I don't have much experience with turn-based games overall but I bought the XCOM collection during the Steam winter sale. I fired up XCOM: Enemy Unknown and so far I think it is really well done. I like that they do a bit extra for immersion (e.g., when you research something new you actually talk to a researcher vs just clicking a menu) and they add a nice amount of flavor while keeping gameplay central. Really enjoying it so far and I appreciate that the missions are fairly short, making it a good game to hop in for a mission or two then hop out.
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The currently playing and random game thoughts thread (Jan 16 to Jan 22)
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Kaamos_Llama
Moderator
XCOM is a really good place to start with turn based combat. The combat interface is pretty well laid out and clearly shows whats happening.
Going back to Battle Brothers at a later date, fired up Wasteland 3 and working through the beginning of that. I think I'll just finish off the last mission of Cyberpunk 2077 tomorrow. Havent done all the side stuff but the thought of playing it not that exciting anymore. No complaints, got about 35 hours out of it and could be tempted to go back and try it after I get a new GPU (in about 3 years). Be interesting to see how much they've fixed and how much better the game looks at ultra settings.
Going back to Battle Brothers at a later date, fired up Wasteland 3 and working through the beginning of that. I think I'll just finish off the last mission of Cyberpunk 2077 tomorrow. Havent done all the side stuff but the thought of playing it not that exciting anymore. No complaints, got about 35 hours out of it and could be tempted to go back and try it after I get a new GPU (in about 3 years). Be interesting to see how much they've fixed and how much better the game looks at ultra settings.
After completing shadow of Mordor i decided to play some indie games until the new PoE league starts. Kinda hope its crap and i can skip it this quarter.
This time i'm playing enter the gungeon. been on my back list for a few years now and decided to have a crack at it.
A tough little game. Part of the challenge is the randomness of it. Sometimes i get easy peasy bosses or i'm given plenty of decent weapons and items to deal with them, other times its a lost opportunity as you're dealt a poor hand and expected to play it. been playing it for 3 days now and racked up 6 hours. its a long grind to be sure. We'll see how things pan out. I'm not into the whole rogue thing if I'm being honest. less so when its randomized.
So far i can get to about the fourth stage before i meet my demise. unsurprisingly against the bosses. No shame, i'll be looking up videos to understand the mechanics to minimize failed attempts. As well as just getting the elevator working and practicing with using the default weapons. As expected, i'm picking the marine.
This time i'm playing enter the gungeon. been on my back list for a few years now and decided to have a crack at it.
A tough little game. Part of the challenge is the randomness of it. Sometimes i get easy peasy bosses or i'm given plenty of decent weapons and items to deal with them, other times its a lost opportunity as you're dealt a poor hand and expected to play it. been playing it for 3 days now and racked up 6 hours. its a long grind to be sure. We'll see how things pan out. I'm not into the whole rogue thing if I'm being honest. less so when its randomized.
So far i can get to about the fourth stage before i meet my demise. unsurprisingly against the bosses. No shame, i'll be looking up videos to understand the mechanics to minimize failed attempts. As well as just getting the elevator working and practicing with using the default weapons. As expected, i'm picking the marine.
Zed Clampet
Community Contributor
Sometimes I think the AI in Total War Troy is actually broken. Was playing a co-op campaign last night and it was over either 3 or 4 turns that 17 factions, many of whom I was on okay terms with, declared war on me. I can't remember the exact number, but it was something like 14 enemy armies in and around my territory. All I could do was play defense and rebuild after they destroyed a settlement. It wasn't very fun, to be honest. Surely it wasn't their intention that this number of factions would just declare war on you out of the blue. It's not the first time that this has happened, either. I had to quit playing for the night. I was just too frustrated. I'll survive the onslaught, but I won't be able to leave my territory for a very long time with all these factions feeding me with enemy armies. Best I can do is sneak a very strong army out and try to wreck havoc away from my home.
Zloth
Community Contributor
Don't get caught in the deluge of blood!
Seriously, you can survive an attack by so many factions? What does it take to lose?
I haven't been playing anything—work projects ongoing—so I haven't got back into Troy yet. Might sneak in a demo or two later.
Did you accidentally tank your reliability or did something happen to give you a diplomatic penalty? Or did you get into a war with someone who asked all of his friends to join their war against you?
Zed Clampet
Community Contributor
So there was nothing I could track that would explain it other than one thing, which was that Achilles was extremely angry. I have no idea whether his anger is what caused it There's next to nothing you can do about his moods other than not forcing him to end his turn garrisoned and not declaring war on your neighboring factions. There will be story questions that come up that you have to answer as Achilles' mood changes, but I was always very careful not to pick anything that had a penalty to diplomatic relations. And the factions that declared war weren't allies to one another or anything. It was just crazy. Actually, the reason Achilles started getting angry to begin with was that a neighboring faction declared war on him, and it just snowballed from there.
The other thing I had against me was "Great Power". I was far and away the strongest faction, which causes a lot of problems.
I honestly don't know if I can survive it or not, but I think that I can. My advantage is that my armies are a hell of a lot better than theirs. I maximized my population growth and got to higher tier units before anyone else. I also targeted food and bronze settlements when picking my early enemies, so I have a decent number of armies, and I'd guess one of my armies is worth about 3 of theirs.
As far as what it takes to lose, in Total War Warhammer 2 and 3, you are racing other factions to a certain goal, but in Troy it's all about conquest, which is kind of a shame and maybe why they made the AI so aggressive. It's the only chance they have, really.
Zed Clampet
Community Contributor
I'm using up all my goodwill with Valve. Just refunded a second game in about a week. This time it was a game called Wrench, which is the Surgeon Simulator of car mechanic games. It doesn't advertise itself that way. It thinks it's a hardcore sim. It's wrong. It's just clunky garbage.
I finished up Trails in the Sky last night and really loved the game. Quite an interesting twist at the end, too. I already bought the Second Chapter during the Steam winter sale so I'll just be continuing on. I really like the characters and the story so I'm excited to see what's next. I'm thinking I will start up God of War on the side as well as I've been getting the itch to pick it up.
I started a new co-op campaign of Warhammer 2 yesterday, with me playing Luthor Harkon and my friend playing the von Carsteins. My plan was to just sail to my friend and help him out in battles, but learned that I needed the entire starting province to unlock Luthor's magic. However, the high elves grabbed one of the settlements I needed, so I had to wipe them out. Then the dark elves started raiding me, so I wiped them out. While I was doing that, the Lizardmen declared war on me and the settlements I took from the dark elves were right next to them, so now I have to exterminate them as well.
By now I have a decent enough income to get a second army though, so if we continue this campaign I can send someone over to help him.
By now I have a decent enough income to get a second army though, so if we continue this campaign I can send someone over to help him.
Zed Clampet
Community Contributor
I may give in and start a new Warhammer 2 campaign. I love Troy, but I really only like playing 2 of the factions, and I've pretty much played them to death. Thought about a Three Kingdoms campaign. I only played that once. I just didn't like the unit variety that much after coming directly from Warhammer 2. Considered Rome, but the battle AI isn't good enough. Hmm.
So I ended up starting God of War last night and I genuinely love it. I know it reviewed amazingly well but I wasn't certain how I would feel about it when I got the chance to play. This game is a masterpiece from a cinematic standpoint and the port is excellent. Looks great, runs great. The mythology stuff is awesome. It is really rare for me to actually organically explore in games; I tend to be a very objective-based player. But in GoW I just love looking around for pieces of lore. The world really is tremendous and very immersive. The combat is very weighty and you feel the impacts of your axe. There's enough depth to be interesting but not too much for me (some people will disagree but I actually really dislike overly-complex melee systems, such as the one's you'd find in fighting games). Really a stellar game so far.
@Ryzengang To many games that I have to finish first, but by the sound of it, this is a must-buy for me. I have watcheded a couple of videos explaining the lore, so hopefully I remember some of it by the time I buy it🙂
Zed Clampet
Community Contributor
My son and I just kicked off the weekend by starting a new campaign. I decided to play someone depending on who my son played. He picked Last Defenders, so I picked Tlaqua. Tlaqua is in bad shape to start. My starting army immediately was attacked by the nearby Empire faction. The system said I would suffer a Valiant Defeat. Looking at the units, I knew I would do worse than that if I actually fought the battle, so I took the auto-resolve. My army then retreated, but were chased down and destroyed. So in turn one I lost my only army. I wasn't too worried, though, because the garrison of my capitol could handle the enemy, largely because we are using a mod that makes all capitols start the game at tier 4.
I recruited a real general. The legendary lord for Tlaqua is a magic user of some kind. I needed a bruiser for a general. If I want magic, I'll recruit a hero. So I got my general and just recruited a few basic units just to be on the safe side and started building the first monster recruitment buildings. Just have to be patient. This Empire faction is strong. It's going to be a slog.
Zloth
Community Contributor
I think I might have found this building in Horizon: Zero Dawn, assuming "derelict" means "early stages of fossilization." 😉 The story is certainly picking up!
At this point, the economy is totally broken - as it is with so many games after the first two dozen hours or so. The most expensive thing I've seen is 1000 shards. I've got 11,000+ on hand and could have more if I would bother to sell. I'm routinely 10+ levels above the suggested level for the quests I'm doing (though they are still fairly difficult, thank goodness). Game design really needs to figure out how to handle levelling when they make so many optional quests.
Zed Clampet
Community Contributor
Here's a screen from TWW2. This was my initial enemy in my current game. They had an army and a half left after I took their capital. They backtracked to their last settlement, and while I let my army heal (lizardmen armies take forever), they built more armies. That's right. With the resources provided by one minor settlement, they did this:
That's right. With one minor settlement, they have 2 twenty stack armies, a 16 stack, an 18 stack, and they just then recruited a new general. If you'd like to know my opinion on that, check the name of the image file.
Update: :They now have 7 armies.
That's right. With one minor settlement, they have 2 twenty stack armies, a 16 stack, an 18 stack, and they just then recruited a new general. If you'd like to know my opinion on that, check the name of the image file.
Update: :They now have 7 armies.
Zed Clampet
Community Contributor
Welp, that just took a lot of the fun out of it for me. I brought my 3 armies over and defeated their 7 and took their settlement, but 6 of their armies sort of survived to one degree or another, and now I have to fight again. And when this battle is over, I'll have to fight at least one more time this turn.
I hope Warhammer 3 has the AI play by the rules like the AI in Troy does. I'll even gladly welcome Troy's hyper-aggressive AI if they'll just play by the damn rules.
I hope Warhammer 3 has the AI play by the rules like the AI in Troy does. I'll even gladly welcome Troy's hyper-aggressive AI if they'll just play by the damn rules.
Agree with image name 🙂
I assume not possible they had 5-6 armies elsewhere you didn't see, which they had quick-march to your location?
Have you checked TW or Steam forums or Reddit for similar tales?
I assume not possible they had 5-6 armies elsewhere you didn't see, which they had quick-march to your location?
Have you checked TW or Steam forums or Reddit for similar tales?
Zed Clampet
Community Contributor
No, I watched them build these armies. They started the game with three settlements (you can check how many settlements each faction has), and I took two of them, and then they moved to their last settlement and just started sprouting armies. They ended up with 7. I've got hundreds of hours in the game and never seen it that bad before. We weren't even playing with mods or I would have blamed it on unintended consequences.
I may look at the game files today if I ever fully wake up and see what is actually supposed to be going on there. It wasn't happening elsewhere on the map, though. I probably triggered a bug or something. These guys weren't naturally anyone's enemy until the faction I was playing was added not that long ago.
Zloth
Community Contributor
That building turned out to be an entire tower of lore! H:ZD (or is it H:0D?) still hasn't explained much, but at least it's started again, and I'm much happier. So far. I may have just bitten off more than I can chew:
Oh, something strange has happened - my screenshots are suddenly being saved at 4K resolution when using Steam's F12 screenshot key. I didn't change anything on Steam, and it's 'quality screenshot' setting saves as PNG instead of JPG anyway.
I did turn on the new DLDSR (Deep Learning Dynamic Super Resolution - see halfway down in this driver note), so maybe that's doing it? I'll have to play around with it to see.
Oh, something strange has happened - my screenshots are suddenly being saved at 4K resolution when using Steam's F12 screenshot key. I didn't change anything on Steam, and it's 'quality screenshot' setting saves as PNG instead of JPG anyway.
I did turn on the new DLDSR (Deep Learning Dynamic Super Resolution - see halfway down in this driver note), so maybe that's doing it? I'll have to play around with it to see.
I haven't seen Sudenburg do anything like this is my Settra or Repanse campaign. Was your son secretly giving them tons of money just to annoy you?
Zed Clampet
Community Contributor
He couldn't pull that off because he spends every dime.
I looked at the files earlier and they don't suffer attrition for running out of money, and they had a -50 percent upkeep and a significant boost to income and growth, especially in their capitol. I can't remember how much it was. What I kind of think is that because I lost a first battle to them and had to hole up for a substantial period of time due to their strength, that they must have amassed a fortune by the time I went over there. Since they don't suffer attrition if they can't pay for their units, there's no incentive not to spend that entire fortune on new units. They can also recruit more units per turn than the player can.
I don't know if that explains it or not. It doesn't feel like it, to be honest. It didn't look like they were following the rules. Maybe a rare bug got triggered, or it was a rogue AI. 🙂
You know, it's always possible that another AI faction was doing what you suggested my son was doing, feeding them money for some reason. I've seen the AI get stuck in patterns of behavior before and watched them do the same thing for many turns straight. Maybe that was happening with diplomacy. I wouldn't know how to check that.
Zloth
Community Contributor
Nope, the game itself got set that way. NVIDIA Experience might have messed with the settings.
P.S. Listen carefully to the random men chatting and you'll hear a familiar voice!
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