Hythia

And let the rejoicing begin, Blizzard has spoken and there will be a new Starcraft game. (more…)

So I have once more reached that crossroads in my life, that monumental life-changing moment where I ask myself: Am I really still interested in this MMO? (more…)

Took a break this evening from work and played some CoH. Third Shard TF. The entire thing took just a hair over four hours it looks like.

1 tank, 1 scrapper, 2 defender, 2 controllers, 2 blasters. ( I think. Might have been one defender and three controllers, it is slipping my mind right now as to what AT one of the people was. )

Only a couple in-mission deaths, the two times I can remember resulted from fights that got rather spread out. Oddly enough none of them were me, though the way I draw aggro I really deserve to get smacked down more often. We had a couple deaths going between missions when I think an ambush would descend on one of the non-50 people and gank them.

Nice break from work and a welcome reminder of how fun the CoX games can be with a team of people who are just nice people.

Good people, good times.

Now back to the testing checklist.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

So Doyce burned me a copy of his X-Com install while I was in Colorado. I still have a copy of it on floppy, but my computer these days doesn’t have a floppy drive to install it off of. His copy also had the hack already done to it so it’d run on ‘todays’ fast machines since the game is a dozen or so years old now and there is the off-chance that your calculator or watch has a faster processor then your computer did in 1994.

Anyways, taking a bit to re-learn how to play the game. Still have my original manual for it, and it had a bunch of hand-written notes folded up in it of tactics I used to use, so that has been fun trying to read my handwriting from so long back and puzzling out my weird short-hand. Mostly its been learning not to make stupid PEBKAC errors and figuring the interface out again. Took me until my third terror site team wipe before I figured out which of the icon buttons let me save during missions.

Biggest ouchie so far… My squid of troopers had just returned from taking out a landed alien ship ( turned out to be a terror ship full of Cyberdiscs ( alien robotic tanks that look like mini-flying saucers ) ( who the hell was piloting the thing anyways? )) when my base got attacked by a large force of Sectoids ( think the classic ‘grey’ aliens ).

First round of the fight my four surviving troopers ( I’d had 10 when I had started my last mission and the replacment fodder.. uh… soldiers hadn’t arrived yet ) and my poor little Rocket-Launcher-Tank each took about two steps before getting nuked. Nothing says hello like missiles. Oi vey. Didn’t even ever get to shoot back. Plus, I had forgotten to save at the start of the mission and my last save was a while back. Need too remember to save more often.

Anyways, game is still fun even after more then a decade. Graphics are really dated now, but it doesn’t matter too much because the gameplay is still a blast.

Been distracting myself with it today while doing laundry and trying to get used to my everyday life again. After a week of being around very cool people and having fun and doing things, kind of a let down to come back home to an empty place and a circle of local friends who require the usage of a pry-bar to get them out of their homes to do anything.

Moving laundry now, then sleep, then up again in a few hours to be a productive member of society and attend meetings on projects that will involve my spending several hours in meetings to discuss how best to do less then an hours worth of work.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

You know your doing something weird when you check the Civ4 forums and find everyone talking about how Diplomatic victories are hard to get and yet… Diplomatic victories I find are the absolute easiest to get. I go out of my way to avoid them now by building the United Nations and then not calling for the Diplomatic Victory vote so I don’t win. Sooo weird…

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

So I was thinking today ( I know, shocking as it is such a rare occurence ) and was left wondering how many of us have a copy of Starcraft?

Way back here Mal commented on having a copy of Starcraft ( as well as Warcraft 2 & 3 ) and that has been bouncing around in my head for a while.

I am really really out of practice at Starcraft, but still have a copy of it in a box somewhere. How many people other then maybe Mal and myself would be interested in playing a multiplayer game of it online?

So I just finished a second game of it. 10 hours and 14 minutes I think. May have been 41 minutes. A bit sleepy. Took longer this time. Huge map instead of standard, which meant 12 total civs instead of 8. Space Race victory this time instead of Diplomatic. Egypt as Hatshupset instead of China as Qin Shi Huang. Chieftain difficulty instead of Settler.

Lessons learned this time…
Found more religions. I founded Buddhism but had a damned hard time getting other people to follow it. Several other civs founded other religions and just didn’t want to switch after that.

Build boats earlier. On the Terra-style map all the Civs start on a sort of ‘old world’ continent leaving an entire seperate continent inhabited by only ‘barbarian’ cities and tribes. Almost lost out on managed to colonize it by not building boats to explore until pretty late.

Get a better handle on making use of the Great People. I managed two golden ages in this last game, one from spending some great people and the other from a World Wonder. But several times I had Great People sitting around and doing nothing. Need to use them for their benefits sooner. Takes too long to generate them in the later game after you’ve had several, and with the first Golden Age taking 2, but the second taking 3, it doesn’t feel worth it yet to have two sitting and doing nothing and just wait for a third to show up.

Very fun. Finally starting to get the hang of it. Going to knock the difficulty up again and try India as Asoka and see if I like the Fast Workers or not. ( Plus, Asoka is one of my favorite historical figures. )

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

On a side note, if anyone who reads this picks up a copy of Civ 4, give me a shout and we can try a multiplayer Play-By-EMail game. Would quite honestly take forever to get done, even on the quick setting, but might be interesting to try.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

Skip this post if you aren’t interested in Civ4, just me gushing about it for a while.

I just finished my first game of it with a Diplomatic Victory. 4 hours and 13 minutes. I have to admit, the Diplomatic Victory is the second least pleasing of the victory conditions ( the least in my mind is the Score Victory when the date reaches 205 and the game ends ) but as this was my first game through I am happy at just getting a victory.

It was on the lowest difficulty ( Settler ), as I still haven’t even scratched the surface of a lot of the changes to the gameplay from Civ3, and it was as the Chinese since I set it to pick an empire and choose a leader for me at random since I didn’t know enough yet about how it worked to be able to appreciate the distinctions between them yet.

World map is a lot prettier then Civ 3. The units stand taller and are more obvious, natural resources are a little more subdued but still obvious looking, rivers clearly flow, windmills turn, etc.

Yes, windmills. They changed the worker options from the old “Irritage, Plant Forests, Mine” to add a lot more variety and complexity to how you develop your cities. The first three terrain improvements you’ll get are likely : Farms ( learn Agriculture tech ) which require fresh water ( until you learn about irrigation ) add +1 food to a square, Mines ( learn Mining tech ) which have to be build on hills ( or resources like Gems ) add +1 hammers / shields / buildpoints to a square, and Cottages ( learn Pottery tech ) which start as a little hut and add +1 gold output to a square but after a few turns of being used by a city will grow to be a Hamlet and have a higher gold output and later can continue growing to be villages and towns ( basically, suburbs of your city ). But those are just the starting options, you can research Animal Husbandry and if you have a square in your city radius that has cattle or horses or pigs or sheep on it you can then build a Pasture improvement there for added food income and added health for the city. In the same way you learn Monarchy to build Wineries to harvest the ‘wine’ resource, Masonry lets you build Quarries so you can get to stone and marble resources, Hunting lets you build Camps so you can get ivory and fur resources, etc.

Health is the new restrictor to city size growth, multiple types of food supplies and sanitation buildings like Aquaducts increase a cities health and its maximum size, previously it was hardcapped for non-river cities nad you were required to build an aquaduct to get past size 6 and a hospital to get past size 12. Some buildings like Forges or Factories can add negative health to a city, and later you can build a recycling center which cancels out building un-health factors.

Military units no longer promote from Regular to Veteran to Elite, instead when they gain experience through battle they get advances to more specialized abilities. The very basic Warrior unit for example can get an advance to give him added defense in forests or a 20% bonus attacking cities, or a 10% strength bonus in general. The bonuses you can choose from are set by unit type, but you can choose something different each time, or the same one more then once apparently. Barracks therefore no longer give you Veteran units, they instead start units with 4 experience which gives them one free advance right at the start.

Government options are no longer simply Despotism, Monarchy, Republic, Feudalism, Democracy, Communism, Facism. Instead it is the much more complex and very cool system of Civics. Civics have five categories: Government, Legal, Labor, Economics, and Religion. You start out as a Despotism / Barbarism / Tribalism / Decentralization / Paganism. Take too long to describe all the choices, five in each category counting the starting one, you gain the other four as your civilizations technology advances and you can choose to adopt them or not as you wish, with a small period of anarchy as you make the changes. I ended the game at Universal Suffrage ( so I could spend gold to rush completion of buildings ), Free Speach ( Culture bonus from Towns (advanced Cottages) and more Gold income ), Emancipation ( Cottages grow to be Towns faster, makes the population in nations that aren’t emancipated unhappy as they want to be emancipated too ), State Property ( Maintenance costs don’t increase with distance from center of government, workshops and watermills give added food ), Organized Religion ( Cities with the state religion construct buildings faster ).

Religion was a nice added feature too. Several wonders and buildings benefit cities that adhere to the state religion. Religions are discovered and founded as your technology advances, only the first nation to reach a tech in a game founds a religion and then must send missionaries to other nations to convert them. But if your state religion differs from your neighbors they will be less then happy with you and may not be willing to engage in diplomatic talks with you.

Much more to ramble about. But brain is bouncing around too much and I need to play more to figure out more of the details and depth still. Anyways, very very cool game. Definately recommend it.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

So on the phone the other night with a couple of friends, and while I was rambling for a moment about Civilization the game of X-Com was brought up.

X-Com was a truly addictive game and really the start of my strategy / tactical gaming.

And the moment I typed that I knew it was wrong. It was the start of my playing those types of games on the computer ( or console ) but thinking about it… Risk, Stratego, Axis & Allies, Battlesystem for AD&D, Battletech, Star Fleet Battles, and a number of civil war board games all pre-dated my having ever played X-Com.

But for some reason ( well, a simple reason ) X-Com stands out in my head as the start of my tactical gaming ( largely because it was one damned cool game ).

This has lead to me played all sorts of other computer games like it, Final Fantasy Tactics ( single most played Playstation game I own ), Final Fantasy Tactics Advance ( same thing, for my Gameboy Advance ), Disgaea, La Pucelle Tactics, Kessen and Kessen 2, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Ogre Battle, etc.

Mostly me rambling, but in the course of thinking about it and rambling today it also brought to mind Necromunda which is a really fun little squad based gang-war game set in the Warhammer 40k setting.

Not sure why I like all these types of game, but I really do. This is just a post of me rambling and gushing about them I suppose. Done now.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)