Monte Carlo

Maybe I'm lucky but I've had quite a dramatic performance improvement, much less jerky than before *and* I'm running on settings a bit higher than my rig should really be handling.

Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, and as somebody who has the technical ability of a potato, my opinion is that modders are gods in the gaming firmament. As somebody who plays mods for virtually all of their games (BG series, Medieval TW, Close Combat, NWN2, JA2) I'd like to say thanks for all the time and effort they put into them. They are grealty appreciated. Cheers MC

Am I missing something? Looks like any other sci-fi shoot-em-up. What's so special? Cheers MC

Games can be art, and good art too. If half a shark encased in a plastic tank of phormaldahyde can be art then so can a game. That's the way I see it. It can only be a matter of time before somebody enters a game into an art competition, after all it would basically be a digital installation project. A rendering of a Taliban fortress using a gaming engine that you can explore a la Quake has already been entered into an exhibition. As for PS:T, it's subjective, of course. I didn't enjoy PS:T as much as others because the "interactive novel" approach, requirement to understand elements of the Planescape setting (which sort of leaves me cold) and that game's propensity to take itself rather seriously all run against my personal tastes (tactics, humour, hack'n'slash). Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that a game as different as PS:T was so popular and that so many people were inspired by it. It just didn't do it for me. It's musings on deep and meaningful stuff left me cold. Cheers MC

If we create an 'X' and 'Y' curve with 'X' being IWD where tactics reign supreme, with 'Y' being Planescape, which is more about plot and characters and interaction (and eye-strain), I'm putting BG2 in the 65% 'X' curve part of my imaginary chart. For me that's about right. Getting that balance is difficult because lots of people here wuod prefer 50/50 or even more. Problem is that the multitudes prefer, I strongly suspect, my end of the spectrum. Well, there is an answer. The game ships with a nifty toolset. People can make their own Planescape-like RPG or their own Diablo-like hack'n'slash. I am still playing BG2 thanks to the frankly saint-like BG2 modding community (bows extremely respectfully). OK, the game I'm playing bears little resemblance to the original, modded to the gunwhales as it is, but it's all part of the fun. I like developing five or six characters exactly the way I like them, and controlling precisely what they do in battle. I'm sorry, but NPC spellcasters still blow chunks in NWN games. In IE games they don't, and if they do it's my fault. My biggest regret is that the TuTu-like mod that was going to allow BG2 to be played with the IWD2 sort-of-3E engine was never released (IceWind Gate). If it were released commercially I'd pay for it. Cheers MC

Given the small number of real allies the US has left, the criminally inept post-war planning by the Pentagon, the fact that the UK always steps up to the plate and that we have spent considerable blood and treasure in Iraq your comment is remarkably crass and insulting. The reflex "hates freedom" line is especially telling. And bunk. I find it the incipient anti-Englishness of certain Americans. You invoke the Boston tea-party yet expect slavish loyalty. Back to politeness school, young man.

[boardcop] What has this got to do with the topic. Go get a room. [/boardcop]

I have a cult based loosely on Ganstourm the Godslayer's (a mad half-orc warlord-chieftan) twisted take on Trotskyism after he spent a year in the wilderness with Major General Anatoly Susenov and his batman from the Urals, Sasha. The two Russians from the Nuclear weapons programme were a bit bewildered at first, but quickly found that life at the court of Ganstourm was remarkably similar to that of the Politburo, albeit with more horned helmets and drinking out of skulls. Together they harnessed magic, radiation and strange long-forgotten technology to forge the God-Slaying weapon from which Ganstourm would take his nom de guerre. The existence of gods angered the Communist visitors strong atheist views and they enabled the half-orc to possess God-Slaying weapons. Ironically, exposure to the heavily radioactive weapons eventually slew Ganstourm, but not before he declared himself a living god and executed his Soviet friends for heresy. Ganstourm's cult, The God-Slayers, think that by slaying the religious elites of other religions, they will ascend themselves to become divine. The Big Secret is the Ganstourm derived his powers from godless technicians. This is only known to the High Priest of the Cult, who worries about it quite a lot. He's like the Wizard of Oz. But bigger. Magic-Users are very rare and only hail from areas where there were no radiation. Radiation, has, however, begat quasi-psionic powers unto a select few. Both psions and magic-users (even rarer, now only hailing from one protected city state that was relatively unaffected by the blast) are however directly blamed for the apocalypse and are ruthlessly hunted down by grim, uber-religious inqusitors. Anarchists plot nihilistic acts of terror is the basements of alehouses. Adventurers make fortunes hunting pre-war artefacts in long-forgotten dungeons and aboard the rusting hulks of dead gods. In the East, ranks of living dead relentlessly storm a huge defensive wall guarded by vast, mercenary armies. I like all the ideas though. However, I'm keeping my mad soviet nuclear scientists, they amuse me. Cheers MC

Then do yourself a favour and play them, they are consistently underrated, and although they are dungeon crawls (which, for me, is a Good Thing in of itself) the stories and NPCs are obviously much-loved by the writers and shine through anyway. OK, HoW isn't the best expansion pack ever, but combine it with TotL and you have a really solid 2E AD&D adventure. As for IWD2, I though it was more fun than a sack of kittens, couldn't understand people who didn't like it. A solid 8.5 / 10 for me. Give them a go, they are classics. Personally, I am heartened to see devs referencing the Infinity Engine / BG games in their comparisons with this NWN2 XP. This can only be positive, I am currently playing BG2 in an insanely-modded high-level game and loving the tactics. Cheers MC

No, it isn't a shortcoming of D&D per se, it's just an unavoidable consequence of having to shoehorn a tabletop system into a computer game played by thousands of people with totally divergent ideas of what constitutes a cool character. If I were the DM in a game where the guy had created a multi-class Genasai Ftr/Cleric of those levels then the spirit of the tabletop game would almost demand that I create proportionate challenges that don't insult the player nor make life too easy for them. Alternatively, I'd have said "look, in this campaign this isn't really an acceptable character." I actually feel sorry for developers who have to ride the D&D horse over the hurdles of making a computer game. They can't win. The sooner a system bespoked for CRPGs comes to the fore the better. I like D&D on the computer, but I'd happily play something designed specifically for the medium as long as it was challenging, convincing and (above all) fun. Still looking forward to MotB. Cheers MC

^ Ah, The Hands of Fury. Yes, it probably was, but you challenged my inner-munchkin with the 10 DEX rogue and my inner-munchkin won

Hello. Although I don't really play much tabletop D&D anymore, I still tweak my homebrew campaign world. This is mainly because one day I will put it on a website for anybody who wants to take a look at it satisfy their curiosity and maybe use bits of it for themselves. I won't bore you with too much of it. People who talk too much about their homebrew campaign worlds can be a bit like those people at work who tell you about their dreams, which invariably aren't as interesting / disturbing (etc) as your own. It's a pretty old-skool, combat-heavy, low-magic type of place heavily influenced by old RPGs like RuneQuest and Arduin (see my previous post on the subject). However, the central premise, which I know isn't wildly original but is quite interesting is this: Take one relatively vanilla, high fantasy world with magic and orcs and all that stuff. Then get a group of apocalyptic baddies to drop and fifty kiloton nuclear device on it (which they had obtained courtesy of extra-planar travel from a group of Soviet scientists in an alternative 1980's, some of whom came back with the apocalyptic baddies). So, yeah, I've thrown some Gamma World and Morrow Project (MP really reminded me of Fallout before Fallout was actually Fallout) but avoided anything remotely Darksun. The world is a few hundred years after the bomb (which, of course, they didn't realise was a bomb). So, on to the point of my post: What would you expect to see in such a setting, and why? Cheers MC

I have to agree with Sawyer. It's a bit like playing a Close Combat game and complaining that your all-armour battlegroup is struggling without infantry and is getting it's arse handed to it by twelve guys with panzerfausts. Or playing a Total War game and wondering why your all-infantry army is decimated by archers before it closes in on the enemy ranks. I know people here seem to like high levels of role-playing, but a game dictated primarily by dialogue decisions influenced by the appropriate soft skill choices is as predictable as an all-combat game dictated by min-maxing and optimal power-gaming. NWN2, like NWN before it, allows non-D&D mentats to click on a "suggested build" button to create an optimal character with no worries whatsoever. Furthermore, D&D isn't actually that difficult from a tactical POV..... build a single-class character and you can't really go wrong in 3E, it's quite paper-scissors-stone. TBH, all the prestige-class character builds people love to construct confuses me... but I view it as one of those things you can indulge in if you want and ignore if you don't. Why not just have loads of characters that the developers enjoyed playing through the game with as playable builds you can choose right from the start, like in IWD2 where you could choose a whole party. Make them easy / intermediate / advanced. I played through IWD2 with one of the pre-generated parties, but is has to be said not Sawyers which had a dwarf rogue with a dexterity score of 10 IIRC. As somebody who likes the ruleset I'm getting a bit tired of relentless dumbing down to pander to people who can't actually be arsed to understand what it is they're actually playing. Cheers, MC

I think the key to getting people like me to play online RPGs is to vet all the people you let in, not unlike the snobby resident's committee of a swish upper Manhattan apartment building. OK, so my online realm would only turn over a hundred bucks a month, and there would only be about four people on it with an interest in hex-based wargames, Cuban cigars, sniper rifles and beer but at least we'd all be on the same page.

In the background on itunes is, usually (in no particular order): The Barenaked Ladies The Pretenders The Killers KT Tunstall The Manic Street Preachers Lloyd Cole and the Commotions The Rolling Stones The best of Lenny Kravitz Paolo Nutini Evanesence (I have a mid-life crisis crush on Amy)

Hello. Have just finished watching England's first game versus the USA. Some thoughts. 1. Our forwards are too old. Experienced, yes, but the Eagles clearly had a more dynamic team up front. The score really didn't reflect the performance (not uncommon in Rugby I think). England won because we have been doing this longer than the Americans, nothing more and nothing less. Vickery's foul was disgraceful, he deserved ten minutes in the Sin Bin and the Eagles deserved a try. 2. Our backs are our strength. The US has the right idea, but need more discipline and technique. It will come, bejaysus they have some big players. Not surprising from the land of American Football and Ice Hockey. Ditch those pads and hockey sticks! 3. My beloved England, who I have supported man and boy for thirty years (I am nearly forty) will get their arses handed to them on Friday by the South Africans if they don't buck their ideas up. It will be a grisly grudge match and I commend it to you all. We are not playing like the world champions, the English curse across our team sports is teams relying heavily on one player's exceptional talent (I remember Rob Andrew playing a similar role to Wilkinson in the 80's / early 90's). Look at football... Rooney and before him Beckham (etc). 4. I don't really follow American rugby, but my friends who are still operational tell me that it has a cult following, not surprisingly in the military. The Eagles clearly have the potential to be a world-class team who could (eventually) seriously challenge southern hemisphere hegemony in the game. They should rise to the challenge and I implore Americans to adopt the game and see it as another way to forge relations with Europe and beyond. Your team did you proud today, despite losing. I know that might seem strange to Americans, but losing with honour is possible. 5. Usually, Italy is my 'second team' after England. After today's performance, The Eagles will vie for that place. Good luck, USA! Cheers MC

^ The way forward there is to goad them into attacking you. Or kick off rebellions in their more fractious cities using assassinations of family members (using spy / assassin combos to take out morale-boosting / public order keeping buildings like races, barracks, government facilities and taverns is a good start for the very patient). Park massive fleets near their key ports hampering movement, march dirty great armies up and down their borders and near geographic choke points. Take any rebel provinces they hold dear, bribing or attacking them. Hopefully the Pope will then excommunicate them. Start paying the Papacy big bribes every turn, declare war on the Pope's enemies and basically suck up to him as much as you can. Build churches, hire lots of clergy, initiate Crusades. Most of the MTW2 gameplay triggers are very much "under the hood" and finding out what they are is all part of the fun. Cheers MC

^ Sorry to teach you to suck eggs if you already know, but start reducing troop numbers (in MTW2 quality always trumps quantity) and convert some of those fortresses that aren't on your front lines into more profitable towns. Ports / Markets / Roads are the way forward.

^ I haven't found it yet if there is one, and I'm too macho to read games manuals.

The TOEE combat engine rocks, it really does. And there it is, stranded in that awful game, doomed forever like bars of gold in the Titanic's cargo hold. Somebody should build a D&D Tactics game using that engine, they really should. It's the best TB combat engine I've ever played. Cheers MC

Spent a few hours pottering away with the Americas and am pleasantly surprised. Initially, because the historical setting is of little interest to me, I was a bit "meh" about this campaign and thought I'd suffer it for the other three. Actually, it's great. Lots of exploration and strategic and tactical challenges (i.e. it's all very well having good cavalry and firearms units but when the enemy outnumber you twenty-to-one you have to start thinking). You can build up interesting alliances with the Mesoamericans and then get them fighting amongst one another whilst you are plundering their natural resources like tobacco, gold and chocolate. The Aztec and Mayan units are crazy-looking. It's like getting attacked by endless waves of multi-coloured clowns, scarecrows and fancy-dress dudes! Cheers MC

Whoah, brother! D&D is a broad church. Personally, I love mindless dungeon crawls. Absolutely love them. You need something to break up the meaningful NPC dialogue and intense plots you lot seem so obsessed by I will happily meet you halfway, though. Mindless dungeon crawls (or MDC if we want a new three-letter-acronym) should be optional and not critical path. You can avoid them, I will POWAGAEME my way through them. Cheers MC

Yes, just had a couple of hours playing Kingdom of Jerusalem. I'd say that as a campaign it has (a) the most intriguing unit roster (specifically the levies and warrior orders of crusader knights, including Constable of Jerusalem heavy cavalry) and (B) probably the largest campaign map. Factions are; KoJ, Kingdom of Antioch, Turkey, Byzantium and Egypt. King Baldwin the Leper is I suppose my hero unit but he's basically a very good general (starts with two stars short of maximum). I'm a few turns off of Richard the Lionheart rocking up, which should happen by 1212 or thereabouts I suppose. The AI seems better, but then again it might be the sharper distinction in unit types, i.e. Franks v. heavy units and Muslim factions light skirmishers / mounted archers. Seems even more noticable than in the vanilla game. There are more trade options, spying is significantly tougher, you get jihads thrown at you from Turn 2. I'm playing Hard / Hard. The music is great, same as the original but I love the Muslim faction battle music. The lighting seems different in this campaign, almost a golden light filtering through the battle scenes. Dunno if it's tweaked but it looks nice. Like I said, this game does what vanilla MTW2 can't do which is focus in on historically specfic scenarios that might not pan out in the campaign game. It's apples and oranges as to which is better, but I'm enjoying myself so far. I just wish I had more time to play! Cheers MC

I'm a bit annoyed that the improvements for Kingdoms do not port over into the Grand Campaign and that you have to mod it instead (as above). Anyway, I have tinkered with the Teutonic and Britannia campaigns and they are very good. The strategic challenges on the main map are quite tough if you are, for example, the Teutonic Order. This part of the game is much stronger than the combat which is very much like the vanilla version but with more, newer units. Basically I am paying five pounds per very large, polished, strategically challenging mod. So I am quite happy, there are many hours of Total War gaming in this XP. Incidentally, like others here, I think they should be remaking Shogun, not TW: Empires. Naval battles and the 18th Century leave me completely cold. It's a shame that the rumoured Tolkien-themed TW game that was murmured of years ago came to nothing, that would have rocked (anybody remember the SPI tabletop wargames based on LotR?). Will add a review of the Britannia mod this weekend, but my initial feelings are that if you love Medieval then there is no reason not to love this XP... it's main strength is developing the strategic aspect of the game, really providing circumstances and choices that are much more period and faction specific. Cheers MC

One cool feature is that you can install any of the campaigns independently with their own desktop icons. Each campaign has it's own quirks, i.e. the English face the possibility of organised internal revolt (a bit like in the original MTW) the Teutons cannot build massive cities but can attract the Hanseatic League to earn big bucks, Aztecs can sacrifice captured armies to increase loyalty in their cities (etc). I'm a bit nervous about the "Hero Units" (i.e. historical commanders), I associate hero units with crappy cartoony Warcraft-type games. We'll see how they pan out here. Cheers MC