Strategy & Wargames - middlebrow autodidact "history buffs" who yearn to pull levers

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Strategy & Wargames - middlebrow autodidact "history buffs" who yearn to pull levers

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Bro Dad: Mar 26, 2010

atelier morgan posted:

c&c simply hadn't yet developed the technology for schlock over the top super america that helldivers provides today

idk i think jk simmons did a good job

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMm-C_DLN-Q

# ? Apr 10, 2024 10:33

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# ? May 28, 2024 01:54

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Tankbuster posted:

Stereotypes are the other side of having a cool faction identity. A lot of the unit blandness is made up for by good voice work and general unit banter. People still quote the "AKs for everyone" or "China Will Grow Larger" but what is even the american equivalent.

"I don't give a wooden nickel about your legacy!"

Yes I know that's from Ray Wise in RA2

# ? Apr 10, 2024 10:58

Raskolnikov38: Mar 3, 2007; We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold

palindrome posted:

Thinking about reinstalling Wargame: Red Dragon and playing through the singleplayer campaign. Is it still a good experience? My recollection is that the post-release unit balance patches skewed the campaign quite a bit since they didn't go back and modify the campaign unit allocations (?).

I'm not good at the games in general but they're kind of fun, just wondering if any of them are worth a new playthrough. I also have airland battle and european escalation if those are better balanced by not having boats. Never managed to complete all the campaigns, I'm just looking for the best ones.

I always like picking up from time to time whatever the last scenario is called where it�s a giant bluefor vs redfor brawl across korea and the East China Sea

just wish you could play it from the redfor side

# ? Apr 10, 2024 12:07

JonBolds: Feb 6, 2015

Tankbuster posted:

Stereotypes are the other side of having a cool faction identity. A lot of the unit blandness is made up for by good voice work and general unit banter. People still quote the "AKs for everyone" or "China Will Grow Larger" but what is even the american equivalent.

the American equivalent was the tank saying �It�s the right thing to do!� when you told it to fire on a mob of civilians

# ? Apr 10, 2024 13:37

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

JonBolds posted:

the American equivalent was the tank saying �It�s the right thing to do!� when you told it to fire on a mob of civilians

look i saw "rules of engagement" and im pretty sure that the americans are right to fire into a crowd

# ? Apr 10, 2024 13:49

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

Tekopo posted:

the reason generals faction are the way they are is because they mapped GDI to America, NOD to the hilariously racist terrorist faction, and the soviets to China

generals was fkng hilarious

like China's passive income generator is by building hackers

as in like building units with laptops who are hacking bank accounts ON THE BATTLEFIELD

# ? Apr 10, 2024 14:37

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

Tankbuster posted:

Stereotypes are the other side of having a cool faction identity. A lot of the unit blandness is made up for by good voice work and general unit banter. People still quote the "AKs for everyone" or "China Will Grow Larger" but what is even the american equivalent.

GLA worker:

"I'll build anywhere"

"I can't build there"

Typo has issued a correction as of 14:41 on Apr 10, 2024

# ? Apr 10, 2024 14:37

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Project Caesar - Dev Diary #7

quote:

Welcome to the seventh edition of Tinto Talks, where we talk about really super secret stuff, that is hidden behind the code name of �Project Caesar�.

Today we�ll look into what makes up the economy in Project Caesar. Obviously, we�ll go into much more detail on some of these aspects in later Tinto Talks. Right now though, we�ll go through the incomes and expenses of a country in the game.

Every month you have running incomes and expenses that need to be balanced, and if your balance is positive, your gold is increased and you can use that gold to invest in other things.

And with balancing incomes and expenses, of course there are sliders. Having some buttons for just a few possible options for taxes or expenses, like in Imperator, is not really fitting for a GSG with deep economical gameplay.

Incomes

If we start with income, you have trade-related incomes, which is a system we will delve deep into in early May, as well as diplomatically related income. You also gain gold from provinces (not locations) that sell surplus food they can not store in their local market. Neither of these you directly control with any slider though.

The bulk of most countries' income will come from taxes though, and taxes in Project Caesar are really different than before. First of all, every estate has a possible tax base, a concept we will delve into much more detail next week. This you can attempt tax from them, but every estate has a maximum tax you can take from them, which depends on your laws and their privileges, and how much power they have in your country. The higher the tax you take from them, the lower their satisfaction equilibrium becomes. Some examples of tax affecting things include the Catholic religion which limits the taxes on Clergy, and also the �Auxilium et Consilium� estate privilege for the nobles, which reduces the tax they pay.

Finally, for something that has existed in some older of our games, we have minting. Now what is that you may ask? Minting is the possibility to get more money by printing more coins. It just has the slight drawback of increasing your inflation the more you do it.

Here we have the possibility to tax the commoners a fair bit more�

Expenses

We all do love gaining gold, but sadly we also have to spend it, and while we can reduce some of the spending, we can not completely avoid all of it.

First of all, we have the Cost of the Court. This is something that is directly correlated to the economic base of your country, and if you spend less gold than expected, your legitimacy, or equivalent applicable government power, will decrease over time, and the more you spend, the more legitimacy can increase. There are advances, laws, and other things that impact how much you need to spend here.

Then we have the cost for your standing army and navy, where spending less reduces their fighting capability. This is nothing new to our GSG games, so I am not sure why I need to mention this here.

Fort Maintenance is another common economic expense from our games, which is here as well. If you don�t pay, garrisons don�t tend to stick around.

Culture, this is an entirely new concept, which will become available in the Age of Renaissance, where you can invest money to get [TO BE TALKED ABOUT LATER], while also impacting your prestige.

You can also decide how much you wish to spend on your colonial charters, which is a new system we will talk about later this year.

Finally, the last thing you can impact with a slider is your investment in stability. The cost for how much your investments are needed depends on the size of your country, with different laws and societal values impacting it as well. Stability in itself ranges from +100 to -100, and will decay towards 0 on its own. There are two other ways to impact your stability gain, besides investing gold as mentioned here. One of them relates to the cabinet system, but another is a more long-term impact from how your country is built up, as it is based upon how many clergy pops you have of your state religion compared to the total population.

There are other expenses as you can see below, but one important thing to mention is that provinces that lack food will try to buy it from the local market.

Maybe maybe we should cut down on our fleet, and maybe we don�t need ALL those forts. Our standing army of 200 brave footmen is enough!

Next week we�ll talk more in depth about how the tax base functions, how the food system works, and some other related issues.

better brush up on your EU3, because sliders are coming back

# ? Apr 10, 2024 16:14

Lostconfused: Oct 1, 2008

Wait I thought Victoria.

Nevermind.

The army and navy sliders are still there in EU4, forts are just a toggle.

# ? Apr 10, 2024 16:31

Tankbuster: Oct 1, 2021

gradenko_2000 posted:

"I don't give a wooden nickel about your legacy!"

Yes I know that's from Ray Wise in RA2

yeah different game. People still remember Tanya.

# ? Apr 10, 2024 16:36

Tankbuster: Oct 1, 2021

gradenko_2000 posted:

Project Caesar - Dev Diary #7

better brush up on your EU3, because sliders are coming back

Just making Meiou and Taxes 2.5 into a game.

# ? Apr 10, 2024 16:37

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Typo posted:

generals was fkng hilarious

like China's passive income generator is by building hackers

as in like building units with laptops who are hacking bank accounts ON THE BATTLEFIELD

China could also hack all your units and disable them, which seems very prescient.

# ? Apr 10, 2024 17:23

FrancisFukyomama: Feb 4, 2019

BearsBearsBears posted:

There is so much to examine just in CnC:Generals. One of the most fascinating things to me is how much of the China faction is pure projection from the US.

1. China gets super-heavy tanks, a staple of the US military. The Soviets got the same thing in Red Alert.
2. Those tanks also get depleted Uranium shells, the most common type of kinetic shell that US tanks use.
3. China gets the nuke cannon, which is just the US's nuclear cannon. The icon uses an image from the test.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqyxhMlwGL0&t=238s
4. China is the one that gets cluster mines despite the US being the largest user of cluster munitions in the world.
5. China gets the nuke superweapon despite the US being the sole user of nuclear weapons. The US gets a satellite-based particle beam.
6. The Chinese fighter jet (a MiG) use napalm as it's primary weapon. The most interesting thing I find is that it gets an upgrade called "Black Napalm", I can't help but wonder if the name was inspired by "White Phosphorus".

It's like the people making the game took their knowledge of America's historical behavior and externalized it onto a racial other. I feel like one of the consequences of this is that the US factions winds up feeling rather bland since a lot of its identity was removed.

All the signature American tech that goes against the american self image of being high speed low drag surgical ops become China exclusives, like rotary weapons
there's some funny overlap between China and America too as a result, like how both get Carpet Bombing since it fits China's in game characterization best but is also such an iconic American tactic that they couldnt not give the US access to it

# ? Apr 10, 2024 17:29

DJJIB-DJDCT: Feb 1, 2024

"First of all, we have the Cost of the Court. This is something that is directly correlated to the economic base of your country, and if you spend less gold than expected, your legitimacy, or equivalent applicable government power, will decrease over time, and the more you spend, the more legitimacy can increase. There are advances, laws, and other things that impact how much you need to spend here."

Did they hire someone other than neoliberal Swedes for this one?

# ? Apr 10, 2024 17:32

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

There are advances, laws, and other things that impact how much you need to spend here.

The highly advanced "neoliberalism" means you don't have to spend anything anymore on anything and your legitimacy won't suffer.

For some completely unrelated reason you might run into manpower issues though.

# ? Apr 10, 2024 17:34

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I do not think this makes sense

# ? Apr 10, 2024 17:59

Dreylad: Jun 19, 2001

i think the shifting focus of civ games reflects changing ideas about game design in video games more than anything. especially civ 5 & 6. alternate victory conditions make sense because if you're wanting something to be more accurate to real life, total warfare in the modern era means nukes are flying and everyone's just making the rubble bounce.

civ4 still is great and the guy who helped make that made the old world which is also a very very good 4x.

# ? Apr 10, 2024 18:35

DJJIB-DJDCT: Feb 1, 2024

gradenko_2000 posted:

I do not think this makes sense

Oh, they let Johan work on this? 😒

That's the most loving liberal understanding possible. I had to reread it twice to get the meaning.

For gently caress's sake Money. Wasn't. Power. until the victory of the bourgeois, essentially after the game ends, and only in northwest Europe. You stupid gently caress.

# ? Apr 10, 2024 18:36

Lostconfused: Oct 1, 2008

Depends on if that's the whole of the picture :shrug:

Right now in 4 the amount of power an estate has is based on land ownership, whatever privileges they have that you can give or revoke, and maybe some other modifiers. They kind of play very loosely with it by creating specific privileges to skew how powerful an estate was during a specific time period. This also goes hand in hand with loyalty where a more powerful estate that's loyal gives your tag bigger bonuses.

# ? Apr 10, 2024 18:44

Tankbuster: Oct 1, 2021

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

"First of all, we have the Cost of the Court. This is something that is directly correlated to the economic base of your country, and if you spend less gold than expected, your legitimacy, or equivalent applicable government power, will decrease over time, and the more you spend, the more legitimacy can increase. There are advances, laws, and other things that impact how much you need to spend here."

Did they hire someone other than neoliberal Swedes for this one?

autistic modders

# ? Apr 10, 2024 18:45

sullat: Jan 9, 2012

Tankbuster posted:

Stereotypes are the other side of having a cool faction identity. A lot of the unit blandness is made up for by good voice work and general unit banter. People still quote the "AKs for everyone" or "China Will Grow Larger" but what is even the american equivalent.

Which was the one where you could play as other countries in the axis of evil? Red Alert 2, maybe? I remember the Iraqi special unit was "the irradiator ' and would say, "it will be a silent spring" when ordered to attack.

# ? Apr 10, 2024 19:20

FrancisFukyomama: Feb 4, 2019

sullat posted:

Which was the one where you could play as other countries in the axis of evil? Red Alert 2, maybe? I remember the Iraqi special unit was "the irradiator ' and would say, "it will be a silent spring" when ordered to attack.

yeah, the Soviets had the subfactions Iraq, Libya and Cuba. in the red alert alt history I think Korea is reunified under the RoK and the RoC still runs the mainland

a really fun detail: the rise of the reds mod for generals has an extremely detailed backstory that�s basically if Tom Clancy took all the nearly nonexistent lore of cnc generals like allusions in the manual and stuff and attempted to make a coherent universe based on it. I looked at the discord once and it was the only game community I�ve seen before that was dominated by neocons specifically instead of your usual 4chan types that run conservative game spaces https://generalsrotr.fandom.com/wiki/Rise_of_the_Reds_Wiki

like dudes going �Saudi Arabia is an important ally for American interests� in response to the trump type conservatives posting about how Saudis were going islamize Europe

FrancisFukyomama has issued a correction as of 19:35 on Apr 10, 2024

# ? Apr 10, 2024 19:28

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Mister Bates posted:

all this talk about Sparta is making me want to play Divide et Impera again

The mod retains the silly uber-elite badass Spartan hoplites from vanilla Rome 2, but because population is now divided by class and only full citizens can become hoplites, the Spartans can only field 1-2 units of them at game start and any significant casualties to those units will effectively wipe out their male citizen population. the rest of the Spartan ranks have to be filled out with helot troops, which are trash, and mercenaries, which are expensive.

It makes Athens the militarily superior power in Greece despite lacking any units of equivalent quality, simply by virtue of you having enough non-slaves in your territory to raise an actual army, so the 150 Spartan elites get crushed by like 5000 good-enough Athenians. You can also actually tank some losses and come back, while at game start Sparta is cooked if they lose even one decisive battle, because their citizen population is too low to replenish the casualties.

It also gives a Rome player a mechanical incentive to Romanize new territory, because without full citizens to recruit as legionaries you�re stuck with whatever local auxiliary troops are available there

DEI is so loving good

# ? Apr 10, 2024 19:33

FrancisFukyomama: Feb 4, 2019

BrotherJayne posted:

DEI is so loving good

too bad their Attila project seems to have died out before it got past the basic rebalance patch stage and never got to adding new mechanics

# ? Apr 10, 2024 19:36

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Oh, they let Johan work on this? 😒

That's the most loving liberal understanding possible. I had to reread it twice to get the meaning.

For gently caress's sake Money. Wasn't. Power. until the victory of the bourgeois, essentially after the game ends, and only in northwest Europe. You stupid gently caress.

Johan always insists on working on every EU.

# ? Apr 10, 2024 22:08

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

FrancisFukyomama posted:

too bad their Attila project seems to have died out before it got past the basic rebalance patch stage and never got to adding new mechanics

Attila is a shame because I really want to love it, but the unit rosters are a huge mess imo and the campaign isn't quite cool enough to make it work

# ? Apr 10, 2024 22:10

DJJIB-DJDCT: Feb 1, 2024

FrancisFukyomama posted:

too bad their Attila project seems to have died out before it got past the basic rebalance patch stage and never got to adding new mechanics

I did some research for them. The real issue was CA not only making ToB but going back after years to make Rise of the Republic, which is fantastic, and fix a bunch of bugs and provide support, while Attila had those same bugs ignored. So the DEI team, choosing between Attila, Empire Divided and RotR, chose the latter because it is a very good campaign, I guess the years of experience on Warhammer went into it.

Apparently there�s a bunch of stuff I�m not privy to with CAs Historical team, which met with Dresden and the ToB Shieldwall team, and obviously CA is a loving mess right now, we�ll see how Throne of Decay goes, but that�s why the effort, which was pivoting to Attila with all of the then existing Rome 2 DLCs done, including the ground up DEI Macedonian Wars campaign, ended up back with Rome 2. CA also hosed up historical title player count w that pivot so, not ideal.

The RTR mod team for the remake of Rome has like 4 PhDs on it, and is sort of mulling over if CA will do more with Barbarian Invasions or Alexander, which would open up more possibilities there.

Really though CAs historical team kept dropping the ball and lacking focus to really support one of these titles the way they could have been. Pharaoh is DOA. They inexplicably stopped support for Three Kingdoms� to remake it. Just � a real brain trust.

DJJIB-DJDCT has issued a correction as of 22:28 on Apr 10, 2024

# ? Apr 10, 2024 22:22

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

FrancisFukyomama posted:

yeah, the Soviets had the subfactions Iraq, Libya and Cuba. in the red alert alt history I think Korea is reunified under the RoK and the RoC still runs the mainland

iraq was the only viable soviet subfaction in competitive play because you needed desolators to counter T3 allied tanks

all the other ones including russia sucked hard

for allies the US was the best faction cuz you got free paradrops while everyone else's unique units either sucked or were pointless

Typo has issued a correction as of 00:14 on Apr 11, 2024

# ? Apr 11, 2024 00:10

FrancisFukyomama: Feb 4, 2019

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

I did some research for them. The real issue was CA not only making ToB but going back after years to make Rise of the Republic, which is fantastic, and fix a bunch of bugs and provide support, while Attila had those same bugs ignored. So the DEI team, choosing between Attila, Empire Divided and RotR, chose the latter because it is a very good campaign, I guess the years of experience on Warhammer went into it.

Apparently there�s a bunch of stuff I�m not privy to with CAs Historical team, which met with Dresden and the ToB Shieldwall team, and obviously CA is a loving mess right now, we�ll see how Throne of Decay goes, but that�s why the effort, which was pivoting to Attila with all of the then existing Rome 2 DLCs done, including the ground up DEI Macedonian Wars campaign, ended up back with Rome 2. CA also hosed up historical title player count w that pivot so, not ideal.

The RTR mod team for the remake of Rome has like 4 PhDs on it, and is sort of mulling over if CA will do more with Barbarian Invasions or Alexander, which would open up more possibilities there.

Really though CAs historical team kept dropping the ball and lacking focus to really support one of these titles the way they could have been. Pharaoh is DOA. They inexplicably stopped support for Three Kingdoms� to remake it. Just � a real brain trust.

the ancient empires and mk1212 mods both implemented a bunch of dei features like the population system, but I don�t think they ever made their way back to vanilla outside of very slapdash implementations. would have been nice since Attila is basically the definitive Late Antiquity game but there isn�t a comprehensive mod that sticks to that timeframe

# ? Apr 11, 2024 00:51

Endman: May 18, 2010; That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even anime may die

Tekopo posted:

look i saw "rules of engagement" and im pretty sure that the americans are right to fire into a crowd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_30VjNREhAM

# ? Apr 11, 2024 02:09

Mantis42: Jul 26, 2010

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Oh, they let Johan work on this? 😒

yea they let the guy who made the greatest strategy game of all time work on it as opposed to letting the goon who ruined vicky 3 do it

# ? Apr 11, 2024 04:19

Tankbuster: Oct 1, 2021

attila seems to be the codebase for a ton of fantasy conversion mods that will come out in the 2030s.

# ? Apr 11, 2024 04:31

BearsBearsBears: Aug 4, 2022

Mantis42 posted:

yea they let the guy who made the greatest strategy game of all time work on it as opposed to letting the goon who ruined vicky 3 do it

They got Brian Reynolds to work on EU5?

# ? Apr 11, 2024 04:33

atelier morgan: Mar 11, 2003; super-scientific, ultra-gay; Lipstick Apathy

BearsBearsBears posted:

They got Brian Reynolds to work on EU5?

# ? Apr 11, 2024 04:37

Megamissen: Jul 19, 2022; any post can be a kannapost
if you want it to be

i dont like the way armies, cities and provinces work in rome 2, also just visually the world map feels pretty desolate

# ? Apr 11, 2024 04:39

Megamissen: Jul 19, 2022; any post can be a kannapost
if you want it to be

in rome 1 you would see farmland and more and more carts and boats would go around as you developed, it felt vibrant
in rome 2 the countryside looks barren and the cities are big bloated blobs, gives me similar vibes to a big shopping mall parking lot on a hot day

# ? Apr 11, 2024 04:44

bedpan: Apr 23, 2008

traveling with the army. . .a honor to be sure

# ? Apr 11, 2024 04:44

Dreylad: Jun 19, 2001

CA should have never abandoned the 2d risk map from medieval 1

# ? Apr 11, 2024 04:47

palindrome: Feb 3, 2020

Alright I'll bite, what are the greatest strategy games of all time that Brian Reynolds and/or Johan have worked on? I don't know their body of work well enough for this to be obvious to me.

Rise of Nations? Crusader Kings 2?

# ? Apr 11, 2024 04:50

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# ? May 28, 2024 01:54

Mantis42: Jul 26, 2010

BearsBearsBears posted:

They got Brian Reynolds to work on EU5?

why would they get a right fielder for a gsg, that's clearly shortstop work

# ? Apr 11, 2024 04:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Strategy & Wargames - middlebrow autodidact "history buffs" who yearn to pull levers

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