PolyCast Episode 92: "Fake the Funk"

Be the beat. The ninety-second episode of PolyCast, "Fake the Funk", features regular co-hosts Daniel "DanQ" Quick, "Makahlua", Philip "TheMeInTeam" Bellew and Lisa "qnl" Bang with returning guest co-hosts Gloria "condor223" Carson and Jim "TheDS" Adams.

The summary of topics is as follows:

- 02m05s | Forum Talk
What's with the Moai Statues National Wonder in Civilization IV, and would you buy Civilization V if it was only offered on Steam.
- 11m26s | Vault (Part 1 of 2)
On changing gaming standards, or at least perceptions of such (from Episode 71) and on attacking in CivIV multiplayer (from Episode 80).
- 17m45s | Miscellaneous
Golden Ages: use and lengths.
- 19m17s | Senate
The argument that the Phalanx Unique Unit is awesome pre-Beyond the Sword expansion for CivIV, and of the Scientific Method technology and the Great Library World Wonder.
- 29m57s | Vault (Part 2 of 2)
Axemen v. Chariot rushes (from (from Episode 80) and capitulation mechanics in CivIV introduced in BtS (from Episode 83).

- Intro/Outro | Miscellaneous
A personal issue of one co-host, the age of another, a brief touch upon of CivV and keeping up with trends.

PolyCast is a bi-weekly audio production in an ongoing effort to give the Civ community an interactive voice on game strategy; sibling show ModCast focuses on Civ modding and RevCast focuses on Civilization: Revolution.

As always, enjoy.

First time in my life !

That I will actually listen to polycast when it comes out

Is it me or is the PolyCast link broken? I can't seem to find the episode from any of the links available to click.

HamTard said:

Is it me or is the PolyCast link broken? I can't seem to find the episode from any of the links available to click.

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Seems fine to me. Just click on the polycast link in dan or my sig, then on the episode title you want to hear. I was able to pull up 92 no trouble just now.

Whoops -- there was some text in the episode link in the opening post that was making it direct improperly. Corrected.

I think I understand why the Moai statues increase production. The people of the Eastern Island were obsessed with making these statues and so went through all their trees chooping like crazy to make them. I like the Statues to help with Priest GP in MP if someone has already gotten the Stonehenge and Oracle. So to me the Statues were an inspiration to produce and work.

I rather not do DLC or Steam, EA games screwed me over on a game that I bought digitally and for some reason they have NO RECORD of me buying it so I can no longer DL'd and have to buy it AGAIN!

Oh yeah Dice rolls are the worst, TMIT must not like playing ANY games with Dice but then I don't blame him really Pure Luck can really be no fun at all.

I'm still looking forward to a collection of creative mispronounciatians of Makahlua's name by The DS . Maybe in episode 100?

The recurrent Phalanx discussion- here's my summary of it's history- kind of a long story but interesting story of how Fireaxis reads CFC forums.
The subject used to come up. Usually beginning with" Phalanxes were formations or tactics, not units."

Praets could march around the Med, Cosssacks could sweep across Asia, Redcoats could carve an intercontinental empire, but could Alex's spearmen conquer the known ancient world?! No! They were justy hill defenders. They couldn't even crush Persia in this game.

I even invited people by PM from various threads on the subject into one discussion.

While phalanxes were varied, just like Greek city-states, the graphic looked like a Macedonian phalanxman. Fair enough. Alexander was the only Greek leader anyway. The idea of Greek axeman was as silly as US lancers- it just wasn't the way they equiped themselves or fought.The Macedonian phalanx was primarily an anti-melee unit, so why not an ax replacement? OK - But how do you properly represent that?

Macedonian Phalanxes were for fighting on battlefields, not hills or cover, so that hill bonus had to go. Some kind of a mounted bonus or formation promotion because they were also spearmen? No, Alex's Macedonian version was directional, 4 rows of specialized spears faced the front, but it's weakness was flanking attacks by mounted/horse archers. It was more realistic to have them supported by regular spearmen to counter that threat. The Greeks used both phalanxes and other spearmen as a screening force for the flanks. The overlapping shields and the raised pikes provided significant protection from missiles coming at it from an oppoosing enemy. You could try to represent that with a cover promo, however, it was an open field formation and cities are where you find the archers, so that didn't make much practical sense, either.

Shock promo out of the box? Strength 6 ? Overpowered. We concluded that maybe the best way to represent it was....

The March promotion, to represent their relentless forward push/march across Persia and Egypt into India. ( I didn't appreciate the distinctions and implications of bonuses vs. promotions back in the day ).


So... It sorta happened. Cossacks and Redcoats were nerfed, but not Praets. Phalanx became axmen replacements rather than spearmen replacements ( but they reversed the graphics ala Kublai/Quinn...oh well ), and if you looked in the civilopedia , it said they had the march promotion. They didn't, they had a bonus against their counter ( chariots), which incidentally happened to be the archnemesis Persia's UU.

My guess is that the march promo was overpowered that early in the game, and useful long afterward in a Berserker -sort of way, so it was abandoned in play-testing, but they forgot to update .

AlphaShard said:

I think I understand why the Moai statues increase production. The people of the Eastern Island were obsessed with making these statues and so went through all their trees chooping like crazy to make them. I like the Statues to help with Priest GP in MP if someone has already gotten the Stonehenge and Oracle. So to me the Statues were an inspiration to produce and work.

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... Pure Luck can really be no fun at all.

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Indeed.

Rusty Edge said:

I'm still looking forward to a collection of creative mispronounciatians of Makahlua's name by The DS . Maybe in episode 100?

Click to expand...

The recurrent Phalanx discussion- here's my summary of it's history- kind of a long story but interesting story of how Fireaxis reads CFC forums.

Click to expand...

A most detailed account -- thanks for it!

I'm still amazed at the contrast between attitudes towards Steam between the panel ( somewhere between cool and a non-issue ) and the Civ V forum (where it's quite contoversial).

Hey everyone! I was wondering why all the crickets were hanging around; now I know I was in the wrong thread!

DanQ said:

Be the beat. The ninety-second episode of PolyCast, "Fake the Funk",

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I'm pretty sure it's longer than 90 seconds in length.

JujuLautre said:

First time in my life !

That I will actually listen to polycast when it comes out

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I'm happy to be there for you, dude! You missed my first appearance, Ep71. IMO it was a better episode than this one, but how can you rate something higher than 10/10?

AlphaShard said:

I think I understand why the Moai statues increase production. The people of the Eastern Island were obsessed with making these statues and so went through all their trees chooping like crazy to make them. I like the Statues to help with Priest GP in MP if someone has already gotten the Stonehenge and Oracle. So to me the Statues were an inspiration to produce and work.

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My thoughts exactly. Except in my case, they applied to EASTER Island. (Handy wiki link for wiki-buffs.)

Rusty Edge said:

I'm still looking forward to a collection of creative mispronounciatians of Makahlua's name by The DS . Maybe in episode 100?

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How many have I got? However many it is, I'll have to come up with a few more. Gotta please my audience. We'll do a mispronounciation a minute for the whole show. She'll like that!

Rusty Edge said:

I'm still amazed at the contrast between attitudes towards Steam between the panel ( somewhere between cool and a non-issue ) and the Civ V forum (where it's quite contoversial).

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For the record, it was my understanding at time of recording that Steam was an irrelevant OPTION; I don't play multiplayer. Since then, I've been told it's a REQUIREMENT, even if you NEVER play online MP. It's bad enough every game has all this extra crap designed to BREAK MY COMPUTER so that I can't have more than about zero games installed before it starts acting all wonky, and uninstalling doesn't get rid of it; Steam makes that two programs at once designed to mess up my computer. No thanks.

I squarely blame MS for coming up with the registry and making it so easy for software companies to hose my computer AND for making it so damned hard to get it working right again. The registry as a tool to centralize things is a good idea, the registry as a requirement to use the computer is a bad idea and the root of almost all evil. And now it's almost impossible to keep your computer running smoothly without doing a full reinstall every week. Who has that kind of time?

But anyway, I'm not interested in being forced to install something I don't want, can never uninstall, and don't get anything out of it but an unstable computer, so until someone comes to their senses and takes Steam out of the requirements, I'm probably not gonna play Civ5. If it was an OPTION, that would be one thing, but FORCING me is something else entirely.

Dan meant second as in the number after First. Though maybe you were just messing around.

I'm also aware that it's Easter Island, however my auto-correcter on my Ipod touch does not and put Eastern. *sigh*

TheDS said:

For the record, it was my understanding at time of recording that Steam was an irrelevant OPTION; I don't play multiplayer. Since then, I've been told it's a REQUIREMENT, even if you NEVER play online MP. It's bad enough every game has all this extra crap designed to BREAK MY COMPUTER so that I can't have more than about zero games installed before it starts acting all wonky, and uninstalling doesn't get rid of it; Steam makes that two programs at once designed to mess up my computer. No thanks.

I squarely blame MS for coming up with the registry and making it so easy for software companies to hose my computer AND for making it so damned hard to get it working right again. The registry as a tool to centralize things is a good idea, the registry as a requirement to use the computer is a bad idea and the root of almost all evil. And now it's almost impossible to keep your computer running smoothly without doing a full reinstall every week. Who has that kind of time?

But anyway, I'm not interested in being forced to install something I don't want, can never uninstall, and don't get anything out of it but an unstable computer, so until someone comes to their senses and takes Steam out of the requirements, I'm probably not gonna play Civ5. If it was an OPTION, that would be one thing, but FORCING me is something else entirely.

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I'm sorry to hear you're having computer problems. I have Steam on my machine ( because I didn't have my glasses with me when I bought Napoleon Total War ) Now that I have the game installed, I'm not exactly comfortable with Steam. I might consider trading it in, but you can't do that with a Steam game. It's more like an open-ended lease than a purchase. I haven't unistalled it, because I might want to play Civ V. I haven't decided whether I'll purchase V yet for other reasons.

I accept Digital Rights Management much like airline security, a nescessary nuisance; Steam may be the lesser of all evils, but it helps to hear that I'm not the only guest co-host with reservations about it.

Yeah Alpha, I'm just kiddin' around.

Not to turn it into a DRM rant, Rusty, but to a certain extent I think we've all accepted it, like we've accepted that nowadays we're all paying beta-testers. In many cases OVER-paying, but what can I do? So long as people buy crap, there'll be someone willing to sell it. That's free market. I'm glad Firaxis keeps it to a minimum most of the time. As long as they don't try to put anything damaging on my computer, and they make stuff I want, I'll keep boosting their paychecks. For now, though, Steam is a step over the line.