Maria Caliban

It's a novel on wheels. You should be too busy reading the game to notice the graphics.

I wouldn't go that far. The first one is highly useful though. I wish they had ships that could carry land units. Is it true that the more cities you have, the harder it is to get social policies?

Please. This crowd was worrying about Dragon Age 2 before it was even announced. This will follow the pattern of DA:O - [Long period where we mostly speculate it will suck] -> [short period where it comes out, we play it, and mostly like it.] -> [Long period where we realize the 1,001 flaws it has and complain about them.] This sequence is as inevitable as the sun rising and setting.

I agree. Right now I'm at mechinized infantry while the other civilizations aren't. He's run up against Montezuma and Bizmark, who have spent the time digging in. I think he's pinned right now, and will attack Monte next. I figure I can fpull off a win before he attempt to attack me. At the moment, that's all I'm using the specialists for other than the engineer.

I've ended up in east asia with Alexander as a neighbor. He won't enter a pact of cooperation, but we have open boarders and we wiped out Washington together. He's now rampaging westward, and I'm wondering if I can trust him to maintain an allience. For some reason, my military advisor refuses to tell me how my army is compared to his. I know he's done unit spam, but I'm fielding calvary, the french forgien legion, and musketers while he still has pikemen. I wonder if a should pre-emptively attack him.

My friend has a forum. It's has about 15 regular posters: Blue Moon Aurora If you're looking for something larger, try EnWorld. EnWorld. About 90% of it is DnD.

How many goddesses have you had sex with so far?

If it had an earth-like atmosphere, yes. Alternatively, you could chuck a naked human body at the moon, and it wouldn't burn up at all. We know the planet had some atmosphere, but not how much compared to earth.

While the idea that Shepard could be rebuilt from bones and burnt flesh is highly questionable, I can't say that ME 2 had millions of plot holes. For one thing, its plot is very simple. 1. Recruit characters 1-4 2. Fight collectors 3. Recruit character 5-7 4. Explore ghost ship and recuit character 8. 5. Go through Omega-5 relay and fight collectors. In between are a bunch of side-quests. The only plot hole I can think of is the one where people who've been stranded on a planet for 12 years have thermal clips and mechs.

Bane still snapped Batman's back. Batman peeing himself along with him having a son with Talia hasn't been retconed as much as every writer refuses to acknowledge its existence. Batman never died; the Omega beams sent him back in time. Which is about as lame as Wolverine having all the flesh blown off his bones but surviving and healing himself fully.

Use Legendary Start.

That car chase was awesome.

? That was an oddly convoluted way of saying, "I want to play Far Cry 2.". I forgot the name of the game. Of course, ME 1 only came out 3 years ago, and when it did, many of the RPG 'purist' on this board complained about BioWare abandoning its original fans to make a dumbed-down shooter/RPG hybrid. Also, I ate a Monte Carlo today. Or was it a Monte Cristo?

Russia Legendary Start Standard Earth Started in North America. Strangely enough, near where Las Vegas is. I had the entire continent to myself along with three friendly city-states. Covered it and then headed to S. America and met Mr. Washington. I set up open borders, research pact, and exchange of luxturies. This last for about 60 turns and suddenly he's calling me 'bloodthirsty' and refuses to do any business with me. I wait another 15 turns for him to relax, but he won't budge so I send my army down to smack him around. After I take over New York, he crumbles and offers me Atlanta, Phily, Boston, and some gold, leaving him with only Washington DC. Sounds good to me. I now effectively control all the Americas. Next I send my ships out to explore and come upon the old world: Oda, Alexander, Gandhi, Ramses, and al-Hadin. Alexander had taken all of Europe, the Middle East, and has successfully pushed into Asia. Ramses has Siberia and is fighting Alexander. Oda and Gandhi are trying to stay alive in SE Asia, and al-Hadin is just hanging out in Africa. I immediately set up open borders with everyone (al-Hadin refuses) and research agreements with Oda and Alexander. Alexander is the only one with resources that are useful for me. Right now, it's the 18s, Gandhi is gone, Oda has two cities left, and it looks like Alexander will take all of Europe and Asia. My tech, wonder, and military is better than everyone else's, and I can't do any more research pacts because no one else has money. In addition, I've become allies with 13 of the 16 city-states. The majority of them are cultural, but I'm not even half-way to my utopia project.

I dropped 1000 gp to make Copenhagen my ally but my capitol didn't love me for getting their silver until I built a road to them.

It occurs to me that the cab chase is possibly the only time I've laughed during either of the ME titles.

You get bonuses at friend and they increase at ally. The resources you get when they join your trade network. I agree about the Americans - they're great neighbors. I wish they'd release the leader personality matrix. I think Rome is expansionist. I assume that Montezuma and Oda are aggressively expansionist as well. Has anyone interacted with Cathrine of Russia?

I am very fond of Jennifer Hale, and would likely think better of Meer's Shepard if I didn't have her to directly contrast the voice work with. I dunno when that was last updated, and whether those numbers reflect the DLCs or not, but it's a good rough estimate Thank you kindly.

Also, I miss religion. With less cities and space, it feels like there's less of a buffer against hostile nations.

Yeah, I didn't have that luck against the Glory That Was Rome. Persia was a [jerk] who refused to even open borders with me, so I let Rome fight him. He ended up with 5 cities and a city state under his control while I had four cities and the Native Americans had four as well. He declared war on the Native Americans so I figured this would be the time to act against him, and promptly got bootstomped by a swarm of Roman Legionares. I sent my swordsman to an unoccupied city and quickly learned of one of the larger changes in the game.

It would be nice if I knew exactly what the upper limit was for needed minerals. I'm playing my ME 1 character again so I get two bonuses, but I'm still compulsively running around and spending 30 probes per system to deplete every planet. If anyone cares, I also agree that Liar of the Shadow Broker is very good. Almost all the major missions have boss fights at the end, and I use it for that.

I just discovered the Hammer Head. For a second time, BioWare can't get their onscreen prompts right. It tells me [L SHIFT] to jump and [R MOUSE] to mine. It's actually [E] and [V]. I went through Firewalker and it was fine. At the first planet, I wished there was the ability to save, but after that, the missions were so easy there was no reason to bother. I'd say the Hammer Head is a good replacement for the Mako, but the missions available were rather lame.

They already knew it was the most popular class. Also, I had hopped on to see if there were any good class suggestions for the second play-through, but I'm now inspired to play a soldier again.

Not to worry. Other people might make the mistake for other reasons, but I suspect it's the same issue.

I disagree. Animation is very important in a video game. Watching people move in Oblivion always pulled me out of the game. They sort of jerked along like pupets. Alternatively, the animation in the Prince of Persia series increased my enjoyment of it a great deal. The movement of the Prince's body as he navigates the game world is an important part of the experience.