Moving Away From 4X

by on November 17, 2014 at 4:37 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This was originally going to be a completely different essay, but I’ve realized it’s past time to tighten up my definitions some, so I’m not continuing having to stop and figure out/explain pieces of my foundation just so I can say something coherent. This really should have been the first post in the ‘game genre’ series. Well, second would have been acceptable.

So, now to talk about what’s been the elephant in the room, the 4X genre. Borrowing from Wikipedia:

The term “4X” originates from a 1993 preview of Master of Orion by Alan Emrich, in which he rated the game “XXXX” as a pun on the XXX rating for pornography. The four Xs were an abbreviation for “EXplore, EXpand, EXploit and EXterminate”.

….

While many strategy games arguably contain a similar “explore, expand, exploit, exterminate” cycle, game journalists, developers and enthusiasts generally apply “4X” to a more specific class of games, and contrast 4X games with other strategy games such as Command & Conquer. Hence, writers have tried to show how 4X games are defined by more than just having each of the four Xs. Gaming sites have stated that 4X games are distinguished by their greater complexity and scale, and their intricate use of diplomacy beyond the standard “friend or foe” seen in other strategy games. Reviewers have also stated that 4X games feature a range of diplomatic options, and that they are well known for their large detailed empires and complex gameplay. In particular, 4X games offer detailed control over an empire’s economy, while other strategy games simplify this in favor of combat-focused gameplay.

The next thing to note is that I both agree with the fact that ‘4X’ adequately describes the course of a wide range of strategy games, and that I tend to define it even more narrowly than the restrictive game journalists. Because of the initial definition of “4X” with MoO, I always associated it with space conquest games. Part of this is also from the fact that the standard 4X cycle is implicit in the nature of space-based wargames. The standard idea, from Stellar Conquest and StarWeb on, is to start with one planet in a big, unknown universe, explore it, claim and settle it, build your empire into a powerful economic force, with which you can eliminate the other players and win the game.

In fact, MoO itself subverted this already existing style with its diplomatic model, and the ability of the game to end without conquest (the Galactic Council vote). For me, 4X naturally already meant games that strongly relied on this cycle without fiddling around with ‘greater complexity’ or ‘intricate diplomacy’ as differentiators, and I would indeed say those don’t make an adequate definition. Reach For the Stars is not that complex compared to many strategy games, and there is no in-game support for any diplomatic status other than ‘war’. But it is a space 4X game.

The heart of the 4X game is the interplay of discovery (explore), colonization (expand), development (exploit), and warfare (exterminate). I’ve touched on the role of colonization in some strategy games already, and should probably tackle those subjects explicitly soon.

But for the overall definition of ‘4X’: Command & Conquer (to use Wikipedia’s example) has you explore the map, and Tiberium fields are one of the things you look for. Then you send units out to get the Tiberium, and get it to your base so you can build more units to kill the enemy with. Sounds fairly 4Xish. And it is. As Wikipedia then points out, it can get hard to say many typical combat-heavy games are not 4X games without a lot of hair-splitting and tightening of definitions.

But I would say the difference is the hair-splitting of scope and emphasis. In fact, it has to be, as everything we are talking about here belongs to the general category of ‘games about being rude neighbors and wanting their stuff more than they do’ (and 4X, no matter how defined, is a subset of that). My first rough breakdown, with the genre labels I tend to like using:

  • Wargame
  • (Base-building) RTS
  • Fantasy Conquest
  • (Space) 4X
  • Empire Management
  • Civilization

There’s more, and overlap, and complications, but that’s enough to be going on with. I’ve also arranged them in something of a sliding scale with games that have detailed combat and little else at the top, and games with simple combat a lots of other detailed systems at the bottom.

There’s some strangely specific ideas mixed in with some very broad ones. Of course, these are meant to be… real genres—genres where there are a number of different games that center around similar ideas or mechanisms, even if that is a fairly lumpy distribution. The main standout from that viewpoint is wargames, which is a superset genre with a long and varied history in both board and computer games, and has plenty of sub genres, like hex-and-counter, CDG, area-impluse, and so on. The definition in this list says they are games with combat, and no real economic or diplomatic systems. Risk fits here as easily as War in the East, but Third Reich starts separating out and moving down the list. That will sound a bit strange to an old board wargamer, but helps with the more general discussion I hope to continue soon.

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Voyage of The Saucy Vixen

by on November 11, 2014 at 9:55 pm
Posted In: MMO

Smudge and I are still continuing through ArcheAge. One disappointment is that the number of dungeons seems to be pretty small. We’re currently level 33+, and have only seen one (for level 20) so far.

At least we had a good time with that one. It had a three-person limit, and Smudge and I were able to two man it pretty well. It was really challenging, but we like that, and two-manning dungeons was one of the things we really enjoyed in Neverwinter.

And then we hit the final boss. Nopenopenope. Fast, lots of damage… and then his minions show up. Only two, but our efforts just kind of collapsed at that point. But, there’s a daily quest to ‘mentor’ someone by taking them through the dungeon when you’re at level 30+. The next night we were mentored by a friendly level 47… that didn’t leave us much to do. There was also a quest to kill (/loot) the final boss three times, which we eventually managed on our own, but it was a nicely tough fight all the way.

Smudge has been variously determinately chasing after the ‘free’ subscription, and despairing of the same. Two APEX turns into enough in-store credit to buy a month’s subscription, plus a little left over. But APEX are generated by people spending real money to get them, so they can auction them in-game for gold. They were about 60g each, and then went up to about 110g when Trion banned a massive number of gold farmers and hack accounts, and with a recent content addition shot up to 200g for a day, and is now about 130g+. Smudge caught up to them at the 110g mark, and is currently in Patron status, which gets her into the housing and farming content.

I’ve gotten both of us into the second tier crafted sets (level 24), and here’s Eseria’s current outfit, with the faction capital of Marianople in the background (with some draw distance problems…). One of the things that truly impresses me with the game is the architecture. Much of the time, it doesn’t draw a whole lot of attention to itself, and feels like the same old faux-medieval that most fantasy games present. And that is true. But most fantasy worlds in games fall apart when it comes time to do fortifications. Here, however, ArcheAge has done a really good job, at least on the western continent, which is more European in style. The city walls are in the style of real medieval city and castle walls, and look like they mean business.

With that crafting goal done, we looked over all the various demands on our crafting, and decided we needed a ship. We’re needing Opaque Polish and Small Leaf Pigment to advance some of the crafting quest/tutorials, and the third set of crafted gear needs them. These need Charcoal Stabilizers to make, and the only way to get that is by doing trade runs to the other (unfriendly) continent. We could row across the ocean to there… eventually. And there’s pirates (PC), and monsters, and all around jerks. So a ship is much faster and safer.

As it turns out the basic fast transport (adventurer’s cutter) is pretty reasonable. So, I bought the plans, we gathered the materials, and then we built a ship.

First, you place the drydock:

Then you add supplies of wood:

Iron:

And cloth:

And then you have to spend labor to build the ship, in three parts:

I had been a little disappointed. I had been hoping for something little more truly drydock-like. So, I was surprised when I ‘took possession’ of the finished ship, and the center dropped away as a ramp, and the ship slid down while fireworks went off. (They should have demanded a bottle of champagne as a material for that part!)

And here’s The Saucy Vixen on it’s maiden voyage:

Sunday night we did a gold-earning run with The Saucy Vixen which reduced the time needed from ~45 minutes to ~25. Nice!

However, the real point is to go to the other continent, where everyone is hostile, other than a handful of merchants, and get Charcoal Stabilizer instead of gold.

One article we saw gave the idea of crafting a pack, dumping it in a little-known area of coast line, logging onto your character on the other side, sail over with a different pack, find and pick up the pack you left (and leaving the one you had), sail back, profit, log onto the first character, pick up the pack, profit!

With two people on Skype, this gets a lot easier. But still more exciting than I wanted.

So on Monday night I make up a trade pack, and set off… and as I’m approaching the enemy shore, another cutter came into view… who turned and gave chase. I couldn’t dodge him, and he got his harpoon into me and used it to tow me closer.

But… he hadn’t quite thought this through. He was alone on his ship like I was. So the only thing that kept us together while I was under full sail was his harpoon (you can’t man that and pilot the ship at the same time), and he apparently couldn’t cast at me (not sure if his range wasn’t good enough, or if the harpoon was too much of a full time job). So, he eventually gave up after I towed him most of the way home.

After that, I straightened out, and headed back, trying for a slightly different approach angle if he was still around. And… ran right back into him! However, I had come in behind him, and got out of draw distance before he could turn around.

And then I ran into seabugs. One leapt onto the ship, and nearly killed me before I got enough distance for him to want to let go and leave me.

After that, I made my third approach to the continent, and spotted a different cutter. I mentioned this to Smudge, who asked, “Does it have a white wing on the sail?”

I couldn’t see what exactly was on the sail, but it was certainly white. We were close enough to both be able to see the same ship! I passed behind it, and it continued on its way, possibly relieved that I wasn’t attacking him. I went on shore, Lingli and I traded packs, and I set off for home.

I headed for Crescent Throne, since it’s the city who’s location I know the best from the coastline. I was sailing along the shore, enjoying the sights, fairly close in, with a junk (warship) sitting along the shore.

It started occurring to me that this probably wasn’t an NPC ship (there are a few scattered around), when a merchant ship appeared in front of me.

I have a problem that when under sudden pressure, my thought processes can just shred apart completely. It’s a major reason why I prefer turn-based games. I was thinking I should take drastic evasive action just in case, but couldn’t get myself to do more than just a couple minor course corrections before it rammed into me, bringing me to a halt.

Before I could really get going again, a level 50 with a purple name tag leaped on board. Green is friendly, blue is your own party, yellow is neutral, red is hostile, including all opposite faction characters. Purple is someone from your own faction that is capable of attacking anyone.

At 17 levels under, the fight went as you might expect, though it went longer than I would think. He was either taking it cautious with incapacitating abilities, or playing with/testing me. I died. In shallow water, so they recovered the pack. The good news is that the crafter of the pack always gets 20% of the sale price, so Lingli still got that much.

I had opportunities to react, if I could have thought of what I wanted to do. There’s a ship-buff that keeps people from boarding for a short time. Presumably, that would have worked. I have a ‘force push’ ability that, if he didn’t just resist it outright, would have knocked him over the railing. Then it’s superior maneuvering and speed to get away.

But there was nothing left to do but rez at the statue of Nui…. in the middle of the enemy continent! As near as I can figure it based the point of resurrection off of the last bit of land I’d touched.

Thankfully, it was a very obscure area, and there’s no fighting at the rez statues. It was tempting to stay and see if I could become a tourist attraction. (See the only Elf on Haranya!) ^_^

But Recall took me home, no trouble.

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The First Conflict

by on November 8, 2014 at 10:37 am
Posted In: Computer games

I’ve spent the last few days poking my way through the next Age of Wonders scenario, “The First Conflict”. Spare time has been a little sparse, so my playing was fairly broken up. It’s also a substantially bigger scenario.

In 965 LIR, Humans first entreated Lord Inioch for refuge in his kingdom. The Keepers welcomed Humans, convincing Inioch to grant them the Grey River Basin. Within the year, Humans had settled there with remarkable ease. Some closest to Inioch feared the power of these newcomers. Orcs and Goblins, led by a secret faction of Inioch’s Court, rallied, eager to destroy. Discovering the plot, the Keeper’s warned agents in nearby Elf and Halfling settlements, hoping they might keep the peace. Should war break out, who would the Humans blame and how would they view this “First Conflict”?

This is a large map with 34 cities and 4 sides. Given the backstory, I enabled allied victory, as the two factions don’t have any real desire for outright conquest of the region. There’s only four (out of the game’s possible twelve) races present, Elves, Halflings, Goblins, Orcs, and Humans. The default AI level seems to be Lords (midway up the scale), so I stuck with that).

I started as the Elves, and started expanding out from my one-hex starting city. The area was mostly pleasant, with some larger elven settlements that I talked into joining me. The map is dominated by a river confluence, with a couple major rivers coming down from the north (where I was) to join in the center of the map and continue south with some smaller rivers and streams joining in the south.

The option to build a navy was there early on, but I was too busy with other matters at first, and where there weren’t any bridges there were tunnels under the river.

Going west was slow as the major rivers were in the way, but to the south, I quickly ran into the Goblins at what was obviously intended to be the ‘natural’ border. There was a bridge across a stream, and on one side a three-hex elven city, and on the other a three-hex goblin city.

As I was building up on that front, I started finding human settlements, which I left alone, and I got a notice that the Orcs were defeated (lost their leader). I’m not sure what happened, but I’m thinking the Halflings got lucky.

The Goblins were trying to nail down parts of their area, and I started interfering. I managed to seize the city across the stream, and migrated it to Elves. I had summoned a giant eagle, and flew around grabbing magic nodes, and the like. He had a two-hex city that had been fortified in the corner… and the AI abandoned it at one point. I took it with the eagles and razed it, since I didn’t think I could hold it in the face of his hero. I lost the eagle, but not until after I’d razed another one-hex city.

The Goblins kind of wandered off after that. The AI was really interested in challenging my main buildup near the stream. I started taking a couple Human cities, and forfying them, and migrating some one-hex Goblin and Orc cities over to them, which raised my relations to the point where I could bribe them to join me.

Thanks to the tunnel system, I had gotten over to the east side of the river system, and started finding a vacuum where the Orcs should be. I eventually met the Halflings in that area and made peace, and eventually allied with them.

I had been nervous about the Goblin heroes I’d seen, but eventually chased him down a cavern in his area and besieged the main hero a two-hex city I found down there. In the end, I took the cheap shot and attacked a stack right outside the city to get the hero without dealing with the walls and finish the game. The final battle itself was lopsided, but fairly interesting, as he had local superiority on one end of the line.

It’s a fairly good scenario, and not quite as large as the the map size would normally mean, as a fair amount of the map is blocked off with mountains. I actually kept with the basic swordman/archer combo for the bulk of the scenario, and pumped out a lot of those. About midway through, I got one city each doing cavalry and priests, and then very late started producing balistae, and that was it.

The Humans are amazingly well settled though for only three years having passed. I’m probably going to turn off the ‘on map leader’ option next time to keep these random faction deaths from happening, even if it is a good way to keep from having to chase down every last city and unit.

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Blood Isles

by on November 2, 2014 at 11:50 am
Posted In: Computer games

After finishing my latest game of MoM, I took another look at my options. I’ve been wanting to stick with earlier fantasy conquest games, and I’m mostly ending up playing on Azuna. This leaves Heroes I/II out (which I did fiddle with some recently) since I’m still on copies that require the disk. Besides, while I can run it in DOSBox, I have to turn the CD music off, or it comes to a halt with every sound effect.

But while my copy of Age of Wonders installs from disk, it doesn’t require it for play, so I managed to copy it over from Horo to Azuna, and with some fiddling, get it to run. So, I decided to try the scenarios, and for the moment, go through them in ‘historical order’, since they all chronicle the conflicts that lead up to the campaign game. The earliest one is “Blood Isles”:

In 962 LIR (Lord Inioch’s Reign), three years before the first Humans set foot in the Valley of Wonders, Human ships arrived in the Blood Isles. Quickly, they overwhelmed the other races, and snatched up precious land. Historically, the islands were named for the sanguine battles which ensued as various factions fought to possess them. Now the Dwarves, Goblins, Azrachs and newly arrived Humans fought for supremacy, never fully aware that the name of the islands foreshadowed what was to come, and that the beaten races served to lead the migrant Humans directly to the Valley of Wonders.

It’s a medium map with 15 cities, and four factions: Humans, Dwarves, Azrachs, Goblins; though most if not all of the races are present in the various cities. I stuck with the default options, with on-map leaders (good hero, but you’re out if he dies), with CPU Squire players (hey, it’s the first time I’ve played this in years…!), though I played as the Humans instead of what seems to be the default Goblins.

The map is a series of islands, with the four factions starting in the middle of one side of the map; the Humans are on an island themselves, but the other three start areas connect to the sides of the map. Each home area begins with the main city, a second small city of a different race, a mine, some other income-producing building, and a shipyard. (You also start with one dragon ship/longboat.)

It didn’t take long for me to meet the Dwarves, who immediately declared war.

What? Is gold currency an insult to you or something?

Shortly after that, I met up with the Goblins and offered them peace. They said that was fine, as their conflict was with the Dwarves anyway. And that’s why you shouldn’t go around instantly declaring war on neutral races.

And then the Azrachs died. That would be the entire ‘leader death’ thing. Whoops.

The Goblins were slowly expanding to the east, while the Dwarves… didn’t seem to do much. I raced into the center, and started claiming everything I could. I tried to keep decent relations with all the races… except the Dwarves. I migrated the one Dwarven city I took to another race. The Azrachs had been in the south, and I got there well before anyone else, and took the area over. I then turned west and took out the Dwarves with no real problems, since I had a lot more resources to draw on.

As soon as the Dwarves were dead, the Goblins declared war, which certainly saved me time. They had just been really getting into the swing of things, so we skirmished a while near the center before I threw them back onto their start area, and then took out their leader just outside of the capital.

It’s a pretty fun and fast little scenario that forces you to pay attention to naval matters, but has a pretty decent city density. It’s obvious that each position is roughly equal, and with the AI turned up would be worth playing again.

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Arcane Conquest

by on November 1, 2014 at 4:29 pm
Posted In: Computer games

For my next game of Master of Magic, I went for the default all Arcane mage, Jafar, and turned the land size down to ‘medium’, so there were lots of separate landmasses to deal with. My initial continent just had one neutral city past my own (I eventually set up three more, but it was a tight fit for all of that). And I could just glimpse one other land mass. The ultimate irony is that my capital wound up building an alchemist’s guild despite having the alchemy skill, because of an adamantium deposit next door.

I managed to nail down most of the stuff on my continent (there were two nature nodes within the area of my home city, and I was worried that I’d get wiped out by wandering monsters…). Took out a tower of sorcery, and found a three square island on the other side; not a lot of help. I also started setting up the High Men city I took as a naval yard before remembering that it’s only actual outlet was on an interior lake. Well, time to warm up the Flight spell….

The land I could glimpse turned out to be a two square island with another tower. But past that was a larger, mostly desert landmass with Oberic on it with three cities. I took out a sorcery node there, and melded with it, but didn’t garrison it, so Oberic melded his own summoned spirit with it. So, I took it back and garrisoned it, but then he wasn’t happy that I had troops near a city of his….

So war was inevitable, as neither of us was happy…. I slowly trimmed away at him, ferrying over new loads of mixed troops and my heroes in the process. I met Merlin just as the war started, and then Horus and Sharee both showed up as it ended. I had already cast Aura of Majesty, so there were no immediate concerns, but I know that patch 1.4n will drive the AI to attack as you gain more power. At that point, the other two were at war with Horus.

While all that was happening to the west, I found more (empty) land to the east. I colonized one and took an existing Barbarian city on the same landmass. The next decision was to explore more of the world, or find a better way into Myrror. Since the two square island with the second tower was in between most of my army and the area I wanted to explore, I ended up opening the second tower with my main hero/flying galley stack, and started exploring. Shortly afterward, Horus cast Planar Seal, leaving them stranded on an alien world….

That should have been a hint, but I didn’t take it. Though it was an interesting strategy for the AI.

I conquered a few scattered cities on Myrror after that. My main possessions continued to develop, and I cleaned up a fair amount of corruption in the newly conquered area (Oberic’s capital had been hit by a meteor), and my second city developed enough to start building warships, which were then granted Flight to serve as the exploration corps.

The ocean to the west (where I’d seen everyone come from) was large and empty, but directly to the east was a large continent with Horus. Sharee was interlocked with him to the east, and there was still no sign of Merlin.

The natives were unhappy as I poked around, and then I found a new hamlet of Horus’… on Myrror. He had gotten there and colonized, and then sealed the planes so no one else could follow! I eliminated the hamlet… which meant war.

Shortly after that, I ran into a pair of well-defended neutral cities on Myrror that tied up my forces for a long while, as I didn’t want to leave them behind, but I didn’t want to lose heroes taking them. So the war was fought on Arcanus, and went fairly smoothly.

After a little while I took his capital… and Horus started casting Spell of Return. I mopped up the rest of his forces, and started sorting out all the new towns I had, and started cleaning up a fair amount of corruption scattered about, presumably as a result of fighting with Sharee.

Horus returned about the time I finally broke the two neutral towns on Myrror, and I decided it was time to be able to bring more force to bear. I Disenchanted the Seal, and started ferrying troops over.

Horus had a lot more on Myrror than I had given him credit for, but he just couldn’t match the high-level heroes or powerful units I had. As I was finishing that off, Merlin told me that I’d gone too far and declared war; which left the question of finding Merlin. He turned out to have a continent to the southeast of Horus and Sharee, which was swarming with lots of units. I got a foothold (mostly thanks to a sky drake), and then spent a lot of time barely beating off counterattacks.

But then his forces were exhausted, and many of my better units were just arriving, and his remaining four cities didn’t take long to fall. Sharee then declared war, and taking her two cities didn’t take long.

Jafar-World2
Arcanus, right before finishing off Horus on Myrror, and the collapse of Merlin.

Final score: 1382 (17%) actually my lowest winning score.

I was much stronger on the magic side of things than is typical for me this time. A large part of that was realizing that you have to work through the research buildings in order to get to banks. I was actually in the middle of researching Spell of Mastery at the end of the game, and at one point was wondering if I was going to end up using it.

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