As is my custom, I'll likely post little or nothing over the weekend, so this Link Storm will have to hold you until Monday.
First of all, two of my articles hit the net over at Yahoo. My summer reading list, and a guide to the Wilson's Creek National Battlefield.
Over on Tales, we had the results of our first day of getting paid by Yahoo.
Here at After Hours, I've got Turn 0 and Turn 1 of the ongoing Dominions 3 Let's Play that I'm contributing to.
Finally, if you were interested in acquiring Dominions 3 yourself, you'd go here.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
The Rise of Pangaea, Turn 1
A splash of harpy droppings landed on the old god's driveway. Cursing, the Cranky Old Man looked up at the offending bird woman and narrowed his gaze. A beam of power erupted from him and engulfed the flying creature, and when the light faded, she was transformed. Her dark feathers had become the color of night, and all those who saw her knew that she'd been given a fraction of his might to use in his name.
"My...My god," she exclaimed.
He smirked, "Exactly."
She dropped from the sky and landed at his feet, "My lord, all that I am is yours. Command me, and I shall move heaven and earth to do thy bidding. I will proclaim your divinity to all, even to the gods themselves! What is thy will, oh great one?"
The old man pointed at the droppings. "Clean that shit up."
As Lilli pointed out in her Turn 1 post, there's not a lot of variation in an experienced player's first turn. Either you expand if you have the troops or SC Pretender for it, or you sit back. If you sit, you either prophetize your scout or send it off, well, scouting while hiring the unit you do want as your prophet. In this case having a stealthy flyer as my prophet can be very handy, so I'm perfectly happy to make my starting harpy my prophet.
The other thing you do if you're sitting is raise your taxes and get your troops patrolling to handle the unrest that a tax rate of more than 100% causes. In my case I jump my taxes up to 200% with the thought that I'll be able to patrol the huge unrest from that down in a couple of turns, but its worth it because I need Pans on the board, and I need 'em quick. Pans are great, but they cost, so I'm going to risk high taxes to buy 'em.
Which is a long way to say that my first turn was almost identical to that of most of my competitors.
"My...My god," she exclaimed.
He smirked, "Exactly."
She dropped from the sky and landed at his feet, "My lord, all that I am is yours. Command me, and I shall move heaven and earth to do thy bidding. I will proclaim your divinity to all, even to the gods themselves! What is thy will, oh great one?"
The old man pointed at the droppings. "Clean that shit up."
As Lilli pointed out in her Turn 1 post, there's not a lot of variation in an experienced player's first turn. Either you expand if you have the troops or SC Pretender for it, or you sit back. If you sit, you either prophetize your scout or send it off, well, scouting while hiring the unit you do want as your prophet. In this case having a stealthy flyer as my prophet can be very handy, so I'm perfectly happy to make my starting harpy my prophet.
The other thing you do if you're sitting is raise your taxes and get your troops patrolling to handle the unrest that a tax rate of more than 100% causes. In my case I jump my taxes up to 200% with the thought that I'll be able to patrol the huge unrest from that down in a couple of turns, but its worth it because I need Pans on the board, and I need 'em quick. Pans are great, but they cost, so I'm going to risk high taxes to buy 'em.
Which is a long way to say that my first turn was almost identical to that of most of my competitors.
The Rise of Pangaea, Turn 0
He was old. The world had passed him by generations ago, and still he sat in his isolated hut and listened to the music of his horned friends while he read his newspaper.
But then he felt it...the Pantokrator had fallen! Now was his chance! The world had gone to hell ever since they let everything get all civilized and sentient. The withered man's form hardened as he stood up from his easy chair at long last. He would show these whippersnappers the what for! The world should be quiet and green, there should be none of these cities and villages cluttering up the place and ruining his view!
It was time to war with gods.
He emerged from his hut, and as he did, the party that had gone one for centuries finally ground to a halt. Softly, so softly, the word spread from satyr and nymph to minotaur and centaur. It grew and grew, and soon the forest echoed with the old man's rage.
"GET OFF MY LAWN!"
And away we go. Lilli's excellent post starts our game off here, so I'm going to jettison most of my learning material since it'd be duplicated anyway and focus instead on my own personal point of view. You should definitely read her introduction first, though, since I'm going to be referencing it here.
As the title says, I'm playing Pangaea.
Pangaea is about as single focused a nation as exists in Dominions 3. That is not a good thing. All my primary spellcasters, the Pans, have good to great nature magic, a little Earth, and a little Blood. My only other native casters are my Dryads who have a tiny bit of Nature and are also my level 2 Priests. That's all I've got, and while you can do a little summoning with Nature and a few other things, being totally closed out of 75% of the magic in the game is rarely a recipe for success.
However, all is not lost. Because I have a Cranky Old Man!
Now Lilli already covered the fact that I've built Cranky to at least dabble in almost everything for casting purposes, but there's another factor at work here. Most combat spells can be cast as is, but Ritual magic, including summoning spells, needs magic gems to fuel them. And Pangaea only gets Nature gems. True, they get a lot of them, but once again, being unable to fuel other spell types is a crippling disadvantage. So I've built Cranky with the idea of being able to walk around in the wake of my armies and search for Magic Sites, which often (though not always) provides you with different types of gems. You can only find sites of your magic level or less, so the old coot isn't going to find anything higher than level 2, but the most common sites are the level 1-2 ones, so its a trade off I'm willing to make.
I'm also hoping to find a site that gives me access to other spellcaster types as I go. A nice Wizard site for Fire magic or a Sorceress site for Air and Astral would be perfect. Or maybe a Necromancer site? That'd come in real handy, because my national Summoning spells require Death magic, of which I have no gems and only Cranky able to cast in.
So why, you may be asking yourself, are you even playing Pangaea if its such a problem? Well, its the Pans, really. Because my Pans can autosummon a handful of berzerk naked chicks to fight for me every turn if there's Turmoil in my territory. And by god is there Turmoil! The advantage to this is mostly defensive. Sure, I can (and will) throw huge waves of Maeneds at my enemies to wear them down before the guys with weapons show up to start stabbing, but the big advantage is that the autosummon keeps happening even if you're besieged! So a fortress with a Pan or two will have its army grow and grow and grow, regardless of what the besieging army outside tries to do. That means that if you don't show up with a huge number of guys at the outset, a Pangaea fortress can be all but impossible to breach. I hope to take advantage of this to make it to the Midgame.
So, as the game begins, here's the plan:
1) Expand as best I can, which, given my only so-so troops and lack of a Super Combatant like T'ien's Dragon, will be rather slow.
2) Avoid war with other players at all costs until I can get multiple fortresses up, each with a Pan or two inside to make it a huge pain in the ass to take them away from me.
3) Get Cranky out there searching to get as many sites as possible, and put Pan Fortresses on the spots with good sites.
4) Build up my magic and try to survive to the Midgame where it starts being less and less about troops and more about magic.
That is the plan. Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy...
But then he felt it...the Pantokrator had fallen! Now was his chance! The world had gone to hell ever since they let everything get all civilized and sentient. The withered man's form hardened as he stood up from his easy chair at long last. He would show these whippersnappers the what for! The world should be quiet and green, there should be none of these cities and villages cluttering up the place and ruining his view!
It was time to war with gods.
He emerged from his hut, and as he did, the party that had gone one for centuries finally ground to a halt. Softly, so softly, the word spread from satyr and nymph to minotaur and centaur. It grew and grew, and soon the forest echoed with the old man's rage.
"GET OFF MY LAWN!"
And away we go. Lilli's excellent post starts our game off here, so I'm going to jettison most of my learning material since it'd be duplicated anyway and focus instead on my own personal point of view. You should definitely read her introduction first, though, since I'm going to be referencing it here.
As the title says, I'm playing Pangaea.
Pangaea is about as single focused a nation as exists in Dominions 3. That is not a good thing. All my primary spellcasters, the Pans, have good to great nature magic, a little Earth, and a little Blood. My only other native casters are my Dryads who have a tiny bit of Nature and are also my level 2 Priests. That's all I've got, and while you can do a little summoning with Nature and a few other things, being totally closed out of 75% of the magic in the game is rarely a recipe for success.
However, all is not lost. Because I have a Cranky Old Man!
I'm also hoping to find a site that gives me access to other spellcaster types as I go. A nice Wizard site for Fire magic or a Sorceress site for Air and Astral would be perfect. Or maybe a Necromancer site? That'd come in real handy, because my national Summoning spells require Death magic, of which I have no gems and only Cranky able to cast in.
So why, you may be asking yourself, are you even playing Pangaea if its such a problem? Well, its the Pans, really. Because my Pans can autosummon a handful of berzerk naked chicks to fight for me every turn if there's Turmoil in my territory. And by god is there Turmoil! The advantage to this is mostly defensive. Sure, I can (and will) throw huge waves of Maeneds at my enemies to wear them down before the guys with weapons show up to start stabbing, but the big advantage is that the autosummon keeps happening even if you're besieged! So a fortress with a Pan or two will have its army grow and grow and grow, regardless of what the besieging army outside tries to do. That means that if you don't show up with a huge number of guys at the outset, a Pangaea fortress can be all but impossible to breach. I hope to take advantage of this to make it to the Midgame.
So, as the game begins, here's the plan:
1) Expand as best I can, which, given my only so-so troops and lack of a Super Combatant like T'ien's Dragon, will be rather slow.
2) Avoid war with other players at all costs until I can get multiple fortresses up, each with a Pan or two inside to make it a huge pain in the ass to take them away from me.
3) Get Cranky out there searching to get as many sites as possible, and put Pan Fortresses on the spots with good sites.
4) Build up my magic and try to survive to the Midgame where it starts being less and less about troops and more about magic.
That is the plan. Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy...
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Link Storm 4/28/11
Today was a busy day, especially over on Tales. Most importantly, my first YAC article got published by Yahoo. You can have a look at it here. I also put up a couple of blog posts about it, both my Writer's Notes and some thoughts about the money side.
Over here on After Hours, I have the set-up post to a series I'm planning to do about my participation in a Let's Play of Dominions 3.
Pursuant to that, here's the first page of a similar project which will give you an idea of what a Dominions 3 Let's Play is all about.
Over here on After Hours, I have the set-up post to a series I'm planning to do about my participation in a Let's Play of Dominions 3.
Pursuant to that, here's the first page of a similar project which will give you an idea of what a Dominions 3 Let's Play is all about.
The Rise of Pangaea, Pre-Game
So there's this game I play called Dominions 3. I've written extensively about it over on my old LiveJournal, and the best summary of the game that I've done can be found here. I won't repeat it on this site, but you can give it a glance if you want to see my take on it.
The reason that I'm not going into too much details about how the game is played is because someone else is going to be doing that for me. You see, Dominions 3 is best played multiplayer, and the easiest way to do that is for someone to setup a server for people to submit their turns to. In the game we'll be discussing here, New Dawn, the turns are being monitored by an outside observer, Lilli, who isn't actually playing the game herself. Instead, she'll be commenting on each turn as it goes, with both descriptions of what happened and her take on it.
As it happens, I'm a player in New Dawn, so I'll be doing the view from the ground of my particular faction, Pangaea. Once Lilli starts getting her reports posted, likely tomorrow sometime, I'll put a link up here going there and a link there coming back here, as well as my Turn 0 and Turn 1 commentary.
So hop aboard as I try to conquer the world in the name of Nature, Revelry, and a Cranky Old Man!
The reason that I'm not going into too much details about how the game is played is because someone else is going to be doing that for me. You see, Dominions 3 is best played multiplayer, and the easiest way to do that is for someone to setup a server for people to submit their turns to. In the game we'll be discussing here, New Dawn, the turns are being monitored by an outside observer, Lilli, who isn't actually playing the game herself. Instead, she'll be commenting on each turn as it goes, with both descriptions of what happened and her take on it.
As it happens, I'm a player in New Dawn, so I'll be doing the view from the ground of my particular faction, Pangaea. Once Lilli starts getting her reports posted, likely tomorrow sometime, I'll put a link up here going there and a link there coming back here, as well as my Turn 0 and Turn 1 commentary.
So hop aboard as I try to conquer the world in the name of Nature, Revelry, and a Cranky Old Man!
Link Storm 4/27/11
Here's what's happening:
Back on Tales, we did more Yahoo and considered writing a mystery.
Over here, we recorded our first impressions of Age of Empires Online.
For the Link of the Day, here's another place to get into the AoEO beta if you like.
Back on Tales, we did more Yahoo and considered writing a mystery.
Over here, we recorded our first impressions of Age of Empires Online.
For the Link of the Day, here's another place to get into the AoEO beta if you like.
First Impressions: Age of Empires Online
So my brother Matt and I got into the Age of Empires Online beta. There are probably still beta keys available if anyone else wants to try it. You can have a look here. Rather than your usual MMORPG, however, Age of Empires Online seems to be trying to be a MMORTS, that is, a Massively Multiplayer Real Time Strategy game. And certainly I think that there can be large scale games that break from the World of Warcraft mode and all, but I'm not sure I'm sold on AoEO quite yet.
The big problems for me so far are a distinct lack of the "MM" so far. Granted, we've only played maybe three hours of the game, but the first two hours were stuck in mandatory tutorial quests that could only be played single player. And by the time we could actually play together, we had virtually identical setups, and it was kind of boring. Granted, beta. I understand that. Out of what appears to be maybe five factions (Greece, Troy, Egypt, Nubia, Libya) only the Greeks were playable, so that led to much of the unit overlap.
But still, the way that units and buildings are rationed out to you as you go along and earn them with gold and other currencies means that what you can do changes only gradually. All but the last two missions I played had only two ground combat units, a Scout, and Spearmen. And since you can't recruit a Scout yet, that meant that everything was just endless Spearmen. It got pretty repetitive very quickly.
Even worse there's hints in the game that you can pay to win. Heros that you can use to boost your army can only be hired in the Advisor's Hall, which in turn is only available to Premium Users. Which sounds like extra cash to me. Not great.
So far, then, Age of Empires Online has not really impressed me. I expect I'll dabble through out the beta, but unless they really wow me, I don't plan to spend any money on the game when the time comes.
The big problems for me so far are a distinct lack of the "MM" so far. Granted, we've only played maybe three hours of the game, but the first two hours were stuck in mandatory tutorial quests that could only be played single player. And by the time we could actually play together, we had virtually identical setups, and it was kind of boring. Granted, beta. I understand that. Out of what appears to be maybe five factions (Greece, Troy, Egypt, Nubia, Libya) only the Greeks were playable, so that led to much of the unit overlap.
But still, the way that units and buildings are rationed out to you as you go along and earn them with gold and other currencies means that what you can do changes only gradually. All but the last two missions I played had only two ground combat units, a Scout, and Spearmen. And since you can't recruit a Scout yet, that meant that everything was just endless Spearmen. It got pretty repetitive very quickly.
Even worse there's hints in the game that you can pay to win. Heros that you can use to boost your army can only be hired in the Advisor's Hall, which in turn is only available to Premium Users. Which sounds like extra cash to me. Not great.
So far, then, Age of Empires Online has not really impressed me. I expect I'll dabble through out the beta, but unless they really wow me, I don't plan to spend any money on the game when the time comes.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)