What Video Games Have You Been Playing VII: The Real Ending is Locked Behind a Paywall

[Lemon Merchant]

That would be a great mechanic. I've seen it done in other 4x games like Endless Space and Galactic Civilizations II and it worked great in those games. In both of those games, you could only put so many ships into a fleet, but as your research progressed you would unlock tech that would allow you to build larger and larger fleets.

Stellaris has that mechanic as well, and it works very well. Fleet stacking is quite convenient in that game. When battle happens, all ships attack at once, with individual battle results for each ship at the end of the battle. I can't imagine how tedious and horrific the game system would be if you had to move your fleet one by one through the stars in order to get anywhere. There is a certain corner of Hell where bad people are forced to play games like that for eternity.

I have to play enough of those games when I die. I'm sure not going to play them while I'm on this side of the grass.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Civ 5 was so much better after the second expansion came out that I decided I won’t buy civ 6 until the second expansion comes out.

As I've said many times...I never buy a Civ game until it has "complete" in the title, and I don't trust Firaxis so they also have to have the next Civ game released before I believe that complete really means complete.

 

[Commodore]

and I don't trust Firaxis so they also have to have the next Civ game released before I believe that complete really means complete.

One of these days they are going to trick you by releasing an expansion for the previous game after the next game has already been released.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

One of these days they are going to trick you by releasing an expansion for the previous game after the next game has already been released.

Well, they're gonna have to be really tricksy to get away with that, since I haven't bought five yet and if you count Beyond Earth, which I do, I'm already a full game behind...and in no particular hurry. To be honest it's unlikely I'd buy any Firaxis game before it hits GoG, so I should probably just use that to describe my limits.

On another front, I finally started modding Rome:TW. DarthMod has some good balancing nerfs that certainly seem to make the early game more challenging playing as a Roman faction, but it hurts the AI Romans so badly that the great climactic Roman Civil War is gonna be a letdown. I played a Julii start far enough to see that the Scipii were likely to just be eliminated, or at the very least contained as a one province stepchild. Thinking I didn't want a one v one civil war I started a Scipii campaign, but now the Gauls are about to march on Rome and the Julii are folding like cardboard and the Brutii have been punted across the Adriatic by Macedonians.

I'll probably give it a whirl as a nonRoman faction to see how that goes, but I'm open to suggestions as to other RTW mods that might provide more challenge without using a straight anti-Rome bias to do it.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Tactical gameplay isn't and shouldn't be at the core of a Civilization game. Civilization is a strategy game, that's the whole reason why it is turn-based with tiles to begin with. A good tactical warfare game wouldn't have any. Not to say that 1upt has no connexion at all with real warfare, it actually just feels like playing a board game, something even more "outdated" than stacking.

It shouldn't be at the core of the gameplay, and it isn't unless you fo full warmonger. I think some tactics is a pretty good addition, otherwise your military sucess is only based on your economy.
Now if only they AI was better at it...

Or make the stacks upgradeable as part of tech tree unlocks or General unit allowing an extra stack
I alway found it odd that a single city square might represent tens of Millions while an Early army unit would be tens of thousands

That would probably be the ideal solution, and they are making some first steps towards this system with corps and armies.
I'd prefer something like this:
Maximal stack size of 3 in the beginning.
After some XP from combat or military buildings you get a chieftain who woks like a Great General and increases the limit of his stack to four. After some experience/civics/tech he can be upgraded/promoted to a warlord and then later a general. Sime additional bonuses from civics/techs increase the limit to a maximum of 10.

Civ 5 was so much better after the second expansion came out that I decided I won’t buy civ 6 until the second expansion comes out.

Civ5 base vanilla was lacklustre indeed but feature wise I think Civ6 is acceptable in that regard. It needs UN/world congress though.

It was more than acceptable. It has almost* everything vanilla Civ5 had, plus the religion system from G&K and the trade routes and great works from BNW.
The only things missing from vanilla 5 are golden ages, which will be added in the expansion next Thursday and national wonders, which would be a bit redundand with the district system and the governors.
I think the only things missing from Civ5 with both expansions are the World Congress and ideologies.
I see the flaws in civ 6, but I can't go back to 4 or 5.

 

[cardgame]

Well I think there's a reason darthmod never took off until Shogun/Empire

Europa Barborum is the gold standard for Rome I afaik

 

[Commodore]

Been playing a little indie game that I think several posters here might enjoy (don't want to mention names since it might be considered trolling even though that's not my intent). It's called RIOT: Civil Unrest. It's on Early Access right now on Steam for $12.99. It's a pretty fun game that deals with some serious political stuff in a surprisingly unbiased manner.

Basically the game takes real world riots/protests that have occurred and let's you play them as either the protestors or the police. There are only four protests right now, but each one is split into four chapters for each side. You can pick different equipment depending on how you want to tackle a particular mission. Obviously you can choose to try to keep things peaceful or you can take a more...aggressive approach. Protestors have access to things like megaphones to rally the crowd, social media to bring in more protestors, rocks, firecrackers and molotovs to scare police, and even homemade smoke bombs and rockets. The police have the standard riot control stuff like batons, CS gas, smoke grenades, rubber bullets, and flashbangs. Interestingly, the developers put in the ability for the police to equip live ammunition as well. This obviously scatters protestors extremely quickly, but can still cause defeat for the police since it turns public opinion against them (more on that later). They can also put their squads in different formations for different situations as well. For example, they can go into line formation to stop a crowd's advance, block formation for tighter control and to keep crowds from separating them, and a wedge formation for charging into crowds and splitting them up.

As stated before, each protest is split into four chapters. Each chapter has a different objective for both the protestors and police to achieve to "win" that chapter. For example, in one mission the protestors have to block a highway for a certain amount of time, while the police obviously have to drive the protestors off the highway and keep them from reoccupying it before time runs out. Another one has protestors trying to storm a compound and destroy generators within the allotted time. Completing these objectives is not enough to win a chapter though. You must also maintain public favor by being less violent than the the other side. Cause more violence than your opponent and you will still lose the mission even if you completed the objective.

The four protest campaigns included right now are the Indignados movement in Spain, the No TAV protests in Italy, the protest of the building of a junkyard in Keratea, Greece, and the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-austerity_movement_in_Spain

 

[Marla_Singer]

@Commodore: it seems your game does solve the carpet vs stack debate in having no tile at all: maybe that's the future for Civ7? No tile at all?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Or make the stacks upgradeable as part of tech tree unlocks or General unit allowing an extra stack
I alway found it odd that a single city square might represent tens of Millions while an Early army unit would be tens of thousands

Civ 6 already has 3UPT and I believe generals allow you to push that to 4UPT.

 

[Birdjaguar]

On another front, I finally started modding Rome:TW. DarthMod has some good balancing nerfs that certainly seem to make the early game more challenging playing as a Roman faction, but it hurts the AI Romans so badly that the great climactic Roman Civil War is gonna be a letdown. I played a Julii start far enough to see that the Scipii were likely to just be eliminated, or at the very least contained as a one province stepchild. Thinking I didn't want a one v one civil war I started a Scipii campaign, but now the Gauls are about to march on Rome and the Julii are folding like cardboard and the Brutii have been punted across the Adriatic by Macedonians.

I'll probably give it a whirl as a nonRoman faction to see how that goes, but I'm open to suggestions as to other RTW mods that might provide more challenge without using a straight anti-Rome bias to do it.

You should try Divide et Impera It is an awesome complete overhaul of the game, and it is ongoing.

 

[cardgame]

DeI is indeed an absolutely fantastic, complete game-changer of a mod, but that's for Rome II and Tim is playing Rome I.

 

[Birdjaguar]

oh. Tim upgrade to Rome 2!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

oh. Tim upgrade to Rome 2!

Still has Steam DRM.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Still has Steam DRM.

Still $12.50 USD, kinda expect it would be a $5 game by now to be honest.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

So back at the DarthModded RTW...before giving up and playing an other than Roman campaign I had one last brainstorm and figured I'd try to be a good Roman citizen. Started as Julii and blitzkrieged the Gauls to consolidate the head of the peninsula and establish a strong economic base, then put my own progress on hold while helping out. Learned that my stupid ally/rivals won't accept help. I captured Caralais and tried to just give it to the Scipii, who are once again going nowhere, and they said no. So I tried to just give them a block of cash and they wouldn't take that either.

However, they couldn't stop me from landing an army on Sicily and stomping out the big Carthage stack that was headed their way. Well, "stomping out" is an overstatement. I ran my half stack up against their full stack hoping Dipius Scipius would drag their big stack out and hammer them. They didn't. After about three turns Carthage coughed up a half stack and hammered me instead. Twelve units of hardened veteran Hastati with a very strong general reduced to 57 guys fleeing onto the boats...but my general got away and we inflicted almost 2000 casualties on their stack and a half, so that was a good start on shifting the balance of power in Sicily. I'm reloading, and then I'll go back and see if I can do similar damage to the Greeks. Hopefully then Dipius Scipius will get off his fat butt and get something going.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Why bother helping your idiot allies and not just take Carthage for yourself ?

 

[Broken_Erika]

One of these days they are going to trick you by releasing an expansion for the previous game after the next game has already been released.

Running with scissors did something like that..
http://postal.wikia.com/wiki/Paradise_Lost

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Why bother helping your idiot allies and not just take Carthage for yourself ?

When I first started playing RTW, so, so long ago, I saw pretty quickly that a "long game" strategy of cutting off the other Roman factions expansion early was very effective and made the inevitable civil war easy. Eventually I recognized that the civil war against two other well established Roman factions was actually the highlight challenge of the game, so I stopped cheating myself out of it. In unmodded RTW I very pointedly avoid intruding into the "designated" territory of my Roman rivals, no matter how slow they are about their business. With this mod they seem to be not just slow, but the Scipii in particular are outright stopped.

 

[Lexicus]

I hated on civ 5 for a long time, but you have to admit the doomstack of IV was a lame mechanic. Now civ 5 combat is a bit funky but still much better.

I couldn't disagree more, actually. I like doomstacks fine. I don't hate 1upt or anything but the AI being unable to operate properly means the combat is incredibly boring. I have never felt anything in Civ 5 remotely approaching the sensation of being invaded in Civ 4 by a doomstack that might be too big for me to handle.

where things like frontlines, ambushes and flanking became part of warfare.

This was never my experience in Civ 5. The biggest challenge in every military campaign was always figuring out how to stop your units from blocking each other up, while the AI's units simply mill around waiting to get mowed down. The combat AI in Advanced Wars 2 (a GBA game from 2003) challenges me more than the Civ 5 combat AI ever did.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I couldn't disagree more, actually. I like doomstacks fine. I don't hate 1upt or anything but the AI being unable to operate properly means the combat is incredibly boring. I have never felt anything in Civ 5 remotely approaching the sensation of being invaded in Civ 4 by a doomstack that might be too big for me to handle.

Civ 4 combat could be pretty boring too.
After a surprise DoW by Montezuma, Shaka or Ragnar I'd usually make a cup of tea or do the dishes while the AI was throwing dozens of chariots or horsemen at my fortified machine guns during the first turn of the war. That turn often took at least two minutes.