In What Electronic Entertainment Have You Been Partaking #18: Reticulating Splines

[shadowplay]

Is Rome II Total War worth getting?

 

[Ajidica]

Is Rome II Total War worth getting?

Depends on the price.
I picked it up for $20 or so and found it enjoyable, but not my favorite Total War game. Battles are way too fast and it tries to ape Paradox style mechanics, but does it poorly. (Plus, Total War's selling point was always the battles, not being a Civ/Paradox knock-off.)
The habit of AI's fleeing before you if they know they can't win gets really annoying really fast. Rather than defending their city in a glorious 300-like last stand, the AI will pack up its army of crappy spearmen and go invade a neighbor, taking a weak border city. The invaded AI lacks the resources to to reclaim the lost city thanks to the army+garrisson and having been deprived of a lot of income, slowly collapses before it too flees from an attacker and invades someone else.
This is a major problem in the Middle East as there are a lot of one or two city factions.
Artillery spam is also hella annoying and unrealistic.

I heard good things about the mini-Campaigns (Caesar in Gaul, Hannibal at the Gates, etc) but I don't like the tightly focused mini-campaigns so I haven't played any of them.

 

[cardgame]

If you want to play Rome II seriously, install the Divide et Impera mod. It's a must-have that completely saves that game.

 

[Akka]

Is Rome II Total War worth getting?

IMO, it's the best Total War game. Started pretty weak, but the latest version have really filled up the game and corrected the initial problems.
So yeah, I'd say it's worth.

That being said, yeah the AI is rather lackluster, but then it's always been the case and I don't think it's better in another iteration.

 

[PhroX]

Can You build any deck You want or is there a system of buying / trading / getting cards ? I'm a long time player - I got back to MTG recently - this January when Theros was released. I haven't played online before.
I guess Arena is a bit "flashy" but it's not that obtrusive imho.
btw. wanna play sometime ?

Yeah, if you want to play constructed formats (e.g. standard, modern, vintage), you have to get cards by either buying and opening packs (whether just cracking them or playing limited with them) or trading with other players usually using the in-game currency, which can either be purchased or won as prizes in events.

I haven't been playing much magic online recently (I've been doing it in the flesh as my LGS is just about allowed to remain open, woohoo!), and when I do play online I stick to limited formats, particularly Cube.

Are you playing SSF? If so, getting to T14s is a great achievement. If you are playing SC then you should be able to find the gear you need. I was lucky this league. Not only did I farm three OG 6 links, but I dropped a corrupted 6 link chest in the Acts that is suited to melee and was colored two of each. I filled it with AW and AP totems and support. My tree is not great, but I'm playing scion for the first time so that is to be expected. I've been tempted to start anew with a duelist, but the thought of leveling once more keeps me from doing that. We'll see.

Yeah, SSF, but I'm playing a character build that is at least supposedly (and I haven't found reason to disagree so far) well suited to the format, easy to gear (I'm stacking mana for offense and defense, plus life and res as usual, so there's not much in the way of uniques that are even that useful for the build compared to rares and none that are mandatory, although a Rumi's Flask would be very nice) while effective enough to do any content in the game once you've got half-decent gear (well, maybe juiced T19s might need more than just decent gear).

 

[AdamCrock]

Yeah, if you want to play constructed formats (e.g. standard, modern, vintage), you have to get cards by either buying and opening packs (whether just cracking them or playing limited with them) or trading with other players usually using the in-game currency, which can either be purchased or won as prizes in events.

I haven't been playing much magic online recently (I've been doing it in the flesh as my LGS is just about allowed to remain open, woohoo!), and when I do play online I stick to limited formats, particularly Cube.

I haven't played limited online yet. For now I stick to constructed until I have more experience under my belt. My skills are a bit rusty and I don't know that many cards as I used to in the old days so I stay away from drafts atm until I know "what's in play" these days well. If You ever got the urge to goof around or test some stuff at the Arena feel free to add me there. I'll PM You my nick.

 

[Takhisis]

The habit of AI's fleeing before you if they know they can't win gets really annoying really fast. Rather than defending their city in a glorious 300-like last stand, the AI will pack up its army of crappy spearmen and go invade a neighbor, taking a weak border city. The invaded AI lacks the resources to to reclaim the lost city thanks to the army+garrisson and having been deprived of a lot of income, slowly collapses before it too flees from an attacker and invades someone else.
This is a major problem in the Middle East as there are a lot of one or two city factions.

This is kindof what happened when the Khwarezmians fled west from the Mongols and eventually took Jerusalem from the weakened Crusader states.

If you want to play Rome II seriously, install the Divide et Impera mod. It's a must-have that completely saves that game.

Is this like vanilla!Civ4 being worse than existing Civ3 but beign eventually redeemed as the engine on which to run Fall from Heaven?

 

[Phrossack]

I have yet to try DeI, as I indefinitely postpone trying new things, but I like base Rome 2 well enough.

My Spartan campaign goes poorly. Despite my best efforts to create an empire so evil it is hopelessly dysfunctional, my empire grows vast. The Spartan Empire rules all of Hellas, Thrace, Illyria, Dacia, and Pannonia, as well as part of Scythia, Cyrenaica, and Libya. A staggering 90% of all people who dwell between the Pontic steppe and the Sahara are enslaved, and the vast slavery economy means I have so much money I spend it on promoting my noblewomen to high rank just to get rid of it. My giant fleet largely wiped out the Catiarioi Scythians with ballista ships, and the main use of my navy is to storm cities by sea and use ballista ships as point blank fire support, where their shots bowl through hundreds of men. None of this makes sense. By rights, Sparta should have collapsed. This is not Sparta - this is madness!

My goal of antagonizing everyone into destroying me has failed utterly. All uprisings have been defeated since pikemen in garrisons are just too strong to overcome for the poor AI. I may need to convert my villages to farming settlements from civic settlements to reduce public order. Numidia and the Gutones, a Germanic people now ruling eastern Europe, have bent the knee before me and acknowledge my overlordship. I have a non-aggression pact with Pergamon - they shall soon learn how little that means before my infinite and arbitrary aggression. Perhaps senseless betrayals will turn the world against me. That, and screwing over my opposition party to incite civil war, but for now I just want to see if invasions and rebellions can destroy me.

 

[Akka]

Is this like vanilla!Civ4 being worse than existing Civ3 but beign eventually redeemed as the engine on which to run Fall from Heaven?

In what dimension is Civ4 inferior to any other Civ title ?

 

[cardgame]

In what dimension is Civ4 inferior to any other Civ title ?

Hex grids are legit superior, but yeah civ 4 best civ

 

[Lexicus]

In what dimension is Civ4 inferior to any other Civ title ?

Takh did explicitly compare vanilla Civ 4 to existing Civ 3, so presumably Civ 4 on release worse than Civ 3 with all its expansions? Probably not a fair comparison but also not necessarily wrong.

 

[H4run]

Takh did explicitly compare vanilla Civ 4 to existing Civ 3, so presumably Civ 4 on release worse than Civ 3 with all its expansions? Probably not a fair comparison but also not necessarily wrong.

Well, I cannot really argue with that not because that is correct, because from civ 1 till 5, civ 3 is the only civ I haven't played yet. I don't know in what sense civ 4 vanilla is more inferior to civ 3, given how we handle siege unit is disastrous by default, it needs mod to finally fix this, but the diplomacy, the religious system and alliance, and how all of that is backed up with the backing unique unit, I cannot see how it's inferior.

Let me summon @aelf , I really love to hear his opinion regarding this (sorry to drag you here).

 

[Birdjaguar]

If you want to play Rome II seriously, install the Divide et Impera mod. It's a must-have that completely saves that game.

This.

 

[Lexicus]

Well, I cannot really argue with that not because that is correct, because from civ 1 till 5, civ 3 is the only civ I haven't played yet. I don't know in what sense civ 4 vanilla is more inferior to civ 3, given how we handle siege unit is disastrous by default, it needs mod to finally fix this, but the diplomacy, the religious system and alliance, and how all of that is backed up with the backing unique unit, I cannot see how it's inferior.

Let me summon @aelf , I really love to hear his opinion regarding this (sorry to drag you here).

Idk I barely remember Civ 4 vanilla. I mostly went back to playing Civ 3 until about the time Warlords came out.

 

[H4run]

Idk I barely remember Civ 4 vanilla. I mostly went back to playing Civ 3 until about the time Warlords came out.

IIRC not so much difference, beside additional civ and scenario, while BTS offered additional civ, scenario, units and technology, but I think the base is pretty much the same.

The only thing that I don't like about Civ 4 is how siege unit operate. And the thing that I don't like about civ game in general is how technology trading operate, which civilization 4 gladly give us the option to turn off that feature.

The clear diplomacy stick and carrots math in Civ 4 makes reading diplomacy group and planning diplomacy maneuver very important. Declaring war with a nation have a domino consequences, and the effect are cumulative and long-lasting. All of these factor makes Civ 4 turned out to be a nicely simple game that hard to master.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I wouldn't say Witches are overpowered. I mean, the base classes don't really mean anything in PoE beyond what Ascendancies you get so considering any of them OP is kinda wierd, but even if we're looking at Ascendancies, Necromancers probably are too good, but Elementalist is awful outside of 1 build (golems) and Occulist is decent but nothing special. The base class with the best set of Ascendancies is probably Shadow, with both Assasin and Trickster being incredible, and Sabouter being very niche, but really good in that niche.

That said, spellcasting is generally better than melee (at least targetted melee, slams are good), but that's independant of class. You can have a melee witch, a ranged duelist and a spellcasting marauder (and there are fine builds for all of those....).

A bit of an essay here, sorry, but once I started thinking about it, my fingers kind of took on a life of their own.

You're right that any character could use the same combination of ranged attack and ranged defense, but I think a Templar might be the only other one that could do it as easily. The Witch's starting point on the Passive Tree gives her quick n' easy access to the damage bonuses for Fireball and upgrades for her minions, and she doesn't have to spend any Passive Points seeking out Intelligence bonuses. The other Basic Classes would have to expend Passive Points working their way around the web. The Marauder has some Fire passives, but several of them - Magmatic Strikes, for example - apply to Fire Attacks, not Spells, and so wouldn't improve the damage of Fireball. I'm not sure whether Passive Skills that "convert % Physical Damage to Fire Damage" would apply to Fireball; if not, then many of the Chieftain's passive Fire skills wouldn't work. I think a Templar could make use of Zombies well enough - in fact, it's real easy to get carried away and accidentally cripple your Templar by making his Minions too good, trust me - but I think only the Elementalist can have 4 Elementals.

So I think the issue mainly lies in the combination of ranged offense and ranged defense that Fireballs, Zombies and Elementals provide, and the Witch is particularly well-positioned to leverage that combination. It may be that (a) another combination of Skill Gems and equipment that I haven't thought of provides an equivalent balance, or (b) the extra Passive Points another Basic Class would use to upgrade their Fireballs and Minions is offset by easier access to a pivotal node nearby their starting position on the skill web. Taking a quick glance around the outer ring of the web: Point Blank and/or Long Shot, set between the Duelist and Ranger, look like they'd be great for Fireballs. I'd have to see whether it's more efficient to start from the Witch and use up a lot of Passive Points getting one or both of those, or to start with a Duelist or a Ranger and then use more Passive Points to get upgrades for the Fireballs and Zombies. I would assume it's the former, but I haven't done the math.

A third possibility is that this Witch has a critical weakness I just haven't stumbled onto yet, that will seriously limit her progression through the Atlas. Most characters can sail through the Acts, so something like the first 70 levels of any character aren't an awesome measure of her capabilities. On only the second tier of Atlas maps, I did get into a fight that killed all of my Minions, and forced me to scramble a bit to defeat the last Boss without getting killed. That had never happened before. iirc, my Zombies have 5000 health and my elementals have 9000 health. So that would be a fast 136,000 points of damage to kill them all - if it was from directed attacks. It probably wasn't, though, it was probably a lot of AoEs. 10,000 damage from wide-area AoEs could kill all of her Minions simultaneously.

However, ime, in any game where you assemble your capabilities from an array of options, and/or have to use your capabilities in a particular way to leverage your strengths and minimize your opponent's, there are two measures that I think of as the "floor" and the "ceiling." imo, any evaluation of a build or character needs to take those measures into account. In simplest terms, how easy and/or intuitive is it to make a build that's capable and/or utilize your chosen avatar's inherent capabilities, and how powerful can that build or avatar eventually become? Most of the time, the 'floor' doesn't matter a lot to experienced players and the 'ceiling' doesn't matter a lot to newer players. With the two versions of Witch that I've played, the 'floor' was very low: The builds seemed to fall into place almost by themselves, and there wasn't anything tricky about using them effectively. I don't think I did anything particularly clever with either of them. However, I haven't played either one into the later stages of the Atlas of Worlds, so I'm not sure what their "ceiling" is. I think my Necromancer got about halfway through the Atlas, and my Elementalist has only just started. It's possible neither one can reach the heights required to complete the tougher maps.

Oh, one other thing: I've found that both Witch builds aren't awesome in the Delve mine. Of course you can choose the level of enemy you face, and you don't have to go down there at all, so it's hardly a crippling weakness. But I do want to try going really far down there someday. I don't think I've gone much past Level 70, and I get the impression that a purpose-built character may be necessary to reach, like, Level 1000 or something. While I was playing last night, I noticed somebody had reached Level 10,000. I wouldn't be shocked if they have a dedicated, deep-dive character and a whole different character for farming Sulphite in the Atlas maps.

As a dedicated true melee player (hit them with a sword or ax) ranged play is certainly easier from what folks say. I'm trying a scion this league and taking both jugg and slayer ascendancies. With OG I can run reave which seems pretty potent at level 70. She is still squishy at 2600 life though and I have to use instant flasks to keep her alive. Standard still draws me back and I've rebuilt my atlas to Awakener level 7. What's nice there is that I get to run all my delirium maps and blight maps and farm T14s and 15s and kill metamorphs for loot! I rebuild one or two Standard guys each league with a new tree and better gear from the last temp league. I can even afford to buy fabulous gear there with everything I've accumulated.

I do find melee a lot more fun to play. With the ranged character, I don't even get to see the bad guys some of the time; my fireballs go sailing off into the darkness, I think until they hit a piece of terrain, and sometime later I find charred corpses and piles of loot waiting for me. On the wide-open maps, you can stand at the spawn point, fire barrages of fireballs in every direction, and clear ¼ of the map without moving an inch. It's effective, but kind of dull. If I were playing for money, or something, it'd be awesome. As a game that I'm playing just for fun, it's kind of anti-climactic.

I also keep looking at the Scion, trying to figure out what they're good for. I haven't tried playing one yet, though. Obviously, the key is to find a combination of Passives from disparate parts of the skill web that has a particular synergy you can't achieve otherwise, or as easily.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@EgonSpengler @PhroX

Oils are an excellent way to pick up a distant keystone. By anointing an amulet you can add any one from anywhere on the tree. Of course some oils are harder to get than others, but if you trade, most of them are pretty cheap. Cassia can be annoying and often difficult, but adding keystones can be enormously helpful.

I suspect that a scion is a good idea that doesn't live up to its concept. We'll see I guess.

 

[aelf]

Well, I cannot really argue with that not because that is correct, because from civ 1 till 5, civ 3 is the only civ I haven't played yet. I don't know in what sense civ 4 vanilla is more inferior to civ 3, given how we handle siege unit is disastrous by default, it needs mod to finally fix this, but the diplomacy, the religious system and alliance, and how all of that is backed up with the backing unique unit, I cannot see how it's inferior.

Let me summon @aelf , I really love to hear his opinion regarding this (sorry to drag you here).

I was never very good at Civ 3 but I did play it for some time. I was still a teenager back then.

My impression is that Civ 3 is more difficult than Civ 4 in general. I knew that there are some tricks that can make it ridiculously easy later in the game (e.g. artillery spam), but I remember the AI's bonuses as being more brutal and the RNG with strategic resources being more unforgiving. I also remember the AI being more hostile and meaningful alliances with them practically non-existent.

All those things gave me the impression that Civ 3 was a game with fewer dimensions - you had to play a certain way or lose. In Civ 4, there were quite a few strategies that were viable at higher difficulties, even if one ended up still being the strongest (mostly likely a form of ICS and cottage spam). It was an easier game overall, but more enjoyable IMO.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I played Civ 3 recently. I got killed pretty quickly.

 

[H4run]

I was never very good at Civ 3 but I did play it for some time. I was still a teenager back then.

My impression is that Civ 3 is more difficult than Civ 4 in general. I knew that there are some tricks that can make it ridiculously easy later in the game (e.g. artillery spam), but I remember the AI's bonuses as being more brutal and the RNG with strategic resources being more unforgiving. I also remember the AI being more hostile and meaningful alliances with them practically non-existent.

All those things gave me the impression that Civ 3 was a game with fewer dimensions - you had to play a certain way or lose. In Civ 4, there were quite a few strategies that were viable at higher difficulties, even if one ended up still being the strongest (mostly likely a form of ICS and cottage spam). It was an easier game overall, but more enjoyable IMO.

I never expect civ 3 would a harder game than civ 4, I always got the impression that Civ 4 is the hardest and more complex from all the civ series. But from your explanation the complexity of Civ 4 provides player with many alternative way to play or to win, hence makes the game easier but more enjoyable to play.

A very honest and objective review from you Aelf.