I'll be talking about things that happened while I played some video games. Only the interesting bits though. I'll play mainly strategy games, or builders, stuff like that. Should be pretty comfy! "Like a Let's Play, but Better!"
I used to do something similar on the OfficiallyDevin channel, and some of the content here will be re-edited summaries of the some of the epic campaigns of the past. I also want to cover some challenges, gimmicks, and generally things that catch my interest in the world of clicking on dudes to make them do stuff.
You'll quickly learn I am a game design pedant, and my prior training in UI design makes me mad about every UI I see. Thus, come share my curse.
Hi Devin! I wonder, what is it you do for a living? You mentioned once you used to work as a "database monkey" (btw., how much do they pay for this position?). Of course, you know some things about programming and video game development. Is that what you branched out to during university, or just hobbies?
Menu and UI design needs someone competent to work on for a few months. A slick menu would make this so much better. But I have to disagree. Combat is extremely important and makes you a lot of money. As you did notice, the faction need materials to build ships as well - the whole market exists to build ships, weapons, turrets, missiles and shields - and for that to work, ships need to be destroyed. That's why you need war. Every ship destroyed is more money you can make.
That's true, and a good way of looking at it. I was thinking more like the bounty you get for killing enemies isn't enough to justify a) the time it takes (since you could have made more doing something else with that time) and b) the risk of losing something. But I think on a more industrial level, war is certainly going to be useful, especially if you are strong enough that risking damage in combat isn't relevant anymore. This was all my extreme early game impressions so more interesting stuff didn't really come up.
@@OffyDGG Oh yea I got that, I was disappointed by the reward at first as well, but than I noticed my miners making more money again, because the demand was crazy since their wharf and shipyard started printing them ships again. Also, leveling captains is difficult. What I would suggest, if you have the player HQ and researched personal teleportation, to get to over 27 reputation with a faction of your choice, so you can teleport to their stations. Than you can visit the managing office where there can be 0-4 people possible to recruit and with some chance, you get a 2 or even 3 star pilot (they cost a million to hire). Which shortens the time considerably. So first things first, crew is important, service crew helps at everything but combat. Loading cargo, mining and so on. Marines help defending boarding, boarding and turret accuracy. But still, get one less in crew than needed for a ship you plan to have a good pilot on. Even if you have to chose the pilot to build, when there is 1 space left for crew, when you hire someone of the station, you can select that the new hire is the captain and the old one will go to the crew. That's how you can start with better pilots for your ships.
29:27 This isn't how it plays out, usually. Why? Well, the symmetricity of ships will just not be there. What you've done is created the least interactive scenario possible here. Also: the ships, unless explicitly told otherwise will try to rotate to a favourable thrust orientation by means of the fastest rotation axis. Just cuz you CAN tell their crew to hold a heading doesn't mean that they won't do what they see as best (following simple rules but still) if NOT told to do otherwise. They'll also repair their ship without your input analogously to above. They're not stupid, but they do follow orders.
You can't have infinite ships. Honestly you can't even have very many ships. There is a choke on the number of ships you can build unless you progress farther into the game. Every four ships, so it seems, the base Founding Cost goes up to the next material. I was trying to play a 'Noob Zone' tycoon and hit a wall because ship #8 wanted me to front them 500 Naonite and I didn't have it. This is in the Noob starting zone ship yard. That was really immersion breaking for me. There is no 'in game' kind of reason that a shipyard would ask you to provide them with a material that is not local, and not in your design. Why would they?
@@llywyllngryffyn8053 ah that's a shame, I had no idea. I think the only option would be to either raid the middle for resources briefly, or look for the rare occasions when the resource depots have small amounts of higher tier resources for sale. But yeah I think it should just let you make as many ships as you want, since the limitation of not being able to use higher tier ship parts is already enough.
@@OffyDGG Another player gave me a workaround. You have to create an Alliance of your own and then give your extra ships to the alliance. Then, as a player, when you build a new ship, it will only cost you Iron or Titanium, depending on how many you make. It's still a stupid concept.
One of the Avoirion 'Dumb things' is the resources in space. You touched on how they have coal mines and coal is decayed plants. Well they also have 'Carbon Extractors' and they take Potatoes, Rice, or Corn as inputs... but not Coal, which is basically all carbon.
The 4X's are Explore, Exploit, Expand, Exterminate. They date back to the Civilization style games. The space genre adopted them too with games like Masters of Orion. (The original one, not the remake. Though it is also 4x)
I think the religious side of Nod is that they believe that Tiberium has something to do with helping humanity evolve to its next stage. I'm basing that off of a very old and vague memory, but I'm sure that was their overall angle.
That makes sense. Maybe it actually says during the nod campaign, can't remember. I only really remember c&c 3, where I think kane and nod are retconned into all sorts of things.
1:00:00 engineers on patroll will do what they think it's best for the eco. So if you have alot of mass, they help build. if you lack mass, they reclaim it.
I just played this game recently and I have to say that the campaigns are pretty trash and frustrating. I've only played the NOD campaign but I really dislike how you never get access to your full roaster while facing an AI that has stuff you can't defend against in some situations (e.g. air). Red Alert is a significant improvement on the formula and Red Alert 2 is just on a whole other level.
They added a talent you can learn that alows you to do autobattles. You can also change your troop stance in the party screen, but its limited to Attack/Defend/Follow.
Actually there are billions of people they're just scattered all over the galaxy since the infinite war, billions of lives have been lost in the 1000 year war, most systems controlled by the UEF, Cybran and Aeon would have at least a couple million per planet. Each faction has it's own civilian population, colonies and established settlements and population centers and cities. Although Earth is the Primary world for the UEF since the collapse of the Earth Empire. The UEF's Administrative Planet called Capella is one of the UEF's most populous planet in UEF Controlled Territory, with some of the largest cities still present since the Old Earth Empire, for the Cybrans, Minerva is home to the largest Cybran/Symbiont colony for the Cybran Nation. As for Aeon, Blue Sky is the least populated, as it is the Princess's Private World with a Palace and Temple of Loyalists.
The game in all honesty is hard, its unforgiving, doesnt teach you shit, and expects you to put a foot forwards to cook. People will enjoy that, some people wont enjoy that, its why these types of games are for select groups of people.
No unit commands? Well thats simply not true!! G: makes all selected units instantly go on "Guard Mode" and starts shooting everything within their sight! (Semi Attack-Move) ((G has to be pressed every time after a new move order or command to make sure they are in guardmode)) X: Units will scatter to all sides to avoid getting squashed by tanks or vehicles (can be done multiple times to scatter even further) S: Stops all selected Units Shift + A : Selects all Military Units across the map
Went into the settings file and mucked around but could not find the line that changes "mission giver range", did find other fun stuff though. Edit: I guess extending Comm Relay transmission ranges does the same. On another note, option to not explore/open stuff is important in cases where a large amount of stuff can be gathered (like minerals, food) but you don' have cargo space for it so it has to be dumped into space and without putting it on a stable orbit the whole stack with disappear. But then again, why can't we not land on a planet, find too much loot and leave it there for a second run instead of bringing it up into space and litter the sky with it.
32:50 - 33:46 I mean, you have games like _Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings,_ (coincidentally, all produced by the same company, and two you've played before) etc. Grand Strategy-genre games don't care about the miniscule things, and care about the highest-management stuff and complexities; they're - to put it one way - the Strategy and Logistics to the Total War's and other such similar RTS/TBS-genre (ironic terminology notwithstanding) games' Tactics and Weaponry. Hell, it's why the _Victoria_ series of grand strategy games are sometimes just called "spreadsheet simulators". Somewhat-related: I feel like the _Rome II_ and onward TW games have been kinda striking an unhappy/dissatisfying median between attempting to integrate many different, perhaps even diametrically-opposed, game concepts into them. If that makes sense at all. Trying to be arcade-y and game-y whilst also holding onto the older games' more serious and grounded approach.
He has also played Europa Universalis, remember that Ukraine playthrough losing almost everything to Russia and then getting accepted in the EU and saved by the force of their military. I've played a Shogun II campaign on MoSS and, even though it's limitations, is just a wonderful piece years later. I have not player much of the recent ones, besides Rome II and Troy, but I do agree that there's a feeling of a lack of correlation of what happens in battles or why they happen to the sort of own narrative we're experiencing in what mostly are sandbox map games with tiny Risky-like pieces representing armies and other stuff. We've got to feel inmersed to forget how boring games can be and develope our story with the game, like the stakes are high but also can get to relax between moments of tension. .
Assorted thoughts written down throughout watching the video, in roughly chronological order: 1. In addition to force moving to crush enemy infantry, you can use the scatter command (default X) to prevent your own infantry from being crushed. 2. 44:21 You're supposed to blow up the airstrip in this mission. The intention is that you should be able to puzzle it out because the objective building in the briefing has 8 asterisks, and the airstrip is the only building with 8 letters. If you do this you get to skip the next mission entirely. Even if you don't, the building you blew up instead will remain destroyed, so the silo is pretty much the worst target you could have chosen here. 3. The difficulty levels are ported directly from Red Alert, and what they do on Hard is give enemy units 20% stronger stats and your own units 20% worse states (the inverse is true on Easy), effectively making enemy units 40% stronger than yours. You're correct in assuming that the campaigns aren't balanced around this at all, and using them tends to cause several issues. 4. An efficient way to grow tiberium is to scatter a few light vehicles across a tiberium field. This means the nodes they're on won't be harvested and therefore are able to slowly spread more tiberium. I'm not sure about the exact mechanics of blossom trees, but I believe your theory is more or less right. 5. The skirmish mode is actually something added by the remaster, again backported from Red Alert. 6. Blowing up Kane's temple with the ion cannon is indeed the canon ending. There's an alternative (and very anti-climatic) cutscene for if you destroy it normally. 7. The console missions also come from the N64 version of the game, which is actually a really interesting port since it's in 3D (but also on the space-limited cartridges so all the FMVs are removed.) If you were wondering, the grayed out button on the select screen is for the secret Funpark campaign where you fight dinosaurs because this was the mid-90s. 8. Finally, I'd seriously recommend giving Red Alert a try. Its campaign is a much more well designed and far less exploit-reliant experience that has overall aged way better, which is kind of amazing considering it only came out about a year after the original. I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts on it and the improvements it makes.
Good thoughts! I am surprised you can skip that mission, but that is pretty cool. And I was so sure there was on skirmish mode in the original, I figured I just totally blanked the childhood memory of it, so good to know it's actually new. Seeing the usual units with the crazy colours is confusingly nostalgic!
@1:19:10 "Tiberium dangerous on contact/is an airborne thing that kills anyone near it." I think the implication was supposed to be that mining Tiberium was basically accelerating its spread: poor countries sprung on Tiberium mining because it allowed cheap, fast mining (as explained by EVA,) but it turns out that also spread Tiberium dust everywhere, which is deadly. At the start of the game, nobody really knows this, which is why Kane is a media darling (dude's operations are single-handily pumping up the GDP of every poor country,) but the truth comes out over the game.
That makes sense. I am sure in the future games it is explained a bit more, but it's something wild like Kane is a 3000 year old god on a magical quest which involves aliens. At least in this first game is does all seem pretty practical lore-wise.
@@OffyDGG It's basically implied that he is the literal biblical Cain, who was banished to forever walk in the lands of Nod, or however it goes. But rather then that myth being something that happened on earth, it happened out in space somewhere.
Any plans for playing Red Alert 2 or 3? For me personally the gameplay really hits it's stride with 2, the art style holds up and the intentional parody elements made the campaign so much more fun, also you get to actually have city fights in it. (in Red Alert 1 you "invade Moscow" as the allies and it's just another normal mostly empty map with normal enemy bases like all of the ones you already saw in CnC 1) And despite all of that Red Alert 3 somehow ended up having better humor. p.s. I too had Red Alert 1 on the PlayStation 1, it was my first command and conquer game at a time I barely knew English. :D
I was thinking of playing the whole series eventually - with this remastered collection I now own all of them, but have played none (being a serial backlog collector).
DEVIN! I was going to play Command and Conquer 1 GDI campaign myself today! Now I don't want to watch this until I finish it! Edit: But before that I am playing this shitty RTS+RPG Hyrbid. Hey Devin, you want to play a weird and shitty Warcraft 3 + Cossacks fusion game? Try Heroes of Annihilated Empires! The CUTSCENES DON'T WORK INGAME ANYMORE!
With this high praise, I took a look, and saw its from the actually Cossacks / STALKER guys. The mother of all jank I bet, but I'll just wishlist it anyway because I bet it will be basically free at some point :D
@@OffyDGG I've never seen it free... well, I actually got it for free from a PC magazine back in the year of our lord 2007. It's... quite jank. And unfinished. And the music might be good but they are only 6 songs that are constantly repeating. The protagonist is an arrogant xenophobic and mysoginist asshole. It's great! But hey, it's old enough to still have cheats!
I enjoy that, even as the rest of Europe is under the merciless assault from the Brotherhood of Nod, Switzerland is still neutral. I have basically no knowledge of C&C outside of its soundtrack and some memes, so this comment is more for the algorithm, hehe.
Hello there Devin, in like 13 days there will be massive update for total war pharaoh under a name dynasties. It adds aegan and mesopotamian regions, 4 new major and 25 minor playeble factions, around 150 new and reworked units, new battle mechanics like a lethality(adds chance to kill unit instantly regadles of HP, some units have higher or lower chance). It also adds family three so faction leadrs can die(old age or on the battlefield), and more options to campaign customization. I was just wondering if you plan to play pharaoh one more time. Sorry for my english and have a nice day.
I would happily play it again, being the one person on the internet who thought it was actually reasonably fun. Those expansions sound very nice! Perhaps I'll do a campaign starting in one of the new regions then.
I'm enjoying the game but you are right about a lot of the UI stuff. I wish there icons and things you build had simple names over them, that you could name weapons so you can remember what they are set up as and so on. Also the way it handles saving is odd and confusing.
This game looks pretty interesting but quite intimidating. I have a few other space 4x4 games. What sets this one apart that might make it worthwhile to get?
I found it interesting because the rules of engagement are different to most games. You don't want to expand quickly, or get as much power as you can. It's more a puzzle, where the easiest route is finding a level of power that just barely wins, without activating new enemy ai thresholds that increase the difficulty. I still haven't come back to this game after saying it, but remember it fondly, and if I ever stop making new content I will come back and play this one privately.
@@OffyDGG The more I see of it the more I like. I'll probably take the plunge. I like quirky and unusual games and sims. So far the only thing I don't really like is most of the music I've heard in it, it seems quite light stuff more suitable for The Sims or a gentle city builder. Hopefully there's music more to my taste elsewhere in it, or I can grow to like it anyway.
I do kinda have to echo your general sentiments on the game; this game's treatment of megalithic structures somewhat indicates the lacking anthropological and, perhaps, overly-economic focus that the game has. You can just build dolmens, menhirs, totems, cairns, etc. just about anywhere and without any actual valuation for the place-prestige, spiritual, astrological, personal, etc. values that its placement has (i.e. a henge in a flat, open plain for lunar/solar observation, complex cairns for VIPs, totems as wards and/or genii locorum). It's a small-scale-and-scope game with a large-scale-and-scope execution. It should be closer to (but not exactly like) RimWorld where you you become more involved with your people personally in an evolving and open narrative you work alongside and can't dictate absolutely, rather than Cities: Skylines/Civilization/SimCity where the people are distant and impersonal simulations and you have near-absolute control over a situation with absolute milestones and "victory" conditions.
