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[Mexal]

24 minutes ago, Ramsay B. said:

About the ending:

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What did you choose? I didn’t hesitate and killed Shimura. I loved when Jin tells him he’s a slave to honor, because he was and it was annoying. The white armor you get for that ending is awesome too.

Great game, but by part 3 fatigue was setting in. It got really repetitive and a lot of the upgrades and moves you get throughout the game felt OP. 

 

Spoiler

I killed him as well. My wife said that you'd shame him forever if you let him live so you had to kill him; there was no choice if we're being Japanese in that period.

I agree in terms of the repetitive nature of it but I find that for all these games. By part 3, I only really did main quests to finish the story but that's pretty much how I finished Witcher 3, Horizon Zero Dawn, RDR2, etc so no real knock on this game.

 

[Toth]

I'm in 1899 now in Victoria 2. I pretty much failed the game at this point with only 36 years left. I very nearly managed to sphere China, but I still had extreme problems staying a Great Power and got demoted in the last moment, with Russia sphering China instead and now no more wars are being fought about China's provinces after a failed attempt by Russia to free one from Britain. I tried to stay a Great Power by training some troops (as I read up on the combat and noticed I have too few artillery units for the ideal army composition), but at the same time the world was wrecked by an absolutely ludicrous alcohol shortage which somehow prevented me from training any troops...

So all have been doing in 75 years of gameplay has been whacking uncivilized countries and failing to industrialize as I am currently at 2000 industry points. That's below Russia's 2800 and that's just sad. And I'm still not entirely sure why I am this bad. I've got the techs and I've got the factories (heck, I'm producing cars, airplanes and telephones already!), it's just my pops turn to workers too slowly. After a bit of research I found out that Pops switch jobs extremely slowly when the number of bureaucrats is smaller than 1%. Which doesn't make a lick of sense, but that's the mechanic. And that was when it dawned upon me that somewhere in the midgame my administration efficiency suddenly dropped down harshly to 6% because all of a sudden all of my core provinces had between 0% and 0,1% bureaucrats. My guess is that when I was busy campaigning for clergy to increasy my literacy, I turned all my bureaucrats into clergymen. So far I hadn't bothered switching my national focus as I was too busy creating colonies, but now that I ran out of room to expand, what with vast swathes of Africa having been gobbled up by Britain and France with me just getting some pieces of East Africa, I went to increase my bureaucrats and much to my surprise things started to become much smoother. Given that colonists now even are bureaucrats, my colonies automatically turn into full states without me putting a national focus on them. Nice! But the gap between me and the major industrial nations is still too damn huge. And I can't even try to beat them on the battlefield because I utterly ignored by military techs and hadn't bothered to build a fleet either. I have just three wooden battleships and a couple of frigates, nothing that could possibly challenge any other Great Power.

I wonder whether I should try to put my new knowledge about industrialization to use by starting a game as Prussia... That certainly would be fun to form Germany and blob in Europe, maybe even invade Britain just to push them off their throne for once.

[Fez]

I think I'm done with Wasteland 3 for now. It just feels so bland, especially the combat. There are choices in the storyline for sure, but when I don't care about any of the characters (and the main party members are generic, interchangeable ciphers) it doesn't motivate me to see how things play out.  It doesn't help that Crusader Kings III is so good; but I feel like I've given W3 multiple fair shots to hook me.

As for Crusader King III, it really is great. But I do have some thoughts on how I hope Paradox can improve the game over time. One, once you reach Emperor rank there's not enough existential threats anymore unless you deliberately screw yourself over. Winning a civil war isn't that hard, and most other Kings and Emperors have enough trouble keeping their realms in line that they don't seem to ever attack foreign powers except for those quite a bit weaker then themselves. I did see the HRE attack France once, but that was it. The only big wars have been Crusades.

Two, the game seems more focused on roleplay instead of map painting (which is great, map painting gets old fast). But there needs to be more events. Too often I don't have much to do besides map paint.

Three, I think the balance of how civil wars and vassal in-fighting works needs some re-working. I think it should be harder for overlords to stop vassals from fighting each other or enforcing demands against the overlord; but I also think it should be much harder for vassals to break away entirely and become independent. Right now there's very little in-fighting except for constant liberty wars (as well as successions that result in realms breaking apart entirely rather than having a nominal head) which end up with independence.

Four, there's too much adultery and cuckolding. There certainly should be some. But considering that these are considered crimes for many of the religions (and therefore anyone who gets caught can be imprisoned), it is imbalanced that the AI is constantly having characters fuck around. Especially for characters with traits like 'Chaste' or have the 'Soulmate' status with their spouse. As is, I'm regularly arresting people and extorting them for their release, which has felt kinda game-y at times. But at the same time, it would immersion breaking for my kings to not be arresting random vassal dukes who sleep with their wives and daughters.

Five, the piety costs to reform or create religions are far too high (especially compared to the costs of simply converting to an existing religion). There are some really cool mechanics around determining the tenets, traits, and even holy sites of religions; and its all locked behind some insanely high costs. If I want to be a heretic, it should be easier. Especially since its actually not that hard to convert to another, existing Christian faith (In fact arguably that's too easy. If the king of Castile converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, which happened in my game, his family and vassals would not just all go along with it. And while most of his provinces didn't convert, they didn't rise up against him either).

But at the end of the day, what is in the game is really great. I just look forward to it becoming even better. Hopefully it follows a path like EUIV, which did get much better, and not a path like Stellaris; I hate what that game turned into.

[RumHam]

I did the tutorial for CKIII and it mentioned "you may take over as your heir and learn they had you killed" how do you check that?

I conquered Ireland, the first guy died and I took over as his son. Then I got an option to go back to the old ways of succession and I said yes because I didn't like how my holdings were split between my children on death. But it turns out the "old way" involves an election! They must have been using mail in ballots because my chosen heir lost to his cousin, who I'm pretty sure then promptly murdered me. 

I just don't really want to keep playing as this (probably) murderous cousin so I think I may start a new run later.

[Fez]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

I did the tutorial for CKIII and it mentioned "you may take over as your heir and learn they had you killed" how do you check that?

I conquered Ireland, the first guy died and I took over as his son. Then I got an option to go back to the old ways of succession and I said yes because I didn't like how my holdings were split between my children on death. But it turns out the "old way" involves an election! They must have been using mail in ballots because my chosen heir lost to his cousin, who I'm pretty sure then promptly murdered me. 

I just don't really want to keep playing as this (probably) murderous cousin so I think I may start a new run later.

Its probably under the Intrigue tab as one of your new player character's secrets. But that's just a guess, I haven't had any murderous heirs yet.

Except one time when my heir was caught trying kill a random courtier. I let it slide, my heir's way more important than whoever that guy was.

[Toth]

I watched a few clips about Crusader Kings 3 and... is it just me or are the map and the menus strangely dark for the series? I find it somewhat hard to make things out...

[Werthead]

Dungeon Keeper is so brutal in that 1990s kind of way games wouldn't even dare of being these days. Very refreshing. I think I'll also check out the recent spiritual successor, War for the Overworld, which I'd forgotten existed (although I have to say that's still very expensive for a five-year-old game).

Pondering having a crack at Deeper Dungeons, the expansion for DK. I never finished it back in the day on account of it being "Nintendo Hard but worse." But I'm feeling more confident on this run.

Finished off my Fallout 3 playthrough as the Minutemen. I did it last time as the Railroad. Fun stuff, and it pairs much better with my settlement-building and civilisation-rebuilding focus this time through the game. So pretty much done, apart from the Nuka World stuff. I might take a crack at Iron Harvest after that, or try one of the 150+ other games I still haven't gotten through on my Steam to-play list.  

2 hours ago, Toth said:

I watched a few clips about Crusader Kings 3 and... is it just me or are the map and the menus strangely dark for the series? I find it somewhat hard to make things out...

I've only seen the screenshots, but the map legibility and general design looks like a huge step backwards from Crusader Kings II.

Also disappointed that the Game of Thrones mod team didn't get their CK3 mod ready in time. I remember they were very fast out of the gates on CK2, but apparently GoT CK3 is going to be slower going (the lack of feudal cities and horse lord mechanics from the CK2 expansions makes Essos a non-starter for now, and they want to create animated portraits like the main game but that's a lot more work).

[Heartofice]

I quite like the UI of CK3, and I think it’s an improvement on previous games. Paradox games interfaces are ugly as shit, the designers knowing very little about information design and seeming to just cram everything into very small spaces, and meaning that nothing is in any way intuitive.

I think they’ve done a reasonable job of simplifying the interface, things that are a clickable are more obvious, there are less long streams of numbers and information , stuff is compartmentalised.. and the avatars are nice too

[Toth]

Still stumbling along with Japan. I am now at 1909. Somehow I managed to beat China now. Once. By... having Russia do all the heavy lifting for me? They offered an alliance all of a sudden and I made use of that by invading China immediately. The USA did an intervention, but ended up not doing anything except getting one army stuck on a Pacific island and another whacking my ally Egypt. China got put through the grinder pretty thoroughly with me coming from Korea and Russia coming from all of the North, it also helped that I used the time to get a few military techs, though I'm still pretty badly behind.

On the other hand I managed to put my national focus on factory workers only and my industry score went up to 3000, finally passing Russia. Next up is... the North German Federation with 5000... and then France and Britain with tens of thousands. Gah. I'm still fairly backwater. I assume it has also something to do with my literacy at 60%. For some reason it utterly refuses to go any higher and I have no clue why. I haven't focused on clergy for the last decades, sure enough, but they barely move the needle anyway.

Well... after waiting for my truce with China to expire, I attacked them again, but this time Russia refused my call to arms (probably because they were busy invading the Ottoman Empire). I thought I should be able to take China on my own anyway, but had to quit after China amassed a 700k doomstack that utterly overwhelmed my army. What the hell?

Edit: Tried to take Vietnam instead. Got another US intervention and they stubbornly refused to step down even after Nam surrendered. I ended up stuck at +4 warscore, having trapped all US forces on islands, but unable to attack the US directly or take out any of their troops as the bastards just gassed my troops whenever they faced off directly.

[Werthead]

Nuka World is very weird. In order to progress down the quest chains, you have to attack the factions you remain allied to back in the Commonwealth and start raiding your own settlements? How does that even make sense? If you say no, then you just seal off a large number of quests you can't do any more. Weird stuff.

[Corvinus85]

I've gone back to TW: Three Kingdoms, as it received a new DLC + an update, more characters, and a new free lord. The DLC brought in the Nanman tribes of southern China, and the map was expanded in the south-west, including northern Vietnam. The Nanman play differently than the Han factions, with their own unit roster, tech tree (called reforms), and some differences in government style. 

Despite being on the same map, playing with a Nanman faction is a bit of a self-contained campaign, as the primary goal is to unite all the Nanman tribes (Impressive that they managed to squeeze in 19 new factions in a corner of the map). But the game does force you to hold more territory than just what the Nanman originally occupy, so you do get to fight against the Han factions eventually. What's interesting is that the end goal mechanic is to achieve a certain territorial expansion, and then hold said territories for 20 turns, so it's a bit like asserting independence.

The unit roster has an exotic feel to it, as you have war elephants, and even tigers. Not sure how realistic tigers on the battlefield is, but they're cool. Your roster expands mainly through gaining the allegiance (confederating) of other tribes; several tribes have access to unique units. Other units can be unlocked through reforms. The reform tablets are interesting, as at one point you are forced into making choices, and what you don't choose becomes locked. The best one is on the military side, where you can choose to get closer to the Han culture, and thus gain access to some Han units, as well as the advanced unit formations of the Han and battlefield tactics, or you can stay pure Nanman, and gain bonuses such as more charge and attack power, be better at ambushes, and increase your capacity to recruit more of the exotic units (so basically become wilder)

But the most interesting part to me is how the characters gain skill. Unlike the other cultures, where you can choose what skill perks to give your characters when they level up, the Nanman characters gain them by doing things in a certain area. All but one are warfare related, but I do like this system, and I think it should be implemented for the entire game.

[Fez]

It's 1210 in CK3, and the Empire of Italia is still ascendent; now encompassing the kingdoms of Italy, Romanga, Sardinia and Corscia, Burgundy, and Valencia. And I control an awful lot of North Africa (the rest is mostly held by the Byzantine Empire which is still going strong despite a couple devastating civil wars). My latest succession even went off mostly without a hitch. It feels like I've basically "won" this first game, but I plan on sticking with it a while longer to experiment and also see if the late medieval tech age changes things up much.

My previous emperor lived long enough that he got enough piety that he could convert most of the empire to a new christian faith. I did some save-scumming to mess around with it. And there's some super powerful religious doctrines you can get. The problem is, none of them are worth the combined losses of not controlling any of the christian holy sites (Catholics currently have all 5), the opinion loss of other Catholic rulers, and the pope turning on you (including being able to call crusades against you.

The Pope is actually a bit of a problem right now. He accumulates insane amounts of money each month (I think he gets a tithe from all the Catholic religious holdings), and, as a result, when he goes to war he can hire every mercenary company available and have these massive doomstacks that overrun everything. Early in the game he's kind of weak (he actually lost Rome itself to a North Africa sultanate, and I took it back; so I've had Rome for a while now; which is a big help), but after a few decades he's near-untouchable. Fortunately he mostly goes to war via Crusade, which can't get called that often, and he he doesn't keep the territories taken from those. But it's still a problem if you ever want or need to fight him. Feels like he needs a bit of a nerf.

On the flip side, the Mongols need a big buff. Genghis Khan showed up at 1200 with a pretty big army and promptly did nothing with it. The regular Mongol kingdom already on the map has kept him contained to the 2 holdings at the eastern edge of the map where he shows up. And I don't think it was RNG. I think the Mongols need a combo of more troops and also some unique mechanics. Best I can tell, he showed up at war with the Mongol kingdom and made an alliance with some of the enemies of the Mongols. However, those allies dragged him into a war with Seljuks, far away from him. I have fog of war of actual troop movements, but I think what happened is he sent his forces to help with that war. His allies won, and the way war works, the ally who started the war got all the territory. Genghis got nothing, but lost almost half his forces. And because he only controls two holdings he can't replinish them nearly enough. And he doesn't have enough to force the Mongol kingdom to surrender anymore either, so he's stuck. It's kinda disappointing.

[Heartofice]

I'm struggling to stick to playing one character in CK3 right now. I'm still learning the ropes so it can all be a little overwhelming. So far the furthest I've got is with the Irish campaign from the tutorial. 

I really want to get into the Alfred campaign, recreate a bit of Last Kingdom, but once Alfred inherits his kingdom as his brother always dies, it can all get a bit much. Suddenly there are Vikings everywhere and it's hard to know what I should be doing next. I find the combat to be hard to really get to grips with, which is why I might leave that campaign for a point where I understand a bit more.

[RumHam]

Xbox series S (the digital only one) info leaks, $299

Surprisingly cheap.

[Leofric]

6 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I'm struggling to stick to playing one character in CK3 right now. I'm still learning the ropes so it can all be a little overwhelming. So far the furthest I've got is with the Irish campaign from the tutorial. 

I really want to get into the Alfred campaign, recreate a bit of Last Kingdom, but once Alfred inherits his kingdom as his brother always dies, it can all get a bit much. Suddenly there are Vikings everywhere and it's hard to know what I should be doing next. I find the combat to be hard to really get to grips with, which is why I might leave that campaign for a point where I understand a bit more.

I tried Alfred first as well and had the same result.  My brother died and I claimed Wessex and then got jumped on by every Viking out there with surprisingly, Gardariki coming all the way from eastern Europe to deliver the coup de grâce to end that game quickly.

Then started in 1066 as the Dunin dynasty of Upper and Lower Silesia.  Served the Piasts of Poland for a few years until they lost the throne to Hungary, so I reclaimed Polish independence and throne and held it until one of my younger half-brothers inherited the Byzantine Empire and conquered Poland with his claim knocking my character back to a Duke.  The Catholics were all converted to the Paulician faith of the Empire.    Then then Byzantines lost Poland to the Carpathian Empire.  The Carpathian Empire started as Hungary and Bohemia, but at their peak they included most of Europe by uniting with the Holy Roman Empire until inheritance caused them to split up again.   By 1350, I had managed to reclaim Poland and then break free of the decaying Carpathian Empire and becoming independent again, and then switched back to Catholic to escape a brutal Holy War.   And then Steam had an update and now I can't open up my saved Cloud files for that game. 

At that point my Dynasty was Famous and had 17 cadet houses,  We had won the 1st Crusade (I couldn't join the later ones as a Paulician) and became the first Kings of Jerusalem (who founded my first cadet branch, Dunin-as-Surrah).   Several of the other cadet houses had been swapping back and forth, taking turns as the Byzantine Emperors for over 150 years.

[aceluby]

Finally got around to playing Dead Cells and am really enjoying it.  Can't believe I've let this go for so long.

[Werthead]

As anticipated, the new console SSD fast-streaming tech is coming to PC. It can also be paired with new streaming tech in the nVidia 30xx series to improve loading times by (wtf) 100 times compared to current tech, which will blow past the consoles with no problems.

The problem, of course, is that this will probably require one of the new SSD PCIe 4.0 drives. There is some hope that some newer PCIe 3.0 drives will be compatible as well, but that's unclear right now.

ETA: Ah, apparently it will also work on the 20xx series.

Meanwhile, Paradox seem to be oddly doing a bit crap at staff employment and retention, despite their recent success and expansion.

[Fez]

Been looking for a second game to play alongside Crusader Kings 3, since Wasteland 3 wasn't cutting it. I had been thinking of checking out the Necromunda game, but reviews make it seem like a pretty half-baked thing (as opposed to the "Mordheim, but more polished" vibe that they were going for). Instead, I'm trying out Star Renegades.

It's pretty good so far. It's a deterministic, turn-based rogue-like; so pretty heavily inspired by Into the Breach. Though instead of tactical movement, it's classic JRPG style of two rows of static combatants; the complexity comes from timeline control (sort of like Othercide) and the wider breadth of different abilities and stats. And its got a nemesis system a la Shadows of Mordor, which ties in pretty well to the rogue-like nature of the game. It seems more story-focused than something like Into the Breach. I'm not sure how that works with the rogue-like aspect yet though. It's also got some really great looking pixel art. 

The tone is a little jarring. It's a "last desperate hope of mankind" story, but everyone is pretty joke-y all the time (it reminds me of pre-D:OS2 Larian Studios writing). It's not bad though; in fact its kind of refreshing that they didn't go the dour, overly self-serious route that most games take. But it does take some getting used to.

 

Meanwhile, in Crusader Kings 3, thanks to a series of minor holy wars I've taken several more Iberian crowns. The Reconquista (not an actual game mechanic; as far as I know) is almost complete, though France and Castille control over half of Iberia instead of me. I might go to war with them; though I'd prefer to try getting their lands by smart marriages and succession. I'll probably go into North Africa next, to try connecting to my vassals in Tunisia. I wish there was some way to declare a restored Roman Empire and reunite with the Byzantine Empire (by force if need be), since between the two of us we control almost the entire Mediterranean (something about Rome is usually in Paradox games, though as far as I know right now it's just that the Byzantines can rename themselves if they meet certain conditions; no one else can yet). 

Also, in a bit of pretty cool emergent gameplay, I have an extremely powerful vassal who got that way without my help. It's not even one of my vassal kings, it's the Duke of Piedmont. Through some combination of inheritances and their own wars, the Duke now has 5 duchies (I think the family got lucky and only had a single heir a couple generations too, I can find a couple other duchies held by relatives of the Duke) and 34 vassal lords. In addition to Piedmont, he controls some pretty wide swaths of the HRE, about a quarter of Tunisia, and has even inherited a couple counties in the holy land which are now part of my realm instead of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (there doesn't appear to be any mechanics for someone to be a vassal to multiple lords, depending title; that's something I hope eventually gets added in the inevitable DLC).

Also, for reasons I'm not clear on, his feudal control with me only requires low taxes and levies from him, which makes him even more powerful. I could modify that, but since I don't have a valid reason, it'd be an act of tyranny that would piss off too many of my vassals to be worthwhile. I've kept successive Piedmont Dukes happy by keeping them on my council, making personal connections, and the occasional bribe. Despite their strength, my personal demesne is strong enough that I could beat them in a civil war, but it would be a big pain. So instead I just keep an eye on them and try to keep them satisfied. I don't want them pulling off against my dynasty what I pulled off against the HRE 130 years ago.

[Caligula_K3]

Damn, Crusader Kings 3 sounds fun. I don't know if I'll get it for a couple months, but I'm really looking forward to when I do.

I've been continuing Subnautica and got into it much more, but it's also made me realize that I may have a slight fear of the deep sea and the terrifying creatures that live down there. Playing it can be really stressful. So I may shelve this game for now and play it at a time when the world isn't so stressful and anxiety-filled in itself.

[The Winged Shadow]

On 9/6/2020 at 3:08 AM, Fez said:

I think I'm done with Wasteland 3 for now. It just feels so bland, especially the combat. There are choices in the storyline for sure, but when I don't care about any of the characters (and the main party members are generic, interchangeable ciphers) it doesn't motivate me to see how things play out.  It doesn't help that Crusader Kings III is so good; but I feel like I've given W3 multiple fair shots to hook me.

I'm in similar boat as you. I don't mind the combat, it's a lot more interesting in higher difficulties where you have to utilize smoke grenade/robots/debuff combos to kill the tougher units quickly and actually need a dedicated healer. The story is where it falls flat. It didn't hook me. It just doesn't have a sense of urgency and doesn't feel like there is a whole lot at stake (even though there supposedly is). The car/world map is ok, but nothing to brag about. The companion characters are a bit meh as well (just unlocked Scotchmo).

Also, after playing Phoenix Point, I despise these outdated %hit chance systems. Missing at 98% is infuriating. I really like the control of Phoenix Point where you can go 100% or take a calculated risk if you wanna hit a vulnerable body part etc. Feels like you are buying into the risk and makes it easier to accept the misses. But the 95% 98% misses are so enraging!