PC Gaming Discussion

[gschwendt]

I know the PC gamers here are few and far between but there are a few of us so why not have a thread.


To kick off... a new Source mod game was just recently released:
No More Room in Hell
(http://www.nomoreroominhell.com/)I'm installing it now but it's an 8-player co-op which sounds like a mix between Left 4 Dead (without the versus) and Dead Island. The interesting aspects are that if you fire your gun, you'll draw more attention to yourself. As well, you have limited sprint capability and finally if you get bitten too much, you'll turn into a zombie; not sure what happens in co-op but a single player video I saw, it just restarts you.

Looks really interesting and one of the bigger reasons why PC games are better... this is absolutely free. All you have to have is a copy of Half-Life 2 or any other Source-based game.

[GatorfanStovy]

I'm moving to PC for my first time ever .I have been a console guy.But since I travel and move ever 6 months this is the best solution for me for FPS games online.I'm trying to get DC Universe done downloaded but it is stuck at 12.1gb .I'll download that game once DC is done.I love free games!

[JBHuskers]

The dude on the left looks like Walter from The Big Lebowski :D

http://i682.photobucket.com/albums/vv182/nmrihmod/beta_banner1.jpg

[gschwendt]

The dude on the left looks like Walter from The Big Lebowski :D
Yeah, I immediately thought of you when I saw that.

[gschwendt]

So I played around a little bit... looks like it doesn't level the game based on number of people so the difficulty is the same whether you have 8 or 1. However, you almost have to have more than 1 because there are areas where it gets really dark and it appears to work best when one has a flashlight lit on the area while others have weapons at the ready. I'm also having difficulty figuring out how to complete certain missions... they have multiple missions per map that you have to complete and it varies those missions from playthrough to playthrough.

So far it's a pretty good little game (for free mind you) but I think it needs to have a system that adjusts the difficulty.

[gschwendt]

Humble Bundle has a new indie game bundle
http://www.humblebundle.com/

(http://www.humblebundle.com/)As well, a "competitor" has started doing indie bundles and has their second one up now.
http://www.indieroyale.com/

For anyone not familiar... for both of these, you set your own price and get a bundle of games. For the Humble Bundle, you can pay as little as $.01 or as much as you wish... proceeds go towards the developers as well as charities. For the Indie Royale, the earlier you are on the deal, the lower the required price is (right now it's $3.43), but you can always choose to pay as much as you want, which could lower the price for everyone else.

Pretty good deal for anyone that doesn't have a high-grade PC and wants some indie titles and also contribute to a good cause. Over the past couple of years I've gotten some really good games out of these deals... usually most are throw-aways but just about everytime I've found at least one game that I really enjoy.

[gschwendt]

I got the Gamefly PC beta program and am greatly disappointed. I guess I had unrealistic expectations that it would allow you to play current or nearly current PC games included with the subscription fee but turns out they're not really current at all. The most popular game right now is Assassin's Creed... Assassin's Creed 1. Saints Row 2 is followed behind it. I don't recognize any of the games that were released in 2011 except some Sam & Max game.

Really disappointing but like I said, I guess it was unrealistic to expect otherwise. That said, it looks like you can purchase new games, but why would I want that when I already have Steam. Unless you're going to greatly undercut Steam or have some exclusive titles that I can't get on Steam, there's no reason for me to go anywhere else.


All that said, I have an extra beta code if someone would want it, but obviously you'll need to be a PC gamer and also pointless unless you already have a Gamefly subscription (which I don't but would have with decent titles).

[morsdraconis]

Yeah. There's just no way that any place is going to get my away from Steam. Steam, with their sales, just KILLS on PC game sales. I can't remember where I read it, but if a game publisher is selling a game on Steam, they actually end up almost always doubling their sales to date by putting their game on sale on Steam.

[oweb26]

I pretty much have all the programs installed and I ONLY buy PC games on sale.

I think I bought Civ V because I was so ready to play it and I shit you not like two weeks later it was 30% off, three weeks after that it was 50% off absolutely pissed me off.

I always had that rule but not its more like a fucking testament in my mind, no PC game buys unless its on sale, the cool thing about PC games sales is if one provider puts it on sale, you can bet another one is on the way its amazing.

Steam is the best though with the overall sales, but origin cuts better deals on some of the older EA products because its their shit.

I really need to finish my PC build though, I have been so obsessed with restoring me a car (buying the car) and I still haven't had any money do the car or PC because of fucking kids. DAMN THEM :mad::P

[jaymo76]

Anyone played Sid Meiers RAILROADS. I downloaded the demo and it was kind of fun but I'm not sure if I want to drop $50 on it. I do love his CIV series though.

[SmoothPancakes]

Has anyone ever played Digital Combat Simulator: Black Shark? It's something I've had my eye on in the past, and it's dropped down to $19.99 on Steam, so it's tempting to pick it up.

[morsdraconis]

Nope, never played it Smooth, but anyone that likes Rogue-likes at all needs to check out this game:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7_R2WfqdrI

It's REALLY hard but god damn is it fun.

[SmoothPancakes]

Any Civilization fans out there, Steam was having a weekend sale on 2K games this weekend and a day-long sale during Sunday on Civilization V. It still has 12 hours left on the sale, you can get vanilla Civ V for $7.49 and Civ 5 GotY edition for $12.49, both 75% Steam retail price. All DLC for Civ 5 is 75% off as well.

[morsdraconis]

Civ 5 sucks... Civ 4 is WAY better. Civ 5 dumbed shit down.

I occasionally go through a Civ phase where I'll play the hell out of 4 for a while and then get bored of it again. Just did it recently but played 5 instead of 4 and I was HIGHLY disappointing with it. While 5 is definitely prettier than 4, it's very much dumbed down and it's quite disappointing considering how complex Civ 4 was.

[SmoothPancakes]

Civ 5 sucks... Civ 4 is WAY better. Civ 5 dumbed shit down.

I occasionally go through a Civ phase where I'll play the hell out of 4 for a while and then get bored of it again. Just did it recently but played 5 instead of 4 and I was HIGHLY disappointing with it. While 5 is definitely prettier than 4, it's very much dumbed down and it's quite disappointing considering how complex Civ 4 was.

Yeah, I have 5 on my PC, but 4 is definitely more fun. And the shit ton of mods out there for 4 keeps it fun. But, if there was or is someone who was looking at getting Civ 5 sometime, can't beat 75% off the price. May as well get it for cheap as well if you want it.

[Marlowe]

Blizzard announces Diablo III release date (http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/diablo-iii/1220854p1.html)

[jaymo76]

Yeah, I have 5 on my PC, but 4 is definitely more fun. And the shit ton of mods out there for 4 keeps it fun. But, if there was or is someone who was looking at getting Civ 5 sometime, can't beat 75% off the price. May as well get it for cheap as well if you want it.

If my VISTA based desktop weren't acting up every other day I would be all over this. I still remember the good old days of playing Civ II for upwards of ten hours during those epic battles that would take all night. I also used to love the Civ on PS2. Revolution on PS3 had such potential but overall it's just too simplistic.

[SmoothPancakes]

If my VISTA based desktop weren't acting up every other day I would be all over this. I still remember the good old days of playing Civ II for upwards of ten hours during those epic battles that would take all night. I also used to love the Civ on PS2. Revolution on PS3 had such potential but overall it's just too simplistic.

Yep, I can't even begin to count the hours I have spent over the years on Civ. I spent a TON of hours of Civ III when it first came out, then jump on Civ IV first thing. Civ IV is still a blast to play. Civ V I personally don't mind. Yeah, some of the changes they made are detrimental to the game, but I still find enjoyment out of it. I agree about Civ Revolution. I got it for 360 for cheap at GameStop a year or two ago, and still have it, but damn that was sort of a disappointment. Way to simplistic and small. Obviously there's only so much you can do with a game like Civ on a console (with the various limitations vs. that of a computer), but even the battles were just completely underwhelming because there was only so much you could do.

Strategy games like that are definitely #1 for me though when it comes to PC games. Civ III, Civ IV (with Warlords and Beyond The Sword expansions), Civ V, Rome: Total War - Gold Edition, Medeval II: Total War (with Kingdoms expansion), Empire: Total War, Napoleon: Total War, Total War: Shogun 2, Supreme Ruler 2020: Gold., R.U.S.E., Wargame: European Escalation, World in Conflict (with Soviet Assault expansion), I can't get enough of those games.

[oweb26]

Wargame: European Escalation,

How is this game? I have been debating about it getting it for awhile now its been betwen this and Age of Empires Complete. Basically waiting until one goes on sale first. lol

[SmoothPancakes]

How is this game? I have been debating about it getting it for awhile now its been betwen this and Age of Empires Complete. Basically waiting until one goes on sale first. lol

I've been having fun with it. If you've played something like R.U.S.E. before, it's very different, more straight up combat, using actual tactics and strategies to win battle, but fun. I've only played a couple campaign missions so far, but have been doing a bunch of skirmishes against the CPU. It's fun to try different strategies.

One game I went with the Warsaw Pact and had like 80% Russian infantry, with some armor and artillery thrown in, keeping with the stereotypical and horribly wrong image of human wave assaults by the Russian troops. Another I played as NATO and had heavy on armor, with some artillery and helicopter backup, and just steamroll over individual or small groups of units that I find out in the field away from their base and other units.

It's gonna take some strategic thinking and planning of your resources, troop numbers and troop placements, and then plan of attack to win battles in it, you're not going to just roll right over someone or blitz someone in the first minute of the game and catch them with their pants down. So I've been enjoying it.

[jaymo76]

Yep, I can't even begin to count the hours I have spent over the years on Civ. I spent a TON of hours of Civ III when it first came out, then jump on Civ IV first thing. Civ IV is still a blast to play. Civ V I personally don't mind. Yeah, some of the changes they made are detrimental to the game, but I still find enjoyment out of it. I agree about Civ Revolution. I got it for 360 for cheap at GameStop a year or two ago, and still have it, but damn that was sort of a disappointment. Way to simplistic and small. Obviously there's only so much you can do with a game like Civ on a console (with the various limitations vs. that of a computer), but even the battles were just completely underwhelming because there was only so much you could do.

Strategy games like that are definitely #1 for me though when it comes to PC games. Civ III, Civ IV (with Warlords and Beyond The Sword expansions), Civ V, Rome: Total War - Gold Edition, Medeval II: Total War (with Kingdoms expansion), Empire: Total War, Napoleon: Total War, Total War: Shogun 2, Supreme Ruler 2020: Gold., R.U.S.E., Wargame: European Escalation, World in Conflict (with Soviet Assault expansion), I can't get enough of those games.



Smooth, I'm a HUGE fan of the Civ series but I never ended up buying CIV 5. HOWEVER, since your first post I decided to download the demo (no expansion packs) and overall I am actually having some fun (not as complex as 4 but the city states are a nice touch). However, I also never played Rome: Total War. I have looked for a demo but can't find it. Of the two games which do you prefer?

[morsdraconis]

Total War: Shogun 2 is SUPER fuckin' fun. I suck balls at it but it's really fun. Tempted to install it again and play some more.

[JeffHCross]

Empire: Total War is what killed my gaming computer. Well, more accurately, me switching the graphics card in order to be able to play Empire: Total War is what killed it.

That probably gives you a clue how long it's been since I did PC gaming.

[SmoothPancakes]

Double post. :fp:

[SmoothPancakes]

Smooth, I'm a HUGE fan of the Civ series but I never ended up buying CIV 5. HOWEVER, since your first post I decided to download the demo (no expansion packs) and overall I am actually having some fun (not as complex as 4 but the city states are a nice touch). However, I also never played Rome: Total War. I have looked for a demo but can't find it. Of the two games which do you prefer?

I've enjoyed both, so it's a tough call. :D Civ 5 is definitely different and less complex, but I do like some of the additions and it's a nice change of pace. Like you, I like the city states, they are indeed a nice touch. Looking at my numbers on Steam, I've put 22 hours into Civ V and 17 hours in Rome: Total War, so they're fairly even for me. One thing with Rome: Total War, is the cities all already exist. What you're doing is going around declaring war on various factions, trying to take over territories and expand your empire, and overthrow Rome. You can start as either Julii, Brutii, or Scipiones. They all have their own attributes, initial objectives, and a couple provinces to start out. What you want to do is build your empire up to 50+ provinces, win the support of the Roman people, before declaring war on and capturing Rome yourself. Here's a little background on the time period and gameplay:


The game's main campaign is set during the rule of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire (270 BC – AD 14),[3] with the player assuming control of one of three Roman families; other factions are playable outside the main campaign. Gameplay consists of real-time tactical battles framed within a turn-based strategic campaign, taking place across Europe, North Africa and the Near East. On the large strategic scale, players spend each turn managing diplomacy, developing infrastructure, moving armies, and managing the population's growth and orderliness through taxes and gladiatorial games, among other tasks. On the smaller scale, real-time battles against enemy armies take place within or between cities, with the player commanding forces which can contain thousands of individual soldiers.

One big thing I love about Rome: Total War is the epic scale of battles. I had a battle one time, where I was defending a star fort from attack by another faction, that took literally over 4 hours just to decide the battle. They had thousands of soldiers and reinforcements that they kept throwing at the fort, I had thousands of soldiers and forces inside defending the fort, plus some reinforcements that came into battle from outside the fort. All told, when the battle was over, there was over 7,500 dead combined. Still ranks as the largest, and longest, ever battle for me on Rome: Total War.

Oh yeah, and I did find a place that has a demo for RTW. It's the playable version of the Battle of River Trebia historical battle, playing as general Hannibal.

http://www.gamershell.com/download_6784.shtml



Total War: Shogun 2 is SUPER fuckin' fun. I suck balls at it but it's really fun. Tempted to install it again and play some more.

Yeah, I bought Shogun 2 when it first came out, but I haven't gotten very deep into it. I really need to start playing it again.

[SmoothPancakes]

Empire: Total War is what killed my gaming computer. Well, more accurately, me switching the graphics card in order to be able to play Empire: Total War is what killed it.

That probably gives you a clue how long it's been since I did PC gaming.

Hell, I intentionally bought a new laptop just so I could and would be able to play Empire: Total War. :D

[oweb26]

Total War: Shogun 2 is SUPER fuckin' fun. I suck balls at it but it's really fun. Tempted to install it again and play some more.

I have put 107 hours into Shogun 2 tells you how much I like it. I need to finish my CPU build so I can max it out.

[SmoothPancakes]

Also, Jamyo, I don't know if you use Steam or not (I'm assuming you do), but I looked, you can get Rome: Total War for $9.99, while vanilla Civ 5 with none of the DLC is still $29.99. If anything, depending on if that link to the demo I posted above still works and the demo still work, I'd consider going with Rome: Total War for $9.99, and then sometime down the road when 2K and Steam has another sale, getting Civ 5 (either vanilla or GOTY edition) for low price.

And to give you an idea of what Rome: Total War is like, here are two game play videos I've found. They give you an idea of what takes place in Rome: Total War, between the turn-based city and unit building, and then the real time battles.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9Ma4esGomA


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QcwudBNN7Y

[morsdraconis]

Yup. Definitely installed Shogun 2 now.

Damn you Smooth for giving me the itch to waste hours upon hours of my free time on that game again. ;)

[SmoothPancakes]

Yup. Definitely installed Shogun 2 now.

Damn you Smooth for giving me the itch to waste hours upon hours of my free time on that game again. ;)

:D I seem to be getting pretty good at that. :D First NCAA 12, I can't remember but I want to think there might have been a temporary NBA 2K12 thing in there, and now Shogun 2. You can't beat good taste (and similar tastes) when it comes to games. :D

[morsdraconis]

:D I seem to be getting pretty good at that. :D First NCAA 12, I can't remember but I want to think there might have been a temporary NBA 2K12 thing in there, and now Shogun 2. You can't beat good taste (and similar tastes) when it comes to games. :D

I guess I'm just impressionable, but, yeah, similar tastes certainly helps. Now I just need you to find a RPG for me to play. ;)

I've been so bored with video games, I've been playing old Genesis, NES, and SNES games via emulators. Reminds me of the good ol' days of video games when graphics weren't the be all end all and gameplay was king.

[JeffHCross]

And to give you an idea of what Rome: Total War is like, here are two game play videos I've found.I loved the story element to Rome, with the SPQR and everything involved there (though that may have only been the tutorial :D)

[jaymo76]

Also, Jamyo, I don't know if you use Steam or not (I'm assuming you do), but I looked, you can get Rome: Total War for $9.99, while vanilla Civ 5 with none of the DLC is still $29.99. If anything, depending on if that link to the demo I posted above still works and the demo still work, I'd consider going with Rome: Total War for $9.99, and then sometime down the road when 2K and Steam has another sale, getting Civ 5 (either vanilla or GOTY edition) for low price.

And to give you an idea of what Rome: Total War is like, here are two game play videos I've found. They give you an idea of what takes place in Rome: Total War, between the turn-based city and unit building, and then the real time battles.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9Ma4esGomA


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QcwudBNN7Y

Especially enjoyed video 2. I can picture how much time and effort go into planning and conducting something like that. I think my cpu had a heart attack just running the video lol.

[SmoothPancakes]

Especially enjoyed video 2. I can picture how much time and effort go into planning and conducting something like that. I think my cpu had a heart attack just running the video lol.

:D Yeah, I actually just played a couple hours of Rome: Total War, first time in over a year, and had a nice battle tonight. I was in the middle of wars with the Gaul, Spain and Britannia when I first loaded up my old save file. Finished off and eliminated Spain and Gaul during my bit of gameplay tonight, and have whittled Britannia down to just one city left. Had one battle trying to capture Spain's second to last city. Laid siege to the city for a couple days, and then with my main army, and then 3 secondary armies as reinforcements, the battle began.

The total numbers ended up being 4,573 soldiers for me, 2,902 soldiers for Spain. Ended up lasting a good hour, hour and a half. It was easier taking the city (especially since it was a small city with only wooden walls as the city had yet to grow large enough to build stone walls), than it was the star fort with stone walls in my epic, 4 hour long battle I described in a previous post, but still costly. While I virtually destroyed the enemy's army, causing over 80% casualties, they did some major damage to me, killing over 3,200 soldiers.

Unfortunately, that delayed my attempt to take Spain's final city for a couple years. I had to hang back, get the post-city capture riots under control, get the city onto my side, and retrain my old soldiers and recruit new ones to make up the lost numbers. Ended up sending a diplomat over to Spain, gave them a sweet deal with some money and other stuff to get them to overlook the whole "we just whooped your ass and took your city not too long ago" issue and settle on a ceasefire. That gave me enough time to build my western front army back up and then go after Spain's final city. Once that was done, I focused on my northern and eastern borders. Went up north and declared war on Britannia and have currently stolen two of their territories, with them holding onto just one last city and a fort.

And over on the eastern front, I've been letting the rebels run wild as they have actually been helping me. They keep attacking and occasionally stealing cities and territories from Brutii, followed by me then coming in and defeating the rebels and taking over that city and territory as my own. With the borders of myself and Brutii right up against each other now after previous conquests, it's the only way I've been able to "steal" territories and cities from Brutii without the whole "declaring war on them and bringing the collective, combined forces of Brutii, Scipiones and S.P.Q.R down on my ass from all fronts" thing. I am nowhere near ready to take on all of the other Roman factions. So for now, I'm just attacking the factions I can, letting the Rebels do my dirty work in taking away from the territories of Brutii, and then coming in and defeating the Rebels and taking the city and territory from them to expand my borders.

We're actually getting close to the end. It's just me, Brutii, Scipiones, S.P.Q.R, one city left for Britannia (which it's just a short matter of time before I have an army ready to attack it), a couple rebel cities, Egypt (which pretty much completely dominates and owns the entire eastern border of the map, and the Greek Cities. Most everyone else has been destroyed by myself, Brutii and Scipiones.

[JeffHCross]

Personal favorite part of Rome Total War was that there was an "Arthurian: Total War" mod made: http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Arthurian:_Total_War

( At least I think it was that one. It was for Rome and was a King Arthur mod. That's all I really remember. :D)

[jaymo76]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmxoG8iOrto



Sim City (5) for 2013... I am excited!!!

[SmoothPancakes]

Interesting. It'll be nice to see a Sim City with modern graphics. It's also making me want to play Sim City 4 now, which I haven't played in a year or two.

[SmoothPancakes]

So after having wanted to buy them for a long while, Steam has DCS (Digital Combat Simulator): A-10C Warthog and DCS: Black Shark (which is the Ka-50 Black Shark attack helicopter) both 33% off through April 4th, so I decided to go ahead and finally buy them. I just downloaded and looked at the flight manuals for both aircraft, good lord. The flight manual for the A-10C Warthog is 672 pages long. The Black Shark flight manual is 534 pages long. I'm gonna be able to practically fly these bitches in real life by the time I get done reading these flight manuals.

[DariusLock]

DAMN I'm a flight junkie what specs u need to run this good?

[SmoothPancakes]

DAMN I'm a flight junkie what specs u need to run this good?

Well, I'm running it on a 3 year old laptop, so if you're on a desktop, odds are you'll be good. :D

Here are the requirements that they have listed on Steam.

A-10C Warthog (Came out in April 2011)


System Requirements
OS: 64-bit Windows XP, Vista, and 7
Processor: CPU: Core 2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom X3 8750 or better
Memory: 4GB
Graphics: Shader 3.0 or better; 512MB DirectX 9.0c or better
DirectX®: 9.0c
Hard Drive: 7 GB
Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible
Other: Internet connection required for activation and multiplayer


Black Shark (Came out in April 2009)


System Requirements
OS: Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7
Processor: P4 2GHz
Memory: 2 GB
Graphics: 256 MB RAM DirectX9
DirectX®: 9C
Hard Drive: 5 GB
Sound: Onboard sound or sound card
Other Requirements:


Black Shark is rated an 82 on Metascore, the Warthog an 87. With both 33% off through April 4th, Black Shark right now is $13.33 and the Warthog is $26.66. Considering the Warthog retails still for $39.99, you can both for $39.99 right now with the 33% off deal.

I just did a quick mission with the Warthog (haven't read through the flight manual yet so I was literally just plain jumping in the cockpit), and my god what a bitch that thing is to fly, at least when you have no clue what you're doing. :D I made it about 3-5 minutes in the air before I pressed some wrong button and completely lost all power to my engines. Of course, as I had no clue where anything was in the cockpit, I couldn't find the switches to restart the engines so I gradually glided to my death in the side of a hill. :D

[jaymo76]

It's an older game but I downloaded Imperium Romanum on Steam. Yeah it's kind of lame but it is basically a city building game with some minor military conflict. Overall I am actually having fun with it. It's a great game to play in between the kids and their naps.

[SmoothPancakes]

It's an older game but I downloaded Imperium Romanum on Steam. Yeah it's kind of lame but it is basically a city building game with some minor military conflict. Overall I am actually having fun with it. It's a great game to play in between the kids and their naps.

Downloading the demo right now. For PC gaming, 2008 ain't all that bad. I still play Rome: Total War and that's from 2004. :D

[jaymo76]

Downloading the demo right now. For PC gaming, 2008 ain't all that bad. I still play Rome: Total War and that's from 2004. :D

Apparently Grand Ages: Rome is the updated version of Imperium (circa 2009) and had a higher rating. I guess there is more military options as well such as naval. I might download the demo and see. The trailer actually looks ppretty good.

[gschwendt]

My hard drive and video card are on their way out so I've decided it's time for an upgrade.

Western Digital VelociRaptor 250GB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236245)
EVGA GeForce GTX 480 1536MB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130759)

The HDD will replace my primary disk which seems to be getting bad sectors or something. It's only 150GB, 7200RPM, 8MB Cache (secondary is 1TB) so the new drive is an upgrade in every sense of the word.

The Video card is replacing my GTX 460 768MB because it's failing as well. Awhile back while I had my case open, I dropped a pen with a metal clip that seemed to make contact to two solder points and caused a spark. Since then, I've not been able to run dual-screens without my system crashing.

Both of these should be a significant upgrade to go along with my 16GB RAM that I recently upgraded to as well.

[JeffHCross]

You could get a ~150 GB SSD for about the same price as that 250 GB VelociRaptor. Just thinking out loud.

[gschwendt]

You could get a ~150 GB SSD for about the same price as that 250 GB VelociRaptor. Just thinking out loud.Right, but everything that I would want to utilize that speed for is either bad for the drive (writing to the drive eventually wears it down) or would be too small to not give me the benefit. Right now all of my video edits are written to my primary (since my captured footage is on my secondary). Writing to the same location as where the media is causes the render time to slow down and writing to an SSD would obviously be fast but only shorten it's life. That said, I've been tinkering around with creating a RAMDisk... seeing as I have that 16GB, I might as well put it to use.

The other use for it would be to store games but right now, I have 315GB worth of games stored on my secondary drive.

[JeffHCross]

FWIW, I've been hearing more and more lately that the write-limit discussion is overblown.

"Intel rates its 160GB X-25M G2 drives with a lifetime of "at least" 5 years even if you write 20GByte per day to them."

[gschwendt]

FWIW, I've been hearing more and more lately that the write-limit discussion is overblown.

"Intel rates its 160GB X-25M G2 drives with a lifetime of "at least" 5 years even if you write 20GByte per day to them."I imagine my next HD will be a SSD but for now there's too much to be uncertain about.

BTW, those Intel drives, are more than twice as expensive as other SSDs
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003F8KT1O/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thegamtai-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B003F8KT1O

[JeffHCross]

Yeah, I was just finding info quick ;) Wasn't actually doing research. I just know this isn't the first time I've heard that the write "limits" are being exaggerated. They're a concern for enterprise systems that expect to run hardware for decades, but for your average consumer ...

[morsdraconis]

Well, for your average consumer, SSDs seem like a bit much anyway. Plus ~$450 for 250gbs is a bit ridiculous. Anything more than $1 a gig is just too much for any type of HD storage.

[gschwendt]

Well, for your average consumer, SSDs seem like a bit much anyway. Plus ~$450 for 250gbs is a bit ridiculous. Anything more than $1 a gig is just too much for any type of HD storage.Pretty much all consumer drives are around that $1 per gig mark. I've been watching them come through on slickdeals & the like consistently under that (though not by much). Still though, SSDs are so new to the market that I couldn't imagine jumping on one as a primary without the plan to replace it in less than 2 years. Obviously time may tell a different story but for now, I'll wait until they decide they've nearly perfected their performance.

[SmoothPancakes]

Reviving this thing, I came across a discussion elsewhere about a game called Crusader Kings II that came out earlier this year. Anyone play it before? It sounds extremely interesting for me (takes place from around the 1066 through 1453 or so in medieval Europe), and Steam has it for $49.99. I think I'm gonna pick it up on Friday when I get paid.

[morsdraconis]

Reviving this thing, I came across a discussion elsewhere about a game called Crusader Kings II that came out earlier this year. Anyone play it before? It sounds extremely interesting for me (takes place from around the 1066 through 1453 or so in medieval Europe), and Steam has it for $49.99. I think I'm gonna pick it up on Friday when I get paid.

It is by far the most insanely complex "dynasty simulator" I've ever seen. I tried to play it but it was just overwhelming to me. People are insane about the game (like there's a mod to change the entire game to Song of Ice and Fire land), but, for me, it's so damn complex, I don't think I could ever actually get into it.

Also, you should wait to buy it, the huge Summer Steam sale is on the horizon and I've seen Crusader Kings II on sale before so it's likely that you could get it on sale when that happens.

[gschwendt]

Supposedly this is the Summer Sale
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/07/09/steam-summer-sale-leaked/



We don’t have prices yet, but here’s what we might possibly potentially maybe perhaps you never know be in for across the first 11 days of the sale, in terms of bundled packs:


Day 1: Anomaly Warzone Earth, The Baconing, Cave Story+, EDGE, Lone Survivor.
Day 2: Botanicula, E.Y.E, Oil Rush, Splice, Universe Sandbox,
Day 3: Bit Trip Beat, Braid, Bunch of Heroes, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, Runespell Overture,
Day 4: A Valley Without Wind, Atom Zombie Smasher, Blocks that Matter, Sanctum, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP,
Day 5: Audio Surf, Gemini Rue, Greed Corp, Tiny Bang Story, Ys: The Oath in Felghana
Day 6: Awesome, Defcon, Space Chem, Ticket to Ride, Trauma
Day 7: Avadon, Dungeons of Dredmor, Qube, Vessel, Zombie Driver
Day 8: Demolition Inc, Hoard, Sol Exodus, Swords and Soldiers HD, Wings of Prey,
Day 9: Capsized, Jamestown, Revenge of the Titans, VVVVVV, Zeno Clash
Day 10: All Zombies Must Die, Beat Hazard, Bit trip Runner, Eufloria, Machinarium
Day 11: Hydrophobia, Orion: Dino Beatdown, Star Ruler, Waveform, World of Goo




Then ALLEGEDLY ALRIGHT ALLEGEDLY we’ll also be seeing this stuff go through the atom price-smasher:


1C Collection Pack
Adam’s Venture Complete Bundle Retail
Anno 2070 Pack
Batman Arkham Asylum, Batman Arkham City and Batman Gotham City Imposters Bundle
Bethesda Collection (BRINK, Fallout New Vegas, Skyrim, Hunted)
Bioshock Franchise Pack
BIT.TRIP.BEAT Bundle
BIT.TRIP.RUNNER Bundle
Carpe Fulger Bundle (Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale, Chantelise, Fortune Summoners)
Civilization Collection
Command and Conquer Franchise
Dawn of War Franchise Pack
Dead Island Complete
Duke Nukem Bundle
Foreign Legion Bundle
Kalypso Collection (Tropico, Jagged Alliance, Airline Tycoon, etc)
Majesty Franchise
Paradox Collection (Magicka + dlcs, Mount and Blade, etc)
Pendulo Adventure Pack
Railworks 3 – Summer Sale Collection
Red Orchestra Franchise Pack (ROW)
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Bundle
Saints Row: The Third Franchise Pack
Sniper Elite Franchise Pack
Square Hit Collection (Hitman, Tomb Raider, Just Cause 2, Deus Ex, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Quantum Conundrum, Thief)
Stardock Collection Pack
Strategy First Complete Pack
Sword of the Stars Franchise
THQ Collection (Dawn of War, Warhammer, Stalker, Nexuiz, Darksiders, Metro 2033, etc)
Total War: Shogun 2 Pack
Victoria Franchise
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Pack
Wings of Prey

[morsdraconis]

Also, to add to this, I recently got back into Terraria (gameplay trailer below). I hadn't played it since it's original iteration, but it's been updated to include a Hard Mode, numerous other bosses, and SO much more shit to build. Yes, it's kinda like Minecraft but 2d instead of 3d, but it's WAY better than Minecraft because there's actually an end to the game, bosses to kill, and just WAY more interesting stuff to build and have fun with. I've only put in about 16 hours or so, but I have people on my friend's list that have put 100+ hours into it easily.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGo7iMUcxLc

[morsdraconis]

Supposedly this is the Summer Sale
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/07/09/steam-summer-sale-leaked/

God, I hope some of that is correct because there are about 20 games on that list that I REALLY want to buy, though I'm disappointed to see that only one of the Ys games are on the list (supposedly the other one - Ys Origin - is a better game).

[morsdraconis]

Smooth, if you don't have this game, you MUST get it as it's right up your alley (Civ in space):


Endless Space





http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/products/endless-space/articles/a-born-leader/793-3-eng-GB/A-BORN-LEADER_prod_image_features_video.jpg

A BORN LEADER




Guide one of eight civilizations as you strive for galactic domination.
Control the entire galaxy through subtle trade and diplomacy.
Explore every corner of the universe to find powerful artifacts and resources.
Overwhelm other civilizations with your advanced technologies.
Destroy your enemies with massive armadas.



http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/products/endless-space/articles/endless-discoveries/805-2-eng-GB/ENDLESS-DISCOVERIES_prod_image_features_video.jpg

ENDLESS DISCOVERIES




[*=left]Explore hundreds of star systems and master the mysteries beneath the Dust.
[*=left]Exploit different planet types, luxuries and strategic resources.
[*=left]Confront a host of strange scientific phenomena.
[*=left]Hire heroes to become fleet admirals or system governors.
[*=left]Discover five hero classes and their unique ability trees and specializations.



http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/products/endless-space/articles/space-opera/817-2-eng-GB/SPACE-OPERA_prod_image_features_video.jpg

SPACE OPERA




Experience Endless Space with state-of-the-art graphics and interface.
Switch between strategic battle decisions and long-term planning.
Optimize each fleet for epic battles around contested stars.
Create the perfect combinations from dozens of unique ships per civilization.
Customize your ships with modules, armament, engines and special mods.





http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/products/endless-space/articles/take-on-the-universe/829-2-eng-GB/TAKE-ON-THE-UNIVERSE_prod_image_features_video.jpg

TAKE ON THE UNIVERSE




Play against up to seven opponents and build up - or break - alliances at will.
Discover an innovative and dynamic simultaneous turn-based gameplay.
Permit instant jump-in for your ongoing online games.
Define your own custom civilizations and confront the ones created by your friends.



http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/products/endless-space/articles/endless-replayability/841-2-eng-GB/ENDLESS-REPLAYABILITY_prod_image_features_video.jpg

ENDLESS REPLAYABILITY




Control every new game's scope, from a quick match-up to an endless war.
Generate an infinity of galaxies where every start begins a new adventure.
Modify the size, shape, density, age and a lot more to create your ideal galaxy.
Choose from different victory conditions and adapt your strategy on the fly.



http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/products/endless-space/articles/creating-games2gether/853-2-eng-GB/CREATING-GAMES2GETHER_prod_image_features_video.jpg

CREATING GAMES2GETHER




Track the dev team's objectives, progress and achievements.
Participate in the creation of the game via the GAMES2GETHER initiative.
Access early versions of the game and give your feedback to the dev team.
Discuss actual and future features and expansions with the dev team.









Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLfiX5PuyWQ

Gameplay:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqF4OaxqWB4

Combat Gameplay:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwLbal5cdbw

[SmoothPancakes]

Sweet. That definitely looks interesting. What are the system requirements? For a new game like that, I'm not sure if my laptop could handle it. I really need to get around to building a gaming dedicated desktop rig sometime, just haven't had the money to do so.

[SmoothPancakes]

In a PC gaming related comment, I'm almost sort of glad I'm not going to be able to reboot my coaching carousel career dynasty right away on NCAA '13 (between dynasty mode bugs, waiting for sliders, still needing to finish naming OC and DC coaches), because after spending all afternoon and evening yesterday reading about Crusader Kings II while watching The Walking Dead, I have a SERIOUS itch to play some strategy games right now. I just can't decide which. I want to get back into Civilization and whoop some ass, but at the same time, I want to whoop some European ass in Empire: Total War which I haven't played in well over a year, but yet, I never got a chance to play much of Shogun 2 and get very deep into it, so I really want to play that, and but yet again, I also want to get back into Rome: Total War and finish whooping Brittania's ass, and try my luck at defeat my brethren (Brutii and Scipiones) and try to take down S.P.Q.R. and overthrow Rome.

So much I want to do at once. :( Damn these tough decisions.

[morsdraconis]

Sweet. That definitely looks interesting. What are the system requirements? For a new game like that, I'm not sure if my laptop could handle it. I really need to get around to building a gaming dedicated desktop rig sometime, just haven't had the money to do so.

It's a little high, but it's definitely not bad. Haven't had a chance to play any yet (just finished downloading it last night before I had to hit the sack), but I'm looking forward to blowing 3-4 hours on it after work today.


Minimum System Requirements
* OS: Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7
* CPU: Core 2 Duo Processor or Equivalent
* RAM: 2 GB
* HDD: 2 GB free disk space
* Graphics: 256 MB Graphics Memory
* Sound Card: DirectX 9 Compatible
* DirectX: Version 9

Recommended System Requirements
* OS: Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7
* CPU: Core i5/i7 or equivalent
* RAM: 2 GB
* HDD: 2 GB free disk space
* Graphics: 512 MB Graphics Memory
* Sound Card: DirectX 9 Compatible
* DirectX: Version 9

[morsdraconis]

Also, I will say this about the game, if you ever decide to make your own colony in the game, it's INCREDIBLY interesting the options you have available to you.

[SmoothPancakes]

Also, I will say this about the game, if you ever decide to make your own colony in the game, it's INCREDIBLY interesting the options you have available to you.

Sweet. I'll have to check it out.

While I'm waiting for UPS to drop off NCAA (fuckers put my package on the late route), plus because between finishing naming coaches, waiting for some sliders, and hoping to find out some info from EA about the fucked up pitches in dynasty mode, I'm not gonna be starting up my Tulsa dynasty for at least a week yet, I'm gonna jump back into Empire: Total War (haven't played since November 15, 2011) and whoop some 18th century European ass.

[SmoothPancakes]

Sweet. I'll have to check it out.

While I'm waiting for UPS to drop off NCAA (fuckers put my package on the late route), plus because between finishing naming coaches, waiting for some sliders, and hoping to find out some info from EA about the fucked up pitches in dynasty mode, I'm not gonna be starting up my Tulsa dynasty for at least a week yet, I'm gonna jump back into Empire: Total War (haven't played since November 15, 2011) and whoop some 18th century European ass.

Well, nevermind. Got into Empire, started up a new game as Britain, and turns out none of the cities, towns and villages were appearing on the map. Their names and stuff were showing up, but the physical sight of the cities weren't. So I guess I'll try to get back into Shogun 2, try my imitation of Sun Tzu.

[morsdraconis]

Well, nevermind. Got into Empire, started up a new game as Britain, and turns out none of the cities, towns and villages were appearing on the map. Their names and stuff were showing up, but the physical sight of the cities weren't. So I guess I'll try to get back into Shogun 2, try my imitation of Sun Tzu.

That's a weird bug.

Played about 3 hours of Endless Space last night. Needless to say, I dreamed about playing that game last night and almost woke up at 3am to play more (was already up having had to take a piss and was SEVERELY tempted to stay up to play it instead of going back to sleep).

It's pretty much exactly like Civilization, but with little things that DRASTICALLY change how everything works. I'm still in the "I don't have a fuckin' clue if I'm doing it right" phase, but I'm having a blast.

[gschwendt]

Valve released Steam Film Maker for public beta today....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc2g-1jZSdY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2pu0m9iTo4



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIZQpwCOCaQ&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUH3JQjcweM

[Kingpin32]

That's a weird bug.

Played about 3 hours of Endless Space last night. Needless to say, I dreamed about playing that game last night and almost woke up at 3am to play more (was already up having had to take a piss and was SEVERELY tempted to stay up to play it instead of going back to sleep).

It's pretty much exactly like Civilization, but with little things that DRASTICALLY change how everything works. I'm still in the "I don't have a fuckin' clue if I'm doing it right" phase, but I'm having a blast.
You can't play this game on Mac OS can you? This sounds interesting.

[morsdraconis]

Mac release isn't until August 24th apparently. :(

[Kingpin32]

Mac release isn't until August 24th apparently. :(
:( Well at least that'll give me some time to upgrade my Ram and harddrive hopefully.

[morsdraconis]

Valve released Steam Film Maker for public beta today....

Those are AWESOME.

[morsdraconis]

Another 4 hours of Endless Space, and, it's so like Civilization it's not funny. My only issue is the CPU doesn't hesitate to attack you if you're just passing by with a scout. Pretty damn annoying.

[morsdraconis]

Oh shit, STEAM SUMMER SALE MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Today's exclusive sales (more tomorrow and until July 23rd!):

Legend of Grimrock - $5.99
Indie Bundle I (Anomly: Warezone Earth, Cave Story+, EDGE, Lone Survivor, and The Baconing) - $9.99
Might and Magic: Heroes VI - $24.99
Crusader Kings II - $9.99
Call of Duty: MW3 - $29.99
Portal 2 - $4.99
Ridge Racer Unbounded - $24.99
Total War: Shogun 2 - $7.49
Terraria - $2.49


Flash Sales (end within 4-8 hours but more are added every time and are voted on to determine which are going to be next):

Deus Ex Human Revolution - $7.49 (ends at 7pm EST)
Mafia II - $7.49 (ends at 9pm EST)
Spacechem - $2.49 (ends at 11pm EST)
Rayman Origins - $14.99 (ends at 1am EST)




Current Bundle Deals:

Star Wars Collection - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/8594/?snr=1_4_4_)
1C Collection (Kings Bounty and Men of War franchises) - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15227/)
Strategy First Collection (MASSIVE strategy game collection) - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15326/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_1)
Kalypso Collection (another assorted bit of strategy games) - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15324/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_2)
2k Games Collection (worth it if you've never played Borderlands or Civ 5) - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15420/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_3)
THX Collection - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15343/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_4)
Telltale Games Collection (IMO, not worth it...) - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15409/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_5)
Activision Hits Collection (most definitely NOT worth it) - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15465/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_6)
Nordic Hit Collection (Gothic, Painkiller, and Spellforce games) - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15545/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_8)
Square Enix Hit Collection (Deus Ex, Tomb Raider, and Hitman collections) - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15299/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_9)
Cyan Worlds Collection (aka Myst collection) - $14.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15168/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_10)
Mumbo Jumbo Collection (aka Popcap wannabes) - $34.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/14498/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_11)
Railway 3: Train Simulator Collection (weirdos...) - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15346/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_13)
Super id Software Pack (aka ALL id games) - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/14587/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_15)
Rockstar Hit Collection - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15560/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_16)
Paradox Collection (Magicka, Mount and Blade, and Crusader Kings FTW) - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15300/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_17)
Valve Complete - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/7930/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_18)
PopCap Complete - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/13005/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_19)
SEGA Hit Collection (Total War complete and nostalgia I are home) - $49.99 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15550/?snr=1_614_615_summersale2012collections_616_20)

[gschwendt]

I bought Terraria & the Wolfenstein bundle... been forever since I've played any of the three and I remember really enjoying Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

[JBHuskers]

Are there any good RPG games in the Summer Sale that don't require a gigantic PC to run?

[morsdraconis]

I bought Terraria & the Wolfenstein bundle... been forever since I've played any of the three and I remember really enjoying Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Terraria for $2.49 is a freakin' STEAL. That game is AWESOME.

And Return to Castle Wolfenstein is AWESOME. Never played Spear of Destiny, but Wolfenstein 3D is PURE nostalgia for me. That was the first FPS I ever played and I was fuckin' HOOKED.

[morsdraconis]

Are there any good RPG games in the Summer Sale that don't require a gigantic PC to run?

There's the action RPG Ys: Origin that's on sale ($11.99) that I most definitely plan on buying tomorrow when I get paid. It looks freakin' FANTASTIC:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUEsU24xnzo


Also, it's requirements are really low:


Minimum:


OS:XP
Processor:Pentium III / 1 GHz
Memory:1 GB RAM
Graphics:64 MB VRAM, 3D accelerator compatible w/ DirectX 9.0c
DirectX®:9.0c
Hard Drive:2 GB HD space
Sound:Compatible with DirectX 9.0c




Recommended:


OS:XP, Vista, 7, 64-bit compatible
Processor:Pentium4 / 1.3 GHz or higher
Memory:1 GB RAM
Graphics:64 MB VRAM, 3D accelerator compatible w/ DirectX 9.0c
DirectX®:9.0c
Hard Drive:2 GB HD space
Sound:Compatible with DirectX 9.0c

[morsdraconis]

Also, don't hesitate to check out Cave Story+ either. It's less RPG and more Action Platformer, but it's SPECTACULAR as well.

[SmoothPancakes]

Alright, I already wanted to buy Crusader Kings II, but was going to wait until I got paid. For 75% off, fuck yes, I'm buying that right now.

[morsdraconis]

Alright, I already wanted to buy Crusader Kings II, but was going to wait until I got paid. For 75% off, fuck yes, I'm buying that right now.

Told ya it'd go on sale. ;)

[JBHuskers]

Thanks Mors. My rig should easily handle that.

[SmoothPancakes]

Told ya it'd go on sale. ;)

They do need to work on their prices a little bit. :D Crusader Kings II vanilla is $9.99. All the DLC separately, with all of it individually either 75% off or 40% is $11.01 total, so $21 exact to buy the vanilla game and all DLC separately. The CKII Collection, which includes most but not all of the DLC is 40% off, and priced $29.99. :fp: Someone didn't think that through too well.

[SmoothPancakes]

Ok, apparently they just hadn't updated the price yet. Crusader Kings II collection (includes all DLC except for three, which are an additional $3.50 total for all of those three) is now listed as $12.49, 75% off like the rest of Crusader Kings II. So I can get CKII collection, the remaining three DLC, and all the remaining unpurchased DLC for Total War: Shogun 2 for something like $24 or $26 combined. God I love this Summer Sale. Just chopped into a sizeable chunk of stuff I have wanted to buy, for a pittance of the price. All of that at full price would have ran $80 or $90.

[morsdraconis]

Ok, apparently they just hadn't updated the price yet. Crusader Kings II collection (includes all DLC except for three, which are an additional $3.50 total for all of those three) is now listed as $12.49, 75% off like the rest of Crusader Kings II. So I can get CKII collection, the remaining three DLC, and all the remaining unpurchased DLC for Total War: Shogun 2 for something like $24 or $26 combined. God I love this Summer Sale. Just chopped into a sizeable chunk of stuff I have wanted to buy, for a pittance of the price. All of that at full price would have ran $80 or $90.

Oh yeah man. I can't wait until my check clears the bank today (around 9am or so) so I can buy all the shit I want to buy. :D

[oweb26]

I can"t stop shopping on this steam sale!!!!!

[morsdraconis]

Well, my wallet is pretty significantly lighter after today having purchased these via the Steam sale:

Sega Collection
Trine 2
Ys Origins
Ys: The Oath in Felghana


Now just gotta wait for Endless Space to go on sale so I can stop pirating it. ;)

[JBHuskers]

Well, my wallet is pretty significantly lighter after today having purchased these via the Steam sale:

Sega Collection
Trine 2
Ys Origins
Ys: The Oath in Felghana


Now just gotta wait for Endless Space to go on sale so I can stop pirating it. ;)

Once Trine 2 was free for PS+ members, I got back into the first one to try to beat it quick so I can get to 2.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2

[jaymo76]

Okay, I am embarrased to ask, but has anyone played the SIMS 3 PETS for PC??? The wife loves the Sims 3 series and she keeps bringing up how she would like to get the pets edition. If it's good, this could get me some brownie points which would mean free time to play NCAA.

[JBHuskers]

Okay, I am embarrased to ask, but has anyone played the SIMS 3 PETS for PC??? The wife loves the Sims 3 series and she keeps bringing up how she would like to get the pets edition. If it's good, this could get me some brownie points which would mean free time to play NCAA.

Don't be embarrassed. I have it on PS3 :) I like it.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2

[jaymo76]

Don't be embarrassed. I have it on PS3 :) I like it.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2

Well, maybe I will pick it up them as a surprise. Cheers!

[morsdraconis]

Don't be embarrassed at all. Sims 3 is fun stuff man though I don't know what the pets edition adds to the mix exactly, but it's definitely worth it since it's only $20 for a normally $40 expansion.

[oweb26]

Well, my wallet is pretty significantly lighter after today having purchased these via the Steam sale:

Sega Collection
Trine 2
Ys Origins
Ys: The Oath in Felghana


Now just gotta wait for Endless Space to go on sale so I can stop pirating it. ;)


I was on the fence about trine 2 that the sidescroller correct? Man I thought long and hard about the sega collection but then I came to the decision that I wouldn't play half of those games.

I am thinking about getting medieval 2 because I am tired of keeping up with these disc I got about 3 years ago.

I picked up civ IV because I have been playing with a "questionable copy" of that for about 5 years (same ISO file). LOL

[JBHuskers]

I was on the fence about trine 2 that the sidescroller correct?

It's a side scroller, but it has more of a puzzle solving theme too it.

[morsdraconis]

Also ended up buying:

Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes (cool action RPG that looks like it would be fun multiplayer)
E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy (AWESOME looking FPS/RPG like Deus Ex)

[SmoothPancakes]

I think I have a much better understanding of Crusader Kings II now. I spent the entire evening reading the actual game manual in a PDF I downloaded from the Paradox forums. I also downloaded a in-depth guide that was made by one of the guys on the forum, but haven't gotten too much into it yet. I also just finished up the entire Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced tutorials in-game. Both the game manual and the tutorials combined definitely gave me a much better understanding of the basics of the game, where to find things in the game, and how to do things in the game.

Debating on starting up a new game tonight or waiting until tomorrow, and try to put everything I just learned to work and see if how well I do this time around in the game.

[SmoothPancakes]

Alright, the three levels of the in-game Tutorial, as well as reading through the 60 page game manual, I now definitely understand this game better. I still have the 140 page, player-created, in-depth guide to read, but I'm going to wait until I'm done with my current game.

I started a new game in Ireland, not even 20 years into it, already declared war on a neighboring county due to de jure claims that I had on it. Now that I finally knew what the hell I was doing, I was able to raise my own personal army, as well as have my vassals raise their levies, combined the multiple forces, whooped the enemy army's ass and laid siege to their city. While I was laying siege to their city, their remaining 140 or so soldiers went and tried to siege my city. It didn't work though since I had more defenders than they had attackers.

After two or three years, my vassals were starting to get upset after multiple years of war and their levies continuously being raised the entire time, so I had enough gold that I called in a mercenary army, sent them to completely wipe out the remaining 100-some soldiers of the enemy army (the mercenary army was 1200 men strong, so it was over the second they showed up), and then sent them to combine with my forces. With the additional 1200 forces, the siege was only a month or two away from ending, the count of that land finally offered to surrender (he refused to surrender just a couple months earlier when I tried to demand it), and became my vassal.

Where I stand now, I have my chancellor trying to fabricate claims against another county, the count of Breify (or whatever the name of the county I conquered was) started pissing me off as he was still butt hurt about getting his ass whooped in war, so since I was unable to strip him of his title (was missing one out or six or seven requirement to do it), I threw his ass in prison, where he has been for the last year and a half. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with him. I could show forgiveness (and win some brownie points with my vassals) and release him and let him go free. While it could make my vassels all like me less, I could banish him from the land, getting rid of him while simultaneously stripping him of his title. I could execute him, which would piss my vassals off at me pretty good. Or I could just let him sit and rot in prison until he dies.

On the non-dungeons and death side, I did immediately solve my "lack of an heir to my dynasty" problem upon entering the game, arranging a marriage with a Princess from Tuscany. Gave me a son and a daughter before dying at the age of 21. Arranged another marriage, this time with someone from the French realm, so I currently have claims to Tuscany and French lands, in addition to the kingdom I'm trying to build in Ireland. Got another two daughters from the second marriage.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuMQjKiaDTg

I will say, at first I was concerned the game only went from 1066 to 1453, it seemed like it would be over fast, mainly because I'm so used to both the Total War and Civilization series, where you have Summer/Winter and then a new year, or each turn was a new year, etc. CKII, having time advance one day at a time, I've already put over 2 hours into my current game, and I'm only maybe 10, 15 years tops into it, and that's from raising the advance time up to a fast speed to get through some quiet periods where I was just filling up my treasury before going to war. If I kept it at the lowest or second to lowest speed the entire time, I doubt I'd be even 5 years into the game at this point. So I'm very glad to see it's a slow, long, realistic advance over time, so that nearly 400 years of game length will actually take a long ass time and many hours to get all the way through (assuming my dynasty doesn't collapse and die before reaching 1453 :D).

[morsdraconis]

See? That game sounds awesome as fuck, but the idea of de jure claims made my head spin and, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to raise a damn army or force my vassals to do the same. So, in the end, I ended up playing Civ 5 instead. ;)


As a side note, think I finally have a bit of a clue of what the hell I'm doing in Endless Space. Decided to go with a straight up "I'm gonna fuck you up as quickly as possible with ships that are more badass than you" approach with my third game (after playing a good 100 turns and 50 turns in two previous games to get my shit straight). Ended up making my own faction instead of going with one of the normal ones (so I could max out various parts of my ship building to enable better defenses and ship customization) and I'm enjoying it so far. My empire is kinda pissed at me because I'm in a shitty part of the galaxy with shitty planet statistics, but they'll get over it once I get the "make everyone happy" sciences researched (another 30-40 turns or so).

[SmoothPancakes]

See? That game sounds awesome as fuck, but the idea of de jure claims made my head spin and, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to raise a damn army or force my vassals to do the same. So, in the end, I ended up playing Civ 5 instead. ;)


As a side note, think I finally have a bit of a clue of what the hell I'm doing in Endless Space. Decided to go with a straight up "I'm gonna fuck you up as quickly as possible with ships that are more badass than you" approach with my third game (after playing a good 100 turns and 50 turns in two previous games to get my shit straight). Ended up making my own faction instead of going with one of the normal ones (so I could max out various parts of my ship building to enable better defenses and ship customization) and I'm enjoying it so far. My empire is kinda pissed at me because I'm in a shitty part of the galaxy with shitty planet statistics, but they'll get over it once I get the "make everyone happy" sciences researched (another 30-40 turns or so).

Yeah, that was what first made me want to get the game, because it sounded awesome as fuck. If you have the game, or still have the game, and are willing to give it another try, try doing what I did. Read the actual game manual the have in a PDF on the Paradox forums (I could also load it up to Google Docs if you want since I downloaded it), and then go through all the tutorials in all three levels (Basic, Intermediate and Advanced), and then give it another whirl. The manual combined with the tutorial really explains a lot and helps to understand most, if not all of the basics (and then some) of the game and how it works. After that, pretty much like what you've been doing with Endless Space, just playing and trying things (finding out what works and what doesn't work from a ruler standpoint, etc), getting that actual in-game experience, and the game starts to come together and you start to know exactly what you're doing in it.

It definitely is fun as hell and is just as awesome as it sounds after you pick up the basics and have figured out where everything is, what everything does, and what you're doing. Definitely glad I bought this yesterday morning.

[JeffHCross]

Fuck you guys and all your talk about games I don't have the PC or time to play.

[oweb26]

Fuck you guys and all your talk about games I don't have the PC or time to play.

I don't have alot of time but since they are so cheap I never feel bad if I don't play them that much.

Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk 2

[Kingpin32]

Fuck you guys and all your talk about games I don't have the PC or time to play.
:+1:

[oweb26]

Fuck you guys and all your talk about games I don't have the PC or time to play.

To prove how many games I don't play, now this is a little misleading because I own the entire half life series and as anyone is aware that is around 20 games within itself and I havent played them in years!!!! well before they started tracking.

[oweb26]

Alright, the three levels of the in-game Tutorial, as well as reading through the 60 page game manual, I now definitely understand this game better. I still have the 140 page, player-created, in-depth guide to read, but I'm going to wait until I'm done with my current game.

Can you link me to this or upload it?

[SmoothPancakes]

Can you link me to this or upload it?

Absolutely. I went ahead and uploaded them to Google Docs earlier. Here are the links:

CK II Manual (60 pages) (https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5GW-kSq1LXGdHlMa2JyV01XSWc)

CK II In-depth Guide (140 pages) (https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5GW-kSq1LXGSVFDY2R4aFpyMTA)

I just spent another three hours or so playing it. I was actually kicking ass for a while in Ireland. Grabbed a couple more counties and was almost done in capturing the necessary counties to create the title Duke of Ulster. Then my ruler died, and his son and heir turned out to be a shit stain of a ruler. Got into a war down in Italy over a couple of counties he held the title to, lost the war and ended up losing every title and claim that he possessed, so so long my years and years of hard work in Ireland.

Ultimately, I had to resort to some assassinating and other less than ideal practices to clear out everyone in line above and take over as Duke of Ulster via being the next in line as heir. That was also a difficult road as Emperor Magnus, who as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was my liege, kept throwing my ass in the dungeons, and I would have to get my regent to talk Emperor Magnus into ransoming me as a prisoner to get my out of the dungeons, costing a pretty penny in gold along the way.

Never fully recovered though. The dumbass son and heir wouldn't knock his wife up, ended up getting poisoned and died in an assassination plot against him by one of his vassals, and thus came to an end the bloodline of my dynasty, in April 1098.

Gonna take a break and may jump back into it with a new game and new start later today. This game is definitely fun as hell.

[oweb26]

I know my playtime says I have played for 12 hours but I have knit played like 2 so I am really new to the game . The price has went up on steam for anyone who didn't get it yesterday. I think I'm going to pick up anno 1707 I like the old dawn of discovery I might also get all my civ 5 dlc.

Btw thanks for the upload I won't say anything bad about you for 1 day. :D

Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk 2

[jaymo76]

Has anyone played Tropico 4? It's 75% off on steam and I am considering pickng it up.

[JeffHCross]

Has anyone played Tropico 4?I direct you to oweb26's image of "Games Played" on the previous page :D

[oweb26]

Has anyone played Tropico 4? It's 75% off on steam and I am considering pickng it up.

Its well worth the 8.00 bucks or so. Its a nation building game that has
one of the longest single players I have ever seen I think I have put in somewhere like 4 hours I am still at the very beginning.





I direct you to oweb26's image of "Games Played" on the previous page :D

See how useful those stats are already.



Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk 2

As I typed that my wife said um....you did like 4 hours in one morning so to be clear I have put in about 36 but most of my time has been in the free build. It has a prima guide but there are plenty of "free" resources online that will tell you everything (even though the prima is only 3.00 this week). I enjoyed (enjoy) the game but I have the attention span of a 2 year old when it comes to video games.

[jaymo76]

Its well worth the 8.00 bucks or so. Its a nation building game that has
one of the longest single players I have ever seen I think I have put in somewhere like 4 hours I am still at the very beginning.






See how useful those stats are already.



Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk 2

As I typed that my wife said um....you did like 4 hours in one morning so to be clear I have put in about 36 but most of my time has been in the free build. It has a prima guide but there are plenty of "free" resources online that will tell you everything (even though the prima is only 3.00 this week). I enjoyed (enjoy) the game but I have the attention span of a 2 year old when it comes to video games.

Do you play Tropico 4 or do you have the modern expansion pack? Apparently the expansion. Pack hasn't got great reviews. However, i thought it looked good.

[oweb26]

Do you play Tropico 4 or do you have the modern expansion pack? Apparently the expansion. Pack hasn't got great reviews. However, i thought it looked good.


I have done both and honestly they played exactly the same to me just with different building that really did the same thing. for example they both have casinos which bring happiness but they look different. Its a really fun game the learning curve isn't too bad but it does have on especially if you were like me and didn't play any of the other ones.

The game is definitely worth the 7.49, I think I payed 12.00 for it plus like 12.00 for the expansion a couple of months ago.

[SmoothPancakes]

Yeah, I bought Tropico 4 earlier this afternoon, let it download while I took a little afternoon nap. :) I played the demo for it on 360 a couple months back, had a lot of fun with it, so when I saw it was 75% off, I jumped on it. I almost bought it yesterday when it was only something like 33% or 40% off. Thank god I said said screw it yesterday and didn't buy. :D

[oweb26]

If anyone didnt pick up CKII at 9.99 its still priced that at Amazon download.

[SmoothPancakes]

I don't know how the hell it is even possible between work and other stuff, but according to Steam, I have somehow already put in 38 hours in CKII since buying it Thursday night. :D

[JeffHCross]

You and I need to talk. I should pay you to get some of the things done that I don't have enough time for :D

[oweb26]

I don't know how the hell it is even possible between work and other stuff, but according to Steam, I have somehow already put in 38 hours in CKII since buying it Thursday night. :D


Those times are screwy it counts the time when lets say you click the game but you get the pop up that says start playing CKII if you never hit that Steam is still counting that as you are playing. That's why it says I have 12 hours I left it on all last night at that start screen, I really only have about 1, 2 at the most of time played.

[SmoothPancakes]

Those times are screwy it counts the time when lets say you click the game but you get the pop up that says start playing CKII if you never hit that Steam is still counting that as you are playing. That's why it says I have 12 hours I left it on all last night at that start screen, I really only have about 1, 2 at the most of time played.

I was gonna say, there was no way in hell I had been playing for 38 hours. I mean, I have been playing the hell out of the game, I probably legitimately have 12-15 hours into the game, but no way in hell could it be 38, since I've only even had the game for less than 48 hours.

I'm actually about to fire it back up again though. :D After playing earlier and getting to 1098, I learned a lot from playing and learned a lot of strategies, what to do and what not to do. Gonna give it another whirl in Ireland and see if I can unite all of Ireland this time around, without having my demesne end up divided between Ireland and Italy because of various gains through marriages.

[SmoothPancakes]

You and I need to talk. I should pay you to get some of the things done that I don't have enough time for :D

I'm sure we could reach an agreement on some things. :D

[Kingpin32]

In a further effort to distract myself from life, I decided to get Civ. 5 for my Macbook. So what do I need to know about the game?

[SmoothPancakes]

In a further effort to distract myself from life, I decided to get Civ. 5 for my Macbook. So what do I need to know about the game?

Yeah, I thought I was having a hard time trying to give games equal playing time on my 360, it's even worse on my laptop. :D Just running down the list in Steam, I've got Anno 2070, Cities XL 2012, Crusader Kings II, Digital Combat Simulator: Black Shark, Digital Combat Simulator: A-10C Warthog, Civilization III: Complete, Civilization IV: Complete, Civilization V with Gods and Kings expansion, Empire: Total War, From Dust, Hearts of Iron III, Medieval II: Total War w/ Kingdoms expansion, Napoleon: Total War, R.U.S.E, Rome: Total War Gold, Sim City 4 Deluxe, Supreme Commander w/ Forged Alliance expansion, Supreme Ruler 202: Gold, Total War: Shogun 2, Tropico 4, Wargame: European Escalation, and World in Conflict w/ Soviet Assault expansion, plus a bunch of other random ass games that came as part of packs and collections. There are games in this list that I haven't played in over a year just because I have been spending all of my PC playing time, whatever amount it may be, on a small handful of games, or in the case of the last 48 hours, nothing but CKII.

As for Civilization V, have you played Civ IV? I'm assuming you have.

[Kingpin32]

Yeah, I thought I was having a hard time trying to give games equal playing time on my 360, it's even worse on my laptop. :D Just running down the list in Steam, I've got Anno 2070, Cities XL 2012, Crusader Kings II, Digital Combat Simulator: Black Shark, Digital Combat Simulator: A-10C Warthog, Civilization III: Complete, Civilization IV: Complete, Civilization V with Gods and Kings expansion, Empire: Total War, From Dust, Hearts of Iron III, Medieval II: Total War w/ Kingdoms expansion, Napoleon: Total War, R.U.S.E, Rome: Total War Gold, Sim City 4 Deluxe, Supreme Commander w/ Forged Alliance expansion, Supreme Ruler 202: Gold, Total War: Shogun 2, Tropico 4, Wargame: European Escalation, and World in Conflict w/ Soviet Assault expansion, plus a bunch of other random ass games that came as part of packs and collections. There are games in this list that I haven't played in over a year just because I have been spending all of my PC playing time, whatever amount it may be, on a small handful of games, or in the case of the last 48 hours, nothing but CKII.

As for Civilization V, have you played Civ IV? I'm assuming you have.
I actually have never played 4. I did some reading on 5, and it seemed very interesting.

[SmoothPancakes]

Well, it was quite an eventful night for me in CKII. After 15 years of wars, I had enough counties to create the title King of Ireland, then spent another 10 years capturing the rest of the remaining counties, eventually taking all of Ireland under my control and setting up a true Kingdom of Ireland. Then things almost went to shit.

Come 1096, the King died, his oldest son was heir and took over as King, only to have his 5 younger brothers not like that. The next brother in line to the throne declared war on his brother the King, beginning a Succession War. The brother called in all the rest of the siblings to fight, resulting in battles in multiple counties, and another 5 years of war before finally everything was put down.

Come the end of the war, three of my brothers were imprisoned, the remaining two brothers and two of the sisters had their titles stripped, and there was finally peace and calm on the Irish coast, bringing the Succession War to an end. To try and keep the rest of my dumbass siblings (not rotting in the dungeons) from pulling that bullshit again in the future, I had the brother who originally started the whole war executed while in prison. Pained me to do that to a brother and family member, but an example had to be made.

It also appears both my original ruler and now his son aren't exactly the most popular people. At one point, I had 13 people rotting in the dungeons, half of them imprisoned after the Succession War was put down and brought to an end, and the other half from people who had plotted to kill me, my vassals, or people in either my or my vassals courts and their plots were discovered. And when they get thrown in the dungeon, they get thrown in the dungeon and the key thrown away. I still have 7 people rotting in the dungeons right now. I right now have a guy who's been sitting in the dungeons for 20 years. I had a woman, one of my courtiers, who had been sitting in the dungeon for 16 years before dying in prison. Out of all the people I've thrown in the dungeons so far in this go-around, probably close to or over 20 in total for the entire length of this current game, only a single one has ever been granted their release by me, and that was because one of the bishops asked me to do so.

Currently in April 1105 when I saved and quit. Ireland is reunited and under my full control again, no threats or dangers of revolts. I'm now eyeing an attempt to possibly start up some wars in England and Scotland. I want to create the Empire of Brittania, consisting of the Kingdoms of Wales, Ireland, England and Scotland.

[SmoothPancakes]

I actually have never played 4. I did some reading on 5, and it seemed very interesting.

Ah, not a problem. I'll see if I can find some stuff for you on Civ 5. I'm not sure if I'd be able to explain it that great and do the game justice through my point of view. It's a fun game though. I'll try to find something to help explain some of the stuff and tell you what you need to know and post it in here later today.

[oweb26]

In a further effort to distract myself from life, I decided to get Civ. 5 for my Macbook. So what do I need to know about the game?

Got ready for 2 hours to feel like 15min. I have never went for a cultural victory or economic one (though I Have gotten close on both) I am always a military domination kinda guy.

If you choose to go that route, get horses ASAP and research pottery and writing( these two things will speed up production and you will get techs faster). Then do Iron Working ASAP, if you are surrounded by water you will want to get the navigation ( I think thats it) technology so you can get across the oceans , lakes, etc.

I am so feared in my game that I can pretty much capture any city so everyone is offering me peace and wants to be friends or choose their side.


I did destroy Ghandi because he as getting to big right beside me. LOL

[morsdraconis]

Got ready for 2 hours to feel like 15min. I have never went for a cultural victory or economic one (though I Have gotten close on both) I am always a military domination kinda guy.

If you choose to go that route, get horses ASAP and research pottery and writing( these two things will speed up production and you will get techs faster). Then do Iron Working ASAP, if you are surrounded by water you will want to get the navigation ( I think thats it) technology so you can get across the oceans , lakes, etc.

I am so feared in my game that I can pretty much capture any city so everyone is offering me peace and wants to be friends or choose their side.


I did destroy Ghandi because he as getting to big right beside me. LOL

Don't forget the "National College" slingshot approach (+50% science from the city it's built in and +1 culture). All you need for it is Agriculture + Pottery + Writing + Libraries in all cities.

It's ridiculously easy to get early on and provides a HUGE boost to Science when it's needed most (in the first 20 turns or so).

[Kingpin32]

Well it turns out that I may not be able to play due to the fact that I have an Intel integrated graphics card. Which sucks.

[oweb26]

Don't forget the "National College" slingshot approach (+50% science from the city it's built in and +1 culture). All you need for it is Agriculture + Pottery + Writing + Libraries in all cities.

It's ridiculously easy to get early on and provides a HUGE boost to Science when it's needed most (in the first 20 turns or so).

Yeah I did forget about that, I have that in Washington, actually my Washington can do military or science with relative ease.

How is cities XL 2012 anyone?

[morsdraconis]

Well, I won my first game of Endless Space and I think I'm glad that I ended up not buying it after all. The game really is just exactly like Civilization even down to the fact that it's IMPOSSIBLE to win a diplomatic victory and it's much easier to just outclass the CPU militaristically and just mow over them (like I just did).

It's rather disappointing that, once again, another turn-based strategy game that's supposed to have multiple ways to win really only has one: blow them to hell with better ships.

[JeffHCross]

It's been so long since I've played a "blow them to hell with better ships" (i.e. a sci-fi 4X or RTS game) that I'm really not sure I'd mind.

[oweb26]

Well, I won my first game of Endless Space and I think I'm glad that I ended up not buying it after all. The game really is just exactly like Civilization even down to the fact that it's IMPOSSIBLE to win a diplomatic victory and it's much easier to just outclass the CPU militaristically and just mow over them (like I just did).

It's rather disappointing that, once again, another turn-based strategy game that's supposed to have multiple ways to win really only has one: blow them to hell with better ships.


I dunno a diplomatic victory is hard on Civ V (next to impossible) but I know on Civ IV I have had some cultural and economic victories.


A diplomatic victory in Civ V is like the episode of Pirates of the Carribean where they say all the pirates kept voting for themselves, that is in essence what happens on Civ.

[SmoothPancakes]

I dunno a diplomatic victory is hard on Civ V (next to impossible) but I know on Civ IV I have had some cultural and economic victories.


A diplomatic victory in Civ V is like the episode of Pirates of the Carribean where they say all the pirates kept voting for themselves, that is in essence what happens on Civ.

Yep. I'm sure as hell not gonna vote for anyone but myself. And the only way to get anyone else to vote for me is to have alliances with them. Other than that, everyone just votes for themselves, since they all want to win.

[jaymo76]

With 2 hours to go before the offer expired I picked up the Tropico 4 Bundle for $16. It included the game and all of the DLC. I read a lot of reviews that said you don't need all the extras, but for 75% off how can you go wrong? I also picked up Grand Ages Rome: Gold Edition for $5 which includs Grand Anges and the EXPANSION PACK for Reign of Augustus. It was either this or IMPERIUM ROMANUM for $3.99 but Grand Ages has a lot more stuff and better (though still weak) combat. Two solid games for $21. What a deal!

[jaymo76]

Just for a free time killer, I might pick up Airline Tycoon 2. It's really cheap. Does anyone have it?

[JeffHCross]

I cannot fathom how you guys have that much extra time :D

( Then again, I do fully recognize how much time I've spent this weekend on NCAA / TGT alone )

[jaymo76]

I cannot fathom how you guys have that much extra time :D

( Then again, I do fully recognize how much time I've spent this weekend on NCAA / TGT alone )

Vacation / playing late at night after the kids go to bed.

[morsdraconis]

I dunno a diplomatic victory is hard on Civ V (next to impossible) but I know on Civ IV I have had some cultural and economic victories.


A diplomatic victory in Civ V is like the episode of Pirates of the Carribean where they say all the pirates kept voting for themselves, that is in essence what happens on Civ.

With Endless Space, it is impossible because it doesn't do what Civ does (the whole get together and vote thing). Unfortunately, it's based on being at peace with races and it builds up over time. The issue is, the CPU controlled races will flip out and decide that you either have too much military, not enough military, your influence ring is touching theirs, or some other bogus bullshit and decide to go to war with you, no matter if you're at peace with them or not.

It's definitely an issue in the game because it's literally impossible to achieve diplomatic victory without doing some REALLY cheap things to keep the CPU controlled races from constantly fighting and being at war with either you or themselves.

As for an economic victory, you have to make a SHIT TON of money for it to kick in (20k a turn or so) and I just don't see how that's possible without having seriously unhappy citizens, which totally puts everything else at a halt. Most I've been able to make a turn has been 2k or so, but I also wasn't really trying to pull it off. It might actually be something to try some time down the road.

Science victory (culture in Civ basically) is nigh impossible too because you have to research the final tech in the Science tree which is INCREDIBLY expensive. I was specializing in getting as much Science per turn as I could and I was still only getting about 2k or so a turn whereas the final tech in the Science tree costs somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 or so to research (if I remember correctly).

All of that is just FAR more difficult than just building a powerful array of ships and blowing everyone to shit.

[oweb26]

With Endless Space, it is impossible because it doesn't do what Civ does (the whole get together and vote thing). Unfortunately, it's based on being at peace with races and it builds up over time. The issue is, the CPU controlled races will flip out and decide that you either have too much military, not enough military, your influence ring is touching theirs, or some other bogus bullshit and decide to go to war with you, no matter if you're at peace with them or not.

It's definitely an issue in the game because it's literally impossible to achieve diplomatic victory without doing some REALLY cheap things to keep the CPU controlled races from constantly fighting and being at war with either you or themselves.

As for an economic victory, you have to make a SHIT TON of money for it to kick in (20k a turn or so) and I just don't see how that's possible without having seriously unhappy citizens, which totally puts everything else at a halt. Most I've been able to make a turn has been 2k or so, but I also wasn't really trying to pull it off. It might actually be something to try some time down the road.

Science victory (culture in Civ basically) is nigh impossible too because you have to research the final tech in the Science tree which is INCREDIBLY expensive. I was specializing in getting as much Science per turn as I could and I was still only getting about 2k or so a turn whereas the final tech in the Science tree costs somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 or so to research (if I remember correctly).

All of that is just FAR more difficult than just building a powerful array of ships and blowing everyone to shit.


WOW well in your case then yes. I was going to buy this game too but I just decided it looked like too much for me at this moment. I am also still playing on my old pc dunno if it can handle it.

[oweb26]

Vacation / playing late at night after the kids go to bed.

That is exactly how I play. I haven't even touched football all weekend because of this sale and all the new games I have bought.

[SmoothPancakes]

That is exactly how I play. I haven't even touched football all weekend because of this sale and all the new games I have bought.

Raises hand. :D I haven't even turned on my 360 at all since probably Thursday, been so busy buying and playing new games through the Summer Sale. I'm gonna try to get back on NCAA today, gotta get defensive coaches named and finished and get some sliders figured out still.

[SmoothPancakes]

Alright, so I got sucked back into Crusader Kings II. Just hit 1166 in my current game, on my fourth generation ruler. After that years-long succession war when my first ruler, King Aedan I, died, I changed the laws to make the Kingdom of Ireland a primogeniture kingdom. It may cause some anger for the other siblings and lead to a chance of revolt, but keeping the titles all with a single person, the oldest son, I haven't had to worry about succession wars since early on.

Currently, I'm waiting as my current ruler, King Demman I, is only 15 years old (the previous heir, Duke Demman I of Leinster, died young, so the first son of Duke Demman (current King Demman I) was next in line, but still young, only 12 years old when he rose to the throne. In the last 50 years of the game, things have become very exciting. I was able to make a beachhead on the English coast thanks to some fabricated claims and usurped titles, making myself the King of Wales in the process. Then everything came to a complete standstill. I was left opposed by the Kingdom England and the Kingdom of Scotland, both very secure kingdoms with MASSIVE armies. The largest army I could bring to arms (with the help of hired mercenaries and holy armies), was 15,000 soldiers. I declared war on England and Scotland separately over a period of three years, they both came storming in with armies over 20,000 soldiers strong. Whooped my ass and I ultimately had to surrender both wars.

Then everything changed in the last 5 years. Shortly after King Aedan II died and King Demman I took over (with regent), the King of England died, starting a massive fucking civil war. Currently in 1166, there are 15 separate counties and duchies in former Kingdom of England lands. The Kingdom of England still exists, but it is fractured all to hell. So now is my chance to start stealing some land from these various counties and duchies (who have much weaker armies than the Kingdom of England) and give myself a large foothold for the future whenever the Kingdom of England pieces itself back together.

I was hoping the same would happen to Scotland (since their king is old and it's also not long before he croaks), but Scotland has Agnatic Primogeniture laws, so I doubt they'll have a full blown civil war. England is Agnatic Elective, so shit hit the fan when King Leofwine I died. Now they have King Harold IV, some 16 year old fat fuck who definitely does not appeal to everyone in England based on the massive Kingdom-wide revolts and wars.

The only thing that's pissing me off, is I have only managed to steal the county of Shrewsbury, thanks to my dumbass Chancellors taking FOREVER to fabricate claims. I could have had the counties of Hereford, Derby and Worcester months, even years ago if my damn Chancellors would hurry the hell up. That's my main worry, that the Kingdom of England will start to regain it's power and Derby, Worcester and Hereford will all fall back under English reign (Hereford already has fallen back under the control of King Harold IV) before my Chancellor can fabricate claims for those counties and I'm able to declare war and take them under my reign.

I think saying that Crusader Kings II has become my new #1 PC game to play whenever I can (previously that top spot rotated between Civ IV/V and Rome: Total War) is a massive understatement at this point. This game is so much damn fun, especially as leaders rise and die and random counties and duchies suddenly revolt in various lands, allowing for primo land stealing chances. Plus add in the various murder plots and threats that arise, throwing people in the dungeons and either execute them sometime down the road or let them sit there and rot (my record longest prison sentence was my brother, who I let sit and rot for 50 years and ultimately dying in prison due to rebelling against my rule and declaring war on my kingdom, becoming a traitor to the crown), excommunicating people now that I have my own anti-pope, attempting to assassinate members of my court and my vassals' courts, as well as assassinate foreign leaders or their heirs, and lots of other stuff.

This was definitely one of the best purchases I've ever made in gaming. And with the loads of mods that people have created for it, plus basically the impossibility of any two games playing out the same, the replay value is infinite. I could rule my dynasty for 400 years and multiple generations in one game, only to be assassinated and my dynasty come to an end in my first or second generation in another game. I love that unpredictability and complete and total unknown in games. Part of the reason I love the Total War and Civilization series, because I have never had a game in either series play out the same as, or even similar, to a previous game. It's always a blind future in these games, most of all in CKII, since things can happen so suddenly (your ruler suddenly die or unexpectedly die young, your ruler be assassinated, vassals or siblings revolt and declare war on your kingdom, other kingdoms, duchies or counties declare war on you, etc) without much warning or advance notice, it truly catches you off guard at times, and if you're not prepared for the worst, you could see your entire kingdom that you have spent decades and generations building crumble before your eyes in a matter of years. I love that blind, unknown future in a game.

[morsdraconis]

Uggh. Damn you Smooth. The temptation to buy that game keeps happening. It sounds amazing but I know how god damn complicated it all is. Gah!

[oweb26]

Uggh. Damn you Smooth. The temptation to buy that game keeps happening. It sounds amazing but I know how god damn complicated it all is. Gah!

It definitely takes a level of dedication which is why I havent fired it up that much. Anno 2070 is fun enough for me.

[SmoothPancakes]

Uggh. Damn you Smooth. The temptation to buy that game keeps happening. It sounds amazing but I know how god damn complicated it all is. Gah!

Yeah, I'm getting pretty good at that. :D

An update on my previous post, I played for a while longer before calling it a morning, currently in September 1186. The Kingdom of England has been a complete mess. Since King Leofwine I died in battle back in 1159 (ending his 32 year reign), King Harold IV's reign only lasted 20 years before he died in a suspicious accident (aka someone assassinated him), ending in 1179. The next King of England, King Gregory I, only reigned for 5 years, until 1184, before dying in a suspicious accident, so England now has their fourth King, King Godfrey I, in 27 years, causing constant wars, revolts and rebellions breaking out all over the entire English kingdom.

I've used that to my advantage, pressing de jure claims on the counties of Cornwall and Devon since that Duke rebelled, allowing me to declare war directly on the Duke and claim those lands without going to war against the Kingdom of England itself, claiming the duchy of Cornwall, so far giving me the Kingdom of Wales, the duchy of Cornwall, and the county of Shrewsbury all stolen from the Kingdom of England since 1100.

Scotland's shriveled up old fuck ruler, that bag of bones is still breathing, but he had some revolts, so I was able to snag the county of Galloway that I had claims on, giving me a foothold in the Kingdom of Scotland's territory on their southern border. Right now my full focus is on England and it's lands, as they keep suffering revolts from various duchies and counties, as well as having extremely high and frequent turnover in Kings, giving me loads of chances to steal land.

England is example #1 why I will never change my succession laws to Elective Monarchy, because things turn to shit the moment your ruler dies and every Duke thinks them or their children are the best option to take over the throne, leading to massive civil war when they themselves or their children aren't elected to the throne.

To put things in perspective, England has had four Kings in the last 27 years alone (I'm 120 years into the game so far). Ireland has had four Kings since the Kingdom of Ireland was created in 1086. King Aedan I was able to create the Kingdom of Ireland after 20 years of rule (started the game in 1066), before being murdered by the Earl of the Isle of Man in 1093, ending his 27 year rule. King Amlaib I ruled until dying a natural death in 1124, ending a 31 year reign. King Aedan II ruled for 38 years before dying a maimed cripple in 1162. And King Demman I has ruled for 24 years and is still going strong.

[morsdraconis]

(sigh)

Do you think the DLC stuff is actually worth it?

I'm going to end up fuckin' buying it before the steam sale ends....

[oweb26]

(sigh)

Do you think the DLC stuff is actually worth it?

I'm going to end up fuckin' buying it before the steam sale ends....


Fuck you steam!!! They are potentially marking Anno 2070 down more than what it was when I paid for it. I hate the steam sale sometimes mostly because of shit like this. I bought it at 45% off they are voting on 50% bastards.

Luckily I didn't buy my Empire total war DLC and now it is on sale so I am all over that shit.

[SmoothPancakes]

(sigh)

Do you think the DLC stuff is actually worth it?

I'm going to end up fuckin' buying it before the steam sale ends....

If you want to get any of the DLC, the only one I would consider absolutely worth buying is the Sword of Islam (the first true expansion).

The details on Sword of Islam are:


Muslim rulers now playable
Updated interface for playable Muslims characters
Unlocks more than 20 features in the game
New counties and titles
Balance Greed vs. Nobility with the new Muslim Dynasty Decadence System
Polygamy. Allow up to four wives for Muslim rulers.
Story events, starting circa the year 100, such as: The Harem, Shia vs. Sunni, Sufi mystics, Dervishes, The Assassins, Sharia, Wife wants to become first wife
Combat Revisions with new Commander traits for more interesting combat tactics

Other than that, some DLC that might be worth it depending on your view:

Ruler Designer (make your own customer ruler, customize the portrait, name your Dynasty and design a Coat of Arms, assign skill points and traits, create a spouse and offspring and/or replace a historical character with your own)
Dynasty Shields (a pack containing 50 unique dynastic shields for the 50 most famous families of medieval Europe)
Mongol Faces (all it contains is thousands of new faces for characters of Mongol cultures and 7 new unit sprites)

Unless you really want them, don't waste your time or money on:

African Unit Pack (it's literally nothing but graphics for 5 units in the African states)
Songs of the Caliph (literally nothing but two songs totaling 11 minutes that are used while you're playing as a Muslim ruler in Sword of Islam)
Songs of the Holy Land (literally nothing but two songs totaling over 10 minutes that are used when you're playing as a ruler from the Middle East)
Songs of Faith (same thing, two songs that are used when playing as devout or religious rulers)
Songs of Albion (same thing, four new songs used when playing as characters in the Kingdom of England)

[oweb26]

Great time to get the total war series stuff if you havent already gotten it.

[gschwendt]

This is why PC gaming kicks console gaming's ass... from GTA IV, a 4 year old game.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRAzvytjFq8&feature=player_embedded

[souljahbill]

This is why PC gaming kicks console gaming's ass... from GTA IV, a 4 year old game.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRAzvytjFq8&feature=player_embedded

That's the prettiest shitty-ass game I've ever seen.

[skipwondah33]

Wonder what his computer specs were.

[gschwendt]

That's the prettiest shitty-ass game I've ever seen.
What did you hate about GTA IV? I enjoyed it, especially at the time it was released. That said, I got tired of it earlier than previous GTAs.

Wonder what his computer specs were.
No clue, but he releases downloadable mods that you can put it on your game to achieve these visual effects. I tried messing with it before but it was fairly complicated and I couldn't get it to work. However, he apparently now has a installer on the way which should help somewhat.

[oweb26]

Any thoughts on Sim City 4? I see its fairly old but hey a good game is a good game...so is it any good? Worth the 10.00? Which seems kinda high for anything on this sale but even higher for something almost 10 year old.

[souljahbill]

What did you hate about GTA IV? I enjoyed it, especially at the time it was released. That said, I got tired of it earlier than previous GTAs.

GTA IV was my first GTA game. I'm not really sure how far I got into the game (it wasn't that far, I know that) but from what I had played, not only was I not really having fun (especially driving) but the main character's cousin was annoying as fuck.

What really made me say, "Fuck this shit" was I was on a mission. I had to go pick up a Jamaican drug dealer, go to some drug house and kill some people then go to another drug house to kill some people. Well, at the second drughouse, I got shot up and died. Instead of restarting me somewhere near the 2nd drughouse, the game wanted me to do EVERYTHING over again including picking up the Jamaican dude. I literally took the game out, put it in the case, and brought it back to GameStop for a full refund (I bought it used and it was under the 7 day timetable). The game didn't respect my time by making me do everything again so I didn't respect the game.

[morsdraconis]

Any thoughts on Sim City 4? I see its fairly old but hey a good game is a good game...so is it any good? Worth the 10.00? Which seems kinda high for anything on this sale but even higher for something almost 10 year old.

It is a bit pricey, but the game is also $19.99 normally so it's definitely better than normal. Also, it comes with the game plus the add-on pack Rush Hour, which, personally, I have no idea what it does, but Sim City 4 wasn't bad, it just added more complexity without making it really any better than Sim City 2000.

[jaymo76]

Any thoughts on Sim City 4? I see its fairly old but hey a good game is a good game...so is it any good? Worth the 10.00? Which seems kinda high for anything on this sale but even higher for something almost 10 year old.

Great series and 4 was a great game at the time but now it's just old looking and feeling. I acutally prefer Cities XL 2012 as my current city builder game. The expansion pack for Sim 4 was pretty weak... naming streets, etc. For $10 I would pass.

[jaymo76]

I am LOVING Tropico 4. I must have put in 20 hours so far. What an awesome game! I also really like Grand Ages Rome but enough with the non-stop fires.

[oweb26]

Its an addictive game. I have about 36 and now I have completely forgotten how to play it.

CkII is 9.99 again for those who missed it. Its a flash sale.

Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk 2

[morsdraconis]

Yeah. I jumped on that. Not sure when I'll get around to even trying to play it though (Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend FTW).

[SmoothPancakes]

Yeah. I jumped on that. Not sure when I'll get around to even trying to play it though (Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend FTW).

Like I said last page or wherever it was, read the manual PDF that I linked in this thread, and then play the tutorial (go through the Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced tutorials for all aspects of the game), and that will give you a good starting level of knowledge about the game.

After that, best way to do it is just play the game and see what plans or methods work and what doesn't work. You'll win, you'll lose, your games will last a while, they'll end after only short reigns, etc. Everything I have read, playing the game for a while is the best way to learn the intricacies of it.

Once you get into it, just post any questions you have and I'll try my best to answer them and help you out.

[JeffHCross]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuO-s1kugLs#!

[jaymo76]

My first CPU game was MYST. It's amazing to see the changes just over the past decade.

[morsdraconis]

Like I said last page or wherever it was, read the manual PDF that I linked in this thread, and then play the tutorial (go through the Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced tutorials for all aspects of the game), and that will give you a good starting level of knowledge about the game.

After that, best way to do it is just play the game and see what plans or methods work and what doesn't work. You'll win, you'll lose, your games will last a while, they'll end after only short reigns, etc. Everything I have read, playing the game for a while is the best way to learn the intricacies of it.

Once you get into it, just post any questions you have and I'll try my best to answer them and help you out.

In the process of reading through the manual right now. Nothing too earth shattering to learn in there so far, but I'm only about halfway through it or so.

I'll probably be hitting you up once I get into it (probably later today or maybe tomorrow).

[SmoothPancakes]

In the process of reading through the manual right now. Nothing too earth shattering to learn in there so far, but I'm only about halfway through it or so.

I'll probably be hitting you up once I get into it (probably later today or maybe tomorrow).

Sounds good, just let me know and I'll help out best I can. I'm about to actually start a new game myself. I'm currently in 1217 and things have gone to shit for me over the last 15 or 20 years. My ruler died of natural causes, his 8 year old son the heir. Made it four years (he was 12 years old at the time) with a regent before he got murdered by the fucking mayor of one of my vassals, bringing a Queen onto the throne as ruler for the first ever time in the Kingdom of Ireland's history. Then shit hit the fan, multiple Dukes and Counts revolting or rebelling. As soon as I'd put down one, another would revolt elsewhere. I was at war trying to squash rebellions and revolts for probably 10 years straight.

Ultimately got to the point I started assassinating people left and right and was forced to strip every single vassal of every single county and duchy I had ever granted them, putting every county and duchy under my direct control. I stopped after finally reaching that point, but for the most part, I'm fucked in the future. I can't trust any of my vassals, siblings or children outside of my heir, so I can't start granting out counties and duchies to try and put things back to normal. I'd have to assassinate probably 95% of my vassals and court members and start over from scratch in that aspect. I had a hell of a run, becoming King of Ireland through conquering and creating the Kingdom, and then taking over and creating the Kingdom of Wales through conquest. Never truly got a chance to try and take over the Kingdoms of England or Scotland through war and create the Empire of Britannia like I had as my goal, so disappointed there. Not really gonna have a chance even if I kept playing in my current save file. The Holy Roman Empire has completely ass raped continental Europe, and now the Muslim steamrollers are coming, turning Europe into an all out war between the Muslim kingdoms and the Holy Roman Empire for control of Europe, with whoever wins in the future probably coming for me, England and Scotland as they have nowhere else to go but north or south.

[oweb26]

SO now that the summer sale is virtually over...whats your final tally games and total amount spent? I am honestly a little leery to look at all my receipts.

[morsdraconis]

I spent around $80 or so and really just added Crusader Kings 2 to my earlier list. I pretty much blew my wad at the beginning, getting everything I wanted.

[gschwendt]

$14.99 The Walking Dead
$12.49 Saints Row: The Third
$2.49 Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
$3.74 Trine 2
$9.99 Summer Sale Indie Bundle Day One
$11.48 Wolf Pack, Terraria
$55.18

[oweb26]

Luxor 2 4.99 USD
Sid Meier's Civilization IV: The Complete Edition 14.99 USD
Total War: Shogun 2 - Blood Pack DLC 0.95 USD
Total War: Shogun 2 - Limited Edition DLC (Hattori Clan) 2.99 USD
Total War: SHOGUN 2 - Rise of the Samurai DLC 2.49 USD
Total War: SHOGUN 2 - Sengoku Jidai DLC 1.95 USD
CKII DLC Combo 12.49 USD
Civ V DLC - Polynesia 1.24 USD
Civ V Cradle of Civilization Denmark DLC 1.24 USD
Anno 2070 Pack 29.99 USD
Civ V Korea DLC 1.24 USD
Tropico 4 DLC Junta 1.24 USD
Orcs Must Die + Artifacts of Power and Lost Adventures 4.99 USD
Men of War Assualt Squad DLC Pack Feb 2012 4.99 USD
Torchlight 3.74 USD
Medieval II: Total War Gold 2.49 USD
Empire: Total War - Elite Units of the West 0.81 USD
Empire: Total War - Elite Units of the East 0.81 USD
Empire: Total War - Elite Units of America 0.81 USD
Empire: Total War - The Warpath Campaign 2.49 USD
Napoleon: Total War 4.99 USD
Napoleon: Total War - Units of the Coalition 0.81 USD
Napoleon: Total War - Peninsular Campaign 2.49 USD
Napoleon: Total War - Imperial Eagle Pack 0.80 USD
E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy 2.49 USD
Demigod 4.99 USD
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Retribution 7.49 USD
Portal 2 4.99 USD
Dawn of War II: Retribution - Complete DLC Bundle 7.49 USD
World of Goo 2.49 USD

TOTAL = 136.77

As you can see I bought a crap ton of DLC/add-ons that I otherwise would have never picked up but since my PC gaming has started to increase (kids on the big screen and general noise in that area of the house) I can quietly PC game without interruptions. I bought Medieval by accident I didn't really mean to get it I was looking at something else, either way its cool becasue it was only 2.50 but I already have the game on disc.

As you can also tell I love strategy games!! Those are mainly the only thing I play on PC.

[jaymo76]

Luxor 2 4.99 USD
Sid Meier's Civilization IV: The Complete Edition 14.99 USD
Total War: Shogun 2 - Blood Pack DLC 0.95 USD
Total War: Shogun 2 - Limited Edition DLC (Hattori Clan) 2.99 USD
Total War: SHOGUN 2 - Rise of the Samurai DLC 2.49 USD
Total War: SHOGUN 2 - Sengoku Jidai DLC 1.95 USD
CKII DLC Combo 12.49 USD
Civ V DLC - Polynesia 1.24 USD
Civ V Cradle of Civilization Denmark DLC 1.24 USD
Anno 2070 Pack 29.99 USD
Civ V Korea DLC 1.24 USD
Tropico 4 DLC Junta 1.24 USD
Orcs Must Die + Artifacts of Power and Lost Adventures 4.99 USD
Men of War Assualt Squad DLC Pack Feb 2012 4.99 USD
Torchlight 3.74 USD
Medieval II: Total War Gold 2.49 USD
Empire: Total War - Elite Units of the West 0.81 USD
Empire: Total War - Elite Units of the East 0.81 USD
Empire: Total War - Elite Units of America 0.81 USD
Empire: Total War - The Warpath Campaign 2.49 USD
Napoleon: Total War 4.99 USD
Napoleon: Total War - Units of the Coalition 0.81 USD
Napoleon: Total War - Peninsular Campaign 2.49 USD
Napoleon: Total War - Imperial Eagle Pack 0.80 USD
E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy 2.49 USD
Demigod 4.99 USD
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Retribution 7.49 USD
Portal 2 4.99 USD
Dawn of War II: Retribution - Complete DLC Bundle 7.49 USD
World of Goo 2.49 USD

TOTAL = 136.77

As you can see I bought a crap ton of DLC/add-ons that I otherwise would have never picked up but since my PC gaming has started to increase (kids on the big screen and general noise in that area of the house) I can quietly PC game without interruptions. I bought Medieval by accident I didn't really mean to get it I was looking at something else, either way its cool becasue it was only 2.50 but I already have the game on disc.

As you can also tell I love strategy games!! Those are mainly the only thing I play on PC.

Holy cow! I don't think I have ever owned as many games as you just bought!!! Good on yeah man. I suspect you will get YEARS of enjoyment out of that.

[oweb26]

Holy cow! I don't think I have ever owned as many games as you just bought!!! Good on yeah man. I suspect you will get YEARS of enjoyment out of that.

Its just alot of DLC for games I already owned, some I might get around to playing others I might not. When things are 75% off you tend to not care if you get around to it. I have fired up most of the games already but games like CKII have such a learning cureve I have no clue when I will actually get into them.

Tropico 4 is eating up alot of my time, trying to figure out how I can stay profitable without going broke any suggestions?

I guess what I am asking is what do you guys build first? I tried farming but that just seems to be counter productive, I have seen people say they just export all the food stuff so that might be an option.

[jaymo76]

Well for me I start with building 2 logging camps (and setting them to selective logging) and a fishing hut. I will then build 3-5 houses and get rid of the tennaments and shacks. Depending on the map I will build 2-3 farms and a ranch. I like to diversify the crops as much as possible. Once I get a little more money I will build 2-4 bars and restaurants as well as the childhood museum. Then I build a cement factory and buy the blueprints for Apartment. I only build good housing and stay away from the shacks and tenements. I find it's also really important to have EL PRESIDENTE visit all the major buildings non stop as it really increases there productivity. Immigration Building is huge early on as it helps keep all jobs filled.

Making sure to plan out your garages is really tough for me as I find they are always full. By far though, the hardest thing is the micro managing of the buildings. I never know how much to pay, who to fire. I also haven't used an things such as assassinations yet.

[JeffHCross]

$0

:D

[morsdraconis]

$0

:D

:smh:

I'm ashamed for you.

[jaymo76]

I love NCAA... but I am embarrased to say that right now Tropico 4 AND GRAND AGES ROME are getting way more time than NCAA 13. With cpu games you can save at any time so if you only have 15 mins you can play while with NCAA you can't. NCAA 14....in-game saves!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[JBHuskers]

I love NCAA... but I am embarrased to say that right now Tropico 4 AND GRAND AGES ROME are getting way more time than NCAA 13. With cpu games you can save at any time so if you only have 15 mins you can play while with NCAA you can't. NCAA 14....in-game saves!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If I only have 15 minutes to do something, it typically isn't starting to play a video game :D

[jaymo76]

If I only have 15 minutes to do something, it typically isn't starting to play a video game :D

Before I had kids, I would have 100% agreed with you. Now however, getting game time in during the day is tough. Sometimes 15 mins is all you get... in a week.

[JeffHCross]

:smh:

I'm ashamed for you.Sadly, I agree.

Though there's no financial sense in buying games for computers that can't run them.

[morsdraconis]

Sadly, I agree.

Though there's no financial sense in buying games for computers that can't run them.

I know. I was just bustin' your balls. I definitely wouldn't have purchased what I did if I hadn't recently upgraded my PC and decided to make it my main gaming machine (once again, REALLY glad that I did - I would have missed out on some AWESOME games if I hadn't).



Case in point:



Sounds good, just let me know and I'll help out best I can.

So, FINALLY, started playing a game last night. Boy, two hours haven't flown by as fast! Started out as Duke Aed I of Connact (a small province of Ireland). He starts out 51 years old so I figured he'd last for a few years and then die. Nope! He's 63 now and still going strong with a son that's 39 (who also has two sons - one that is of age and another that's about to be). I laid my de jure claim on Breifne around 1070 or so and was repelled by their forces for quite some time, until I got fed up with it, hired some Mercenaries with the money the Pope gave me (Pope fuckin' LOVES me) and crushed them. Breifne and their little brat of a leader are my vassels now (she thinks the fuckin' world of me) and I'm not trying to come up with a claim from another county to help spread my unifying love.

That leads me to a question for ya Smooth, when I was trying to take Breifne while having claimed their lands via my de jure claim, I was invading with a slightly larger force but I was getting QUICKLY repelled when I would attempt to sack their holding (with, from what I could tell, no upgrades beyond it being the normal main castle holding that those places have). My force that was basically the same size or slightly bigger than their defenses would get annihilated while I attempted to do anything. Do you just have to have a MUCH big force than the defending castle to have a chance (like when I hired 1500 mercs and obliterated them) or was I missing something? I think, what might have been the issue was I was leading with my Duke and he isn't a very good military leader, but I couldn't apply my awesome military leader to lead the force instead (could it be because I had him training troops in the county instead of just being idle?).

[morsdraconis]

Think I might have figured it out, but more testing will need to be done when I get home this afternoon.

[SmoothPancakes]

Think I might have figured it out, but more testing will need to be done when I get home this afternoon.

Sorry, I didn't see your post yesterday. As for the military and wars, at this moment, your guess is as good as mine. That is still something I haven't been able to figure out or work out. I've gone into battle with "death stacks", armies made up of mercenaries and Holy Orders over 12,000 in size, and when I siege a county, I can lose 3,500 soldiers while attacking that county defended by a levy of 1,500 soldiers. Or I can go up against a stack of 8,000 or 9,000 in straight up battle on the map and end up getting routed. I know it depends on where you're fighting, with counties giving you an attacking bonus or a defending bonus.

Military technology also plays into it, as well as how you have your armies set up. You don't want to have open flanks in your army as that can screw you if you go into battle with an army only in the center and left flank, while fighting someone with a center army and armies on the left and right flanks. Military, wars and actual battles are still one of the MASSIVE question mark for me. Most other areas of the game, I have managed to get a pretty good grasp on, it's just military I'm still in the dark. And of course it's the one area you ask about :D

[morsdraconis]

:)

No worries man. I figured with all the stuff about NCAA going on, you probably missed it.

Apparently, when it comes to war, you have to pay attention so that you're not attacking over water (not sure if it applies to seas or not but definitely applies to rivers) as it gives you a negative multiplier (but it doesn't tell you what kind of negative, how severe it is, or anything like that). Also, if you're a King, you can choose who controls your armies instead of it basically always using you. Having a higher military score for the leader of each of the three flanks, apparently, makes a HUGE difference in how well your armies fight. Mercenaries suck balls by themselves because they have no leader of their flanks. What I've seen suggested is combining them with your normal forces so that you can use whatever leader you do have for the flanks as their leader to make them more effective (I made the mistake of hiring them and sending them out by themselves and, while I still won, they weren't the most effective at their job.


My main question is this though:

How do you get claims on lands that you don't have a de jure claim on yet? With your Chancellor? I've tried that for several years to no avail and I'm not sure what to do about it. My Chancellor isn't the best (I think he has a 12 or something currently) but you'd think even a semi-adept one would be able to do something within a few years...

I definitely think I'm going to start over because I think I fucked up changing my ruler setup to the one that gives the eldest son all the titles instead of splitting them up among everyone. At the time, I only had one with a liege (that liked me) controlling another county so there was really not reason to change it. It basically just pissed off my heir's two sons because they no longer had a chance at some titles.

So, that actually reminds me of another two questions I have:

Should I always strip county titles from someone so that I can give them to people in my court instead of letting them keep them? I read somewhere that letting them keep them isn't the worst thing, especially if they like you, but, later down the road, I actually lost my really good Chancellor (had like a 15 or 16 score) to them because my liege invited them to their court away from my court. How do I prevent that from happening and what do I do if it does happen to get them back?

[SmoothPancakes]

:)

No worries man. I figured with all the stuff about NCAA going on, you probably missed it.

Apparently, when it comes to war, you have to pay attention so that you're not attacking over water (not sure if it applies to seas or not but definitely applies to rivers) as it gives you a negative multiplier (but it doesn't tell you what kind of negative, how severe it is, or anything like that). Also, if you're a King, you can choose who controls your armies instead of it basically always using you. Having a higher military score for the leader of each of the three flanks, apparently, makes a HUGE difference in how well your armies fight. Mercenaries suck balls by themselves because they have no leader of their flanks. What I've seen suggested is combining them with your normal forces so that you can use whatever leader you do have for the flanks as their leader to make them more effective (I made the mistake of hiring them and sending them out by themselves and, while I still won, they weren't the most effective at their job.


My main question is this though:

How do you get claims on lands that you don't have a de jure claim on yet? With your Chancellor? I've tried that for several years to no avail and I'm not sure what to do about it. My Chancellor isn't the best (I think he has a 12 or something currently) but you'd think even a semi-adept one would be able to do something within a few years...

I definitely think I'm going to start over because I think I fucked up changing my ruler setup to the one that gives the eldest son all the titles instead of splitting them up among everyone. At the time, I only had one with a liege (that liked me) controlling another county so there was really not reason to change it. It basically just pissed off my heir's two sons because they no longer had a chance at some titles.

So, that actually reminds me of another two questions I have:

Should I always strip county titles from someone so that I can give them to people in my court instead of letting them keep them? I read somewhere that letting them keep them isn't the worst thing, especially if they like you, but, later down the road, I actually lost my really good Chancellor (had like a 15 or 16 score) to them because my liege invited them to their court away from my court. How do I prevent that from happening and what do I do if it does happen to get them back?

Unless one of your vassals have claims that you can press for them, your Chancellor fabricating claims is the only way. It can take a long ass time. If you leave your mouse either over your chancellor while he's trying to fabricate claims, or when in the Council menu to assign him to fabricate claims, it'll tell you his odds. The best I have ever seen is a 19.82% yearly chance to successfully fabricate claims. Trying to fabricate claims against a county up in Scotland while it was still outside of the King of Scotland's reign, it took over 5 years just to fabricate a claim against that one county, and that was with a over 15% yearly chance.

12 diplomacy for a chancellor is a good starting point, but either through inviting people to your court or natural progression of future generations, you definitely want a Chancellor with at least 17-20+ diplomacy. 20 and higher is always preferred for all five positions.

As for the titles, I actually prefer Primogeniture (all titles to the oldest son) because it keeps your demesne together. I had that issue my first ever game. Eventually got to create the Kingdom of Ireland, not very long after my ruler died, and because titles went to all the children, all hell broke loose with multiple duchies and counties rebelling because the younger sons wanted the throne and the King title, and being Dukes and having control over multiple counties, they were able to raise rather strong armies, ending up with a full blown Succession War for the Kingdom of Ireland. Without the help of mercenaries, I honestly don't know if I would have been able to quell the rebellions. The Kingdom of Ireland may have ended up torn apart. Yes, you will piss off your sons who will lose titles by switching to Primogeniture, but having a couple pissed off younger children (which generally it really isn't even too big of a hit to their opinion of you) is better than having all your children/siblings suddenly rebelling and going to war with you when your heir takes over because they want the King or Duke or whatever title and they are considered a pretender to the throne and feel they have the military strength to make it happen.

You can strip titles from someone to give them to someone you want to have them, just make sure you read what it tells you if you try to. You may run the risk of that person rebelling against you, and ended up in a civil war with that person. I tried to revoke the duchy of Gwynedd, they rebelled, and suddenly I had all three counties under the Duke's control at war with me. Your best bet, try to get the pope to excommunicate that person. If the Pope does, your vassals won't give a shit if you imprison that person then because they've been excommunicated. Then you can revoke their titles without threat of revolt with them imprisoned (just can't have an active truce with them at the time).

What I do, is get all the duchy and county titles under my control, then hand them out to the people in my court with positive opinions of me. If you have someone in your court with a -100 opinion of you, don't waste your time, they will never like you and will give you only headaches in the future with rebellions, revolts and possible plots. Never give more than one county in a duchy to one person. I've made that mistake, giving the Duchy of Ulster and the all the associated counties to a brother, and it did nothing but become a nightmare for me. So instead, with the Duchy of Ulster, what I do now is give each county to a different person. That way if they end up hating me down the road and revolt or rebel, they only have one county and one county's worth of levies that they can raise against me, making it simple to squash rebellions. So for the Duchy of Ulster, I'll give my brother the Duchy of Ulster title and the county of Ulster itself. I'll give another brother the county of Tyconell, a son the county of Tyrone, and a court member the county of Oriell. So while my brother is happy because he's now a Duke, he only has one county directly under his control.

Also, when granted landed titles, grant only the title. Never grant all lower titles, as that is basically giving that person, his family and his court complete and total control over that duchy or county and you would have to go to war or imprison the guy to strip him of the title without an opinion hit from your other vassals, and in the process leave his family pissed off at you.

As for your last question, the only way I know of to get them back is invite them back via the diplomacy window, or have them enter a matrilineal marriage with your daughters or sisters, thus bringing them back into your dynasty.

As for the rest of it, I'm not 100% I'm following. You said he left for your liege, but unless someone else was able to create the Kingdom of Ireland title before you could, you shouldn't have a liege. That's the thing I love best about starting as Duke Aed I of Connact. You start as a Duke so you get some of that upper level taste of ruling right out of the gate, along with the related diplomacy and warring, but not overwhelming like if you first started as a King. You also have a de jure claim on Breifne, so you can immediately jump into warring and getting familiarized with that, and it gives you a quick start on eventually taking over the 7 provinces needed to create the Kingdom of Ireland title.

And since there is no King of Ireland, Dukes have no liege. Unless you meant vassal instead of liege, in which case, it would still be just inviting him back to your court, or revoking the title of your vassal, which should put the county back under your direct control, and thus bring your chancellor back into your court that way.

[morsdraconis]

Ah! I didn't think about excommunicating them. Damn. And the Pope (before he died) freakin' LOVED me too. I probably could have pulled that off with no issues.

I definitely made the mistake of going into peace time with my vassal (you're right, I meant vassal, not liege) instead of stripping their title straight away.

That actually brings up another question:

Would I have to fabricate claims in my vassal's county to be able to strip them of their title if we're in a time of peace? I would assume so since the only other way would be to excommunicate them or marry into their lineage and then assassinate them.

[SmoothPancakes]

Ah! I didn't think about excommunicating them. Damn. And the Pope (before he died) freakin' LOVED me too. I probably could have pulled that off with no issues.

I definitely made the mistake of going into peace time with my vassal (you're right, I meant vassal, not liege) instead of stripping their title straight away.

That actually brings up another question:

Would I have to fabricate claims in my vassal's county to be able to strip them of their title if we're in a time of peace? I would assume so since the only other way would be to excommunicate them or marry into their lineage and then assassinate them.

As far as I know, if they are your vassal, you can strip them of their title any time you want (as long as there isn't an active truce between you and them). It's only the counties or duchies that are not a part of your kingdom/dynasty that you have to fabricate claims and go to war or marry into their lineage.

[morsdraconis]

As far as I know, if they are your vassal, you can strip them of their title any time you want (as long as there isn't an active truce between you and them). It's only the counties or duchies that are not a part of your kingdom/dynasty that you have to fabricate claims and go to war or marry into their lineage.

How long does a truce last then? Cause I couldn't strip Breifne's current holder of his title after 5 years or so I think it was (I could be wrong on the amount of time though).

[SmoothPancakes]

How long does a truce last then? Cause I couldn't strip Breifne's current holder of his title after 5 years or so I think it was (I could be wrong on the amount of time though).

Truces last 10 years. When it becomes that case, my favorite, imprison the ruler, assassinate him, and then strip the title from his heir. The truce is only between people, not counties/kingdoms. So if you kill off the ruler that you have a truce with, you can immediately strip his heir of the title.

[morsdraconis]

Truces last 10 years. When it becomes that case, my favorite, imprison the ruler, assassinate him, and then strip the title from his heir. The truce is only between people, not counties/kingdoms. So if you kill off the ruler that you have a truce with, you can immediately strip his heir of the title.

With all the imprisoning and such, how the hell do you keep people happy? There are only so many titles to go around...

[SmoothPancakes]

Oh yeah, and there are some cases you might have to resort to fabricate claims and going to war. Some duchies, over in Wales for instance with the duchy of Gwynedd, it's made up three counties, Powys, Gwynedd, and Perfeddwlad. If you want to declare war on Powys or Perfeddwlad, you have to declare war on the Duke of Gwynedd because Powys and Perfeddwlad are the vassals of the Duke of Gwynedd.

So if you don't have the option to strip the title from someone, even in your kingdom, it's because that guy is either a vassal of one of your vassals or the vassal of someone else. So ultimately you have to take over your vassal's titles and lands to gain the county you want or declare war on that guy's liege to be able to go to war for his county.

[SmoothPancakes]

With all the imprisoning and such, how the hell do you keep people happy? There are only so many titles to go around...

Well, I should rephrase that. You can assassinate him, or you can imprison and execute him.

As for keeping people happy. Giving them gifts (gold), granting them honorary titles, have a good chancellor with high diplomacy, have an honorable reputation, high piety, high prestige.

In trying to find specifics, I found a CKII wiki page detailing a lot of what we're talking about. Some great and much better detailed information than I have been able to give.


If you've played Crusader Kings II for any decent length of time, you've almost certainly encountered what happens when vassals get too strong and dislike you.
If any single vassal gets strong enough to challenge your power, you're at constant risk of rebellion. Everything you've worked for could be undone in years. Thus I'll be going into how to prevent this from happening, concentrating on keeping your vassals weak.

The Basic Concept

To prevent sizable rebellions, you have one primary goal: Prevent your vassals from having more power than you. This is achieved in multiple ways.

First, you have to keep yourself strong.
Second, you don't want your vassals to hold a lot of titles.
Third, you don't want your vassals to have a lot of vassals.
Fourth, you want to keep your vassals happy.

Keeping Yourself Strong

Keeping yourself strong in the long term primarily relies on two factors: Number and concentration of holdings, and construction.

You want to hold every single county in two duchies you own that are either bordering each other, or very close to each other. These two duchies should together have 7 to 10 counties so that you can use most of your demesne limit without having to construct holdings.

By keeping your entire demesne in two duchies you avoid the penalty from having more than two duchies, and you avoid the penalties for vassals desiring your duchies. No vassals will thus be able to plot for your duchies, thus keeping your powerbase secure.

The advantage of keeping your demesne limited to a small geographical area is that you can now gather up your army very quickly, so you'll be able to respond quickly to any rebellion with very low risk of your units being picked off separately.

Second, you want to upgrade your holdings as much as possible. This is covered in further detail in the installment on construction.

By upgrading your holdings you'll have more money available, and more troops. You'll also refill your levies faster, so you'll be able to recover from wars faster.

As your vassals will seldom be able to upgrade their holdings to the same extent as you, construction can give you a large advantage.

Keeping Your Vassals Weak

The other side of the coin is keeping your vassals weak, and reducing their powerbase when possible. If you expand via conquest, you'll often have titles that you need to give out. You should be quite careful about who you give these titles to, as it is easy to end up with a single vassal holding many titles, and eventually being able to challenge your power.

The strategy I recommend for giving out counties goes like this: Search for characters that are not rulers, are of your religion, are male, and are of your culture. You should then sort by dynasty, and scroll down to your own. You should now find someone who is not heir to anything, and who's heir does not own anything. You then give that person a single county with all its holdings (if applicable). The new count will then soon make the holdings in the county into vassals, and will be of no threat to you.

For duchies you do much the same. Search for characters that are rulers, are of your religion, and are of your culture. Sort by dynasty, and scroll down to your own. Find someone who owns a single county or barony. One county and one barony is also fine, but only a single holding is preferable. This person should get the duchy. It does not matter if (s)he actually holds any counties within the duchy; that is their problem, not yours. By following this strategy you'll end up with dukes who hold a single duchy and a single county, and will be unlikely to ever be able to challenge your power.

Whenever a vassal rebels and you beat him, you should strip him of his primary title. To do this you will need Limited Crown Authority. You can then follow the strategy described above to give this title to someone else.

Further, you can deliberately make strong vassals rebel so that you can imprison them and strip them of a title. Simply give them the court jester honorary title, and raise their vassals and just leave them there. Eventually they will rebel, and then you can crush them and take a title from them.

Another way to make them rebel without incurring tyranny is imprisoning them with a just cause. They'll rebel approximately half the time, and upon crushing their rebellion you'll be able to strip them of a title. If they don't rebel you can just ransom them, thus taking a bit of money from them and giving it to you, and you'll likely end up with another reason to imprison them later.

Beyond how you distribute county/duchy grants, and stripping of titles, it is very important to attain Medium Crown Authority.

Medium Crown Authority will prevent all intra-realm warfare with the exception of rebellion. This will make it near impossible for your vassals to expand via conquest, and they're thus much more likely to remain weak. They'll also not be using up huge amounts of levies on pointless internal wars, so you'll have the levies you need when you go to war.

Keeping Your Vassals Happy

Finally, you should do your best to keep your vassals happy. The two most important ways of doing this is keeping your vassals the same culture as you, and keeping them the same religion as you. This lets you avoid the large 'foreigner' penalties, and you get -15% risk of rebellion for each. Having all your vassals of the same religion is especially simple, as at Medium Crown Authority you can revoke any title held by a Heretic or Infidel without incurring tyranny.

For culture you should simply make sure to never give titles to people of a different culture unless you have a very good reason to, for example so as to push their claim on some other title. You can also like described above, deliberately make them rebel so that you can give their titles to someone else.

Further, you should groom your heir yourself. Unless you have good reason not to, your heir should always be your ward, not someone else's. This will let you make various choices throughout his childhood, thus having him end up with good traits. A few good traits can make a huge difference both when it comes to chance of rebellion, and the levies and taxes he can get from his vassals.

Finally, apply bribes and honorary titles strategically. Unless you actually want someone to rebel it is usually better to pay them off with a bribe than to have to crush their rebellion. Do note that honorary titles only expire upon the recipient's death (or rebellion); they'll even persist beyond the ruler's death. As such you should be careful about when you give them out, as there's a rather limited number of them.

Summary

Keep your vassals happy and weak, and yourself strong, and it becomes much easier to hold onto the throne.

My tips are as follows:
When giving out a county, give it to a dynasty member who holds no other titles
When giving out a duchy, give it to a dynasty member who holds a single county or barony
After crushing a rebellion, strip every member of the rebellion of their primary title. You'll need Limited Crown Authority
Revoke the titles of any infidels and heretics. You'll need Medium Crown Authority
If any vassal is getting too strong, induce rebellion then strip him of a title
Avoid having vassals of different cultures and religions. Inducing rebellion can help
Get Medium Crown Authority, it will stop vassals from expanding via intra-realm conquest
Hold every county in two bordering duchies
Upgrade your holdings as much as possible
Be your heir's guardian
Give out bribes and honorary titles to prevent rebellion

http://crusaderkings-two.wikia.com/wiki/Keeping_Your_Vassals_Weak

[morsdraconis]

My only problem with that guide (which I've read before; it's from the user made 140 page manual) is it assumes that you're a King and have the ability to have and change crown authority.

Being a Duke, it's much tougher to deal with some of the things he brings up in the guide.

[gschwendt]

From a cinematic designer for Bioware

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RYeKYj4vEY&feature=player_embedded

[SmoothPancakes]

My only problem with that guide (which I've read before; it's from the user made 140 page manual) is it assumes that you're a King and have the ability to have and change crown authority.

Being a Duke, it's much tougher to deal with some of the things he brings up in the guide.

Ah, my bad. I haven't actually gotten around to actually reading the user made 140 page manual. :D

No, if you're not a King, a lot of that becomes somewhat worthless being unable to do things. But as a Duke, you're not going to have to worry too much about Crown Authority and your vassals doing other stuff on their own. Ireland is such a mess in the early years, it's just all the dukes (and counts) trying to grab land. If anything, keep all provinces under your complete control early on. Don't start handing out titles to people until you are able to create the Kingdom of Ireland and become King.

You won't have a whole ton of provinces under your control, so it should all remain under your demesne limit, and I have never experienced a revolt until after becoming King, so keep every county and title under your sole possession and control, there's no real concern or penalty to worry about early on. After you have created the Kingdom of Ireland, beat down every remaining province and unified the entirety of Ireland under your control, then look at start handing out titles and raising Crown Authority.

[morsdraconis]

This is quite interesting though:

http://crusaderkings-two.wikia.com/wiki/Tale_of_an_Irishman_:_How_the_count_of_Dublin_beca me_King_of_Ireland

[I OU a Beatn]

Any recommendations for 128GB solid state drive? I've looked around on Amazon and Newegg but can't decide which one would be best. I mainly just want to use it for faster initial bootup and faster launching of games. I'd really like to spend less than $120 if possible. It's for a laptop, by the way.

[JBHuskers]

Any recommendations for 128GB solid state drive? I've looked around on Amazon and Newegg but can't decide which one would be best. I mainly just want to use it for faster initial bootup and faster launching of games. I'd really like to spend less than $120 if possible. It's for a laptop, by the way.

Keep an eye on SlickDeals .... they post deals on solid state drives ALL the time.

[morsdraconis]

Any recommendations for 128GB solid state drive? I've looked around on Amazon and Newegg but can't decide which one would be best. I mainly just want to use it for faster initial bootup and faster launching of games. I'd really like to spend less than $120 if possible. It's for a laptop, by the way.

This is what I would buy if I were to do what you're doing. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239009) Kingston is an awesome company from the products I've bought from them before (RAM mostly).

Edit: Didn't notice that you wanted a 128gb one instead of a 120gb one. Not sure if 8 gigs is gonna make a difference for you, but here's a 128gb version Sandisk one for the same price. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820171646)

[I OU a Beatn]

Yeah, 8GB wouldn't make a difference. I'm not planning on having a bunch of shit on it. I did see Amazon is selling the Samsung 830 Series 256GB solid state drive for ~$200 which is a good price and would pretty much replace my current hard drive as I will never use that much storage. May just go that route so that I don't have to worry about it in the future. I also have to upgrade my RAM, but that's probably a future project. I probably should have just had Dell put in a SSD and more RAM when they were building it, but they wanted outrageous prices for that kind of stuff. I think 8GB of RAM was a $150 upgrade.

If anyone has a SSD, is there a noticeable all around performance increase or is it mainly just noticeable for boot up and program launching?

[morsdraconis]

Yeah, 8GB wouldn't make a difference. I'm not planning on having a bunch of shit on it. I did see Amazon is selling the Samsung 830 Series 256GB solid state drive for ~$200 which is a good price and would pretty much replace my current hard drive as I will never use that much storage. May just go that route so that I don't have to worry about it in the future. I also have to upgrade my RAM, but that's probably a future project. I probably should have just had Dell put in a SSD and more RAM when they were building it, but they wanted outrageous prices for that kind of stuff. I think 8GB of RAM was a $150 upgrade.

If anyone has a SSD, is there a noticeable all around performance increase or is it mainly just noticeable for boot up and program launching?

I don't have one, but, my understanding of the performance increase is it can be RIDICULOUSLY fast compared to normal IDE HDs and it's still pretty damn noticeable compared to SATA connected HDs.

[morsdraconis]

HOLY SHIT. Thank you for getting me to buy this game Smooth. I started over as the Count (Earl?) of Dublin and I've already unified close to a 3rd of Ireland as I'm the Duke of Leinster and the Duke of Meath. I control the countries of Leinster, Dublin, and Kildare is controlled by my son and heir to the throne. I have a strong de jure Ducal claim to Ossory, that I'm just waiting for my forces and money to restore to claim and I already have a weak claim on Galloway in England as well, but I'm gonna wait until I unite Ireland first and declare myself King.

It's 1088 and I'm well upon my way. Just gotta get a claim for the northern part of Ireland and I should be in good shape.

I gotta say, at first, I wasn't having fun with this game at all, but it was because I didn't know what the hell was going on most of the time. Now, I have a pretty good grasp of what I'm doing and it's working out pretty damn well. Can't wait until I get home from work tomorrow and have more time to play more!

[gschwendt]

$90 for 120GB SSD
http://www.beachcamera.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=SDSSDX120GG25&ref=dealtime&omid=113

Sandisk is also a good brand.

[I OU a Beatn]

Yeah, I'm going to go with the Sandisk you posted or the Kensington Mors posted. I'm just not sure which yet. I had looked at that one somewhere else but it was $105 so the cheaper price is definitely nice.

Just saw that Stellar Impact and all it's DLC are 50% off until August 2nd on Steam. I was just looking at it the other day and was intrigued.

[JeffHCross]

I know. I was just bustin' your balls. I definitely wouldn't have purchased what I did if I hadn't recently upgraded my PC and decided to make it my main gaming machine (once again, REALLY glad that I did - I would have missed out on some AWESOME games if I hadn't).I knew you were. That heavy sigh you heard while reading my post was more about the fact that I hate how I utterly lack the time for additional games, even if I had a quality PC again.

I would love to spend a month solid playing EVE Online again, if I could.

[jaymo76]

I have now hit 50 hours on Tropico 4 and I just started the 10th (out of 20) missions. It amazing how quick time passes with that game. I need to get in some time with Grand Ages though as I only have THREE hours with that game thus far. In other news, I have seen more SIM CITY footage and it looks awesome.

http://www.simcity.com/en_US


http://www.simcity.com/en_US/media/video

[jaymo76]

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/media/screenshot/sims-fight-fires

I really love the look and feel of the sim city pics. I will need to get a new cpu for February in order to run this game. Has anyone heard of the specs yet for this game?

[SmoothPancakes]

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/media/screenshot/sims-fight-fires

I really love the look and feel of the sim city pics. I will need to get a new cpu for February in order to run this game. Has anyone heard of the specs yet for this game?

I don't know, but I have a feeling I won't be playing it for a while, as it will most like have specs high enough to fry my laptop if I even try.

[souljahbill]

Let me know when the conversation is about the greatest PC game of all time, Rollercoaster Tycoon.

[JeffHCross]

You have been mislead, Bill. The greatest game is, in fact, Dino Park Tycoon. Not Rollercoaster.

[baseballplyrmvp]

does anyone play team fortress 2?

[gschwendt]

does anyone play team fortress 2?
I used to play quite a bit but over the past 5 years or so, I rarely play. I especially stopped when they started adding more weapons, customization, etc. That said, I still have it installed and always itching to find a decent game, that along with the rare clan-night that I'll join in on.

[I OU a Beatn]

I downloaded it the other night but haven't tried it. When I'm always bitching about balance on various games, someone ALWAYS says something about playing TF2, but I never had a PC capable of doing so. Now I do...I just have to find the time to try it out.

By the way, what's everyone's Steam usernames? I need some PC friends!

[gschwendt]

Steam = gschwendt (though will show up as _WayoftheGun_OZ_)

Though when NCAA comes out, I'm very rarely on Steam for the first few months.

[JeffHCross]

_WayoftheGun_OZ_Every time I boot up Portal 2, I think "who the hell is that?"

[gschwendt]

Every time I boot up Portal 2, I think "who the hell is that?"
I'm named so because 1) one of my favorite movies is The Way of the Gun (trailer below) and 2) because most PC games I play multiplayer online are FPS. The first is also the reason my spread offense last year was named Way of the Gun (ala Shotgun & Pistol).


(ignore the out-of-place Limp Bizkit song)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXGm-2lvJww


*Edit
I've now been forced to watch The Way of the Gun tonight because it's been too long since I've last seen it.

[JeffHCross]

Well, I think it's also that I wasn't 100% sure it was you when I added you. I don't remember how I came across the name, but somehow I knew without asking you. So there's been that uncertainty too, lol.

[jaymo76]

Let me know when the conversation is about the greatest PC game of all time, Rollercoaster Tycoon.

One of the best Tycoon games that didn't get enough love from the masses... ZOO TYCOON 3 + Prehistoric Expansion Pack

[morsdraconis]

By the way, what's everyone's Steam usernames? I need some PC friends!

Morsdraconis


And, if all you fuckers start playing TF2, count me in!

[morsdraconis]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXGm-2lvJww


*Edit
I've now been forced to watch The Way of the Gun tonight because it's been too long since I've last seen it.

And now I too must watch this movie again later. I've actually only seen it once.

[oweb26]

By the way, what's everyone's Steam usernames? I need some PC friends!

I thought about this the other day but I never asked. Mine is oweb26.

[SmoothPancakes]

I downloaded it the other night but haven't tried it. When I'm always bitching about balance on various games, someone ALWAYS says something about playing TF2, but I never had a PC capable of doing so. Now I do...I just have to find the time to try it out.

By the way, what's everyone's Steam usernames? I need some PC friends!

Mine is smoothpancakes. I know, unexpected, right? :D

Right now I just have G and Mors on my friends list, so anyone feel free to add me.

[souljahbill]

You have been mislead, Bill. The greatest game is, in fact, Dino Park Tycoon. Not Rollercoaster.

*Raises eyebrow*

Is this like a build your own Jurassic Park game?

[souljahbill]

Mine is smoothpancakes. I know, unexpected, right? :D

Right now I just have G and Mors on my friends list, so anyone feel free to add me.

I should make an account named LumpyWaffles and become your arch-nemesis.

[JeffHCross]

*Raises eyebrow*

Is this like a build your own Jurassic Park game?If kid-friendly and lacking the whole "they might kill us" aspect -- yes.

[souljahbill]

If kid-friendly and lacking the whole "they might kill us" aspect -- yes.

Intrigued.....

Can you build rides or are all the rides, outside of the on-rails jeep tour, pre-made?

[SmoothPancakes]

I should make an account named LumpyWaffles and become your arch-nemesis.

Hell yes! :D

[JeffHCross]

Intrigued.....

Can you build rides or are all the rides, outside of the on-rails jeep tour, pre-made?Unfortunately, that I can recall, no rides. It is a much, much simpler game.

But at the time (like 1996), 'twas awesome to be able to play it during school.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8El8qDbKac

[I OU a Beatn]

I sent everyone a friend request on Steam. It's the same username I have on here.

I noticed mors liked Terraria and The Binding of Isaac, both of which I've been contemplating getting for the past few weeks. May have to pull the trigger on both of those. I feel like I've been missing out on PC gaming. I can't believe I never tried to get into until now.

[morsdraconis]

I sent everyone a friend request on Steam. It's the same username I have on here.

I noticed mors liked Terraria and The Binding of Isaac, both of which I've been contemplating getting for the past few weeks. May have to pull the trigger on both of those. I feel like I've been missing out on PC gaming. I can't believe I never tried to get into until now.

Both are AMAZING games. Terraria is SUPER fun with people but can be quite enjoyable for a good 10-20 hours by yourself.

As for The Binging of Isaac, it was my personal game of the year last year. It's a phenomenal game but it definitely has a steep learning curve now that they've released the DLC stuff. I would recommend, if you do plan on playing it, only buy the original game and decide whether or not you like it first because the DLC ramps up the difficulty quite a bit.

Also, you most definitely have been missing out on PC gaming. There are some definite gems that are on the PC and no where else (Terraria, The Binding of Isaac, VVVVVV, Dungeon Defenders, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Cave Story+, the Bit Trip series, Hard Reset, Legend of Grimrock, and Wizorb just to name several ;) ).

[I OU a Beatn]

Bought The Political Machine 2012. Call me stupid, but I think it looks fun as hell. :D

[morsdraconis]

Bought The Political Machine 2012. Call me stupid, but I think it looks fun as hell. :D

Not at all!

I wanted to buy it before it went off sale, but I think I'm still gonna pick it up at $10. It DEFINITELY looks fun as hell.

[I OU a Beatn]

I played through once and got my ass kicked so I'm going to have to pay attention a little more to what I'm doing. Definitely fun, though. Some of the character faces are hysterical.

[morsdraconis]

Bought it along with two of the indie bundles (3 and 9) that I didn't get a chance to buy during the steam sale. Damn you steam for making things so damn cheap...

[jaymo76]

Bought The Political Machine 2012. Call me stupid, but I think it looks fun as hell. :D

I wanted too buy that game as well but I passed because I thought it would be lame. Glad to hear it's fun.

[SmoothPancakes]

Yeah, I bought it. I played through once, won with Ron Paul (that's right bitches!). I was pretty secure in the lead most of the game, then shit started plummeting over a cliff in the final 10-15 weeks, states all over started turning pink or blue as I lost my grip. Ended up winning with 291 electoral votes. God bless Ohio, Florida and Texas (as well as a stolen California). :D

[I OU a Beatn]

Yeah, I bought it. I played through once, won with Ron Paul (that's right bitches!). I was pretty secure in the lead most of the game, then shit started plummeting over a cliff in the final 10-15 weeks, states all over started turning pink or blue as I lost my grip. Ended up winning with 291 electoral votes. God bless Ohio, Florida and Texas (as well as a stolen California). :D

I've gotten my ass kicked every time. I must just suck.

That Indie Bundle #9 is looking really tempting. I'm interested in all of those except for Zeno Clash.

[JeffHCross]

Bought The Political Machine 2012. Call me stupid, but I think it looks fun as hell. :DI bought 2008, and it was fun for about 5 minutes. As cool as the results are to see, the actual gameplay is rather hands-off and boring.

Sounds like 2012 was enhanced though, just from you guys describing your experiences.

[morsdraconis]

I've gotten my ass kicked every time. I must just suck.

That Indie Bundle #9 is looking really tempting. I'm interested in all of those except for Zeno Clash.

VVVVVV is TOTALLY worth it and Jamestown looks pretty badass. Capsize looks interesting but I'm not too interested in Zeno Clash or Revenge of the Titans.

I already have VVVVVV, so I bought it just for Jamestown and Capsize.

[I OU a Beatn]

Yeah, Jamestown and Capsize are what caught my eyes. I think I'm going to get that bundle and then just buy The Binding of Isaac and Terraria. I was going to wait for a sale, but those 2 have had my interest since I first saw them. I also need to try the STALKER games. Those are right down my alley.

[morsdraconis]

I've heard the STALKER games are amazing, but I've never actually played them.

BOI and Terraria are definitely worth the price of admission. Too bad you weren't interested in doing this during the Steam Sale. Both were on sale at one point for like a $1.50 or something a piece.

[gschwendt]

I tried to get into STALKER but I got impatient I think. It's definitely a very slow-paced game, similar to how DayZ is. It's great in concept but I just never knew whether what I was doing was correct or if I was missing out on some other aspect, or whatever. I was moving the story forward, but it's so open-world without any true direction, it's hard to not question yourself.

[gschwendt]

I think Indie Bundle X might be the best of the bunch.
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15389/

Includes 5 items: All Zombies Must Die!, Beat Hazard, BIT.TRIP RUNNER, Eufloria, Machinarium

Beat Hazard alone is worth the $10 alone, especially if you like a lot of music and old school shooters like Galaga & Asteroids. Machinarium is a quirky puzzler that is pretty fun and BIT.TRIP RUNNER, while I've never played it, seems quite popular. All Zombies Must Die! looks like it could be pretty fun but other than the video I know nothing about it.

[I OU a Beatn]

I tried to get into STALKER but I got impatient I think. It's definitely a very slow-paced game, similar to how DayZ is. It's great in concept but I just never knew whether what I was doing was correct or if I was missing out on some other aspect, or whatever. I was moving the story forward, but it's so open-world without any true direction, it's hard to not question yourself.

Eh, I thought it was more linear than anything. I don't know how I would feel about it being open world. I tend to get disinterested in games like that after awhile and never finish them.

[JBHuskers]

Good stuff on DayZ for Arma II

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/01/how-dayz-came-to-life?utm_campaign=ign+main+twitter&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

[morsdraconis]

DayZ is awesome. Arma III is going to feature it as a game mode. DayZ is the type of stuff that you could write college thesises relating to human behavior and human interaction when the end of the world happens. It is definitely some interesting stuff.

[JBHuskers]

I wish I had a rig that could run it :fdown:

[I OU a Beatn]

Skyrim is 50% off on Steam.

[morsdraconis]

Even at 50% it's not worth it. It wasn't worth it for free.

[JBHuskers]

Mors likes to just put negatives all over Skyrim every chances he gets :D

I've put over 90 hours into it, I love the game.

[I OU a Beatn]

I didn't think it was terrible, but I did think it was mind-numbingly boring for the most part. I don't do well with open world games and Skyrim especially got boring to me extremely quickly. I will get back into it eventually, though.

[morsdraconis]

Mors likes to just put negatives all over Skyrim every chances he gets :D

I've put over 90 hours into it, I love the game.

I calls it like I sees it. You damn Bethesda homer. ;)

[JBHuskers]

I calls it like I sees it. You damn Bethesda homer. ;)

I'm only a Bethesda homer because the games are good and I've spent nearly 400-500 hours between Elder Scrolls and Fallout :nod:

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2

[I OU a Beatn]

The Political Machine 2012 was buggy as hell when I played it earlier. I had multiple slowdowns and when I would check to see how many resources were being used, it said it was taking up 1.3GB of RAM. WHAT? I also had numerous times where I couldn't right click to travel to another state and had to exit out of the game and go back in to correct it. Hopefully they fix those things.

[morsdraconis]

It's boring as hell... Disappointed I spent $10 on it...

[oweb26]

It's boring as hell... Disappointed I spent $10 on it...

I sent IOU a message on steam and asked him about it, you pretty much just said what I was afraid off.

[SmoothPancakes]

The Political Machine 2012 was buggy as hell when I played it earlier. I had multiple slowdowns and when I would check to see how many resources were being used, it said it was taking up 1.3GB of RAM. WHAT? I also had numerous times where I couldn't right click to travel to another state and had to exit out of the game and go back in to correct it. Hopefully they fix those things.

Damn, that's surprising. I've played it a couple times, never had any slowdowns or bugs show up. I'll have to keep an eye on things next time I play it.