Aggressors: Ancient Rome

Started by Grim.Reaper, May 05, 2018, 03:21:08 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

JasonPratt

My guess is the timescale precludes it. It's "Ancient Rome".
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

8 Steam mods so far since release a couple of hours ago.  O0
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Gusington

Where does ancient Rome end? 600 AD? 1453?


слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

Jarhead0331

Quote from: Gusington on August 30, 2018, 02:03:19 PM
Where does ancient Rome end? 600 AD? 1453?

I believe most historians attribute the end of the ancient Roman era with what has commonly been accepted as the collapse of civilization due to the birth of the "disco" music genre and subculture, circa 1971.

Grogheads Uber Alles
Semper Grog
"No beast is more alpha than JH." Gusington, 10/23/18


Gusington

That would be some awesome dlc.


слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

Sir Slash

That is true. Disco killed Roman Rock-N-Roll and caused The Plague.
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

bob48

I thought video killed the radio star?

'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'

'Clip those corners'

Recombobulate the discombobulators!

Sir Slash

That too. But surely you've heard the story about how Brutus Terrio and his Bee Gee conspirators slew the Emperor Elvis when he made his appearance on the floor of Band Stand. It's in every history book.  :coolsmiley:
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

JasonPratt

#68
I'm not sure yet how long the campaign lasts. The game theoretically can run 1500 turns, from 500 BC to AD 1000 (or 499 turns yes I know there' s no AD 0 ;) ). But the main campaign starts in 253 BC, if I recall correctly from a few minutes ago (poking around on my Surface Pro 3 at work), with Rome having already consolidated most of the Italian boot and looking to intervene in Sicily. Thus the "Aggressors" of the title.

(Note that "Aggressors" is the name of the game system, this first scenario being "Ancient Rome".)

The game itself is set up rather like Civilization or a Master of Magic inheritor, with the ability to generate random maps and start everyone with no infrastructure and only a couple of mobile units. 6400 hex square map limit at 80 x 80, but 5000 hex square rectangles are possible 100 x 50 (tall or wide).

This suggests to me that the dating system is simply an arbitrary convenience for the campaign setting and general culture of the game.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

PanzersEast

I thought this gave some interesting insight from a Steam review which indicates it has roots in a board game.... which is fine by me.

QuoteThis review is actually a Thank you letter to the developer for making this game.
For unbiased reviews skip this one.

I think it was 25 years ago that most of my school holiday time was used to do what I really like. Gaming. But I did not had my first PC yet, so gaming was spending one day in the city to collect all kind of painting materials and paperboards to create the ultimate game myself.
The Civilization boardgame, HeroQuest boardgame and some rare tabletop games I owned served as an example. But mine had a bigger boards, more options, more counters and features, more of everything actually.

As many of you experienced around the end of last decade, the tabletop hobby slowly turned into a PC game hobby and the tabletop boards and dices ended up under a layer of dust.

This year, 2018, spring, I was invited by a Steam friend of me to get involved in an early alpha of a new project called Project Caligula. He didn't know what to expect from it, didn't had much time to look to it anytime soon and so I decided to give it a try.

My initial thoughts were that it has potiential, but it was somewhat unpolished and one major flaw was that is was really looking aged. Some UI and shortkey functionallity was not implemented very well, the use of capitols in tooltip texts, the tooltips itself etc was pretty much not release ready. Some buttons looked like placeholders.

But as I took the first step to experience this new game in development I started to play and before I knew it was very early in the morning while I was writing my first 8 hour impression.

This game is build from the bottom to the top. That's unique. There are major releases that are build from top to bottom. That cause flaws. Major flaws. Most 4x games suffers from this.

The game have a unique boardgame feel over it. That is not a coincidence. Aggressors in his current form has his roots in a homebrew boardgame from the developer himself. What the developer did was bringing the boardgame to live without making it a boardgame on PC and without making it loosing his roots.

To give you an example of what I mean with build from bottom to top.

You have a gameboard that consist of a map. On this map are terrains. Those terrains are placed randomly or fixed on thousands of tiles. Those thousands of tiles all have their own flora and fauna. Animals can move in groups or individually, they can be big or small, there can be a lot of trees on tiles and just some trees, there are birds flying and everything is animated.

Now keep this as an example of how the gameplay works.

A river make sens not only for movement, but for resource flow as well if the source is positioned on the other side of the river. Not only this. Every possible direction to build a bridge have a different model ingame. The detail is simply amazing.

Every step you make in game make sense.
This is not a civ game where you autoselect every settler to start building farms on every tile.
You have to deal with a large amount of details that influence almost all aspects of the game every game state. (mid and end game etc).

New tribes can emerge, new federations and confederations can be signed by you and the AI.

The depth is amazing and the one more turn feeling hits hard with Aggressors.
Everything in game can be generated on the fly and almost everything is open for modification. Just with a simple paint program or text editor, but also with the Aggressors SDK within Visual Studio for scripting to your needs. There is more then a game here, it's actually a complete wargame toolbox.

I expect we will see a lot of detail mods from ancient times in different themes and settings.

If you just want to play the main game, you have 20 tribes you can play with. All have different objectives, locked and unlocked, that give extra historical sense, but you are not forced to follow that path. Otherwise there are many ways to create a map just from scratch in the size and shape you want and a lot of settings to choose from.

Turntimes are accurate even after 200 – 500 turns there is no real difference in waiting time compared to turn one (which is short).

Mid and end game offers enough challenges because of an human like AI that use the same rules as the player and new tribes can emerge, civil war can break out, confederations can be signed.

There is always something to do. It's a game. Use it to your liking in all freedom!

solops

Quote from: PanzersEast on August 30, 2018, 01:41:57 PM
Quote from: Gusington on August 30, 2018, 01:31:17 PM
^DLC or expansion perhaps?

Or mod, it is very mod friendly.

Maybe...I can see the map size limitation as being a real problem. I wonder if they will expand the available map size? It is a 64-bit program, yes?
And I can see some fantasy mods as real possibilities, too.

I went from "Buy it now" back to sitting on the fence. Have any of you guys actually played it? I trust the Steam reviews about as far as I can shot-put my Suburban.
"I could have conquered Europe, all of it, but I had women in my life." - King Henry II of England
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly. - Winston Churchill
Wine is sure proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. - Benjamin Franklin

PanzersEast

Quote from: solops on August 30, 2018, 05:33:29 PM
Quote from: PanzersEast on August 30, 2018, 01:41:57 PM
Quote from: Gusington on August 30, 2018, 01:31:17 PM
^DLC or expansion perhaps?

Or mod, it is very mod friendly.

Maybe...I can see the map size limitation as being a real problem. I wonder if they will expand the available map size? It is a 64-bit program, yes?
And I can see some fantasy mods as real possibilities, too.

I went from "Buy it now" back to sitting on the fence. Have any of you guys actually played it? I trust the Steam reviews about as far as I can shot-put my Suburban.

I have it loaded up, will report back soon....

Jarhead0331

Quote from: PanzersEast on August 30, 2018, 05:55:14 PM
Quote from: solops on August 30, 2018, 05:33:29 PM
Quote from: PanzersEast on August 30, 2018, 01:41:57 PM
Quote from: Gusington on August 30, 2018, 01:31:17 PM
^DLC or expansion perhaps?

Or mod, it is very mod friendly.

Maybe...I can see the map size limitation as being a real problem. I wonder if they will expand the available map size? It is a 64-bit program, yes?
And I can see some fantasy mods as real possibilities, too.

I went from "Buy it now" back to sitting on the fence. Have any of you guys actually played it? I trust the Steam reviews about as far as I can shot-put my Suburban.

I have it loaded up, will report back soon....

Hurry. I'm home from work and loitering with intent.
Grogheads Uber Alles
Semper Grog
"No beast is more alpha than JH." Gusington, 10/23/18


Gusington



слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

JasonPratt

I just got home, and I'm dl-ing it to the home computer. But I've got a number of other (hopefully small) updates to zip through, too, one of them being R2TW ironically. ;)

I'll post here when I'm up, and Steam users who have friended me (Sabreman) can ping me to watch over my shoulder, which is like live-streaming on Youtube but..... actually, I think Steam allows live-streaming now, too.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!