[off-topic] GUPT 5!

[Atom]

Thank you, thank you.

[Atom]

[sarcasm]Well, isn't this place a hive of activity.[/sarcasm]

[McBrain]

Yeah! It really is!!

Party!!!

[freespace2dotcom]

Hey, doc!

I got my hands on that rome: total war game you showed us oh so long ago.

I should say it's pretty fun, but I'm on the third real-time day of playing the campaign and I haven't even conquered
all of france yet, much less europe. MUCH much less the entire mediterranean region.
 
It's very interesting. I like the idea of controlling a legion of people as one unit rather than individually, but I can't help
but that they could have made the armys a tad bigger. It only goes up to about 1000 people, and I'm sure that's a lot
back in 300 BC, but I could make a bigger one if only the game would let me... then those stupid gauls could fully
feel the wrath of the freespacian empire.

It's addicting, but I wish they would have added a few more lines for the motivating speeches before battles. It gets
boring hearing the general telling the troops that he wants to bathe in the enemy's blood for a week for the
umpteenth time.

Should I post creenshots of my battles, everyone? (you know you want me too!)

[reekchaa]

you GO, Boy!  (post away)

[DocHoliday]

Do, do!!

I guess later on you WILL get a bigger army. I remember reading on the website, it should be about 20.000 men
strong. 1.000 isn't much even for Roman era Anyway, how does it play? Do the troops panic really quickly, is the
game forgiving in terms of "small" mistakes or do they cost you a battle?

Cheers,

[freespace2dotcom]

well. It depends on your general.

If your general is killed, then that's a really sucky morale blow. the army's morale depends as to their overall numbers
as well as the immediate fight. if you've got 20 men fighting 100, then their morale is going to sink very fast. I doubt
I'll get any bigger an army, though. the biggest unit has eighty men, and you can have 20 units. if you use wimpy
peasants, (which I don't) you can have 120 in a unit. or perhaps I simply didn't read the instructions?

I haven't learned the more subtle military techniques, and suck at flanking (which my enemy love doing.) and
ambushing. But I love using my heavy calvalry to charge into them and scare them silly.

So far i've conquered all of western europe with the exeption of spain. go me!

One time, I was defending a city from the gauls, and had only half the numbers they had! I was like, "oh crap!"

then they came, battered down my walls, gave me heavy losses, yet somehow not only did I break their attack, but I
didn't leave a man standing. my guys are all bloodthirsty.


Note that they outnumbered me. in war, numbers mean not a thing. see also the map. the red is me.


Look at how many that is! can you imagine how hard it would be to manage 20 times that many? it would be chaos!


The opening skirmish. note how my guys lose formation after a while. I was doing my best to keep them in line...


After the battle. This is why you should fear freespace. he's quite powerful, you see.


The reason why this turned out so favorably, is because

1. The big army came as reinforcements, so it took a while for them to reaach me while I slaugtered the small army.

2. They just came at me with no formation. That's very easy to break.

3. They had low morale because I killed their general early on. they don't fight back when they get scared. they just
run away, and so I just pick them off..... I could have let them run away, but then they'd come back to fight another
day....



Post Edited ( 10-22-04 20:20 )

[Atom]

I have Medievil Total War, but I don't play it that much. It's probably becuase I didn't give it much of a chance when I
first got it. I might try it some more actually.

[reekchaa]

SOUNDS cool, but looks more tedious than Sims2... AHHH!!! Why can't they just pee, bathe, and sleep on their own?  
Micro-management is the Devil!

..Now that the thread has about TEN MEGS of pictures to load... maybe it's time for Atom to drop-kick GUPTVI

[Krytom]

There's only been 83 something posts so far, and nothing compares to the pictures on the GUPT II.

BTW Reekchaa, on the Sims2 there is an option for 'free will', like on the sims 1, so the sims can look after
themselves. While concentrating on one sim the others just make themselves happy.

And BTW again Reekchaa, are you obsessed with the devil or something?

[McBrain]

Krytom wrote:

And BTW again Reekchaa, are you obsessed with the devil or something?

Well, maybe you should remove the pictures with the edit function, Freespace!

[reekchaa]

Heheh...  The Devil ! ...THE DEVIL !  hehehe.  Naw, just watching 'the WaterBoy'... that Mama was FUnny!
  ..."That girl only wants ONE thing!  ...She's the DEVIL!"  

Sims1's freewill seemed a little more 'intelligent'.  Playing the BROKE family.. the mom's always passed out, her kids
struggling for survival.  At least the casanova guy's only aspiration is a Public 'WooHoo' with all the chicks in town.

I expect a lil' better gaming excitement on 11.16.04 -HALFLIFE TOO!

[freespace2dotcom]

McBrain wrote:

Well, maybe you should remove the pictures with the edit function, Freespace!

This is the gupt. They're gonna stay. besides, doc hasn't responded to this yet, so I'm gonna assunme he hasn't seen
them yet.

[McBrain]

OK, I can live with that.... I'll stop the site loading manually.

[Atom]

I'll open 6 when this burns out or get to big to load on my crappy connection.

[reekchaa]

Good Call

[DocHoliday]

Well, I'm hear and I asked for the pictures, so I'd be a prick to be against it now

Anyway, I gave up on trying to keep GUPT low-bandwidth. There's no point, besides it's my problem to have a slow
connection, no point in spoling the fun for others

Free: That game looks like a GREAT improvement over the Medieval, at least as far as the game interface goes.
Bigger armies though are a LOT harder to command and you can make fewer tactical mistakes if any at all. With a
smaller force, I guess it's all a lot more manageable, but I guess you still can't make mistakes I used to HATE the
fact that your army might panic and run away, but it's great if you can do it to the other guy The first game I ever
played to use this concept was Centurion. You guessed it. Rome again. Any of you oldtimes out there played that?

Now I never really played a full version of ANY Total War game. I had Shogun, but my machine was to jealous to let
me play it And I only played Medieval Demo. I suggest you try the demo. There is really only one battle where you
are Richard Lionheart, fighting against Sultan Saladin outside of the Caste of Jaffa. His army is about 3 times larger
than yours and he only has 1/3 infantry. All the rest is cavalry and cavalry archers, while you have only 15 knights
and the rest are spearmen and archers It's really a hard battle to win, but I played it so many times now, I actually
manage to win with like 90 men lost and over 900 enemy killed (captured enemy soldiers NOT included) You should
try that, but I guess it would really be a downgrade from what I can tell of this last version

Atom, if you ain't gonna play Medieval I WILL!

Cheers,

[Atom]

I'm going to play it, just as soon as I've ironed my trousers and polished my shoes. OK?

[Atom]

Also I was looking at the smileys and realised there is one smiley that just about sums up Dan.



It's so Dan-like.

(Another useless comment, brought to you by Atom in association with Atom Co.)

[DocHoliday]

hehehe, sorry, I have a professional disease I keep pressing and old IRC habbit.

My personal favourite smiley is .. actually it reminds me somehow of Freespace, especially when we're talking
forum rules, restrictions, globalization, metric etc, hehe.

BTW: I downloaded Rome:TW demo and ran home during lunch brake to test it out (the advantage of living 5 minutes
away from office!) and I LOVE it.. Although I don't really appreciate the way the speech has been.. well americanized.
No offense, but if English knights spoke Latin in Medieval: TW, I sure as hell find it unrealistic that Romans speak
American military English in this game! It all just sounds too modern-like. I'm changing that to Latin as soon as I
get my hands on a full version!

[Atom]

Seeing as I have a week off school now, I installed Medieval:TW and played it all afternoon. It's good. I did all the
tutorials and I'm currently on a campain, it was going quite well. I took over the French and most of western Europe. That's
when I though Spain would be a nice prize. But it wasn't, I'm now in a whole lot of sh'*t. My money is on -4000 or so and all
hope of ever attacking the Spanish is gone. I hope things will improve.

But it was fun taking Scotland. On my first attack I was defeated, but that left them with only 98 men. So I gather together
a 400 man army and I squished them like a bug. It's so fun watching your cavalry chase down the highland scum that defeated
me previously.

Good game.

(No offence meant to an Spaniads or Scots).

[freespace2dotcom]

meh.  All of western europe has fallen to me as a roman.

I hope I don't get a knock on the door from a bunch of europeans claiming that I defeated their virtual country too
easily!

And doc. I thought it was odd that the romans were speaking english in the game as well. But I'm afraid that I think
you're stuck with it even with the full version. I see no way to turn it off, otherwise I would. I'm a big fan of reading
subititles of different languages. It really adds to the authenticity.



On a side note, I got my hands on a super-rare mp3!



The original power rangers theme!



CD quality even!


And before somebody disses the power rangers, please know that at least with the original, everyone did once think
it was cool. but then they went the way of the sims and came up with a dozen expansions with different names. I
neither know nor care what they're called nowadays, but I'm sentimental to the first, which I think any real ex-fan will
agree was the best. (even if they watched an episode nowadays and agreed it was cheesy as hell)

God, I still like pokemon, and to an extent, even the power rangers. I stick with the fads even after they're dull.
at least nobody can say I have no loyalty to the things I like! for if I admitted this in real life, I'd probably be flogged
by a bunch of "cool" people.

And my favorite (no "u" this time, hehe) smiley would have to be the one on the button you press to get the list of
smileys. It's so anime-like!

[DocHoliday]

Okay, that's it. I'm gonna go and buy Rome:TW today. I played the demo last night and although it is a lot more
confusing to play than Medieval I am hooked. Also I think battles with Rome have a quicker pace than Medieval even
if you use no time acceleration.

Yup, I checked out the sound system. They changed it. It used to be so, that all the orders were in a special directory
as .wav files, now they are all packed into a single .dat. I'd need to decode it and then "insert" my own commands
into it, and since I'm not a big expert on hacking I'd have to make the sound lenght exactly the same as the sound I'd
be replacing and possibly find and change some sort of bit values or CRC checksums... ugh... I guess I'm gonna stick
to the default speech for the time being.. It would be nice though if they prepared a Latin speechpack. Maybe we
should send them an email

Cheers,

[Atom]

The original Power Rangers was brilliant, the new ones are terrible but at least they got the first one right. I was just the
right age when it started.

[freespace2dotcom]

Warning!!! Large post

Atom wrote:
The original Power Rangers was brilliant, the new ones are terrible but at least they got the first one right. I was just
the right age when it started.

I agree with that fully, especially concerning the age. I was just at the right age for the first one. I liked it up
until they started zeo. I would also like to add that I actually taped the entire green ranger saga on VHS. No small
feat considering they were airing one episode a day for five days straight. (my favorite episodes by far. I think it has
to do with the fact that the bad guys actually had a shot at winning the whole thing.) The only way I could have done
it was that it was a vacation from school week. And even then my schedule had to be carefully planned. The first was
taped at my house, the next two at my friend's house as I was spending the night there. and the last two at my
grandparents' house. It's a small miracle I managed to tape all of them. But now I have fond memories of the time:

1. Desperately tuning that blasted analog VCR so that it would record channel 32 instead of static just minutes before
the show started.

2. Pleading with my brother for that half-hour time slot. (I promised him the TV for the rest of the day!)

3. Getting really mad at the thought of missing one of the shows, (it seemed very likely just before every episode)
since having only 4 of 5 episodes isn't worth anything compared to all five. (I'm a horrible perfectionist like that)


Thinking back, I wish I had recorded more saturday morning cartoons back then. You have to understand, that for a
regular cartoon watcher like myself, saturday morning was really awsome. I would actually wake up at 6:00 AM to
catch the very first ones. but sadly, saturday cartoons nowadays suck. what made them great back in my day was
that all of the main channels here had cartoons showing, (2, 5, 7, 11, 32, 50.. and that's without cable, you
youngsters. it was pratically every channel that was showing cartoons.) and you could take the TV guide and choose
your favorites, and amongst those channels, there was at least ONE cartoon worth watching. man, and it would go
on until noon. that's 6 HOURS of staring at the TV, and I loved every second of it. nowadays, all you get is crappy
disney cartoons on that "one saturday morning" crap on saturdays. I mean, I loved watching the disney afternoon
just after getting back home from school, (that would be where gummi bears, duck tales, chip & dale, tale spin, goof
troop, darkwing, bonkers, and I think a few others first aired, you know.) but they had 4 shows, and after a while,
they'd retire the first one on the list, and replace it with a new one at the last of the list. I always hated hearing them
promote new cartoons because I knew what that meant, and I perfectly liked my old ones.

...but anyway, I liked disney cartoons, but the new ones shown nowadays (like recess) can't hold a candle back to
the old disney afternoon shows. Perhaps it was the fact that old scrooge mcduck (no, not the one at the main
forum ) had a super big money bin. totally unrealistic, but it made for a lot more fun in watching.

...Damn, I'm rambling like an old man.... Next thing you know, I'm gonna be talking about the Teenage mutant ninja
turtles. maybe even transformers, although I was more at the end of their era.

anyway, doc. when you do get rome: total war, maybe we can play together.

(erm... so I can beat you badly...)



Post Edited ( 10-26-04 15:06 )