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Having to import fairly basic goods like that is one of those things that annoy me when playing city builders, I think that back when I played Caesar III a lot, a long, very long, time ago, I basically only played one map that had my favored structures and resources available, including barbarian invasions. (It was Lugdunum and I'll have you know I remember it being technically possible to bring running water to the hill thing.
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Jun 15, 2021 22:43
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Sometimes it is rather convenient to import cheap stuff rather than deal with producing it yourself. Well maybe not clay but wood and hemp is nice to not bother with.
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Jun 15, 2021 23:40
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SIGSEGV posted:Having to import fairly basic goods like that is one of those things that annoy me when playing city builders, I think that back when I played Caesar III a lot, a long, very long, time ago, I basically only played one map that had my favored structures and resources available, including barbarian invasions. (It was Lugdunum and I'll have you know I remember it being technically possible to bring running water to the hill thing. On the other end, my favorite mechanic in Nebuchadnezzar was that there was no native way to produce copper (or ivory or stone or gold or papyrus or wood or dye or olive oil - really you were importing basically anything that wasn't plants, clay, or refined plants or clay). It's really the heart of your strategy in a lot of ways since it defines what you can get done with your middle and upper classes.
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Jun 16, 2021 01:16
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That's the sort of thing that wouldn't bother me then, because it's not really a removed option, it's just a game mechanic that represents a reality of the thing the game is pretending to simulate. Although it might have bothered younger me a lot, figuring out the trading posts was maybe a bit much for ten years old me who didn't read the manual, so imagine figuring out a raiding, diplomacy and trade menu.
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Jun 16, 2021 01:23
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If it was always the same resource I think it would bother me, but not being able to produce everything at every location is a good thing IMO. Particularly because in a game of this length - 11 scenarios in and we're only just approaching the quarter-pole - they need to mix it up any way they can.
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Jun 16, 2021 02:57
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I wouldn't be terribly bothered if it was silk, gold, silver and so on, it's just that it's for a basic commodity that you need to get past the first stages of building up the city. It makes sense in a campaign, sure, it'd just really bother me in a non campaign map. It'd bother me in a campaign in a different way, but I'd just hate the mission and get to the next one.
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Jun 16, 2021 03:19
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 Valley of Rice (1:37:04) Nearing the end of the Shang Dynasty, we head south where we get to grow rice for the first time. A *lot* of rice. A few gameplay lessons of importance are learned, including 'don't send all your troops out of the city if you value peace'. Other new concepts are Bridges, the long-awaited Acupuncturist, etc. as we move up another tier in housing for the first time in a while. This scenario didn't need to be quite as much of a grind as it was, but it's intended to be quite a long one with another monument at the end capping it off. Next time we'll head north to see how the Shang period wraps up.
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Jul 8, 2021 17:11
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The acupuncturist has a funny animation. A bit unsettling, but funny. Your wood production is slowed down because of the long travel time for the wagon to the trading post. They only carry 100 wood each trip but if they could unload at a nearby warehouse it would collect up to 400 and deliver to sell. Your only stockpile is set to get 400 so it's not doing anything to help. Tax offices, and other wood consumers, have higher priority than trade so you don't need to stockpile any except for monuments. But this is just from my own observations of playing, not exactly a game mechanics expert. Oh and forts don't need inspectors.
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Jul 8, 2021 22:03
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You're right on the forts - I figured that out before, but I often don't remember when playing what needs them and what doesn't. I could have put the loggers closer to the trading stations in this case, but I don't trust the whole warehouse situation. I've seen them sell too much and then run out of a number of commodities if I don't set it to retain a specific amount. With wood you could probably get away with it I suppose, but I think it's safe just to have a stockpile of everything I need.
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Jul 9, 2021 05:50
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Yeah. I suppose you could have two warehouses for wood, one get for the stuff you're expected to need and one accept to collect for trade. But it costs twice as much of course.
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Jul 9, 2021 08:27
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Just bumping so I don't lose the thread for when I eventually get back to this (pending stuff on the Egypt side).
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Sep 14, 2021 07:52
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SIGSEGV posted:Having to import fairly basic goods like that is one of those things that annoy me when playing city builders, I think that back when I played Caesar III a lot, a long, very long, time ago, I basically only played one map that had my favored structures and resources available, including barbarian invasions. (It was Lugdunum and I'll have you know I remember it being technically possible to bring running water to the hill thing. Hill thing? I had a lot of fun with Caesar I and II in my time.
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Oct 10, 2021 17:31
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Mysteries of Giza & the Great Pyramids: A Reasoned Perspective (49:00) Egypt not China obviously, but linking this here as it's also part of the HP project. More relevant for this thread is that I'll now be moving on to the final Shang scenario.
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Oct 26, 2021 14:17
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A Tomb for Lady Hao (50:01) Back with the end of the Shang Dynasty. We have some not-exactly-smooth arrangements to make in Yin for everything to get done, but eventually manage it. More and better elite housing, chariots join our military force, the palace menagerie gets used for the first time, and a new monument structure that involves lots and lots of dirt. Oh, so very much dirt. We've now reached the chronological point where Very Bad Things (tm) happen in the Near East, aka what has come to be known as the Late Bronze Age Collapse. So we need to wrap up Egypt: Old Kingdom before moving on to the Zhou Dynasty in this thread, but when that's happened our China adventures will continue.
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Nov 2, 2021 18:01
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Wait... are all these lp updates done in a chronological order? 
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Nov 2, 2021 22:33
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No, Egypt is something like 1400 years behind China right now. I started them both at about the same time since they were roughly the same technologically. However, my plan is to start doing it more strictly chronologically going forward after the Egypt series is done. Speaking of which, this is a good time for suggestions for the next series in the 'West'. What I Know For Sure ** Emperor, Rise of the Middle Kingdom continues on for another more than two millenia. So we just keep going here as we reach each scenario. ** Something something Bronze Age Collapse. I have a couple of links I'll put up about that, but basically it's been covered far better by others than I'd ever do so I'm not doing another deep dive there. ** Less is said about what happens afterwards, aside from the Greco-Persian wars, Spartans, the later emergence of Alexander the 'Great', etc. Not to get too far ahead, but I plan on doing a bit (shorter than the Pyramids video but still worth exploring) about the developments over the next few hundreds years after the Collapse, empires reforming/rebuilding/recovering, new ones arising - a chaotic and interesting period of history. What I'm Still Pondering ** I don't know any great candidates for games during this period. Marble Age is similar to Egypt: Old Kingdom in style but by all accounts not nearly as good. Troy: Total War is a bit too divorced from reality. ** Zeus could get us into the Greek timeframe; this is probably the best thread to ask if it would be too repetitive with Emperor, both being Impressions city-builders and all. From what little I've seen, it appears to be a bit shorter than Emperor but still quite long, but just more 'compressed'. The years covered appear to be 1150-485 BCE ish. I know there are Zeus fans in this thread; if you think this is a good idea, now's the time to talk me into it. ** Definitely open to considering any other games I don't know about. ** The other plan is to just skip to one of the Total War Rome games, which I want to do eventually anyway. I think the Punic Wars are basically essential from a historical point of view. Best mods are for the original game but I'm told it's not very cooperative with modern OS so ... that's going to be a play it by ear situation when I get to it.
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Nov 3, 2021 02:47
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Have you checked out Nebuchadnezzar?
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Nov 3, 2021 16:45
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I hadn't, but looking at what it offers just now it looks interesting but also would be mostly a step backwards in time and be largely redundant with what we've already covered in the current games. Of the 16 missions (correction, I guess it's actually 13?), 10 are prior to the timeframe I'm really looking for which to my mind is probably too much review. If I knew it was there as an option before, I might have done say Egypt first and then Nebuchadnezzar/Emperor side-by-side or something since they're closer to be the same period. Dunno. Just feels to me like we've spent a lot of time in the growing civilizations/bronze time period and that I should move on to something that spends at least the majority of the experience moving forward in history.
Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Nov 4, 2021 |
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Nov 3, 2021 19:10
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gently caress it, just play TitanQuest. No but to keep going on the city builders I'm the only person on the planet who like Caesar 4 more than Caesar 3, but either would be a good 'classical era' pick.
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Nov 7, 2021 04:56
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Zeus makes a lot of sense to both explore the Hellenic history of that time, as well as Greek mythology in great detail. I think it helps that the cities themselves are persistent through each scenario in a way that Emperor's cities aren't. There are a ton of cool details with the gods, their temples, the statue placement of all things, etc. Poseidon is more alt-history and alt-mythology, but still very fun to explore. Atlantis is always cool, after all. And both of these games have a lot of comedic elements, especially in the scenario designs.
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Nov 8, 2021 12:36
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The point on Zeus is well-taken. Poseidon's definitely in the no category, Atlantis as a legend is fun. As a matter of history, not so much.GuildensternMother posted:but to keep going on the city builders I'm the only person on the planet who like Caesar 4 more than Caesar 3, but either would be a good 'classical era' pick. I want to avoid this becoming Impressions City-Builders; the series. There are some who consider them too repetitive, a valid complaint, and I think a variety of genres serves my goals here better. Could always change my mind but as of now I have no plans to include the Caesar games.
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Nov 9, 2021 08:42
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Quick progress update; 'finished' the script for the Late Bronze Age Collapse video yesterday - tweaks will always happen but most of the research/legwork is now finished and it's on to the technical putting-it-together side.
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Dec 22, 2021 16:01
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Chaos and Carnage: A Broad Perspective on the 'Late Bronze Age Collapse' (23:20) Yep, believe it or not an actual update relating to this thread. My next 'deep dive' will probably not be for at least a solid year, unless I change my mind on what it's going to be; as of now I'm anticipating the Great Wall of China but we're not there yet. Going forward I'll have the odd Emperor video sprinkled in between Zeus scenarios as we move into the Zhou dynasty here, and the classical era in general.
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Feb 26, 2022 16:57
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Strategic Sage posted:
Catching up with the thread, I gotta say you cracked me up with this one. "Now, see, there's ample space and resources to build a bronze/bronzeware/weapon infrastructure here BUT we would have to cut a (1) tree to make it really Feng Shui. And that obviously will not do. So we'll set up diplomatic and logistics lines halfway across China instead, to deliver copper by boats (the making of which positively does not involve cutting a local tree)". What NIMBY bastards, these Zhengzhouans are !
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Feb 27, 2022 08:03
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Regarding the Assyrians and then the Neo-Assyrians, the actual continuity between states gets a little wonky. The Neo-Assyrians of course claim the Assyrian legacy, but they extend a lot faster, in part due to their better technology, iron working makes better weapons, true, also better wagon wheels, since circling them in iron is now possible, so are hobnails and such, allowing control over land on larger distances, but the administrative technology didn't follow, and while there was some effort to prevent rebellion, there was no real integration effort. The collapse of the Neo-Assyrian empire is less of a simple civil war and more an imperial / colonial collapse in which the vassal states finally rise up in synch with each other (as opposed to one at a time, which had doomed all the previous revolts) and basically destroy the Neo-Assyrian empire pretty effectively, despite the Egyptian help, which I believe is basically the one documented loyal vassal. The Neo-Assyrians, or at least their ruling class, were particularly awful people, just profoundly evil, even for their era (you may laugh at the idea things are much better, which, well, fair), incredibly evil people, the original Evil Empire, ready for some edgy Saturday morning cartoons. E: They also created one of the first libraries in the world. State power: pretty useful for things other than violence, but also very good at violence. SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Feb 27, 2022 |
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Feb 27, 2022 23:35
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I knew I could count on you to correct my (limited and summarized) knowledge on that part of the world.
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Feb 27, 2022 23:41
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It's perfectly fine in the video, it's just that I find that specific bunch of assholes absolutely fascinating, just awful, awful people, and also food for thought.
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Feb 27, 2022 23:44
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Do you have a few favorite anecdotes of Neo-Assyrian asshattery? Kobal2 posted:What NIMBY bastards, these Zhengzhouans are ! Nonsense, you :P. Just like zero stone or metal whatsoever are required for building Bronze Smelters. Having cash you see allows one to magically snap their fingers and Watchtowers, Housing, roads magically appear. Or maybe it's just simpler to abstract all that into a single currency resource. Yeah, probably that.
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Mar 3, 2022 04:04
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Neo-Assyrians did some fairly nasty imperial poo poo, like breaking up and relocating entire populations to cut down on rebellion prospects and other not quite unusual things, like mass murder and utterly oppressive taxes, and what appears to be taxes that were deliberately impossible, so next campaign season could have a fun little fight, but there's a number of fairly vile things around in terms of laws and customs. Of course they had what appears to be the standard (in Mesopotamia) rite of the replacement of the king, in case of a bad omen you call the king a farmer and name one guy to be the king for a month or two, you give him a queen and feed him and clothe him, and once the risky period is over you execute him and the queen, how droll. There's the fact that they managed to unite what was at the time their known world against them. (... Except the Egyptians, somehow, oh well, Egypt survived them all the same.) But I really recommend reading the (translated) official royal archives, they are pretty open about using terror tactics against populations all the time (I do not have my big book of those with me right now, so I can't go into detail), also banquets under the eyes of the severed head of the recently defeated enemy king (Pic here, it's the funny looking thing in the tree to the left.), probably very ripe by them.)
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Mar 3, 2022 10:20
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There's a weird tendency among some modern people to talk about being unable to treat anybody from the past as a moral agent, that they were just of their time, but it really is noteworthy how hated the Neo-Assyrians were by their contemporaries. As one historian, I believe Bret Deveraux, used for illustrative purposes about the differences between empires, the Roman empire had a many stage collapse that arguably took over a thousand years to actually see through as people kept fighting to keep Rome alive, the Neo-Assyrians went from largest empire on the planet to gone in under 10 years because none of their subject people were interested in sustaining the empire one the facade cracked. The Egyptian dynasty at that time, 26, was functionally put on the throne by the Neo-Assyrians so not super surprising Psamtik I of Egypt supported the Neo-Assyrians.
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Mar 3, 2022 21:25
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True, however the Babylonian king at the time was an Assyrian prince, the brother of the current Assyrian king and still was a major participant in the destruction of the Neo-Assyrian empire, and didn't try to grab the crown or anything, which really goes to show how much the world hated the fuckers at the time.
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Mar 3, 2022 22:44
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Guh, having more issues on the technical side. I'll update when I'm actually sure what the heck is going on.
Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Mar 17, 2022 |
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Mar 17, 2022 19:17
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Ok so here's the deal: ** I'm not going to be able to do Zeus: Master of Olympus. Sound won't work reliably. A recent Windows update or driver update or somesuch broke it. Tried every reasonable option I can think of and it randomly works once in a great while but other than that, zip nada. I was already going to have to use a widescreen mod to make it work graphically, and combined with the fact that the UI contrasts aren't great and hard to read in places as it is, already doing a similar game in terms of style w/Emperor ... there's just too many strikes against it. ** I've spent the last few days diving down the fairly deep rabbit hole of Hegemony: Gold. It's a mixed but has some really good elements. Best comparison I can make I think is Total War but real-time and simplified. Grindy and tedious (but after the start that just means a sizable chunk of it can be done off-screen), it has some real flaws but also does a good job emphasizing the limitations and challenges/logistics involved in ancient warfare. Three campaigns; first covers the underappreciated Philip II of Macedon and the setup to Alexander the Great, there's a lot of good thematic stuff there. The other two cover the first and third acts of the Peloponnesian War, and the contrast there. A more war-focused title but I don;t think that's necessarily a bad thing in this time period. Emperor will be continuing of course here and there also, but that'll be how I loop in the 'western' part of the tale, and developments in the Greek world that influenced the Romans to follow.
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Mar 21, 2022 18:01
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Hao & Wei (1:11:32) We have quite the re-entry, transitioning into the Zhou dynasty and being required to 'conquer' - more like subdue - multiple neighboring cities for the first time. The game doesn't do us any favors, what with all the ones we need to capture being walled, which are hard to handle without catapults, which we don't have yet. That's a bit of scenario design I could have done without for our first aggressive military venture. A few minutes at the start about what I've found to be a compelling corner of history, the transition between the Shang and Zhou dynasties. If time travel is ever invented, mark this down as a time to *not* visit. The final Shang king, Di Xin, apparently got off to a great start before earning a place of impressive infamy if the tales of his decline are even half right, possibly due to the influence of a wife that may have made Jezebel look kind and congenial by comparison. Didn't get into the detail in the video, but it is said that Di Xin's wife Daji was the originator behind a lovely form of execution in which a hollowed-out bronze cylinder was filled with burning coals until it glowed red, then the victim was tied around it so they were 'hugging' the cylinder, and ... yeah. On the whole killing his uncle thing, the story there is that he had his heart removed in part because it was said that a sage's heart had seven apertures. You don't know until you've looked for yourself, right? Not that any of this is all that particular unique in the annals of human cruelty, but diving into some of the tales here was still ... disturbing is the kind way to put it. It is said that such tortures aroused the royal couple.  The next session will get us into producing one of the new resources shown here, and will also be the first one that cannot be completed without clearing out a minimal amount of trees. 
Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Apr 6, 2022 |
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Apr 5, 2022 23:07
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Yeah, as far as we can tell from here, it's impossible to determine what happened at the time and while assuming that the victor is honest isn't safe, assuming the loser was actually a nice and decent person is also unsafe. For what it's worth the Deer Terrace Pavilion apparently existed and did have a pool, separate from the water supply, but from there to assuming it was actually for wine, there's a little bit of a leap.
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Apr 11, 2022 04:07
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Salt Mines of Anyi*(1:05:47) First map I couldn't do in completely 'pristine' fashion, as you can't get to the salt without removing trees. It would appear that hour-long scenarios are just going to be a thing going forward. Salt. A lot of salt here, and some interesting logistical challenges in spacing out where everything gets built. I re-designed this city multiple times before I was happy with it; and I still need to adjust my housing blocks as the interior ends are having minor issues. In any case, this is a very trade-focused map about making money and shipping salt especially everywhere. As usual, once you start making a profit it is only a matter of time, with an earthquake in the middle of everything to shake things up. Salamanders didn't do me any favors either. Next scenario is curious in that I won't have to worry about having to remove trees - there's aren't any and we'll have to import wood, among other challenges. This makes me sad. I like the loggers. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Apr 15, 2022 |
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Apr 15, 2022 20:39
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SIGSEGV posted:Yeah, as far as we can tell from here, it's impossible to determine what happened at the time and while assuming that the victor is honest isn't safe, assuming the loser was actually a nice and decent person is also unsafe. It's very, very difficult to peace together those kind of details from this vantage point, for sure. These were people who got caricatured across hundreds of years as emblems of immorality and vice. It's not the same as saying the accounts are value-less, since they tell us about what behaviors were taboo enough to be offend but not so taboo that people won't even mention them. Interestingly the stories that I get near-instant pushback against are "casualty numbers from pre modern Chinese battles," mostly because people are familiar with e.g. Caesar doing so, but to my knowledge the numbers for battles like Changping and Fei River are considered fairly reasonable and the big overestimate is Cao Cao overstating the numbers he lost at Chibi.
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Apr 15, 2022 21:10
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Tulip posted:Interestingly the stories that I get near-instant pushback against are "casualty numbers from pre modern Chinese battles," mostly because people are familiar with e.g. Caesar doing so, but to my knowledge the numbers for battles like Changping and Fei River are considered fairly reasonable and the big overestimate is Cao Cao overstating the numbers he lost at Chibi. I think a lot of this is cultural bias. I.e. the average westerner at least knows a lot more about the Holocaust than they do about Japanese atrocities during WW2. Which isn't to minimize anything the Nazis did ofc, but well ... the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy did not exactly cover themselves in glory compared with modern conceptions of human rights. I've said it before in this thread but this LP is causing me to do some serious self-reflection. The amount of Chinese history that I had no clue about compared to comparable events in Europe and the 'New World' is frankly embarassing. A lot of that is how I was educated growing up, but a good part of it is me swallowing all of that too readily and not questioning it enough, wanting to learn more enough, and so on.
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Apr 16, 2022 03:24
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Sage, do you have as part of the challenge that all the roads must be connected to each other in a single road network? Because seeing your poor cart pushers having to trek half of China is painful otherwise. So, the mechanics of cart pushers in Emperor/Zeus as accurately as I can remember them. The basics: (that everyone already knows) with the exception of farms*, most buildings only have one cart available to do logistics with. When a production building has reached 100% production, if their cart is back they'll load the product on it and the pusher will start delivering. If the cart pusher isn't back, production stops until the cart is back. *whenever a farm has stockpiled 400 units of the same product, they'll spawn a big cart pushers carrying those 400 units. This is in addition to the standard 100 units cart pusher they also have. I don't know of any limit to how many big carts can spawn this way at once. The solution that everyone tries at first but doesn't work: Mills/warehouses have access to the big carts carrying 400 units. Just plop a warehouse next to the production building set to accept, build a warehouse on the destination site set to get, and the big carts will do the logistics instead. And then the cart pusher from the production building ignores the accepting warehouse next door and goes straight to the other side of the map wasting half an year. gently caress. Why it doesn't work; the prioritization of deliveries: When a cart leaves a production building, it'll choose their delivery target depending on this priority list, without any weighting for distance between different priority tiers: _buildings that need the resource as input _getting mills _getting warehouses _accepting mills _accepting warehouses _trade depots are either on the same tier as accepting warehouses or above them, but below getting warehouses. So yeah, if anywhere on the map is set to get the accepting warehouse gets ignored. How to make it work: There is, however, a way to make it work. Let's define a road network as a connected set of roads, including connections through ferries. A delivery cart can only stay on its road network. The cart from a mill/warehouse set to get will be able to leave its road network if needed; although I think they can't cross trees and obviously they can't caulk their Thus, just cut off a single road into the production area, set up an accepting warehouse, and let the big carts do logistics. Note: getting warehouses will deliver the items to buildings that need them, but only on the same road network Disadvantages: the getting warehouse will need to do a LOT of logistics so it is at risk of getting swamped with requests, needing multiple warehouses for multiple product types. But for salt? The hell is your mill's cart going to do otherwise? Miscellanea: To provide labour access, a road DOES NOT NEED to be on the same road network as your housing either; again, river crossing needs to be provided and I think trees will block access. Immigrants and traders can leave the road network, but they prefer staying on it. On one hand traders will beeline to the depots by the shortest path if no direct road connection is available; on the other said path may be through salamander breeding grounds.
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Apr 24, 2022 13:49
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That was a really good effort-post. Thanks! I was aware of the idea in general, but definitely didn't know all those specifics. I'm torn on the roads idea. I view figuring out how to make the cities as a puzzle thing - that's why I'm going with perfect Feng Shui. I think it's too repetitive otherwhise. To me, it feels at least as bad to cut off the roads and have carts traipsing across the frontier as it does to have production slow down, and it gives another logistical puzzle to solve. So while it's not strictly part of the challenge rules I've set, dealing with these sorts of inefficiencies due to buildings that are far apart from each other feels like part of the optimization puzzle to me.
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Apr 25, 2022 15:01
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