What Video Games Have You Been Playing? #23: Lost in Shalebridge Cradle

[Rambo919]

I keep hearing that RI is even better than C2C (which is partially built on RI), even from fans of the latter.
Can you elaborate on that?
I'm pretty sure I've played RI in the past, but since it's a "maybe", it definitely didn't register as a "cool mod" for me (unlike, say, RFC, especially the newer version, which I do recall).

It's not just "everything and the kitchen sink overwhelming" it's much better balanced.... pretty much the perfect version of Civ4

 

[Somebody613]

It's not just "everything and the kitchen sink overwhelming" it's much better balanced.... pretty much the perfect version of Civ4

It's obviously "smaller", but what's its main appeal?
Like, C2C is kinda 3 games in 1: Main game, Future game, Prehistoric game.
Main game is probably close to most other mods, besides the number of stuff in it. It has a bit of new mechanics, but not too drastic in comparison.
Future game is very much still in development, so it's a non-issue for now.
Prehistory game, though, is the main appeal of C2C,if you ask me personally. The whole concept of hunting is really fresh and makes the games totally unique.
So, what's your point?

 

[Rambo919]

It's obviously "smaller", but what's its main appeal?
Like, C2C is kinda 3 games in 1: Main game, Future game, Prehistoric game.
Main game is probably close to most other mods, besides the number of stuff in it. It has a bit of new mechanics, but not too drastic in comparison.
Future game is very much still in development, so it's a non-issue for now.
Prehistory game, though, is the main appeal of C2C,if you ask me personally. The whole concept of hunting is really fresh and makes the games totally unique.
So, what's your point?

Less busywork and more balance.

 

[amadeus]

I keep hearing that RI is even better than C2C (which is partially built on RI), even from fans of the latter.
Can you elaborate on that?
I'm pretty sure I've played RI in the past, but since it's a "maybe", it definitely didn't register as a "cool mod" for me (unlike, say, RFC, especially the newer version, which I do recall).

One of the big benefits above all of the other gameplay implements is just the much-improved interface. It does not look like a 20-year-old game.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Total War: Three Kingdoms - Finally eliminated Northern Han, so now I have 2 of the 3 Emperor seats, with the "heroic" Liu Bei controlling the third. At this point I am more powerful than him, and could probably win in an all-out conflict, but I am having so much fun that I am playing with my food a bit... I want to punish Meng Ho's faction for all the trouble and aggravation they've been causing.

I spent numerous turns chasing down and cornering Meng Ho. He had marauded deep into my territory and captured several villages... and every time I tried to confront him he ran, which was getting pretty frustrating. I eventually had to surround him with 4 different armies and trap him in a mountain pass just to finally force a fight. I could have waited a turn and let Lu Bu initiate the fight, but by the time I cornered him, I was so relived I just attacked with the closest available general and let Lu Bu play a supporting role. Anyway, we defeated him, but he apparently escaped somehow.

At this point, I've recalled all my armies from the north and we are squeezing Meg Ho from the West and the North simultaneously, with almost all my armies attacking from the north in tandem. The AI still manages to force one-on-one battles, with the "night battles" ability, which nullifies nearby armies, but I am getting better at winning even with slightly unfavorable odds, so we keep pushing them back, including executing Lady ZuRhong, which was bittersweet, since she has been almost as much as a nuisance as Meng Ho himself, but with much prettier armour and feathers in her outfit. I wanted to keep her in the game as a character, but she had a really cool weapon that I had to confiscate, so execution was the only option to get it. Once the Meng Ho faction is defeated, I will eventually have to confront Liu Bei, who is currently an ally and one of my best supporters, just to finally win the campaign.

I also learned that Duo Si, a native/nomad faction wasn't eliminated as I thought. They allied with Meng Ho and are helping him harass me in the South. Fighting/conquering in native/nomad lands (referred to in the game as "Nanman")has introduced me to fighting tiger units, which consist of actual tiger-handlers, like the Wardog handlers in Rome II. They are a pain to deal with, because they cause routs, but they are nothing compared to the Elephant units, which are an absolute terror.

I am trying to recruit a captured Nanman general that can train these units, but they keep refusing to join me. The one Nanman General I have does not seem to be able to recruit elephants or tigers... I don't know if you have to be in the designated "Nanman lands" to do so... the game is so intricate. Ever since engaging the Nanman, the music in the game has changed to intrweve some tribal-sounding themes with more woodwind, vocals, and drums... all very immersive. I may have to break down and just look up whether I can recruit Nanman units.

Lu Bu's eldest son, and heir, Lu Ju, which is apparently (according to his in-game traits) an entitled, incompetent, coward, has been having a bunch of kids since I arranged a marriage for him. He and his bride didn't like each other (described as "harmony" in the game) but apparently they've gotten over that since they seem to be having a new baby every year. I hope to finish the campaign before the heir even becomes a factor, but its nice to know there is a line of succession in place. I've lost games of Genghis Khan (NES) because I didn't keep an heir in reserve and my main character died without a designated heir.

 

[Somebody613]

Less busywork and more balance.

Compared to Vanilla or to C2C?
I was kinda asking the former - what's so good about this mod to begin with?

One of the big benefits above all of the other gameplay implements is just the much-improved interface. It does not look like a 20-year-old game.

Ah, interesting, lol.

 

[Rambo919]

Compared to Vanilla or to C2C?
I was kinda asking the former - what's so good about this mod to begin with?


Ah, interesting, lol.

Compared to C2C. It's basically a 2.0 version of the base game with lots of enhancements and additional content but never too much. C2C on the other hand drowns you in extra's.

 

[cd5ssmffan]

Valheim. It's an experience that immerses you into a beautifully crafted world inspired by Norse mythology. I like the idea of surviving in a hostile land where almost everything wants to kill you. I warn you, it is a bit unforgiving. The enemies are not scared about beating you into the afterlife, and the game will only tell you crafting recipes once you have encountered all the pieces of it.
Also, if you have a low-end PC and poor internet upload speed, I recommend getting a private server. I got mine from SuperCraft. It's much more stable having one, and you don't need to let your PC work nonstop for others to play.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Valheim. It's an experience that immerses you into a beautifully crafted world inspired by Norse mythology. I like the idea of surviving in a hostile land where almost everything wants to kill you. I warn you, it is a bit unforgiving. The enemies are not scared about beating you into the afterlife, and the game will only tell you crafting recipes once you have encountered all the pieces of it.

I've been looking for another good survival game, although I'm not really drawn by the whole Norse/Viking theme.

---

Speaking of survival games, I'm intrigued by the idea of Dune: Awakening, even though I haven't seen Dune 2 yet. It's an MMO, though, which turns me off a little. Still, I'm keeping an eye on it. If it gets rapturous reviews, I may have to give it a whirl.

 

[EgonSpengler]

American Truck Simulator. I still can't find the Great Salt Lake. I guess I don't know for sure that it's in the game, but it seems like that'd be a big oversight. I went up to Ogden and then found myself in Idaho. I don't have Montana or Wyoming yet, so I don't know if I can visit Yellowstone, but I think there is a corner of it in Idaho, irl.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Civilization VI. I decided to play the Aztecs on a Huge Continents & Islands map, Emperor difficulty. Barbarian Clans; Tech & Civic Shuffle. Lots of mods, I won't bother listing them all.

Early scouting revealed a crowded continent. Ethiopia to my northeast, the Maya to my southeast, the Mapuche to my southwest. I had meant to set the geographical groupings to Random, where Cultural is the default, but either I didn't or this is just a funny coincidence.

So, yeah, the Aztecs and the Mayans are at war. I know, cliche, right? Hey, it's not my fault. Okay, it's a little my fault. I settled Malinalco right in Lady Six Sky's face, knowing she wouldn't like it. Of course she Denounced me and then declared war. I upgraded my Slingers to Archers just in time. How do you say "Cry havoc!" in Nahuatl?

Spoiler :

Aztec and Maya warriors both used macuahuitl, wooden clubs with obsidian razor-blades embedded along their length. These things are like half-club, half-axe. Some were one-handed, used with a round shield of wood or rattan, and some were two-handers. Obsidian is fragile, compared to metal weapons, but just as sharp. Aztec Eagle Warriors tried to disable and maim enemies, to take them prisoner. I'm not sure if Mayans did that.

Spoiler :

Mayan hul'che use atlatls, which are wooden levers for throwing feathered javelins with extra force. I say "feathered" javelins, because they look like arrows. Really big arrows. You remember those arrows the Uruk Hai shot Boromir with? That's what I'm dealing with here. Some places refer to them as "darts", but that makes it sound like you're down the pub with your mates. I don't know what kind of velocity a trained warrior gets with an atlatl, but I bet it was a lot.

Spoiler :

So it's almost the end of the Classical Era, I've taken two Mayan cities and captured a lot of prisoners, but my army needs to take a breather and Lady Six Sky isn't accepting my generous terms for her surrender. I mean, she started it.

 

[PhroX]

Been playing quite a bit of Helldivers 2 with friends now that it's stable. I'm not usually a shooter player, but damn this game is a lot of fun. From calling down airstrikes on hordes of bugs, to crawling through the Space-'Nam hell of the Creek under fire from God knows how many Terminators, it does an incredible job of organically creating cinematic moments in a way that very few games I've played can manage.

Also gotten back into Yi Xian, a game I first played a year or so back when it was in early access, now that it's got its full release. It's a clever mix of ideas I've not really seen elsewhere, in that it combines building a "program" of cards from the classic board game RoboRally with Team Fight Tactics style competitive multiplayer. Each round, you put together from 3-8 cards (depending on how far into a match you are) which will play out in the order you specify, then test it against somewhen else in your 8-man lobby. The loser takes a hit to their "Density" (i.e. overall health), then you get a chance to draw more cards, upgrade the ones you have and unlock special abilities, before going into another fight. This continues until there's one player standing. There's a lot of variety in builds, with 4 sects (i.e. decks), half a dozen side jobs which add extra cards and something like 16 characters with their own abilities, and particularly as you get to the later rounds of a match, there can be a lot of counterplay, as you can see what your next opponent did in their last round and adjust your program accordingly (and of course, they can do the same to you....). And best of all, it's free to play with only cosmetic microtransactions (character skins, card images etc.)

 

[EgonSpengler]

Civilization VI: Azteca

With the end of the Classical Era, Moctezuma and Lady Six Sky have brought centuries of conflict to a close. (Probably a temporary state of affairs. She's already denounced me again. Oh well.)

In this alternate universe, the three founding altepetl[1] of the Nahua people - the "Triple Alliance"[2] - are Tenochtitlan, Xochicalco and Malinalco[3]. Tenochtitlan sits at the confluence of the three great rivers of our people: The Chocón Machacas flows down out of the northern mountains, joins the Samalá, and together they become the Machacas[4]. Those are the Spanish names. I don't know if I can manually change their names to whatever the indigenous people called them, if indeed they named their rivers. "Chocar" means 'crash' in Spanish, so we can imagine that the Chocón Machacas has a lot of rapids and waterfalls as it comes down out of the mountains. It probably gets insane in the Spring, as the mountain snowcap melts, with flash floods from breaking ice-dams (I've heard that breaking alpine ice-dams can sound like gunshots). It's probably freezing-cold, too. It's just a coincidence that I have yet to settle a city up the Chocón Machacas, but we can imagine it's not an easy place to live. Xochicalco, my 2nd city, is downriver on the relatively-placid Machacas. Malinalco, out on the grassy plains to the southeast, was Lady Six Sky's objective when she declared war on me.

Speaking of the wars[5], they went pretty well, all in all. I brought the Mayan cities of Mutal and Xtampak into the empire, and my Eagle Warriors captured twelve Builders. Xtampak is a metropolis, and is now the largest altepetl in the empire, by population. More than a third of my people now speak Mayan as their first language[6], rather than Nahuatl.

Mayan Tzolk'in has become the dominant religion across the empire, espousing the principles of 'Feed the World' and 'Stewardship' and no doubt further spreading Mayan language and culture - the empire surely now uses the Mayan calendar, for example. With the additional food and housing, the two remaining Mayan cities under Lady Six Sky's control are both enormous, far larger than any of my cities. Sa'aal, the Mayan capital, is almost twice the size of Tenochtitlan. Xtampak, now the largest Aztec city, was the smallest Mayan city. While Mayan Tzolk'in emphasizes reverence for the rainforests in their natural state (the Sacred Path pantheon), Aztec Tzolk'in celebrates the cultivated crops. The Nahua people cherish their olives, bananas[7], and varieties of chili peppers, and wear clothes of cotton (the Goddess of Festivals pantheon seemed to fit thematically with Gifts for the Tlatoani, and the extra culture will help my borders grow a little more quickly). No doubt that slight difference between the Aztec and Mayan versions of the same religion are the source of great consternation.

The end of the Classical Era and the Mayan wars coincided with the opening of several libraries across the empire, collecting codices, scrolls and tablets and books of paper, leather, and cotton. All of those Mayan Builders I captured will soon be put to work constructing Entertainment Complexes and Tlachtli across the empire. I'm already feeling squeezed, with only a couple more places for settling new cities, but I'm thinking I can use the "Bread & Circuses" project and Governor Amani's "Emissary" ability to flip a couple of bordering cities by Loyalty pressure when I get a Golden Age. Ideally, I could knock Lady Six Sky out of the game that way, although her cities will be so big, that could be difficult. There's at least one Mapuche city that looks ripe for the picking.

I'm also hoping to build the Colosseum in Tenochtitlan. No one has built that yet. I don't know if I overvalue the Colosseum or the AI undervalues it, but I find myself getting that one frequently, even at higher difficulty levels. From the spot I have picked out, its area of influence could encompass 8 cities, which would be awesome.



[1] An Altepetl was basically a semi-self-governing city-state, ruled by a Tlatoani. The Aztec 'emperor' held the title of Huey Tlatoani. It was sort of a feudal system.
[2] irl, the "Triple Alliance" of the Nahua people were Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan, on Lake Texcoco. Today, the entire area is Mexico City, and the lake is gone.
[3] One of the mods I use randomizes the order of the list of city names for each Civ, after the capital, so you don't get the same names every game.
[4] irl, all three rivers are in Guatemala.
[5] I say wars and not war, because while it was technically one, long war in the game, it stretched over centuries of history.
[6] irl, Guatemala today recognizes 21 Mayan languages and Mexico 8.
[7] They're probably not Cavendish bananas, as we know them. They're probably what we call plaintains. They're very starchy, almost like a potato. irl, corn was the staple crop of the Aztec cities.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Civilization VI: Azteca

I blazed through the Medieval Era the last two nights. Centuries of peace and prosperity for the Nahua people. I almost wish I'd slowed down to enjoy them more. Lady Six Sky is still furious, but whatevs. If she wants to have another go, she knows where to find me. (Just in case, though, I built walls around several of my cities. Not that I'm worried. I just like that cozy atmosphere they bring.)

We made contact with Germany, on the far side of the northern mountains, and Norway on the far side of the western mountains. I learned that the reason I haven't had any trouble with the Mapuche is because they've been battling the Vikings this whole time. And a mysterious, ocean-going people from a faraway land somewhere to the west also made contact. They arrived in giant ocean-wagons called "ships" and come from a place called "Vietnam." They love our spicy food. They keep asking why we don't fish in the ocean, though. Heh. Right-O. Nice people, maybe a little nuts, but friendly. Fish in the ocean? Okay, dudes, whatever you say...

I built two more cities in the mountains to the north, in the last two empty spots. Libraries and marketplaces continue to proliferate across the empire, and I opened tlachtli in every city. A special thanks to all of the Mayan workers who sacrificed dedicated their lives to the project. The pièce de résistance: The Hue Tlachtli, aka The Colosseum, outside Tenochtitlan.

Spoiler :

("Hue" or "Huey" is used before words to indicate increased size, stature or importance. A teocalli, for instance, is a temple-pyramid; so the Huey Teocalli was the 'Great Temple.' Thus, Aztec Colosseum = Hue Tlachtli.) irl, Wikipedia says that contemporaneous accounts of Rome's Colosseum claimed it held up to 87,000 people, while more modern estimates put its capacity closer to 50,000. Either way, the Hue Tlachtli must be a sight to behold, worthy of an emperor. You're all invited, of course. Just try to avoid the High Priest; you don't want to get invited to his 'sky box.' As mentioned earlier, The Colosseum's area of influence reaches 8 of my 10 cities. With this network of fields, I have introduced my people to a couple of sports of my own invention: I call them "soccer" and "rugby." I can explain the rules of each later.

German Catholicism has begun making inroads into Nahua cities. One of my newer, smaller cities to the north has already fully embraced it. I don't mind. The more, the merrier. Anyway, the German missionaries bring something they call "beer", which you should really try. I'm having it distributed at all of the tlachtli before games.

I'm about to enter a Golden Age, and with all of my Tlachtli completed, I can use "Bread & Circuses" to create Loyalty pressure on my neighbors. With any luck, the Mayans and/or Mapuche will have a Dark Age. It's still unclear to me precisely what flipping cities by Loyalty pressure is supposed to represent. I figure it's a number of things, and could be different depending on the civs involved and the historical era. Anyone who's played Crusader Kings can probably envision an annexation of territory by means other than miltary conquest. Marriage, or some head-scratching legal inheritance. There were in fact genuine wars that started because of contested claims (e.g. the War of Spanish Succession), but there must also have been claims that went through without any bloodshed. So perhaps that's one way we can understand flipping cities by Loyalty pressure in Civ VI.

The Aztec had something called a Flower War, in which two contesting cities would agree to a kind of non-lethal battle, in a predetermined place, with a predetermined number of men. If the smaller city said no, the Aztecs would just come in and attack for real. The Aztecs won a lot of these Flower Wars because their larger population meant their Best 500 men were bigger and better than a smaller city's Best 500 men, and their big, wealthy cities with established agriculture meant they could train a whole class of warriors - the Eagle Warriors. Imagine if the city of Paris or London went to Giverny or Norwich and said, "hey, let's play a football match, your best XI against our best XI, and the loser pays the winner taxes, in perpetuity; and if you're not into that idea, we can just send our army instead, your choice."

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Looks like Europa Universalis V is in the works

Paradox says where we're going, we don't need no marketing plan as it just shows off and chats about the unannounced Europa Universalis 5

Where we're going is 15th-19th century Europe.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[Arakhor]

Nice Back to the Future reference, used ironically for going back to the past.

 

[Kyriakos]

Just make sure they have 100 DLC, to satisfy their greed.

 

[Arakhor]

This may come as a surprise, but game development is long and difficult. Something has to pay the bills.

 

[Kyriakos]

This may come as a surprise, but game development is long and difficult. Something has to pay the bills.

If that was a good answer, then all software companies would release 20+ DLC/game.

 

[Broken_Erika]

This may come as a surprise, but game development is long and difficult. Something has to pay the bills.

That does not excuse The Sims 4