Video Games: Devils Die Twice

[A True Kaniggit]

On 4/20/2019 at 2:37 AM, Toth said:

I'm still looking at your pic and wonder how the hell you managed to dismantle the HRE. I tried the diplomatic way, but immediately hit the road-block that catholic countries refused to become vassals. And when I try it with force, I can only take tiny advances for fear of gathering massive aggressive expansion and unlawful territory penalties. Instead my path turned out... quite unusual...

I got lucky my ally Austria was voted out as the emperor early on. I expanded relatively slowly, so aggressive expansion wasn't an issue (especially after I got a port to the west of Jutland and was able to start colonizing overseas), and I didn't care if emperor Baden didn't like me because of unlawful territory. What's he gonna do? Scold me?

10 hours ago, Toth said:

1740: https://s16.directupload.net/images/190421/hwhmi4kx.jpg

I like the way this is looking. You almost have a northern "Mare Nostrum" going on.

[Toth]

9 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

I got lucky my ally Austria was voted out as the emperor early on. I expanded relatively slowly, so aggressive expansion wasn't an issue (especially after I got a port to the west of Jutland and was able to start colonizing overseas), and I didn't care if emperor Baden didn't like me because of unlawful territory. What's he gonna do? Scold me?

How is your ally being voted out a good thing? I thought you don't get the unlawful territory penalty if the Emperor is your friend. Admittedly, in my case each time I allied an Emperor, they immediately voted him out. -.- Happened to both Hesse and Cleve.

Quote

I like the way this is looking. You almost have a northern "Mare Nostrum" going on.

Thanks. I still looked at some Youtube videos of Brandenburg playthroughs and this late in the game they all were already finishing up their world conquests, so that shows me just how horrible I am. Or unlucky... my fourth regency lasted till 1749, when my King Alexander I came to power. I named him not after the Macedon, but after the overeager Tsar Alexander of Russia who got his army killed at Austerlitz by trying to be too clever. His stats are really shitty again. I still immediately waged another crazy war.

Up until then interesting things happened politically. France turned into a Republic, but was immediately destroyed by an alliance of Spain, Milan and Savoy, costing me an important ally. Instead I managed to ally Britain, which alongside my rival Spain has the biggest colonial empire. Meanwhile Russia dragged me into a war against the Ottomans... and interestingly, after supporting them as much as I could by taking the Balkans and Constantinople, I got a war exhaustion message that allowed me to claim land in a separate peace. I didn't think that was possible, but apparently it is (maybe just when the attacker has an Imperialism casus belli?). So I grabbed Bosnia despite it being south of Hungary.

Then my idiot kid came to power and saw that my great ally Britain has cut its alliance to Milan and rivaled them. Making it the best possible target to further the unification of Germany without too much collateral damage. Milan was allied with Austria, Bohemia, Bremen, Sweden and Portugal. I was capable to bring all my allies with Russia, Hesse, Bavaria, Cleve and Great Britain to bear. I took out Bohemia early on and annexed it entirely. Bremen had a lvl 9 fortress being very annoying and binding one of my armies for 3 years. Austria folded and offered me three provinces and annulling treaties, I accepted. Then I beat up Sweden and took pretty much everything except Finland. Then I made a peace with Portugal in which I gave England a whole bunch of their colonies before finally turning towards Milan with a warscore of 96%. I pacified the Netherlands from them.

It is 1753: https://s16.directupload.net/images/190422/av799wvp.jpg

Not pictured is me burning through my entire manpower pool fighting the absurd number of revolts that wrecked Prussia for the next two years. I accumulated 217% overextension and have aggressive expansion penalties from 150 points and beyond. Cleve and Bavaria cut their alliances with me, shortly forming a coalition with Hungary, Baden and Liege, but for some reason immediately abandoning it again a few months later. I I recovered my alliance with France however. I suppose once I recover from these revolts, I go for my former allies. I really want to form Germany. Too bad Alexander's administration stat suck so absurdly badly, I still haven't cored everything...

[A True Kaniggit]

19 hours ago, Toth said:

How is your ally being voted out a good thing? I thought you don't get the unlawful territory penalty if the Emperor is your friend. Admittedly, in my case each time I allied an Emperor, they immediately voted him out.

When you're allied with the emperor there are some prohibitions on going to war with other HRE states.

11 minutes ago, Toth said:

Thanks. I still looked at some Youtube videos of Brandenburg playthroughs and this late in the game they all were already finishing up their world conquests, so that shows me just how horrible I am.

Hey, I've never once conquered the world either. We shouldn't compare ourselves to them nerds! 

[Toth]

7 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

When you're allied with the emperor there are some prohibitions on going to war with other HRE states.

Okay. Good to know. But still strange... I only saw that the Emperor refused to join a war in order to not further destabilize his rule.

Quote

Hey, I've never once conquered the world either. We shouldn't compare ourselves to them nerds! 

Yeah, that's true.

Well... at least the one advantage of sitting sick in the bed is that you can finish what you started. Because I did it. The last decades were absolutely insane, but I did it!

So I attacked Bavaria and Hesse in short order, gobbling up huge chunks of them in order to go straight for the provinces need to fulfill the conditions for forming Germany. I was constantly low on manpower, constantly fighting massive revolts and constantly low on admin points. At one point I had even a revolution happening and braced myself for becoming democratic. Much to my surprise however, the Russians came to my help and politely removed the insurgents: https://s16.directupload.net/images/190422/2v2mxtx2.jpg

That was... really odd, to say the least, but I was thankful. Though monarchy had royally screwed me over throughout the course of my playthrough, I didn't want to know just how much of Prussia had to be wrecked for the rebels to claim victory.

While still reeling from that, I waited for my truce with Hesse to expire since Hesse owned the remaining three German provinces that I needed. King Alexander then immediately rushed in to finish them despite working with whatever troops I could scrounge together.

And he did it: https://s16.directupload.net/images/190422/js6kieig.jpg

Better don't zoom into how ugly the borders with Hesse look like...

Still only ranked fifth in global ranking. I assume in front of me are Britain, Spain, Russia and maybe Ming China, though they are in deep trouble of getting eaten by Korea of all things.

So... that was Europa Universalis 4. Quite impressive game, but annoyingly unforgiving at the beginning. Just how much time have I wasted being unable to expand in any way... My main concern is that from what I can tell coalitions as a mechanic are broken. They should be a safeguard against huge blobs out for world conquest, but  instead they are only frustrating roadblocks for smaller countries that are making negligible conquests. As soon as you are big enough for world conquest, your conquests are suddenly not the business of those who are still capable of stopping you while those who feel threatened by you for whatever reason fail to create coalitions. Pretty much the only thing stopping me from unlimited total war is manpower and my allies speaking out guarantees.

But seriously. The manpower issue sucks.

[Inkdaub]

I have started another play through of Horizon and suddenly all is good and proper in my world.

[Heartofice]

Bought a PS4 and Red Dead 2 and its taking me a while to get into it for a number of reasons.
 

• Chapter one is so linear and is basically an enormous tutorial. I was getting frustrated and bored with all the handholding and lack of freedom and was really scared the whole game was going to be like that.
• Once I got to Chapter 2 things improved, but I'm really struggling to get my head around the save/restart mission system, because its more like GTA (which I haven't played in years) than like Fallout or Skyrim. I get so confused when I die as to whether I'm still on the same mission, why I didn't start from the point I died etc. Taking me a while to get my head around the rules.  I killed a legendary bear and then died.. and when I reloaded my save I was in a different location and the bear was gone. I still don't get it.
• Moving from PC gaming to console there are some things that get on my nerves, like endless cutscenes and tasks which give the illusion of interactivity but are really just pressing a button that I've been told to press. 

The more I play the more I like it, and having read more and watched videos I think there is a great game in there, but it takes a very long time to get to a point where it is enjoyable.

[Inigima]

Anybody tried MK11, particularly on PC? I'm interested, but hearing a number of disconcerting things about microtransactions and about the PC port specifically.

[Rhom]

51 minutes ago, Inigima said:

Anybody tried MK11, particularly on PC? I'm interested, but hearing a number of disconcerting things about microtransactions and about the PC port specifically.

I have not.  But after my experience with the most recent Street Fighter and Injustice with the microtransactions, I’m basically done with the fighting genre I think.

[aceluby]

Finally finished Sekiro, getting one of the 'good' endings and taking out all the mini-bosses and optional bosses.  The last fight took me three hour+ long sessions before I finally took him down.  Now I'm going through NG+ and just breezing through it.  Did die once to the ogre, but other than that I've been cruising through, really leveraging the deflecting mechanism a lot more than my first playthrough of these areas.  This run through I'll be getting all the boss battles I can (I think there are 3-4 missing ones in this ending) and then moving on to NG++ to use this character for grinding out the platinum run.  Can't decide if I want to try that bastard in NG++ & NG+++, or start from scratch to get all the endings.

[Fez]

Both Imperator: Rome and the latest Steamworld game (Switch-only this time, which is interesting) drop tomorrow. Going to be real tough deciding which one to get first. I'm leaning towards Steamworld though, since I've got a fair amount of travel coming up; and I suspect, like most paradox games, Imperator will be greatly improved by some patches. 

[Werthead]

BattleTech is launching its Urban Warfare expansion on 4 June.

Enjoyed the original game, couldn't get to grips with Flashpoint for some reason. Hoping this is better.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

17 hours ago, Inigima said:

Anybody tried MK11, particularly on PC? I'm interested, but hearing a number of disconcerting things about microtransactions and about the PC port specifically.

Did you play the other recent ones? I remember those (especially the last one) being super microtransaction heavy. I haven't tried 11, and the only thing I've heard is gamergate types pissing and moaning about women fighters having their cleavage covered up. I kind of what to get the game just to make sure I am firmly on the opposite side of those douches.

[Jon AS]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

BattleTech is launching its Urban Warfare expansion on 4 June.

Enjoyed the original game, couldn't get to grips with Flashpoint for some reason. Hoping this is better.

They've also announced that the third expansion will feature a number of the Unseen. Here's hoping we're getting the full roster of classic 'mechs, from the lowly Stinger to the (arguably) mighty Marauder.

The game is still one of my principal time killers. I can always fire it up, play a few missions, redesign a 'mech to try out some new dumb way to blow stuff up or try to keep Dekker alive throughout the campaign.

[KiDisaster]

I'm looking forward to picking up Steamworld Quest for my trip next week, seems like the perfect game for planes and hotel rooms. 

In the meantime I was thinking about grabbing Days Gone despite having little to no expectations for it but uh...damn https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/a3xg4j/days-gone-is-an-ugly-miserable-experience-thats-not-worth-your-time

[Jace, Extat]

11 hours ago, Jon AS said:

They've also announced that the third expansion will feature a number of the Unseen. Here's hoping we're getting the full roster of classic 'mechs, from the lowly Stinger to the (arguably) mighty Marauder.

The game is still one of my principal time killers. I can always fire it up, play a few missions, redesign a 'mech to try out some new dumb way to blow stuff up or try to keep Dekker alive throughout the campaign.

I'm on like my 6th playthrough with the same basic routine.

[Toth]

Ah, damn. Wrong thread. Sorry.

[A True Kaniggit]

On 4/24/2019 at 9:29 AM, Fez said:

and I suspect, like most paradox games, Imperator will be greatly improved by some patches. 

Yep.

Mine started up ok, but it doesn't let me declare war. How can Pontus become great if it can't annex territory? Mithridates is saddened.

So for now I'm just using the time to learn mechanics and explore the map.

 

Edit: The good news is, I found a way to declare war. The bad news is, f*** Paphlagonia. 

 

[Jace, Extat]

Got a few hours in with Rome: Imperium today.

I'm seeing it compared to EU4, which is a Paradox title I've played very little of. Regardless, after twenty minutes with the tutorial I was able to start up a campaign as Sparta and know what I was doing. I conquered all of the various city states of Achia and the Peloponnese, aligned Epirus and a few other local powers. Eventually Epirus began conspiring against me but the Macedonian successor declared a surprise war on me and I was able to defeat them in the field (their leader had died like a year earlier) with the help of the Byzantius (somehow the city state conquered like half of Thrace) and my allies. I ended up devouring like forty percent of Macedonia, all the way up to Thessalonika. But I made a mistake in taking a fight with Epirus and lost badly in the field. With all of my campaigns I'm also totally bereft of manpower.

It was a good first campaign and I'm gonna move on to a faction with more complexity.

[Ramsay B.]

I started Sekiro a few days ago. I’ve never played any of the Dark Souls games and I couldn’t get into Bloodborne, but I’ve committed myself to this. It’s been rough at times but it is real fun and satisfying to beat a boss. I’m also a few hours in and just now realized that I can sprint. 

I began reading The Witcher books too. I started with The Last Wish because Reddit told me to. I’m on the story about Geralt’s first meeting with Yen. Good stuff so far.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Worst fears confirmed, I accidentally deleted my saved game of RDR2 last weekend. Oh well, at least I get a third chance to not be a complete villain…..