So... Computer games.
2 April 2007 16:37![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_eggwhiteI've been playing one a bit lately. Not one of the big, mainstream ones either. A turn based strategy type thing called Space Empires V (game company webpage here - you'll need to click the link for the game). It's rather good... along similar lines to the Civilization games, but interstellar rather than international. It's also not shy on scope or variation in how you can progress things.
As an example, the game I'm currently playing my third game. My first was a continuation of the tutorial game, and the steered early stages of it didn't really fit with the way I wanted to take things... so I started again. My second game was okay, but I hadn't grasped the scope of what was possible, and made mistakes due to bad assumptions (I was still stomping my opposition soundly in my first war, but then, his empire was a bit poo). Now I'm playing my third game, having started with a clearer idea of whatI can do. At the start of this game, it took me ages to find another empire... but when I did find one, I was still quite weeny. They refused my first couple of treaty offers, and spanked a couple of my explorer ships quite soundly. When I eventually did get a treaty, they insisted on terms that told me I couldn't use biological weapons on them - fair enough, I hadn't developed any. Seemed reasonable.
Now that I know them a bit more, and have managed to get some of my slightly more advanced ships to the front line, we've had the odd skirmish (the treaty doesn't say we're not going to kill each other, just that we're going to trade whilst doing it and that certain weapons were off the table). After I pummelled a couple of his fleets into submission, he started offering a bit more leeway in treaty terms, and making a few more polite requests (as opposed to demands). Such as (paraphrased) "Please don't extinguish our sun!" or "Please don't turn our home system into a giant black hole!".
I'm just wondering what terms he'll start pleading for when I send in my little fleet (which I've chosen to name "Prejudice") of tiny little ships that fly real fast, carve you a new arsehole and pull your head through it before you've even noticed they're there. I did consider calling the class of ship "Psychotic Nutter" or "Glaswegian", but stuck with my existing (and much more pompous) naming convention and called it "Frenzy" instead. When I ran combat simulations (yes, you can run combat simulations for your new ship designs), one of them on it's own carved up one of his ships three size classes above it (my frigate versus his cruiser, skipping destroyer and light cruiser). When I stopped playing yesterday, I had a fleet of eight of them heading over in his direction.
There's another empire in the game, too, but I've not found them yet. I've explored about 7/8ths of the map already, so they must be small. Either the one I've met has subjugated them already (don't think so), or they've not been putting their resources into expansion. Could be interesting.
Anyway - coming back from the detailed blurb of my game of it... This game costs about 20 dollars via steam, so just over a tenner. It's also possible to play it over the net, either by taking turns or by having all turns happen simultaneously. You can also do the same kind of thing all on one machine with each player taking turns one after the other, or setting up their turns and then they all happen at once. You can even set it up to work as a play by email if desired...
If anyone else likes this kind of game and picks it up, let me know at some point. I suspect that a networked game might be interesting, if somewhat slow at times due to waiting for each other to complete their turns. I'd suggest he simultaneous turns approach, but even then there could be delays.
As an example, the game I'm currently playing my third game. My first was a continuation of the tutorial game, and the steered early stages of it didn't really fit with the way I wanted to take things... so I started again. My second game was okay, but I hadn't grasped the scope of what was possible, and made mistakes due to bad assumptions (I was still stomping my opposition soundly in my first war, but then, his empire was a bit poo). Now I'm playing my third game, having started with a clearer idea of whatI can do. At the start of this game, it took me ages to find another empire... but when I did find one, I was still quite weeny. They refused my first couple of treaty offers, and spanked a couple of my explorer ships quite soundly. When I eventually did get a treaty, they insisted on terms that told me I couldn't use biological weapons on them - fair enough, I hadn't developed any. Seemed reasonable.
Now that I know them a bit more, and have managed to get some of my slightly more advanced ships to the front line, we've had the odd skirmish (the treaty doesn't say we're not going to kill each other, just that we're going to trade whilst doing it and that certain weapons were off the table). After I pummelled a couple of his fleets into submission, he started offering a bit more leeway in treaty terms, and making a few more polite requests (as opposed to demands). Such as (paraphrased) "Please don't extinguish our sun!" or "Please don't turn our home system into a giant black hole!".
I'm just wondering what terms he'll start pleading for when I send in my little fleet (which I've chosen to name "Prejudice") of tiny little ships that fly real fast, carve you a new arsehole and pull your head through it before you've even noticed they're there. I did consider calling the class of ship "Psychotic Nutter" or "Glaswegian", but stuck with my existing (and much more pompous) naming convention and called it "Frenzy" instead. When I ran combat simulations (yes, you can run combat simulations for your new ship designs), one of them on it's own carved up one of his ships three size classes above it (my frigate versus his cruiser, skipping destroyer and light cruiser). When I stopped playing yesterday, I had a fleet of eight of them heading over in his direction.
There's another empire in the game, too, but I've not found them yet. I've explored about 7/8ths of the map already, so they must be small. Either the one I've met has subjugated them already (don't think so), or they've not been putting their resources into expansion. Could be interesting.
Anyway - coming back from the detailed blurb of my game of it... This game costs about 20 dollars via steam, so just over a tenner. It's also possible to play it over the net, either by taking turns or by having all turns happen simultaneously. You can also do the same kind of thing all on one machine with each player taking turns one after the other, or setting up their turns and then they all happen at once. You can even set it up to work as a play by email if desired...
If anyone else likes this kind of game and picks it up, let me know at some point. I suspect that a networked game might be interesting, if somewhat slow at times due to waiting for each other to complete their turns. I'd suggest he simultaneous turns approach, but even then there could be delays.
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no subject
2007-04-02 16:21 (UTC)no subject
2007-04-02 16:26 (UTC)It's possible I explored too much too soon, and I got quite impatient waiting for technologies to arrive (I was tweaking them every turn so that I had a new technology to play with each turn - probably not the best way of doing things.)
no subject
2007-04-02 18:04 (UTC)As for getting spanked by "less advanced" ships, well, not all of the new stuff you can generate is inherently better than the stuff you generally start with (if you're doing quickstart or started with fairly normal weapon tech). In fact, quite a lot of it is worse, but cheaper or lighter on the ammo. Some of it's also pretty handy against specific things. The nasty weapons I mentioned that I've developed also didn't come out of the standard weapons research trees... I think it came from one of the higher end engine research trees.
As for the warp gate defence thing - wormholes are good places to make a stand as ships don't come through them very quick... But if you want to mash somebody on the far side, you can create drones and send them through first. They'll auto-target on the far side and pummel the ships a bit.
Space.......lebensraum....call it what you will.
2007-04-03 11:20 (UTC)CIV 4 in the end just didnt grab me and whilst I heartily recommend Medieval Total war 2 it is infact more of a super scale RTS than a strategy.
I'll take a look at it.
Has it been reviewed well?
Re: Space.......lebensraum....call it what you will.
2007-04-03 12:33 (UTC)A few of the reviews talk about bugs, and I'll admit I've encountered the odd one or two, but as far as I can tell, most have been patched out of existance now.
Also, it costs about a tenner, which is a plus.