The last movie you saw...

[maxpayne2409]

LOL that comment "as max said in silly speech" made me laugh

i've played the titans and i agree with dinky, it was fun when the AI had a titan and you didnt but once you both got one it jsut got boring and turned into more of a "whose titans gonna trash the village first" godzilla movie type thing

incidently spud valve are soon releasing day of defeat: source

for AoE IV they could lead from the beginning/Mid 1800s (where AoE III ends) and lead up towards the beginning of WW1 or 2

i still play AoE II sometimes, AoE II and RoN are 2 games that NEVER leave my hdd no matter how badly i need space, as i suspect AoE III will too

i have some ideas for what could perhaps be called Age of Ultimate Empires

they are as follows (pasted from my thread at http://aoe3.heavengames.com AoE III forum)

id like to see ensemble try they're hand at Age of Ultimate Empires (an idea of mine) where you start with a tribe of neanderthals, and research

rudimentary tools and weapons etc, hunt mammoth, sabre tooth tigers etc and evolve to the next stage and keep going through aom aoe1 aoe2

aoe3 right up to the near future (say maybe have a guess at the next 20/50 years) and have different seasons and weather patterns actually

changing across the landscape, for instance you could be marching a roman army across the landscape to an enemys base in autumn and see

leaves falling from the trees, or go exploring in autumn across vast seas and oceans in huge galleons or whatever and encounter sea

creatures, storms, pirates, snow storms, and the further north or south u go the less you can proceed by boat etc as the water gets iced over,

and the further towards the equator you go the warmer and more tropical climate you get.

the camera could change between localised areas (like maps in aoe2 and 3 where your all kinda local) and zoom out into the same style as the

local maps but slightly bigger units to cover more ground (i guess kind of like rome total war tactical map or sid meiers pirates!) you could

also have things on the economic side like fairs in your town, or pleasure cruises/flights in later ages, etc etc, or have settlers getting ill from

plague in middle ages and so on, but you can set up small doctors/hospitals to cure them

Possibly in the 1600-1700s have pirate nations pop up with home citys as Tortuga or the pirate friendly Port Royale, and they could be mostly

AI and your ships and cities have to watch out for attacks from them, but if you get an explorer to a pirate city you can hire them as

mercenaries for gold, and have the british navy hunting them too, and have random automated battles going on between the AI aswell as your own

[maxpayne2409]

more ideas

Maybe also Have the sea level rising as you progress through ages meaning any initial bases/docks etc you build near water run the risk of flooding requiring you to build a new base somewhere else

possibly have different natural disasters aswell like earthquakes, strong winds, drought, heavy snow storms, avalanches & rock falls etc. This would mean you would have to build defences from these things aswell such as

Snowstorms - these could block civs in houses unable to get to the mills/factorys etc meaning without research into things like snowploughs, snow shovelling etc your production lines stop meaning you cant jsut leave it your required to do something about it to keep your wheels of industry turning

Drought - Maybe research water storage/dams/reservoirs etc where you can store water should a drought occur you can still have civs working, but if you dont store water then your civs start to die after a while and diseases start infesting your towns (a good reason to research medicine and doctors) and crops start to die, a result could be food production slows by 1/2 speed (or research food stockpiles early on to provide a solution during drought meaning the speed only slows by 1/4

Fires - you could have fires start up if the summer season causes trees to burn and it could spread across the map (would also be a good reason to research water storage to battle the fires and maybe include research into a fire service in later ages) but the result in forest fires could be that wood production slows by a 1/4 for every 15 trees that gets burnt between your city/town up to a radius of 10 miles out, (also giving you a reason to fight those fires quickly to make the least damage to your wood economy). The Slowed speed would last until the season change (or you could research forestation causing the speed to pick up again by 5 minutes for every 10 trees planted)

Maybe include a politics section aswell where random civ names are put forward to become the leader of your nation, but also as a twist be able to train assassins to assassinate your enemies leaders which could lower the effectiveness of the unit and econ production by 1/4 for every 3months a new leader isnt chosen, and if it reaches 12months with no new leader production stops and riots break out

[El Mariachi]

I watched another STV movie with Wesley Snipes. I fell asleep and erased it today.

Not sure what I'm going to watch today... I'm in the middle of putting the english audio of Best Seller into the movie.

[spudthedestroyer]

incidently spud valve are soon releasing day of defeat: source

I know i get it free, it looks good but i never play those kind of online games. Deathmatch is so boring. I'll just trade accounts with my brother or something.

As for your ideas on the game development, i think it would flat out kill the game, the franchise and not be Age of Empires in the slightest. Civilsation does all of that, true its not real time. Empire earth takes a bigger chunk. IMO the former is excellent but no AOE2, the latter was turd.

I heard similar things about Total War, and i just don't like the idea of WWI/WWII... i mean there is no resource gathering or town building... nope it was pretty much all ship out tanks/planes/guns/men to get killed. No Empire building, so it wouldn't really be an age of Empire, it would be the age of superpowers. imo terrible idea, or at least for these franchises... there's enough war strategy games for these periods not only is it done to death, they risk changing things so much it will either make the game not what it was or flat out kill it.

As for the progressing thing, i think your closer to total war than Age of Empires. It has the marching to battles in weather/night/day/dawn with the new one. It has ecological disasters such as flooding and eruptions that wipe out armies, etc.

They just aren't being a glossy thumb through of history, and sticking with a specific period. I don't think people want AOE to become that totalitarian, I only have 2 interests really in AOEII and III; LAN Skirmish and Skirmish, and all the ideas about micromanagement would kill it off for me.

It would have to be more like Civilisation, which infact does cover from the sludge to the digital age. That wouldn't be total war and that wouldn't be age. A new franchise, no objections, but it would spoil those two franchises.

[maxpayne2409]

but civilisation is total crap, i hate it so much lol, i only like real time strats (well really im refering to age of and rise of nations series, c&c ra2 was ok for a while too i guess)

apart from rome total war ive not played the others (is shogun total war the same thing?)

[dinky]

I think AoE4 would just be another C&C.

max! for shame! RTW is awesome. It's plays like Civ. at first, but it doesn't bog down in all that shite like all the other city-builder games do. And when you finally start fighting wars yourself...well...I love it. hell, just create battle scenarios: position your troops in terrain. make command decisions in the heat of battle. armies actually fight like armies as opposed to the small scale stuff on AoE (more individual and stylized). troops tire, get second winds, route, etc. great stuff!

got a ton of shite I haven't had time to watch yet. s'all about football and baseball and university this month.

(although I will definitely be seeing Serenity</i>) - btw, recent trailer doesn't look nearly as good. and even I was getting some of spud's "ugh. look, it's buffy! wait, no...yeah, it is." feelings from it.

[maxpayne2409]

i never played past Civ 2, 1 and 2 were bulldercrappen so i didnt bther with the rest, in an interview one of the guys from ensemble loosely said that the closest AoE IV would come to world wars would be the beginning of ww1, but anyway theyre remaking AoE I and II then making AoM 2 before they even start on AoE IV

[spudthedestroyer]

Yeah i heard that lots of times, and i understand that people dislike turn based , i nearly always dislike them categorically, but I have to say, imo you are dead wrong about the crap claim, its not crap in the slightest; its one of the biggest selling and most loved strategy games ever written for reason, it has a huge following and that's because its brilliantly thought out and implemented. I only state this because this was way before marketing and buzz took over. It wouldn't have the status is has if it were crap, to the contrary it has it because its the best turn based strategy to date, bar none in my view. Which is unfortunate if you don't have the patience/stomach for them and thus why you may not like such an exceptionally well thought out and programmed title, i normally don't. Its an acquired taste for sure, but I think calling it crap isn't really fair on such a great game, that unlike games like... say tomb raider, exists based on the game not the advertising, hype and lack of other titles at the time that were worthy of attention. It was back in a period where great games got all the attention, not pap with a budget. I hate most Turn based strategy, but i have to bow to civilisations pure genius, and i think that's largely down to the company and the man behind it who deserves a lot of credit for the games he brought to the pc.

Civilisation is one of the best games ever made, once you get past its rather unforgiving difficulty, pacing and large scale... which takes some stomach since its pretty hard going. There's a reason why every PC magazine had it in its top100 number one slot, and i have to say whilst i prefered other titles over the time they had a strong case, for a solid 5 years+ back when gaming lists meant a tad more, and that's because its highly addictive (fuck tetris!) and deeply loved. The sequels were just as highly rated as the first, personally I hated the sequels and never played them for more than a short time before discovering this, but the first one was in a league of its own. You have to remember when it came out too, good old Sid made some awesome games, he also made another one of my favourites of the same era, pirates! People bitched about that too, but imo that was another great game.

Rome Total War isn't really too much like Civilisation at all you'll know, you've played em both (think dinky read it as you'd never played a total war, not shogun), when i had my IBM compatible on windows 3.1, even before thinking back, it got played a hell of a lot more than anything else (i liked a bit of sim ant, theme park and countless more). Civilisation is not about the battles but the civilisation building and its a very slow, and a very long, Rome Total War is still battle sim at heart and a damn fine one at that.

If you start turning age of empire into civilisation or even a bit to the management side like rome total war it will kill it or at least transform it into something else. Age of Empires thrives on its simple view of it all, yet achieves quite a lot and is brilliant because its not bogged down with politics and management in such a heavy way. They got the forumula right for AOE2 (and three it would seem).

Perhaps the crappy single player can be addressed more in a map management style? ie. interlocking skirmish games that determines environment. But the actual gaming bits, if they change them much beyond what its been like in every empire game, then the franchise will effectively be dead to me.

That's my 2cents on the Age of "civilisation"/Empire, hot or not debate.

ps. i went on about civilisation, so i'll clarify. i would list it in amongst my favourite games in the top 30 or so most likely. It is sure as hell not as good as AOE2, I don't think comparison is fair. I used the comparison early because i think turning AOE more into a totalitarian management system would kill it and make it unrecognisable. I hate turn based games too almost entirely, I can't think of another that would be in my top lists sicne i find them boring and unappealing. I got into civilisation though, I guess you weren't as forgiving, but i think you certainly can agree with the claim that its extremely well made, was very original and very popular? And as such the quality of the game is far as possible from actually being crap, although you personally have no care at all for it?

[maxpayne2409]

well ok i will agree as far as turn based go it is one of the better ones, but i really dont like turn based hence why i dont like the game, i mean if your in a real fight you wont say "oi wait its my turn now what shall i do?" thats one of teh reasons i hate most rpgs like final fantasys etc (surely a game with final in the title shouldnt spawn 10 sequels and more spin offs?

sid meiers pirates! is one of the best games ive ever played i love it, i remember i had it on amiga, and ive since got the remake he did for pc which i also really like, on the amiga version though i remember not only did u fight other pirates on ship and land but ocassionally u came up against giant octopus' and squids attacking your boat and had to fight them off with ur cannon which seems to be missing in the remake

ive also played sid meiers alpha centauri (won it free from frosties lol) and it was fun too concidering it was turn based, i even gave civ 2 a try on psx lol just incase it had been altered to appeal to the console market, maybe i will give civ 3 a try then just incase, incidently rise of nations is made by some members of the civ team, hence why it is balanced a bit more to resource collecting then aoe, i really love rise of nations too, theres a sequel-esque game coming out from them (Big Huge Games) called Rise of Nations - Rise of Legends in spring 2006, it looks like AoM meets RoN meets some sword and sorcery with tech game, i suspect ill give it a try

I fully agree about tetris too, i have never seen the appeal there, falling blocks erm yaya, much more fun playing human tetris around a building site

what are your theories on Sim City? and do you remember an old game (pre cursor to Railroad tycoon i guess) on the amiga called A-Train? also do u like railroad tycoon? a mates told me to dl it so im dlding Railroad Tycoon 3 at the mo

[dinky]

how can you like sims crap and then slam tetris? it's a puzzle game. that's it. period. simple. ok. yes. it's a a simple concept. you can play it and forget it. you can play it and play against yourself in a way that other games just can't match (iunno why, there's high scores in all sorts of games). but what exactly is fun about building and managing a railroad line or a theme park, yet alone the standard sims stuff? that shit is about as high on my list as digipets. only slightly higher is the soft porn junk from playboy/penthouse that started with the cd consoles. "look! a booby." yeah, I'm looking at one right now, and he's getting a rise out of a naked lady in a video game. mind you, this is a cut ABOVE understanding the sim stuff.

alright, flame on (yes, I realize this is like max blasting civ)

[maxpayne2409]

id love to see where you got the whole "max likes sim" from as i dont recall ever actually stating a like or dislike to it, the closest i come to it is saying a mate likes RRT and told me to dl it, whether i willl like it or not is a different matter

Maybe i wont say if i like sim games or not now i'll just keep you guessing, it'll eat away at u night after night until you get a final definative answer..... although it probably wont

[dinky]

heh

[Jynks]

I just watched primer and FFVII... primer was really cool... a little understated but a very cleaver cool little story.. I recommend it.

FFVII suxed arse!!!

@max
I loved that alpha centauri game...

ed2k: Sid%20Meiers%20Alpha%20Centauri%20-%20Alien%20Crossfire%20Expansion%20Pack!%20(Fu...0-%20Gowenna.zip  [460.97 Mb] [Stats]
ed2k: Sid%20Meiers%20Alpha%20Centauri%20-%20Full%20ISO%20-%20Gowenna.zip  [366.57 Mb] [Stats]


BTW you guys a phyco gamers..... My mate just got a new PC and is asking me to get a game for him.... wounder if you had any advise... he loves Baldurs Gate and Morrowind... .. . any sugestions?

[ Add all 2 links to your ed2k client ]

[maxpayne2409]

my god dinky we bow down to the master of great replies /me puts on his best waynes world voice "we're not worthy"

jynks all FF sucks arse, im looking forward to Surface that starts on the 19th, sounds pretty good from what ive read, kinda like a cross between the outer limits, tremors and leviathan

never played the xpack

[Jynks]

The screen is posted on the board..... with its original name Fathom.

[maxpayne2409]

screen of surface? hmmm hes a fan of rpgs eh, as im not really a fan of them i cant really say what he would like

[Jynks]

Fathom (AKA - Surface) @ scifi donkey

[maxpayne2409]

yeah just gone there before u linked and added it didnt know any was out yet

i always liked the tremors series, spud only hated it because it replaced his precious thats my theory anyway, i believe we had our first run in on the sr forums with the tremors v farscape bit, oh how we evolved lol

[Jynks]

Yea... some mod should prob add surface into the main thread name.... .. .

[maxpayne2409]

lol this si lively tonight isnt it