Clockwork Empires

Bringing the thread back because the game is out in Earliest Access. (Yes, that's exactly what it is).

I bought it, because I was gonna buy it anyways. As of right now, it seems to work fine, but there's no sound for me and it's laggy. But hey, it's earliest access, I can't fault it.

I'm not seeing it on Steam. Is it under an unexpected name?

It is not in Steam early access yet, it is in "the early access of the early access". Basically Gas Lamp Games are putting the game on sale on their website a month before puting the game on Steam early access to have the game a Little bit more polished when they put it on Steam early access.

I want to buy the game but it is to expensive for me rigth now

edited 19th Jul '14 8:16:37 AM by joaqs

@Tuefel Hunden IV Holy shit, the worker units are black, thus implying they're AFRICAN SLAVES?

I knew they wanted to hit colonialism with both barrels but DAMN that takes some balls. Kudos to them for telling Politically Correct History to go fuck itself!

edited 19th Jul '14 9:27:37 AM by Psyclone

As someone who's actually played the game, that isn't true at all. Race has no impact on what class someone is.

Wanna buy too, tho I think I might wait until proper Early Access is out...

Alright, sat down and played it for an hour.

It's solid overall. Needs quite a bit of work, but the framework's there.

...as horrendous as this sounds, I am actually disappointed by this.

Oh please. Build a soap box somewhere else.

The game is a fictional setting there is no need for them make it ugly in one way or another. We already have Cthuloid things.

edited 20th Jul '14 2:47:33 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Yes, please take your desire for the game to be racist elsewhere, please and thank you.

Back on topic, has anyone else picked up the earliest access? If so, thoughts?

Maybe, but his delivery and general statement have very Unfortunate Implications, and nothing about it made those seem accidental.

edited 21st Jul '14 10:36:37 AM by Thnikkafan

I think what he's actually saying is that some Deliberate Values Dissonance would have been an interesting touch.

Given the game is supposed to have some inspiration from Dwarf Fortress it is a pretty safe bet we will have that and likely it will be player induced to a point.

edited 21st Jul '14 1:28:46 PM by TuefelHundenIV

That'll be there, of course. It just won't be the sort that's incredibly racist.

One could flip it, anyway. Sure, the worker is unarmed, but it's also the life-blood of the empire. Without workers, resources will go uncollected and nothing can get done. Because we have a history of Black Slavery in the U..S. and Europe, we jump to the unfortunate side, but given the extreme importance of worker units in games like this, they're actually a treasure.

Without black slaves in real life, it just would have fallen back to white indentured servants to do the work. These games are rigged so ONLY the worker unit can do resource jobs. Without those workers? You're on borrowed time at best.

That is a good point about the worker units and actually notable as a type of game mechanic.

The list of every ugly institutionalized part of those systems would be quite expansive and rather disturbing.

Indeed. I'm just pointing out the difference because it's a nice little mental exercise to see things differently.

It would still be irksome for all workers in-game to be black, but it'd be the same if they were all white. Setting jobs based on race at all is, if not inaccurate for the old Colonialist era, serious dissonance.

Oh I'm just a change, yes I'm only a change...

[obligated to point out that Britain, at least, banned the slave trade close to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution]

Ten major updates later, random events happen, the colonists don't walk around in ticks, the game doesn't crash as often, the economy got slightly simplified and my nitpicking gave you Forges built with Iron Bars.

So the game is finally out of beta. The most ridiculous thing is that on average, the gameplay model changed every five to ten versions, and the release is markedly different from what I saw back in the version 0.23 or thereabouts. Now it's simpler, more streamlined and has some particularly pain-in-the-ass features like the requirement to have the entire supply of a building material ready before the building construction starts.