The Currently Playing & Random Game Thoughts Thread (4 September to 10 September)

[ZedClampet]

Playing Immortal, Sons of a Solar Empire, Forza Horizon 5, and Total War Warhammer 3. I jump around a lot so there are some other games I'm playing off and on like Solasta, which I'm really enjoying. In fact, I'm enjoying Solasta so much I may be dragging it out a bit.

Total War Warhammer 3 is where most of my time is going, however, and there have been big changes in the game. @Pifanjr reported that Reddit players believe that the AI is screwed up on Normal difficulty, and looking at the official forums and Steam forums, I'm finding the opinions are all over the place, including at least one poster who wrote a long and tiresome post about how the opposite were true and the AI had been nerfed and could no longer build significant numbers of armies. I've got 4 games going since the update, and I believe I can say that this last poster is incorrect. As for the rest of the theories, I'm not sure they are right, either, but I'm going to try to go through the code and tables this week and see if I can make sense of it. One thing is for sure, the theory that Hard doesn't feel accurate. I think the reason some think this is probably just random variations from one game to the next. Also, people on Hard expect a higher difficulty, so they wouldn't necessarily notice a difficulty spike as much as players on Normal.

What I want to do, but may not get around to, is to compare the tables and such to TWW2 and Troy. Most people barely played Troy if they played it at all, but the AI seems exactly like Troy's AI--as it stands now, not at launch--to me (which is a good thing). Right now my theory is that they've either intentionally or unintentionally made the AI like Troy, as there are tables from that game included in this one if you search through them using RPFM or the dev tools. This is all a really tedious process if you aren't completely familiar with their naming conventions, etc. so I may or may not get much done on it, but it's something I'd like to do.

Note: I can't read what I'm typing this morning, so sorry for the above if it's a mess.

 

[Pifanjr]

I played a bit more of my Wood Elf campaign. I killed off the Dark Elves that declared war on me, with some help of the Tomb Kings I allied (they actually followed my war coordination to attack the last Dark Elf army that passed near them and wiped them out when the Dark Elves attacked them).

I also got a quest to confederate the Bowmen of Oreon faction which occupied one of the magical forests you need to capture. I just needed to defeat one of their armies. Luckily, there was also an event that spawned near their faction that allowed me to fight one of their armies, so I didn't even have to declare war on them. I got the rewards for that event and then immediately confederated the entire faction.

Of course I immediately went 5000 in the red, even with the additional income from the extra magical forest, and after upgrading my main army with the higher tier units in the armies I got and disbanding the rest I was still around 0 income.

Economy is a bit strange as Wood Elves anyway because you can't really get income from the settlements you conquer, but luckily there's been plenty to plunder so far. Enough to have three armies so far, though only my main army is at the full 20 units.


I also hosted the first session of the D&D campaign I'm running. There's two people who've never played, it's entirely over Discord voice chat and I was of course wildly underprepared and forgot half of the stuff I had prepared, so it was a mess. But everyone had fun, so it was a successful mess.

 

[ZedClampet]

I played a bit more of my Wood Elf campaign. I killed off the Dark Elves that declared war on me, with some help of the Tomb Kings I allied (they actually followed my war coordination to attack the last Dark Elf army that passed near them and wiped them out when the Dark Elves attacked them).

I also got a quest to confederate the Bowmen of Oreon faction which occupied one of the magical forests you need to capture. I just needed to defeat one of their armies. Luckily, there was also an event that spawned near their faction that allowed me to fight one of their armies, so I didn't even have to declare war on them. I got the rewards for that event and then immediately confederated the entire faction.

Of course I immediately went 5000 in the red, even with the additional income from the extra magical forest, and after upgrading my main army with the higher tier units in the armies I got and disbanding the rest I was still around 0 income.

Economy is a bit strange as Wood Elves anyway because you can't really get income from the settlements you conquer, but luckily there's been plenty to plunder so far. Enough to have three armies so far, though only my main army is at the full 20 units.


I also hosted the first session of the D&D campaign I'm running. There's two people who've never played, it's entirely over Discord voice chat and I was of course wildly underprepared and forgot half of the stuff I had prepared, so it was a mess. But everyone had fun, so it was a successful mess.

One of the reasons we keep jumping from faction to faction is to check out what's changed from 2 to 3, as some factions, like the Tomb Kings, have had some significant changes, as have The Dwarfs. I might try the Wood Elves for a bit to see if anything is different with them. In addition to some changes with the Forge, the Dwarfs have been buffed a little. The High Elves seem mostly the same.

As for D&D, a campaign is like a web of lies. Unless you are an extremely experienced DM, you are going to mess that web up a bit, but it usually doesn't make it any less fun. Are you using any software for the campaign?

 

[ZedClampet]

Pop Quiz Time!

Did my Red Dragon keyboard survive an 18 inch fall onto carpet?

 

[ZedClampet]

https://www.pcgamer.com/if-you-were-a-videogame-what-kind-of-game-would-you-be-and-why/

Dang, @Brian Boru exceeded the maximum lines for an extra and should receive residuals on this article.

 

[Pifanjr]

One of the reasons we keep jumping from faction to faction is to check out what's changed from 2 to 3, as some factions, like the Tomb Kings, have had some significant changes, as have The Dwarfs. I might try the Wood Elves for a bit to see if anything is different with them. In addition to some changes with the Forge, the Dwarfs have been buffed a little. The High Elves seem mostly the same.

I've read that the Dwarf players are having a difficult time because the AI now perfectly dodges artillery fire, which the Dwarfs (among others) rely on pretty heavily.

I haven't actually noticed any artillery for Wood Elves (which shows how little planning I do). Which also meant I needed to built siege rams before taking cities, until I got some Ogre cavalry that apparently have the siege attacker trait.

As for D&D, a campaign is like a web of lies. Unless you are an extremely experienced DM, you are going to mess that web up a bit, but it usually doesn't make it any less fun. Are you using any software for the campaign?

I'm running a published adventure, so I don't have to track too many lies. And I'm only using a Discord bot for dice rolls (it's a pretty fancy one though).

 

[ZedClampet]

I've read that the Dwarf players are having a difficult time because the AI now perfectly dodges artillery fire, which the Dwarfs (among others) rely on pretty heavily.

I feel like I'm just being contrary at this point , but I haven't noticed this at all. In the one battle I manually fought this afternoon, my Flame Cannon got 383 kills and my regular cannon was somewhere around 200 (I only remembered the exact number on the Flame Cannon because it was so high). Of course, one battle doesn't prove anything, but I fought some battles yesterday and didn't notice anything unusual.

HOWEVER, the AI doesn't stand and wait in formation anymore. If they are waiting for reinforcements to arrive, for instance, they are in constant motion, so it's a little harder to hit them. But they aren't dodging your artillery. They're just wandering around. I guess it amounts to the same thing if you don't take their movements into consideration. They behave the same way even if you don't have artillery. But if you do have it, and you aim a shot where they are going, they don't change direction. They just keep going and get blasted. We're already done for the day, but if I remember, I'll make a gif the next time I play and show you what they are doing.

On the other hand, I previously noticed when playing Cathay that the AI has some mad dodging skills when you are trying to cast certain spells on them. If they are out in the open. you are pretty much just wasting your spell. I started only targeting enemy units with these spells when they were engaged in hand-to-hand and couldn't move. I'm not really a big magic person, so maybe this happens in 2 also, and I just didn't notice it. It's only on spells that have pre-attack effects, like big electric clouds appearing over the enemies (a pretty darn good reason to move, I guess)

 

[WoodenSaucer]

The other day, I started a new game of Skyrim. It's been a couple of years since I played it, and I was just in the mood. Man, it's tough going back to the beginning and starting from scratch. Last time I played, I was basically a beast with all enchanted Dragon armor and weapons. If a Dragon attacked me, I just stood there and killed it pretty quickly. Now, I'm hiding in the hills when I hear one, hoping I don't run into a bear. It's a lot different dynamic. Haha.

But I decided pretty early in the game to go to Solitude and join the imperial legion. I've never done the political stuff before. It's pretty wild as many hours as I've put into the game, and I've won the main quest twice, that there is so much that I've never seen before.

 

[Zloth]

OK, I've got a delivery to make to the next settlement over in Death Stranding. It's late game. I'm a porter god now. I'll need to climb a mountain, but I've done that many times already and it isn't all that far. In fact, I think I'll bring some extra supplies on a little floaty platform so I can set up zip lines ASAP.

So off I go. There's a pre-made zip line some other player set up, so I start off using that. Poof! A third of the way there in 10 seconds. Oh look! A big container with some more materials I can use for zip lines! Pop that on the floater, too. Plenty of room! Now on up the mountain.

Then the storm hit... package-eating precipitation and white-out conditions. My little ground scanner could briefly light up the landscape within about 20m of me, but that was it. This was going to be harder than I thought, but it shouldn't really be a problem.

Trudge trudge trudge... eventually, I finally bother to tilt the map a little so I can discern altitudes. The settlement I was trying to get to was not actually on top of this mountain. There was a BIG cliff coming up, and it was a little past the bottom of it. Ugh. Well, going down is way easier than going up - I just hope the cliff isn't so big that I run out of rope. Still, I better spray down the containers to counter-act the corruption.... oh. Ooops. Forgot to pack any spray. Now I'm in trouble.

Faster trudge trudging... I want to start heading downward, but the landscape makes it just about impossible, making me go higher as I get closer to that cliff. I finally get there and... great, I've only got two climbing spike-and-rope things. Is that going to be enough? Well, it's the only option at this point. I pound the thing in and look down - into pure white. Of course. Well, start climbing down and pray...

Oh no! My little floaty platform can't go down ropes! Well, it can - very quickly in fact - but it doesn't stop at the end. Back up the rope!! Let's see what I can carry off the floating platform. I get what I can right about when red messages pop up saying the cargo containers have been ruined and now the cargo itself is being damaged. I need to hurry! But there's one more thing: the key to re-activate the floaty platform is F. They key to grab the rope and go down is F. One is on top of the other.

Many mystical incantations were pronounced. I finally managed to go down the rope but it was still cliff at the end. Maybe there was a ledge below me? With only one rope left, I really don't have a choice now. Let go.

No ledge. Death by overconfidence.

Playing Immortal, Sons of a Solar Empire, Forza Horizon 5, and Total War Warhammer 3. I jump around a lot so there are some other games I'm playing off and on like Solasta, which I'm really enjoying. In fact, I'm enjoying Solasta so much I may be dragging it out a bit.

FIVE games at once!!

 

[ZedClampet]

FIVE games at once!!

No, it's actually more than that. I just didn't list them.

 

[Ryzengang]

It's finally cooling down a bit around here, so I'll be slowly getting back into the rhythm of gaming regularly on my PC. I played a sizable chunk of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag yesterday and it's quite enjoyable. The last time I played it I had weird (and unmanageable) stuttering so I refunded it. This time around it seems like whatever weirdness was present then is gone, and it's been a pretty smooth experience so far. They have their problems but I've always enjoyed the AC games for just messing around and wandering in the open world.

 

[ZedClampet]

I'm going to spend a chunk of today helping people win The Trial in Forza, which is a nightmare this week. Like everyone else, I can't beat the Unbeatable drivatars in this week's car, but there's one thing I can definitely do, and that's join The Trial and then drop out immediately, thus giving the humans the scoring advantage.

Edit: That doesn't seem logical unless you know how it's scored. The AI gets big points for every human it beats, so if you remove a human, that lead AI car which is literally impossible to beat this week, scores fewer points. Meanwhile, the humans can beat the rest of the AI cars and will get enough points to win.

 

[Zloth]

Got to 100 hours in Death Stranding last night. That puts it at #30 for total time played on my Steam list, overtaking Galactic Civilizations 3.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

It's finally cooling down a bit around here, so I'll be slowly getting back into the rhythm of gaming regularly on my PC. I played a sizable chunk of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag yesterday and it's quite enjoyable. The last time I played it I had weird (and unmanageable) stuttering so I refunded it. This time around it seems like whatever weirdness was present then is gone, and it's been a pretty smooth experience so far. They have their problems but I've always enjoyed the AC games for just messing around and wandering in the open world.

I recently picked that game back up and couldn't believe how dated it looked. When I first played it on the Wii U, I thought the graphics were amazing.

 

[Pifanjr]

Played a little bit of Warhammer 2 during my break today. I got a quest to take a city belonging to Naggarond, who just confederated Hag Graef and is strength rank 1. I'll just have to hope my main army is strong enough to beat anything they might throw my way.

However, I managed to convince the nearby High Elves to declare war on them too by offering to join one of their wars as well (one I'm not anywhere near), so hopefully that'll keep them busy. I already saw one full stack ignore my army and march to them, so it seems to be working so far. The other full stack consists almost entirely of spearmen, which should be no problem for my main army. Hopefully this'll also allow me to increase my relationships with the rest of the High Elves so I can get some more trading agreements, as I'm still losing about 1k a turn.

I feel like I'm just being contrary at this point , but I haven't noticed this at all. In the one battle I manually fought this afternoon, my Flame Cannon got 383 kills and my regular cannon was somewhere around 200 (I only remembered the exact number on the Flame Cannon because it was so high). Of course, one battle doesn't prove anything, but I fought some battles yesterday and didn't notice anything unusual.

HOWEVER, the AI doesn't stand and wait in formation anymore. If they are waiting for reinforcements to arrive, for instance, they are in constant motion, so it's a little harder to hit them. But they aren't dodging your artillery. They're just wandering around. I guess it amounts to the same thing if you don't take their movements into consideration. They behave the same way even if you don't have artillery. But if you do have it, and you aim a shot where they are going, they don't change direction. They just keep going and get blasted. We're already done for the day, but if I remember, I'll make a gif the next time I play and show you what they are doing.

On the other hand, I previously noticed when playing Cathay that the AI has some mad dodging skills when you are trying to cast certain spells on them. If they are out in the open. you are pretty much just wasting your spell. I started only targeting enemy units with these spells when they were engaged in hand-to-hand and couldn't move. I'm not really a big magic person, so maybe this happens in 2 also, and I just didn't notice it. It's only on spells that have pre-attack effects, like big electric clouds appearing over the enemies (a pretty darn good reason to move, I guess)

I should have been more specific, it seems to only happen to artillery that shoots in an arc, so mortars and catapults, not cannons.

I'm also pretty sure the AI doesn't dodge magic in Warhammer 2, though there might be a few exceptions. They definitely didn't try to dodge when a massive ghost ship appeared from the ground with its cannons lined up with several of their units.

 

[ZedClampet]

I should have been more specific, it seems to only happen to artillery that shoots in an arc, so mortars and catapults, not cannons.

I'm also pretty sure the AI doesn't dodge magic in Warhammer 2, though there might be a few exceptions. They definitely didn't try to dodge when a massive ghost ship appeared from the ground with its cannons lined up with several of their units.

Ah, okay. I haven't manually fought a battle with the mortars and catapults yet. That makes sense kind of like the magic. High lobbing projectiles = run away. We aren't using mods, but now I remember seeing one that said it changed the mortars and catapults so that they fired like cannons. Now I understand why people would want that. I just thought the lower trajectory made them easier to manually aim.

 

[ZedClampet]

@Pifanjr No idea what other people are thinking about it, but I'm finding Karaz-a-Karak very intense. I already did an SP play, then Guido wanted us to do a Dwarf co-op. I like Grudgebearer, so I decided just to play him again and see if it was as intense this time, and it is working out to be just as crazy. I'm actively fighting Skarbrand, one Greenskin faction and 4 Skaven factions, and the battle line for the war ranges from the east all the way across my territory to the west. I haven't fought a battle outside my own territory in maybe a dozen turns. I have 10 armies, and I need every one of them. I can make one more and then I'll be out of money. Thankfully, Karaz-a-Karak make obscene amounts of money compared to most factions. I have two gold mines and a gemstone mine. Most of my armies are Dwarf Warriors and Longbeards, so they are better as defenders than attackers. I have been able to win with them so far, but the AI is producing better armies now. Could get rough.

As I get rid of the armies in my territory right now, which I'm having to scramble for, I'm going to quickly move 3 armies east and see if I can't at least stop armies from coming in that way. Thorgrim will continue a slow march south through Skarbrand territory by himself, and the other 6 or 7 armies will be scrambling to pick off new arrivals from the west and south. There's just no way to block those areas. But if Thorgrim's army can slowly take these Khorne territories, that will help a lot.

I also paid 13,000 for an alliance with another Dwarf faction a couple of turns ago, so hopefully I can coordinate with them and my buddies the Tomb Kings along the eastern side.

It's pretty fun. At this point playing TWW2, Thorgrim would be mostly uncontested in this part of the world. I'd just be wandering around mopping up and thinking about starting over.

 

[ZedClampet]

Here's my card as of a few turns ago.

At war with 16 factions, and all of them border me except for a couple. Got a whole new wave of them just awhile ago as my armies went east. Makes sense. I actually have cleaned out the south and am fighting the Skaven at Skavenbright now. Once that is done, I won't have to worry about armies from the west for awhile. I can confederate two dwarf factions, but I'm really enjoying not doing that. I don't need to be in that mess to the east of The Empire and the other one is blocking a main pass from the east.

Just signed a non-aggression pact and trade agreement with Greasus Goldtooth, so I shouldn't have to worry about him as I approach his area. None of the factions really dislike the Ogres so far as I can tell, so they are kind of neutral. Every now and then some Ogre factions get into it with Cathay or Kislev, but they don't seem to be natural enemies and often get trade agreements and such with them even though they consistently try to eat Cathay's caravans. But Cathay hires them quite often as mercenaries, too.

Guido just finished a ridiculous journey from the northwest corner of the map. He has a mission somewhere in Empire country. I gave him Sartosa as a welcome gift. Under certain circumstances you can gift regions to other factions, but Guido didn't qualify for that, so I just razed the city and encamped next to it until he got there.

 

[Ryzengang]

I recently picked that game back up and couldn't believe how dated it looked. When I first played it on the Wii U, I thought the graphics were amazing.

I'm not sure that I fully agree. Environmentally, I think it holds up pretty decently considering the game came out in 2013. I don't think it looks especially dated relative to other games of that time (though it obviously looks dated to some extent given it's nearly a decade old). Where I agree more, though, is in reference to the character models. They are looking pretty damn rough by modern standards. Character rendering has progressed enormously in the past decade or so.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I'm not sure that I fully agree. Environmentally, I think it holds up pretty decently considering the game came out in 2013. I don't think it looks especially dated relative to other games of that time (though it obviously looks dated to some extent given it's nearly a decade old). Where I agree more, though, is in reference to the character models. They are looking pretty damn rough by modern standards. Character rendering has progressed enormously in the past decade or so.

Yeah, the character models and animations were the main thing I was noticing. Plus, I wasn't really talking about relative to 2013, but relative to now. Tomb Raider came out in 2013, and I think it looked quite a bit better, though.

 

[Pifanjr]

Played a little bit of Warhammer 2 during my break today. I got a quest to take a city belonging to Naggarond, who just confederated Hag Graef and is strength rank 1. I'll just have to hope my main army is strong enough to beat anything they might throw my way.

However, I managed to convince the nearby High Elves to declare war on them too by offering to join one of their wars as well (one I'm not anywhere near), so hopefully that'll keep them busy. I already saw one full stack ignore my army and march to them, so it seems to be working so far. The other full stack consists almost entirely of spearmen, which should be no problem for my main army. Hopefully this'll also allow me to increase my relationships with the rest of the High Elves so I can get some more trading agreements, as I'm still losing about 1k a turn.

So I took the city the quest told me to take, then immediately got sieged by the full stack of spearmen (as expected), then the other full stack came running back to within reinforcement range (not as expected). Luckily they decided to try and siege me instead of immediately attacking and also luckily I had another army within range, though it was half dead from razing one of their cities the turn before.

So I got my other army within reinforcement range, merged its half dead units and went on the offensive. The Auto Resolve predicted a pyrrhic victory which would cost me several infantry units. I decided to fight it manually and I did... better.

By a lot. The only reason I think this was counted as a close victory was because I used up pretty all of my ammunition.

 

[ZedClampet]

The person who made the TWW3 mod that turns settlement battles into just regular field battles seems to have already abandoned it, so I'm going to borrow it and update it. I won't use it all the time, but sometimes I get sick of settlement battles.

**********

Thanks to another thread, I've been inspired and have sent a letter to Bossa Studios asking what they want to sell World's Adrift, a game that went under a few years ago. There's a bit of urgency because I suspect Bossa Studios is going to go under themselves soon. There's a possibility that the game was included in their recent sale to TinyBuild. I'm not paying much for it. It's a mess and requires SpatialOS. I'd almost rather just completely remake the game for solo/co-op play. I'm just okay at this sort of thing. Would take a lot of work, but maybe this could be that project I was looking for.

 

[Brian Boru]

Fire up the game, crank up the volume—aah, that steady pounding beat…

Charge into battle, throw dynamite, take an RPG in the a… nether regions—aah, that steady pounding beat…

Slowly approach an outpost, crouching, peeking—aah, that steady pounding beat…

Geez, I hope they finish replacing the roof today!

 

[ZedClampet]

Welp. Today's TWW3 update killed our Dwarf co-op campaign. Now it constantly desyncs and throws us out to the menu. We were so close to winning the "short" conditions. *sad face*

 

[ZedClampet]

Figured out what my problem with The Trial was this week. My Duke controller is once again having problems with the brake always being on, albeit slightly. I've sent a customer service request in. Maybe they have some way of fixing it.