Tigranes

What the heck happened there? Getting away from both random automatic repostings and silly bickerings, does anybody have the full game yet? Getting mine in about 24 hours, but I'm getting so impatient. Especially since my friend keeps grilling me with his demo disaster stories. Apparently started with Munster (the one in Ireland) to try and unite it. Unfortunately he invaded Connaught before realising it was allied to England., which sent over a massive army. Him being him, he took about 4 loans (gurk) and raised an army. The problem was that while he eventually bought England offw ith ~50 ducats (bankruptcy time!) and annexed Connaught, his BB was such that England soon invaded hiim again.. with his ally, Portugal. So he has about 70 ships circling Ireland, and what with all the bankruptcy, state of war and BB he has massive rebellions going on. The rebel leader, who has 1,000 cavalry with him, promptly destroys his entire army suffering minuite losses, then proceeds to destroy the English and Portuguese troops, and then besiege Ulster or whichever provicne the English hold. After about twenty battles against superior numbers the said rebels are finally eradicated, but not before devastating the entire island and destroying the Anglo-Portuguese invasion army. Then finally, Portugal and England, who now both have provinces in Ireland, declare war on each other, each of them bringing their own allies. He went bankrupt a second time, had rebels besieging his only province, and watched Portuguese and the Venetians fighting the English with their Protestant Lithuanians fighting over Connaught. Then the demo crashed.

As I understand, when the game runs *properly*, in the fastest setting, 3-4 days pass in a second. Thus, it would take around two minutes a year. Thus it would be about 2 hours to play 50 years, barring player-initiated pauses and so forth. My computer on demo only handles ~1 day per second, which is significantly slower, but apparently that's due to "lag"! I'll see when I get the real game tomorrow, but that does not sound very nice. EU does take up a lot of processing power though.

As I understand, when the game runs *properly*, in the fastest setting, 3-4 days pass in a second. Thus, it would take around two minutes a year. Thus it would be about 2 hours to play 50 years, barring player-initiated pauses and so forth. My computer on demo only handles ~1 day per second, which is significantly slower, but apparently that's due to "lag"! I'll see when I get the real game tomorrow, but that does not sound very nice. EU does take up a lot of processing power though.

As I understand, when the game runs *properly*, in the fastest setting, 3-4 days pass in a second. Thus, it would take around two minutes a year. Thus it would be about 2 hours to play 50 years, barring player-initiated pauses and so forth. My computer on demo only handles ~1 day per second, which is significantly slower, but apparently that's due to "lag"! I'll see when I get the real game tomorrow, but that does not sound very nice. EU does take up a lot of processing power though.

Uh..... we know. Getting a bit fed up with the apathetic AI in the demo that just waits for you and does nothing, so I'm having to wait for the full version. It's ridiculous how it takes ~2 months to get to New Zealand, I should just get myself a credict card and download it.

You're exactly right, meta. Yes. Some of those things aren't done well at the moment (like the option to automatically pause the game when a popup appears - that's due in the next patch). Political mapmode is the easiest to get your geography right. Still, after the first 10 years or so you know your surroundings pretty well. The fastest time mode in EUIII is not as fast as that in EUII, which sucks because it really should be much faster. I tend to go down to low/mid speed in times of war and when I'm doing stuff (or just pause), and then go to full speed to pass a couple of weeks or a month. It is a very long game and in my experience there are times where you dont do much for ~6 months and so have to leave the game going. The great thing is you can just alt-tab and the game would still run!

The full game is out (although not here). Gamersgate has it available for pay-to-download as well. The demo is pretty different from the full version in a number of ways. The AI is too passive and apathetic; colonisation happens way way too fast; naval attrition is screwed; tech development is too fast; map knowledge spreads too fast. All of those things are redressed in the full game, which is now patched to v1.1. It seems right now that public opinion is divided on EU3 - that is, public opinion amongst the EU2-players. EU2 pursued a very controlled history, whereby a slew of historical events happened in EVERY game and you just had to go with the flow or work against it. So if you played EU in 1907 as Muscovy (you can't) you'd always aget the "Communitst Revolution" event, and though you could choose how to react to that event, it would always happen in some form. EU3 uses a new dynamic way of scripting (I cant get more technical) and pursues a slightly different philosophy to create a more 'free-form' game. The starting conditions are set as close to history as possible, and national 'personalities' and 'tendencies' are too, but then the game follows no set guidelines as EU2 does, and instead lets things happen - so you could really see Savoy take over France, Spain inherit Austria (yep, happened) or Milan become the big colonising power of the world. The premise is that, if conditions are fulfilled so X can happen, then X will happen. Why shouldn't Savoy take over France if it becoems extremely powerful and the French kingdom stagnates? Why shouldn't Spain inherit Austria when such big inheritances had happened before (i.e. Frenchman on Polish throne)? Why shouldn't Milan become the next colonising power if Spain and Portugal are wracked by civil war, or excomm'd by the Pope, and Milan comes tod ominate the western mediterrenean shipping? Anyway, no matter which side one takes, everyone agrees that the full game is miles better than the demo. I'm salivating, myself.

The biggest disadvantage to using mercenaries is that you will not gain military tradition from winning battles with mercenaries. Military tradition is extremely important in getting you generals (amongst other things) - which is the key to having a great army long-term. Also, of course, EU is much more punishing with war weariness ont he citizens and inflation from loans. You really have to watch yourself because even a successful war can easily bankrupt you. I've tweaked things and got into the game, and I must say that it is a better game than EU2, if not significantly better. We'lls till need AGCEEP to give us a plethora of funky events, but I like especially the Holy Roman Empire. It's a pity that retreat-cycle-chase-enemies-around-for-5-years is still there, though, even if it's historical. I got smashed by Savoy playing as Milan thanks to having no Generals and with some bad decision-making, will try again tonight.

Where is this? And NWN1 AI was just as bad as NWN2, really. I don't remember many respawns and instaspawns..

Probably so that the publishers can be persuaded that EU3 is a good decision. Yes, EU3 really is ugly. But I find that in the end it really doesn't matter for me. After all, while EU2 looked pretty good for its purposes, I never looked at any part of it and thought "wow, that's beautiful". In terms of aesthetics EU has always been poor so it wont make a difference for me. What does make a difference is that I can't merge armies!! It's making me really frustrated, how do you do it? Anyway, other than that, it seems very similar to EU2 with small improvements, but hard to tell yet, esp. with the AI.

Oh, it works now. Dunno what happened before. Thanks guys, hopefully this one works. I loved EU2 + AGCEEP, played a lot of it before it finally got routine. alanschu (or whoever) is right in that AI makes or breaks these games.

Meh, fileplanet = subscribers only. Are there any other sites with the file? Gamespot is subs too isnt it?

Well, okay. Installation fails around 50% because some western?stormHouse.tga or something has an invalid name or something. Tried downloading twice, didn't work. Anyone know anything about that?

Wait, it's only 128mb?! I can get it with my remaining bandwidth! Holy crap, I live in New Zealand and I'm getting 350kbps (that NEVER Happens in this country).

How does having random monarchs work at the same time as having historical monarchs? O_o isn't it one or the other? I loved the complexity of EU's AI compared to TW's, and that's why I was willing to have historical monarchs (which I dont mind at all). I would guess that starting at any date works by having a 'map' for every single year? So if you start at a specific year it will always be under the same conditions?

I can't count the number of orgasms that gave me. Is the random monarchs thing a tick-box option? Because I may actually prefer historical monarchs if we dont have a family tree and selectable heirs a la TW. Is the battle system getting any revamp? I dont want it too complicated, but I thought EU2's was *too* simple so that it broke immerison and got in way of your politically and economically and geographically well-planned maneuvres.

In one day and nine hours on Crapspot. Of course, I gotta wait for 2 weeks for my bandwidth cap to reset. :'( I blame the Russians. I haven't kept up with what exactly was changing in EU3 over EU2, although as usual I keep hearing "3D" thrown about everywhere. Anyone else excited? Surely we still have some EU enthusiasts. What are the biggest changes?

But then, people who find funky haircuts, buying titles such as Arseface and sexxing up barmaids enjoyable in a game would find a YMCA dance hilarious.

*shrug* to you maybe. The basic mechanics were very similar, but PST had a much smaller pool of classes, spells, monster types and so forth. They also lacked traps (did the game even have any?) and spellcasting enemies, and the only really different type of enemy I remember are the Cranium Rats. There was also only one ranged weapon NPC, and combat items were much more limited. I haven't played PST in a while, but as I remember those were the main reasons. Similar mechanics but much more limited, and therefore every battle was similar.

Yes. However, I think Torment has shown that for many games, unless the system is changed a lot to promote this kind of bonuses, they are only seen by players as nice little 'add-ons' - in other words, little 'secret' or 'special' bonuses you find, and not the main way of getting your character fitted out. Torment had a fair bit of these bonueses but people always did moan about, say, the lack of armour or even other equipment to be found in that game. Although, tattoos were a great bonus, and as was filing up your empty eye slot. Perhaps the complaint came to light more because of PST's lacklustre combat side?

The problem, of course, is that those too must be given very sparingly. Having lots of unique items with unique effects can become more a chore than a reward if you're constantly having to think about them, or turn them on and off; thats why simple skill + or DC + bonuses usually work better. As an example, I remember loving the Ring of Energy adn the RIng of the Ram in BG1/2, but later finding out that I had only ever used a couple of chargres, just because I kept forgetting about them. This is less of an issue with the NWN2 hotbar system, of course, but just a note. I always thought that it would be nice to confine a particular theme of enchantments to a particular type of equipment. For example, AC bonuses or damage reduction can only be provided by Armour or Helms; Gloves often provide Dexterity bonuses (nimble fingers) or spellcasting ease, only boots can give stealth bonuses, and so forth. Something that could easily be pursued in conjunction to the 'unique enchamtments' idea, combining to make equipment that is truly more realistic than "i have 7 slots of magical itemss for +ac".

The thing is, the average player would not find all of them in BG1. It was quite a gruelling trek to get to the Gnoll Caves book, not everyone would check all the random outdoor caves, or even kill Ramazith, and so on. There were also those hidden wands and gems in the starting areas (i.e. in the Nashkel Mines exterior) that were really helpful, I loved that. They could probably do it with skill checks and so forth here instead, or increasing memorised spell slot by 1 or so if that's doable.

As to Pop's speculation on crafting: how much was it a part of the original module? I think that would decide it a lot. But I don't think it'll be as extensive as it was in NWN2 OC.

Really depends on how long the module is, don't you think?

Yeah, the first and fourth screenshot looks at that one spot which has a lot of grass (as it's pretty much where you start). But my system isn't stellar either so no doubt I will soon have to reduce the number of trees. The quandary is that I want this area to create a forest look - so a pretty thick cluster of trees all over the map (4x20) but always with enough room to walk through easily, and no defined road. Still, making the trees all slightly bigger (x1.2-3) then laying them out even a little further will help. Trust me, I can only afford environmental shadows on ANYTHING on the toolset, not in the game. I forgot about that. I've killed a lot of the trees at the back now, and made most of them without shadows. In the below 'bird's eye' screenshot, I had already deleted ~25 trees and about half the trees you see there have 0 shadows. The theme for this particular area is that it's a pseudo-illusion; the plane of lost causes has inhabitants who had lost their life pursuing a lost cause, and the object of their obsession is recreated by their mind within this plane. This man is (conventionally) wracked by guilt, as a simple mistake on his part led his group of infantry to death and torture; and these horrible circumstances are repeated again and again as he seeks redemption and redress. Iker's mind has 'warped' this recreation of the area to something less of a normal forest, what with the blue-and-orange sky, over the patchy red earth, leafless trees, and a strange grey fog that hangs over it all.