settlers 2

[Skanky Burns]

There is a lot to be said for games that just run.
Theres also a lot to be said of games that don't come out on 5.25" floppies, my current problem when trying to play Hyperspeed again.

[lord of the mark]

Problem solved - sort of. I uninstalled, and reinstalled without setting up sound, and now the game runs fine, if rather quietly. But then gameplay is whats important, not chrome, like having sound, right . Well, at least I only paid 5 bucks.

Anyway ive now build a woodcutter, a sawmill, a pair of quarries ( i was fooling around and built the second one) and a forester. I then saved.

Im getting the hang of the interface, which kinda reminds me of 1602 AD. Does that make sense?

[Skanky Burns]

All except for the 1602 reference. I haven't played that game.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Hehe, as I'm fond of pointing out to those who view old games generally with overly rose-tinted glasses, sometimes they were a royal pain in the ass.

But it was a learning experience that forced you to understand a bit more how your pc worked

And to those who view the latest releases as the best ever - people still get all sorts of hardware compatibility problems/poor performance with high end games, and the hardware requirements are ridiculously high comparitively to the old games.

Generaly things are better in terms of plug+play, but its not as perfect as it could be mainly due to hardware manufacturers wanting to keep everyone upgradeing every year.

LoM - what soundcard do you have? and do you know its properties(port number/DMA etc)?
If so you may be able to setup the sound using something generic like the 'Soundblaster16' from the setup options and edit those properties to match your card setup?
Although i cant quite remember if in Settlers2 you could specify those particular details or not.
Still if you feel you want to mess around a bit(and if the program lets us!) with all that i can give you a hand.

As for the interface, even in the first one i never got a complete grasp of it all - it wasn't the most user friendly approach once you got past the basics of building and placeing things.
It took me a while to work out how to use my geologist for example. And trying to exactly understand how the priority of placeing your troops closer or further away from your castle was also tricky.
I dont think i ever really played around with the priority settings for how goods were moved around and all the menus like it(those lists of goods that ran from the top of the screen to the bottom that you could move around).

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Problem solved - sort of. I uninstalled, and reinstalled without setting up sound, and now the game runs fine, if rather quietly. But then gameplay is whats important, not chrome, like having sound, right . Well, at least I only paid 5 bucks.

Anyway ive now build a woodcutter, a sawmill, a pair of quarries ( i was fooling around and built the second one) and a forester. I then saved.

Im getting the hang of the interface, which kinda reminds me of 1602 AD. Does that make sense?

So, do you like it or what?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DrSpike


So, do you like it or what?

at about 15 minutes into the game (and thats cause I dont know what im doing, and am checking a printed copy of the readme while the game is running in real time) its rather hard to say.

The HQ reminds me of the 1602 warehouse. The little yellow houses look odd. The back story (setting in ficitionalized Rome?) doesnt appeal to me, so far. The rabbits are cute, though I still prefer AOE's gazelles. Other than that, theres not much to say.

[Adagio]

15 minutes isn't much time to evaluate the game. First mission in the campaign is only a basic building training without enemies, while the enemy on the second map isn't that diffecult

What drags me to this game is that it's not some standard RTS game where each game has to be finished within 90 minutes. A game could easily take many hours. Also the way combat is handled is nice, though some people hate it... if you don't like the combat then this game is probably not for you... Have you gotten that far yet?

The manual to the game doesn't help much IMHO, but if you just read everything they write while playing the campain you should do fine... IIRC the first mission tells you how to build the most basic buildings, how to send out geologists (sp?) and things like that. What you don't learn in those early missions are not important at the beginning. Don't start messing around with "how much garrison where", goods-transport and such before you're confident about how the game is played...


But of course are the gazelles in AoE "better" than rabbits are in S2 since the graphics are much older...

[Skanky Burns]

The first mission is, in essence, a tutorial. You build when they let you and discover how to control the game. Mission 2 lets you put that information to the test against an enemy, but a very weak one.

You will have access to gold with which to train your soldiers while they have none. If you train all your soldiers up to general level, your soldiers will be able to get hit 6 times before dying while your enemies will only survive one hit before decorating the ground with bone-art. Can anyone say "cake-walk"? You will expand through their empire with ease until you run out of trained soldiers. To make things even easier, they will not attack you until after you attack them the first time, so you have plenty of time to prepare for your attack ie: training soldiers.

[lord of the mark]

egads!! Im actually beginning to understand this bizarre animated spreadsheet

Just built my first farm.

I got a paved path with a donkey, not sure why.

Do i only need food for the mines, or for the general population?

Everyonce in a while someone waves his arms. Is he idle? Is he saying something id hear if i had sound?

Since i built a hunter shack, I see no more rabbits. Not a coincidence?

[vovan]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
I got a paved path with a donkey, not sure why.

I haven't played this game for ages, but I believe that happens when you have a road over which a lot of goods and people traverse, so there appears the donkey automatically to help alleviate traffic problems.

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Since i built a hunter shack, I see no more rabbits. Not a coincidence?

Nope, definitely no coincidence.

[Skanky Burns]

The paved path appears where many goods and/or people have passed. It helps the movement of goods - both the donkey and the person can move a unit of goods on the same road at the same time. It doesn't help move people through the road though.

Food is only for the miners. But then, no food means no new soldiers and no training for your soldiers. And, I guess, no new tools. Not that you will build many in the game.

Someone waves their arms if they are idle. I think they are silent but I generally play with the sound off so can't be sure.

Here's a hint: Make all road sections two "bits" long. This is the shortest distance you can have between two flags and gives you the fastest movement of goods compared to 3 or more "bits" per road.

[Adagio]

There's no sound when someone waves their arms (or doing any of the other animations), it's just a sign that they haven't had any work for some time... it's just included in the game to make the game look more alive

In most cases Skankys hint about two "bits" long roads is correct, but there is a few times where a longer road makes more sense (if it's a road with very little traffic, then more flags will just make it go slower... not much though)

And if you haven't come to that part in the game where you've got gold then here's a hint: On all garrission (sp?) buildings you can turn on/off if that building should recieve gold or not, which is an important feature. Always makes sure that gold arrives at the building with most soldiers inside, since one gold will upgrade 1 soldier of each different level when used (it's used at random, so you wont have direct control over this). If gold is used in a building with only two soldiers and both of them are of the same level, then only one of them will be upgraded...

[DrSpike]

Hehe, I'm feeling all nostalgic. Might have to dig out my old machine.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Adagio
In most cases Skankys hint about two "bits" long roads is correct, but there is a few times where a longer road makes more sense (if it's a road with very little traffic, then more flags will just make it go slower... not much though)

If that road might become part of a main stretch of road though, then it will become a bottleneck when goods start to flow. The only 3-section roads I use are connected to farms and are all dead-ends.

And if you haven't come to that part in the game where you've got gold then here's a hint: On all garrission (sp?) buildings you can turn on/off if that building should recieve gold or not, which is an important feature. Always makes sure that gold arrives at the building with most soldiers inside, since one gold will upgrade 1 soldier of each different level when used (it's used at random, so you wont have direct control over this). If gold is used in a building with only two soldiers and both of them are of the same level, then only one of them will be upgraded...

Which means the best building to upgrade soldiers in is a fortress with 1 of every rank soldier in it. By manipulating soldiers garrisoned in the HQ and deleting the road outside the fortress while other military buildings get trained soldiers, you can ensure that the fortress will get 1 of the lower-ranked soldiers and lots of privates. Then 1 gold gets you 1 new general, the most efficient upgrading you can do.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
If that road might become part of a main stretch of road though, then it will become a bottleneck when goods start to flow. The only 3-section roads I use are connected to farms and are all dead-ends.

Yep, that's the ones I ment...