Len is joined this week by David Lagettie, CEO of the resurrected MicroProse. We share some of our own MicropProse memories, and discuss what makes a MicroProse game, as well as why David chose this brand to bring back from oblivion.

This is a free preview of this month's Patreon episode. Check out the extended version at Patreon.com/3ma! Len, Lambert, and FatherLorris continue their ongoing beef with the Holy See while discussing Europa Universalis 5 dev diaries primarily focused on warfare. We're not even doing jokes about how long these are anymore. That's so early 2024. It's just expected at this point. This is our lives now.

This is a free preview of this month's Patreon episode. Check out the extended version at Patreon.com/3ma! Len, Lambert, and Lorris are back to discuss the next four Europa Universalis V dev diaries and The Johan Files, an edited compilation of all of Johan's relevant forum posts that has more than doubled in size since we last talked. We decided to call it at four hours, but still had plenty more to talk about, so it seems like the Megacast format isn't going anywhere any time soon...

Rob is joined by freelance writer Sin Vega to discuss Suzerain, a branching narrative head-of-state simulator that asks you to make complex decisions about the politics of a small, Cold War nation. Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/3ma

Rob, Jon, and shadow councilor Mike are joined by 3ma Panelist Emeritus Tom Chick to discuss Shadow Empire, a post-apocalyptic sci fi colony management sim with a 300+ page manual.

Bruce takes the Winter of Wargaming to the Streets of Stalingrad as he interviews acclaimed wargame designer Dana Lombardy to discuss his past, present, and future work. Check out lombardystudios.com where you can still pre-order MacGowan and Lombardy’s The Great War card game at the Kickstarter backer price.

Rob, Troy, and Jon discuss Field of Glory II: Medieval as the Winter of Wargaming enters the Middle Ages. Who are these guys Alexander Nevsky brought to war today? Anybody? Pyotr, are they friends of yours or what? Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/3MA

As the Winter of Wargaming presses on, Rob and Bruce discuss the Avalon Hill classic PanzerBlitz and the interplay between game mechanics and the awesome war movie you see in your head. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/3MA

Note: Since this episode was recorded, one of the designers discussed, Tom Russell, has come out as transgender. Please note that while he / him is used on the podcast, her correct pronouns are she / her. The Winter of Wargaming begins with a trip down memory lane with Bruce and wargame designer Lou Coatney, whose career includes not just several great original print-and-play designs but also a robust set of fixes and "mods" to classic wargames. Bruce and Lou also discuss in detail the problems of getting Barbarossa and The Bulge "right" from a design and history standpoint. coatneyhistory.com/ lcoat.tripod.com/

Len, Rowan, and Fraser ally up to discuss all of the updates to Total War: Warhammer 2 since its launch, as we've miraculously not done a show on it since then, and the piping hot announcement of Total War: Warhammer 3.

Rob, Rowan, and Len discuss how faction design in strategy games has changed over the years, and the trend toward more specific and asymmetrical mechanics which started in RTS before spreading to the rest of the wider genre.

Fraser and Jon are joined by PC Gamer's Rachel Watts to discuss high-flying city builder Airborne Kingdom. Can this unorthodox spin on the classic genre keep our interest aloft?

Rob, Rowan, Jon, and Len discuss the year in the rear view. 2020 was a year we'll never forget. But can we say the same about its strategy games? How good was Crusader Kings 3, really? What could our modern leaders learn from Soviet Concrete Simulator? Is RTS back, baby? Tune in and reminisce with us.

It's a full house this week, as Len is joined by Ian Boudreau, Luke Plunkett, Mike Williams, and Ruth Cassidy to perform a bit of an autopsy on Millennia, C Prompt and Paradox's take at a Civ-like historical 4X. We all came away with a bit of a bad taste in our mouths about it, to varying degrees, and we spend a fair bit of time trying to explain why – and set aside some time to talk about what we did like.

STORY SPOILERS! Skip ahead from 58:30 to 1:13:05 to avoid. Rowan, Jon, and Len discuss the new Mars colonization game Per Aspera, and how it weaves branching story into a classic colony builder.

Troy and Jon are joined by Dicebreaker editor-in-chief Matt Jarvis to discuss the PC version of the award-winning avian card game Wingspan. What are these birds up to? Where are they coming from? Should we be concerned? Why does our producer feel the need to ask you a whole bunch of questions at the end of every episode description these days? What do you think ever happened to those birds that used to sell us cereal on TV? Where did they learn to talk? You know, just curious.

Rob, Troy, and Jon discuss Zachtronics' Cold War wargame Möbius Front '83. What has it borrowed from the genre's storied past? And what might it have missed from recent years?

Troy and Rob discuss two films about exposing the seedy underbelly of the institutions of power: Michael Mann's Insider and Alan J. Pakula's All The President's Men. How has the film industry's portrayal of investigative journalism and corporate whistleblowers changed with the times? What can each of these stories still teach us today?

Rowan and Jon Bolding are joined by Fanbyte's Steven Strom and Waypoint Radio's Ricardo Contreras to discuss spacefaring tactical roguelike Star Renegades.

Troy and Rowan are joined by Paradox's Johan Andersson and Mohawk Games' Soren Johnson to discuss the august Sid Meier's recent book, Sid Meier's Memoir.

Rob, Troy, and the prodigal panelist Jon Bolding discuss the alt history interwar RTS Iron Harvest. Can a strategy game be good in single-player for the same reasons it's bad in multiplayer? Aren't giant dieselpunk mechs just the raddest shit? Rev up and strap in to find out.

Rob, Rowan, Fraser, and Leana discuss their feelings on Crusader Kings 3 a few weeks after launch. How do we feel now that we've spent more time with the full version? Why does Rob keep sleeping with his grandkids' wives? Listen in and find out!

Rob and Troy are walking the battlements as they revisit Wolfgang Peterson's "Troy" and Ridley Scott's director's cut of "Kingdom of Heaven". What do these two movies about major siege-battles fought between clashing civilizations, from the early years of the War on Terror, say about their moment? Is Troy underrated, overrated, or correctly rated? Why is Brendan Gleeson so unsettling? All these questions and more are answered this week on Three Moves Ahead.

Rob and Leana are joined by Creative Assembly's Simon Mann to talk about the latest DLC for Total War: Three Kingdoms, The Furious Wild.

This is a preview of this month's Patreon episode. Check out the extended version at Patreon.com/3ma! Join Len, FatherLorris, and Lord Lambert as we get the NoCB Cast band back together to talk for 3.5 hours about Paradox Tinto's "Project Caesar," which is probably Europa Universalis 5. Okay, let's be real: it's definitely Europa Universalis 5. We break down the first four dev diaries, everything Johan has ever said about the project on the forums, and talk a bit about the year 1337 – which was not confirmed as the new start date when we recorded this, but has been at this point. So we nailed it. We're very smart. Please clap.

Rob, T.J., and Fraser are joined by freelance writer Dia Lacina to discuss A Total War Saga: Troy. The ancient city, not the creator of this show.

Rob and T.J. are joined by freelance writer Astrid Johnson to discuss goth girl tactics game Othercide.

For our landmark 500th episode, Rob sits down with Rowan, T.J., Troy, and Bruce to discuss the formative games that made us strategy fans. Buckle in - it's a long one!

USgamer's Mike Williams and Kotaku's Luke Plunkett join Rob to talk about Desperados III, the stealth tactics puzzler from Mimimi. They talk quicksaving versus flow, stealth tactics vs stealth immersive sims, and Desperados vs. Shadow Tactics, the previous game from this developer.

Rob and T.J. got some hands-on time with an in-development build of Crusader Kings 3, and they have a lot to say about it. Can the medieval strategy sequel live up to its now august predecessor?

Rob is joined by Cameron Kunzelman and Evan Lahti to discuss Gears Tactics, which adapts the familiar rhythms and dynamics of Gears of War to a turn-based, squad-tactics format with generally positive results.

Rob, Rowan, and Bruno Dias start working the mean streets of City 31 as they discuss XCOM: Chimera Squad.

With the sports world mostly on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, sports games have emerged to take their place in some of the oddest ways. Rob discusses this weird moment for sports sims with Troy, Jenn Cutter, and Kat Bailey. They chat about why sim motorsports seem to be working well, but most console sports sims don't seem to have the same resonance. Rob accuses Troy of being the target audience for beat reporting based on Out of the Park leagues. Troy denies the charge, then describes the travails of his Expos dynasty in detail.

Rowan, Jon, and T.J. are joined by Waypoint and Friends at the Table's Austin Walker to once again ask the immortal question: Is Stellaris good now? On the heels of a diplomacy rework and four years of expansions, what has become of Paradox's oddball 4X space child?

Fraser is joined by Jon Bolding, Dia Lacina, and Philippa Warr to discuss Animal Crossing: New Horizons, from the ways it connects to the city builder genre to the oddities of the game's premise.

Len, Jon, and Mike Williams deal out a hand or two of Balatro. It's poker? Sort of? Not really? Poker with boss battles. Poker with booster packs. Poker with tarot cards? We don't hold our opinions close to our chest as we try to apply some kind of taxonomy to this indie surprise hit.

Rob is joined by Cameron Kunzelman and Ethan Gach to return to the world of Frostpunk before the frost as the panel considers the game's latest DLC, The Last Autumn. In some ways it's an expansion the reveals some of the worst traits of Frostpunk, but in some other ways it reinvents and reimagines the game as a trickier and more credible management game.

This week we are going all the way back to 1994 to discuss Master of Magic. MoM, though not quite as popular as its bovine counterpart, was a very forward-thinking game. It offered many levels of customization not yet seen in gaming and inspired classic modern series like Dominions and Age of Wonders. Listen in as Rowan Kaiser, Jon Bolding, and Troy "Do you like what I've done with my hobbit hole?" Goodfellow discuss Master of Magic, sci-fi vs fantasy, and why generic magic isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Not every novel must be Inifinite Jest, not every RTS game must be Starcraft 2. Sure, sometimes you need to hold your copy of Starcraft 2 with the cover facing out so people at the coffee shop KNOW you're playing Starcraft 2, but sometimes you just want to play a quick game of something and get out. This week, Rob and Cameron Kunzelman discuss three RTS games the can be played in less time than it takes to listen to this episode. So once you are done loudly asking if the barista has a second bookmark you can borrow for the footnotes, take a listen to our discussion on Circle Empires, Escape Dead Earth, and Death Crown.

Rob, Brian "Chef Lu Bu" Smawley, Rowan, and T.J. discuss the Mandate of Heaven expansion for Total War: Three Kingdoms. Brian has been radicalized the populist vision of the Yellow Turbans and feels like only Zhang Jue has put in the work to lead China to a glorious new age. Rob and T.J., meanwhile, feel that incremental reform is the way to go. Rowan is out for themselves, but is also starting to wonder if that old Total War campaign inertia might not be settling in.

Rob, T.J., Rowan, and Fraser gather to consider the last ten years in strategy games. There is a stark division about what happened to the RTS, as well as how the concept of a game being "finished" mostly disappeared. Then Rob tries to wrap up the show and it goes for another hour as everyone tries to choose their favorite genre game from the last ten years.

Rowan, T.J., Jon, and Rob look back at 2019 and the games that most delighted or dismayed them.

It's Christmas at the Plantagenets as Rob and Troy watch the superb Lion in Winter and the less superb Becket. What do these movies have to say about history and politics, and is any of it related to historical fact? How good is Hepburn? What is O'Toole doing across these two films?

Jon and Rob welcome back Paul Dean to discuss Julian Gollop's and Snapshot Games' Phoenix Point, which tries to blend some of the old-school systemic realism of the original X-COM games with the ease of play of newer tactics games. It's all going well until the gang realize the AI plays like a zombie... and this isn't a zombie game.

Rob and Troy are joined by Kotaku's Luke Plunkett to discuss Unity of Command 2, the long-awaited sequel to on of Three Moves Ahead's favorite wargames. How does the new setting change the game, and what's with all these new buttons?

T.J. and Fraser are joined by Bruno Dias (@NotBrunoAgain) to talk about Planet Zoo, Frontier's spiritual successor to zoo tycoon. Animals are great, but is managing everything around keeping them happy? Why are there 30-50 feral hogs on my trade screen? Zoo-ne in to find out!

Len, Jon, and Mike Williams sit down to discuss the strategy and strategy-adjacent demos that caught our eyes in Steam Next Fest. Jon played 50 (!) of them, and several were actually good! Also like, where are all the aliens, for real though?

Troy, Jon, and Rob have been to The Nam and deep in "The Shit" this week as they play Serious Sim's narrative wargame, Radio Commander. To what extent is Radio Commander an actual wargame versus a cleverly disguised RTS choose-your-own-adventure? Does the distinction matter? What are the game's politics, and how do they affect Radio Commander's portrayal of contemporary politics? Most confoundingly, the crew wrestle with whether this is a good game that people should play, or merely an interesting experiment.

Rob and Troy play the new, 3D Close Combat: The Bloody First and see how it measures up to the series' history.

Rob, Rowan, and Sean welcome Jeff Green to discuss what might be the greatest year in gaming. Looking down the release slate for that year, it was obviously stacked with brilliant games like Alpha Centauri, Freespace 2, and Jagged Alliance 2 (to name just a few). But did people know it was special at the time? And did anyone realize how fleeting that moment would prove to be, just before Microsoft entered the console wars and began to bridge the gap between console and PC?