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Nebulous is a lot of fun. I think it's supposed to be naval combat but in space. The guy making it is apparently a USN guy or something.
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Sep 19, 2022 13:09
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| # ? May 20, 2024 22:51 |
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hot take: the Cultural Victory in Civilization should not exist it first reared its head in Civilization 3, and was basically formed around this "end of history" mentality where American pop culture, consumer goods, and general world influence had reached such an apex that you could declare a "Pax Americana" and consider the game good-and-won despite not actually having conquered everyone, under the premise that the rest of the world would simply follow your lead because your national identity and cultural output was just so dang influential. If everyone in the Global South is watching MTV and wearing Levi's, that's sort of a victory, right? except you look at Civilization 3's release date and it came out one month after 9/11. The very moment that Pax America had been shattered was the same moment that the series tried to generate a win condition out of it despite everything that has happened since, every succeeding incarnation of Civilization has still carried forward this victory type you can even see the game straining under the weight of trying to justify the legitimacy of it, when you have these oddball scenarios where you can win the game in the 1400s or whatever just via Culture, and sometimes even completely accidentally, because it's trying to shoehorn a sense of triumphalism that was born of a particular ideological belief that has since been disproven, but the designers just can't seem to let go of a conquest victory is fine. a domination victory is just a conquest victory concatenated so you don't have to do all the clean-up a space-race victory is fine - it's formed on a materialist foundation where you need to have enough research to learn space travel, and you need to have enough production to manufacture the space parts, and sometimes you might even need enough of a military to defend your space program a "diplomatic" victory is also mostly fine, because "winning votes at the UN" is difficult enough that it may end up requiring conquering anyone that votes against you, and let's face it, if you have a nation capable of defeating the entire UN security council, then that's just another form of Domination even a religious victory can be acceptable, because at some point it again comes down to material conditions where you need to have enough military power to impose your religion on the few holdouts that refuse to convert but cultural? As a Marxist, no way, jose
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Sep 22, 2022 04:37
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You know I never thought of it like that before
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Sep 22, 2022 06:23
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I kinda wish that economic victories in the Amplitude 4xs was more about diverting the economic production and benefits of the rest of the players towards you instead of being about hitting an arbitrary currency limit that says "You've Won, Congratulations!" I kinda get that they're educated in a liberal worldview and such but it would make for greater impact if capital-I Imperialism was how economic victory is explicitly attained with the implicit assumption of having enough military and industrial strength to ward off anyone trying to upset you.
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Sep 22, 2022 07:20
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the Civilization series has long dabbled in the concept of "Power", in that your Factory improvements would greatly increase in effectiveness if you had "Power" in a city, which was a property of a city that was activated by having a power plant a coal plant was the first kind of power plant that you could build in a city, and all it needed was access to Coal as a resource ditto with oil the downside to either of this would be that it would play into the game's global warming mechanic (such as it was) a hydroelectric plant wouldn't contribute to global warming, but you could only build it on cities next to a river a solar plant wouldn't contribute to global warming, but you could only build it on cities next to a desert a nuclear plant wouldn't contribute to global warming, but it carried a small chance of a nuclear meltdown (and was quite a bit more expensive than the alternatives) and needed access to Uranium as a resource I mention all of this because I'm thinking of "stopping climate change" as a victory condition it would be simple: you win if there are no more coal and oil plants in the game, anywhere you can delete the coal and oil plants in your own cities (and this by itself skips over a huge part of the issues blocking action on climate change mitigation)... but the big question would be how do you get everyone else to turn theirs off? do you even turn yours off if you know everyone else isn't?
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Sep 22, 2022 07:58
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Introduce nuclear power to any obstinate holdouts directly.
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Sep 22, 2022 08:04
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A Sim enjoying nuclear power for the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTEilGNDifI
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Sep 22, 2022 08:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:you can delete the coal and oil plants in your own cities (and this by itself skips over a huge part of the issues blocking action on climate change mitigation)... but the big question would be how do you get everyone else to turn theirs off? do you even turn yours off if you know everyone else isn't? nuke their cities also its too easy because everyone would just build the nuclear plants. the AI isn't burdened by ideology the way we are, except for the meltdown chance, which should be negligible. Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 has issued a correction as of 14:42 on Sep 22, 2022 |
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Sep 22, 2022 14:39
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The XCOM Long War team’s upcoming game is getting great press XCOM's best modders have made a mind-boggling grand strategy game - Defeating aliens with politics, rocket science, and space mining in Terra Invicta.
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Sep 23, 2022 13:16
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Frosted Flake posted:The XCOM Long War team’s upcoming game is getting great press XCOM's best modders have made a mind-boggling grand strategy game Leana Hafer tends to have at least some idea of what she's talking about so this is promising. I gave the demo a try a few months ago and it was impressive and intriguing although extremely lib-brained in its geopolitics (I've posted about it before, possibly even in this thread, I can't be bothered to check). I'm looking forward to giving it a shot.
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Sep 23, 2022 13:41
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just having a model of a global geopolitics game set in Current Year that doesn't devolve into complete loving nonsense after five minutes is a daunting task, because lots and lots of games have tried and it's always garbage but to throw in an entire alien invasion into the mix is really something else
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Sep 23, 2022 13:52
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John Charity Spring posted:Leana Hafer That checks out
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Sep 23, 2022 13:58
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Xcum
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Sep 23, 2022 15:14
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I did a Long War back in my day. Even installed the Jorbs voice pack and had him paired up with all my buddies from Mass Effect. I'm 1000% going to watch someone play this and 10% actually gonna play this beyond their Gatecrasher equivelent.
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Sep 23, 2022 15:19
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Is there a goon LP of Xcom Long War? 1 or 2 doesn't matter.
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Sep 23, 2022 15:20
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I can’t tell you how many campaigns of either I’ve started just to bog the gently caress down and play something else. War of the Chosen goes a long way towards making that better, but still. XCOM never quite goes far enough towards making me care about my guys. Their personality is whatever posture you assign them, and then it’s all what you project onto a flag, name and generic bio. Characterization of the XCOM staff and enemy got much better in XCOM 2, but not the guys on the screen you spend 80% of the game on. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 15:30 on Sep 23, 2022 |
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Sep 23, 2022 15:27
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Its always fun doing a mao and building a fortified base area after you cheese using snipers. Long War 2 is really fun when you use snipers as artillery.
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Sep 23, 2022 15:30
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everything I've heard about Long War makes me think it's more about experiencing the slow loss and thinking about what the mod does and what could happen, rather than actually winning the drat thingFrosted Flake posted:XCOM never quite goes far enough towards making me care about my guys. Their personality is whatever posture you assign them, and then it’s all what you project onto a flag, name and generic bio. Characterization of the XCOM staff and enemy got much better in XCOM 2, but not the guys on the screen you spend 80% of the game on. nu-XCOM's critical flaw is that it doesn't have The Funnel anymore. in the original, you'd send a dozen dudes out on a Skyranger, half of them die horribly (on a good day), and you remember the ones that make it out alive you might even have a long-time veteran die horribly, and you'd remember that guy for lasting as long as he did, but the key was that you could always move on XCOM2 was good in that it let you eat a loss without killing the main geoscape momentum, and it even has a bunch of "on-death" bonuses to make you think like it's acceptable for someone to die, but the squad size is still too small
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Sep 23, 2022 15:44
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gradenko_2000 posted:you might even have a long-time veteran die horribly, and you'd remember that guy for lasting as long as he did, but the key was that you could always move on It's practically thirty years later and I still remember the poor colonel standing at the back of the Skyranger who managed to get gibbed almost the instant the doors opened. That guy had really seen some poo poo.
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Sep 23, 2022 15:48
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I played the demo and it is very much a type of game that the AI will have no clue how to play. Furthermore there is a whole lot of moving parts and granularity that doesn't really serve much purpose but will wow people and obscure that under the hood the game is a trainwreck for a good while. I expect eventually the hype will die down and people will figure out the game is just poo poo though. Unrelatedly the games geopolitical model is hilariously liberal.
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Sep 23, 2022 15:48
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Games like the Civs, Total War, and new XCom all haven't figured out that they're not great vehicles for really in-depth anything yet keep bolting on more boring bullshit. There's nothing wrong with being a beer and pretzels strategy game done well.
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Sep 23, 2022 15:50
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John Charity Spring posted:Leana Hafer tends to have at least some idea of what she's talking about so this is promising. I gave the demo a try a few months ago and it was impressive and intriguing although extremely lib-brained in its geopolitics (I've posted about it before, possibly even in this thread, I can't be bothered to check). I'm looking forward to giving it a shot. I think it was in the Grognard games thread in the Games forum where people complained about the Democracy Meter or Index a lot.
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Sep 23, 2022 19:08
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my impression from the Terra Invicta demo was that they were trying to make two distinct games, couldn't settle on which one to make, and decided to just attempt both, with the result being a thing less than the sum of its parts. the idea of playing essentially an Illuminati-style secret conspiracy manipulating governments from the shadows, and competing with other shadowy conspiracies to do the same, is really neat in principle and could easily be its own game. In Terra Invicta that part of the game has one function, and that's to get enough Boost to get into space and supply you with the resources to get your first shipyard and mining station built. Once you do that you can abandon Earth entirely, it no longer serves any purpose and you transition into the other game, a space 4x which doesn't interact with the Earth game much at all. the geopolitics simulation is also extremely simple and basic when you really drill down and look at it in detail, they just try to obfuscate its lack of depth with extreme breadth. there are a shitload of numbers and stats but not really a ton going on with them, they only influence each other in very simplistic ways and the end result feels less like a simulation and more like a very obtuse board game. there's also not really any simulation of economy, logistics, or supply chain at all, which is a glaring omission in a game about modern geopolitics, and also makes attempting to build a power base in poorer countries in the Global South a pointless waste of time and effort, because controlling all of Africa combined won't net you the kind of resources you could get by taking a couple European countries or gaining partial control of the US. the big rich developed countries just magically have more money and resources than the poorer underdeveloped ones and the game treats that as an inherent quality of those specific states, that is not influenced by anything else happening outside of those states. it's a shame, because if you cheated and modded the demo to skip past the Earth stuff and get to the other game, where you're building stations and outposts and trying to combat an aggressive alien force expanding through the solar system, it's actually pretty good! they should have just made that game! Mister Bates has issued a correction as of 20:01 on Sep 23, 2022 |
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Sep 23, 2022 19:51
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Tankbuster posted:Is there a goon LP of Xcom Long War? 1 or 2 doesn't matter. Fairplay did Long War 1 in his lp thread Let's Play XCOM: Long War, and Discover the True Horror of Slenderman! I haven't watched it, also weird that it didn't show up on the LP Masterlist on LParchive.org had to run my own searches to find this thing. I watched DerAva being a german man doing modjam which is like Long War 2 but with EVEN more bolted on. It is a slog and never in 100 years will I attempt that albatross. I played the abandonware version as a teen and the XCOM UFO when that came out enough.
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Sep 24, 2022 00:28
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gradenko_2000 posted:
Wait what? Seriously? I always just scummed outta there if I lost even a single troop.
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Sep 24, 2022 01:05
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Slavvy posted:Wait what? Seriously? I always just scummed outta there if I lost even a single troop. I've won (unmodded) XCOM2 WOTC games where I lost tons and tons of people. Pretty much anything is recoverable, and it actually gets kind of hard to lose outright in the late game no matter how many losses you take. Paradoxish has issued a correction as of 03:29 on Sep 24, 2022 |
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Sep 24, 2022 03:27
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Slavvy posted:Wait what? Seriously? I always just scummed outta there if I lost even a single troop. I like new XCOM but this is probably the best description of what it's missing from the old version
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Sep 24, 2022 03:28
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Paradoxish posted:I've won (unmodded) XCOM2 WOTC games where I lost tons and tons of people. Pretty much anything is recoverable, and it actually gets kind of hard to lose outright in the late game no matter how many losses you take. Late game sure, at that point you're practically invincible from all the ability synergies, maybe I just really suck but I found in the mid game if I lost too many of my experienced guys I could never recover. For me it's one of those annoying games that gets easier as you go instead of the right way around.
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Sep 24, 2022 03:38
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Minenfeld! posted:Games like the Civs, Total War, and new XCom all haven't figured out that they're not great vehicles for really in-depth anything yet keep bolting on more boring bullshit. There's nothing wrong with being a beer and pretzels strategy game done well. Total War figured it out. Watching Dinos fighting Vikings is better than wacky "depth" that results in death threats sent against it's staff.
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Sep 24, 2022 08:11
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As an aside I am enjoying watching Workers and Resources. A crunchier version of other citybuilders.
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Sep 24, 2022 08:16
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Imagine having to save scum in the good xcoms to avoid casualties. Pathetic. *disappears in smoke grenade throw by supporting units after spending my TUs pointing out you failures as a human being (spamming autofire)*
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Sep 24, 2022 19:09
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Acting like nucom and Jake Solomon's bug chasing fetish are hard without ever having to deal lobster men giving the snip snip. What utter trash.
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Sep 24, 2022 19:11
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Armadillo Tank posted:Imagine having to save scum in the good xcoms to avoid casualties. Pathetic. This makes me want to play the original really badly now. An average mission being like 60% casualty rate is how god intended it. Does it even run on modern systems?
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Sep 24, 2022 19:12
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Slavvy posted:This makes me want to play the original really badly now. An average mission being like 60% casualty rate is how god intended it. Does it even run on modern systems? OpenXcom. It's made by forum goers like sup-super.
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Sep 24, 2022 19:13
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Sep 24, 2022 19:17
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Armadillo Tank posted:Imagine having to save scum in the good xcoms to avoid casualties. Pathetic. *autofires from the back of the squad hitting several of my allies in the back of the head*
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Sep 24, 2022 19:41
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I watched two or three hours of the Victoria 3 stream, and it's super fiddly. I hope it's good though, and playable at launch, I want to redraw some borders without having to conquer the whole globe.
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Sep 24, 2022 19:42
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One of the best parts of classic (open)xcom is being able to use conventional high explosives to blow a hole in the side of a ufo instead of going through the front door
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Sep 24, 2022 19:42
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Lostconfused posted:I watched two or three hours of the Victoria 3 stream, and it's super fiddly. I played the leak and that version had the same issue in V2 where sometimes the AI wouldn't (or couldn't) develop super important industrial inputs so the only practical way to get more was to conquer territories that had those resources. The socioeconomic tinkering was really fun to slowly grasp once I got past that pesky issue.
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Sep 24, 2022 19:49
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| # ? May 20, 2024 22:51 |
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Takanago posted:One of the best parts of classic (open)xcom is being able to use conventional high explosives to blow a hole in the side of a ufo instead of going through the front door Can you not do that in these ones? I have Chimera Squad in my library because there was some promo when I bought War of the Chosen but haven’t tried it yet. The reviews all say it’s very good but very different. Anyone tried it?
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Sep 24, 2022 20:07
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