Topic: Gamer thread

[WolfyGriess]

I definitely don't feel brave enough to do hard, let alone legendary. I'm relatively confident in battles, but campaigns are hard enough on normal with settlements constantly being sniped by all sorts

[Feanor Fire Heart]

I've been told Normal is too easy and Hard is the traditional normal of most games. If I just want to mess around and make lore-ish armies I'll do normal. I did pretty good as Vlad on Hard. I need to revisit it, but Mannfred is getting out of hand as a vassal so I stopped for a bit.

I got all of Sylvannia, Averland, and Solland. I was able to kill Gelt before Karl could try to confederate him. Mannfred is under my thumb as a vassal and has two provinces in my empire. I need him to get his ass beat so I can confederate him.

I did pretty good as Tyrion on Legendary for a bit, but I usually play late at night and when you're tired, you start to rely on auto-resolve a bit too much the later it gets. After a few bad ones I stopped playing that campaign. I should give it another try at some point.

[GamesPoet]

Go for at least hard!

Then go for legendary!

Feanor the Legendary ... I can see it now.

[Feanor Fire Heart]

Ah you commented as I edited my post GP! I plan to, especially as High Elves, that would be fun. Maybe Greenskins too. Empire is too tedious to do IMHO, but if I ever had the time I would.

[Brad]

Someone found this in The Last Of Us 2:

Found that room.  Totally fake.  Not a single unpainted mini in the entire apartment.

[GamesPoet]

 

[Brad]

Finshed the game.  It's not good.  Has a major problem with its pacing - it's far too slow.  Most of it feels like padding out the runtime.  It took me about 27 hours, which is 10-15 more than it needed.

And the story is shit compared to the first one.

[phillyt]

That is what I’ve heard some others say Brad!  Too bad really.

I finished the Empire long campaign on Total Warhammer 2.  It was really really easy!  At a couple points I literally had nothing to do.  I focused on diplomacy early on, became close friends with Karan Karaz.  I built my authority up so I could easily confederate each time. Was offered.  The only real challenge was that I went after the vampire counts really early to catch them before they could get rolling.  They never had the chance to go off and were eradicated by turn 90 or so!  In the end I held all of the empire except for Marienburg.  I had Loth Lorean as well since I was allied with all the other dwarf and humans and they kept going to the at with those poor wood elves so I fought them as well to keep my treaties strong.  I held the lands of the Awakened at the very end to satisfy the long campaign requirement.  The dwarves of Karaz held almost the entire right side of the map!

I’m trying the Norscan campaign now.

[Gankom]

Another Warhammer humble bundle is up! $1.50 (Canadian) gets you Dawn of War and Vermintide, both awesome games, plus two others. $10 gets those, plus dawn of war II, Battlefleet Gothic, and more!

https://www.humblebundle.com/games/warhammer-40k-bundle?hmb_source=navbar&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=tile_index_6

[Feanor Fire Heart]

THE FORCE IS WITH US!!!!!!

Star Wars Squadrons is X-Wing vs Tie Figher!!!

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

To sum up the gameplay:
-You're in the cockpit of a star fighter the whole time (no 3rd person view)
-You have to manage your engines, weapons, and shield energy (Just like XvT)
-Dogfighting and fleet based combat (kind of like old Battlefront 2)
-You can upgrade you fighters and customize your cockpit (with little doodads and bobble heads if you wish)
-4 classes of star fighter (Fighter, Bomber, Interceptor, and Support)

This looks great especially with online friend play.

There is also a single player campaign. It looks like it takes place during New Republic vs Empire Remnant times (so the tail end of the Galactic Civil War).

[Feanor Fire Heart]

Warhammer Total War 2 announced there will be another Lord Pack on the horizon. It will be Wood Elves and one other Legendary Lord, but from a Warhammer TW2 faction (I'm guessing Skaven so all of the OG WHTW2 races have 6 lords). If you have the Wood Elves DLC from WHTW1 you will also get a free wood elf LL (separate from the one mentioned above) that will be available in Mortal Empires (rumor has it, its probably Ariel). The wood elves are going to get a complete rework and they mentioned adding a new hero unit "that everyone can enjoy." I have a feeling its a wood elf hero too to compliment their changes and expand their roster.

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/dev-blog-july-2020/

I am guessing the DLC wood elf lord is going to be in the south lands since there is already a Wood Elf faction there. As for the other legendary lord, my guess is Skaven (Clan Moulder) and they will probably be in a different location in ME than they are in Vortex (like Clan Skryre). Lustria and the Southlands (with the WE addition) seems a bit crowded so my guess is probably up in Naggaroth or an island to the north of Ulthuan.

[Feanor Fire Heart]

So I installed "Mechanicus" from steam and played the tutorial mission this morning.

Its pretty interesting.

The Plot: You are the leader of a Mechanicus ship sent to a planet where another mechanicus team went missing. You and you're delightful crew explore and find Necrons. Now its a race against time to salvage as much tech and information as possible before all the Necrons wake up. Honestly the crew is pretty cool so far. You have the religious fundie that recites scripture and he hates heretical technology, you have the curious analyst that wants to study everything even if she shouldn't, The commander of the troops that cares for her skittari soldiers, and a few other colorful character that supports your protagonist.

The game mechanics: Its very interesting. You view everything from your ship through a star wars style 3D holomap of a dungeon. If you've ever played "Darkest Dungeon" its very similar. You put together a team of troops (cannon fodder) and tech priests (they do everything else)  and you go room to room just like Darkest Dungeons. Some rooms have enemies, some have treasures, some have decisions you have to make, and some are just empty. You explore the ruins/tombs and fight necrons. Combat is a lot like the original Fallout games from the 90s. Every soldier rolls initiative and fights in turn. You move the unit around the map, click on the weapon you want to use and select the target. At the end of the turn everyone re-rolls initiative and the new turn starts. You can also collect and use command points during combat which allows you to do an extra action, fire a special gun, or move further. You collect command points by defeating enemies, loosing troops, or from collecting data on the battlefield. Its not really like XCOM at all (no cover mechanic that I can see). Tech priests (and maybe troops?) also are customizable and level up from experience and can be kitted out as you like from collecting in game currency.

I've only played the tutorial so far but its very intriguing. I am kind of surprised they went with the old Fallout 90s style combat as opposed to say the fast paces xcom combat style. Honestly its more strategic RPG (Like Fallout or Darkest Dungeons) than tactical squad game (as far as I can tell). I like it.

[Brad]

As I recall, the game has a reverse difficulty spike.  It's stupid hard in the beginning, but after a few level-ups you'll end up steamrolling everything.  At least, that's how it was when it first released.  There may have been balance patches since then.

[Feanor Fire Heart]

I don't know. I lost all my tech priests and lost the game at mission 5 or 6 so I am still in the early game. I was doing alright after 4 missions but mission 5 killed 2/3 tech priests and mission 6 killed my final one. Its pretty tough because the Necrons are stupidly tough with murdery weapons. The hardest challenge is that deploying troops in combat costs command points and anything above a standard servitor costs 2 CP (out of a possible 4). Weapons use CP too, so its hard to manage with only 4 possible CP (unless you get lucky and collect a few in the other rooms before the combat rooms you start with 0). One of the missions I tried to do was labeled "easy" and would have increased my max CP but I lost 2/3 tech priests in that encounter. I've been reading some tips on how to survive the early game and it seems that how you level up your tech priest is pretty important. With my first two I had one focus on healing, and the other on recovering CP. I'm thinking I should switch it up with one focusing on CP and the other on combat. I guess I figured the troops would be able to manage combat but I didn't realize that deploying them takes a lot of CP. This means I'll need a decent combat tech priest until i have enough CP to deploy a trooper or 2.

[Brad]

Did you try to fight a Destroyer by any chance?  Another vague memory I have is that that mission is labelled as "easy" but is ridiculously difficult.  And it has a chance of appearing super early and potentially blocking further missions from that particular chain.

[Feanor Fire Heart]

Yes, in fact it was that mission.  I am going to start over anyway so no worries. I think I fucked up anyhow as I replaced a gun on one of my priests early on which cost 2 enhancements to do when I should have just given him a second gun.

I really like the character you play as. He's like an AdMech Picard. I also really like the Skitarii commander Subdominus Khepra. Too bad all the other AdMechs (outside of your character) treats her troops like they were copy paper which really glitches her stitches.

[Feanor Fire Heart]

Ah okay, so each mission is labeled either easy, normal, or hard. Some genius decided that they do not in fact relate to the difficulty of the mission, but how many combats are in the mission. Easy has 1 combat, normal has 2, and hard has 3. So having a destroyer on "easy" just means there is only one combat in the mission. I also figured out the servo skulls can collect command points from areas on the map instead of having to walk all the way over to those CP objects. This is a game changer and has made the game easier (to an extent). I am still leery on doing the destroyer mission until I level up a bit more. A boss mission has also become available but I do not feel ready to take them out. I could just be a little gun shy because of the last attempted campaign. Still a lot of fun.
 

[Warlord]

THE FORCE IS WITH US!!!!!!

Star Wars Squadrons is X-Wing vs Tie Figher!!!

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

To sum up the gameplay:
-You're in the cockpit of a star fighter the whole time (no 3rd person view)
-You have to manage your engines, weapons, and shield energy (Just like XvT)
-Dogfighting and fleet based combat (kind of like old Battlefront 2)
-You can upgrade you fighters and customize your cockpit (with little doodads and bobble heads if you wish)
-4 classes of star fighter (Fighter, Bomber, Interceptor, and Support)

This looks great especially with online friend play.

There is also a single player campaign. It looks like it takes place during New Republic vs Empire Remnant times (so the tail end of the Galactic Civil War).

Yeah I saw this. Pretty excited. Though where is my B-Wing?!?

[Brad]

Having a bit of fun with Hellpoint.  I was a kickstarter backer so long ago that I'd forgotten it was even a thing until they sent me the Steam code.  It's a small dev team with a small budget and it shows, but it still has a certain charm to it.

Everyone and their dog seems to be spooging over Ghosts of Tsushima.  I've played the prologue but got distracted by Hellpoint so I can't really form a full opinion - but from what I've seen, it's basically Assassin's Creed in Japan.  If you like that kind of game, you'll probably like this.

[Feanor Fire Heart]

I net a bunch of achievements last night as High Elves in Warhammer Total War 2. I found out I could load a previous campaign and continue where I left off and still get achievements (thought it was only with current patches). So I loaded an old Vortex Campaign from just before The Grim and The Paunch DLC and continued where I left off. I finally finished the campaign (First time finishing a Vortex Campaign) and have all the High Elf specific achievements except winning on VeryHard\Legendary.

I also got a few rare ones and man did it take a long time to do. At one point I was just ending turns, doing nothing, waiting for the population to grow high enough to expand the cities just to get the governor one. Reminded me of my Empire playthrough where I was just ending turns for 40+ turns just to confederate the last 2 elector counts after having defeated Archaon.





I do notice that although I have clocked in 400+ hours in the game, I have only ever finished a campaign 4 times (including this one). I can't be the only one that plays a campaign for 100 turns before wanting to play another faction because it got too easy or needed a flavor swap, right? Its like "turn 100 ADD" or something. I think there is a technical term for it (not ADD of course) but I forget what it was called.

Anyway, it felt good to finish it and not have to start all over again. 


Edit: looking at achievements and it looks like only 18.1% of players have completed the Vortex campaign. I am finally one of those people.

[Warlord]

I feel that way with a lot of games. Stellaris I play to a point and get bored.

[Feanor Fire Heart]

Booyah!


I'm playing on Very Hard and so far I am doing pretty well. The Tomb Kings vortex campaign is about collecting 5/9 books of Nagash. I currently have 2 and am marching off to claim 3 more near me. After that I probably have a battle or something to win the game!

Honestly the first 5-10 turns is fucking rough! After you knock out the Orcs to the north though, its pretty easy.

[Feanor Fire Heart]

Settra rules supreme! 

[Brad]

I have just reached turn 72 in my Malekith Vortex campaign.  I'm pretty sure this is the longest I've ever gone without restarting.  Usually I run ME campaigns, and it's possible that having an actual goal (ie the Vortex rituals) instead of just an open-ended sandbox might actually be giving me incentive to keep going.

Anyone tried Troy?  I've heard mixed things.

[Rowsdower]

Is Cobra Commander that guys interior decorator?