Tale

It seems like it was just scope creep by developers who've never had this much freedom before, so didn't know how to manage it. I'm hesitant to read into it some greater plan. Edit: You left out the part that sold me on this theory.

There's a bug in domination. Any empire with a modified version of the domination tradition, such as machine empires, does not get checked properly for vassalization/tributary.

Looks like they're changing war exhaustion to not force a status quo. Instead you take happiness, influence, and unity penalty until you accept. After I finish Chaos;Child, hopefully they'll have a good patch out and I'll do my next game. The War Exhaustion change makes me want to do yet another Machine Empire. I could see warring through exhaustion until the enemy empire fragments from rebellion. But I think I'll just do my Technocrat empire instead, so I have an excuse to blow up all the planets.

I think this ironman game of Stellaris is over. Y'know how I was terrified of Crisis before, but ended up crushing them? Well, they're terrifying again. More than a bit. And it's a long war of attrition I will lose. 600k+ defense fleet on a hub in the middle of my empire. And the largest combined fleet I can put together is about 250-300k. Cleary, in 2.0, that Crisis slider isn't joking. I could sit around, containing them. If you clear out one of their stations, they'll come back for it, park their fleet, and wait for a constructor. During which you can attack a different station. And they'll never move forward. Unless I make a mistake and end up getting jumped by a fleet. I could do that, for 300 years until repeatables let me make a dent in their defense fleet. I could. I won't. The most boring part about it is that's not even my containment strategy, I learned it after figuring out why the Contingency hadn't killed everyone else already. The rest of the galaxy is worse off than me, but even they're keeping the Contingency secure. They're just losing all their fleets while they're at it. So I don't even get to see them eat everyone up. It was an interesting run, but a boring middle, and such a letdown of an end. There was no upstart awakening, nor Khan awakening. 2200-2350 consisted of me having to fight multiple wars against 3 or 4 empires at a time. I lost a single uninhabited system once. 2350-2420 consisted of me looking at my shiny Colossus and Titan before trying it out on the most obnoxious of those aggressive attackers. The War In Heaven happened, and ended, shortly before the Contingency appeared. Without accomplishing much other than forcing a League of Non-Aligned to form.

Apocalypse I do not think I like Marauders, no sir. Had a crappy start, no primitive species close to me, only 2 planets that my cyborgs had more than 40% hab on and one of those is a 12. I'm surrounded by spiritualists. But on the upside, I have managed to get my fleet and tech up so that nobody attacks me. Instead my only neighbor who isn't a spiritualist rivaled me earlier and keeps sending Marauders after me. I actually fought off the first one. Now the second one comes and someone else nearby invited me to a war against our shared neighbor. So I have a marauder fleet twice the strength of my two combined fleets ravaging my systems and my only chance at making a friend appears. So now I'm fighting a war while being raided. What could go horribly wrong? On the plus side, I do have a claim on a primitive in the guy we'll war against. So my expansion plans are back on the table. I also have a ton of uncontested space to the south. The only other guy down that way doesn't completely hate me and is busy fighting a rebellion.

Yeah, but who wants to sort through the backseat of their car for one of those? That's where everyone else keeps theirs, right?

Xenonauts and Age of Wonders 3 are the only ones I don't have. I do wonder if it'd be worth it.

Some, perhaps quite a few, of us have become old farts who've abandoned mastery entirely. With talk of just wanting to relax, enjoy a story, or play a style without worrying about optimization being common enough. I know that I spend most of my gaming time with adventure games and visual novels. But I do also trek into action and strategy games, since most of the joints in my hand don't yet hurt from the moment I wake up until I go to sleep.

I finished Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth. Haven't done all the dream battles yet, but they're starting to feel like trial and error. I'll get to them eventually, probably. On to Chaos;Child! I was really excited for this one, it'll be my first Sci;Adv title that's not part of Steins;Gate. So far it's living up to my expectations with delightful characters, an interesting murder mystery, and hints at a conspiracy. The main character is so cringey it goes all the way to the other side and hits adorable.

Painkillers on Netflix. Ooh, it's got that guy in it who's in pretty much every sci-fi show out! And it's terrible. Like, I started watching it at 9 AM today, it's 3:20PM now. I've only made it 1 hour 20 minutes and can't stand to actively watch it. It's one of the dullest B movies I've ever seen. I simply can't stop myself from calling it out. From the time they are under fire, so they decide to jog away until the firing stops, to them spending like 10 minutes taking cover behind a single line of rusty barrels that couldn't stop a strong wind. The movie isn't futuristic at all, but for some reason one guy's very basic rifle scope does some weird scanning thing complete with obnoxious computer noises. Or how about the place it's paused now, where our hero has knocked some woman unconcious, but she's clearly smiling while laying on the floor as if thinking "oh yay, acting!" Edit: Onto Taking Earth. I have never seen acting this bad. It's like everyone barely knows how to speak english.

Moved to Computer and Console.

I think I'm nearing the end of Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth. It feels a lot more dramatic than the first one, or simply that there's not nearly as much downtime for the characters to goof around. There was one scene not long ago where the characters got to relax and be funny and it made me realize how much I missed those moments. Still, I really like this and am aching to go back and play the very first one. Also doing a bit of The Fall since Part 2 is out.

It helps. If you don't know why you like things, then it's harder to figure out what else you might like or to talk about it with other people.

My understanding is that THQ Nordic is just Nordic with a name change, not the old THQ. I'd be surprised if they had any of the management of THQ on staff, honestly.

I played a little bit of Mysteries of Westgate. I remember getting horribly bored of it quickly.

Radius on Netflix. I want to say it was good, but if anyone asks me to justify why, I wouldn't be able to say.

Quake 3 used to do it on Dreamcast, so no.

Went to the dentist. A tooth busted on Monday. I haven't been to a dentist in a while, but the checkup went better than expected. Only one cavity and it's too small to do anything with. But I need a deep clean and a crown for the busted tooth. With a quote that's making me take the idea of dental medical tourism seriously...

It's always the Contingency. There's this one little corner of space that has had the most hilarious trouble with unrest. It was once a pretty decent small-to-mid size empire. Now it's something like 6 or 7 different empires, most of which are only a single system. And the Contingency appeared smack dab in the middle of that. They're doing fabulous at cleaning up the borders, I tell you. And as usual, they end up appearing right in the middle of my empire, then right at the border between me and someone who hates me, and then only attack me from that position. I don't know how this keeps happening. Their last hub was over where my ally met the Caretakers. And they focused on attacking the Caretakers, so all is right with the galaxy. This is the strongest crisis I've ever faced, but I'm also fielding the strongest fleet I've ever had, due to a great willingness to go overcapacity. Now that I've destroyed all of the Contingency hubs attacking me and my allies, I've cleaned up the Caretakers and taken their space for myself, and I'm leaving the last one alive to clean up all those pesky empires that are trying to create a Federation against us. This game is turning me into a monster, I think. My Determined Exterminator allies don't seem too bothered by the Contingency. With the threats to our own empires resolved, they decided we should attack the largest empire left on our side of the galaxy. I can't say the same idea didn't occur to me, after all I was checking if I could demand vasslization a mere month earlier. Nope, too big. This should help.

Indifferent dumb. I generated a small number of flat whats.

For those asking about The Cloverfield Paradox, I'm 1:14 in. It's dumb.

I really enjoyed Altered Carbon. I won't be buying the blu-ray or anything, but I will binge a season 2 if it gets it. I'm on to The Cloverfield Paradox now.

I'm addicted. New game of Stellaris. I'm playing Driven Assimilators again, but the different thing about this one is I force spawned two Determined Exterminators. We're best friends! And have conquered over half the galaxy. With some temporary help from an Awakened Empire, we've crushed 3 out of 5 Fallen Empires, then turned on the AE and have crushed 4 of them. I have Machine World terraformed the Spiritualist Holy Worlds, leaving the Spiritualists with only a single world to seethe and rage upon. Currently trying to figure out how to get to and help a Machine Uprising a couple empires over. Federations are kind of funky. It's a federation of me and two Exterminators, but they tend to refuse to fight wars when one empire gets stuff and they don't. And they don't want anything if the empire we're fighting is far from them. Killing meatbags just isn't enough for them. So it has to be some neutral goal where nobody gains anything, like Humiliation or Liberation. Or... Vassalization. So I can conquer whoever I want, so long as I let the meatbags live serving me. This seems inappropriate for Exterminators. But it's working out for me because I get to take all the gains in the future when I eventually integrate. The real theme behind this campaign is organic zoos. I started the game trying to conquer empires before the exterminators did so I can save the inhabitants. And now that I've started Machine World terraforming everything, I'm moving the organics to habitats above their home systems. I also lucked out by getting The Preserve and have built my own preserve type system on a ringworld. These will be safe from the terraforming. By the time the game is over, there will be less than 20 of any organic species left. Aside from the three "best" specimens that I gave a full ringworld quadrant to. Fun thing about getting The Preserve is one of the Exterminators gave it to me. He was the main defender in a defensive war, so he could have kept it to himself. Such a nice gift.

Did someone say RANDOM Video Game News?!

This takes place before RDR by my understanding.