I finished the shit mission. It turned out not to be that bad. The secret was to pause the game and just build a bunch of shit buildings (way more than you think you might need) right at the beginning of the scenario. Knock that shit out early, before it has the chance to build up.
I think I might like Stronghold 2 under other circumstances. Not the part about attacking and defending strongholds, obviously, but you can hold feasts and throw balls and build churches and the like. Making sure my peasants have a balanced diet and plenty of entertainment is diversion enough for me.
My issue here is that I can't escape the feeling of being trapped by the Stronghold series. I should have spread the games out over the course of a year. One game every 2 months. Then maybe, when I got these urges to do literally anything else, I could ignore them, because I'd know that I'd only have to hold out for another few hours. Now, though, I get demoralized when I think about the fact that even if I finish quickly, I'll have to start all over again in another couple of days.
A silly little medieval village simulator should probably not devolve into a test of endurance, especially not so quickly. And given the new pollution, crime, and honor systems, it's not really that similar to the 2D stronghold games, but it's just close enough that it seems like a purgatory that will never end.
It will end, though. Just 70 more hours of Stronghold to go. And I'll get three more breaks as well. I just have to take it one minute at a time. Retreat to free build and let time pass. If I can endure Sakura Spirit, I can endure anything.
Sunday, January 28, 2018
Thursday, January 25, 2018
Stronghold 2 - 5/20 hours
I am staring at the computer, dead-eyed. There's nothing wrong with Stronghold 2, I tell myself. I repeat, more forcefully, there is nothing wrong with Stronghold 2. But time has lost all meaning. Meaning has lost all meaning. I am playing the sim campaign and the challenge is to clean up shit. Oh, the game calls it "gong" for some reason, but we all know it's shit. And they put you under a clock. Your workers, with their indifferent pathfinding, crawl their way towards these steaming turds and you have to fend off bandit attacks and all the while the clock is ticking. And it's not enough. It's never enough. The arbitrary deadline the game gives you for your shit cleaning task passes in a flash and I have to start all over.
So I get aggressive. I dedicate half my economy to cleaning up shit, except it's not fast enough. Even with the massive bribes I pay my population, my popularity ticks down and people start abandoning their jobs. Yet even with a shrinking population, the shit keeps piling up. I'm going to be buried in it, I think. Is there any hope left for me at all?
I thought this was what I wanted. A game where the logistics were important. Where you had to think about things like sanitation and infrastructure and the like, but I'm not up to the task. I'm too weak. My town keeps getting buried in shit and it's making me want to cry. Those poor little simulated peasants with their lack of a modern sewage system. They betray me with their untamable digestive tracts. I know it's just the game teaching me a lesson, like in a previous mission where everything caught on fire, or the lesson after that where I had to use the cargo shipping system to save a village from starvation. But it's demoralizing, having this kind of problem. It feels like such a basic failure.
I tried to get away from it for awhile, but playing as the defensive side in historical sieges felt pointless (is it just me or are the strongholds weaker in Stronghold 2) and my free build city was attacked by bandits, which seems to me to miss the point of "free build" entirely. I guess I'll just have to grit my teeth and crawl my way out from under this mountain of shit. After all, I'll only need to do it once, right?
So I get aggressive. I dedicate half my economy to cleaning up shit, except it's not fast enough. Even with the massive bribes I pay my population, my popularity ticks down and people start abandoning their jobs. Yet even with a shrinking population, the shit keeps piling up. I'm going to be buried in it, I think. Is there any hope left for me at all?
I thought this was what I wanted. A game where the logistics were important. Where you had to think about things like sanitation and infrastructure and the like, but I'm not up to the task. I'm too weak. My town keeps getting buried in shit and it's making me want to cry. Those poor little simulated peasants with their lack of a modern sewage system. They betray me with their untamable digestive tracts. I know it's just the game teaching me a lesson, like in a previous mission where everything caught on fire, or the lesson after that where I had to use the cargo shipping system to save a village from starvation. But it's demoralizing, having this kind of problem. It feels like such a basic failure.
I tried to get away from it for awhile, but playing as the defensive side in historical sieges felt pointless (is it just me or are the strongholds weaker in Stronghold 2) and my free build city was attacked by bandits, which seems to me to miss the point of "free build" entirely. I guess I'll just have to grit my teeth and crawl my way out from under this mountain of shit. After all, I'll only need to do it once, right?
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Stronghold 2 - 2/20 hours
Stronghold 2 is an odd beast. Its new 3-D presentation makes it look different than its predecessors, but go beyond that superficial layer and the actual game rules are very similar (all the population management stuff with the campfire and granary and happiness rating, is almost identical). But then look beyond that and there are some new mechanics which have the potential to significantly change the way the game plays.
You have honor, which appears to be a kind of experience point system, allowing you to acquire new lands (and presumably other things) by doing medieval-noble-type things like holding feasts and tournaments. There's also estates, which allow you to have satellite villages that can send you goods and tax revenue. And I'm sure there are other things I haven't encountered yet. It remains to be seen whether this will be a deep or shallow addition to the Stronghold formula, but I think it at least has the potential to improve the peaceful game by giving you some new benchmarks for success.
Speaking of which, Stronghold 2 has a new campaign mode, called the "Sim Campaign." It sounded really promising, but so far it's not been as "sim-ish" as I might like (then again, I've played The Sims: Medieval, so I'm a bit spoiled here). It seems to resemble the original Stronghold's economic campaign, right down to the part where you have to recruit an army to fight wolves (of all things). I'll reserve judgement, but I suspect I'll be retreating to free build sooner or later.
You have honor, which appears to be a kind of experience point system, allowing you to acquire new lands (and presumably other things) by doing medieval-noble-type things like holding feasts and tournaments. There's also estates, which allow you to have satellite villages that can send you goods and tax revenue. And I'm sure there are other things I haven't encountered yet. It remains to be seen whether this will be a deep or shallow addition to the Stronghold formula, but I think it at least has the potential to improve the peaceful game by giving you some new benchmarks for success.
Speaking of which, Stronghold 2 has a new campaign mode, called the "Sim Campaign." It sounded really promising, but so far it's not been as "sim-ish" as I might like (then again, I've played The Sims: Medieval, so I'm a bit spoiled here). It seems to resemble the original Stronghold's economic campaign, right down to the part where you have to recruit an army to fight wolves (of all things). I'll reserve judgement, but I suspect I'll be retreating to free build sooner or later.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Yomi - 20/20 hours
Survival mode was a mixed bag. It was a fun and challenging mental puzzle, but ultimately the demands of playing multiple games with a single pool of hit points forced me to be more conservative than I normally like. Also, it was on a timer for some inexplicable reason, and I couldn't pause it when I got interrupted at the hotel. That was unnecessarily frustrating.
Overall, though, I liked Yomi. It may well be impossible to make a card game I won't enjoy. Possibly poker. . . because it relies too much on chance and on reading the opponent, which just so happen to be my least favorite parts of Yomi. However, Yomi has the advantage of creating a cool fighting game narrative with a bunch of interesting and distinct characters, so the element of chance is much more tolerable.
It's likely that I will play Yomi again, but I think it will definitely take second place to cooperative card games like Sentinels of the Multiverse or elaborate deck-building games like Magic: the Gathering or Ascension. The main weakness of Yomi, as far as I'm concerned, is that it's mainly focused on tactical play and there aren't enough fiddly widgets to make me enjoy the competition.
That being said, variety is the spice of life, and there may be times when I'm feeling the urge to brawl (card-game-style). I'll also be keeping an eye out for the tabletop version, because heaven knows I need more of those in my life.
Overall, though, I liked Yomi. It may well be impossible to make a card game I won't enjoy. Possibly poker. . . because it relies too much on chance and on reading the opponent, which just so happen to be my least favorite parts of Yomi. However, Yomi has the advantage of creating a cool fighting game narrative with a bunch of interesting and distinct characters, so the element of chance is much more tolerable.
It's likely that I will play Yomi again, but I think it will definitely take second place to cooperative card games like Sentinels of the Multiverse or elaborate deck-building games like Magic: the Gathering or Ascension. The main weakness of Yomi, as far as I'm concerned, is that it's mainly focused on tactical play and there aren't enough fiddly widgets to make me enjoy the competition.
That being said, variety is the spice of life, and there may be times when I'm feeling the urge to brawl (card-game-style). I'll also be keeping an eye out for the tabletop version, because heaven knows I need more of those in my life.
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Yomi - 11/20 hours
I love games with a lot of characters. I mean, a lot of characters. I'm not kidding here. The more, the better. Dozens is best. This is so much a thing for me that I even enjoyed Chrono Cross, despite the fact that most of the characters are nothing more than a special move and an accent. I think I may like games with multiple characters even more than I like games with character customization.
But there's a paradox to having multiple characters. The more there are, the fewer (in terms of percentage) you tend to use. The game requires a certain degree of mastery in order to overcome its challenges, and to attain that mastery, you must focus on a few of the characters over the others. Either that, or it's like the Bioware rpgs, where you've got a dozen shipmates, but you can only take two of them with you at a time. One of these days, I'm going to play a game that forces you to use all of your dozens of characters more or less constantly, and I'm never going to want to play anything else.
In the meantime, I've been having fun with Yomi. My current approach is to pick a character for each session and just play a dozen practice games in a row against random opponents. I learn a lot in the process, but I miss the variety.
I've also gotten some opportunities to play against human opponents. It's pretty fun and requires a sharper strategic acumen than matches against the AI, but I'm neurotic enough that it brings with it its own set of worries. I have a natural emotional reaction to losing too frequently, but then I feel guilty about having that reaction. Then, when I win, I worry that I might be winning too much, and I feel guilty about that. It's not a big thing (and indeed, I'm a little embarrassed that the people I've played against may read this and think I'm making it weird), but I am who I am, and I have this strange social anxiety. I'd prefer to just alternate between victory and defeat, but that would be an unnatural situation, and thus is probably too much to hope for.
The plan going forward is to play Survival mode. I'm not sure what exactly that entails (the game has no tooltips, for whatever reason), but I'm sure it will kill some time.
But there's a paradox to having multiple characters. The more there are, the fewer (in terms of percentage) you tend to use. The game requires a certain degree of mastery in order to overcome its challenges, and to attain that mastery, you must focus on a few of the characters over the others. Either that, or it's like the Bioware rpgs, where you've got a dozen shipmates, but you can only take two of them with you at a time. One of these days, I'm going to play a game that forces you to use all of your dozens of characters more or less constantly, and I'm never going to want to play anything else.
In the meantime, I've been having fun with Yomi. My current approach is to pick a character for each session and just play a dozen practice games in a row against random opponents. I learn a lot in the process, but I miss the variety.
I've also gotten some opportunities to play against human opponents. It's pretty fun and requires a sharper strategic acumen than matches against the AI, but I'm neurotic enough that it brings with it its own set of worries. I have a natural emotional reaction to losing too frequently, but then I feel guilty about having that reaction. Then, when I win, I worry that I might be winning too much, and I feel guilty about that. It's not a big thing (and indeed, I'm a little embarrassed that the people I've played against may read this and think I'm making it weird), but I am who I am, and I have this strange social anxiety. I'd prefer to just alternate between victory and defeat, but that would be an unnatural situation, and thus is probably too much to hope for.
The plan going forward is to play Survival mode. I'm not sure what exactly that entails (the game has no tooltips, for whatever reason), but I'm sure it will kill some time.
Saturday, January 20, 2018
Yomi - 4/20 hours
I don't quite have a handle on Yomi yet. I don't think it's going to break my streak of enjoying card games, but I'm still not sure how to get the most out of my time with it. The strategy looks to be pretty deep and that's a double-edged sword for me.
I tend to go on and on about how strategy games are my favorite, and how I can play turn-based strategy games more or less indefinitely, and those things are true, but I have a confession to make - I have no head for strategy.
It's strange, because I'm a relatively smart guy. I graduated from college with a degree in mathematics. And you'd think some of those skills would transfer over - looking at a problem, noticing areas where you can simplify and reduce, and working out the steps to a solution. But I think my training might actually be a hindrance, and that I tend to look at strategy as too much like a math problem. I see a likely-looking avenue of attack and then I charge down it, confident that if it turns out not to work, I can backtrack to my last point of certainty and try a different approach. You know, just chip away at the thing until it's solved.
Except I always seem to forget that I'm playing against an opponent, someone who is doing to me what I'm trying to do to them. My instinct is always to create baroque structures, traps, and combos that would be elegant in execution, were they not easily disrupted by the most trivial of enemy countermeasures.
The good part about Yomi is that its Rock-Paper-Scissors-style resolution system forces me to consider the other player's viewpoint. The bad part is that, given the impetus to do so, I immediately start spiraling. I'm like Vizzini from The Princess Bride. I can't play a throw, because I know that you have a powerful attack, but clearly, you know that I know you have that attack, so you will be expecting me to play a block, except that I know that you know that I know, and thus . . .
After awhile, I tend to get flustered and just go with my intuition, which is frequently based on nothing and overly concerned with avoiding risk, and thus is frequently wrong, and ineffectual when it isn't.
But the aggravating thing is that I know about this weakness in myself, and as much as I try to control it, I can't. I read books on strategy, and I think I understand them. Card advantage, tempo, territory control - these things make sense to me. And I can't count the number of times I've resolved to myself - "okay, this time I'm going to go in and play a disciplined, intentional game (of Magic: the Gathering, or Chess, or, most recently, Yomi) and I'm going to avoid all my characteristic mistakes." But then, the time comes, and I panic, or I get distracted by a convoluted combo that will take 3-4 moves to set up, but be absolutely sweet if I can pull it off, and suddenly I'm no longer playing for the win, but to make the highlight reel, and before I know it, I've lost. And then come the self-recriminations and the vague feeling of guilt, like I didn't respect the game enough.
That's silly, though. No one is relying on my strategic acumen, and losing a game to a friend is more fun than playing it alone. I just have accept this part of myself and remember to buy more co-op games in the future.
I tend to go on and on about how strategy games are my favorite, and how I can play turn-based strategy games more or less indefinitely, and those things are true, but I have a confession to make - I have no head for strategy.
It's strange, because I'm a relatively smart guy. I graduated from college with a degree in mathematics. And you'd think some of those skills would transfer over - looking at a problem, noticing areas where you can simplify and reduce, and working out the steps to a solution. But I think my training might actually be a hindrance, and that I tend to look at strategy as too much like a math problem. I see a likely-looking avenue of attack and then I charge down it, confident that if it turns out not to work, I can backtrack to my last point of certainty and try a different approach. You know, just chip away at the thing until it's solved.
Except I always seem to forget that I'm playing against an opponent, someone who is doing to me what I'm trying to do to them. My instinct is always to create baroque structures, traps, and combos that would be elegant in execution, were they not easily disrupted by the most trivial of enemy countermeasures.
The good part about Yomi is that its Rock-Paper-Scissors-style resolution system forces me to consider the other player's viewpoint. The bad part is that, given the impetus to do so, I immediately start spiraling. I'm like Vizzini from The Princess Bride. I can't play a throw, because I know that you have a powerful attack, but clearly, you know that I know you have that attack, so you will be expecting me to play a block, except that I know that you know that I know, and thus . . .
After awhile, I tend to get flustered and just go with my intuition, which is frequently based on nothing and overly concerned with avoiding risk, and thus is frequently wrong, and ineffectual when it isn't.
But the aggravating thing is that I know about this weakness in myself, and as much as I try to control it, I can't. I read books on strategy, and I think I understand them. Card advantage, tempo, territory control - these things make sense to me. And I can't count the number of times I've resolved to myself - "okay, this time I'm going to go in and play a disciplined, intentional game (of Magic: the Gathering, or Chess, or, most recently, Yomi) and I'm going to avoid all my characteristic mistakes." But then, the time comes, and I panic, or I get distracted by a convoluted combo that will take 3-4 moves to set up, but be absolutely sweet if I can pull it off, and suddenly I'm no longer playing for the win, but to make the highlight reel, and before I know it, I've lost. And then come the self-recriminations and the vague feeling of guilt, like I didn't respect the game enough.
That's silly, though. No one is relying on my strategic acumen, and losing a game to a friend is more fun than playing it alone. I just have accept this part of myself and remember to buy more co-op games in the future.
Thursday, January 18, 2018
Yomi - Initial Thoughts
About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)
Tom Vasel's (of Dice Tower fame) Game of the Year, 2010
Yomi is a fighting game in card form. Learn your character, practice combos, and read the opponent's tendencies. 10 characters to choose from, plus 10 more expansion characters available for purchase inside the app.
Yomi captures the mindgames from fighting games such as Street Fighter, and was created by the lead designer of Street Fighter HD Remix, who was also a long-time fighting game tournament player. Yomi itself is a strategy card game that has held up to many years of tournaments. Start practicing now!
Previous Playtime
0 hours
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
It's a funny story. A reader was going to buy this game for me in the most recent Steam Sale, but couldn't because the regional price differences were such that he could not send it as a gift (I guess to prevent complex international money-laundering schemes using Steam games as an intermediary). Nonetheless, I was so touched by the gesture I bought it myself, just so the world will not be deprived of my insightful commentary. Also, Yomi was on my wishlist anyways because I like card games and have a very low threshold for what goes on my wishlist (I kind of see adding things to my wishlist as being like methadone for my shopping addiction), so it wasn't any kind of hardship.
Expectations and Prior Experience
I have no idea what to expect from this game, but I do know that I've yet to play a card game I didn't like. The biggest obstacle I anticipate is the need for repetition. There's only 10 decks, which means 90 possible 1v1 match-ups (or 100, if mirror matches are allowed). So unless the matches take 12 to 13 minutes each, I'm going to be repeating at least some of them before this is all said and done.
It's probably nothing to worry about, though. I could play a card game in my sleep.
Tom Vasel's (of Dice Tower fame) Game of the Year, 2010
Yomi is a fighting game in card form. Learn your character, practice combos, and read the opponent's tendencies. 10 characters to choose from, plus 10 more expansion characters available for purchase inside the app.
Yomi captures the mindgames from fighting games such as Street Fighter, and was created by the lead designer of Street Fighter HD Remix, who was also a long-time fighting game tournament player. Yomi itself is a strategy card game that has held up to many years of tournaments. Start practicing now!
Previous Playtime
0 hours
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
It's a funny story. A reader was going to buy this game for me in the most recent Steam Sale, but couldn't because the regional price differences were such that he could not send it as a gift (I guess to prevent complex international money-laundering schemes using Steam games as an intermediary). Nonetheless, I was so touched by the gesture I bought it myself, just so the world will not be deprived of my insightful commentary. Also, Yomi was on my wishlist anyways because I like card games and have a very low threshold for what goes on my wishlist (I kind of see adding things to my wishlist as being like methadone for my shopping addiction), so it wasn't any kind of hardship.
Expectations and Prior Experience
I have no idea what to expect from this game, but I do know that I've yet to play a card game I didn't like. The biggest obstacle I anticipate is the need for repetition. There's only 10 decks, which means 90 possible 1v1 match-ups (or 100, if mirror matches are allowed). So unless the matches take 12 to 13 minutes each, I'm going to be repeating at least some of them before this is all said and done.
It's probably nothing to worry about, though. I could play a card game in my sleep.
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