Month: August 2011

The joy of conquest

Shameless history nerd that I am, I’m a big fan of the Europa Universalis series from Paradox Interactive. For those of you who haven’t been exposed to the awesomeness that is EU, it’s a series of grand strategy games that allow you to play as one of many different countries during the period from the end of the Middle Ages to the first decades of the 19th century. It’s basically a digital board game: you play on a map that’s divided into numerous provinces and each army is represented by a giant soldier who towers over everything else.

What the games lack in graphical sophistication, they more than make up for in depth. Sometimes, it can feel a little too deep, but it’s nowhere near as bad as Paradox’s other historical strategy games (e.g. Victoria and Hearts of Iron). I still fondly recall the elation of playing as the Byzantines in EU2 and successfully conquering the Turks. That was damn difficult to do, considering they started the game with just two provinces!

The other day I had the inexplicable urge to play Europa Universalis 3, which is the most recent incarnation in the series. I’ve had it for years, but for some reason I never really played it much (though I did buy two of its expansion packs!). After getting everything installed, I sat down and started messing around as the Austrians during the War of the Quadruple Alliance (which started in 1718). EU3 is a bit more complicated than the earlier games, but I still felt right at home. It very much follows the tried-and-true formula that’s so addictive. My first foray into the game ended in ignominy as a precipitous decline in my realm’s stability caused numerous revolts. I decided to restart the scenario and, the second time around, things went much better. I managed to successfully wage war against the Turks (I’ve sacked Istanbul on two separate occasions!) and most of the Balkans are now under my control.

Even though I’ve had a great time with EU3, I’ve also become reacquainted with its downsides. Because of its great complexity, it’s not really a game you can play casually. The pacing can also be inconsistent. In peacetime, the game can actually get rather boring, but when you go to war, you can be bombarded with a million decisions, forcing you to make liberal use of the pause button. Still, on the whole, I’m really glad I rediscovered EU3, and I look forward to many delightful hours of putting smaller countries to the sword.

 

Remembering the SS France

Today ended up being a very happy day here at Casa Loch. Earlier in the week, I won a set of deck plans from the SS France on eBay and they just came in the mail. I’m thrilled to bits; not only did I snag a great deal, but they’re even more incredible than the photos led me to believe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here’s a photo of the exterior of the ship:

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The France is one of my all-time favorite ocean liners. At 1,035 feet long, she was the longest passenger ship in the world at the time of her construction (a record she held until the construction of the Queen Mary 2 in 2004). From the beginning, she was heavily subsidized by the French government, who hoped that she would become an oceangoing showcase of Gallic culture and design. But when she entered service in 1962, the transatlantic passenger trade was already in decline. Her owners, the French Line, increasingly used her for cruising during the off season, but, like many ships built for the transatlantic run, she wasn’t well suited to sunnier climates. She had little open-air deck space, and both of her swimming pools were indoors. Still, she remained a popular ship, and she continued to sail for the French Line until 1974, when the rising price of oil forced the French government to stop subsidizing her (the funding went to the Concorde instead).

Instead of going to the scrappers, the France received a second lease on life when Norwegian Cruise Line made her their flagship with the new name of Norway. She sailed for NCL until 2003, when a boiler explosion forced her withdrawal from service. By that point, it would have been prohibitively expensive to repair her, and in 2005 she was sold for scrap. By 2008, this grande dame of the seas was no more.

I’m not sure why I like the France so much. Her decor was very much a product of the 60s, and that sort of sleek modernism isn’t usually my thing. But her exterior was amazing (despite the silly little wings on her funnels!), and to me she epitomizes the lean look of a transatlantic greyhound. I wish I could have had the chance to sail on her, and it’s really too bad that she couldn’t live on as a museum ship like the first Queen Mary.  At least I now have these deck plans to remember her by.

 

Stalking potential customers isn’t really a good idea

I love going on cruises. I’ve been hooked ever since my parents and I went on a three-day Caribbean cruise on Norwegian Cruise Line’s old Leeward back in 1996. Since then, I’ve taken NCL’s Norwegian Wind to Alaska and done a transatlantic crossing on Cunard’s Queen Mary 2. There’s something wonderful about life onboard a ship, and I enjoy being able to visit several different places in the course of a single vacation.

It’s been a while since I set sail, and I’m itching to get my sea legs back. In preparation for a possible trip next year, I’ve been poking around the web and ordering brochures. For nostalgia’s sake, I ordered a brochure from NCL, but I’m starting to wonder if that wasn’t a mistake. I requested the material on Saturday, July 30 and on Tuesday, August 2, I got a voicemail message from a “personal cruise consultant” at NCL offering to help me plan my vacation. He also sent me an email, complete with a smarmy postscript reminding me to tell my friends about him when they ask about my cruise. Since he didn’t hear back from me, he called again today.

I really don’t like this approach. For starters, I haven’t received my brochure yet, so I don’t know whether or not they have anything I’m interested in. And being nagged like this doesn’t make me want to open up my wallet to them. There’s a fine line between being solicitous and being obnoxious, and NCL has crossed it. I have half a mind to respond to their email by saying that each unwanted communication will lower my chance of booking with them by 20%!

More Diablo 3 news

Last week, Blizzard held a press event with the owners of several Diablo fansites in order to unveil the final (?) bits information before the beta begins. Now that the Non-Disclosure Agreement has expired, the blogosphere has been abuzz with new tidbits about Diablo 3.

For me, the most interesting announcement was that D3 will do away with skill points entirely. In D2, you received a skill point with each level up and you could use it to either augment existing skills or unlock new ones. Now, skills will automatically become available when you reach the necessary character level and, once you activate a skill, it will automatically scale as you level up (or, in some cases, it will scale based on your weapon’s damage). Also, the maximum number of active skills that you can have at any one time has been reduced from seven to six (apparently, you start with two active skills at the beginning of the game, and the number gradually increases as you level up until you reach the six-skill cap).

At first, I thought this change was a bit dodgy. Now that both stat points and skill points are gone, it seemed like it would be impossible to customize your character to any meaningful degree. But after reading interviews with the D3 team, I think the six-skill limit and the runestones will provide enough variety to keep things interesting. I think this new setup will also make the game a lot more enjoyable since it encourages experimentation in a way that Diablo 2 didn’t. When you only get one skill point per level, you can’t afford to take many risks. And since each D2 character only had a few skills that were viable in the long-run, you ended up putting most of your eggs into a very small number of baskets. So even though there will be a six-skill limit, I think D3 will encourage players to develop a broader skill base instead of just spamming one or two high-level abilities.

Blizzard also revealed three quest items that you’ll end up keeping throughout the entire game: the Cauldron of Jordan, the Nephalem Cube, and the Stone of Recall. The Cauldron allows you to sell stuff without returning to town, the Cube allows you salvage goods for their raw materials, and the Stone will allow you to portal back to town. The last item was a bit of a surprise since Blizzard had previously said that they wanted to remove town portals in order to make combat more challenging. No word yet on whether or not there will be any limitations on the Stone’s use, or if it will be just as easy to use as the old Scrolls of Town Portal.

The thing that seems to have generated the most chatter among gamers is the new Auction House feature. Now, it will be possible for you to take your loot and sell it for either in-game gold or real-world money (of course if you’re selling it for real money, Blizzard will take a cut of the profits). This is nothing new, of course. There were a number of third-party sites that allowed you to sell D2 loot. But now Blizzard is making these sales official, and a lot of people aren’t happy. They’re afraid that people with money to burn will end up dominating the game since they’ll be able to fork over cold hard cash in order to buy the best stuff, or that they’ll have to spend money to get the coolest stuff.

Personally, I don’t give a flying Fudrucker about the Auction House. I don’t care about finding the very best equipment; I’m happy to limit myself to the stuff I find naturally in the course of a game. I also don’t play with strangers on Battlenet, so I don’t really care what other people have. Chances are, the only people I’ll play with are The Physicist and perhaps The Elder Mr. Loch, and I can’t see either of them swanning off to the Auction House in search of Phat L00t.

What does annoy me though is the revelation that D3 will require you to be online to play, even in single-player mode. I had assumed that it would be like StarCraft II where they strongly encourage you to be online, but you can ultimately play offline if you wish. But no, Blizzard has decided that all characters will be stored on their servers, so you must be connected to the Internet in order to play any part of the game. This could be tricky for me since I have a temperamental Internet connection that misbehaves from time to time. It has been known to break down for an entire weekend, and it would be very annoying if I couldn’t play D3 at all during that time. It will also be much harder to play D3 when I’m traveling, since free high-speed Internet access isn’t exactly universal. I kinda wish Blizzard would let me play the game how I want and stop forcing Battlenet on me.

If you’re hungry for more info, here’s a report from one of the sites that attended the press event.