• Civ7 is already available! Happy playing :).

What video games have you been playing? ΚΔ (24)? More like ΚΔ,Ζ,ΤΞΕ!

Floating 700 food on P10 is still pretty good and indicative you're sailing over the difficulty hurdle! Especially on a minimal footprint settlement like that. I found things got tricky somewhere about 13 where your upgrade options get reduced, so assembling combos becomes RNG vulnerable.

Perhaps worth keeping in mind that only 4.5% of owners on Steam have a P10 completion, down from approx 58% of players having won at least one game.
All my settlements are roughly of that size, or rather only a little larger pop-wise on average - I just power everything from early on with water and automate pumps if there are any, so not that many people are needed.
 
I tried a demo of Let's School, a Japanese cozy game in which the player is a school administrator, but it's not grabbing me just yet despite the cozy aesthetics.
 
It's impressive how Against the Storm, trying to maintain playability, went for "we will just randomly make stuff x times more difficult to negate first randomly having made them x times easier". Maybe don't make them easier so that you wouldn't need a gimmick to make them harder ^^
@Senethro , is there a final level of prestige?

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By the way, they really should have different gfx for different levels of upgraded houses.
 
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POE 2 Early Access

Oh my it is a whole new game for sure. So many changes and most seem like good ones. The 3 new Acts start you off and can be a challenge the first time through. Acts 4-6 are not yet done and for early access the second set of 3 Acts is a repeat of 1-3 but stepped up to be harder. The end game mapping is there for those who get to the end of Act "6". EA has been running since Dec 6. 1.6 million people signed up for up. There are so many changes to everything that many are still a mystery to me but it is coming together. So far I would say it has been fun after a hard start. The graphics and setting (land, building, effects, etc.) are all spectacular. A huge improvement over POE1.

  • Started a mercenary first and got to level 5 in Act 1. I didn't like the crossbow and switched to mace and shield. Didn't like that either. Bad gear and hard monsters is not much fun when coupled with all new combat mechanics.
  • Got a Warrior through Act 3 to level 46 using a quarterstaff. By the time I got to Act 3 my guy was good enough to make the game feel much more like POE1 and busting through mobs and sometimes not even dying from bosses. I then had a friend come and show me his level 80 witch stormweaver! :lol: He was ripping through everything. He was 30 levels below his normal but I could see the potential. So...
  • Started witch (now level 7) going with spark and heading for some version of Stormweaver.
My second run through is going much faster and is helped by my already collected gear in my stash. BTW, at the end of Act 3 I had over 100,000 gold!

Early Access will for at least 3 months and maybe more as GGG works out kinks and balances, adds the 3 new Acts, and several more character classes. As expected the game is hard to learn and complicated to play well and make progress. But what about the Passive Tree? :lol: It will break your heart.
 
Victoria II: Austria

It's time for my annual partial game of Vicky II. Two years ago it was Prussia -> Germany, last year it was the Two Sicilies. I think three years ago was the Ottomans. This year it's Austria, whom I played many years ago when A House Divided was my most recent expansion - i.e. prior to the crisis updates.

Ten years in, in 1846, things are going well. Ferdinand I's advisors are encouraging an industrial-capital class, which has created a booming luxury clothing industry in Vienna, and is building out a nascent rail network. Austria is ranked 8th worldwide in industry, though it is still early days. Diplomatic efforts are successful, with Spain joining the Habsburgs in alliance, along with Portugal, Denmark, and most recently Sweden. Southern Germany is under Austrian sway and we're jockeying with France for influence in Italy.

The Ottoman Empire is attempting to re-assert control of Egypt, but along the way the Sick Man of Europe has lost its great power status. While some regarded this as an opportunity for Austria to expand into the Balkans, we have maintained the Concert of Europe, at the advise of Metternich.

The Empire is peaceful as well. Oh, sure, there's some guy who got on a podium and started speaking of an independent Moravia, but so far this industrialization phenomenon doesn't look like a threat to stability at all. 1848, you say? Just a year, a couple years down the road. Why would it be any more notably than 1838?
 
Victoria II: Austria

It's time for my annual partial game of Vicky II. Two years ago it was Prussia -> Germany, last year it was the Two Sicilies. I think three years ago was the Ottomans. This year it's Austria, whom I played many years ago when A House Divided was my most recent expansion - i.e. prior to the crisis updates.

Ten years in, in 1846, things are going well. Ferdinand I's advisors are encouraging an industrial-capital class, which has created a booming luxury clothing industry in Vienna, and is building out a nascent rail network. Austria is ranked 8th worldwide in industry, though it is still early days. Diplomatic efforts are successful, with Spain joining the Habsburgs in alliance, along with Portugal, Denmark, and most recently Sweden. Southern Germany is under Austrian sway and we're jockeying with France for influence in Italy.

The Ottoman Empire is attempting to re-assert control of Egypt, but along the way the Sick Man of Europe has lost its great power status. While some regarded this as an opportunity for Austria to expand into the Balkans, we have maintained the Concert of Europe, at the advise of Metternich.

The Empire is peaceful as well. Oh, sure, there's some guy who got on a podium and started speaking of an independent Moravia, but so far this industrialization phenomenon doesn't look like a threat to stability at all. 1848, you say? Just a year, a couple years down the road. Why would it be any more notably than 1838?
I αμ tempted to play again as Greece, but I should resist :yup:
 
You should resist!

I've now played to 1867. 1848 was just another year. In fact, it's been a relatively calm game. The only notable conflict in Europe was Russia invading the Ottomans and taking the southern Caucuses, in return for which we declared war on Serbia to force them to pay their debts after they declared bankruptcy. Along with our swarm of German and Italian allies, we dealt a defeat to Russia/Serbia, gaining prestige and the repayment of debts, but also showing that our forces were not especially strong; the idea to continue advancing and to free Finland was deemed to pose unacceptable risk of leaving us vulnerable to Prussian interference. Thus, the policy since has been to build forts (especially along the Prussian and Russian frontiers), increase the size of the army, and improve our army's capabilities, while studiously avoiding conflict and continuing to invest in commerce and industry.

It has been successful. Austria's number of soldiers is now slightly larger than Prussia's, compared to four-fifths and three-fifths the size before and after the Serbian conflict. Prussia has focused on military technology and is slightly more advanced, but we're still above-average, especially in fortifications. And most importantly, Prussia has been caged in. Sweden annexed Denmark diplomatically, Saxony remains in the Austrian sphere of influence along with Bavaria, and while Prussia has immense levels of industry, Austria is still 7th to 9th in industry depending on the month, and competitive.

Diplomatically, my allies are Scandinavia, Spain, and the Ottomans. France has been locked in a war with America for several years, during which time the Union defeated the Confederacy. The crisis du jour is the usual one at this stage of the game, Greeks seeking independence from the Ottomans. We've consistently sided with the Ottomans, with Russia siding with Greece, and Britain and Belgium siding with the us. So far, this has always led to a peaceful resolution that disappoints the Greeks. But from an Austrian standpoint, now that we've put aside our old rivalry with the Ottomans, there's little to be gained from supporting nationalist ambitions, and the longer the eyes of the world are focused on Greece, the longer they aren't focused on Croatia or Romania.

About a tenth of the population is engaged in a Jacobin movement, but the government finds this acceptable, as the movement is especially popular in Croatia, and as long as the Croatians are focusing on republicanism, they aren't focused on nationalism. Socialism is the new popular movement, and to a lesser extent, anarchism. At this point only 26% of the Upper House consists of conservatives, with 43% liberal, 12% socialist, 7% anarchist, and 13% reactionary. But it's the aristocrats and capitalists who are most liberal, and among the population at large, the numbers better support the status quo.

The great powers:

1. United Kingdom (1st in prestige, 1st in industry, 2nd in military)
2. France (2nd, 2nd, 9th)
3. Prussia (6th, 3rd, 5th)
4. USA (3rd, 5th, 12th) (on the verge of bankruptcy due to the war with France)
5. Austria (4th, 8th, 7th)
6. Belgium (5th, 4th, 20th)
7. Scandinavia (8th, 7th, 13th)
8. Ottoman Empire (7th, 18th, 14th)

Secondary powers:

9. Russia (104th, 14th, 3rd) (has been swapping with the Ottomans every few years, such that none of them ever have a sphere)
10. Bavaria (13th, 6th, 16th) (this could be interesting, three great powers in Germany? they're only 3 points out of 8th so it's entirely possible)
11. Spain (10th, 11th, 10th)
12. Japan (37th, 12th, 8th)
13 - 16: Netherlands, Baden, Switzerland, Two Sicilies
 
I may try a USA game in Vicky.

In EU, you don't get meaningful time with America, unless you deliberately create it in 1452. Done it via colonization. End up really OP. In HOI, America is preposterously overpowered. Which is of course historically realistic but kinda boring.

Vicky is really the only game where you can play as the USA while experiencing some of the fun strategic dilemmas other nations get to face. I think I'd enjoy defeating the Prussian army. IRL, Sheridan(famous Civil War general) described them as brave fellows but thought there was nothing of military value to be learned from them. I think he was right. US had developed logistical techniques with railways that Prussia would later exploit against France famously about 18 years before Prussia did. Sat next to each other, Union army, strategically, was above any Euro nation by 1865.

We were the best as early as that date, maybe even in power projection. It just wasn't made conclusively obvious because of a lack of meaningful involvement in the European theater. Does sound like fun to establish Pax Americana, via chauvinistic violence naturally, in Europe, about 80 years early.
 
Picked up GTA Definitive Edition via the Playstation sale. It's..an interesting experience playing it on a console for the first time. Some controls are intuitive, others not so much. Sorry, Mercedes, for gunning you down. I was trying to change the radio. The graphical upgrade is ....odd. Sometimes it's gorgeous ("Oh, hey, I can count the threads in this guy's suit!) and sometimes bizaare, like everyone's eyes. It's also wildly inconsistent from model to model. Most NPCs don't look any better.
 
Picked up GTA Definitive Edition via the Playstation sale. It's..an interesting experience playing it on a console for the first time. Some controls are intuitive, others not so much. Sorry, Mercedes, for gunning you down. I was trying to change the radio. The graphical upgrade is ....odd. Sometimes it's gorgeous ("Oh, hey, I can count the threads in this guy's suit!) and sometimes bizaare, like everyone's eyes. It's also wildly inconsistent from model to model. Most NPCs don't look any better.

They used AI upscaling for most of it and also worked off of the original mobile port rather than the PC/console versions. It's my understanding they fixed some of it through updates but that it's still a shadow of what it could be/should have been. I've been afraid to get it. :lol:
 
They used AI upscaling for most of it and also worked off of the original mobile port rather than the PC/console versions. It's my understanding they fixed some of it through updates but that it's still a shadow of what it could be/should have been. I've been afraid to get it. :lol:

I figured at $23 I couldn't lose much! The environment and lights are gorgeous so far. My main issue is learning PS4 controls. Haven't managed to beat Demolition Man because of helo controls -- seems to be no way to rotate things. Just managed to unlock the other island, and I'm trying to remember how I beat The Fastest Boat. Tried to get an edge by stealing the news helo, only to send it directly into the Gulf of Mexico...
 
Doesn't the game actually coach you and tell you what buttons to press for each movement?
 
Civ3 got resourced screwed. 1 iron deposit for 5 civilizations. I'm India war elephants don't need iron or horses. Unlike Knights.

French, Zulu don't have iron either. Loxod9n stomps stomp.

Incas have iron. I have tech, horses and gunpowder. Elephants upgrade to cavalry. I now have iron vs importing it.
 
They used AI upscaling for most of it and also worked off of the original mobile port rather than the PC/console versions. It's my understanding they fixed some of it through updates but that it's still a shadow of what it could be/should have been. I've been afraid to get it. :lol:
Oh, I'm aware. Was looking forward to the original release and then saw alllll the weirdness.
Doesn't the game actually coach you and tell you what buttons to press for each movement?

Most of the time, but the helo tutorial is limited -- "Hit this to rise, hit this this to sink, hit this to drop bombs", but I've yet to find out how to rotate the thing. Seems it's worse on the PC version of the DE -- in searching for answers to this I've found there's no key bindings for rotating helos in the PC version. I'm on the PS4 version, though, so there should be something out there. Right now I'm stuck on Demolition Man, which is kinda nostalgic: it took me many, many tries to learn helo controls on the PC 20 years ago enough to beat it. :lol:
 
Hrm. This is a weird place to make that point, now that I think about it. Civ games, since they never seem to actually update the AI scripts for the computer opponents, are probably at their very best at vanilla release. Everything they add afterwards simply degrades the opponent performance and thus the game in general
Yep, like this in strategy games cross board. In Stellaris, base game it is much harder to beat the AI. Buy all the DLC, and you'll be exploiting powerful mechanical options the AI flat ignores in no time.

Two guys at work play Magic the Gathering. Afaict, WOTC faced the dilemma long ago: how do you sell new content without disrupting balance? Quandary they resolved by saying bleep balance, strategy is in figuring out who can piece the most absolutely busted deck together from the 100k mechanical complexities we made.

Strategy games cannot use this approach. They're almost exclusively SP, and limitations of AI mean players near invariably handled introduction of increasing levels of complexity better. IDK what the solution is. From a player perspective, I often turn all DLC off and often get a better game from it.
 
Wait for the late super sale where only vanilla is at deep discount to try and sell the other 50 - 200 bucks of DLC and just ignore the DLC seems to be the way. Play indie games while waiting?

Edit: works a lot better when you get notifications about things being on sale. Which I had been too dumb to figure out. Thanks Synobun!
 
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Two guys at work play Magic the Gathering. Afaict, WOTC faced the dilemma long ago: how do you sell new content without disrupting balance? Quandary they resolved by saying bleep balance, strategy is in figuring out who can piece the most absolutely busted deck together from the 100k mechanical complexities we made.
So true. You had to rebuild your deck strategy after each expansion with some old cards losing power and new ones offering brand new options. Interestingly, the founder of Path of Exile was an avid MTG fan and applied that same development strategy to that game. The regular new leagues (3-4 per year) were all FTP but scrambled the balance of the various mods and gear such that one had to rethink how to play with each new league.
 
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