Online Gaming Podcast

Full Show Notes at http://onlinegamingpodcast.blogspot.com

Online Boardgaming News (as of 9/21/2006)

Online-Vinci.de.vu

- Not as good as Ludagora, but it has a lot of players

- All in German

BSW

- Diamant

- Power Grid

Full Show Notes at http://onlinegamingpodcast.blogspot.com

Online Boardgaming News (as of 9/6/2006)

Ludagora.net

-Through the Desert

-Hare and Tortoise

-Set

-Vinci

-Medina

-Crazy Circus

-Capharnaum

High Descent

SpielByWeb.com

Amun-Re - I am in 3 games of varying players. Nice scans of the board

Bus - I haven't played an entire turn, yet.

Hacienda - I am not sure I know how to win this game, with land or animals.

Hoity Toity - I just cannot buy the art I need!

Reef Encounter - I don't get the shrimp?

Tikal - The first game, I failed, the second game I kept confusing my color...

Wallenstein - I hope to conquer the world soon...

Brettspielwelt.de

Transamerica - Loved playing this online. I had a lot of fun.

San Juan - Could only get a two player game. I mention the bad text rendering and go off on a tangent.

Carcasonne - Sans expansions. It played fast with some minor inconviences that may be to represent the real playing experience...

Sorry, no online multiplayer browser-based game this week, I ran over, this episode is nearly 50 minutes long!

Boardspace.net

Hive - Surround the queen bee

Gobblet - Line up four globblets in a row column or diagonally

Trax - Make a complete circuit, includes a tile sizer

Lines of Action - Get all pieces touching

Plateau - Stack of 6 or Capture 6, Hidden pieces

Zertz - Collect balls, 4 white or 5 Gray or 6 Black

Yinsh - Collect 3 rings by making rows of 5 chips

Punct - Connect opposite sides of the board using pieces that can stack in patterns

Hex - Connect one side to the other

Brettspielwelt.de

Caylus - Plays faster online and players are easy to come by

Ra - Plays in about 1/2 hour. Watch the Red dots at the top, those are the Ra tiles.

Sorry, no online multiplayer browser-based game this week, I ran over, this episode is nearly 45 minutes long!

I am planning on focusing more on the online boardgaming sites and PBEM sites and spacing out the browser-based game reviews.

Next week: Boardspace.net, Tribal Wars, and part 1 of BSW

Review of Astro Wars:

http://www.astrowars.com

Review of Urban Rivals:

http://www.urban-rivals.com

Review of Yahoo! Games:

http://games.yahoo.com

Review of MSN Games:

http://zone.msn.com

Next week: Boardspace.net, Poker RPG, Tribal Wars, and part 1 of BSW

My Odeo Channel (odeo/79fe3a0eeba55592)

Review of Imperia Online:

http://www.imperiaonline.org

4 Servers in different Eras (not sure what the difference between Eras is)

Buildings for each Province

Resource Gatherers (Farms, Granary; Quarry, Iron Mine, Lumber mill)

Military Resources (Infantry, Ranged, Stables, Seige)

Fortress

Research

Melee Attack, Ranged Attack, Mounted Attack, Seige Attack, Tactics, Centralization, University, Medicine, Armor, Cartography

Espionage

Attacking

Recruiting

Workers

Trade

Alliances

Review of Atari Play:

http://games.atari.com/playgames/home.jsp

Games Available

Boggle

2 game modes: Master Boggle (5x5), Boggle (4x4)

Battleship

3 game modes: Classic, Volley, Salvo

Scrabble

Monopoly

Options: Auctions, Build Evenly, Collect 2x Salary, Short Game, Collect Fines on Free Parking

Yahtzee

3 game modes: Classic, Colored, Triple

Sorry

Next week: Yahoo! Games and Astro Wars

Review of Travian:

6 servers with different approaches

3 races to play

Romans (all around, cavalry-heavy) Can raise or extend a building and resource field simultaneously, High Defense-bonus by wall, Merchants can carry 500 units of resources (speed: 16 fields/hour), Very powerful infantry, average cavalry, development is expensive and takes a long time.

Teutons (attackers, aggressive) Plunder bonus: the cranny of enemies only hides 2/3 of its content, The earthwall is almost indestructable, but only gives a minimal defense bonus, Merchants can carry 1000 units of resources (speed: 12 fields/hour), Very cheap and fast trained troops which are excellent plunderers, Weak defense

Gauls (defensive, passive, but can be powerful) Speed bonus: Fastest troops in the game, average defense-bonus because of palisade, Merchants can carry 750 units of resources (speed: 24 fields/hour), Cranny is twice as big, Expensive siegeweapons, Cheap settlers

Main screens

Village Overview (this is where you raise resources)

Village Center (this is where the buildings are built)

Surrounding Map (who your neighbors are)

Messages (alliance, others)

Statistics

Reports (who attacks you)

Resources: Lumber, Clay, Iron, Crop

Crop is a persistent need, each building and unit requires a constant supply of crop

Buildings

Main building to decrease building time

Barracks for troops, Marketplace for trading, Embassy for alliances

Cranny is important, it protects resources from attack

Warehouse for storing resources, Granary for storing crop

Academy for better units, Blacksmith for better units, Stables for cavalry

Rally point for attacking, Armory for increasing the defense of your units

Residence for settling new areas (make new cities)

City Walls, Resource enhancing buildings, and more

Alliances

Forums are good and let you know what you are doing wrong and are good for alliances.

Plus gives some nice extra options such as queuing, resource look forward (when the resources will be available), better statistics, longer map view, better combat simulator, notebook, sorting function on marketplace.

$2.99/month; $6.99/3 months; $19.99/10 months; $19.99/1 year

Online experience with Travian:

Initially, I thought this game was a slow boring game, but as I played it and got into an alliance, I found it to be more engaging.

I definitely plan on playing more often and will report back in a few months

Alliances are key

Cranny is very important

Different races play differently

Play often even for a few minutes here and there

Review of BoardGameGeek:

Three games

Roads and Boats

Kingdoms (Auf Heller und Pfennig)

Tigris and Euphrates

PHP / mySQL based

Turn-based, non-interactive

Online experience with BoardGameGeek:

Could use an email reminder feature and a slightly better interface

The rules are pretty nice

Non-interactive (can be days between rounds)

Next week:

Boardgame site: Atari Play: http://games.atari.com/playgames/home.jsp

MOBBG: Imperia Online

Show #3 delayed one week.

Review of Cyber-Wars, http://www.cyber-wars.com

Steep Learning Curve

Lots of similar sounding options

Options that are important are hidden amongst options that are superfluous

Rechargable Statistics:

Energy, Capacity, Intent

Combat Stats:

RAM, CPU Speed, BUS Speed, Harddrive

A number of options and a lot of room to advance

Premium Package is $5 to buy more energy or increase the regeneration of energy

Regeneration gets full every 7 hours or so, which is a time commitment for some casual players

Final Grade: C, I found too much of the game to be complicated and not enough advancement

Review of Days of Wonder, www.daysofwonder.com

Games Available: Ticket to Ride (USA and Europe), Queens Necklace, Gang of Four and Fist of the Dragonstones

Java-based, but I found it to be very stable and easy to use

Ticket to Ride has a lot of players all the time, the others may be more difficult to play at any given time.

Exactly duplicates the boardgame/cardgame (Except with automated scoring and a highlight of destinations in TTR)

Karma system

No tournaments or serious ladder system. There is ranking but it is simply a number (there is no top players list I could find)

AI bots have different flavors: LongBot, DirectBot, DumbBot