Blizzard has just announced what almost everyone expected them to announce. A Starcraft sequel will see the light of day by some time next year.
More on this once I remember why the hell people liked Starcraft in the first place. And since PC Gamer has been holding back its podcast for a big announcement, I suspect those guys have some sort of exclusive that will break the story wide open.
Then they’ll review the game in next month’s issue.
(I kid because I love.)
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Big Huge Games is developing the game for Ensemble and Microsoft. Where’s my Rise of Legends expansion?
EDIT: The first Q&A is up at Gamespot.
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SSI’s Medieval Lords: Soldier Kings of Europe (not to be confused with the recent game from O3 Entertaiment
The “Author’s Note” in the manual is a little surprising, since Martin Campion (a history professor at Pittsburg State) didn’t necessarily see his game as entertainment. The note is subtitled “Using Medieval Lords in a Classroom.”
MEDIEVAL LORDS was originally conceived as a game in my course, “World Civilizations,” taught mainly to college freshmen and sophomores. The game is also suitable for high school students. A few words to the teacher thinking about such use may be helpful.
Campion then goes on to discuss the basics from proper group size, appropriate scenario choice and the like. The debriefing (to my mind, the central part of any teaching effort that deviates from the traditional lecture/read/write model) is curious, though.
Debriefing the game can be done by having the students write histories of the alternate universe they created with their decisions and comparing the way things seemed to be going with the way things actually happened in history. Students can be encouraged to keep track of their positions by coloring in copies of the outline map while the game is in progress.
In effect, the debrief is an after action report of a multiplayer game, with each student group making decisions for a realm.
Campion reportedly had success with his classroom games. He also wrote SSI’s Rails West, based on a classroom game, and designed two classroom only titles not released to the general hobby market, one based on the Slave Trade and another on the settlement of Jamestown.
As always, my major concern as a teacher would be the balance of time and payoff. The game box “boasts” that the game has a playing time of 20 to 80 hours – a gross exaggeration for a single session, but trust me – this game can take a long time even in the suggested 100 turn version. Remember that this is multiplayer. Now add in group decision making. Now add the writing. Next the oral debrief. And the student outcome compares what happened in game with what happened historically. In a high school setting this is a two week project. In college, maybe longer, though you can probably trust the kids to do more work at home.
The manual is fairly clear on the lessons Campion wants to teach. War costs money, debts are best relieved by calling assemblies, but strengthening these weakens the king’s hold on the country. The alternative, relying on feudal levies, means that the king has to circumscribe some of his ambitions. The pope likes it when you kill heretics, but hates it when you get too strong in Italy. A series of invasions from the East will remake the map in dramatic ways. The big lesson is that politics, religion and bad luck in leadership can undo even the soundest plan.
Whatever its educational merits, as a game, Medieval Lords still holds up really well – much better than most other strategy games from 1991. Even though the monarchs are nameless and there is no log of events, the world it creates is fascinating in the way all well written history (or alternate history) is.
So whatever happened to Martin Campion? He’s no longer at Pittsburg State. Apparently dissatisfied with the academic life, he moved into educational game design full-time with Perspicacity Software. It’s curious that the company doesn’t seem to have a website, though they made it GenCon Indy 2005. If anyone knows, drop me a line. I’d love to interview the guy.
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IGN has a new interview with Beyond the Sword designer Alex Mantzaris. He lets loose a lot of details that have me both excited and bewildered.
* “One of my new favorite leaders is Joao II of Portugal. He’s especially fun to play because his traits (Imperialistic and Expansionist) and unique unit (Carrack) work very well together for early expansion and colonization.”
A unique naval unit? Really? Civ III had some of these (Portugal, England, Byzantium and the Vikings) and they were always second rate units. Most Civ games are won on land, so the Portuguese will have to make the most of their trait combo. “Exploration” is mostly useful on a terra map (they have “New Worlds” with barbarian continents). So I’m skeptical about how useful the carrack will be. But, hey, it’s not like all the other Civs have great unique units.
* “Not only is the Native American leader Protective, which gives him powerful archer units, but the Totem Pole acts as sort of an extra barracks for archer units as well.”
Because if there’s one unit that needs more help in this game, it’s archers, right? (And it looks like the Maya are back.)
* [Corporations] each consume specific resources in order to provide benefits to their city. The more instances of resources they consume, the more food, production, commerce, or resources they supply. The downside is that any city hosting a corporation has to pay a maintenance fee for its services.
I can see some nasty tricks here. Found a corporation and then hit all your enemy’s far flung towns, driving maintenance up and research down. They went with real religions, but I’m betting that Exxon isn’t going to let them use their name. Anyway, this section clarifies a lot. Read the interview for more on this.
* Espionage has actually added a whole new dimension to the game. Its importance to your empire is now comparable to scientific research, culture, or income from taxes.
I only really used espionage in the first two Civ titles. Stealing technology, destroying buildings, and, most importantly, inciting revolts. So I’m glad to see it return as a primary strategy. I fear that I will be hopelessly out of practice.
* The space race is now more suspenseful because victory is not achieved until the spaceship actually arrives, not when it’s launched. Therefore, you may pull out a victory even if you launch late, by building a faster spaceship and overtaking your opponent on the way to Alpha Centauri.
Another return to the early Civ games. Excellent idea and I have no idea why it was changed to its current form in the first place. Anything that makes the Space Race more interesting is to be encouraged.
* However, in general, we added units to fill needed roles, rather then adding exotic units and trying to dream up roles for them.
This is sound design, and was, in fact, one of Brian Reynolds big ideas in Civ II. Fill out the tech tree, fill out the unit list and make the military game about more than waiting around until your superweapon is discovered.
* [Y]ou’ve got to love a Wonder like the Statue of Zeus, which doubles the war weariness of other civilizations fighting against you.
If you build it, it will certainly make the early aggression of Montezuma and Alexander easier to manage. Conversely, it will make it easier to launch a series of little wars, knowing that the other guy is suffering a little bit more than you are.
Lots more stuff at IGN. Expect more updates and crankiness from me as information becomes available.
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My review of Ancient Wars: Sparta is now up at Gamesradar. It’s a run-of-the-mill RTS with not much going for it. It looks OK, but that’s all.
Some gamers accuse reviewers of going easy on major franchises so we can pound away at the marginal titles. How, after all, are the three same-but-different races of Sparta worse than the three same-but-different races of Command and Conquer 3? Stainless Steel Studios got a pass from me for Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War because of its innovations but World Forge fails in spite of unit customization?
The big difference is that marginal games often miss subtle, but important, things that distinguish a satisfactory game experience from a bad one. I think that, in some ways, bad games can be more educational than good games. Just like Left Behind was a good introduction to how important basic interface design can be, Sparta should remind developers to keep scale in mind.
I mention in the review how cramped the maps are. “Cramped” is not the same as small. In fact, the maps themselves aren’t that different in size from the Command and Conquer 3 maps. But you quickly run out of space on these reasonably sized maps because the buildings are so huge. And the terrain can be very particular about what fits where. So instead of having your economy or military production area in a compact and coherent pattern, you have to fit the buildings wherever you can find room for them, leading to a grotesque sprawl of structures.
“So what,” I can hear you thinking. “Learn the hotkeys and you can jump to your buildings.” That works fine. What doesn’t work fine is pathfinding. And if you are forced to cram your too large structures into a too tight spot, your already directionless units will get even more lost. May Ahura Mazda bless the king who decides to shepherd three elephants through a town without micromanagement. They go back and forth looking for a trail that only human eyes can spot.
Why are the buildings so large? The root, I think, is the dual insistence on detail and relative scale. The developers want every unit and building to have a detailed appearance. Forges and resource buildings have to be manned by peons, but it’s not enough to add this unnecessary level of attention. You have to see your peons at work in them. Peons have to be shown slaughtering sheep, hauling grain or hammering steel. To make this look convincing, the peons can’t be the same size as the buildings they work in. A forge should be many times larger. The gymnasium trains elite units – it should look appropriately huge. The result? Polis sprawl.
The added insistence that the units themselves look detailed from a distance is extra maddening. Elephants can be manned by archers, chariots and horses by riders (yes, you need to mount these yourself). To make sure you can tell at a glance how many men are on your beasts – and see them fire arrows – World Forge has given you a close up look at all the units. You can’t zoom out far enough to manage an army with combined arms, let alone navigate them through town. It would have been easier to have the animals come equipped with soldiers, but instead you have a properly scaled man emerging from a properly scaled barracks to climb onto a properly scaled camel. To keep the whole process from looking absurd, everything is too big compared to the land area it is forced to work with.
The scale problems go beyond mere size. The cost of units and soldiers throws the game out of whack. You always start near a mine with 50,000 gold. The barracks and archery range will cost over 1000 gold each. Each weapon more advanced than a club needs to be researched separately, sometimes with a blacksmith tech added. Say this adds up to 3000 more. Better soldier models come from the gymnasium, which costs over 1500. We’re already close to 6000 gold, and haven’t built a single soldier. Or peasants to harvest the wood and food you’ll also need. And soldiers with basic spear/shield combos will run about 500 each. And since each mine can only be harvested by one side (each nation has a unique building to get the riches) your empire will be fighting for its life – gold income is an advantage you cannot afford to lose at the beginning. And there is only one way to get the gold.
Every two player map has four mines, one close to each player and two others that have to be sought out. Because of the high cost of units, grabbing another mine early becomes required. If you can grab both, you can economically strangle the other guy. There’s nothing wrong with this on its face. All the best RTSes force the player to push for resources, and combat results from the struggles to control resource nodes. The problem is when there is only one place to go, and Ancient Wars: Sparta gives you only one option – move on to the nearest mine as soon as you can. There aren’t multiple mining options like in Age of Empires, or stable coexistence like in Battle for Middle Earth II.
Add on the time scale – how long it takes to build or research – and you have a game that is completely disjointed. The time and resource issues could work in a different genre (Children of the Nile, for example) but are out of place in a real time strategy game.
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1. Dual core computers are not exactly new, so why do I have to turn the second core off in order for the game to run properly? I want to use all my processing power.
2. These loading screens take forever.
3. The first campaign on the list lets you play as Poland in September 1939. “Stop the German advance.” Yeah, this’ll be easy.
4. The game looks much, much better zoomed in tight than it does zoomed out. From a distance, it’s a mediocre landscape. Up close, your army men look like men.
5. So far, it’s a prettier Combat Mission but with no random scenario generator. (I’m gonna miss that.) Still getting the hang of cover – I’m not sure why it works some times and not others. Maybe taller Germans can see me?
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