Hangout Sept 3 – It’s Over!

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Sep 3, 2013

Filed under: Notices 39 comments

Hey everypeoples, Josh is going to play a whole mess of Rome 2: The Sequel to Rome. I’ll be there. Randy will be there. Josh will be there. The Romans will be there. It’ll be fun.

The stream is here. Let’s get the parley started!

UPDATE: Things were lively and fun for the first couple of hours while Josh was being griefed by horrible AI, bugs, and humorous scripting. But then he got a headache and we kinda ran out of steam. Thanks to everyone who showed up.

 


From The Archives:
 

39 thoughts on “Hangout Sept 3 – It’s Over!

  1. Sean says:

    Finally, something to distract me from work.

    Other than the latest Diecast, and Spoiler Warning episodes I haven’t watched yet.

  2. Merzendi says:

    The post is up before the stream? :O

    Looks like this is gonna be “organised.”

  3. Felblood says:

    I’m just posting this on my lunch break, to sound my impotent fury, over how this will be over before I get off work.

    Will there be an archived version for those of us who missed the show?

  4. Thomas says:

    It’s the start of the EU WCS :(

  5. Dovius says:

    Seeing as I’m currently knee-deep in school assignment that are maybe kind of due in 17 hours: Could someone else bug Josh about the Shogun 2 series for me? That’d be great.

  6. Tse says:

    I have a suggestion for a future hangout- modded DotA 2 from http://www.d2ware.net One of the possible mods is Legends of Dota, where you select the abilities you use from all the heroes. There are builds out there that can 1-shot the whole enemy team!
    Other possible mods include having random abilities, random lane paths, tower building, getting bigger the more you kill and a lot more.

    1. Randy Johnson says:

      I play d2ware all the time, but Josh refused to play any form of Dota 2 with me.

  7. Phrozenflame500 says:

    Great stream! Twitch chat was as kind and thoughtful as usual. Hope to catch you guys for longer next time.

  8. guy says:

    The part where the AI trolled Josh into sortieing and then hit him with a flank attack from cavalry, causing him to lose the tutorial a second time, was glorious.

  9. broken says:

    can we not do a total war game next hangout? I understand people liking to play it, but it’s pretty difficult to “read” what’s happening on-screen, and it doesn’t really allow for interesting chat about the game since nobody has a clue what is going on…

    1. hborrgg says:

      Now, to be fair I tried actually playing the game for a little while earlier today, and even then I could barely follow what was going on.

      1. 4th Dimension says:

        In battles I could follow basic flow of the battle (except in that multiplayer one in the forest where 3/4 of players used red flags) but what I couldn’t catch over stream is what units are used and how effective will they be.

        Also Josh’s efforts to speed everything up, and do five things at once frustrated my OCD. “You are attacking with hopites without phalanx! Why are you doing that.” Your lines are not neat enough!” “Stop for a turn and defend your lands!” and so on and on.

        As to no battle timer in sieges, that is BULSHIT. While I ussually played R:TW without it, it is essential in a siege if the AI will not attack. Because defenders should be perfectly fine with enemy not attacking while reinforcements are on the way.

        1. hborrgg says:

          Hoplites break out of their phalanx if you order them to attack.

          1. 4th Dimension says:

            o_0 but WHYYY!!!

            1. Josh says:

              It’s total bullshit.

              Having played a bit more, I’m surprised at how much more… “blobby” the combat feels compared to Shogun. Formations rarely stay together even when moving, and once an attack order is issued everyone just bullrushes towards the enemy line and the entire fight becomes a massive mob.

              This may have been the case for levies and other poorly trained forces, but for drilled and well trained Greek or Roman armies, acting in such a disorganized fashion was tantamount to suicide. Spearwall formations were the mode of combat of the day – especially after Alexander – and spearwalls only worked when soldiers stayed in formation.

              I can’t fathom why CA would make such a blunder of the combat system.

              1. Ben Hilton says:

                Yeah, it’s not like the Romans were known as one of the most well organized, trained, and disciplined armies of history or anything….oh….wait…

              2. 4th Dimension says:

                Ahh, so terible disorganisation was not your fault. I just thought you were in such a hurry to fight on multiple fronts and was not making sure your formations are straight.

                So it seems combat devolved from Rome:Total War, where we did have rigid manipulae and palanxes.

  10. Eldiran says:

    I didn’t participate in the chat, but it was an enjoyable hangout regardless. And now I know not to get Romes 2: Even Romer. Thanks guys!

  11. shoobadoo says:

    Hey, Shamus, do you know around when you started using the line “Failure isn’t allowed until it’s mandatory” (something like that), or was it from someone/where else?

    I recall hearing it in the Human Revolution season, in the Modern Warfare 3 episodes, and in other ones?

    (Also, it being a very apt phrase much of the time has made me wonder about its origin…)

    1. Shamus says:

      As far as I know, it’s just something I said. I don’t remember hearing it anywhere.

      1. Dave B. says:

        The first time I remember it was in the Modern Warfare videos, but that time I think it was Chris who said it. On the other hand, my memory is notoriously unreliable.

        1. Cuthalion says:

          I’m picturing Shamus saying that.
          And I’m picturing Chris saying that.

          With Shamus, it sounds snarky; with Chris, it sounds profound. I think they complement each other nicely this way. So, here’s what we need to do. We just need to have Shamus and Chris both read each other’s stuff, and it’ll end up meaning twice as many things!

          Or something.

          1. morpork says:

            +1 would watch!

      2. Halceon says:

        I feel like this came from one of the Experienced Points columns, but I really can’t recall which one, if any really.

    2. Volfram says:

      That is being added to my quotes archive.

      Attribution to Shamus.

    3. Torsten says:

      I believe it now is the family motto of Cuftberths House of No Mercenaries

  12. Phantos says:

    Aww, this was today?

    Poop. Guess I was still in “August Mode” and forgot the date.

  13. Volfram says:

    Guess I didn’t miss much. I left right as the intermission ended, right after a couple of people made some abusive political statements that offended me rather deeply, and then denied doing anything objectionable. It kind of killed my ability to enjoy the SW crew’s antics.

    I’ll try and make the next hang-out.

    1. Tse says:

      I’m sorry to say I was one of them. I did apologize for making the political joke about Bulgarian polititians being like a single American one, whom I called incompetent. It was the one improper thing I said and again, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have followed in the wake of the original troll.
      Part of the reason is me being really frustrated at the way my country is run, but that’s no excuse. I will not do political jokes on anything related to this site again.

      1. Volfram says:

        Apology accepted. I probably either left before you did, or I was too shaken to notice it at the time.

        Being of a particular US Political party on the internet is a little bit like walking around with a “Kick Me!” sign on your back and a second one on your chest. Unless the place you’re at specifically caters to your political views, pretty much everyone automatically considers you(or people you respect) an acceptable target for abuse. It’s one of the reasons I REALLY appreciate that Shamus doesn’t allow politics on his site.

        And with that, I have probably said too much.

  14. Wulfgar says:

    seriously, every time there is new total war game i say to myself: surly this time they made AI acceptable. every time i am wrong. i bet that their solution to “harder” AI is buffing their stats not changing way in which computer behaves (again).

  15. Daemian Lucifer says:

    So,did you guys record the thing?

  16. krellen says:

    Hey Shamus, if it’s worth any make-up points, I was playing Descent when it first came out, and ended up being the third-best player (and best keyboard-only player) on campus.

    1. Shamus says:

      Took me a minute to remember why we would need “make-up points” until I remembered the “closet Hitler” joke from yesterday. (Also, sorry if that went too dark. It’s hard to modulate your comedic absurdist hyperbole in realtime.)

      All the respect for mastering Descent in KB-only.

      1. krellen says:

        It’s all good. You should have heard some of the jokes made with my former coworkers (very diverse workplace; I was the only white guy).

  17. Galad says:

    Huh..while looking for the L4D video from last night which I missed, I find a Slenderman video from 3 days ago? Was that announced anywhere? And what’s the link to the L4D video?

    Thanks for the stream, guys :)

    1. krellen says:

      We couldn’t get L4D to stream properly. Randy’s game kept crashing.

  18. ChoppazAndDakka says:

    Rather sad I missed it. I got on when Jarenth left and the stream was laggy for me. And once I got that sorted, Josh immediately called a break, and by the time they came back I was off to work. Oh well, always next time.

  19. That tutorial was… kind of amazing to watch. I am never touching that thing, if and when I play the game.

    Too bad Josh didn’t go for the bonnet people in MP.

Thanks for joining the discussion. Be nice, don't post angry, and enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be fun. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*

You can enclose spoilers in <strike> tags like so:
<strike>Darth Vader is Luke's father!</strike>

You can make things italics like this:
Can you imagine having Darth Vader as your <i>father</i>?

You can make things bold like this:
I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

You can make links like this:
I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

You can quote someone like this:
Darth Vader said <blockquote>Luke, I am your father.</blockquote>

Leave a Reply to krellen Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.