What Video Games Have You Been Playing? Five-and-Twenty: I Used to Play, But then I Took an Arrow to the Knee

[Kyriakos]

This instantly made me stop considering playing Factorio again:

Ultimately, everything ends up looking like an Urbworld/Hive world.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

For the past two months I've somehow gotten back into RTS games again. I started with trying out Command and Conquer 3, which I had never played before, and had a lot of fun. I then decided to download Red Alert 3, which was the first non-browser video game I ever played. RA3 gets a lot of flak from CnC purists, but I love it even apart from the childhood nostalgia factor. Asymmetrical faction design is always a winner for me, and three factions: Soviets, Allies and Imperial Japanese all have their own unique aesthetics and playstyle. The Empire of the Rising Sun is particularly awesome in their design: unlike the other two, they're not restricted by a construction zone, having the ability to unpack their construction core anywhere on the map, and while they don't have a dedicated air force, several of their units have the ability to switch to and from aerial forms. The Co-Commander system is also a lot of fun. Every AI commander has their own personality and gameplay style, from the paranoid and unhinged Moskvin who prefers to Terror Drones and Skirmisher, to the snobby and aristocratic Giles who throws all his resources into a grand air fleet of bombers and fighters. Unlike in previous titles, ore mines deplete with time and cannot be replenished like tiberium fields, forcing players to crawl out of their bases and stake out outposts to keep the war chest going, every ore field a flashpoint for conflict as players are forced to fight all over the map.

Down the same arc I've come back to Age of Empires II and III. I still haven't got the hang of AoE2, I can get my economy running, but I can never match the AI's hordes of units. AoE3's gathering mechanics are too simplistic for my taste, your villagers don't have to deposit their collected resources at a collection point, allowing them to just wander all over the map, but I do love the Ottoman civ, turtling and defending your base until you can commit to a devastating assault with a dozen Great Bombards is one heck of a kickup. Just like Red Alert's Kirov Airships, they're mostly vanity projects which need to be supported by other units to prevent them from getting destroyed, but just like Red Alert's Kirov Airships, there's something special about using these behemoths to finish off your enemies.

 

[amadeus]

Darkest Hour again, this time as Nationalist China. Defeated Mao in 1935, got the peace event with the Japanese, and joined the Allies in 1942. KMT armies have fought in Libya, Italy, and liberated Paris.

However, I’m going to have to go back to a slightly earlier start date as when territory is occupied by an ally, they can’t supply it. I have enough convoys but I can’t manually send them to territory that isn’t my own.

Since Japan was defeated before Pearl Harbor, that never happened and they never attacked America. FDR dragged the USA into it against Germany, which caused revolts from the dissent because they were still isolationists and no intervention event fired. He mopped those up though.

 

[Kyriakos]

Did you like my strategy? (I am the blue side)

Note: this is from the pov of my army - red couldn't see some of the sneaky units hiding behind the hill, which is part of the reason he lost.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I've had a decent amount of fun with the puzzle game Blue Prince.

It's not a pure puzzle game like The Witness, but a hybrid with roguelike gameplay and a bit of board game built in.
It also takes logic, scheming, and a sharp eye to beat this relaxing game.

The Random Number Generator Roguelike part is not for everyone, but I enjoy inching forward.

 

[Broken_Erika]

 

[Kyriakos]

Started playing Songs of Syx.
This looks like Dreamweb. Very hypnotic.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Got a new PC. Returning to Grim Dawn for some old-school hack and slash. For the loot!

 

[Birdjaguar]

Got a new PC. Returning to Grim Dawn for some old-school hack and slash. For the loot!

Welcome back.

Path of Exile 2 early access had a major upgrade recently so I took the opportunity to give it a go. It has been many months since I played it when it first opened. Huge improvements and much more fun. 4 of the 6 acts are in place with Acts 5 & 6 handled with placeholder content. I am almost through to the end game mapping with my sorceress: spark/Orb of storms, freeze them all character. It is not finished yet, but getting better. At the moment I still prefer POE 1.

 

[gangleri2001]

I'm just enjoying this MS-DOS 1995 classic again

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Welcome back.

Path of Exile 2 early access had a major upgrade recently so I took the opportunity to give it a go. It has been many months since I played it when it first opened. Huge improvements and much more fun. 4 of the 6 acts are in place with Acts 5 & 6 handled with placeholder content. I am almost through to the end game mapping with my sorceress: spark/Orb of storms, freeze them all character. It is not finished yet, but getting better. At the moment I still prefer POE 1.

Heya.

PoE 1 was and still is definitely great (at least until I got lost in the maps and dozens of weird currency drops, which I have no idea what they're for; way too many different kind of tokens.). Going back to it eventually. As for 2, will wait for the finished game. Currently it kinds of swing all over the place, with each update, since technically it's still in early access.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Heya.

PoE 1 was and still is definitely great (at least until I got lost in the maps and dozens of weird currency drops, which I have no idea what they're for; way too many different kind of tokens.). Going back to it eventually. As for 2, will wait for the finished game. Currently it kinds of swing all over the place, with each update, since technically it's still in early access.

Yes currency in POE can be complicated and they keep adding to it. POE2 is the same and I am still trying to figure it all out there.

 

[Quintillus]

My main "new" game in December wound up being a Hearts of Iron IV game as Canada, one of the few mid-size powers I'd yet to play. I decided to take an active role (much more so than real-life Canada), and try to prevent France from falling. In that, I was just barely successful, and had Germany not respected Belgian neutrality, I may well have failed.

Spoiler Storyline :

But for some reason - perhaps superstition around repeating what happened in the Great War - Germany did leave Belgium alone. It was still a near-run thing, as the French did not mobilize enough troops, and Canadian reinforcements were frantically switching between helping defend the Alps against Italy, and the Maginot Line against Germany. Italy nearly broke through, and at one point Germany did break through Maginot. As Canadian forces scrambled to contain the breakout, another stroke of luck happened - Switzerland declared war on Germany, and occupied the part of the Maginot Line that France had failed to defend, trapping the Germans who had crossed it. France survived, but barely.

In June of 1940, the Soviets declared war on the Germans, who had quickly conquered Poland, Denmark, and Norway, but were experiencing some difficulties against Sweden. The Soviet "they look like they're in trouble if they can't handle Sweden, let's finish them off now" strategy didn't work quite as planned, and by the next year, the Germans were approaching Stalingrad, where their momentum was stopped, with Leningrad controlled by the Estonians and Finns. But this also meant they had weakened the garrisons at their West Wall, opposite Maginot, so I decided to test their defenses with the (entire) Canadian Army in the spring of 1942.

Somewhat surprisingly, the result of the test was that Canada could push Germany back. And back some more. And some more. We went in a generally northeastern direction, up to Hannover, then taking the Kiel Canal and into Mecklenburg, over the course of two or three months. The culmination was the capture of Berlin by Canadian forces on June 20, 1942.

This was not, however, the end of the war. It took a while for the Germans to disengage in the east, but that summer their troops went west in a big way, re-conquering the occupied lands west of the Elbe (Hamburg), conquering the Netherlands, and threatening to break through Maginot once more. Canada was forced to bail out France once more, leaving a perilously small 14 divisions in control of northern Germany, which were forced to retreat from Berlin in September. But with France re-stabilized (and Luxembourg still valiantly holding out, in a much more impressive showing), I was able to retake Berlin in October, just to lose it in November, before finally taking it for good by January of 1943. By that point, the Soviets were getting back in gear, and over the course of that year, the British and Americans would arrive in force, ensuring ultimate victory in Europe. Canadian troops from France would help liberate Austria and Bohemia via Switzerland, meet up with the northern contingent around Dresden, and then march east, liberating Poland, and ultimately conquering Estonia and Finland to end the European conflict.

But by then, Japan had conquered both China and India, the first time I'd ever seen that happen. Conquering China? Not that rare? Also conquering India? Very rare, especially a total conquest. They did pretty much entirely ignore the East Indies, including failing to take Singapore, so they had a lot of focus on India. But it meant that the amount of manpower that Japanese-allied forces now had access to was essentially unlimited, with the only limit being how quickly they could equip those forces. If they mobilized millions of troops from China and India as well as Japan? We didn't want to find out what would happen.

Canada's navy, however, could not take on the Japanese Navy. So, instead, I sent my troops to Oman, and with the British Navy keeping Japan east of Singapore, launched a naval invasion of western India. Much like the Canadian invasion of Germany, this met with immediate success, as it was totally unexpected. Moving as quickly as possible - and, like in real life, the Canadian Army was highly motorized - I managed to take the entire southern half of India before enough Japanese reinforcements arrived to stop the Canadian advance. By then, British and Swiss troops were reinforcing my lines, and after some time to regroup, I managed to work my way up into Bengal, and eventually force the Japanese-allied collaboration government to capitulate. Pockets of resistance remain, where Japanese or Chinese troops control parts of India, but with each month, there are fewer such areas.

By then, I was planning my next move, an invasion of Siam. This, too, went well, if not quite as drastically well. Most of the core Siamese areas are now Canadian, and the diversion of Siamese troops helped the British advance north from Singapore, linking up with the Canadian vanguard. It's now abundantly clear that Japan has sent many troops from eastern Siberia, where they had been fighting the Soviets - initially highly effectively, less so recently - to southeast Asia, and Canada, being a relatively low-population, moderately industrialized country, is not pushing them back very much right now. But like against Germany, it also feels like only a matter of time until our British and Soviet allies wear Japan down, finish off the last Japanese pockets in India, and tip the balance in our favor.

As for America? Like Britain, they're island-hopping. The Americans have Saipan, the British have Iwo Jima. The AI is very bad at escorting troops across oceans, and the Americans have lost a humungous number of troops to Japanese submarines (they should also really send more destroyers to the Pacific). What would really make sense is if the British and Americans combined naval forces, defeated the Japanese navy, and invaded the Home Islands, but I don't really expect the AI to pull that off quickly, and the Canadian Navy only has about 11 ships right now, so I can't impact the naval situation to any degree (my original navy was sunk by Germany).

All in all, it has been a satisfying campaign. Mainland Canada is completely undefended, except by the size of the Pacific Ocean, and my policies have very much not been in alignment with real-life Mackenzie King, who was very hesitant to institute a draft even late into the war, as well as to send Canadian troops overseas. In real life, the Canadian Army had not won a single battle by early 1943, largely because it had only fought two battles since entering the war more than three years earlier. But my "could Canada have made a difference on the battlefield?" experiment seems to have been answered in the affirmative, and I learned some Canadian history along the way.

I may well not finish it out; I rarely do, usually only playing either the European or Asian theater, depending on where I start. The fall of Japan, playing as a non-naval power, tends to be a disengaging affair, and I'm surprised the Indian and Siamese campaigns were as interesting as they were - thankfully, neither resulted in the Canadian Army being destroyed at the landing beaches. Playing onward from this point seems like mostly a formality, something that would be unnecessary if the Americans knew how to use their fleet.

Up next? I have revisited my Millennia game from October, but Civ VI and Old World are both tempting.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I have been playing Kenshi on and off for the past few months, and the experience has probably put me off any other open-world RPG. I picked up Skyrim in between, but dropped it after a few hours because it simply can't compare to the absolute freedom that Kenshi gives you. Between the two, Kenshi is the only game that can actually claim to be open-world.

You start off as an unarmed nobody in a battered outpost with a few ducats in your pocket and nothing else. That's all. The game just throws you out into the harsh, unforgiving world. At the most the game explains a few mechanics and suggests some actions you can take, but beyond that you're on your own. It's up to you to survive in a world where you're just another character, there's no Chosen One here. In fact a lot of characters will go out of their way to be mean to you at the start when you're no better than a dirty thieving beggar, and interactions in Skyrim feel lovey-dovey in contrast.

There is no storyline in Kenshi, no quests to follow. You are fully in control of your own destiny. You can choose to join the slave raiders, amassing a fortune by rounding up poor unfortunates and selling them at your nearest slave market. Or you can live as a merchant, venturing from land to land to sell exotic and sometimes forbidden goods while you battle brigands who try to plunder you. Or you can set up a farm and grow crops and sell your produce. Or you can set up a smithery to craft weapons and armour. Or you can just wander the land, exploring the weird and post-apocalyptic world of Kenshi and meeting with its various races and factions. Or you can do all of them, and more, once you have enough 'cats to hire other desperates to join your band.

Right now I've completed an impromptu circumference around the world of Kenshi with my motley crew of humans, Sheks and an emancipated Hive slave. It's a miracle anyone is even alive, though we lost one member while wading in the southern coasts (but not too bad a loss, because we hired two more mates later on in the journey). At one point, more characters were out for the count than could be carried by the still standing members of the party, and we had to just stand there besides the ocean for several in-game hours waiting for the others to recover, praying that yet another group of robbers, cannibals, fish-men, crabs or robot didn't stumble on us there and then. Later on I tried to trek through dry land instead of hugging the coast (the pro of being near the ocean means enemies will stop attacking if you swim far away enough, but the con is that the acid will slowly eat away your body the longer you stay there), but literally everywhere I tried to go we just got massacred by a surprisingly diverse cast of pluguglies. In the end I decided to go on hugging the coast. I actually cried when we finally reached our first town since we set off from the desert in the south-west, it felt like heaven to be able to sleep without having to constantly get up and change base to avoid any marauding enemies (sleeping is important because it heals you faster).

I am finally back at the outpost I spawned at the start of the game. I'm hoping to pick some safe fights to improve my little band's skills so we can go hunting for Beak Thing eggs in the marshes. Those eggs will fetch you a fortune if you can get your hands on them, but you'll have to go through an entire family of Beak Things first. The only way I was able to get those eggs was when a Hive caravan I had linked up with stumbled onto a nest, and the guards made short work of the Things. I sold off all the eggs I could to the caravan leader, until he ran out of money. I then just carried as many eggs I could to nearest Hive village, where I bankrupted yet another Hive trader. There were still a lot of eggs left back at the nest, but I didn't trust myself to go all the way there and back in one piece. This time I've bought a Pack Beast, one of Kenshi's two beasts of burden, and with a well-trained band of friends and a bunch of hired mercs if necessary, I'm hoping to haul a prince's ransom. And after that, I'm going to pay another visit to the southern coasts, I've got some social calls to keep...

Semester break, so playing Kenshi again.

I tried my hand at base building when I realised that I needed a building to place my research bench inside so I could research technologies to craft my own equipment. In Kenshi, almost everything you can buy in the stores you can craft yourself too. What I want are sleeping bags, absolutely necessary because sleeping heals you quicker, and beds aren't plentiful in the wilderness. One of the worst things about my famous circumference expedition was that we had a single sleeping bag to share among nine people. But back to crafting. I want to make a sleeping bag. I can do that using machines, but I need fabric for raw material. I could get that from the stores, or I could make it myself from cotton or hemp, which I can also buy or grow myself.

So we set up base, research techs, and soon enough we have burnt through all our research books. Research books you can get from ruins, or from the Tech Hunter cities in the south-east, or nearer among the Hives in the northern swamplands. So Hive ho it is. We set up base some distance away from a Hive settlement, procure some books, and get to studying. Life threatens to be boring, but bandits come social calling, and we make short work of them. Loot the poor suckers, then send a member to the Hive town to sell the loot and get more books.

Then the Beak Things attack. Thankfully just a handful of them, but most of my party is grievously injured. At this point I realise we're right opposite a Beak Thing nest. I put my plan in motion. I send my fleetest member - Mogi, the leader of the group - to attract the attention of the Beak Things, then have him skedaddle back to base, hopefully with only two to three mad raptoids in pursuit. Even with our superior numbers it's a bloody fight, and the next day sees the squad nursing their wounds in bed, but we win. Rinse and repeat for the next two days, and the nest has been wiped out. Just walk up and collect their eggs. Sell it to the Hives, buy more books. We repeat the procedure.

After three or four successful operations, we end up with far more money than we did at the start of our journey. No less than 150,000 ducats. At one point our base is attacked by Black Dragon Ninjas. These thugs are significantly stronger than the starving bandits we've tussled with so far. But to my suprise we win, and that too without getting a single K.O. against us. Morale is high. Mogi decides to light out for the dreaded ruins at the end of the river.

Flashback. When Mogi was still a dirty little urchin in rags exploring the world, he followed a Hiver caravan into the swamp and promptly got lost. He followed the course of the river, stumbled upon a vanquished Beak Thing nest, sold the eggs to the Hiver traders and became filthy rich beyond his dreams. He decided to walk all the way to the end of the river. Instead he ran all the way to the end of the river, mauled mercilessly by Gorillos and Beak Things. When he crawled to the buildings at his destination, he was disgusted to find that they were abandoned ruins. To turn back was to go through all the pain of running from the swamp wildlife again. To go on would be rushing headlong into unseen horrors. Mogi decided to rest, leaning against the doors of the broken library. A passing Giant Spider crawled over and bit him, leaving him to bleed alone in the jungle. Hours later, when a bloodied, battered but unbowed Mogi hobbled off into the unknown, he swore that if he would survive, he would return one day to tame the swamp. And slay the Giant Spiders.

The day had come.

 

[Senethro]

Kenshis really really good and like nothing else, but I'd struggle to ever recommend it to anyone who I didn't already know was a sicko for weird, jankness and punishing.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Kenshis really really good and like nothing else, but I'd struggle to ever recommend it to anyone who I didn't already know was a sicko for weird, jankness and punishing.

Kenshi But I’m a Torso, Bankrupt, and Everyone Wants Me DEAD​

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Kenshis really really good and like nothing else, but I'd struggle to ever recommend it to anyone who I didn't already know was a sicko for weird, jankness and punishing.

I don't like punishing games, but I love Kenshi. When I think of 'punishing' I think of games that force you to do the same things or fight the same bosses over and over again.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Trying to get up to speed to where I am right now. Long story short our stay at the Ruins-At-The-End-Of-The-River was brutal, but we won against the wildlife in the end. We had to establish a base to allow most of our members to heal. While our dutiful archer-scientist Ferra researched new technologies in our rooftop lab, we made a sales desk in the ground floor and sold our eggs and other booty to wandering caravans. Finally it was time to go. We left the base as it was instead of dismantling it, and named it 'Meridon' for no reason in particular.

Made our way back to civilisation (or what passes for civilisation in Kenshi) through the riverine Hive villages. Assaults by Beak Things forced to set up camp for a second time, a little distance away from a Hiver settlement. While the others healed in bed, Mogi and second-in-command Tako came upon a copper deposit just outside the building. Deciding to make the best of the time it took for the rest to recuperate, Mogi and Tako began mining and selling the copper to the Hiver village. By the time the rest had healed, we had turned in a tidy profit. We left base again, our second settlement named 'Copperhead'.

Reaching the hub, Mogi and co. used their newly-acquired wealth to strike up an alliance with the Shinobi Thieves guild. Not willing to settle down just yet, Mogi decided on a new adventure: venturing into the Foglands. The Foglands were a region to the north of the hub, mostly inhabited by Fogmen, Hivers who had gone insane and now craved to feast on human flesh. In the heart of the Fogland was Mongrel, a haven for escaped slaves and scoundrels where they could escape the authorities and begin life anew. If they could get past the Fogmen, that is.

Getting to Mongrel proved easier than expected. A quick battle with a group of Fogmen, then we retreated into a recess as waves upon waves of Fogmen marched through the depression, heedless of the cowering comrades just a stone's throw away. Then there was an appreciable break between two successive groups. It was now or never. Mogi and buds sprinted out the exit of the bowel. There rose Mongrel above the mists. But the second party of Fogmen had spotted us. A mad dash ensued as Squad Mogi ran for their lives towards Mongrel, with the Fogmen hot on their heels. The commotion attracted attention, and more Fogmen joined the pursuit. Just as all looked lost, Mogi reached the gate of Mongrel. The alarm had been raised; Mongrel guards descended upon the Fogmen. Mogi joined them in their assault, providing cover for his mates as they rushed up past the gates. Once inside, they manned the wall turrets, shooting at ever more Fogmen as they joined the fray in a blood frenzy. In the end it was a veritable massacre, the stairways of Mongrel lined with the lifeless bodies of dozens of Fogmen. Just another day in Mongrel.

So this was Mongrel. Haven of safety and freedom, nestled in the hill-tops high above the mists in the heart of the treacherous Foglands. And yet there was little to be jocose about. Due to the infestation of the Fogmen, few were the caravans that made it to Mongrel, and the outpost was running on food reserves. There was security only within the walls, everywhere outside lurked armies of Fogmen, on the hunt for their next victim. And just outside Mongrel, somewhere in the mist, was an infamous deathyard, and when the winds calmed down you could hear the horrified cries of the Fogmen's prey as they were rended limb from limb and eaten alive by the savage Fog Princes. It looked like Mogi and co. would have to relocate for further adventures where they could preferably come back from in one piece.

Spoiler screenshots :

The Black Dragon Ninjas about to attack our research base

Squint and you can see an army of fogmen marching rightwards; from our perspective hiding within a cranny

Gruesome sounds from the deathyard just outside Mongrel

​

 

[Birdjaguar]

Can't see much beyond the UI in those screenshots.

 

[Quintillus]

I eventually abandoned my Hearts of Iron IV Canada game, although not before the Canadian invasion of China, which went quite well, and was supported by American and British forces. By the time I tired of the campaign, Canadian forces were approaching Beijing from the south, and Soviet forces from the north (they had actually briefly controlled Beijing but had been forced back). Britain had taken Okinawa, and the campaign was where I tend to abandon strategy games these days - the mop-up phase. Even the Imperial Japanese Navy was starting to look a bit frayed around the edges.

Instead, I've wound up playing Banished and Old World. Banished is one of my favorite background builder games. I tell my village what to build, make sure it's unlikely to starve or freeze anytime soon, and do something else while checking in every so often.

Spoiler Banished :

The new village almost did starve, as it ran out of food in year two. Year two is often critical; year one featured building one large boarding house, a fishing dock, and starting on a hunting lodge, gatherer's hut, forester's lodge, and woodcutter. But as the initial resources around our starting area depleted, the latter four of those crawler across the finish line, and we were eating more than we could gather from the fishing dock. Thankfully, our hunters quickly procured some venison, buying time for the gathering hut to get up and working, and the immediate threat was neutralized. There was another moment of concern the next year, as our tools began wearing out before a blacksmith was finished, but the smithy got up and working before that became a doom spiral. Then it was a tailor, and then houses, which are critical to encouraging new families to start up and thus growing the population.

I now have a school as well, and a market, and just got a trading post up, so hopefully I can start some farms in a few years. An herbalist is still on the todo list, so health levels are poor, but there is a rather empty cemetery and an as-yet-unused quarry. The next two years are likely to focus on getting a second forest-resource-gathering-area going, as with all the kids to support, we could use a larger food and firewood supply.

----

Old World, meanwhile, has me playing a real-world map for the second time. The first time was back in 2022 as Persia on the Middle East map. I wound up not finishing that game because the map is really big, and my computer struggled to handle it with its 20 GB of RAM. Now I have 64 GB of RAM (I actually upgraded by desktop to 32 GB for Old World, now I have a laptop with 64 GB as it was really cheap to upgrade in 2023), and in the meantime the game has become much better-optimized, and I would be fine on the Imperium Romanum map with 16 GB. Maybe it's not quite as big as the Middle East, but it's still pretty sizeable.

Spoiler Strategic Overview and Thoughts on the Game :

Playing as Rome, I'm 80 turns in, which is solidly mid-game, and my army is almost all Warriors. Rome started out in Rome, expanded into Apulia and Liguria, and that was the extent of easy expansion. I made securing the Alpine areas my next priority, to make sure I had plenty of quarries and was not boxed into Italy. But that took a while, and the subsequent move into Gaul was also rather slow. The Gallic tribes, the Danes (the closest in-game tribe to the Germanic tribes), the Vandals - none of them made it easy. Meanwhile, Alexander the Great over there in Macedon was expanding like crazy, and I wound up near the bottom of the scoreboard, aside from Assyria, which got conquered by the barbarian raiders (maybe with a bit of help from Persia, Babylon, or the Hittites, I'm not sure). I'm still concerned that Macedon will turn west one day and try to conquer me; they probably could, but I have made sure to leave a good number of troops in the eastern Alps so they won't be able to just waltz in. Although I should probably put a few ships in the Adriatic so they don't pull a Pyrrhus on me.

On the storyline side of things, perhaps the most unexpected event was the reconciliation between my founder Romulus and his brother Remus, who start out at loggerheads with each other. Romulus focused on exploration and roads between cities; his successor Nonus focused on expanding Rome beyond Italy militarily. Nonus made the questionable decision to exile his heir, Sempronia, a few years before he died (although to be fair, he didn't know he would die then), which gave a high risk of a crisis when he died with an heir nowhere nearby. But Sempronia managed to get back to Rome, albeit worse for the wear, before a civil war started or Macedon invaded. Thus, so far the largest crisis has been the slave revolt of Nonus's reign, which ended in the abolition of slavery, seen as a preferable outcome to having to cease Roman expansion into Gaul to deal with the revolt. We need those Gallic cities to provide wealth and resources if we have any hope of competing with Macedon - especially if we can't convince the Hittites to turn against them!

For now, however, my focus is turning to the south. Carthage is starting to settle Iberia, and I want to claim as much of it for Rome as possible. We both were recently fighting over Sardinia, a contest that Rome won, and now I'm focusing on Sicily. Carthage's reaction to losing Sardinia was pragmatic - forming a National Alliance with Egypt - and for now, our battles for influence remain proxy affairs, although no nation dislikes Rome more than Carthage. Still, I'm not sure that I want a full conflict with them - that would be highly hazardous if Macedon isn't otherwise occupied, and for now we've been to focus on pearls and honey to build a true fortress along the Macedeonian frontier.

Even though I think I have forgotten a bit about the strategy, or maybe the AI is just better than it used to be, it's hitting the spot strategically. The tradeoffs are real, resources are limited, you can't just rush your way out of problems but have to plan in advance, and the world is dynamic. Nonus the Lion excelled at quarry and fiscal management and troop training; Sempronia is a poor fiscal manager and that's causing some problems, but is an excellent orator, which is helping inspire leaders to serve Rome where Rome needs them.

Spoiler On Cannibals :

Then there's the Scythian Amazons we hired, who are lead by someone known as the Orphan Eater. Some advisor had the brilliant idea to lean into that identity to strike fear in Rome's enemies, and to promote the Orphan Eater to a position of prominence. Sempronia decided in the end that perhaps that was just what the Scythians hoped we would do, and has thus far kept the Orphan Eater limited to commanding the group of mercenaries. She was lucky to survive the succession events, and a potentially power-hungry barbarian cannibal being at the court just didn't seem wise. But had my leader had a different set up experiences or personality at that point? I might have had to see where that story line led to.