TOEE - ambushed!

One of the interesting things which I found myself doing while playing TOEE was to compare what was happening in the game with what might actually happen if this were a PnP campaign. Not sure what this says about my psychologically but I suspect that I've been doing this for a couple of reasons.

1. I started playing TOEE initially primarily because I had been listening to the Penny Arcade D&D podcasts and this was the most accessible cRPG using turn based initiative mechanics which I could find at the time.
2. The game itself is named after one of the most popular modules from D&D's glorious past which always makes me think back to PnP days.

But of course, the problem is that although the scenario is based on a PnP module, the game itself is being run by an AI and not by a real human. And occasionally, this creates a few problems.

The Ambush

After taking out Lareth the Beautiful, my party was in a pretty sorry state of affairs. Several characters were heavily injured and I had also exhausted my supply of arcane as well as divine spells. In short, time for an extended rest.

However, I was faced with a slight dilemma. Do I rest in the lair of the pirates and risk being attacked by wandering monsters (monsters which I could well have trouble defeating in my current weakened state)? Or do I travel back to Hommlet to rest in the Inn and trust that my druid's survival skill was high enough for me to evade any wildlife?

Considering that my druids survival skill had enabled me to pick and choose wildlife encounters quite well so far, I decided to take my tired party back to Hommlet.

Of course, if the DM were a dick, now would be the perfect time to introduce an ambush.

Oh look, the DM is a dick

With an injured party and no spells or scrolls left, this resulted, not surprisingly, in a TPK. After a reload, I let my injured party rest in the pirates lair and faced off against my ambushers once again - this time with a full strength party.

A full strength party also means sleep spells...

It wouldn't have been an exaggeration to say that I was looking to completely wipe these guys off the face of Greyhawk. Seeing as I was on my way back to Hommlet, where I would be able to rest again before heading out, I basically unleashed my full arsenal of spells.

>:)

...and more sleep spells...

In short, I unloaded my sorcerer's supply of sleep spells on the enemy (PS I love the fact that this game provides you with the exact radius of you AOE spells so you can make sure that your party doesn't get caught in the blast). This put most of the enemies to sleep and reduced the odds enough that I was able to take out the remaining bad guys without much trouble.

...and even more sleep spells.

And after taking out the bad guys which were still awake, it was a simple matter of wandering around the remaining enemies and slitting their throats before they woke up.

>:)

pwned

Star Wars: Empire at War

Star Wars: Empire at War is an RTS game developed by Petroglyph and was probably the first successful RTS based on the Star Wars franchise. And after playing through both the Rebellion and Empire campaigns, it's easy to see why. Petroglyph have managed to do a fantastic job of capturing the feel of Star Wars in an RTS format.

Stuff I liked

Persistent campaign

In a rare move for RTS games, SW:EAW actually features persistent campaign maps and technology tree. This has always been one of the things which bugs me about most RTS games. Generally, after completing a mission, you lose all your research or buildings for the next mission. This fundamentally doesn't make sense and is a pitfall which Petroglyph managed to avoid by having a galaxy map where you have your persistent campaign followed by missions consisting of land or space battles involving units which you built up in the galaxy map.

Granted, this approach is quite common now but I suspect it was a wee bit rarer when this game was first released.

Major heroes

SW:EAW also features the major heroes that you see in the original Star Wars trilogy and its a real blast to control them on the field of battle. Particularly so as the heroes tend to be quite powerful and able to turn the tide of battle single-handedly. For example, Darth Vader can use his force abilities to devastate both vehicles and infantry. In addition, his lightsaber automatically reflects a portion of blaster fire back at enemy troops. In general, the only time Vader is at risk is if you send him in on his own against overwhelming forces (and if you are stupid enough to do that, then you deserve to lose his services).

With that said, even if you do lose the hero, its not a big deal as the game will regenerate the hero after a portion of time. This is a good approach as it means that you won't worry about throwing your heroes into battle as you know that you can get them back and which then allows you to experience some of the cooler powers that the heroes have.

Death Star

Probably the most awesome thing about the Empire campaign is the Death Star itself. Near the end of the campaign, you get hold of the Death Star. And it is as awesome as you would expect.

Once you get the Death Star, any space battle you take it into starts off with a timer. Once the timer counts down to zero, that means that the planet is now within range of your Death Star. At that point, pulling down on the Death Star firing lever activates a nice video of your Death Star blowing the planet into a giant Asteroid Field. What makes this doubly awesome is that you don't automatically win the battle if there are still enemy ships around - instead, you have to defeat the remaining armada but now with the awesome backdrop of a recently destroyed planet.

Space battles

The space battles in this game are consistently awesome. After building up your fleet in the galaxy map, you then select a planet to move to. If there is an opposing fleet there, then battle ensues (normally, you would know if there is an opposing fleet or not as you would usually scout out the target first).

Once you enter combat, you don't actually bring your entire fleet with you. In any combat, you have a limited number of points to spend on ships (with bigger ships costing more points) and generally, your fleet is going to be much bigger than the number of points worth of ships that you can actually deploy. In practice, this makes the battles manageable as you are only controlling a smaller number of units.

Which isn't to say that there isn't any point in building a big fleet. As the battle progresses, you are going to lose units. As you lose units, this frees up some of your points which you can then use to bring in reinforcements from the main fleet. Its a good system which, in addition to keeping the number of units manageable, also adds an additional element of tactics as you consider which type of reinforcements to bring in.

Petroglyph have also done a decent job with AI in the space battles as the enemy ships try to maneuver to take advantage of any terrain. For example, some of the maps contain asteroid fields. Asteroid fields are dangerous to larger ships so your capital ships will want to avoid them. Meanwhile, smaller ships, like Y-wings and tie bombers, can maneuver through them safely while remaining hidden from sensors. As a result, the enemy often sends in bombers via asteroid fields which caught me by surprise the first time I encountered it.

Stuff I didn't like

Land battles

Unfortunately, the land battles are considerably less fun primarily due to poor AI. Although you have to contend with terrain, there isn't much in the way of environment hazards which basically means that land battles turn into a constant stream of enemies coming at you in waves until you destroy the factory that spawns them. Trust me when I say that it gets old fast when you have to repeat this multiple times for the various planets that you have to conquer.

Which makes the appearance of the Death Star near the end of the Empire campaign all the more awesome as you can avoid the land battles altogether. :)

AT-AT walker

This is related to the land battles but one of the things I really didn't like was how weak the AT-AT walker was. The AT-AT is one of the iconic images from the Star Wars movies and all throughout the rebellion campaign, I had been looking forward to facing off against them. However, when I finally did see them - what a letdown!

The problem is that, although the AT-AT is great against other vehicles, its pretty much useless against infantry. In game, it relies completely on other units to defend it from infantry which meant that I was able to destroy most AT-ATs by simply swarming them with my own infantry instead of having to rely on my speeders. I can understand why this was done - for game balance - but still, it was really disappointing.

Closing thoughts

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with SW:EAW. It's a lot of fun - made all the more so by the fact that I'm such a fan of the Star Wars universe. With that said, I have to admit that without the Star Wars franchise, I wouldn't have enjoyed the game as much as I actually did.

The land battles, although providing some variety to the game, end up detracting from the overall experience of the game owing primarily to how weak the land battles are. Midway through the campaign, you just wish the land battles would end and although the game allows you to auto-resolve combat - the thought of losing so many units (and hence resources) from not taking control myself stopped me from ever using it.

Still, considering the amount of fun I had with the space battles, I have to give this game a thumbs up.

TOEE - the Master

Making my way through the bandits lair, we eventually found our way to the Master. And if you immediately thought of Doctor Who then give yourself 10 geek points!

The Master is actually a priest of Llolth going by the name of Lareth the Beautiful. And fitting for a bad guy with such an awesome name, this was one heck of a fight!

The fight actually starts off with our party in a corridor leading into a big room. I know that there is a fight coming as there was a guard in the corridor who tried to bar our entrance. I can guarantee that he won't be doing anything so foolish in the future.

Of course, with us in such a good defensive position, the key for us would be to bring the bad guys to us. With that in mind, time to launch a classic cRPG tactic - the lure.

In this case, the lure was my pet attack dog (summoned by Jaheira, my druid). By moving to the end of the corridor, he was able to see into the room and activate most of the guards in that room.

Check out the number of bad guys at the top of the screen!

Which kicks off one of my favourite tactics in this game. My wizard casts an Enlarge Person spell on Sir Galahad and I promptly use him to cover the entrance to the corridor. With the extra size, he can cover the entire corridor so anyone trying to run past is subject to opportunity attacks.

Judicious use of the Enchant Person spell also gives the bad guys some targets other than myself

Another favourite tactic is for my mage to cast True Strike which grants him +20 on his next attack roll. With a +20 attack bonus, this pretty much ensures that he will hit on his next attack. With an almost guaranteed hit, I then cast Ray of Enfeeblement which reduces the targets strength by d6. As a general rule, mages work best as support characters in this game until they hit high level and pick up some decent attack spells.

As you can see, I manage to hit (even on rolling a 2)

Just to give an indication of how many bad guys there are in this fight, here you can see that I have managed to fight my way into the room. However, by this time, my Enlarge Person spell has worn off and Sir Galahad has returned to his normal self (albeit with just 1hp left - time for a cure spell!).

Luckily, by this stage, I have Cure Medium Wounds

Despite Sir Galahad's close brush with death, we manage to take out Lareth. After that, its just a case of mopping up. The remaining bad guys aren't much of a threat to Sir Galahad as I've been really pumping up his armor class.

Falgur, my cleric, with the killing blow

TOEE - the ogre

After taking out the zombies with relative ease, I have to admit that I was feeling pretty good about myself. I had been caught in an ambush but, with some quick thinking, had managed to deal with the situation quite handily.

Now, if I was a DM and felt that the players were starting to feel a bit cocky, then I would introduce something nasty to bring them back down to Earth. At least, I would if I were a dick. Considering that we've already established that this DM is a dick, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to find an ogre waiting for us behind the next door.

The ogre hasn't seen us yet

I tried to cast a sleep spell and get an easy kill. Alas, it was too high a level and the sleep spell had no effect. With no other option, I engaged in melee. In hindsight, considering that the ogre's strength gave it a +10 to its attack roll, this may not have been such a good idea.

A breakdown of the ogre's bonus to attack

Although it missed its first attack, it wasn't long before the ogre started to hit. And when it did, it hit hard!

24 damage on 1 hit!! Smeg me!!

With such massive damage output, I wasn't able to heal my fighter quickly enough. A couple of hits later and Sir Galahad fell. Permanently. :(

Alas, poor Galahad

Luckily for me, Sir Galahad had managed to hold out long enough for the my party to badly damage the ogre. Shortly after Sir Galahad fell, Jaheira was able to deal the killing blow and the ogre toppled to the ground next to my knight.

I have to admit that I seriously contemplated reloading. However, I had a scroll of raise dead and in the end, used the scroll to raise him instead. Ultimately, our party had done reasonably well and I decided to let the dice lay where they had fallen.

In a way, its lucky that Galahad is dead otherwise the ogre toppling on top of him would have really hurt...

TOEE - turning undead

The main benefit of having a cleric in the party is the healing spells. Without the clerics ability to cast healing spells, the progress of your delve effectively slows to a grind as you have to take a major rest between each combat.

The second benefit of having a cleric is the access to divine spells that the cleric gets - some of which are pretty awesome. Particularly as I have a good alignment cleric, I get to pick the divine spells as normal and just convert them to healing spells at the time of casting if I need to do some healing instead.

The third benefit of having a cleric is the ability to turn undead. Which, to be perfectly frank, isn't actually all that useful in most cases. All this ability does, in practice, is it extremely annoying for you to have to go hunt down any remaining undead who ran off in fear. With that said, there are times when having the ability to turn undead can be helpful.

Encounter with the dead
After taking care of the bandits on the top level of the old castle, our party decided to venture deeper into the depths of the castle. And it wasn't long (no, really - it wasn't long. In fact, you can still see the stairs in the screenshot.) before we encountered a group of zombies still feasting on the last party of adventurers to wander through their domain.


ewww - gross!

Bear in mind, TOEE uses 3.5e rules so the game is still modelling blunt vs slashing damage. Which basically means that my arrows really aren't doing much damage. I guess we will have to get up close and personal so I put my party into a defensive formation and start readying actions to deal with the zombies impending charge.


Despite rolling a decent 6 on my damage roll, the zombies slashing resistance means it only takes 1 damage

Alas, we are ambushed by two cleverly hidden slimes who drop down from the ceiling into the midst of our party! So much for my defensive formation.

I have to admit though - I really like this encounter. Up until this point, my tactics had been fairly standard. I would generally setup in a defensive formation with my fighters readying actions to attack anything entering our threaten zone. This way, I forced all the monsters to take on my tank while funneling them into a kill zone. The sudden introduction of the two slimes completely shook this up and forced a rapid tactical rethink.


eep! Where did those slimes come from!

With two slimes and five zombies in attack range, and more zombies charging in, I needed a bit of breathing space. This was the rare situation in which a turn undead would actually be useful.


Desperate times call for desperate measures

Amazingly, all five zombies cower before the might of Moradin (my dwarf's patron deity). The zombies run away in fear which gives me a little breathing room to deal with the slimes.


Result!

And with the slimes taken care of, mopping up the remaining zombies is easy work. Particularly as I have an awesome Holy Sword +1 (which I got for marrying Meleny - if you can recall that far back)


18 damage! Awesome sword is awesome!

TOEE - of the benefits of spears

If you recall from my initial party setup, I deliberately gave my Dwarven cleric a 10" great spear. Which allows me to setup situations such as the below.

While wandering around some bogs looking for bandits, my party came across an old and seemingly deserted castle. Upon wandering inside, we soon discovered that it was inhabited by bandits (as if any old castle in D&D wouldn't be inhabited by monsters).


Improved initiative allows most of my PCs to act first

Edwin, my mage, immediately casts a sleep spell into the room to thin out the number of attackers.

Although 5 bandits are in the spells range, the spell's power means that only 1 or 2 will fall under

My paladin and druid then move into position to block the door. Meanwhile, Falgur, my Dwarven cleric, moves up behind them. This means that the door is completely blocked which only allows 1 or 2 bandits through. And as soon as they come through, they are immediately hit with three readied actions.

:)

Setting up an unbreakable defensive position

With my team in place, the only real danger is going to come from the bandit leader who went berserk at the sight of us (you can identify him in the next screen shot as he is glowing red). However, a ray of enfeeblement promptly reduces his strength by six.

Haha!

At this point, all I need to do is hold position and slowly wipe out the bandits as they come through. I love it when a plan comes together!

You can already see the bodies piling up by the door

FM 2010 - World Cup 2014

Just in case the title of this blog post wasn't clear enough, 2014 is a World Cup year. The English FA were expecting me to lead England to the quarter finals. Was I up to the task? Or, to be more precise, were the plonkers masquerading as England Internationals going to bottle it in a major competition (again)?

Group Stages
The draw for the group stages actually put me in a pretty good group. I didn't have any real opposition as I had Colombia, Montenegro and DR Congo.

woohoo?

As you can see, I managed to win all 3 group matches and didn't concede any goals. Good start right?

Well, not as such. Despite managing to win all 3 group matches, the reality was that my England team were consistently outplayed. The only reason that I didn't concede any goals was because the opposition didn't have any strikers worth talking about. Even one on one, they somehow contrived to miss.

By the time the group stage ended, my only hope was that my team would play better as the tournament progressed.

Knockout stages
Our first opponent in the knockout rounds was Egypt. And for once, my team completely outplayed the opposition. To be honest, I don't really know what caused my team to start playing - all I know is that we kicked ass!

Of course, this result also meant that we managed to make it to the Quarter Finals which is what the FA expectations were.

Finally! A performance worth writing home about!

The bad news is that our performance against Egypt was going to be the highlight of the competition as it was the only match where we would actually outplay our opponents.

Our next match was against Brazil and, with a couple of rare exceptions, we basically played the match in our half. Despite being completely outplayed, an outstanding performance by our GK allowed us to hang on until Walcott managed to pop out of nowhere and score a goal on the counter!


Brazil must have been furious!

With Brazil out of the way, we moved onto the Semi Finals and France - who were the No.1 ranked international team in the World (oh well, I guess the FM scouts don't always get it right...). Just as with Brazil, France completely dominated play. Alas, we weren't able to repeat our heroics and were duly knocked out.


Bugger

Although we were knocked out by France, we did manage to get to the Semi Finals so we had one more match to go. We would be facing Italy for the 3rd place play-off.

The match against Italy was an interesting one. Basically, we were completely outplayed at the start of the match. Then, one of the Italian players got sent off in the 54th minute and at that point, I ordered my England team to attack. Most of our shots on goal actually came post the 54th minute. Alas, my players couldn't hit the broad side of a barn and we ended up going to penalties.


England's luck in penalty shoot-outs remains true to form

Still, having managed to get into the Semi's can be considered a good result for a team who were ranked 7th in the World at the start of the World Cup.

Closing comments
Overall, despite making it to the Semi Final's, I have to concede that it wasn't a great world cup campaign. The fact that we were so completely outplayed by so many teams was unacceptable and we could just as easily have gone out at the group stage.

Still, there were some highlights:


Ben Foster, after only conceding 1 goal, picks up the World Cup Best GK award!

Also, despite my own thoughts, the FA seem to be happy.

Woohoo! That should keep my job safe for a bit longer!

FM 2010 - Season 2013/14: The awards

One of the noticeable improvements that FM2010 has made over FM2006 is in relation to the awards. In FM2006, with the exception of the Manager of the Year award, all of the other awards were nearly impossible to get. It never seemed to matter how well my players played - they never picked up awards.

I'm not sure when SI games fixed this particular issue, but its clear that they cleaned up the code around this as my players picked up a slew of awards this year.

Premiership awards
With that said, one thing which doesn't appear to have changed is the manager of the year award. In FM2006, it felt like the award always went to the manager who won the league. So far, FM2010 seems consistent with this.


After winning both the league and the League Cup, it's no surprise that I picked up manager of the year

You may recall that I started to put a much higher focus on my youth policy last year. This focus really started to pay off in the current year as my youth players won a raft of awards.


Proving that you can have a good youth policy while still winning things - Wenger would be envious


I managed to sweep the young player of the month awards in April as well :)


Ian Jones loses out on the young player of the year award despite winning more young player of the month awards than any other player


Torres - despite only making 19 appearances (due to injuries), he still managed to place as 3rd top goalscorer


For the first time ever, one of my players gets the goal of the season (and can you believe it was Babel?!?!?)

European awards
In addition to Prem awards, my players also picked up a raft of European awards too.


Torres is the third top goalscorer in the Champions Cup - despite only having 5 appearances!


Good ol' Stevie G - Class is permanent!


Torres - consecutive European striker of the year awards!


So close to sweeping the European footballer of the year awards!

World awards
And even more honors as we go to the World stage!


Torres - breaking Messi's stranglehold on the World footballer of the year award


:) Sweeping the World player of the year awards :)

FM 2010 - Season 2013/14

Season 2013/14 has now wrapped up and, despite some setbacks, this will go down as a successful year for Liverpool.

Going into the new season, there was one main concern that I had about the squad. If you recall, Skrtel got tapped up during the 2013/14 preseason. This meant that I only had 2 experienced CBs and, although I had several up and coming future stars, I wasn't sure if they could make the step up and was worried about the defensive backbone of my team.

Champions Cup
I started the Champions Cup extremely strongly. Torres was in top form and we walked the group stage. Unfortunately, both Torres and one of my key CBs got injured just as we got to the first knockout round. We were up against Fiorentina who, despite having a weaker squad on paper, must have fancied their chances.

They promptly wiped the floor with me 6-2 on aggregate (beating me 3-1 both home and away). The annoying thing was that Stefan Jovetic, an attacking midfielder who I had previously tried to sign, was the key player in both legs and was the main reason I got pwned. As you can imagine, neither the fans nor the board were particularly impressed.

Premier League
The other key competition I wanted to win was the Premier League. And just as with the Champions Cup, my team started strongly with Torres in absolutely scintillating form and by Christmas, we were 10 points clear at the top. Unfortunately, the same injuries which led to Liverpool getting knocked out of Europe also allowed Man Utd to close the gap.

By the time we got to March, Man Utd were only 2 points behind me. What a time for us to face-off in an early title decider! We managed to beat them - but only just.


A marginally better performance allows us to win this critical match


Two weeks later, Bobby Charlton leads a takeover of Man Utd - no doubt displeased with how Man Utd are no longer a powerhouse in the Prem
Although we only just managed to beat Man Utd, this match would prove to be critical in more ways than one. Despite their run of good results to catch up with me, this defeat knocked the spirit out of them and they subsequently had a run of bad results.

In the end, we ended up walking the Premiership. :)


Consecutive Premiership titles has the fans dancing in the streets!

The Premier League title, coupled with the League Cup and the Club World Championship, meant that we ended up with a historic treble. It was a shame that we couldn't add the FA Cup to that (we got beat by Arsenal 2-0 in the final). Still, a decent year overall.

The squad
Final squad ratings below.



Check out the stats on Torres!

As you can see, Torres has been outstanding this year. In fact, the only reason those numbers aren't higher is because he picked up several injuries throughout the year which, in addition to limiting his playing time, also meant that he sometimes played even when he wasn't fully fit. Even so, 32 starts is nothing to be sneezed at.

Stevie G continues to be an excellent captain. With that said, his form clearly dipped during the second half of the year at which point, I played Sneijder and Ozil a bit more. I suspect that he will be playing a much smaller role next season (in his defence, he is 34 now).

Lastly, as you can see from the stats, my team were pretty good when going forward. Unfortunately, they were rather less impressive when defending. I really need to make one more CB a priority for my off-season.

A look at the squad value. The addition of Ozil and Sneijder mean that I now have 7 players valued over GBP10m (as before though, a huge caveat around how values are now calculated).



Although there are still some old players, I now also have a pretty impressive mix of youngsters too

Finances
The money side of this game has always been a problem for me. Even last year, when our club received massive prize money from the Premiership and the Champions Cup, we still ended the season with a loss. With us getting knocked out of the Champions Cup at an early stage, I had a real concern about what our financial situation was going to look like. As such, it was a nice surprise at the end of the year when I realised that I actually ended up with a profit!


We made a profit this year thanks to a reduced net transfer spend

As you can see, our turnover for the year did indeed drop compared to last year. Luckily for me, the extra income from winning the Club World Championship was able to slightly offset the reduced Champions Cup income.

However, the key reason for our profit this year was a reduced net transfer spend. Although I spent a fortune on players, this was partially offset from player sales. In particular, the sale of Fabien Ritter for GBP8.5m was a great piece of wheelin' dealin' as he originally signed on a free transfer at the start of the season.


Harry Redknapp would be proud of me


The Board
With a treble to my name, the increase in stature of Liverpool FC means that the Board love me. In fact, they just offered me a new deal with a weekly wage of GBP150,000 (up from GBP110,000). :)


Bloody fans - you would think they would appreciate me a bit more!

Overall, I have to admit that I do like my new board. I've been bugging them in recent years about expanding the stadium. However, we have never been able to do anything as there was no room for expansion at Anfield. Fortunately for me, the Board decided to go out and build a new stadium instead. Unfortunately for me, my interest payments just shot up again.


Liverpool finally get their new stadium