General Strategy & Sim thread

[ZedClampet]

I have some history with TW WH. Played a bit of Mortal Empires but I preferred the story campaigns and in the end the MP battles. I own all the DLC for 1 and everything in 2 up to Vampire Coast because I wanted the lords as options in quick battles. Didnt play pretty much anything else in 2017 and got 2 on release day.

Checked out the CA forums and theres a bit of outrage going on. I dont personally see any veiled threat in their messaging, but I'm not invested anymore so maybe its just I'm not that bothered. Lord packs used to be €9.99 so doubling the price does seem a lot. Looks like the Chaos Dwarfs faction pack was the same price and I imagine that would have had much more content.

Theyve always been milking it though, from the start.

$25 is more than most of the indie games I play. At worst they cost $29.

As for the veiled threats, I was just going by what the PCG article said and what the players were saying. I'm not sure where they are getting it from. But if they are going to price the DLC at $25, they might as well stop supporting the game.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

This is the message I've found in response to the community reaction:

Let's Talk About the Shadows of Change DLC

A message from Creative Assembly's Rob Bartholomew (Chief Product Officer) and Rich Aldridge (Senior Game Director).

www.totalwar.com

To get right into it: our costs are up. Unfortunately, that means that prices have to rise. We know any increase is going to be tough, which is why our prices have remained fairly stable over the past few years. The downside is that any increase today is going to be more noticeable.

There’s no good time to increase prices, and we have not taken this step lightly. However, this is the business reality of supporting WARHAMMER III and ensuring we’re able to offer the years of extra content that are currently planned.

That said, we do need to challenge ourselves to ensure that this cost still offers good value. Ultimately, that’s up to each of you to decide and we’ll keep trying to balance that. Of course, we want more people to play, we want to continue to deliver content you’re excited to see, and we want to do that for as long as we can.

Totally agree its a lot of money for what it is and complaining and/or boycotting is fair enough. I dont think the response is unreasonable though, theyre just standing their ground instead of backpedalling as people probably hoped they would.

 

[Brian Boru]

"our costs are up"
Is there anywhere this is expanded on? What costs?

$25 is more than most of the indie games I play

When I was buying BigFish casual games regularly, they cost me $7—or $14 for a 'Collector's Edition'. These aren't 5-hour games either, typically 10-30 hours—and with a focus on gameplay usually, lots of replay value.

So yeah, $25 DLC is way out of whack for the market. My last 'impatient' purchase was Command and Conquer Remastered for $20 the day after release—that was 2 AAA games + 3 major expansions altogether.

The market has taken a 20% rise recently with a lot of titles now $60 instead of $50. Not a 200% rise.

 

[ZedClampet]

"our costs are up"
Is there anywhere this is expanded on? What costs?

That's all they said. I doubt that there's anything else to say about it because their annual report clearly showed costs remaining steady for the last 6 years while profits rose 20 to 25 percent each year. I don't know the context surrounding these yearly figures, but it doesn't seem like they are being honest.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Weeell theyve had €20 DLC's since the start in 2016, Wood Elves and Bestmen were both about that. Lord packs which I think generally had 2 or 3 new Legendary Lords, maybe some hero units and campaign starts were 9.99 or thereabouts, in € of course. They threw in some free stuff as well with it.

I dont know what content is in the new pack, it seems theyre trying to say the Changeling changes (sorry) things up more than new lords generally have. Obviously they think they have enough people on the hook that will pay it for it to make financial sense, maybe they tried to push the needle to far this time. Perhaps they arent selling like they used to and they arent as bothered about maintaining general goodwill anymore because the franchise is winding down.

 

[ZedClampet]

Weeell theyve had €20 DLC's since the start in 2016, Wood Elves and Bestmen were both about that. Lord packs which I think generally had 2 or 3 new Legendary Lords, maybe some hero units and campaign starts were 9.99 or thereabouts, in € of course. They threw in some free stuff as well with it.

I dont know what content is in the new pack, it seems theyre trying to say the Changeling changes (sorry) things up more than new lords generally have. Obviously they think they have enough people on the hook that will pay it for it to make financial sense, maybe they tried to push the needle to far this time. Perhaps they arent selling like they used to and they arent as bothered about maintaining general goodwill anymore because the franchise is winding down.

Not actually correct. In American dollars, these DLC are 30 percent more than any prior DLC, including the Wood Elves and the Beastmen, and this DLC doesn't have nearly the content of either of those. This was plainly what they were selling for $9 previously. Lord packs have always been that price and have always had new units and new mechanics. They admit the price change, thus the statement about their costs. Players let them get away with charging $25 for the Chaos Dwarves, but a line has to be drawn somewhere.

 

[Hveðrungr]

I dont personally see any veiled threat in their messaging, but I'm not invested anymore so maybe its just I'm not that bothered.

Hey, I am invested so maybe I can explain why many think there was a veiled threat.

The missing context one needs is that two years ago CA killed their popular Total War: Three Kingdoms game without fixing game-breaking bugs and without releasing all the expansions they'd said they would make. They did this in a weasel-worded video misleadingly called “The Future of Total War: Three Kingdoms” that started by saying how delighted they were at the community's reception of the game before saying that the game was being abandoned. TW3K had had the best launch of any Total War game ever, yet CA still dropped it as soon as it ran into problems, so they have a record on this that the community is well aware of.

The key line in the message is [my emphasis]:

Of course, we want more people to play, we want to continue to deliver content you’re excited to see, and we want to do that for as long as we can.

If they merely “want to deliver content for as long as they can” rather than being committed to doing so or taking it as a given, then they are raising the possibility that they might kill TWWH3 like they killed TW3K. For example, they could have said something without any contingency like “We love delivering content you're excited to see, and that's what we're going to continue doing”. That would have been a firm statement of intent about their commitment to the game.

Personally, I think it wasn't so much a veiled threat as a veiled plea for help: that corporate owner Sega are breathing down their necks and making them do this. But I can see why some in the community think it was a threat.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Not actually correct. In American dollars, these DLC are 30 percent more than any prior DLC, including the Wood Elves and the Beastmen, and this DLC doesn't have nearly the content of either of those. This was plainly what they were selling for $9 previously. Lord packs have always been that price and have always had new units and new mechanics. They admit the price change, thus the statement about their costs. Players let them get away with charging $25 for the Chaos Dwarves, but a line has to be drawn somewhere.

I'm with you, its way too much for a lord pack to double the price. However Chaos Dwarves as a faction pack is roughly in line with an inflationary increase, even if they did throw 6 years inflation on all at once.

I'll say though that from day one, 1/3 of the price of the whole base game for a single new race was too much, and people complained about the withholding of content at the time too. I dont think we should be surprised that they would really be yanking teets at this point. Whether that's down to CA or Sega is a whole other thing.

Hey, I am invested so maybe I can explain why many think there was a veiled threat.

The missing context one needs is that two years ago CA killed their popular Total War: Three Kingdoms game without fixing game-breaking bugs and without releasing all the expansions they'd said they would make. They did this in a weasel-worded video misleadingly called “The Future of Total War: Three Kingdoms” that started by saying how delighted they were at the community's reception of the game before saying that the game was being abandoned. TW3K had had the best launch of any Total War game ever, yet CA still dropped it as soon as it ran into problems, so they have a record on this that the community is well aware of.

The key line in the message is [my emphasis]:

If they merely “want to deliver content for as long as they can” rather than being committed to doing so or taking it as a given, then they are raising the possibility that they might kill TWWH3 like they killed TW3K. For example, they could have said something without any contingency like “We love delivering content you're excited to see, and that's what we're going to continue doing”. That would have been a firm statement of intent about their commitment to the game.

Personally, I think it wasn't so much a veiled threat as a veiled plea for help: that corporate owner Sega are breathing down their necks and making them do this. But I can see why some in the community think it was a threat.

Appreciate the context. Possible some weird stuff happening behind the scenes between Sega and CA. Its never enough to make a good profit, always have to make more.

 

[ZedClampet]

Playing Total War Three Kingdoms...

Guido: Do you think the Emperor will get mad if I vassalize Liu Bei?

Me: You mean the guy I just broke 3 alliances to declare war on? I'm not going to withdraw even if you vassalize him.

Guido: Will the game let you do that since we're playing co-op?

Me: We're not playing co-op.

Guido: Oh, crap.

We started this game weeks ago. Apparently he forgot this key piece of information. I was actually getting ready to attack him, but the fact that he didn't know we weren't playing co-op completely took the wind out of my sails. I ended up telling him we'd just declare a co-op victory in the end, whoever won.

 

[ZedClampet]

Played some Motorsport Manager and did AWESOME!

Instead of starting a new career game, I decided I'd better just try a single race first. I had two drivers, one was starting in 3rd and the other in 18th. I made the genius-level decision that we were going to drive carefully in such a way that we could skip the final pit stop. Except for both cars running out of gas, coasting halfway around the track and coming in last and second to last, the plan worked like a charm.

 

[Brian Boru]

Spud plays a Deity Civ6 start that I would've rerolled in a heartbeat even on King. This 22m video is very educational for starting to make lemonade from lemons.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN2Ysk6WTxI

 

[Brian Boru]

Just took Humankind off my wishlist, where it's sat for 2 years—$10 @ 80% discount is make-your-mind-up time.

Thoughtful recent reviews make it fairly clear game has gotten worse since release. Sad, I had high hopes from the makers of the Endless games.

 

[ZedClampet]

Just took Humankind off my wishlist, where it's sat for 2 years—$10 @ 80% discount is make-your-mind-up time.

Thoughtful recent reviews make it fairly clear game has gotten worse since release. Sad, I had high hopes from the makers of the Endless games.

For $10 I was going to take the leap, but then I started reading user reviews. Sounds like the devs have repeatedly ignored the players and created something truly awful.

When large portions of your player base are all saying the same thing, the developers need to check their egos and make the changes.

 

[ZedClampet]

I went to Steam wanting to buy a new strategy game, but ended up buying all the rest of the Civ 6 DLC for about $19. It was like 70 percent off with the bundle. One of them was $39.99, and I had maybe 6 DLC to get, so that was a pretty good deal. I can finally play Civ 6!

But I was still in the mood for a strategy game, so I kept looking, and ended up buying the last 5 DLC for Total War Rome 2, which were also on sale.

At this point, I decided I needed to stop looking for new games XD

 

[Brian Boru]

Go

If you play Go, be aware there's a game on Steam titled "Gomoku Let's Go" which is not Go but a Connect 5 game. You may want to put it on Ignore to avoid a mistaken purchase, even tho it's cheap.

Same dev actually has a good looking Go game "Just Go" on Steam for $10.

Please post if you've played any digital Go games, and if you recommend it/them. I haven't yet.

History

Probably the oldest game in the world which has been in continuous play, Go started ~4,500 years ago in China. It's main player base is in east Asia, and the strongest players are in S Korea, China and Japan.

Famous chess master Edward Lasker was a rare good Western player in the early 20th C.

A loose approximation of the number of legal board positions on a Go board is to square the number of atoms in the observable Universe. If you doubt that, start counting…

 

[ZedClampet]

Go

If you play Go, be aware there's a game on Steam titled "Gomoku Let's Go" which is not Go but a Connect 5 game. You may want to put it on Ignore to avoid a mistaken purchase, even tho it's cheap.

Same dev actually has a good looking Go game "Just Go" on Steam for $10.

Please post if you've played any digital Go games, and if you recommend it/them. I haven't yet.

History

Probably the oldest game in the world which has been in continuous play, Go started ~4,500 years ago in China. It's main player base is in east Asia, and the strongest players are in S Korea, China and Japan.

Famous chess master Edward Lasker was a rare good Western player in the early 20th C.

A loose approximation of the number of legal board positions on a Go board is to square the number of atoms in the observable Universe. If you doubt that, start counting…

He should have called "Gomoku Let's Go" just "Gomoku", especially since it looks just like a Go game. If you read the descriptions, it's pretty obvious what it is, but I guess people aren't always careful when they buy games, particularly if they are only $2,99.

I'm currently trying to decide whether I want one or the other or neither or both

 

[ZedClampet]

Since this is the strategy-sim thread, it feels off that we don't have any posts about the greatest business strategy simulation ever made, Monopoly. That may be an exaggeration, but it's cool to bash Monopoly, so I thought I'd start off by trolling the cool people.

But I remembered liking Monopoly as a child, and after Bryan's post yesterday, I wondered if there were any other board games on sale on Steam, and there was Monopoly Plus. I wondered what the "plus" was about and found out the game was made by Ubisoft. Since I signed up to Ubisoft Plus for the month, I decided to try it out. (This paragraph was to explain why I tried Monopoly and to suggest that I'm actually cool even though I played it)

Unfortunately, the game was unbearable. It works great and looks great, but the AI turns take forever, and there's no way to speed them up. If you do the normal thing and play with other people, the game would be fine, but I was just going to play by myself, and it drove me batty.

Real players taking their time is fine. But I couldn't care less about watching the AI roll their dice across the board, then count out how many boxes they can move, then decide whether they want to buy the property or not, then put the property in an auction, then get in a bidding war with another AI and raise the auction price by $1 over and over, then finally win the property and decide it wants to trade it with another AI.......

 

[Brian Boru]

after Bryan's post yesterday, I wondered

And the jealous meanies try to claim I'm not an inspiration… KAPOW!

greatest business strategy simulation ever made, Monopoly

Hmm.

it's cool to bash Monopoly

Oh goodie, a side bennie! Never liked the game myself, and if I recall correctly, it was developed as a criticism of Capitalism's systems. BoardGameGeek doesn't like it either.

I wondered if there were any other board games on sale on Steam

Loads

 

[Brian Boru]

I know we have at least one Black & White fan here, so for you:

The god game that flew too close to the sun

Looking back at the flawed but ambitious Black & White 2.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[Pifanjr]

Since this is the strategy-sim thread, it feels off that we don't have any posts about the greatest business strategy simulation ever made, Monopoly. That may be an exaggeration, but it's cool to bash Monopoly, so I thought I'd start off by trolling the cool people.

But I remembered liking Monopoly as a child, and after Bryan's post yesterday, I wondered if there were any other board games on sale on Steam, and there was Monopoly Plus. I wondered what the "plus" was about and found out the game was made by Ubisoft. Since I signed up to Ubisoft Plus for the month, I decided to try it out. (This paragraph was to explain why I tried Monopoly and to suggest that I'm actually cool even though I played it)

Unfortunately, the game was unbearable. It works great and looks great, but the AI turns take forever, and there's no way to speed them up. If you do the normal thing and play with other people, the game would be fine, but I was just going to play by myself, and it drove me batty.

Real players taking their time is fine. But I couldn't care less about watching the AI roll their dice across the board, then count out how many boxes they can move, then decide whether they want to buy the property or not, then put the property in an auction, then get in a bidding war with another AI and raise the auction price by $1 over and over, then finally win the property and decide it wants to trade it with another AI.......

I've had the same problems with slow AI in the digital adaptations of Catan and Terra Mystica. The best adaptations will probably be from board games that have a single-player mode built into the rules, like Gloomhaven (though it seems the last update broke the game). Though I think even those games will be better when played with friends.

 

[ZedClampet]

I've had the same problems with slow AI in the digital adaptations of Catan and Terra Mystica. The best adaptations will probably be from board games that have a single-player mode built into the rules, like Gloomhaven (though it seems the last update broke the game). Though I think even those games will be better when played with friends.

Hmm, I was actually interested in Catan, but it sounds like I would be too impatient with it. The only video game version I know has terrible recent reviews anyway.

 

[Pifanjr]

Hmm, I was actually interested in Catan, but it sounds like I would be too impatient with it. The only video game version I know has terrible recent reviews anyway.

Have you tried Terraforming Mars? It was a freebie on Epic at some point. It's considered one of the best board games.

A quick look at the Steam reviews suggests that it's unstable for multiplayer matches, at least with more than two people, but otherwise it seems fine.

 

[ZedClampet]

Have you tried Terraforming Mars? It was a freebie on Epic at some point. It's considered one of the best board games.

A quick look at the Steam reviews suggests that it's unstable for multiplayer matches, at least with more than two people, but otherwise it seems fine.

I must have missed that week's freebies. I don't have it.

I looked at it on Steam and it looks pretty good. There's another game just called Terraformers which is pretty good. It's not based on a board game, but it plays somewhat like one.

Thanks for the heads up. I put Terraforming Mars on my wishlist.

 

[Brian Boru]

@ZedClampet and other EA folk:

Closed beta free playtest of city builder & [in future] RTS mix Thrive: Heavy Lies the Crown

Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown on Steam

Thrive: Heavy Lies the Crown is a complex city builder, where the fate of your kingdom hinges on your every decision. Explore this medieval land alone or with friends, make tough moral choices and conquer your foes in RTS combat. Will you struggle to survive, or find the strength to Thrive?

store.steampowered.com

11m video by Zade:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9uVAvBoNG0

 

[ZedClampet]

Looks great. Downloading.