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

[Smellincoffee]

Tried a demo of Super Mega Baseball 3. I think I like the idea of baseball video games more than the reality. Switched to the remastered Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 & 2 and tried to learn console controls for a game my hands only know the PC controls for. Trying to get better at chaining tricks.

 

[Arakhor]

That does not excuse The Sims 4

Paradox doesn't make the Sims 4.

 

[EgonSpengler]

American Truck Simulator. Route 95 through Idaho is a fun drive (probably irl, too). Also picked up Montana, Wyoming and Colorado from the Steam Spring Sale.

Spoiler :

 

[Quintillus]

With Sim City 3000 Unlimited on sale for $2, I decided to create a city and see if there's an appetite for a CFC Succession Session, like we had for SC4 in 2013 - 2014. The first five years are played and posted, and now we just need a new City Council President to take the reigns for the next five years! Tagging @Thorgalaeg as the SC4 session's remaining active CFC member, and a potential candidate, but I'd love to see new mayors as well.

----

Otherwise, I've been dabbling in a variety of games. I modded GearCity to make it more difficult (and focused on the eastern U.S.), promptly went bankrupt, and tried again. Built a thriving auto engine company, licensing out designs for 10-20% of the autos being built, and once I'd built up some savings, expanded my own manufacturing business. Survived the Depression while many of my competitors went broke, built thousands of trucks for the Canadian Army during the war, and have wound up being the largest auto manufacturer circa 1950, although if my competitors can scale up production faster, they might take that crown back for a year or two.

I also resumed my Civ VI Poland game, where it's now 1940, and Polish modern armor are rolling into China, who foolishly teamed up with... Spain, I think? to invade my friends the Malinese. China is right next door to me, and the most backwards country in the game. We had a large war chest with nothing to spend it on, and all of a sudden we had something to spend it on. The nearest Chinese city has already been occupied, and there's little to prevent us from making more of them Polish. But we have no ambitions of fighting anyone challenging; instead our goal is to go into space. A satellite has already been launched, and we're working on a moon mission. We don't think we'll have any real rivals here over the long term, given our tech lead, but Spain has kept pace on satellites, so we'll see.

Meanwhile, ice melt threatens to open a Southeast Passage, which would give our southernmost cities ocean access. Unfortunately we lost a couple of tiles to rising ocean levels, but poor China, who hasn't warmed the planet at all, was the one who lost the most, with Beijing founded by many low-lying tiles. So far we're still the world's largest polluter, primarily from our shipping industry, but we've been working on cleaning up our image, and use only clean power, generated by hydro power with the help of our city-state ally Cardiff. Which reminds me, I probably should send another envoy or two there, so they don't switch allegiance to someone else.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

With Sim City 3000 Unlimited on sale for $2, I decided to create a city and see if there's an appetite for a CFC Succession Session, like we had for SC4 in 2013 - 2014. The first five years are played and posted, and now we just need a new City Council President to take the reigns for the next five years! Tagging @Thorgalaeg as the SC4 session's remaining active CFC member, and a potential candidate, but I'd love to see new mayors as well.

----

Otherwise, I've been dabbling in a variety of games. I modded GearCity to make it more difficult (and focused on the eastern U.S.), promptly went bankrupt, and tried again. Built a thriving auto engine company, licensing out designs for 10-20% of the autos being built, and once I'd built up some savings, expanded my own manufacturing business. Survived the Depression while many of my competitors went broke, built thousands of trucks for the Canadian Army during the war, and have wound up being the largest auto manufacturer circa 1950, although if my competitors can scale up production faster, they might take that crown back for a year or two.

I also resumed my Civ VI Poland game, where it's now 1940, and Polish modern armor are rolling into China, who foolishly teamed up with... Spain, I think? to invade my friends the Malinese. China is right next door to me, and the most backwards country in the game. We had a large war chest with nothing to spend it on, and all of a sudden we had something to spend it on. The nearest Chinese city has already been occupied, and there's little to prevent us from making more of them Polish. But we have no ambitions of fighting anyone challenging; instead our goal is to go into space. A satellite has already been launched, and we're working on a moon mission. We don't think we'll have any real rivals here over the long term, given our tech lead, but Spain has kept pace on satellites, so we'll see.

Meanwhile, ice melt threatens to open a Southeast Passage, which would give our southernmost cities ocean access. Unfortunately we lost a couple of tiles to rising ocean levels, but poor China, who hasn't warmed the planet at all, was the one who lost the most, with Beijing founded by many low-lying tiles. So far we're still the world's largest polluter, primarily from our shipping industry, but we've been working on cleaning up our image, and use only clean power, generated by hydro power with the help of our city-state ally Cardiff. Which reminds me, I probably should send another envoy or two there, so they don't switch allegiance to someone else.

Not time anymore to play games in any consistent way. :-(
I vaguely remember how to play SimCity anyway.

 

[EgonSpengler]

American Truck Simulator: Pulling two trailers with 58,000 lbs / 26,000 kg of crushed cars is like driving a train.

Along the Snake River in Idaho, heading for Oregon.

Spoiler :

Drawbridge on the Snake River. "Sister Christian" on the '80s radio station. This song always makes me think of the scene in Boogie Nights with Alfred Molina.

Spoiler :

 

[Quintillus]

Kyriakos playing a Paradox game as Greece? I don't believe it!

Pretty sure Greece doesn't have claims on Italy in the base game though? That must be part of the mod?

Not time anymore to play games in any consistent way. :-(
I vaguely remember how to play SimCity anyway.

Bummer! For what it's worth, I hadn't played SC4 since that succession game 10 years ago, and hadn't played SC3K since prior to that. Which might be part of why I wound up taking out so many loans to provide so few services...

American Truck Simulator: Pulling two trailers with 58,000 lbs / 26,000 kg of crushed cars is like driving a train.

Man, it looks like they've really upped the game graphically since I was cruisin' around California, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. I had the Oregon and Washington packs too, and I remember Portland, Oregon, being way more impressive than places like San Francisco that are considerably bigger cities in life, but seemed like small villages in-game. So I knew they were getting better as they went along, but it seems they really have kicked it up a level since then.

What do you use to play it? I was using a Steam Controller which seemed pretty all right (and is the only controller I have that's easy to use on modern Windows; my XBox 1 "Duke" and "Akebono" controllers take quite some configuration to get working).

-----

I've now also started a Cities: Skylines city. With the city simulator bug, I spent time getting all three simulators ready to go, and SC3K was the easiest, SC4 was moderate, and CS took the longest. Why? Largely because of all the mods needed to mold it into what I'm looking for. I found my old saves and found I'd tried it three times, not getting that far in any of those attempts. Played 3 years (game time) in 2016, three years in 2019, and seven years in 2021. Now I have more mods than I've had for any game:

- Hard Mode. This ships with the game so it's really more like an option. But it increases build and maintenance costs by 25%. Which is good as I'd always felt CS was too easy - and playing Sim City 3000 today confirmed that.
- No Money From Milestones. The free money from milestones (city sizes being reached) always felt gamey, and exacerbated the "too easy" problem. It basically gave you enough money to build every new building, but where's the challenge in that? Sim City had the right approach; you have to pay for the new buildings!
- Achieve It! Allow achievements with mods. I still have 0 achievements in all my other Paradox games because I'm not going to play in Ironman mode just to have achievements.
- Realistic Population. One of the things that always bugged me in CS was having two people per floor in residential high-rises, or a couple dozen working in a skyscraper. It felt wildly unrealistic. And meanwhile, you'd have 10 people in a suburban midsize house. Realistic Population fixes problems like this. I've also set it so Sims age one year per year.
- Lifecycle Balance Revisited. Fixes things like the Death Wave of all your immigrants from the same time dying at the same time, and Sims going to school from birth.
- Stats. Adds a sidebar with overviews of stats like happiness and crime rates. TBD how necessary it is.
- Snooper. Lets you see where vehicles/Sims are traveling from, as well as to. In theory will result in better insights into traffic.
- Chirpy Exterminator. Admittedly, it would have been nice to be chirped at when a fire broke out in my city that lacked a fire station, but it's worth it to not have all those annoying chirps about finding someone to water the plants while a Sim is on vacation (this is also why my plant of choice in real life is the cactus, followed by the artificial Christmas tree. They're both quite hardy).
- Speed Slider. I need to remember that I have this, it lets the game speed be adjusted incrementally.
- More City Stats. Adds way more statistics. Even more than Sim City has.
- Date Changer. Lets me start the game in 1900 instead of 2024. Still leaves things like nuclear plants unlocked, but the "always playing in the future" thing bothered me since I'd rather play in the past like in SC3K, or at least have a "ab urbe condita" date like in SC4.
- CSL Music Mods. Lets you add custom radio stations, which I proceeded to spend an hour doing.

Yeah... that's a lot of mods. I tend to prefer games that have good defaults or in-game options for good defaults to ones that have a million mod possibilities but you have to track down the mods that make it play the way you like. SC3K definitely wins in that regard. But maybe CS will scratch the itch with all these tweaks.

So... I have founded a new city, named Cloverleaf. It has about 1500 people, near the end of 1901. With a central commercial zone along the main street, and residential areas around it, plus a new residential area to the west, also with a small commercial zone in the center. And with Stonehenge in an undeveloped are of that district, for an unknown reason, but it's cool to have Stonehenge in the city. I recently bought a second plot of land where I plan to build farms, and almost went bankrupt right away as rather than built an ahistorical 1900 wind plant (the cheap and sensible option in CS), I built a coal plant. Which is now being properly utilized. Our roads are all gravel roads to be historically accurate, and surprisingly, that isn't causing any problems.

The only real problem is that it's almost impossible to see anything at night time, and it looks like I need another mod to adjust the gamma settings. Apparently C:S is optimized for TN (Twisted Nemantic) monitors, and my IPS (In-Plane Switching) monitor with more accurate colors consequently has too dark of nights for the game. It is surprising how much of a difference a monitor can make; I still remember the stark difference in Civ3 terrain colors when I switched from a CRT to a laptop with a TN cold-cathode fluorescent display.

Sigh... maybe I'm just one of the minority of people who would've preferred Sim City 5 if it hadn't been exclusively online for so long.

Edit: There are some nice features though. Like that I was able to name the local convenience store Kim's Convenience. And I expect I'll like the districts feature once I have a few more of them.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Man, it looks like they've really upped the game graphically since I was cruisin' around California, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. I had the Oregon and Washington packs too, and I remember Portland, Oregon, being way more impressive than places like San Francisco that are considerably bigger cities in life, but seemed like small villages in-game. So I knew they were getting better as they went along, but it seems they really have kicked it up a level since then.

Yeah, they've continued improving the parts of the game they'd done previously, in free updates, even as they release new states as paid DLC (Texas is out, and Kansas is coming soon). They're currently working on a massive update to California, which I think will be free. It doesn't seem to have a release date yet.

California Rework - California Trucking #4

SCS Software's official blog - information, screens & movies from our truck simulator games Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator.

blog.scssoft.com

What do you use to play it? I was using a Steam Controller which seemed pretty all right (and is the only controller I have that's easy to use on modern Windows; my XBox 1 "Duke" and "Akebono" controllers take quite some configuration to get working).

I just use keyboard & mouse. It is a little awkward, and I still haven't found my ideal keyboard layout. I don't play enough driving games to justify the price of a wheel-n-pedal rig, or even just a wheel (not one of the good ones, anyway, and I don't know if the cheap ones are worth it). I'm not quite up to 'full realism' on the controls yet. I use sequential (no clutch) gear-shifting and I keep braking intensity at the middle of the slider, which I've read is the most realistic setting. For me, that's kind of the minimum for interesting gameplay. I don't know if you can do H-shifter (w/ clutch) gear-shifting on a keyboard. If you can, I might try that, just to see how it feels. I left the ******er [let's call it an 'engine arrester' instead, because I guess the auto-censor doesn't like that word] and engine & exhaust brakes set to automatic, but I might try changing those, too. I think I left 'realistic fuel consumption' off, and driver fatigue on, but I might swap those around. I like to drive during the day, so I can enjoy the scenery, and having to sleep keeps screwing up my schedule. otoh, I almost never have to factor refueling into my plans, so I want to see if that adds an interesting variable or it's just a tedious chore.

 

[Quintillus]

Yeah, my interest in picking it up again has increased as they've worked their way east, now including some areas that I've driven through. So there can be some familiar along with some new.

Good to know that it's playable with the keyboard! I'm not a big controller fan (ergonomics, basically), and have pretty much only used my Steam Controller for ATS/ETS2 and Rocket League, which I haven't played in several years (and even in Rocket League, I only use it for football, but use the keyboard for hockey), and likewise, can't justify the expensive or space requirements of a wheel/pedal setup. I'll have to try it again with the keyboard and see how I like it; I would likely pick it up a bit more often that way.

----

Decided to give Skylines one more try. My city from the weekend was lacking in character; a grid layout with nothing particularly interesting, with planned expansion for a non-grid farm area, but no real direction. However, on the same map, there was Stonehenge, and at about the same I time I was reminded of Octagon City, a place I'd been near during recent travels, but which never really got off to much of a start. Making regular octagons proved to be a bit challenging with the snapping settings, although, now that I'm writing this, I've thought of another way that I could make octagons in a theoretically more reliable way. Anyway, I found hexagons to be much easier to make, and so Hexagon City was founded.

Hexagon City is centered around Stonehenge, our religious monument, and has now expanded out to include five "circles" of streets. Most recently I started making another hexagon, with the idea of having a grid of hexagons, but I think instead I'm going to just keep expanding our existing hexagon; it's what the oracles recommend, after all, more glory to Stonehenge.

Eventually we'll be limited by rivers, so I'll probably have to build another area outside the hexagon; maybe I'll try my new idea for construction octagons over there. Or maybe it'll be the Triangle City or the Radially-Connected-Square City or some other polygonal city. Fun with shapes that isn't readily possible in vanilla SC3K/SC4 (although I wouldn't be surprised if it's possible in SC4 + NAM).

 

[Kyriakos]

Kyriakos playing a Paradox game as Greece? I don't believe it!

Pretty sure Greece doesn't have claims on Italy in the base game though? That must be part of the mod?

Italy isn't a greek core, which is why I had high infamy.
But I now erased the game (surprise to no one ). It's annoyingly random, Britain getting allied to OT really can make this meaningless if you are playing as Greece, due to even 5 years mattering in a ridiculously small timeframe to play (100 years).
Maybe I was playing some other mod in the near past, though, since Egypt got great powers against it all the time, while I recall France or Spain intervening in its favor in older games.

 

[Quintillus]

Italy isn't a greek core, which is why I had high infamy.
But I now erased the game (surprise to no one ). It's annoyingly random, Britain getting allied to OT really can make this meaningless if you are playing as Greece, due to even 5 years mattering in a ridiculously small timeframe to play (100 years).
Maybe I was playing some other mod in the near past, though, since Egypt got great powers against it all the time, while I recall France or Spain intervening in its favor in older games.

Ah, I had missed the infamy.

Yeah, that's why I tend not to play countries that are surrounded by one, or sometimes two, much larger countries in Paradox games. Playing as Georgia, and wind up with the Ottomans and the Russians as neighbors... now what? But such is life. For what it's worth, I've seen Egypt be clawed apart by the Ottomans plenty of times; sometimes they get friends, sometimes not.

I'm now surprised the game has been erased... although I do wonder, do you also play Greece/Byzantines in games where the start situation isn't so dire? Like after Manzikert in Crusader Kings II, a time when there was plenty to reconquer, but not imminent risk of irrelevancy? Or, if the Macedonians aren't too far north to count, the Rome: Total War: Alexander campaign? There has to be a good Bronze Age or otherwise ancient game set in Greece as well... maybe Total War Sagas: Troy? Or one of the Field of Glory games?

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I've played 4.5 years of Hexagon City. Skylines is still missing something for me... maybe I should let Chirper chirp at me for a while... but the city has grown nicely.

Spoiler Hexagon City :

The plan for multiple hexagons was scrapped, and the hexagon grown to a depth of 6 rings. Then, realizing that our radial roads risked being overwhelmed with traffic, we sought and received permissions from the oracles to sub-divide the next sections, forming dodecagons, which were split organizationally into the three new arrondissements. The original radials remain our main commercial areas, with small neighborhood grocers and boulangeries scattered among the new, smaller radials.

The total population, with the Realistic Population mod (which decreases low-density population, which is 100% of this city's population, and increases high-density population), is 5723. I expect to hit 6000 easily once the quatrième arrondissement fills out, but have to hit 7500 to unlock high-density, which in turn will lead to a new region so I can complete the 3e arrondissement. Industry has been slowly being pushed outwards, where the extra roads in the dodecagonal section help prevent congestion. Tennis courts have been provided throughout the city, parks built, and a high school opened; basic services are thus at least somewhat established, and the populace is happier as a result. Although we did have one fire drill when our then-only power plant caught on fire.

With the dodecagonal sections now being nearly as wide as the outermost hexagon, the question arises, will we start building icositetragons? This is seen as unlikely, as the 2e arroindissement is close to the river. But I definitely want to build more polygon-shaped areas. Parallelogram City? I'll also likely build some non-polygon-shaped developments, to make use of the waterfront, and allow skyscrapers in some of those (whereas the hexagon uses the European building style that limits the heights of buildings to those associated with Paris).

 

[Kyriakos]

Ah, I had missed the infamy.

Yeah, that's why I tend not to play countries that are surrounded by one, or sometimes two, much larger countries in Paradox games. Playing as Georgia, and wind up with the Ottomans and the Russians as neighbors... now what? But such is life. For what it's worth, I've seen Egypt be clawed apart by the Ottomans plenty of times; sometimes they get friends, sometimes not.

I'm now surprised the game has been erased... although I do wonder, do you also play Greece/Byzantines in games where the start situation isn't so dire? Like after Manzikert in Crusader Kings II, a time when there was plenty to reconquer, but not imminent risk of irrelevancy? Or, if the Macedonians aren't too far north to count, the Rome: Total War: Alexander campaign? There has to be a good Bronze Age or otherwise ancient game set in Greece as well... maybe Total War Sagas: Troy? Or one of the Field of Glory games?

I have never played Byz with a good starting position in Paradox games (only in Medieval Total War). There'd be no point for me, since then the game is won before the first day played

That said, it was the wrong mod (hadn't played VicII in ages). Now tried with the correct one, and it should be fine. Two years in, the usual result:

The issue with this mod (GFM) is that Constantinople produces luxuries, so you can run the entire country even from that one province, without doing anything else + you can claim it from the start. But it makes life easier (not that I am into taking Constantinople without having a land line to it), because Egypt often manages to defeat the OE since it gets France as its overlord (or poor man's France, which is Spain) and I also feed it money. So it will form the arab league and I won't have to spend more years taking Syria/Arabia from the OE.
So in GFM the game is rarely wrecked, as long as you know what you are doing. In this mod I never ally with great powers until I am one myself, and the first war against the OE should be just me against them, otherwise the war score won't get to something irrational like 94% which is needed to take Thessaly/Macedonia/western Thrace/eastern Thrace in one war.

Still, even with all that, consider that already I have played 1/50 of the game. And this is nothing :\

 

[Quintillus]

Medieval II! How'd I forget that one as a Byzantine option?

So it's about finding the right level of challenge... not easy, not hopeless. I can relate to that being the sweet spot. Occasionally I like to play someone powerful, usually someone more mid-size, but rarely someone with no hopes (although I still have good memories of my Krakowian Vicky II AHD game, I wish I'd kept the save as I can't recall if I made it to Secondary Power or 8th-ranked Great Power status on the backs of maximized prestige and a vibrant telephone industry; needless to say there was no military expansion). Luxembourg in Hearts of Iron IV is a step too far for me though - although they've valiantly resisted the Germans for several years in my current game with significant help from France, whom I am playing, and additional help from mighty Belgium.

 

[Kyriakos]

A good VicII mod for that might be the New Era mod (which I think was created by a Greek). It starts at 1920, with the Greek-Turkish war, and it's pretty straightforward to win as Greece there (which was that IRL too, but the people here still managed to mess it up). Basically you land your own army (you have full naval supremacy) in Trebizond to take out the only turkish army that matters.
But the issue with that mod is that it goes on to 2020. No one wants to play to then. Still, it's mostly HOI (which I never played) with the VicII engine.

 

[Kyriakos]

I am pretty sure this game is already ruined.

Anything that could go wrong, did go wrong, and I even needed a few safety saves.
1. OE defeated Egypt in the oriental crisis, despite no other powers intervening. So now it will take a lot longer to /Sevres it.
2. No one would sell me weapons early on, so it took a while to have even a risk army.
3. I was in no position to defeat the OE alone, so had to ally with Russia. They are always greedy and thus the war went on for half a year longer so that they could get both a province and reparations - more importantly, I could not ask for the Aegean islands too (I took Crete from Egypt).
4. Combinations of the above meant that Naples is still alive, but I will deal with it now (I don't want to allow Italy any space, and preferably will ally with France or Austria too so as to 'deluge' them.

Only positives were that I did ok with my own army and navy. Didn't lose any battle (20+ divisions means you can get a massive stack, let alone the mobilized ones), and my 21 Man-o-War fleet actually defeated the ottoman one many times - they had something ridiculous like 40 Man-o-War and other trash ships, but the AI isn't good and my naval commander had excellent stats).

OE had Netherlands as its main ally in this war, along with Moldavia/Wallachia and Egypt. Russia dealt with them, mostly, iirc I only wiped out one 20K stack by Moldavia and a 25K stack (naval landing) by the Netherlands. I occupied 8 OE provinces, Russia occupied 15 (also 5 in Moldavia/Wallachia and naval blockaded the Netherlands), one of which was Constantinople.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I picked up Forever Skies (2024) in the Steam sale. I was looking for a new survival & exploration game, and this one's setting and concept are interesting. You're a traveler/scientist/explorer from an off-Earth colony, returning to Earth after a total environmental calamity has rendered it mostly uninhabitable. You build an airship to float above a layer of smog-like "dust", exploring the ruins of buildings and structures that stick up above the haze. It's... okay, so far. Still being developed. I admit to being slightly disappointed that they went with a kind of generic, sci-fi design to the airship instead of steampunk. I mean, I knew that was the case before I bought it, but now that I've played a few hours, I feel like that was a lost opportunity. The concept and setting would still work with a kind of retro-futuristic theme, like something from H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, or Edgar Rice Burroughs (or more recent authors, like Cherie Priest and Scott Westerfeld). As it is, it has very little personality. I've seen people compare the game to Subnautica, which was one of the reasons I picked it up, but so far it doesn't have any of the charm of that game. But it's still a work in progress, so we'll see. Maybe it'll grow on me.

 

[Kyriakos]

@Quintillus : https://www.moddb.com/mods/new-era-mod/images/1920-europe1#imagebox

 

[Quintillus]

A 1920 start? Could be interesting. I've played enough HOI4 that I don't think I could do Vicky II in 1936, though. Too many of the mechanics of HOI4 are too well-developed for that time period - both in terms of technology development and battlefield tactics and strategy - to play Vicky II in 1936, even if the economic part of Vicky II would be an interesting alternative.

Who controls Constantinople? Britain? Man... it makes me think Vicky III should really have a start date shortly before the Great War. Maybe 1911, with the Agadir Crisis brewing? Maybe a few years earlier? Or did they implement EU4/CKII style continual start date options? I've yet to pick it up, plenty of other games to play.

----

I've played another year of Hexagon City, and unlocked high-density zones. Unfortunately, unlike Sim City 3000/4 where you can just paint over low-density and let the property developer build bigger buildings when they please, Skylines requires de-zoning and thus destroying the low density. Le sigh. I'm also debating how I want to design traffic systems, since gravel roads are unlikely to be adequate forever. A few roads have already been updated; the 10th ring is a wide boulevard with trees in the center, and the radials around the industrial zone have been upgraded, including a tunnel under the 10th ring as an express route for trucks exporting finished goods from the city. I have visions of every other ring being a one-way ring in opposing directions, and am debating whether the radials should be alternating one-way roads (of which two already area), or wider two-way boulevards. Thoughts of busses and metro stations are also popping into my head, with circular bus routes on the rings being especially appealing.

And I played a few more years of Gear City, now in 1955, having recently bought Oldsmobile, who has a stellar reputation for luxurious vehicles, and with them Peerless, who will be my new top-tier money-is-no-object marque. My market share has started falling, just as my new factories are about to finish, but thankfully refreshed vehicles are just around the corner. Meanwhile, diesel is on the cusp of becoming mainstream, something that I don't think I've ever seen happen. I like to sell alternative-fuel vehicles but they are only ever sideshows, gasoline always has 90%+ market share and usually 99%.

 

[Kyriakos]

A 1920 start? Could be interesting. I've played enough HOI4 that I don't think I could do Vicky II in 1936, though. Too many of the mechanics of HOI4 are too well-developed for that time period - both in terms of technology development and battlefield tactics and strategy - to play Vicky II in 1936, even if the economic part of Vicky II would be an interesting alternative.

Who controls Constantinople? Britain? Man... it makes me think Vicky III should really have a start date shortly before the Great War. Maybe 1911, with the Agadir Crisis brewing? Maybe a few years earlier? Or did they implement EU4/CKII style continual start date options? I've yet to pick it up, plenty of other games to play.

----

I've played another year of Hexagon City, and unlocked high-density zones. Unfortunately, unlike Sim City 3000/4 where you can just paint over low-density and let the property developer build bigger buildings when they please, Skylines requires de-zoning and thus destroying the low density. Le sigh. I'm also debating how I want to design traffic systems, since gravel roads are unlikely to be adequate forever. A few roads have already been updated; the 10th ring is a wide boulevard with trees in the center, and the radials around the industrial zone have been upgraded, including a tunnel under the 10th ring as an express route for trucks exporting finished goods from the city. I have visions of every other ring being a one-way ring in opposing directions, and am debating whether the radials should be alternating one-way roads (of which two already area), or wider two-way boulevards. Thoughts of busses and metro stations are also popping into my head, with circular bus routes on the rings being especially appealing.

And I played a few more years of Gear City, now in 1955, having recently bought Oldsmobile, who has a stellar reputation for luxurious vehicles, and with them Peerless, who will be my new top-tier money-is-no-object marque. My market share has started falling, just as my new factories are about to finish, but thankfully refreshed vehicles are just around the corner. Meanwhile, diesel is on the cusp of becoming mainstream, something that I don't think I've ever seen happen. I like to sell alternative-fuel vehicles but they are only ever sideshows, gasoline always has 90%+ market share and usually 99%.

Britain controls most of the straits during the war, but then they go to the winner of the war (through an event). You can also ask for other territories.

A problem with ww2 in this mod is that you can only take part fully (=unlimited claims) if you are either a great power or a protectorate of one.

But imo far worse is that you then get ridiculous events, such as about the Eu, which simply don't correspond to anything in the game ^^ Also, decolonization kills most of the great powers.

As Greece, I had to struggle to get above #9, when no great war was going on. Italy will go to war against you for Corfu Aircraft carriers are ridiculously overpowered and in general the period after the 30s doesn't interest me anyway.

 

[Smellincoffee]

With Sim City 3000 Unlimited on sale for $2, I decided to create a city and see if there's an appetite for a CFC Succession Session, like we had for SC4 in 2013 - 2014. The first five years are played and posted, and now we just need a new City Council President to take the reigns for the next five years! Tagging @Thorgalaeg as the SC4 session's remaining active CFC member, and a potential candidate, but I'd love to see new mayors as well.

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Otherwise, I've been dabbling in a variety of games. I modded GearCity to make it more difficult (and focused on the eastern U.S.), promptly went bankrupt, and tried again. Built a thriving auto engine company, licensing out designs for 10-20% of the autos being built, and once I'd built up some savings, expanded my own manufacturing business. Survived the Depression while many of my competitors went broke, built thousands of trucks for the Canadian Army during the war, and have wound up being the largest auto manufacturer circa 1950, although if my competitors can scale up production faster, they might take that crown back for a year or two.

I also resumed my Civ VI Poland game, where it's now 1940, and Polish modern armor are rolling into China, who foolishly teamed up with... Spain, I think? to invade my friends the Malinese. China is right next door to me, and the most backwards country in the game. We had a large war chest with nothing to spend it on, and all of a sudden we had something to spend it on. The nearest Chinese city has already been occupied, and there's little to prevent us from making more of them Polish. But we have no ambitions of fighting anyone challenging; instead our goal is to go into space. A satellite has already been launched, and we're working on a moon mission. We don't think we'll have any real rivals here over the long term, given our tech lead, but Spain has kept pace on satellites, so we'll see.

Meanwhile, ice melt threatens to open a Southeast Passage, which would give our southernmost cities ocean access. Unfortunately we lost a couple of tiles to rising ocean levels, but poor China, who hasn't warmed the planet at all, was the one who lost the most, with Beijing founded by many low-lying tiles. So far we're still the world's largest polluter, primarily from our shipping industry, but we've been working on cleaning up our image, and use only clean power, generated by hydro power with the help of our city-state ally Cardiff. Which reminds me, I probably should send another envoy or two there, so they don't switch allegiance to someone else.

I love SimCity 3000. Still boot it up via GOG form time to time. Are save files interchangable between CD installs and GOG installs?


As for me, I'm exploring the Stardew Valley 1.6 update on the Meadowlands farm. Haven't gotten very far because of class & work, though.