Playing other games

[Observe]

I decided to take the plunge and get Civilization VI Platinum Edition at 75% off from Steam. Civ V has long been a favorite of mine, so I figure I might as well check out Civ VI.

[red assassin]

I, slightly belatedly, played Outer Wilds, which is fantastic and highly recommended. (Not to be confused with The Outer Worlds, which is also very good.)

[Mightysword]

I decided to take the plunge and get Civilization VI Platinum Edition at 75% off from Steam. Civ V has long been a favorite of mine, so I figure I might as well check out Civ VI.

It's a good game and overall I think improved upon Civ V a lot. One piece of advise though: you should only focus on religion as far as trying to be the founder of one (aka rushing your first prophet) for the early bonus to develop your cities. Do not try to keep up with the AI after that. I know for many people who tried to keep up with the AI religions it can becomes an absolute kill joy and source of constant frustration.

[fiksal]

Here comes my yearly question, does anyone play HotS or want to try it?
I have been playing it since the beta and can help out new players or just play occasional games

[pjknibbs]

It's a good game and overall I think improved upon Civ V a lot.

In some ways, yes; however, the return of infinite city spam being the best approach to playing the game is an unwelcome change, IMHO. Civ5 was beautifully balanced so that 4-5 cities was optimal, meaning you didn't have to race the AI to grab territory so much.

[Mightysword]

It's a good game and overall I think improved upon Civ V a lot.

In some ways, yes; however, the return of infinite city spam being the best approach to playing the game is an unwelcome change, IMHO. Civ5 was beautifully balanced so that 4-5 cities was optimal, meaning you didn't have to race the AI to grab territory so much.

I had heard some other people say the same thing but personally doesn't feel much different to me.. My playstyle is always about going wide and I still spammed cities in Civ5, so I can't really tell the difference. To you which was more of a factor in Civ5? You're not expanding because it's actually detrimental or just not worth it to do?

[Observe]

I decided to take the plunge and get Civilization VI Platinum Edition at 75% off from Steam. Civ V has long been a favorite of mine, so I figure I might as well check out Civ VI.

It's a good game and overall I think improved upon Civ V a lot. One piece of advise though: you should only focus on religion as far as trying to be the founder of one (aka rushing your first prophet) for the early bonus to develop your cities. Do not try to keep up with the AI after that. I know for many people who tried to keep up with the AI religions it can becomes an absolute kill joy and source of constant frustration.

Thanks Mightysword. I hadn't planned on doing anything with religion for a while. My first game is Domination, because I feel I can learn the basic survival mechanics best that way. Later, I will look at the other victory types. I expect to lose while I learn. I am very familiar with Civ5, so a lot of the learning curve seems to be in the UI.

[Mightysword]

Thanks Mightysword. I hadn't planned on doing anything with religion for a while. My first game is Domination, because I feel I can learn the basic survival mechanics best that way. Later, I will look at the other victory types. I expect to lose while I learn. I am very familiar with Civ5, so a lot of the learning curve seems to be in the UI.

Good choice, domination is actually about the only game mode I play haha (not just in Civ but also other similar games). I'm a fan of long slough-survival game, and domination kinda give me the choice of ending the game when I want. With other victories it feels like there is a time limit on your game.

Plus winning with a rocket in space is not as satisfying as painting the map in your chosen color.

[Observe]

I'm a fan of long slough-survival game, and domination kinda give me the choice of ending the game when I want. With other victories it feels like there is a time limit on your game. Plus winning with a rocket in space is not as satisfying as painting the map in your chosen color.

My sentiments exactly!

[notaterran]

So, "thanks" to this pandemic I finished all 3 Yakuza games and I liked them. The last one (Kiwami 2) is a bit different, but they're all good. Get Kiwami on sale, but Zero and Kiwami 2 are worth it even at full price. The combat in Kiwami 2 seems a step back at first, but that's because weapons play a bigger role and you have access to more of them (it helps that more objects in the environment are destructible). There are also moves that I didn't know about, such as grabbing an opponent and throwing him off a bridge

[Mightysword]

If I recall, a few people here play Banished yes? For some reason that simplistic game is one of the city builder I enjoy the most in the post Simcity 4 era.

Anyway, saw a few screenshots on steam:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2113640691

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2113640163

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... =626585888

Had to go looking for my jaws on the ground. Forget Banished 2, I wouldn't imagine even Banished 3 would look this good. The author of these shots provided a list of mods used to produce this:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

Ninety - six freaking mods

I'm debating whenever I want to tackle this challenge (getting these mods and launch the game properly) over the weekend. Very tempting though.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

I honestly loved Banished and every now and then I play a little of it.

[Mightysword]

Well I took the challenge and got all the mods. Still reluctant to install and test them. Nothing more deflating spending hours getting and installing mode just to be great with an error message on launch, usually happen with this kind of quantities.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

I usually only look for mods adding wares, as I'm a bit reluctant on "new mechanics", as I find them possibly dangerous / game breaking / buggy.

[felter]

Talking about mods. I've been playing a couple of games of late, one of them I have been replaying Skyrim but without any mods at all, as I thought I would do some of the game achievements and they get turned off when you instal any mods, and I had nearly not played any of the game without mods. This has led to an interesting conclusion that Bethesda has to be one of the worst game/software developers out there. I came to this conclusion as the game is a bug ridden mess and some of them are pretty serious bugs. It was only a matter of a few hours into the game that I stumbled onto a game killer, where the monks quests where you are sent to retrieve shouts bugged out and could not be completed. When I checked online for a solution I discovered that Bethesda has known about this bug at least since release day, and they have never done anything about it. What I did find out was that to solve it and the numerous other bugs you need to install the unofficial patch, which of course is counted as a game mod, turning off the achievements. The game was released 9 years ago there has been several different releases on several different platforms, but yet Bethesda cannot be bothered to even patch the bugs that breaks the game. And yet Todd Howard takes this as a joke and is something to be proud of, personally I think Bethesda is a joke and I doubt I will be buying the next elder scrolls game when it is released.

On a brighter note, I have also been playing Stardew Valley Extended which is a modded game of Stardew Valley and if you have the original game and enjoyed playing it, I highly recommend it. At the heart the game it is still the original game, with the original quests but with the mod it now has a bigger map, new quests, a new larger starting farm and other farms, with new NPC's and so forth. One other good thing, it is not a bug ridden mess like a Bethesda game.

[brucewarren]

I generally avoid mods. I prefer to play a game as originally designed.

That said there's one Skyrim mod I'm interested in. It's *huge* download. It's being released in stages because the amount of work is immense.

I believe it's called "Beyond Skyrim." The idea, as I understand it, is to add the entire region of Cyrodiil to Skyrim, along with all sorts
of new stuffs to go with it.

[felter]

Just stumbled onto this little gem, an ARPG from China called Black Myth: Wu Kong. It's been a while since I went, damn now that looks good and it most certainly does. No release date but it's being released on both PC and console and looking at it, I guess that will be next gen consoles.

[Mightysword]

@felter: if you just start getting into this kind of games, you'll be in for a treat. Over the last 5 years or so there have been many of these titles from Chinese developers. And there are still a few more coming including the one you just stumbled to.

If you haven't, check out Gujian 3. I think it's the most acclaimed game in the last few years. The story, gameplay, and production value are pretty up there, comparable with classic squaresoft/sega tittles in term of quality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDjVfKM48q0

Gate of Firmanent also deserves a good shout.

[Rug]

Any recommendations for DLC for EU4 ? I bought the base game for a princely 78p a few weeks back, so feel I might splash out on a half-price DLC or two now if it is going to improve the experience enough. I have fewer than 50 hours in game so far, so I won't need to rebuild any strategies for play , as I haven't really developed any yet... just the odd I-really-must-remember-not-to-do-that-again lesson !

I've been reading online reviews, but some may be a bit out of date. I don't know how much of the "You need this DLC because this feature" is not relevant now, as I know some such stuff has now been added to the base game in its 1.3 incarnation. (Province development no longer just in Common Sense DLC seems to be an example here).

I'm sure there must be a good few players out there, and would really appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks.

Rug

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

Any recommendations for DLC for EU4 ? I bought the base game for a princely 78p a few weeks back, so feel I might splash out on a half-price DLC or two now if it is going to improve the experience enough. I have fewer than 50 hours in game so far, so I won't need to rebuild any strategies for play , as I haven't really developed any yet... just the odd I-really-must-remember-not-to-do-that-again lesson !

I've been reading online reviews, but some may be a bit out of date. I don't know how much of the "You need this DLC because this feature" is not relevant now, as I know some such stuff has now been added to the base game in its 1.3 incarnation. (Province development no longer just in Common Sense DLC seems to be an example here).

I'm sure there must be a good few players out there, and would really appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks.

Rug

I think Wealth of Nations is the most generic one, while the others focus a lot more on specific countries or regions of the world.
If you like playing around the Mediterranean sea, Mare Nostrum is also good and Emperor can spice things up if your in the Vatican area or in Germany / HRE (or you plan to fight against them).
If you love to struggle in the long term, Conquest of Paradise expands a lot native american nations and I think it's a good combo with Eldorado.