My two-cents on overcoming the psychological phenomena of why game collectors play a game for five minutes before moving on to the next one and can’t seem to enjoy any game, although they know deep in their hearts that they love gaming. With this advice hopefully you might even be able to play 20-year-old games and enjoy them for how they were meant to be played and enjoyed: 1/ Don’t compare games. This automatically makes you compare the pros and cons of each game and you’ll start to focus on the negatives. One negative feature is enough to make you say, ‘nah, this game isn’t worth it’, especially if the game you’re comparing it to doesn’t have that drawback. 2/ Take each game one at a time and judge them on their individual merits. 3/ Pretty much what Ben said. Focus on the positives of each game or what feature/aspect makes them interesting or unique eg. boardgame vs simulation. More specific examples: the population system of the original Rome Total War, the guild system of Medieval 2, or maybe the historical accuracy of a game like Grand Tactician Civil War.
Excellent point on not comparing. I remember back in the 1990s playing on my Commodore Amiga 500 and having tons of games to play yet i was never overwhelmed and was always playing two or three games a day with all my attention on them. I never did comparisons back then i just played the games because the subject matter interests me enjoying it for what it is. Around 2018 though i fell for that buying and comparison trap with the result being more games brought but less played. Now that am saving up for a new computer am focusing on the games i have again where am getting back into that old mindset of enjoying gaming instead of buying buying buying. It also helps to come to the realization as i did in the 1990's when i first visited a tabletop games shop that there was no way in the world i could play all these games and i was going to have to select a very small amount of games to spend my time, limited house space and limited income on which ended up being BATTLETECH where i totally enjoyed the game and still play the video game versions out there. I think especially with us old timers that we have seen the miraculous improvement in technology over the last few decades and think anything and everything is possible in a video game these days and that everything including the baby and kitchen sink should be in it expecting a perfection which can never be achieved and thus we jump from game to game in hopes of finding it.
These are all great points, I might make a video about this topic. I too got sucked into the trap of buying too many games but I've broken free after some contemplation on what actually caused it, for me at least.
@@77Arcturus Yes, it’s a vicious circle you could get trapped in forever. Game A doesn’t have the marvelous feature of Game B, so I’ll play game B, then realize Game B has negative features or even bugs that Game C doesn’t have, so what’s the point of playing Game B? Move on to game C and so on indefinitely.
@@Patrick8804 Exactly. Reminds me of the lyrics from the Gary Numan song THAT'S TOO BAD " Machines scream in anger. From a thousand dead ends. I turn my face, I crawl away, I look for a friend. " in this case a friend being another game. I know many of my STEAM friends who do nothing but buy at least twenty five games a week and on top of that they then go buy more games to give away. They are also this way in other areas of their lives collecting new and old computers, guns and knives etc. Fortunately they seem to be very good at it especially when it comes to decorating their homes unlike many others who hoard and create dangerous fire hazard obstacles.
This was the video I unknowingly needed to see for the longest time. I'm a hardcore hex-and-counter pre-PC wargamer. I love monster games. I have many of the classic, large games, and I've been suffering this malaise for the past couple years of starting them and not being able to carry them through. This video has helped identify a lot of what I'd stopped doing, and has inspired me to pick up one of these games again and start a playthrough with these principles firmly at the front of my mind.
Really pleased to hear that! I hope it works out for you, and if you have anything to add, let me know. I can make a follow up video with all your feedback sometime.
This is some of the most actionable advice I have ever heard about playing strategy games. I have used much of this advice, and profited enormously from it, and I still to this day neglect some of it, and I know my enjoyment suffers when I do. If you are a creative type, I can tell you that narrativizing is one of the most powerful tools you can use to maintain motivation. Don't engage with mechanics, engage with a LIVING HISTORY.
Ah that's good to hear someone else has also used this stuff too. I learned this playing Shadow Empire I think, and it started to sink in why it was that I was enjoying the game when I tend to just drop stuff when it starts getting long in the tooth.
Hello BATTLEMODE, thank you for the inspiring video. With age, I started to appreciate “obvious” advices. I call them obvious not in a negative way. So many times I had to have someone tell me something I knew but didn’t pay much attention to it. It’s good to have someone telling you that that trivial thing you knew already is actually important. Your video is a great example and I will surely implement your advices. If nothing else, I am sure I will discover a thing or two in games I thought I knew inside out and, admittedly, played on auto-pilot.
That's great to hear you got something from it, and I completely agree that sometimes having someone point something out that you probably already knew, but didn't necessarily abide by in practice, can be very useful. People do it for me all the time, and I took some advice from a friend that even if 90% of your audience thought it was a bit obvious, helping the 10% that didn't would be worthwhile.
I decided to scrap my initial game of Distant Worlds 2 after watching this video and have been enjoying myself so much more! Initially, I had most things set to "Auto" but took your advice and am playing with nearly everything on "Manual". Figuring out the best way to design ships has been so much fun. Slowing down has allowed me to enjoy the learning process. Thank you for putting out this video! I'm glad to have found your channel.
Thanks Ben, I loved this video. I've been waiting for it for what seems ages. I agree, immersion is definitely the most important factor for truly enjoying a game. I think this is why Dwarf Fortress has been so popular from the start, players really cared about their dwarfs, they weren't just pawns moving around.
You're welcome, glad you liked it! I remember whrn DasTactic said that the secret to enjoying Dwarf Fortress was to not try to minmax it too much, onstead see it as a sandbox simulation game, and I think that observation carries across quite well to other kinds of games
@@battlemode Most definitely. Shadow Empires does a good job of making you view the characters as real. I literally ruined things for my empire as I really hated one of the guys I had but I really needed him. Because I hated him so much due to what he had done and how he had acted previously I got rid of him out of spite and this caused upset, but more importantly I lost some really crucial battles. He was a great leader but a dick so I sacked him off. I wish games like Civ and Total War made you care more about the people, not just the heroes.
@@ToeAndno it's a great system and I'd argue it might be better because it just provides you the numbers and some events, and your brain does the rest. After seeing how Stardock have used GPT technology to make personalised text for custom civs, I wonder if the same could come to Shadow Empire to give the leaders their own special dialogue?
Shadow Empire is so good. End game can get interesting with the logistics and doing things like changing your government type to work with a larger population. You have to replace all your leaders and factions and it can be tricky to work through it without everything falling apart while at war with another large major. The people become so important with how you dispose of them or how they end up rebelling against you. You feel bad about getting reading your super high cap leader who has done so much.
What a wonderful & insightful video, covering a wide range of topics per 4x gaming with a little role playing thrown in. I, especially, enjoyed the section on Shadow Empire...thank you, sir.
@@mathefff23, well, I'm not perfect but I'm a lot better at it now. I've completely avoided buying any new games for a while, still enjoying the ones I have
While I agree with most of your points, I do have to note that as Sun Tzu stressed that half of the victory is knowing yourself, I also know I never want to do any citizen management in any Civ-like game. It is a chore that I do not want to touch unless something goes wrong by the automatics. That includes the newer AoW games. The more I think about how I approach games, it is playing through once or twice, then learning the semi-hidden mechanics that are automated in the background, but can be handled manually. That allows me to learn parts of the game without getting too much thrown at me at the same time. Plus, this approach scales a little better with upping the difficulty after some playthroughs as becoming more efficient has a motivation. I do not want to spend an hour or more to make a single turn. If I did that, I'd never find the time to finish any game.
Yeah I think this is highly dependent on time, I did mention that in the video. But playing too fast is definitely an issue for some people, and I think this is aimed at those people.
This is EXACTLY what I was looking for. I am super glad you made this video, I have been struggling with “sticking too it” particularly with Song of Conquest, which is my first real foray into this genre (played a few rounds of civ and stellaris but had no idea what I was doing). I’ll give it another go with these tips in mind, I was guilty of just about everything you were saying can make it difficult to stick to a game!
Really happy to hear it was helpful. Songs of Conquest is a good game I think, a bit simpler than ths stuff I showcased here. I'd be grateful if you let me know later if these tips were helpful with a game like that actually
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Well, I recently subbed you because of lords of midnight - and I enjoyed all these videos. This one could help me to recatch the fun of playing strategy games again. The thing I really liked was seeing you taking notes and talking about your strategies and the game generally, with some fluffy talking about characters and their missions. This is what makes your videos so great compared to others, because they feel somehow like a movie. And I'm happy that you share your secrets to us 😌 Now i remember how it felt to write notes as a youth, making maps, encouraging your imagination. Thanks! ❤ Keep up your style, it's so unique.
It's funny because when I started the channel I had no idea anybody would find it either interesting or useful but I've somehow gotten the best community watching. I appreciate it Michael, thank you! I'm intending to make more vidoes like this as I get a moment, since people seem to enjoy the scripted stuff a lot.
This is something I needed to hear. I rarely finish games and I know I play way, way to fast. So, thank you. I, too, started playing video games in the early 80's. Never forget one thing - "All your base are belong to us",
How could I forget that! I snuck an All Your Base reference into one of my GalCiv videos for Stardock, don't think anybody noticed yet :D Thanks Slice, glad you enjoyed the video. Engagement in games is an important concept and I'm not sure anybody really understands quite how it works yet.
Fantastic essay and vid mate, remember you talking about this on a podcast about half a year...if not a year ago. Glad you finally made the video for it :)
Mate it's taken me six months to get off my arse to finish it. Next video I do will be a lot faster, I do this everyday at work now and so I'm getting much better at it.
Really enjoyed this video, great stuff. It's given me a lot to think about, as someone with ADHD who enjoys the smaller scale wargames but often loses track of the larger scale games and scenarios. Currently playing and enjoying the Franco-Prussian War scenario for Strategic Command: American Civil War which feels very manageable. I have bounced off Dominions 5 a number of times but it is a game I'd love to be able to understand more and play better. I think I'm struggling with knowing what I should be doing at any given moment.
I hear you man. I don't know enough about ADHD to be able to advise much beyond the usual stuff to try to compartmentalise stuff to make it easy to find without too much searching. So, writing notes to figure out what you're doing and what you WERE doing in the last playthrough could be quite helpful. I certainly find that helps me stay engaged. Also, starting with the smallest scenarios and building up to the bigger ones helps. I like the John Tiller games for that, they usually come with a boat-load of smaller maps/battles along with the huge ones: Korea '85 does this, and I played a few of those tiny ones to get my head around the mechanics first.
@@battlemode That's all good advice! I do try to follow some of it, usually by dealing with one area of the map at a time, or one facet of a game turn or what have you at a time which does help. My memory is quite good so I hadn't really considered taking notes but I may try that! I do agree and appreciate smaller scenarios. Thank you for taking the time to make this video :)
Thanks for a new /much appreciated/ type of game-stream! I love learning/investigating a complex and good game. I get a kick our from understanding mechanics and then applying it to my personal game play style. I've dug countless of hours into learning games (e.g. Dominions, Dwarf Fortress, Battletech Rougetech, MOO2, XCOM2, AoW Planetfall and M&B Bannerlord) but the understanding is a huge part of my game enjoyment. I agree with all your advice. For me, trying to "play slowly" is the most important - because normally I'm a driven/fast person. Perhaps that is why I love to investigate game mechanics on forums as that often takes time. After I learn something important, I write them in my personal game-notes (the DF notes are 18 pages...). And great music clip at the end! ;)
Exactly, if you can really spend time with your game you'll end up getting so much more for it. I like to take notes on bigger games like Shadow Empire. The music at the end is Thalamusic from Sanxion by Rob Hubbard, an old C64 classic.
As a long time 4X, RTS, Grand or whatever kind of strategy gamer I really appreciate this video! It has also uncovered games which I have looked past or never seen before and they are now wishlisted! :D Though this isn't the idea of the video, it is a nice development
Thx for the video Its nice to see so many games I enjoy on here like Dominions and even Imperiums, I never knew about Megamek so I appreciate finding something new to check out. Since you seem to have enjoyed Shadow Empire so much I'm curious have you ever played Emperor of the Fading Suns before? For some other lesser known games I recommend Songs of Syx, Advanced Tactics gold, Legion war. And lastly since I see others asking about the games in the comments: Plz someone fill in the blanks or correct any that's wrong or missed 00:02 Space Empires series 00:0500:082:02 Dominions 5 Dominions 6 should be releasing later this year 00:06 John Tiller wargames 00:16 Megamek Battletech computer program 00:24 Shadow Empire 00:281:46 Warhammer Total War 00:32 UnderRail 00:385:20 Don't Know I've seen this before but don't remember name; Roguelike 00:42 Don't Know again seen this before don't remember name except I believe you play as a Dungeon master and allies are your minions vs ppl who raid your dungeon 00:54 Master of Magic 1:184:00 Conquest of Elysium 5 1:35 dwarf fortress 2:21 Endless Space 2 2:405:30 Age of Wonders Planetfall 3:15 Distant Worlds 2 3:45 Wizards and Warlords I believe 4:25 Galactic Ruler I've had this and Star Ruler 2 wish listed for years nvr got around to trying them out 4:42 Deity Empires 4:51 Remnants of the Precursors, basically playable MoO 1 5:05 Warhammer 40k: Gladius 5:55 Rogue I believe I've nvr played this but have ADOM 6:55 Age of Wonders 4 8:20 Galactic Civilization 4 I believe last I played was 3 14:4415:05 Songs of Conquest 16:50 UFO enemy unknown 19:00 Imperiums: Greek Wars 29:35 Master of Orion 2 29:50 Master of Orion Started skimming through after 5 minutes so sry If I missed any
Target audience here. While a couple games can hold my attention to the end (namely Civ6 and Shadow Empire) my game library is otherwise littered with half played games because I can't find myself interested to go to the end. Love the advice and bonus point, I now know how to cook onions.
Haha! A friend of mine told me that about onions years ago, and it stuck with me forever. It's true as well, they caramelise so nicely. Same as a good strategy game! I also have a library full of unplayed/semi-played games. I've banned myself from buying any more now until I've played the ones I have.
Great video. I just finished a massive MP game of Shadow Empire and I applied many of these suggestions here without realising it. I'm normally a fast player but starting off with a 4 tile, no resource province surrounded by water I managed to beat my opponent on a mega continent with 30 cloning vats by engaging with the game systems and building and sticking with a coherent long term strategy that culminated in mass airdrops on logistics hubs and naval invasions on 4 silmultaneus fronts. Your advice here is great and I think is actually something I really needed to hear to get out of my cynical gaming slump that I've fallen into through my mid 30's.
Great to hear that the info was relevant, and congratulations on your victory! I'm still slogging my way through my second MP game and there's no clear winner still.
Great video, thanks Ben. I’m a grazer, I spend more time buying stuff than playing stuff and it’s a habit I’m ashamed of. I can never seem to get started. This will help I think. Also, Sanxion! Yes, I’m an old git too 😊
If you do get around to trying these ideas, let me know how you get on. I'm keen to know if it's helpful for other people too. As for Sanxion, I wasn't gonna put any music in but I thought since I'd referenced it later in the video I might as well start the video with that! It's an amazing piece of music, Rob Hubbard is an absolute genius, pretty much every track he did for the C64 SID chip was revolutionary in some way.
@@battlemode I will mate, just as soon as I overcome my other issue - deciding what to play next ;) Seriously though, you reminded me of the existence of the game manual. I swear I used to spend more time reading and re-reading these more than anything else when I was a kid. I think that's where I'll start. As for Rob Hubbard, I used to load up Flash Gordon on the old C64 just to listen to the music sometimes. Cheers!
In the past months and years, I've started to notice something very peculiar: I seem to get frustrated much quicker whenever I don't understand the details of a game mechanic than when I was much younger. For example, I recently came back to Hearts of Iron IV because I think it's actually a really good game and I wanted to spend more time with it. But I quickly realized I didn't remember all that well how much of the game worked, especially with all the new mechanics introduced over the years, and for some strange reason quickly got frustrated and ended up moving on to something else. (I know many of the games mentioned here are much more impenetrable than HOI4, but hopefully you can see where I'm coming from). I experienced something very similar when Dominions 6 came out recently. I jumped into it, and because I didn't play all that much Dominions 5 (I played 3 the most), it had been quite a while since I played a game in the series. And because of that, I didn't immediate succeed at playing the game very well, and I again moved on. I've had this with other games as well, where sometimes strategy games don't always convey the right information effectively to the player, and that turns into a reason to stop playing for me because "how am I supposed to play this game if I don't understand x y z". When I say "frustrated" I *THINK* what's happening is that I'm frustrated with myself for not being able to handle the game. It might be that because at this point I've been gaming for 25+ years, I sort of expect myself to be able to deal with any game that's thrown at me? When I was younger, I didn't have this feeling at all and played all kinds of games that I didn't really understand. Another element might be that I now just experience much more pressure to spend the time I'm in-game "effectively", since as an adult you perceive your game time much differently. It could be that I feel like time spent playing a game poorly or without understanding it well is a bad way to spend time? Especially when I have a bunch of other games I could be playing. I'm not entirely sure where it's coming from but it has been blocking me from playing and/or enjoying a bunch of games that I really wanted to spend time with. It's very annoying and I'm not quite sure how to tackle it.
This is an interesting topic. I periodically experience something similar, and go for short periods of time where I just put gaming down for a bit completely. I've got some half-baked ideas on what my particular issue is but I'd hesitate to extend it out to the experiences other people have. But I do think we strive for novelty, even if we're not always conscious of that, and so we'll quickly get fed up of stuff we've seen before, even if it's changed, become more difficult or unfamiliar in some way. If you're hoping to get into Dom6 etc, try some of the techniques I've described in this video and see if it helps. You don't need to be good at a game, so long as you're having fun learning it.
Great video. I'm so guilty of buying game after game in those damn sales and hopping from one to the other like a mental rabbit. I come from the Zx Spectrum days when money was a lot tighter and you maybe had 3 or 4 games you would play inside out. And manuals, beautiful Manuals read cover to cover. Right that's it I'm picking a game and playing it to completion. I might video it. Give me something to think about other than steam sales.
My forst computer was a ZX Specteum 48k and so I'm with you on that. Those were the good ol' days! I think memory probably makes them better than they really were, but at least we learned how to enjoy our games properly
Thank-you so much for putting this video together! When it comes to buying games, I'm learning that it's best to only buy when you're going to be able to play it right away. The philosophy of your video takes that a step further by saying that not only should you try to play the game right away, but you should try to immerse yourself in it and press in toward mastery. I'm curious about a couple of things, though: 1) How do you keep up on 4x, strategy or general gaming news and not get caught up in buying the "latest and the greatest"? What has helped you to keep in the know, but not have to buy everything you set your eyes on? 2) Do you ever get bored with playing only one game at time (assuming you do that)? Do you do anything to mix things up and keep things fresh (i.e. play other genres, play multiple games at a time, etc.)?
1) Honestly, it's Rob at eXplorminate that is the one that keeps on top of all the latest 4X stuff, and so most of that news comes from him. Then I'm an active member of DasTactic's community and he also keeps on top of all the latest strategy gaming news. I'm not that enthusiastic about most new games releases because experience tells me that only about 10% of them interest me, and aside from what's presented to me on Steam, or UA-cam, or that I get in the occasional offer from PR people, I just let others do the hard work of seeking all the new stuff out. For the most part, I'm quite focused on the small set of games I really like now. Currently been getting back into the John Tiller/WDS stuff. 2) Yes, I can't play the same thing day in, day out. If I'm really into a particular campaign and I have the time, I might binge play (I put 9 hours straight into a GalCiv4: Supernova game last Sunday) but that is rare for me to do now. Trying to vary what I do in my spare time a touch more, and I spend as much time discussing games now as I do playing them. And I do mix up genres yes: I play pretty much everything, but mostly focused on strategy games now. But I like all kinds of games really: I also play classic CRPGs (mostly 2D or the old blobber style), stuff like Resident Evil series, I've got a Switch and like classic Nintendo/Sega stuff, general retrogaming, sandbox games like the Mount & Blade series, the occasional city-builder as well as all the usual wargames/4X/tactics stuff I play.
Amazing advice for those becoming disillusioned with gaming as a whole. I remember i've played hundreds of hours in Medieval Total war 2, as a kid and later as an adult. Even MTW2 which is not a super complex game by any means can be a drag once you've made some serious progress. The funny thing is no amount of modding or changes in the gameplay/world/units would bring me the same amount of joy as when i was playing it as a kid and exploring it. And what changed that, is something really simple, i role played everything my faction leader was with his traits and all plus keeping a kind of storytelling notepad of what happened in the turns i played (which u do mention it as after action report). I can 100% tell you i can't remember none of my campaigns and i've played with every faction possible/challenge etc besides the one where i role played, took notes, got invested in characters/generals and even the agents. Hearing your advice in this video really reminded me of why we play video games in the first place. Cheers for the video dude! Great stuff!
Hey thanks! It's really nice to hear other people's experiences. This is gonna sound a bit trite, but one thing that was kind of drilled into me when I worked as a professional circus arts teacher/performer was that as adults, we've forgotten how to play. And play is important in so many ways I could barely have time to sit here and list them all, even if it's just cracking jokes with your friends. We can over-play of course, and I know people who've gotten in a mess there (myself included perhaps) but letting your imagination go wild is really healthy, providing you're doing all your adult stuff properly. Video games are a great outlet for that fantasy-creating element of your psyche, and I think if you're just going through the motions when playing a game, you're missing out on some important downtime.
Great video. Many times I've chosen to play the biggest map because I'm afraid I'll never have time to play more than one playthrough and I want to experience the maximum amount of content, obviously that often becomes a slough. We also are blessed with so many good strategy games these days that, depending on your free time, there could be an enormous backlog and the next iteration might even come out before you've even played the one you've bought.
I completely agree, we're oversaturated with amazing strategy games these days. I've started to narrow myself down to just a handful, one of the reasons I've not done much with eXplorminate as I'm not really able to keep up with all the latest stuff.
Hehehe... I was watching this randomly because I don't have the circumstances to play those long immersive games like I used to and suddenly BATTLEMODE is scrolling through an AAR I did as a way of making a point about immersion! Good times! Cheers you put a smile on my face and also great and wise video :)
Yeah I think that's the main point people are disagreeing with on this. I don't think you should avoid ALL Let's Plays and tutorials, just play the game a bit first to get a feel for it before you do, that's all!
@@battlemode oh absolutely and it's gonna be vastly different person to person based on who they watch. I think if you enjoy min-maxing or very high scaled content you're robbing yourself. Also it can be game to game, something like Rimworld or CC:DA where everything is kind of about letting a story unfold. All in all solid points to consider and very glad this hit the UA-cam algorithm as I've been enjoying your GalCiv videos! Thanks for the hard work and taking the time to respond
I was not ready to better my life and gaming habits after watching this. i will imideatly start playing rimworld right now, see you when i got 1000 hours (just got 64 right now)
@@battlemode yes. I think what u saying in here is 100 percent true. People that want to fast forward should be playing eu4 or stellaris where real 4x players know u need to plan carefully every move. Very true in shadow. I have not played dominions yet looking for dom 6 i think at this point. Your thoughts on dominions wait or play 5 ? Currntly in my shadow empire playthru
@@JerryNorthwayNJ Err... I think if you missed Dom5 in the sale, I'd wait for Dominions 6 since that's what everybody's gonna be playing. Even if you never touch multiplayer you'll appreciate learning it alongside everybody else, and it is looking to be a huge improvement over Dom5
also - i think what would be a great modern addition to these kinds of games is ADVISORS. in the real world, a single executive can't possibly be in charge of every little detail. they need officers to run things. they need advisors to tell them when something is going wrong or that they need to pay attention to something. i think the complexity level of some of these games are beyond the scope of what a single person can actually make sense of. so i think having a robust DELEGATION system would be awesome. so that to an extent, i can GUIDE the outcome and INTERVENE at crucial points but that the details can actually be taken care of by ai systems and they can ping me when they need something. this kind of running things at a higher level while also having the option to drill down and examine a squad or something if desired for some reason... that might be the best way to evolve these kinds of games into the future. make it more realistic insofar as no one would actually have this amount of detailed information that they were responsible for.... more realistic in that it abstracts the data in a way a real leader would have it abstracted for them. with options to dig deeper for people who want to.
I love deep complex games but I've always struggled finishing them. I've found that the thing that helps me the most, more than anything tends to be roleplaying. This is especially true in like, Stellaris, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings ect. where the events that pop up, I choose based on what my character specifically would do. Even if that means it's a "Bad" choice. I've had play throughs in CK3 end suddenly because my king ended up being a tyrant and just getting stomped by rebels and other factions and it's been some of my most fun play throughs. Another thing, similar to what you've mentioned in this video, is making a wiki. I remember there was a time in the Stellaris subreddit where everyone was making wiki pages dedicated to their empires, adding in all the fluff they could, following certain leaders, big battles with exact numbers of people dying. it was so fun and in the case of Stellaris, adds even more fluff and personlization.
@@battlemode Do you have a recomendation for a deep game for someone to try and get into? I've been bouncing between Dominons 6 (after watching some of your gameplay) and Shadow Empire. I'm looking for a game with those fun emergent moments and a community that shares a lot of them.
ehehe "taking notes" ive still my notepads (on paper of course !) of 30 years ago , while i was playing games like "battalion commander" " steel panthers" "operation flashpoint" and the first total wars...
@@battlemode it's funny but "getting older" (im 53) i've abandoned these strategic deep military games and i am more for "living adventures" in games like The Long Dark, RDR 2... and it's strange because one should assume the contrary ...
One last thing - I believe Stellaris made a rather successfull (from what I have heard) atempt of fixing the soulless leaders and admirals with their Galactic Paragon DLC. Haven't tried that though but maybe it is in a better shape than before. At least this part of the game.
Yes! Because I'm slow, that DLC was released between me recording and posting this video. I did play it a bit, I didn't think it made that much difference to immersion really, was more of a mechanics thing, but I didn't play for long so I might be wrong there. Stellaris is generally an excellent immersion experience though so despite me calling that out, I don't think it affects the game too badly.
In the older Total War games was an encyclopedia with lore and stats it was fun to read all of it while playing the game. Now I'm playing Total War Warhammer 3 and I miss this feature, only lore I get from this game is through small descriptions.
Yeah I hear you, TW Warhammer added a lot of really cool stuff at the expense of losing some of the older games charm and tightness of game mechanics. I don't play Warhammer 3 so much now, I'm waiting for CA to fix the bugs up.
While I'm glad this video came up in my recommended, I am currently in a hard crunch-phase of searching for simplicity, in video games and board games. I don't want to build the patience for long, complex games because at this point I don't feel they respect my time. I find massive-scale 4X to involve too much procedure and too few meaningful decisions; while that's occasionally comfortable, I want short, crunchy games that really test my faculties but are easy to jump back into for new games. As a working man I really don't care for 10-40 hour game times. Nexus 5X is aiming squarely at what I'm looking for, but on tabletop there's also General Orders: WW2, War Chest, and Air Land & Sea. I really appreciate some of those old adages: "An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity" or "Perfection is not achieved when there is nothing more to add, but nothing more to take away."
I try not to tell people whether or not what they're doing is right or wrong, I don't have any right to do that. One thing I have learned over the years is people play games for different reasons and want different things from the games they do play. There's no "one size fits all" approach to leisure
A couple of my own bits of advice that I want to add to this is: ignore big sales at times. I know that seems a bit of a silly piece of advice at first, like why would you ignore all those great deals on the latest Steam sale, right? But that's the thing: If you go and splurge in one of those, you're going to end up with like 25 games that each get barely played (and some wont get played at all, and will go onto The Backlog). Instead, pick something that you know will keep you coming back over and over. Take some time to do the research before choosing something. For the love of puppies, dont pick something up because the trailer was shiny. And really, this is how it used to be done, "back in the day". No Steam, no online vendors, you'd go to an actual physical store, and you'd have to slow down and choose carefully, because you were probably walking out that door with just one game. The fact that your collection couldnt bloat over the course of just a single sale is, I think, one of the many things that made those older games able to get players to stick to them. You couldnt just zoom onto the next shiny thing after doing the intro section of the previous one. And really, if you think about it, this just makes more financial sense too. Those big sales might look like they'll save you a ton of money, but really in many cases they'll do the opposite. They heavily encourage splurge-spending, adding up quickly to a point beyond what you'd normally spend, while getting you lots of things you wont even touch. That one game you got for $30 that just keeps you coming back for 200 hours is going to be a lot more value than the 25 games you'll quickly forget (10 of which you didnt even play) that you got for $60 in the most recent big sale. That's part of what really did it for me. I forced myself to slow down and stop the spending on things that would just add to the backlog. And I tend to just not care about the big Steam sales (including the one that's happening right now) as getting out of that habit got me to see what they ACTUALLY do. Also, when you are buying something, read the reviews! Specifically, look for the longer, detailed reviews by players who have a lot of time in the game you're checking out. You can get a lot of extra details about the game you're looking at that could help you decide whether it's going to be truly worth it. Second thing: Once you've gotten a handle on the game's mechanics (so you're not losing purely because you didnt understand something), stop reloading every bloody time something goes wrong. Like with Xcom and such... if you watch someone play who regularly gets frustrated and burned out on it, you'll find that they immediately reload the moment a single soldier gets killed. In a game that is 100% balanced around the fact that you WILL lose soldiers over the course of the playthrough. Even if you have a total team loss, so long as that doesnt trigger the overall campaign loss condition... keep going! You dont know how your story will end until you get there. And often, the most memorable playthroughs of any games are the ones where you are absolutely, totally certain you're going to lose... but somehow you win anyway. Not because you reloaded 10 billion times, but because you simply did not give up. That's just my thoughts on it all though. Excellent video here, you made tons of great points in a way that is really easy to follow.
Thanks for posting this. Got some good tips and will listen to it again to see what else sinks in. My issue has always been figuring out the mechanics. Not so much from not being able to understand it but I find I lose focus or don't know where to start. I end up just playing really casually without much thought to what I'm doing which in turn means I lose interest. Maybe another idea for a video is how to approach looking at the mechanics of a particular game. I'm always amazed at how people find complex interactions between the mechanics which I never do despite playing these games so long. Is there a systematic way to approach figuring out what units to use etc...?
How to approach learning a game is a different level of discussion for sure, and I think it's kind of getting into topics of cognition and meta-learning. I'm interested in that field but didn't get too far into it at university so I'd have to do a bit of digging if I were to do it justice. On a less academic level, I reckon one way to approach it is to find someone else who is good at learning games inside out, and watch how they do it. Eliminating the fact we all think differently, we can at least observe how experts go about their business. I tend to watch DasTactic, how is quite good at digging the details out of these games and was someone who inspired me to look at strategy games in much more detail.
@@battlemode Thanks for the response. I have watched Das Tactic. There's some good stuff there but it seems mostly focused on the specific game details where as I'm looking for more concepts. I've been playing 4x off an on since the late 80s so not a new comer. I just need some loose ends tied up. One day I need to sit down and figure this out before attempting to play to separate the process.
I hear you. Let be straight about this: in the grand scheme of things, games are entertainment and we've all got more important stuff to do. The main reason I made this video was that I hear this thing about "4X games are boring in the endgame" and wondered if that was really true, or whether it was something in the approach to the game that was the issue. Jury is still out on that!
I think one problem that grand strategy games for me is the clean up phase. I enjoy the intense challenging battles that happens a lot during the early to mid game. Take Masters of Orion 2 for example: you can have intense wars going back and forth and then at some point you become stronger than everyone else. The game does a good job of making everyone start to feel threaten by you, but at some point it becomes just having to send fleets to take over world after world that can't really put up a fight.
Absolutely. I don't know how to address that issue: when a game is over for the player, then it's over. Designers have come up with all kinds of ways to speed that process along: double-win mechanics, scaling difficulty settings and so on. I was aiming this more at keeping people engaged in their campaigns until whenever they are satisfied that they have won, and avoiding that pre-win attrition.
You have! It's funny, I only actually played Adventure for the first time about six years ago when I found it came pre-installed with Linux/Unix. First text adventure I remember playing was "The Hobbit" on the ZX Spectrum. The game here is Twin Kingdom Valley, also on the ZX Spectrum 48k, and still a good game in my opinion! It had NPC characters that'd wander the map, pick items up and move them around randomly, so every game was different. And yes, the time does indeed fly!
great subject matter for a vid. and although the advice might be helpful, it is, unfortunately not a magic potion that just "makes it happen". i really do wish manuals were physical like they were back in the day. for some reason, that really gives me a way to invest my attention even when away from the game. heh, sometimes i think i liked reading through the manuals more! hey - idea for a vid - HOW TO PLAY CIVILIZATION!!!! i have NEVER won ANY scenario in civ! and it's always because i don't understand when i've already arrived at a point where i CAN'T POSSIBLY WIN! how do you avoid that? like most of the time, i get into a situation where even before half the game is over, i'm in a no-win situation but i have no idea that this is the case... and that actually makes me hate civ games. feels like just looooong wastes of time where i am destined to lose.
That is a really big problem in some games: losing before you have any idea that you've lost. Which Civ game do you like best? I've only really played Civ4 recently enough to be able to talk about it, although I played Civ2 and 3 a lot too.
It seems you put as much thought on this video as you do on your gameplay ones, BM, and thus there is plenty of food for thought here, especially for me personally, since I oftrn lose patience quickly because of how most 4X games are paced, haha.
Thanks! It's been something I've been mulling over for a few years now. The responses I've had in the comments have got me thinking further, so expect a follow up at some point.
The issue has nothing to do with the player's mindset, and everything to do with how these games are designed. Problem 1: Once the player starts winning, it becomes easier and easier to win. This a problem with the economies within these games. Players must spend resources to defend themselves, but are also encouraged to invest the resources they have into things that will improve their economy. Either by increasing resource production, reducing resource expenditures, increasing throughput, or creating securities against disaster. All of which allows the player to defend themselves better, and also attack enemies and expand their territory. Which gives them access to more resources, that they can invest back into their economy, giving them more military capacity, to get more land and resources, and so on. The result is a virtuous cycle, where growth and expansion encourages further growth and expansion. Which leaves the player less and less vulnerable, because they have more resources to spend on defending themselves, or on protecting their economy from shortages or damages. Which means the player has less and less reason to care about the decisions they're making, because their margin for error just keeps getting wider and wider. The only thing that can really make them think is a rival actor with a similarly snowballing economy, who threatens to eclipse them. But if the player manages to gain an advantage over said rival, that advantage will just snowball into another victory. Some games try to rein in player growth by including upkeep costs. So growth and expansion also increases expenses, as well as income. But this is rarely an issue for players, because most upkeep costs only increase linearly. While their income from economic growth usually increases exponentially. Allowing players to just outrun their upkeep costs forever, by continually growing and expanding. Players don't play these games to their conclusions, because after a certain point their victory is assured. Everything after that is just busywork. There's no more tension, no more struggle. Problem 2: Strategy games are obsessed with bottom-up command. That is, the idea that the player makes their base, their army, their faction, their great strategic machine do anything, by telling each individual component what to do. Imagine trying to walk to the shops. If it was a strategy game, the player would have tell every individual muscle involved what to do. They would have to tell every muscle that needs to stretch, to stretch. They would have to tell every muscle that needs to contract, to contract. They would have to tell their lungs to breathe, and their intestines to digest that day's breakfast. And if something unexpected arose, the player would have to coordinate every muscle and organ to respond to the new situation. The player would have to do all of that, instead of just deciding to walk to the shops, and having their body manage the nitty-gritty for them, subconsciously and automatically. That would be top-down command. Strategy games loathe giving the player any top-down control. The player has to serve as the decision-maker for every single agent under their command, directing every unit and building individually to achieve a gestalt objective. The army marches, because the player told every soldier to put one foot in front of the other. And the army stops, because the player told every soldier to stop swinging their legs. And this is a problem, because as the number of agents under the player's command increases, the number of decisions the player has to make increases exponentially. They have to divide their attention more and more, and keep track of more and more information. It becomes harder and harder to play efficiently, or even just effectively. And harder and harder to focus on the big picture, when so much of their brainpower is devoted just to staying afloat. The player may know what they want every agent under their command to do, but the actual process of making it all happen becomes increasingly tedious. Some games try to alleviate this, by offering automation features. But these are all based on bottom-up command as well. Instead of a player ordering a factory to build a certain number of tanks, the player can tell the factory to just produce tanks forever, and it will do just that. But the factory will never stop making tanks, if conditions change. The player will have to come back to the factory later, and tell it to stop. It hasn't solved the problem - it's just turned the factory into a faucet, that the player needs to remember to shut off when it becomes a problem. Players don't play these games to their conclusions, because after a certain point the amount of mental labour isn't worth the reward. Problem 3: Problems 1 & 2 feed into each other. As a player's economy grows they can afford to be more careless, because their safety net is also growing. At the same time, the amount of mental labour that efficient play demands is spiralling beyond what the player can supply. So the player is encouraged to play brainlessly, spamming out buildings and armies and burying their enemies in raw numbers. But also, at a certain point it will become practically impossible for the player to lose. So the long march to complete victory will just be another hundred turns of mindless slogging, just to paint a map the right colour. It won't be interesting, or fun, or challenging or engaging. It will just be a waste of time, watching numbers go up. And that's why players stop playing, mid-campaign. Because the most interesting, enjoyable, challenging and rewarding part of the game was the start. The part where they were struggling, where their decisions mattered the most, where the mental load was the least overwhelming. Unless the design of strategy games changes, players will keep behaving like this.
Interesting points well made, but you're wrong. I made it quite clear this was not a single genre issue, but you've focused on a narrow band of genres and that is why your initial point that it's not about players is completely incorrect. Problem 1 is certainly an issue with certain kinds of 4X-like strategy games. I don't think it's at all relevant to roguelikes, tactics games where you play consecutive, shorter maps with their own difficult curves, RPGs, sandbox games or anything else that requires an extension of attention without the same snowballing of resources. Furthermore, modern 4X games like Shadow Empire have demonstrated you can make a 4X game engaging from start to finish without artificially trying to stop the snowballing issue. I'd direct you to that game as it holds the key to this fallacy that "4X games are fatally flawed" because it's just not true any more. I don't think it was ever really true, because the argument in Problem 1 assumes there's a determinable hard line where people stop playing, and that's a dubious claim since the people that make it tend not to back it up with evidence (and how could they provide it?) Problem 2 falls foul of the "everybody I know must play like me" fallacy. Just because some people do not like managing large empires, others do. Worse still, this kind of thinking is reductive and it's what turns a great game like NetHack into a shit game like Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. Once we start "streamlining", it's tempting to keep going until your game plays itself (like Path of Achra to continue the roguelike analogy), and all human interaction with the game plays second fiddle to academic games designer fart-sniffing. Sure, there's a sweet spot between manual control and abstraction to avoid "busy-work", but one man's busy-work is another man's immersion. I try to advise people that what they have, right there right now, in front of them, is enough. We don't need "streamlining", more abstraction or a different, less flawed genre, we just need to understand ourselves and how we approach these things from our own, individual, unique perspective. By the same arguments, you can try to claim that your failings to create a beautiful oil painting are due to the outdated medium: oils are too hard to use, that they provide a steep learning curve with false summits that makes learning it difficult and why bother when acrylics dry 100x faster and look the same right? When it comes to gamers, sometimes they've got a bad product, but other times they've just not really engaged with it in a way that it was intended to be engaged with. The blame for this is mostly on the developer, but it's also partly on the player because there are a million and one reasons we don't give a title the time it deserves to be enjoyed as intended. I buy stuff and don't play it occasionally, and I can give you a dozen reasons for each, I'm sure. And so, I think the right thing to do is for the developer to take this all as advisory, and we don't blame either them or the player. Better to help people understand themselves right? That way they can learn to enjoy everything, not just video games. I think next time I should probably try to spell this message out a bit more clearly for those that thought it was talking about how to enjoy long video games.
@@battlemode We're talking about strategy games. All you covered in this video, was nothing but strategy games. The title of this video only concerns strategy games. Why are you bringing up roguelikes, RPGs, sandbox games, or anything else? Those aren't strategy games. And those games have their own loops, their own mechanics, their own appeal. Their own ways of keeping players engaged. We are talking about strategy games, and how their design affects the psychology of players. Snowballing economies and overwhelming command complexity are the most frequently-cited reasons I've seen, why people don't play strategy game campaigns to their conclusions. I have seen people say this, over and over again, throughout 4X and Grand Strategy communities. But even outside of people's anecdotal experience, it is well-known among game designers that strategy games get easier the longer a player plays, due to snowballing economies. Over a decade ago, Total War: Shogun 2 had its “Realm Divide” mechanic, which essentially made every other faction on the map declare war on the player, if the player grew too powerful. In an effort to keep the player struggling, even into the end-game. This kind of “end-game crisis” shows up a lot in modern games, but Shogun 2 is the earliest example that I'm personally aware of. Meanwhile, Extra Credits (now Extra History) made a video on this exact topic, *7 years ago,* called "Strategic Uncertainty - Keeping Strategy Games Fresh". It outlines the exact problem of snowballing economies and lack of tension that I'm talking about, and discusses potential solutions. Developers have known about late-game snowballing, and the threat it poses to the play experience, for a very long time. Even outside of strategy games, selling players on a mechanical challenge and then making it too easy, will bore them to tears. If a roguelike is too generous with good loot, players will find it boring. RPG players frequently get bored of combat when they have too many healing potions, or can do too much damage, or whatever, and can just faceroll through encounters. And in so many games, players stop paying attention when buying items in shops, because past a certain point they're loaded with cash and don't need to think about how much things cost any more. In any game that bases its challenge on budgeting resources, overly-generous economies undermine player interest. Some genres, like RPGs, may have the benefit of other elements like writing and world design, to make up for easy gameplay. But strategy games are built on production, investment and budgeting. So a breakdown in the economic challenge is a breakdown of the entire game. Also, based on some reading of Shadow Empire, I suspect it has implemented the exact solution that I would have suggested to fix the snowballing problem. Namely, making upkeep costs scale exponentially, too. So that growth and expansion offer diminishing returns, and the player's empire is always fragile and imperilled no matter how strong it becomes. Am I right? As for Problem 2, in the video you trotted out a Sun Tzu quote. The one about how "management of many is the same as management of few. It is a matter of organization". But you clearly don't realise what that quote actually means. Sun Tzu is talking about breaking up an army into smaller units, and assigning subordinate officers to each one. He is talking about diffusing responsibilities and decision-making across a command hierarchy, *so that every officer has a manageable workload.* Because that's the thing: in the real world, no commander behaves like a strategy game player. No commander micromanages every little thing that their subordinates are doing. Or if they do, they are generally regarded as a bad commander. A good commander tells their subordinates what to do, and then trusts them to carry out their orders without constant oversight. This is why commanders don't have to be galaxy-brain gigachads to do their jobs. They only have to think about military activity within a limited scope. The rest of the command chain handles everything else. So in these games, why do we have to “command” from the bottom-up? You frame this as a balance between manual control and abstraction. You are mistaken. Because even games that abstract away a huge amount of detail, are STILL built on bottom-up command. In so many “top-down” games, you can find the following scenario: the player decides to build something, like a factory, but they don't have enough resources to do so. They will get more resources in the future, thanks to their regular income. But they will have to wait until they have enough resources to actually give the order to build the factory. That means they will have to hold that decision in their head the whole time, and monitor the situation themselves, until they can finally act on it. That's bottom-up command. Instead of, say, clicking the button to build a factory, and it getting pushed into a queue to be built as soon as the resources are available. That would be top-down command. The player made a decision, and communicated their intent to the game, so now the game will handle the matter on their behalf. Realistically, that would be like the player passing an order to an adjudant, who would monitor resource levels for them, and order the factory's construction as soon as it was possible. You might think that's a trivial thing to complain about. A tiny commitment of brainpower. But a strategy game might have dozens, hundreds, thousands of these tiny commitments. Which add up to an overwhelming burden. Having systems to automate these matters would not make the game "play itself", any more than a commander can just tell their army to "win the war". Players would still have to pay attention to what's happening on the ground, what forces they have, what resources are available. All to ensure they're not issuing bad orders. So they're not ordering factories be built while everyone is starving, or ordering units to attack a position that they cannot capture. It would push the game away from many small, trivial decisions, and towards big, important decisions. Instead of directing every soldier themselves, players would be expected to set up the systems to automate their armies. To assign objectives, priorities and doctrines to units, so they know what to do without being babysat. To arrange units into infrastructure, to serve other units. And then monitor that organisation, tweaking and adjusting as needs change. That would be far, far closer to what an actual commander does - what Sun Tzu says a commander ought to do. It would let players *actually feel like commanders.* Nor would it mean “streamlining” these games. I am advocating for all the same complexity and granularity of simulation. But also giving players tools to efficiently manage that complexity. If anything, I'm advocating for strategy games to be MORE complex, not less. But complex in a way that serves the player, instead of drowning them.
Thanks for the video. In my opinion, it was largely psychologically scientific and highly debatable from a philosophical perspective.🙃 I would never recommend it though to those who can't live without CS:GO or Starcraft II. 👍
Never really considered the philosophy behind it, I probably should have done considering my background in the subject but then I was just trying to find a way to get people to stick to their campaigns rather than make a coherent philosophical argument. Hopefully it was helpful to someone anyway, regardless of its lack of intellectual merit ;)
I knew someone would ask this! I was hoping people in the comments section would try to figure it out but if there's any particular you are stuck with, hit me with a timestamp and I'll tell you
great video! Please make a playlist for your meta-videos, as I'm honestly not as interested in Let's Plays but would love to see anything else you put out like this.
I'm going to do more videos like this when I get the chance. This one took a long time but I'm a professional video producer now so it's a lot easier for me to do!
Have you left out information on the games to encourage people to listen to this as a podcast while sitting down with their favourite overly complex grand strategy? :D
That is Galactic Ruler, from the Supreme Ruler devs. I've honestly not really had chance to play it yet, but it's on my "to-play" list. Initially I did not like it at all, but I'm starting to see how it might actually be quite good.
hey Stellaris has the "Leader Overhaul" that makes leaders more akin to having the importance, and connection to the player compared to their vanilla offering.. people might wanna give it a whirl, since it was a pretty important point you made about leaders or heroes in these types of games (why heroes of might and magic series is so great) in keeping a players interest. anyways thanks ggod vid, i reinstalled a bunch of games i had i forgotten i had lol will give em another shot like shadow empire
I bought the DLC and had a look, I didn't really think it fixed the issue I discuss in all honesty but I did think what it did mechanically was interesting for sure! I'm not a big fan of Stellaris in all honesty, I rarely play it now, but I get why it's popular and I do like the RPG side of it. I just don't really rate it as a great 4X game.
It's only the best 4X game of the last 20 years ;) Give it another try: stick it on Beginner on a small map and go stomp the AI, have fun and figure it out a bit. If it still doesn't make sense afterwards, go watch DasTactic's tutorial series or the start of one of my Let's Play series for some tips.
Many games you showed look like games i would like to play, but i have no idea what they are called.. i wish there was some way to find out the names of all the games you used as content in your nice vid.. :(
I'm really enjoying Galatic Civilization 4. I just start a new game every time i play while i slowly learn what im doing and trying different stradegies
My two-cents on overcoming the psychological phenomena of why game collectors play a game for five minutes before moving on to the next one and can’t seem to enjoy any game, although they know deep in their hearts that they love gaming. With this advice hopefully you might even be able to play 20-year-old games and enjoy them for how they were meant to be played and enjoyed:
1/ Don’t compare games. This automatically makes you compare the pros and cons of each game and you’ll start to focus on the negatives. One negative feature is enough to make you say, ‘nah, this game isn’t worth it’, especially if the game you’re comparing it to doesn’t have that drawback.
2/ Take each game one at a time and judge them on their individual merits.
3/ Pretty much what Ben said. Focus on the positives of each game or what feature/aspect makes them interesting or unique eg. boardgame vs simulation. More specific examples: the population system of the original Rome Total War, the guild system of Medieval 2, or maybe the historical accuracy of a game like Grand Tactician Civil War.
That's great advice, thank you! I'm gonna pin this comment
Excellent point on not comparing. I remember back in the 1990s playing on my Commodore Amiga 500 and having tons of games to play yet i was never overwhelmed and was always playing two or three games a day with all my attention on them. I never did comparisons back then i just played the games because the subject matter interests me enjoying it for what it is. Around 2018 though i fell for that buying and comparison trap with the result being more games brought but less played. Now that am saving up for a new computer am focusing on the games i have again where am getting back into that old mindset of enjoying gaming instead of buying buying buying. It also helps to come to the realization as i did in the 1990's when i first visited a tabletop games shop that there was no way in the world i could play all these games and i was going to have to select a very small amount of games to spend my time, limited house space and limited income on which ended up being BATTLETECH where i totally enjoyed the game and still play the video game versions out there.
I think especially with us old timers that we have seen the miraculous improvement in technology over the last few decades and think anything and everything is possible in a video game these days and that everything including the baby and kitchen sink should be in it expecting a perfection which can never be achieved and thus we jump from game to game in hopes of finding it.
These are all great points, I might make a video about this topic. I too got sucked into the trap of buying too many games but I've broken free after some contemplation on what actually caused it, for me at least.
@@77Arcturus Yes, it’s a vicious circle you could get trapped in forever. Game A doesn’t have the marvelous feature of Game B, so I’ll play game B, then realize Game B has negative features or even bugs that Game C doesn’t have, so what’s the point of playing Game B? Move on to game C and so on indefinitely.
@@Patrick8804 Exactly. Reminds me of the lyrics from the Gary Numan song THAT'S TOO BAD " Machines scream in anger. From a thousand dead ends. I turn my face, I crawl away, I look for a friend. " in this case a friend being another game. I know many of my STEAM friends who do nothing but buy at least twenty five games a week and on top of that they then go buy more games to give away. They are also this way in other areas of their lives collecting new and old computers, guns and knives etc. Fortunately they seem to be very good at it especially when it comes to decorating their homes unlike many others who hoard and create dangerous fire hazard obstacles.
This was the video I unknowingly needed to see for the longest time. I'm a hardcore hex-and-counter pre-PC wargamer. I love monster games. I have many of the classic, large games, and I've been suffering this malaise for the past couple years of starting them and not being able to carry them through. This video has helped identify a lot of what I'd stopped doing, and has inspired me to pick up one of these games again and start a playthrough with these principles firmly at the front of my mind.
Really pleased to hear that! I hope it works out for you, and if you have anything to add, let me know. I can make a follow up video with all your feedback sometime.
This is some of the most actionable advice I have ever heard about playing strategy games. I have used much of this advice, and profited enormously from it, and I still to this day neglect some of it, and I know my enjoyment suffers when I do. If you are a creative type, I can tell you that narrativizing is one of the most powerful tools you can use to maintain motivation. Don't engage with mechanics, engage with a LIVING HISTORY.
Ah that's good to hear someone else has also used this stuff too. I learned this playing Shadow Empire I think, and it started to sink in why it was that I was enjoying the game when I tend to just drop stuff when it starts getting long in the tooth.
Hello BATTLEMODE,
thank you for the inspiring video. With age, I started to appreciate “obvious” advices. I call them obvious not in a negative way. So many times I had to have someone tell me something I knew but didn’t pay much attention to it. It’s good to have someone telling you that that trivial thing you knew already is actually important. Your video is a great example and I will surely implement your advices. If nothing else, I am sure I will discover a thing or two in games I thought I knew inside out and, admittedly, played on auto-pilot.
That's great to hear you got something from it, and I completely agree that sometimes having someone point something out that you probably already knew, but didn't necessarily abide by in practice, can be very useful. People do it for me all the time, and I took some advice from a friend that even if 90% of your audience thought it was a bit obvious, helping the 10% that didn't would be worthwhile.
I decided to scrap my initial game of Distant Worlds 2 after watching this video and have been enjoying myself so much more! Initially, I had most things set to "Auto" but took your advice and am playing with nearly everything on "Manual". Figuring out the best way to design ships has been so much fun. Slowing down has allowed me to enjoy the learning process. Thank you for putting out this video! I'm glad to have found your channel.
Welcome to the channel! And thanks for letting me know, I'm really pleased the video was helpful
Thanks Ben, I loved this video. I've been waiting for it for what seems ages. I agree, immersion is definitely the most important factor for truly enjoying a game. I think this is why Dwarf Fortress has been so popular from the start, players really cared about their dwarfs, they weren't just pawns moving around.
You're welcome, glad you liked it! I remember whrn DasTactic said that the secret to enjoying Dwarf Fortress was to not try to minmax it too much, onstead see it as a sandbox simulation game, and I think that observation carries across quite well to other kinds of games
@@battlemode Most definitely. Shadow Empires does a good job of making you view the characters as real. I literally ruined things for my empire as I really hated one of the guys I had but I really needed him. Because I hated him so much due to what he had done and how he had acted previously I got rid of him out of spite and this caused upset, but more importantly I lost some really crucial battles. He was a great leader but a dick so I sacked him off.
I wish games like Civ and Total War made you care more about the people, not just the heroes.
@@ToeAndno it's a great system and I'd argue it might be better because it just provides you the numbers and some events, and your brain does the rest.
After seeing how Stardock have used GPT technology to make personalised text for custom civs, I wonder if the same could come to Shadow Empire to give the leaders their own special dialogue?
Shadow Empire is so good. End game can get interesting with the logistics and doing things like changing your government type to work with a larger population. You have to replace all your leaders and factions and it can be tricky to work through it without everything falling apart while at war with another large major.
The people become so important with how you dispose of them or how they end up rebelling against you. You feel bad about getting reading your super high cap leader who has done so much.
Completely agree, and that's why I almost always finish Shadow Empire games, they're fun from start to finish.
What a wonderful & insightful video, covering a wide range of topics per 4x gaming with a little role playing thrown in. I, especially, enjoyed the section on Shadow Empire...thank you, sir.
Great to hear you enjoyed it Eddie, cheers
What a time to be alive to have people tell us (and rightly so!) to actually play (instead of skimming) the game we want to play.
I only made this because I noticed myself doing this, and saw others around me complaining of the same thing.
Interesting. Is this video also a kind of a vow to yourself as well? ;)@@battlemode
@@mathefff23, well, I'm not perfect but I'm a lot better at it now. I've completely avoided buying any new games for a while, still enjoying the ones I have
Sure, nobody is. To be fair, though, I am pretty sure you have all the main players of strategy games already in your library, haha. @@battlemode
While I agree with most of your points, I do have to note that as Sun Tzu stressed that half of the victory is knowing yourself, I also know I never want to do any citizen management in any Civ-like game. It is a chore that I do not want to touch unless something goes wrong by the automatics. That includes the newer AoW games. The more I think about how I approach games, it is playing through once or twice, then learning the semi-hidden mechanics that are automated in the background, but can be handled manually. That allows me to learn parts of the game without getting too much thrown at me at the same time. Plus, this approach scales a little better with upping the difficulty after some playthroughs as becoming more efficient has a motivation. I do not want to spend an hour or more to make a single turn. If I did that, I'd never find the time to finish any game.
Yeah I think this is highly dependent on time, I did mention that in the video. But playing too fast is definitely an issue for some people, and I think this is aimed at those people.
This is EXACTLY what I was looking for. I am super glad you made this video, I have been struggling with “sticking too it” particularly with Song of Conquest, which is my first real foray into this genre (played a few rounds of civ and stellaris but had no idea what I was doing). I’ll give it another go with these tips in mind, I was guilty of just about everything you were saying can make it difficult to stick to a game!
Really happy to hear it was helpful. Songs of Conquest is a good game I think, a bit simpler than ths stuff I showcased here. I'd be grateful if you let me know later if these tips were helpful with a game like that actually
Well, I recently subbed you because of lords of midnight - and I enjoyed all these videos. This one could help me to recatch the fun of playing strategy games again. The thing I really liked was seeing you taking notes and talking about your strategies and the game generally, with some fluffy talking about characters and their missions.
This is what makes your videos so great compared to others, because they feel somehow like a movie. And I'm happy that you share your secrets to us 😌
Now i remember how it felt to write notes as a youth, making maps, encouraging your imagination. Thanks! ❤
Keep up your style, it's so unique.
It's funny because when I started the channel I had no idea anybody would find it either interesting or useful but I've somehow gotten the best community watching. I appreciate it Michael, thank you! I'm intending to make more vidoes like this as I get a moment, since people seem to enjoy the scripted stuff a lot.
This is something I needed to hear. I rarely finish games and I know I play way, way to fast. So, thank you. I, too, started playing video games in the early 80's. Never forget one thing - "All your base are belong to us",
How could I forget that! I snuck an All Your Base reference into one of my GalCiv videos for Stardock, don't think anybody noticed yet :D
Thanks Slice, glad you enjoyed the video. Engagement in games is an important concept and I'm not sure anybody really understands quite how it works yet.
Bro! I haven't played Space Empires in Forever. I miss Malfador Machinations.
What a game tho se4 and se5 are just soo good
I'm a newcomer to it, initially didn't get on with it but now I love it, great game!
I had the same reaction... I may need to re-buy the game and give it a go!
GOG has the entire Space Empires series discounted to $3.99 US right now. Autumn sale
Fantastic essay and vid mate, remember you talking about this on a podcast about half a year...if not a year ago. Glad you finally made the video for it :)
Mate it's taken me six months to get off my arse to finish it.
Next video I do will be a lot faster, I do this everyday at work now and so I'm getting much better at it.
@@battlemode It shows too :) Looking forward to more scripted vids.
Ageed 🎉!
Really enjoyed this video, great stuff. It's given me a lot to think about, as someone with ADHD who enjoys the smaller scale wargames but often loses track of the larger scale games and scenarios. Currently playing and enjoying the Franco-Prussian War scenario for Strategic Command: American Civil War which feels very manageable. I have bounced off Dominions 5 a number of times but it is a game I'd love to be able to understand more and play better. I think I'm struggling with knowing what I should be doing at any given moment.
I hear you man. I don't know enough about ADHD to be able to advise much beyond the usual stuff to try to compartmentalise stuff to make it easy to find without too much searching. So, writing notes to figure out what you're doing and what you WERE doing in the last playthrough could be quite helpful. I certainly find that helps me stay engaged.
Also, starting with the smallest scenarios and building up to the bigger ones helps. I like the John Tiller games for that, they usually come with a boat-load of smaller maps/battles along with the huge ones: Korea '85 does this, and I played a few of those tiny ones to get my head around the mechanics first.
@@battlemode That's all good advice! I do try to follow some of it, usually by dealing with one area of the map at a time, or one facet of a game turn or what have you at a time which does help. My memory is quite good so I hadn't really considered taking notes but I may try that! I do agree and appreciate smaller scenarios. Thank you for taking the time to make this video :)
Thanks for a new /much appreciated/ type of game-stream!
I love learning/investigating a complex and good game. I get a kick our from understanding mechanics and then applying it to my personal game play style. I've dug countless of hours into learning games (e.g. Dominions, Dwarf Fortress, Battletech Rougetech, MOO2, XCOM2, AoW Planetfall and M&B Bannerlord) but the understanding is a huge part of my game enjoyment.
I agree with all your advice. For me, trying to "play slowly" is the most important - because normally I'm a driven/fast person. Perhaps that is why I love to investigate game mechanics on forums as that often takes time. After I learn something important, I write them in my personal game-notes (the DF notes are 18 pages...).
And great music clip at the end! ;)
Exactly, if you can really spend time with your game you'll end up getting so much more for it. I like to take notes on bigger games like Shadow Empire.
The music at the end is Thalamusic from Sanxion by Rob Hubbard, an old C64 classic.
As a long time 4X, RTS, Grand or whatever kind of strategy gamer I really appreciate this video! It has also uncovered games which I have looked past or never seen before and they are now wishlisted! :D
Though this isn't the idea of the video, it is a nice development
Glad to hear that! Hope it was helpful
Thx for the video Its nice to see so many games I enjoy on here like Dominions and even Imperiums, I never knew about Megamek so I appreciate finding something new to check out. Since you seem to have enjoyed Shadow Empire so much I'm curious have you ever played Emperor of the Fading Suns before? For some other lesser known games I recommend Songs of Syx, Advanced Tactics gold, Legion war.
And lastly since I see others asking about the games in the comments: Plz someone fill in the blanks or correct any that's wrong or missed
00:02 Space Empires series
00:05 00:08 2:02 Dominions 5 Dominions 6 should be releasing later this year
00:06 John Tiller wargames
00:16 Megamek Battletech computer program
00:24 Shadow Empire
00:28 1:46 Warhammer Total War
00:32 UnderRail
00:38 5:20 Don't Know I've seen this before but don't remember name; Roguelike
00:42 Don't Know again seen this before don't remember name except I believe you play as a Dungeon master and allies are your minions vs ppl who raid your dungeon
00:54 Master of Magic
1:18 4:00 Conquest of Elysium 5
1:35 dwarf fortress
2:21 Endless Space 2
2:40 5:30 Age of Wonders Planetfall
3:15 Distant Worlds 2
3:45 Wizards and Warlords I believe
4:25 Galactic Ruler I've had this and Star Ruler 2 wish listed for years nvr got around to trying them out
4:42 Deity Empires
4:51 Remnants of the Precursors, basically playable MoO 1
5:05 Warhammer 40k: Gladius
5:55 Rogue I believe I've nvr played this but have ADOM
6:55 Age of Wonders 4
8:20 Galactic Civilization 4 I believe last I played was 3
14:44 15:05 Songs of Conquest
16:50 UFO enemy unknown
19:00 Imperiums: Greek Wars
29:35 Master of Orion 2
29:50 Master of Orion
Started skimming through after 5 minutes so sry If I missed any
Thanks for this list! Much appreciated!
5:55 is actually Sil-Q, a First Age of Middle Earth themed game based on Angband
Target audience here. While a couple games can hold my attention to the end (namely Civ6 and Shadow Empire) my game library is otherwise littered with half played games because I can't find myself interested to go to the end. Love the advice and bonus point, I now know how to cook onions.
Haha! A friend of mine told me that about onions years ago, and it stuck with me forever. It's true as well, they caramelise so nicely.
Same as a good strategy game!
I also have a library full of unplayed/semi-played games. I've banned myself from buying any more now until I've played the ones I have.
Great video. I just finished a massive MP game of Shadow Empire and I applied many of these suggestions here without realising it. I'm normally a fast player but starting off with a 4 tile, no resource province surrounded by water I managed to beat my opponent on a mega continent with 30 cloning vats by engaging with the game systems and building and sticking with a coherent long term strategy that culminated in mass airdrops on logistics hubs and naval invasions on 4 silmultaneus fronts.
Your advice here is great and I think is actually something I really needed to hear to get out of my cynical gaming slump that I've fallen into through my mid 30's.
Great to hear that the info was relevant, and congratulations on your victory! I'm still slogging my way through my second MP game and there's no clear winner still.
Great video, thanks Ben. I’m a grazer, I spend more time buying stuff than playing stuff and it’s a habit I’m ashamed of. I can never seem to get started. This will help I think. Also, Sanxion! Yes, I’m an old git too 😊
If you do get around to trying these ideas, let me know how you get on. I'm keen to know if it's helpful for other people too.
As for Sanxion, I wasn't gonna put any music in but I thought since I'd referenced it later in the video I might as well start the video with that! It's an amazing piece of music, Rob Hubbard is an absolute genius, pretty much every track he did for the C64 SID chip was revolutionary in some way.
@@battlemode I will mate, just as soon as I overcome my other issue - deciding what to play next ;) Seriously though, you reminded me of the existence of the game manual. I swear I used to spend more time reading and re-reading these more than anything else when I was a kid. I think that's where I'll start. As for Rob Hubbard, I used to load up Flash Gordon on the old C64 just to listen to the music sometimes. Cheers!
Greating inmortal. Your wisdom helps greatly.
Hehe thanks! Much appreciated
Whoa! So cool to see Space Empires in the titles!
Nice vid.
Glad you enjoyed it!
In the past months and years, I've started to notice something very peculiar: I seem to get frustrated much quicker whenever I don't understand the details of a game mechanic than when I was much younger. For example, I recently came back to Hearts of Iron IV because I think it's actually a really good game and I wanted to spend more time with it. But I quickly realized I didn't remember all that well how much of the game worked, especially with all the new mechanics introduced over the years, and for some strange reason quickly got frustrated and ended up moving on to something else. (I know many of the games mentioned here are much more impenetrable than HOI4, but hopefully you can see where I'm coming from).
I experienced something very similar when Dominions 6 came out recently. I jumped into it, and because I didn't play all that much Dominions 5 (I played 3 the most), it had been quite a while since I played a game in the series. And because of that, I didn't immediate succeed at playing the game very well, and I again moved on. I've had this with other games as well, where sometimes strategy games don't always convey the right information effectively to the player, and that turns into a reason to stop playing for me because "how am I supposed to play this game if I don't understand x y z".
When I say "frustrated" I *THINK* what's happening is that I'm frustrated with myself for not being able to handle the game. It might be that because at this point I've been gaming for 25+ years, I sort of expect myself to be able to deal with any game that's thrown at me? When I was younger, I didn't have this feeling at all and played all kinds of games that I didn't really understand. Another element might be that I now just experience much more pressure to spend the time I'm in-game "effectively", since as an adult you perceive your game time much differently. It could be that I feel like time spent playing a game poorly or without understanding it well is a bad way to spend time? Especially when I have a bunch of other games I could be playing.
I'm not entirely sure where it's coming from but it has been blocking me from playing and/or enjoying a bunch of games that I really wanted to spend time with. It's very annoying and I'm not quite sure how to tackle it.
This is an interesting topic. I periodically experience something similar, and go for short periods of time where I just put gaming down for a bit completely. I've got some half-baked ideas on what my particular issue is but I'd hesitate to extend it out to the experiences other people have. But I do think we strive for novelty, even if we're not always conscious of that, and so we'll quickly get fed up of stuff we've seen before, even if it's changed, become more difficult or unfamiliar in some way.
If you're hoping to get into Dom6 etc, try some of the techniques I've described in this video and see if it helps. You don't need to be good at a game, so long as you're having fun learning it.
Great video. I'm so guilty of buying game after game in those damn sales and hopping from one to the other like a mental rabbit. I come from the Zx Spectrum days when money was a lot tighter and you maybe had 3 or 4 games you would play inside out. And manuals, beautiful Manuals read cover to cover. Right that's it I'm picking a game and playing it to completion. I might video it. Give me something to think about other than steam sales.
My forst computer was a ZX Specteum 48k and so I'm with you on that. Those were the good ol' days!
I think memory probably makes them better than they really were, but at least we learned how to enjoy our games properly
Thank-you so much for putting this video together! When it comes to buying games, I'm learning that it's best to only buy when you're going to be able to play it right away. The philosophy of your video takes that a step further by saying that not only should you try to play the game right away, but you should try to immerse yourself in it and press in toward mastery. I'm curious about a couple of things, though: 1) How do you keep up on 4x, strategy or general gaming news and not get caught up in buying the "latest and the greatest"? What has helped you to keep in the know, but not have to buy everything you set your eyes on? 2) Do you ever get bored with playing only one game at time (assuming you do that)? Do you do anything to mix things up and keep things fresh (i.e. play other genres, play multiple games at a time, etc.)?
1) Honestly, it's Rob at eXplorminate that is the one that keeps on top of all the latest 4X stuff, and so most of that news comes from him. Then I'm an active member of DasTactic's community and he also keeps on top of all the latest strategy gaming news.
I'm not that enthusiastic about most new games releases because experience tells me that only about 10% of them interest me, and aside from what's presented to me on Steam, or UA-cam, or that I get in the occasional offer from PR people, I just let others do the hard work of seeking all the new stuff out.
For the most part, I'm quite focused on the small set of games I really like now. Currently been getting back into the John Tiller/WDS stuff.
2) Yes, I can't play the same thing day in, day out. If I'm really into a particular campaign and I have the time, I might binge play (I put 9 hours straight into a GalCiv4: Supernova game last Sunday) but that is rare for me to do now. Trying to vary what I do in my spare time a touch more, and I spend as much time discussing games now as I do playing them.
And I do mix up genres yes: I play pretty much everything, but mostly focused on strategy games now. But I like all kinds of games really: I also play classic CRPGs (mostly 2D or the old blobber style), stuff like Resident Evil series, I've got a Switch and like classic Nintendo/Sega stuff, general retrogaming, sandbox games like the Mount & Blade series, the occasional city-builder as well as all the usual wargames/4X/tactics stuff I play.
Amazing advice for those becoming disillusioned with gaming as a whole. I remember i've played hundreds of hours in Medieval Total war 2, as a kid and later as an adult. Even MTW2 which is not a super complex game by any means can be a drag once you've made some serious progress. The funny thing is no amount of modding or changes in the gameplay/world/units would bring me the same amount of joy as when i was playing it as a kid and exploring it. And what changed that, is something really simple, i role played everything my faction leader was with his traits and all plus keeping a kind of storytelling notepad of what happened in the turns i played (which u do mention it as after action report). I can 100% tell you i can't remember none of my campaigns and i've played with every faction possible/challenge etc besides the one where i role played, took notes, got invested in characters/generals and even the agents. Hearing your advice in this video really reminded me of why we play video games in the first place.
Cheers for the video dude! Great stuff!
Hey thanks! It's really nice to hear other people's experiences.
This is gonna sound a bit trite, but one thing that was kind of drilled into me when I worked as a professional circus arts teacher/performer was that as adults, we've forgotten how to play. And play is important in so many ways I could barely have time to sit here and list them all, even if it's just cracking jokes with your friends. We can over-play of course, and I know people who've gotten in a mess there (myself included perhaps) but letting your imagination go wild is really healthy, providing you're doing all your adult stuff properly.
Video games are a great outlet for that fantasy-creating element of your psyche, and I think if you're just going through the motions when playing a game, you're missing out on some important downtime.
endless legend suprised me how good it was
Great video. Thanks for that!
Glad you enjoyed it, hopefully you'll find it useful!
Great video.
Many times I've chosen to play the biggest map because I'm afraid I'll never have time to play more than one playthrough and I want to experience the maximum amount of content, obviously that often becomes a slough.
We also are blessed with so many good strategy games these days that, depending on your free time, there could be an enormous backlog and the next iteration might even come out before you've even played the one you've bought.
I completely agree, we're oversaturated with amazing strategy games these days. I've started to narrow myself down to just a handful, one of the reasons I've not done much with eXplorminate as I'm not really able to keep up with all the latest stuff.
Hehehe... I was watching this randomly because I don't have the circumstances to play those long immersive games like I used to and suddenly BATTLEMODE is scrolling through an AAR I did as a way of making a point about immersion! Good times! Cheers you put a smile on my face and also great and wise video :)
Hey, sorry for the late reply, thanks very much! I'm glad you enjoyed the video and that it was useful!
I agree with all points but the letsplays, usually I ambiently watch those and sometimes get inspired to check out the game myself. Solid video.
Yeah I think that's the main point people are disagreeing with on this. I don't think you should avoid ALL Let's Plays and tutorials, just play the game a bit first to get a feel for it before you do, that's all!
@@battlemode oh absolutely and it's gonna be vastly different person to person based on who they watch. I think if you enjoy min-maxing or very high scaled content you're robbing yourself. Also it can be game to game, something like Rimworld or CC:DA where everything is kind of about letting a story unfold. All in all solid points to consider and very glad this hit the UA-cam algorithm as I've been enjoying your GalCiv videos! Thanks for the hard work and taking the time to respond
I was not ready to better my life and gaming habits after watching this. i will imideatly start playing rimworld right now, see you when i got 1000 hours (just got 64 right now)
Great video. Keep up this channel going. U are one of my favorites channels that i follow. Big shadow empire fan here as well.
Thanks Jerry I really appreciate that. Did you find the info here useful?
@@battlemode yes. I think what u saying in here is 100 percent true. People that want to fast forward should be playing eu4 or stellaris where real 4x players know u need to plan carefully every move. Very true in shadow. I have not played dominions yet looking for dom 6 i think at this point. Your thoughts on dominions wait or play 5 ? Currntly in my shadow empire playthru
@@JerryNorthwayNJ Err... I think if you missed Dom5 in the sale, I'd wait for Dominions 6 since that's what everybody's gonna be playing. Even if you never touch multiplayer you'll appreciate learning it alongside everybody else, and it is looking to be a huge improvement over Dom5
Really good points, ty for the vids!
Glad you enjoyed it! Hope it was helpful too
also - i think what would be a great modern addition to these kinds of games is ADVISORS. in the real world, a single executive can't possibly be in charge of every little detail. they need officers to run things. they need advisors to tell them when something is going wrong or that they need to pay attention to something. i think the complexity level of some of these games are beyond the scope of what a single person can actually make sense of. so i think having a robust DELEGATION system would be awesome. so that to an extent, i can GUIDE the outcome and INTERVENE at crucial points but that the details can actually be taken care of by ai systems and they can ping me when they need something.
this kind of running things at a higher level while also having the option to drill down and examine a squad or something if desired for some reason... that might be the best way to evolve these kinds of games into the future.
make it more realistic insofar as no one would actually have this amount of detailed information that they were responsible for.... more realistic in that it abstracts the data in a way a real leader would have it abstracted for them. with options to dig deeper for people who want to.
I love deep complex games but I've always struggled finishing them. I've found that the thing that helps me the most, more than anything tends to be roleplaying. This is especially true in like, Stellaris, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings ect. where the events that pop up, I choose based on what my character specifically would do. Even if that means it's a "Bad" choice. I've had play throughs in CK3 end suddenly because my king ended up being a tyrant and just getting stomped by rebels and other factions and it's been some of my most fun play throughs.
Another thing, similar to what you've mentioned in this video, is making a wiki. I remember there was a time in the Stellaris subreddit where everyone was making wiki pages dedicated to their empires, adding in all the fluff they could, following certain leaders, big battles with exact numbers of people dying. it was so fun and in the case of Stellaris, adds even more fluff and personlization.
Ah that's a really good idea, making a record of your playthrough. I think wargames do this with AARs but for other games I like your idea a lot
@@battlemode Do you have a recomendation for a deep game for someone to try and get into? I've been bouncing between Dominons 6 (after watching some of your gameplay) and Shadow Empire.
I'm looking for a game with those fun emergent moments and a community that shares a lot of them.
ehehe "taking notes" ive still my notepads (on paper of course !) of 30 years ago , while i was playing games like "battalion commander" " steel panthers" "operation flashpoint" and the first total wars...
Wow that's cool! I don't think I have any old gaming notes like that
@@battlemode it's funny but "getting older" (im 53) i've abandoned these strategic deep military games and i am more for "living adventures" in games like The Long Dark, RDR 2... and it's strange because one should assume the contrary ...
One last thing - I believe Stellaris made a rather successfull (from what I have heard) atempt of fixing the soulless leaders and admirals with their Galactic Paragon DLC. Haven't tried that though but maybe it is in a better shape than before. At least this part of the game.
Yes! Because I'm slow, that DLC was released between me recording and posting this video.
I did play it a bit, I didn't think it made that much difference to immersion really, was more of a mechanics thing, but I didn't play for long so I might be wrong there. Stellaris is generally an excellent immersion experience though so despite me calling that out, I don't think it affects the game too badly.
make a list, make a list, make a list i want to see these games
In the older Total War games was an encyclopedia with lore and stats it was fun to read all of it while playing the game. Now I'm playing Total War Warhammer 3 and I miss this feature, only lore I get from this game is through small descriptions.
Yeah I hear you, TW Warhammer added a lot of really cool stuff at the expense of losing some of the older games charm and tightness of game mechanics. I don't play Warhammer 3 so much now, I'm waiting for CA to fix the bugs up.
Thanks!
Hey thanks man, I really appreciate that ❤
While I'm glad this video came up in my recommended, I am currently in a hard crunch-phase of searching for simplicity, in video games and board games. I don't want to build the patience for long, complex games because at this point I don't feel they respect my time. I find massive-scale 4X to involve too much procedure and too few meaningful decisions; while that's occasionally comfortable, I want short, crunchy games that really test my faculties but are easy to jump back into for new games. As a working man I really don't care for 10-40 hour game times. Nexus 5X is aiming squarely at what I'm looking for, but on tabletop there's also General Orders: WW2, War Chest, and Air Land & Sea. I really appreciate some of those old adages: "An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity" or "Perfection is not achieved when there is nothing more to add, but nothing more to take away."
I try not to tell people whether or not what they're doing is right or wrong, I don't have any right to do that. One thing I have learned over the years is people play games for different reasons and want different things from the games they do play. There's no "one size fits all" approach to leisure
A couple of my own bits of advice that I want to add to this is: ignore big sales at times. I know that seems a bit of a silly piece of advice at first, like why would you ignore all those great deals on the latest Steam sale, right? But that's the thing: If you go and splurge in one of those, you're going to end up with like 25 games that each get barely played (and some wont get played at all, and will go onto The Backlog). Instead, pick something that you know will keep you coming back over and over. Take some time to do the research before choosing something. For the love of puppies, dont pick something up because the trailer was shiny. And really, this is how it used to be done, "back in the day". No Steam, no online vendors, you'd go to an actual physical store, and you'd have to slow down and choose carefully, because you were probably walking out that door with just one game. The fact that your collection couldnt bloat over the course of just a single sale is, I think, one of the many things that made those older games able to get players to stick to them. You couldnt just zoom onto the next shiny thing after doing the intro section of the previous one.
And really, if you think about it, this just makes more financial sense too. Those big sales might look like they'll save you a ton of money, but really in many cases they'll do the opposite. They heavily encourage splurge-spending, adding up quickly to a point beyond what you'd normally spend, while getting you lots of things you wont even touch. That one game you got for $30 that just keeps you coming back for 200 hours is going to be a lot more value than the 25 games you'll quickly forget (10 of which you didnt even play) that you got for $60 in the most recent big sale.
That's part of what really did it for me. I forced myself to slow down and stop the spending on things that would just add to the backlog. And I tend to just not care about the big Steam sales (including the one that's happening right now) as getting out of that habit got me to see what they ACTUALLY do.
Also, when you are buying something, read the reviews! Specifically, look for the longer, detailed reviews by players who have a lot of time in the game you're checking out. You can get a lot of extra details about the game you're looking at that could help you decide whether it's going to be truly worth it.
Second thing: Once you've gotten a handle on the game's mechanics (so you're not losing purely because you didnt understand something), stop reloading every bloody time something goes wrong. Like with Xcom and such... if you watch someone play who regularly gets frustrated and burned out on it, you'll find that they immediately reload the moment a single soldier gets killed. In a game that is 100% balanced around the fact that you WILL lose soldiers over the course of the playthrough. Even if you have a total team loss, so long as that doesnt trigger the overall campaign loss condition... keep going! You dont know how your story will end until you get there. And often, the most memorable playthroughs of any games are the ones where you are absolutely, totally certain you're going to lose... but somehow you win anyway. Not because you reloaded 10 billion times, but because you simply did not give up.
That's just my thoughts on it all though. Excellent video here, you made tons of great points in a way that is really easy to follow.
@@Amalga_Heart fantastic! I 100% agree with all of the above, and very well put.
Thanks for posting this. Got some good tips and will listen to it again to see what else sinks in. My issue has always been figuring out the mechanics. Not so much from not being able to understand it but I find I lose focus or don't know where to start. I end up just playing really casually without much thought to what I'm doing which in turn means I lose interest. Maybe another idea for a video is how to approach looking at the mechanics of a particular game. I'm always amazed at how people find complex interactions between the mechanics which I never do despite playing these games so long. Is there a systematic way to approach figuring out what units to use etc...?
How to approach learning a game is a different level of discussion for sure, and I think it's kind of getting into topics of cognition and meta-learning. I'm interested in that field but didn't get too far into it at university so I'd have to do a bit of digging if I were to do it justice.
On a less academic level, I reckon one way to approach it is to find someone else who is good at learning games inside out, and watch how they do it. Eliminating the fact we all think differently, we can at least observe how experts go about their business.
I tend to watch DasTactic, how is quite good at digging the details out of these games and was someone who inspired me to look at strategy games in much more detail.
@@battlemode Thanks for the response. I have watched Das Tactic. There's some good stuff there but it seems mostly focused on the specific game details where as I'm looking for more concepts. I've been playing 4x off an on since the late 80s so not a new comer. I just need some loose ends tied up. One day I need to sit down and figure this out before attempting to play to separate the process.
I always have issues because I have a busy life. I can’t just go home and play. Unfortunately
I hear you.
Let be straight about this: in the grand scheme of things, games are entertainment and we've all got more important stuff to do.
The main reason I made this video was that I hear this thing about "4X games are boring in the endgame" and wondered if that was really true, or whether it was something in the approach to the game that was the issue.
Jury is still out on that!
I think one problem that grand strategy games for me is the clean up phase. I enjoy the intense challenging battles that happens a lot during the early to mid game. Take Masters of Orion 2 for example: you can have intense wars going back and forth and then at some point you become stronger than everyone else. The game does a good job of making everyone start to feel threaten by you, but at some point it becomes just having to send fleets to take over world after world that can't really put up a fight.
Absolutely. I don't know how to address that issue: when a game is over for the player, then it's over. Designers have come up with all kinds of ways to speed that process along: double-win mechanics, scaling difficulty settings and so on.
I was aiming this more at keeping people engaged in their campaigns until whenever they are satisfied that they have won, and avoiding that pre-win attrition.
@@battlemode Some games have done this by not having to need total victory and have victory conditions or key locations.
Great video by the way.
Thank you!
Got you beat bro. I started gaming in 1980 with Microsoft's Adventure (text game) on IBM's first PC! Where does the time go?
You have!
It's funny, I only actually played Adventure for the first time about six years ago when I found it came pre-installed with Linux/Unix.
First text adventure I remember playing was "The Hobbit" on the ZX Spectrum. The game here is Twin Kingdom Valley, also on the ZX Spectrum 48k, and still a good game in my opinion! It had NPC characters that'd wander the map, pick items up and move them around randomly, so every game was different.
And yes, the time does indeed fly!
great subject matter for a vid. and although the advice might be helpful, it is, unfortunately not a magic potion that just "makes it happen". i really do wish manuals were physical like they were back in the day. for some reason, that really gives me a way to invest my attention even when away from the game. heh, sometimes i think i liked reading through the manuals more!
hey - idea for a vid - HOW TO PLAY CIVILIZATION!!!! i have NEVER won ANY scenario in civ! and it's always because i don't understand when i've already arrived at a point where i CAN'T POSSIBLY WIN! how do you avoid that? like most of the time, i get into a situation where even before half the game is over, i'm in a no-win situation but i have no idea that this is the case... and that actually makes me hate civ games. feels like just looooong wastes of time where i am destined to lose.
That is a really big problem in some games: losing before you have any idea that you've lost.
Which Civ game do you like best? I've only really played Civ4 recently enough to be able to talk about it, although I played Civ2 and 3 a lot too.
@@battlemode i've played pretty much all the civ games but i've probably played civ2 and civ3 the most.
It seems you put as much thought on this video as you do on your gameplay ones, BM, and thus there is plenty of food for thought here, especially for me personally, since I oftrn lose patience quickly because of how most 4X games are paced, haha.
Thanks! It's been something I've been mulling over for a few years now. The responses I've had in the comments have got me thinking further, so expect a follow up at some point.
some of these games look good ..
can some strategy expert provide us wtih the names and timestamp for these games ?
The issue has nothing to do with the player's mindset, and everything to do with how these games are designed.
Problem 1: Once the player starts winning, it becomes easier and easier to win. This a problem with the economies within these games. Players must spend resources to defend themselves, but are also encouraged to invest the resources they have into things that will improve their economy. Either by increasing resource production, reducing resource expenditures, increasing throughput, or creating securities against disaster.
All of which allows the player to defend themselves better, and also attack enemies and expand their territory. Which gives them access to more resources, that they can invest back into their economy, giving them more military capacity, to get more land and resources, and so on.
The result is a virtuous cycle, where growth and expansion encourages further growth and expansion. Which leaves the player less and less vulnerable, because they have more resources to spend on defending themselves, or on protecting their economy from shortages or damages. Which means the player has less and less reason to care about the decisions they're making, because their margin for error just keeps getting wider and wider.
The only thing that can really make them think is a rival actor with a similarly snowballing economy, who threatens to eclipse them. But if the player manages to gain an advantage over said rival, that advantage will just snowball into another victory.
Some games try to rein in player growth by including upkeep costs. So growth and expansion also increases expenses, as well as income. But this is rarely an issue for players, because most upkeep costs only increase linearly. While their income from economic growth usually increases exponentially. Allowing players to just outrun their upkeep costs forever, by continually growing and expanding.
Players don't play these games to their conclusions, because after a certain point their victory is assured. Everything after that is just busywork. There's no more tension, no more struggle.
Problem 2: Strategy games are obsessed with bottom-up command. That is, the idea that the player makes their base, their army, their faction, their great strategic machine do anything, by telling each individual component what to do.
Imagine trying to walk to the shops. If it was a strategy game, the player would have tell every individual muscle involved what to do. They would have to tell every muscle that needs to stretch, to stretch. They would have to tell every muscle that needs to contract, to contract. They would have to tell their lungs to breathe, and their intestines to digest that day's breakfast. And if something unexpected arose, the player would have to coordinate every muscle and organ to respond to the new situation.
The player would have to do all of that, instead of just deciding to walk to the shops, and having their body manage the nitty-gritty for them, subconsciously and automatically. That would be top-down command. Strategy games loathe giving the player any top-down control. The player has to serve as the decision-maker for every single agent under their command, directing every unit and building individually to achieve a gestalt objective. The army marches, because the player told every soldier to put one foot in front of the other. And the army stops, because the player told every soldier to stop swinging their legs.
And this is a problem, because as the number of agents under the player's command increases, the number of decisions the player has to make increases exponentially. They have to divide their attention more and more, and keep track of more and more information. It becomes harder and harder to play efficiently, or even just effectively. And harder and harder to focus on the big picture, when so much of their brainpower is devoted just to staying afloat. The player may know what they want every agent under their command to do, but the actual process of making it all happen becomes increasingly tedious.
Some games try to alleviate this, by offering automation features. But these are all based on bottom-up command as well. Instead of a player ordering a factory to build a certain number of tanks, the player can tell the factory to just produce tanks forever, and it will do just that. But the factory will never stop making tanks, if conditions change. The player will have to come back to the factory later, and tell it to stop. It hasn't solved the problem - it's just turned the factory into a faucet, that the player needs to remember to shut off when it becomes a problem.
Players don't play these games to their conclusions, because after a certain point the amount of mental labour isn't worth the reward.
Problem 3: Problems 1 & 2 feed into each other. As a player's economy grows they can afford to be more careless, because their safety net is also growing. At the same time, the amount of mental labour that efficient play demands is spiralling beyond what the player can supply. So the player is encouraged to play brainlessly, spamming out buildings and armies and burying their enemies in raw numbers.
But also, at a certain point it will become practically impossible for the player to lose. So the long march to complete victory will just be another hundred turns of mindless slogging, just to paint a map the right colour. It won't be interesting, or fun, or challenging or engaging. It will just be a waste of time, watching numbers go up.
And that's why players stop playing, mid-campaign. Because the most interesting, enjoyable, challenging and rewarding part of the game was the start. The part where they were struggling, where their decisions mattered the most, where the mental load was the least overwhelming. Unless the design of strategy games changes, players will keep behaving like this.
Interesting points well made, but you're wrong.
I made it quite clear this was not a single genre issue, but you've focused on a narrow band of genres and that is why your initial point that it's not about players is completely incorrect.
Problem 1 is certainly an issue with certain kinds of 4X-like strategy games. I don't think it's at all relevant to roguelikes, tactics games where you play consecutive, shorter maps with their own difficult curves, RPGs, sandbox games or anything else that requires an extension of attention without the same snowballing of resources.
Furthermore, modern 4X games like Shadow Empire have demonstrated you can make a 4X game engaging from start to finish without artificially trying to stop the snowballing issue. I'd direct you to that game as it holds the key to this fallacy that "4X games are fatally flawed" because it's just not true any more. I don't think it was ever really true, because the argument in Problem 1 assumes there's a determinable hard line where people stop playing, and that's a dubious claim since the people that make it tend not to back it up with evidence (and how could they provide it?)
Problem 2 falls foul of the "everybody I know must play like me" fallacy. Just because some people do not like managing large empires, others do. Worse still, this kind of thinking is reductive and it's what turns a great game like NetHack into a shit game like Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. Once we start "streamlining", it's tempting to keep going until your game plays itself (like Path of Achra to continue the roguelike analogy), and all human interaction with the game plays second fiddle to academic games designer fart-sniffing.
Sure, there's a sweet spot between manual control and abstraction to avoid "busy-work", but one man's busy-work is another man's immersion.
I try to advise people that what they have, right there right now, in front of them, is enough.
We don't need "streamlining", more abstraction or a different, less flawed genre, we just need to understand ourselves and how we approach these things from our own, individual, unique perspective.
By the same arguments, you can try to claim that your failings to create a beautiful oil painting are due to the outdated medium: oils are too hard to use, that they provide a steep learning curve with false summits that makes learning it difficult and why bother when acrylics dry 100x faster and look the same right?
When it comes to gamers, sometimes they've got a bad product, but other times they've just not really engaged with it in a way that it was intended to be engaged with.
The blame for this is mostly on the developer, but it's also partly on the player because there are a million and one reasons we don't give a title the time it deserves to be enjoyed as intended. I buy stuff and don't play it occasionally, and I can give you a dozen reasons for each, I'm sure.
And so, I think the right thing to do is for the developer to take this all as advisory, and we don't blame either them or the player.
Better to help people understand themselves right? That way they can learn to enjoy everything, not just video games. I think next time I should probably try to spell this message out a bit more clearly for those that thought it was talking about how to enjoy long video games.
@@battlemode We're talking about strategy games. All you covered in this video, was nothing but strategy games. The title of this video only concerns strategy games. Why are you bringing up roguelikes, RPGs, sandbox games, or anything else? Those aren't strategy games. And those games have their own loops, their own mechanics, their own appeal. Their own ways of keeping players engaged. We are talking about strategy games, and how their design affects the psychology of players.
Snowballing economies and overwhelming command complexity are the most frequently-cited reasons I've seen, why people don't play strategy game campaigns to their conclusions. I have seen people say this, over and over again, throughout 4X and Grand Strategy communities.
But even outside of people's anecdotal experience, it is well-known among game designers that strategy games get easier the longer a player plays, due to snowballing economies. Over a decade ago, Total War: Shogun 2 had its “Realm Divide” mechanic, which essentially made every other faction on the map declare war on the player, if the player grew too powerful. In an effort to keep the player struggling, even into the end-game. This kind of “end-game crisis” shows up a lot in modern games, but Shogun 2 is the earliest example that I'm personally aware of.
Meanwhile, Extra Credits (now Extra History) made a video on this exact topic, *7 years ago,* called "Strategic Uncertainty - Keeping Strategy Games Fresh". It outlines the exact problem of snowballing economies and lack of tension that I'm talking about, and discusses potential solutions. Developers have known about late-game snowballing, and the threat it poses to the play experience, for a very long time.
Even outside of strategy games, selling players on a mechanical challenge and then making it too easy, will bore them to tears. If a roguelike is too generous with good loot, players will find it boring. RPG players frequently get bored of combat when they have too many healing potions, or can do too much damage, or whatever, and can just faceroll through encounters. And in so many games, players stop paying attention when buying items in shops, because past a certain point they're loaded with cash and don't need to think about how much things cost any more.
In any game that bases its challenge on budgeting resources, overly-generous economies undermine player interest. Some genres, like RPGs, may have the benefit of other elements like writing and world design, to make up for easy gameplay. But strategy games are built on production, investment and budgeting. So a breakdown in the economic challenge is a breakdown of the entire game.
Also, based on some reading of Shadow Empire, I suspect it has implemented the exact solution that I would have suggested to fix the snowballing problem. Namely, making upkeep costs scale exponentially, too. So that growth and expansion offer diminishing returns, and the player's empire is always fragile and imperilled no matter how strong it becomes. Am I right?
As for Problem 2, in the video you trotted out a Sun Tzu quote. The one about how "management of many is the same as management of few. It is a matter of organization". But you clearly don't realise what that quote actually means. Sun Tzu is talking about breaking up an army into smaller units, and assigning subordinate officers to each one. He is talking about diffusing responsibilities and decision-making across a command hierarchy, *so that every officer has a manageable workload.*
Because that's the thing: in the real world, no commander behaves like a strategy game player. No commander micromanages every little thing that their subordinates are doing. Or if they do, they are generally regarded as a bad commander. A good commander tells their subordinates what to do, and then trusts them to carry out their orders without constant oversight. This is why commanders don't have to be galaxy-brain gigachads to do their jobs. They only have to think about military activity within a limited scope. The rest of the command chain handles everything else.
So in these games, why do we have to “command” from the bottom-up? You frame this as a balance between manual control and abstraction. You are mistaken. Because even games that abstract away a huge amount of detail, are STILL built on bottom-up command.
In so many “top-down” games, you can find the following scenario: the player decides to build something, like a factory, but they don't have enough resources to do so. They will get more resources in the future, thanks to their regular income. But they will have to wait until they have enough resources to actually give the order to build the factory. That means they will have to hold that decision in their head the whole time, and monitor the situation themselves, until they can finally act on it. That's bottom-up command.
Instead of, say, clicking the button to build a factory, and it getting pushed into a queue to be built as soon as the resources are available. That would be top-down command. The player made a decision, and communicated their intent to the game, so now the game will handle the matter on their behalf. Realistically, that would be like the player passing an order to an adjudant, who would monitor resource levels for them, and order the factory's construction as soon as it was possible.
You might think that's a trivial thing to complain about. A tiny commitment of brainpower. But a strategy game might have dozens, hundreds, thousands of these tiny commitments. Which add up to an overwhelming burden. Having systems to automate these matters would not make the game "play itself", any more than a commander can just tell their army to "win the war". Players would still have to pay attention to what's happening on the ground, what forces they have, what resources are available. All to ensure they're not issuing bad orders. So they're not ordering factories be built while everyone is starving, or ordering units to attack a position that they cannot capture.
It would push the game away from many small, trivial decisions, and towards big, important decisions. Instead of directing every soldier themselves, players would be expected to set up the systems to automate their armies. To assign objectives, priorities and doctrines to units, so they know what to do without being babysat. To arrange units into infrastructure, to serve other units. And then monitor that organisation, tweaking and adjusting as needs change. That would be far, far closer to what an actual commander does - what Sun Tzu says a commander ought to do. It would let players *actually feel like commanders.*
Nor would it mean “streamlining” these games. I am advocating for all the same complexity and granularity of simulation. But also giving players tools to efficiently manage that complexity. If anything, I'm advocating for strategy games to be MORE complex, not less. But complex in a way that serves the player, instead of drowning them.
Thanks for the video. In my opinion, it was largely psychologically scientific and highly debatable from a philosophical perspective.🙃
I would never recommend it though to those who can't live without CS:GO or Starcraft II.
👍
Never really considered the philosophy behind it, I probably should have done considering my background in the subject but then I was just trying to find a way to get people to stick to their campaigns rather than make a coherent philosophical argument.
Hopefully it was helpful to someone anyway, regardless of its lack of intellectual merit ;)
Excellent video! Thanks for doing this. Could you include a list of the games that you used for the screenshots?
I knew someone would ask this! I was hoping people in the comments section would try to figure it out but if there's any particular you are stuck with, hit me with a timestamp and I'll tell you
@@battlemode Fair enough! 🙂 How about 14:55?
@@battlemode Oh yeah, and 4:26?
@@darrelld8837 14:55 Songs of Conquest and the other is Galactic Ruler
great video! Please make a playlist for your meta-videos, as I'm honestly not as interested in Let's Plays but would love to see anything else you put out like this.
I'm going to do more videos like this when I get the chance. This one took a long time but I'm a professional video producer now so it's a lot easier for me to do!
Hey could you tell me what were those games at start
Bro please show us your steam library
@@ivanbro1208 haha why?
Have you left out information on the games to encourage people to listen to this as a podcast while sitting down with their favourite overly complex grand strategy? :D
Haha! Something like that ;)
I did put in chapter marks after DasTactic publicly shamed me
what is the game @4:26?
That is Galactic Ruler, from the Supreme Ruler devs. I've honestly not really had chance to play it yet, but it's on my "to-play" list. Initially I did not like it at all, but I'm starting to see how it might actually be quite good.
What are the games at 9:40 and 10:25 ?
Distant Worlds 2 and Galactic Ruler
In comlex games always start a game to fail
Simply to try it
Then
Read what you didnt understand
Reading manual before trying is wast of energy
I'd definitely recommend reading the manual early into playing, the sooner you do it the sooner you get the connection you want to finish games.
what game is shown at 0:33?
Underrail
Just curious, what text app do you use for taking notes during a game, as seen at 18:00?
SublimeText3, it's used for programming mostly but it's a good general notepad program too.
hey Stellaris has the "Leader Overhaul" that makes leaders more akin to having the importance, and connection to the player compared to their vanilla offering.. people might wanna give it a whirl, since it was a pretty important point you made about leaders or heroes in these types of games (why heroes of might and magic series is so great) in keeping a players interest. anyways thanks ggod vid, i reinstalled a bunch of games i had i forgotten i had lol will give em another shot like shadow empire
I bought the DLC and had a look, I didn't really think it fixed the issue I discuss in all honesty but I did think what it did mechanically was interesting for sure! I'm not a big fan of Stellaris in all honesty, I rarely play it now, but I get why it's popular and I do like the RPG side of it. I just don't really rate it as a great 4X game.
oooh i have that Shadow Empire game, is it any good ? of course i bounced off of it and then forgot about it lol
It's only the best 4X game of the last 20 years ;)
Give it another try: stick it on Beginner on a small map and go stomp the AI, have fun and figure it out a bit. If it still doesn't make sense afterwards, go watch DasTactic's tutorial series or the start of one of my Let's Play series for some tips.
Many games you showed look like games i would like to play, but i have no idea what they are called.. i wish there was some way to find out the names of all the games you used as content in your nice vid.. :(
The comment section can help you there! If there's anything you don't see, ask and I'll let you know what it is.
I'm really enjoying Galatic Civilization 4. I just start a new game every time i play while i slowly learn what im doing and trying different stradegies
Yeah it's a great game. I don't like many modern games released now but that's a really good series and GC4 is a big improvement over GC3
What game is shown at 14:55?
Songs of Conquest
What game is shown at ~3:59?
It's Conquest of Elysium 5 by Illwinter Games Design, one of my favourite games ever