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 flamingkillamajig wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Extending the maginot focus is locked behind the worst reform focus tree though, you can always build lvl 2 forts on your own in better terrain.

Yikes I found that out the hard way. Honestly looking at regular enemy ai they don’t seem to have much anti tank (unless it’s air based). A bunch of good high tier medium tanks with support infantry might wreck em as long as I keep my tank tech top notch.

You did say most enemy ai have issues handle one stack of heavy tanks. I’ll figure it out at some point. Looks like tanks are best for breakthroughs too.

Don't do mediums and infantry, if you want to go infantry tank, go heavies. ( requires less and speed is less of an issue)
france also starts out with researched basic heavies. (altough you need to slap on a radio, because france.)

Further the AI can barely handle competently designed light tanks, all you need in my experience are 3- 5 tank divisions of your choising designed competently with some air support or superiority and you just peacemeal cut appart the AI.

Anyway, here's the result of my french run.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2736841629
Yes for the lols i took over the chinese united faction.

I just started a co-op campaign where i was french and he was british. So how could it go wrong? Well i did much of what i normally do although i was worried about commie spain and decided to send some forces. Sadly i seemed to need over 25% stability which i knew about and had planned for. Unfortunately i didn't have enough time to have "improved worker conditions" go off for long enough (only like 0.5% stability increase per week starting off at 23% with a bit over 2 weeks left) so Half of my fething country rebelled, taking half my land, a bunch of my regiments, probably over half my generals and a good chunk of my airforce. I try to split them in half but some of there forces just walk past mine and encircle a bunch of my dudes. I try to fight out and do in some cases but get stuck. Eventually i capitulate because france's disjointed government forces it sooner.

So yeah the most embarrassing ending i've had as france in any game and i was try to help those commie spain bastards and i get repaid by having them take my whole damn country? I hope hitler burned both spain and France down to the ground. Seriously that's likely the last time i try to help out Republican Spain. Screw them seriously.

Also yeah i know there are other options to increase stability but i had no idea the riots would go that bad. I was expecting de-buffs to my overall city or perhaps some insurgents or even needing MP's to quell rebellious intent but never did i expect it to go down that badly. For 20-30 or so percent of the vote they sure seem to throw down like they're legit half the population.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I just started a co-op campaign where i was french and he was british. So how could it go wrong? Well i did much of what i normally do although i was worried about commie spain and decided to send some forces. Sadly i seemed to need over 25% stability which i knew about and had planned for. Unfortunately i didn't have enough time to have "improved worker conditions" go off for long enough (only like 0.5% stability increase per week starting off at 23% with a bit over 2 weeks left) so Half of my fething country rebelled, taking half my land, a bunch of my regiments, probably over half my generals and a good chunk of my airforce. I try to split them in half but some of there forces just walk past mine and encircle a bunch of my dudes. I try to fight out and do in some cases but get stuck. Eventually i capitulate because france's disjointed government forces it sooner.

So yeah the most embarrassing ending i've had as france in any game and i was try to help those commie spain bastards and i get repaid by having them take my whole damn country? I hope hitler burned both spain and France down to the ground. Seriously that's likely the last time i try to help out Republican Spain. Screw them seriously.

Also yeah i know there are other options to increase stability but i had no idea the riots would go that bad. I was expecting de-buffs to my overall city or perhaps some insurgents or even needing MP's to quell rebellious intent but never did i expect it to go down that badly. For 20-30 or so percent of the vote they sure seem to throw down like they're legit half the population.

you just learned why the "revive the nationalist block" even for democratic play throughs, is far superior AND more stable. the hard way, my condolences, btw the revolt is funnily enough smaller if you deny rhineland and it escalates.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

So yeah the most embarrassing ending i've had as france in any game and i was try to help those commie spain bastards and i get repaid by having them take my whole damn country? I hope hitler burned both spain and France down to the ground. Seriously that's likely the last time i try to help out Republican Spain. Screw them seriously.

For what it's worth - and since this seems to be something you consider in your choices - the Nationalists under Franco are probably the more humane choice in the Spanish Civil War. From what I've heard, historically the Republican forces were engaging in "more leftist than thou" assassination and liquidation campaigns against each other as the civil war progressed, with the full backing of Stalin.

Really, though, as France, your primary concern with the Spanish Civil War - if you have any concern at all - should be to get some military experience for your army. It's an interesting diversion otherwise, particularly since there's no "Democratic" side in that fight.

Eumerin wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

So yeah the most embarrassing ending i've had as france in any game and i was try to help those commie spain bastards and i get repaid by having them take my whole damn country? I hope hitler burned both spain and France down to the ground. Seriously that's likely the last time i try to help out Republican Spain. Screw them seriously.

For what it's worth - and since this seems to be something you consider in your choices - the Nationalists under Franco are probably the more humane choice in the Spanish Civil War. From what I've heard, historically the Republican forces were engaging in "more leftist than thou" assassination and liquidation campaigns against each other as the civil war progressed, with the full backing of Stalin.

Really, though, as France, your primary concern with the Spanish Civil War - if you have any concern at all - should be to get some military experience for your army. It's an interesting diversion otherwise, particularly since there's no "Democratic" side in that fight.

Actually there is, if you as a player maintain the republic but don't call in the soviets, you don't start that nonsense funily enough, you also don't end up as a puppet.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Actually there is, if you as a player maintain the republic but don't call in the soviets, you don't start that nonsense funily enough, you also don't end up as a puppet.

Since no player is running Spain, and he appears to be playing with the Historical option, I think it's safe to say that a Democratic Spanish faction is almost never going to turn up.

We played another co-op campaign. Interestingly enough we helped out slovakia as it was being attacked or some of the early victims to the fascists. Was rather interesting how much europe stood together when france and the uk didn't just abandon them.

Ofc this wasn't a historical run and we were playing the war going off early in 1938. Turns out we did a much better job. Germany never attacked netherlands or belgium like they historically did which was stupid because it allowed us to focus our forces in one area to fight them even with my forts protecting the belgium and netherlands flank should they have fallen.

He also has some weird dlc added so 3 spains tried winning with nationalist spain ending up on top, the soviet union had a civil war and overthrew stalin for a different soviet socialist republic (huh?), mexico had a civil war and i think the socialists overthrew catholic mexico, portugal had a civil war but retained control of their nation, japan is led by the shogunate for some reason, hitler was assassinated (i won't shed tears for either him or stalin personally) and the whole world is some alternate crazy-verse.

Non historical HoI 4 is really weird man or is that just the dlc?

Anyway in my co op game with me as france and my friend as the UK we actually held together pretty well. He always seems to handle navy much better and even though he never has the unit numbers he always seems to have decent units. Ofc maybe that's because i'm always more and more on a border with my enemies.

DLC alter the national focus trees, though not all of that is from DLC.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

He also has some weird dlc added so 3 spains tried winning with nationalist spain ending up on top,

La Resistance adds a lot to the Spanish Civil War. The Republicans invariably break up into two factions, and the Nationalists will likely break up into two factions if Franco doesn't take charge of them. If Franco keeps the Nationalists together, they usually win easily. Otherwise, the Republicans tend to win.

the soviet union had a civil war and overthrew stalin for a different soviet socialist republic (huh?),

Added in the latest DLC, No Step Back. One of the big draws for it was that it added all sorts of paths for the USSR if you wanted to try a different form of government. They put in just about every option possible... except for a Democracy option. For some reason, they got it into their heads that the USSR (or Russia) shouldn't have a focus path option that pushes them to become a Democracy. Russia can embrace fascism, but not democracy. I haven't purchased this DLC yet, so I don't know how frequently Stalin gets overthrown. Oh, and if Trotsky is still alive, he can end up in charge of the Soviet Union. This was a possibility even before the latest DLC.

mexico had a civil war and i think the socialists overthrew catholic mexico,

Mexico almost always has a civil war (and sometimes two) in the ahistorical games. Usually it's a pretty one-sided civil war.

portugal had a civil war but retained control of their nation,

This one is actually uncommon.

japan is led by the shogunate for some reason,

Waking the Tiger added a bunch of options for both Japan and China. Japan *usually* still follows its more or less normal path (with one change - see below). But sometimes you get stuff like what you saw. The fun option, imo, is playing as the Last Emperor of China in Manchukuo (Manchuria), declaring independence from being a Japanese puppet, and then both uniting China and conquering Japan (not necessarily in that order).

hitler was assassinated (i won't shed tears for either him or stalin personally)

Surprisingly, this is *not* a DLC. Unlike all of the other major nations, Germany had a lot of options in its national focus tree right from the release of the game. Usually the first choice Germany makes is whether to remilitarize the Rhineland (as it did historically), or overthrow Hitler. If you pick the latter focus tree option, Germany's generals decide to remove Hitler, and a civil war starts. If the generals win (and they usually do), then Hitler is usually killed (sometimes no body is found, and if that happens then *very* rarely he will turn up somewhere else; finding out where exactly he might turn up is part of the fun). More often than not, the German generals turn against Hitler in an ahistorical game.

and the whole world is some alternate crazy-verse.

Non historical HoI 4 is really weird man or is that just the dlc?

It does get weird, especially if there are DLCs. The only country that pretty much *will* try and follow the same path as its historical route (albeit faster) is Italy, since Italy has only one main route (as Fascists into the Balkans), with only a couple of minor variations on it. I expect that the next DLC will have a lot of changes for Italy. Everyone else is pretty much up for grabs. Great Britain frequently goes fascist. France often goes Communist. Incidentally, AI France pretty much *always* goes to war with Germany even if Germany decides to be nice to everyone.

The US *usually* stays as a democracy. But it also tends to sit out the war unless Japan attacks it. Japan usually doesn't attack it.

Eumerin wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Actually there is, if you as a player maintain the republic but don't call in the soviets, you don't start that nonsense funily enough, you also don't end up as a puppet.

Since no player is running Spain, and he appears to be playing with the Historical option, I think it's safe to say that a Democratic Spanish faction is almost never going to turn up.

Nope it's the Start republic, it always turns up actually it's just that the republican Ai is.... How to put it, not confident in it's ability to win. Their lack in republicanism is lacking so to say

Meanwhile as a player you can easily sabotage the nationalists, f.e. by moving the Navy to a republican port beforehand and intercepting the army of africa, or by destroying all Military industries in the northern garrison pre war, both of which neuter the nationalists severly so that you only have to bypass the volunteers.

Played some xenonauts. It was just one mission today and just one low health but full health lady with average to low armor died from one direct shot. Aside from that the mission to secure the alien crash site went off ridiculously well. Well I suppose I did allow one guy to get hit for little reason but his shield took most of the shots.

The previous mission I played was a base defense and went off so well that nobody I had was even hurt and nobody died. Pretty sure that’s medal worthy as that game does present them. Ofc I also had a general idea of where the enemies were too.

I also saw someone play Tom Clancy’s end war the rts that is entirely voice activated. I’m shocked by looking at it that it didn’t change rts as a whole similar to how Star Wars empire at war did with a campaign, space battles and hard point system.

One of these days I gotta get not_online into some game whether that be xcom eu or xcom 2 or xenonauts or something. He converted me to hoi 4 so it’s only fair I return the favor with some game I like.

Echoing all the things Flinty has to say about Aliens: Fireteam.

It's great fun. It theoretically has a plot, but so far this appears to boil down to:

Aliens Bitey

Company Bad

Marines Gung-ho

Maybe Synths are a bad idea (Except Alpha, who kicks ass and tends to pick me up after the jumpy red gits knock me over).

It can therefore be pretty safely ignored in favour of making snarky comments over chat about the NCO giving you directions.

It feels like being in Aliens as Hudson. Which is great.

It's a game which knows exactly and unashamedly what it is.

Also - seconding the Medic station recharge ability. Thats... silly. Technician with shotgun and sentry gun for me for a while!

 flamingkillamajig wrote:


I also saw someone play Tom Clancy’s end war the rts that is entirely voice activated. I’m shocked by looking at it that it didn’t change rts as a whole similar to how Star Wars empire at war did with a campaign, space battles and hard point system.

I played that back in the day.

The voice activation was super useful, when it worked

It may just be that it was really handy on a console, but mouse and keyboard provide greater fidelity and speed and you don't need to keep repeating yourself to do stuff.

We have Alexas around our house, and even modern voice recognition is not sufficiently good to prevent frustration when you forget the correct command names or the mic doesn't pick up the sound properly.

I played a voice-activated Japanese PS2 game back in the day. I can't remember the name of it, but the plot was that you were trapped in a room on a space station with only security cameras and a microphone, giving directions to a young woman with a gun. Sometimes the voice commands worked fine. Other times she would stand there complaining that she couldn't understand you as one of the horrific creatures in the game attacked her.

IIRC, I got to very last fight in the game, couldn't get the voice commands to work consistently enough to win, and finally quit playing in frustration.

Eumerin wrote:
I played a voice-activated Japanese PS2 game back in the day. I can't remember the name of it, but the plot was that you were trapped in a room on a space station with only security cameras and a microphone, giving directions to a young woman with a gun. Sometimes the voice commands worked fine. Other times she would stand there complaining that she couldn't understand you as one of the horrific creatures in the game attacked her.

Lifeline?

Picked up Pokemon Legends: Arceus over the weekend and really enjoying it. I think its the game a lot of people have been clamoring for for decades. It's still fundamentally Pokemon, but its significantly snappier, with battles happening directly in the overworld and catching Pokemon not being as dependent on battle. It's just very smooth, with exploration, battle, catching and the like all flowing together quite well.

The big knock against it is that presentation wise its nothing special. The story has a very PS2 era JRPG vibe to it, though thankfully it does a pretty good job of staying out of the way of the gameplay once you get through the hand holdy opening (which isn't really any worse than most modern games). The environments are a little ugly, with a lot of boring textures, but are pretty easy to look past when all the focus is on the Pokemon that fill the world with a lot of its character.

Overall it seems they've finally found a way to move the franchise forward. I think there's a lot of quirks to work through still. I'm not sure the new FFIX style system is quite primed for PVP which you can really feel in the relatively sparse trainer battles. I think though if they got that worked out, I'd LOVE to see the next mainline game follow this gameplay formula focused around the gym trainer challenge, particularly if given the feel of Sword and Shield's arenas.

About to assault Vercingetorix's hall in Expedition: Rome, having pacified Gaul. Had to force myself to save it and go to bed late last night. It was a pretty exciting mission, where one team had to take the front gates while killing as much as possible to take pressure off of my infiltration/rescue team. Once the infiltration team got to Vercingetorix's hall, the mission then shifted back to the front gate where my team then had to fend off reinforcements. A third team was tasked with destroying the dam that was built to take away the cities natural moat, killing the reinforcements and of course cutting off. It was all pretty precarious, aside from the A-team who had an easy going towards Verci's hall.

I'm pretty enamored with this game. I think I'm close to the end of the game, and I'm hoping there is a "New Game+" mode where I can take my high level and skilled up characters through another playthrough with more tactical options, with the enemy also having access to those abilities. I highly doubt it though, but I can dream.

A.T. wrote:
Lifeline?

That was likely it.

 Graphite wrote:
Maybe Synths are a bad idea (Except Alpha, who kicks ass and tends to pick me up after the jumpy red gits knock me over).

It can therefore be pretty safely ignored in favour of making snarky comments over chat about the NCO giving you directions.

It feels like being in Aliens as Hudson. Which is great.

It's a game which knows exactly and unashamedly what it is.

Also - seconding the Medic station recharge ability. Thats... silly. Technician with shotgun and sentry gun for me for a while!

What I like about the synths is that they continue the naming conventions taken over from the films, calling their synth Esther, following on from Ash, Bishop, Call and David. But yeah, if you want to play solo beyond normal difficulty, don't. The game straight up advises you to get some friends involved, the synths will not cut it.

And sarge being a snarky bitch is a lot of fun, some of the remarks she makes are just dripping with gallows humour, which fits in nicely with a Marine Corps that has knows about xenos and has been fighting them for a couple of decades now. None of that "Oh no, my throat is itchy" bs from the previous games, just straight up Bug Stompers - We Endanger Species mentality, love it. You're there to rescue civvies, don't take gak from the corporations and nuke them from orbit.

The game is a massive love letter to the franchise for me, it takes all the good stuff and rolls with it. High time they update the roadmap again, curious to see what the next free class and suite of weapons will be. Still got my fingers crossed that they'll somehow manage to work a pulse rifle with grenade launcher into the game.

You are there to rescue the civvies, even when they repeatedly tell you not to rescue them. You have come all this way and by god, someone is getting their ass rescued! And you even have the law on your side while you do it (as well as some sharp sticks and other gear).

I also quite like the bizzaroness of using an active hangar deck smothered in munitions and other marines for running around testing out your latest blasty toys…

While noodling about with weapon skins and decals I had a wander about the hanger/weapons-test-area and did talk to some of the NCOs hanging about. Seems that after <shenanigans> the Marines stopped working as contract mercs for WY (and they're a bit salty about that part of their past) and became the main authority out in the Rim. (Which presumably leads on to the unfairly maligned Alien 4 where the Corps aren't anywhere in sight). I was wondering why the Marines would arrest people.

Also that Alpha and Beta have "Marine Machine" and "Synthetic Person Badass" on their armour is a great touch. That they're the make of Synth from Isolation is very neat. Partly because it makes them distinct from human players, partly on a worldbuilding level that makes it clear that the Corp really doesn't entirely trust WY any more. Bad feelings about Esther. Which reminds me, must play a bit further into Isolation, I heard a rumour that it's leaving Game Pass at the end of March and I'd like to either finish it or get far enough to work out if I want to buy it.

(And I said I was going to ignore the plot )

And yes, love letter to the franchise is right.

I make it a point to customize every gun I have before taking them out in the field, so they're all Armat battle-tested green and they all have a slogan or graffiti on there somewhere, it just feels right. I love that they did the same to Alpha and Beta, goes to show that they are part of the squad, even if they both lack a personality. That they're Seegson synths is just icing on the cake, as this game takes fluff and lore from the entire franchise, but only the good stuff. Like the recon marine getting the PUP droid from Prometheus, or your CO being the character from a novel.

Also, highly recommend replaying the game with some of the more special challenge cards in play, the filter effects (noir, retro and tactical) are just ace, spoilered for size.



Or if you want to have a real bug hunt on your hands, use the "They'll Breed, You'll Die" card, which ramps up the spawning of runners at an insane rate, making for some truly epic moments. I dare you to play that card on the final-final mission of the campaign.

We played a card where your gun jams and you have to reload it to start firing again. I can't remember exactly what it said about the percentage but it was a lie. Rarely that infuriated by a game but being able to fire 3 rounds of the smart gun before having to reload about 5 times in a row was not amusing.

The bug hunt one sounds good fun.

Finally finished the campaign for Halo Infinite last night. My thoughts are...mixed...



Do I like it? Yes, but it's a shadow of what Halo used to be.

 Olthannon wrote:
We played a card where your gun jams and you have to reload it to start firing again. I can't remember exactly what it said about the percentage but it was a lie. Rarely that infuriated by a game but being able to fire 3 rounds of the smart gun before having to reload about 5 times in a row was not amusing.

The bug hunt one sounds good fun.

I feel you on the randomness of some of these cards, I played the card that spawns a drone at irregular intervals throughout the entire mission duration, Beautiful Butterflies I think it's called? But fething hell, the moment I dropped one the game decided to spawn in a new one straight away, four drones in a row on top of regular swarms was a tough fight and a massive drain on ammo.

Update on My Bannerlord campaign. Still at war with the Aserai and I realised that the last war I had the difficulty down. So it seemed if I wanted to stand a chance on even footing I had to turn down the difficulty again. Now I can win but the casualties are high no matter how well I command or perform tactics. I've also been struggling to keep my money up with the daily cost my forces have going into the red a couple of times before I can sell off my loot and ransom my prisoners. Then, the king of The Vlandians and his lords decide to announce war against the Battanians overwhelmingly too I might add one hundred per cent. So the first thing the Battanians do is ransack a couple of my villages as they were once there's so now I'm earning even fewer denars. Of course, I have to be the one to deal with the immediate consequences of such a war, not the fools who voted for it lol. Had a break from the game after that lol

A friend bought me Civ V for my birthday.

I put 13 hours in on the first day of owning it.

h e l p

Just one more turn.

Lol indeed. I'm about 600 turns into a marathon Civ 6 game at the moment on the Switch. Trying to get the conquest victory on a huge map, which is pretty difficult, but I am barely getting a couple of turns in for each play as the empire is so large!

Am currently playing through the Legendary Edition of Mass Effect (just on the first one at the moment, about 15 hours in). Forgot how well made the game was, the environments and graphics design (the suits, wargear, background scenery etc.) is just so well done. I still think, in video gaming terms, it is the closest any game has got to the feel of something like Star Trek, where you have your crew and ship, and are adventuring around the cosmos.

YAY bf 2042 season got delayed, but guess what, we get a scoreboard!! Huray...

Finished a playthrough of Expedition: Rome. Went with a fairly benevolent Roman Republic loyalist throughout all of the story choices. Overall was alot of fun with a decent enough alt-history story (Julius Caesar dies early on) and was paced well enough that it didn't feel grindy.

Probably won't do another playthrough too soon, despite enjoying the campaign as I'm just not up to the time investment, but next time I'm going to will myself to go as full power hungry villain as I can be and try to take over Rome.