Anym

Count me in, then.

I'm also cautiously interested, just a bit worried that I might be playing too slowly.

Don't Dementors feature prominently in the third movie?

While they apparently aren't linked to anymore, the original posts are still up at Flash of Steel. You could either browse the categories Three Moves Ahead or Podcast there or do a site search (at Flash of Steel) for "episode" and the number you're looking for.

Does look Far Cry 4's villain look just like Julian Assange to anyone else or is that just me? Also, never having played a Pokemon game nor currently owning any consoles, are there any good Pokemon-likes on PC?

Games that I played sooner than I probably would have without the podcast: Trine and Trine 2, which are both excellent Crusader Kings II and Europa Univeralis IV, which are both very good, the latter not really from the podcast, but I wouldn't have played it without first playing CK2 because of it The Last Express, which I didn't like. Admittedly great atmosphere and writing, but coupled with a questionable story and graphics style and a bad interface and gameplay. Watching a video or strictly following a walkthrough (which I resorted to more than once) would probably have been more enjoyable than playing it

I thought you hated the Game of Thrones mod?

I've been wondering if it would be feasible to take distance and the speed of communication into account. I know that there have been wargames that modelled that, but has anyone ever tried it in a grand strategy game.

Is it just me or did Danielle have a different, kinda more goofy, laugh this week?

My second game of Crusader Kings II, didn't quite catch me the way the first one had, so I've moved on to Europa Universalis IV for now and I'm liking it so far. One thing I'm not sure about at the moment is how to best deal with allies' wars. The punishment for declining a call to arms seems rather harsh. If I join and let them negotiate for me, I end up with a bunch of crap I don't want (or worse they give away some of my stuff if they lose), if I don't let them negotiate for me I don't seem to get anything out of it for all my effort and if I negotiate a separate peace with favourable terms for myself, they hate me. Am I missing something here?

I found this series of guides very helpful when I was starting out.

Regarding the discussion about playing a character that acted in unpredictable ways, didn't L.A. Noire have something like that where your detective would sometimes react not how you'd expect during interviews? I haven't played it myself, but seem to remember hearing/reading that about it.

Yes, over the course of the game I created the Empires of Alba, Francia, Mali, Arabia, Persia and Rajasthan. Is that a bug? The game went something like this, the dates for conquest referring to when I had gained enough territory to form or usurp that Kingdom: 1066: Started as Duke of Munster 1084: Formed Kingdom of Ireland 1127: Conquered Wales 1134: Peacefully gained Scotland through marriage 1183: Holy Roman Empire took over England, halting my progress there; started waging holy war against the pagans in north-eastern Europe from a single county I happen own in Norway 1196: Conquered Finland 1229: Conquered Pomerania 1245: Peacefully gained Brittany through marriage 1255: Conquered England and formed Empire of Alba after the English duchies declared Independence from the Holy Roman Empire when it unsuccessfully tried to attack me 1260: Conquered Lithuania and by this time also most other pagans and minor independents north-eastern Europe 1282: Peacefully gained Aragon through marriage, giving me a much needed foothold in a new area, including new targets for holy wars 1287: Conquered Navarra 1288: Ilkhanate conquered Anatolia, this will become important later 1289: Conquered France (sans independent Aquitaine), was definitely equal or superior to the Holy Roman Empire by then 1299: Conquered Andalusia 1314: Liberated Anatolia in a successful crusade, finally bordered the caliphates and could start attacking them 1318: Conquered Aquitaine 1322: Formed Empire of Francia 1327: Conquered Mauretania 1347: Conquered Mali and formed Empire of Mali 1356: Conquered Syria and Jerusalem 1365: Conquered Egypt 1366: Conquered Frisia 1375: Conquered Perm 1378: Conquered Africa 1378: Conquered Arabia and formed Empire of Arabia 1382: Conquered Nubia 1385: Conquered Sweden 1389: Conquered Baluchistan 1390: Conquered Mesopotamia 1419: Conquered Persia 1426: Formed Empire of Persia 1440: Conquered Khiva 1449: Conquered Punjab 1450: Conquered Malwa 1452: Formed Empire of Rajasthan 1453: Screenshot and end Most of my territory gains came from holy wars, so I got to distribute them freely afterwards, typically to content Irish Catholic family members of mine which all loved me and as I kept expanding, there were always more of them, and they were only too happy to quickly convert the counties to our faith, too, probably helped by my religious authority always being maxed out and everyone else's crumbling as a further consequence of all those holy wars. And if, say, the Spanish lords were of a mind to start something, they'd be hard pressed to find enough levies to go against my retinues. Most of my money went into the build-up of my retinues, by the end I had more than 100,000 men permanently under arms. After some point, I conquered new duchies faster than I could save up the money to form them all, large swathes of land were just counts. That one might be a bit tricky, as I noticed the interface really lagging when the game wasn't paused (at least on my machine and with a large empire).

OK, so it took forever, but I finally, finally managed to finish my first game of Crusader Kings II and it was great (most of it anyway). From the 1066 Duke of Munster start, I managed to expand into this, being a sextuple emperor and trigintuple king at the end: And that's not even counting the minor thrones held by other members of my dynasty. While I did enjoy most of it very much, I also felt that it went far too well for it being my first full game. When I started, I thought the 100,000 points highscore of House Capet would be a longterm goal to beat, but I ended up with far more than twice as much in the end. Was I just lucky? Is the Munster start so powerful? Wasn't I role-playing enough? Is the default difficulty level considered to be on the easy side? Over the course of the game, I don't think I ever lost or had to white-peace any war ever, even though I was almost constantly at war after a certain point (for which there didn't seem to be a much of a drawback). There were two or three close calls, but the AI always failed to press its advantage instead allowing me time to regroup and ultimately enforce my demands. Nor was I (or my heir) ever assassinated (as far as I know). I grabbed more and more land, but nobody seemed to feel threatened by it or even care. The game didn't push back at all and snowballing was in full effect and soon no power within or outside my realm was challenging me anymore, but I kept on conquering just for the sake of it and because I could, which is also the point at which my fun started to decline as most of my time was spent either pushing huge, indefeatible retinue army stacks around (always having to pay attention that they didn't get eaten up by attrition too much) or putting down incessant and annoying, but ultimately pointless, peasant revolts. It was exhausting and not as enjoyable as the early game. Still, this being my first game and all, I was interested in seeing how far I could expand, even though I knew that a world conquest was probably out. However, now I'm not sure if I have another game in me. It's probably due to a combination of my inexperience, suboptimal message settings, a compulsion to micro-manage everything and warmongering way too much, but I think I must have spent almost 100 hours of that one campaign alone. Is that normal? I'm not sure if I could muster the motivation to finish another game of the length (nor am I the type of personality who can abandon and start a new game when my previous one is still unfinished). So, I'm not sure what to do now. If I were to play another game what would be the most different from the Ireland start? Restoring the Roman Empire starting as a lowly count somewhere in the Byzantine Empire maybe? Currently, I only have the Sword of Islam and Legacy of Rome DLCs. Should I absolutely get any of the others for my second game? Are any of the achievements particularly interesting or challenging (in a non-annoying way)? Also, how do they higher difficulty levels work? Do they make the AI smarter or do they just hand them bonus troops and a tendency to gang up on the player? I.e. are they more challenging or just more annoying? Similarly, I feel like a huge part of my ability to almost endlessly expand in this game were my retinues. Would disabling them by disabling Legacy of Rome make the game more interesting or also just more annoying? What are ways to speed up the game? Is there a way to play on the smaller, pre-expansion map, for example? Finally, is there any game (or a mod) that is like Crusader Kings, but plays in a fifth or a tenth of the time? Is anybody trying to make one? Sorry if this is all sounding a bit negative, mainly coloured by the last quarter of the game which I didn't enjoy as much. I did very much enjoy the way to becoming Emperor and then facing off against the other existing empires. It's just that once they were soundly beaten, it very much became smooth sailing and just painting the map my colour for the last century and a half.

I know. I didn't mean to call you out specifically.