Tigranes

Probably so that less tech-savvy people just end up with a huge number of saves and find their hard drives got full - what with ETW's save naming system.

Once you can do barre chords comfortably it increases your flexibility with the frets immensely. I have small hands so its a pain, though.

I am depressed because I got into NYU but I can't afford it. BUT spending money on booze at this juncture would be too much dark comedy, so Walsausages might be the way to go.

OK, screw Darthmod - others seem to love it but it does nothing but destroy the battle AI for me. Back to that Prussia campaign. There's a patch out with some technical fixes - I don't really want to turn Steam online unless I have to so I'll skip, but might be good news for some.

I fully agree with Matthew, and this should apply to mods as well. I've seen way too many NWN/2 mods that just think they have a great story to tell and focus on getting it out there (sometimes with terribly epic writing, long-winded cutscenes and badly photoshopped posters).

I abandoned the Dutch game and started a Prussian one at H/H. After about 10 years of building up (difficult because of lack of funds despite my Indiaman marathon) I decided to declare war on Poland-Lithuania. The problem is, I could only afford to upkeep 2 armies, and one was stuck in the West because Saxony would hit me if I moved. That left Denmark free to blockade my port (too busy making indiamen to make a navy) and bleeding my economy dry. On the East I managed to take Gdansk and Warsaw after a struggle and quickly force a peace with Poland and Russia, but the minor nations won't stop and Courland kept attacking. My by-now 7 star general nearly got himself killed chasing them too far up North (was outnumbered 3:1 with no retreat option and had to enter battle then run like hell), and now Warsaw is rebelling. And my Western army STILL can't move as Saxony is checking it. Darthmod 0.2 over at twcenter appears to have made SOME naval invasions possible, along with a host of other fixes/changes including longer-range, less accurate muskets, more aggressive / dynamic major faction behaviour and such. I am skeptical about a fwe of the changes but will try later when I get off work.

The wars with Savoy and Italian States were quite challenging, lots of logistical thinking and fun battles... but the AI diplomacy keeps trying to put a needle in my fun balloon. The bloody Pope wouldn't agree to any sort of reasonable peace, and the problem is if I want to reduce his armies to get him to agree, I'd have to take on the big garrison in the city... which, if I won, would eliminate that faction. Same with Savoy. So I ended up destroying Savoy and immediately offering its provinces to get Naples back and a peace.... except (a) I forgot to include peace in the deal so now they have MORE regions and we're still at war, and (b) the retarded relations count does NOT decrease "Territorial expansion" negative points if you get rid of the provinces, so everyone hates me. They do the stupid offers nearly every campaign. They did in previous games as well. The stupid thing is that this shows how if the AI decides X is the best plan of action they will stop doing anything else and just sit there trying to do X for 50 years.

Not having played any other Gothics, and having struggled for good 10+ hours with release version Gothic 3, the impression I got was an Oblivion Done Right. As in, a sandbox game but with factions that aren't retarded, a more challenging and complex combat (that was unfortunately bugged to death), a world design that isn't the result of a spasm from a twelve year old and lots of wandering, questing, etc. Oh, and the loading times that helped me read two books. Of course, that also means that my impression was the world was far too big for its own good and it would probably get pretty weary after mid-game (much like Oblivion), especially since the story and characters didn't seem that strong. No idea if I'm right, but I did have a blast for those first few hours (I mean, why else would I have put up with the freeze-every-60-seconds thing?) So yeah. I might try it again if I can find the CD.

I missed you, Volourn. Come back to the Codex, too.

I don't think it's going overboard to expect people to clean up after themselves in the gym though. The sweat, the body/facial hair, the dirt, the dead skin...

Dude, other people's sweat is disgusting. So you clean up after yourself. What exactly is the issue? Of course it should be a requirement in every gym.

Aaaaaaass bandito

The AI does do well sometimes. No sooner than I moved my armies out of Savoy did Genoa declare war and destroy my small garrison, leaving me hurtin'. The Italian States did the same to Naples. I decided the latter was more important and got back in there... it's just a pity that they keep leaving their only city completely empty while they raid my towns. I don't want to annex and get all the bad rep though, so I'm trying to goad them into protectorateship.

What are you doing to my children!

The official forums have very strict moderating under their own rules. But then, I've faded out of TWC a long time ago because when you get a community that big, I find I don't really enjoy the discussions anymore. Really good to see a lot of people chugging away trying to unravel ETW's all-wrapped-up files for modding though (real smart move). So my Dutch campaign is going haywire. Savoy declared war on me and wouldn't quit blocking my routes, so I decided to send a full stack army and half-stack navy over to destroy them. Only the bloody Morocco ships were sitting in the Straits blocking everything, even after I negotiated military access! (Again, broken design) I had no option other than to declare war and destroy Morocco in one fell blow. Then I thought what the heck, it only makes sense to secure the perimeter, and destroyed the Barbary States (that's what you get for refusing outrageous peace offers, you bastards). I've given over the easternmost province to my protectorate, Knights of St. John, to create a buffer so the Ottomans don't feel threatened. Spain seemed to really like Morocco as well, so I decided to trade it for Naples. Perhaps a silly move, given now I"ll probably get stuck in the Straits again, but I like the idea of building up that area of influence in central mediterranean. Having finally destroyed Savoy, I'm looking in the direction of Genoa - should let me bulid up some good trade routes there.

This new big daddy is actually Shepard in disguise.

Yeah, but gals bash the men on a daily basis.

They stole the couch!

That's a year and a half on the mumorperger - a fair amount.

Yep, to make up for the AI I'm going to be pretty weird with the Dutch. Going to take chunks of Mexico/Paraguay, Morocco/Tunisia, Venice/Milan, Constantinople, South India and such.

It *is* in Fallout tradition.

Started a new campaign as Dutch - after playing in the 1770s theres some lightning quick endturn speeds. I tried the "quick war" thing people were talking about; allied with Prussia to give myself some backing, declared war on Spain (and thus France), took Flanders and won a sizable naval engagement against the French, then they accepted peace. Probably fair enough, since Spain didn't seem to have troops up North, but seemed a little bit easy. Said naval engagement was quite fun - ~5 ships v. 5, i had a nice balanced fleet but their weaker one was supplemented by a big fifth(?) rate ship. Took the eastward wind and kept drawing curvy N's - basically crossing the T continuously. But then my ships got bloody stuck on the edge of the map (another bug?). When only one remained I could finally move, and decided to board their fifth(sixth?) rate ship in forlorn hope.. only for them to catch fire and win me the battle! Trying to eliminate the pirates but the mobs at Antigua actually drove me back - my line infantry had to go from building to building and I don't know what's the best way to storm them. If you have too many units rush in there'll be no room; if you have some shoot from the outside it seems to have minimal effect (~1 death per 50 shots). As it is my last units routed at the last building and my general beat a sad retreat from a city that was all but taken. Also found I was still at war with Bavaria as they were a Spanish protectorate. I bargained for military access with Westphalia (2k gold) and now saved just before a big even battle.

To paraphrase Ros: Women are screwed up and make you do crazy things.

"Set limitation" doesn't even make sense when they rebuilt the engine for ETW, though. I *think* they did it for either RTW:BI or MTW2:Kingdoms, but I forget - I never got either expansion. You will also have been affected by the Light Galley 256 attack bug, which occurs in all versions.

Yeah, I know people with those kind of dimensions and it's pretty freaky. You can see the leg-bone rattle around when they run, and all. Hell, that probably gets you an exemption from conscription.