Monte Carlo

Hi, I'm in the mood for a space trader / exploration game, the last one I played being Elite. On a very old computer. What examples of the genre are worth a look? They don't have to be very new, any age / tech specs welcome. Cheers in advance, MC

It's quite good fun in a "beer and pizza multi-play with your mates" kinda way. Hey, it's Gauntlet. But snazzier.

Yes, it ports all those features across. You also need the Retrofit mod. Kingdoms is already bargain bin and worth it for the new material, especially The Crusdades campaign and the Americas (which is awesome). This mod greatly expands the New World section of the vanilla game too. Am looking forward to storming the Americas with the Royal Navy in the late 1400's! I'm not very technical but I followed the instructions and it took me five minutes and worked first time out of the box. One of the things I'm most impressed about is mod stability and lack of bugs - I've found one minor one that mucks up a character name on floating text - very small beer given the scope of this piece of work.

OK, here is the Portuguese order of battle / situation at Turn One (1180 AD). Note that this is for a game on Medium / Medium difficulty settings, it might well be different if you play at harder levels. REGIONS: Lisbon (Capital) King Afonso* (complete with The Crown of Galicia and Portugal - +1 Command / +2 Defence / +3 Authority / +2 Law) Garrison: Some spears and crossbow units and a squadron of feudal knights Oporto Johao Enriques Garrison: Some spears and crossbow units, another captain is lurking nearby with some Jinettes Other Units Prince Sancho (faction heir) with three milita spear untis and two corssbow units Princess Maria Henriques (three hearts) One spy, one Cardinal but I couldn't see a diplomat! Of note is that resource-wise, Portugal only has three tin mines and some marble. It's also flanked by Spain and the Moors, both in a more favourable strategic position! Hope that is of some help. * Bearing in mind that we are dealing with ruthless Medieval tyrants, all of the monarchs in the mod seem to start with pretty impressive stats and are accomplished warriors. Cheers MC

I don't know about Portugal TBH, the readme is pretty sketchy. There's almost certainly more regions than before (I just bumped into Utrecht, for Chrissakes, en route to Lithuania on a Crusade). As England, on H/H it's going to take easily 70+ turns to take out the Scots & Irish. There's a "rush to the walls" feature whereby civilians form ersatz milita to defend their city. For example, I put a full stack army on Edinburgh, garrisoned by a few units of highlanders and archers. Suddenly, there's a full stack of one and two chevron pikemen etc. Hmmm. It's realistic, i.e. to win a siege you need 2:1 manpower advantage. I've decided to give myself a break and try out some Medium Campaign / Hard Battles options instead! It's very addictive, like playing a new game in fact. It does for MTW2 what Total Realism did for Rome in my humble, and then some. Cheers MC

No. Bioware doesn't really do it for me anymore, and they can stick their intrusive copy protection too.

Despite loving the Total War series, the only mods I've ever really used are Rome: Total Realism and the Retrofit Mod for MTW2. I'm now using the MTW2: Kingdoms Grand Campaign Mod (hereafter referred to as "The Mod" for brevity). This is by a chap called BossDave, and kudos to him because is really is rather good. In fact, it's better than that... it's the game I really wanted MTW2 to be after Kingdoms came out. Although Kingdoms is good, it's really four large mods bundled together. Not allowing the improvements to convert into the vanilla game seemed a bit, well, crap. As a Creative Assembly fanboy I was upset. In a nutshell, the creator has decided to apply the best bits of Kingdoms to the vanilla MTW2 Grand Campaign without unbalancing or spoiling the spirit of the original. In this he has done extremely well. All the units from Kingdoms are there, plus new banners / titles for your generals (a la MTW1) as well as new regions and factions with the "big map" modification. The mod starts in 1180, is about 600 turns long and allows you to play as the Teutonic Knights, Jerusalem, Antioch as well as Ireland and Lithuania. The Papacy doesn't like making allies with you, the diplomacy is much tougher. I've started a game as England (Hard/Hard) and I'm immediately plunged into a battle of survival with the Irish and Scots invading and trying to make an alliance with France. It's very tough, but in a fun way. Ireland has four or five regions, Wales is now two (Cardiff / Canearvon) and Scotland is bigger. The pace of the game is slower and more considered. In all, it rocks and is very stable. No crashes or obvious bugs yet - just follow the instructions carefully. You can find it HERE. Cheers MC

Who needs romances when you've got dinosaurs? Unless you want dinosaur romances. Which would be wrong on so many levels.

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Krezack, I think your point is well made. BG2's plot is what I'd call "loop-the-loop linear" (i.e. we're all ending up at the same destination just via slightly different aerobatic moves). Imagine if the Throne of Bhaal had two completely separate end battles depending on your decisions? I'd have happily given up a lot of the other content for that. Having said that, I still see it as a paragon of CRPGs. Why? Simple - it's generosity of spirit. Bioware tried, heroically, to be give almost everything you'd want from a D&D computer game. It was vast, it had loads going on, it was completely over-the-top and we all loved it. The fact that people are still modding it and playing it eight years on (I still have a game on the go, although I only play for about an hour a month, so I got pretty good value for money out of it!) says it all. Nobody would describe it as perfect. But it was a fantastic attempt at getting there, and no single CRPG since has given me the same stay-up-all-night buzz. IWD 1 & 2, were they bigger with joinable NPCs would have been close, but no cigar. Cheers MC

Unfinished Business is a bit disappointing, TBH. It does, however, introduce the Barratt Light Fifty to the game so it's not all bad.

...and you're rude too. Bravo.

You quote Wikipedia as a source? Please tell me you're not a history major.

NWN2 (Human, Chaotic Neutral Greatsword-wielding Fighter / Barbarian... an archetype but one i've not played for ages). Medieval Total War 2 (Retrofit Mod) I never get bored of playing as England. Am currenty being deliberately contrary and making big buddies with France (turn 130), anticipating late era, high-tech total war all over central Europe. That's it, really. Am busy with R/W stuff. Am looking to install IWD2 for another go, strangely growing on me as one of the best IE games and I enjoyed hanging out on the BIS boards during it's development a few years ago. Am looking forward to: Fallout 3 (sue me, am sure I'll enjoy it more than the first two, so sue me again) Dragon Age Total War: Empires (altho' I'm not interested in naval battles) NWN2 XP2

^ Adding to that, a "Merchant Venturer" prestige class, a bit of a dialogue / lore based rogue with fighter powaz to reflect his rugged out-doorsy retail environment. I'm thinking a bard but with an abacus instead of a lute. Every party needs one.

Obviously, the Returning Frost Dart must, er, return. Apart from that, if we are having jungle adventures I'd say: * Big rubber snakes a la the first Conan movie, preferably in temples, guarded by cultists drinking from cauldrons full of limbs * General Apocalypto style craziness * Poison gas, rolling boulders, Aztec-style temples, blow-guns * The ability to paint my character in black and white zebra-camouflage, a bit like Conan when he's fighting the Big Rubber Snake * If we can be merchants I want a haggling mini-game based on multiple factors / skills / attributes / kama so I can choose to become uber-merchant and sell dead beetles for immense sums of money * A more realistic romance / marraige option where your 'lover' leaves you, takes both your horses, your best suit of armour and boils your familiar before claiming your castle too

^ Isn't that a Feat in 4E D&D?

The new NWN2 expansion pack makes something extremely strange but potentially cool very, very possible: We could actually make a mod that tries to make a D&D version of Jagged Alliance 2, set somewhere in the FR. Build a team of mercs. Take locations and hold them. Buy and sell stuff to buy better mercs. Queen Dedrianna as a D&D NPC, holed up in a fortress with her henchman Elliot (who is an idiot). We could even McGuyver a sort of magical-internet GUI to pass instructions! OK, it might suck and I've the technical skills of a housebrick but I'm prepared to write dialogue. Who's in? Cheers MC

This is another good point beyond my innate hatred of romances in CRPGs. Development time writing soppy romances versus, say, a new exploding head animation, witty one-liner or interesting magic item? Hmmm.

Because they are tragic. Just knowing that a romance script exists offends my sensibilities. In other news... Wahey!

Hmmm. Jungles. Baddies. Party building. Exploration. Buying and selling stuff. NPCs. I'm thinking Jagged Alliance 2 with swords and crossbows. Yay!

Oh, just a quickie, does it mention if the new wilderness content / functionality will be in the toolset or is it stuff that's there already? Am looking forward to some awesome mods if this is the case.

I am pleased. It would appear that there is still hope. This sounds right up my street, a sort of D&D tactics / trading / exploration game. Cool. It was as if they sat down and thought "how do we make a XP for NWN2 specifically for Monte Carlo's birthday?" I shall now re-install NWN2 and buy myself a copy of MotB in anticipation. I'm almost..... excited. Wow. Cheers MC

I love BG2 to bits. I really do. It's the first game I install on any new 'puter. However, it's just a fact that the BG2 NPCs aren't as good as the BG1 NPCs, ironic really given how much extra dialogue they get. I almost always end up with a similar party. OK, I did play a "Team Gimp" game with the less popular NPCs almost all the way to Throne of Bhaal, but I ended up deleting it. Bad Haircut Teifling, Aerie, Druid-Boy etc are no way near as good as Shar-Teel, Tiax or Xan (and i'm not talking about stats, just general coolness). And leaving out Coran was actually the worst game design decision since the Pool of Radiance OS killa bug. Note to Modders - rather than self-indulgent fan-fic whimsy when it comes to making NPCs, why not just recreate the best BG1 NPCs to the quality of, say, Kelsey? That would rock. Cheerio MC

It's not awesome, given that he has the combat ability of a pigeon. He get's insta-chunked in about three rounds, leaving only a 1980's pop band haircut as a reminder that he ever existed. Cheers MC