What Video Games Have You Been Playing #11: I should go

[warpus]

So, wind back to that save's version on Steam and continue playing.

I will remember this. Oh how many grand Polish empires have been lost

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I hate it when I have some epic EUIV save going and I load it.. and.. nope, there's a new version, can't play anymore, my save is not compatible.

The short version of that statement is "I hate Steam."

 

[Zack]

I avoid early access games because I wind up being done with the game long before all the content and polish is finished. So now I try to wait for the full release so I don't spend all my hours playing an inferior version of the game.

 

[warpus]

The short version of that statement is "I hate Steam."

Hate is a strong word. I actually quite like how I have 650 games at reach anytime and I can be lazy about it and spent a small amount of $ per game overall. It's usually convenient about 95% of the time most of the time. Better than the CD collections that ended up getting lost or eaten by the cat

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Hate is a strong word. I actually quite like how I have 650 games at reach anytime and I can be lazy about it and spent a small amount of $ per game overall.

Me too. Well, my number is smaller but same concept. Mine just aren't attached to the world's most intrusive DRM system, a forced marketing tool, and the rest of the 5% annoyance that you get with your 95% convenience. They also didn't require doing business with a grotesquely deceptive bunch of scum who's enterprise I would rather see burned to the ground than having them get any dime of mine.

Yes, hate is a strong word...but well earned in this case in my opinion.

 

[Commodore]

Going back to Dragon Age Origins because my wife wants to see the rest of the story. Because I find the game to be such a chore to play, I just put it on the casual difficulty to ensure I never lose a fight and get through the game as quickly as possible.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Going back to Dragon Age Origins because my wife wants to see the rest of the story. Because I find the game to be such a chore to play, I just put it on the casual difficulty to ensure I never lose a fight and get through the game as quickly as possible.

Wouldn't putting it on the casual difficulty level and letting her play it herself serve the purpose even better?

 

[Commodore]

Wouldn't putting it on the casual difficulty level and letting her play it herself serve the purpose even better?

It would, and I've even suggested as much. Her response though is that she just likes to watch me play and doesn't want to play it herself.

 

[Quintillus]

I recently got back into Deathtrap. It's a splendid game. I've never even played the Van Helsing games it derives from, but it's an excellent tower defense/RTS/RPG hybrid, and does especially well in co-op.

Also nearing the end of my EU4 - Ryazan campaign. I've conquered about half of the Commonwealth in two wars, and now have almost all the East Slavic lands united. But in the east, the Timurids dealt me a significant defeat, taking two of the four top-level forts on our border in the process. Simply put, after slicing the Ottomans in two and dealing the Commonwealth their first major defeat, the half-million man army of the Timurids was too much for my manpower. It didn't help that by 1777, they had a better-quality army, and 300,000 mercenaries.

It's now 1797, I've become Russia so that I am an Empire, and thus could start a Golden Age, and I have three goals:

1. Take back what is rightfully ours from the Timurids, who recently rebranded as the Mughals. This will not be easy. They've been curb-stomping Delhi, and Gujarat, who controls about 1/3 of India, is their ally, too. At least I have a (relatively weak) Ming as an ally to divide the front.
2. Finish uniting the Ruthenians with our great empire. This should be easy.
3. Defeat the Ottomans once more for good measure. This should be somewhat easy.

If all goes swimmingly, 4 and 5 are take the rest of Holland from Revolutionary Great Britain, and defeat Denmark and make them remove me as a rival so they quit sending spies towards me. Denmark should be easy but tedious; Revolutionary Great Britain is a war I only expect to win via the Conquest casus belli, as their navy has over 140 capital ships (my French and Venetian allies can't touch that), and North America is their loyal colony. Really, a Revolutionary war would be a great war to finish the campaign, but vengeance on the Timurids takes priority.

On a hopeful note, in my last war with the Ottomans (which retook lands the Timurids had forced me to take back, plus Sevastopol), I defeated both the Ottomans and the Mughals put together, after the Mughals failed to enforce peace on me (first time I'd ever had that request put forth against me). But that relied heavily on the Conquest war goal bonus, and myself and Venice (fighting the Ottomans in a separate war) having occupied all of Ottoman Europe and Anatolia before the Mughals arrived. I did defeat a few Mughal armies, but one took my entire army to defeat, and winning long-term would have been very costly and likely Pyrrhic. A small win with low losses, and fighting the Mughals later without the Ottomans also being involved, made more sense.

haha I had to read that a couple times to figure out what was going on.

I hate it when I have some epic EUIV save going and I load it.. and.. nope, there's a new version, can't play anymore, my save is not compatible. I take long breaks from my games sometimes, but like returning to them

I will remember this. Oh how many grand Polish empires have been lost

It's worth noting that the old (pre-1.25) versions are now only available on the Paradox forums, due to not being GDPR compliant. I haven't fetched them myself, so I can't give the whole process - I have the ones I've played the most archived locally - but if you're wondering why you can find 1.17 or another version where you have a great Polish empire, that's why.

 

[warpus]

Currently I'm playing through a game of CKII, I have the Slavic DLC, the Islam one, and.. some other one. I started in 800AD or something similar and have been playing random kings/emperors and it's now 1150AD and Europe is a very strange place. Francia is a huge empire that stretches from Spain and convers most of present day France, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. I have been playing as them on and off trying to destabilize them, in order to bring balance to the continent, but nope.. last time I weakened the ruling dynasty they were overthrown by some other family which then went on a conquest of Austria and parts of Spain, expanding the empire further. I had lots of fun playing as Pictland, one time a bit early on in the game, and another time a bit more recently. They now control about 75% of the island and the family has several marriage ties to the Francian royal family.

I played as Poland on and off, and they popped into existence in 850AD or so while I was playing as Serbia (which was giant, stretching into central Asia somehow). For a while Pommerania, Poland, and Bohemia all had rulers from the same family, although Pannonia invaded Poland at one point and replaced the rulers with others. Lithuania also had the same ruling family at an earlier time, sharing it with Pommerania at the time.

It's a bit annoying when you conquer a kingdom but your succession laws only allow you to give one kingdom to 1 person. So if you are the ruler of Poland and you conquer Lithuania, your heir will only get one of those kingdoms. I assume these succession laws update later on due to some historical trigger? Well, I am hoping that happens anyway. My goal is to play through to 1440 and export to EUIV. I want a strange yet balanced world geopolitical stage at that point, so I don't want massive blobs for anyone, including Poland. But it just makes it harder to play when you know you can't really conquer other kingdoms and have to do it province by province. I think I can eventually change the type of government and succession law myself, but I never seem to be in a state to do that. Any tips in that vein are welcome!

The Byzantine Empire is by the way still around, they control southern Italy, Anatolia, and some of the Balkans.. oh yeah and most of present day Israel and some Jordan. I played as them a couple times and tried to destabilize them (for balance on the continent and for new kingdoms to pop up) and for a while they were engulfed in a series of civil wars one after the other, it was chaos there for quite a while.. but afterwards they seemed stronger than ever and continued expanding into Italy and the middle east.

Any tips on how to mess with these 2 empires a bit more? Ideally I wouldn't mind them breaking up into smaller kingdoms so it's more interesting for me. I wouldn't mind playing as Greece for instance.. or Germany.. I created both those titles when I was emperor, and I gave them to random people. But that didn't seem to help. The titles still exist, as do the kingdoms of Bavaria and a couple other ones. But I am not sure how to free them. I am a more seasoned EUIV player and CKII is just fun and games for me. It's really fun jumping from family to family and watching the map change as I screw around in various corners as time goes on

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It would, and I've even suggested as much. Her response though is that she just likes to watch me play and doesn't want to play it herself.

I'm jealous. I've been trying to get my wife to watch me play The Last of Us for years as it's a very scary zombie game with an amazing story that she'd love.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Other Civ 6 game went a bit off the rails. Wanted to be peaceful, but ended up rushing Mapuche because they started too close. The conquered France because they were also too close to Mapuche,
Then had to attack Georgia to the east because they sent two Settlers so an area I wanted to colonize later. The Settlers had escorts, but I had some military units there, just in case.
Then, after centuries of me being nice, Georgia voted for a military emergency against me. Of course I took the opportunity to conquer some of their cities.
Then another military emergency against me...
Oh, and Saladin was to the north and declared a surprise war against me mostly because I was another religion (and I converted some of his cities, because he was going to hate me anyway).
Tried to flip some cities and city states with spies. I think six or seven of my spies failed their missions and were killed, despite having ~75% chance of success.
Anyway, got a culture victory around 1800...

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Nintendo is being sued over the controllers for the Switch. They used metal-on-plastic contacts in the joystick mechanism and they wear out very quickly, resulting in permanent control drift. This isn't the first time they've flubbed hard on controller quality - the N64 controller was sort of legendary in the way that the joysticks would grind down and leave a film of plastic inside the joystick well. I don't remember that one being particularly susceptible to drift though, the ugly film was more of a cosmetic issue than a playability one as far as I recall. Meanwhile, the Switch joycons can be completely unusable in as little as 6 months of hard use.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Nintendo is being sued over the controllers for the Switch. They used metal-on-plastic contacts in the joystick mechanism and they wear out very quickly, resulting in permanent control drift. This isn't the first time they've flubbed hard on controller quality - the N64 controller was sort of legendary in the way that the joysticks would grind down and leave a film of plastic inside the joystick well. I don't remember that one being particularly susceptible to drift though, the ugly film was more of a cosmetic issue than a playability one as far as I recall. Meanwhile, the Switch joycons can be completely unusable in as little as 6 months of hard use.

The right hinge on my Nintendo 3DS XL has a giant crack in it, and a piece of plastic came right off. It's a common problem. It's not covered by warranty (so I'd have to pay a crap of money for Nintendo to fix it) and fixing it myself by replacing the casing requires more dexterity than I have.

 

[Lexicus]

mfw i conquered the east

 

[Phrossack]

View attachment 530450

mfw i conquered the east

I see Baktria is no longer your friend. Good.

My first Parthian campaign was delayed by the outbreak of relentless peace. I shan't let it plague my next game.

 

[Lexicus]

I see Baktria is no longer your friend. Good.

Baktria had a great life as a one-province satrapy of mine that rebelled and got big for its britches while all my armies were in the west, then was completely wiped out by the divine flame that is the vengeance of the King of Kings

 

[FriendlyFire]

Nintendo is being sued over the controllers for the Switch. They used metal-on-plastic contacts in the joystick mechanism and they wear out very quickly, resulting in permanent control drift. This isn't the first time they've flubbed hard on controller quality - the N64 controller was sort of legendary in the way that the joysticks would grind down and leave a film of plastic inside the joystick well. I don't remember that one being particularly susceptible to drift though, the ugly film was more of a cosmetic issue than a playability one as far as I recall. Meanwhile, the Switch joycons can be completely unusable in as little as 6 months of hard use.

The gameboy LCD display used some kind of cheap bio material and all of them are destroyed by exposure to sunlight and time.
It was one way Nintendo was able to manufacture them cheap but well there not designed to last. Those were the days of Japanese consumer electronic culture
But Nintendo should know better by now, it weird because the buttons are all designed for excessive use and wear while other parts are made to save costs and weight.

 

[warpus]

So this is what I'm doing in my CKII game right now @ 1149

The Francian Empire had a bunch of kingdoms in it that I created a while ago. I created some more and am now loading the game as the kings and declaring wars of independence. So basically huge civil war is coming.

Then I will load as a Byzantine King (if they exist) and throw a couple new countries into the mix. Then I will load the game as the picts and watch the fireworks

edit: It is the year 1153. Here you can see some of the remnants of the Francian Empire. Decently sized parts of it still exist south of here and in Iberia

Spoiler :

If you look closely you will see that France, Francia, and Franconia all exist. I think this is amazing personally, although it remains to be seen how long all 3 will last

 

[Ajidica]

Playing Rome 2 made me want to go back and play Rome 1 as the Scythian hordes. They have a slow start because their infantry is limited to archers and basic axemen (and they don't start with the ability to recruit axemen) so instead of storming cities you have to sit and wait to siege them out. Just conquered Thrace and investing my profits into recruiting some Sarmatian Nobles before invading Dacia.