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

[EgonSpengler]

Just bought Cyberpunk 2077 bundle.

I bought Cyberpunk 2077 on sale a long time ago, but didn't play it much. The headlines around "2.0" do seem promising. Let us know if it's worth giving a(nother) try.

 

[Arakhor]

If it helps, my friend who played through it three years ago is apparently really enjoying the changes that Phantom Liberty makes.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I dinged 91 with my morning coffee & respecced a bit for the first time in this league and at least it didn't seem to make things worse so I'm ok. On the other hand an old annoyance has escalated exponentially which makes the Atlas progression next to non-existent - I can't seem to remember to corrupt my red maps. It's like I've unknowingly joined a cult where usage of Vaal Orbs is strictly forbidden.

You are not alone. Getting a nice roll is step one. adding scarabs or sacrifice orbs maybe step two. Corrupting it, step three, is easily forgotten until too late. I got my Boneshatter dps over 2 million yesterday with some tree changes and will push ahead into red maps without regard to dying. I'm only at 3000 life so dying happens.

EDIT: I just noticed that I have forgotten to do uber lab!

 

[Quintillus]

Played Victoria III.
They changed way too much, imo. No army units visible on the map (indirect control), no ability to manually set building upgrade rate (dependent on other factors in your infrastructure and set automatically), and worse diplomatic interaction for war (way too easy to lure the great powers - as if they need you to take a treaty port which isn't even in your continent).
For me, VicII was certainly a lot better.

That's disappointing, but I've read similar reviews elsewhere as well. Are there any positives compared to Vicky II? It seemed like such an opportunity, make the UI 1/10th as clunky and make the diplo/economy layer a bit more involved than Vicky II (I'd love to have embargoes), and they'd have had a stellar game. So the decidedly mixed reviews are disappointing.

I'll probably still pick it up in a sale later this year to see it for myself... but I wouldn't have hesitated to buy it at full price had the reviews been glowing.

And I know you said you weren't in the mood for EU4, but have you heard that the next expansion is going to have a Byzantine focus? They put way too much detail in their dev diaries these days, to cater to the hardcore fans who are most likely to read them, but the main point is Byzantium should have a lot more detail in the not-terribly-distant future.

I'd still recommend Old World as my favorite new strategy game of the past couple years that should run on your new PC but not the old one. Though if you like total war, Attila is my new favorite in that series. Otherwise... a bit more simulation/builder than strategy, but Factorio has overwhelmingly positive reviews for a very good reason, there's a bit of a learning curve at first (less than Vicky II IMO), but its mechanics are super solid.

 

[Kyriakos]

That's disappointing, but I've read similar reviews elsewhere as well. Are there any positives compared to Vicky II? It seemed like such an opportunity, make the UI 1/10th as clunky and make the diplo/economy layer a bit more involved than Vicky II (I'd love to have embargoes), and they'd have had a stellar game. So the decidedly mixed reviews are disappointing.

I'll probably still pick it up in a sale later this year to see it for myself... but I wouldn't have hesitated to buy it at full price had the reviews been glowing.

And I know you said you weren't in the mood for EU4, but have you heard that the next expansion is going to have a Byzantine focus? They put way too much detail in their dev diaries these days, to cater to the hardcore fans who are most likely to read them, but the main point is Byzantium should have a lot more detail in the not-terribly-distant future.

I'd still recommend Old World as my favorite new strategy game of the past couple years that should run on your new PC but not the old one. Though if you like total war, Attila is my new favorite in that series. Otherwise... a bit more simulation/builder than strategy, but Factorio has overwhelmingly positive reviews for a very good reason, there's a bit of a learning curve at first (less than Vicky II IMO), but its mechanics are super solid.

Thanks for the game news and suggestions

Regarding VicIII, imho the UI is also considerably worse (though tbh, I played too little of the game, when I had played VicII for tens of hours), due to the number of different ways to do the same thing (there are essentially two UIs). I didn't try embargo, which should be a great option, yes. Economy is "more involved" in that you get stats for the effects of your actions (rising/falling price), but those are only for the moment (may change very soon) and I did not like at all the individual trade with other countries (though it makes sense historically, I did prefer the schematic of trading in a "world market"). This "only trade with specific countries" reminds me of HOI, which I only have seen in videos.

For me, not being able to control army units is a very serious downgrade, because the Paradox games were always emblematic in that. There simply is no fun in just setting a general "army goal" and "focus on front", without any units visible anywhere. No ability to use tactics (not sure if this ever changes with new tech, but it looks terrible, and the lack of army sprites wouldn't change anyway). There is also no "province occupation" bar, which while also very gamey and not realistic (real armies didn't lay siege to a "province"), is now replaced with nothing and the front advances with you fighting literally the same enemy "army" continuously, just in different provinces.
I am also not sure how the mechanics of sending troops from far away work. For example, Russia had no issue magically placing its army immediately alongside mine. Maybe the only barrier there is naval invasion (which simply means having automatically placed ships there, ships not being contested, and then you can warp an army from half a continent away?).

Regarding buildings, you cannot manually create them as you please, since the pace of creation is dependent not on yourself willing to spend stuff on them (as in VicII), but parameters in your country (such as bureaucracy and "construction ability"). Which means that your actual economy is roughly as invisible as your army, and controlled indirectly through a cumulative effect. You can easily end up having to wait months for a single building, without concurrent builds being available (this does change when you get more stuff, but is still the opposite of fun).

All in all, no, VicIII looks broken. I think they tried to undo what I highlighted in red - but this should be playable as a game, otherwise there's no point.

 

[Quintillus]

The lack of army control is the most common criticism I've seen, and it makes sense. I like how Hearts of Iron IV does it - you set fronts along your borders, and can let the AI control the front with various parameters (including a line to which you'd like them to advance, how much cohesion the lines have, etc.), but you can also take manual control. If I'm playing a smaller country, I'll take manual control. If I'm playing a medium/large country, I'll let the AI control most of the fronts but might control one small-ish one myself, or if it's a large continuous front, I might fine-tune certain areas. Key defensive areas, or trying to break through in a certain area. It doesn't have the Vicky II-style province sieges (just morale and equipment in the battles), but you can control the armies.

I tend to agree with suggestions that Paradox could have hit a nice balance by taking a slightly-dumbed-down version of what Hearts of Iron IV has, giving a slightly-richer version of what Vicky II has, and wound up with a pretty good model for the Franco-Prussian/Great War time period. Importantly, HOI4 not only has the ability to give orders, but you can see your units deployed along the whole front, it's not too-abstract.

It's surprising that a year on they seem to have just made tweaks around what was likely the largest criticism at launch.

And the "sending troops from far away" aspect is also surprising. The whole Schlieffen Plan in the west depended on it taking Russia longer than it wound up actually taking to mobilize, it certainly shouldn't be instant in that time period, and wasn't in Vicky II.

The instantaneous-price-picture is one of the things I disliked about Vicky II as well. I understand that in the moment you'll get the price you'll get, but that historical context, average over time, and so forth was an area I'd been hoping they'd flesh out. Am I paying a ton for clipper ships or getting a bargain? You had to play a while and kind of learn the ropes to even have an idea in Vicky II.

I'll probably have to experience the economy a bit for myself. I remember the pain of buildings taking forever in Vicky II because you needed machine parts and had no supply of machine parts, for instance (all the top powers often monopolizing them early on). But you could, if fruitlessly, queue as many as you could afford, well, provided your economy laws allowed it anyway. The abstracted economy was IMO overall a plus in Vicky II, although there were times when it was a bit of "watching the game play itself." I rarely found the national focuses for preferring certain buildings to do a whole lot, for example.

I'm split in theory on world market versus trading with specific countries. I suppose my practical concern would be the busywork of maintaining the individual trade agreements.

 

[Kyriakos]

I have to assume Russia sent some of its forces by warping, otherwise it makes no sense that my starting army was about as large as the ottoman one in the province
Though on youtube I came across a video which claimed the army numbers are pretty much arbitrary on the map...
But you should keep in mind that you can set the army position/focus before the war starts. So in that vein, Russia/France etc maybe can preplace their armies wherever. I don't know, and it is itself terrible and anti-game to have to assume.

Army size also increases automatically (through buildings and other parameters). Which again is too abstract, I preferred to manually expand it (though after a while you end up with massive numbers of units).

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

And I know you said you weren't in the mood for EU4, but have you heard that the next expansion is going to have a Byzantine focus? They put way too much detail in their dev diaries these days, to cater to the hardcore fans who are most likely to read them, but the main point is Byzantium should have a lot more detail in the not-terribly-distant future.

From a Reddit post it seems like they're making the Byzantine game more challenging and imposing arbitrary penalties to counteract the exploits and strategies players have devised over the years.

I just can't play EU4 anymore. I started a Great Horde run, conquered a few provinces, waited too long to declare war on Crimea once their alliance with the Ottomans broke down, Genoa swept in and annexed all of them. Then waited too long to war on Genoa, who secured alliances with Austria and an ugly-looking Aragon. Also the ally jinx struck again. My buddies the Ottomans got completely devastated in two wars, first against Austria, then Poland-Lithuania, leaving them in heavy debt with a smallish standing army. (Also, did an update buff European army sizes? Austria, Hungary, Poland and Lithuania can each easily raise a standing army of 40k at the start of the game, which is double of what I remember. Also can't help but feel there is a European bias when it comes to army size. The Bahmanids, despite ruling over a larger and more populous area, only have a standing army of 20k, Morocco also 20k, Tlemcen 20k, Muscovy has a larger starting army than either Great Horde, Kazan, and Uzbek, despite occupying roughly the same area size).

Recently started a Kazan game. Captured a few provinces, then got blocked by alliances. So spent an hour twiddling my thumbs waiting for an alliance to break or an enemy ally to fall into debt but got mind-numbingly bored so dropped it.

Then got bored of the 1444 start date and started an Aq Qoyunlu game at a later date, when they control almost all of Persia. Like an ass, I again waited too long to declare war on Khorasan and they got an alliance with the Ottomans (who, being my rival this time, showed no signs of weakening). Ottomans allied every little state bordering me, so expansion ended up getting blocked again. Respite in the north when Shirvan got their alliance broken with Ottomans, I declared war, captured all their provinces bar one, because Astrakhan's ally decided to declare war as well. No worries, I thought I would take it from Astrakhan once their war was over. Except they peaced out without taking the province, and the Ottomans rushed to ally this worthless OPM (did I mention the Ottomans hate my guts?) So I declared war on Astrakhan, being only the avenue for expansion, when Ottomans declared war on me, and my two western allies Tunis and Yemen simply broke their alliance (despite the fact that Tunis was sitting on the far side of the front, and had enough soldiers to open up another front and take enough European provinces to mess with the warscore) (and I had supported Yemen in two stupid wars they initiated in Africa). Only poor Jaunpur sitting in India came to my aid. I could have made a stand against the Ottomans (because almost every other province in Iran is mountains) but I didn't have the energy so dropped it too.

Can't get into Civ6 because keeps crashing. Civ5 has staled for me, it's just a game of 'click next turn'. Civ4 is interesting, but UI is unfriendly for me.

Still haven't resumed my CK2 Caliphal run. It's a Random World game, so it's missing stuff like historical Great Works and historical characters. Tried to add them by copying stuff from data files and pasting to savegame file but I ended up breaking the game. I managed to do that sort of stuff at the first try when I was younger and stupider, but despite the wisening passage of time and having gained more knowledge of coding I just can't replicate it. And lack the energy to keep plugging at it.

 

[Kyriakos]

I doubt I will ever play EuIV. Eu just has too simple mechanics and I never even finished a game in EuIII (despite having played that for hundreds of hours, possibly). Even with the Byz Empire, you get to first tier power status in less than half a century; what is there to do for the next 350 years?
Breaking up the other major powers gets boring after a while.

 

[Arakhor]

If you can consistently become a Great Power as Byzantium by 1500, you'd rank as one of the best EU IV players.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I doubt I will ever play EuIV. Eu just has too simple mechanics and I never even finished a game in EuIII (despite having played that for hundreds of hours, possibly). Even with the Byz Empire, you get to first tier power status in less than half a century; what is there to do for the next 350 years?
Breaking up the other major powers gets boring after a while.

You could try going for the achievements?

 

[Kyriakos]

By the way, it looks like Victoria II doesn't even run in windows11.
First it prompts you for a missing dll, but even if you install that, there is a new error.
Oh well.

If you can consistently become a Great Power as Byzantium by 1500, you'd rank as one of the best EU IV players.

I could do that in EuIII (including in the non-modded game). I have to assume it is very doable in EUIV too (?), at worst you have to reload (which I tried to avoid).

 

[Zardnaar]

If you can consistently become a Great Power as Byzantium by 1500, you'd rank as one of the best EU IV players.

Used to be able to many patches ago lol.

 

[Zardnaar]

From a Reddit post it seems like they're making the Byzantine game more challenging and imposing arbitrary penalties to counteract the exploits and strategies players have devised over the years.

I just can't play EU4 anymore. I started a Great Horde run, conquered a few provinces, waited too long to declare war on Crimea once their alliance with the Ottomans broke down, Genoa swept in and annexed all of them. Then waited too long to war on Genoa, who secured alliances with Austria and an ugly-looking Aragon. Also the ally jinx struck again. My buddies the Ottomans got completely devastated in two wars, first against Austria, then Poland-Lithuania, leaving them in heavy debt with a smallish standing army. (Also, did an update buff European army sizes? Austria, Hungary, Poland and Lithuania can each easily raise a standing army of 40k at the start of the game, which is double of what I remember. Also can't help but feel there is a European bias when it comes to army size. The Bahmanids, despite ruling over a larger and more populous area, only have a standing army of 20k, Morocco also 20k, Tlemcen 20k, Muscovy has a larger starting army than either Great Horde, Kazan, and Uzbek, despite occupying roughly the same area size).

Recently started a Kazan game. Captured a few provinces, then got blocked by alliances. So spent an hour twiddling my thumbs waiting for an alliance to break or an enemy ally to fall into debt but got mind-numbingly bored so dropped it.

Then got bored of the 1444 start date and started an Aq Qoyunlu game at a later date, when they control almost all of Persia. Like an ass, I again waited too long to declare war on Khorasan and they got an alliance with the Ottomans (who, being my rival this time, showed no signs of weakening). Ottomans allied every little state bordering me, so expansion ended up getting blocked again. Respite in the north when Shirvan got their alliance broken with Ottomans, I declared war, captured all their provinces bar one, because Astrakhan's ally decided to declare war as well. No worries, I thought I would take it from Astrakhan once their war was over. Except they peaced out without taking the province, and the Ottomans rushed to ally this worthless OPM (did I mention the Ottomans hate my guts?) So I declared war on Astrakhan, being only the avenue for expansion, when Ottomans declared war on me, and my two western allies Tunis and Yemen simply broke their alliance (despite the fact that Tunis was sitting on the far side of the front, and had enough soldiers to open up another front and take enough European provinces to mess with the warscore) (and I had supported Yemen in two stupid wars they initiated in Africa). Only poor Jaunpur sitting in India came to my aid. I could have made a stand against the Ottomans (because almost every other province in Iran is mountains) but I didn't have the energy so dropped it too.

Can't get into Civ6 because keeps crashing. Civ5 has staled for me, it's just a game of 'click next turn'. Civ4 is interesting, but UI is unfriendly for me.

Still haven't resumed my CK2 Caliphal run. It's a Random World game, so it's missing stuff like historical Great Works and historical characters. Tried to add them by copying stuff from data files and pasting to savegame file but I ended up breaking the game. I managed to do that sort of stuff at the first try when I was younger and stupider, but despite the wisening passage of time and having gained more knowledge of coding I just can't replicate it. And lack the energy to keep plugging at it.

It's development now and muscovy has raise a large army as it's national ideas. They also start with several vassals and eat Novgorod more often than not. Orthodox got buffed as well.

Austria got buffed few DLCs ago as well.

Ottoderps gonna derp until mil tech 16 or so unless they get dog piled.

 

[Kyriakos]

I don't see how any artificial weakening of the Byz Empire (which let's be real, starts with what, 2 provinces? Come on) is going to alter player strategies much. If you play as Byz, you are dedicated enough to win regardless
I am sad that Vic2 doesn't seem to run on Windows 11. It was a good game and it looks like I will never get to play it on a computer where lagging won't be an issue.
I will try one last trick I saw online (changing settings to not allow fullscreen mode).

 

[Grendeldef]

You are not alone. Getting a nice roll is step one. adding scarabs or sacrifice orbs maybe step two. Corrupting it, step three, is easily forgotten until too late. I got my Boneshatter dps over 2 million yesterday with some tree changes and will push ahead into red maps without regard to dying. I'm only at 3000 life so dying happens.

EDIT: I just noticed that I have forgotten to do uber lab!

I just did mine & now my PoB dps is 341k so a tiny bit lower than yours and I don't think my 3,7k life makes up the difference - such is life in SSF. I didn't forget to do it but forgot that I only need an offering to enter - I was waiting that last trial to appear in the maps for quite a while.
I do have better gloves available but I have to sort my resistances after the swap so I haven't done it yet. I think I have (several) better MH but even PoB isn't too sure and I have The Magnate to replace my rare belt but that starts a chain reaction of messing with crafting bench that I decided to sort out my inventory first.
Gearing in Civ is much easier.

add.

After switching MH, gloves & belt PoB dps is 440k - still a loooong way from 2M but nice upgrade anyway.

 

[Takhisis]

But Widelands is just a beefed-up Settlers II.

I don't have Settlers II to begin with. But I can recommend Widelands.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I just did mine & now my PoB dps is 341k so a tiny bit lower than yours and I don't think my 3,7k life makes up the difference - such is life in SSF. I didn't forget to do it but forgot that I only need an offering to enter - I was waiting that last trial to appear in the maps for quite a while.
I do have better gloves available but I have to sort my resistances after the swap so I haven't done it yet. I think I have (several) better MH but even PoB isn't too sure and I have The Magnate to replace my rare belt but that starts a chain reaction of messing with crafting bench that I decided to sort out my inventory first.
Gearing in Civ is much easier.

add.

After switching MH, gloves & belt PoB dps is 440k - still a loooong way from 2M but nice upgrade anyway.

I tried a Maven challenge with the four synthesized map bosses (which I had killed individually without trouble). Six portals later, I was in my HO and there were still four bosses roaming the arena. Somebody's big black circles drained away my life unceremoniously in about 3 seconds. I had good chaos resists and an amethyst flask with lots of uptime, so it doesn't seem like chaos dot. Haven't a clue though what it was. BTW, this was in standard.

 

[madviking]

vic3 is better than vic2 because it has an actually functional economy and more dynamics politics. the ai, however, does suck, yes. but retconning vic2 into a "good game" because of vic3's downfalls is tedious.

 

[Gorbles]

Almost simultaneously indulging both my early 00s era video game favourites. Playing through the Master Chief Collection (most of the way through Halo 2 now), and (tonight) continuing my march through Age of Empires IV's campaigns (only on the English, but I take my time and don't really rush anything, ever). Tomorrow night I'm likely cooking, so it'll probably be MCC after again (easier to jump into).