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Decoy Badger posted:This has definitely been one of the calmest games so far. Everyone's happy as long as the tech keeps flowing in I guess. That actually kind of makes sense -- for every one tech you steal from them (and sometimes it's not even you they blame for it) you give them at least three different ones back. Sure, those weren't yours either in the first place, but what do they care?
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Oct 2, 2018 19:39
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Wild that Darloks are actually the best diplomats.
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Oct 2, 2018 19:43
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kaosdrachen posted:That actually kind of makes sense -- for every one tech you steal from them (and sometimes it's not even you they blame for it) you give them at least three different ones back. Sure, those weren't yours either in the first place, but what do they care? in the context of their relationship with Thot that makes perfect sense. but the galaxy is united in a pretty universal alliance right now and that status quo has been more or less true for what, 75 years now? it's unusual that one of the frontrunners hasn't kicked off at someone, especially when one of those frontrunners is Ruthless and doesn't give a crap about stomping on an inferior power regardless of agreements.
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Oct 2, 2018 19:46
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kaosdrachen posted:That actually kind of makes sense -- for every one tech you steal from them (and sometimes it's not even you they blame for it) you give them at least three different ones back. Sure, those weren't yours either in the first place, but what do they care? It's particularly amusing because "realistically", they'd have to know that you're bribing them with stolen secrets. There's no way the Darlok scientists are advanced enough to be able to make all these discoveries legitimately on their own, and everyone's presumably conferring with each other, which would lead to at least some conversations along the lines of  "We caught some Darlok spies awhile back." "So did we! What did you do with them?" "They apologized and gave us better spaceship engines, so we decided to forgive them." "Wait...you mean the warp drive? We were wondering why everyone got them so quickly after we invented them!" "Sucks to be you, I guess." "Yeah, especially since our captured spies only gave us some out-of-date beam weapons when they apologized."
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Oct 2, 2018 20:18
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MillennialVulcan posted:Wild that Darloks are actually the best diplomats. Who hates technology santa
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Oct 3, 2018 12:40
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Can you see the instability of your own planets, or only of ones that you're inciting riots on? And if instability never goes down, would a strategy for Darloks (other than "Steal everything that isn't nailed down, then steal the nails") be to raise instability to as close as 50% as you want to risk, then wait for them to declare war/all of a race's planets are on the verge of rioting, then tip them all at the same time?
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Oct 3, 2018 13:05
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Randalor posted:Can you see the instability of your own planets, or only of ones that you're inciting riots on? And if instability never goes down, would a strategy for Darloks (other than "Steal everything that isn't nailed down, then steal the nails") be to raise instability to as close as 50% as you want to risk, then wait for them to declare war/all of a race's planets are on the verge of rioting, then tip them all at the same time? seems risky, since all it takes is some other schmuck taking a stab at the sabotage game to prematurely knock over your deck of cards
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Oct 3, 2018 13:06
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Randalor posted:Can you see the instability of your own planets, or only of ones that you're inciting riots on? The second one. You never have any indication until it happens(or you catch their spies doing other things) that a planet of yours is about to revolt. As to the strategic tipping of an entire race's planets, that could arguably viable with the Humans who only have three planets. Even so, it would take at least that many years -- you can only target one planet per empire per turn. With any decent-sized empire it would be totally impossible, because of how many systems they have. It would take centuries to get all the planets that far and decades to tip them all over the edge. Sloober posted:Who hates technology santa Apparently everyone, until he starts handing out gifts, is the MOO answer. coolguye posted:aren't the bugs Ruthless? i'm surprised they haven't flown off the handle at someone yet. Me too. They've been isolated a fair amount since the early fake war against us, but that's the only declaration of war I've yet seen with anyone. It's always triggered by now in other games.
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Oct 3, 2018 18:50
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Re uprisings: You can trigger multiple systems in revolt, though only one at a time (so to have multiple systems the AI would have to be slow in putting the revolt down). If you get the majority of the target empire's population in revolt (eg, they have a 100, 35, and 55 pop planets and you flip the 100) it'll be counted as a successful revolution and the leader's personality gets re-rolled.
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Oct 3, 2018 22:11
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Coolguye posted:it's unusual that one of the frontrunners hasn't kicked off at someone, especially when one of those frontrunners is Ruthless and doesn't give a crap about stomping on an inferior power regardless of agreements. Yeah, definitely. I wonder if it's because the "default" relations between the leaders are all pretty high. There aren't any major "natural enemies" going on (no Mrrshan or Sakkra for the Alkari to hate, for example) and there are lots of alliances [and presumably] trade deals. So stuff keeps getting canceled and set back up, and without a war to start putting in huge "us vs. them" penalties and bonuses things are staying static. If nobody is Xenophobic or Honorable there aren't as many huge swings from negative diplo, either. Speaking of diplo, forgot to mention earlier: in all my years of Orion I've never seen the "Hurrah, a vote for X is a vote for peace!" or however that went. And I pretty much always vote for other races unless I can't. If there's ever a real MOO remake, it'd be neat to see aliens doing stuff like campaign ads and promises.  OAquinas posted:If you get the majority of the target empire's population in revolt (eg, they have a 100, 35, and 55 pop planets and you flip the 100) it'll be counted as a successful revolution and the leader's personality gets re-rolled. Ahh, good to know! I thought it was causing a revolt in the homeworld, but that's probably because normally when a coup happens the empire doesn't have many planets left, and the homeworld is where the majority of their population is anyway.
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Oct 4, 2018 03:06
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Episode XVII: 2400 - For the second quarter-century in a row, I go into this intending it to be the final update. Does MOO have any more surprises in store for me?  Our fleet's about half as big as the Klackons, technology has nearly caught them, production is still competitive though the Silicoids are rising. More and more evidence that the Bulrathi(and probably Alkari as well) have fallen off the pace.  It's be really nice to turn all our systems Gaia and max them out, aside from further terraforming gains yet to come. Right now though the industrial buildup continues. The plan remains simple; go for Orion, meet and befriend the Alkari, bribe everyone who isn't an insect before the next Council, cackle evilly on the throne. Emperor Gmork aims to become High Master Gmork, and he's getting a bit impatient about it. Of course in the meantime we'll continue working on constantly expanding and modernizing the fleet, because if that fails, Darlok ships will darken the skies of enemy planets.  Several years ago, missile base maintenance was over 11%. We haven't scrapped any. That's a good measure of the scale of the economic expansion that is underway(mostly finished). Trade deals with the Silicoids and Klackons are boosted to 4350 -- 2k was the previous high.  Same song, new verse.  Two years, two more frame jobs, and we're nearly done with the buildup. Time to put over a billion to work building torpedo cruisers. With Arietis contributing 2-3 of them by itself annually, it shouldn't take long ... but particularly with our lagging missile tech at the moment, it is reasonable to see to boosting our base numbers first.  Boring ...  More miniaturization is the big gain here. A warning from the Bears, and we'll target Industrial Waste Elimination next in our research. Fusion Beam and a much worse version of the same tech we just stole from them fixed the damage.  Had a few years of quiet before this in 2512. The fleet is nearly ready.  Same time, from the Klackons. This saves us a few years of time basically researching it. And now we'll grow some more. Complete Eco Restoration to go with the coming waste elimination is basically redundant, but it's the only forward option. After that, Bio Terminator is in the next tier ... 2513, the next year, the fleet deaprts for Orion. Facing the Guardian ... for the last time As seen here again, the Guardian does much better in close-quarters fighting. I was happy to sacrifice the older cruisers to it's rapacity. That makes sense to make it virtually impervious to low-level assaults barring absurd numbers, but it also means that it's particularly vulnerable to torpedoes or HEF-powered beam weapons. Missiles, due to limited ammo, wouldn't fare nearly as well.   Yeah, yeah, yeah ... gimme the Orion loot already.  There we go. And a few more planets are scanned ... before we see the toys. That's backwards.   That sword flashes black, then white, then black again in pattern. These guys don't look nice either. Also ... ** Black Hole Generator ** Hellfire Torpedoes ** Advanced Damage Control  LOL. You DARE insult the glorious rulers of the fabled Orion?? You will pay. Err, not really. Actually, we're going to be-friend and bribe the crap out of you. But only because it suits our interests. It's a good thing we have a lot of tech, because they are Xenophobic Technologists. We'll have to really open the piggybank. A trade deal for a mere 5575 BC starts things off on the right foot.  Just because we can. Death Ray and BHG for maximum evil. Game came up with the class name, but I think it's highly appropriate. I don't actually expect to ever fight a battle with these, but ... Espionage was halted for the next decade to allow relations to improve as much as they would naturally. It also occurred to me that it was probably better to secure Happy Thoughts(tm) now, so the Bribery Tour commenced. A scandalous, bordering on criminal giveaway commenced. When it was over, we had an Alliance with four of our five rivals. THe only holdout were the Humans, ironically. We just waited a few years, and threw more crap at them. Their diplomatic reports they couldn't refuse those he gave us the secrets of Anti-Missile Rockets. You could knock me over with a feather.  The year before the vote. There is no question it will be the Klackons opposing us again, so to make sure the Ultimate Love-In is uninterrupted, I need to break up any alliances they have. The Silicoids were the only one. They simply said, in true Princess Bride fashion ... As you wish. And then, if we could have the drumroll please ... Voting, and ... It is over!! For this game, it was really quite charmed. Missed out of the chance at a gut-punch Final War, great starting planets except for the first colony, hitting the planetology trifecta, and so on. Some thing like early propulsion tech went against me but there were about three good things for every bad one. 10-7 is the final record, completing my original goal of winning at least as many as I lose. There's only one of the losses that I think I have should have won, and at least a couple wins(Humans and Sakkra stand out) that I should have lost. Luck plays a significant role as has been noted, but the fun games are the ones where things are somewhat, but not too horribly, on the bad-luck side of things. The ones that are winnable, but require you to pull out all the stops. There's nothing I know about Master of Orion that I haven't shared, a lot of it multiple times over. Thanks for sharing the journey! Next up: the poll, and the bonus challenge game. I demand that somebody kick my arse. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Oct 6, 2018 |
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Oct 6, 2018 11:20
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drat, well done.
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Oct 6, 2018 12:00
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Man, this last one felt more like a victory lap than an actual final no-holds-barred boss fight. A well earned victory lap, mind. This was an amazing ride, and thank you for letting us share it.
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Oct 6, 2018 12:24
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Congrats. Also, holy poo poo. And also, congrats. Will you move on to MOO2?
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Oct 6, 2018 12:45
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Well done.
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Oct 6, 2018 12:51
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Your LPs got me back into playing MOO but I kept getting stymied by the way the Computer is allowed to send transports to planets they haven't even colonized yet. I loved following your games and picking up tips on how it's supposed to be done, even if I'm nowhere near Impossible.
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Oct 6, 2018 13:13
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Very nice. Great LP.
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Oct 6, 2018 13:23
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Thanks for the trip down memory lane
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Oct 6, 2018 14:11
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And so theft proves itself obviously the best power. Theft, and luck. A lot of luck.
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Oct 6, 2018 14:22
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And thus Robin Hood becomes the King of England. Congrats!
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Oct 6, 2018 16:34
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*applause* Well done!
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Oct 6, 2018 18:11
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I have to admit, I wasn't expecting the spying to go half as well as it did. Also interesting that the Darloks were a first-try win despite being the lowest "ranked" race on the playing board when we started out tallying up who was the most powerful option.
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Oct 6, 2018 19:34
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Congratulations on your victory, and completing the challenge you set yourself! I'd say you qualify as a Master of Master of Orion. 
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Oct 6, 2018 19:59
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Wayne posted:in all my years of Orion I've never seen the "Hurrah, a vote for X is a vote for peace!" or however that went. And I pretty much always vote for other races unless I can't. If there's ever a real MOO remake, it'd be neat to see aliens doing stuff like campaign ads and promises. It is pretty rare. My brother's favorite, which never came up because I don't use the Threaten option cause well, it can backfire pretty horribly, is probably the funniest. If they find themselves unconcerned, they can say "You bray like a Rigelian rear end, and we take your threats just as seriously". I literally LOL'd the first time I saw that one.
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Oct 6, 2018 20:23
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That really did seem like a victory lap, congrats Thot!
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Oct 6, 2018 20:24
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Well done, and congrats on a long journey completed in style. As for the update: I'm happy to see the Darlok troopers. They're probably my favorite tech NPC - sure, we're a spacefaring civilization and all but that's not going to stop us from keeping our glowing rune swords.
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Oct 6, 2018 22:27
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All hail our dark, glowy-eyed masters  Nicely done Thotimx, what a great LP!
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Oct 7, 2018 02:18
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First, thanks to all for your kind words. I'll not spam things by quoting all of you or pick some to leave others out, but I'm glad so many have enjoyed this. . The OP is now roughly twice as long as it was. I finally got off my duff and made a proper table of contents with links to every update -- and one example of excellent 'fan art?' that flourished in the animal species games, esp. the Mrrshan one for obvious cat-picture reasons. I also noticed a few things: ** I must apologize for the final emperor name. Not the first, but second time in which people made good suggestions for that which I forgot to implement. Ender for Humans, and then Redacted with Complex as the homeworld for Darloks. And I didn't even notice this time, everyone was nice enough not to say anything, but shame on me. It was an oversight :P. ** Over the past year and a half, I have demonstrated my self-hatred with 179 updates covering 3,889 years/turns of Master of Orion. Works out to about one update every three days, and 7.5 years of gameplay per day. Pretty much one game completed and documented per month, for those who like the numbers. What Should I LP Next? After the bonus challenge is completed, this journey through the original Master of Orion will have come to an end. At some point I'm going to want to do another retro game -- I'd like to have one old-school title in my rotation. What should it be? That'll be selected from among the most popular choices by readers of this, my most successful SA LP to date. I have a couple of restrictions: ** Retro Games only here. If it's come out in the last 15 years, fughedaboudit. I'd like it be something from 2000 or before, ideally. If you want to suggest something modern you'd like me to do at some point I'll consider that, but it won't be part of the voting here. I'd do it after finishing up one of my other LPs. ** NO RPGS. I used to be a big RPG fan, not so much anymore. More to the point, when I look around I see lots of other people playing them ... and playing them better, explaining them better, etc. than I can. Now, if there's one from the relevant timeframe that you just feel I MUST play, then go for it and I'll consider if enough people want it. But I'd strongly encourage looking at other genres. ** Other than that, anything goes. I like strategy games in general because they don't have a pre-determined story and there's variation in what can happen. Doesn't have to be a MOO game or even a 4X, tycoon games are fine, simulations are fine, sports games too, puzzle games, use your imagination. Anything that fills the 'thinking man's game' space in your mind. Suggestions Some while back I talked about this and threw around some ideas. Here's a few things that come to mind for me, but don't feel like you have to vote for one of these. Feel free to select others if you have a better idea. I'm going to leave the voting up for a while, at least a week. These are listed in alphabetical order, so don't think the first ones are the ones I really want to do or any such thing. ** Freespace(1998) -- If you were a gamer in the 1990s and liked flight sims, chances are you're either a Wing Commander or Freespace person. I'm the latter. A pair of games from Interplay featuring fairly strong story and voice-acting follow the struggles of humanity in interstellar war. This future conflict is played from the perspective of a fighter pilot in the familiar 'water navy tactics in non-Newtonian space' shtick. I count myself among those who think these games did that better than anyone else has before or since. The cinematics are particularly strong IMO(if the name Colossus means only a wonder of the ancient world to you, I weep). There's quality LPs of these in the Archives, primarily by Goldom which unforunately the scourage of internet images lost to time have ravaged. It's just here because it's a game I love and am confident I could do a decent job of if people want to see it again. ** Ground Control(2000) -- This product of Sierra and Massive Entertainment went all tactical with the RTS genre. The twist here is that there is no resource-gathering whatsoever of any kind, so you can't build up some huge force and crush the enemy. No base-building either. Zero, zip, nadda. Use your troops wisely, or fail. In many ways it is a precursor to the 2007 game by the same developer, World In Conflict. That series and the inferior GC sequel both allow for some manner of in-mission reinforcements, which does dilute the approach a bit for better or worse. Ground Control was done by Calculus Man a decade ago, and that was well-received. It was also never archived and the images are no longer available, so there isn't a proper LP of this available to the community right now. ** Homeworld(1999) -- If you can talk about 1990s RTS games without talking about Homeworld, you're an idiot. The original, which was followed by two sequels and a prequel, is among the best games ever made and is one my personal favorites. 3D space combat, persistent fleet between missions, good story, rarely approached quality of atmosphere. A significant number of people bounced off of it, but those who didn't are almost universally fans. There aren't five strategy games that I would put above the original MOO; this is one of those that I would and two of the other three games in the series are also good. It is a tragedy of unfathomable proportions that the other one, Homeworld 2, defines the series for many younger gamers. A few years ago berryjon did the whole series, and did it well, so other than my particular take on some things I wouldn't be adding anything particularly profound to what's already out there. If I did this, we'd do it in chronological order, starting with the prequel and proceeding through the timeline in that way. No Remastered version here, as that never got to the point of reproducing it faithfully, as much as Gearbox's efforts are appreciated. ** Lords of the Realm(1994) -- A series of three titles, with the second being the most popular by far and the only one I've completed. LotR(apologies to Tolkien) was a pioneer in the whole real-time battles, turn-based strategic map deal that the Total War series would later take and run with(often out of bounds, but I digress). None of them have a proper LP around these parts(SpermySmurf did the first two but only single scenarios), and I can't find anything with the expansion pack campaign of Lords of the Realm II anywhere on youtube, which is weird. Anyway, the second game is a refined version of the first. The AI on the strategic map is largely intentionally bad(for reasons of variety in the opponents) and the battle tactics range based on the situation from tolerable to violently, face-palmingly stupid. The weather system is literally the most challenging opponent for a skilled player. Ambitious interface decisions, some of which worked and some of which really, really didn't, combined with some cool options as well and good atmosphere, solid and reasonably simple economic model, and one of the best easter-egg credit songs of its or any time put this soundly in the 'flawed classic' category. The original is graphically quite dated, just before the age of 'good 2D sprites'. The third version went real-time on the strategic map and made other major changes to the formula, resulting in a game that doesn't play at all like the first two. It's been said the best thing about it is the opening cinematic, as fans of the series were largely turned off by it. And thus ended another Sierra series. ** Master of Orion 2: Battle at Antares(1996) -- An obvious choice continuing the MOO franchise. It's a solid sequel, and the only deserving one the game has ever had IMO. A number of features were changed and/or added. Unfortunately it is my opinion that the majority of them were not improvements. MOO2 is a solid strategy game that is better than most 4X titles. It falls well short of the mark of the first though, and I would be spending more time criticing it than I did here while attempting to be fair as always. I've played only a handful of games and am not nearly as good at it; I'm probably roughly an equal match for Hard difficulty at best, and not skilled enough to have even attempted Impossible yet. I'd need a lot of patience or a lot of help to pull off the routine I did for the original. Also, unlike MOO when I started it, it's been done. There are three LPs in the archives, two by noted narrative storyteller extraordinaire nweismuller. ** Theme Hospital(1997) -- Bullfrog Entertainment's quirky and off-beat title puts you in the role of managing a hospital. A hospital with bizarre ailments, a seriously twisted sense of humor, and treatments that are simultaneously hilarious and borderline, even outright horrifying. Here you'll find the things you'd expect -- managing finances, designing the layout of the facility, hiring and firing staff -- as well as things you would never imagine, like SHOOTING MICE. Most consider this to be one of the best of the 'Theme XYZ' series of games. Another title that is missing from the SA compendium. Voting Instructions Select up to three choices; if picking more than one, please list in order of preference. I do not promise to choose the top vote-getter, but I will select from among the most-requested titles. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Oct 7, 2018 |
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Oct 7, 2018 04:37
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I had to think about this one for a minute, since most of the 90s games I could think of were action titles (Duke Nukem, Jazz Jackrabbit, Quake, etc.), and I wanted to see some more strategy slaughter. Then I remembered a skirmish game my dad and I played sometimes in the late 90s: MAX. And there's my singular vote.
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Oct 7, 2018 04:46
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Thanks for the LP showing off this classic! My suggestion would be a really obscure strategy title, the Battleship RTS by Hasbro from 1997: https://youtu.be/Rbaa_Saz9KU?t=1360
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Oct 7, 2018 05:03
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Lords of the Realm rocked hard.
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Oct 7, 2018 05:19
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And now ... the long-promised bonus challenge game. MATCH THE MASTER Epic Micromanagement Pain: The Game Note: actual Master not guaranteed. No substitutions, exchanges or refunds. Local fees and laws may apply, and X never marks the spot. Or something.  I am Thotimx of Borg, administrative adjunct to Unimatrix 101. The Queen is gone. Only this single matrix has survived the disastrous experiments on the Anomaly*. The only conclusion we can draw is that the shockwave has sent us centuries back in time into an alternate timeline. Before we crash-landed on this world and most of the primary systems failed, sensors indicated several other space-faring species in this galaxy. They, however, do not have our strength, our unity. They are devoted to lesser ideals, and are isolated, scattered, divided, individualistic. They are not perfect. They will resist, but as it has always been so it will be again; their resistance will be futile. Their biological and technological distinctiveness*** must adapt to service us. We are the Borg. We will not fail. * For those who know your Star Trek: Voyager lore, the idea here is that increasing efforts to experiement on and harness the power of the Omega Particle resulting in disaster. Or just watch any three episodes at random and you'll probably find something with sufficient metaphysical hooey/time-space continuum shattering/incoherent, nonsensical technobabble to explain this state of things. ** Actually the biological distinctiveness will simply be eradicated, because of genocidal game mechanics. RULES For this game I play as the Klackons, who serve two purposes; the appropriate hive-mind approach to fit the Borg Collective, and they are also the strongest race to play for the purpose of this challenge IMO. Naturally we will going with the green theme. Average Difficulty, Huge Galaxy, Five Opponents. i ride bikes all day posted:I just want to see a finale type game where you play on normal difficulty with whatever race you think would win fastest. If you are still around, this was posted back in April after that epic Sakkra game finally finished. At that point I was planning on doing this but on the easiest difficulty. I rethought that after seeing this, and decided going with the 'standard' MOO resistance made more sense to show default mode. So the form this challenge took is to a significant degree your fault. ** Negotiation is irrelevant. Not quite, but no Council/diplomatic victory is permitted. All diplomatic options may be entertained but winning that way is unacceptable. ** All timelines converge in a single point. I.e., anyone who wishes to participate in this challenge must do so using the linked savegame. ** YOU SHALL NOT SPOIL!!!. Don't post about anything you've found in the game beyond what my 'official' run has revealed. Feel free to play beyond that, just don't talk about it. ** All your systems are belong to us. To win, you must occupy, not merely defeat, all habitable systems in the galaxy. That includes Orion. It may happen that Radiated worlds don't show up in anyone's tree or whatever. In that eventuality, those worlds and only those worlds may be glassed. I don't care if they are Bulrathi-owned, or 10M max pop Ultra Poor. You MUST invade and conquer every last stinking one of them. Only total victory is allowed. ** If you're not first, you're last. Your score is this year in which you complete the total victory by conquest objective. Feel free to restart as many times as you wish, though as for me I'll be doing it once and whatever happens goes. Obviously in this case, the lowest score wins. ** Lurkers are welcome. Nobody has to play, you can just follow along if you like. I just thought it would be interesting to see how fast others can do it, if anyone is interested in trying to beat me to the finish line. METHODOLOGY I promised this game would be more highly-documented. Here's what I meant by that; and I hope General Revil, with his aversion to micromanagement, is still hanging around to witness it. ** Everything I change will be documented. And I do mean everything. Rather than describing in general terms what I've done, I'll put up a screenshot for each thing. Every transport that is sent out. Every ship movement. Every diplomatic audience and/or proposal, spying investment, planetary spending adjustment, etc. Not every click mind-you, but just a screenshot of what it looks like after I'm done(ship scrapping, ship design, planetary sliders are good examples here). This will be a good incentive for me to get it over as quickly as possible :P. Everything that is required for me to play the way that I play will therefore be demonstrated. ** Videos will be uploaded for every 'between turns' period, as ships move, combat happens, etc. Often there will be nothing really going on, but I'm still going to capture them. ** Updates will come as close to daily as I can manage them. They'll have the usual number of screenshots roughly, so that updates stay at about the same length but cover less time. This could be anywhere from a single year to a decade probably, depending on what's going on in the game. ** I'll update key imperial stats on a 5-year basis, so that the growth or lack thereof can be observed. This train leaves the station hopefully on Monday, at which point I intend to upload the initial save and put up the starting update. The Orion Galaxy is really going to be in for it here; I'm going to enjoy flattening them into oblivion. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Oct 7, 2018 |
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Oct 7, 2018 05:36
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Thotimx posted:First, thanks to all for your kind words. I'll not spam things by quoting all of you or pick some to leave others out, but I'm glad so many have enjoyed this. You did good.  It was probably the most fun I've had participating in a thread here, and as others have mentioned the trip down memory lane was welcome.As for my votes, two are easy picks, the third I'll leave blank if you're not up for it. Master of Orion 2 (I've been needing an excuse to stop being so lazy and start recording stuff  ), Master of Magic, and Civ 4 if its release date (2005) isn't too recent for you. Yes, those are all 3 of my favorite 4Xs. Alternately, Lords of Magic? That's one game I've never figured out what you're "supposed" to do. I guess that's why nobody remembers the Sierra strategy games and people still rave about Simtex's 20 years on. Looking forward to the bonus game (even if I am more of a DS9 than a Voyager guy)! Already wondering whether it'd be better to attack early or bide my time and wait for the AI to expand some, since it's more profitable to invade than build from scratch....
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Oct 7, 2018 05:50
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My votes for next LP in order of preference: Master of Magic, but preferably with some silly handicaps/gimmicks since that game is hilariously broken Master of Orion 2, just to see the contrast between that and the original. (I am much more familiar with 2 myself) I was also going to suggest Starflight but according to wikipedia it's an RPG 
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Oct 7, 2018 05:56
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Mine in order of preference, for obscure strategy games. The latter two are borderline too new, though. Star Trek: Starfleet Command (1 or 2) Act of War: Direct Action Rise of Legends Cythereal fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Oct 7, 2018 |
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Oct 7, 2018 06:03
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Whoo! Congrats on completing the challenge and great to see this game get to shine.
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Oct 7, 2018 06:10
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Personally I think strategy games make the best LPs in all, they give us readers a chance to theorycraft various build strategies/races/technologies/etc. They can also be done mostly in screenshots if desired. Space sims/shooters like Freespace or X-Wing*.* are great to play, but other than talking about the merits of the few different weapons/ships there's not much for the peanut gallery to add. Plus they're mostly going to be videos, and if a particular mission is big you either have the viewer watch it the whole thing (including any long boring parts) or need to edit it in post which is a pain too. Homeworld, granted, is kind of an exception - Berryjon's LP of it was fantastic. But the HW series has some strategy elements (what ships to build) that folks can talk about, and the story is loving dense and is develpoed really well through the missions. Anyway, long story short I'd like to see these strategy games: Lords of the Realm - I've never played it and the series sounds really great Master of Orion 2: Battle at Antares - this one I have played, in fact I'm looking at the icon on my desktop. But I'd like to have you go through not only the game but also the changes it has over MoO 1 and your thoughts on what worked and what doesn't. And theorycrafting? Oh lordy, we can theorycraft all the doo-dah day for this game! The best MoO, imo. Well, the only one I play so... Master of Magic - Also a game I played a lot of and have now, but I'm poo poo at it and it's pretty much a straight-up MoO with magic. The magic system itself is interesting, and there's lots of thought that can go into your beginning builds and expansion strategies. Like most of these early games, the AI is weak and turning up the difficulty seems to just make it more powerful (ie easier to kill you off early) but no smarter so it may get tedious. Neophyte fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Oct 7, 2018 |
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Oct 7, 2018 06:20
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I'm voting for Lords of the Realm because that sounds really fun.
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Oct 7, 2018 06:45
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I'm adding a vote for MAX.
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Oct 7, 2018 07:23
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Gatac posted:I'm adding a vote for MAX. God, MAX was my loving crack cocaine of videogame addiction for a while. I REALLY LIKE BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE, OKAY? I had to have roads and connectors everywhere, plus the more or less infinite tech tree did bad things to my sense of completionism. It's a sad thing the sequel was such a weird, broken wreck. Only problem with a MAX LP is that there's no real campaign and the skirmish AI is kind of passive garbage in my experience. You'd probably want some human opponents to spice it up some, and I have no idea if a game that old even supports any sort of modern multiplayer other than hotseat gaming. Anyway, voting for MASTER OF ORION 2, because I think a swift follow-up there would A) make sense, B) be interesting from an analysis perspective since freshly coming in from MoO1 would allow for some comparing and contrasting and C) out of the Master of Orions, 2 was the one that I spent a lot of my childhood on. Hooray for nostalgia. GROUND CONTROL as a backup vote, because it's one of those games I've always been a bit baffled about. A lot of people hail it as a TRUE CLASSIC, but trying to play it, my experience is mostly that it's jank as hell in a lot of ways that aren't related to old technology but just poor design. I'd be curious to see it LP'd and analyzed a bit. It does have some excellent music/sound design and mood setting, though. Alternate suggestions: WAR WIND if you want to cover something a bit weird and niche in the RTS genre. It's a super strange game, and rolls with some odd ideas that I haven't seen any other games try to emulate since. Possibly for good reasons. For instance, no units are built directly except your basic "peasant" unit, which you then train in appropriate training buildings to teach them how to be wizard, shootmen, stabmen, etc. AGE OF WONDERS for an older, fantasy-themed 4x that's pretty well-designed, and which has a great sequel, Age of Wonders 3, which is sadly out of the scope(time-wise) for the retro suggestions.
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Oct 7, 2018 07:37
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