Twilight Struggle: An AAR – Part 3
How’s the new digital Twilight Struggle play? ~
Michael Eckenfels, 19 April 2016
PART 3
TURN ONE, ROUND 2: USSR GOES FIRST
04/19/16
Author: Michael Eckenfels
04/18/16
Twilight Struggle: An AAR – Part 2
How’s the new digital Twilight Struggle play? ~
Michael Eckenfels, 18 April 2016
PART 2
TURN 1: HEADLINE PHASE
In the last article, I described the basics to Twilight Struggle to pave the way for anyone that’s not heard of the game (which is probably only two of you). Here, my possibly disastrous game of TW begins officially.
04/17/16
Twilight Struggle: An AAR – Part 1
How’s the new digital Twilight Struggle play? ~
Michael Eckenfels, 17 April 2016
Everything You Wanted To Know About Letting Godless Communists Overrun The World (But Were Afraid To Ask): A First Look/AAR on Twilight Struggle (GMT) on Steam
Twilight Struggle is a highly-rated board game by GMT that came out way back in 2005 (in fact, I reviewed it back in the day, somewhere else). It is an immensely popular one, too; BGG has it as the number one, number two, and number three game among war games, board games, and strategy games, respectively, on their site. It’s been a LONG while since I’ve played it, though we did try our hand in the forums a year or so ago (I think the links have long since been closed down, though). It took a while for things to come back to me, and I don’t think they fully did.
So, when this Steam version of Twilight Struggle was released, the first thing I checked was to see if there was an AI component to it (there is). Of course, the quickest way to learn a game is to get your butt handed to you by a pro at the game, but I figured it would be better to not try to be quite so awful when playing a live person, by trying out the AI, which was sure to be a min/maxing devil.
10/8/15
Birth of the Federation, an AAR, Part 16
CHAPTER XVI: MAKING FRIENDS AND INFLUENCING ALIENS
Well, I offered a Friendship Treaty to both the Edo and the Xindi. I didn’t expect the Xindi to offer me their own Friendship Treaty, which I accept heartily. I can now establish trade routes with them, and make even more money! Woo-hoo!
The Edo, unsurprisingly, rejected my Friendship Treaty. It’s going to take a little while before they’ll warm up. Usually, bribing a minor alien race is best done when you put about five turns between bribes, to ensure their effectiveness. So it’ll be about 20 turns or so before they warm up. Meanwhile, the bug-faces find themselves inundated by human trade ships, in something very akin to a California Gold Rush, or the Great Beanie Baby Scam of 1995.
09/17/15
Birth of the Federation, an AAR, Part 15
CHAPTER XV: CONTACT! (FINALLY!)
A breakthrough in Construction! Phase Transition Bonding. Whatever that is. Oh wait, let’s read the description:
“Phase transition bonding merges two pieces of material by temporarily changing the phase of one item., When the phase distortion is reversed, the two pieces are inextricably merged, and the density of their intersecting volume is doubled.”
This allows for both Industrial Replicators and Type 4 Mass Replicators. Upgrading to newer versions of Mass Replicators can be a very expensive proposition. Well, expensive, in that it takes for-freakin’-ever to do it. This is why having a good, solid agricultural base is so important: you can drag people off of their farms, sometimes kicking and screaming, to working in a factory somewhere. Ah, the choices of an autocracy.