riadsala

Advice from "ghosts" is perfectly fine And, of course, choosing to destroy your father's legacy is also fine. On that note, it would be handy to know what the heir thinks of his/her predecessor on handover. [i'm now in Copenhagen for a long weekend but I'll check in when I can and try keep relatively up-to-date with the blogs posts and forum thread.

Sure. I've copied the first post to the blog. https://riadgameblog.wordpress.com/2015/01/22/3maidle-thumbs-forum-crusader-kings-ii-succession-game-part-i-gormongous/ You'll be able to find the RSS feed if you want to stay up to date that way. if anybody has a wordpress account and would like to help post/edit the AAR, let me know Sorting out the picture formatting is a bit of a drag (they look a bit ugly if I don't insert them into wordpress manually). We're off to a flying start

I'm not expecting much. There's been a glut of GW games over the past few years and none of them have been good. [DoW1 was good, but that was ages ago. I thought DoW2 was somewhat unsatisfying given how small scale it was. I haven't played Blood Bowl recently, but the last version I did play was a terrible computer game adaptation of a brilliant board game. So the end result was ok, but nowhere near as good and slick as it should of been]. On a related note, has anybody bothered to play the 40k Armageddon wargame?

ps. if you'd like to play, but aren't so keen on writing, please don't be put off! I'm sure we can find a ghost writer to fill in some details. or we can have a few generations that are not as detailed! pps. Thinking ahead... if this goes well.. might be a laugh to try porting it to EUIV and carrying on Not that I've ever played EUIV, but this might convince me to pick it up!

Great start. I'm away for a long weekend, so may not get round to checking in on the forum! Do you mind if I copy and paste the write up to my blog, so we can have all in game events in one place? if you can supply dates which span each post, I can put that in the title and it will be easy for people to follow along

I wouldn't worry... you only have to play one in-game life time, at your own schedule. And if you don't have time to play when you're name comes up on the list, you can always defer. As long as you don't take much over a month to play out your lifetime, it's not a problem

Ps. Might be fun to play with The Way of Life on as a single DLC?

+1 for Duke to start with. Sounds like Gormongous is pretty experienced, so I'll let him start and select a character. And role playing it is. Which doesn't mean that you can't try to play well... but please avoid minmaxing exploits and whatnot. If people don't mind, I will repost the game history notes to my under-used-blog (https://riadgameblog.wordpress.com/) just so we have a coherent record of what happened. Current (suggested) player order: Gormongous SuperBiasedMan Riadsala Cordeos New players can be added on as we find them.

Yes, the idea is to very much post updates on what happens during your rule. Different players can chose how much they want to document events, but I'd encourage people to share enough to that people can follow along. Also, if anybody else wants to take the known facts, and act as court historian turning it into a semi-accurate tale, then that's fine

I own Sword of Islam, Legacy of Rome, and the Way of Life. My game history is: first game started somewhere near Poland. Second game, realised Ireland was a simpler start. Then I spent a while trying to Muslim regions in Southern Spain, or the eastern Med. Current game, I started off a count in the Byzantine Empire, and am now King of Serbia (although still within the Empire). Ok, so my vote for starting is somewhere in the Holy Roman Empire's sphere of influence. As I haven't done this before. Open to other suggestions. I guess I have a preference for playing underdogs rather than kings. but hey, happy to go a ruler if everybody else does, as it will be new to me! Another thing we should decide is if we're going to roleplay a little.. it tick what you think your character would do, rather than gaming and minmaxing systems. I have no strong feelings either way, I just think it would be good to be on the same page. It's a shame we can't do this with ironman switced on, to avoid any save scumming. A final point: one player = one character. You might get another shot if we run out of interested players, but people who've already played get put on the end of the queue, and new players leapfrog them in priority. Exception: if your character dies within a few years, you can rejoin the end of the queue and new players won't leapfrog you. However, kibitzing on the forum is encouraged There's no reason why the ghosts of previous rulers, or future visions can't offer advice on whether to go to war or not I'd rather not go first! I'll let somebody else set the tone! I may even investigate steam-streaming so others can watch in realtime. Although that's maybe going overboard

Yes, I meant Legends. Sounds like it's a "strategy" game that doesn't really require any strategy beyond going with whatever strength your race has. Once you do that, you spend the rest of the game idly pushing units around a map. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy games like that from time to time. They're nice and relaxing. And i'll probably pick up EL once I've completed some of the other games I already own. But it seems odd that it gets so much praise as a great "strategy" game when there's not a lot to it.

So, does Endless Space require much actual strategy? That's the main thing that's been putting me off picking it up (that, and I have plenty of other 4xs crying out for attention). The game looks lovely, but some of the comments on 3MA suggested that it provides somewhat of a false challenge? I'm worried it just boils down to pushing pretty unit counters around a colourful map.

I'd suggest patience. There are probably youtube videos that show you how to win but I think that maybe would ruin the point of the game? I just have fun playing around with the game and seeing what happens. I haven't played it all that much, but I really like the ideas in the game. Once you get an idea of each race's personality, the game makes a bit more sense. And I get the impression that it's fairly difficult to hit a lose condition.

Time to suggest the panel play TLF again. Version 2.0 is out this week, and there's an expansion out around the same time. Sounds like the game has done well, and the post release patches have added a lot to the game. You have to admire Arcen, not only do they think out side the box, but they also really reward their customers supporting their games.

So, I'm finally getting round to playing CiV properly. My word, the end game drags. Perhaps it is a case of rose tinted glasses, but I don't remember CivIV dragging quite so much late game. And the culture mini-puzzle game thing doesn't really work. There's no reason not for it to be automated, all it does is waste the players time mousing over things to work out what goes where for a theming bonus. I might go back and play CivIV:Legends of the Revolution a bit for a proper comparison

Nice to find somebody else who shares my view: I like SciFi/Fantasy in theory, but most novels and films fall under daft escapism.

Sounds like a really fun game, but I can't see myself ever getting a chance/time to get into it given the multiplayer focus. [which isn't to say I never play against people, as opposed to AI. Just that if I have a spare hour or so for a competitive game, I'm probably going to play Go online rather than this]. I don't really see how it would translate to a single player game either. Although it would be neat to re-use some of the mechanics in a single player focused game with a 4x style score (of course, it would be centred on the economic aspects rather than the 4Xs, but no reason it couldn't work really well with the right story driving it along).

Done, I have spontaneously created a game. We need 7 players in total. I've set a healthy 3 day time limit for move orders, 2 days for retreat and build phases. If anybody would like to play, PM me for details.

Of course it doesn't. But that doesn't mean it's not a fantastic fort/castle building game which offers a lot of the gameplay Rob was hankering after. For example, you get to study the map and terrain and pick a spot that will be defensible, while still giving you access to fresh water etc. I hear it's a bit easier to get into now what with improved support for graphical visualisers. How come 3MA have never done a DF show? Don't tell me Rob and Troy are too casual for the game Actually, that would be a really interesting discussion: get some of the regular panel who haven't played before to spend a week trying to get into it, then report back (an invite a guest who knows the game pretty well to flesh things out). I'm not a huge DF fan, but it's a fascinating project. I try and figure out how to play every couple of years. I can get some basic stuff built, but then either the learning curve or pacing causes me to lose interest. I wonder if Captain Duck has done tutorial videos since the latest big patch.

Question: would you consider making a sdk/modtool for the AI? I remember being really impressed with the CivIV:BetterAI mod that eventually came out once Fixaris gave the community access to the relevant parts of the game. I think I remember you saying that you're not a fan of modern AI techniques, but it would be interesting to see what the community could come up with

We should totally get a game of Diplomacy going over at http://www.playdiplomacy.com/

Weird... Paradox used to be well known for releasing broken buggy games that they would eventually fix. Now they are gaining a reputation for releasing good games that they slowly break. Here's hoping the mess is cleared up by the time i catch up with the DLC I'll likely pick up Legacy of Rome in the next Steam sale. Here's hoping the mod scene sorts itself out. On that note, one small thing that's always bugged me is that all the CK2 characters appear to start unmarried, which means some have children with no mother. It also gives the game a weird cyclic baby boom. Are there any mods that sort this out? Seems like a small, reasonably trivial and easy change to the starting conditions.

Are they likely to patch/fix it at a later date? How is the modding scene? I suppose the game is getting introduced too often for a stable community mod to emerge? I guess as I only have the first DLC, I'm safe to continue with my plan of buying an expansion in a sale, and only buying the next expansion once I've played around with the one that I've bought.

Also, surely Dwarf Fortress deserves a mention? You get to build up defences, gates, death traps, etc etc. And it's all combined with an impenetrable interface as a last ditch defence

Good show, but you never got onto the Elemental v Endless Space discussion that you hinted at! Surely there's a really interesting, informative comparison. Maybe a topic for a future show (could include any other recent fantasy 4x games). There are surely some useful lessons to be learnt.