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Still Anthem.

Still a ton of fun to play.

It's odd;
-Anthem is amazing to play, but every aspect aside from gameplay is in bad shape.
-Division 2 nails every aspect aside from gameplay, but the gameplay is meh.

I get why so many people prefer Division 2, but I'm still having a blast.

Finished off the final season of The Walking Dead telltale series. Intense as usual but a satisfying ending I think.

Recently been playing Crusader Kings II a lot, I imagine mid-April that will switch to Imperator Rome.

So one of my friends in Division 2 went full yellow, and oh my god are skill builds broken. We've been setting entire rooms on fire using the chem launcher, which with upgrades can cover the entire room. The fire forces all affected enemies out of cover, making them easy prey for LMGs. It's pretty damn broken.

Rome total war II, rise of the republic as ioliei.

gotta say, archers, nurghahic and sherden units make for a fun roffle wave.

Also rotr seems to have better AI, diplomatically now, so it is refreshing to see actual working system there for once.

Finally, finally finished Pathfinder: Kingmaker.
Out of sheer obstinacy, as the bad encounter design gets worse and worse and into sheer lunacy at the end of the game.

And the writing didn't get patched at all, so is pretty awful.

But the early/mid game and a lot of side encounters fill my fix for D&D tactical combat.

In theory they're releasing a random 'endless' dungeon DLC next month which can be played outside the main campaign, which will likely be better than the main campaign.

Though the recently side story DLC was not...

Somewhat glad I played it, but even more pleased to be done with it.

Decided to get back into Medieval 2 Total War and try the HRE, a faction I've never played in probably ~1000 hours because they seemed kinda boring until late-mid/late game, where most European factions have something fun they can mess about with fairly early.

That said, HRE make up for having no roster diversity whatsoever early/early-mid game by having a ludicrous economy and all the rebel settlements you could want in very easy striking distance. One of my favourite factions to play is Russia, and their early game is so very painfully slow at least expanding into South and Eastern Russia, but HRE is fast off the bat.

So far I've got Denmark hemmed into their starting region, Poland forced to expand into Russia, France allied (for all that's worth in M2, which excepting the Papal States is usually very little indeed), Venice throwing away militia trying to take Bologna as my armies fresh from storming Milan and Genoa (because I'm not letting Milan survive any game of M2 if I can help it, and they're now safely stuck in Ajaccio where I can dispose of them later) set their sights on Venice itself. A proper castle army is rolling in as well to bulldoze Zagreb and head down to Ragusa.

Meanwhile France has been excommunicated because Spain and then Milan attacked them and France had the sheer audacity to defend itself, and England decided to jump on the wagon shortly after. I doubt they're stupid enough to try and attack my garrisoned cities and castles while being attacked on two fronts already, but this is M2 AI...

All I really have to potentially worry about until the first Pope dies, France is reconciled, and they all make peace, is Poland and maybe Hungary to a lesser extent, though once Venice is taken I should have more than enough income from the entirety of North Italy to fund a nice modern army from the newly Fortress-ed Hamburg, complete with Teutonic Knights from Frankfurt, to roll over the Danes, grab Bruges and Antwerp, and then glare menacingly over the Polish border.

All in all it's been a fair change of pace from normal. Being able to afford to upgrade all my settlements, train more troops, keep fairly swelled garrisons where I need to, and still rake in 10k income profit every turn is welcome, as is being able to expand so rapidly.

Bharring wrote:
Still Anthem.

Still a ton of fun to play.

It's odd;
-Anthem is amazing to play, but every aspect aside from gameplay is in bad shape.
-Division 2 nails every aspect aside from gameplay, but the gameplay is meh.

Agreed, for the most part. But Division 2 seems to have one glaring problem in group-finding.

The matchmaking terminals in the safe zones allow you to automatically find groups... but they're keyed to random stuff for the most part. If you want to run missions, then you can get a random mission, etc... If you want to get assistance with a specific mission, then you need to enter the mission, and then send out a call for help. And then you wait and see whether another player joins you. Sometimes you get a swift response. Other times, you don't get help until you're nearly done with the mission. And if you leave the "player needs help" prompts active, then you'll get barraged with a constant stream of players in Freeroam (i.e. the open world) who are asking for help with one task or another, while you're running your mission instance. It's possible to do the missions solo (I've done a number of them that way). But they tend to be a lot easier with at least one other player, particularly with how some of the main mission boss fights work.

Anthem, on the other hand, goes with the more traditional "pick the type of mission you want to play, and we'll automatically find a group for you". You can still get a random mission if you want via Quickplay. But if you've got a specific mission you need to clear, the game will build the group for you before you enter. I'm puzzled why Division 2 didn't adopt that model, which is pretty standard these days.

Division 2 has that same matchmaker model, it's just that the menus are not intuitive, and unless the mission happens to be VIP at the moment on the difficulty you're playing then its really hard to find people (you can just wait outside the mission while waiting for people if you want). Outside of that I've found missions to be not so hard to get groups for, but missions are a bad source of loot on the whole relative to the time spent on them (except for the Strongholds).

The call for aid function on the whole is a disaster. Basically every time I've used it I wind up with some afker, which is just bizarre. I turned it off because it's annoying and a waste of time.

I don't consider that much of a loss, but the really egregious aspect of the matchmaker is that it's hard to get a group to do the core loot loop (control point farm). There's no matchmaker option for it. Call for aid is a disaster, so it isn't very helpful. Exploration is the only option that fits, but that also tends to put you with afkers.

If I had to pin a major flaw on the Division 2, it's the menu design. There are too many levels with core options buried in obscure places or left in places where it's very vague what they actually mean/do. EDIT: And heaven forbid someone tries to manage inventory in the middle of something. They'll be standing there for five minutes and you'll be wondering where the feth your help is.

And the game play in Division 2 is stellar. Really the only barrier to it is do you like Tom Clancy cover shooters? Cause RPG aspects aside, it's still a Tom Clancy cover shooter, where the punishment for being passive or hyper aggressive is instant death and the only real "play style" is calculated aggression. If that doesn't suit you, you'll probably never enjoy the game. Even if you do like that kind of gameplay, the way The Division is balanced, it's exceedingly hard to do things solo, especially when the punishment for death in open world content is a limited availability of spawn points and having to walk back to what you were doing (and if you're solo you'll do this a lot). Some people are really liking that challenge, but I find it annoying. You either play the Division 2 with people, or you don't play at all which I'd consider a minor flaw given the kind of game it is.

 LordofHats wrote:

And the game play in Division 2 is stellar. Really the only barrier to it is do you like Tom Clancy cover shooters? Cause RPG aspects aside, it's still a Tom Clancy cover shooter, where the punishment for being passive or hyper aggressive is instant death and the only real "play style" is calculated aggression. If that doesn't suit you, you'll probably never enjoy the game. Even if you do like that kind of gameplay, the way The Division is balanced, it's exceedingly hard to do things solo, especially when the punishment for death in open world content is a limited availability of spawn points and having to walk back to what you were doing (and if you're solo you'll do this a lot). Some people are really liking that challenge, but I find it annoying. You either play the Division 2 with people, or you don't play at all which I'd consider a minor flaw given the kind of game it is.

The main thing that makes Division 2 hard to do solo - and something that flies in the face of the earlier Tom Clancy games - is the bullet sponge nature of enemies. I understand why they made the game that way. Without that, groups would pretty much instantly blow through any and all content. But it does get a bit weird when you note that you're dealing with a company that got its reputation for releasing games that were heavy on the realism aspects.

Eumerin wrote:
The main thing that makes Division 2 hard to do solo - and something that flies in the face of the earlier Tom Clancy games - is the bullet sponge nature of enemies.

Really part of the problem at the moment is that enemies are dumber than they're supposed to be and its making the game harder. Yes. The AI is dumb, and because it's dumb the game is more challenging than intended XD

The biggest issue when soloing the game is that the AI, with its massive HP bars you can't go toe to toe with, will bum rush you. According to the devs, they're not supposed to do that outside of the charger and shield class of enemies (who have very low health under their armor/big weak spots that are easy to hit). There's some error in the current AI for Grenadiers and Linemen where they both tend to rush you, and when multiples of them come at you unless you have a strong build you can't kill them fast enough. Neither were intended to behave that way. Grenadiers are meant to stand back and grenade (obviously) while linemen are supposed to try and flank the player, but not straight up rush them. Neither class' armor/HP was balanced for them to behave this way, so when they charge you you have to engage in a fighting retreat, use CC of some kind, or die miserably.

Hopefully tomorrows patch fixes this as it can even screw over a coordinated group if it happens fast enough. Part of why my group is keeping a dedicated skill build around to spam fire, but honestly that needs either 1) a nerf cause it's too damn strong, or 2) some mechanic to prevent the player from burning the enemy over and over until they die (Division 1 had this).

Personally as a fan of the looter genre, I do feel that something the shooter wing has continually failed to understand is that the player is supposed to be pretty tanky too, but in all three of the main looter shooter games out right now it's simply not the case. The player is squishy, with increased damage being the only way to handle incoming damage (kill them fast enough that they can't kill you). In Grim Dawn, Diablo, and Path of Exile, building up your defenses/sustainability is as important as building up your offense, and no looter shooter has ever managed to do this well.

Taking a short break from the Division 2 for now, the search for good gear got a bit too tedious.

But I agree that the PC is too squishy a lot of the time. I guess it's meant to enhance the cover shooting mechanics, but sometimes they go through me, despite having full health and armour, in less than a second.

A coworker gave me Star Trek Legacy, and I've been doing that most of the time.

 Just Tony wrote:
A coworker gave me Star Trek Legacy, and I've been doing that most of the time.

I liked that one. Pretty good story and it was fun to fly the various starships around.

After at least two years away, I have finally returned to playing SMITE. It's a lot of fun, but really frustrating if you have to play against a bunch of guys who really know what they're doing. Hopefully I don't encounter all the toxicity that drove me away from the game before.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
After at least two years away, I have finally returned to playing SMITE. It's a lot of fun, but really frustrating if you have to play against a bunch of guys who really know what they're doing. Hopefully I don't encounter all the toxicity that drove me away from the game before.

The moba effect no? I commonly still play a bit of Leauge of legends every now and then, mostly when I'm feeling down or angry. The thing is I do it because the inevitable toxcisity is a bit of relief from whatever makes me angry or down. It's a bit weird but it's developped into a bit of a thearaputic thing for me.

Moar total warhmmer 2. Kind of given up on my Lizardmen campaign. Was playing as Mazamundi, managed to ally with the drowned and togheter we kept the dark elves and the Tomb kings at bay. With that done two other armies are steamrolling the south. I then did a mortal empires campaign with the Empire and realised why I struggled with the lizardmen so much. With the Empire, even early game, I can have 3-4 almost full stacks of dudes running around and have many plans working in unison. With lizardmen I feel like I can't put all my plans into place because the economy is so restricted. I can support max 2 stacks. High elves blew everyone else out the water in the ritual race, I'm second and would simply let the high elves finish. It's a bit of the civ syndrome. I'm certain I've "won" if I don't compete with the high elves and so I have to wait some 100 turns for the game to end. The feeling gets me a bit bored.

 Nerak wrote:


Moar total warhmmer 2. Kind of given up on my Lizardmen campaign. Was playing as Mazamundi, managed to ally with the drowned and togheter we kept the dark elves and the Tomb kings at bay. With that done two other armies are steamrolling the south. I then did a mortal empires campaign with the Empire and realised why I struggled with the lizardmen so much. With the Empire, even early game, I can have 3-4 almost full stacks of dudes running around and have many plans working in unison. With lizardmen I feel like I can't put all my plans into place because the economy is so restricted. I can support max 2 stacks. High elves blew everyone else out the water in the ritual race, I'm second and would simply let the high elves finish. It's a bit of the civ syndrome. I'm certain I've "won" if I don't compete with the high elves and so I have to wait some 100 turns for the game to end. The feeling gets me a bit bored.

I'm also playing TWW2 and it's fun. Usually somewhere near end-game in mortal empires things just get super boring and i just wanna finish. I hear that's common in all grand strategy and also 4X games. Atm this is my 2nd run of clan rictus and it's fun. I killed a bunch of dark elf AI and allied up with Malekith oddly who also confederated with morathi. Both of them loved me and the 3rd main dark elf faction that was near to hating me started loving me after i killed off his trade partner or ally which is weird. I guess dark elves find you killing their rivals of the same race pretty funny.

Anyway now it's me and my 2 allies vs lizardmen (the ones in lustria which i think is hexotl), a massive confederated bunch of high elves and exiles of nehek (tomb kings faction). I had to get moving and fighting off the high elves as they were wrecking malekith hardcore but i took out like 3-4 armies. Hopefully proximity gives lizardmen a hard time to get to me but we're facing a lot of enemies right now. It's interesting because 20 turns before i was probably just finishing off a dark elf minor faction and now 3 massive factions are my enemies. At least Malekith has most of the sea covered with black arks but it's still a tough situation. Thankfully after every fight i'm mostly in friendly territory so i just use my assassins to replenish troops super fast.

I WISH I could play TWW or TWW2 right now. My desktop died and my dinosaur laptop won't push it. Once life allows some breathing room to reinvest in a desktop, I'm gonna buy those games like it's my job.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Decided to get back into Medieval 2 Total War and try the HRE, a faction I've never played in probably ~1000 hours because they seemed kinda boring until late-mid/late game, where most European factions have something fun they can mess about with fairly early.

That said, HRE make up for having no roster diversity whatsoever early/early-mid game by having a ludicrous economy and all the rebel settlements you could want in very easy striking distance. One of my favourite factions to play is Russia, and their early game is so very painfully slow at least expanding into South and Eastern Russia, but HRE is fast off the bat.

So far I've got Denmark hemmed into their starting region, Poland forced to expand into Russia, France allied (for all that's worth in M2, which excepting the Papal States is usually very little indeed), Venice throwing away militia trying to take Bologna as my armies fresh from storming Milan and Genoa (because I'm not letting Milan survive any game of M2 if I can help it, and they're now safely stuck in Ajaccio where I can dispose of them later) set their sights on Venice itself. A proper castle army is rolling in as well to bulldoze Zagreb and head down to Ragusa.

Meanwhile France has been excommunicated because Spain and then Milan attacked them and France had the sheer audacity to defend itself, and England decided to jump on the wagon shortly after. I doubt they're stupid enough to try and attack my garrisoned cities and castles while being attacked on two fronts already, but this is M2 AI...

All I really have to potentially worry about until the first Pope dies, France is reconciled, and they all make peace, is Poland and maybe Hungary to a lesser extent, though once Venice is taken I should have more than enough income from the entirety of North Italy to fund a nice modern army from the newly Citadel-ed Hamburg, complete with Teutonic Knights from Frankfurt, to roll over the Danes, grab Bruges and Antwerp, and then glare menacingly over the Polish border.

All in all it's been a fair change of pace from normal. Being able to afford to upgrade all my settlements, train more troops, keep fairly swelled garrisons where I need to, and still rake in 10k income profit every turn is welcome, as is being able to expand so rapidly.

Gotta love the excommunication because you defended yourself.

Mid game is where the HRE shines, hellbard militia forever.

(might be biased)

Yeah, France just hasn't been having a great time of it recently Pope-wise. Their excommunication lasted right through the first Pope's reign, the new Venetian Pope reconciled them, France made peace with everyone but England, and got excommunicated again--no idea if that's because they defended themselves or tried to siege Caen over and over.

Meanwhile, Venice sent its faction leader and heir over to Toulouse when their pope called a Crusade against it, recruited a huge load of crusader mercs on Toulouse's doorstep, and took it. I sent a force after them to reclaim it, while at the same time positioning myself to take Zagreb. Couldn't quite make it to Ragusa, though, as the road was blocked by mercs and a random Venetian army I didn't want to attack in case it triggered an early papal wrist slap. One turn saw the French-turned-Venetian fortress, and Venice's last civillian settlement, fall to the HRE. The Pope got annoyed, of course, and gave me 6 turns to cool off, which was enough to send a force over to Sophia and position outside Ragusa, where the Venetians built up a few more castle troops and tried to attack me in the open field from three directions: one from the castle, one nearby from the aforementioned random army, and one from their returning faction leader fresh from the crusade.

They lost pretty hard, and a turn later Ragusa and Sophia were in German hands, with the Pope the last remnant of Venice.

In between, Sicily decided to take a pop at me and invade Corsica with three family members and a nearly full stack, but a quick roundup of castle troops from Staufen and Bern, and an influx of militia from northern Italy, they were crushed against the sea. Their excommunication lasted all of about 3 turns, between attacking me for no reason and having several shades of Sicillian snot stabbed out of them, which the Pope apparently felt was enough of a lesson for them--which was actually annoying, as I'd planned on sailing on to Sicily and Cagliari itself, then to Tunis, and using the army stationed at Ragusa to sail across to Naples before marching down to Palermo. Ah well, now I just have to wait until I can capture Cagliari and Naples in one turn, then spend whatever timeout the Pope gives me sitting outside Tunis and Palermo drinking beer and making pretzels until the Pope takes the leash back off.

But with that, the HRE is entering a time of relative peace for the first time in years. France is too frail to pose a threat, and if Spain want to try and take Toulouse then they're welcome to give it a go, but we've only just opened up trade and they've still got their own troubles with the Moors. To the East, I'm allied with the Hungarians, who either have Poland as their vassal or vice-versa, and the Byzantines, who forgave me for beating up Milan when I bulldozed Venice.

Poland and Hungary both look to have growing forces nearish my borders, though, so Sophia's imminent growth into a Fortress is welcome, and the army I've had developing at Hamburg may soon see action in Poland, which given it's backed up by many Teutonic Knights would not be wholly surprising. To the North, Denmark has... stagnated. Completely. They've done literally nothing. I've rarely seen a Danish AI this utterly passive. Usually they venture to Stockholm, or Oslo, but since turn 1 when they sent an army to take Hamburg, but saw I was already there, they seem to have just given up. Their King is currently hanging around Antwerp with 6 other units, having followed my army as it rolled through Belgium. Antwerp itself is fairly well upgraded--can't remember if it's a City or a Large City--but utterly undefended, with a smattering of about 10 units total spread across its garrison and another army or two standing nearby.

I had noticed Stockholm was still inexplicably rebel, and planned to sail over to it from Hamburg/Stettin to avoid angering the Danes, who I reckoned must've taken at least Oslo by now and got mean armour-piercing castle infantry. But no, a quick trip North with a Diplomat and map information exchange later revealed Antwerp is their only settlement. They're also the only faction able to match me in treasury funds, or beat me when I have spend-heavy turns, no doubt because they've nothing else to spend their money on except the Merchant agents fuelling their economy. Half considering using Hamburg's army to take them out as an act of mercy.

I could also say the same for France, given they're brittle and rather pathetic at the moment, but I've a soft spot for sticking to my guns in games like this. We've been allies most of the game, and I don't intend to change that (until they inevitably and inexplicably backstab me as is M2 AI's wont) regardless of how disappointed in me the Pope is for it.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Yeah, France just hasn't been having a great time of it recently Pope-wise. Their excommunication lasted right through the first Pope's reign, the new Venetian Pope reconciled them, France made peace with everyone but England, and got excommunicated again--no idea if that's because they defended themselves or tried to siege Caen over and over.

Meanwhile, Venice sent its faction leader and heir over to Toulouse when their pope called a Crusade against it, recruited a huge load of crusader mercs on Toulouse's doorstep, and took it. I sent a force after them to reclaim it, while at the same time positioning myself to take Zagreb. Couldn't quite make it to Ragusa, though, as the road was blocked by mercs and a random Venetian army I didn't want to attack in case it triggered an early papal wrist slap. One turn saw the French-turned-Venetian fortress, and Venice's last civillian settlement, fall to the HRE. The Pope got annoyed, of course, and gave me 6 turns to cool off, which was enough to send a force over to Sophia and position outside Ragusa, where the Venetians built up a few more castle troops and tried to attack me in the open field from three directions: one from the castle, one nearby from the aforementioned random army, and one from their returning faction leader fresh from the crusade.

They lost pretty hard, and a turn later Ragusa and Sophia were in German hands, with the Pope the last remnant of Venice.

In between, Sicily decided to take a pop at me and invade Corsica with three family members and a nearly full stack, but a quick roundup of castle troops from Staufen and Bern, and an influx of militia from northern Italy, they were crushed against the sea. Their excommunication lasted all of about 3 turns, between attacking me for no reason and having several shades of Sicillian snot stabbed out of them, which the Pope apparently felt was enough of a lesson for them--which was actually annoying, as I'd planned on sailing on to Sicily and Cagliari itself, then to Tunis, and using the army stationed at Ragusa to sail across to Naples before marching down to Palermo. Ah well, now I just have to wait until I can capture Cagliari and Naples in one turn, then spend whatever timeout the Pope gives me sitting outside Tunis and Palermo drinking beer and making pretzels until the Pope takes the leash back off.

But with that, the HRE is entering a time of relative peace for the first time in years. France is too frail to pose a threat, and if Spain want to try and take Toulouse then they're welcome to give it a go, but we've only just opened up trade and they've still got their own troubles with the Moors. To the East, I'm allied with the Hungarians, who either have Poland as their vassal or vice-versa, and the Byzantines, who forgave me for beating up Milan when I bulldozed Venice.

Poland and Hungary both look to have growing forces nearish my borders, though, so Sophia's imminent growth into a Fortress is welcome, and the army I've had developing at Hamburg may soon see action in Poland, which given it's backed up by many Teutonic Knights would not be wholly surprising. To the North, Denmark has... stagnated. Completely. They've done literally nothing. I've rarely seen a Danish AI this utterly passive. Usually they venture to Stockholm, or Oslo, but since turn 1 when they sent an army to take Hamburg, but saw I was already there, they seem to have just given up. Their King is currently hanging around Antwerp with 6 other units, having followed my army as it rolled through Belgium. Antwerp itself is fairly well upgraded--can't remember if it's a City or a Large City--but utterly undefended, with a smattering of about 10 units total spread across its garrison and another army or two standing nearby.

I had noticed Stockholm was still inexplicably rebel, and planned to sail over to it from Hamburg/Stettin to avoid angering the Danes, who I reckoned must've taken at least Oslo by now and got mean armour-piercing castle infantry. But no, a quick trip North with a Diplomat and map information exchange later revealed Antwerp is their only settlement. They're also the only faction able to match me in treasury funds, or beat me when I have spend-heavy turns, no doubt because they've nothing else to spend their money on except the Merchant agents fuelling their economy. Half considering using Hamburg's army to take them out as an act of mercy.

I could also say the same for France, given they're brittle and rather pathetic at the moment, but I've a soft spot for sticking to my guns in games like this. We've been allies most of the game, and I don't intend to change that (until they inevitably and inexplicably backstab me as is M2 AI's wont) regardless of how disappointed in me the Pope is for it.

The correct thing imo, is to now tell everybody to take a hike off some alpine cliffs. Also if you are lucky you can get merc swiss pikemen in Bern, in decent quantities, saved my hide multiple times.
Also the danish AI is passive? Normally they behave more like the Balkans and attack everything, even their own merchants

If I have one flaw when I play this sort of game, it's a tendancy to want to play nice but punish hard. Which does tend to lead to letting factions build up enough to cause me eventual trouble rather than risk the game telling me I'm not a bastion of trust and virtue

And yeah, in the games where I've had sight of Denmark they're either tussling with the HRE, or got Hamburg first and expanded into Poland and occasionally grabbed Antwerp/Bruges. Right now it's not far past turn 50 and they're completely and utterly passive, to the point I'm almost concerned their AI didn't load properly.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Also the danish AI is passive? Normally they behave more like the Balkans and attack everything, even their own merchants

Yupp, that sounds like us alright.

 Nordicus wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Also the danish AI is passive? Normally they behave more like the Balkans and attack everything, even their own merchants

Yupp, that sounds like us alright.

In medieval total war, irl i only have seen swedes so I won't judge


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Avatar 720 wrote:
If I have one flaw when I play this sort of game, it's a tendancy to want to play nice but punish hard. Which does tend to lead to letting factions build up enough to cause me eventual trouble rather than risk the game telling me I'm not a bastion of trust and virtue

And yeah, in the games where I've had sight of Denmark they're either tussling with the HRE, or got Hamburg first and expanded into Poland and occasionally grabbed Antwerp/Bruges. Right now it's not far past turn 50 and they're completely and utterly passive, to the point I'm almost concerned their AI didn't load properly.

Nothing wrong with that, normally i try to differ, play themathically for a campaign or go full tryhard Mode.
Normally as the HRE i never go tryhard, to easy imo, but reconquering the HRE and all claims of it, and then just wait until something happens.

Well things are certainly slowing down, now. I've got enough settlements that I spend ages every turn making sure I've checked them all--several times over, because I've the memory of an amnesiac goldfish--and I'm starting to really fluctuate cash-wise now that about 5 settlements are at Large City status, with 2 nearing Huge and another handful coming up to Large. Every few turns I blow most of my budget on North Italy alone. The Venetian Pope finally popped his Papal clogs, and one of my youngest Cardinals got elected, so there'll be a German in Rome for a long time to come--maybe even long enough to welcome more of them in as well as their horses, or if it comes to it, diseased cows. Naples has been secured, and Cagliari is actually under Moorish control, so the stack I sent there is instead going to move right on to Tunis while the Naples force goes knocking on Palermo's door.

I'm surprised there's been no Crusade beside Toulouse, yet. Usually there's one called for Cairo rather early on in the game, but I wonder if the Frech crusade displaced it this time. It's close to turn 70, the Mongols have been teased, but still no holy lands--well, Egyptian lands, close enough I suppose--crusade. Which I'm actually a bit thankful for; the mad rush to organise a force to go and beat up some Egyptians can be annoying, and being able to focus purely on European expansion was welcome. At least it wouldn't have been as bad as trying to get to the Middle East from England or Denmark. The HRE's starting access to the right side of the Med would've been a literal godsend. I could still divert one of the Sicillian front armies to Antioch if I want to, after smashing Tunis/Palermo. For some reason that entire region is still rebel; neither the Egyptians nor the Turks have shown any interest in it, the same way the Russians have shown no interest in the rebel castle above Novgorod, nor the Polish/Hungarians/Byzantines in Kiev. This camapign is certainly one of the most bizarre I've ever played in terms of AI decisions.

Speaking of bizarre AI decisions, the same turn my Cardinal became Pope, Portugal broke their alliance with the Moors to attack a freshly-reconciled France, and two turns later France were excommunicated again... They either can't seem to catch a break, being stuck in an endless loop of excommunication through self-defence, or at this point feel there's no reason to adhere to the rules of Rome and are quite happy to throw militia at Caen, in the hope of eventually building a ramp of dead peasants high enough against the walls for their knights to ride up. I'm going to have to send a spy over just to sate my curiosity about what exactly is going on. England and Portugal are both fine Papal-ly speaking, and France has only lost Toulouse all game, but England's been their only enemy for most of it--Milan being, uh, 'dealt with' by me early on, and Spain making peace after becoming vassalised by the Moors--and Caen's not fallen, either.

I do hope France survives, though, if only to exhaust the Jinetes stacks I've seen wandering around Iberia. Bordeaux should be doing good work on that front, if the Portuguese stack of 2 Almughavars and the remaining slots split between Mailed Knights and Jinetes is anything to go by. Assaulting a Fortress with only two infantry units and the rest cavalry can only ever end well.

Lots and lots of Neverwinter Nights 2 RP

my youngest Cardinals got elected, so there'll be a German in Rome for a long time to come--maybe even long enough to welcome more of them in as well as their horses, or if it comes to it, diseased cows.

The idea of germans / germany only really shows up after 1800



Also HRE includes a lot of non germans, E.g. Bohemians / czechs soooooo, i mean they Drink beer in equal ammounts to their Bavarian neighbours.

Crusaders kings two satanic immortal horse boogaloo?

Pulled Chaos Gate back out of mothballs, going through the campaign again as we speak.

I downloaded Vampyr on my Xbox Game Pass this weekend. Enjoying it, cool story and all though the combat is really simple once you figure out how it works. Take a few swings, bite someone, take a few more swings, rinse and repeat. You can be taking on a group of 5 hunters, and they all just stand there and watch while you bite their friends's neck off.

Not Online!!! wrote:

my youngest Cardinals got elected, so there'll be a German in Rome for a long time to come--maybe even long enough to welcome more of them in as well as their horses, or if it comes to it, diseased cows.

The idea of germans / germany only really shows up after 1800



Also HRE includes a lot of non germans, E.g. Bohemians / czechs soooooo, i mean they Drink beer in equal ammounts to their Bavarian neighbours.

Eh, just going off what the Generals call themselves in the pre-battle speeches