Videogames - The definitive Edition, remastered

[Kalbear]

5 hours ago, Ran said:

Haven't owned a console since the Super Nintendo. That said, the Xbox S pricing is really impressive. And Xbox X of course, shots fired at Sony there and it'll be interesting to see where Sony will price the Playstation...

The only thing I wonder at is the Xbox cloud service. If I understand right, for $15 a month you can stream content from the cloud to your console. That includes content you own? If I have a fast, low-ping connection to the local Azure data center, and I'm not playing twitchy multiplayer games, why would I ever spring for Xbox X, assuming that the streaming servers will be specced similarly to Xbox X?

As always: I am an employee of Microsoft who works in Xbox. 

So I don't know all the details of it, and it's somewhat up in the air, but my understanding is that yes - if you want you can sign up for xCloud/Gamepass and stream whatever you want to the devices of your choice. The library of what works in xCloud is not 'all games you own' so it's not quite as easy as what you say, but they're adding more and more titles all the time. I'm also not totally sure about the highest level of streaming that you can do as far as 4k goes. . If that's what you want to do I think that's awesome. I had a lot of fun playing xbox games on my phone nowhere near my console, and I imagine streaming to a PC would be pretty sweet. 

Microsoft Gaming strategy is to make you part of the Microsoft world however you fit into it. For a lot of people that's going to be the top-end console. For others it might be the Series S. And for others they might not care about owning a console but still want access to the latest games on a monthly basis, and want to play on their TV or their phone or their computer. A lot of the strategy is just around giving gamers what they want how they want it.

[polishgenius]

Anyone up for some Zelda?

[Fez]

The Empire of Italia continues to expand; most recently I seized all of Egypt via holy war (which is less than a crusade). But more interestingly I had some really messed up family drama and murder happen.

My current Emperor has the traits compassionate, forgiving, and wrathful; which makes him a bit of a contradiction. I don't remember his wife's exact traits, but they give her the AI personality of 'treacherous villain'. Early on their marriage, there were rumors that she had an affair and that my oldest daughter might not be mine. I decided to stick with the forgiving side and let it slide, especially since I set my spymaster to find out the truth and he couldn't uncover anyone in the imperial court who had the secret of sleeping with my wife (though it could've been someone outside my court).

But recently, during the Egypt holy war actually, I learned that she had at least one other affair. This time the lover was known, the mayor of Florence, and I learned that my only son and heir was probably his (and this was within a year of finally being able to change my realm laws to primogeniture so that this son would've gotten everything). Fortunately the affair was a secret, so no one else knew. I decided to go wrathful this time. I placed my wife under house arrest (which I was able to do under the pretext of the previous, known affair), where she died under mysterious circumstances within a year (I didn't order it; I wonder if this was some sort "save me from this troublesome priest" moment).

I couldn't arrest the mayor since he had committed no known crimes (or rather, I could, but I'd take a big opinion hit from my vassals). So I asked the Pope to excommunicate him, which he did no-questions-asked because of how much I've done for the church. Now he was a criminal, so I arrested him, had him tortured, and he died from his wounds a few days later.

All this gave my ruler a pretty big stress hit because he is also compassionate and forgiving (though the wrathful mitigates it some); so I decided to go on a hunt to alleviate the stress. During the hunt I got an event, and I don't know if this was pure randomness or if the game pulled this from a list because of what I'd just done. The event was that I catch my son and heir killing a peasant woman (its unclear if its an accident or not), which he lies to me about and says a wolf did it. I have four ways to respond: 1) Help him hide the body; 2) Back up his lie with the rest of the hunting party when they arrive; 3) Arrest him; 4) Kill him and say the wolf got him too. I decided to go with option 4. And now his two-year-old son is my heir instead.

I also decided to remarry. And because I don't need any alliances or any new claims, I decided to just marry the woman with the best stats I could find (gotta get those spousal bonuses); which ended up being a middle-aged lowborn genius lesbian from Swabia. I doubt I'll have any kids from this marriage, though the game says "medium chance". I'm hoping I do and that it results in my second wife going evil stepmother and trying to kill off my grandkids so that her kid could inherit.

Italia is so powerful now that there are no outside threats anymore. So I'm kinda hoping I can gin up a really brutal inter-family civil war. But I won't play deliberately bad to cause it, since that's no fun either. I want to have it happen from roleplaying the characters. That's why I'm a bit disappointed that my wife died mysteriously, since I took no blame from it. I was hoping I'd get a chance to do something that would turn all my kids against me. I have 4 daughters, who I each placed in a matrilineal marriage and then gave their husbands new duchies from my conquests. They could be a threat if things went bad.

[RumHam]

Xbox Game Pass for PC is doubling its price next week

They gave me the first month for a $1, which I thought was weird because I'd already used it on my Xbox. Just saying anyone who wants to try CKIII should probably take that deal now. 

[The Winged Shadow]

4 hours ago, RumHam said:

Xbox Game Pass for PC is doubling its price next week

They gave me the first month for a $1, which I thought was weird because I'd already used it on my Xbox. Just saying anyone who wants to try CKIII should probably take that deal now. 

Damn you Kalbear (as the local MS scapegoat)!!!

I got it as well and am trying out Wasteland 3 on it. $5/month though as I've already spent the $1 deal when Phoenix Point launched. I am glad I did cause Wasteland 3 is not a AAA title, like its priced. I am enjoying it, but I would've regretted buying it for $90aud. I have been using it as a way to scan for games i might want to buy, like Phoenix Point and Wasteland 3 when they are on sale/released on steam (I missed Metro Exodus....). Not sure if $10/month is going to be worth it though. I think going forward I will sub intermittently if enough of the games that I want to try out are on it. I do like 'owning' my games so spending $120 per year and not owning anything is not really worth it for me. 

How do the sub models work? do the game developers get paid by per hour a gamer spent playing a specific game?

 

[Caligula_K3]

6 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Anyone up for some Zelda?

Honestly, yes. Terrible title, but I love Breath of the Wild so much and am completely down for a ripoff of it in Greek mythology world, which should tide me over nicely until BOTW 2.

[Gorn]

I don't think the Game Pass is for me at the moment, since my gaming time is limited, and I don't think I even consume $10 worth of games at the moment. Besides, there will always be stuff that is not included and that I'll need to pay for separately. For example, I'm tempted to get back into Europa Universalis IV, which I haven't played in years, but the Game Pass version doesn't seem to include its zillion DLCs, for which I would have to pay an additional zillion dollars. No thanks, I'll rather wait for a Steam or Humble Bundle sale.

However, using it for a month to try a new game like CKIII and then cancelling is a good deal. I might do that once I'm done with my current game.

[Toth]

On 9/9/2020 at 2:55 PM, Werthead said:

Humble Bundle has a great deal today. The first five Tropico games (Tropico 1 and 2 are listed under Tropico Remastered) plus their DLCs for under £10. I only played Tropico 4 and it hit the sweet spot of being a fun and accessible city-builder without going overbord with the detail (like arguably Cities: Skylines can do). Plays a lot like I imagine a Bullfrog city-builder would, just the right level of complexity and challenge-based gameplay. I didn't get Tropico 3 or 5 as they were effectively the same game and engine as 4, which seemed a bit steep for full price, but at this price it's a steal.

I'm actually on the fence about this one. I got Tropico 3 Gold edition as a DVD and the Tropico 4 base-game. I too have the feeling that they are essentially releasing the same game over and over again, so I still find it somewhat hard to judge whether 10 Euro are a worthy investment for Tropico 5 and DLC when I essentially already have the game. Twice. XD

10 hours ago, Fez said:

The Empire of Italia continues to expand; most recently I seized all of Egypt via holy war (which is less than a crusade). But more interestingly I had some really messed up family drama and murder happen.

In regards to the Crusader Kings 2 discussion, I recently stumbled across the Door Monster crew doing CKIII the Musical:

Meanwhile in my Victoria 2 game:

It's 1920. I... am in a strange position. So last week I complained about the USA using poison gas on me, but it turned out this war against this opponent was actually exactly what I needed to give my military a much needed edge without getting beaten up too badly. With the US navy neutralized I managed to just sit there for a few months making use of the 5% discovery bonus for anti-gas measures by being in a war with a country using gas attacks without committing my troops in actual battle. When the event finally triggered, I invaded Portland, didn't manage to actually take it, but beating the hastily scrambled relief forces thrown at my army was enough for the US to fold and agree to a White Peace.

... I then turned around and immediately invaded China again, cackling manically as I myself used gas attacks to melt those damn doomstacks. I was pretty sure I would have been able to take them on my own, but funnily enough Russia out of their own volition joined the war on my side to grab one province they had a core on and Tibet as a bonus. I only had enough room for Infamy left to grab one coastal region, but it's one that is unfortunately in the middle of the country. Before the game ends I want to take as much land as possible, so when the truce expired, I declared war again to take two more regions... but with Russia still having a truce with them (they fought for about half a year more than me), I had to take them on alone and did pretty badly this time as my colony got swarmed. I am a bit savescumming right now to go try to find the right army placement to bait China into attacking Manchuria instead where I can bring in reinforcements from Korea.

Also oddly enough, China got maritime superiority. Somehow. I had a fleed of 60 cruisers at the Chinese coast to block their harbors and they got scared off by 160 wooden ships. My ships are about 30 times more advanced, but I was skimping on the technologies providing fleet organization. So their moral immediately dropped to zero and they just fled to the nearest harbor without any losses. Damn...

[polishgenius]

5 hours ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Honestly, yes. Terrible title, but I love Breath of the Wild so much and am completely down for a ripoff of it in Greek mythology world, which should tide me over nicely until BOTW 2.

I mean I’m almost definitely gonna play it but even expecting a Botw style game from its first introduction back when it was gods and monsters it’s funny how much of a rip that is.

[Ran]

Thought this was a fun CK3 story -- guy made it his goal to eat the pope, and succeeded. Got a bad belly ache for his trouble.

[Inkdaub]

14 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Anyone up for some Zelda?

I'm in.  This looks pretty great.  I haven't played BotW...or any Zelda game...so I won't even notice the similarities. 

[Fez]

4 hours ago, Ran said:

Thought this was a fun CK3 story -- guy made it his goal to eat the pope, and succeeded. Got a bad belly ache for his trouble.

My one regret so far is that I haven't had a chance to experiment with the really off-the-wall religious stuff; the tenets like ritual cannibalism, carnal exaltation, and witch covens all seem really fun. There's also less fun, but super powerful (and therefore really expensive) tenets like 'tax the non-believers'.

And if you have insanely high piety you can do stuff like bring back the ancient Hellenic religion (e.g. the cost for me to do that right now is ~67,000 piety, whereas the cost of converting to a branch of Islam is "only" about 2,000 piety since I rule a lot of Muslim-majority provinces). My understanding is that the only way you can get piety that high is to first convert to a religion that allows human sacrifice, wait a generation (since each ruler can only convert once), and then get into a lot of wars and keep sacrificing your enemies to the gods to get lots of piety boosts.

[Caligula_K3]

6 hours ago, polishgenius said:

I mean I’m almost definitely gonna play it but even expecting a Botw style game from its first introduction back when it was gods and monsters it’s funny how much of a rip that is.

Yep. You would think they could maybe try to come up with some new powers, but I'm pretty sure I saw both Stasis and Magnesis in there. I guess if you're going to completely rip off something, might as well rip off the best!

[Rhom]

18 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Anyone up for some Zelda?

That does look really good.

I didn't catch what systems.  They doing all the current gen and the upcoming?

[Toth]

1924 in Victoria 2. Just after the most interesting war I have ever seen in this game in regards to satisfying army maneuvering. Daming had been a Japanese enclave on the Chinese coast because I can't conquer Beijing to connect my borders, therefore I had at the start of this war a number of troops stranded behind enemy lines. My strategy therefore was to hold out in that enclave while my main army pushes downwards from Manchuria. This... at first didn't really work at all because a massive Chinese army forced me into the trenches. I'm talking of a 2 Million doomstack here! That I had to hold off with just 400.000 troops of my own. It was absolutely insane. Fortunately things kinda fell into place. I had a few armies still moving around that huge battle, sieging provinces in Mongolia while at the same time dared China to attack Daming to relieve my forces at the main battle a little. That wasn't really a good idea and looked pretty close to backfiring, but somehow the Chinese troops attacking Daming ran out of organization and retreated, allowing me to replenish my Daming troops as I saw the forces from Mongolia coming down.

At that point I realized that China was singlemindedly throwing every single newly created unit into the meatgrinder in the north, completely ignoring all provinces that I had conquered around it. With the provinces around Daming suspiciously empty of troops I decided to widen my front, cutting off the Laizhou region and taking Beijing itself, leaving a single path west of Beijing so that China can keep sending their troops north. The moment I had consolidated by frontlines like that I pulled some exhausted armies out of the trenches and positioned them around the battle, while at the same time merging my two southern front lines and closing the gap. It was a textbook encirclement that left the Chinese main army utterly devastated... and yet the battle raged on until the very end of the war and the annexation of two more provinces of the Shangdong peninsula. At that point the 2M stack had melted down to 300k though, which is just terrifying.

I still have time left for another expansion into China in 1929, but damn it is going to be hard. I noticed that my soldier population in Korea has been totally exhausted, so I have to make haste to press more Chinese in my newly acquired provinces into service, to make up for it. This also means that using the same strategy might not work as well again or at least that I will have trouble replenishing my forces in a prolonged trench war in north, meaning I'll have to use my enclave as main battle line.

[Caligula_K3]

21 hours ago, Rhom said:

That does look really good.

I didn't catch what systems.  They doing all the current gen and the upcoming?

Yep, all the systems: Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox1, Xbox X, Xbox S, PC (am I the only one who finds XBox marketing insanely confusing?)

[RumHam]

2 hours ago, Caligula_K3 said:

 (am I the only one who finds XBox marketing insanely confusing?)

Nope, it's even worse than what you listed. Right now there's the Xbox One, Xbox one X and Xbox one S. and in november they're releasing the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. So next generation xbox is called the "Xbox Series?" that seems really dumb. 

I'm sure at least a few kids have already gotten the wrong current gen systems because X and S sound kinda similar. It'd be so easy for a gamestop clerk to miss-hear an uniformed customer and give them the wrong version. 

I guess maybe they don't like the idea of the Xbox 4 going up against the PS5. 

[Rhom]

5 hours ago, RumHam said:

I guess maybe they don't like the idea of the Xbox 4 going up against the PS5. 

I’m almost positive that’s exactly why there was an XBox 360 during the PS3 generation instead of the XBox 2.

[Toth]

And my Japan playthrough is done. It's 1936. And the last years of the game had been a weird trip. Before my last attempt to nab some Chinese provinces my allies seem to have taken a liking of dragging me into weird wars at the other end of the world. First Portugal attacked Vietnam and with that triggered a US-intervention as well as dragging me and France into it. And while that was still being fought Egypt got attacked by the Kingdom of Sicily. So I sunk the Vietnamese fleet and some hastily assembled American ships in Indonesia, dropped an army off at Vietnam and hurried to the Mediterranean where Sicily awaited with an impressive amount of wooden ships that managed to hold my fleet at bay through sheer numbers, at least until my reinforcements came through the Suez channel.

In the end the US never bothered to commit much more than a few ships to defend Vietnam and ultimately threw them under the bus by agreeing to the Portuguese demands. And Sicily peaced out as well after I beat their fleet and took Crete, which for some reason belonged to them rather than the Ottomans or communist Greece. With that done, I was free to turn my attention back to China and declared war again. This time it was... not really all that impressive, I must admit. The war started, China immediately swarmed my enclave, my forces from Manchuria/Korea rushed to their aid... and things got messy. My enclave apparently was too big and when Chinese doomstacks attacked me on several parts at once and threatened to overrun me, I decided to give up on trying to form a coherent frontline and drew all my not yet engaged forces together to at least be able to win some of these battles, even if that meant allowing Chinese forces to lay siege on my provinces. After that it went surprisingly smoothly thanks to how recklessly fast I pushed from the north and thanks to the Chinese resistance having being more spread out. In fact I really took a liking to these encirclement maneuvers, now that he I had so ridiculously plenty armies to do this with and at some point managed three encirclements at once.

After China folded, I sat back and thought where to go next. My infamy was at the limit and I didn't feel confident enough to take on the whole world, so doing anything reckless was out of the question. But I was still only fourth in the world ranking and that angered me. Which is why I did the most historical thing and attacked Russia to get my last core they occupied. That once again was a very short and vicious war in which I abused encirclement, luring their main army of 400k onto Kamchatka and then closing the door essentially. They folded before the battle was over. I guess I'm now ready for Hearts of Iron, huh?

The last few years then were spent trying to drive my scores higher by building ships, forts, researching prestige technologies and pushing my industrialization forwards in a desperate attempt to at least catch France in the world ranking. With annoyance I received the message in 1933 that my people finally developed tanks. Bravo. As if I could use them at this point...

... until I suddenly did as just before the end of the game I all of a sudden got a "Place in the Sun" casus belli against the Ottoman Empire, allowing me to invade the middle east. Funnily enough France, smelling blood, immediately joined the war on my side. But the game ended before anything became of it.

This is the state of the world at the end: https://s12.directupload.net/images/200913/c8eb72mj.bmp

(note that the Netherlands have the same color as Japan, making figuring out the territorial ownership in Indonesia a mess)

Here's the world ranking at the end (sorry, I forgot to switch the game to English this time): https://s12.directupload.net/images/200913/9icg69wu.bmp

I indeed narrowly managed to catch France and become third! But I am absolutely flabbergasted at that Industry rating of the USA. It just... skyrocketed at the end there... And Britain is still utterly invincible.

So... With that done, my initial thought had been to try again as Prussia and this time to succeed in industrializing early. But eh... I guess I don't have all that much time on my hands now...

[Red Tiger]

Finished Cuphead this week. Now to wait until Cyberpunk.