Tag Archives: 4X
Tracer Rounds: Attack of the Killer Poetry
What do you do with a backlog of reviews? ~
Brant, 04 April 2016
We get all kinds of games sent to us, along with the ones we pick up one our own. Some good, some bad, some gorgeous, some not so much. We try – we really do try – to get to all of them for review purposes, but it doesn’t always happen. There’s a reason I’ve got a weekly blurb here called “What I’m doing this week when I should be playing games”. Moreover, when I play a game for review, I want to play it multiple times to ensure that the review I’m writing is accurate based on how the game is balanced, and how it plays over time – especially if replayability is one of the key factors we want to discuss.
Among the reasons I’ve made it a point to start republishing a bunch of the ‘classic reviews’ are that I don’t want my reviews to be dependent on someone else’s site continuing to exist, as well as wanting folks to be able to find opinions on older games that they may want to take for a spin. Additionally, many of those older reviews (some of which I’m going to get to soon) were longer borderline-investigative-journalism pieces that really dug into the games through repeated plays. That was a lot easier when I was in grad school. Working 3 different teaching jobs, plus being the editorial director here, makes all that a lot tougher.
So, this episode of Tracer Rounds is designed to catch up on those reviews – with a twist.
Civ5 AAR: Empires of the Smoky Skies, Part IIII
War and peace and smoky skies ~
By Brant Guillory, GrogDude
Click images to enlarge
Last session, the war against Pulias to our north came and went. And oh yeah, I’ve got spies that I needed to send.
Freakin’ Canadians
I guess I’m not building a road in that direction. And why the heck do we have archers in a steampunk scenario?
Not just any engineer, a great engineer!
Yeah, it’s not any funnier when we move it out of Africa.
Polaris Sector – First Mission, part 6
A visual AAR, from Sauron ~
click images to enlarge
no habitable planets – as expected – but it contains something else
Polaris Sector – First Mission, part 5
A visual AAR, from Sauron ~
click images to enlarge
we still have enough fuel to move to this system
Civ5 AAR: Empires of the Smoky Skies, Part III
Going back to the Civ5 well again ~
By Brant Guillory, GrogDude
Click images to enlarge
So we’ve knocked out 33% of our nearest neighbor’s potential population and production, then had him bribing us to back off. But we’ve barely explored the rock we’re on and it’s time to go looking around.
First Naval Unit
Since we’ve got a barracks in every city, we open up with a free promotion. This is our first naval exploration unit, so we’re going with mobility. Some folks might argue for the sentry promotion to see further without having to travel as far, but I prefer to be able to close and kill folks faster if we have to.
Prepare for blast off!
pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat
