Diary of a Pigman
My life started in a swamp, and it was as nice as swamps get. I decided to leave. Immediately I noticed a black figure teleporting away, then it teleported right next to me! It looked at me with its purple eyes and said “Hi!”(fun fact! Endermen actually say “hi” and “what’s up” but it is altered and messed up and that is why you hear….whatever you heard) and I repeated back “Hi?”. He told me his name, “John,” he said then he went on about this “End” thing and a nether portal and how to build it and how it is essential to go to the nether to get to the End. I asked him if he knew what either of these things are and he said “other dimensions”. I started to freak out, “I’ve never even been to a different area than this one, I’ve only been alive for like 10 minutes now and you expect me to go to a different dimension?!!”
“I’m in.” I said “So how do we get to the End anyhow?” I asked and John answered, “First we ask a blaze (which live in the nether) if we can have some of their extra blaze rods (which they always have extras). Then we turn it into blaze powder and we craft it with an ender pearl (which John has an infinite amount of) to get an eye of ender. When you throw an eye of ender it floats in to the sky leading you to the direction of the nether portal. Eventually it will fall or shatter in mid-air so you might need a lot of them to throw and you’ll also need twelve of them to place down on the end portal itself. When the eye of ender falls and shatters you’ll need to dig down. Eventually you will find yourself in a strange maze. Follow the light until you find the End portal. At that moment, destroy the thing that is spawning silverfish and deal with the silverfish! Then place down the eyes of ender on the yellowish-blueish block and your End portal will turn into a night sky. Jump in and you’re in the “End”.”
“Wow, that is a lot to take in. So, how do we get to the nether?”
“Well, we either have to build one out of obsidian or we can find a player that’s a Noob that will leave their nether portal unguarded. It would be a lot of trouble to build one out of obsidian, so we should look for a player for sure,” He said, pointing east. We eventually found what we wanted, an unguarded nether portal, so we went through it. It was very noisy going through and when we got there it looked like hell, really – I’m not joking! There was lava and red blocks everywhere called nether eak. In the distance, there was red building. I was 90% sure that was where we were going to get blaze rods.
I was right! John said, “That’s the building over there! Let’s go!” When we got inside the building we started exploring everywhere. Eventually we found a cage with a blaze spawner inside. We asked them if we could have some extra blaze rods. They said yes and gave us 2 stacks of them. We began our journey back to the nether portal. Once we got there, a magma cube asked us if he can come too! We said yes and we left together. Since we had the key ingredient and John’s wisdom, we crafted eyes of ender with ease. What a journey that was! I can’t wait for our next adventure.
Starcraft II
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, and its following expansions Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void mark the long awaited continuation of Blizzard Entertainment’s landmark RTS title Starcraft, one of the most popular and successful real-time strategy games of all time. Starcraft II follows directly on the heels of the narrative setup by the original game with numerous characters returning to fill greatly expanded roles. Mechanically the sequel builds heavily off its predecessor, continuing and expanding on many classic mechanics and strategies.
When taken all together, Starcraft II’s campaign, formed of three individual campaigns each released with the base game or one of the expansions, is perhaps the greatest single RTS production element in the second decade of the 2nd millennium. Each campaign focuses on one of the game’s three main races, and follows iconic characters that were the movers and shakers from the previous game as they continue to chart their own paths, and those of their respective races, through the deepening conflicts in their home system. The various campaign sections feature new units, mechanics, and abilities beyond Starcraft II’s standard multiplayer fare; these variations not only keep the very large string of missions exciting and engaging, they also perfectly showcase how effectively the game’s design tools were implemented and thus the great level of customization available to modders. This is all in addition to watching a very colorful cast of characters interact between missions inside the “command ship”, a semi-interactive debriefing and prepping area that serves as the “lobby” for the campaign missions and the workshop were the player upgrades and customizes their units and abilities.
The downtime between missions is another great addition from Blizzard. Pacing is balanced between diverse and sometimes rather hectic missions and the controlled, casual environment of the command ship, without ever bringing the player out of the overall campaign experience. Aside from a slightly distorted sense of time, primarily due to “time-sensitive” missions being optional due to multiple choice selections, the game world and its nuances are continually in the fore of the player’s space. The interaction between the different points of the command ship, and the characters within, also serve as the perfect vehicles to establish plot points and the campaign’s narrative in an environment where the player would not be easily distracted and can engage or skip them at leisure.
Pacing is most certainly an element that Starcraft is known for, at least as far as action economy is concerned. The first Starcraft was famous of high-speed, knife-edge missions and matches where players had to be continually focused on balancing long-term goals while addressing short term needs. Starcraft II maintains this trend most obviously in its multiplayer, and in its campaigns to a lesser extent. Blizzard was very careful to preserve the design elements and mechanics that make this level of action possible, including a proliferation of hot-keyed commands and abilities. The campaign missions are for the most part a more casual sampling, which is entirely appropriate considering the highly detailed levels, colorful faction designs, and intricate plots. Of course varying levels of difficulty are still including to satiate more experienced players and some of the higher level missions include their own parameters for increased challenges such as time-limits and resource limitation.
Starcraft II’s developers were also able to take advantage of its famed multiplayer and stellar single player to introduce an element that was still in its infancy at the time. Cooperative play, in which two or more players join together through LAN or internet play to complete a single mission, was introduced in the form of a specific multiplayer option where players could each take control of a commander, represented by one of the notable characters from the campaign, and lead their specific roster of units alongside their ally against singular pre-built missions. With each completed mission, the particular commander that was used gained experience, unlocking new units and abilities, up to a final level of 15. Over the years Blizzard released more coop commanders, gradually increasing not only the unit options but also the very mechanics of gameplay for each commander. Players can not only use familiar units from the campaign and multiplayer lineups, but also experience completely new rosters and mechanics developed specifically for cooperative play.
All of this variety comes in a refreshingly concise and smooth package. Starcraft II demands its share of memory space, but can operate on most internet connections and high graphics settings are manageable on just about any gaming computer currently on the market. It also launches quickly, has very well developed tools to maintain internet play, and practically seamless party chat and matchmaking tools. Its graphics levels have also aged well, and while not up to the standards of modern FPS titles it can still provide enough grand explosions and minute, interactive details to more than satisfy any level of RTS gamer.
It’s always difficult to confidently say that a particular title is the greatest genre champion of its generations, but as one of the few RTS franchises still viable and active, Starcraft II most certainly deserves accolades as a game worthy of its fanbase and the legendary popularity it has boasted over the years. It is still supported by Blizzard and continues to receive new content. The base game is also free to play and its other assets are available at reasonable prices through Battle.net. The RTS genre may have faded, but Starcraft II should still hold a place among anyone’s game library as an enjoyable single player experience and a fun multiplayer excursion.
Hearts of Iron IV
Hearts of Iron IV was released in 2016 as the latest entry in Paradox Interactive’s long-running Hearts of Iron series of grand strategy games. Continuing the tradition of its predecessors, the fourth title brings players the full scope of the brewing world at war, with 1936 and 1939 scenario start dates. Players can take the roll of any existing nation on earth at the time, and must manage resources, industry, politics, the development of new technologies, and the organization and deployment of their armed forces as the globe erupts in war.
As with its more immediate predecessors, Hearts of Iron IV, or HOI IV as it is often abbreviated, continues to present Paradox’s traditional grand strategy model with many changes to the nuances of combat and diplomacy from previous titles. A new resource was added, political power, that enabled each nation to make changes to its government and laws, engage in direct and indirect political maneuvering, and research national focuses. Political power accrues at a base amount, with modifiers adding or subtracting to the daily gain as appropriate. There is no penalty for running out of political power, but if the player is reduced to a negative gain of power they will be unable to continue developing focuses.
The national focus tree is perhaps HOI IV’s biggest addition to the series. Instead of scripted events guiding the course of historic events and developments, each nation now has a focus tree that contains numerous political choices that initiate diplomatic actions, develop countries, and lead to war. Historical events such as the Anschluss of Austria appear as part of a chain of focuses that guide the historic development of the Third Reich, culminating in war with France and England. Most nations utilize a generic focus tree which provides industrial development, military research, and the option to make a nation communist, democratic, or fascist. The great powers come with unique, highly developed focus trees, and with expansions more of the minor nations such as Australia and Romania gain their own special focus trees as well.
In past titles, players were concerned primarily with the assembling of armies and navies, who led them, and how they were utilized in individual battles. For this latest release a slew of detailed mechanics now define the operating parameters for division performance in the field. Divisions are made using templates which automatically draw the appropriate equipment from the national stockpile during training. Combat width, which increases or decreases based on the number of battalions a template requires, determines the operational viability of a specific template. If a template’s width is too high it will be unable to participate in most battles; if it is too low it runs the risk of being overwhelmed by larger opposing divisions.
The division template and how it interacts with the numerous combat mechanics is perhaps the most confusing and arbitrary part of HOI IV, and a hallmark of the game’s overall style. While the template is easy to learn and use, the reasons for its performance on the field are cryptic and at times illogical. Numerous guides exist online regarding appropriate templates for various widths and purposes, but performance of these templates in game varies heavily and the player is often at a loss to understand why a supposedly advanced template design is failing to overpower inferior combat formations.
This complexity permeates most aspects of the game and is certainly prevalent in the military side. The use interface serves perfectly well at informing the player about their ships, planes, and combat formations. However it’s over-reliance on symbols and parlance leaves most new players confused as to what any of the unit commands actually do. This level of complexity is more subtle in the economic and diplomatic sections, where symbols are more easily decrypted and effects are more basic. Yet nuances remain, with most players finding certain political actions restricted or even inaccessible depending on a variety of factors relating to their own nation as well as the world in general.
Of course, in typical Paradox fashion, all this complexity doesn’t exist without a way to subtly manipulate it. The division template designer allows for almost any combination of units to be applied as long as the player has enough army experience to afford it. Factories can continue producing obsolete equipment, and even when going the historical focus route players don’t have to make alliances or enemies with the traditional targets. Admirals and generals can be swapped at will, with a short travel delay, and air wings can have any type or number of planes assigned to them.
The user interface features a level of customization as well. Players can assign specific symbols to division templates allowing them to be identified at a glance. Ships, air wings, and armies can be renamed and the color and symbol utilized by each army can be modified for distinctive recognition. Notifications also crowd the top of the screen, highlighting production, diplomacy, or other areas that might need to be addressed. Clicking on each notification brings up the relevant screen and, although not precisely perfect, allows for quick examination of any deficiencies.
HOI IV goes a long way in telling the player what they can and should do. Sadly, it is also quite adept at telling the player what they cannot do. The default settings for a standard game are designed to funnel the normally free-flowing mechanics into the more predictable historical setting of World War II. Diplomatic actions, economic and military laws, and even national leaders are all restricted by a complex web of ideology, world tension, and military parameters. These cannot be circumvented, and the passage of game time has been observed to be the only true cure. Most nations have at least three years of in-game time to adjust themselves, but ambitious players will find the limitations on their goals frustrating and sometimes completely obstructive. It is highly recommended that players familiar with the basic mechanics adjust their game’s diplomatic and ideological settings to ensure the maximum number of options are available.
At its heart, HOI IV is a WWII simulator to the core. Its alternate paths and options are numerous and extensively developed, but prospective players should approach the game with the foremost notion that they will be playing through historical WWII. With this mindset, the restrictions and difficulties that may arise will seem more flavorful and less belligerent, allowing gamers to gradually ease into the notion that events need not follow a set pattern. Coming to HOI IV with the idea of immediately turning history around may lead to substantial disappointment that can overshadow the elements of the game that are actually done well, such as the division template designer and the nature of focus trees as player-driven events.
Grand strategy is a niche genre for a reason, and players may surprise themselves by finding that they like, or dislike, this style of play when it may have a great deal of, or no, relation to their preferred genre. Anyone that enjoys nation building and logistical organization will fit right into HOI IV and shouldn’t hesitate to try the game out. The new content from the many DLCs might seem overwhelming, but it helps in the Hearts of Iron series to start at the end of development to avoid learning strategies that are rendered obsolete by later updates. Of course, the game is perfectly playable with any DLC combination and is overall reasonably priced. Most importantly, prospective gamers should remember that failure is part of the learning in this game, and quite often the thrill of a hard won victory in the greatest conflict in human history is worth the harsh learning experiences required to achieve it.
Total War: Warhammer II DLC and its effect on Mortal Empires.
Now that the latest release of Warhammer II DLC has settled in, the new trends resulting from the changes and additions of the combined updates are starting to show their latest effect on the campaign overall. The trend thus far, while showing love to some badly neglected factions, has grown a little disappointing. So far four different Old World races have received major updates, increasing their competitive ability against the newer races of Warhammer II. Of those four, three of them have been from the “good guys” or Forces of Order, and it’s starting to show.
After each Old World update, the respective beneficiary race showed massive improvement, normally dominating its regional affairs and easily crushing its traditional rival. As potential competition was updated and introduced, like the Skaven or Vampire Coast, these dramatic results were curbed to some degree on a global level. Yet now that the Empire, one of the original superpower factions when Total War: Warhammer was introduced, has been added to the list of updated factions the global balance of power has finally produced noticeable ramifications across the world map.
Forces of Order factions, in this case a colloquial term identifying all Human, Dwarf, Elf, Lizardman, and yes even Tomb King factions, are typically more likely to ally with their neighbors and consolidate their power with peaceful confederations. This factor combined with the imbalance of Old World updates has resulted, in a frequent but not total basis, in the Forces of Order achieving overwhelming map dominance before Archaon’s Chaos invasion is even defeated. Greenskins are usually the first to go out, with Skaven relegated to balkanized provinces and the Dark Elves forced on a perpetual defensive campaign. The Vampire Counts, if fortunate, will survive just long enough for the dwarves to unify their realm and aid the Empire in crushing the remnants of Sylvanian undead.
This is all well and good for peace-loving players and diplomatic challenges, but for those players looking for a long game of global conquest and multi-racial challenges, this can be a bother on both sides of the alliances. Order players will rapidly find themselves with no one to fight since their beloved trading partners and military allies now likely control all the surrounding territory. Of course there is no game limitation on who to fight or when, but attacking a former ally typically causes more problems than it’s worth.
On the flip side, factions opposing the general Forces of Order will almost inevitably find themselves embroiled in what is effectively a world war. Fighting one or two major factions is usually little more than a hassle, but four or more super powers with their hordes of un-killable agents and unpredictable assault routes cause even a victorious campaign to bog down into quagmires of maneuvers, unfixable notifications, and compoundable domestic problems. Any single difficulty can usually be managed with a few turns of corrective action, but when faced with conflict on a multi-front scale simple problems like agent actions and harmful events grow out of proportion.
On top of all the above, evil factions generally have difficulty aligning with each other, making any sort of united front among surviving factions problematic if not impossible. This first manifests as evil factions are slowly eliminated by their main rivals while quarreling with their minor neighbors. Any survivors must fight alone against an increasingly growing alliance of opponents.
Now, the Old World updates do need to happen, and have clearly improved the playability and enjoyment of these races, but the weight of focus needs to move a little more towards center. The Forces of Order have received the overwhelming majority of new content, free or paid, and the Greenskins, Norsca, and other Chaos forces would benefit from an improvement to their now partially obsolete mechanics, skill trees, and traits. This would go a long way to not only making these races more viable and playable factions, but also permit a more contentious Mortal Empires campaign throughout the course of extended play.
The Aversion and confederation mechanics could use somewhat of an overhaul as well. Aversion, or the generic diplomatic penalty between races and factions that don’t like each other, was originally used to reinforce lore-based prejudices that existed among said powers. In the beginning this made sense, Skaven and Lizardmen, for example, hate each other bitterly and only the most determined diplomatic efforts should succeed between them.
Lately however Aversion has been turned into a mechanic that represents any disgruntlement or grievance a faction could have with another. It’s gotten to the point where almost any faction, including ones of the same race, will have an Aversion to almost all of its neighbors to some degree or another. Aversion has stopped becoming a mechanic that enhances flavor and has turned into a crutch to make early- and mid-game diplomacy more difficult.
Confederation has, in many ways, followed a similar path. It’s understandable that confederation is a somewhat divisive mechanic. Some players enjoy sweeping up large amounts of settlements and collecting Legendary Lords. Others don’t have the time or desire to mess with that diplomacy nonsense and wish confederation didn’t exist, or was harder, if that were possible. That disagreement is part of the reason that standard confederation is a favorable option; it gives the players complete freedom to choose if they want to try confederating. Norsca’s alteration to this formula was a welcome change, since it made confederation a very tangible objective while still giving the player freedom of choice.
Changes like this should be welcomed for future race updates. Confederation is fun when it is thematic and attainable, all the more so when it is unique between the races. The standard confederation mechanic, while functional, is becoming dated. The AI has a far easier time confederating, even among rivals, while players struggle to make even the most trusted friends accept that final step. Introducing unique, but optional, faction mechanics for confederation would go a long way in smoothing over the diplomatic hurdles and the troublesome mid-game relational challenges that so often bedevil “evil” factions.
The Empire’s new confederation mechanic is not this way. Now confederation is effectively a mandate for the defenders of humanity, and a very costly and time consuming one at that. The player suffers tangible penalties for not playing the diplomacy game; relational penalties pale in comparison. Although the mechanics are detailed and easily understood, they interfere with every aspect of the player’s immersion and strategy. CA should be applauded for trying a change as radical as they did, and in fairness they chose one the best factions, flavorfully speaking, to try it out with. Yet their first attempt has, overall, been a failure: the Empire is wearisome to play.
Once again, change is good and Warhammer II is vastly improved beyond its original release. The recently announced update for the long neglected Greenskin factions should go a long way in addressing many of the above issues and will hopefully encourage CA to take a more balanced approach to further updates and content releases. They have already demonstrated their willingness to attempt a revision of existing mechanics and with some trial and error already accomplished in previous DLCs there is a high possibility that more thematic and entertaining mechanics will be available in the future.
Epic Units: Part 2
This is the continuation of the epic units topic from previous post. Epic units had finally begun to enter mainstream Real-time Strategy gaming. Now it’s time to see what developers did with this growing concept.
When Electronic Arts defied expectations and made their RTS adaption of the Lord of the Rings film series an epic retelling with massive battles, grand fortresses, and larger than life heroes, it only stood to reason that such a game needed at least one super unit thrown in. The fiery demon of Moria, the Balrog, fulfilled this requirement in every way. The pinnacle of the evil forces’ power tree, the Balrog required a large number of power points to unlock (or successfully progressing through 2/3rds of the evil campaign). It was summoned rather than built, and only remained on the battlefield for a limited amount of time. Yet its raw power and special abilities gave it every advantage against whatever enemies it faced. Unless the great Gandalf was on the field, the Balrog was pretty much guaranteed to take the day.
By this point an epic unit of some kind was practically expected in any true RTS publication that was not a strictly historical/contemporary setting. If the game’s genre was sci-fi or fantasy, an epic unit was almost guaranteed to appear. This became readily apparent when Big Huge Games announced Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends, the series’ first foray away from historical settings. The epic units, or Master Units as they were called, were advertised from the beginning and no one was surprised at their inclusion. Indeed, their presence was a source of great excitement and anticipation among the RTS community; and they did not disappoint. Each unit was worth an army by itself, and possessed capabilities beyond what any other single unit-class in the game could deliver.
Now that epic units had become commonplace in RTS titles, it was time to make them a central part of game design. Gas Powered Games’ Supreme Commander was released to great excitement in the RTS community as it was billed as the spiritual successor to the much beloved Total Annihilation. Supreme Commander featured a full tier of epic units, dubbed experimental units (and buildings in the some cases), and a great deal of the game’s overall strategy revolved around acquiring these units quickly, or ensuring that opponents could not acquire them easily.
Some such units were so powerful that they were classified as “game-enders” and could be disabled in online or skirmish matches if the player(s) so choose. Surpreme Commander 2, a sequel released three years later, not only featured even more experimental units, but made them almost ubiquitous by going so far as to sideline conventional combat units to the pure rolls of cannon fodder and swarm tactics.
Even though the Command & Conquer franchise had been one of the first to introduce a super unit worthy of the title, it became rather anomalous by staying in production for over a decade without an epic unit of note. This would change with the release of Command & Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath, which introduced three epic units, one for each game faction. These monstrous war machines physically and statistically dwarfed any other unit, and featured customization slots allowing them to be equipped with a variety of secondary weapons systems. Each epic unit could only be produced from an advanced version of the war factory and cost more credits than any other unit in the game.
Another Command & Conquer title, Red Alert 3, would be released later the same year. It never approached Kane’s Wrath’s level of epic integration, but it included a campaign only epic unit, the Shogun Executioner, that the player was allowed to control on a few occasions. On an interesting note, this would mark one of the rare times in all of RTS history that a campaign only epic unit was given freely to the player. In fairness, the Shogun Executioner was far from invincible, but its destructive capability surpassed even the faction super-weapons.
The epic units of RTS were the arcade bosses of old brought into the RTS genre. They were rarely the centerpiece of the game’s design or story, but each one almost always left a notable impression on the players that encountered them. As the years passed some players used them as a sort of handicap mode to test unique strategies or challenge themselves to defeat otherwise unbeatable opponents. Designers and producers that had grown up experiencing these battlefield giants in action now applied the concept to new genres and mediums; with movies, card games, literature, and video games on other platforms all featuring super units in one variation or another. The RTS genre may have become obscure as the new millennium moved on, but its contribution to the media presence of epic units is undeniable and will continue to be felt by gamers of all genres for generations to come.
Epic Units: Part 1
For a Real-Time Strategy player, there are few things more satisfying than the comprehensive act of causing immense digital destruction in a short amount of time. Traditionally this is accomplished utilizing super weapons like nuclear missiles or orbital bombardment, but starting in the mid-90s game developers provided players with a new way to devastate their opponents on the battlefield. Epic units, as they would come to be called, were powerful creatures or war machines that were incredibly durable, possessed immense destructive power, and were typically the pinnacle of the player’s economic and technological development. Their presentation and themes took different turns over the years, but the trend is unmistakable.
As with Westwood Studio’s iconic Mammoth Tank, the development of epic units had a slow and indeterminate start. In Blizzard’s landmark title Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, each race is able to use its highest tier caster to summon a powerful, temporary unit; the Water Elemental for the humans, and the Daemon for the orcs. While both units were not in the strictest sense epic, they were notable for requiring the highest possible concentration of resources to produce, and possessed combat abilities far beyond anything else the rest of the army rosters could muster. Despite this being something of a hallmark for things to come, Blizzard would never fully pickup on this trend.
That Westwood Studios would be the next developer to produce an example of a proto-epic unit is quite ironic given the rivalry it shared with Blizzard. Red Alert: The Aftermath, the second expansion to the popular Command & Conquer: Red Alert title, featured a single mission with three AI controlled “super tanks”. Although un-buildable and uncontrollable for the player, these tanks had all the features of an epic unit, which the mission proceeded to showcase as the tanks shrugged off tesla coils and nuclear warheads while laying waste to an extensive Soviet Base. Editing the unit files would allow modders to gain access to the super tanks, but as yet a true epic unit would remain out of reach of players for a few more months.
In March of 1998, Cavedog Entertainment would release the first expansion to its seminal product, Total Annihilation. The Core Contingency, as the pack was titled, introduced a host of new units to the base game, including the mighty and powerful Krogoth Experimental K-bot (k-bots being essentially single-purpose mechs). The Krogoth was a surprise for many Total Annihilation players as it had no direct counter or equivalent in the opposing faction. Additionally, its only weakness was its inability to cross water; in all other respects the Krogoth annihilated any form of opposition that could be sent against it aside from massed, accurate, long range firepower. The Commander unit could destroy it easily with its disintegrator, but only a skilled player could micro a Commander close enough without being obliterated in turn. Krogoths required immense time and resources to produce, and typically necessitated an immediate response by the opposition before the battle was swiftly resolved.
Westwood Studios would take a cue from the arcade and console traditions of the previous decade and introduce a “boss battle” in their Firestorm expansion to Tiberian Sun. The Core Defender was an enormous humanoid mech that towered over every unit and structure in the game. It activated after players completed the pen-ultimate objective in the final mission; with no warning or foreshadowing given that the Defender would even appear. Capable of dispatching the strongest units in seconds, the Defender’s only weakness was a lack of air defense, yet its enormous pool of hit points necessitated some very creative tactics that can still be found on various forums and videos today.
As the development era of the 2000s came into full swing, developers knew that super units were a rare but accepted aspect. The only challenge was balancing them, if they were available to the player at all. Ensemble Studio’s Age of Mythology featured several in-game cutscenes were deities and similar beings appeared on the battlefield and wrecked havoc, but it wasn’t until The Titans expansion came out that the enormous Titan units were made available to the player. Titans were far from invincible as they lacked air defense and the ability to traverse water. Yet they had the largest hit point pool of any buildable unit by a vast margin, and their attack could level buildings and finish off most units in a couple of hits. The most impressive feature of the titan was its scale, the enormous model was quite often the largest single object on the map.
After the success of Starcraft, and the publishing of expansions like the Core Contingency or The Titans, two developments became increasingly apparent. Firstly it was possible to safely provide players with epic units, secondly the standard “heavy” or “high tier” units like Terran Battlecruisers had slowly become just expensive cannon fodder in the faster paced meta of modern RTS games. Relic Entertainment’s Warhammer 40k franchise, Dawn of War, took this to heart by providing each playable faction in the base game and its expansions with a top tier unit. Typically these took the form of super heavy armored vehicles or supernatural gods and demons.
Each of them was, by default the last thing unlocked in a battle and required more resources than any other technology or unit. Additionally, players had to control at least one relic resource on the battlefield in order to even build these epic units, and only one such unit could be built at any time. Once constructed, these epic monsters and machines typically required an opposing epic unit to stop them, otherwise the battle was often resolved quickly. Another new development was the uniqueness of each epic unit. Each had its own quirks and mechanics, and they were not balanced around each other, but around their faction as a whole. Some were more effective as support weapons, others as frontline units or building destroyers. For the first time, epic units had transitioned from a class or type to an actual unit tier.
This topic turned out to be a bit longer than expected, so it’s being broken up into two releases. Now that we’ve had a chance to see where RTS epic units got their start, next time we’ll see what they turned into as the concept entered mainstream RTS gaming in force.
Hearts of Iron II
First published in 2005, Hearts of Iron II, with its accompanying expansions, is considered one of the flagship titles of Paradox Interactive and the title that launched the Hearts of Iron series, which at the time of this writing is on its fourth iteration. Following a design formula that would become Paradox’s standard, Hearts of Iron II, abbreviated Hoi2 by the fanbase, is one of the largest scale grand strategy games about WWII that has ever been produced.
Hoi2 takes the setting of WWII and puts the player in an almost godlike position of control over a country. The player must manage national resources, production, politics, and the command logistics and organization of their nation’s military. Many mechanical liberties are taken to showcase the level of removal that the player has from the day to day business in their nation, and to simplify complex processes like weapons research and industrial production. The smallest controllable unit is a division, air squadron, or naval flotilla, with brigades appearing as dependent attachments to divisions and ships. Industrial production involves simply ordering a unit to be produced with parallel and/or serial runs, while ensuring there is enough Industrial Capacity, or IC, to complete the process on time.
Yet the simplification of most of the specific processes in Hoi2 has resulted in many general processes being included, such as the management of specific territorial infrastructure, the direct diplomacy between over fifty potential nations, and the hidden nature of combat modifiers such as weather, terrain, and division overcrowding. This has all resulted in one of Hoi2’s biggest noted flaws: abrupt complexity. Beginner players see the exact same user interface as advanced players do, and must manage all of the same systems. The tutorial covers the basics of gameplay, particularly the movement and organization of divisions, as well as the basic controls for diplomatic and political interaction, but fails to accurately inform and test the player on the nuances of combat or the potential optimizations of even basic systems like industrial modifiers and chains of command.
All of that is to say that Hoi2 is very hard to learn; it’s not to say that Hoi2 is a bad or poorly designed game. Once a player has broken through the wall of ignorance that effectively locks all but the easiest playable nations, they are able to explore and enjoy a wide range of options and possibilities. Although the game is primarily a WWII simulator, with historical events coded in and most national AIs programmed to follow historic courses, the player can take their nation in any direction they please. Radical changes like turning the United States communist or Japan allying with the Soviet Union take time and skill, but more subtle actions such as successfully defending France can be accomplished with only a modest level of familiarity with the game.
An introduction to Hoi2 cannot be made easier for new players, but is absolutely worth the effort for anyone looking to take on the roll of a major world power in one of the most significant periods in human history. Obviously the major powers of the period are the ones with the most capacity for flexibility and outright conquest, but any nation that was present at the period can be played. Most importantly, the game proceeds in a sort of real time, with each hour of each day from the start point (as early as 1936) to the game’s end (as late as 1964) proceeding at a rate between 1 hr every five real seconds to 4 hrs per real second. The player can adjust that rate at will, and even pause the game to issue detailed orders and react to events and notifications at their leisure.
If any gamer every looked at a map, illustration, or diagram of a WWII front or operation and imagined moving those unit markers and shifting vector arrows, than Hoi2 is their dream game. It’s primary learning method is failure, but the player loses nothing but time by exploring different nations and strategies that might end in defeat in order to acquire essential familiarity with the game’s mechanics and nuances. Hoi2’s simple graphics and well designed processes ensure that it runs smoothly on old and new machines with minimal software requirements. The grand strategy genre will not appeal to all strategy gamers, but for those that enjoy the complexity of large scale command, Hearts of Iron 2 is a title worth mastering.
XCOM 2 | Game Review
XCOM 2 is the successor to Firaxis Games’ reboot title of the famous XCOM series: XCOM: Enemy Unknown. XCOM 2 was produced by 2K Games and released in February of 2016. An expansion pack, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, was released in August of 2017. XCOM 2 follows right on the heels of Enemy Unkown’s premise and greatly expands on the story, gameplay, and experience of its predecessors.
XCOM 2 begins its campaign twenty years after Earth’s original attempt to fend off the invading aliens, the XCOM Initiative, suffered total defeat. The aliens now occupy the Earth through their puppet government, the ADVENT administration, and maintain a benevolent facade while developing their secret Avatar Project. XCOM has morphed into a resistance movement led by the Commander, the player’s avatar in the campaign. XCOM’s forces are now based out of the Avenger, a retrofitted alien supply ship that keeps XCOM’s assets on the move and away from ADVENT retaliation.
Galactic Civilizations III
Galactic Civilizations III is the long-awaited sequel to Stardock’s enormously popular Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords and the third title in the Galactic Civilizations series. It was published by Stardock in 2015 and has since then received two expansion packs, Mercenaries, and Crusades, and a third is to be released later in 2018. Similar in nature to the Civilization series of 4x strategy games, Galactic Civilizations holds one of the premier positions among the space 4x titles of the 21st century.
At its core, GalCiv III follows a familiar pattern of 4x gameplay. Individual planets take the place of cities or settlements, with each planet featuring a number of build slots where improvements can be added to increase planetary production of such resources as research, credits, and production. Each planet contributes to a global fund for credits and research but utilizes production individually and production is further diversified into social production, which is used on other improvements, and military or ship production. All planets that sponsor a shipyard can contribute their military production to the construction of space vessels.
Total War: Warhammer II
Total War: Warhammer II, is the sequel to Creative Assembly’s landmark title Total War: Warhammer and is published by Sega. It is the second title in a trilogy of Total War: Warhammer games based off of Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy Battle tabletop game. Warhammer II was released in September of 2017 and brings with it an abundance of new features to add to CA’s developing Warhammer series including a new narrative campaign, four new races, and an overhaul to many of the campaign map mechanics.
One of Warhammer II’s primary features is its new single-player campaign called the Vortex Campaign. Unlike previous DLC mini-campaigns in the first Warhammer, the Vortex Campaign covers an entirely new campaign map featuring the fictional New World continents of Lustria and Naggarond as well as the paradise island of Ulthuan and the Old World Southlands. The campaign is also the primary delivery vehicle for Warhammer II’s new mechanics and campaign overhauls such as the introduction of settlement climates and treasure hunting.