Online Gaming Podcast

Show #14 was delayed further due to Audacity and illness. It is up on Wednesday the 13th. Next show is still scheduled for the 18th of December and then a hiatus until January 15th.

e-Boardgames.com
PBEM website
FREE!
Many games, fast turnarounds in some games
I played an Age of Steam game in 8 weeks.
The 18xx games are also varied and interesting (I am playing the 1826 Trinidad game now which I had not seen before)
Highly recommended!

Full Show Notes at http://onlinegamingpodcast.blogspot.com (I hope!)

Online Boardgaming News (as of 11/06/2006)

ACTS - Automated Card Tracking System
(PbEM server)
http://acts.warhorsesim.com
A Fistful of Planets
Age of Renaissance
Blue vs Gray
Empire of the Sun
Epic of the Peloponnesian War
For the People
Generic Game Module
Hammer of the Scots
Hannibal
LOTR: The Confrontation
March Madness
Paths of Glory
Republic of Rome
Successors
Sword of Rome
The Napoleonic Wars
Thirty Years War
Titan
Twilight Struggle
We the People
Wilderness War
WWII: Barbarossa to Berlin

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!

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

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

Review of ZeldereX:
Tick-based game
Every 20 minutes you get more oil, money
Economic and military
Money buys stuff including military
Military is used to attack and gain money
Vast research options
Improve troops
Add offensive weapons, defensive weapons
Improve income
Lower cost of goods
Nice clan structure
Easy to recruit and spot teammates
Needs improvement in the helping others aspect (being part
of a clan doesn't seem to afford any protection or benefit)
Basic military and attack setup
Put your heroes in charge,
put them in a vehicle and hit players close to you in rank.
Building and upgrading
Certain buildings are very important and others are not.
Premium options
Buying cash (which I hate!)
Additional buildings and research options

Review of AsoBrain:
Games available:
Settlers of Catan (Xplorers)
SET! (Match!)
Barricade (Roadblock)
Carcassonne (Toulouse)
Java-based
Simple ranking system
Active forums with Tournament details
Uses ports 1981 - 1998, so firewalls may be an issue
Normal long Java load time

Online experience with AsoBrain:
Carcassonne, I mean, Toulouse
Played against two others
Easy to play and score
I didn't have any problem with setting it up or having fun

Settlers of Catan
A plethora of map setups
Allows for a lot of replayability
Easy to setup
AI is ok at trading
As good or better than the official Settlers of Catan by
Microsoft

Online experience with ZeldereX:
Easy to play
A lot of attacks
Only way to really get ahead seems to be to purchase
money