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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Poil posted: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. This sounds like Oblivion where you'd sneak-attack shoot an arrow at someone and then spam-click tab, open the weapon menu, and pull a sword out right before the arrow hit so it would give you the sweet x6 melee sneak attack multiplier instead of the lame x3 ranged one. But in reverse. And yet still more practical because archery was TERRIBLE in Oblivion.
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Dec 29, 2016 10:30
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Poil posted:Magic was fun in Oblivion if you hit an enemy with a weakness to magicka, fire, frost and shock spell and then with a second identical spell which got more effective and then the first again for even more power before using the neat wizard's fury spell which did all three types of damage and just blasted the enemy to bits from stacking up vulnerabilities. I mostly liked to play on max difficulty (it's a surprise to nobody!) as an apprentice birthstone high elf so that everything would instant-kill me and then use custom spells that did 1 second 100 Drain Health (remember, drain was inexpensive temporary damage rather than expensively actually stealing it) and like 3 seconds of 100% weakness to magic. Then I could dart in and out hitting them with that inexpensive spell till the magic weakness stacked up enough to make the 100 drain health kill them. It was actually pretty fun since it meant I had to dodge every single attack all game long or die, but I could also kill the enemy in a reasonable time frame as long as I never missed. Then I'd do things like eat a poison apple and try to run around doing the whole main quest before I died. Or like put on custom gear that set me on fire or something. I liked Oblivion a fair amount for the kind of ridiculous and awesome challenge stunts one could do. As for hydras, yeah they're pretty sweet. You'll see me use them more than a few times. Though I often go manticores instead these days because there re other solid melee myth units to replace hydras but not many good ranged myth units to replace manticores. Cythereal posted:That's Poseidon Greeks. I mostly go Hades so I can get 3 divine archery upgrades (Ares, Apollo, Artemis) on top of his and then used maxed out Gastraphetes and Toxotes to kill everything. The thing about Medusae is that there are a LOT of myth units with instant kills. Even counting only the ones like Medusae that also work on myth units there are Medusae, Mummies, Arguses, Lampades, and I think there might be a Chinese one I'm forgetting. Oh and Frost Giants are pretty close. And Perseus for heroes. A lot of those myth units have shorter cooldowns on their instant kills or have extra range to them or extra perks like how the mummy turns the enemy into little guys who fight for you or the Lampades who make the enemy go crazy and attack their former troops. Medusae (why do we call them that instead of gorgons anyway?) just don't standout too much from that crowd to me. Astroclassicist posted:Oooh, AoM! Just noticed your picture is Alexander the Pretty Good.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:21
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Astroclassicist posted:
To lazily copy/paste from my history/nature photos blog (thesupremeexcellence.tumblr.com) since I was just talking about this guy; Alexander the Better There was this Macedonian king named Alexander who was great, and it’s not the one you’re thinking of. Alexander the Pretty Good mostly just overran the failingest empire in world history using the unstoppable army and alliance with other excellent armies which his father had built out of nothing. Oh and named twenty or thirty cities after his only pretty good self. But HE was named after his great-great-great grandfather Alexander I. Alexander I was a young prince when the Persians sent envoys to his father Amyntas and demanded they surrender to Persia. Amyntas did so because he wasn’t an idiot. In fact, he was pretty smart and decided to wine and dine the envoys so they’d give a favorable report back to Darius. The Persian messengers reciprocated by getting drunk and groping the women at the party. Now Alexander was a cosmopolitan young man and he realized that this was probably just the Persian way of politely asking to be thrown in a shallow grave. So he tells Amyntas, “Hey, Dad, I know being king is hard work and you’re getting on in years and all, so how about you go get some rest and I’ll entertain our charming guests?” Amyntas shows his sense again by warning his son against letting pride and anger on behalf of a few plunge the whole kingdom into a ruinous war, but Alexander reassures him that he’s got a plan which will work as long as Amyntas goes to bed right now and doesn’t ask questions. Amyntas does. These two are a highly successful father-son team, and it’s largely thanks to them that Macedonia was eventually able to become such an important part of the Greek world. So Alexander turns to the Persians and goes, “My father and I want to be good hosts, so you’re going to be not only feasted but bedded as no living man!” “Well this might just be the liquor talking, but that doesn’t sound ominous at all!” So they let Alexander usher the women out to go ‘bathe’, and the party goes on until an equal number of veiled Macedonians appear to lead the Persians off to bed. The other Persians outside are watching this enviously because they don’t know that the bed is a metaphor for getting their loving throats cut by the royal guard in drag. They also don’t know that there’s no need to feel left out, because while they were distracted Alexander got his other men in position to slaughter them all. Come morning, there’s nothing left but a few tired Macedonians whistling while they sweep up leftover dirt. Darius sent a team of investigators, but Amyntas was able to solemnly swear that he didn’t see what happened to the envoys, and Alexander bribed them for good measure. Darius shrugged and decided he was ok with his messengers vanishing into some sort of classical Bermuda Triangle as long as the Macedonians paid their taxes. Big mistake. See Amyntas and then Alexander kept acting like good little vassals, so when Darius finally got around to properly subjugating the region he left them officially in charge of all of it. And since Alexander was their number one Greek ‘ally’ and had carefully cultivated ties to Athens during the intervening years, Xerxes and his general Mardonius made Alexander their main ambassador to the Greeks. He used his position to leak the Persian battle plans to the enemy. Then after Athens defeated Persia at Salamis, the perennially worthless Spartans were thinking about sitting back and letting Athens be overrun alone by the remnants of the Persian army. So Alexander showed up to offer the Athenians incredibly sweet terms that they could gallantly refuse but then threaten to consider if the Spartans didn’t actually help. This made the Spartans decide to help. Alexander again leaked them the Persian plans and the Persians were crushed at the battle of Plataea. The Persian army fled for home through Macedonia, and Alexander’s army finally resolved the forty-year-old cold case by giving almost all of them a vivid demonstration of what had happened to their forebears. Thanks to Alexander I, Macedonia had been left alone during Darius’s rule and was now free from Persia forever. If you ask me, that was a much greater accomplishment than stomping on the broken and crumbling Persian empire and enslaving them in turn could ever be. Back on topic: I'll probably do the final tutorial mission tonight and then in the not-so-distant future it will be on to the actual game. So one more time, is there anything I should be doing differently in terms of the best way to make these videos?
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Dec 30, 2016 00:27
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Here is the third and final tutorial level: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_Df4h1UM2g This time there is definitely something wrong with the sound. Or several things wrong. For one thing, my mic seems to have picked up a ton of noise from the game this time even though I had the actual volume on minimum. This resulted in kind of an echo is places. I used audacity to try to clean up that noise, but it was imperfect and also seems to have distorted my voice a bit. Any suggestions? Or other tips or problems?
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Dec 30, 2016 07:51
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White Coke posted:Aside from being an oligarchy how much is known about the government of Thebes? I have some knowledge of the Athenian and Spartan government since they're the two city-states everyone focuses on, but how hosed up was Thebes? Were they just really hostile to the other city-states or was there some really screwed up social organization like the Spartans had? Well nowhere in the universe was as screwed up as Sparta's social organization if you ask me. The short answer to your question is that we really don't know much about the internal oligarchical government of Thebes. We do know a lot about how Thebes governed its neighbors (brutally and with a really paper thin veneer of it being a league rather than just their empire) and what the posts in that government were, but we know much less about the actual titles in Thebes's internal government when it was an oligarchy. There actually was a period after Sparta conquered them when a democracy arose and overthrew both Sparta and the allied oligarchs. This was not coincidentally the only period when the Thebans did decent stuff, and they actually ended up crushing Sparta and freeing many of the helots. And again, I know more about their government and its titles during this period than during the actual oligarchy. However, I'll bet my man Xenophon knew more since he wrote a bunch about them during this time period. As it happens, I got his book Hellenica for Christmas, so I may be able to tell you more in a couple of weeks.
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Dec 30, 2016 18:25
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Do people have recommendations about the best kind of microphones for this purpose?
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Dec 31, 2016 01:26
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SSNeoman posted:You might wanna turn down the game's audio a bit more. It's an RTS so I doubt there's gonna be anything too interesting being said most of the time while you will still probably comment. I had the volume set to minimum, but I'm thinking of maybe wearing headphones. The main thing is I want to hear attack alerts and troop trained sounds, so I can't just mute it. Various People posted:Major gods! Of course in the campaign I will never, ever get to choose a major god so I probably won't talk about this much. But I do have a favorite major god for each civilization and a decent argument as to why they're the best for serious play (though all are at least somewhat viable and have their own advantages). Greeks: Hades. Fantastic early power means you can't be rushed, useful technology boosts your gold income all game long (and gold is hard to come by in long games). And gastraphetes are probably the best unique Greek units, plus maximal Hades archer upgrades are usually better than Zeus's maximal infantry or Poseidon's maximal cavalry at least for my playstyle. The best part is that the minor gods you want to pick for upgrades also give you an excellent mix of myth units and good god powers. Norse: Loki. Fast, cheap ox carts are very nice. But of course it's really all about the hersir and myth units. Loki is unique here and can do stuff nobody else can with his spawning myth units mid-battle and so forth. Access to Forseti is a major advantage over Odin (the main rival since Thor's 2 dwarf start and armory focus are problematic), and if you get a randomly spawned Valkyrie (quite likely) then you've got the best healing of any Norse. And sole access to Hel is pretty darned nice if the game goes long. All 3 kinds of giants are great and only Loki can get them all- or have some of the best upgrades for them. Atlantean: Oranos. Hands down. Sky passages are amazing at all levels of play and sped up human soldiers is also great regardless of strategy. Not having access to Atlas for Implode does hurt, but it's no Earthquake or Meteor anyway. Seeing all settlements on the map is also a major perk. Chinese: Nu Wa. Kind of a sucky god power. But having like 30% more favor all game long is huge, as is free +10 population by the end (trumps Isis's pop bonus unless you get more than 3 town centers, which is rare). All human soldiers being cheaper is also a GREAT bonus and saves way more money than many other gods' perks that upgrades or myth units are cheaper since human soldiers are your main expense. Oh and the best minor god choices. Egypt: This is a tough one. I really, REALLY want to say Ra. And vs AI yeah, it's Ra. He's got the best Egyptian economy with his empowering priests and super empowering pharaoh. And super chariots and camels are great because those are THE Egyptian units. But for serious multiplayer it's Isis. Mainly because Isis's monuments that prevent enemy god powers are incredible. But also because Ra is conspicuously missing a bunch of the best god choices. No Anubis? No Nephthys? No Thoth? Now granted Bast is > Anubis for many purposes in theory but her upgrades are bugged and in multiplayer you often really need Anubis just because Anubites are cheaper than Sphinxes and you benefit a lot from defensive serpents. Nephthys is just the best Egyptian heroic age god and losing her screws over Ra's otherwise superior priests and pharaohs. And while Thoth has trash myth units, his god power and upgrades are awesome. I'm not saying you always want to pick Thoth by any means, Osiris is also excellent. But not having Thoth as an option when you need him is painful. Melth fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Dec 31, 2016 |
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Dec 31, 2016 19:46
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HannibalBarca posted:Bolt makes Nidhogg and SoO pretty useless, yeah. I think I read that the extended edition made it do scratch damage to them instead of instant killing. Which was lame. I mean, it used to do thousands even to a titan. Testing it again now, it deals about 33% damage to each and about 16% to titans. So sucky compared to how it use to be, but not worthless at least. HannibalBarca posted:I cosign Johnny Law's and Asehujiko's recommendations. Thank you, all three of you. I'll be trying the next one with headphones. It's the last one in which Athena talks much, and this time it's just a few lines (albeit at important times) instead of talking incessantly. the JJ posted:Thing with Xenophon is you have to keep in mind his biases (like: mercs should get paid, helots and poors can suck a dick, Yeah, definitely. But I mean you have to watch out for bias in history with any writer ancient or modern. Even if it's unintentional kinds of stuff. Heck, even Thucydides who is proverbially neutral and often criticized for that neutrality has a bit.
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Jan 1, 2017 00:29
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HannibalBarca posted:Huh, that's interesting. I guess it's good that Bolt is no longer a *nightmare counter* to super-units, but I can't help but feel that that's a bit underwhelming. Ah well. I actually liked Zeus having a hard counter to those things pretty well, but I suppose it's not a big deal either way. You know what IS a big deal either way? Fire Giant damage. It has been known since day 1 of this game that the displayed Fire Giant damage is nonsense. But I've never been able to find the truth anywhere. Even the normally accurate aomheaven tables are garbage on this count. Having tested things extensively, I can now say that the closest anyone came to the real numbers was this one silly fellow claiming that his particular computer was bugged so that Fire Giant normal attacks did triple damage and special attacks only did single damage. He was of course shouted down by even sillier fellows claiming the displayed numbers were right. So Fire Giants are displayed as dealing 15 hack damage and 5 crush damage per attack. No. I, Melth, have painstakingly scienced my way to the truth! The truth is that Fire Giants do TRIPLE this damage to nearly ALL targets. Human soldiers. Buildings. Siege units. Villagers. Animals. Triple damage all the time. But what about heroes and myth units? Well most sites say they do quarter damage to heroes. No. Not even close. They do full damage to heroes, putting them in a very exclusive club with almost no other myth units. Most sites also say they do double damage to myth units. No. They do SEXTUPLE damage. Now what about their special attack? Honestly, the upshot is that it's hard to predict. It's firing 3 projectiles which bounce around and hit or miss fairly unpredictably. Damage varies based on whether the target is moving or not. And how big it is. So tests vs units which were running around kept giving me different results. Testing vs Houses (small buildings), Temples (medium), and Wonders (huge) which all have the exact same armors had it deal 32 to the House and 96 to the Temple and Wonder. Now several sites had said what it did was 25 hack damage each for 3 fireballs. Wrong. But the aomheaven tables say the fireballs also do 15 crush damage. THAT actually fits, so they're right about that part. Now this means that the Fire Giant's special attack is actually inferior to its normal attack in not only DPS but even absolute damage against most targets (Sidenote, it won't even activate vs heroes or for some reason siege units). However, it's actually pretty good against densely packed human soldiers since it deals area damage. It's hard to predict how much each soldier will take, but fairly often guys a step or two BEHIND the primary target get hit by all 3 fireballs and therefore die. The main target usually gets hit by 2 and guys to his sides tend to as well. All in all, the Fire Giant is WAY better than the game says. Which is good, because the game numbers would make it one of the worst of all myth units for its price. It's probably still overpriced and its special splash attack is situationally either quite decent or an outright downgrade, which I don't like. But since the Norse are short on good mythic options anyway and really short on decent siege, it's still definitely going to be part of their armies.
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Jan 1, 2017 02:56
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The first episode of the actual campaign is ready! As one would expect from the first level of the game, it's an easy victory. Still, I point out a couple of really handy tips for winning it elegantly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRf2RnTQSi8 Melth fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Jan 2, 2017 |
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Jan 2, 2017 08:05
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Poil posted:You could have showed off the kraken's special ability against normal soldiers. But there will be more chances. I'm trying to avoid casualties since I'm trying to show very good play, so you'll probably never see me let a Kraken get one of my humans. But there's at least one mission in the bonus campaign where I'll be using Krakens, so you might see me throw some screaming people there. And of course there are Cyclops in the meantime, which do something similar. Yep! Armor upgrades actually benefit heroes more. A 15% reduction in your vulnerability instead of 10%. This is really good stuff for the campaign heroes in particular and is a major part of my strategy really. Glazius posted:Do enemies get one god power per Age, same as you? Or can they just spam out half a dozen of them on later maps? Yes. First of all, as a minor note, my own god powers in this mission were a bunch of nonsense. I mean, I had Rain -which is Ra's power from a whole other civilization- and then Restoration which is Athena's, but Athena isn't even available to Poseidon. And the enemy wasn't even mythic age this time and were Egyptian but they used Locust Swarm (heroic age Egyptian) and Lightning Storm (mythic age Greek, exclusive to Zeus). That they would have a Zeus-exclusive power makes no sense any way you look at it. Later missions generally will have like 80% of my god powers actually come from my minor god choices and the major god they gave me, but there are still plenty of exceptions and bonus powers and so forth. Typically, the enemy will have some of the god powers plausibly available to them based on their age, but numerous others will just happen as story events or be reusable by them or all kinds of things. Next level, for example, the enemy will be Egyptians worshiping Ra and Anubis, so they will use Plague of Serpents. Which is indeed Anubis's power. But they'll use it twice, which is cheating. Emperordaein posted:Oh man. This game and the rest of the series was a big part of my childhood. I loved playing the series. There's so much I remember about the workings of the Campaign. On this mission of course the enemy doesn't really have an age or a techtree and uses special units like Pirate Ships or ones from other civilizations like Krakens. So it's not exactly a rules-based army. As a general rule though, enemies in Titan difficulty will start off at or reach higher ages quicker and upgrade their soldiers accordingly. And on predeployed missions they'll be more numerous or more upgraded. Yeah, I was going to talk about it later, but I just think it's really cool and nice that so many of the upgrades in this game actually change the unit's appearance. Even I didn't notice until you said this though that the medium/heavy/champion upgrades don't give units shields, the shield upgrades do! And that every hoplite upgrade level has a different shield style for every shield upgrade level. Man, that is cool. Even neater, as far as I can see, campaign hoplites sometimes use a custom shield design that is never available in normal games. They look like heavies with fully upgraded shields but they have this triple lightning bolt design on them. Having just checked, normal heavies with full shield upgrades look a little bit like that but their shield doesn't actually have lightning. I believe the reason that they change back to their in-game models is just so that they suffer appropriately high casualties for the weak, unupgraded ones you'll actually have to play the mission with. Cythereal posted:I'm not sure about the finest, but it's certainly a really good story that benefits from its choice of setting well. We're about to embark on the longer, drunker brother of the Odyssey and Aeneid. But with competent and likable characters who sometimes succeed at things without divine intervention! Asehujiko posted:When you get there, will you show off the spectacularly cheesy strategy for the last titans expansion mission that doesn't require user input for most of it's duration in a (sped up) side video? Not sure which one you mean; there are a LOT of ways to trivialize the final level hard enough that you can wreck Kronos's base if you want to. Melth fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Jan 2, 2017 |
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Jan 2, 2017 19:46
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Asehujiko posted:Nothing that would require good micro or skill at the game, you can just wall off one of the trees with the forest god power and there's nothing red team can do against it. Oh there's some even easier options. Poil posted:The easiest mission you don't even need to make any units at all beyond what the mission objectives say, but if really you to want one type is more than enough even on titan. The difficulty is all over the place. Hmmm, we might be thinking of the same mission. You need two bird cages. Yeah, the difficulty is all over. There's stuff that some people think is literally impossible to win with a frontal assault and then there's Priests: the Movie where you can't lose. SirSamVimes posted:You didn't know about the delete unit function? That means you missed out on the joy of selecting your entire army and mashing delete when the victory screen came up. It's worse than that! Like there's a 'kill this unit' option in the unit commands you can bring up for military units. I knew you could kill those guys. But that isn't available for buildings or peasants or the like. I assumed that was deliberate, like you were not supposed to be able to take back and replace things like Fortresses and towers that have a defined maximum allowed. My false notion that you couldn't get rid of and replace those things shaped my whole strategy for some missions.
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Jan 2, 2017 22:22
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Cythereal posted:This thread made me dig out my discs for the first time in years, and I forgot terrain deformation is a thing. I'm not sure if it's possible for Heka Gigantes to turn terrain downright impassible, but they're building a heck of a mountain at the key chokepoint leading to my wonder. One thing I do know about Heka Gigantes is that all their terrain deformations can be instantly undone by building something on or near the spot. HannibalBarca posted:Just reinstalled to play a 2v2 against the AI with Astroclassicist, but the game crashed before the Decisive Battle. Sad! That's actually not a god power, it's just a perk of Kronos. Quite useful though definitely! You'll see me do some of that later. For the record, his god power actually un-builds YOUR barracks (or fortress or whatever). It's amazing in multiplayer and singleplayer both because you can basically just delete any two buildings that aren't a town center or a wonder. The person gets their money back, but it's still a huge advantage that can easily win the whole match- or force the opponent to double build anything important. Later on the Atlanteans have some really weak god powers, but their archaic age stuff is sweet. Oh and I haven't ever played co-op multiplayer (just supremacy matches in the original) so I don't actually know how it's done in the extended edition or whatever, but I'd be up for multiplayer co-op if people want.
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Jan 3, 2017 03:53
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Cythereal posted:Good to know! The friendly AI in this game is also surprisingly robust, once I finished my wonder my two AI teammates started sending troops to help defend it while the enemy team AI locked its attention on the wonder. Wonders I think I can identify: Zeus: Temple of Zeus at Olympia, one of the original 7 wonders of the world. Poseidon: Hades: the Mausoleum probably, also one of the original 7 wonders and where we get our word 'mausoleum' from. Ra: Great Pyramid, one of the original 7 wonders of the world Isis: Great Sphinx (not exactly to scale with the pyramid) Set: Credit to Orv, it's Abu Simbel. All I knew was it was some famous temple way up the Nile. Odin: Credit to Orv, it's probably Valhalla. I agree that it bears no actual resemblance whatsoever to the mythological original. Thor: Some kind of giant tree that's maybe Yggdrassil? Not that that scale makes any sense, but why would that stop them? Loki: I think probably Naglfar, the ship made of the fingernails of the dead which Loki was going to sail to Ragnarok, bringing all the giants. Kronos: Oranos: Gaia: Fu Xi: Forbidden City Nu Wa: Shennong: Melth fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Jan 3, 2017 |
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Jan 3, 2017 04:37
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LordHippoman posted:I'm always impressed by the way you manage to take the worst situations and blow through them. That FE7 LP was mindblowing for me as someone who loves that game but is very bad at it. Thanks, I quite appreciate that! anilEhilated posted:I was thinking more along the lines of setting Arkantos up as an unreliable narrator would help deal with all the mythological inconsistencies he stumbles into. I don't think we really need any kind of unreliable narrator explanation here. They're just trying to tell a fun story with a few familiar characters having an ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny because lots of people have thoughts about whether Odin could take Zeus in a fight even though the question makes less than no sense to begin with. This is clearly not meant to be set on Earth or to bear anything but superficial resemblance to any Earth mythologies. I mean, the world maps aren't actually accurate, there's these giant Atlantis islands, etc. It's also not even trying to make sense. You can have vikings slug it out with Egyptian laser crocodiles on the banks of Chinese rivers with no attempt at explaining how they might have existed in the same time, let alone the same place, let alone a place 4000 miles away from both of their homelands. (This is unlike, say, Warcraft or Starcraft which often go out of their way to create story scenarios to explain why factions of every race could be fighting every race including themselves on just about every continent/planet). And besides the addition of original characters and the merging of several directly and completely incompatible pantheons, many of the mythologically-derived characters make no attempt to be similar to the original versions. And this is pretty much acknowledged with, for example, the notes about how Prometheus was totally a swell guy in the original myths, but this game's Prometheus just wants revenge. Within its own ad hoc setting, events and characters generally make sense and are consistent though so that's fine with me. For that matter, it is NOT like there was any sort of rigorously defined canon to the original Greek, Egyptian, Norse, or Chinese mythologies. The Chinese couldn't even make up their mind about who was included in the Three Emperors and Five Sovereigns were. Ancient Egypt existed for about 3000 years in which their religion changed numerous times. Gods were added, gods were forgotten, gods were re-characterized, gods were merged with each other at random. Several of the gods in this game were not worshiped at the same time. The Greek mythological timeline makes less than no sense, even in terms of whether whole eras like the 'golden age' and 'silver age' actually happened in any particular myth. And people like Herodotus just wrote their own fanfics in which the events of the stories were totally different, while Plato claimed that all the Greek gods existed but every myth about them was clearly false because they portrayed the gods as whimsical and bad whereas he knew for a fact that they were wise and good. And even individual stories were often told several ways to begin with. So there's not really a 'correct' version of the mythologies as a whole to get wrong in the first place.
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Jan 3, 2017 19:56
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Mzbundifund posted:That's basically all of them. Poseidon really is constantly awful though. I don't think anyone but Hera is more consistently petty, mean-spirited, vengeful, and murderous. Cythereal posted:One mythologically accurate note I do love about this game, though, is Hades. Hades in modern media tends to be more or less Satan in a toga, but while a Greek god is one of the primary antagonists behind the scenes in this game, it's not Hades. Sure, hostile Greek factions tend to worship him, but that's nothing on Hades himself. Like in Greek myth, Hades is essentially a neutral, dutiful god who never shirks his responsibilities. The actual antagonistic Greek god is likewise one with a well established track record of being a major dick in Greek myth. I do like their treatment of Hades, though I can't agree that the original Hades was dutiful or never shirked his responsibilities. He was a total softie who let just about anyone traipse in or out of the underworld. Or borrow his giant three headed dog. Or tie death up and stuff him in a closet.
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Jan 3, 2017 22:29
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anilEhilated posted:Honestly, the only gods I can think of that weren't complete dicks were Hades, Hephaestus and maybe Athena (whom I only really recall messing with Arachne but she really had it coming). Hestia was one of the original 6 Olympians with Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus and she was basially the goddess of family and everyday decency. At every sacrifice she was usually given the first portion since she was the oldest. All the myths about her are her being determinedly reasonable and conciliatory. I think you're right about Hephaestus as far as I can remember. Hades was somewhere between a kidnapper and a rapist, but admittedly only the one time so he does look good compared to every other god. And he did seem to treat Persephone respectfully in all later myths. Athena is actually pretty nasty. I mean, she's as nutty as Hera about wanting to massacre everyone in Troy for exactly the same stupid reason (and she was just as venal in trying to bribe Paris/Alexander). And then she assaults several other gods directly or tells Diomedes to. And then she switches sides to massacre random Greeks to punish them for not killing mini-Ajax even though the reason they didn't kill him was that they were afraid of offending her by killing him in her temple- and even though they made that choice based on her favorite Diomedes's instructions about what she'd want. She didn't do anything to Diomedes or mini-Ajax himself though. Throughout the Odyssey she's pointlessly a jerk to random people or helps Odysseus be one. There was Arachne and also Medusa in cases of petty vengeance and murder too. Melth fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Jan 3, 2017 |
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Jan 3, 2017 23:43
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Poil posted:
I think I remember Castlevania: Circle of the Moon having 'Gorgons' that were also big weird bulls with breath that turned you to stone. Then later there was a palette swap called a Catoblepas. Now a catoblepas WAS supposed to be a bull critter that turned people to stone, but I haven't the faintest idea why they decided gorgons were the same thing.
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Jan 4, 2017 00:19
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Wayne posted:That goes back to D&D, actually. Gorgons and medusae were both in the original Monster Compendium and gorgons were poison-smoke-breathing bull monsters even back then. I think it's safe to say anybody working on games like this and HoM&M probably has some D&D under their belts. Ah ha! Yeah, I do remember seeing 'gorgons' as clear catoblepas renames complete with metal hides in the 3.5 Monster Manual too (I never used that book much though, I always preferred making up my own monsters or better yet just having human enemies). And from that article it sounds like he basically just got it from this lousy source Topsell who himself inexplicably stated that a gorgon was a rename of a catoblepas. That guy sounds worse than Herodotus. Smiling Knight posted:There is an excellent moment near the end of the Odyssey where Odysseus in disguise as a beggar encounters one of the suitors, Amphinomus. Amphinomus is actually a pretty decent guy, and Odysseus decides to warn him that it would be a good idea to skip town. Athena, however, is having none of this, and forces Amphinomus to stay and be killed. Despite being nominally on Odysseus' side, Athena really doesn't care about what he thinks or wants. He is a trophy or a particularly favored pet, nothing more. I think that's a good but somewhat incomplete analysis of the appearances of the gods in the Iliad, though I think you're being unfair to Athena in the Odyssey. There's a lot wrong with what she does, but she's pretty consistently helpful and sometimes even kind to not just Odysseus but his whole family and prevents further fighting once all the real enemies are dead. Returning to the Iliad, I think there are a lot of other moments where the hijinks of the gods are treated with utter seriousness and I'm pretty sure I remember other moments where these absurd, petty, and pointlessly cruel gods are described as just and righteous. Certainly it is explicitly stated in the Odyssey that it's improper to blame or question the gods. Wayne posted:Going back a bit, Melth, did you ever get any advice on a mic? It mostly depends on your price range, but Blue Yeti's Snowball is kind of the gold standard in cheap USB mics; I use an Audio-Technica 2500 (which has better quality but worse self-noise, so...), and those are $50 and $75 respectively. You might seriously just Google for "best condenser mic" and "$price range" and see what the Internet suggests, heh. Good to have you back. Thanks for the advice, I hadn't gotten much about mics. And thanks, it's good to be back.
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Jan 4, 2017 03:02
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unwantedplatypus posted:Which culture has/had the chillest gods? Of the in-game cultures or like worldwide? I'll assume in-game. I mean actually a lot of the Egyptian ones were nice and helpful. Set and Sekmet (who was sent by Ra who was otherwise a good fellow) being exceptions. I know a bit less about Chinese mythology and the thing about it is that it was heavily influenced by a bunch of other religions like Buddhism over time, which the AoM version doesn't really separate out. But I think most of the gods were benevolent. But really, I'm not sure why the Aesir have been getting so much flak. Sometimes they're foolish and Thor in particular gets pranked by giants a lot because he's kind of dumb and hangs out too much with the actually even dumber in most myths Loki, but they're not bad to humans in any of the myths I can think of. A lot of them are quite heroic and Odin goes around righting mortal wrongs. And despite being mortal and knowing they'll all really die and be gone forever if they try, they still fight giants and monsters and sacrifice hands and eyes and eventually their lives so that there can be a better world for new humans and a few of the gentler gods after Ragnarok. Only two of them screw things up. There's Loki who's terrible and who they eventually imprison because they're finally more tired of his terribleness than they are determined to honor Odin's oath with him. But he's not even an Aesir; both his parents were giants. And there's Freyr who stupidly decides to give up his super sword in the process of trying to marry a giantess. Which will screw everyone over at Ragnarok because now he'll lose his fight against Surtr, the super monster they were counting on him to kill but be killed by in this whole chess piece for chess piece trade of gods for monsters they were planning on. So Surtr will destroy everything and there'll only be a few survivors and it's all Freyr's fault and the other gods irritably remind him of how badly he ruined everything from time to time. But he's not even an Aesir either, he's one of their lame Vanir cousins. So if you ask me, it's actually hard to top the Aesir.
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Jan 4, 2017 05:45
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Orv posted:Are we going to ignore the various family members cooked into stews, the backfiring beastiality plans, the various illegitimate children of Loki, and so on and so forth? I grant that the Aesir, as a whole, are not huge dicks. But if you dig into the smaller stories they do some hosed up poo poo on the regular. But like their victims are giants or other gods rather than humans. And again, yeah, Loki is behind everything bad that happens in the universe, but he's not even one of them. And they cast him out and tie him to a rock with a snake dripping poison on his face until the end of the world for his crimes. And more immediately for ruining an awesome party, but mostly for his crimes!
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Jan 4, 2017 06:03
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Orv posted:
Don't worry, I'm only racist against the lame giants that aren't on fire. So as a follow up to my previous investigation of true Fire Giant damage, I wondered how strong their secret 3x multiplier made them in practical terms. So I did a TON of myth unit vs myth unit testing to see directly how strong an upgraded (Granite Blood) Fire Giant is compared to the others. Vs. Greeks: An upgraded Fire Giant easily wins 1v1 against any lesser age myth unit. It even beats fully upgraded Colossi, which are supposedly the biggest and strongest unit in the game. This is not even getting into how Fire Giants are faster than Colossi and could therefore kite them to death without a scratch. A Medusa, of course, can instant kill a Fire Giant same as it can kill everything else. But it’s notable that a Fire Giant can kill a Medusa in less time than the Medusa’s cooldown. Upgraded Chimeras beat Fire Giants (though they’re badly injured). The upgraded Chimera is, despite being relatively unknown, the true most powerful myth unit in the game for fighting myth units. And it's just amazing for other purposes too. It deals massive damage, has huge HP, great armor, great speed, one of the best area attacks in the game, and has enormous bonus damage against its fellow myth units. Accept no substitutes. Vs. Egyptians: An upgraded Fire Giant easily wins 1v1 against any lesser age myth unit. It tears Phoenixes apart. Now granted Phoenixes are terrible anyway, but a Fire Giant beats them especially hard. Fire Giants actually beat Avengers, which are another extremely powerful unit with major bonuses vs other myth units and which also have high hack attack and hack armor. That was a really close fight though. Like with a Medusa, the Mummy’s ability can instant kill a Fire Giant but a Fire Giant can kill a Mummy in less time than the cooldown, so don’t stick around to fight another of the giants if you're using Mummies. Vs. Norse: the Fire Giant beats MOST lesser age myth units. I was actually startled by how easily they trashed Battle Boars and Giant-Killer (Guess not) Einherjar since those guys have really serious hack armor and Battle Boars are just nice all around. However, Frost Giants win effortlessly against Fire Giants due to their freeze ability which might as well be an instant kill for this purpose. And unlike Mummies and Medusae, these guys can take the heat. Fire Giants crush Fenris Wolves, beat Mountain Giants, and are of course tied against themselves. Now here’s the crazy bit: a single Fire Giant will do 90% damage to Nidhogg before dying. Nidhogg is REALLY bad but that's one of the clearest demonstrations of it I've ever seen. Vs. Atlanteans:The Atlanteans actually have by far the most options for beating Fire Giants. For starters, the Traitor and Chaos god powers which normally are weak were just made to deal with heavy myth units like these. The Atlanteans have some god powers that spawn units, so I tested Fire Giants against those as well just to be complete. Carnivora get wrecked. 5 Dryads from a Hesperides tree all get wrecked. A whole pack of Tartarian Spawn get wrecked. But in terms of standard units, the Fire Giant as usual does beat all lesser age myth units. This includes Stymphalian Birds, which are normally great against myth units, because Fire Giants laugh at pierce damage. But then in the mythic age, an Argus can of course instant kill a Fire Giant with its ability. Lampades are maybe even better since they can make the Fire Giant turn on its former allies (though of course in this 1v1 test the result is just that the Fire Giant goes neutral and then rips the Lampades apart). More interestingly, a Heka Gigantes actually just beats a Fire Giant in a fight. Heka Gigantes started off powerful when the game came out and then were buffed again and again until only an upgraded Chimera is stronger. And heck, even the upgraded Chimera isn’t strictly better since the Heka Gigantes is, bar none, THE most powerful siege unit in the game. Vs. Chinese: The Fire Giant beats most lesser age myth units, but actually will juuuuuust barely lose to an upgraded Jiangshi. This is less because Jiangshi are actually good and more because their upgraded HP stealing ability lends itself to 1v1 matches. A pack of Jiangshi vs Fire Giants with each focus firing results in a slaughter of the Jiangshi. Fire Giants beat Vermillion birds, though they take substantial damage. They beat unupgraded White Tigers and unupgraded Azure Dragons, but just barely. Upgraded White Tigers and Azure dragons tend to win with about 2 HP left, though the fight can go the other way too. Now all of these were 1v1 matches rather than cost-effectiveness matches. In most cases, that would make no difference because most other myth units cost only slightly less than a Fire Giant- or they’re worthless little fragile guys that a Fire Giant would easily beat a pack of due to its area of effect special attack. There were a few interesting cost-effectiveness matchups though. Automata lost but juuuust barely, and a single extra Automata (which wouldn’t be far above price parity) would swing the fight easily. Which matters because the surviving Automata can then fix up the ‘dead’ ones for a zero casualty win. I also tested Fenris Wolves just to prove that they’re as worthless as ever. And indeed, a cost-matched pack of them gets crushed same as a lone one. Since I’d proved before that the Fire Giant is secretly one of very few myth units to do full damage to heroes, I was also interested in seeing how Fire Giant vs hero matchups went. Amusingly, it turns out that Fire Giants actually stomp on any heroes that do pierce damage due to their spectacular 80% pierce armor rating. Mythic age fully upgraded Odysseus and Hyppolyta and Chiron all die 1v1 (but inflict some decent damage). And these are Greek heroes which are supposed to be the strongest! Atlantean hero Turmas and Arcuses are even more helpless since they also do pierce damage but are much weaker. With the Egyptians I found that a single Fire Giant was able to slaughter 1 Mythic Age non-Nephthys Pharaoh and then 5 Priests in succession before the sixth Priest took him down. Note that this isn't 7v1, just a series of 1v1 fights to see how many it would take. The Fire Giant is actually cost effective vs non-Nephthys Priests if you ignore favor. Nephthys’s massive bonuses to Priests and Pharaohs and particularly her upgrade that makes both better at fighting myth units swings things the other way though. A few priests still lose badly, but her Pharaohs are like 4x better than normal overall, so one of them can beat a Fire Giant. But Fire Giants don’t have that kind of edge against heroes with hack type attack. A lone, upgraded Hersir (or Hero of Ragnarok) will flatten a Fire Giant, as will a Chinese Immortal or any of the normal Greek melee heroes. Oh or the Son of Osiris, but that almost goes without saying. Jarls get wrecked, even when maximally upgraded as Thor and everything. I have never understood the hype of Jarls. For the Atlanteans, Citizen heroes lose but that’s ok because they’re a darned villager and they deal heavy damage anyway. Katapeltes and Oracles can be officially inducted to the hall of shame because they lose to fire giants even when maximally upgraded. Katapeltes are one of the most worthless units in the game in general because Murmillo do their one rare job better in some cases and are a thousand times more versatile. Murmillo heroes actually do NOT do well in this fight though. In fact, they're likely to juuuust barely lose and leave the Fire Giant with 2-3 HP. The reason is that Murmillo heroes actually have a really sub-par damage multiplier vs myth units compared to other heroes, and their base damage just isn’t amazing. Contarius heroes win with about 30% HP left despite having bad hack armor because their damage is preposterously high when fully upgraded. Destroyers also win with about 30% despite being bad in a fight just because their secret damage multiplier is the highest for absolutely no reason. And Fanatics win the easiest with about 40% HP left due to spectacular damage with a real multiplier and good HP and hack armor to begin with. It’s worth noting though that even the Fanatic is barely keeping up with Hersir, Immortals, and Greek melee heroes. Those guys all have better multipliers and armor. So what does all of this mean? Well it’s no great surprise for a mythic age unit to beat heroic or classical age ones, so nevermind that for now. There are a total of 10 mythic age land myth units which do not have instant kills. When upgraded, Fire Giants beat 4 of them, ties or virtually ties 4, and loses to 2. A Fire Giant is one of the more expensive myth units, but it’s not the priciest. So it’s high in power, high in price and thus pretty well balanced vs its fellow myth units in 1v1 matchups. But the game isn’t 1v1 matchups. In a real battle, the Fire Giant has some very critical advantages and disadvantages. Its chief disadvantage is being slow. Not catastrophically so if you can get Bragi for the Thurisaz Rune upgrade, but somewhat slow. One initial advantage to note is that it’s incredibly versatile. It deals massive damage to human soldiers, siege units, myth units, flying units, AND buildings and isn’t even weak vs heroes. There is no target in the whole game the Fire Giant is bad against. Even Chimeras and Heka Gigantes can’t say that. Its chief advantage though is being ranged. This is tremendously useful for a slow, bulky unit since it means all your Fire Giants can immediately start contributing instead of milling about uselessly like many myth units will. It also means Fire Giants can effectively focus fire, whereas most myth units can’t- so in groups they will actually be able to mow down many of these myth units which beat or tie them individually. Being ranged also means they can wield their area of effect special more easily than many other myth units that have one (like Avengers, Chimeras, Heka Gigantes, or Azure Dragons) can, though their special is not by any means the most powerful. And it helps them in their role as building destroyers since many other siege myth units struggle to actually get into melee with buildings they need to take down. Perhaps even more importantly, being ranged is defensively great. A Fire Giant is a major, expensive investment and the Norse in particular do not like to lose myth units. Since the Fire Giant is ranged, it can be kept safely behind the front line. It is critical to note that nearly all ranged units in the game have pierce attacks- which do barely any damage against a Fire Giant’s massive pierce armor. Even ranged heroes struggle to hurt a Fire Giant and they must walk dangerously close to the front line to have a chance to try. So it’s really easy to keep Fire Giants alive just by keeping a screen of other units between them and the enemy. Thus a lot of the supposed hard-counters to Fire Giants -melee heroes and myth units with instant kill abilities- actually will have trouble engaging at all. Arguses and Lampades and Frost Giants in particular must be nearly next to their target to use their specials and are not fast, so one can easily protect Fire Giants from them long enough to kill them. Mummies and Medusae and Perseus remain dangerous. So does the Son of Osiris, who is nearly unique in dealing hack damage at range. To a lesser extent, so does Bellerophon who can jump right over the front line and is quite powerful. Count them up though: 5 practical unit counters to the Fire Giant. And guess what? Only Zeus can ever get Medusae or Bellerophon. Only Osiris grants the Son of Osiris or Mummies (and Osiris is unavailable to Set and a painful choice for Isis). Only Hades grants Perseus, and there can only be one of him. In other words, most civilizations HAVE no clear counter to Fire Giants available as long as the giants' owner keeps them in the rear. So the Fire Giant is not be the most powerful combat machine myth unit in the game, but it’s the most versatile. Many of its supposed counters are ineffective or impractical against it, meanwhile it is strong against literally everything in the game other than heroes- and isn’t even weak against those.
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Jan 4, 2017 08:01
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Dinictus posted:I'm kind of on the fence about this game. I mean, it's a wonderfully made product of its time. It is going to be a bonkers ride with regards to its story. And this LP will feature more information behind the veil of the stats and the performance, and some lovely info on mythology from other fans of the material. But poo poo like this would make me pull my hair out in frustration. Game balance being this muddy, complicated and evasive just is not fun, and I both am enjoying and am boggled at the effort people like yourself and others have made just to more effectively play this game. I think it's worth noting that, as Orv said, a lot of this doesn't really matter that much. If you follow the basic counters the game tells you about and make sensible decisions, you'll generally do just fine. There are exceptions like the silliness of spearmen only having a 10% bonus against cavalry. That's ridiculous when we're told they're only good against cavalry and when the other units with similar descriptions trained by the same building have 300% bonuses. And having a unit like a Fire Giant secretly do triple damage (or better) all the time is kind of an issue too. My impression of the AoM community is that they've never been all that fact-based and they tend to make decisions based on gut feelings or anecdotal evidence of what beats what rather than numbers- which is actually a good approach when so much about the in-game numbers is wrong. For me as a guy who's into game design though, yeah this is ridiculous. When I make a game, I try to provide players all the information they need in a convenient and organized manner so they can make intelligent decisions instead of guesses and gut reactions. I hate opaque or falsely described mechanics in other games I play that have them- talking about them was part of my Civ 2 Let's Play and a smaller part (because most mechanics are on the table or at least easy to figure out) in Fire Emblem. One mitigating factor here though is that at least there are some semi-convenient ways to test things and learn the truth.
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Jan 5, 2017 00:44
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HannibalBarca posted:What's a good counter to massed laser crocodiles? Asking (honest) for a friend. I know that, like all myth units, they get wrecked by heroes, but it can be hard to break through the chaff to get to them. Is it simply a matter of not letting the laser crocs get massed, given the fact that they're fairly expensive? Well as in many things, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure, but telling you not to let them get massed is about as helpful as telling you to use heroes. Particularly because Petsuchos aren't *that* expensive. Do note though that the Egyptians can really struggle before the heroic age, so it's good to hammer them early (particularly on gold) and try to prevent them from easily building their Migdol stronghold and such. That's what lets them build real units afterall. Let's talk about the Petsuchos's actual stats. Well their nominal damage is a HUGE 55 pierce plus a bit of crush damage. But actually they attack only once per 3 seconds or so on my watch so their true DPS seems to be about 18 pierce. Very nice, but not amazing on its own. They have enormous range and they NEVER miss, which is a serious bonus. Further, they do secret double damage to myth units. They do not have ANY bonus against buildings, so they're not actually great siege units. And they do QUARTER damage to heroes, not the usual 50%. All in all a very nice single target attack with some good perks, but not incredible. Their speed is pretty bad, but not terrible. Their durability is pretty bad for their age but not the worst. It's important to note that their hack and pierce armor are about the same, so they have no clear strength or weakness there. So they're not fast and not durable and they've got no special attacks or anything, but they're not awful in those areas either. And that's a very nice attack. What to do? Well, the Petsuchos suffers against opponents with high pierce armor. Despite it being heroic age and having a bonus against myth units, even some classical myth units can beat it if they have high pierce armor. Upgraded Valkyries or Sphinxes easily can for starters since they have even bigger anti-myth unit bonuses. Quite a few heroic age myth units with good pierce armor can often beat it in fights- Battle Boars, Frost Giants, etc. It also is REALLY bad against heroes. Much worse than most myth units are. And unlike many ranged myth units, it has mediocre pierce armor, so ranged heroes can tear it up pretty fast. So when I say 'use heroes' I'm not just saying that as generic anti-myth unit advice; heroes really do beat up on Petsuchos more than most other myth units. But because it never misses, cavalry is not a good counter to it- unlike to many ranged units. One upshot is that the Norse are definitely better off using Hersir than Jarls because the Hersir will barely be scratched by their quarter damage, but the Jarls can be terribly injured before they even get close. Now you talked about the trouble of breaking through the chaff to get to them- definitely a big problem. But what IS the chaff? That makes a lot of difference. Are these chariot archers? Elephants? Camelry? Spearmen and slingers or something? You also didn't tell me what civilization this friend plays as, so I'll try to give a bit of advice for all possible matchups- but first some general strategy ideas. One interesting way of looking at this situation is to think about what the opponent is missing instead of what he has. Petsuchos means the opponent picked Hathor. But Hathor kind of sucks other than in granting Petsuchos. This guy does not have Nephthys's awesome Ancestors god power to turn the tide of battle. Or Nephthys's massive upgrades for pharaohs and priests- and if his pharaoh dies, he's dead a LONG time. Less importantly, his human soldiers can't get Sekhmet's attack bonus upgrades. And all gold spent on crocs is gold not spent on priests or on migdol units. Investing heavily in crocs means he's probably going to have less variety and less numbers for human soldiers. And fewer priests. So this guy doesn't have strong priests, strong pharaohs, or particularly numerous priests. Petsuchos are still dangerously good against myth units themselves, but only to a point. It's also forth thinking about the relative speed of his units. Petsuchos are slow, whereas the main advantage of some important Egyptian units like Chariot Archers or Camelry is that they're fast. If you fight on the ground of his choosing then you can't exploit that and you're out of options. Do NOT fight on the ground of his choosing. You don't want to be fighting his army in his base, but you REALLY don't want to be fighting his army just outside YOUR base where you have no room to maneuver and his guys are already in formation. Instead, make him defend a frontier outpost or a gold mine outside his base. Or if he's there already, force him to run to defend his main base instead. Put him on the defensive and force him to walk a long way to do so. If he has to go a long way, then either his quick guys will arrive without their precious crocs and you can defeat his army piece by piece (maybe having some heroes come up behind and massacre the isolated crocs) or he'll have to be slow to respond to keep the army all together with the slow crocs. In that case, you can do some damage and leave. But maybe his human soldiers are instead mainly elephants? In that case, his army is REALLY slow and not maneuverable. And he'll have a very hard time taking down heroes that sneak around to flank his crocs instead of just rushing in. He'll also have a hard time moving around if you send a decoy raid to one location and then slam somewhere else with your main force. If they're axemen or spearmen then they're not as slow, but they're weak to archers and he'll definitely have trouble focus firing heroes. If they're mainly slingers, then his whole army relies on pierce damage and is bad against heroes. As Atlanteans: This is easy. Hero Arcuses have the same range as Petsuchos and will destroy them. If he's got lots of Chariot Archers, then go Hero Turmas instead and you're super-effective against his whole army. Go Prometheus for cheap heroes and then I can see arguments for all the heroic age choices but none of them are that amazing regardless. Just focus on making sure your human soldiers can beat his human soldiers while your Arcuses or Turmas easily clean up his Petsuchos. As Egyptians: Still fairly easy because Priests also can have the same range as Petsuchos and rip them apart. Go Nephthys if you can and make sure to get armory upgrades (especially the pierce armor ones). Your main concern will be protecting your priests from his chariot archers, so you'll probably want a lot of slingers and maybe elephants. Use Ancestors to win the decisive battle. Sucks to be using Hathor! As Greeks: Here you'll actually have some trouble. Your ranged hero is your best friend, but you only have one of them. Get the other heroes too and try to find ways to sneak them around to flank. I'd probably recommend Aphrodite since Nemean Lions destroy Petsuchos and will help chew up the human soldiers that threaten your ranged hero. And Curse can help you win a decisive battle. Apollo for Manticores is not such a good choice since Petsuchos beat them, but it's still not a terrible idea since Underworld Passage can give you the kind of mobility edge that helps render the slow crocs ineffective. Or ambush them. Dionysus just for Bronze could also work if you've definitely got a really big, strong army of human soldiers and you want to force a giant battle. But if you use it at a time when he can run away you're really in trouble. As Norse: The Norse have just got nothing in terms of ranged heroes and that's bad. Here I really recommend that you go on the offensive early with a rush and keep the pressure on. Get Heimdall to nix one of his early towers. If you're not doing that, then Forseti for the major speed boost. Now the Norse actually have a TON of myth units that can beat up on Petsuchos, but the trouble is that you have to get the favor for them by fighting. So again, you benefit a lot from raiding early and continuing to fight throughout the classical. And for goodness' sake don't go Njord! Frost or Flaming Weapons could both let you win a major battle, and you really need that ace up your sleeve. As Chinese: The Chinese also have no ranged heroes, but they can enjoy a substantial mobility edge since they have mounted units that beat infantry, cavalry, AND archers. Use that to your advantage. Compared to the Norse, one key edge is that you can get favor without fighting all the time, so you don't HAVE to rush. Several of your heroic age myth units are quite good against Petsuchos due to their high pierce armor, so get plenty of those and exploit the enemy's relative shortage of priests. Your weakness is that you don't really have any super god powers available.
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Jan 5, 2017 05:09
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The next video is finished: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rth5yGf3ezk It took me a while this time since I spent a lot of hours trying to make sure the sound was better than last time. Do people have any thoughts about ways the commentary could be further improved, or things that are already good about it to keep doing?
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Jan 7, 2017 15:42
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Thanks, everyone, for the tips and suggestions. Please do keep letting me know ways I can improve or ways I have improved that I should keep doing as I go along. To the person who suggested I be less formal by the way, I'll try (and I'll also keep trying to get slower, though this already feels unnaturally slow to me) but that's just how I talk most of the time. I really even say things like 'Let's talk about X' in everyday conversations. I've come up with a very nice plan for the next mission, and I'm hoping to post that on Monday. I'm going to post one mission every Monday evening from now on, at least until I figure out whether that's too fast or too slow.
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Jan 8, 2017 01:54
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Emperordaein posted:If some of Age of Empires III's missions are any indication, i'm wondering if we'll see alot of quick base building to ward off a huge early enemy attack. Because I noticed that speed building was a big part of the early game of your video, like you need to have your moves set up in advance. That actually does make me wonder. Is there any mission where you can get screwed by random chance? anilEhilated posted:I've got something for you to talk in another video: you seem to play for maximum efficiency (army to pop cap and so on), what's the idea behind the numbers you use? How many villagers in average for a resource, how many villagers can pray and not be wasted manpower, what's the minimum army sizes you'd use? How to handle the early game and how many villagers to have are complicated questions, and the singleplayer answers are different from the multiplayer answers. Indeed, some singleplayer maps are different from others so you'll see me take several approaches to different levels. In multiplayer, most sensible players will say you want 15-20 villagers per basic resource in the late game. Some silly people will claim that you should have 25+ for each resource, with some of the silliest saying that the Atlantean race is worthless because they can only get 75 pop worth of villagers while other civs can get 80. The first problem with this is that he's overlooking that the Atlanteans can get another 10 hero Citizens for +40 pop, thereby vastly exceeding the Greeks and Egyptians and Chinese. And by this absurd logic the Norse are the indisputable best in the game since they can have 80 Gatherers plus 40 Dwarves. But really, having more than 75 pop of villagers is going to be terrible in most games because your income will vastly exceed any possible expenditures, so most of them are worthless. Meanwhile, your population is hard-capped at like 160 on most maps unless you're crushing the opponent already, so you're really hampering your army size. And if there's one thing I am going to prove to you guys before this is over, it's that in this game a very big army can run over an infinitely rich, continuously retrained, but smaller one. If your tactics are good anyway.
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Jan 8, 2017 23:47
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Dakona posted:Your write-ups and explanations about the game are a fascinating read, Melth. Thanks, I'm always glad to hear that people like these things, and particularly that they're interesting or thought-provoking. Smiling Knight posted:Saw the mission two video. Audio was much improved. The pacing worked out fine for me; you seemed to have just the exact right amount of content. It never seemed to drag. But as others have said, it might be a good idea to fast forward through the base-building sections in the future. And thank you for pointing that out. Since before starting the LP I've been pondering how to balance explaining everything for people who may have no AoM experience vs. not boring people with massive mechanics exposition. I've been trying to talk in detail about roughly one mechanical or strategic element per mission, plus give at least a little explanation of the hundreds of things going on (I said last mission was going to be hectic more because there were a plethora of new things to talk about than because it actually required much micro beyond the first 30 seconds). I do have a plan for when to talk about walls (mission 5, where they're quite handy and you need big ones for the first time). It's very helpful though to hear what people have questions about or plausibly might have questions about so that I don't end up taking things for granted and never explaining them. Emperordaein posted:That actually does make me wonder. Is there any mission where you can get screwed by random chance? I just finished recording the next mission and it took me no less than 23 takes, in large part due to getting screwed by random chance! There were also a couple of odd happenings that ruined otherwise good takes, like this one time my villagers just wouldn't harvest wood and instead blankly stared at the tree I kept right-clicking. Never saw that before, my only guess is that maybe there was another tree blocking their pathing or something which I just couldn't see due to the camera. And three times I made a single critical mis-click that ruined everything. But all of that was only a problem because I was doing a special speed-run strat I had concocted which had zero margin for error. Under normal circumstances, no, at least in the campaign there is basically no luck. About the only random element is enemy scouting patterns, but that makes virtually no difference since enemy attacks are largely scripted anyway. Or huntable animal random walks maybe but again, that makes virtually no difference. The only real luck based elements are certain god powers that are needlessly random. Over time, many patches removed the pointless randomness from god powers in multiplayer, but the campaign grandfathers in the earliest versions of unit stats as well as god powers. The god powers that were wholly or partly random in non-trivial ways were: Lure (targets random animals across the map over time, may also have a semi-random cap to what it targets), Curse (Affects random number of targets), Lightning Storm (Who gets hit?), Shifting Sands (Affects random number of targets), Locust Swarm (They wander randomly), Ancestors (Spawn positions are random and delayed enough to matter), Tornado (It wanders randomly), Meteor (Who gets hit?), Great Hunt (Affects random number of targets), Walking Woods (They wander randomly), Fimbulwinter (In very large games it hits random town centers), Spider Lair (Placement is random), Chaos (Affects random number of targets), Geyser (Placement is random), and Inferno (It wanders randomly). Theoretically Valor and Call to Arms also hit random targets, but YOU have complete control of who's even in the area so it's only random if you foolishly target it on a giant group instead of the people you actually need it to affect. Most of those powers are less luck-based now than they used to be. Like Great Hunt works on everything in the zone, not just a random %. And the number of people who get Chaosed or Cursed isn't random anymore (but which particular people are affected still is). Meteor, Tornado, etc. are still unpredictable though. Multiplayer/random maps do have their own special luck element in that, of course, the map is randomly generated. And the algorithm for that is very good but does still produce unfair circumstances from time to time. The most extreme I've heard of is one person having more settlements in their zone than the other fellow gets, providing a basically permanent population advantage. Random gold mine placement can also make a lot of difference. And so can stuff that isn't technically luck, but functionally is such as whether the direction you scout just happens to include really important stuff or not.
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Jan 9, 2017 09:17
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Here's a rather remarkable run of the third campaign level: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3dQwDPIIbc From now on, I'm going to update every Monday evening, if not more often.
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Jan 9, 2017 23:08
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Orv posted:Fast Heroics are also a concept in AoM, though they're mostly done by a select few gods, for very specific purposes. A very good Isis FH can clock in around 6:50 (I think that's right, it's been a while. It's under 7:30) and lead to a really ugly situation for the enemy players because of the power of migdol (egyptian castle) units. Yeah, I alluded to Egyptian FH when I was talking about beating Petsuchos and so forth I think. There's a distinction between Fast Heroic and 'straight tech' though. Most FH play I've seen in AoM still involves spending substantial time in classical to get upgrades and build more villagers and this and that. (Egyptians love the safety of their free Classical towers for one thing). But on this map I clicked Armory the second I got to Classical and had multiple people work on it, then clicked Heroic the second the armory finished. That's more like the WC3 strat I was thinking of where Night Elves in particular liked to upgrade their Tree of Life to a Tree of Ages, save up the 200 wood and 300 or so gold needed during the 2 minute or so upgrade time, and then immediately click the button to upgrade to Tree of Eternity the instant the first upgrade finished.
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Jan 10, 2017 16:47
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