both ways. Kind of like whether defeated gladiators were killed if given a thumbs up or thumbs down. I hope someone can give us a definitive answer to those questions before 2028 when I can run for president and begin my reign of terror.
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May 11, 2017 02:36
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Melth posted:It might be hard to give them enough human unit variety. It was kind of a key plot point in history that they had no cavalry of any kind for starters. People have been talking for 15 years about wanting to add the Aztecs or the Celts or (before the expansion actually did it) the Chinese or some other favorite pet civ to this game though, so I'm sure someone has already thought of a solution for that. My hypothetical Age of Mythology 2 would just ditch Atlantis as a civ, and I think it would be just fine if one of the Aztecs' gimmicks was that they'd have no cavalry - perhaps making them exceedingly dependent on their heroes (jaguar warriors spring immediately to mind) and myth units with a weak human core relegated to support roles. Probably have a civ setup along the lines of Greeks, Norse, Egyptians, Chinese, and Aztecs - maybe the Celts or Persians. There's a lot of interesting stuff in Arabian, Persian, and general Middle Eastern mythology that could be fun to plumb for ideas, but I'm unsure if there's really a good civilization to represent any of those bodies of myth.
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May 11, 2017 02:46
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Cythereal posted:Probably have a civ setup along the lines of Greeks, Norse, Egyptians, Chinese, and Aztecs - maybe the Celts or Persians. There's a lot of interesting stuff in Arabian, Persian, and general Middle Eastern mythology that could be fun to plumb for ideas, but I'm unsure if there's really a good civilization to represent any of those bodies of myth. It might be hard to make Persian stuff work since as far as I'm aware the Zoroastrians were quite emphatic that there was only one god. Or at least only one that should be worshiped. Actually this reminds me of an amusing bit of Plutarch where he says that upon learning that Themistocles had come to his court, Artaxerxes 'prayed to his god Ahriman in thanks'. Either Plutarch was woefully ignorant of Persian culture or he was saying Artaxerxes was some sort of bronze age Satanist. Dinictus posted:This really bears repeating, but the animations and the voice acting for this game are really really good for an RTS. And considering this game's from 2002, the animations despite the lower quality models really are emotive. Yeah, I really love the animations in this game. The voice acting has a few issues from time to time but is mostly excellent too. As far as I can tell, the priests look identical regardless of your god. I can't see any kind of mask on them at all for that matter when I zoom in, just dark brownish low-detail faces. SirSamVimes posted:
This is also true in several other RTSes with a tug of war type level. Like the much more challenging one in WC3's expansion human campaign. In this case it just makes things even easier though.
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May 11, 2017 04:39
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So, instead of Persia, use the Hindu. Their pantheon is large enough... Or just play Rise of Legends.
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May 11, 2017 07:41
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The way I would do it is advance the timeline a bit, (mostly) keeping the Greeks and Norse and having them be Romans and Germans, with some rebalancing where those cultures diverge from the originals like having romans have their counter infantry infantry(now known as the legionary) be their main unit and then look east for new stuff like Zoroastranism(Ahura Mazda/Mithra/Apam Napat) and Hinduism(Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva). Or maybe go back in time and have the Mesopotamians with their city protector's deities as major gods.
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May 11, 2017 12:00
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Calax posted:Or just play Rise of Legends The problem with Persia is that if you go full Zoroastrianism, you don't really have space for minor gods even if you plunder the older mythology for units. And if you go with the older mythology, you're suddenly without the gods... You could mesh them together but it'd come out a hot mess. I wouldn't mind seeing an Africa-based civ - plenty of gods and demons in there - but again, it'd be merging a lot of different cultures. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 12:07 on May 11, 2017 |
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May 11, 2017 12:04
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Calax posted:Or just play Rise of Legends. But if I'm playing Rise of Legends, I'm playing as the lunatic steampunk Italians beating the stuffing out of mages, monsters, and aliens with giant clockwork robots and steam tanks.  Awful RTS, but brilliant visual design.
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May 11, 2017 12:29
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As a fan of the original Rise of Nations who didn't play Legends, what exactly was wrong with the game?
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May 11, 2017 13:22
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Emperordaein posted:As a fan of the original Rise of Nations who didn't play Legends, what exactly was wrong with the game? Also the campaign was unfinished and the entire third act has like 5 proper missions and 10 plain skirmishes. Despite all that, the art and creative direction was still pretty rad though.
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May 11, 2017 13:29
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Cythereal posted:My hypothetical Age of Mythology 2 would just ditch Atlantis as a civ, and I think it would be just fine if one of the Aztecs' gimmicks was that they'd have no cavalry - perhaps making them exceedingly dependent on their heroes (jaguar warriors spring immediately to mind) and myth units with a weak human core relegated to support roles. Aztec hero creation mechanic could be similar to Atlantean' (normal units can be upgraded to heroes) but instead of being a purchase, heroes would be gained by losing normal units (either through sacrifice or combat). Throwing bunch of soldiers to temples to gain heroes that counter Myth units seems pretty Aztecish.
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May 11, 2017 18:01
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It should probably be villagers being sacrificed. Maybe something like raiding for other people's villagers to take them captive and sacrifice them. Mandatory raiding as a core game mechanic sounds like it could even break up a few turtles' bad habits.
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May 11, 2017 18:10
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Asehujiko posted:The way I would do it is advance the timeline a bit, (mostly) keeping the Greeks and Norse and having them be Romans and Germans, with some rebalancing where those cultures diverge from the originals like having romans have their counter infantry infantry(now known as the legionary) be their main unit. Or post-Marian Legionnaires could be a higher-tech unit, with the earlier units being the more Greek style units like Triarii and Principes.
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May 11, 2017 19:07
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SIGSEGV posted:It should probably be villagers being sacrificed.
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May 11, 2017 19:18
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It runs the risk of being easily unbalanced. If an Aztec player is expected to sacrifice a significant chunk of his economy to get heroes, an Aztec player who's left alone a bit longer due to teammates/lucky terrain/winning an early skirmish with human soldiers is now ahead in eco by a bunch, which will compound over time.
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May 11, 2017 22:27
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Eh. It's basically a food->faith exchange program once you're done setting up your eco.
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May 11, 2017 22:36
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my dad posted:Eh. It's basically a food->faith exchange program once you're done setting up your eco. There is no 'done' setting up your eco in multiplayer though. People are pumping out villagers full speed all game long usually. Having to sacrifice them for favor might well be crippling unless the favor amount was huge. And raiding for enemy guys to sacrifice might end up being too much like the norse favor generation method.
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May 13, 2017 18:22
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Just make any human unit sacrificeable.
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May 14, 2017 04:17
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