What video games have you been playing V: the return of the subtitle

[Hygro]

I miss the time when Grand Theft Auto was about, well, doing grand theft auto.

I think that was a feature of your cars exploding every six blocks.

 

[Spidernova]

Playing CK2 again. Going for the Zoroastrian and India achievements. I learned today that you can have four separate waves of black death going on at the same time.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

No, we looked at the first word first. "Manhole". A hole in a man. aka butthole

I dread to think what you thought Alice was getting up to with that rabbit.

 

[Takhisis]

Some non-combat skills such as Haggle can be very useful. If you play a mage, try to learn Teleport before too long, as you'll often be walking very many places.

You mean barter, but, yes, it's a good skill. I honed it enough when playing Fallout I that I could buy stuff meds off NPCs, exchange them for a larger amount of the same ware, and again and again. A small mountain of anti-rad pills later I swept the entire base at The Glow clean.

Don't forget to check out the brothels!

Oh, Arakhor! *flutters eyelashes*

I miss the time when Grand Theft Auto was about, well, doing grand theft auto.

I think that was a feature of your cars exploding every six blocks.

Heh-heh, back then you could earn money by ramming other cars. Or torching them. Or shooting them. Or dropping grenades under the hood. Or landing them on their backs. Or…

 

[warpus]

I dread to think what you thought Alice was getting up to with that rabbit.

The Alice story makes a lot of sense. I have read it in Polish before I moved to the land of manhole covers.

 

[Arakhor]

Oh, Arakhor! *flutters eyelashes*

Mr Takhisis, are you trying to seduce me?

 

[Ajidica]

Mr Takhisis, are you trying to seduce me?

Is that a game controller in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

 

[Arakhor]

Well, I am fondling my mouse right now...

 

[Takhisis]

Mr Takhisis, are you trying to seduce me?

There is no try. Just do.

 

[Snerk]

Rise of Tomb Raider was on sale so I DL'ed it. Nothing ground breaking but it seems pretty good. I've always liked a good Lara Croft romp. So to speak.

 

[thecrazyscot]

I really enjoyed Rise of the Tomb Raider, managed to 100% it actually. Had zero desire to get any of the DLC though afterwards.

 

[Lexicus]

Anyone got any good mods for Empire: Total War?

 

[Civ'ed]

Ahh so that's when that nonsense stops. I don't even get the point of it. It just makes things annoying. It would have been cool if the raiders showed up every couple decades and tried to pillage a couple of your cities, maybe occupying them, trying to start up their own kingdom or something. But nope, they just show up, annoy people for a while, accomplish nothing, and leave. Why are they even in the game?

Raiding in ck2 is a bit of a weird thing.
There are various checks for raiding:

• Certain cultures can raid - Norse, all Altaic, Hungarian, Nahua
• Certain religions can raid - all pagan, hindu
• Certain government forms can raid - all Tribal and Nomadic

As the ck2wiki puts it,

1. Catholic Feudal Norwegian cannot raid
2. Germanic Feudal Norwegian can raid
3. Catholic Feudal Norse can raid
4. Catholic Tribal Norwegian can raid

Raiding is only really a thing (at least the way you describe it) in three start dates: 769, 867, 1066.

1. 769 - begins with normal raiding procedure. At some point, the Viking Age event gives every Norse Germanic holding (i.e. owner is Norse Germanic, county is Norse Germanic) extra shipyards and shipbuilding tech.
2. 867 - the Viking age has already begun
3. 1066 - the Viking age is nearly over and there's really only one character left who can raid like this.

The issue is that raiding is supposed to be an annoyance. You cannot capture holdings through raiding, only loot them for money and prestige. Nomadic governments get the ability to invade other holdings (not sure if duchy or kingdom level) once their horde becomes too large. Norsemen, upon the start of the Viking Age, gain access to the Prepared Invasion CB - meaning that at some point a Norseman with a large army of event troops can come bearing down.

The AI only uses the prepared invasion very rarely. The one prepared invasion guaranteed to happen is in the 867 start - the Great Heathen Army is in the game from the start so Jorvik will almost always happen. In addition, by 867 the Norse tribes are slowly starting to merge into kingdoms like Svithjod and Danmark, meaning that they actually have more levies to bring to the table and thus larger armies.

In 769, however, the highest level title any norse character owns is a duchy. This is ok, but does mean that there will be no strong raiders - as the Chapel webcomic pointed out, no single norse county has enough levies to besiege another single norse county. This often translates into annoying mosquito swarms of bearded Norwegians coming down on holiday.

an interesting thing to note (according to the wiki): apparently defeating a raiding army means it cannot raid the victor's lands for five years. To facilitate this you need to catch a raiding army first, however, and raiding armies under AI command will always flee to ships the moment an army starts to converge on them.

 

[warpus]

Interesting, thanks for the writeup

an interesting thing to note (according to the wiki): apparently defeating a raiding army means it cannot raid the victor's lands for five years. To facilitate this you need to catch a raiding army first, however, and raiding armies under AI command will always flee to ships the moment an army starts to converge on them.

From my experience I have never seen this happen. I always just waltz in with a much larger army and wipe them out.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I finished Fallout 4's "Nuka World" expansion last night. It's pretty much more of the same, so if you've finished Fallout 4 and are keen for more, the DLC is just fine. If you've had enough of Fallout 4, there's nothing here to entice you back. There are some fun areas to explore, a couple of new monsters, a couple of new weapons, a couple of new armor types, and 2 suits of power armor with unique paint jobs.

The only new wrinkle is that you can become a Raider and launch attacks on the very same Commonwealth settlements you've spent all that time building, which I didn't find all that compelling. I mean, the combat is the same, and there's no exploration or tension because you're attacking locations you yourself have built, so there are no surprises. You could, if you wanted, go back to the Commonwealth and try to construct a settlement that is "foolproof" and then see if you can crack its defenses, like playing chess against yourself. Meh. Once you get the park running, you can also ride some of the rides, but again... meh.

It's perfectly playable if you've already paid for the DLC and are just in the mood to shoot things. Otherwise, I'm sure folks around here can recommend a thousand other things to spend your money on.

 

[Lohrenswald]

1. 1066 - the Viking age is nearly over and there's really only one character left who can raid like this.

2, IIRC

 

[Takhisis]

Anyone got any good mods for Empire: Total War?

I think Steph was doing one. Check the Total War Center.

 

[cardgame]

American Civil War is fantastic if you can get it to stop crashing. Everyone's computer is different

 

[Ajidica]

Question about Arcanum:
I must be missing something, or did the game seriously ship without a way to control how party members level up and/or control them in battle and how they cast spells?

 

[gay_Aleks]

I've played the game briefly, and, well, I think if you go to their character profile you can set presets how to level up or even adjust the stat points?