Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

It's a long way from what Siege set out to be, but for what it is, it works well enough. Not for everybody, if you don't like Siege, then it'll be a hard pass.

Booted up Expedition: Rome after installing it last night.

Damn near immediately lost the campaign on the first mission because I positioned a central plot character in the wrong spot in an early mission. He bled out before I could kill the enemies and... "Game Over".

Its like X-com in the Roman world, so I think I'm going to sink a good amount of time into it.

M&B 2: Bannerlord: Electric Boogaloo, again, but kinda quit, I'm now a lord in the Vlandians who owns a lot of castles and a town now and quit because one of my villages was attacked by the Eastern Empire (it once belonged to them) and ransacked by a gathered army of over 460. I couldn't stop them due to having less than half that number and a whole lot injured from a prior battle. It had to be one of the pettiest moves I've ever seen in gaming or otherwise all because they kept failing in retaking my castle. So I was like, "Yeah, nah, I'm done for now" lol

Finished yet another play through of Mass Effect, this time the Legendary Edition. Only missing 7 achievements now as some need a second play through to get. At least I have my save for when ME 4 comes out.

After all the hype for Warhammer 3 I'm gunna re-install 2 for prep.

So whats your take on the legendary edition over the existing versions of the game? Worth the shot, or not?

I’m most of the way through the first one and it’s pretty much the same. The graphics update is nice, but there is no real changes ive been able to notice. If you get it through game pass it’s worth playing again, but I wouldn’t pay full price for it if you already ha e the originals.

 nels1031 wrote:
Booted up Expedition: Rome after installing it last night.

Damn near immediately lost the campaign on the first mission because I positioned a central plot character in the wrong spot in an early mission. He bled out before I could kill the enemies and... "Game Over".

Its like X-com in the Roman world, so I think I'm going to sink a good amount of time into it.

I'd be interested to know how you enjoy it after a bit more game time. Sounds like a game I'd like a lot.

 Olthannon wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:
Booted up Expedition: Rome after installing it last night.

Damn near immediately lost the campaign on the first mission because I positioned a central plot character in the wrong spot in an early mission. He bled out before I could kill the enemies and... "Game Over".

Its like X-com in the Roman world, so I think I'm going to sink a good amount of time into it.

I'd be interested to know how you enjoy it after a bit more game time. Sounds like a game I'd like a lot.

Its very solid. Combat is a bit challenging at first, but once you get the hang of it and get the right skills/equipment, it becomes even more fun. I just finished the tutorial missions and am in charge of a full legion, it seems. I’m having a blast.

Combat is pretty deep and open ended to a degree, with multiple ways to win some scenarios. I had a mission where I had to burn lumber that was slated to go to building an enemy fleet or fortification, I can’t remember. Point was, I needed to burn it. The map design would lead you to believe that you need to go down to the lumber piles and light them on fire, killing your way down. But I was able to kill just a few of the defenders and then lob torches and oil pots down from the cliffs onto the lumber and enemies, instead of going full fisticuff. Mission completed with little to no damage to my party.

Alot of dilemmas/events that happen on your journey are written with seemingly no right/wrong answers evident. For instance, my party came upon a woman being abducted, with the womans family in full pursuit. Me being a modern, decent(mostly) man, I intervened and drew swords on the abductors. Lo and behold, that was just a local custom and the guy in charge of the pursuers then drew on me, to protect his future son in law and his crew(the abductors)! Then I had to kill all the men…

The non RPG base building, upgrading, legion recruitment and all the other non-rpg stuff is still a mystery to me as the game doesn’t really hold your hand too much. That might be where this game falters, as I look at some of these systems and have no clue whats going on. I had a similar problem with the previous Expedition games, but the scope of this game is just so different.

8/10 is my rating, a few hours in.

I think there is a Demo available on steam. Give that a whirl!

Hearts of iron 4 co op campaign as Uk and friend as USA. A bunch of units are about ready and mostly just being trained including tank divisions. However I’ve dedicated a crap ton of military factories to full factory research for infantry equipment.

I also made a fairly beastly artillery and rocket artillery Template with lots of boosts. It’ll be nice once they hit the ground. I’ll probably do the -25% for training considering how many of my guys are training atm and the fact it’s slowing our invasion of Germany.

We are both researching rockets and nuke tech so that’ll be fun.

I’d say my biggest concern is keeping updated units constantly supplied and upgraded which tends to take so long as does template changing a list. You change a list too drastically at once and suddenly you need to reinforce units being made and it slowed the unit coming out.

Anyway I guess we will see. I have made new templates just to avoid seeing the old regiments have a million upgrades that will take forever to upgrade and refit.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Hearts of iron 4 co op campaign as Uk and friend as USA. A bunch of units are about ready and mostly just being trained including tank divisions. However I’ve dedicated a crap ton of military factories to full factory research for infantry equipment.

I also made a fairly beastly artillery and rocket artillery Template with lots of boosts. It’ll be nice once they hit the ground. I’ll probably do the -25% for training considering how many of my guys are training atm and the fact it’s slowing our invasion of Germany.

We are both researching rockets and nuke tech so that’ll be fun.

I’d say my biggest concern is keeping updated units constantly supplied and upgraded which tends to take so long as does template changing a list. You change a list too drastically at once and suddenly you need to reinforce units being made and it slowed the unit coming out.

Anyway I guess we will see. I have made new templates just to avoid seeing the old regiments have a million upgrades that will take forever to upgrade and refit.

Just a slight highlight. Rocket artillery is far superior to regular Arty in normal divisions, especially as line battery IF you have done rocket research.

Voss wrote:
So whats your take on the legendary edition over the existing versions of the game? Worth the shot, or not?

To be honest it's that long since I played the original I would be hard-pressed to tell you. I played ME1 back in the pre-HD days, so would assume the graphics are somewhat better. Apparently they have tightened the combat a lot, which was one area that the original had aged quite badly. Again, I'll be honest, not having them side by side it's difficult to compare. But, I will say it plays pretty well, I've not found myself getting frustrated by it, so they must have done something right.

They really are such great games. I'm about 10 hours into the original so far and really enjoying it.

@not_online: Updates! So we took out Germany and at the end the western front was rolling Germany hard. I guess we just had too many forces. Slovakia kept fighting us after but I let my co op partner and the remaining ai take them out. Diplomacy still confuses me in this. Even the treaty part where you take land or ask for govt change confused me. I guess democracies can’t take land. It makes sense but in some ways post battle hurt more due to me ceding territory I grabbed from enemies in Africa somehow.

We then went on to fighting Japan which feels much easier of the two countries but A different fight overall. I’m more used to fighting by land so that’s exactly what I was getting close to do. Changing theaters certainly from mostly Europe to mostly Asia takes a while. I had to stop gaming for work tomorrow but at this point it’s basically a decided game. As long as Soviet Union don’t declare war on anybody important somehow that pushes our sides to fight the game will end.

Somehow I wonder if Stalin partly stopped fighting because though he took a lot of land irl he lost a lot of men, the infrastructure was wrecked and the idea of allied nukes vs a nuke-less Soviet Union wasn’t too thrilling after just fighting such a harsh war. In this we don’t have nukes yet despite my ally researched final nuke tech and he’s over 500 days from it due to being so early and the tech being so research intensive.

Btw the entirety of Germany and likely most of its states are back to normal now with democracy changes. I think my USA partner made Germany and Italy puppet states for him. I guess it’s a way of making a country your bitch and then your bottom bitch.

Anyway it’s good we rolled Germany’s homeland so hard in the end as the country started to fall apart hard and with all the victory points in Germany it basically capitulated despite still having massive land and conquered territory in Eastern Europe. Soviet Union was getting close to capitulation too so taking out all the factories and whatever in Germany helped a ton.

As for how we tackle the Japan war vs China I’d say China is close to capitulation so I’m gonna fight through to save them so they don’t go under.

——

On another note. Spamming units, figuring out maneuvers using boat transports to supply with resources, learning cancel all orders, making entirely new army templates so your old units don’t spend forever updating and rocket artillery spam are good. I also made an armored carrier template and a medium and hopefully heavy tank only template for when a little muscle is absolutely needed but somehow the current ai seems to hate using armored units.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
@not_online: Updates! So we took out Germany and at the end the western front was rolling Germany hard. I guess we just had too many forces. Slovakia kept fighting us after but I let my co op partner and the remaining ai take them out. Diplomacy still confuses me in this. Even the treaty part where you take land or ask for govt change confused me. I guess democracies can’t take land.

You should be able to seize territory, afaik, even if you're a democracy. AI democracies generally don't, but players should be able to.

But the peace settlement interface is frustrating, particularly if you're getting used to it, and you're a minor player in the war. There are some obtuse rules about how you spend your points (there have to be so many points left over in your pool in addition to whatever you want to spend). And it's not very well documented. The process really needs a tutorial of its own to explain how it works, and just as importantly *why* the rules for it function the way that they do.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
@not_online: Updates! So we took out Germany and at the end the western front was rolling Germany hard. I guess we just had too many forces. Slovakia kept fighting us after but I let my co op partner and the remaining ai take them out. Diplomacy still confuses me in this. Even the treaty part where you take land or ask for govt change confused me. I guess democracies can’t take land. It makes sense but in some ways post battle hurt more due to me ceding territory I grabbed from enemies in Africa somehow.

We then went on to fighting Japan which feels much easier of the two countries but A different fight overall. I’m more used to fighting by land so that’s exactly what I was getting close to do. Changing theaters certainly from mostly Europe to mostly Asia takes a while. I had to stop gaming for work tomorrow but at this point it’s basically a decided game. As long as Soviet Union don’t declare war on anybody important somehow that pushes our sides to fight the game will end.

Somehow I wonder if Stalin partly stopped fighting because though he took a lot of land irl he lost a lot of men, the infrastructure was wrecked and the idea of allied nukes vs a nuke-less Soviet Union wasn’t too thrilling after just fighting such a harsh war. In this we don’t have nukes yet despite my ally researched final nuke tech and he’s over 500 days from it due to being so early and the tech being so research intensive.

Btw the entirety of Germany and likely most of its states are back to normal now with democracy changes. I think my USA partner made Germany and Italy puppet states for him. I guess it’s a way of making a country your bitch and then your bottom bitch.

Anyway it’s good we rolled Germany’s homeland so hard in the end as the country started to fall apart hard and with all the victory points in Germany it basically capitulated despite still having massive land and conquered territory in Eastern Europe. Soviet Union was getting close to capitulation too so taking out all the factories and whatever in Germany helped a ton.

As for how we tackle the Japan war vs China I’d say China is close to capitulation so I’m gonna fight through to save them so they don’t go under.

——

On another note. Spamming units, figuring out maneuvers using boat transports to supply with resources, learning cancel all orders, making entirely new army templates so your old units don’t spend forever updating and rocket artillery spam are good. I also made an armored carrier template and a medium and hopefully heavy tank only template for when a little muscle is absolutely needed but somehow the current ai seems to hate using armored units.

No, democracies can take just aswell.
It depends on how much warscore you have had AND more importantly you pay 5x as much on land you didn't occupy, ergo if you attacked from france and the benelux these will have cheaper prices whilest you, since you didn't occupy it, will pay 5 x as much.

as for the underlined bit.
don't do that.

The reason for that is organisation, tanks don't have much organisation, if you lack organisation your divisions become disorganised and retreat, organisation is what allows divisions to stay in a fight, hence why infantry, with the highest organisation, is the best defensive division in the game as it was IRL.
a tank division with no organisation is basically not able to fight prolonged, (basically about a 3 hours according to my experience), and will just get shoved out, since they also don't recover.
The ballpark for organisation that you should NEVER go under for tank divisions is an organisation stat of 30.

By armored carrier division I meant like transports for infantry. Do they have low organization too. It’s basically just mounted versions of infantry units I have.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
By armored carrier division I meant like transports for infantry. Do they have low organization too. It’s basically just mounted versions of infantry units I have.

Nope , they are awesome , the armored carriers (what you mean is mechanised) and make for good fast Organisation givers to Tank divisions that need more mmph.

These have some of the highest organisation in the game and especially mechanised has awesome Stats for their price overall offensively and defensively ( you can modify them to half production cost), can therefore also be used without even going into tanks.

Just never do tanks (or artillery) only divisions.

Yeah we were doing some invasions of Japan or it’s islands it took and gotta say landing invasion forces are a pain in the game like so many teeth pulling things in this game. You need your forces about bordering one particular friendly dock, a bunch of ships selected to surround the invasion transports starting sea region to escort them and like 72 to 75 or so days to get this gak done hoping all you 2 months of in game planning won’t go to waste. Of course mine did a few times. The first I didn’t land and take a naval yelled to keep the supply line going. 2nd attempt I made I had 2 to 3 army groups trying to take Japan itself. Sadly the first division didn’t select a naval base as one of the invasion targets and during preparation China cancels not aggression pact and suck and kicks me out of all land they had I was using to start my naval invasion points which probably prevented 2 and left only one army group to attack Japan while unsupported and not taking a naval base. If it was allowed to go as it was supposed to I’d have had Japan hit with 48 units and at least 1 dockyard for resupply but China screwed me yet again esp when I tried fighting them on the occupied mainland China. Are we supposed to be nuking Japan or China because China is making good arguments for it.

Also I embarrassingly figured out what increasing infrastructure does. Shame because it would’ve definitely helped with resource shortages sooner. I figured what it likely did but never knew till I saw it in action because the info on it is kind of bad.

You can launch a naval invasion of Japan.

Or you can drop two atomic bombs on the country in quick succession. They'll immediately surrender, provided you haven't used a-bombs elsewhere up until that point.


Also, the No Step Back DLC (which I don't own yet) added Mulberry Harbors to the game. So for the really big invasions - such as an invasion of Japan - you can add temporary harbors to keep your troops supplied until they can seize a port city.

Finally figured out how to pacify the regions in Expedition: Rome and have Asia Minor(Mostly modern Turkey) under control, aside from the last mission of this chapter. Its a siege, wherein one portion of your party is a Forlorn Hope, drawing the besieged to where they think the assault is coming. The other half of the party is tasked with infiltrating the city and destroying as much of the enemy artillery as possible, then freeing the prisoners. Once that's done, the frontal assault supported by Roman artillery happens.

I think I'm on the last part of the mission, where I've achieved all of the above. Just gotta kill the king. Its challenging, in that consumables, health and tactical items like Pilums and caltrops aren't replenished, but not so challenging that I want to rage quit or feel like its an impossible task.

This game is a solid fun turn-based RPG. Probably closer to Divinity: Original Sin 1+2 in that the environment is part of the tactical toolkit. I may have to do a restart now that I've grasped the mechanics and skills though, as well as conserve consumables better.

Solid sequel to Expedition: Viking? I had a lot of fun with that one

 Bobthehero wrote:
Solid sequel to Expedition: Viking? I had a lot of fun with that one

Yeah, I'd say so. I did a playthrough of Expedition: Viking earlier in the month, just because I was impatient waiting for Rome so E:V is pretty fresh in my mind. I feel like dialogue plays a bigger part in the story and how it unfolds, but I'm only on the first playthrough so can't say for sure. I like the combat in this one a bit better. Cover and terrain play a bigger part, and the enemy AI seems improved, having abilities and utility items and knows how to use them, generally. My only beef so far is the AI's propensity to use flaming arrows, as well as repetitive story events while traveling. That could be because I spent so much time running around the map, not knowing what to do.

Cool, thanks.

Yikes Japan in HoI4! What a meat grinder.

So taking normal land in territories japan took was a bit annoying but not that bad. However combined with china leaving the war and other mishaps japan became an absolute slog of a fight.

You couldn't invade mainland Japan for long even when taking a port and eventually just got pushed into the sea or otherwise lose a crap ton of units even with two to three full army groups invading at the same time. It was hard to make air units near Japan due to lack of land meaning naval carriers were somewhat needed if you wanted to nuke them as well as just to have air power in the area. Nuking them takes 75% air superiority in an area, strategic bombers and nukes available which are dependent on reactors built, research accomplished and time. Finally you need at least 50% naval superiority just to do a naval invasion at all which took forever just to do (probably about 3 days per division in an army group meaning doing lots of small army groups is likely better than a few really big ones).

Anyway that was a slog. Considering all the army groups i had that got wiped i'm glad my co-op partner said he nuked them about 12 times in the first volley and got each airport area too just to maintain air power so we could nuke them more. I nuked a total of only 4-6 times maybe but it certainly helped. I think he nuked right on top of our army groups and killed 3-4 of them that way but i'm not sure. Either way it softened japan up so much we just rolled over them when we did the normal invasion of Japan.

Eumerin wrote:
You can launch a naval invasion of Japan.

Or you can drop two atomic bombs on the country in quick succession. They'll immediately surrender, provided you haven't used a-bombs elsewhere up until that point.


Also, the No Step Back DLC (which I don't own yet) added Mulberry Harbors to the game. So for the really big invasions - such as an invasion of Japan - you can add temporary harbors to keep your troops supplied until they can seize a port city.

Try about 12 from my co-op partner and another 3-4 from me during the first volley of nukes . I did see that option available but it was gonna take like 600+ days. Whatever, video game version of Japan had it coming. I'm not saying irl Japan did but seeing how dug in they were in the computer game version i dunno what else you could do besides surround em and basically ruin all of their trade routes and supply chains. I don't know if that was an option though seeing as Japan was developing nukes too.

-----

Oh and i also grabbed the entirety of japan except for Tokyo during negotiations which was pretty funny.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:


Try about 12 from my co-op partner and another 3-4 from me during the first volley of nukes

Nope. Drop exactly two atomic bombs, and Japan immediately surrenders. From the Hearts of Iron 4 wiki (which is on a Paradox website) -

After the 2nd nuclear bomb has been dropped on a Japanese core state, Japan has a special decision for surrender (note: prior to dropping the 2nd nuclear bomb, Japan's navy must be reduced to less than 40 ships and Japan must not be the controller of Okinawa or Iwo Jima)

I suppose but in game terms our way was more fun. Also I think there’s a cool down where you gotta nuke Japan twice in the decisions board. Taking almost the entirety of Japan was pretty funny during the treaty conference. We basically confirmed Japan would cede most of its land to us therefore turning them into pre ww2 Germany or likely a brand new colony/puppet state of the uk with next to no notions of independence for a long long time.

For invading mainland Japan, I'd recommend making sure you have their military capacity completely drained first.

Bomb their economy into the ground (Civ factories first, then mils once they cannot repair them any more), make sure you have total control of the skies and back up your invasions with a ton of CAS, which is incredibly strong at the moment. If you can grab Korea then you'll have plenty of airfields in range (may need to build some but by this point that shouldn't be an issue) to launch these planes from. Even if they develop nukes, they cannot use them without aerial control, and it is unlikely they will have the planes or the production capacity to gain said planes to defeat your own air force if you haven't been neglecting it.

If possible, perhaps lure them into wasting their manpower and equipment first by cheesing the ai's love of futile naval invasions. Allow them to land and begin to move inland before taking the port behind them and crushing their invasion force. Then repeat.

Was playing xenonauts again. Practically got squad wiped and retreated (but was shocked there was only 5 enemies left) and had to replace laser weapons with plasma weapons as well as take like a month or two just to rebuild my lost soldiers with crappy new recruits and to replace the old laser weapons with much more expensive plasma weaponry.

Hopefully I’m still in the game but it’s possible I’m not. Battle cruiser ships are everywhere now and this is at least the 2nd big financially wasteful thing ive done in this campaign. The biggest was trying to make a 3rd base early only for the base to get invaded so early the defenses I built didn’t even get the chance to help.

In Bannerlord the Aserai declared war on the Vlandians which makes sense as we've been quite effective in our expanse. This is the second time we have but for some reason, the Aserai have become OP or something. The first battle was an army of us at 13 odd hundred against 1100 of them but for some reason, they beat us with ease. That's even with my character who has high tactics skill leading the attack. So yeah, a bit annoyed. Last time we fought them it was pretty even so I don't know what's going on.

Tried out Aliens Fireteam with Graphite recently. It was entertaining. Bug hunting galore. The funniest bit though is the terrible status of maintenance on the refinery you are scrambling through… so many bits falling off the ceiling!

Did a short run as Falangist spain, after they fixed the focus tree... again, after breaking it, again. Thanks Paradox.

Did quite well, was unhistorical, and for 1940 i am not in a bad position, could technically expand this into a WC but, honestly... just nope.