Flash of Steel header image 1

Civ IV PBEM Update

May 29th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Me, Multiplayer

We’re about a third of the way through our PBEM Civilization IV: Warlords game, playing the excellent Chinese Unification scenario. In single player, the scenario is largely about diplomacy – persuading your opponents to support your claim to the Mandate of Heaven. So you export your bloodline or strategically convert, all the while beating on whoever looks like they are going to be a threat. Then you suck up to get the votes you need to win.

In multiplayer, this is not going to happen. Aside from a couple of “open borders” arrangements, there hasn’t been a lot of chatter or horse-trading. All sides start with similar resources, so there is no blackmailing with horses or tea. Three of the states are AI controlled and serve as buffers between the human players. This game will be almost entirely about conquering the votes you need to win.

This would be exaggerated in a two player game, of course. When the only options are “win” or “lose”, there is no incentive to talk to your opponent at all. But with four players, the politics should be getting sticky soon. Eventually, an alliance of convenience will have to be formed against whoever is the biggest threat. Balance of power politics will make sure that everyone is in play when the Council Building is constructed.

The nature of the opponent has a dramatic impact on the civics you choose. Since this will be a military game, keeping the people happy in a prolonged war becomes important, as does lowering the cost of conquered cities or extra troops. It’s a truism that you play differently against the AI in all games, but this isn’t about exploiting AI weaknesses or taking advantage of AI predictability. It’s about the entire zeitgeist changing because the AI is willing to vote for someone else where a human is more likely to drag it out to the final conclusion. Add to that the fact that you know what your computer controlled opponents think of you (Annoyed because I Follow A Heathen Religion) whereas everything that Alan Au does is sure to be a trap.

My Wei Kingdom is doing nicely, by the way. Two of my AI controlled neighbors declared war on me. One agreed to a draw after a sitzkrieg and the other lost a city to my chariots when a fake buildup on the other side of the map pulled a lot of his defence away. I’m also putting a lot of cultural pressure on one of his cities – pressure that will grow once I take a nearby barbarian settlement.

Still in third place though. A human opponent built the Chinese Great Library, so that gave him a huge boost. My marble is still unquarried since I had to rush to get my metals ready for the wars. I’ll keep you updated as I go through this.

The scenarios, by the way, are the best part of Warlords and are well worth the price of admission. With the new Civ expansion two months away, I hope we’ll hear more about what stories Firaxis has included this time around.

→ 6 CommentsTags:

The Zeal of the Convert

May 24th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Design, History

Best-selling historian Niall Ferguson has written an essay about his experiences with Muzzy Lane’s Making History: The Calm and the Storm. Ferguson is thrilled to find out that he can test counterfactuals with PC strategy games.

I’ve always loved counterfactuals and alternate histories. (What if Alexander had lived to consolidate his empire? What if Pompey had died of his illness in 51? What if the Crusades had worked? What if the Ming hadn’t scuttled Zheng He’s fleet?) There’s a trick to doing this rigorously – maintaining that certain things stay constant, recognizing which effects happen at which level of interaction, etc. – and I recommend Ferguson’s Virtual History very highly.

But he’s really picked a peculiar game to model this sort of thing with.

I’m writing a review of Making History, and I don’t want to step on the toes of that review, but suffice it to say that there is too much randomness in your standard game. Certain things will fire regularly, but in the wrong way. Take the Anschluss. Hearts of Iron does this by event – Germany can choose to annex Austria. Making History can only handle this by war, so Germany attacks Austria. The war inevitably goes easily, but since it’s a war, all kinds of strange things can happen. Franco’s Spain can defend the victim, for example. As Ferguson’s article notes, trade makes a huge difference in how states respond, but the difference is almost too huge – tiny countries jump into pointless wars to support someone who buys the occasional parcel of food. Not to mention the woeful military AI.

The big thing about the article is how amazed Ferguson seems. He somehow lumps Empire Earth in with Civilization and still (to my horror) thinks Axis and Allies is a good game. Making History is the first real attempt at historical strategy gaming he has played, and he is blown away. It’s as if someone had never seen a science fiction movie until Attack of the Clones and decided to write an article about special effects will change the world.

Then he asks Dave McCool if he has ever won as Germany. McCool recounts how this happened and Ferguson is thrilled. “Now ask yourself: How many other companies in the world are run by a man who has led Germany to victory in World War II?”

Maybe if I ever win as China, I can get that small business loan.

The article is useful if only to remind us strategy gamers that some people take the educational promise of gaming seriously only because their benchmark knowledge is so low. Ferguson lumps Empire Earth in with Civilization as games that teach the importance of economics. He shows no sign of having tried other games based on other historical periods. And he heaps copious praise on the game that most heavily promotes itself as an educational tool.

In any case, I welcome Dr. Ferguson to the world of historical strategy gaming. Be sure to try the buffet. There’s a lot to choose from.

(Ferguson article spotted at The Strategy Gamer.)

→ 4 CommentsTags:

Random Things

May 24th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Blogs, Me, Stardock

I’ve been trying to hammer out an article for the latest Gaming Round Table, but I’m not very happy with how it is turning out. I guess I still have a week, but it’s one of those cases where you have an idea and some witty phrases, but the argument is in that netherworld between “freaking obvious” and “are you high?”.

I’m simultaneously working on an article for The Escapist. There I have a pretty good idea, but I am wondering how bitchy I should sound. It’s a think-piece, and I tend to oversell my points in those. Every year I get more certain that ruthless self-editing is the key to quality work. I have four or five drafts of posts that haven’t seen the light of day even on this blog, and you know how iffy the quality is here much of the time.

I’ve also got two or three reviews in the hopper, including my first one for GameShark. Plus some stuff for Game Squad which is on hold. Not to mention the early stages of a Twilight Struggle death match versus Bruce Geryk over the VASSAL engine. He told me it was a slick translation of GMT’s Cold War game, and he’s right. More on that experience once my Red Hordes finish consolidating their hold on Africa.

There’s also a little more information on the new Civ expansion at IGN and the new Age of Empires expansion at Gamespy.

Meantime, I encourage you to read Tom Francis’s game diary/AAR of a GalCiv2 campaign. It reminds me how difficult it is to pull off an interesting AAR. The two usual routes are humor (like in GFW’s Tom versus Bruce) or role-playing (like in innumerable interminable AAR’s you’ve read on strategy forums). Francis uses some humor, but it’s really a decision tree model of a game diary and I think it mostly works. I wonder if his conclusion is just reading too much into the game’s AI, but part of the game diary experience is rationalizing what your computer opponents are doing.

→ 4 CommentsTags:

Fear Me

May 23rd, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Consoles, Me

I now have an Xbox 360. I will soon be gaming regularly on two platforms.

Best part? My wife complained there was only one controller and that I should get another one ASAP.

Always marry a nerd.

→ 6 CommentsTags:

Delays, Success and Publicity

May 21st, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Blizzard

The announcement of Starcraft II is easily the biggest strategy game announcement in gaming history. This morning’s Gametab front page is cluttered with news about a real time strategy game that we know very little about. Even the announcement of a new X-Com remake would do little to push the Protoss into the margins.

The size of this news event is tied to a number of things, all of which say something about the media climate that companies work in.

The biggest factor is that the original Starcraft was in 1998. Since then we’ve had an expansion, but no sequel. I’m hard pressed to think of another game as big or important as Starcraft that did not get a sequel. Blizzard’s Diablo only had to wait three years. The second Warcraft game immediately followed the first, and the third game in that series took another five. But Blizzard was going against the general industry trend, not simply its own history. Public pressure for sequels is so loud and immediate that it’s hard to resist the easy sales that a follow-up promises to the cautious developer. The world has been starved for any news of a Starcraft game since the collapse of the Ghost project, so Starcraft II is falling like rain on the parched throat of fanboys everywhere.

Second, this is Blizzard. They have three and a half series that regularly place in lists of best/most-important/coolest games ever. Diablo brought gave birth to the hack and slash action RPG (a graphical roguelike, if you will.) Starcraft put asymmetry into the RTS in a manner still worthy of study. And the Warcraft RTS games (I find them dull) are landmark titles that gave birth to the most successful PC game in history, World of Warcraft. On the latest PCGamer podcast, Gary Whitta compared Blizzard to Pixar – a development house with an equally enviable record of commercial and critical success.

But it’s not just the success – it’s the proprietary nature of this success. Where other series have bounced from publishers and developers (look at the long sad tale of Fallout 3) or inspired half-hearted clones (how many “spiritual successors” has X-Com had, now?) no one has been able to clone the universe or lay claim to it as an ancestor beyond certain design decisions. One of the two lead designers went on to make Sacrifice, the other remains with Blizzard.

You also can’t discount the preternatural insanity of Korea here. If Korea had a gaming culture like that of Europe or America, then Starcraft would be just another game, not the game that millions of people watch on TV. They have color commentators for Starcraft. While we were busy finding a way to make poker an interesting spectator sport, the Seoul Men were perfecting gaming as football. (I wonder what will happen to that sporting environment now? This isn’t like introducing the lively ball to Babe Ruth; this is like bringing Arena Football to a nation of NFL fanatics.)

But this news wouldn’t have been as large as it is if it weren’t for the perfect media-technological storm. First, Blizzard announces that they will make a major announcement at a gaming event in Korea. So you get news posts that feed the speculation. Then you get either a misinformed leak, strategic lie or media stupidity that is Dugg, cross-posted and hyped. (I, for one, never believed a Starcraft MMO was in the works and most people I spoke to agreed with me.) Then you get the promotions for international live-blogging – a technique perfected in the coverage of the next-gen console wars at recent E3s. You get the build-up and analysis until the announcement is made. Having already whetted the appetite of readers, you are now making them wait while you talk about the introduction of the best Protoss player in the world.

Then – instant reaction. Flood the media with the same few screenshots and video clips and everyone will talk about it everywhere.

Hope you enjoyed the moment. I can’t imagine we’ll see its like again soon.

→ 4 CommentsTags:

Back In Time

May 19th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Blizzard

I’m probably not alone, but today I have decided to reinstall Starcraft. It was one of those games that never had enough time to sink its hooks into me – it arrived at a time when I didn’t play as many games as I do now. So this is research.

I’m not looking forward to it, though. I installed Pharaoh last week and was astonished by how primitive it looked and played when compared to Caesar IV. This will be an amazingly low-res experience with a pain in the ass interface.

→ 13 CommentsTags: