Monte Carlo

Am I the only dipstick who didn't find the hidden stash of juicy loot

^ For me, moral ambiguity is all about the dividend between "do I kill him and get the loot or let him go and get the XP?"

^ Yeah, but will there be tunnels? and fighting in tunnels?

Slowtrain, I love wargames. Tactics, strategy, what if? history. I don't like these ultra-violent FPS war shooters, I see them in a different genre completely. However, I'm of the Airfix generation, you know the WW2 model kits? I grew up with war comics, war movies, a lot of men in their late 40's onwards had actually been in the war. So I grew up with those stories too. So for me a game like Company of Heroes is a lot of very powerful, nostalgic stuff from my childhood made real on the PC.

I wanted to like Oblivion. I tried to like Oblivion. Oblivion is the type of game I SHOULD like. Big, open, non-linear, stats and quests, flaming swords and monsters. That's my stuff. But in the end, I couldn't do it. ^ +1

^ Yeah, I wonder if the PnP Dragon Age game uses the same mechanics, they make 2E AD&D look elegant.

^ Indeed, on the chat function it went: WTF WTF!!! DOOD WTF!! ??? as they tried to figure out this new smurf-tastic piece of spamming. I did manage to zero in a couple of arty strikes on exposed ground (that was sort of one of the inchoate ideas swirling around my ale-addled head when I started pumping points into jeeps), I think I blew up some scenery in an impressive piece of tactical indirect fire coordination. Anyway we won, although my jeeptruppen had nothing to do with it. Somewhere out there in CoH land there are some guys probably desperately wondering how to master jeep-spam. But the secret is mine

I think you're onto something: Medal of Moral Ambiguity. Although a tactics game where you channel money via shell companies in the 1980's might be a tad dull, although an Ollie North avatar would rock.

Don't want to bore you by putting on my military history head but a shed-load of UN units served with extreme distinction in Korea. It's an epic, if under-publicized, conflict. Vietnam tells it's own dramatic story, with yes valour by combatants on both sides.

Why not Medal of Honor: Korea or Medal of Honor: Vietnam?

Cronicler, many thanks for that detailed and very helpful post. I'm not using the DEX hotfix, am waiting for the patch. What should I do in the meantime?

^ Sword and Shield looks vanilla and not much fun, but actually it is. Bashing enemies to a pulp with a big metal disc and hurtling smugly into a wall of arrows knowing they'll bounce off is cool, as is being last man standing 99.9% of the time. Cheers MC

Ha ha ha. I have invented the newest CoH spam tactic. JEEP SPAM! Yes, spend thousands of manpower points swarming crappy, extremely fast but very frail units into enemy lines. As a tactic, it's rubbish. As a way of getting everybody else in the game going WTF? It's absolutely priceless.

^ Hmmm. There are so many Baldur's Gate influences... BG2 took you some distance from BG1. I'm pretty easy about it, but yeah the 'French' Orlesian accents are grating. Although the Zorro / Anitvan thing would get old quickly too. Rialto bay LOL! Like I said: Dragon Age 2: The Deeper Roads: Fighting In Tunnels has to be the way forward. Cool acronymn too... DA2:TDR:FIT = Teh Awesome!

Why do terrorists have such awful haircuts?

^ It depends, it would seem, on your Cunning score. I'm a level 2 with high Cunning and can get away with quite a lot but I'm aiming for the virtual ring-of-invisibility effect that level 4 gives you. I can't throw bombs at the moment at level 2 and Cunning of 26. Cheers MC

^ Mages are so rare and controlled in Ferelden that every other mob has several "Mercenary Mages" on tap, and every other hovel is a Blood Mage coven. Nobility hire mages to work as tutors. On street corners mages stand, openly, with a Sack 'O Quests. Honestly, the underground mage oppression thing reverberates through the game. It's like making a game about a famine that, when you boot it up, has a strong abundance of food theme. Whoever is in charge of the gate guard at Hogwart's needs relieving of their post!

Am finding that my Swiss-army knife rogue is working out OK, as long as your not looking for an uber-ninja build. I can do melee, good fire support with a bow, stealth grenadier is fun and I'm rich. I also have 65% of party damage.

This map of Thedas gives you some clues as to what DLC / XP / DA2 stuff might come next, especially when you think about the end-game postscript...

^ If it's any consolation, I tried that fight at level 8 on Normal and had my arse handed to me. OK, it was my first playthrough and I also fell foul of the, er, environmental peculiarities of that battle. I went away, came back at level 12 and returned the serve quite easily.

^ Gromnir and Alan have played 2H warriors more than I. They've bespoked them. However, having finished the entire game with Sten in my party continuously I have the scars to show how 2H warrior works. He's ironically a bit like the rogue - he relies on lots of modal powers and needs to pump more than two primes stats (CON, STR and WILL to recharge powers). My advice? It's pretty obvious, but boost armour as much as you can, plus your prime stats plus look carefully at your tactics tab so your stamina-sapping powers are used judiciously.

^ My impression is that Cunning, in combat, simply allows you to (a) increase your chance of a Crit and (b) reduce enemy armour reduction. It also allows me to disarm traps without putting any points into the skill, useful for low level XP harvesting.

I have already solved the DA mage balancing issue earlier in this thread. 'X' is Mage POWAZ and 'Y' is ridiculousness of Mage Apparel. X and Y rise in tandem until the game actually melts and distorts the space / time continuum. Honestly, mages should literally look like Mr Krusty off The Simpsons to balance their awesomeness. This would be an especially potent way of balancing the class in a MMO context.

OOOps, sorry Lucian please delete although my title was much better

Please continue, it was just getting fun on page 35 or something. MC