Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[gomez]

It's not about the money, it's about sending a message.

[Vgray]

The AI completely failing to understand the concept of "Teaching him a lesson" in strategy games.

If this punk of a nation/faction/space empire decides to have a go at you, the AI should understand that killing his troops just won't get the message across, so you take a few of his castles or planets or such to send a clear message of "Don't declare war on me again or I will take more of these again".

Except despite how clear the message is, everyone watching decides you're an evil scumbag and the other guy is a poor victim even though he declared war first, yeah I'd understand everyone giving you weird looks if you take half the guy's empire in retribution but no one should bat an eye at you taking a few spots.

On the same vein as that...

When you break another faction's nose and then chew it off, they should accept an offer of peace when they get it for the good of the nation instead of spitting in your eye and fighting for their grudge, forcing you to exterminate the bloke and get in a fight with someone else.

These two things are incredibly irritating in strategy games and currently I'm getting a lot of the latter then the former at the moment.

This somewhat reminds me of my current EU III game as (a fully restored-ish) Byzantium.

Castile has three greek provinces and a claim on another and is stubbornly throwing thousands of troops at me. But only ever 8-1000 troops at a time when I have about 30. And they still won't give an inch.

[94dima94]

Same...
This is even worse when your ALLY won't help you anymore because of your "horrible actions", that is... saving his ass by destroying the guy that was killing him. You saved him, he is fine, but you captured some enemy territories while doing so, therefore... that's it. Evil.

[Mech#4]

I think this is the same kind of problem in Total War. The A.I. is willing to be your ally but because of the players aggressive expansion from conquering neighbouring enemies, raising armies to defend yourself the negatives strongly outweigh the positives.

The player wants to expand and conquer, but the A.I. all see this as really aggressive and feel threatened, usually rightly so. The negatives still outweigh the positives if you take all but one province from an enemy and try and get them to be a vassal, causing the "going down fighting to the bitter end" dealy.

[Culise]

Same...
This is even worse when your ALLY won't help you anymore because of your "horrible actions", that is... saving his ass by destroying the guy that was killing him. You saved him, he is fine, but you captured some enemy territories while doing so, therefore... that's it. Evil.

1. "This person A has blobbed up on my borders."
2. "This person A is now invading me to blob even more."
3. "This person B is saving me from Person A."
4. "This person B who saved me is now blobbing up on my borders."
5. "..."

I think that's the logic as far as it usually goes.  Unfortunately, for the EU3 mention by the next person after you, it does tend to have issues with, say, regions where you can't just release a protective string of countries to break down a larger country without issue (*cough* France).  I think that dealing with relationship penalties for Bad Boy/Aggressive Expansion is one of the things EU4 did improve on, though it does have its own issues.  It's definitely loads better than Total War, though admittedly that's saying next to nothing.  Really, it's just a bit lazy to use a single global relationship multiplier, and while I don't mind disincentivizing conquest (due to being a builder myself), I can understand where problems would arise for more martially-inclined folks. 

[Bohandas]

Related to the above:

Artsy indie pixel garbage

At least it's better than games where the cutting-edge graphics are their only selling point so if you buy them more than half a year after they first came out the graphics are outdated and you get really disappointed and wonder why the fuck everyone keeps raving about them and/or pestering valve to make a sequel

[TheBiggerFish]

Which game is that, Bohandas?

[Graknorke]

At least it's better than games where the cutting-edge graphics are their only selling point so if you buy them more than half a year after they first came out the graphics are outdated and you get really disappointed and wonder why the fuck everyone keeps raving about them and/or pestering valve to make a sequel

laughingsalad.tiff

[Bohandas]

Some games using graphics as a crutch have aged better than others though. The first time I played Wolfenstein 3d, about a year ago, I got bored with it in about an hour. The first time I played Half-Life 2 on the other hand, about 2-4 years ago, bored and disappointed me from the very beginning to the very end.

[Egan_BW]

That's around the same time as I played it, and that game is a fucking masterpiece of visual and game design, so you must just be weird.

[Mech#4]

Wolfenstein 3D is difficult to play now. Turning is slow so aiming is difficult. Playing it on GZDoom or similar is easier but kind of takes the challenge away with the low enemy count.

Wolfenstein 3D has a number of interesting mechanics to it though. Like Doom, enemies have to be alerted to your presence by either you shooting or moving into their line of sight. Also, enemies do more damage the closer they are to you and whether you are facing them or not. This also applies to your weapons as you may notice sometimes it takes 1 or 2 shots to kill the basic soldiers.

The game shouldn't really be played as fast as Doom. Rather, rooms should be more carefully entered and enemies dispatched while trying to conserve health. If your health is below 10% or 5% (I forget which) you can collect pools of blood to regain a small amount of health. The enemies shout when they're first alerted but the game later introduces mutants that make no noise so they can sneak up on you.

[Dorsidwarf]

Some games using graphics as a crutch have aged better than others though. The first time I played Wolfenstein 3d, about a year ago, I got bored with it in about an hour. The first time I played Half-Life 2 on the other hand, about 2-4 years ago, bored and disappointed me from the very beginning to the very end.

The idea that half life 2 is a game that uses graphics as a crutch baffles me.

[Graknorke]

Some games using graphics as a crutch have aged better than others though. The first time I played Wolfenstein 3d, about a year ago, I got bored with it in about an hour. The first time I played Half-Life 2 on the other hand, about 2-4 years ago, bored and disappointed me from the very beginning to the very end.

At least it's better than games where the cutting-edge graphics are their only selling point so if you buy them more than half a year after they first came out the graphics are outdated and you get really disappointed and wonder why the fuck everyone keeps raving about them and/or pestering valve to make a sequel

gigglingasianman.webm

[hector13]

Bizarre key mapping

Playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown again on the PC, after having finished it on the PS3 a few years ago. This was my third mission, after one awful and one really good one. Shot down UFO in the Nigerian forest, because it's always a forest.

My Assault wasn't in cover after being attacked at the end of the Alien's turn, and another alien was on overwatch so I couldn't move without him getting shot at. I wanted my Heavy to fire a rocket at the offending alien (inside the UFO) but my dude was on a higher z-level. I couldn't figure out how to change which z-level was displayed so I decided to press buttons. Logically "PgDn" seemed a good place to start so I did. Nothing happened. Then I press "End", which ends my turn without having done anything.

Cue my assault being caned and then a rookie getting killed in the ensuring alien turn.

Why is the End key end turn!? Why is the PgDn key not for changing the z-level that gets shown!?

Particularly egregious when you consider that it's a bloody Firaxis game, of Civilization fame. The Enter key on the far side of the keyboard, away from where you might accidentally touch it, ends the turn in those games!

I did look in the key mapping thing later (I know I should've done that in the first place, but it's obviously the game's fault anyway) to find you can do it by scrolling the mouse-wheel, which I'm unsure about as good "key"mapping... mostly because I was expecting it to be zoom in/out. Like a sensible game.

[94dima94]

Yeah, as much as I love XCOM, that is a major problem.
Also, the same happens with soldier commands. You use numbers as shortcut, but those change constantly according to skills ad equipment.

I once pressed a button thinking "Let's put this guy on Overwatch", but since he had different skills, that number was asssigned to "Throw grenade"...
He died instantly (a rookie at the beginning of the game) and set fire to the car he was hiding behind. End turn, the car blows up and kills his friend.

I didn't pay close attention to it in the videos I watched, but I think XCOM2 still has that problem, right?