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

[aelf]

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.

Oh. Well, I think the game allows for alternative ways to play partly because it's easier. If you have to worry about suddenly being steamrolled by an AI that you had been friendly with (regardless of leader), and who's half an age ahead of you in the Middle Ages, then you probably don't have the freedom to play less-than-optimally.

 

[Sarin]

Huh. Second lockdown is most likely coming here, so I've time. I think I'll pick up PoE. Looks like helova lot to take in from the start, anything I should avoid so as not to ruin my character or worse?

And how prominent is PvP there?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Huh. Second lockdown is most likely coming here, so I've time. I think I'll pick up PoE. Looks like helova lot to take in from the start, anything I should avoid so as not to ruin my character or worse?

And how prominent is PvP there?

PvP is not very prominent at all. Possible but not a feature.

When you start you can choose to play the current league Heist or play in Standard. For beginners, the only difference is that Heist game play (breaking into places to steal stuff) is not in Standard. Heist action is not necessary to understanding or enjoying the game. In either Heist or Standard you can choose:

• Softcore, SC: a trade league where you can use in game currency to buy gear from other players. Party play is possible here.
• Hardcore: Where if you die your character is migrated to standard. (not a place for beginners). Trading here is also possible.
• Solo Self found (SSF) is an option in either HC or SC. Here you play alone and cannot trade with other players and must make do with gear you find during play.

After each 3 month temp league ends, all characters and stash items migrate into the Standard league. Some folks only play temp leagues and never play standard. I play both and actually prefer Standard as a rule since my characters are more developed and I can play content I did not play during a temp league.

Once you have a character in play, you can hit S and open the social window to invite others to be friends or create a party. The game is very complicated and challenging. There are forums, videos and guides along with a wiki. The best way to make sense of what is going on is to have a friend or two who can answer questions and tell you stuff you can do that you would not find out just by playing. I am happy to help. In Heist my character is COGm; in Standard I have several characters, but most commonly I play Banjo_Dancer.

Hit S (social menu) look for invite friends near the bottom; type in a name and send an invite.

 

[Traitorfish]

Picked up Total War: Attila in the Sega Steam sale. Enjoying it so far, but the terrain and inhabitants of the Northern European region seem to have a colour palette exclusively of greenish-brown, greyish-brown, and brownish-brown, which can make it difficult to understand battlefields at a glance. I'm starting to miss Shogun's brightly-coloured samurai strolling through well-manicured meadows.

 

[Sarin]

PvP is not very prominent at all. Possible but not a feature.

When you start you can choose to play the current league Heist or play in Standard. For beginners, the only difference is that Heist game play (breaking into places to steal stuff) is not in Standard. Heist action is not necessary to understanding or enjoying the game. In either Heist or Standard you can choose:

• Softcore, SC: a trade league where you can use in game currency to buy gear from other players. Party play is possible here.
• Hardcore: Where if you die your character is migrated to standard. (not a place for beginners). Trading here is also possible.
• Solo Self found (SSF) is an option in either HC or SC. Here you play alone and cannot trade with other players and must make do with gear you find during play.

After each 3 month temp league ends, all characters and stash items migrate into the Standard league. Some folks only play temp leagues and never play standard. I play both and actually prefer Standard as a rule since my characters are more developed and I can play content I did not play during a temp league.

Once you have a character in play, you can hit S and open the social window to invite others to be friends or create a party. The game is very complicated and challenging. There are forums, videos and guides along with a wiki. The best way to make sense of what is going on is to have a friend or two who can answer questions and tell you stuff you can do that you would not find out just by playing. I am happy to help. In Heist my character is COGm; in Standard I have several characters, but most commonly I play Banjo_Dancer.

Hit S (social menu) look for invite friends near the bottom; type in a name and send an invite.

Thanks, I might look you up soon. Still wondering what'll be my first character, leaning toward Juggernaut focused on stun, if I can find some way to use it as AoE for crowd control...

 

[EgonSpengler]

Huh. Second lockdown is most likely coming here, so I've time. I think I'll pick up PoE. Looks like helova lot to take in from the start, anything I should avoid so as not to ruin my character or worse?

And how prominent is PvP there?

I wouldn't worry too much about ruining your character, because it's guaranteed to happen. Part of the gameplay is figuring out how everything works, trying out new combinations of things, trying out new game mechanics, etc. The game is designed for that, though. For one thing, all of your characters share some things. A storage container, for one: Anything one character doesn't keep in their specific inventory can be tossed into the shared inventory and used by another character. Also, every 3 months the entire game undergoes a kind of mini-reboot with new DLC (called "Leagues", as @Birdjaguar mentioned). You keep all of your existing characters, but the new content is available only to brand-new characters, so almost everybody starts a new character (or 5 or 6) every 3 months anyway.

Some advice to a new player:
Take your time. Enjoy the artwork. The voice-acting is great. The story is linear, but it's pretty good.
Don't worry a lot about the dizzying skill web at first. Instead, play around with different combinations of equipment and skill gems. Passive Skill Points applied in the skill web are semi-permanent, but equipment and skill gems can be swapped out and moved around all you want. Also, Passive Skill Points don't have a big impact in small amounts, the bonuses they provide are meant to be stacked up to achieve a significant effect. Some of them, referred to as "keystone skills" provide big buffs, but you have to spend several Passive Skill Points tracing a route through the skill web to reach them.

A Marauder/Juggernaut who uses Stuns is a good choice. For stunning mobs, I think clubs are better than axes, and I think two-handed weapons are better than one-handed weapons. Your melee attacks will have a small, innate AoE, and you can get "Melee Splash Support" around Level 8, which dramatically increases the radius of your attacks. Around that same time, you can get Leap Slam, which allows you to jump up onto cliffs and across short gaps in the terrain, so you can close the distance with ranged attackers. Leap Slam also creates a Stun effect, so it will have some synergy with your melee weapon.

 

[PhroX]

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.

I think what you're saying he is kinda true....for the first 20-30 levels. Which is a pretty small part of a the time you're playing the character (I'm far from a speedrunner, but I can get through that in a couple of hours tops). Starting as, say, a spellcasting marauder is a bit clunky at this very early stage, as there aren't damage nodes right where you start, but it doesn't take that long to route upwards towards the templar starting area, not to mention on the way up there, you can get a good amount of something even more valuable in the long term than spell/elemental damage: life. And then on top of that, you're only a witch/marauder/etc. for about 30 levels. Then you become your ascendacy class of choice, and the bonuses they offer massively outweigh any starting position advatages outside of possibly really extreme things like spellcasting rangers. Not to mention that, by the time you get a decent way into the game, you're going to be pathing outside your starter area regardless of class, so again, it's just not a major long term impact. Also, any concerns about not getting the skill gems you want are sorted in Act 3.

This is the tree for a lvl 61 spellcasting chieftan I've played this league. I was using BladeFall/BladeBlast, i.e. physical spells I was converting to fire, so a couple of the nodes would be changed when using a base fire spell, but the general pathing wouldn't be that different. Overall, there aren't that many "wasted" travel points. I've moved around a fair bit, but I've been picking up useful clusters as I do, partiuclarly those that grant life. And once I picked up the nodes in the elemental wheel on the left (Divine Judgement etc.) in the mid 20s, I was getting more than enough damage to cruise through the campaign (I wasn't particularly enjoying the playstyle though, so I switched to my Cremation Necro build).

For a fireball build, looking at the witch ascendacies: Occultist has no realy synergy, you could possibly do a crit/curse/ES build, but there's skills that fit that much better than fireball. Elementalist only really has the two golem nodes going for it - the rest of the ascendacy is pretty awful - and when using golems for their buffs, which is what a spellcasting build would do, they're not going to have much life and so it's easy to loose a lot of your power once you face up to any decently strong opponents (and if you do buff their life, you're hurting yourself in damage or your personal survivability which is not going to be worth it, leave that for actual minion builds). Necromancer could be worth considering if you're going for an Archmage build, as there's a decent amount of mana synergy there, as well as the great defenses it offers, but there's not particular synergy with Fireball Archmage compared to other ascendancies, and you'd need a Stormfire so that your lightning damage can ignite if you wanted to scale damage that way, which is a late game item.

On the other hand, Chieftan adds plenty of fire and/or fire DoT damage (depending on whether you're scaling the hit or ignite of Fireball), plus a lot of survivability. Trickster is utterly fantastic for any DoT based build (such as ignite) with damage, survivabilty and great QoL. If you're going for the mana stacking route, Heirophant generally works better than Necro unless you have specific corpse synergies (i.e. Cremation) and will do the more conventional spellcasting style much better than an elementalist. If you want to go for crit damage Assassin is gonna outdo any witch based build while again offering very good survivabiltiy thanks to elusive.

To be clear, I'm not saying that characters starting as a witch can't be powerful - hell, my currect character is a necromancer and is probably the best I've ever done in SSF - but that good builds are powerful because of how their ascendacy interacts with their skills far more than where they start on the tree.

As for advice for a new player - jump straight in with whatever sounds cool, but be prepared to accept that you're going to mess your character up horribly. Then, once you've got your head round how the basic gameplay is, step back and look at some guides. In particular, things recommened as a league starter, doubly so if SSF (solo self found) viable, will be a good place to start for learning how to put together a more coherent build that will actually function.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Thanks, I might look you up soon. Still wondering what'll be my first character, leaning toward Juggernaut focused on stun, if I can find some way to use it as AoE for crowd control...

One nice aspect of the game is that you can start out using one skill and easily change to another later. Two handed builds are great fun but get more difficult as you get into the high end of mapping. Don't forget that after you stun 'em, you have to kill them!

 

[Sarin]

Yeah, my marauder kinda took turn to the weird...and worse. The initial idea was to make a tank with one-handed mace, using stun for crowd control and focusing on single target DPS. Instead, I found myself using Smite and clearing loads of mobs fast with AoE, but both my tanking and DPS on bosses are terrible, which means I'm incapable of doing the labyrinth.

And by the way...mana reservation from various auras stack multiplicatively or additively?

 

[PhroX]

Yeah, my marauder kinda took turn to the weird...and worse. The initial idea was to make a tank with one-handed mace, using stun for crowd control and focusing on single target DPS. Instead, I found myself using Smite and clearing loads of mobs fast with AoE, but both my tanking and DPS on bosses are terrible, which means I'm incapable of doing the labyrinth.

And by the way...mana reservation from various auras stack multiplicatively or additively?

Mana reservation from different auras stack additively (e.g. if you have a 25% reservation aura and a 40% reservation aura, it will reserve 65% of your total mana). However, it's also worth noting that many support gems multiplicatively increase the cost, including aura reservation, of the skill(s) they're supporting. For example, if you link Herald of Thunder to Added Lightning Damage, your Herald will now reserve 1.3*25 = 32.5% of your mana.

As for your character, well, moving away from stunning was probably a good idea regardless of outcome, as it doesn't so much in the current game - normal and magic enemies are just as easy to kill as to stun, and rares and uniques can't be permanently stunned as they gain immunity after each one, so its not really worth investing into. But it does seem like you're already identifying one of the basics of character builds in PoE - that clear focused (i.e AoE) builds still need a solid amount of single target damage, and boss-killing builds still need to be able to clear at a decent rate. The game throws both types of challenge at you, partuclarly while levelling up, and you have to be able to deal with them. There's various ways to do this: some skills are perfectly good at both, sometimes you might want to swap around support gems (for example switching Increased AoE, which boosts AoE at the cost of damage, for Concentrated Effect, which does the opposite, when you're fighting a tough boss), some builds run some supporting skills that are clunky to use when clearing but worth it for extra damage on bosses (e.g. Marks [i.e. single target curses] or Vaal skills) and sometimes you just end up runing two different damage skills, one for clearing, one for bossing.

Here's some general tips for getting a character going:

• Make sure that your main damage skill in particular has as many good support gems as possible. Based on your reference to the lab, I'm guessing you're towards the end of Act 3, so you should be trying to find a 4-linked item for your main skill. Keep any eye out for drops, and check the vendors in town regularly (they refresh their inventory whenever you levels). I wouldn't suggest trying to create your own with Orbs of Fusing yet, as they're relatively rare. But once you're got one, don't be afraid to use Chromatic Orbs to get the colours you want, although be aware that items are more likely to roll socket colours that match their defense stat (armour based gear is likely to roll Red sockets, Energy Shield Blue and Evasion Green), so it's probably not worth trying to get 3R/1G on some Energy Shield gloves.
• I've not used Smite, but looking at the skill, I'd probably try to support it with Ancestral Call, Elemental Damage with Attacks and then another damage boost, maybe Added Lightning Damage
• If you can't get those support gems from the normal vendors, there's a quest in the Library in Act 3 which opens up a special vendor who will sell gems from all classes
  
• Speaking of Chromatic Orbs, if you sell an item with at least one socket of each colour linked, then you get one. Looking out for these is a nice little way to keep up with your recolouring needs. Early on it can even be worth buying them off the vendors and reselling for the Chrome.
• Vendor recipies in general are pretty useful early on. One key one for any weapon user is that if you sell a normal (i.e.white) weapon, a Blacksmith's Whetstone and a magic (blue) or rare (yellow) Rustic Sash to a vendor, you get the weapon back as a magic item with increased physical damage. Using a rare sash increases the value of the modifier. If you go to the vendor every 10 levels or so, buy the best white weapon they have and do this recipe, you'll have good enough weapons to get through the campaign. As such, keep any rare Rustic Sashes you see, even if the modifiers on them aren't good.
  
• Don't overlook defenses. Glass cannon builds are not something I'd remotely recommend for a new player. The easiest and most important things to get are Life and Elemental Resistances. The former should come from both gear and the passive tree, while if your short on the latter, then don't be afraid to use the crafting bench in your hideout (accessible through a waypoint) to throw some cheap resistance crafts on gear. The game is balanced around you having 75% resistance to all three elements, so try to get and maintain that. Chaos Res is nice to have, but not essential, particulary while going though the campaign.
  
• Also, not getting hit is often a really good defense. Particularly against bosses, trying to facetank everything is a good way to die. As a general rule, if it looks like the boss is about to do something scary, you should be getting out of the way. Movement skills like Dash or Flame Dash are an excellent way to get in combat mobility, plus they also make it quicker to run between packs.
  
• Get a loot filter. The vast majority of what drops from monsters is an utter waste of time. I'd recommend the default one from https://filterblade.xyz/ for a new player (just click the download button and it will tell you how to use it). Not only does it hide pontless stuff, but it also highlights some of the things I've mentioned like items that sell for Chromes and 4+linked items.

 

[tjs282]

Predictably got utterly stuck at the beginning of the last Far Cry mission (Volcano, "Hallway of Hell") at 'Challenging', so I decide to restart. At 'Veteran'.

Last night I blew through the Cooler mission with only about 3 deaths — none of which were incurred (for a change!) while taking out the last 3 Locusts, 3 Fat Boys and 4 Monkey-Trigens (plus a whole mess of Elite Mercs).

Thinking I've finally got a handle on this (and already considering doing the next run at 'Realistic'), I was really looking forward to the subsequent Boat mission (which I completed in one shot on the Challenging run — including knocking down Crowe's heli).

But karma is a b****, and I was paid back for my hubris, by getting repeatedly splattered all over the map (how the hell did those Rocket-Mercs even see me?!?)

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Sarin Are you playing in Heist or Standard?

 

[Takhisis]

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.

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

Yes and yes. Vanilla! Civ4 got a lot of flak back in the day, while Civ3 had some well-designed and -curated mods and scenarios e.g. Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.

In my experience Civ games (like so many other franchises) have initial releases that are almost Beta releases and then the expansions build on that and are the real game.

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.

You made me think ‘mwahahaha’ when I read ‘artillery spam’, but that digression aside, yes, the epic game at times railroaded you, especially in the late (modern ages) game. Of course, scenarios ran wild with new possibilities e.g. the Playground Mod or Zombie Island.

 

[Sarin]

@Birdjaguar standard. I figured there's no reason to go Heist, by the time I learn enough to not stumble around leagues, the current one will be ending anyway. I've rebuilt the gear, messed around a bit, and turned my Marauder into a character that could breeze through Lab. And then I forgot to make use of the glove enchanting...I hope I can go back later and do it.

I've also started a new char, Witch, to get a sense of a different playstyle. We'll see how that one will go.

 

[sendos]

I have been playing the following games:

1. Stellaris;
2. Age of Wonders Planetfall;
3. A bit of dota 2 (after a 9 month hiatus); and
4. Element TD.

I briefly played Napolean Total War and Total War; Shogun 2, but it didn't stick with me. They're good games though. I think these strategy games are too much rock/paper/scissor based.

It's been a very long while since I have played Civ 5. I do not have Civ 6. I am having a few thoughts about buying SMAC onlline, despite still having the SMAC disc because my Dad keeps playing it.

I mainly play strategy games these days. This may include town management games. I've played Cities Skylines and Surviving Mars.

I am open to new gaming suggestions here.

 

[Synobun]

I have been playing the following games:

1. Stellaris;
2. Age of Wonders Planetfall;
3. A bit of dota 2 (after a 9 month hiatus); and
4. Element TD.

I briefly played Napolean Total War and Total War; Shogun 2, but it didn't stick with me. They're good games though. I think these strategy games are too much rock/paper/scissor based.

It's been a very long while since I have played Civ 5. I do not have Civ 6. I am having a few thoughts about buying SMAC onlline, despite still having the SMAC disc because my Dad keeps playing it.

I mainly play strategy games these days. This may include town management games. I've played Cities Skylines and Surviving Mars.

I am open to new gaming suggestions here.

When they go on sale, I can recommend Sanctum TD and Kingdom Rush. They're both tower defense games and pretty fun, although Sanctum TD suffers from the same dev treatment Sanctum did. Which is to say, abandoned. You'll still get a few hours of fun out of it, though.

They go on sale for like 75% off during the major Steam Sales.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Birdjaguar standard. I figured there's no reason to go Heist, by the time I learn enough to not stumble around leagues, the current one will be ending anyway. I've rebuilt the gear, messed around a bit, and turned my Marauder into a character that could breeze through Lab. And then I forgot to make use of the glove enchanting...I hope I can go back later and do it.

I've also started a new char, Witch, to get a sense of a different playstyle. We'll see how that one will go.

What's your character's name?

 

[AmazonQueen]

I seem to be bored with all my games atm and unable to play more than 10 minutes of any of them.
Baldurs Gate 3 looks as if it will be really good when its finished but no way I'm spending £50 on what is basically a bugridden beta of the 1st Act atm.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I mainly play strategy games these days. This may include town management games. I've played Cities Skylines and Surviving Mars.

I liked Aven Colony (not at full price), Children of the Nile, and Banished for fun variations of city builders.

 

[H4run]

I seem to be bored with all my games atm and unable to play more than 10 minutes of any of them.
Baldurs Gate 3 looks as if it will be really good when its finished but no way I'm spending £50 on what is basically a bugridden beta of the 1st Act atm.

I feel like that most of the time. But when I start to play and get hooked, I can play for hours and hours.