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 I’ve returned at last to show off at another game! About This Game: This game and I go way back! As does my love for its main theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuirWcaeNgE Age of Mythology is a 2002 spin-off of the Age of Empires series, one of the most famous and iconic real time strategy game series in existence. Although Age of Mythology didn't break new RTS ground like Dune II, Starcraft, or even Warcraft 3, it did well with the existing RTS formula. For example: 1) Like Starcraft and unlike most Age of Empires games, it features several very different playable civilizations with distinct units and strategies. 2) There was still a long peasant buildup phase, but it was shorter than many RTSes and there was other stuff to do during it. 3) It didn't break free from the stale rock-paper-scissors of infantry > cavalry > archers > infantry that too many RTSes rely on, but Age of Mythology did at least add enough additional layers and enough exceptions to this pattern to be tactically interesting. For example, the Greeks could counter infantry with archers of course- but there were several varieties of archers and they could also do so with specialty units called Hypaspists or Myrmidons (for non-Greek infantry) or with ‘myth units’. 4) The sharp population limit and the fact that some units required micro to be effective ensured winning battles took more than just numbers. 5) Many of the special ‘god powers’ punished unthinking conventional play 6) The campaign had an actual story and memorable characters and wasn't very repetitive. 7) Four difficulty modes ensured there was an appropriate challenge for any player. 8) Randomly generated maps meant tons of replayability. Most importantly, it was simply a fun game. The graphics still hold up today, god powers looked awesome, devastating enemy armies with giant myth units was satisfying, the interface was smooth and free from many of the usual RTS nuisances, and developers had both a clear pride in their work and a sense of humor. So it was an immediate commercial and critical success, as was The Titans expansion pack a year later. This added a new campaign, new features, and a new race (The Atlanteans), making 4 with the original Greeks, Egyptians, and Norse. Even besides that, the game has had a decent amount of support from the developers over the years like patches fixing some balance concerns or adding new units and even a small bonus campaign called The Golden Gift. Since lots of people like me still played 12 years later, some new developers ultimately released the 'extended edition' in 2014. This fixed it up for windows 10 and streaming with Twitch as well as adding new features like a day/night cycle and bigger maps. Then, not even a year ago, the new developers released another expansion for the 14 year old game: Tale of the Dragon. This added yet another new civilization (Chinese) as well as yet another campaign. I only heard about that new expansion a week ago, which is what inspired me to make this Let’s Play. About this LP Age of Mythology has been one of my favorite games since I got it when I was 10. I'd never played an RTS before but became a lasting fan of the genre. I eventually beat it on easy, played around for a while, and then moved on. After nearly a decade, I returned to Age of Mythology and was surprised to find out that it was also very fun on the highest difficulty levels. Titan difficulty throughout the main campaign was a mild challenge for teenage me but the Atlantean campaign was amazing. I was wiped out in five minutes on the first level, and from there I buckled down and played seriously. I didn't know a lot of important stuff about the game, but I learned more fast -and most importantly I played strategically. The second level of that campaign is a legend and I've since read a lot of conversations between people wondering how to beat it. The strategy I came up with that day stands as one of my most creative and effective ever, though of course now I know many ways it could be improved. At the time, it took me nearly eight hours to beat that level- including four of nonstop battle as I steadily consumed all the resources on the map to fuel an army that gradually wore down the enemy base. In the end, I'd won by a frontal assault- which I later learned people to this day say is impossible- and it had been one of the most exhilarating videogame experiences of my life. Those of you who've read my previous max difficulty Let's Plays of Fire Emblem 7 or 6 or Civilization 2 (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3701153&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1 , http://archives.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3716259 , https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3741434) know that I delight in the kind of incredibly difficult games and levels that everyone else hates and in coming up with elegant ways to beat them. That's exactly the kind of challenge that the best levels of Age of Mythology present. Just like my previous LPs, I’ll be playing the game on the highest difficulty and showing off clever ways to win. My intention is to play through every single campaign (the tutorial, then the original, then The Golden Gift, then the Titans’ Expansion campaign, then the new Tale of the Dragon campaign) on Titan difficulty. I may set additional challenges or restrictions for myself mission by mission, but one important one I’m going to stick by is accomplishing every single campaign objective in order. Too many campaign missions (especially in the expansion) can be trivialized by what amounts to sequence breaking, and I’m not going to do that. I’ll also delve a lot into the game’s hidden mechanics, probably doing some experiments myself since a lot of important things are actually unknown or debated to this day. And I’ll probably leaven all of that with commentary on the story and game design- and likely the history and mythology the game is based on as well. It should be an awesome ride for anyone who liked my previous Let’s Plays as well as fans of this game. But it’s going to start off very bumpy because I’ve never made a video Let’s Play before. In fact, I’ve never made or edited a video of any kind. Ever. I don’t yet know what I’m doing and I’m experimenting with different software and hardware as well as just learning how to balance speaking and playing, so I'm looking for tips and suggestions and comments. I’m starting with the game’s trivial little tutorial here mainly to get practice making these videos. If you can bear with me and give me some advice as I figure stuff out, I should be on top of things by the time the actual campaign starts. Here goes! Table of Contents Tutorial Mission 1: Hunt for a Killer Tutorial Mission 2: Pleasing the Gods Tutorial Mission 3: Uninvited Guests Fall of the Trident Prologue & Mission 1: Troubled Sleep & Omens Fall of the Trident Mission 2: Consequences Fall of the Trident Mission 3: Scratching the Surface Fall of the Trident Mission 4: A Fine Plan Fall of the Trident Mission 5: Just Enough Rope Fall of the Trident Mission 6: I Hope This Works Fall of the Trident Mission 7: More Bandits Fall of the Trident Mission 8: Bad News Fall of the Trident Mission 9: Revelations Fall of the Trident Mission 10: Strangers Fall of the Trident Mission 11: The Lost Relic (and Egyptian tutorial) Fall of the Trident Mission 12: Light Sleeper Fall of the Trident Mission 13: Tug of War Fall of the Trident Mission 14: "Isis, Hear My Plea" Fall of the Trident Mission 15: Let's Go Fall of the Trident Mission 16: Good Advice Fall of the Trident Mission 17: The Jackal's Stronghold Fall of the Trident Mission 18: A Long Way From Home Fall of the Trident Mission 19: Watch That First Step Fall of the Trident Mission 20: Where They Belong Fall of the Trident Mission 21: Old Friends Fall of the Trident Mission 22: North Fall of the Trident Mission 23: The Dwarven Forge Fall of the Trident Mission 24: Not From Around here Fall of the Trident Mission 25: Welcoming Committee Fall of the Trident Mission 26: Union Fall of the Trident Mission 27: The Well of Urd Fall of the Trident Mission 28: Beneath the Surface Fall of the Trident Mission 29: Unlikely Heroes Fall of the Trident Mission 30: All is Not Lost Fall of the Trident Mission 31: Welcome Back Fall of the Trident Mission 32: A Place in My Dreams Scenario 1: Close to Home The Golden Gift Mission 1: Brokk's Journey The Golden Gift Mission 2: Eitri's Journey The Golden Gift Mission 3: Fight at the Forge Side Updates: Sacking Troy Without the Horse Melth fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Jun 17, 2018 |
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Dec 27, 2016 06:36
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Dxtory.com edit: To be less of a dick, your commentary is pretty good but having that big banner constantly on the top of the screen is rather Not Good. unwantedplatypus fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Dec 27, 2016 |
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Dec 27, 2016 07:53
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20 year old me played the poo poo out of this game when it game out. It was one of the few games i ever played to completion on the hardest difficulty. Looking forward to your elegant strategies as mine mainly consisted of brute force.
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Dec 27, 2016 08:15
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unwantedplatypus posted:Dxtory.com Thanks, yeah I know. I've been trying to figure out whether to buy the full version of Dxtory or to go with Shadowplay or something instead. That's one thing I wanted advice from you guys about. As far as I can tell from my experimenting both make recordings of equal quality. However, Dxtory separates out my microphone from the game's own sounds as two different tracks. That let me quiet the game sound in Audacity so that I'd be properly audible (originally it was hard to hear me over the game). But for all I know, there's some easy way to do that in Shadowplay too or some other simple fix that would make me easier to hear. I didn't think it would be wise to just jump into buying Dxtory and assume that it's the best option without hearing from people like you guys who know more than me. Deadmeat5150 posted:20 year old me played the poo poo out of this game when it game out. It was one of the few games i ever played to completion on the hardest difficulty. Looking forward to your elegant strategies as mine mainly consisted of brute force. Sometimes I've got some ingenious little stratagem, and sometimes brute force applied efficiently and really, really hard truly is the best strategy. You're going to see me win missions with 0 casualties or find clever ways to use masses of archers to beat masses of counter-archers, however you're also going to see meat-grinder missions where I take hundreds of casualties but the enemy takes thousands and that means I win.
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Dec 27, 2016 08:45
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Melth posted:, however you're also going to see meat-grinder missions where I take hundreds of casualties but the enemy takes thousands and that means I win. The Ulysses S. Grant approach
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Dec 27, 2016 08:53
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Take care with the Chinese campaign, I had a lot of critical scripts break during it, and had to brute force through a lot of things that the game intended workarounds for.
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Dec 27, 2016 14:02
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Glad to see another of your LP's Melth!
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Dec 27, 2016 18:17
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Melth posted:Thanks, yeah I know. I've been trying to figure out whether to buy the full version of Dxtory or to go with Shadowplay or something instead. That's one thing I wanted advice from you guys about. As far as I can tell from my experimenting both make recordings of equal quality. However, Dxtory separates out my microphone from the game's own sounds as two different tracks. That let me quiet the game sound in Audacity so that I'd be properly audible (originally it was hard to hear me over the game). But for all I know, there's some easy way to do that in Shadowplay too or some other simple fix that would make me easier to hear. I didn't think it would be wise to just jump into buying Dxtory and assume that it's the best option without hearing from people like you guys who know more than me. I think OBS does it too, but you might wanna check in at The Tech Support Fort.
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Dec 27, 2016 20:43
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Reinbach posted:Take care with the Chinese campaign, I had a lot of critical scripts break during it, and had to brute force through a lot of things that the game intended workarounds for. The Chinese campaign is VERY buggy and so some levels are much harder than intended and some are much easier. This was one reason I said I am going to complete every mission objective in order: many Chinese missions in particular completely break if you don't follow the mission objectives like bread crumbs. The few other Titan LPs of China I've seen either abuse that or stumble into it and were thus kind of worthless. Mind you, there's a bit of that in some of the other campaigns too. I'm also still mulling over whether to generally show really good conventional play and beat missions as the developers intended or to show creative play that obliterates whole missions. TravelLog posted:Glad to see another of your LP's Melth! Thanks, it's been a nice few months, but it's good to be back.
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Dec 27, 2016 23:35
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I managed to beat some of the missions on Titan when I played this back in the day, but never the whole campaign. This looks like it'll be great.
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Dec 28, 2016 00:16
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Super psyched for this LP! I also picked up the extended edition, ran through the campaigns on titan. I think that both the original and Titan's campaigns are some of the best in single-player RTS history. Great and memorable map design, plenty of variety to spice things up. I would love to see the more creative strategies, when you've come up with them -- but then again, I've beaten them the traditional way myself already. Also, if you want any mythological background -- I took a fair number of Greco-Roman myth classes in undergrad, so I'd be happy to do an effort post or two on the Trojan War or general gods/heroes stuff.
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Dec 28, 2016 02:14
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Looks like a fun trip down memory lane!
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Dec 28, 2016 03:31
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Smiling Knight posted:Also, if you want any mythological background -- I took a fair number of Greco-Roman myth classes in undergrad, so I'd be happy to do an effort post or two on the Trojan War or general gods/heroes stuff.
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Dec 28, 2016 10:21
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SSNeoman posted:I think OBS does it too, but you might wanna check in at The Tech Support Fort. OBS does indeed do that. You can record audio on up to four separate tracks which you can then pull apart at your leisure through Audacity. The only drawback is that occasionally OBS gets a little obstinate about what it considers a "game" and what it doesn't. Beyond that it's a versatile program and completely free too so you won't be held hostage by DXTROY.COM.
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Dec 28, 2016 11:28
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Alright, I finished the second part with a somewhat different process. Said process may be wildly foolish in ways I don't yet understand, so I want you more knowledgeable persons to tell me if I'm leaving out something critical or am doing something destructive: 1) Record the game using Dxtory 2) Open that file up with Virtualdub and then export the two audio tracks (one for the mic, one for the in-game sounds and music) 3) Open up both audio tracks in Audacity and lower the amplitude of the in-game sounds so that it's easier to hear me over them. 4) This time I couldn't actually find any background noise to cut out, but usually I'd try to clean up background noise at this step 5) Export the re-volumed audio tracks from Audacity as one file. 6) Use Virtualdub to replace the original video audio with the new one. 7) Use Zarx264Gui to convert that file into an MKV file with FLAC for the audio setting. Whatever any of that means. 8) Upload to Youtube. 9) Post it right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-azaQI_Fc8 Smiling Knight posted:Also, if you want any mythological background -- I took a fair number of Greco-Roman myth classes in undergrad, so I'd be happy to do an effort post or two on the Trojan War or general gods/heroes stuff. anilEhilated posted:There's also an encyclopedia of sorts in the game - same as with AoE. This one can get a bit creative on facts, obviously, but I do remember some of the entries being pretty funny. I myself am a classics man, so besides knowing a lot of the myths, I've read a lot of the historical sources they draw on for this game and I was planning on talking a bunch about that stuff later on. It's actually partly thanks to this game's excellent little encyclopedia entries that I first began to get into ancient history (mythology I'd already been interested in for years by the time I was 10 and the game came out). Anyway, Smiling Knight, I'd certainly welcome your or other people's knowledge about myths and history too Just as long as you agree that Thebes was the worst city-state in the universe. This is objective truth.
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Dec 28, 2016 13:24
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Melth posted:Alright, I finished the second part with a somewhat different process. Said process may be wildly foolish in ways I don't yet understand, so I want you more knowledgeable persons to tell me if I'm leaving out something critical or am doing something destructive: I'll agree it's the worst if only because I spent years of my youth confused by the fact that it seemed to be in two places at once!
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Dec 28, 2016 14:28
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Melth posted:I'm also still mulling over whether to generally show really good conventional play and beat missions as the developers intended or to show creative play that obliterates whole missions. Both, obviously! If there's enough variety in the missions then I think we'd love to see every trick available, from really canny micro and economy play to just breaking the game in half.
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Dec 28, 2016 16:42
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Smiling Knight posted:I'll agree it's the worst if only because I spent years of my youth confused by the fact that it seemed to be in two places at once! It's awful in Herodotus, who talks about both frequently and often jumps around the world from incident to incident with no context so you don't always know if he means the Egyptian or Greek one. And you especially can't be certain when he talks about Theban troops among the other Persian guys because both Thebes fought on the Persian side. Luckily AoM features only the Egyptian version, not the terrible Greek one.
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Dec 29, 2016 00:27
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I had no idea this game had a tutorial like that.  Kinda embarrassing considering how much time I've spent playing the campaigns. Didn't know about diminishing returns on worker building and praying either.
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Dec 29, 2016 00:31
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Poil posted:I had no idea this game had a tutorial like that. Yeah, that was why I thought I'd show this stuff. The tutorial is nothing special, but a lot of people don't even know it exists, and I'm trying to show everything about this great game. Including the parts that aren't actually that great. One of the big things that isn't so great (which I also said was a big problem in Civilization II) is how many critical mechanics in this game are entirely secret. I'm not even demanding they give us exact numbers on things (though that would be nice), it would just be good if somewhere in the game they mentioned at some point that each villager praying gave less favor than the last guy. The other favor generation patterns are even crazier. I'll talk more about it later but the Egyptian favor generation rates for their five Monuments go: good, worst, bad, ok, best in that order. With no indication whatsoever that there's any difference other than increasing price. The Chinese can actually have slightly increasing returns to more Gardens as Nu Wa, though it's constant for other gods. The Atlantean first Town Center is secretly the worst; all other ones are equal to each other and slightly better. In ALL of these cases the game encourages a false impression that each Villager/Monument/Garden/Town Center is equal by simply listing a count of all of them that are producing favor next to the favor icon. The Norse are just told that they get favor by 'fighting'. Actually they get favor by dealing damage. Every unit or building type in the game is worth a certain (secret) amount of favor, and you get favor equal to the % of its maximum HP that you deal in damage. Hersir (Heroes) gain double this rate and myth units gain 0. Also, secretly, Hersir generate small amounts of favor simply by existing. Similarly, it would have been excellent to give some indication that wood is gathered faster than gold which is gathered faster yet than food. They tell us that hunting is faster than farming for food, but say little about herding and nothing about berry bushes and such. Also, you might think that chickens count as hunting since they're wild animals that your Villagers must kill, but actually they're just like berry bushes (which are in the middle and equal to herding). I don't even know the numbers on fishing because I can't find them ANYWHERE. But it seem to be quite good when upgraded. It would have been better game design to make things like, say, wood and gold gather at the same rate and then simply adjust unit prices (which we can see, unlike the gather rates) to equivalent levels. Arguably the biggest problem of all relates to attacking. The game seems simple with its attack x (100%- armor %) = damage formula, but actually there's a bunch of critical information missing. One is attack speed. The game doesn't mention the existence of attack speed and I haven't found any information on it anywhere, but some units clearly attack much faster than others. And not even just like siege units compared to infantry; different infantry secretly have different attack speeds. Without knowing those numbers, we have no way to really know comparative DPS. Beyond that, the game doesn't mention this but it is NOT just cosmetic (unlike in Starcraft and Warcraft 3 and some other games) that some units seem to launch multiple projectiles when they attack. Each of those is a separate attack dealing the listed damage. So a town center's true damage is actually x3 what the game tells you since it shoots 3 arrows. A watch tower also shoots arrows, but only two at a time so its secret multiplier isn't as good as the town center's. This is especially problematic because with some units it's hard to tell how many projectiles are actually launched. I've got NO idea with Manticores. Having just looked it up, it's apparently 3. But their special attack is 6? And also a different damage base? As a side note, the game never says anything about the power of special attacks, or their cooldown time. Accuracy is also a secret which isn't even mentioned. Some units miss moving targets. Others don't. And a few units miss stationary targets with some of their projectiles some of the time! Sometimes missed projectiles can hit other guys in formation, but not always and that also seems to be random and unpredictable. Infamously, it turns out the Satyr myth unit is actually trash because on top of actually cruddy stats, when tested it can't even hit with its basic attack half the time and its special attack tends to miss completely. And the upgrade for them doesn't do what it says. And then of course there are the damage multipliers. Now the game does state that some units do bonus damage to some other units. But it gives no indication whether this is a flat bonus or a multiplier. Turns out it's a multiplier. But the size of the multiplier isn't mentioned anywhere. Turns out it varies unit by unit. Even when it REALLY shouldn't. For example, the Egyptian Barracks building can produce both Spearmen and Axemen for comparable prices. Axemen are stated to be counter-infantry units which get bonus damage vs infantry and should only be used vs infantry. Spearmen are stated to be counter-cavalry units which get bonus damage vs cavalry and should only be used vs cavalry. Now you might reasonably assume that these units would have the same damage multipliers against their specified targets. Wrong! Axemen do amazing quadruple damage! Spearmen? They get a measly 10% bonus. That isn't even noticeable, so they're actually trashy at countering cavalry except that they're inexpensive. Several other infantry units have secret and unlisted bonuses vs cavalry that are bigger than that. To add insult to injury, Spearmen actually enjoy much bigger damage bonuses against random stuff like siege units which we aren't told anywhere. Another example of such problems is heroes. We know heroes are good against myth units of course. But it turns out every individual hero or hero type has a different secret damage multiplier against them. Most of the Greek heroes do x7 damage, but not all of them. For one, there's this guy Bellerophon. Bellerophon's whole thing is that he deals massive damage. He's an endgame hero and his rival endgame heroes have super abilities that instant kill things, but he doesn't. Instead his damage is just really high. But wait! Turns out his multiplier is secretly worse than theirs, so his damage vs myth units -which is his only asset- isn't anywhere near as good as the numbers would make you think. Similarly, you might think Pharaohs are just better Priests because they can do all the same stuff plus some other things and they have higher stats. And we keep being told they're great against myth units, like Priests. But actually their damage multiplier vs myth units is much worse than for Priests. They still come out a little ahead in net damage due to much better base damage, but not by as much as they should. Now furthermore, the game doesn't tell us that myth units are bad against heroes, but they are. The rest of the rock-paper-scissors never works that way; myth units are unique. But it's worse than that. Each individual myth unit has its own secret and unlisted penalty vs heroes. Some myth units do half damage. But some largely at random are screwed with quarter damage. And a few actually seem to do full damage? And then some myth units have secret bonus damage against other myth units. This is not hinted at anywhere. Not all myth units have it and it's not all the same multiplier. A few lucky myth units are swaggering around with secret quadruple damage against their fellow myth units, which is as much of a multiplier as some heroes get. To give one dramatic example of all of this at work, I used to think that Stymphalian Birds were terrible because they did like 11 damage. Nope! See they actually shoot 3 blades at once AND they have secret triple damage vs myth units (who are big enough to be hit by every blade). So they're actually amazing myth unit assassins, better at the job than most heroes. Oh, and some units have multipliers that the game not only doesn't tell us they have but outright says they won't have. Like Turmas vs Throwing Axemen. Turmas are a counter-archer unit, they do quadruple damage against archers. Now this may come as a surprise to you, but Throwing Axemen are not archers. They are infantry. This is explicit. The game emphasizes again and again that they are infantry, not archers. They build structures like other norse infantry. They benefit from norse infantry upgrades. They do not benefit from norse archer upgrades. Archery relics do not benefit them. Infantry relics do. And counter-infantry troops are good against them. But guess what? Turmas secretly do double damage against them for some reason. I mean, besides that a unit is being given bonuses against a unit it is explicitly not supposed to be good against, even the people who wrongly assume Throwing Axemen are archers and build Turmas to counter them get screwed here because their Turmas don't have as big a bonus as they were (wrongly) expecting them to. So this nonsense hurts both people who do and people who don't know what they're doing. None of this stuff is in game, most of it isn't on the wiki, and SOME of it isn't even on AomHeaven, which is the only place with a lot of the important stats. Some of it I had to figure out with my own experiments in the editor just now. Like siege unit vs building multipliers. We all knew they had them, but how much? Well it turns out for Catapults and Petroboli it's a sizable x4. Ok, what about Portable Rams? The guys whose only purpose is to knock down buildings and they can't do anything else. x1. That's right. They actually have NO multiplier. That makes them completely terrible. Their attack speed is solid, but still you're better off with just using a bunch of infantry or something. Or some Mountain Giants. Ballistae have no mentioned bonus damage at all in-game, but my test indicates they actually have a multiplier of x2.85 or so vs buildings. A Helepolis turns out to only have x2 which means that, contrary to the in-game stats and popular belief among their fans (and despite their secret higher attack speed), Petroboli actually hurt buildings more. Siege Towers have x4, so they're the same as Catapults for Egypt. And Fire Siphons only do x2, wasting their nominally very high damage. On the plus side they do have a better attack speed than most other siege. And I am now the first man in the universe to actually know how good various AoM siege units are. SCIENCE! Melth fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Dec 29, 2016 |
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Dec 29, 2016 02:38
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drat, quite the effort-post there. Good stuff.
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Dec 29, 2016 02:48
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Makes me realize how different an era of gaming AoM came from. I guess the balance must've been enough of a clusterfuck because nobody even tried to play it competitively as far as I know.
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Dec 29, 2016 03:05
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WarpedLichen posted:Makes me realize how different an era of gaming AoM came from. I guess the balance must've been enough of a clusterfuck because nobody even tried to play it competitively as far as I know. There was definitely a limited competitive scene, but obviously nothing like what you had for something like Starcraft or WC3.
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Dec 29, 2016 03:14
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HannibalBarca posted:There was definitely a limited competitive scene, but obviously nothing like what you had for something like Starcraft or WC3. Was there? I remember that the AOE2 competitive went on for a long time, even though the multiplayer was a complete lag fest.
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Dec 29, 2016 03:17
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WarpedLichen posted:Was there? I remember that the AOE2 competitive went on for a long time, even though the multiplayer was a complete lag fest. When I say "limited" I mean below even what AoE2 had.
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Dec 29, 2016 03:17
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HannibalBarca posted:There was definitely a limited competitive scene, but obviously nothing like what you had for something like Starcraft or WC3. Yeah, AoM had LOT of people playing multiplayer for many years (and enough still are that developers wanted to release the extended edition and the new expansion and such) but they weren't really organized and didn't have the kinds of big, official tournaments that WC3 and Starcraft did. As another interesting comparative note, AoM also has a pretty good map editor and people still make scenarios and such for it- kind of like for WC3 only not as good or as famous. I don't think I've mentioned in the last 24 hours that I think WC3 is one of the most brilliant games ever made, and is certainly the best RTS I ever played. So it's not a surprise that AoM doesn't match up to it or Starcraft, but it was still one of the most successful and acclaimed RTSes ever. WarpedLichen posted:Makes me realize how different an era of gaming AoM came from. I guess the balance must've been enough of a clusterfuck because nobody even tried to play it competitively as far as I know. The metagame has been healthy and developed a lot over the years too, and it's also proven to actually be quite well balanced. There was a consensus at least years ago that overall the Greeks and Atlanteans -while newb friendly- were not quite as good for experts as the Egyptians and Norse, but even in those days a big % of the top players were still Greeks or Atlanteans. Even the legendary Starcraft has had that kind of broad consensus at times that one race is not quiiiiite as good for experts as the others, so that's not really a major flaw.
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Dec 29, 2016 03:34
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Oh, wow. This game ate so many hours of my childhood, and there was a Chinese expansion at some point? Huh. Watching with interest. I can't be the only one who liked playing skirmishes and cheating so I could get a billion uses of the trapdoor spider power because I loved the screams and animations of the spiders grabbing people. Makes a fun chokepoint defense for a wonder victory. There's some brutal death animations for an RTS like this when certain myth units and god powers get involved.
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Dec 29, 2016 03:40
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The above effort post is exactly the reason I was not having any fun play this game when I bought it now put into words. I never finished the Titan's expansion because of all the obfuscated effectiveness of units versus this or that unit and I was just getting so impatient and aggravated with it.
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Dec 29, 2016 04:15
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WarpedLichen posted:Was there? I remember that the AOE2 competitive went on for a long time, even though the multiplayer was a complete lag fest. I bounced around between third and tenth on the AoM 1v1 ladder for around six months right before Titans came out, the scene existed but it wasn't huge. I was actually planning to LP this but I never got around to doing the legwork, so I look forward to this. My favorite time with this game ended up being a weird thing where a bunch of human players played a handful of outnumbered highest difficulty AIs and it was just a huge, hours long meat grinder hell. Good times. E: Also the AoE2 competitive scene is actually still going thanks to AoE2HD (even though it's busted in MP) and stuff like Gameranger and Voobly. They even held a tournament a week or so ago with some old school names that have been playing AoE2 for the last decade and a half. Orv fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Dec 29, 2016 |
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Dec 29, 2016 04:22
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Glad to see this lets played, I love AOM, it really got me interested in reading when I was younger, I usually ended up spending hours reading the little myth entries. I also remember playing skirmish mode and just spamming Atlantean dual sword units, they died in droves and I never really learned that Atlantis was "few good expensive units" faction until I started playing with people.
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Dec 29, 2016 05:09
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Cythereal posted:Oh, wow. This game ate so many hours of my childhood, and there was a Chinese expansion at some point? Huh. Watching with interest. The Chinese expansion isn't even a year old yet, and I myself only found out about it like two weeks ago (which is one reason why I decided to make this LP now, another being that the holiday season always reminds me of this game since I got it for Christmas). I'm not going to get everyone's hopes up too high for it; it's not all that well made. But hey, it's new material and new challenges and a new race and all. And a mythology many of us are going to be less familiar with, though I knew some of it myself since I'm also a Chinese classics man. Well sort of. I've read a lot of the Chinese classics, but I don't actually like any of them. There is going to be SO MUCH WACKY SPIDER COMEDY on Making Amends! They give you just this perfect chokepoint and then after just enough time to lay down 2 layers of spiders, they run a whole bunch of cavalry through. The little screams get funnier every time I play it. You may also enjoy one of the Chinese powers that similarly traps an area and pranks enemies that walk in. That one will get used a lot more often, since they hand it to you in like every single campaign mission, whereas you only get to worship Leto in one or two. Lunethex posted:The above effort post is exactly the reason I was not having any fun play this game when I bought it now put into words. I never finished the Titan's expansion because of all the obfuscated effectiveness of units versus this or that unit and I was just getting so impatient and aggravated with it. The nice thing though is that most of it doesn't really matter. I beat the game on Titan before I even found out any of this stuff. It IS aggravating to me since I am all about MAXIMUM WIN, but it's also kind of par for the course for almost every game ever to hide some of the most important mechanics for literally no reason. At least in AoM there is a convenient way to do experiments and learn the truth.
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Dec 29, 2016 05:11
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Melth posted:And a mythology many of us are going to be less familiar with, though I knew some of it myself since I'm also a Chinese classics man. Well sort of. I've read a lot of the Chinese classics, but I don't actually like any of them. My mythology of choice is Aztec myth, which would make for a fun potential expansion. You could do a pretty good sequel with Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Chinese, Aztec, Celtic, and maybe Indian mythologies.
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Dec 29, 2016 05:15
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Jimmy4400nav posted:Glad to see this lets played, I love AOM, it really got me interested in reading when I was younger, I usually ended up spending hours reading the little myth entries. Yeah I loved those little things. Some of them were pretty funny as well as informative. Like how the giant acidic eye blob's diet is listed as "Scenic vistas, dissolved mortal flesh" My own first game I mostly spammed elephants, which also died in droves. I now know the reason though and will explain it in due course! But actually I wouldn't have described Atlantis as the "a few high quality units" faction. Like definitely for villagers, yes. But really it's the Greeks who are the few expensive guys group. For starters they can literally only field 4 heroes max. Everyone else has unlimited numbers but will probably make like 6-16 for small to big games. But of course the Greek heroes are amazingly strong compared to the others. And then in every age the Greeks have the biggest, baddest, most expensive myth units. Cyclops can beat up some Mythic age guys despite being Classical age. And Colossi of course are just the biggest, toughest thing there is. And of course for human soldiers the Greeks are explicitly stated to have pricier but better dudes. The Atlanteans do actually have near perfect parity with the Greeks in terms of human soldier price and quality so I'll give you that, but they have spammable heroes who are barely better than human soldiers and then THE TRASHIEST spammable myth units. Every single Atlantean myth unit is garbage in a fight. But they're cheap and you get favor just for existing anyway, so it's ok!
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Dec 29, 2016 05:21
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Melth posted:I don't even know the numbers on fishing because I can't find them ANYWHERE. I've got you on this one. Insofar as I'm aware, the rate was the following as of the Atlantean expansion: For everyone except Egyptians: 0.61 Egyptians are ~10% slower, and thus have a rate of 0.54 I have no idea whether this has changed with the addition of the Chinese or in subsequent patches.
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Dec 29, 2016 06:27
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Melth posted:The Atlanteans do actually have near perfect parity with the Greeks in terms of human soldier price and quality so I'll give you that, but they have spammable heroes who are barely better than human soldiers and then THE TRASHIEST spammable myth units. Every single Atlantean myth unit is garbage in a fight. But they're cheap and you get favor just for existing anyway, so it's ok! Behemoths were really good, relatively cheap siege fodder. Trouble is you have to go Rheia.
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Dec 29, 2016 07:24
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Melth posted:[a thousand pounds of huge invisible game mechanics] That is an incredible pile of silliness. A very good effortpost. So every unit in the game does different amounts of damage to arbitrary subsets of all the other units in the game, and how much is never indicated? Wow, that's... that's kind of amazing. Iny fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Dec 29, 2016 |
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Dec 29, 2016 07:30
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Why was Thebes the worst city-state?
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Dec 29, 2016 08:04
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White Coke posted:Why was Thebes the worst city-state? They had just the vilest and most oppressive oligarchy and they kept trying to back oligarchies and overthrow democracies elsewhere. And for about 300 years no matter who was in charge they were constantly invading, massacring, bullying, enslaving, or betraying their fellow Greeks. All their neighbors lived in fear and hatred of them and kept begging for the Spartans or the Athenians or ANYONE to come and protect them. For which the Thebans would massacre them again. They were always on the clearly wrong side in every war (and often they were the ones who started wars that no one else even wanted) and they allied with every invader like the Persians and betrayed every attempt to create a united Greece from the days of Xerxes right down to when Alexander said the hell with it after they broke yet ANOTHER treaty and finally torched the place. And mind you they didn't join the Persians because they were forced to, but enthusiastically. Like when the Persians were defeated and slinking home the Thebans kept trying to rally them and encourage them to turn around and keep enslaving Greece and coaching them on how to divide and conquer everyone. And at like every council with the other allies of Sparta throughout the Peloponnesian War they're always going "Guys! Guys, guys! Listen. We should kill EVERYBODY. We will take it as a personal insult and a diplomatic slight if you do not join us in murdering every single man, woman, and child in this city that just surrendered to our armies without a fight." So it's the SPARTANS of all people who keep having to rein them in and say that actually we're not going to be psychotically evil for no reason today. Which always makes the Thebans whine and threaten to quit the war, but they never do because it has become a war of oligarchies vs democracies and they REALLY don't want the democracies to win. It gets to the point where the Spartans often threaten places that if they don't surrender, the Spartans will let the Thebans have them. Even people like Xenophon (who is famously good at being neutral between Athens and Sparta even though he has ample reason to hate both) just give up and say that Thebes is really the worst. Iny posted:That is an incredible pile of silliness. A very good effortpost. The best part is that besides the details of this crazy system not being indicated, the existence of this crazy system isn't indicated. Orv posted:Behemoths were really good, relatively cheap siege fodder. Trouble is you have to go Rheia. I can't say I've ever liked Behemoths at all; their damage is just too terrible and they're too slow and fragile. But luckily Rheia has some sweet improvements to offer and very little competition because the other heroic age choices are mostly worse. Unless you're using lots of cavalry, then Theia is amazing instead. TravelLog posted:I've got you on this one. Insofar as I'm aware, the rate was the following as of the Atlantean expansion: Excellent, thank you. I just experimented and confirmed that that is still right or close enough to right. I also confirmed that Purse Seine really does add a whopping 30% to that rate (as good as all 3 layers of upgrades for any other resource gathering) and then Salt Amphora adds an amazing 40% more AND doubles carrying capacity. The upshot is that fishing is actually THE fastest food gathering in the game when fully upgraded, even better than upgraded hunting, as long as you can put your docks reasonably near the fish. It's also the worst in the game when unupgraded. Even worse than farming. Now at first glance buying a bunch of docks just to be close to the fish sounds not worth it, but when you consider that any given farm costs 2/3 as much as a dock and one dock can support several nearby boats that are like 50% better than a farm, it's a solid option.
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Dec 29, 2016 09:03
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Melth posted:I can't say I've ever liked Behemoths at all; their damage is just too terrible and they're too slow and fragile. But luckily Rheia has some sweet improvements to offer and very little competition because the other heroic age choices are mostly worse. Unless you're using lots of cavalry, then Theia is amazing instead. Prometheus + Hyperion hero cheese spam was always a favorite of mine, but 10% more favor is hard to argue with. Part of my brain is given over to early 2000s RTS bullshit, mostly various rushes, and it always makes me sad that modern RTSes have kind of gotten away from allowing that kind of thing. They were never exactly effective, but they were always hilarious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYNtZNiE5a0&t=330s Orv fucked around with this message at 09:42 on Dec 29, 2016 |
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Dec 29, 2016 09:36
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AoE2 is also full of hidden modifiers and multiple projectiles issues. Did you know that a ranged attack bases the damage on what the attacker has when it hits? So if you pack up a trebuchet before the rock lands it'll deal 1 damage because a packed treb has no attack value. You can check out SpiritofTheLaw for AoE2 mechanics. He has done a lot of setting up things with the editor to find out and check stuff.
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Dec 29, 2016 10:00
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