BeRzErKeR's Let's Play Megathread

[BeRzErKeR]

Hello, all you lovely people!

As you probably don't know, because I haven't been around for a while and you don't know me from a hole in the ground, I love to play PC games - especially kinda weird PC strategy games. As you especially don't know, I recently got my hands on some decent audio equipment and usable video software and began the long and painful process of learning how to use both of those things, and so I started a Youtube channel! My name on Youtube is GeneralConfusion, both because that's my usual state of existence and because it makes a vaguely-clever military pun. And really, what else could a man want in life?

So here, in this thread, I'll be posting my videos from said Youtube channel, for your collective edification or enjoyment or possibly something else beginning with the letter E, I don't know, I don't control you. Here at the OP I'll just link the playlists, since I already have a bunch of videos up, but in future posts I'll link direct to new videos as they go up.

Hope you enjoy!

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Playlists
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - This is literally one of my favorite games of all time. It's Sci-fi Civilization, but it goes far beyond what the Civ games themselves have done in many areas. It's deep, it's complex, it has a really cool society engineering system, there's a fascinating story you can piece together out of tech quotes and database entries, it features alien worms that eat brains and radical environmentalists with psychic powers and that's just the beginning. By the end of this game you'll be flying airships armed with GBEs and shields of solid time across a planet literally boiling with incoherent alien rage while dropping nukes powered by artificial black holes on your enemy as you prepare to ascend to godhood, and somehow it all remains believable and immersive - and a hell of a lot of fun.

Ultimate General: Civil War - The team that are making this game are headed by a long-time veteran Total War modder, Darth Vader, who retired from modding a few years back and was snapped up for actual real-life game development pretty quickly - which isn't surprising, given how quality his modding work was. He's turned out a very cool, easy-to-play, yet surprisingly deep strategy game based around the Civil War, thus combining two things I love - murdering pixel mans and non-modern military history - in one highly attractive package.

Missionforce: Cyberstorm - This game is the shit. I mean, I don't love it quite as much as SMAC, but it's a complex-yet-intuitive hex-based mech wargame in computer form, complete with individually-destructible components and an interesting, sinister cyberpunkesque backstory that you can still totally ignore if you just want to shoot some giant robots in the face with the cannons of other, gianter robots. The mechanics are solid, the weapons are cool, the music is eerie (if a bit too loud sometimes), the missions, enemies, and terrain types have enough variety to stave off boredom without blatantly padding the game, and the difficulty curves between 'cakewalk' and 'OH GOD MY EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE' in a way that is both believable and entertaining. It's also set in the Earthsiege/Starsiege/Tribes universe, for anyone who's familiar with those games, although frankly it doesn't share a huge amount with any of them.

 

[BeRzErKeR]

Part two of Cyberstorm is up!

Spoiler: Video Embed

Featured in this video; actual editing! By which I mean I did two cuts to remove boring little bits where I was just mining, but hey, that's more cuts than I've ever made before! Also featured; me completely blanking on a name for an Ogre-class HERCs (Oni, Bluebeard, Grendel, I thought of TONS basically as soon as I finished recording) and the first mission in which I was actually outnumbered. Don't worry, the combat will get pleeeeenty harder later on - the first Elite mission, especially, has a reputation among Cyberstorm players for being just an unreasonable difficulty spike, and I've been wiped out playing it before.

 

[BeRzErKeR]

Alpha Centauri part 4 is up!

Spoiler: video embed

Lots of terraforming in this one - not the absolute most efficient possible, but pretty reasonable - but the biggest change here is the discovery of Doctrine: Flexibility, which finally allows us to expand off our little island. Now we can build sea bases and transport ships, which will allow us to take colony pods across the water and colonize somewhere else. . . or take military units over and take over somebody else's stuff.

Water bases, as I talk about in the video, are super-useful for generating energy in the early and mid game. The high nutrient content of farmed Ocean Shelf squares means you can either have every worker generating 3N/2E and max out your population pretty quickly with good energy production, or max out and then have a third of your population set to specialist work making even MORE energy. The downside of water bases is the lack of minerals, which makes building base facilities in them quite difficult and energy-expensive. Late-game, they also fall behind in energy production because they can't have boreholes unless there's land in range, meaning they never get 7 or 8 energy from a single square. But still, they're definitely handy to have, both for the energy production early on and for use later in the game as airbases and repair points for ships.

 

[BeRzErKeR]

This battle didn't look like it was going to be tough, but it ended up being kind of tough.

Spoiler: Video Embed

Those Union assaults? A little harder to hold off than one might think, at least when they outnumber you two and a half to one and can afford to concentrate most of their forces on one point. I did it - even managed to get 'em flanked by the end - mostly thanks to my artillery laying down some truly devastating canister shot, but I took a lot of casualties among my veterans in the process.

I do have to say, the choice to have no friendly fire in Ultimate General is an interesting one. I'm not sure that I dislike it exactly, because in a way it actually combines with the other abstracted mechanics to make end results more historical-seeming rather than less, but on the face it does definitely jar my suspension of disbelief a little to see great cone-shaped blasts of shot flying out of my cannons right into a frantic melee and yet not blowing away any of my own men. From a game design perspective, though, probably a good decision; certainly it simplifies the micromanagement of artillery, which is a good thing.

 

[BeRzErKeR]

Alpha Centauri part 5 is up!

Spoiler: Video Embed

In this episode we did a bunch of exploring and founded a couple new bases, but the most important thing that happened was the discovery of three of the very important early/midgame techs; Ecological Engineering, Centauri Empathy, and Planetary Networks. That unlocks mineral totals, allowing us to completely abandon the whole 'environmentalist' thing in favor of spamming Thermal Boreholes all over the place (Deirdre would absolutely murder me if she saw this), lets us build Probe Teams for spy-type shenanigans, and lets us switch to Green economics for a delicious 75% mind worm capture chance.

 

[BeRzErKeR]

Two big firsts in this one.

Spoiler: Video Embed

First, we got our first Demon-class! These are the big guns, the HERCs that can actually engage medium and large targets individually and inflict damage - though of course they're still more effective working as a team. They're also the first HERCs big and tough enough to have a decent chance or surviving losing their shields, at least if the enemy isn't too concentrated on them.

Second, and much more sadly, we had our first death. Poor Xian, we hardly knew ye. But hey, at least it was a clean kill and his HERC survived, that saved us a lot of money! Does that sound callous? It is. Cyberstorm is that kind of game.

 

[BeRzErKeR]

Spoiler: Video Embed

Wow, I was not expecting to be flanked like that in Port Republic. Three artillery batteries with plenty of supporting infantry out of nowhere; that took me by surprise and cost me quite a few casualties.

Gaines Mill, on the other hand, is starting out pretty much exactly like I expected, flanking maneuver and all. With the elite 1st Division in their rear, I don't think the General Porter's troops can hold out until nightfall like they did historically. . .

Also, I made a big history goof in this video; Jackson's late arrival happened in this battle, Gaines Mill, not at Malvern Hill like I said. My bad!

 

[BeRzErKeR]

Two videos today; I wanted to step up to six per week for the main three series, to ensure that all three got at least a couple videos per week. Today's are Part 6 of SMAC and Part 4 of Missionforce: Cyberstorm, and there's some real action going on in both series!

In SMAC, we've launched our first war, discovered some major military technology, and swapped around until we could buy a couple of other people's maps at a reasonable price, so now we have a much better idea of what's going on in the world around us - and the mindworms are coming for the University, slowly but surely. In Cyberstorm, we got promoted, upgraded a bunch of stuff, talked about new tech, and then launched a full-on assault on a Cybrid base!

 

[BeRzErKeR]

So I've decided to start doing something a little different.

Weekdays, I'll be updating my ongoing long-term Let's Plays as per usual; on weekends, though, Saturday or Sunday or possibly both, I'm going to put up one-shot videos on games - indie games, smaller games, or just games that I have around - that I like but don't think would support a full series for whatever reason; too short, too random, etc. I won't be too picky about using strategy games for this, either; just anything I enjoy, and think you all might enjoy seeing!

This week marks the inauguration of these one-shots with CTHON, an in-development roguelike FPS by new developer Gravity Games. CTHON is, at this point, basically Wolfenstein 3D-lite but with a better control setup, permadeath, and an interesting little strategic tweak in the form of the inventory and upgrade system. Basically you have a limited number of inventory slots (increased via pickups) which can hold different upgrades (also pickups), and a limited amount of energy (increased through, you guessed it, finding pickups) that you can use to turn those upgrades on, meaning that you frequently have to choose which upgrades you want to keep or ditch AND which of those you have available you want to turn on in a given situation.

It's a cool little system for a cool little game! This video doesn't get too deep into it, since it's a little under twenty minutes and I only made it through level 1 of 9, but I can see real promise here. At the moment it seems a little limited in enemy and pickup variety, but I anticipate that will get better as the game progresses along its development cycle.

CTHON is on Greenlight right now, and can also be bought on itch.io for five bucks.

 

[BeRzErKeR]

A question for anyone interested;

I am looking ahead to what games I'll LP after I'm finished with the current rotation. Not sure which of my current ones will finish first, but I'm planning to cut down to two at a time - having three running at once just means all three move too slowly.

So I'm looking for recommendations for strategy games! I tend to prefer older games, but I'm not averse to new ones except on terms of price; my disposable income for new games is fairly low. Games I am already considering include;

- Battlezone 98 Redux, including The Red Odyssey
- AoE 2 HD
- Sid Meier's Colonization
- Ground Control and expansion
- Age of Wonders
- Eador Genesis
- Medieval 2 Total War, or some mod thereof.
- Master of Orion 2
- The Last Federation
- Battle Brothers

Are there any of those games that you would particularly like to see? Or what other games in a similar genre would you recommend for a video Let's Play?

 

[Hykal94]

Medieval 2 plz. Preferably one you're knowledgeable about. It's a surprise that not many LPers go the MATN route of making Total War vids.

 

[BeRzErKeR]

Medieval 2 plz. Preferably one you're knowledgeable about. It's a surprise that not many LPers go the MATN route of making Total War vids.

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure what MATN stands for, but sure! I definitely won't try to make videos on something blind, that way disaster lies.

 

[Hykal94]

I'm not sure what MATN stands for, but sure! I definitely won't try to make videos on something blind, that way disaster lies.

Click to shrink...

Many A True Nerd. His videos on Rome 1 prove to be one of his more successful on his channel. If you can emulate his editing, I say you get a winning formula on your hands.

 

[Happerry]

In order for what I hope to see...

1. Eador Genesis <- Because I love this game but have never managed to finish a campaign for one reason or another, and I'd love to see someone else play it. It's not given enough love.
2. Battlezone 98 Redux <- Because I love this game but playing it makes me carsick, so it'd be nice to actually see the storyline.
3. Ground Control <- Because I've always wanted to know what all the hype about it is about.

 

[BeRzErKeR]

Well, I just double-checked the thread and whoops, I missed a couple!

First there's Ultimate General: Civil War Part 12 - Gaines Mill Concluded, where our flanking maneuver paid off big-time and successfully levered the whole Union army right out of its entrenchments, allowing us to mop the battle up very succesfully.

And then there's today's video, SMAC Part 7 - Every Day I'm Resource Crawlin', where we got our hands on the crucial Industrial Automation technology and promptly began replacing several key workers with robots, allowing us to shoot our productivity through the roof and letting me go yammering on about the terraforming system yet again. My favorite!

 

[BeRzErKeR]

In part 5 of our Missionforce: Cyberstorm playthrough, we met the biggest badass in the Cybrid bunch; the Nihilus! It's big, it's ugly, it has approximately a million guns, and it is guaranteed to completely mess up your day unless you happen to be riding a Demon - as demonstrated by the fact that, once our last Ogre's shields went down, a single Nihilus more or less ate it whole.

On the plus side, though, like our own heavy HERCs it's a slow beasty, and it tends to mount relatively short-ranged weaponry, so lasers and EMP Beamers can pick the shields off it from 12 or 13 hexes in relative safety.

 

[BeRzErKeR]

Ok, so this part is a bit different from the previous ones.

Mainly because in this one, I chickened out.

Malvern Hill, historically, was not a winnable battle - like, at all. The Confederate army spent the entire length of the fight throwing themselves futilely at a well-established, prepared, dug-in Union gun line, accomplishing basically nothing except to pile up corpses. I'm sure that's not entirely true in the game. . . but it's pretty close. My read on the situation was that I could, potentially, have taken the first layer of defenses and secured North Malvern Hill, thus winning a draw, if I was willing to accept extremely high casualties - but to be honest I wasn't even entirely sure of that. The Union defensive line was extremely solid, backed by masses of artillery, and had plenty of units free to extend and refuse their flanks in response to any attempt to get around them. My assessment of the situation, therefore, was that it just wasn't worth trying to win; I would lose so many troops that, even if I won, I would be worse off than if I just retreated and took the loss.

Which is, honestly, something I really like about this game! Historically, retreating is exactly what the Confederates should have done - Malvern Hill, like Gettysburg later on, is a clear example of Robert E Lee's aggressive disposition overwhelming his tactical good sense, and the battle honestly should never have been fought. The fact that retreating from this battle is not only viable but arguably the wiser decision (at least if you're not very, very good at the game) is a mark in UG:CW's favor in my book.

 

[BeRzErKeR]

In this part of our SMAC playthrough we learn exactly what war is good for; conquering other people's bases and stealing all their resources for your own use. Imperialism, ho!

Also, and possibly more importantly, we unlocked the last of the resource restrictions by discovering Environmental Economics, thus kicking our energy production into high gear. At this point, all the limiters are off; the only thing restraining the productivity of our bases is population and former-turns now. We can also build Tree Farms, which are a super useful building and also very much in-character for Deirdre to spam everywhere; they increase economy, they increase psych, they make forests even more useful, and they also make Planet less mad about all your terraforming shenanigans. I intend to have one in pretty much every base.

 

[BeRzErKeR]

In Part 6 of our Missionforce: Cyberstorm playthrough, we fought a couple of pretty hotly-contested missions - but no casualties this time. As our force grows in power and number of Demons, the Cybrids are starting to fall behind; their technology isn't keeping up with ours in terms of killing power. Maybe that elite military mission will be easy and painless?

(Spoiler: It won't.)

And in Part 14 of Ultimate General: Civil War, we somewhat redeemed the ignominious retreat from Malvern Hill by defeating the damnyankees at Cedar Mountain. Like Gaines Mill, this was a battle won by maneuver; by threatening the Union flank from a position of relative strength, we managed to draw them out of their defenses, flank their line deeply, and force them to retreat away from the objective despite relatively light casualties. Well, not light casualties by historical standards, but certainly light by Ultimate General standards.

 

[BeRzErKeR]

In Part 9 of our SMAC playthrough, the Gaians continue their rampage across Planet by declaring war on the Morganites! Or, well, they would have, but the Morganites declared war first - which was frankly a very silly thing to do, considering that the Morganites have no weapons more advanced than lasers! Occasionally the SMAC AI will do such ridiculous things, especially if you have chosen social engineering choices that they hate; I consider this representative more of irreconcilable philosophical differences causing a total breakdown in relations than an actual face-to-face declaration of war for no apparent reason.

More interestingly, in this one we got our hands on Pre-Sentient Algorithms, a technology that's both terribly useful in-game and fascinating outside of it. Apparently, this development represents the creation of programs capable of learning on their own in a human-like manner, though not quite yet self-aware; of course, this being Planet and we being at war, the technology is immediately turned to make self-directed, aggressive security systems. In-game, that allows the construction of the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm, which makes us absolutely immune to probe teams; it also turns us down the road of AI-driven systems of control that will eventually lead to such dystopian endpoints as the Self-Aware Colony.

 

[BeRzErKeR]

Hoo boy. This episode was a tough one to make. All in all I was recording for about an hour and a half, and this video marks my first attempts at more significant video editing - so apologies if it's choppy.

Basically, the first Cybrid CC is the toughest mission in Cyberstorm, by far - and overall I think the difficulty is a good thing, but it does make it somewhat frustrating to play through. The problem is that, as I knew back when and forgot in the intervening years, your usual tactics just don't work against the Cybrids here; you have to play this mission completely differently from any mission before or, honestly, afterwards, just because you're faced with multiple problems that have to be solved in different ways. There are three main forces to deal with here;

1. The Verminus. They spawn two at a time, every turn, forever, until you destroy the Construction Node. Their dual ELFs are capable of doing significant damage through shields, they move fast enough to get around behind you if not killed the same turn you see them, and if they get behind a HERC and self-destruct they've got about even odds of either killing it outright or doing massive, possibly irreparable damage. They're weak enough to be killed with even light weapons, fortunately, but they do have shields of about 75 strength on all facings - and all they have to do is survive one round of fire to completely mess up your day.

2. The turrets. The v3 turrets on this mission are armed with weapons of a technology level higher than you are allowed to use; pulse lasers, which do huge shield damage at long range with high accuracy. The Heavy Turrets, in particular, mount what I believe to be SP-1200s, the largest and most powerful pulse laser. That means that the standard turrets are excellent at punching through heavy shields - and they're backed up by heavy mobile Cybrids with large cannon and missile batteries, more or less ensuring that any HERC that loses shielding near the base is dead.

3. The mobile defense node. The base has a large gang of Cybrids in it, including at least one Nihilus, a couple of Hades, and several Genocites, which move around to oppose you; they're supposed to come out and attack, but sometimes they decide to just hang out at base and back up the turrets for a while. It's a heavy force, one that's something of a challenging fight on its own, and with the turrets and Verminus in support it's nigh-impossible to deal with.

So these multiple layers of opposition sort of put the player in a catch-22 situation. If you advance, you end up having to fight all three simultaneously; but if you hang back to try and draw the mobile units out, the Verminus will slowly whittle down your HERCs and ammunition stocks, and there's no guarantee that the mobile defense node will advance quickly.

Back when, as I said, I could go through this mission without losing a single HERC, but I've gotten rusty in the intervening years! Time to back off, reset, and try a few more times. . .

 

[BeRzErKeR]

This episode marks the last bit of run-up before we hit Second Bull Run, the next major battle in the game - and this one is interesting, mostly because it marks a decided shift in battle design! In this battle I use none of my own forces - I'm not even allowed to deploy anything! The only troops I can control are those of General Isaac R. Trimble's brigade and General Early's division. I like that design decision here; as I say in the video, it allows the scenario designers to exercise a bit more control over the scenario, because they know exactly which forces will be involved. It is interesting to me, though, that the design team chose to place Early in charge of the reinforcements; historically it was A. P. Hill and William Taliaferro who reinforced Trimble after he took the Junction.

In any case, this is a fun little scenario with lots of maneuver and some tight back-and-forth; there's little cover in the center of the map except the depots themselves, so victory is very much dependent on flanking and setting up effective infantry lines with interlocking fields of fire. I was very amused to see the way, by the end of the match, the lines had completely swung around so that I was now in control of the Union positions and they were over where I had entered the map!

 

[Happerry]

So was catching up with the Alpha Centauri videos and noticed that Video Nine was a private video of which I can not actually watch. I'm assuming this is an error?

 

[BeRzErKeR]

So was catching up with the Alpha Centauri videos and noticed that Video Nine was a private video of which I can not actually watch. I'm assuming this is an error?

Click to shrink...

It definitely is! Sorry, that's fixed now.

 

[BeRzErKeR]

In this part, we go to space!

Or, well, rather, we research the technology that allows one to go to space, Orbital Spaceflight. Orbital Spaceflight is useful for two reasons, besides obviously being a stepping stone to Advanced Spaceflight; it unlocks the first satellite, the Sky Hydroponics Lab, and it unlocks missiles and Planet Busters, aka nuclear ICBMs. Of those factors, despite how sweet nukes sound for a game about conquest, the satellites are actually more important. I go into more detail in the game, but suffice it to say that satellites generate free resources out of nothingness empire-wide and so are always worth building, no matter what. In fact, it's generally worth adding Aerospace Complexes to pretty much every base you own once you have satellites, because that doubles the benefit from satellites! In addition, and this I didn't mention, minerals gathered from Nessus Mining Stations (which we will get in the future) do not antagonize Planet the way minerals mined from the surface do, so NMS are a decent way to keep up production while also remaining relatively Planet-friendly.

Also in this part - we completed the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm and Morgan attempted to surrender but was rejected, because we hadn't quite stolen enough stuff from him. He won't make that mistake again, but it hardly matters because with the HSA active his probe teams are useless against us, and his military force is far too anemic to hold us off.