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Three Moves Ahead

Three Moves Ahead 121: Pride of Nations and Philippe Thibaut

Three Moves Ahead

Idle Thumbs

Strategy, Strategy Games, War, Games & Hobbies, War Games, Games, Video Games

4.8532 Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2011

⏱️ 79 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Paradox France's Philippe Thibaut and GWJ's Erik Hanson colonize 3MA this week to talk about Pride of Nations, Paradox France's new grand-strategy game of imperialism. Erik and Rob are intrigued by Pride's cynical view of colonial competition and its novel mechanics. Philippe explains the game's origins and how it is at once a departure for Paradox France and a natural extension of their work as AGEOD. The Victoria II comparison comes up for discussion, and Erik and Philippe discuss the game design challenges of the Civil War.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Good evening. You are listening to Three Moves Ahead and I'm your host, Rob Zackney.

0:03.8

With me tonight is a returning guest, Gamer's with Jobs, Eric Hansen. Eric, thanks for being on the show tonight. I have coffee, but I'm not sharing. Oh, see, you are no Tom Chick, sir. No, no, I can't claim that. And it's fitting that Eric returns today because the last time he was on the show was when we were talking about the Civil War.

0:22.5

And today we pick up, in some ways, almost... admitting that Eric returns today because the last time he was on the show was when we were talking about the Civil War.

0:22.6

And today we pick up in some ways almost where we left off.

0:25.6

Tonight's topic is Paradox France's new strategy game, Pride of Nations, a game of 19th century imperialism.

0:32.6

Designer Philip Thibaut was good enough to join us for tonight's show.

0:36.6

Philip, thanks for coming on.

0:38.3

Thank you, and I'm pleased to be with you, just at dinner, so I'm not missing anything, coffee or anything else.

0:45.3

Excellent.

0:46.3

Phil, before we get into the game itself, I'm interested to hear how you came to make a game about colonial conquests in the 19th century.

0:59.0

What brought that to your mind when you were considering what your next game would be?

1:02.0

Yeah, well, it's a rather long process because I would say if I take everything into account the idea,

1:09.0

matured in my mind almost 10 years ago.

1:12.4

I used to be a fanatic boardgamer playing every weekend, and I was in love with the game

1:18.5

called Pax Britannica, which I played a lot. And with friends in France, about 10 years ago,

1:24.4

we designed a more elaborate board game on the subject.

1:29.3

But at the time, the market was a sub for ball game in France was just going to die,

1:34.3

and I shelved the idea.

1:36.3

About five years ago, when we decided what would be the next big project for our company,

1:42.3

H.O., we decided that the 19th century, because

1:45.8

there's so many things interesting in it, would be a very good subject. And the luck was that

1:51.4

had already a large set of documents and designs that we could use.

...

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