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2009 End of Year Strategy Wrap-Up

December 29th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Awards

A rather rapid dash home to Canada for the holidays and poor access to the internet (not that I would have had time) meant that I didn’t get a lot of December blogging done. But there’s always time for the annual look back at the year in strategy gaming.

I Wish I Had Played This When It Came Out and Had More Time: Men of War: Men of War is a very good Russian RTS with some cool stuff going on, but I missed it in the spring and never had time to really dig into it this fall. So though I could probably see this making a strong run for best strategy game of the year, I don’t feel I know it well enough to make that call.

Best Trend: Simplicity: The move to smart phones and consoles and social gaming sites has pushed developers to take a look at basic strategy mechanics in interesting ways. Yes, one result is an explosion of crappy tower defense games. But another result is greater exposure to strategic thinking and advance planning in games.

Worst Trend: Simplicity: The same trend also means that the genre itself is going though an identity crisis. Two of the year’s best strategy games – Dawn of War II and Demigod – were almost more like gladiatorial combat than strategy games, emphasizing small steps that had dramatic consequences. And games that pushed the sprawl and complexity that many old time strategy gamers enjoy – like Empire: Total War and Hearts of Iron 3 – stumbled a bit, though I am fond of the former and very fond of the latter. I just hope that the success of one does not drive out the other.

Worst Media Coverage of Strategy Games: What Media Coverage?: As the gaming media gets smaller, its coverage has become more centered on “event” games. So the strategy coverage you find on a general gaming site has diminished. Though IGN and Gamespot still review almost everything, previews are few and far between and analysis of the genre is mostly left to blogs, specialist sites and the like. Part of this is the console centered industry in America. But when G4 doesn’t have a best strategy game category at the end of the year, you get the sense that the genre is heading down the flight sim slope.

But as readers of this blog and listeners to TMA know, that’s not the case. The genre may be a smaller pond than it once was, but it is still full of exciting developments and thought provoking implications for what it means to game. If we gamers are heading to a pastime dominated by Michael Bay-like games, then I think a very important part of the industry now – as well as its past – will be lost or marginalized. And the gaming media, I think, has a responsibility to find some space for stuff like Dawn of Discovery, Solium Infernum, King Arthur and Field of Glory.

After all, we’re still big in Europe.

Most Disappointing Game: World War II: General Commander: I almost thought I really liked this game for a couple of days. Once I understood what I was doing, this wargame about the 1944 struggle for the Rhine was a real letdown. And it was all about two things – the AI was too predictable, marching its troops in a straight line into a Thermopylae of anti-tank guns, and the graphics were often confusing, making it impossible to really feel comfortable. On the plus side, I think that the developer has a style and an engine that could go a long way to making me interested in World War II again.

Worst Strategy Game: History: Great Battles Medieval: Slitherine used to have a very interesting real time wargame engine, even if it was yoked to uncreative strategy modes. Great Battles Medieval doesn’t even have that. You go mindlessly from battle to battle in the Hundred Years War, interrupted by clips from the History Channel and upgrade your troops. Like their Roman game (Legion Arena/Great Battles Rome), each battle is more a matter of learning the trick than it is a matter of knowing your military tactics or history. Even when I didn’t like a Slitherine game in the past, at least they made a product I could find something to admire. I didn’t even finish a single campaign in GBM.

Biggest Surprise: Anno 1404 – Dawn of Discovery: A series I’ve historically hated turned in one of the most enduring pleasures of 2009. It’s a great city builder, a decent trading game, and I’ve come to appreciate its slow pace a little more than I did for my review. It still has that European fiddliness that grates me, but I will now have to re-examine the rest of the series and see if I was just wrong.

Can I Have A Do-Over?: Empire: Total War: I still think this is a good game, but my review could have used another week of testing. It’s not an A- game (the score I gave for 1up), but still a B for me. Worse, though, has been the poor post release support. AI issues not fixed, petulant developers complaining that no one likes them and the much ballyhooed multiplayer campaign mode is still in beta almost a year after release. And we have a stand alone expansion already on the way.

Best Independent Game: Solium Infernum: And it’s been a great year for indie strategy games. AI War, apparently Gratuitous Space Battles (which I haven’t played), and even the old school pleasures of WW2 Time of Wrath. Solium Infernum, though, is an original triumph from one of the most original minds working in the strategy arena today. Vic Davis still has a lot to learn about the “boring stuff” – documentation, tutorials, interface – but I have spent more time dissecting his world and throwing emailed turns around the world than I have with almost any other game its size this year. Read my review. I stand by every word.

Best Wargame: Field of Glory: It’s not especially original, but it’s an addictive pleasure that works great in multiplayer. And they’ve just added a new battle! Hopefully they can keep up the stream of content, because that would be a big thing for me. But even as it stands, Field of Glory is an accessible and entertaining translation of the miniature rules to the PC. Slitherine deserves a lot of credit for making this work so well. Part of the secret is the simplicity of the rules themselves. The math isn’t terribly difficult, but you can do well by just thinking historically and finding a way to get a run of successful attacks, disrupting and fragmenting your opponent. Let’s get that larger army list soon, though. And maybe a random battle generator.

Strategy Game of the Year: Dawn of War II: This was not an easy pick. Demigod‘s new demigods brought me back to that game and I remembered why I liked it and how unfair we were to it in our podcast about it. Solium Infernum is genius. Sims 3 is going back to a well I love and have fallen down many times. And, in many ways, Dawn of War II represents the downsizing of the RTS in a manner I don’t necessarily appreciate.

Though it’s not as good as Company of Heroes, Dawn of War II is, I think, the archetypal Relic RTS. It is streamlined and focused without sacrificing complexity. Even the campaign set piece encounters have a tightness that is unmatched in 2009 strategy gaming. DoW2 is the product of a company that actually has a design ethos in place that is more than just licenses and explosions. The basest beggar in his meanest thing may be superfluous, but Relic would still find a way to cut it if it distracted from the entire point of the game was.

I am looking forward to the DoW2 expansion more than I am Starcraft II. More than I am Victoria 2. More than I am SupCom 2. More than I am Civ 5, and that’s not even real.

So those are 2009’s Flashies.

Nope. Still sounds stupid.

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Three Moves Ahead Episode 44 – Religion

December 23rd, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Podcast, Religion, Three Moves Ahead

A subtle shifting of the guard as Julian Murdoch is back after hiatus, but Troy Goodfellow is off for a week, leaving Julian at the mercy of the far more stable Tom Chick and Bruce Geryk. The topic is religion: does it work in a strategy game as a mechanic? Has anyone done it better than Civ IV? Bruce argues for Dominions and random boardgames about the reformation nobody’s ever heard of. Tom revisits the Sims and Europa Universalis, and Julian goes off-topic and spoils all of Assassins Creed 2 (You’ve been warned.)

Listen here.
RSS here.
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Solium Infernum Cheat Sheets

December 15th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Blogs, Cryptic Comet

Even people who love Solium Infernum complain about the lack of good introductory documentation. Thankfully, Jake Mix has decided to make things a little easier. He sent me a link to his work, nicely laid out as a bunch of flowcharts. It’s a little heavy on the icons, but should come in handy for when you’re not sure what is going on.

Here it is on letter sized paper and again on legal size.

Thanks, Jake!

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Three Moves Ahead Episode 43 – Our Console Present and Future

December 15th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Consoles, Podcast, Three Moves Ahead

ThreeMovesAhead

This week, Tom Chick makes the case that strategy gamers need to have a console to truly appreciate the range of games out there. He calls Bruce and Troy “dinosaurs” for clinging bitterly to a fading gaming platform, even though it is at the moment best suited to the deep games that all three love. What is the present condition of strategy gaming in the console arena? Are independent strategy game designers making a mistake by focusing on the PC?

Listen here.
RSS here.
Subscribe on iTunes.

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On Site Mini-Review: For the Glory

December 11th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Paradox, Review

I’ve been dithering on commenting about For the Glory, the fan made pseudo-expansion to Europa Universalis 2. It has new graphics, including a greater variety of sprites and map modes, and makes good use of the alert tabs that Paradox introduced in EU3. But when you pay your twenty dollars for it, you are essentially buying smoother integration of two popular mods – The Alternative Grand Campaign Event Exchange Project and the Age of Timur.

The latter mod is in many ways the more modest. It adjusts the start date and gives you lots of new nations to choose from. You also get to play Timur – the great Central Asian conqueror who is near the end of his reign in EU3.

The real meat is in the AGCEEP, which take a very different design philosophy from the current Paradox model. EU2 was always chained to history to some extent. Monarch and leader lists were fixed to an historical chronology and events would pop up to either keep you on the straight and narrow historical path or give you an alternative history.

Imagine that those event pop-ups happened to you every three years and they asked you to make decisions that didn’t really make sense outside of the real historical context. For example, your English Henry V obliterates and vassalizes of France and is still sitting in Paris with a huge army. Then an event asks you if you want to give a bunch of these provinces to your Burgundian friends – say no and everything goes to hell.

It would be stretching it to say that the AGCEEP forces you down an historical path. Events link across nations in some interesting ways and the alternative histories it draws are actually quite intricate. But this is an event driven game in ways that the new EU games are not. Events are not there to entertain the player or give variety or goals to aim for – the events exist to make you feel you are living a textbook, that you are the guiding spirit of a nation with a destiny you are either simpatico with or struggling against. The events, both historical and original, are creative and interesting and attractive in a very unique way.

In many ways, AGCEEP is one of those “Let’s Add More” mods. To compare, the largest event file in the default EU2 game is the 210 kb random event file. AGCEEP has a 1.8 MB event file for the Holy Roman Empire and most of those events are there to cover almost every possible contingency for the abolition or restoration of the HRE.

So much work has gone into the Timur setting and AGCEEP mods that I sort of regret not being able to return to EU2 with any great joy. I’ve moved past the event driven history that both embrace because EU3, at least since In Nomine, has found ways to make me feel more attached to the national histories I write even as it doesn’t ask me to choose to between a constitutional monarchy and a radical revolution in 1789 France or combat Hussite and Lollard heretics or applaud the rise of an historically awesome ruler like Akbar.

If you were a fan of the historical events, the real question is whether it is worth the 20 dollars to have smoother mod integration with the main program. One of the problems with the EU games pre-EU3 was that there was a wide range of mods and each one pretty much needed a unique installation. The mod functionality here is the big asset, since you can get both the AGCEEP and Timur mods for free on the official forums.

That’s a decision for each individual gamer. As much as I enjoyed looking at the greater variety in unit sprites and applaud some of the new religious stuff in For the Glory’s mod additions, I’ve moved past EU2 – still one of my favorite games ever, but superseded by its sequel.

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Solium Infernum Game Diaries

December 9th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Blogs, Cryptic Comet

Josh Bycer has been taking a look at the mechanics of Solium Infernum on his game design blog.

Three entries in his diary so far (1, 2, 3) and he has so far covered only the very early steps of the game. They are clearly written and would be helpful to many newcomers. Hopefully he will update soon so more people can appreciate what makes this game so special.

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