Classic old games

[Matthew.]

That, and maces were overpowered. Super cheap to buy in mass quantities, and effective against pretty much everything. Nothing was more disappointing (both recently and when I played back in the day) than spending huge amounts of resources for tons of swordsmen and knights, and realize they don't perform nearly as well as maces.

I also remember thinking how the economy system was so complex (give me a break, I was around 12 when I played it). The only other strategy game I had to compare it to at the time was Warcraft 2. In LoTRealms 2, you had to like... rotate crops, balance cow vs. wheat, and manage taxes all at the same time!

 

[sophie]

Lords of the realm 2 was great, indeed. I love crossbowmen! My only big gripe with it was the AI had no concept of seiging castles. If you got a royal castle they could never capture your county ever.

Bah. No need to waste resources on crossbows. Pretty much the best strategy was to just spam archers and pikemen. Once you reach that critical mass of archers you're basically undefeatable.

 

[Matthew.]

I used peasants instead of pikes. Basically have every city on forestry and bows unless I needed stone, use all extra gold on maces, and massed up peasants when population got too high.

Have peasants sacrifice themselves to protect archers; flank enemy with maces from behind.

The diplomacy in that game was even more ridiculous than Civ5. The AI would send a 50 peasant troop over to pillage all your farmland and when you killed it you would get a message like "You know this means war!" or some other threat that makes it sound like you are the aggressor. Right... I am at fault for not letting you pillage as you please...

 

[Disgustipated]

Looks like someone posted a picture of Way of the Exploding Fist on page 1. Funny thing on that game on my commodore 64 (hooked up to my TV), during the long load time of that game I wasn't sure where to put the TV volume, so I turned it all the way up thinking I'd adjust it down as needed. The intro of the game is a eardrum piercing loud scream which scared the hell out of me and my brother's friend who was there with me.

Commodore 64 games were fun, but older games don't have as much play time as I've spend on games in the 2000's. Most were action games you get bored of around 10 hours of gameplay.

Turn your volume all the way up when clicking the link below.


Link to video.

 

[Disgustipated]

One C64 game I really enjoyed was Impossible Mission. We never had rule books for any of these games (most of our games were pirated), so that didn't help. But I had no idea how to beat the game. I just messed around rotating the puzzle pieces together. Never got very far in that game, but the action is fun and the voice effects are amazing.


Link to video.

 

[civvver]

I disagree, maces are good and so cheap that in auto calc battles they're one of the most cost effective. But they are easily counters by pikes/swords and archers. Just have the pikes block them and archers annihilate them. They're really good against the computer because the computer is bad at moving quickly to protect their archers.

For that reason knights are also the best unit in the game. You can literally take out the computer's archers and move your knights back before the respond with anything. Notice at the start of any open field battle the AI starts moving to some defensive position. If you attack the end of their train of units they don't respond until super late. Sometimes they move their archers last as well.

For sieges you can save a lot of troops by moving your knights to the flag before the AI can respond. Try it out sometime, knights are just damn good.

Crossbows are super expensive and probably unnecessary but really good at repelling sieges since the AI tends to use pikes to dig up moats and the crossbows will mow them down.

As far as diplomacy, yeah it doesn't exist really. If someone is adjacent to you expect an attack soon.

 

[sophie]

I disagree, maces are good and so cheap that in auto calc battles they're one of the most cost effective. But they are easily counters by pikes/swords and archers. Just have the pikes block them and archers annihilate them. They're really good against the computer because the computer is bad at moving quickly to protect their archers.

For that reason knights are also the best unit in the game. You can literally take out the computer's archers and move your knights back before the respond with anything. Notice at the start of any open field battle the AI starts moving to some defensive position. If you attack the end of their train of units they don't respond until super late. Sometimes they move their archers last as well.

For sieges you can save a lot of troops by moving your knights to the flag before the AI can respond. Try it out sometime, knights are just damn good.

Crossbows are super expensive and probably unnecessary but really good at repelling sieges since the AI tends to use pikes to dig up moats and the crossbows will mow them down.

As far as diplomacy, yeah it doesn't exist really. If someone is adjacent to you expect an attack soon.

Well yeah. I usually have 2 kinds of armies. Defensive armies (getting at least stone castles up in each region is usually my first order of business) consist of like 90% archers and 10% pikes (in case this is one of the 5% of the battles in which the AI actually gets its act together and tries making a concerted attack), my offensive armies are usually about 55% archers, 40% pikes and 5% knights, basically for the reason you mentioned. I never autocalc battled unless I"m at the end mopup stage of the game. Like I said, crossbows are useless because archers are cheaper and once you hit a critical mass of 200 or so archers there's really not much that can touch you. My strategy in field battles is usually find a defensible location, create a fort out of pikemen and use some expendible unit (usually a single peasant or weakened archer) to lure the enemy into the fort. Rinse and repeat until the archers are exposed at which point the knights go in to take them out, and then I advance the fort slowly until the enemy is in range and then the battle is over.

Sieges generally depends on what I'm attacking. palisade is pretty simple: knock down wall>rush flag with knights/maces (if very early-game). motte and bailey is use archers screened by pikes to take out any archers/infantry dumb enough to get in range>knock down front door>use knights or archers to force oil to pour>knock down second gate>set pikes at gate (in awning where they can't be hit by arrows), post archers behind, or sometimes I use the ram as a screen>mow down everyone>take flag

Norman keeps in my opinion are the toughest fortifications to take in the game (aside from Royal Castles obv.). Generally I just try to kill all their archers with mine screened by pikes and then I blow a hole in the wall, make a fort out of pikes and then try to lure as many as I can or I rush knights for the flag if there's a window of opportunity. The trickiest part is trying to dump the oil without getting everybody killed.

Defensive sieges are so easy they're a joke. As long as you have enough archers you win. Pretty much my strategy in the campaigns is to first to dump all money/labor into getting stone>build a stone castle or royal castle>fill it to the brim with archers>slowly accumulate enough resources to build an army>wait until I have enough stone for another castle>take province>put all labor into building castle, happiness be damned>from there, once you have two provinces with two at least stone castles the game is essentially over, it's only a matter of mopping everybody up because the AI is just so damned incompetent at dealing with moats. They do silly things like sending in 1 or 2 units at a time to fill the moat or put men into fill the moat>get peppered with arrows>pull out rather than just biting the bullet and taking the casualties. Generally the AI is lucky if they even manage to get a lane filled in enough to bring in the ram and even then they can't get in because you just bring the oil to bear on them.

 

[Matthew.]

I've never had a problem flanking archers, and maces destroy archers incredibly fast. I've also been able to take out parts of the enemy at the start of the battle, just like knights. In my experience knights are slightly faster, but die just as fast, if not faster than maces. I could never justify spending the gold when maces worked just as well for a fraction of the cost.

I'm sure they would lose in a straight up fight against swords, but I've never seen large number of swords for it to ever be a problem. With how cheap they are, you could just field two large armies of maces/bows and it still wouldn't be a problem.

For castle sieges, I lose patience and just go for brute force. 2 battering rams as siege, that is it. Break down the door, send in a coupe of units to knock over any oil the AI hasn't used yet, break down a second door if there is one, then flood the castle.

For moats, I just sacrifice peasants. Other than the Bishop (who rushes royal castles) it is usually late in the game when you need to cross moats. By that time, I can replenish 600 peasants every single turn and not ever worry about happiness or growth. It is also fun to be the evil tyrannical ruler exploiting the poor to expand my rule

Crossbows are good for castle defense. They will drop enemy rams the fastest, and will do more damage than archers since you are limited in how many you can use. Although the 600 limit on Royals is enough to still mass archers.

 

[sophie]

Crossbows are good for castle defense. They will drop enemy rams the fastest, and will do more damage than archers since you are limited in how many you can use. Although the 600 limit on Royals is enough to still mass archers.

I suppose you could justify crossbows for the lower-level castles when unit limit is really a problem, but for stone or royal castles I really just can't justify them. The AI is never realistically going to get the moat filled in and there are points on the stone and royal castles where you can stick archers and they can hit anything going for the moat while being impervious to enemy missiles.

As I said, I never stick with anything below a stone castle for very long so I rarely find a need for crossbowmen, especially with their reduced range and rate of fire (and more expensive cost) compared to archers.

 

[civvver]

Crossbows would be great in royal's and stone castles if their range was greater. As it is they can barely shoot across the moat. Good for taking down rams but that's it.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I wasted countless hours with Drakkhen, an overlooked RPG which was totally advanced to its time.

Link to video.

Also, Barbarian deserves some remembrance for its primitive yet funny sword combat system (the little green toad-guy was particularly funny)

Link to video.

Which carry us to another not so old overlooked tittle: Severance: Blade Of Darkness, with the best sword combat system ever IMHO.

Link to video.

 

[sophie]

Link to video.

Warning: language