Troy is joined by Tom, Julian and Rob to talk about the new expansion for Sins of a Solar Empire. How does Diplomacy work in a multiplayer game? Does it add more personality to a game with rather bland sides? Does Tom cheat? How should Rob refer to his significant other? Where does Julian go when the podcast is over?
Listen to the final podcast of the year long cycle to find out why this is the expansion that made all of us fall in love with Sins again.
question to julian, have you played ai war co-op?
I’m referring to what he’s talking about at 46 minutes. co-op game against ai
Just a heads-up: MK and I have played a lot of Sins since we recorded, and we’ve run into a rather significant problem. We didn’t notice when we had the Diplomatic victory enabled because the games were so quick that it never had time to crop up.
In longer games, I’ve run into a minidump crash bug on my 32-bit Vista machine. The game freezes then crashes to desktop. Here’s the kicker: the save files that MK and I have on our machines are not identical. When we reload and go back in, we discover that our games are basically completely different. We played through two crashes and about an hour of play before we realized that we were seeing completely different games. We only notice because we’re in the same room and could look and see the dissimilarities.
We haven’t verified whether this happens anywhere but over a LAN connection. It is a known issue, however. And it’s not a lot of fun.
http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/375539
Just thought I should mention this. It has nothing to do about what we covered in the podcast, but folks might want to know.
“Where does Julian go when the podcast is over?”
You had me scared there. I was listening to the whole podcast waiting for the terrible moment where you announced the demise of the podcast, and then you went on about next week’s being the last anniversary. Don’t ever do that again!
One Move Behind – Sins Diplomacy | RobZacny.com // Feb 17, 2010 at 6:16 pm
[…] once, I don’t have too much to add beyond what I said during the podcast. I was a bit more nervous than usual during this recording because I don’t feel all that […]
I do love me some Sins. I do find that when I get back into it, it only takes me about 20hrs to be “done” with it. Granted, that’s some incredible gameplay value…
About sins of Solar empire, FYI – if you turn diplomatics off this option the pacts actually improve your armies and your planets. For instance the TEC can increase both armies to have 1000 more points. AS a pacted group can have more ships then anyone else.
I can only emphasize Julian’s lack of appreciation of AI War: Fleet Command – if you mention Co-op Comp Stomp with a decent AI, then I immediately think of Chris Park’s evolving epic. I can’t compare it to Sins, since I’ve not delved that deep into Sins sadly. But damn you all for making me purchase the expansion and want to play it again!!!
I don’t know, you fire up the podcast and then you find yourself sucked in, and spending money before you know it. Stardock should sponser you. Or perhaps Paradox. Or someone.
I love 4x games, but usually end up swamped by them and I often find their diplomatic options just plain confusing. Diplomacy with a real person I understand, it usually ends up ganging up on some innocent. But with an AI, I often struggle to see the point of it. I suppose like Tom says, its about milking the AI, which seems to be gaming the system a bit.. so why even have it in a single player or comp stomp?
Julian! Try AI War: Fleet Command immediately! Did he miss the Chris Park show?
BTW, I always thought “comp stomp” was “COM stomp” – until I looked it up on Wikipedia.
Nice podcast guys. Hopefully you can get the 3v3 game going. Looking forward to hearing about it.
Great show guys. I enjoy the single game discussions like this the most, especially when its something as great as Sins!
Julian — seriously, play AI War. From one GWJer to another. Its fabulous and just what you were describing.
Rob — sorry to see you’ve gotten a dreaded desync. Don’t worry though, they’ve been an integral part of the Sins mp experience for a while now. If you ever realize there is one going on be sure to claim that victory is close at hand on your end. At least you can get some fun out of it. ;)
Knock on wood, I think the sync problem cleared up for me after the latest patch. We’ve played a lot of Sins without a hitch.
SoSE is one of my favorite games, but I haven’t played it MP at all, so my reaction to the Diplomacy expansion has been somewhat ‘muted’. Sounds like I should rectify that deficiency. Entrenchment was so superb that it kind of spoiled me, methinks.
Re: the episode, this was a really good one. The enthusiasm for the subject made for an energetic episode, with a lot of useful and respectful give and take amongst the panel. Well done. One of my favorite episodes.
Enjoyed the episode, love when you all play the same game and discuss it.
That said, the only thing I wish you would do, IS go over the base game again, pro’s, con’s etc. I play SiNS, so I knew things already and what you guys were talking about. I own EU3, but haven’t played it yet. When I listened to the EU3 episode, there was a lot of ‘inside’ talk about that game. Things YOU guys knew and could discuss, but there was almost an assumption that the listener knew the game well enough to go along with it. Since I didn’t, I tried to take what I could from the episode, but a lot was lost on me. I guess what I’m asking for is almost a capsule how-the-game-plays kind of thing, so when you talk about the casus-beli system (sic?), I’d know better of how it fits into the system and why you guys liked it so much.