What video games have you been playing? ΚΔ (24)? More like ΚΔ,Ζ,ΤΞΕ!

Played Europa Barbarorum today. Blast from the past.

Did a Makedon campaign. After defeating the Greek city states and Epirus within 10 turns, I made no attempt whatsoever to reunite the Diadochi.

This is deliberate. I don't really care about the Eastern Mediterranean much at all. Persia has no access to Med sea lanes and therefore has a low economic ceiling. Egypt does, but to successfully invade it means I would have to defend it endlessly from the Seleucid behemoth. Both diadochi also utilize the phalanx, an extremely strong unit in the mod, making the battles more difficult relative to other regions.

So I invaded Carthage.

I put 6 of their cities under siege on the same turn as the war declaration. Hammered them. It was over quickly. I leave the AI no time to respond. It was over before they could redirect troops from Iberia and Sicily.

I intend to go after the Italian peninsula next. I will open with a siege assault on Rome itself. I will besiege every Southern Italian city simultaneously. I will have one turn to take them before they move forces south to defend Rome. I should be able to. No trouble.

From there, a Western European focus makes the most sense. Gaul and Hispania. The East is just a trap. Higher expenditures for less gain, with less trade income. Makedonia is much more militarily potent than Rome, particularly against barbarians, who have no answer for heavy cavalry, which Rome does not effectively field ,nor can their lightly armored troops withstand a phalanx for long enough to flank it. The new Greek world will be in the West, not the East.
All this is what the Greeks kindof ended up doing more or less haphazardly between Agathocles, Pyrrhos, Hiero, etc. and which Alexander planned on doing before his death.
 
All this is what the Greeks kindof ended up doing more or less haphazardly between Agathocles, Pyrrhos, Hiero, etc. and which Alexander planned on doing before his death.
It generally happens that way in the mod, too. Most players do not go in particularly well prepared in any of the TW games. Tactics is usually the focus, not strategy.

My approach differs from most EB players in that I besiege many cities simultaneously. This is an adaptation to the EB money script, which grants the AI enough money to recruit approximately 12 mid-tier units per turn. Effectively, if the enemy has 12 cities, they recruit a full stack once every 2 turns. No victory is very decisive if that ability is uninterrupted.

This does not happen because they cannot recruit if the city is under siege. Carthage and Rome are very vulnerable to this strategy because the length of their coastlines allows for simultaneous small invasions. I face less possibility of a war of attrition than any historical Greek leader did, consequently.

Only Makedon probably had the manpower to pull the strategy off. The other historical Greek leaders probably shouldn't have bothered with Italy or Carthage.
 

Age of Empires II at 25: the strategy game that inspired a generation of historians​

Many historians of a certain age admit that the game reinforced their passion for the past and got them into the field. Four of them explain what drew them in



My dad is the kind of man who will find a game he enjoys and stick to it. While I have always flitted about, hopping between different genres, he remains the only person I know who does absolutely everything it has to offer. When people ask, “who actually finishes these enormous games?”, I can respond with confidence that it is a geordie man in his 60s with a love of Lego and creative swearing. Age of Empires II had a grip on him for well over a decade.

The game came out in 1999, when I was five years old, and I am not exaggerating when I say that it was a permanent feature of our domestic life right up to when I moved out thirteen years later. The only thing that changed were the laptops he played on, which became progressively less bulky over the years. The sound effects, from the iconic “wololo” of the priests and the villagers’ warbles of acknowledgment as you sent them to chop wood, were the soundtrack to my childhood.

When I got old enough, I picked up my dad’s interest in the game, and it was one of my earliest exposures to historical media. I do think it helped develop my own engagement with history, which eventually led to me becoming a historian. I’m not alone in this. When I speak at conferences about history and video games, I have on many occasions had historians of a certain age sheepishly approach me to say that Age of Empires II got them into this field.

Greg Jenner is a public historian and host of BBC Four’s history podcast You’re Dead to Me. He played Age of Empires II while doing his A-levels, and found that the game captured his historical imagination as well as complimenting his studies – so much so that it became an early recurring joke on his podcast. “The game definitely reinforced my passion for the past, likely broadened my historical vocabulary, and gave me a wider range of global references that I wasn’t getting at school; Genghis Khan, for example,” he says.

The technology tree, which shows the game’s various techn and units available to the player, particularly caught his imagination. “As a historian, I’m now way more cautious of the tech tree approach to thinking about societies,” he says. “It’s interesting to look back at it, because at the time it definitely resonated with, and indeed bolstered, my historical tastes.”


While I am sure there are many military historians whose passionate interest in trebuchets started with this strategy game, my own historical expertise is in the social and cultural. Playing through Age of Empires II’s scenarios and watching my dad endlessly battle against the computer really highlighted to me that it wasn’t the knights or castles that interested me – it was the villagers. I placed my houses and farms in a pleasing way that I truly believed would provide these little automatons with a good quality of life, even as they existed purely to generate the resources for war. And frankly it was annoying when enemies would insist on laying siege to my town and setting fire to my crops. I see echoes of this in my current historical work, which focuses on the everyday. I wanted to know about the lives of the people whose labour enabled these big events.

Age of Empires really took ahold of me when I discovered the map editor. Here, I was free to build my towns and create stories about who these villagers were, without the game rudely insisting on making me engage with its mechanics. Dr Agnes Arnold-Forster, a historian of medicine at Edinburgh University, had a similar experience. “I only enjoyed the map editor – any kind of setup or planning, building landscapes, drawing coastlines, establishing where settlements would lie. I wasn’t that interested in the main gameplay element – not a big fan of fighting, although I liked harvesting fields.”

Agnes is also an expert in nostalgia and reflected on the game through this lens. “I think it absolutely informed my interest in history. I think a lot of professional historians, myself included, start out life as nostalgics – longing for periods in the past they haven’t lived through – and Age of Empires, along with other games like it, indulge some of that nostalgia. And, I suppose, it’s about playing with the past – which is basically what historians do for a living, whether they like to admit it or not.”


She makes an excellent point. While some of us are more explicitly playful in our methodologies than others, historians all inhabit a space of experimentation and play as part of the research process.

Where I was introduced to this game by my dad, Mathew Lyons, an author and historian, reflected poetically on playing it with his son. “It was lovely to discover the game as a result of becoming a parent – one of those strange unlooked-for gifts that parenting gives you,” he tells me. “It felt like a brilliant way to explore the idea of empires rising and falling, and the wider idea of historical impermanence, in the context of the constancy and certainty of parental love.”

Play can be a powerful source of connection; to the past, to ourselves, to one another. Twenty five years after its launch, we can now nostalgically reflect on the impact Age of Empires II had on us. As with any piece of historical media the game is not without its issues in how it represents the past. But for me, and plenty of other historians of a particular generation, it provided a spark of joy that developed into something more. It also kept my dad entertained for two decades and gave us a point of connection. For those two things, I’m very grateful.

 
Last edited:
Playing more Bannerlord.

New character, Umar ibn Umar of the Banu Shum. My internal RP is that he's a Baal worshipper. He's pretty zealous but not sadistic. His mission is religious reform, replacing a decentralized polytheism with his Baal-centric formalized hierarchy and rituals. He has become Sultan and High Priest, completely melding religion and state together.

He only uses javelins. It's for the thunder symbolism. Usefully, he can throw these javelins through any shield with absolutely no loss of velocity(skill perk). This breaking of all known and probably some unknown laws of physics has a great psychological effect on the enemy. Particularly when one strikes their general from 150 meters away. Other than these consistent feats, he's not good at fighting. In sieges, on foot, he embarrassingly has to run away from peasants armed with rusty sickles pretty often. 1H skill of 18. He can take Cletus 1 on 1. But 5 Celtusii? Run.

His talent is in organization. He was never in any danger of his state failing to launch or maintain. The Aseri tribes were easy converts. The gold bought many tribes before the Pretender Unqid could muster a counter-rebel attack. Two of the Imperial empires, hollowed by civil war, collapsed with minimal pressure to the now united and aggressive state of Baal-Shum. Although Garios' empire is fighting hard, its armies and lands and fortresses extensive, Baal-Shum's reforms allow me a pretty extreme mobilization advantage that grows as the war goes on.
 
Started a game of Civ 3 as England, playing against 7 civs who have been in every iteration of Civ. Very crap starting location: plains, followed by desert, followed by marsh. I'm going to have to conquer the Chinese so I can take the middle of the continent and re-center my civ down there. Have started a war and gained slaves to clear marshes, but will need more archers to make progress. Planning to play as England against the same civs in Civ 4, 5, 6. If I can figure out how to do Civ 1/Civ 2 games on a modern PC I might try those as well. My corraghs (Britannia, Albion, Wessex, and Northumbria) have been pretty good at suicide runs to reveal the continents. Only lost Northumbria so far.
 
status.jpg




So, I've successfully re-centered my realm. At the very top of the map, which you can't see in this shot, are my original capital of London, followed by York: both are plains cities. Near them there's an island, where I have a city named Dublin. I think I can fit in a Belfast as well. It's a 3-city island at best. Beijing and Victoria (Shanghai) indicate where the Chinese empire used to be. The City of London was settled by a settler from London, and I insta-built the palace using a Great Scientist. I've been in wars with all three of my neighbors -- Babylon, who used to have a string of cities (where Westminister & the volcano are); Egypt, and Greece. All three were precipitated by their sending settlers inside my present and imagined borders, and they were awfully convenient because I also need lots of workers to clear marshes and jungles. The Babylon war is about to kick back off because they re-settled a town I razed (Eulbar location) and have several settlers running around what will be the southern part of my kingdom. I just finished an odd war with Egypt: I razed several of their cities and finished the war sacking Thebes,, and never met any serious resistance. Presently, I'm shifting most of my forces east, where in 6 turns I'll sack both Akkad and Eulbar, gauge resistance, and then raze or take Babylon itself. The Greek war was anticlimactic: I took one of their settlers, and then 20+ turns later a swordsman showed up and I killed him, too. The Greeks settled for 50 gold.


Long term, my only serious competition in this game will be Rome, who have most of a continent to themselves. That little bit below them is Germany, and while it's connected to the same mainland, they don't have any real way of settling the northern half of that continent. India is off to the right and has a continent seemingly divided into thirds of marsh, desert, and grassland. I don't think they'll become a contender. What I'm assuming will happen is that I'll absorb Egypt and Babylon, and then we'll see where the game goes. Lots of work to do cleaning marshes, jungles, etc before that, though.
 
I feel like Firaxis had a more balanced map generation script in 6. I don't intuitively recall encountering a civ lucky enough to spawn in geography really favorable to expansion as frequently as past civs.

That civ A would block civ B from expansion by claiming a narrow peninsula felt more common. In 6, continents is basically two big pangaeas. Pretty featureless. Even fractal felt like civs receive a fair allotment of the snake, most of the time. I only recall having an island spawn once on fractal in 6. In 4 I'd check worldbuilder for it.

I don't miss personally spawning in a randomly generated poor location. I do sorta wish they were more frequent, though, because of the effect on AI. It leads to more dynamic gameplay if an AI manages to develop into a behemoth via fortune of its geography.
 
I seem to have become addicted to UFO 50, and I’ve not even tried half the games yet. Please send help.
UFO 50? Is there any UFO game beyond the old DOS(Box) ones?
 
Playing a game of Civ 6. It's frustrating though.. For the past 5 years or so I have only been playing with mad raging barbarians, no city states, and only 1 type of victory possible - domination. I love conquering barbarian islands and continents, and city states just get in the way.

Recently I've been playing with some friends, who play with city states and with all the victory conditions turned on. Fair enough! I started a single player game with all victory conditions turned on, King difficulty. Figured I would get reacquainted with the dynamics of such a game.

Why does the computer suck so much at fighting me? I swear I had more of a tough time conquering the world on Prince difficulty, with only domination turned on. In my King difficulty game, I am casually making my way around the world conquering everyone, including players who are more advanced than me. Where are their defenses? Some of them have sent 5-10 units at me, but I just destroy them in the water. Then they have nothing left to defend themselves with.

It's so frustrating. Prince difficulty is too easy, but at King the computer opponents progress relatively fast. Faster than me. They do everything better than me, yet they suck butt at fighting me, or each other. I like an engaging game with warfare, but it's so boring to fight incompetent morons. Yet I can't up the difficulty any more, as then I'd have to focus everything on proper growth and learning more kinks that I can exploit to help me win. The computer opponents are already growing faster and better than me, they literally do everything better than me.. except the military.

Not every game is like this either! Some games the computer will have a giant army and will crush me. Or even a smaller army with solid units that I can't fight against well, given the terrain. In some games the computer will produce more military units when attacked! Not in this game. I am casually making my way around the world with like 8 units, conquering everything. It's boring.

This is why I use a raging barbarians mod. It's actually a challenge to find a large island full of barbarians and to conquer them.. not during the latter stages of the game mind you, when you have bombers and tanks.. but when you have knights, conquering an island like that can be a challenge. I enjoy that.

Are computer players programmed to only know how to play if there's city states? If there aren't any, they suck?

Civ 6 is still fun, but I hope Civ7 is heaps better
 
Last edited:
Civ 6 is still fun, but I hope Civ7 is heaps better

I honestly tried 6 after departing from beloved 4 and 5, but couldn’t get into it. It was a death by a thousand cuts, more precisely a thousand annoyances. Reduced movement rate (reason number 1 for AI stupidity if you ask me). The AI was terrible at combat tactical movement to begin with and only shined through brute forcing. But then combat competence requirement went through the roof as the increased requirement for moves (on AI’s part) made any aspirations for AI combat competence simply unrealistic. There is a lesson here somewhere - sometimes Simple is best.

And then workers. I always liked that particular abstraction as it had creative venue. Now I understand Firaxis is getting rid of them entirely in 7, while many people are cheering. I must be getting old and impervious to change… although I must admit, by lategame my army of workers was getting tiring to manage. Sometimes I even automated some of them!

I am of course more than curious about the future of civ. Each of the iterations had at least one special thing going for it. Part I had simplicity, part 4 had depth. Someday Firaxis can stumble upon perfect civ by accident. Or maybe they already did?
 
I honestly tried 6 after departing from beloved 4 and 5, but couldn’t get into it. It was a death by a thousand cuts, more precisely a thousand annoyances. Reduced movement rate (reason number 1 for AI stupidity if you ask me). The AI was terrible at combat tactical movement to begin with and only shined through brute forcing. But then combat competence requirement went through the roof as the increased requirement for moves (on AI’s part) made any aspirations for AI combat competence simply unrealistic. There is a lesson here somewhere - sometimes Simple is best.

And then workers. I always liked that particular abstraction as it had creative venue. Now I understand Firaxis is getting rid of them entirely in 7, while many people are cheering. I must be getting old and impervious to change… although I must admit, by lategame my army of workers was getting tiring to manage. Sometimes I even automated some of them!

I am of course more than curious about the future of civ. Each of the iterations had at least one special thing going for it. Part I had simplicity, part 4 had depth. Someday Firaxis can stumble upon perfect civ by accident. Or maybe they already did?
Civ 4 is still the best. 1UPT is tedious, especially when it comes to combat. In Civ 5 it was unbearable. Civ 6 improved things a little, but I just get over how ugly the map looks with so much unit spam, particularly all the unit banners. I hate how the banners artwork don't match/blend with the map scenery. Its an eyesore, and it worse the farther you zoom out. I remember a mod in Civ 4 that gave you real national flags for the unit banners. That was nice, because it blended better with the scenery and was more immersive.

I really miss Stack-of-Doom. The AI was so much more challenging with SoDs. And there were still tactics involved... you still had attack-order, chokepoints, naval drops, amphibious attacks, bombing raids. The major tactical difference I guess was that CIv 4 siege units are more like suicide bombers/goblin sappers/banelings than actual siege units, and archers were almost purely defensive, rather than for bombardment.

What I also liked about Civ 4 was that the units were BIG, so you could see the detail didn't need the banners/icons to tell what unit they were, especially once they made the units culturally specific. In Civ 5 the units got so small, the artwork was wasted because you couldn't even see it unless you zoomed all the way in, but then that was too close to actually play and see what was going on around the map. I hate being forced to use the ugly unit banner icons to tell what unit it is... very immersion breaking.

Managing workers is lots of fun in the early game, particularly mods that allow you to capture workers and settlers, but I like the idea of phasing them out, maybe even in the mid game, but certainly by the late game they are too tedious and should be phased out... especially since by then, as you say, we are automating them anyway.
 
Last edited:
You can win via conquest in 6 on deity. It's not much different. 6 Military AI was the largest deficiency of the whole series. Taking 3 or 4 archers and 1 warrior against deity AIs is totally viable and probably actually a requirement for top-tier play.

The 6 AI simply can't handle the nuances of 1UPT movement. Skill results in tight, speedy moves, with minimal wasted motion. It's true almost universally, in more than just civ. The 6 AI is the opposite of that. If a player practices a little, just a little, with ranged units, they'll simply annihilate the AI as it blunders about aimlessly. Near the end of my 6 playing cycle I stopped using archers altogether. Just too game breaking.

Deity actually produces the fastest player win times, because the AI has more settlements and gold to capture.
 
Ouch, that would hurt if the game was looking otherwise good.
As it is, guess another reason to shrug and not care.
 
So, we have Persia, but no Babylon, Sumeria or Akkadia? There's a surprising number of Asian civs there.
 
So, we have Persia, but no Babylon, Sumeria or Akkadia? There's a surprising number of Asian civs there.
You can also notice that there are only two ancient Euro civs and only two """age of discovery""" Euro civs. But, of course, Britain/France/Germany (and the US) all there in the final age.
Maybe the idea that civs typically follow a Rome-Normans-Britain path is not even applicable to Britain itself ^^
 
Top Bottom