Zynga’s Brian Reynolds makes Planetfall on Three Moves Ahead and, along with Soren, Troy, and Rob, founds a discussion of Alpha Centauri. He explains what went wrong with the “Civ in space” idea, and the role of the game’s fiction. He and Soren talk about how Alpha Centauri changed the Civilization series, and take a […]
Entries from September 15th, 2011
Three Moves Ahead Episode 134 – The Alpha Centauri Show
September 15th, 2011 · 53 Comments · Podcast, Three Moves Ahead
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A World You Believe In
September 15th, 2011 · 5 Comments · Design
As emotional as I can get when I start deciding which of my enemies I hate, one of the big challenges for strategy games is creating a playing field that is interesting and alive. This is where the role-playing side of strategy games comes in, I suppose. (I often mock Tom Chick by suggesting he […]
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Play The Rainbow: Early Thoughts on Pride of Nations
September 11th, 2011 · 4 Comments · Design, Paradox, Wargames
I can’t rightly remember the first grand strategy game to have multiple map overlays, each designed to show different bit of pertinent information. Europa Universalis was 2000, and it had different maps for diplomacy, terrain and religion as well as the political map where I did most of my work. Civilization IV came later and […]
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Three Moves Ahead Episode 133 – We Built This City
September 8th, 2011 · 12 Comments · Podcast, Three Moves Ahead
Tropico 4 gets Rob, Troy, and Julian talking about city-builders and their quirks. Why are their politics so artificial? Troy notices that videogames say the business of cities is business, but at least they give strategy gamers something to look at. Soren joins midway through, because he can’t stay away, and Julian wonders where the […]
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The Emotions of Strategy
September 6th, 2011 · 17 Comments · Me
Over the weekend, I mentioned that I was reading J.E. Lendon’s Song of Wrath, and it’s really an interesting book. His major argument is that we can’t understand the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War when it happened by just looking at it as a classic bipolar system breaking down because of colliding spheres of influence […]
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Picking Up the Gauntlet
September 4th, 2011 · 4 Comments · AAR, Board Games
I’ve been reading J.E. Lendon’s Song of Wrath, which talks about how Greek ideas of pride, hubris and manliness fueled the opening of the Peloponnesian War. Sometimes when you get called out, you have to answer. Once I figure out where all these stickers go, it’s on.
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