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Australasia and South America both fell. I also lost quite a few soldiers on these carrier missions. Some deaths seemed to be quite bs but whatever. Also my super elite shotgun guy hallucinated and panicked and even with smoke covering him a sniper still pegged him because apparently the sniper could take like 3 hits and still wouldn't die and that was with plasma weapons.

Anyway I've done a few carrier missions and gotten some good tech off them. It took work but I have 6 marauder fighter-bombers, a tier 3 dropships, a full squad of mag weapons and mag heavy weapons and each of the 3 bases have the communications intercepting thing so I can tell what crew makeup and crew size my enemies have and what their ufos mission is.

I think it's about May 1980 now in the game's time and every other region is really stable aside from the 2 funding regions that fell. All research I can do is done until I capture a praetor and study a corpse of one. Might have fight some battleships ufos when they start sending them again. If I recall battleships have some ridiculously fun tech I also need to research.

I'm pretty sure most of my bases have enough defenses to one hit kill most ufos for each turret defense system I've got aside from battleships. Ofc I'm wondering if I could ever miss with all 4 of my defenses with their 50% chance to hit. They seem to hit a fairly even amount of the time.

Well I guess we'll see what a squad of 12 soldiers with full mag weapons and 2 heavies with top tier gear is like. Should be fun.

Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord

I keep coming back now and then to see how it's progressing. It's leagues above it's predecessor, Warband, but I keep falling into the common trap of sandbox games - you always reach a point where the challenge disappears and you're doing things for the sake of it. Right now I've decided to start up a Kingdom, stealing land from the Battanian King who has perfideously allowed in those damn Vlandian and Sturgian nobles! (Skyrim for the NORDS!). But there's no real point to it. I could have stuck with the Battanians and watched them steamroller the map Green, or I can do it myself and steamroller the land blue. As with all sandbox games, the lack of a rich story eventually leaves me a bit restless.

What I really want to do is binge my way through HALO and Mass Effect again. I'm eagerly awaiting the new installments in both franchises, and hoping they fix the issues with the previous ones .

 Warpig1815 wrote:
Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord

I keep coming back now and then to see how it's progressing. It's leagues above it's predecessor, Warband, but I keep falling into the common trap of sandbox games - you always reach a point where the challenge disappears and you're doing things for the sake of it. Right now I've decided to start up a Kingdom, stealing land from the Battanian King who has perfideously allowed in those damn Vlandian and Sturgian nobles! (Skyrim for the NORDS!). But there's no real point to it. I could have stuck with the Battanians and watched them steamroller the map Green, or I can do it myself and steamroller the land blue. As with all sandbox games, the lack of a rich story eventually leaves me a bit restless.

What I really want to do is binge my way through HALO and Mass Effect again. I'm eagerly awaiting the new installments in both franchises, and hoping they fix the issues with the previous ones .

How's the modding scene for Bannerlord? I recall Warband had an absurdly large number of total conversions.

Well more xenonauts and that battleship mission was tough. It killed off 8 of my 12 soldiers but I managed to capture the praetor in it and get all the worthwhile tech in it. Lost most of the rest of my really good soldiers trying to take it with at least 2 to 3 dying from the praetor leader when trying to capture it.

Well at least I won't have to capture another praetor in this game. I don't think they can be suppressed so I might have to use stun gas on them next time I try capturing any in another game. Im not sure because i think units with helmets filter out gas and are harder using flashbang grenades on.

Anyway I can work towards the final mission of the game soon provided I don't want to grab any more battleships which I might just do for singularity cannons because singularity cores are just that good.

SkavenLord wrote:

 Warpig1815 wrote:
Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord

I keep coming back now and then to see how it's progressing. It's leagues above it's predecessor, Warband, but I keep falling into the common trap of sandbox games - you always reach a point where the challenge disappears and you're doing things for the sake of it. Right now I've decided to start up a Kingdom, stealing land from the Battanian King who has perfideously allowed in those damn Vlandian and Sturgian nobles! (Skyrim for the NORDS!). But there's no real point to it. I could have stuck with the Battanians and watched them steamroller the map Green, or I can do it myself and steamroller the land blue. As with all sandbox games, the lack of a rich story eventually leaves me a bit restless.

What I really want to do is binge my way through HALO and Mass Effect again. I'm eagerly awaiting the new installments in both franchises, and hoping they fix the issues with the previous ones .

How's the modding scene for Bannerlord? I recall Warband had an absurdly large number of total conversions.

Couldn't really say. I've been waiting for it to come out of Early Access with it's final features before I use any mods. But I know they've released the mod tools, so it's probably just a matter of time before the modders descend.

Played all of Doom Eternal, Ancient Gods Part I & Ancient Gods Part II.

That was really, really good!

Been playing a lot of Nova Drift recently. It's a really fun game.

Though I'm disappointed that "Shielded Constructs" doesn't give your shield to the Shield construct if that's your only one.

Took a break from my Byzantine Empire playthroughs in Hearts of Iron 4 to recreate the Ottoman Empire instead. I took care of the Turkish political stuff, got the Ottomans back in power, and grabbed Greece with a hard-fought campaign. And then things more or less ground to a halt.

There are a couple of decisions early on that allow you to add additional core territory to the Ottoman Empire. But those (including the one that cores Greece) also require you to go to war with both the Axis and the Allies. Turkey starts out with poor manpower in comparison to the major powers. So not an option right away. I moved a little further down the focus tree, but then stopped after getting war justifications against some of the nearby nations. I had no capability to take those nations, and - again - would end up in a war with the Axis and the Allies. Instead, I went and worked on the military tree.

Eventually, I came back to the Ottoman progress path. I took the penalty for passing up the opportunity to go to war against Bulgaria (in retrospect, taking it might have been the better option but still would have been very risky), puppeted Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, and convinced Free France to return Syria to me. I accepted Syria as a puppet, but I probably should have taken it in directly instead as there's a decision involving it, and I think that would have gotten rid of the resistance problem. I also started working to integrate the puppets so that I could use the decisions involving each of them. I also grabbed Saudi Arabia and Yemen, since they had territory involved in some of my decisions (oddly enough, Oman - which is on the peninsula as well - does not). Meanwhile, I started justifying on all of Bulgaria. But I'd waited too long. Bulgaria lost a province, and I had to restart the justification (I understand why the game does it, but it's utterly and completely absurd). Then the Axis gave up before my next justification could finish (September 1944).

Peace had returned to Europe. It was an odd peace, though. The Soviets had made all of Germany communist, and had created the rest of their Warsaw Pact puppets. Spain - which had joined the Axis literally just before the war ended - was chopped up into little bits including a reborn Council of Aragorn (I have *no* clue how that got there). France, of all things, was divided into parts - including Free France. Japan was still on the loose, though. It had conquered India and New Zealand, and was about halfway done with China. I figured I'd finish integrating my puppets into the Ottoman Empire, and maybe see whether it would be worth going to war with Japan.

And then the Soviet Union started to justify against me and my puppet, Afghanistan.

So much for that game...


My big frustration this game was the lack of manpower. Turkey is *big* geographically, with a lot of coastline. One of my primary concerns in this game was going to war with one of the factions and being forced to defend against naval invasions (which were happening all over the place; Italy even briefly overran Ireland!). I simply didn't have the troops to do that. Coring Greece as the Ottoman Empire might have helped. But you can't core Greece by itself. You have to take some additional territory that's not part of Greece before you can perform that decision. I'm guessing the decision represents an old Ottoman administrative area. But it causes problems when you're trying to reach the point where you have enough manpower to actually do stuff. You need those cores to do anything. But most of the cores require you to fight both the Axis and the Allies. And you can't fight them (for very long) without manpower. It's a vicious cycle. Greece has similar problems initially (Greece actually starts with limited conscription and *zero* manpower). But it's much easier for Greece to get its numbers up before it starts picking fights with everyone.

Playing more xenonauts. I took out a carrier without much issue. Sebillian and reaper combo isnt that tough when most of your guys have the 360 degrees vision power armor that can fly. It also helps to know alien numbers and types so I can plan accordingly with gear before I send a dropship out there. Also reapers cant move on most high ground with their melee attacks so you could just go up on a cliff and with multiple dudes to spot and just pick them off while they ineffectually walk around you unable to get to you which is kinda silly to watch.

Anyway I only lost one soldier in the carrier and it was probably avoidable if I used c4 to blow up needless cover that often gets in the way of clear shots. I'll try to do it next time maybe.

The harridan and andron combo in the battleship is an interesting combo. Harridans arent easy to pin down sometimes and robots while never using cover its annoying you can never suppress them. Usually I take most flashbangs out and replace them with smoke in but I suppose using c4 more in missions filled with worthless alien garbage mostly. Gotta protect singularity cores now always when raiding the ship. Just about everything else on the ship might fetch a nice penny or two but singularity cores make the top tier weapons that could make the game a cake walk otherwise.

I lost 4 soldiers (only 2 absolutely died tho) at least on the 2nd battlship I took we got an autopsy of the praetor leader. Only research we lack is praetor leader interrogation and operation engame. After i get my 2nd singularity core ill fight some carriers if possible to level up my guys. Resources are nice but not the greatest. I likely won't need many more of em.

Eumerin wrote:
Took a break from my Byzantine Empire playthroughs in Hearts of Iron 4 to recreate the Ottoman Empire instead. I took care of the Turkish political stuff, got the Ottomans back in power, and grabbed Greece with a hard-fought campaign. And then things more or less ground to a halt.

There are a couple of decisions early on that allow you to add additional core territory to the Ottoman Empire. But those (including the one that cores Greece) also require you to go to war with both the Axis and the Allies. Turkey starts out with poor manpower in comparison to the major powers. So not an option right away. I moved a little further down the focus tree, but then stopped after getting war justifications against some of the nearby nations. I had no capability to take those nations, and - again - would end up in a war with the Axis and the Allies. Instead, I went and worked on the military tree.

Eventually, I came back to the Ottoman progress path. I took the penalty for passing up the opportunity to go to war against Bulgaria (in retrospect, taking it might have been the better option but still would have been very risky), puppeted Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, and convinced Free France to return Syria to me. I accepted Syria as a puppet, but I probably should have taken it in directly instead as there's a decision involving it, and I think that would have gotten rid of the resistance problem. I also started working to integrate the puppets so that I could use the decisions involving each of them. I also grabbed Saudi Arabia and Yemen, since they had territory involved in some of my decisions (oddly enough, Oman - which is on the peninsula as well - does not). Meanwhile, I started justifying on all of Bulgaria. But I'd waited too long. Bulgaria lost a province, and I had to restart the justification (I understand why the game does it, but it's utterly and completely absurd). Then the Axis gave up before my next justification could finish (September 1944).

Peace had returned to Europe. It was an odd peace, though. The Soviets had made all of Germany communist, and had created the rest of their Warsaw Pact puppets. Spain - which had joined the Axis literally just before the war ended - was chopped up into little bits including a reborn Council of Aragorn (I have *no* clue how that got there). France, of all things, was divided into parts - including Free France. Japan was still on the loose, though. It had conquered India and New Zealand, and was about halfway done with China. I figured I'd finish integrating my puppets into the Ottoman Empire, and maybe see whether it would be worth going to war with Japan.

And then the Soviet Union started to justify against me and my puppet, Afghanistan.

So much for that game...


My big frustration this game was the lack of manpower. Turkey is *big* geographically, with a lot of coastline. One of my primary concerns in this game was going to war with one of the factions and being forced to defend against naval invasions (which were happening all over the place; Italy even briefly overran Ireland!). I simply didn't have the troops to do that. Coring Greece as the Ottoman Empire might have helped. But you can't core Greece by itself. You have to take some additional territory that's not part of Greece before you can perform that decision. I'm guessing the decision represents an old Ottoman administrative area. But it causes problems when you're trying to reach the point where you have enough manpower to actually do stuff. You need those cores to do anything. But most of the cores require you to fight both the Axis and the Allies. And you can't fight them (for very long) without manpower. It's a vicious cycle. Greece has similar problems initially (Greece actually starts with limited conscription and *zero* manpower). But it's much easier for Greece to get its numbers up before it starts picking fights with everyone.

As someone that has done a certain achievement ending predictably in a World conquest.... I feel that pain.

However, with greece you should not struggle period, even if your army is still in shambles, the trick to winning there easy is to make atleast one, preferably two collaboration regime missions and a naval invasion in the south. Do that and you have a good chance of winning easily.
Also collaboration regimes will be the name of the game if you actually intend to go further with the Ottoblob playthrough due to paying of doubly:it lowers manpower requirements for garrison and it grants you more manpower from the regions. Further you have a whole slew of great advisors that further help out, between the grand vizir and other non core manpower boosts.
As for syria, Right now the decision for the demand is stil bugged. Even if you directly take over you can't integrate syria until you are at war with the allies, which btw should be your first opponent.
BTW: bulgaria submitting to the ottomans is a diceroll at the start of the game which you can't influence to my knowledge.

Played some clan Moulder today in tww2 as throt. The mutation lab seems real nice. I was iffy with clan eshin but I really loved the insane Ikit klaw campaign way back. SSD works really well btw.

I’ve also been playing divinity 2 with a friend which hasn’t fully worked out. Let’s just say we are both new and suck as a team. Also doesn’t help he charges headlong into fights whether everybody is healed or not and then we have to go through the frustrating and expensive experience of finding or buying more revives.

More Hades, I've finally managed to get up to Hades but can't defeat him yet. I will eventually, though.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Played some clan Moulder today in tww2 as throt. The mutation lab seems real nice. I was iffy with clan eshin but I really loved the insane Ikit klaw campaign way back. SSD works really well btw.

I’ve also been playing divinity 2 with a friend which hasn’t fully worked out. Let’s just say we are both new and suck as a team. Also doesn’t help he charges headlong into fights whether everybody is healed or not and then we have to go through the frustrating and expensive experience of finding or buying more revives.

the best thing about throt is mutant slaves and slave only campaigns.



in general its a fun mechanic until you have terrible RNG

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Well more xenonauts and that battleship mission was tough. It killed off 8 of my 12 soldiers but I managed to capture the praetor in it and get all the worthwhile tech in it. Lost most of the rest of my really good soldiers trying to take it with at least 2 to 3 dying from the praetor leader when trying to capture it.

Well at least I won't have to capture another praetor in this game. I don't think they can be suppressed so I might have to use stun gas on them next time I try capturing any in another game. Im not sure because i think units with helmets filter out gas and are harder using flashbang grenades on.

Anyway I can work towards the final mission of the game soon provided I don't want to grab any more battleships which I might just do for singularity cannons because singularity cores are just that good.

I take it have you got hold of the missile launcher + stun rocket, and stun grenades? Those are a really effective combination for trying to capture stuff.

Not Online!!! wrote:

As someone that has done a certain achievement ending predictably in a World conquest.... I feel that pain.

However, with greece you should not struggle period, even if your army is still in shambles, the trick to winning there easy is to make atleast one, preferably two collaboration regime missions and a naval invasion in the south. Do that and you have a good chance of winning easily.
Also collaboration regimes will be the name of the game if you actually intend to go further with the Ottoblob playthrough due to paying of doubly:it lowers manpower requirements for garrison and it grants you more manpower from the regions. Further you have a whole slew of great advisors that further help out, between the grand vizir and other non core manpower boosts.
As for syria, Right now the decision for the demand is stil bugged. Even if you directly take over you can't integrate syria until you are at war with the allies, which btw should be your first opponent.
BTW: bulgaria submitting to the ottomans is a diceroll at the start of the game which you can't influence to my knowledge.

Ah. I put my agents on Kurd suppression duty, and then forget about them. Of course even that only slows the Kurds down. I'm playing a communist Turkey game right now, and got frustrated enough with the Kurds that I finally put them under martial law to get the resistance percentages back down.

Shame to hear about Syria. Also shame about Bulgaria being a dice roll that can't be modified. It appears that the communist path has one as well, involving mining in Georgia (i.e. across the border). I had a Communist government, and maxed my rep with the USSR, but still failed to get the agreement.

On another note, there's something very wrong with AI naval invasions right now. The computer seems to launch them with disturbing regularity through what should be hostile waters. I mentioned in my previous post that Italy even successfully overran Ireland. In my communist game, I've had to fight off multiple small Italian invasions along the southern coast (i.e. the same sea zone as Cypress, which the Royal Navy heavily patrols), and one big one by the Dodecanese Islands. That invasion actually managed to take one of the island ports (from the British, who'd taken it from the Italians) that allow ground troops access to the mainland, but I was able to crush the invasion before the Germans could get more than eight or so divisions transported over.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Played some clan Moulder today in tww2 as throt. The mutation lab seems real nice. I was iffy with clan eshin but I really loved the insane Ikit klaw campaign way back. SSD works really well btw.

I’ve also been playing divinity 2 with a friend which hasn’t fully worked out. Let’s just say we are both new and suck as a team. Also doesn’t help he charges headlong into fights whether everybody is healed or not and then we have to go through the frustrating and expensive experience of finding or buying more revives.

the best thing about throt is mutant slaves and slave only campaigns.



in general its a fun mechanic until you have terrible RNG

I've been having mostly good RNG but that's because i only do one mutation per unit so far. That may change later. It'd be nice to fight enemies with higher numbers so i can get more mutagen for growing new breeds. At least i think that's how it works.

@Pacific:

I do have one missile launcher dude in the team but that's mostly for removing cover so i can suppress some enemies right after or so i can have a clear shot at some of them. I'm kinda wanting to use c4 more. I used to use flashbangs followed by c4 because not only would it destroy cover it would tend to suppress the enemy so much that they couldn't run away from the c4 blast and therefore not only get caught in it but have all the cover surrounding them destroyed. Also c4 suppresses the crap out of whatever survives so that's pretty nice too. Ofc while fun this seems a bit complex and i only really use c4 to destroy spammed cover anyway. Sadly i don't think i've used very much of it in this game if at all. Perhaps i'll make my shield dudes start off carrying them. Sadly i'll probably need some good strength and accuracy as well as movement and maybe strength to work it out right. A simple rocket would probably be easier for destroying cover but rockets can be blocked by cover whereas grenades and c4 can usually be thrown above cover without effecting accuracy.

As far as stun rocket and grenades go if you mouse over them in equipment when you're viewing your soldiers and weapons in the base it says helmeted enemies are less effected or sometimes immune. This somewhat worries me in the case of the praetors because they don't seem to be able to be suppressed but maybe i should try again. I think the major issue with praetors is you just gotta hit em where they can't see you since they can only fire overwatch but they never go on the attack in their turn. If hitting them where their back is turned doesn't work then maybe i can bait their shot with a dude with lots of health and a shield being blocked by a crap ton of cover.

Eumerin wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

As someone that has done a certain achievement ending predictably in a World conquest.... I feel that pain.

However, with greece you should not struggle period, even if your army is still in shambles, the trick to winning there easy is to make atleast one, preferably two collaboration regime missions and a naval invasion in the south. Do that and you have a good chance of winning easily.
Also collaboration regimes will be the name of the game if you actually intend to go further with the Ottoblob playthrough due to paying of doubly:it lowers manpower requirements for garrison and it grants you more manpower from the regions. Further you have a whole slew of great advisors that further help out, between the grand vizir and other non core manpower boosts.
As for syria, Right now the decision for the demand is stil bugged. Even if you directly take over you can't integrate syria until you are at war with the allies, which btw should be your first opponent.
BTW: bulgaria submitting to the ottomans is a diceroll at the start of the game which you can't influence to my knowledge.

Ah. I put my agents on Kurd suppression duty, and then forget about them. Of course even that only slows the Kurds down. I'm playing a communist Turkey game right now, and got frustrated enough with the Kurds that I finally put them under martial law to get the resistance percentages back down.

Shame to hear about Syria. Also shame about Bulgaria being a dice roll that can't be modified. It appears that the communist path has one as well, involving mining in Georgia (i.e. across the border). I had a Communist government, and maxed my rep with the USSR, but still failed to get the agreement.

You don't actually need to proclaim martial law. Its actually counterproductive in this case. Indeed local police force is the maximum you should do until normal resistance has been reduced and you got some comppliance still with it. However if you go Ottoman you get access to "reconciliation" specifically for the kurdish regions, which cuts down on resistance, costs less garrison and creates far more compliance faster. That way you will not have any issues at all with the kurds pretty soon.

On another note, there's something very wrong with AI naval invasions right now. The computer seems to launch them with disturbing regularity through what should be hostile waters. I mentioned in my previous post that Italy even successfully overran Ireland. In my communist game, I've had to fight off multiple small Italian invasions along the southern coast (i.e. the same sea zone as Cypress, which the Royal Navy heavily patrols), and one big one by the Dodecanese Islands. That invasion actually managed to take one of the island ports (from the British, who'd taken it from the Italians) that allow ground troops access to the mainland, but I was able to crush the invasion before the Germans could get more than eight or so divisions transported over.

Somehow, if italy or the axis manages to secure the suez, the italians send their fleet to france and attempt to use ireland, if in the war, as a bridgehead against the UK.
Which in turn makes them really susceptible to get naval invaded from north africa...

And yes, recently the AI favours , i'd like to say small ish 5-10 division naval invasions, over the 20 / 40 division attacks in earlier iterations of the game..

i'd like to put that down to the developpers attempting to make the AI not overcommit on the shores of the normandy as to avoid the "normal" bleeding out tactics many employed against the AI.

It does not help because the AI will just launch 5-8 5 division invasions that get to acomplish even less and often can be dealt with the 20widthshovel division.

Decided to fire up and finish subnautica below zero. Quite enjoying it. I quit when I got to a very long part on land. It was boring. Now I’m back in the water and it’s pretty great. Spending time in my base building it all nicely. I really do enjoy the base building of subnautica. Looking forward to spending more time with the game. It’s not as good as the original but still a really good game. Maybe like 9/10 where the previous game was 10/10.

Any Conan Exiles fans out there?

I wasn't really familiar with the setting, but I've had a blast in the Exiled Lands. I do wish there was a little more for single-players, as it's aimed at being a multiplayer experience, but even so the deep crafting mechanisms and base building are great fun /(especially with the right balance of settings between grind and fun). It's apparently 'buggy' if you read the Steam reviews, but honestly, very few bugs have impacted my experience. If there were quest elements and more interactable NPCs it would give Skyrim a run for it's replayability money.

Exiles has a "story" of sorts. The game has a bunch of goals (100, iirc). They start out as learning to play stuff - i.e. make a campfire, etc... But as you get into them, they start to focus on a series of actions that will allow you to escape. Unfortunately, the last time I checked (which admittedly was a while back), the thing you had to kill to retrieve a needed item still didn't exist in the game. Note that was *after* the game moved out of beta and into release. I don't think that's changed since then.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Not Online!!! wrote:
You don't actually need to proclaim martial law. Its actually counterproductive in this case. Indeed local police force is the maximum you should do until normal resistance has been reduced and you got some comppliance still with it. However if you go Ottoman you get access to "reconciliation" specifically for the kurdish regions, which cuts down on resistance, costs less garrison and creates far more compliance faster. That way you will not have any issues at all with the kurds pretty soon.

I did need to declare martial law. In my current communist playthrough - the one in which I invoked martial law - unrest was about to hit 60 in one of the Kurdish states. Yes, I could have let it run up another forty points. But then I'd need to wait for it to come back down again. I've successfully pacified one of the four provinces. But the other three were all above the maximum thirty unrest needed to settle a province down One of the provinces had just reached 70% compliance. But I couldn't initiate the pacify action because unrest was at 37%. Civilian Oversight plus cavalry garrisons with MP kits, and two agents plus a double boost to the pacification espionage action, wasn't doing the job I needed. Sometimes it works. This time it wasn't. I suspect the problem might be the random Kurdish event that fires off periodically. If RNG likes you, the Kurds settle down a bit. If RNG doesn't like you, they get more unruly. There's an event that the Turks can perform to try and settle down the Kurds, but the success chance never rises above 50%. And I stopped trying it after failing probably a dozen times in a row in my earliest Turkey games (either RNG *really* hated me, or there's an unlisted influence somewhere) because the penalty for failing is (imo) overly punishing.

Also not helping matters (at least on my current playthrough) is that the Communist path gives lots of hits to your national stability. I've had to spend more time dealing with stability than I have in any previous game. And low stability makes it harder to keep unrest low.

The Communists have a "reconciliation" option, as well, though iirc the only bonus it provides is a boost to compliance. I don't remember it having any effect on unrest.

It does not help because the AI will just launch 5-8 5 division invasions that get to acomplish even less and often can be dealt with the 20widthshovel division.

It also helps that you usually (not always, though, which was happening in my Byzantine Empire games) get advanced warning of where a naval invasion is targeted, and can set some units aside to keep an eye on the general area.

I bought Exiles a bit ago because of how neat the crafting and base building looked. I think I'm going to try and read some of the Conan books before I play, though, just to get that greater experience.

Has anyone heard of a game called Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden? It's a turn-based strategy game, apparently made by a few of the guys that worked on X-COM 2. Have just got hold of a copy for the Switch.

 Warpig1815 wrote:
Any Conan Exiles fans out there?

I wasn't really familiar with the setting, but I've had a blast in the Exiled Lands. I do wish there was a little more for single-players, as it's aimed at being a multiplayer experience, but even so the deep crafting mechanisms and base building are great fun /(especially with the right balance of settings between grind and fun). It's apparently 'buggy' if you read the Steam reviews, but honestly, very few bugs have impacted my experience. If there were quest elements and more interactable NPCs it would give Skyrim a run for it's replayability money.

I had it for a while on the PS4. I didn't think it was bad (like you say the crafting is good, and to begin with just staying alive is a challenge) but I found myself getting bored with it quite quickly.
Some of the multiplayer servers are quite fun, if for nothing else than the absolutely nuts player-made buildings and encampments which reminded me a lot of Ultima Online - great big towers, piles of tables with a crocodile sat on top etc.

@Eumerin - Yeah the survival steps are ok, but they're intende more as a tutorial to help new players adjust (much as the Exile adjusts to the Exiled Lands). I was more referring to some deeper lore elements and something to make the player's final choice more meaningful. Currently, there's no real sense of achievement in survival. So long as you avoid predators until you're middling levels and fairly strong, you'll reach an easy status quo. Anything after that is just accumulating loot and building bases for the giggles. I'd like a more persistant challenge, perhaps with environmental factors, that create a real sense of struggle. However, Multiplayer does provide that in the form of other players (If you find a decent server that isn't populated by noob-slaying jackasses).

Eumerin wrote:
Took a break from my Byzantine Empire playthroughs in Hearts of Iron 4 to recreate the Ottoman Empire instead. I took care of the Turkish political stuff, got the Ottomans back in power, and grabbed Greece with a hard-fought campaign. And then things more or less ground to a halt.

There are a couple of decisions early on that allow you to add additional core territory to the Ottoman Empire. But those (including the one that cores Greece) also require you to go to war with both the Axis and the Allies. Turkey starts out with poor manpower in comparison to the major powers. So not an option right away. I moved a little further down the focus tree, but then stopped after getting war justifications against some of the nearby nations. I had no capability to take those nations, and - again - would end up in a war with the Axis and the Allies. Instead, I went and worked on the military tree.

Eventually, I came back to the Ottoman progress path. I took the penalty for passing up the opportunity to go to war against Bulgaria (in retrospect, taking it might have been the better option but still would have been very risky), puppeted Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, and convinced Free France to return Syria to me. I accepted Syria as a puppet, but I probably should have taken it in directly instead as there's a decision involving it, and I think that would have gotten rid of the resistance problem. I also started working to integrate the puppets so that I could use the decisions involving each of them. I also grabbed Saudi Arabia and Yemen, since they had territory involved in some of my decisions (oddly enough, Oman - which is on the peninsula as well - does not). Meanwhile, I started justifying on all of Bulgaria. But I'd waited too long. Bulgaria lost a province, and I had to restart the justification (I understand why the game does it, but it's utterly and completely absurd). Then the Axis gave up before my next justification could finish (September 1944).

Peace had returned to Europe. It was an odd peace, though. The Soviets had made all of Germany communist, and had created the rest of their Warsaw Pact puppets. Spain - which had joined the Axis literally just before the war ended - was chopped up into little bits including a reborn Council of Aragorn (I have *no* clue how that got there). France, of all things, was divided into parts - including Free France. Japan was still on the loose, though. It had conquered India and New Zealand, and was about halfway done with China. I figured I'd finish integrating my puppets into the Ottoman Empire, and maybe see whether it would be worth going to war with Japan.

And then the Soviet Union started to justify against me and my puppet, Afghanistan.

So much for that game...


My big frustration this game was the lack of manpower. Turkey is *big* geographically, with a lot of coastline. One of my primary concerns in this game was going to war with one of the factions and being forced to defend against naval invasions (which were happening all over the place; Italy even briefly overran Ireland!). I simply didn't have the troops to do that. Coring Greece as the Ottoman Empire might have helped. But you can't core Greece by itself. You have to take some additional territory that's not part of Greece before you can perform that decision. I'm guessing the decision represents an old Ottoman administrative area. But it causes problems when you're trying to reach the point where you have enough manpower to actually do stuff. You need those cores to do anything. But most of the cores require you to fight both the Axis and the Allies. And you can't fight them (for very long) without manpower. It's a vicious cycle. Greece has similar problems initially (Greece actually starts with limited conscription and *zero* manpower). But it's much easier for Greece to get its numbers up before it starts picking fights with everyone.

How does the gameplay work in Hearts of Iron. It looks really cool. It looks like a turn based strategy game but is listed as realtime strategy.

I’ve been playing a bunch of total war warhammer 2 with a friend. I chose Ikit claw and he chose Settra. For the longest time he was doing most of the battles whereas I was trying to bait my enemies in tilea to fight me. It managed to work and with some significant retreats I managed to fight one of his two armies. They both had to march to get away so I ambush attacked forward and wiped out both armies but took some losses. I eventually took the capital of tilea as well over multiple turns of waiting.

Arnessa saltspite helped take a small settlement and take out a starting tile an army. I noticed our feelings about each other weren’t completely positive so while she was away fighting a far off border princes territory 3-4 turns of marching away I amassed armies near her minor settlement and then attacked and took it without issue. Then I laid siege to her capital which oddly she attacked me with it so I won and then I looted her capital for about 11k gold. The turn after I attacked again and she attacked with the lone settlement again which I won yet again but it was a harder fight. I then took her capital.

Finally she had 2 depleted armies coming for a worthless territory but I defended it with both armies and blocked her main army after doing 13th scheme for hero action boost. Oddly she attacks the settlement and all 3 armies defend so I hit auto resolve and one army she had vaporizes like it was nothing and she tries raiding since she can’t move. I then take both my armies and ambush attack her one army and she vaporizes.

Well that’s 2 enemies down. I think I’ll build some under empire buildings in wood elf lands so I don’t have to deal with maybe conquering an area with the under empire buildings.

My friend had to fight off bretonnia, green skins and beast men. He’s killed a whole lot and gotten his territories taken and taken them back but I think our progress is about the same for now even if he is fighting a few enemies at once. Took me a while to get my momentum going but we’re in a pretty good spot right now. I’m actually in a good spot to help him since he probably needs it a bit right now.

Btw settras battle kitty and chariots are hilarious and stupid. Seeing the battle kitty attack guys like a big cat is just funny to watch.

 Warpig1815 wrote:
@Eumerin - Yeah the survival steps are ok, but they're intende more as a tutorial to help new players adjust.

Early on, yes, that's the case. But as I stated above, later on the steps shift. They start recommending other things with an eventual goal of being able to leave the Exiled Lands.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:How does the gameplay work in Hearts of Iron. It looks really cool. It looks like a turn based strategy game but is listed as realtime strategy.

Hearts of Iron - like most of Paradox's games - is a pausable real-time strategy game. The game starts in 1936 (there's an alternate start of 1939, but people rarely use it). The game isn't really designed to go past the late 40s or so, but you could theoretically let it continue running forever (though it tends to slow down considerably by that time). You're tasked with running the country of your choice. You can pick pretty much any country that existed at the start date. Each country has a "National Focus Tree" that allows you to improve the development of your country in certain areas. There's a generic focus tree, but most of the nations that were involved in the war have a custom one designed specifically for that nation. For example, the first choice of the German focus tree is between reoccupying the Rhineland, as Hitler historically did, or having the generals overthrow Hitler (which historically the generals planned to do if the Allies objected; the Allies didn't). A later choice involves the Anschloss, when Germany forcibly incorporated Austria into Germany. Other choices focus on the development of weapons and equipment, or improving resources available to the country.

The economy of the game is handled via civilian and military factories, which act both as your means of producing everything, and currency that is used for various things (most notably, to trade for resources). You design the units in your army, and the game tells you how much of each type of equipment you need for those units. Your military factories produce equipment, and troops are trained over a period of time that typically lasts at least a few months. You can also build aircraft, or design ships. War gets started either when a nation finishes particular National Focuses that explicitly trigger the war (for example, Germany has a focus that declares war on Poland), or go through a lengthy period of time justifying the war both to the civilian population, and to the world at large.

The game is rather complicated, and is something that can take some time to get the hang of. Because of that, the best way to learn more about the game is to watch videos of people playing it and explaining what's going on.


Many of the national focus trees also have alternate history options. For example, as I noted above, Germany can get rid of Hitler through a civil war. This opens up non-Nazi options for running Germany. The US can go into a new civil war. Greece and Turkey can attempt to reinvoke their imperial pasts (as I've been doing recently). The USSR and Italy are still largely stuck in a single path (with a few small variations), but the USSR is getting a complete reworking in the next DLC that will allow multiple flavors of communism, a return of the tsar, or the option to go fascist (but NO option to go democratic, which has me - and a lot of other people - very annoyed).


Also note that because it's a game, things don't always work out as they did historically. We know that historically, if the British and French had stood up to the Nazis over the Rhineland, Hitler would probably have been removed from power. The game doesn't cause this (and also gives the French good reasons to acede to Hitler's actions). The aircraft carrier is not the end-all be-all of combat that it was historically. Etc...The former is a game design issue. If the Allies could cause Hitler to be deposed right at the start, it would cause too much influence on a foreign country. The latter is more subtle. In theory, it provides a reason to pursue naval doctrines that incorporate battleships. In practice, it has more to do with the game mechanics, which at the moment are heavily favoring either lots of cheap light ships, or lots of submarines. Also, for reasons of balance, the industrial production capability of the United States (which built up the US military practically from nothing, rearmed much of the British army, outfitted a significant portion of the Soviet military, completely rearmed the French, and sent some help to the Chinese) is toned waaaaaaaaay down.

@eumerin thanks for the breakdown. Seems quite interesting.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
@eumerin thanks for the breakdown. Seems quite interesting.

its a good game.
But it has also its shortcomings.
Being a paradox game f.e. makes it really costly to start up with it. Granted HOIV is nowhere near EUIV, alas its already rather expensive due to DLC. and you can't really avoid them since some specific unit types and functions are locked behind the DLC. Wanna spy on your enemies, DLC, armored cars you know, all the SDKFZ and panherds and desert vehicles, yup DLC... Wanna play Hungary and Romania as axis important minors, DLC.... Shipdesigner? DLC. Puppet integration and deeper mechanics? DLC. Special Puppets like Reichskommisariats? DLC.

Right now there are also some balance issues, especially prevalent if you want to play multiplayer but also adaptable torwards singleplayer, NR1 being that heavy tanks are really problematic to deal with if a country has a designer that grants further hardness. Singleplayer thats less of an issue since the AI doesn't really build heavy tanks until 44-45 but then again the AI can't deal with any somewhat competently designed tank or mechanised division either... (it puts AT in normal divisions making light tanks somewaht obsolete in midgame, but if you replace the trucks in said division with mechanised you will once again be unpennable and that means that you take far less damage than you should)

HOWEVER: Singleplayer and Multiplayer balance are also a tad disconnected:

As for Eumerins point about the USA, actually i disagree, its really easy to become the arsenal of democracy to a point that would put the real world to shame. (you can f.e. start the full on rearmament and war effort a lot earlier then IRL)

The core issues of naval also apply mostly to Singelplayer since the AI is quite frankly massively confused with naval composition. that has to do with Screening efficency Basically Paradox wants you to have a mixture of ships and enfoces this with that efficency, if you fail to provide that in adequate numbers then you will get results of your capitals or carriers sinking far more often due to Torpedos.

Basically any Capital ship (carrier or regular) requires 4 light ships (Light cruisers or destroyers) for 100% if you have no admiral (good admirals can lower that rate significantly)
However Carriers have a special screening efficency that requries also another capital ship / carrier.
Further there exists a large navy penalty that lower screening efficency massively. optimally you go for medium to large fleets that don't go over 40 ships total and preferably since you will incur losses you have more screening ships as to not suddendly get the screening efficency down which could mean that your fleet gets wiped.


Aircraft carriers technically are the be all end all if you got enough escorts and decent naval planes, the core issue though is, that Paradox fethed up buildcost imo making the production needlessly overexpensive for capitals which in turn means that cheaper ships become king since they allow for more impact due to number, which allows you to technically bathtub swarm (cheapest oldes Uboat.) the UK navy and getting that critical landing in.

There are also other issues: the AI cheats massively, especially in regards to supply, and even then it fails to accomplish something since it still over populates a frontline.
Theres also the case of certain countries if AI led seemingly having Manpower appear.. germany i am fairly sure gets somewhere bonus Manpower.

Had a crap ton of problems with my computer crashing esp playing total war warhammer 2 only to stumble upon the solution being too many different types of ram sizes in my computer. I took out the 1 gb and now just have the two 2s and a 4 and it’s running really well.

Anyway we played more tww2 with me as Ikit claw skaven. My friend playing settra had multiple bretonnia factions declaring war on him as well as fighting off the beast men. After a few turns I got both of my armies down to him and fought off the bretonnians which made his collapsing situation more manageable.

Oddly in all the turns we played no local neighbors declared war on me but I was reinforcing garrisons just in case.

He fought more of the battles I think but I had a fairly notable one vs repanse “not-Joan of arc” and beat her pretty well and then destroying her remaining forces with auto resolve if I recall or maybe that was another Bret army.

There was one battle I had I was very worried about where there was a lot of cavalry, lots of open ground and most of what I had probably wasn’t meant for facing the enemy. I did Ikit nuke the enemy infantry and position all of my forces on high ground at the start of the battle however near some stones making me hard to flank as well. This ended up working insanely well and they had trouble charging me significantly uphill. I was actually a bit proud of myself for coming up with that strategy on my own without anything else to work with.

Anyway after a lot of frustration we have gotten most of the brets seemingly in check and the beastmen faction in my friends rightmost territories were completely destroyed and wiped off the warhammer world.

Once I wipe the floor with the bretonnians in the one remote island and loot the settlement I’ll let my ally grab that last territory and head back to my lands so I can kill off greenskins and border princes for more territory. I’m significantly built up and have a decent bit of research but only about 5 territories with all the help I sent to keep my friends lands mostly secure.

The only thing keeping my lands together were a couple heroes scouting for possible enemy armies and blocking them if possible while buildings walls and garrisons so I wouldn’t lose territory.

Honestly aside from getting food sending my forces to help my friend probably put my empire at a net negative to what it could’ve been but he’s a friend and ally in the game so whatever. Must be odd to have a trusty skaven rather than a backstabbing one in his particular case.

I got the Tony Hawk Pro Skater remake for my Switch. feth I loved these games on my N64 back in the day.