Three Moves Ahead

No agenda this week beyond a few of my favorite clips, some chat about the podcast’s high and low points and what we’d like to see in the coming year of podcasts. Learn about Tom’s other podcasts, Bruce Geryk’s origin story, whether or not Julian is a game reviewer and how Rob makes his girlfriend cry. Lots of self congratulation, too, so if you don’t like that sort of thing, maybe you shouldn’t l...

Troy is joined by Tom, Julian and Rob to talk about the new expansion for Sins of a Solar Empire . How does Diplomacy work in a multiplayer game? Does it add more personality to a game with rather bland sides? Does Tom cheat? How should Rob refer to his significant other? Where does Julian go when the podcast is over? Listen to the final podcast to find out why this is expansion made all of us fal...

Troy is joined by Tom, Bruce and Rob as they counter December’s religion show with a talk about how strategy games treat science. How do you link technology to other game mechanics? Is there a risk of runaway games if you emphasize science too much? Dead ends, blind research, science of observation and whether you can actually have hard science in a strategy game. And Bruce replies to comments abo...

Having not seen each other in weeks, Tom and Bruce giggle like schoolgirls reunited after summer break before getting into their usual sparring. Troy just tries to keep people on topic – futilely. The putative topic: How do you design a game that makes the management of a government as interesting as the issues of war and peace? There’s a side trip into questions about abstraction and the problem...

This week, Troy, Julian and Rob talk about the limitations and possibilities of story telling in strategy games. Can you have an authorial perspective in a system driven genre? Is the RTS campaign story irrevocably broken? Is there anything on the horizon that might give us hope? And stay tuned to the end where I ask for feedback for our anniversary show.

This week, Troy and Tom welcome Lara Crigger, Jenn Cutter and Tiffany Martin to the show to talk about the gender gap in strategy gaming. Well, that’s where it starts. It turns into an almost 90 minute discussion of the place of women in gaming, their portrayal in games, the importance of peer groups, more Brutal Legend and the coming demographic shift. So less strategy wonkery than usual, but you...

Troy, Tom and Rob look at the big 4 RTSes coming out this year ( Command & Conquer 4, Starcraft 2, Supreme Commander 2 and RUSE ) as well as the return of Norb Timpko, the future of Facebook games, the battle between Victorian Age games. And Tom makes Troy sing. Apologies for the sound issues. It was a bad connection that we tried to fix a couple of times without much success. Greed Corp Scourge o...

Troy, Tom and Rob Zacny talk about Europa Universalis 3, the new Heir to the Throne expansion and how the series rewards different play styles. Has the new expansion compromised the importance of stability? How does the new system change our favorite nations' development? Can Tom keep all the changes in every expansion straight? (Spoiler: No, he cannot.)

Tom and Troy spend the hour looking back at 2009, including insight into how to make a Best of the Year list, why Tom finally joined Facebook and the state of the genre in the last year. Dawn of Discovery, Brutal Legend, Heir to the Throne, UniWar, and even Evony. Bruce is also there, in body if not spirit, but he finds time to complain about why Uniwar is the worst game ever. Tom Chick’s RTS Roun...

A subtle shifting of the guard as Julian Murdoch is back after hiatus, but Troy Goodfellow is off for a week, leaving Julian at the mercy of the far more stable Tom Chick and Bruce Geryk. The topic is religion: does it work in a strategy game as a mechanic? Has anyone done it better than Civ IV? Bruce argues for Dominions and random boardgames about the reformation nobody's ever heard of. Tom revi...

This week, Tom Chick makes the case that strategy gamers need to have a console to truly appreciate the range of games out there. He calls Bruce and Troy “dinosaurs” for clinging bitterly to a fading gaming platform, even though it is at the moment best suited to the deep games that all three love. What is the present condition of strategy gaming in the console arena? Are independent strategy game...

Rob Zacny comes to the plate as a pinch hitter, but we still manage to get three original panelists together for a long discussion about strategy games gone wrong. Ascendancy, MOO3, Road to Moscow, and other favorites. Road to Moscow preview at IGN Bruce’s Review of Squad Leader Tom’s review of Axis and Allies Troy’s Diplomacy Review Rob’s love of the old Total War games Troy’s review of SupCom fo...

Our first ever guest, Vic Davis, returns for an episode that will not be lost to the ether. Solium Infernum gets invited to a love in as Tom, Troy and Bruce try to explain why it is one of the best games of the year. We can an inside look at game design, how an game about unbalancing your opponents stays balanced and what Vic has up his sleeve for the expansion. Ameritrash Games Cryptic Comet Quar...

Troy, Bruce and Julian deal with a few questioners listeners brought to the panel. Can noobs and experts play together? What is the place of AI in current game design? Why do we keep doing this? And where is Tom? Thanks for your questions, and keep them coming. We might do this again some time soon. Bruce Geryk on MOO3 Julian on Populous Rob Zacny on Black & White Solium Infernum Live Blogging

Another guest this week as Ntronium Studios lead Bob Smith talks to Troy and Tom about the imminent release of Armada 2526 . Bob is a veteran of Creative Assembly and has been making games for over a quarter century. Is there room for another 4x sci-fi game? And how do you differentiate one title from another? Armada 2526 at Ntronium Studios One week left to send in questions to the TMA crew at tr...

This week’s show begins with a business chat as we talk about the changing revenue models in all gaming as downloadable content begins to supplant or supplement the traditional retail expansion pack. Be sure to stay tuned for Bruce’s Nietzsche moment in which he declares that gameplay is dead. The last half of the show is spent celebrating expansions that were good, denigrating those that were bad...

Chris Park from Arcen Games joins us this week to talk about independent game development and how his sci-fi RTS AI War: Fleet Command saw the light of day. Park talks about the design process, the challenge of modeling risk and reward and the difficult part of difficulty levels. It’s also one of our longest podcasts ever. Arcen Games Tom’s column on AI War: Fleet Command Feature Series: The Decad...

We try to make up some ground this week with a little chat about Panzer General: Allied Assault (via Julian), Eufloria (via Tom) and, our main topic, Tropico 3 (via me). When is a remake enough? Am I trust too critical of a game that I actually like parts of? Can you cautiously recommend a game with major gameplay problems? Eufloria Tom’s Dragon Age diaries Troy’s Tropico 3 review (link to come)

Skip a night and the inmates take over the asylum. Tom and Julian decide to talk about Brutal Legend , especially its strategy components. Why is BL Tom’s favorite game of the year? Are there different strategies for the RTS component? Is it an RTS at all? Also, Bruce makes a cameo appearance in the intro.

Ubisoft’s Michael de Plater joins us for a fanboy grilling from Tom Chick. Why EndWar worked, its relative success and why Bruce never got to actually play EndWar for very long. Apologies in advance for Michael’s sound. His plug-in mic was not working for some reason so he talked to his laptop. Through a tin can. From the distant future. While in a submarine. Fighting robots. He’s that good. Micha...

Sometimes Bruce misses a show he really needs to be on – like the one where we pronounced the death of the Dominions 3 game. This week, Dr. Geryk won’t give up and he makes a compelling argument along the way. Bruce admits to a new way of thinking about games, we talk about reviving our board game blogging (but we need help!) and we talk about wargames we like and don’t like. We both say mean thin...

So what do you do when your guest doesn't show and your schedule for the rest of the week is shot to hell? You go ahead, press record and make it up as you go along. A beloved friend of the show is on his deathbed and no doctor is in sight to save it. Tom calls Section 8 "the shooter from the Kohan guys" and fights with Julian over whether or not the game is very good or just good.

Majesty 2 becomes the starting point about the pluses and minuses of surrendering control. Troy, Tom and Bruce talk about the origins of Majesty, other games with the detached czar motif and whether or not the game is repetitive. Listen as Bruce schools Tom on the subtleties of his new favorite game and find out which game Tom thinks is about sex and death. Also, listen to the worst contest ever....

Ever wonder what would happen to a show where Tom Chick didn’t show up to ask annoying questions? This is the answer. PCGamer’s role playing game authority Desslock sits in with the remaining panelists to talk about how RPGs and strategy games overlap. Where is character advancement more important than story? Does Dominions 3 count as an RPG? It’s a low key and low energy discussion with only a li...

This week, a full panel deals with the question of getting started in strategy gaming. Should people approach the genre from first principles (The Murdoch Method) or through a topic they are interested in (The Goodfellow Approach)? How important is the visual immersion compared to the mechanics? Bonus: Everyone is called an idiot by someone else at least once. The Qt3 thread that inspired this cha...