DrummerKidJack

Hey guys, I was wondering if you could do me a favour: I'm submitting a writing piece to get into a third year writing course at my university, and I've been reworking one of my old pieces. There's a link here, and I'd be really appreciative if you could tear it apart and tell me how and where it is terrible. I really want to get into this course, so criticize me until I cry. Seriously.

The great thing about writing and art is that it's never too late to leeeeaaaaaarn!

I've been keeping up with the ol' writing, even started a wee blog based around it: http://jackmedlandslater.wordpress.com/ Check it out if you feel like some short stories.

Man, I've been following PZ since... blimey, must be 3 years now. I don't even play it any more to be honest; I'm waiting for the final build, so I can be all surprised by all the new cool stuff/fixed stuff. I still post on here occasionally though, because you're all lovely EDIT: I reckon the best thing PZ ever did for the community was implementing mondoids. Back in the days of yore, updates were few and far between, and just having that specific date to read up really made it apparent how much work was being done!

I've heard that Black Flag is an excellent pirate game, but a shitty assassin game... OH WELL YAR HAR ME HEARTIES! ONWARD T'WARD PIRATES CREED!

Well that's just, like, your opinion, man. Could be worse though, the entire gaming industry mislabels "survival" games. ermergerd, it's got a hunger bar! MUST BE A SURVIVAL GAME.

If in doubt, whip your wang out. but for serious: do what you must; try everything once; if you enjoy something and it doesn't hurt or hinder others, do it; ignore societal expectations that are based around your age, gender or culture; admit when you don't know something (especially in political debate); feel free to not have an opinion about something; travel, even if it's to another state/county/local country; be lovely and don't be a dick, but be ready for when others don't follow that philosophy; have one thing that you're really good at, something that you're better at than everybody you know; understand that other people have different opinions than you and realize that your method of thinking is far more likely to be a result of your upbringing and your environment than any sort of individual thought that you have had.

DING DONG DING DONG!!!! Men, SHIELD-FORMATION!!!!!!!! GET TO THA CHOPPA

More like electronic FARTS amirite guys? Eh? EH?! EA fucking sucks.

This community is so fucking weird and I love it.

I'm going to be all over Enemy Within when it comes out. Honestly one of the only strategy games to accurately transfer to the console.

But I want to like Rome 2

Rome 1, I assume. Impossibility to play a diplomatic game, troop unbalancing (see above), bloated troop types, lack of support for barbarian nations (though I realize this was addressed with Barbarian Invasion), naval combat ridiculously underdone... the biggest one is the first one. The only way to win Rome was to troopblast everyone, war war war. Couldn't even bribe allied towns without the senate demanding you give it back to the original owners.. Couldn't assassinate everyone in a roman family, thereby destroying their dynasty; they just picked some random dude to lead them instead. I once killed every major player in the SPQR, thinking that might make it easier for me to declare myself Dictator, but nop. Same with the Scipio and Brutii families (I was playing Julio, because Caesar is my homedawg). There should've at least been some level of civil unrest, right? Closest I ever got to playing more strategically than that was sticking spies in allied towns, destroying happiness-inducing buildings with assassins and hoping they rebelled, then swooping in and snatching it up. But yeah. I know. It's total WAR; diplomatic games aren't exactly encouraged. But there should still be that option; diplomacy shouldn't equate to "bribe this army" or "trade agreement?", which is pretty much the only effective options in Rome 1. At least in later titles (Empire and Shogun 2) the diplomacy began to make more sense.

But Rome still has issues, and I don't think it's by far the "best one" at all. If anything, I think Medieval 2 outstripped it, but even then not by much,

Eh, I still play original Rome sometimes, and I think you may be seeing it with the above mentioned rose-tinted glasses. Empire was a bloated mess, Shogun 2 was a reaction against that but ended up too shallow and too small in scale. I was just hoping Rome 2 would have the vastness of Medieval 2 or Rome 1, mixed with the more chess-playing-based strategy of Shogun. Even Rome had a few too many troops types for my taste; I always just ended up spamming Praetorians and roflstomping everyone, maybe throwing in some cav and a few archer units every so often, or amassing so much wealth I could just bribe away any invading army. However, Shogun 2 just ended up too simple in terms of city customization. They went the right way with adding in levels for strategic units and generals, but I can't even remember the city building except for spamming farms asap.