What Video Games Have You Been Playing, Part 10: Or; A Shameful Display!

[EgonSpengler]

In Fall from Heaven 2, higher level land units tend not to require any resources, but get stronger with access to copper, iron, or mithril. Which makes sense--you can make perfectly usable weapons without any metal, and even armor can be made without it, but metal is preferable. The Aztecs and the Tlingit, for example, had great arms and armor without metal, beyond copper daggers and the odd armor made out of Chinese coins for the Tlingit.

I also think that, with the time- and geographical scale of Civ, Strategic Resources represent massive quantities of the material, but that a Civ lacking an iron deposit appearing on the map might still have small amounts of iron, just not enough to make iron weapons & armor common outfitting in their army. So a Warrior unit with the Battlecry promotion could represent an army composed mainly of commoners with axes, clubs & spears, led by a few nobles wielding swords and wearing mail (I'm thinking of pre-Christian Ireland as an example).

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Which makes sense--you can make perfectly usable weapons without any metal, and even armor can be made without it, but metal is preferable. The Aztecs and the Tlingit, for example, had great arms and armor without metal, beyond copper daggers and the odd armor made out of Chinese coins for the Tlingit.

That "preferable" is an understatement. Yes, you can certainly make weapons without metal that are deadly as the plague...until you run into people with metal. A Maori armed with two clubs, one of wood for swinging with some reach and one of stone that basically served as a heavy hardened fist, was an extremely capable killer. But against someone with a sword, shield, breastplate, and helmet made of even bronze they may as well be empty handed. Might even be better off empty handed for better grappling so they can get the swordsman off their feet.

I think Civ is reasonably accurate in that warriors don't need metal, but without metal they will always just be warriors.

 

[AdamCrock]

Warriors should be able to steal (upgrade self) enemy's equipement upon capturing a city (raidin an armory sort of thing) I think.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Warriors should be able to steal (upgrade self) enemy's equipement upon capturing a city (raidin an armory sort of thing) I think.

At the scale that Civ VI represents, this is reflected in the Promotions system. The full upgrade to the next unit on the tech tree isn't merely the same bunch of guys wearing new armor and wielding new weapons; it's a jump in operational and strategic organization, discipline, logistics, command & control, and so on. I think that's part of the reason the Iron requirement on Swordsmen and Knights rankles some folks - the implication is that improving your army's operations, its logistics, training, support, and fieldworks, all rely on having strategically-significant quantities of iron.

 

[Phrossack]

That "preferable" is an understatement. Yes, you can certainly make weapons without metal that are deadly as the plague...until you run into people with metal. A Maori armed with two clubs, one of wood for swinging with some reach and one of stone that basically served as a heavy hardened fist, was an extremely capable killer. But against someone with a sword, shield, breastplate, and helmet made of even bronze they may as well be empty handed. Might even be better off empty handed for better grappling so they can get the swordsman off their feet.

I think Civ is reasonably accurate in that warriors don't need metal, but without metal they will always just be warriors.

I'd say the main benefits of metal arms and armor are that they don't break as quickly, and that they can be strong and light at once, rather than one or the other. Stone, bone, tooth, and obsidian weapons can be as sharp as or sharper than metal blades, but they take a lot of work to make and break very quickly. Wood, fabric, and hide armor work well--Aleksandr Baranov said Tlingit hide and wood armor could stop his men's musket fire!--but can weigh more than metal for a given level of protection, and get damaged quickly.

Swords don't really deal with armor except in some specific cases by stabbing, since even thick clothes can stop a cut. Instead you just target the places where there's no armor. The conquistadors often swapped their mail for Aztec and other native cotton armor, giving a variety of weird reasons I'd never heard used before, like "the arrows could splinter and get through our mail" or "arrows would bounce off and hit our comrades next to us but they safely stick in cotton armor." Maybe they found cotton armor easier to repair or replace in an area that made it but which made no mail. In any case, they liked it, and many conquistadors used leather adargas for shields rather than metal rodelas. Steel swords are nice because they can cut, thrust, and give decent reach while being light and durable, but wooden swords, macuahuitls, and stone maces are still useful--and in any case most of the killing in battle was done by cavalry lancers and, probably, by native allies. It's also interesting to note that Coronado's expedition muster roll listed many conquistadors armed with "arms of the country," probably meaning "native Mexican weapons," which would not have been metal but wood and obsidian.

In days of yore, I had a thread on armor in the mostly-dead World History subforum, and it had a post on Tlingit wooden and hide armor. I'll dig it up later.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Grievous injury... Palpable fear... There can be no hope in this Hell.

 

[Birdjaguar]

POE announced its next expansion: Synthesis for early March. It is free to play. If you are new to the game or want to learn the basics, pm me.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I'd say the main benefits of metal arms and armor are that they don't break as quickly, and that they can be strong and light at once, rather than one or the other. Stone, bone, tooth, and obsidian weapons can be as sharp as or sharper than metal blades, but they take a lot of work to make and break very quickly. Wood, fabric, and hide armor work well--Aleksandr Baranov said Tlingit hide and wood armor could stop his men's musket fire!--but can weigh more than metal for a given level of protection, and get damaged quickly.

Swords don't really deal with armor except in some specific cases by stabbing, since even thick clothes can stop a cut. Instead you just target the places where there's no armor. The conquistadors often swapped their mail for Aztec and other native cotton armor, giving a variety of weird reasons I'd never heard used before, like "the arrows could splinter and get through our mail" or "arrows would bounce off and hit our comrades next to us but they safely stick in cotton armor." Maybe they found cotton armor easier to repair or replace in an area that made it but which made no mail. In any case, they liked it, and many conquistadors used leather adargas for shields rather than metal rodelas. Steel swords are nice because they can cut, thrust, and give decent reach while being light and durable, but wooden swords, macuahuitls, and stone maces are still useful--and in any case most of the killing in battle was done by cavalry lancers and, probably, by native allies. It's also interesting to note that Coronado's expedition muster roll listed many conquistadors armed with "arms of the country," probably meaning "native Mexican weapons," which would not have been metal but wood and obsidian.

In days of yore, I had a thread on armor in the mostly-dead World History subforum, and it had a post on Tlingit wooden and hide armor. I'll dig it up later.

Notice that the conquistadors who opted for the padded armor weren't up against metal weapons. A steel sword that, as you pointed out, can be thrust, makes padded armor pretty much obsolete. It will stop a slash, and it's good against the low mass piercing of an arrow, but getting skewered ruins your day. I can see wood panel armor standing up well enough though, but it's going to be a lot harder to minimize the vulnerable joints than using metal.

And we still have the flip side, where the weapons available without metal are going to come up badly wanting against metal armors. Sharp doesn't really carry the day if after the first strike against a metal plate you have no more edge.

 

[cardgame]

I note that the unit descriptions the game provides are kind of narrow. For example, it says the Warrior is "armed with a club or stone axe", and yet the unit clearly represents the infantry employed by, say, the Egypt of the Pharoahs, who were armed with bronze weapons like spears, axes, daggers, javelins, and khopeshes (Wikipedia says kopeshes were used at the Battle of Kadesh, although that fight was all about the chariots). Promotions don't do enough to differentiate a superior version of a lesser unit from the next unit up the tech tree, imo, because units keep promotions when they're upgraded. If you upgrade a Warrior with Battlecry to a Swordsman, you get a Swordsman with Battlecry, so the Civ that lacks iron can only make up some of the difference by using veteran Warriors if the enemy happens to field an army of green Swordsmen. If you want an interim unit, maybe it would be something like 'Improved Warrior' (that deserves a better name, but I can't think of one right now). There could also be a Policy Card that improves existing units slightly. Right now, "Discipline" is an Ancient Policy Card that provides a +5, but only against Barbarians. Maybe there could be a new Policy Card in the Classical Era that provides a bonus against anybody (but then you would have to go back and redesign many of the UUs that already represent a superior implementation or refinement of a common unit type, so maybe that would just be opening a can of worms...).

I haven't played civ 6, but something does come to mind: Classical Era policy called Tactics, +5 flatline, +10 vs anyone who has not adopted discipline or tactics.

 

[Broken_Erika]

And we still have the flip side, where the weapons available without metal are going to come up badly wanting against metal armors. Sharp doesn't really carry the day if after the first strike against a metal plate you have no more edge.

What about warhammers?

 

[cardgame]

Warhammers work fine against armor, but they don't have any reach until they're made of metal (e.g. poleaxes). Since they also wouldn't have metal armor, they'd probably be easy to take down by the armored boys.

 

[Arakhor]

That's interesting. I got the Special Edition for free because I had Skyrim and all the DLC at the right time, but I haven't ever played it because I consider the game unplayable on PC without the SkyUI mod, which afaik is unavailable for the Special Edition.

I'm fairly certain that there is a working version of SKSE for SE these days.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Played some Civ 6 with Gathering Storm.
No final verdict yet. Seems pretty good and has balance issues.
Diplomacy seems improved. I was able to end a joint Scottish/Persian war on Scythia by pushing through an emergency in the World Congress after Cyrus conquered a city state. Robert switched sides and I'm now in a stable alliance with Scythia and Scotland. Persia is a rogue nation that we tolerate because they pose no threat to our coalition.
Climate Change is too easily countered with sea walls. I'll ramp up the disaster intensity for my next game and give coal and oil away for free.
The only change I dislike is that some civs can have a really ugly (randomized ?) color scheme. Possibly because multiple civs the same or similar standard colors spawn in the same game ?
America was a trashy orange. Please keep politics out of my game Firaxis.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Why does everyone seem to hate Final Fantasy 8? Was it the game play or the setting?

I know that they mixed up the game play a lot in an effort to curb the kind of grinding that makes Final Fantasy 7 a bit miserable to play but I still thought it was fun. The leveling system was easily exploitable but no one makes you exploit it. I got about 95% through that game before I really had to grind to advance and in reality I believe a lot of my struggles were that I needed to upgrade my fighting strategies rather than my character's levels.

And I loved how much further into sci fi this game went than previous entries. Thematically it's my favorite game in the series though I found Final Fantasy 12 to be most fun to play overall.

I got a copy of Final Fantasy 6 and am having a lot of fun with it even though the graphics are pretty horrid. I appreciate the level of detail they tried to bring to their sprites but the end result is hard on the eyes.

Does anyone know how grindy Final Fantasy 6 is? It's fine so far but if I'm going to have to spend hours roaming the same screen trying to level up, I might stop while I'm ahead.

 

[Synobun]

It's the only Final Fantasy I've played.

I always end up bailing after the train sequence on the first disc.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Too tedious or what?

 

[Synobun]

I just really dislike random encounters. Take a few steps, really drawn out battle cutscene, one-shot kill a floating eyeball or something, go through the victory prompts, take a few steps, really drawn out battle cutscene...

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Oh yeah they really suck and it's been a frustration I'm already experiencing in 6. I'm not sure what more recent games are like but in 12 they had cut way down on truly random encounters and instead put the enemies on the map so that you can choose to avoid or actively engage them.

At least with 6 there isn't really a formal intro/outro cut scene. The battle just starts, you fight, it ends.

 

[cardgame]

I only played FFX but I freaking loved it.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I've mostly just been playing Audiosurf. Somebody I know who used to play it a lot suggested I try Bush's "Machinehead." It was wild! A huge chunk of it is just these crazy red slides where the camera shifts off to the shoulder so it's harder to tell where the blocks actually are. It's a pretty cool song, too.