What Video Games Have You Been Playing, Part 10: Or; A Shameful Display!

[Azem.Ocram]

This week I’ve been playing Citystate. It’s difficult.

https://imgur.com/gallery/oC1oVoG

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Just got an e-mail ad for a game, and when I read this line I couldn't help but think of @Lexicus: "Evil Bank Manager is an exciting economic simulator in which you can become the most successful capitalist in the world!"

 

[cardgame]

I missed the growth of new cities and economy in Empire as compared to Napoleon, so I'm giving it another shot. Like a madman, I opted not to install Darthmod this time around and as a consequence am dealing with some severe bugs that I never knew existed. DM really does a very fine job getting rid of them. On the one hand, I want to go back and install it. On the other, I am actually facing some challenges for the first time in my Total War career (at least in recent memory) as I am being DoW'd by practically everyone, playing as Spain. Literally every nation in Italy has tried to opportunistically steal my Italian holdings, for which they paid for with their life. A bunch of Amerindians are being hostile for no reason and just generally being a PITA (Florida actually got sacked, and the AI is smart enough in this instance that they deleted every building and town in the province, which freaking sucks).

It's still modded, mostly with Bran's tweaks for vanilla, but the AI is behaving far smarter with his vanilla tweaks than they are with darthmod + Bran's tweaks. France, for example, is actually conquering provinces instead of literally camping out in Paris and doing nothing ever for literally decades. They've taken my lost province of Flanders as well as Bavaria or Wuttermberg.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I've mostly been playing the Witcher 3. I made it to the second location (Velen). My stupid horse got stuck in a tree.

 

[Takhisis]

Just got an e-mail ad for a game, and when I read this line I couldn't help but think of @Lexicus: "Evil Bank Manager is an exciting economic simulator in which you can become the most successful capitalist in the world!"

Sounds like a mod for the old Transport Tycoon games.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Sounds like a mod for the old Transport Tycoon games.

Nahhhh. It's a pretty serious looking stand alone game. I gave it some pretty serious consideration, but my need for a new game, given the number I have that I've never played, is really minimal.

 

[Takhisis]

Still a backlog to plough through, eh? I'm trying to get to grips with mine here.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Still a backlog to plough through, eh? I'm trying to get to grips with mine here.

What really stops me from buying games isn't the existence of the backlog, it's that when I am honest about it I have to admit that I'm not really trying to plough through. I have some number of games I've never played, and I still play X3 or Civ IV far more often than I even look at them. Today in the aftermath of the Oblivion fiasco, which in itself was certainly not progress on the backlog, my comfort food mentality steered me right back into X3.

EDIT: Much to my disgust and self loathing, after playing some X3 and feeling better I returned to the endlessly repetitious non-adventures of Testy McTestface in Oblivion. I think I have all the mods I want, and after some mucking around I have reached the point where a clean install and very deliberate installation sequence is the next step and might make them work. If I ever seem like I am about to give Bethsoft one more thin dime of royalties please just shoot me.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I...think I may be playing the game wrong.

 

[Akka]

Wait, there is a machinegun in the Mako ?
(I only played the game since it's been released and finished it four times, it's not like I got enough occasion to notice it !)

 

[Arakhor]

Apparently so.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Yeah. In my game I had to remap some of the controls to get access to it. No, wait, that was a different game I'm thinking about.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Random thoughts and a narrative on Polytopia:

• This game does not allow units to pillage territory. Because of this, if you rush the shields technology and get defenders, you can build one to sit in each city and be pretty well set up defense-wise until the end game. The earlier you get the technology, the cheaper it is due to the way tech costs scale with city count.

• There is no real benefit from turtling with just one city because the cities are not productive enough to stay competitive with larger empires. Connection bonuses (roads, seaways) are largely responsible for the growth of your capital in the midgame so a single-city civ has difficulties competing with civs with capitals that grow bigger than their own and have other cities to fall back on. Well, that's my theory anyways. I'm about to test it out.

• I have upped my difficulty from easy to normal and I haven't lost a game yet so I may push to higher difficulty.

I did have an interesting game against the Atlantians and the Bardur (Scandinavia/German clone). All three of us possessed a complete continent between us and I managed to get the least productive continent of the three. I was also sandwiched between them with one on each coast rather than having them next to each other so I was especially vulnerable. My capital was on a peninsula surrounded by mountains that lacked metals and half the cities of my continent were similarly situated between mountains or barren tundra.

When the first Atlantian sea turtle raider showed up I knew that I would be in trouble as I was already engaged in a blue-water stalemate with the Bardur. It was then that I realized the shape of the map and how I was about to get the squeeze pretty hard. I rushed the defender tech and turtled my west coast - the Atlantian showed up to chuck some tridents at me but the defenders held the line. Meanwhile, the narrow straights between my continent and Bardur's filled up with my battleships as I built fleets to trade barrages with their coastal catapult installations. I was contently having to ship individual squadrons from the east coast to the west and back whenever the Atlantians threatened to overwhelm my defenders but then retreated.

At some point I realized I was in a number's game and that there was no way I could outproduce both rival empires with my current set up. So I withdrew my fleets to hug the coast in an effort to sustain them while I poured my stars (money) into the technology tree and terrain improvements. I came up with windmills and lumber mills that increased the productivity of the few farms and lumber camps I owned and I built a lot of temples on more marginal terrain to bring in additional star revenue.

Eventually I got to ~70 stars per turn and then I began cranking out fleets of wooden battleships and knights. Bardur collapsed under a sustained coastal barrage - even his super units could not reach the front from the hinterland before succumbing to hot iron cannonballs. Once Bardur had fallen, I pushed the entirety of my fleet to the west where they rained the same hellfire on the Atlantians. By the time the game had wrapped up, every square on my continent had been improved and most coastal squares contained a port or a water temple. I was pulling in close to ~100 stars a turn and brought such overwhelming force to the breakthrough on the Atlantian war that I didn't lose a single unit in combat.

This is a pretty fun mobile game and I'd love to play against any of you online.

 

[Syno]

I don't think I've ever had more than two sentences worth of opinion over a mobile game, so mad respect for that post and the previous ones.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It's surprisingly deep and somewhat addictive. There is some artwork in the game files that hint they may have plans for expansion of the game into future eras. I hope that proves to be the case; the game has potential to be so much more than it already is.

While it's deep, it's not extraordinarily so. With Civ games, people like @MadDjinn or @TheMeInTeam could write a legit thesis on winning strategies for the game. Polytopia isn't anywhere near that complex but at the same time it's not exactly simple either and has non-obvious winning strategies that reward players that put effort into fully manipulating the systems the game offers.

Because there are less actions a player can take, the AI is simpler than the Civ ones but at the same time, it performs much better. In fact up until that last game I wrote up, the AI was consistently outfighting me in ranged duels due to superior unit placements on the computer's side. Even now I basically drew even in the shooting war with Bardur and it wasn't until I had the resources to send a wave of melee's across the ocean did I win. Oh and all the while I was getting pounded by the Atlantians ranged attacks - I was unable to mount any counteroffensives in the west thanks to Atlantian ranged harassment until the last five turns of the game.

But there I go again. I'm telling you it's pretty dope.

 

[AdamCrock]

Wait, there is a machinegun in the Mako ?
(I only played the game since it's been released and finished it four times, it's not like I got enough occasion to notice it !)

It's aint worth using anyway (It is probably weaker than Spectre Master Gear and besides has a huge spread) It is IMHO better to dodge incoming missiles in between realoading the main gun than aiming a machine gun.and risk getting hit. I was using it only for immersion sometimes I've got to admit it is a satysfying after shooting the main gun.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I don't think I've ever had more than two sentences worth of opinion over a mobile game, so mad respect for that post and the previous ones.

elder scrolls blades is dumb and i do not like it

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's surprisingly deep and somewhat addictive. There is some artwork in the game files that hint they may have plans for expansion of the game into future eras. I hope that proves to be the case; the game has potential to be so much more than it already is.

While it's deep, it's not extraordinarily so. With Civ games, people like @MadDjinn or @TheMeInTeam could write a legit thesis on winning strategies for the game. Polytopia isn't anywhere near that complex but at the same time it's not exactly simple either and has non-obvious winning strategies that reward players that put effort into fully manipulating the systems the game offers.

Because there are less actions a player can take, the AI is simpler than the Civ ones but at the same time, it performs much better. In fact up until that last game I wrote up, the AI was consistently outfighting me in ranged duels due to superior unit placements on the computer's side. Even now I basically drew even in the shooting war with Bardur and it wasn't until I had the resources to send a wave of melee's across the ocean did I win. Oh and all the while I was getting pounded by the Atlantians ranged attacks - I was unable to mount any counteroffensives in the west thanks to Atlantian ranged harassment until the last five turns of the game.

But there I go again. I'm telling you it's pretty dope.

Neither MadDjinn nor I are active enough in the current Civ game to have any claim to particular expertise. Even in Civ 4 days the great deity players like Rusten, Unconqured_Sun, ABigCivFan and such were significantly better than me, though I could also win on deity sometimes and probably knew some mechanical nuances they didn't need to bother with.

In the Civ 6 scene players like Civtrader, Boyan_Sun, and Victoria are the deity players who know the mechanics and post consistent wins with good times. I can win on deity because Civ 6 is just not as hard as Civ 4 and you can grind wins simply with solid military tactic control and targeting AI to remove ones closer to winning.

Neither list of elite players is complete BTW, just listing a few that come to mind as obviously strong players who posted often. There are a number of really strong deity players who caught up to ~Rusten level abilities after he stopped posting as often, and I'm sure there are tons of strong Civ 6 deity players now as information on how to optimize stuff is significantly easier to access now than in 2009.

 

[Akka]

Finished Brutal Legend yesterday.
It's completely silly, but it's an actual game, full to the brim with relevant references and pretty fun : a roadie gets teleported into the "metal world" (imagine a world which looks like the cover of the most notorious 70' heavy metal or 90' power metal album, with huge swords surging from the ground, demons/cults, fire and brimstone and so on, in which "the power of music" is an actual force and guitar riffs cast spells.
About 20 hours of laughs and giggle.

 

[Hygro]

It is IMHO better than Diablo 2 and that's saying something (btw. Be sure to teleport on a tiny NE island when fighting the demon that guards the anvil - he can't get You there )
If my HDD would be alive I might have join the fun but I don't have the drive to collect lost items again ....

The multiplayer version is a separate application from the singleplayer and doesn't have quests (though some of them are partially there), so no hellforge quest... also none of your belzebub items could carry over to tchnernobog so you might as well get re-started