Thursday, March 25, 2010

Seanchan > everybody else except maybe the borderlanders, at least as far as countries go

 

 

  Also: Playing R:TW on hard is waaaay different then easy.

 

  First, I’m almost imperial and I still haven’t conquered Gaul.

  Second, those small armies I was running around with? Ha! I now have two armies, both with upwards of 1k men and I’m getting ready to start a 3rd one once I hit imperial and get new units.

  Third, can I have some of your denarii? I’m po.

  Fourth, the brutii and scopii get better temples then us Julii, it’s not fair!

  Fifth, the Spanish will be dying as soon as the Gaul are “pacified”.

  Sixth, Woooo! (more details on that later)

 

  Lastly, anyone have any experience with installing wine on openSuse(11.2)?



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Monday, March 15, 2010

Prince of the Ravens

  Well it turns out the large D is worth something after all. I need to make a correction to my last post. I was calling each unit battalions(6-700), but in fact they’re closer in size to a company(60-100).

  So in fact…Most of my armies are really more of battalions, and small ones at that. I don’t think I have a force over 500. Well, I take that back, I have two that might be over 500, barely. Though they’ll all be seeing some major growth since it turns out if you have over 50k denarii you start running into corruption in your generals, and I have upwards of 90k.

 

~joe/ish



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Rome: Total War

  So Dammerung/Malkais/The Large One posted about R:TW the other day. I thought I’d add my general thoughts to it.

 

  First off, it’s pretty fun. It provides a nice tactical game, and lets you wonderfully slaughter badly balanced forces. (See: 2 battalions of heavy cavalry on a flat plain vs 3 battalions of sling throwers and 5 bat. of light infantry vs 1 bat. of light horse archers)

 

  Second, it’s the first RTS game I’ve played where terrain could *really* hide troops. I mean, like, you’re walking along and BAM you have two battalions on your flank that just came out of nowhere and are slaughtering your Velites(like archers, only they throw spears). (See: 3 bat. medium infantry, 1 bat. Velites, 1 bat. heavy cavalry (general’s guard) vs a freaking buttload of gaul on an insanely wooded mountainside).

 

  Third, influence? It makes towns happy. And makes people happy. And makes the senate like you and vote you into positions. Other than that? Junk. It’s one of those things that’s useful for those crappy relations that you’re never, ever going to give an army to so they just sit in town.

 

  Fourth, the greek phalanx thing. I hate them. I can’t break them with a charge of cavalry, they’re hard to kill with arrows, and I tend not to have archers, and they’re hard on infantry as well. The only thing that makes them tolerable is that they can’t really charge, just walk slowly forward, or backward.

 

  Fifth, cavalry. I’m not a *huge* fan of cavalry as a rule, namely because they’re not as much use when in towns. I do, however, really want one bat. or so in every army. Why? They can run people down while they flee. Breaking an army is great, annihilating an army so that you don’t have to worry about it again is awesome. My poor infantry just don’t run fast enough.

 

  Sixth, my usual army makeup. You’re probably not that interested, but as a rule my armies will have 2-4 bat. of medium infantry and some sort of ranged unit, either velites or archers, Or horse archer mercenaries in one lucky case, and the heavy cav that surrounds my general.

 

  Seventh, momentous battles. One of the best parts about RTW is probably the glorious defeats. For example, when you’re moving a battered group of cav or infantry and you get ambushed by vastly superior forces (best one yet was 25 light cav vs about 350 peasants and light inf). Retreat of course isn’t an option I’ll take. So what do I do? I harry them! I ended up taking about 200 down with me before the last remnants finally were slaughtered or fled. While that isn’t as good of a ratio as some battles, the fact that I managed to do that much was pretty nice. Had they been horse archers I think I could have won.

 

joe/ish



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Monday, March 1, 2010

I Blame....That Guy

    So here we are again. I may well post more than once a month at some point, who knows! Ducks could fly, pigs could swim, and elephants could gather together and bind the Tellan warren around them in such a way as to live immortally and wage eternal war against the giraffes.

 

    Well, Dax decided to ask some questions, so that will set the tone for today’s post. How’s married life? Any kiddos on the way? How far down that honey do list are you? And….discuss!

 

    Hmm, married life. Well, it’s married, and different. Some things are quite what I expected, the costs, the fact that I don’t seem to have any time, and the fact that I’m eating far more. Though I didn’t expect to get my first gray hair so soon! (I have one! She said I do!)

    Other things I didn’t expect so much, and I don’t know why. First, we seem unable to communicate some times. It’s amazing how hard it can be to say “hmm, there’s a fair chance I’m wrong, so I’m not going to continue this argument over <insert some topic that totally doesn’t matter at all>”. So far I think just about every argument we’ve had has been over things that don’t really matter and we honestly agree over we just can’t understand each other.

    Overall? Totally worth every pseudo-argument and lack of computer games. Though I do have her playing risk with me now on the PC AND Wing Commander: Prophecy (I might have mentioned that one before).

 

    Any kiddos on the way? Well, that depends on how you define on the way. If you’re asking it from the same point of view as “Is Starcraft 2 on the way?” and “Is Diablo 3 on the way?” then yes, quite a few are on the way. If you’re asking it like, “Will Dammerung’s hairline recede further this year?” then no, we aren’t buying a baby carrier yet. Though when we do buy one I plan on rigging it up to fly, have shields, and launch up to eight small fighters with which to pacify other small children.

 

    How far down that honey do list am I? I’m pwning it greatly. The only thing I have left, that I know of, is the need to build a cabinet between our two wine cabinets for a little more storage and plate holdage.

 

    And….discuss! I won a game of Risk last Saturday, first real game for me to play in years and the Blue Empire rained chaos and destruction from Europe until all was pacified and brought to heel. Except South America where my wife ruled, them I merely disarmed and gifted large estates.

 

    In other news…I’ll post again later!

 

~joe/ish

 



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