Single Malt Strategy: Episode 79 - Rule the Waves 3 - Featuring: Benjamin Magnus - Single Malt Strategy

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello everybody. It's the Historical Gameronce again, but you can call me
Matt. And today we are returningto the Single Malt Strategy Podcast. This
is episode number seventy nine. I'mjoined today by my trusty co host Eric,
you can call him Tortuga Power.How are you doing today? Eric?
Am I really that trusty? Idon't know. Sometimes I wonder.

(00:21):
I mean, I trust you.Yeah, I've really pulled the wool over
your eyes. I'm doing well.I guess I'm a little bit beat up
from work, but I'm excited aboutthe podcast as always. Yeah, and
I am too. And today wehave a special guest, a first time
guest on the Single Malt Strategy Podcast, Ben Magnus of twitch and YouTube fame

(00:42):
and also over there at Paradox.How you doing today, Ben? Well,
I'm doing great. It's like sevenam here, So I got my
coffee, I got my dog sleepingon my feet. It's good. It's
a good day. Yeah, lifecould be worse, right, dogs sleeping
at the feed coffee. Nice morning. You know over in yonder across the
pond, I guess for those whodon't know, I'm in Stockholm now formerly

(01:04):
Florida. So big step up Florida. Man makes good. So, so
how are you doing today, Ben? What have you been plain lately?
Uh? So other other than thetopic of this podcast here, recently I
played The Great War, which wasquite good. Western Front. Yeah,
that's what it's called. I'm waitingfor a patch though. Did you either

(01:26):
of you play it? Oh?Yes, Mad, I mean you can
probably talk a lot about it,Matt. We actually have our We're gonna
do a podcast in this one too. At some points, he's Ben's already
making a play to be on thenext episode two, right, he knew,
Yeah, exactly. I have thoughts, So maybe we don't go too
deep into it right now. ButI've thought, well, that's actually that's

(01:47):
pretty cool because I saw you werestreaming on it at a while back when
it first came out. I didn'tknow if you had if you had stuck
with it. I've been playing ita lot actually on Obviously, we're recording
this in early May, and I'vegot my final episode going up on my
channel for my series tomorrow I thinkit is, which is the last episode

(02:08):
in my victory as the Central Powers, and I have seen the game change
somewhat with some of the patches thathave come out. I think it is
a really interesting look at World WarOne. You don't get a lot of
World War One games, right,Like, there's just a not a lot
out there these days. And it'scool because it merges the tactical and the
strategic side of things in the campaign. So I think there's a lot to

(02:30):
talk about there. I think there'sa lot of good. There are some
limitations. I am kind of whereyou're at, Ben. I have thoughts.
Don't know that I'm ready to expressthose thoughts because they're kind of complicated.
Like I go back and forth onthis, and I think it's very
close to being a home run.I think my concern though is like the
long term support. It's made byPetroglyph and they don't have a and this

(02:53):
I don't mean this is a negativething. I think they make games that
are generally pretty good on release,but I don't think they have a long
life cycle of development with their games. It's usually sort of release, get
it in a steady, reliable state, and then they don't really Like I
don't think they typically add much ina way like DLC or additional content or

(03:14):
additional support. It's kind of arelease and move on to the next game
approach that a lot of developers don'tdo that anymore. But yeah, I
mean they release pretty pretty decent,solid games on release and then just kind
of move on. So I don'tI don't know if we'll get a bunch
more patches or not. I hopewe get some, because like, I
don't want to go too deep intoit, because especially if we're going to

(03:34):
do and wait, say you aregoing to do an entire episode about it.
But my major grape is that it'sfar too easy. I almost never
fail offensive attacks, even with inferiornumbers. I just found it incredibly easy
to launch attacks on fortified trenches,which does not feel very World War one
eye. And the meta of howto play the game is very wonky and

(04:01):
doesn't really fit like historical reality.The meta of like, okay, so
your machine guns are not best outfront of your trenches, they're best behind
the lines a couple a couple oflines. It's best not to have connected
trenches. It's best to have themjust disjointed little bits. The fact that

(04:25):
people in trenches or you cannot fireinto trenches with guns. You can only
basically jump into them. And domelee. There's some exceptions with certain units,
but but yes, there's a lotof meta stuff about how the game
works. That's just like, okay, this is work or like most of
the artillery does like suppression damage butdoesn't do a lot of like actual damage

(04:45):
to units. But suppression doesn't slowunits down. So if someone's attacking you
and you blast them with artillery,they just run through it perfectly. Fine.
He's like, yeah, just strollingthrough a field, nothing going on,
just artillery blowing up all around me. Have you played since the one
that one patch, because they madepretty dramatic changes to light artillery with it.
I have played, and it's stillto me that wasn't that drastic.

(05:06):
It was like, okay, it'ssome light changes that now that artillery is
like a little more tight and alittle bit more damage, but it still
felt off to me. I justwant you guys know that I too have
thoughts about this game. I'm notjust a big dummy here, So just
when I put that, I actuallythink that this game is a little bit
great at modeling World War One.From the perspective that it is a grind,

(05:29):
I actually don't know if I thinkit's a great game. I think
it's a good game for the firstten to fifteen hours, and then it's
it didn't like in a way,which is different because it's very similar to
like the Total War games. ButI felt drawn to come back to the
Total War maybe like the progression happenedfaster or it was more alluring. Am

(05:50):
I actually kind of thought I wouldput it down, so if there's a
new update or something, i'd pickit back up. But I think I've
settled on that as my verdict.I think I know what you mean by
the grind. The oh, Ihave to attack this province five times in
a row and each battle is goingto be thirty minutes exactly exactly on one
turn to make sure that I capturethis province is very grandy, especially when

(06:14):
the map is exactly the same becauseyou're hitting the same province every single time.
I wish there was a little bitmore persistence between battles too. They
sort of sold it as the battleevolves over the course or the map evolves
over the course of the war,and it does. But I think the
only stuff that really stays battle tobattle is the destroyed buildings and then your
trenches. Yeah, and then likethe shell craters disappear within seconds, the

(06:35):
bodies disappear. What I think wouldbe interesting is if you attack on a
hacks and you don't fully sweep theenemy off the hacks. It would be
interesting if the game kept your troopsin the position that they were in or
something like that. Because there wasa lot Oh man, I could talk
about this game for easily for anhour plus, Yes, me too.
I don't want to. I don'twant to go down that roadboat. What

(06:57):
I would say is, I thinkthe oncept is solid. I think there's
a lot of good mechanics in thegame. I think there's some polishing that
would make it a truly great game, and some some changes in tweaks that
I don't think would like completely haveto change the game, I think.
But I think I don't know thatwe'll ever get there, because I think
there's some core decisions around the designthat would probably need to alter with the

(07:20):
I will say I felt like thegame is a little too time pressed when
it first came out, Like Ifelt like I was rushing, which seemed
strange, like I gotta get hereso I can take every spot on the
map, and oh no, theclock is my biggest enemy. Like that
felt a little weird, But Ido love what they do with supply in
the game. Um. I lovethe way that the strategic maps supply interacts

(07:42):
with the battles. And I haveto pull myself back because this doesn't need
to be the Great War Western Frontepisode, but I do want to talk
about it, and uh and uh, maybe you know, maybe we'll do
an episode on that next. I'vebroadly similar opinions. Well, what else
have you been playing anything slately?I've been so busy at work and a
lot of times I come home butI don't want to do something too terribly

(08:03):
taxing. So I've been playing graveyardKeeper again because I picked up all the
DLC on sale. For those ofyou who don't know, Graveyard Keeper is
basically Stardu Valley with cannibalism. Cannibalismglad, I'm glad you're over there and
we're over here. Yeah. Yeah, And how are you enjoying that one
compared to Stardu Valley, because Ihaven't played it, but I saw it.

(08:24):
I have played Stardu Valley, andI enjoyed that one. It's it's
it's started value all the less crops, more graveyard and corpses. It's interesting
and zombies and all that because it'sit's it's like a more adult version of
Star of Stardu Valley. Is there'sstill dating because there's dating in Stardu Valley.
No, there's no dating. Idon't think there's a lot of booze

(08:45):
though with the corpses. I didn'tknow how the whole dating thing would work.
So but it was a question Ihad to ask, Yeah, well,
Matt, do you want to continueon? Tell us what games you've
been playing? Oh? Um,the Great War Western Front obviously, the
other game that I always talk about, War in the Pacific. I don't
know if I've been playing much else. I'm trying to think. I think
that's kind of an d I thinkit's been. That's been those those two

(09:07):
games in the game we're going totalk about a little bit. But yeah,
there's a few games I want totake a look at, but I
haven't gotten around to them yet.So it's I don't know that I have
a lot to add on this thissegment, this this episode. What about
you, Tortuga or Eric or whateverI'm supposed to call you. Yeah,
that's right, and we never know. I have been playing besides The Great
War Western Front, And by theway, I'm serious, I think I

(09:30):
am going to stop playing that one. I really enjoyed it. But I'll
play some more right before we dothat podcast so I can refresh my opinion.
But other than that, I've beenplaying this game, tycoon type management
game called Airport CEO. It wasreleased a while back, so it's not
like a new game. It's justa new game for me. It's I
kind of like Prison Architect, butyou're building an airport. It's pretty fun
when I play. It also playsout like Prison Architect because I always makes

(09:52):
some dystopian nightmare. Yeah. Imean there's a lot of amusing things.
I think the UI for that game, or maybe it's really the UX for
that game, is it could usejust like a one more pass to make
it a very good game. I'dgive it kind of like a B rating
overall. Yeah, but it's veryenjoyable for a management game. It's like

(10:13):
I'm in the same boat as you'vebeen. Some days, I come home
and I don't really have the brainpower for a World Waves type game,
so I'll just I'll just pop onAirport CEO and watch people dance around on
the airport, the contractors that areimmune to airplanes. That's always my favorite
when I watched them, like walkingacross a runway when planes are landing.
Anyway, that definitely feels like thetype of game where it was like made

(10:35):
by one guy who's was very goodat doing some things, but then needed
to do other things to get thegame done. Yeah. I could see
that, and it's like it's agood game, but again, same same
place as you. It's a it'sa good B plus for me, but
could definitely use some spit and polish. I'm pretty harsh with my grating two,
so B for me. I mean, there's no great inflation. I'll
try. I try to give aC as my average, so it's pretty

(10:58):
harsh. But I the scientist doesn'tlike to skew the curve. You're not
ign You're not going to give everythingA seventy percent is long if it's garbage.
Yeah, seven out of ten Ihated it. Seven point five.
It was amazing, And I nevereven know what any of that stuff means
anymore. Like it's also I feellike half the time the score is just

(11:20):
influenced by seo. It's like,what's going to get us the clicks?
You know. By the way,they have a DLC that's free apparently called
Supersonic, So that makes me thinkof Aerobiz Supersonic toward two get Oh yeah,
I mean it's not I miss Ireally. If anybody knows a good
aerobis supersonic like game, let meknow. And we actually I went through

(11:41):
a bit of an aircraft airplane airportphase with some other people were all they
were doing Microsoft Light Simulator, andthat's what actually kind of transitioned us into
the management side of things, becauseapparently there's actual Tycoon type games, So
you can play on top of MicrosoftFlight Simulator where you can pilot your aircraft.
It counts as you're making money foryour airline corporation, and then you

(12:07):
can actually just completely move to astrategy version of the same game. You
don't even fly in Microsoft's Flighting later. But even though it's supposed to be
a mod for that, I thinkthere were some mods like that for Silent
Hunter where it would give you likea strategic map. Oh that's pretty cool,
do some stuff, but I'd haveto talk to Wolf. He would
know better than me. I playeda lot of Airport Tycoon two way back
in the day, which Airport CEOkind of reminds me of. Okay,

(12:31):
that's so, I played the AirlineTycoon Airport Tycoon two, and I went
back and looked at it, andit gets like awful ratings, like it's
a thirty percent on Steam or somethinglike that. Not just because the game
has technical issues, but I thinkit has technical issues. Even when I
played it, it had technical issues. And I vaguely remember this. I

(12:52):
mean, obviously, I was muchyounger than an Airline Tycoon. The original
is apparently a very good game.Oh you're talking no, so I'm talking
Airport. He could not Airline Tycoon. Oh okay, yeah, well that's
back back in the day when everygame was a tycoon game. Yeah,
this is one of those early twothousands, late nineteen nineties type things too.
My go to was theme Park Tycoon. That's a good one, and

(13:15):
Railroad Tycoon. Yeah, I meanthose are exceptional titles. I played a
lot of the sims. When Iwanted to build houses, it was basically
the house Tycoon. You know.You know what is a little funny is
I just googled Airline Tycoon and itwas like seventy percent rating. I was
like, oh, oh or Orit never changes, and then Database twenty

(13:37):
two, it's always been the same. Oh no, right on cue.
Okay. Another one is a TerraInvicta. I haven't really played that much
in the last week, but sincethe last podcast at least, I'm still
trying to finish. And this justgoes to show you that Aran Victa is
like the interminable, never ending gamethat you can I hope one day to
see the ending screen. It feels. I mean, it is by the

(14:00):
same people who did the Long Warmod for Xcom, and it feels the
same way where I'm like, Iwant to get to the end of this
damn game because it's a good game, but damn it if it doesn't take
forever. I have feelings on thatone too, well you can express those.
I think we already do. Wealready do Tarran Victor. Is that
a strategy game? Okay, wedidn't do it on that's right, you
never played it. I told youlike a thousand times to go get Tarran

(14:22):
Victa, that we need to doa podcast on it. I actually hit
a podcast with Exploriminate for that onemy very brief takeout it is that it's
the core of a very good gameand Jazz brittan need of an experienced YUX
designer. Yeah, I think that. Besides that, I would also say
that I have like two like strongfeelings on it. First of all,

(14:45):
I think that the game needs toevolve beyond nation management when you get to
space. Space should just be thefocus. But yet you're really tethered to
all these stupid espionage and manipulation ofcontrol and public opinion and like that should
only be an early game thing,and there's no real transition out of that,
so it becomes a real nuisance.And the second point is this game

(15:07):
is like made made for the Expanse. So I hope to god somebody does
like a total overhaul and makes thisgame into like an Expanse universe where there's
actually somebody you know on all thedifferent asteroids, there's Mars as its own
entity. That would be awesome.I would definitely come back and play the
game for that. I have nothingto add on this. Okay, well,

(15:31):
those are the games I've been playing, so I think I'm tapped out.
Well, I suppose we can moveon to our titular episode or titular
topic or is that the right word. I don't know. Yeah, yeah,
it's very titi leading. Well,I guess today's episode we're going to
be talking a little bit about Rulethe Waves three, the third one,

(15:52):
and I, you know, Irealized this is a game, being the
third game in the series, thatdespite the fact that it's been around for
a while, I imagine there's afair number of people who have probably never
even heard of Rule the Waves becauseit was previously only available a website called
NWS I believe, Naval Warfare Simulations, which is kind of its own storefront

(16:12):
or is its own storefront, buthas never been on Steam. And Rule
the Waves three is going to goon Steam, so it's going to be
exposed to a wider audience than hasprobably ever been aware of it before.
And well before we before we gotoo far down that road, though,
Ben, do you want to talka little bit about what is Rule the
Waves? What? What what's thegame? What's the what's the concept,

(16:34):
what's the elevator? You know,if you if you had to explain to
someone who had never heard of thisbefore, how would you explain what Rule
the Waves is? The way I'vealways described it to people whenever I've been
streaming it is basically, you arethe secretary of the Navy from around the
turn of the century to Cold War. You are in charge of designing,

(16:55):
building, managing the budget, andthen fighting with yours and that's it.
You don't control the nation. Youdon't control like world politics. You don't
control when peace we'll talk about this. When a war ends, you just
control the ships, the booty boatscool, and you get to fight in
tactical battles as well as designing shipson a strategic map and moving them around

(17:19):
at least at sort of a highlevel to different commands. Yeah, there's
different difficulty levels, so you couldplay it in a matter where you have
limited control during the tactical battles orvery very minute control. Yeah, it's
like what captained Vice admiral. Thoseare like the difficulty levels that I don't
I don't know what diffic studies youguys play on. Always play on Captain
difficulty because I want to I wantto fire the torpedoes myself. Yeah,

(17:41):
me too. I usually play asadmiral. I want to command the school,
I want to command what I cansee and then if ships move out
of my line of site, youknow, they I wouldn't have, at
least in the early part of thisgame, I wouldn't have wireless to tell
them what to do. So thenat that point it's, uh, it's
the the AI's job to figure itout. So I'll give you signal flags

(18:03):
and that's that's it. I thinkthat it's also a little missleading to call
it difficulty, because the difficulty ofthe game is the same for any of
those modes. It just really influenceshow much control you have over ships.
There is a modifier when you're startinga new game to make the game a
little more difficult by boosting the AIthrough the course of the campaign or the

(18:26):
career. It's important for this discussion, at least, it's a point that
I want to make. So I'lljust preface my point by saying that the
game was originally a Rollways One wasbased on Steam and Iron, and Steam
and Iron was a tactical only kindof game where the only like quote unquote
strategic shell around it was just likea scenario selector that allowed you to jump

(18:51):
into a bunch of different scenarios thatthey had like handcrafted. I think it
was built around the World War One, some series of battles around World War
One, and maybe some other ones. So the game that we play as
Roll the Waves is just an evolutionof some tactical battle simulator for World War

(19:11):
One type ships. I have someimportant things I want to say about that
later, so I thought i'd prefacethat, But otherwise Ben nailed the description.
It's it's perfect to say that youdon't control the nation, because that's
definitely what people will think when they'repicking like the US or you know whatever.
No, yeah, you don't.You don't even have really that much
control over who you go to warwith. The tensions just kind of rise

(19:34):
and fall, and you know,you end up with at war with people
who you may not have wanted togo to war with. It's all outside
of your control. A little foreshadowinghere. We'll get to this later,
but I would like, in termsof not controlling the nation, entirely,
fuck the Kaiser. Okay um.Yeah, So I mean like when you're
on this, when you start thegame as the as the head of one

(19:56):
of the nations, you're basically onthe strateg je map that has or I
guess Excel spreadsheet to some extent thathas a list of all your ships,
different classes of ships. You haveto manage the budget to determine like do
I want to build more do Inot? Do you want to design more
ships? How do you want tohandle researching items? And then you know
you do have some and you've gotlike this section on the screen that shows

(20:19):
the tensions that exist between the differentcountries. When tensions get to a certain
point, then you end up fightinga war. The strategic game is turn
based. When you fight battles,it's in real time, sort of like
possible, I guess real time,but it is. It's interesting because you
don't control the nation you're right,but you do have some influence over right,

(20:41):
Like events can pop up and thingscan happen, and they're like,
hey, what is the secretary ofthe navy think? So in some sense
it feels a little bit like theTurpits simulator in a way because you're because
you're you can play a pretty strongrole in the politics of things as events
occur, or you can clearly steeraway from war with certain countries, steer

(21:03):
toward war with other countries. Thereis still randomness of tensions going up and
down, that you don't have directcontrol over. But I feel like as
as tensions get closer to war,you get more control because it's more likely
that events occur with countries that you'reon the brink of war with, and
so you can kind of steer thingsto some extent in the same way that
like turpets As writings and speeches andwhatnot had very profound political impacts and whatnot,

(21:30):
even if he wasn't the one whocaused, you know, Germany to
go to war with Britain. Yeah. I mean, though the events in
the game are actually usually pulled fromthese historical events that you're referring to.
I know that they have one whereit's like submarines are you know, unslash
your country name here, like unAmerican or an Italian and underhanded and this

(21:55):
is a reference to I think wasit It was in England, I think
where they decided not to submarines ordidn't invest in research because I thought that
they would be it was like beneaththe Royal Navy to use such underhanded tactics.
Well, they still used them,but they definitely there was pushback and
elements of the fleet where they're likewe already have control of the seas.

(22:15):
Why would we want to invest insomething that would basically undermine our entire our
entire investment, right, Yeah,well whatever the I mean, they just
picked these events, so you geta chance to take these historical events and
then apply them to the nation you'replaying. Yeah, and you've get there's
like there's one that's very clearly likeinfluenced by the Boxer rebellion and other things

(22:37):
like that. But yeah, whydon't you what are your thoughts? I
mean, I guess you know ifyou have played the series? What's new
with Rule the Waves three? Someof the key stuff that's new The game
starts earlier. So the previous versionsof the game started in nineteen hundred,
and now you can push out toeighteen nineties, so you get kind of
the tail end of the Ironclad era. You get the full pre Dreadnought era
of ships, and then you gointo the Dreadknots. Game pushes out from

(23:00):
I think was did Rullaways two endin nineteen fifty? Was it? Well?
I don't know. I mean,nominally, I know you can kind
of push it, but I thinkat nineteen fifty is when things basically like
events stopped happening. They're stopped tobe if you were playing on like a
normal pace, that's when technology wouldstop progressing, but you could keep hitting
the turn button. Sure. Andnow this version Rulaways three goes to nineteen

(23:22):
seventy and so they've made it madea point of you know, this stretches
into the into the earlier phases ofmissile combat, and I want to hear
from you Ben a little bit onthat. But so those are some new
things. They've added officers, whichI think is an interesting although perhaps a
little bit time. I don't,I don't know, I'm torn on it.
I think it's cool that you havethe ability to assign commanders to different

(23:47):
divisions and to officers of ships,and you can promote them. And there
can be political implications to promoting,you know, a less senior commander.
You know, you can piss peopleoff and prestigious. Ultimately, how you
win. The goal is to toa mass as much sort of respect as
the secretary of the Navy. Ohbrother, what does anybody play with that

(24:07):
in mind? I don't, Idon't care. I mean, it's like
it's clearly the victory, Like that'swhen the game ends. It talks about
your your character based off your prestigescore. Yeah, I mean, it's
it's a score that's built into thegame. So I guess if people don't
have any like Sandbox inclination, theydon't have a sandbox bone in their body,
they can shoot for a high prestige. But I think I play,

(24:30):
and I think a lot of peoplemight play just I mean, you can.
You can try to maximize prestige overdifferent events or whatever. But I'm
happy to take a prestige hit ifit benefits me in terms of budget or
something else. If I already haveenough prestige to spare, I'll take a
hit. But the goal is tomake it go up right mine. No,
my my goal is to paint themap in my nation's color. That

(24:51):
mean my my my goal is usuallyprestige and big big boats. Yeah.
I mean, like at the endof the game, if you don't have
a high enough prestige, they're notgoing to name a battleship class after you
or whatever, right, like you'rean aircraft carrier aircraft carry exactly. Yeah,
I don't. I don't want somedinky little patrol boat named after me.
What the heck? I actually don'tlike painting the map because I find
that it makes like the endgame tedious. Oh yeah, you're right. I

(25:15):
mean it doesn't increase your foreign stations, that's for sure, which is I
find that part of the game prettytedious, managing the foreign stations, because
you know, there's like the world'sbroken down into what like fourteen different areas,
and so it's a pretty large it'svery global. I mean it's very
you know, you don't have alot of control of where your ships go.
You put them into the Western Pacific, you know, like the seasons

(25:37):
are pretty big. Well, basedon your empire, you're required to put
a certain amount right foreign stations ofships in areas where you have colonies.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Andso that's why I never plays the British
because I don't want to. Idon't want to deal with that, Like
I really enjoy playing as like thesmaller starts. Yeah, they're more rewarding
to more than Japan or Austria,Hungary or like even Russia. You basically

(26:04):
just had you you could pretty muchignore the Pacific side as that Russia start
for a while, just focus onthe Baltic Italy is a good one.
I mean, you don't want tosend your fleet over from the Atlantic all
the way to the Pacific to fightJapan. I have literally done that before
and it never works out. Well, nonsense, It sounds like a brilliant
idea. I thought that there wasgood historical precedent. I wonder why why

(26:29):
could that have gone poorly? Ifonly the Germans had been able to refuel
them and take care of them theway that Vilhelm told Nikki he would.
There were a couple of other thingsthat are new in the game. I'd
like to mention these, especially becausethey're very personal to me. They were
both mods that I had created forRuthaways one and two. One is they

(26:49):
have an AI wars introduced now,so you don't just in the previous two
games you were just kind of alonethat AI only went to with you.
They never went to war with eachother. So in theory, if you
were going to war with different people, like a person who is resting,
not a war with you could justget better and then they could go to

(27:10):
war with you right after a previouswar with someone else. And yeah,
I mean, basically you were alwaysfighting an enemy that was only geared at.
They would only lose their ships ifyou were fighting them. Now there's
a system where different different nations cango to war with each other even if
they're not you, and then theycan lose their ships, so you might
be able to attack like a weekin nation. That's a nice system.

(27:30):
That's a mod that I had madefrom roadways one, two and another one
is kind of a miss I Actually, I'd be curious to see what Ben
thinks about this one. But theyadded something like an auto resolve for people
who like to play like the totalwar games from the strategic perspective only,
or who want to at least skipsome battles because some wars, I mean,
just like we were talking about withthe Great War Game, some the

(27:53):
battles do get a little bit grindy. You can get into wars where it's
like, okay, it's my fifteenthrade on this poor I don't want to
fight it. So the way thatthey instituted this game this mode is you
just put your ships on AI controland they're still controlled on the tactical map.
It would be like going into theroom total warmap and watching the AI

(28:14):
control your units. And that's thequote unquote auto result that they instituted mine
was. I always thought that itwould be more of like a strategic button.
You would click and it would justgive you the results right away.
So it was interesting to me tosee that they called it an auto resolve,
or maybe they walked back on that. I don't know what the exact
verbidge was, but it's to me, it's definitely not an auto resolve.
It's just allowing the AI to takecontrol so you can max the game speed.

(28:41):
I broadly similar opinion. I wouldhave preferred that it just be a
click button and then it calculates whatthe outcome of the battle was and gives
it to you and then you moveon, because you're entirely right. If
it's anything I think it's a problemwith the game that has been Exacerba aided
in Rule Aways three is that sometimesthe wars can get extremely long and tedious,

(29:04):
and I, okay, it's like, okay, a full sized fleet
battle every thirty days is a littlebit ridiculous. Yeah, and those battles
can literally take hours to play through. So you know, I just want
to finish this run of battleships thatI really want to see done, but
oh no, I've got to playsixteen hours of fleet battles, so it

(29:26):
would be nice to have that autoresolve battle a button, but that you
know, I don't want to watchthe AI do stupid things with my with
my boats. Just tell me thatthat's exactly it. I can't watch like
okay if you give me an autoresolve result and you show me that like
two. I think that, firstof all, most time, most of
the times, auto resolve tend tobe like conservative things because I think that

(29:51):
the game designers are smart enough toknow that people do want to take control
for like some key battles, andthen they don't want the auto resolve like
throwing away their fleet, you know, without them in an actual control of
it. But that's not what happenswhen you do the AI control. At
least in my very limited experience,I only used it for maybe two or
three battles, and then one ofthem it took my armored cruisers and actually

(30:11):
attacked the enemy armored cruisers, andyou know, it sank half my armored
cruisers, which I was not particularlyhappy about. So anyway, it's interesting
to see that they at least implementedit. But I'm not the biggest fan
of the way it was implemented bythe way Matt. Have you played this
game, are you you know,aware of these things or yeah, I've

(30:32):
played it, I'm aware of it. I thought it was strange when I
was on a battle and I'm like, wait, I can put the ships
in the AI control, Like,okay, I don't know that. I'm
gonna want to like just sit here, and I guess I can fast forward
it more, but I don't know. It just it didn't seem like it
was the Auto resolve I was lookingfor. Yeah, what's horse is?
I had a battle where it wasbasically over, but the time, you

(30:52):
know, there's a timer for eachbattle and it has to go like eight
hundred minutes before the battle will actuallyquit. And I was like, okay,
I'll just let the AI. I'llclick on this AI resolve button mode
so that the AI can just takecontrol of my ships for the rest of
the you know, four hundred minutesor whatever. But then I had already
won the battle and I moved away, and when I clicked the AI on,

(31:15):
they went back towards the enemy andI was like, oh no,
no, no, no, Soyeah, it's you're really at the Mercy
of whatever the AI chooses do,and it may not be it may not
always do the smart thing, orat least the thing you wanted to do.
What do you guys think about thedivision system? Do you like it?
Do you use? It? Isjust an extra? Like because I've
I've played this and I liked theofficers. In my initial play through,

(31:38):
I thought the divisions adding the abilityto sort of craft your fleet by building
your own divisions was nice. ButI've seen I saw some comments in the
stream I was doing where it seemedlike some folks kind of felt like,
you know, this just feels likeit's just extra work and doesn't add a
lot to it, and like,why do I care about these officers?

(32:00):
Like to me, it's like Iwant to tell a story, and I
think having actual officers there helps medo that. The divisions, I wasn't
entirely sure what to do with themthough, because like I set them up,
But then if I want to dostuff that's not fleet battle stuff,
do I do I want to withdrawthose ships from the division? Do I?
If I'm going to set them toraiders, should they not be in

(32:20):
the division? Like, how doyou guys interact with the divisions, and
do you feel like they pose avalid purpose. I personally rather like them
for me. I use them usuallyonly for large ships if I have multiple
classes with significantly different capabilities. Soearly game they usually mean a lot to

(32:43):
me, because, Okay, I'vegot eight pre dread knots in two different
classes. One goes sixteen kilometers anhour or sixteen knots, one goes eighteen
knots. And now I've got anearly battleship that goes twenty two and has
broadly different armament and different capabilities.I can take these guys over here and
put them into division. I cantake these guys over here and put them

(33:04):
into division, and when I getto the battle, I won't have ships
with different, vastly different speeds andcaliber of guns and capabilities mixed together.
I like that. I generally don'tget two in the weeds about making divisions
outside of that with like light cruisersor heavy cruisers or something like that.
It's usually just the big stuff.I'm exactly the same way, basically,
I think, then you hit thenail on the head. I haven't gotten

(33:28):
into like the whole constructing your fullfleet. Like in my mind, I
like the idea of and maybe I'lldo it more when I get deeper into
the carriers, like having carriers thanhaving like an escort like cruisers, maybe
you can make those with like dualpurpose me and armaments, but I haven't
gotten that far in my current game, and as far as the main purpose,

(33:50):
I see and it works. Itworks well at least my experience so
far. Division editor does keep shipsof different types and the same I'm sorry
at different classes of the same type. It keeps them separate, and that
was just something that a lot ofpeople complained about. In fact, I
also made a fleet editor for Rulethe Waves too, because it was just
frustrating to see your twenty four knotbattleship like fast battleship paired with like a

(34:15):
seventeen knot battleship and the divisions onlymove at at the speed of the fastest
ship. So it was just likethis advantage I had. I'm not even
sure how why they've got picked put. Why are they in the same division,
I don't know, but now wedon't have to worry about it.
Why why is my forty year oldcoastal defense ship with two sixteen inch guns

(34:37):
on it paired with my modern battleshipwith and fourteen inch guns. Yeah,
you would so at least it's it'sreally useful. I find that that future
is like the best one so far. In fact, going back to the
AAR Wars one, I haven't actuallynoticed very much about this. I've seen
nations go to war, but Ididn't. I don't know if I recorded
how how much damage did they doto each other? They're they're very timid

(35:00):
in the game I've got going rightnow. There was one AI were going
on and like the entire quarters ofthe war, one capital ship and a
couple smaller ships were destroyed during thehigher course of the war, and then
in the war I was going on, fourteen capital ships were sunk in the
first six months. And it's like, wow, those guys are really playing
with a different set of rules,aren't they. Do you? Did you

(35:22):
guys feel like because I heard youguys say that you're you're seeing a lot
of fleet battles, like over andover again, too many? Is that
that's different than my experience with theprevious rule of Waves, where it felt
like it was just a million tinyship actions and maybe occasionally a big fleet
action. Is that is that wrongor no? I agree with that.
At the previous one and one intwo I always felt like it was it

(35:45):
was a more balanced so the wayI would want to play the game,
and that like, yeah, you'llyou'll fight some cruiser actions. Cruiser actions
I always found super fun. Orthe single single ship combats were always my
favorite, when it was just like, oh oh yeah, heavy cruise are
out on a raid, got interceptedby another heavy cruiser and it's just one
on one. I love that,And there was always a lot of that.

(36:07):
But like in Rule the Waves three, I was in the game,
I'm going I'm a plan right now, I'm Austria hungry, and Italy has
tried to invade Dalmatia every other monthfor eighteen months, and it's just like,
how many times do I have tosing all of your transports and destroy
so many of your capital ships.It's just like the massive fleet battles which

(36:30):
take hours to resolve, just fireway too often. Well, to be
fair, in that situation, thatsounds historically accurate, it's just the twenty
third Battle of zon Zo at Sea, you know that's right. Yeah,
I'm going back to the officers whenyou were talking about, Matt, I
really enjoy the officers. They doadd Okay, so I in theory enjoy
the officers because they do add alot of flavor to the ships, and

(36:52):
like I think you could if youhad the patients for it, track your
different officers put them on too.I think the system is very good.
The problem for me is that thegame is already such a spreadsheet management game,
adding like one extra column that Ihave to sort by, I mean
put it in spreadsheet terms, youknow. I feel like it's one more

(37:14):
thing I have to look into,and that's probably going to make people who
are like grognards, who have thetime just to really dive fully deeply into
the game. That's gonna make themhappy. Unfortunately. I mean, I
actually I don't think it's a badthing. I just haven't I haven't used
it. I don't have the timeto, Like, you know, I
want to progress time in my game. I want like one year to go
buy in my game. If I'mat peace, I don't want it to

(37:36):
take like an hour. Because themost fun thing about the game is designing
ships and then waiting for them tobe built. This is like the most
rewarding thing, in my opinion,design ships and then get you know,
you need to go a couple ofyears, three years for them to be
built. The officers things just kindof deter my ability to advance turns as
quick as I'd like to do.They make a big difference in how ship
performing battle because you'll get you'll getnotices of, oh, the officers above

(38:00):
average, and I've not. MaybeI've just not playing close at enough attention,
but I haven't noticed the ship betternow I don't know, because there's
so it's like the UI is soarchaic. I would also just like to
say I fucking love these games.I know I feel like I'm shitting out
it a lot, but at theend of the day, I do love
these games. The UI is soarchaic though, that you don't get a

(38:22):
lot of feedback on things. Soit's like, yes, it'll tell you
that this is an above average officerand then he'll have some traits, but
it won't tell you what that actuallymeans. It's it's it's not going to
tell you that he'll be less likelyto misinterpret orders, or the accuracy will
be you know, X percentage betteror anything like that. You don't have

(38:43):
that feedback what those things actually do. So it's hard to see without like
a straight A to B comparison,what's going on with that information. Yeah,
and it's almost like because you don'treally get because you're not really really
auto resolving very often, at leastI'm not. I kind of feel like
the individual captains matter less than thatscenario too, because outside of maybe a

(39:06):
ship misreading orders and going off onits own, you know, or maybe
having a better accuracy rate, likeI don't know that, I have a
lot of opportunity for those officers tostand out. Maybe maybe an above average
officer would be better on a commercerating order, like, maybe they'd be
better at tracking down merchants, butI haven't noticed. Maybe I need to
pay closer attention. I love thesetypes of games too, by the way,

(39:27):
Ben, So I've referred to Rulethe Waves as the as the out
of the park baseball of war games, Like I don't know if you've ever
played that, but it's like avery similar sort of super spreadsheet heavy style
baseball management game where you're a GM. They've made it look a little prettier
in recent years, but like historicallyit had always basically just been like you're

(39:49):
reading spreadsheets. But what I thinkout of the park Baseball does a better
job of. And maybe it's justbecause I know baseball stats and and understand
baseball better than I do naval combat, but what out of the park Baseball
does a much better job at hisfeedback. And that's my biggest complaint with
Rule the Waves is like I reallydon't get a lot of information other than
like, if there's a flash fireand a ship blows up, and maybe

(40:10):
I can like interpret like, oh, I should put more barbet armor or
however you pronounce that, or turretarmor to prevent that from happening again,
right, But like, other thanthat, the game doesn't give you a
lot of information about why a shipis performing well or why it's not.
It's very obscure. You've got todig in there and kind of make those

(40:31):
assessments yourself, which you know,I would think if a ship comes back
from a battle, you'd probably acaptain will be like, hey, this
worked and this didn't write and yousaw that in especially in World War One,
the British learned a lot from fromDodger Bank. The Germans learned a
lot from dodger Bank that influenced someof the things they did at Jutland,
but they didn't learn everything. AndI think, you know, the British

(40:52):
got away with a flash fire almostdestroying I think it was lying or one
of the battle cruisers had a turretthat like had a flash fire, but
it didn't go all the way,and so they didn't they didn't learn that,
and then they then they learned atJutland the hard way. Oh,
maybe we should keep the blast doorsclosed. That's why the engineers put them

(41:12):
in there. Yeah, right,maybe we shouldn't staffed shell upon shell and
powder bag upon powder bag and theturrets, lining the you know, lining
the walkways for faster reloading. Butlike there's just no there's not any real
feedback about why things are working orwhy they're not, which I think is
a big miss in a game aboutship design. I love Rule the Waves

(41:36):
and I've played it a ton,but it is a lot of slogging through
obscurity to try and understand why thingsare working and why they're not. There's
a lot of things in the gamethat, like like mechanics and best practices
and things like that that exist butare in no way broadcast to the player

(41:58):
at all, and the old wayyou will ever know them is if you
have like lived on the forums forthat game for a while and have played
all of them and understand that twoinches of armor is the minimum required to
prevent splinter penetration. The game nevertells you that that's just something that you
have to figure out on yourself outsideof the game. There's a lot of

(42:22):
things that you can't learn in gamethat need to be learned by reading the
PDF or the forums. Yeah,and I think that's sort of an old
old school war gaming style of design, right, where it's like, well,
did you read the manual? Youknow, like, and I don't
know that that'll play well on Steam. I guess we'll see. But that's
certainly sort of more of the oldschool style of game where it's like,
hey, you should be reading themanual before you play. Yeah, it's

(42:44):
interesting. That's an interesting point becauseI am the person who is living on
the forums and I've learned all thesebizarre things that You're right, I guess
I would have no way of knowing. Why is it that two inches is
what stops? Why is it thatyou don't really need any conning tower armor?
Why is that that's my own designphilosophy. At least my captains don't

(43:06):
need conning tower armor. Yeah,the ship, if it's going to get
hit in the conning tower, thingsare going to get gold poorly anyway.
So and plus there's a fifty percentchance when they get a quote unquote bridge
hit, there's a fifty percent chanceit hits the bridge instead of the conning
tower. And then the conning towerarmor doesn't matter anyway. Yep. And
that's another thing, like the gamedoesn't broadcast this information to you. I

(43:27):
do think it would be a greatmechanic is if you built a design flaw
into your ships, and then fiveyears later you get into a war and
all of a sudden, oh,a couple of my early pre dreadnoughts flash
fired and blew up, and thenyou'll get a notification in game. It's
like, oh, the engineers havediscovered that the lack of armor and the
secondary battery has resulted in flash firesupon a direct hit. You might want

(43:54):
to increase armor the secondary battery orsomething like that. I feel like the
mechanic ex for something like that too, because if you think about it,
when you build a ship, there'sa chance. Anytime a new class of
ships comes out and you commissioned someships, you will sometimes, and I'm
pretty sure it's random, but you'llget a pop up that says, like,
you know, it was discovered duringsea trials that the ship is easily

(44:15):
exceeding its design speed. And whenyou design a ship, there's a button
that you press to check the design, and it will also tell you things
like you don't have this technology,so you're getting like developed yet, so
what you're trying to do is goingto result in a rate of fire penalty
or other things like that. Likethere are a couple of things in the

(44:35):
game that do some interesting communication toyou about your design. But why don't
I get a pop up like thatabout a ship after a battle? Like,
right, you know it was discoveredin this battle that here are these
these faults and then maybe you canaddress them when you refit a ship,
because that is something you do periodically, is you will refit old ships to
make them good again. I thinkthe question is that's often not worth the

(44:58):
cost, which is silly. Becahis ships were a refit all the time
historically. Yeah, so like maybethey could give you more reasons to refit
a ship if if defects or otherproblems come up, that then would be
worth the cost to fix. That'sactually segues into another point that I found
out the hard way is a lotof my old strategies for building ships for

(45:19):
longevity that would be able to berefit no longer work in Rulawaves three.
Oh yeah, you got you gottaexpand on this. I may not know
these yet. In the older Rulawavesgame, there was always quality. You
know, you've got your quality ofguns, and I think it was some
guns go down to negative two andthen up to positive one. But now
all guns go down to negative two, and that's new. And what they

(45:42):
did was any any gun built ata negative two quality cannot be changed out.
My old strategy was, Okay,I've got a lot of money to
spend and a lot of dockyard space, but I don't have any good technology
available right now. I'll be like, Okay, I'm going to build a
pre dreadnought with with a big hall, and I'll just put the biggest guns
in the turret, and then lateron I'll be able to refit this thing

(46:06):
to have better guns and it'll itcould be a coastal defense ship. It
could be short range and just takeup you know, you know, just
defend the homeland or something like that. That no longer works because you can't
refit turrets with negative two quality guns. So my old strategy of I'm going
to take these thirteen inch guns atnegative two quality, put them on a
big hall, and then later onI'll be able to turn that into a

(46:28):
halfway decent battleship or at least coastaldefense ship by giving it like triple eleven
inch guns or something like that nolonger works, which removes the drive to
make big ships early and to beable to refit those ships. Now it's
better to just scrap them once youget better guns. Interesting. Yeah,
there were a few ships that Ithink it was mostly the Germans in World

(46:51):
War Two, where they designed shipsto swap the guns out with a different
caliber. I want to say itwas the Sharnhorsts were originally designed with the
intent of putting i think fifteen inchguns on instead of the elevens at a
later time, and they just neverdid it. But generally ship once a
ship was built, like you didn'tsee, no one was swapping out calibers

(47:15):
on like the war spites. Despitethe fact that you know, they had
fifteen inch guns from World War Onethey fought again in World War Two.
They didn't. They didn't get upgunned in between wars with like better quality
guns, despite the fact that metallurgyhad obviously improved. I'm that bums me
out though, because trying to keepships in service as long as possible.

(47:36):
It was one of the things thatI really enjoyed about the game. And
there's lots of runs where like thestars just aligned where I got like Topee
to Protection one fairly early on,and I had a big so I could
put down, like, I don'tknow, a twenty two thousand ton pre
dreadnought with four turrets and cross deckfire formation, and then later on it'll
get upgraded to have better gunsaller,and then later on it will get upgraded

(48:01):
again. Now it's got four eighteeninch guns and is just basically a forty
year old monitor that sits behind themain battle line lobbing giant shells into you
know, the enemy, the enemyvan formation. I loved shit like that,
but now I can't do that atall. That it has been completely
removed. We just have to figureout new ways to min max. I

(48:21):
know that's that's your thing toward twoGA. You love min maxing. Well,
can you upgrade the guns if they'reat negative one quality and negative one
quality? Yes, okay, soit's only for negative two. Well,
it's only for negative two quality.So your guns are just so crap that,
like they're so garbage, they're integralto the superstructure. Does the manual
explain the rationale for that? Notthat I've been able to find. Which

(48:45):
was which bummed me like that becauseI was I was playing, and I
designed a ship purposely to be upgradedlater, and then once I got the
better guns, I went to rebuildit. I was just like, now
you're not allowed to do that.Yeah, there's something about keeping ships alive
for you know, a large ofthe game, which is very satisfying.
And I feel like the game firstof all, I mean, we do
Ben, you should know this kindof this podcast. I feel like sometimes

(49:08):
we over amplify the negatives of games. We just end up talking about it.
I'm kind of a I have acritical way of viewing the world,
not in a negative way, butI mean it does end up being coming
off as a negative. But Ijust I look for the things which can
be improved. It's just the waymy mind works. Oh yeah, yeah,
we end up talking about things whichcould be improved. But I want

(49:30):
to just say I think that weprobably all have a high opinion of this
game. This is probably like anine out of ten for me. I
told you I don't really do greatinflation, so that's a pretty outstanding rating.
I'm curious, what how do youget? So I have mixed feelings
on this, but what I willsay is I think the game. I
feel like tech is super slow inthe eighteen nineties start, yes, but

(49:51):
like the core Rule the Wave gamenineteen nineteen twenty, I would I would
almost say ten out of ten,but it's like it's like a nine and
a half out of ten. Likethe best part of Rule the Waves,
in my opinion, was always biggun ships shooting at big gun ships yep.
And the ability to design that andthe ability to have sort of a

(50:12):
campaign over many years where we havemultiple different wars like that was the core
of the game, and like,let's be real, this was an influential
game, despite the fact that itwas buried away on naval warfare simulations.
I don't think there's any way youcan argue that Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts was not
inspired by Rule the Waves because becauseRule the Waves one came out first,
and that was like kind of asurprising success within the confines of the store

(50:34):
that it was in, and Iknow, like it was it Wilhelm or
Will I'm trying to remember the nameof the guy we interviewed, Tortuga,
Frederick Frederick ah like made some commentsto where it was like, yeah,
wow, we didn't really expected tosell as many copies, but but it's
an influential game, and that partof the game is really strong. Rule

(50:57):
the Waves two added air combat andthrough to World War or two, I
feel like that's kind of a weakspot in the game. Like, I
don't I don't know that I'm superI don't know carriers and aviation in the
game. There's some interesting elements toit, and like putting contracts out for
new types of planes and land basedstuff mixing with the the scale just feels
off and I don't know that it'ssuper well done for aviation. But now

(51:21):
they're adding missiles two and like,I just wonder at one point, like
when you keep adding stuff on topof it, the core of the game
is still solid. I would sayeighteen nineteen twenty five, twenty eight that
game is great, but I justdon't know that I'm sold on everything after
that, like aviation, and Idon't even know about the missiles because I
haven't really experienced them a ton yet, but like it just feels like they're

(51:45):
adding on to stuff that I don'tknow. I don't know, like does
it need to be there? Idon't know. So I entirely agree that
the core of the game, likeeighteen ninety to nineteen twenty nine twenty five
is the best part of the game, ten out of ten for me.
Fucking love it, absolutely love it. The main issue for me after that

(52:07):
is that you spend all this timeand effort and fun with your big gun
battleships and then all of a suddenthe aircraft come in and now you're no
longer Secretary of the Navy. You'remanaging a lot of land based aircraft for
some reason, and you're paying forthem, Like why is the Secretary of
the Navy's budget being used to buildair bases and blimps and contract for new

(52:34):
types of bombers and stuff like thatfor all of the land based stuff.
But the biggest issue with the aircraftis the UI is oppressive when dealing with
aircraft, yeahs to me, it'sthe carrier. It's always the tactical battle
stuff which really holds me back.I still have a lot of fun designing
carriers. I really enjoy it.You go into the battles and now instead

(52:58):
of just here moving your ship salong, and you move them towards the enemy
and then you know, you getinto range and your ships will fire instead
of that. Now it's okay,I gotta go click on the carrier fleet.
Now I gotta click on this otherbutton to bring up like a new
spreadsheet of all the different fighters squadronsand the bomber squadrons I have. Now
I have to write, click andask this bomber squadron to load this type

(53:20):
of torpedo or this bomb. ThenI have to click on someplace on the
map where I think the enemy carrieris going to be. And so like
the clickfests just gets, in myopinion, very annoying and very unfun when
carriers getting involved, and it's it'skind of fun for a little bit the
first time you have this, youknow, the whole like chasing the enemy,

(53:43):
trying to find out where they are. That is still that's still fun.
But the man, it's it's it'sjust the user interface is such as
it holds the game back so much. It was a simple, straightforward,
fairly simple, straightforward, tight design. I think with Roll the Waves too,
and they just keep bolting more andmore on without addressing sort of the
core ui UX pieces, and Ithink that gets in its way. I

(54:07):
want to ask Ben about the missilestuff, because you've done it. I
haven't done that yet. How's themissiles working out in three? Fairly simple?
It's not really. It's kind oflike anti aircraft guns that just kind
of do their thing. Aren't thereship anti ship missiles? Now they're anti
ship missiles, but it's kind ofin between. You kind of just set
up and go here an attack andthey go. It's it's not nearly as

(54:29):
bad as is trying to set upan airstrike. Okay, well that's that's
good. Do I can I askdo they do they have sensors that like
help you understand where the missile shouldbe targeting, Like are these missile attacks
coming in way too close arrange likewhat does it feel right? Or should
I stick to command modern operations formissile combat games. So when I got

(54:50):
to do the missile stuff, itwas a situation where it was like there
was attack of void where I didn'thave a lot of missile stuff, but
the enemy did. So for meit was just like do do do do
do? I'm trucking a log lookingfor some guys in the middle of the
night and then just a wave ofmissiles comes flying in over the horizon and

(55:12):
you just seem pop up in theradar and you're just like, oh,
oh, that's pretty cool. Iguess I get to die now. That
sounds like a really cool experience.It was, so it's like that's one
of the things I really love aboutthe game is like when you are in
a tech void or your enemy isin a tech void and like the stars
have aligned, you have a technologythat just makes your fleet so far superior

(55:37):
to theirs that you're trouncing them,or it's the other way around and you're
the one getting your ass handed toyou because it's like, okay, obviously
it's the middle of the night andthey are landing hit after hit after hit
after hit. Clearly their radar techis much more advanced than mine, and
I need to work on that beforeI need a kid into another ship.
I love that part of the game, even if even if I'm blowing up

(55:58):
left and right, I still findit enter. Okay, well, I
did have one thing I wanted tosay about the game, but basically it's
going back to the point about howthis was originally Steam and Iron a tactical
the game, and we talked toFrederick about this too, Matt. I
don't know if you remember it,but he designed Rule the Waves as some
kind of way to get people toplay the tactical engine. So originally Steam

(56:21):
and Iron was just this World WarOne scenario based thing. But they had
this idea, what if we canwe have this nice tactical engine, how
do we get people to use itmore. Let's build this like sandbox environment
where people basically can create their ownways of generating battles. And then they
ended up because they already had theship properties, they end up allowing people

(56:43):
to design ships too. Now Ithink that the funny thing is that this
game, to me is like ahundred times more successful on a strategic layer
than it is on the tactical layer. But the developers and the game designers
have always been focused on the tacticallevel, and I feel like it's almost
like begrudgingly that they move more attentionand more resources into the strategic layer.

(57:07):
And to me, that speaks towhy this strategic layer is just a clusterfuck
of a UI. It's terrible.You could probably have this up at work
and your boss would think you weredoing work. That's how bad it is.
It does not look at like anygame. I legitimately have spreadsheets that
look better than the strategic layer.Yeah, yeah, So I don't know.

(57:27):
I feel like if they're focus,if they could read the temperature in
the room and understand that people likerule the ways because of the strategic side,
and that's why something like an autoresolve, in my opinion, is
necessary, because there's times when youlike that. I think that their view
is this is an amazing way ofgetting people into the tactical battles, and
my view is this is amazing strategiclayer that allows me to if I want,

(57:52):
also investigate how the ships are doingat the tactical layer. But that's
like secondary when I when I getfrustrated and put the game down. It's
because I'm twenty seven months into awar and I just wanted to get a
run of battleships finished, but insteadI have to take a two and a
half hour break and fight a tacticalbattle for the fourteenth time. Well,
and the fact that there isn't atrue auto resolve as well, like this

(58:15):
is a long game. Well,it's coming soon, I'll make a new
one. Well, but like theoriginal game was twenty years and that was
a pretty good Like it didn't feellike it was super long, but it
didn't feel short. Then the secondgame was basically fifty years. Now the
third game in the series is eightyyears nominally of tech development, Like eighteen

(58:37):
ninety nineteen seventy, that's a longgame. Yes, to be doing this
and without an auto resolve, withmany wars that you're going to fight over
eighty years, I worry. Ihaven't gotten end to end on it yet,
but I worry that's gonna just You'regonna lose half the players by the
time you hit nineteen forty, letalone, Like, who's gonna stick around

(58:59):
at nineteen seventy In a campaign,they do have multiple start dates, but
it's still kind of weird to methat the last start date is nineteen thirty
five, Like you'd think you'd wanta post World War two Tech one.
You know, if you start innineteen fifty you still have the original length
of the original game pretty much.Yeah, So the way I tend to
play the game is super large fleetso I can have more battleships because that's

(59:24):
fun earliest start date, And thenI'd set the tech speed to forty percent
and I slow aircraft development. Thatway, I get a really long pre
Dreadnought Dreadnought era to play with.Yeah, you also don't you play like
the long warm OD or something likethat too. No, I've made my
own custom mods before, Like well, I made a mod to give more

(59:49):
gun variation, change gun stats becausethere are guns that are just arguably way
better than others, so I kindof even them out. I've made mods
where there were I just moved allbombers from the game, Like carriers were
basically just there to scout. There'sonly only planes and the fifty kilogram bombs
that they only fighters in the fiftykilogram bombs that they could carry, and

(01:00:13):
stuff like that. To just tobasically like postpone, the Carrier era,
where all of it all the Oh, I can't have battleships anymore because I
need to have four thousand land basedbombers. I mean that kind of goes
back to the fact that, likewhat you're you're just reiterating the core of
the game is the ships with bigguns, shoot at ships with big guns.

(01:00:35):
Like that the best part. That'sthe best part. That's the absolute
best part of the game. Andthat's the part of the game I focus
on because usually when I stream it, I see about a forty percent decline
to audience when the carriers show up. That's so one hundred percent increase in
my frustration rate. Oh yeah,I think that mirror is my experience too.

(01:00:57):
I mean, I don't know aboutyou know, what's funny, as
I started in eighteen nineties, Startand that's a series which is going up
on YouTube and I'm only in likeeighteen ninety three or something like that,
and I get a question in thecomments, how many how many episodes?
How many more episodes do you thinkuntil missiles? Like good lord, but
like hundred exactly, Like there's there'sprobably no way the series is going to

(01:01:20):
make it that far, because I'llprobably be dead. But I really hope
they add a nineteen fifty start though, because like you got to slog away
through like the whole Carrier era,which I'm not super interested in, for
twenty years before missiles show up inthe latest start. I guess you could
speed the tech development up, butlike that has other implications to the game's
experience, So I don't know.They need a later start date. Nineteen

(01:01:44):
thirty five is too is too earlyfor the last date. One of the
things that always frustrated me about TheCarriers is it doesn't have to be frustrating.
It's mostly frustrating because of a couplemechanical things and the god awful UI,
like the fact that you can't evencopy and paste and mask for like
air bases and carriers. You haveto just right click copy, right click

(01:02:06):
paste, right click paste right.Oh my god, you just don't remind
me. Oh my god. Youcan select air bases at once, but
you cannot paste information to fifty eightones. You have to do them all
individual. It was like that wasstandard uy thirty years ago. Well,
you think they do have a publishernow they are with Slytherin and Matrix.
In the past, they were justsort of a lie by night, you

(01:02:28):
know, naval warfare simulation things,so like you'd think they have some more
resources to help with some of themaybe the busy work of doing a ui
UX. I don't know. Maybethat's yeah, it's all exactly. It's
all copy pasted from the second one, probably painfully over the course of hours,
and from from Rulaways too. It'sall exactly. Say, oh,
but okay, so people think I'mcrazy about this as a complaint of the

(01:02:50):
game. I don't know what youguys think about me, because people,
there's so many people who played thisgame told me it only affects me and
nobody else. They don't know whatthe hell I'm talking about. So in
Rule the Waves too, and evenit's worse than Rulawaves three, there's the
dreaded close combat wiggle waggle that Iget in ships. Do you guys see
that? Oh my gosh. Ihaven't seen it in Rula Waves three,
but definitely in Rule Waves two.In fact, I have. I was

(01:03:15):
recording when one of my ships hadthe wiggle waggle. The enemy ship,
I should say, had the wigglewaggle and then teleported as my torpedo was
about to hit it, and II took a video over to the forum
and asked him what was going onwith this because it looked like the ship
got out of the water and movedon the other side of my torpedo just

(01:03:35):
to avoid it. You're just ina tech void. They just beat you
on some you know, they gota chronosphere or whatever that thing was called.
That's all yeah, I have ordo you experience like, um,
is it a big problem for you? Because I see it, but dreamely
big problem for me. And it'sit happens reliably every single tactical battle.
For those of you who don't knowwhat I'm talking about. It's a situation

(01:03:58):
where say there's an enemy battleship goingtwenty knots and you have a destroyer that
has a buttload of torpedoes, isin a good position and has a fifteen
not advantage on them, but itjust needs to get into a firing position
to be able to launch them.You have a fifteen not advantage on them,
you should be able to catch upto them easily, overpass, you
know, surpass them, and getinto a good firing position. But what

(01:04:21):
happens is whatever you get within aradius of an enemy ship, it looks
like the captain just starts healing thewheel thirty degrees to the left, then
thirty degrees to the right, andthe ship just wiggle waggles back and forth.
And because a you're turning a lot, you're losing speed, and b
you're increasing your linear distance traveled becauseyou're going off to the side and then

(01:04:43):
off to the other side, you'relosing a ton of speed. And then
you're up. You're incable even thoughyou have a huge speed advantage of overtaking
an enemy ship because of the wigglewaggle. And it happens all the fucking
time, And before it used toonly happen with destroyers, and now I'm
seeing it happen with ships up toheavy cruisers, just wiggle waggling all over
the place when I'm trying to getthem into a good position, and it's

(01:05:05):
so incredibly frustrating. Yeah, theway it appears to happen to me is
that it's like ships seem to exertsome kind of like repulsion zone where they
don't want any other ships within thissmall radius, and this happens a lot
of night battles and sure range,like you were saying, especially even if
you're not just chasing after somebody,but as two ships like a cross each

(01:05:26):
other's teas or whatever, like,there's this that's actually how that the torpedo
teleport maneuver happened was that it lookedlike it was going to go left around
my ship, but then it teleportedto be on the right side of my
ship anyway. I mean that lookslike the mechanic which is trying to keep
ships from traveling right on top ofeach other. They can collide too.
I mean you can actually have shipswhich you just clide in and I'll do

(01:05:49):
that all the time on purpose.It's funny. How did now I'm trying
to think, how does that evenwork? Because they do they have this
wiggle waggle which is like being repulsedfrom each other, but yet you can
still get collision. The other thingthat's always annoyed the shit out of me
in tactical battles is that the enemyships always know the second a torpedoes in
the water. I okay, thedeveloper has commented to me directly that he

(01:06:14):
said that it's not true, andyet it still happened. It happened just
the other day in Roadway three,where the enemy was closing, closing,
closing, They were very very close, and I launched a torpedo and suddenly
the very next turn, the verynext minute, they turned away. Maybe
it's coincidence. I don't believe thatfor a hot second, because it doesn't
matter if you're at two hundred yardsor twenty thousand yards. The second that

(01:06:38):
torpedo hits the water, the enemyships turn away from it. Yeah,
they made which is why it's almostimpossible to land like purposeful torpedo hits until
you've got like massive spreads of sixteentorpedoes in the water. You know what
this game needs, tactical nukes.I feel like this game is so good
and the reason why I'm so passionateabout the little things that doesn't do well

(01:07:00):
because I have this is like oneof my favorite games. But man,
if they you know, every nowand then you think about games that should
be remade. This game, althoughit's modern, made in modern times,
at least it's not modern. It'sa game that, despite Rule the Waves
story not even being released yet,I'm always I'm already ready for somebody to

(01:07:21):
remake Rule the Waves, to doit in a better graphics engine. I
don't know it'd be It's it's theconcept is just it's just perfect. It's
something that's so enjoyable. It's calledUltimate Admiral Dreadnoughts Tortuga. That's I mean,
that's why we thought that that wouldbe good. But then you know,
it turns out it's not. I'vethought about that game too. Yeah,

(01:07:45):
I think a lot of people havethoughts about that game. They just
announced another major patch. I didn'treally see anything interesting in it, but
you know, yeah, we'll probablydo a one hundred and eighty degree change
on some mechanic that was a previousone hundred and eighty degree change on another
mechanic. Well, well, thatbeing said, Um, is there anything
we haven't talked about? Is thereanything you you wanted to mention ben or

(01:08:06):
or Tortuga or Eric? So whydo we Why do we talk about some
good things? I mean I trylike the ninth eighteen nineties to nineteen twenty.
The game is a chef's kiss,like the One of the things I
love about the game is that theway the ship designer works I'm like a
really weird nerd. Where like whenI used to play some form form based

(01:08:28):
RPGs where you'd sort of role playsdifferent countries and whatnot, and m one
of them used a program called springSharp to design your ships, which is
basically the exact It was a freeit's a free might even still be out.
There was a free download where youcould design sort of ships and it
would give you sort of information aboutthat ship, and then you could compare
designs. You couldn't fight. Itwas literally just like the ship designer in

(01:08:53):
this game. And I think thatwas really you know, that's one of
the reasons this game really lured me. And I'm like, oh my god,
it's it's the program, but nowyou can do something with the ships.
So like the ability to design theships, the ability to sort of
chart your nation's navy and sort ofbuild the fleet that you want to build,
unless your prime minister's a jerk andtells you they want you to build

(01:09:15):
a certain number of cruisers. Allof that stuff is really well done and
is a lot of fun. Ilike the flavor of the different events that
pop up. I mean, we'vedone like the three of us we did
we did like a role playing series. For one of the previous versions of
Rule the Waves, heavy cruisers werestill the best design ships where each of
us would play for a certain numberof years and then hand the save off

(01:09:38):
to the next person and they'd takeover. Like, I think this is
a really great game for building storiestoo. I think there's a lot here
that is really good. I justI think it's a I think a lot
of our negativity is there was there'sfeels like there's a lot of bolting on
of mechanics without solving some of thecomplaints you have with other mechanics, right,

(01:09:59):
like need more control over which shipsand why things get put into a
battle in the previous games, isyou know, like it's just like random
ships are getting pulled into battles andlike why why do I have sixteen battleships
in this era area and one battleshipis going to go off and fight on
its own against five enemies, LikeI would probably deploy that in a squadron

(01:10:19):
or in this now in three ina division, Like why would it?
You know, why is the battlegenerator working the way it did? And
like that in Rule the Waves oneand two didn't get addressed, and but
in Rule the Waves two and nowthey're like, well, we're not going
to address that. We're not goingto give you more fidelity over the strategic
side of the game, which iswhere it is. Tortuga said, I
think is the best part of thegame. But we're gonna give you like

(01:10:42):
air combat, which I don't knowthat anyone is really asking for that.
So like it's it. I feellike the complaints I mainly have as it
feels like they're focusing on the wrongareas in some cases. But I but
what is there I think is tremendous, especially the early game. Yes,
that's the early game is the bestpart. I would kill for some spit

(01:11:03):
and polish. Yeah, I thinkthis game is it's a it's any kind
of naval Grognard is their wet dream. I mean, this game has has
all the little knobs that you'd wantwith anything related to naval combat, and
that includes Now if you really areinterested in doing the whole carrier thing,
you can do it. I mean, I think that there might be other

(01:11:24):
games that do the carrier cat andmouse better, maybe like Carrier Warfare for
Guadalcanal comes to mind. I thinkthat one does Warren the Pacific. Yeah,
Warren the Pacific does it as well. That's if you can get into
that game. I mean, that'sprobably like the archetype for how to do
naval combat stuff, well slightly different. I mean, the one thing that's
missing in this game. Okay,after talking about other things, but there

(01:11:45):
is a little bit of a disconnectbetween when you're wearing your Secretary of the
Navy hat and then you go intothe tactical battles and you're wearing your admiral
hat. There's a bit of adisconnect at the operational level. Battle narrator,
I call it like the whipping Boyof the game, because everyone kind
of complains about getting weird battles,and I think they've done a good job.

(01:12:08):
In World Waves three. I haven'tseen any utterly bizarre battles generated,
although that may just be a matterof playing more and maybe it's out there,
but I think that there's a disconnectfor me, like I'm being blockaded
as Germany right now, and ablockade is really kind of an operational action.
There's also met you know, thingsyou can do to try to break

(01:12:30):
a blockade. You can you know, sally out and raid and all this
stuff. But the thing is,none of those things will matter. The
operational point is not really addressed.And it's to me it's frustrating because if
I'm the Secretary of the Navy andthen I'm also the admiral controlling the fleet,
I would just expect it to bealso include the middle ground between those

(01:12:50):
two, which is the person who'slike the nimits the Halsey, who's like
controlling things going on in the wholetheater. Yeah, the the randomness of
what happens is strange. You've gotthe strategic level, and you've got the
tactical level, and then there's justa big void of like what you can
what you like as you sat onthe operational level. Why are we turning

(01:13:10):
this Ben's request of positivity back overto negativity. I do have to interrupt.
I'm gonna I gotta get going towork pretty soon. So I just
want to say that I do fuckinglove the game. I play it a
lot. I've been playing it alot for years and years and years since
Rule the Waiames won. Now there'sone anecdote I want to end on,
though, was that in my AustriaHungary game some bastard United Nations bastards decided

(01:13:35):
they were going to do a navaltreaty, and I said no, because
I was building my first run ofproper battleships, big gun battleships, ten
fourteenage guns, best in the world. It's gonna be awesome. They were
like eleven months away from completion,so there were two thirds done, and
they go, okay, okay,okay, how about a slightly less restrictive
treaty. I said no. Thirdtime, slightly less retreat restrictive treaty.

(01:13:58):
If you say no, this timeraise world tension, might start a war
with Italy. No, I'm readyto fight a war. And then the
next thing they go, oh,the Kaisers signed the treaty. Anyway,
we're scrapping your entire fucking fleet.Oh wow. I love that. Though
I love the naval treaties. Iknow we didn't really touch on them,
but like the ability for the politiciansto say, screw you, we're interested
in peace, We're going to signthis treaty. And you're the admiral who's

(01:14:21):
probably just fuming that all this workyou put in is now being thrown away.
Yep. That's that's when I discoveredthe problem with refitting ships because when
they scrapped on my battleships, Iwent to refit all my other ones and
they're like, nah, yeah,I can't do that either. So I
went to build some nice heavy cruisersand they went, oh, well,
oh, those guns are too big. You can't do that. So I

(01:14:42):
went to build some light cruises andthey're like, ah, nah, you
don't have the technology to put thatkind of gun on that kind of ship.
I was like, oh my god, I'm going to strangle you all.
Just let me build a ship.Well, on that note, I
think we'll probably wrap the episode uphere before we let you go, though,
Ben, anything you want to plug, where can folks find you?

(01:15:04):
Oh? I make it easy,Benjamin Magnus everywhere, YouTube, Twitch,
Twitter, all those places we stayedin the beginning. I work for Paradox,
so I host their streams every Wednesday, So you say hi to be
there too. What time is thatstream, Matt two pm Central European summertime.
Everyone, But it's it's on theVODs too, right, I mean

(01:15:26):
they post that. Yeah, y'allhave the bods are up? Well?
Thanks for coming on, Ben.There's a lot of fun to talk with
you. Yeah, thanks for havingme. It was fun. We'll have
to do this again sometime, butthat's gonna do it for today's episode.
So until next time, This isMatt. You can call me the historical
gamer for Eric and Ben. Thanksfor tuning in. Until next time,
we're out.

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Single Malt Strategy: Episode 79 - Rule the Waves 3 - Featuring: Benjamin Magnus

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Single Malt Strategy: Episode 79 - Rule the Waves 3 - Featuring: Benjamin Magnus