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Koramei posted:Um. You realize they're talking about historians from like 2000 years ago right? Not like the 1970s Yes, I'm saying this is not a unique situation. There are 'historians' from thousands of years ago who mythologize the past and present bullshit numbers and there are also historians from more recent times who do the same. There are also actual historians from the past who did actual work and tried to get realistic numbers for wars and the like.
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Apr 22, 2019 04:21
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Sampatrick posted:Yes, I'm saying this is not a unique situation. There are 'historians' from thousands of years ago who mythologize the past and present bullshit numbers and there are also historians from more recent times who do the same. There are also actual historians from the past who did actual work and tried to get realistic numbers for wars and the like. what are you even arguing anymore
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Apr 22, 2019 04:44
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Beamed posted:Yeah, and again usually the ancient historians weren't trying to get the exact number down pat, but were trying to show "lots" vs. "tons" vs. "many more", since that's sort of how history worked then.
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Apr 22, 2019 04:50
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just listened to the Imperator Rome soundtrack. I'm finding it really underwhelming and bland  EU4, VICKYII, EU:ROME, CK2, HOI4, STELLARIS all have good to amazing soundtracks. But this one just seems to fall flat. It also really doesn't feel like it fits the period, but maybe that's an intentional decision so I can't fault that without knowing more. I loved EU:Rome so I'll probably definitely still play it as it looks like an up to date remake of it with some changes here and there.
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Apr 22, 2019 04:54
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Just mod in the old Rome: Total War soundtrack.
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Apr 22, 2019 07:14
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StarMinstrel posted:just listened to the Imperator Rome soundtrack. I'm finding it really underwhelming and bland
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Apr 22, 2019 08:16
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New Imperator Rome thread now open for business: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3887704 
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Apr 22, 2019 09:06
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AnEdgelord posted:I think I'd like it more if it covered the Christianization of the empire and the fall (complete with Huns and the Great Migration) as well as the current stuff but as is I'm just not terribly interested in the Punic wars or Caesar seizing power. Love 2 get invaded and wrecked over and over as yet another one of my generals randomly declares himself emperor
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Apr 22, 2019 11:00
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Poil posted:I disagree about the music in Stellaris being good. It's not that it's bad it's just that it feels kinda bland and generic to me. Like background "meh". For example March of Profits is amusing but the only things that even stand out are the bits that are totally not Imperial March. Stellaris music fits in perfectly with the rest of the game, just about the right amount of bland and uninspiring.
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Apr 22, 2019 11:10
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Falcorum posted:Stellaris music fits in perfectly with the rest of the game, just about the right amount of bland and uninspiring. 
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Apr 22, 2019 11:27
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Think I made the right choice in going for Endless Space 2, goons aren't wild about Stellaris.
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Apr 22, 2019 14:37
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Phlegmish posted:Think I made the right choice in going for Endless Space 2, goons aren't wild about Stellaris. I have approximately a zillion hours in Stellaris and it’s my favorite paradox game now, but I admit that’s partly because I fell behind on EU4 and CK2 dlc. What I’m saying is I clearly have to buy endless space 2.
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Apr 22, 2019 16:43
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Poil posted:I disagree about the music in Stellaris being good. It's not that it's bad it's just that it feels kinda bland and generic to me. Like background "meh". For example March of Profits is amusing but the only things that even stand out are the bits that are totally not Imperial March. I'm just a sucker for anything synth 
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Apr 22, 2019 16:59
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Phlegmish posted:Think I made the right choice in going for Endless Space 2, goons aren't wild about Stellaris. Stellaris(and modded Stellaris) is by far the most fun 4X I've played since SotS1, both in single and multiplayer. I've clocked hundreds of hours in it. I've got 20 hours in ES2 and based on the DLC they've released I don't see that increasing. I also have hundreds of hours in Endless Legend, which made ES 2 very much a disappointment, as my expectations were high. StarMinstrel posted:I'm just a sucker for anything synth This. Most games I end up disabling music after a couple of hours, particularly 4X games, but Stellaris music lasted much longer for me. A lot of it is how well synth-whatever works as background music.
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Apr 22, 2019 17:16
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Stellaris is probably a top 5 game OST ever for me. It’s rare that I like almost an entire track list, but I think I’ve only turned off two of them in game. It also just has a lot of variety within that synth-style aesthetic. I listen to it frequently at work or the gym to stay excited but my daughter has listened to Spatial Lullaby every night since she was about a month old before she goes to sleep.
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Apr 22, 2019 17:51
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Phlegmish posted:Think I made the right choice in going for Endless Space 2, goons aren't wild about Stellaris. ES2 recently got ruined by its latest DLC adding an atrociously implemented "hacking" system. There's a lot good about Stellaris, don't let a few of the most vocal spergy goons ruin what's a pretty ok game. Fantastic score though, ES2 has amazing music that makes Stellaris' feel bland as poo poo.
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Apr 22, 2019 18:55
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The Stellaris soundtrack is really great and chill and good but this...Anno posted:I listen to it frequently at [...] the gym to stay excited ...boggles my mind.
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Apr 22, 2019 18:59
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Baronjutter posted:ES2 recently got ruined by its latest DLC adding an atrociously implemented "hacking" system. There's a lot good about Stellaris, don't let a few of the most vocal spergy goons ruin what's a pretty ok game. You should be able to turn off Xpacs individually in ES2, I believe that's how EL worked anyway. I just skipped buying that one in particular because it sounded like a tedious mess (like basically every other espionage system in a 4x game).
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Apr 22, 2019 19:03
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Original Moo had a perfectly fine espionage system. I love how many solved issues MOO had on release in 1993 that every subsequent 4X space game has failed to learn from and struggled with because everyone apes the flashier but flawed moo2.
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Apr 22, 2019 19:08
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I'm not hyped for Imperator but I'm getting it anyway since Paradox games are good
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Apr 22, 2019 19:09
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Drone posted:The Stellaris soundtrack is really great and chill and good but this... Eh maybe excited isn’t then right word. It’s just music that for some reason I can have going and enjoy that drowns out everything else and helps me focus.
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Apr 22, 2019 19:11
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Baronjutter posted:Original Moo had a perfectly fine espionage system. It was my dream that by "getting rid of the tiles system" they meant a slider system of production like MOO but alas
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Apr 22, 2019 19:11
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StarMinstrel posted:It was my dream that by "getting rid of the tiles system" they meant a slider system of production like MOO but alas Paradox is ideologically opposed to sliders. They'd sooner give you a cramped edict menu with 20 options you have to scroll through than a single logical slider.
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Apr 22, 2019 19:14
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every problem with space 4 X's stems the fact that people never moved past master of Orion. The best space 4 x is distant worlds and the most moo element it has is the space ship designer that honestly holds the game back.
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Apr 22, 2019 19:15
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Agean90 posted:every problem with space 4 X's stems the fact that people never moved past master of Orion. I'd say the problem is that everyone sort of cargo cult's moo2 rather than understands moo1. MOO was an incredibly tight game with every moving piece exactly designed to fit the game's overall design and every other system. There's detailed ship design because there's detailed turn based ship combat. Planets are managed via sliders along with a bunch of very handy empire-wide slider adjustment prompts because they knew you'd be going from 1 planet to dozens or more so the system really needed to scale. Tech is a cool semi-randomized draw system because tech-trade between empires was an important part of diplomacy. Snowballing through conquest is quite effectively countered by a surprisingly good diplomatic AI for 1993 that would actually make coalitions against you or even unite the galaxy in a diplomatic victory against you, turning what seemed to be a sure victory into a hopeless defeat. Other 4X games then just blindly took all these features and declared them the essential recipe for a 4X game, then forced those features into situations where they didn't work. Stellaris and other 4X games that have no hands-on tactical combat still demand detailed ship design for example. Why? Because that's just a 4x tradition.
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Apr 22, 2019 19:22
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Baronjutter posted:Paradox is ideologically opposed to sliders. They'd sooner give you a cramped edict menu with 20 options you have to scroll through than a single logical slider. Paradox games are still packed with sliders, but it used to be "everything is a slider" which was really not very good and Im glad they moved away from it
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Apr 22, 2019 19:25
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Given the current Stellaris team mortal terror of letting anything the player does affect their bland gameplay, if they did have sliders, it would be a +1% or a -1% slider at either extreme
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Apr 22, 2019 19:28
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Phlegmish posted:Think I made the right choice in going for Endless Space 2, goons aren't wild about Stellaris. Endless Space 2 has a lot of the same problems as Stellaris did at launch. Still does. Someday we'll move past MOO2 clones but clearly not yet.
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Apr 22, 2019 20:20
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Broke: moo2 clones Woke: moo clones Why has no 4x maker ever figured this out? Stop cargo-culting the inferior sequel, understand what worked in the source. Or do something totally different that cuts all ties to the "must have" tropes of 4X games. There's this company that makes strategy games where you play as a country, but it's like in pre-made historical settings packed full of mechanics and content related to the time period. It's like they took the "civilization" genre but dispensed with all the civilization 4x mechanics and did their own much better thing. I imagine if this company was to make a space game it would be rad, they could ditch all the tired 4X poo poo like symmetrical starts and do what they're good at instead. Some richly detailed setting full of crumbling superpowers and upstart young races and all sorts of "one planet minors" along with mechanics balanced around this actual focused setting rather than trying to be the typical bland 4X setting. I'd love for this map-game company to make a space game one day in the style of their other games, because the world doesn't need yet another generic 4X that totally misses the point and half its mechanics are there simply because "moo2 had them!"
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Apr 22, 2019 20:33
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I mean, MOO was made by like a dozen dudes in the 1990s, why exactly do modern dev teams have to use that as a blueprint when they have dozens+ of people working on the game and literally just rehash the same gameplay with slight variations? Same question for all these endless remakes of Star Control and Xcom and Doom and If a few people could make something wholly new in 1990 why exactly can't your team of dozens do the same thing?  Master of Orion was new and novel and interesting. in 1993. 26 years ago. And 26 years later it's time to take the exact same gameplay and give it a coat of polish for yet another modern remake / remix. Why? Make a new game with new mechanics like those dudes did in 1993. For gently caress's sake. Gameplay / design is difficult yes but with modern games there seems to be a complete lack of effort to even try. And it's not difficult in the sense of making tons of art or 3d models or getting good graphical performance. It requires a few people theorycrafting and making some mechanics that are fun to play and then putting them in the game.
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Apr 22, 2019 20:43
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Developers churn out more of the same because the hogs have proven they'll buy it, taking creative risks might threaten shareholder value hth
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Apr 22, 2019 21:09
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another good space game that wasn't afraid the break from the moo mold was star ruler 2 Love to fling entire planets into another system cause it gives me a beachhead to work from
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Apr 22, 2019 21:15
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Back in the day a tiny team of like 2 guys with a clear vision and their 6 full time staff and 10 other contracted out folks had no choice but to really boil their design down to something they could actually accomplish in their budget and time frame. There was no cop out with endless patches and DLC, you released a good finished game or you didn't. Sometimes you'd release an expansion pack if you were lucky. So many modern games have such a horrible case of feature-creep and bloat just in the initial design phase, then they get deep into the alpha phase and realize half their design is poo poo and the other half is a buggy mess and start doing radical surgery on their game, cutting and gutting things and hastily replacing them with poo poo that just doesn't quite work but maybe one day after enough patches and DLC they'll figure it out. A good game is like a fine watch, every single part is exactly where it needs to be, it's a fine tuned machine and no single part of it could be removed or changed without the entire mechanism needing a nearly full re-design. It was designed all at once, as a single entity with the absolute minimum of parts for it to function with nothing left to add and nothing left to take away. I love my paradox games, but so many of them feel like Rube Goldberg machines built by 10 people barely communicating with each other that have had whole new sections jammed in between them and even the people working on them aren't quite sure how it all works. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Apr 22, 2019 |
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Apr 22, 2019 21:23
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Baronjutter posted:So many modern games have such a horrible case of feature-creep and bloat just in the initial design phase, then they get deep into the alpha phase and realize half their design is poo poo and the other half is a buggy mess and start doing radical surgery on their game, cutting and gutting things and hastily replacing them with poo poo that just doesn't quite work there has never been a time in the history of game development as a full-time profession where this part of what you said was not the case. you are nostalgic for an entirely imaginary past, a past colored by the fact that you were not aware of or have forgotten all of old half-baked over-scoped games. there is a real case to be made about paradox's tendency to overscope, and for pdox DLC to turn games into rickety rube goldberg machines, but it's not because the old ways were better.
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Apr 22, 2019 21:37
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Ham Sandwiches posted:Given the current Stellaris team mortal terror of letting anything the player does affect their bland gameplay, if they did have sliders, it would be a +1% or a -1% slider at either extreme I really like Stellaris but I think the criticism about it not being ambitious enough is very true -- I feel like there's a lot of missed opportunities. Stellaris has suffered from the start from a misguided attempt to make it streamlined and simplified compared to PDS's other games. That's fine in principle but they tended to focus on streamlining the wrong things, which still shows up in the lack of diplo options and ways to manage your empire at a higher level than fiddling with individual planets, or even basic UI stuff like no message settings and limited map modes (they didn't even really exist until a few patches in). The writing's good but it relies too much on railroading and events that get old after a few games, and the narratives that emerge from the gameplay itself feel much weaker than their other games. With the direction Wiz took I think they belatedly realised that they should have emphasised the grand strategy in space part more than the 4X part, but it's still not there yet and will probably never go all the way -- I haven't played Vanilla Stellaris in years now but even loaded with mods it still feels like there's something fundamental missing compared to their other flagship titles.
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Apr 22, 2019 22:18
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Zohar posted:I really like Stellaris but I think the criticism about it not being ambitious enough is very true -- I feel like there's a lot of missed opportunities. Stellaris has suffered from the start from a misguided attempt to make it streamlined and simplified compared to PDS's other games. That's fine in principle but they tended to focus on streamlining the wrong things, which still shows up in the lack of diplo options and ways to manage your empire at a higher level than fiddling with individual planets, or even basic UI stuff like no message settings and limited map modes (they didn't even really exist until a few patches in). The writing's good but it relies too much on railroading and events that get old after a few games, and the narratives that emerge from the gameplay itself feel much weaker than their other games. it's the sense of history. play one of those divided world scenarios for eu or ck and you'll get the same feeling no other paradox game would dream of a symmetrical start, because historical borders are not symmetrical. i would much rather have a game that starts in the middle of stellaris's tech tree and generates a random "historical" scenario with big and small empires that have claims/cores on each other, persistent cores from empires that were conquered before the start date, all the stuff that adds texture to eu4. it wouldn't even need to be to the ridiculous levels of detail that eu4 scenarios have - anything to shake off the feeling that space was pretty empty until suddenly 30 species simultaneously achieved ftl
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Apr 22, 2019 22:44
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Crazycryodude posted:Developers churn out more of the same because the hogs have proven they'll buy it, taking creative risks might threaten shareholder value hth The day that Paradox decided to go on the share market was actually a sad day. We all know how that ends up 10 years down the line.
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Apr 22, 2019 23:52
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Oh yeah gently caress Paradox for wanting to be a *checks notes* successful business.
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Apr 23, 2019 00:13
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Baronjutter posted:Broke: moo2 clones What's worse is that MOO2 was fundamentally more of an iteration on Master of Magic. And while I loved MOM, I could never get into MOO2 and I've always considered it to be something of a disappointing game simply because it did feel like a reskinned MOM. I would love to see a spiritual successor to MOO1 that iterates on its basic systems. The tech system in that game was far better than anything that has come since, in large part because it was built around the concept that not all technology would be available in every game due to the luck of the draw. Instead, most 4x space games are happy to go Red Laser / Blue Laser / Green Laser and just increase damage rather than make anything particularly unique. MOO1 had some evolutionary advances (Neutron Pellet to Mass Driver, etc.), but they also had several different types of weapons and respective countermeasures that were fairly interesting in how they interacted with each other. But I agree: where are the MOO1 or Stars! clones? And when can ship designers and tactical combat in the genre finally die? (shakes fist at cloud) Tyrel Lohr fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Apr 23, 2019 |
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Apr 23, 2019 00:17
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Baronjutter posted:Broke: moo2 clones Bespoke: MOO3 clones
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