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

[Arakhor]

Gorogoa has a beautiful art style and an interesting narrative, told without a single word of text. I'd certainly give that a go.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Total War: Three Kingdoms - Finally won the Lu Bu Campaign with Lu Bu still alive. I had to reload to a scumsave when Meng Ho started thrashing me in the South with Elephant units and Lu Bu subsequently died of old age, leaving his incompetent, cowardly son Lu Ju (Champion/Green) and heir as faction leader. I tried playing it out for a bit but it was a disaster, so I abandoned it and reloaded to a prior save, and made a very expensive set of Peace treaties with Meng Ho, and DuoSo, (the two Nanman leaders) along with Shu Han (Liu Bei's faction) shortly after his death.

Once I made peace with these rivals (vassalizing all three) I was able to steamroll all the remaining factions I was at war with, and capture the remaining Capitol to claim the undisputed Emperorship, thus achieving a Victory condition for the campaign. IIRC the year was about 220 or so, meaning it took 26 IG years to win. Despite getting the victory condition, I decided to continue playing, since at this point, I am enjoying all the buffs and items my characters have collected and the beautiful army compositions I've put together.

So I continued playing, and earned another victory condition, similar to a "Domination" win in Civ, but the game let me continue playing, so I think I will go for a complete conquest of China by totally eliminating all rivals. I may start by absorbing all the vassals that I did not give guarantees of autonomy to. Might as well see what happens.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Civilization VI: Queen of Ndongo

Spinning up a new game of Civ VI, Emperor, Large Continents & Islands map, Barbarian Clans and randomized Tech and Civics trees. Randomizing the leader choice, because I couldn't be bothered to pick one, I am Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba.

I know nothing about Nzinga or the Kingdom of Kongo, so I took to Google. I can see right away that the game developers took some liberties. Actually, they kind of made a hash of things. I guess I can't blame them too much. African politics and history was already complicated before the European colonial powers - Portugal, in this case - came along and [mucked] things up. And the Civ games made the choice early on to wedge every civilization on Earth into one particular model. Plus, they have to find enough information on each civ to give them the traits, units, buildings and whatnot that would slot into the Civ gameplay systems. A lot of human societies didn't leave written records, so we're stuck with the more modern (mis)impressions and (mis)interpretations of the European soldiers, explorers and missionaries who wrote down what they thought they were seeing. (This is why we'll probably never see the really early human societies that didn't last long, like the Hittites or the indigenous North Americans who built the Cahokia mounds in Missouri. Hattusa and Cahokia are both city-states in Civ VI, fwiw).

Okay, so, first of all, I'm not actually playing the Kingdom of Kongo at all. Historically, Nzinga was associated with the modern country of Angola, not the Kingdom of Kongo. She was born into the Kingdom of Ndongo, a contemporary of the Kingdom of Kongo. So in my game, this is the Kingdom of Ndongo, founded on the banks of the Kasai River. And indeed, when I mouse over my leader's portrait on the UI, it shows Nzinga Mbande of the Ndongolese Civilization, although I'm using so many mods, I have no way of knowing if that's a feature of the base game or not. Also, I don't think they would've called themselves 'Ndongolese.' The people of Ndongo were the Mbundu (or Ambundu). The Ambundu people are still around today, and comprise about 25% of the population of contemporary Angola. Modern DNA testing has revealed that American actors Isaiah Washington and Chris Tucker have Ambundu heritage.

Spoiler :

IRL, the Kasai River is a tributary of the Congo River that starts in Angola. In my game, there is no Congo River, the mighty Kasai is the major river here. On this world, the Kasai and its two major tributaries, the Inkisi and the Tsuapa, run north to the sea, like the Nile on Earth. On both worlds, it sometimes runs pink, orange, or even red, due to sediments in the water. These pictures are of the Kasai on Earth, but I think they represent the Kasai on my world well enough: A wide, slow river meandering through flat, marshy grassland with patches of forest. I can't find much about the ecology of the river. An English-language travel site promoting a fishing trip on the Kasai promises "ferocious tigerfish", "massive catfish" and "other elusive, some still unnamed, freshwater monsters." Another site notes that there can be hippos in the Kasai, but they're rare. I think crocodiles can live lots of places, so they're probably around, too.

Spoiler :

My first city and capital, Kabasa, has a lot of floodplains, a lot of rainforest and swampland. According to Wikipedia, "kabasa" is the Kimbundu word for capital and may not have been the name of a particular town or city. Similarly, the Kimbundu word for king is Ngola, from which the modern country of Angola derives its name. "Ki-" is the Bantu prefix for 'language of the so-and-sos.' So the language of the Mbundu people is Kimbundu, and the language of the Kongo people is Kikongo.

I see an ocean to my East and a long mountain range to my North, which runs East-to-West all the way to the coast. I have some diamonds, dyes, obsidian and tobacco within easy reach, and a few good spots for campuses at the feet of the mountain range. I can't tell yet which hemisphere I'm on. I sent a couple of Warriors on walkabout, then founded my 2nd and 3rd cities in the Ancient Era: Kindu on the Tshuapa River and Mbanza Mbamba on the Inkisi. Heading West, one of my warriors found a fourth major river - the Senegal - and my first neighbor, Mansa Musa of the Kingdom of Mali. Technically, neither of us is a kingdom yet, we're both still chiefdoms, but we're thinking big. It's not a coincidence that my immediate neighbor is also an African civ, I left the Cultural Link placement setting on. I'll be curious to see how many African nations there are. The mountain range to my north is called the Jebel Nagashush, which makes me think Ethiopia may be on the other side. I'm not sure why I should be forced to refer to the mountains by their Ethiopian name instead of their Kimbundu name, but whatevs...

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I'm not sure why I should be forced to refer to the mountains by their Ethiopian name instead of their Kimbundu name, but whatevs...

Whoever discovers them first names them

 

[EgonSpengler]

Whoever discovers them first names them

That's the game mechanic, yes. But I think that's a dumb game mechanic, in this case. It doesn't make sense that I would even know what a civ I haven't met yet calls a thing. The ocean to my East, for example, is the Gulf of Mexico. Why would I call it the Gulf of Mexico?

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

That's the game mechanic, yes. But I think that's a dumb game mechanic, in this case. It doesn't make sense that I would even know what a civ I haven't met yet calls a thing. The ocean to my East, for example, is the Gulf of Mexico. Why would I call it the Gulf of Mexico?

My rationalisation was that what happens when you first discover a natural feature, your scout first asks the locals what they call it. They don't know, so your scout says 'I hereby christen this peak Mt. Egon!' and moves on. Later when another civ's scout reaches the peak, he asks the locals what they call it and they reply 'Mt. Egon' so he calls it that.

This of course brings up the question of why the locals don't call anything by a name until the big boys come around and tell them...

 

[EgonSpengler]

Civilization VI: The Ndongo Empire

Mansa Musa went and did it. I was content to share the area, which, it turns out, is pretty big. I told him. Don't do it. Don't. Not a good idea, man. *sigh* Ngola Nzinga Mbande welcomes our Bambara cousins into the new Kingdoms of Ndongo and Mali. I really don't understand the AI in this game. I think I basically just won the game, in the Classical Era. Still a ways to go, obviously, but now I have the space alloted to both our nations to grow into, and it looks like I have the whole southern portion of this landmass to myself.

On Earth, the Bambara (or Bamana) people were descendents of the Mandika (founders of the Ghana Empire, which was not in modern-day Ghana). It was the Bambara who founded the Mali Empire, and they are the largest ethnic group in Mali today, about 30% of the population. On my world, the Bambara now comprise about 40% of the Empire of Ndongo, and the Mbundu are about 60%. (Actually, with the Tribal Villages and Barbarian Camps I've cleared, there's probably 1-2% of other ethnities, like the Yaka and the Imbangala.) I captured 3 Malian cities and 2 Settlers, and Niagassola and Niani, the former capital of Mali, are now my two biggest cities. I read that Bambara society is patrilineal, while Mbundu society is matrilineal. I hope that's not going to cause any friction. (It won't. The game's not that deep. There is no penalty to Happiness or Loyalty in captured cities, once their original Civ is out of the game. There's a big motivation to wipe out the other civ, once you've started capturing some of their cities. If you leave them with even one city, they're a constant thorn in your side for the rest of the game; but if you send them packing, it's almost as if they were never there. You get a penalty to your accumulation of Diplomatic Favor for every Original Capital you occupy, but that's about the only consequence of early conquest. Later on, other Civs will get perturbed if you start wiping out their friends, but this early in the game, only Ethiopia even knows that Mali was once an independent kingdom. He denounced me, but with this mountain range separating us, that's really all he can do. He's already getting over it.)

The Empire now stretches across 5 great rivers: The Kasai, Tshuapa and Inkisi in Ndongo, and now the Senegal and the Gambia in Mali. Not many hills, it's all pretty flat. Lots of floodplains and swamps, lots of forest and rainforest. I see now that Mali was up against another long mountain range to its West, the Trara Mountains, which run North into Ethiopia and South, nearly to Sangareya Bay. Musa could've expanded West, though. There's a gap in the mountains big enough to move through, and on the other side is more flatlands, with a couple of big freshwater lakes, Lake Tumba and Lake Mai-Ndombe. And unlike to the North, where Ethiopia and Nubia are on the other side of the Jebel Nagashush mountains, there's only 3 city-states on the other side of the Trara Mountains. Ripe for the taking.

So now I have 9 cities, am poised for a Heroic Medieval Era, with borders protected by mountains and oceans, and lots of room to move about peacefully, settling where I please (Barbarians and City-States notwithstanding, of course). The Medieval Era will probably see a round of expansion, with all 9 of my cities producing a Settler, more or less all at once. I'm not currently leading in any of the important metrics - science, faith, diplomatic favor - but I'm already the largest nation by number of cities and land area, and I'm about to double in size. I think I've already all but won this game, and I can pick my victory condition (even a Religious Victory is on the table, which is unusual for me). The Kingdom of Kongo's Ndongo's special abilities haven't even come into play yet. That 50% bonus to Great Artist, Great Musician, and Great Merchant Points is [flipping] insane.

 

[warpus]

I played some more Transport Fever 2 last night, focused on upgrading and expanding my Kyushu island infrastructure and connections.

Spoiler :

Kyushu is the southernmost of the 4 main Japanese islands. In the above screenshot you are looking at it from the north-west (towards the south-east). Hiroshima, Osaka, Tokyo, etc. are all off-screen to the top-left.

The island to the left of it is Honshu, the main Japanese island. That is basically its southernmost tip. That's where I have the terminus of my main Shinkansen lines (in Shimonoseki), which run northeast all the way to Sapporo. If you look closely you will see 4 distinct railway lines heading northwest from there, 2 of those are bullet train lines and 2 are more regional connections. That train station is my major southern transit hub.

What I did yesterday was connected this transit hub to the Kyushu airport using a rail link (the curved bright green line that connects both islands). I have 4 trains running back and forth from transit hub to airport and back. Before this there used to only be an LRT connection that went through busy parts of multiple cities.. It was okay but this is much more direct and much faster.

Yesterday I also expanded my new Kyushu rail line (the black route) to Nagasaki. It is the only rail route on the island and only has 4 stops, sort of spanning the island from end to end. The Nagasaki expansion also meant new LRT routes there (blue and red), as well as other LRT connections to the new rail station. I also worked on new LRT connections and upgrades on other parts of the island, usually involving the other train stations on the black line.

Most other routes you see on the map are either LRT or BRT express routes, for trams or buses that run in their own lanes. The two water routes are commercial/industrial/cargo connections. The air link is yellow and should stand out too.

The station by the airport is itself a major transit hub, it's got stops for the black Kyushu line, the bright green express rail connection to the southern transit hub, as well as an LRT station where 4 LRT routes begin. Those are usually express LRT connections that bring people from cities to the airport transit hub.

I basically only have 2 airports on the whole map. The other one is by Sapporo, where it is connected to the northern end of my Shinkansen set of routes in a similar fashion. The airports are meant to relieve stress from my Shinkansen routes and give people who want to go far an alternate way.. otherwise my rail lines get clogged up with people who stay on the train for most of the ride, and what you get are full trains bypassing stations in the middle on a regular basis.. then stations getting overloaded.

Anyway, I've now beefed up the public transit infrastructure on both Hokkaido and Kyushu to a certain level of satisfaction. Everything is well connected. My attention now turns to the smallest of the 4 main islands, Shikoku. Several cities there have LRT routes, but most don't.. There is also no rail link from the island that connects to my main Shinkansen routes (the spine?).. and in fact no rail on that island at all. There are no obvious design choices for that.. so it is something I will have to think about. It's just that the island is smaller, and sorta blobish, and it doesn't make sense to build a small circular route.. so I'll have to figure something out. But solving problems like that is why I love this game, so it will be fun

edit: bonus shot of the airport transit hub

Spoiler :

 

[EgonSpengler]

I played some more Transport Fever 2 last night, focused on upgrading and expanding my Kyushu island infrastructure and connections.

Spoiler :

View attachment 689188

Kyushu is the southernmost of the 4 main Japanese islands. In the above screenshot you are looking at it from the north-west (towards the south-east). Hiroshima, Osaka, Tokyo, etc. are all off-screen to the top-left.

The island to the left of it is Honshu, the main Japanese island. That is basically its southernmost tip. That's where I have the terminus of my main Shinkansen lines (in Shimonoseki), which run northeast all the way to Sapporo. If you look closely you will see 4 distinct railway lines heading northwest from there, 2 of those are bullet train lines and 2 are more regional connections. That train station is my major southern transit hub.

What I did yesterday was connected this transit hub to the Kyushu airport using a rail link (the curved bright green line that connects both islands). I have 4 trains running back and forth from transit hub to airport and back. Before this there used to only be an LRT connection that went through busy parts of multiple cities.. It was okay but this is much more direct and much faster.

Yesterday I also expanded my new Kyushu rail line (the black route) to Nagasaki. It is the only rail route on the island and only has 4 stops, sort of spanning the island from end to end. The Nagasaki expansion also meant new LRT routes there (blue and red), as well as other LRT connections to the new rail station. I also worked on new LRT connections and upgrades on other parts of the island, usually involving the other train stations on the black line.

Most other routes you see on the map are either LRT or BRT express routes, for trams or buses that run in their own lanes. The two water routes are commercial/industrial/cargo connections. The air link is yellow and should stand out too.

The station by the airport is itself a major transit hub, it's got stops for the black Kyushu line, the bright green express rail connection to the southern transit hub, as well as an LRT station where 4 LRT routes begin. Those are usually express LRT connections that bring people from cities to the airport transit hub.

I basically only have 2 airports on the whole map. The other one is by Sapporo, where it is connected to the northern end of my Shinkansen set of routes in a similar fashion. The airports are meant to relieve stress from my Shinkansen routes and give people who want to go far an alternate way.. otherwise my rail lines get clogged up with people who stay on the train for most of the ride, and what you get are full trains bypassing stations in the middle on a regular basis.. then stations getting overloaded.

Anyway, I've now beefed up the public transit infrastructure on both Hokkaido and Kyushu to a certain level of satisfaction. Everything is well connected. My attention now turns to the smallest of the 4 main islands, Shikoku. Several cities there have LRT routes, but most don't.. There is also no rail link from the island that connects to my main Shinkansen routes (the spine?).. and in fact no rail on that island at all. There are no obvious design choices for that.. so it is something I will have to think about. It's just that the island is smaller, and sorta blobish, and it doesn't make sense to build a small circular route.. so I'll have to figure something out. But solving problems like that is why I love this game, so it will be fun

edit: bonus shot of the airport transit hub

Spoiler :

Taking public transportation in Japan is like being in a sci-fi movie.

 

[warpus]

Taking public transportation in Japan is like being in a sci-fi movie.

Especially the high speed trains. They depart right on the second, as printed on your ticket, and move so smoothly and quietly that it doesn't really feel like you're on a train. You hear this hum like you might on a plane, but nothing shakes. It's amazing. The passengers are also for the most part 99.99% courteous, there's nobody listening to music on their phone without headphones, and those who are aren't cranking the volume up so you'll hear. Nobody's talking loudly, nobody's eating loudly, it's just a pleasure to ride these things. And when it's time to get off, those waiting to get on will always be standing off to the side, so you can get out first.

My first experience buying a bullet train ticket was amazing too. I showed up at the train station with all my stuff and waited in line for about 20 minutes. I figured it would be a while until I was actually on the train, but it literally took 20 seconds from the point when I sat down and asked for the fastest next train to Kyoto, to the ticket being handed to me and me being told that my train is departing in 15 minutes from a platform 3 minutes away. When you get to the platform, you can see your train type's car numbers printed right on the floor, so you know where you'll have to wait and where your car will stop.

The one thing is the sheer number of people making their way through some of these stations. My first experience with this was at the busiest train station on the planet. It was a bit overwhelming to say the least, there's seas of people and multiple levels of connecting hallways and passageways. It was weird though, when you looked around you saw chaos, but it was a sort of ordered chaos. Everybody knew where to go and nobody was getting in the way. Like it was all choreographed.

Getting around Tokyo was a treat, so easy to just ask google maps how to get to where you want to go.. and there was usually a subway stop close to where you were and one close enough to where you wanted to go... just soo many crisscrossing subway lines throughout the city.

Anyway, yeah, my experiences riding trains and other public transit in Japan is what inspired this save. I am heading back to Japan next year, and am really looking forward to it. When people ask me, I always say that the best parts of Japan are the trains, the food, the people, and the toilets, not necessarily in that order.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I've been playing the Beach Farm in Stardew Valley -- I think it's the only one I've not tried yet. The inability to use sprinklers on most of the map really curbed my usual expansion policy, but at the end of year one I think I've done well. Steel watering can, pick, and axe; upgraded house plus a coop, salmon pond, and upgraded barn. House increasingly full of preserving jars and three kegs. Community center has 2 rooms done, the only remaining ones being the pantry (I didn't get quite enough gold star pumpkins in fall) the money one, and the fish tank. All I need is a pufferfish for the tank, but I didn't fish up ANY last summer. I'm not going to beat my record for fastest community center completion, but considering how limiting the beach farm is I think that's pretty good. Also on the verge of marrying Leah once it turns Sunday and I can give her salad to get the last heart.

 

[Quintillus]

I've primarily been playing Railroad Tycoon II, specifically the Italy & The Alps map, a community map by Steve & Geoffrey Banks, the same two people who designed the Poland 1945 map I was playing earlier. It's the most difficult map I've played, yet alluringly so. The goals seem so attainable, and yet... they're not. It took me three tries to get the bronze medal, and nine tries to achieve gold, with no other bronze or silver in between. And yet for most of those attempts, I thought I at least had a chance at another bronze until the last couple of years. The one time I didn't, I fell victim to a 7.5-year-long recession while having a significant debt load.

The map takes place in Piedmont, the Aosta Valley, and nearby parts of Switzerland, Lombary, Liguria, and alpine France. You start with access to Piedmont and can build anywhere, but you have seven goals. One, personal net worth, is pretty much a given unless you try to buy up everything at once and go broke while having over-extended yourself on margin (I only did this twice). Another, $10 million in industrial profits, tends to help with the others, so long as you don't overshoot it by too much. The other five are hard, and involve moving cargo to the three major Alpine tunnels in the area - the Frejus Tunnel, which has been a major connection between Italy and France since its opening in 1871, the Simplon Tunnel, which was the lowest Alpine pass between its opening in 1906/1921 [east/west tunnels] and the opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel in 2016, and the Gotthard Tunnel, the predecessor of the modern base tunnel, which opened in 1882. You have to build tracks to each of these tunnels, which is not easy, and for the gold medal, also carve a new path to Lausanne, Switzerland.

Then you have to haul the cargo. Swiss cheese to Italy. Luxury clothes from Milan to Lausanne. And Fiat automobiles to each of the three tunnels, to compete in the Swiss, German, and French markets. The latter is the toughest task, as to do so you have to make Pirelli tires in Milan, which require rubber, which can only be acquired by exporting finished goods (such as metalworking or textiles) through the tunnels of the Ligurian ports. Cars also require steel, which you may be able to make locally in the Aosta Valley if neither the coal nor the iron has run out, or which you can import in exchange for fine Italian foods as exports. You may also be exporting food for steel to create metal goods to export for rubber for tires, or Italian wines in exchange for aluminum, for the same purpose.

The combination - creating enough cars to export to each tunnel, having the money to build all the rails required, and having the time to move all the cargo - is most difficult, with the mountainous terrain not helping. It's a very good idea to give the scenario-goal-relevant trains the highest priority, above even your express passenger trains, as one late arrival - I'm looking at you, Pirelli tires - can throw everything off.

Along the way, there are various optional goals that may be helpful aids, or a golden-apple-like distraction. Do you help Olivetti of Ivrea export typewriters? Do you help the locomotive works at Ferroviaria after the war, and if so, how intensively (you'll need a lot of metal for that and automobiles!). Is investing in the Aosta Valley a priority, or the French connection at Briancon? Will you help build the new Mont Blanc tunnel, or do you have other priorities to worry about? All offer rewards, but can they be accomplished without losing focus on the main goal?

Spoiler Tips :

The map is different each time, so your mileage will vary, but...

Electric track is too expensive, particularly as the best diesels are available. You need lots of track, most of which will be added mid-late game, electric won't pay for itself.

Don't chase every passenger or load of cargo. Find highly profitable routes. I usually give each town along the way at least token service, not this time, if they didn't offer enough value, they weren't getting a station and locomotive.

Beware interest. Several runs got bogged down in too much interest, too poor of an economy. Anything more than 6%, 7% max, becomes risky as the rail network is built out towards the mountains beyond the best profits, and locomotives age. You need loans to fuel growth, but not necessarily loans at any cost. I knew the gold run had serious potential when I was setting record profits even as the economy dipped into a recession.

Selectively upgrade locomotives. The diesels, even 1945 models, are worth upgrading to, but also consider upgrading to faster diesels (especially for tires) or more mountain-friendly ones for those crucial routes. If you can afford them, that is... on one of my more successful runs, where profitability waned late, my modus operandi became buying the cheapest locomotive with decent speed to save money, figuring its low reliability probably wouldn't bite me before the scenario ended.

Have insurance trains. Even the most reliable locomotives can crash, especially over those tough mountain passes, so if you have the cash, have at least one extra train beyond what the objectives required. On my gold medal game, the one that crashed was my backup insurance train, but it could've been another!

Is there anything that you will find in RTII, and not in similar games like OTTD?

It's going to sound odd considering it's a 1999 game that runs at 1024x768 (or 800x600 if you prefer), but RTII's graphics are much better, and it would be hard to go back to either OTTD/Locomotion or Railroad Tycoon Deluxe after having played RTII. It partly the art style and detail, partly the detailed and gradual elevation model giving picturesque hills, which happen to also make for interesting gradient work when laying tracks.

The exclusive focus on trains is a plus for me (although I need to read that post about Transport Fever), and the scenario library is great. Maybe OTTD also has a great scenario library, and maybe you can ignore everything that's not a train?

The bluegrass soundtrack is also great. I find it hard to build railroads in games without bluegrass soundtracks now. The glory of distributing the game on CDs, you can include a 128 Kbps mp3 soundtrack with lots of tracks that sound quite good.

You won't find signals in RTII, which is part of why I like Railroad Tycoon and am less of a fan of most other railroad games. I find it hits the level of abstraction I am looking for. I don't have to make sidings, it's assumed that the lower-level people at the company I am running are smart enough to do that, and trains still have to wait if there's a passing train, but I'm saved from the busywork and can focus on the big picture items.

Finally, it's the one I grew up playing, and like a small handful of other games, has stood the test of time.

 

[Quintillus]

I've also continued my Livonian Order EU4 game. The state of Europe in 1561:

Spoiler :

The War of the Brandenburgian Succession is not in fact a big deal, and Stettin has almost no hope of success, although the Danish rebels are doing their best.

I have dealt with the Gotlandic pirates! But that took a little while.

The first big event shaping the Baltic was freeing Mazovia from Poland-Lithuania (Poland still exists, technically, south of Mazovia, but Lithuania has since gained their freedom). The Teutonic Order (now Prussia) invaded Mazovia soon thereafter, so I intervened, and that was the first splintering of the Baltic Alliance of Livonia, Sweden, Denmark, Lubeck, Mecklenburg, and the Teutonic Order. But we made up with the Teutons for a while after that, despite simmering tensions over Gotland.

Circa 1530, Mazovia officially became a vassal of the Livonian Order, in a war without any battles. They got to march their troops out and ceremonially besiege one of our castles to fulfill the required amount of honour, but no blood had to be spilled, and they became our vassals, with the promise that unlike Poland, we would not annex them. They've requested to become a march several times since then, and maybe I'll accept one of these days, but for now a mix of military support and income is preferable.

Soon after that, Gotland was finally dealt with, and this also ended our friendship with the Teutonic Order. We took Memel, they rivaled us, our historic friendship was over. Pirates were the breaking point from our standpoint, what good crusader allies with pirates that are attacking the other crusaders? Better that we control the whole area! I feared for a time that Sweden might break up with us over our rule of the ethnically-Swedish land of Gotland, which they believe should be theirs, but so far they've been quite happy with both the scourge of piracy being gone, and the ending of our alliances with the Teutons and Danes, neither of whom they'd ever been very fond of. They did lose one province to the Danes, but on the whole, remain strong. Norway, meanwhile, made an abortive attempt at freedom, and is once more in a union under Denmark.

I've expanded Mazovia a bit since acquiring them, with the goal of all Poles being part of Mazovia some day. Trade-wise, I now have all the important nodes on the Baltic other than Stockholm, and have expanded as far east as I plan to go, although I might go a bit farther south. I'm proud of Beloozero, who has lifted themselves up by the bootstraps since I freed them, has kept Sweden from coveting their lands, and has formed regional alliances, such as with Nizhny Novgorod. My goal for the east is to have no one powerful enough to have to worry about, and so far that has worked out brilliantly; even the hordes, which are large, are not very powerful. Lithuania, to the south, is also a paper tiger, with about 15,000 troops, approximately as many rebels at most times, and no spare manpower. In my war against Bohemia that is in progress, Lithuania made a white peace less than a year into the war before fighting any battles, taking the -25 prestige hit as the best available option.

More surprising to be in the "paper tiger" category is the Ottomans. You'll see a few rebel provinces in their lands in the screenshot; they betrayed their Bohemian allies, which was the reason I attacked when I did, as otherwise a Bohemian-Ottoman alliance was quite imposing. They seem to have overextended themselves with rapid expansion to the east against Aq Qoyunlu and then Qara Qoyunlu, losing manpower in the mountains and deserts, going significantly into debt to fund mercenaries, and then having rebels decide it was time to revolt; they now have about 22,000 troops, and about 2500 ducats in debts. It probably didn't help that for about a dozen years they had an especially inept Sultan, although their new one is decent.

I have a great set of allies - Sweden, Hungary, Austria, and Burgundy. I almost ended my Hungarian alliance when it looked like they would be carved up by the Ottomans, but now it looks like the opposite could happen. Austria did just suffer an embarrassing setback against Venice when they tried to defend Ragusa's independence, but on the whole, I'm quite happy with my allies.

I've also started colonizing the New World, and it seems there are two continents, a larger northern one and a smaller yet still sizeable, and less-known, southern one. I have a colonial nation on the northwest side of the northern one, and colonizing is now profitable. Unusually, none of the trade routes from the New World go back across the Atlantic Waters of Acheron to Europe or Africa, although some do appear to go to Asia. What this means for the world economy remains to be seen. Castile is also colonizing, aggressively, with England doing so more peacefully, and France being a relative newcomer. Portugal has stuck with colonizing Africa towards Asia. They've had a couple setbacks there, with Ashanti and Kongo (not Ndongo, though they also appear in EU4) taking several Portuguese colonies apiece along the African coast. Livonia has a mission to establish colonies in West Africa, so I'm preparing for that. It's a bit ambitious given the geography, and Portugal's failures are not reassuring, but the gist of the plan is to invade Mali's coastline, and ideally establish an alliance with Fulo, who is their neighbor and despises Mali. Best case, we give a few provinces from Mali back to Fulo and they form a shield between us and Mali, with a fort giving us time to reinforce from afar if need be.

I'm also still role-playing the Catholic crusader state in the time of reformation. Orthodoxy has been dealt, if not a terminal blow, at least a serious one to its prestige, all my allies are fellow Catholics, and the Pope seems to really like us except when it's time to appoint new cardinals. The Religious Leagues are just starting to form, and I plan to participate as a loyal member of the Catholic League, to which Catholic France is treacherously opposed. But the times, they are a-changing. I could now enact the "Secularize Livonia" decision at any time, and that is the long-term path. I'll probably still remain Catholic, as the Reformation has targeted Germany, Italy (rather unusually), and is now reaching the Low Countries and Denmark, but outside of conquering some provinces from the misguided Teutons who became Reformed Prussia, I haven't had to deal with any Protestants locally.

This is also the first game where I've seen the Council of Trent in action. It went by quickly, and took a hardline view. This gives some decent bonuses but also -40 opinion of non-Catholics, exacerbating the Monastic Order penalty to potential alliances with non-Catholics. That's what could ultimately require a conversion to something other than Catholic - if the Religious Wars go horribly wrong, and all the Catholic powers get cut to size, Catholicism could become a sinking ship. Or it could lead to a resurgence of Papal power and Holy Roman authority - both are plausible at this point.

----

I also thought I should share this picture of North Africa in 1547, to contrast the border gore with Bonyduck's Tunisian game:

Spoiler Border Gore :

What happened here? Well, Tunis did great early, that's how they got that province across from Grenada. Then Morocco came back, which is they they have those provinces over by Tripoli. At some point Tlemcon has a resurgence too. Portugal has been more interested in losing to Ashanti than conquering Morocco, and Castile is focused on the New World, both of which have enabled the Balaeres to occasionally be North African. Since then, Portugal has conquered one province from Morocco, but only after Castile sent a Serious Army over. It's probably all going to wind up Castilian, Portuguese, or perhaps Neapolitan or Mamluk someday, and the tragedy of it is that it's obvious in the cartography that all three of the major powers have been at each other's throats at every available opportunity.

 

[Quintillus]

Nobody expects... the Mamlukean Inquisition!

Spoiler Mamlukes! :

I don't think I've ever seen the Mamluks get involved in the War of the Protestant League. IIRC, the League is limited to countries with their capital in Europe and Asia Minor, and maybe the Emperor has an ally outside of that area on occasion, but the Mamluks joining two years in to the war is something out of left field!

The country that least expected the Mamlukean Inquisition was the Ottomans, who have all of their troops in Europe and nobody at home to defend against the Mamluks. There have been some lovely joint Austrian-Ottoman expeditions, which have been quite effective. The Ottoman manpower recovered nicely since my last post (though their reserves remain quite limited), but it really does put a new spin on thing to have the Mamluks involved, and a 4-4 tie among Great Powers on each side.

Despite the -15% war score (up from -26%), things had been looking good prior to the intervention. A few battles had been lost, but we still had a decent numerical superiority, Lithuania was nearly out, the Ottomans had arrived after a slow mobilization, and with that the stage was set for an inexorable push westward. Now? Who knows.

-----

In other news, the map shows Livonian Niger, our new colonial area. The expedition was a bit of a fiasco. Outnumbered more than two-to-one, the initial landing party was decisively defeated, and only a portion of it escaped to the New World. Undeterred, we regrouped, and landed again a few years later, with improved tactics, sticking together more closely this time. It wasn't easy, but we gradually advanced, only to discover that we could not annex any territory, as even with a Navigator hired (+20% colonial range), the nearest province was at distance 554, with our maximum being 553. But Diplo Tech 10, which increased Colonial Range by 100, was being researched, and we weren't about to have to start from scratch, so what should have been a four or five year war after the initial fiasco became an 8-year-war, with war exhaustion soaring to over 6 (and in my mod, it's twice as expensive to reduce manually, and impossible to do so at war). But in the end, the Malian Empire crumbled, with three countries liberated, of whom Jolof and Macina are quite friendly, and many Ivory and two Gold provinces becoming Livonian.

Still a very expensive endeavour, and maintaining a mercenary company there to handle revolts means it is not profitable in the least right now. But there's potential over the long term. I'm thinking I might actually make those areas, especially the inland ones, core Livonian states, rather than trading companies. Trading companies along the coast make sense for the countries in Western Europe that can direct trade to their entrepots, but it's not possible to direct it to the Baltic, and at any rate, most of my lands are in the interior, Timbuktu node. Maximizing gold and ivory income seems like a better priority, and having more manpower would not be a bad thing. And when we're ready, word is there's another gold province, currently ruled by the King of Kong.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Started a new Civ4 game. Playing on Chieftain because I'm still learning. Played as Genghis Khan, settled 4 cities, leading with +200 score, everything going swimmingly, when I absent-mindedly minimised the window and crashed the game. I hadn't saved for severall turns.

I don't know if it has to do with the resolution settings or something else, but if I once minimise the game I can't open it again. I have to either close the window or it aborts itself.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Jealous of folks posting maps from their 4x games, I went looking for a similar map image I could post out of Civ VI.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Started a new Civ4 game. Playing on Chieftain because I'm still learning. Played as Genghis Khan, settled 4 cities, leading with +200 score, everything going swimmingly, when I absent-mindedly minimised the window and crashed the game. I hadn't saved for severall turns.

I don't know if it has to do with the resolution settings or something else, but if I once minimise the game I can't open it again. I have to either close the window or it aborts itself.

It's been a while since I last played Civ4 but I don't remember this happening to me on my Win 10 machine. I have the Steam version of Civ4.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

It's been a while since I last played Civ4 but I don't remember this happening to me on my Win 10 machine. I have the Steam version of Civ4.

I suspect it's the resolution settings. It's also the reason why I can't take Civ5 screenshots anymore. Using PrtScrn while playing Civ5 minimises the window, but doesn't for CK2. The clew is that they both have different resolution/dimension settings

 

[Smellincoffee]

I've primarily been playing Railroad Tycoon II, specifically the Italy & The Alps map, a community map by Steve & Geoffrey Banks, the same two people who designed the Poland 1945 map I was playing earlier. It's the most difficult map I've played, yet alluringly so. The goals seem so attainable, and yet... they're not. It took me three tries to get the bronze medal, and nine tries to achieve gold, with no other bronze or silver in between. And yet for most of those attempts, I thought I at least had a chance at another bronze until the last couple of years. The one time I didn't, I fell victim to a 7.5-year-long recession while having a significant debt load.

The map takes place in Piedmont, the Aosta Valley, and nearby parts of Switzerland, Lombary, Liguria, and alpine France. You start with access to Piedmont and can build anywhere, but you have seven goals. One, personal net worth, is pretty much a given unless you try to buy up everything at once and go broke while having over-extended yourself on margin (I only did this twice). Another, $10 million in industrial profits, tends to help with the others, so long as you don't overshoot it by too much. The other five are hard, and involve moving cargo to the three major Alpine tunnels in the area - the Frejus Tunnel, which has been a major connection between Italy and France since its opening in 1871, the Simplon Tunnel, which was the lowest Alpine pass between its opening in 1906/1921 [east/west tunnels] and the opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel in 2016, and the Gotthard Tunnel, the predecessor of the modern base tunnel, which opened in 1882. You have to build tracks to each of these tunnels, which is not easy, and for the gold medal, also carve a new path to Lausanne, Switzerland.

Then you have to haul the cargo. Swiss cheese to Italy. Luxury clothes from Milan to Lausanne. And Fiat automobiles to each of the three tunnels, to compete in the Swiss, German, and French markets. The latter is the toughest task, as to do so you have to make Pirelli tires in Milan, which require rubber, which can only be acquired by exporting finished goods (such as metalworking or textiles) through the tunnels of the Ligurian ports. Cars also require steel, which you may be able to make locally in the Aosta Valley if neither the coal nor the iron has run out, or which you can import in exchange for fine Italian foods as exports. You may also be exporting food for steel to create metal goods to export for rubber for tires, or Italian wines in exchange for aluminum, for the same purpose.

The combination - creating enough cars to export to each tunnel, having the money to build all the rails required, and having the time to move all the cargo - is most difficult, with the mountainous terrain not helping. It's a very good idea to give the scenario-goal-relevant trains the highest priority, above even your express passenger trains, as one late arrival - I'm looking at you, Pirelli tires - can throw everything off.

Along the way, there are various optional goals that may be helpful aids, or a golden-apple-like distraction. Do you help Olivetti of Ivrea export typewriters? Do you help the locomotive works at Ferroviaria after the war, and if so, how intensively (you'll need a lot of metal for that and automobiles!). Is investing in the Aosta Valley a priority, or the French connection at Briancon? Will you help build the new Mont Blanc tunnel, or do you have other priorities to worry about? All offer rewards, but can they be accomplished without losing focus on the main goal?

Spoiler Tips :

The map is different each time, so your mileage will vary, but...

Electric track is too expensive, particularly as the best diesels are available. You need lots of track, most of which will be added mid-late game, electric won't pay for itself.

Don't chase every passenger or load of cargo. Find highly profitable routes. I usually give each town along the way at least token service, not this time, if they didn't offer enough value, they weren't getting a station and locomotive.

Beware interest. Several runs got bogged down in too much interest, too poor of an economy. Anything more than 6%, 7% max, becomes risky as the rail network is built out towards the mountains beyond the best profits, and locomotives age. You need loans to fuel growth, but not necessarily loans at any cost. I knew the gold run had serious potential when I was setting record profits even as the economy dipped into a recession.

Selectively upgrade locomotives. The diesels, even 1945 models, are worth upgrading to, but also consider upgrading to faster diesels (especially for tires) or more mountain-friendly ones for those crucial routes. If you can afford them, that is... on one of my more successful runs, where profitability waned late, my modus operandi became buying the cheapest locomotive with decent speed to save money, figuring its low reliability probably wouldn't bite me before the scenario ended.

Have insurance trains. Even the most reliable locomotives can crash, especially over those tough mountain passes, so if you have the cash, have at least one extra train beyond what the objectives required. On my gold medal game, the one that crashed was my backup insurance train, but it could've been another!

It's going to sound odd considering it's a 1999 game that runs at 1024x768 (or 800x600 if you prefer), but RTII's graphics are much better, and it would be hard to go back to either OTTD/Locomotion or Railroad Tycoon Deluxe after having played RTII. It partly the art style and detail, partly the detailed and gradual elevation model giving picturesque hills, which happen to also make for interesting gradient work when laying tracks.

The exclusive focus on trains is a plus for me (although I need to read that post about Transport Fever), and the scenario library is great. Maybe OTTD also has a great scenario library, and maybe you can ignore everything that's not a train?

The bluegrass soundtrack is also great. I find it hard to build railroads in games without bluegrass soundtracks now. The glory of distributing the game on CDs, you can include a 128 Kbps mp3 soundtrack with lots of tracks that sound quite good.

You won't find signals in RTII, which is part of why I like Railroad Tycoon and am less of a fan of most other railroad games. I find it hits the level of abstraction I am looking for. I don't have to make sidings, it's assumed that the lower-level people at the company I am running are smart enough to do that, and trains still have to wait if there's a passing train, but I'm saved from the busywork and can focus on the big picture items.

Finally, it's the one I grew up playing, and like a small handful of other games, has stood the test of time.

Closest thing I've played to that has been Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon, the remake done in early 2000s. I enjoy it, but never beat the Pacific Northwest map.


I've been binging on Stardew Valley and finally got to level 100 of the skull caverns. Didn't get a LOT of loot because I was mostly focused on getting to that point. No dinosaur or treasure levels, but I picked up 50 iridium. Now to make more bombs and wait for more jade to trade for staircases.

 

[Quintillus]

I suspect it's the resolution settings. It's also the reason why I can't take Civ5 screenshots anymore. Using PrtScrn while playing Civ5 minimises the window, but doesn't for CK2. The clew is that they both have different resolution/dimension settings

Are you playing on a non-native resolution, or HiDPI (4K or similar)? It sounds odd that PrtScrn would minimize the window, although for most games, I've been using Steam's built-in F12 (which is configurable) for screenshots. For the Sim City 3000 succession secession (new players welcome!), I've been using ImageShack's QuickShot, which is also configurable with Alt+S as the default shortcut.

-----------

The War of the Protestant League was long, bloody, and ultimately, not directly conclusive. The Mamluks joining was a game-changer; while they occupied most of Syria and the eastern reaches of the empire, they didn't overwhelm the Ottomans, but two-thirds of the latter's troops went home to deal with the incursion, ending Catholic momentum. A Crusade was declared against the Mamluks, but in practice, only the Sunni Ottomans fought battles with them, as the Catholic countries were too busy fighting other Christians. It was not the Holy See's finest hour - and for that matter, they were completely on the sidelines, perhaps ostensibly to be above the conflict, but it also meant they were at peace with the Mamluks.

In the end, the big winner of the war was Wurzburg, who nearly doubled in size. The big loser was almost everyone else, through devastation and humungous battlefield losses for little change in practice. Bohemia, leading the Protestants, was completely occupied for a while and had 25 war exhaustion (the new maximum in my mod), but always had an army, and pursued a strategy of making peace with any Catholic nations who would make peace, even for negligible tribute or none at all. The Ottomans were the first big Catholic-(ish) nation to make peace, with the Mamluks still in their lands. Burgundy, facing a French-Italian offensive while the Iberian and most of the Austrian troops were stuck in southwestern France by forts, was next. Hungary followed not long afterwards. It was clear that the Protestants had gained momentum. Austria adopted the same tactic, and made peace with France, but unless Venice could be pacified, there was no apparent winning strategy.

Venice, for its part, was besieging Vienna. We Livonians had adopted a more defensive strategy after failing to defend Catholic Genoa, and were fighting the Venetians outside of Vienna when the Emperor announced that peace had been made, and each prince would be free to choose their own faith, with all faiths being open for Emperorship. Denmark would hand over overlordship of two-province Brandenburg to Austria, England would give two New World provinces to Castile, and a minor amount of gold would change hands. Officially a minor victory for Catholicism, it was clearly not a triumph.

And all the while, Catholicism had been becoming less popular in practice. With peace concluded and being Catholic no longer a requirement, the Emperor who had just lead the fight for Catholicism announced that Austria was now Protestant. Hungary soon followed by announcing they were Reformed, and a few years later, Burgundy abandoned the Catholic faith as well.

It was in this environment, having seen so much religious bloodshed, that the Livonian Order secularized into the Kingdom of Livonia. Still Catholic, and still reserving lands for the Church, the emphasis would no longer be in crusading and converting, but on administering a successful realm. Religion may still be the former Crusader King's Way of Life, but it would be in service to the people, not in service to conversion at the point of a sword.

In meta terms, this is mostly a downgrade, in the short term at least. The Order receives a -25% fort maintenance buff that was lost, and by choosing the Church Lands reform rather than Temple Rights, income fell by a ducat and a half per month (although our papal relations and influence increased). But it seemed the right decision at the right time from a role-playing standpoint, and at any rate, just a couple years later, the lands of Livonian Niger were cored, and became immediately profitable, generating 8-9 gold income per month before taxes and other goods, and once we conquered the King of Kong a couple years later and invested a little bit in its gold mines' productivity, that increased to a solid 12 gold per month, more than double what our mercenaries garrisoning the area cost to maintain, and far exceeding what a Trade Company would have returned.