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 Bilge Rat wrote:
I am currently playing Pharaoh (a 1999 city building game that followed on from the Caesar titles). I was never able to beat it back in the day but I think I only have three missions left now. They get extremely difficult near the end

The original Pharaoh or the remake? I've been wondering how that turned out.

Stellaris and Age 3.
Both having had updates.

Personally in stellaris i love the new Civic of eager explorers.

Testing an absurd build of beeing a remnant, technocratic and eager explorer. The former two are for Fluff and crunch reasons. Technocrat allows me to not suck so much at science and so does the remnants.
Economy is in shambles though

Not Online!!! wrote:
Stellaris and Age 3.
Both having had updates.

Personally in stellaris i love the new Civic of eager explorers.

Testing an absurd build of beeing a remnant, technocratic and eager explorer. The former two are for Fluff and crunch reasons. Technocrat allows me to not suck so much at science and so does the remnants.
Economy is in shambles though

Curious about that Stellaris expansion. The prospect of being primitives in space certainly is apealing. Very sci-fi. I’m only missing this one and the toxic expansion. I feel pretty done with Stellaris but might get the expansions sometime in the future.

More citizen sleeper. It’s basically a role playing game and a visual novel being married. Great stuff and good stories. If you’re into sci-fi that is.

Finally keeping a keen eye on dark and darker. Seems to be hunt: showdown the fantasy dungeon crawl version. What I’ve seen seems a little janky but looks like a lot of fun.
Edit: looks like there’s no release date for dark and darker. They’ve previously put it at last quarter of 2023. There’ll be a play test starting April 14 2023. Damn, I was hoping it would be out soon. Will probably forget about it by the time it’s released haha.

 Nerak wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Stellaris and Age 3.
Both having had updates.

Personally in stellaris i love the new Civic of eager explorers.

Testing an absurd build of beeing a remnant, technocratic and eager explorer. The former two are for Fluff and crunch reasons. Technocrat allows me to not suck so much at science and so does the remnants.
Economy is in shambles though

Curious about that Stellaris expansion. The prospect of being primitives in space certainly is apealing.

It doesn't really do that. It gives some nice bonuses at the cost of 10 starting pops, but mostly what it means is hyperdrives, corvettes and research labs are moved into your first 'hand' of research options (and are always available), your first research is a lot further away (because you don't have a free research lab on your planet at the start) and the jump drives mean your ships require a lot of attention and micro, as you can't queue destinations. You have to micro each jump for every construction/science ship or fleet. It gets old real fast.

After the first ~90-100 months (less if you get research bonuses) you can just have hyperdrives and switch over. Keeping some jump ships is useful for cutting across long chains of hyperlanes, but creating weird pocket empires probably isn't a great idea, as you can't mix jump and conventional hyper drives. Its always one or the other (unlike the advanced jump versions, which have jump capability on top of normal movement)

---
Interacting with or spying on primitives is more interesting, but it can be buggy (apparently atomic pre-FTL civs have a flat 5% chance of nuking themselves into oblivion every month, which isn't intended (no idea if its been patched) and the event pool is fairly shallow (people are complaining about the plague event frequency)

---
Cloaking is pretty much quality of life for science ships (basically no stops on the science train), for fleets... reactions are pretty mixed. I suspect its another 'good for multiplayer, indifferent vs computer' choice.

yeah. The new stuff has some Interesting RP qualities. But realistically a lot of it is questionable. And indeed you start as a late age Primitive but that isn't something that really turns you into a primitive that has a challange. It just gimps your start a tad. Or a lot. Eager explorers is also absurd for some origins and has 4 forms 1 for hives 1 for robots 1 for normal empires and 1 for megacorp and of those 4 the normal one is basically a selfgimp whilest the megacorp one just catapults your science forward. Hive one is positivly absurd in application and origins also don't always work well with it.

Also the three new origins are... ehhhhhh.
One is blatantly broken if you pull it off (forest in the dark, either get a free suprise fanatic purifier civic slot or a free civic slot of your liking, yes you get more than 3 civic slots)
Broken shakels is nice on paper, but i question it's design somehow i can't be authoritharian as an ethics choice yet i can have my own species dominate and exclude the species that fought along my side in the uprising from politics? Seriously? Your telling me that these lot of intelligent species couldn't rally around a demagogue to throw of their shakels but are perfectly fine being excluded from policy making afterwards?
Payback is, either a rush build because free 4k ship is free 4k ship... or diplomatically inclined, but everyone knows the galactic senate is about as usefull as used toilet paper.

If you like stellaris and RP, then yes, the DLC is okay. If you want quality of DLC, then i'd say no.

Steam Sale time, so I bought two video games:

Doom Eternal. Played a little, it's pretty fun. Maybe it's just my computer, but the graphics are ....okay? Bit cartoony for my tastes. The Chainsaw/glorykill mechanic works for me though.
Dome Keeper. Came suggested to me, so I gave it a go. That's a fun little game.

Grim quest. It’s a small dungeon crawler for smart phones. The game is available on steam but honestly I don’t see any reason to play it on anything other then a smartphone. You crawl through dungeons, kill monsters and get loot. Not much to say but has a nice old school feel to it. Great for killing time when you’re on the bus or tired on the couch. Like a zone out kind of game.

Resident Evil 4, some cutscenes aside it moves at a great pace and is a blast to play through.

Since Warhams 3 is CTD on startup for me, I needed my Total War fix so I've been playing a Meng Huo campaign in Three Kingdoms.

Been fun, but CA always seems to make the barbarian factions pretty boring by giving them less stuff then the more "civilized" factions. Like no spies, no faction council to unlock stuff, very limited dilemmas.

Was a lot of potential in this game.

On a lark I decided to pick up Chrono Trigger while it was on sale on Steam. I know it's basically THE classic JRPG (along with Final Fantasy VII), and that's not really a genre I've ever explored before so I thought, "Why not?" I've been enjoying it immensely, I can see why it's so well loved. I also did pick up Chrono Cross as well in the same sale.

I've been playing Xcom 2: war of the chosen long war of the chosen mod. It was going really well for a while and might be going sort of well still. I'll have to see. I might need more alloys and a good supply of corpses.

------

Also am i the only one that played Diablo 4 in this forum during the Beta? Seriously this whole freaking forum was radio silent during that. A friend and i were both pleasantly surprised so far. I played the necromancer and he played most of the classes. Supposedly he didn't like the druid or the barbarian and said that melee damage is much weaker than ranged attacks in this game and necromancer blew the druid out of the water.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
On a lark I decided to pick up Chrono Trigger while it was on sale on Steam. I know it's basically THE classic JRPG (along with Final Fantasy VII), and that's not really a genre I've ever explored before so I thought, "Why not?" I've been enjoying it immensely, I can see why it's so well loved. I also did pick up Chrono Cross as well in the same sale.

Chrono Cross remains to this day one of my favourite games I've ever played, but I've never played Chrono Trigger and most CT fans don't like CC so take from that what you will.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 ZergSmasher wrote:
On a lark I decided to pick up Chrono Trigger while it was on sale on Steam. I know it's basically THE classic JRPG (along with Final Fantasy VII), and that's not really a genre I've ever explored before so I thought, "Why not?" I've been enjoying it immensely, I can see why it's so well loved. I also did pick up Chrono Cross as well in the same sale.

Chrono Cross remains to this day one of my favourite games I've ever played, but I've never played Chrono Trigger and most CT fans don't like CC so take from that what you will.

Chrono Cross is a really really great game, its just a terrible sequel to Chrono Trigger. It has almost nothing to do with the original except it IS a sequel unlike the Final Fantasy standalone stories. It takes place in a completely separate part of the world, it doesn't have any returning characters, the art style and battle system is completely different and the only times it ever even references the original is to tell you that after the game all the characters of the first were murdered horribly. Technically the whole thing is just a missing side quest from the original too, but that's a reductive complaint that simplifies the legitimately great story that Cross has to tell.

To me that's the worst part. Cross is great. It's not the pinnacle of its generation (that would be IX followed closely by Xenogears) nor does it surpass the original, but its a game that stands out even among the heyday of its genre as one of the best. It just really didn't need to have any ties to Trigger at all. They add nothing and just come across as mean spirited, leaving you with a feeling that the game knows its inferior and decides to be petty about it. It sucks, because it taints every conversation about the game because its best experienced as its own thing rather than a sequel to Trigger, but its hard to just say that to people asking about it while riding the high that is Trigger.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
...
Also am i the only one that played Diablo 4 in this forum during the Beta? Seriously this whole freaking forum was radio silent during that. A friend and i were both pleasantly surprised so far. I played the necromancer and he played most of the classes. Supposedly he didn't like the druid or the barbarian and said that melee damage is much weaker than ranged attacks in this game and necromancer blew the druid out of the water.

Well, it's Blizzard, and Blizzard have turned from "the surefire one to go with" to "clown, stumbling from one bucket into the next". I know that many people are cautiously optimistic about the upcoming Diablo game. At least the ones I know. And they don't care for open betas or demos. Either the game's good at release or not. Maybe. I don't know. Me, I'm having a hard time to get hyped for anything at this point.

 Sigur wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
...
Also am i the only one that played Diablo 4 in this forum during the Beta? Seriously this whole freaking forum was radio silent during that. A friend and i were both pleasantly surprised so far. I played the necromancer and he played most of the classes. Supposedly he didn't like the druid or the barbarian and said that melee damage is much weaker than ranged attacks in this game and necromancer blew the druid out of the water.

Well, it's Blizzard, and Blizzard have turned from "the surefire one to go with" to "clown, stumbling from one bucket into the next". I know that many people are cautiously optimistic about the upcoming Diablo game. At least the ones I know. And they don't care for open betas or demos. Either the game's good at release or not. Maybe. I don't know. Me, I'm having a hard time to get hyped for anything at this point.

Well to be fair he played the game because he's a small time twitch streamer and he's trying to get bigger and i played during the Free to Play Beta so it's not like i had to give them a dime. I'm still disgusted it's like 70 USD for the game at full price. Most games aren't worth 40 possibly even with all this inflation going on. Of course i say that with GW's price increases for all their models and it's getting absurd. I also imagine Blizzard has burnt good will pretty hard from all groups at this point.

Didn't play it myself, but the coverage I've seen hasn't been terribly impressive (or impressed, to be honest).

The character creation looks amazing. But the game doesn't play that zoomed in so... whatever.

Several of the classes seem to be duds and the sorceress overtuned. And going by WoW, fixing that discrepancy is not something Blizz seems good at anymore.

Areas seem to very wildly from very atmospheric side quests to 'meh.'

The always online with other people in towns and the main world maps (outside of dungeons) is a huge turn-off, and general design is same-old, same-old.

Visually great (especially if you like overly dark areas), but gameplay seems like nothing to write home about.

I may pick it up at some point, but it isn't going to depend on the quality of Diablo 4. Its going to require me getting bored of dwarf fortress, TW3 Chaos Dwarves and Age of Wonders 4 (tho I expect my interest in total war to get completely run over by AoW4) and then Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield being total flops and nothing else coming out in the back half of the year, AND not wanting to go back to anything I already have.

Honestly, the WoW expansion had the same problem. Its fine, but there are just too many other things that have a bigger pull on my attention. Blizz makes fine, average games with high production cinematics for filling time during a pandemic when everything else is delayed, but they make games I'll instantly put down for something more interesting.

Playing Dredge now, after it came out yesterday. It scares me.

World of Warships, Left4Dead with bots, and occasionally also Rule the Waves.

 nels1031 wrote:
Since Warhams 3 is CTD on startup for me, I needed my Total War fix so I've been playing a Meng Huo campaign in Three Kingdoms.

Been fun, but CA always seems to make the barbarian factions pretty boring by giving them less stuff then the more "civilized" factions. Like no spies, no faction council to unlock stuff, very limited dilemmas.

Was a lot of potential in this game.

WH2 is better, especially with mods. WH3 still hasn't fixed basic AI issues that weren't a problem in WH2.

Been playing Warhammer 40,000 Battlesector after getting it on sale on Steam. It's pretty fun, but there are little mechanics that I forget about that can make it frustrating and the damned Gargoyles. The Gargoyles are the epitome of the trope Goddamned Bats.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoddamnedBats

Annoying as frig lol

 Adrassil wrote:
Been playing Warhammer 40,000 Battlesector after getting it on sale on Steam. It's pretty fun, but there are little mechanics that I forget about that can make it frustrating and the damned Gargoyles. The Gargoyles are the epitome of the trope Goddamned Bats.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoddamnedBats

Annoying as frig lol

What is it like? Quick look kinda reminds me of Dawn of War.

 Domobran7 wrote:

 Adrassil wrote:
Been playing Warhammer 40,000 Battlesector after getting it on sale on Steam. It's pretty fun, but there are little mechanics that I forget about that can make it frustrating and the damned Gargoyles. The Gargoyles are the epitome of the trope Goddamned Bats.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoddamnedBats

Annoying as frig lol

What is it like? Quick look kinda reminds me of Dawn of War.

It's pretty good! Unlike DOW, it's turn-based strategy, which is my jam, don't know if it's yours. It's more like a traditional game of Warhammer 40,000 as you choose your units at the beginning of each game using a points system. It's based just after the War for Baal. It seems to go into a bit of depth about how the Blood Angels deal with the devastation (pun unintended) and their dealing with the influx of the Primaris Marines, but I'm not too far into the story, so don't know how well they deal with those themes. The Voice acting is good, and the characters seem pretty well written so far, but there aren't any cut scenes, just stills and such. Hope this helps.

My friend got me a copy of TW2, and wow is it a lot lot better than the first one. It actually runs better on my old laptop too which is strange. But as a fan of greenskins, all the new changes are very very very appreciated. I'm just amazed how many improvements they made on core mechanics, the game itself seems to play a lot smoother now too.

After playing a greenskins campaign I'm torn between the lizards and skaven next. They both look fun to play.

Playing TW3 and doing an immortal empires campaign with Grom and I'm really liking the cooking mechanic he has and like Makeitorky mentioned, the revamp to the WAAAGH! system since it gives you a lot more to work with and not have to worry about the WAAAGH! armies constantly being out of range of your main stacks.

However, I am starting to hit a brick wall though, as I've unfortunately not even had a chance to start attacking Tor Yvresse since my neighbors keep declaring war on me. First it was the Bretonnians, who I wiped out. Then it was the Wood elves, who all took turns declaring war on me. I wiped them out. Then it was the Empire, followed by like 3 different dwarf factions, Border Princes and then Vampires backstabbed me after breaking their non-aggression pact. I was kind of hoping they would have fixed their war-declaring happy AI, anyone else find that to be incredibly annoying? I can barely catch my breath to regroup before I get into another extended war, especially with factions that send their units halfway across the continent to try and kill me.

Dwarf Fortress again. Very interesting start. By pure random chance my new starting location was on top of an existing cave system, filled with traps and staircases. No sign of any occupants, so I opened up the initial area and disarmed some of the closer traps, sealing some of the mysterious tunnels off.

A brief moment of concern came when one of the dogs encountered a necromancer experiment in forest, but (eventually) she drove it off.

Then a tree fell on a tree cutter, killing her instantly. (which, sadly, is not the stupidest way I've seen a dwarf die, as three in a row at my previous fortress decided to the best way to detail a wall was step into a waterfall and get pushed under water and drown, rather than work the other side where it was completely clear).

Finally I moved into a large space in the caves, which held a nicely terraced set of rooms going down 5 z-levels, which I decided to occupy and turn into bedrooms, a dining hall, with workshops lining the upper level. It looks fantastic, and is a complete departure from how I normally build living areas in DF, so that's fun.

But I finally discovered the occupants of the cave: kobolds. I'd inadvertently managed to seal them off from both my fortress and the surface, so I've been arming and training. They are hostile, so sadly we can't coexist. But its a very neat piece of world gen that basically just happened: this expedition of dwarves just happened to stumble on an existing cavern and move in, rooting out the miserable kobolds who lived there.

(somewhat sadly, the traps were all instantly forbidden the moment I arrived and my dwarves don't seem to trigger them, so this won't be a challenge. But I don't know what else lies below)

There is also another downwards passage that I haven't explored yet, so there may be more to this cave yet.

Drums… drums in the deep… make sure you can get out easily

 Flinty wrote:
Drums… drums in the deep… make sure you can get out easily

The tunnel did lead down to the cavern layer, with a thin rock slope at the end, 1 tile wide. But... nothing was there, which was a surprise- I'm used to attack forces of ratmen or olm-men waiting on the first cavern level. So, walls went up, and I have a nice safe pasture, farms and water well. Once I sort out bedrooms, I'm going to expand again.

The dozen kobolds died horribly shortly thereafter. None had weapons. A couple had tunics or shirts.

Then a goblin scouting party arrived, and camped out on top of the chalk mound that serves as the entrance to the caves/my fortress (its just chalk, 5 z-levels tall in the middle of a forest).
Sent my squad out and, they got... carried away. Several goblins were just chopped into bits. (in several case a stack of body parts. Left hand, left upper arm, right foot, multilated body. Or legs chopped into several pieces, heads lopped off, the works).
One dwarf was slightly bruised and decided that was grounds for 'losing the ability to stand,' and just slumped on the ground until I got a hospital set up. They were in there for maybe 5 minutes after being diagnosed.

Between the goblins and the traps, I have a lot of junk equipment to sell off to the next set of merchants that show up, but somehow I've got a population of 100 already, and need to sort out keeping them supplied with drink (my food supplies are good to excessive) and also a massive backlog in housing. (I fell behind in that while getting my military up to speed, which I usually neglect. I just need to sort out why they simply won't wear steel boots).

My second biggest issue is with all the pre-dug tunnels and chambers, I've got less stone to work with than I'd like. My fancy trading hall in front of the entrance is only partly built because I've basically run out of building materials.

My mayor is, of course, a necromancer. [This happens a lot, currently. Mostly because necromancers in DF are immortal. If they've been around a while, they pick up skills over extended periods of time, and the elections appear to be based on social skills. So the necromancers consistently win, because they've been practicing conversation skills longer than anyone else. Well, except vampires.]. This one's highest non-social skill appears to be 'Milker.' Because... sure. Immortality of milking cows, makes you just want to run out and master the secrets of life and death for sure.

Dwarf Fortress sounds fun, so I looked it up. I might pick it up whenever it goes on sale.

Back to Far Cry 6, this time on the relatively (past six months) update which allows New Game Plus.

Oh man those early missions are fun when you’ve enough firepower to make a Freebooter think “steady on”.

Commandeering a Mortar remains my favourite giggle. Nothing quite compares to shelling an enemy base with its own toys.

Took a turn at Hearts of Iron 4 for the first time in a long while. I decided to play as ahistorical Nationalist China. Highlights -

1.) Japan returned control of the nation to the Emperor. This was good news for me as that particular path leads to going to war with the USSR instead of with China.
2.) The USSR had a civil war break out. After several republics broke away (Ukraine, Belorus, Armenia, and a few others down by Armenia), the uprising succeeded, and the Tsar regained his throne.
3.) The entirety of the new Russia ended up as a Japanese puppet.
4.) Yugoslavia went communist, forming the Yugoslavia SFSR. This wasn't the only unusual communist uprising, but it had some repercussions for me much later.
5.) With no threat from Japan, I was able to focus on reuniting China under the KMT banner. And since the USSR wasn't around, Mao didn't have anyone watching his back. Time to get rid of that troublemaker.
6.) While I was dealing with Mao, one of the other Chinese states decided to start the "campaigning" mechanic (I hate it because it's always negative if you're the top dog; they can force you out by using it, but you can't use it to get rid of them). So I issued my ultimatum to the warlords. The two northwestern states joined as my puppets. The other three blew me off. Ma joined my war against Mao, which was initially a mistake since he couldn't properly watch the western border of the communist enclave. They expanded like crazy until I brought in reinforcements and got everything under control. Once they were (mostly) back where they had started, I brought in a couple of new units of light tanks and used them to punch through the communist lines. They fell shortly afterwards, and Mao met his end.
7.) During my war against the communists, they received an unexpected ally - Yugoslavia SFSR decided to enter the war on the side of the Chinese communists. Yugoslavia couldn't actually contribute anything to help in the war, owing to the fact that they were on the other side of Asia (technically in Europe), and had no way to reach me. But when the CCP finally capitulated, Yugoslavia SFSR did as well. So I grabbed the Chinese areas... and then grabbed Yugoslavia too. But I quickly thought better of it, and released it as a puppet. Having anything to do with Yugoslavia proved to be a mistake.
8.) Communists dealt with, I turned to the remaining warlords. Ma was quickly brought fully within the KMT fold, and Sinkiang was following. The group of bandits known as the Guanxi Clique was targeted, and I declared war. It was a slow slog, but much faster than the war against the Communists. They were doomed from the start.
9.) Mid-way through my war against the Guanxi Clique, the British decided to declare war against my Yugoslavian puppets. This automatically brought me in as a co-beligerent, and the British were part of the Allies. When the flurry of messages popped up from various nations at war with the Allies, I hurriedly clicked through them... and missed that one of them was an invitation from the German Reich to join the Axis. Oops. Oh, well.
10.) I finished off the remaining Chinese states, leaving just the Japanese puppets out of my control. At this point, I took stock of the world map. The Allies never actually invaded Yugoslavia SFSR, despite the war declaration. Russia was no longer a Japanese puppet, but it was a member of the Axis. In fact, the only parts of the European continent that weren't part of the Axis were Poland(!), Romania, and Lithuania, which were all part of a Polish-led Falangist alliance that was not at war with the Axis (I didn't check to see whether they were actively siding with the Axis, or just not at war with them). Great Britain led the allies. India was also part of the Allies, but the Japanese had landed troops while I was reuniting (most of) China, and were slowly pushing the Indians and their allies back.
11.) I attempted to send troops into India and Pakistan from across the Chinese border in the north, but the area's a mountainous mess and I bogged down immediately.
12.) Mexico was running rampant through Central and South America.
13.) Other than a brief declaration of war against the Bahaman communists (who started a civil war in the Bahamas), the US did what it always does when the Japanese don't attack the Philipines. It stayed out of the fighting (and was even shipping me arms even after I joined the Axis).
14.) With the Japanese making steady progress in India, the outcome of the Axis vs Allies war was pretty much determined. All that was left was the very long, slow, slog. So I called it quits at that point.