alanschu

Beethoven was deaf too wasn't he?

A bit of me would consider nominating Steve. He seems like a reasonable person, and I think it would be entertaining to see two mods arguing with each other about the merits of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Has the world of Obsidian gotten to the point where the Child of Flame will become a moderator?

Good point! Though I'm sure it's not because he has historically enjoyed Bioware games, but only because he wants them to make more PC games. I can't think of a better way of telling a game company that I would like them to make more PC games than by buying their console games.

My Legionaries do okay against them, mostly I think due to the numerical advantage. They also have solid armor (like 36 or something base). I'm also a newb and play on Normal/Normal....something I will likely change in the future. The game has gotten kind of easy, as I was able to get Marius quite early. I'm not sure if maybe I'm just better, or the legionaries are just powerful (for the most part I use Principes pre-Marius, which are similar enough to the Legionaries). Legionaries make up the overwhelming bulk of my military (Gallic warbands for garrisons, as they have cheap support costs and a large number). They seem to be able to go toe-to-toe with almost anyone, and as long as they aren't surrounded and flanked, tend to win most of the time. I have noticed that the odd time I have picked up mercenaries (simply because I had concerns about numbers I was about to face), they absolutely do not last as long as the Legionaries. I bought some of the armorless, 120 stack German mercenaries because they were cheap and had large numbers, and some Javelineers did quite a number on it. As a counterpoint, the armorless barbarians are cannon fodder for my Sarmatian Archers (I also have a general in Macedonia who has Cretian archers, which seem to kick ass as well...except against special forces shock troops). I picked up two 80 stacks of Sarmatian archers, as well as some Horse Archers (OMG how I loved these in Medieval...and I do now!). Horse Archers are sweet, as they can shoot while moving, are too fast to be caught, and have way, way, way more ammo than a javelineer. Though speaking of Javelineers, I did pick up some Numidian Cavalry in my attack against Carthage. I moved in with a full stack of a General with 1 Roman Cavalry unit, and the rest Legionaries (with some reinforcements en route). After taking Carthage, I moved over to Ucidia and quickly captured it as troop sallied forth as reinforcements to a huge counter attack. I left behind 5 full stacks of Legionaries in Carthage, and they just got besieged by a HUUUGE stack. I'm hoping I can take advantage of the Large Stone Walls, and prevent them from breaking though and getting some free kills from the towers. After taking Ucidia, I noticed another huge stack en route. Nearby, there was a medium sized stack, that also had two Elephant units. Since I hate elephants as I'm always terrified they'll run amok, I picked up the Numidian Cavalry, as well as some Rhodian slingers. The job of the Cavalry was specifically to take care of one of the elephant groups, and they did just that. I even got lucky and the last one ran amok through the Carthaginian troops, resulting in some extra kills. I then slowly moved up, making sure to save my pila for the undoubted charge of the other elephant group. After advancing my wall of legionaries, the elephants started rushing. 4 or 5 squads started tossing their pila. I was able to get away with few casualties, though I couldn't get it to rout until it was too close. Two groups ended up losing about 20 soldiers each as the two remaining elephants went blasting through. I think proceeded to slaughter the weak Berber Javelinmen. The Rhodians had fun with them as the Berber's might as well be naked. Good times good times. I'm up to 55 provinces now, so I just need to collect on the ones that I need for my victory conditions (which I'm still a ways away from). Byzantium is about to fall, but I'm still a ways away from all the Middle East. Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem are still a looong ways away, as is Sinope. On the plus side, I'm starting to really pull in the money. So I have hired some diplomats to see if I can't make life a little easier on myself by paying off some cities/armies. Here's hoping I can steal a general or two! Speaking of generals, I have recently been getting a lot of adoption proposals (not that I mind). I hardly ever say no to the free, unexpected general. I have placed some of them in the small Gaul towns, so that they can take advantage of any enslavements I do. They also act as Governor's of my newly captured area in Greece/Macedonia. I'm hoping I can get some children spread from them to other towns, so I don't just feed them all from Italy. I have 4 really sweet generals (as well as my pet project general). With the bonuses to Barbarians, two can get to 10 stars pretty easily. They just finished off Germania and are cleaning up on the Rebels in the area. I will probably land one of them in Britain as well, though the navy pirates in the area are quite a pain! But I like to conquer conquer conquer. I'm aiming for a bit of a TC Sweden and Norway will also get an axe soon too. These places do have fishing villages, so they'll eventually get ports for more money making goodness as well (though capturing Sicily was insane, as they all had at least a Shipwright. Carthage is raking in huge dough as well!) I'm about ready to start a big push east, that will have me swallowing up the Illyrian Rebels, as well as Thrace (who is actually an ally at the moment) with Macedonia. My fleet in the Aegian Sea is getting quite large, so I may cross over into Turkey. Not sure if I'm ready to take on the Seleucids at the moment though. I'm sure they'll enjoy meeting my Legionaries!

I'm sure Spellmar cries himself to sleep somewhere.

The mudslinging has already begun!

Well, to say if it is or is not powerful you'd have to compare to how it performs with CPU only. Even then, I do see something like this as a good thing. Hardware T&L was initially slower than letting the CPU do all the work initially with the GeForce. Though nVidia was in a much better position of power than Aegia is.

That would start things off slowly. It's also reinforcement learning, and I'd be surprised if routers didn't actually implement it in some way. It's the the best interests of ISPs and companies like AT&T that layout much of the network to make sure that packets get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible, if for no other reason than to make sure that their network is not necessarily bogged down. Good performance helps stop the phones from ringing with complaints.

Because I am not smart.

There's an expansion coming that has the Executor in it isn't there?

My Legionaries seem to do quite well against arrows (which makes up for the fact that RTR removed the testudo formation). There are some heavily armed guys that I fight that almost seem impervious if I don't get the missiles at their flanks. One group is the Hypstaiasti (or whatever) guys that the Macedonians seem to have. They just sit there and take it while I shoot arrows. Would you say BI is worth $50 (as I'd have to get the box set to play it).

Not exactly the MP I was hoping for I understand the limitations of a large scale, turn-based strategy game like that, with fights that can take up to 45 minutes. But I'd totally be game for playing the GC of a Total War game with a friend.

Will do. I imagine this might actually make "Forts" more useful to boot!

Unfortunately all I had was legionaries. Which isn't really that bad of a problem In other news, I was able to take Carthago by surprise. I happened to have a spy inside, and his 40% chance to open the gate paid off. Clearly Carthage wasn't expecting this, as all he had was a garrison of 80 Sacred Band Spearmen. As a result, I was able to take Carthage the same season I got there. A crushing blow to the Republic of Carthage no doubt!

Meh, I think this is one of the few times that I'll say never, at least with respect to this particular card. The bottleneck is already outside of our computer (router jumping). Sure it's nice that it prioritizes game packets, but unless you're maybe doing something like downloading at a high bandwidth, I doubt that that will make a difference. This card will be doing what most cards do....waiting for the internet to send it the next packet. Like some guy on Slashdot commented, unless the thing is some how able to construct a LAN between two remote computers, you're not going to see a difference. I already get a latency of 0 ms when pinging my roommate's computer, so clearly my current NIC (which is onboard) is already capable of really low latency. If one of us is pinging 5 in a LAN game, then that's hardcore lag (or poor netcode in the game).

I noticed those abominations too! Almost as bad as our omission!

Rubbish. If someone is so PC gaming that they'd be boycotting Bioware if they stopped making PC games, probably isn't getting a console to play their games anyways. I fail to see how "Oh look, we're still making a PC game" has any real bearing on "coaxing" their PC fans into buying consoles. Why would they do that? The influence Bioware has with making people buy consoles is the games they release on the console. Are you actually suggesting that the false promise of a PC game entices people to buy consoles and their console games, under the assumption that people will do this to somehow help fund the PC game in development?

Battle.net is pretty silly too.

What is that? I'm not talking about an alliance....

Yes.

Some feels it's just a front to appease PC fans. Which is kind of funny. If Bioware had plans to abandon the PC market, there'd be no sense in even humouring us. The opinion of PC gamers wouldn't matter to them anymore, because they'd no longer be customers of Bioware.

That makes a bit more sense

Ahahahahahaha. I just had a wierd bug with a siege Tower where guys would get stuck at the bottom and just run around (getting shot by arrows). I was able to work around it by setting their move target the ground, followed quickly by the wall, as this would allow a few extra people in the tower. However, at one point the tower had opened up top, and for some messed up reason, they all went running off the side of the wall killing themselves. I reacted in time to save 9 of them (who fortunately opened the Gatehouse), but it looked very interesting seeing a troop of 80 men go running off the side of the wall and kill themselves.

I'm ignorant on the issue, but is that in any way grounded in reality? I know they can be used as anti-vehicle weapons, but I was under the impress that we're talking Humvees and whatnot. Could you actually take out an M1A2 Abrams with a bunch of .50 cal machine guns?