MrBrown

If I remember correctly, Caesar also aims to create a civilization that lasts. As he sees it, the NCR functioned best when it was still a de facto dictatorship under Tandi, and it's pre-war values of democracy and western individualism will eventually destroy it, like it destroyed the pre-war world. What Caesar is creating is a nation that values the whole over the individual. I still gotta check that speech victory over Lanius, though.

There are supposedly 110 caps placed in the game world, + any you get from bottles. Unless you rush through the game, it's kinda hard not to find lots of them. Pew Pew has a base DAM of 77 or thereabouts, btw. It's one of the most powerful weapons in the game.

I'll probably end up playing the old Fallouts again, just because New Vegas constantly uses their background music. It's a conspiracy, I tell you.

"For Auld Lang Syne" brought a tear to my eye.

RE: Lady killer and associated perks: Unpatched, you were able to use Confirmed Bachelor to get free repairs out of Major Knight. Talk about broken. It doesn't seem to be a bug though, since the dialogue seems to imply it. Recently, I've been attempting to break the game by getting the good equipment as early as possible. Currently I have a character that got a Gauss Rifle, Plasma Caster and the Intelligence Implant on level 1, and Reinforced Combat Armor MkII and the YCS/168 by level 2. Haven't tried getting power armor early, but I think it's possible. Power Armor training, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be.

I was walking around Primm and had just found a trail of frag mines I was disarming and taking. I got to the last one, it started going 'beep! beep! beep!' and suddenly I was in a conversation about bottle caps. As soon as the conversation ended, the mine blew off my legs. I was backing away from geckos, fell off a cliff, and he met me halfway on a ledge. He was hanging upside down during the conversation. It was pretty surreal.

Mixed feelings about Civ5. The new combat system alone makes me never look back to previous Civs', but as to how long I'll be playing 5, I dunno. It seems like there's only one or two ways to play the game efficiently, while in 4 there were several. 4 certainly had it's share of always-do-this strategies, but those were restricted to early game, where as in 5 infinite city spawning and trading post spamming is a strategy for the whole duration of the game, and seems to dwarf every other possibility. And while I'm talking about difficulty, it seems like the game only has 3 difficulties: very easy (1-4), easy (5-7), impossible (. In short, the difference between them doesn't really show. Maybe this is just an effect of not being able to see what techs the AIs have, which was the most obvious effect of the difficulty rating in Civ4. The AIs also lack in personality. Every game seems to bring about just two types, a) Sociopath bent on world domination and b) loser with a couple of cities. I certainly don't want the AIs to consciously make stupid choices because it's their "personality" (I'm looking at you, Tokugawa from Civ4), but it just doesn't feel like Civ when Gandhi is conquering the world and Montezuma likes you. Anyway, I do like the game and, as previous posters have said, will probably play more of it when there's more patches/expansions/whatever out. - MrBrown @ only 100+ hours of Civ5 so far.

Aah, japanese can get so touchy when they get critic from foreigners. He even quotes Jesus in the original letter, heh. Back when this rapelay debacle first surfaced, and the japanese gaming industry considered censuring the games, some adult gaming companies started banning foregin IPs from their websites, and all sorts of messages in the line of "if you don't understand our culture, get lost!" started appearing on the sites. And webforums, of course. It's all rather funny, really.

It won't add anything really useful to your party, no. Some of the jokes are funny. Your call.

What's wrong with a little funnies?

Frankly, I can't see this being any worse than games that depict realistic killing of people. Certainly there will be people to whom such a game will be one driving force that will lead to real acts. But for every such case there will be hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands? of people to whom a game will be just an afternoons fun in a normal life. An adult, healthy mind is always able to separate imagination and fantasies from reality. As for RapeLay itself, I played it back in 2006 or 2007 when a friend recommended it to me. Why? Well, I watch porn too. And I assume a healthy majority of this forum does too. Japanese have been making porn (and rape) games for a long time, but most of these are text adventure games with pictures; unmoving and 2D. RapeLay, and the creator company Illusion's games in general, tend to be 3D and involve more than clicking next and choosing whether to ejaculate inside or not. Anyway, the "rape simulation" part of the game involves the player moving the mouse in a circular motion, so that character will caress the women to get them excited enough for the sex scene. After it took about 10 minutes of wagging the mouse for the second girl, my wrist got tired and I just downloaded a save game crack from the net to get all the scenes. I swear, in some of Illusion's games, it's harder to get sex than in real life. I suppose some people would get excited from imagining a rape situation, but I doubt anyone enjoyed playing this. As for the sex scenes themselves, they were no different from typical porn scenes. Sure, the women cry and shout "no!", but they do so in just about any kind of japanese pornography. I suppose someone could write their doctorate on the cultural differences of depicting sexuality in pornography, but I think analysis of whether it's more right/realistic/whatever to go "please, no!" or "****! **** me more!" is kinda beyond this forum.

The blood talents (but not the items) from Warden's Keep, as well as the items from Return to Ostagar are supposed to transfer to Awakening.

That exactly was his explanation - you don't need them. I suspect the real reason for not including them is some sort of inter-company bureucracy.

DA is buggy in the romances. I had a male character who I tried to court Leliana with, and I ended up triggering relationship related banter from Morrigan (not so surprising) and Alistair (shouldn't even be possible) as well.

I played FF13 through a few weeks back, still got side-stuff to play. The combat system is great. It's basically a better version of FF12's system. Like all the reviews say, the game is more linear than the previous, meaning it has alot less sidequests and other stuff to do besides the main plot, and most of it comes late in the game. Still liked it though, probably for the combat system. The story is your typical character centric melodrama, so if that isn't your thing, skip all the cutscenes. And by the gods, thanks for the skip function... and they didn't add that until FF12. I used to leave FF10 running and go do something else while the teen-drama was going on.

Reading about the death mechanics almost made me give up playing it, but I'll probably give it a chance soon. How necessary are rogue-skills or arcane magic stuff in SoZ?

Hmm. While I liked party management ala BG and IWD, NWN2's UI doesn't really seem suited for it. Hopefully it'll be modified for this.

The Koreans and their vassals (the Japanese and the Babylonians) as well as the Egyptians only acquired Gunpowder a few turns ago, so I doubt they'd pose much threat even 4vs1. Elizabeth and Zara also dislike each other, so it might be wise to make them fight, or at least cut all deals, at some point. They're the biggest enemies, really.

I'm done. I'll report by topic rather than by turn. I researched Assembly Line and Fascism. I also got a Great Scientist, which I used to create an Academy at Crossroads Keep, the second highest commerce city. Traded for Scientific Method and Democracy from Elizabeth. I'd research Steel next, as that way we'd get Cannons instead of Trebuchets. Changed civics to Universal Suffrage and Emancipation. Also got the great general from Fascism, hasn't been used yet. Started building the Pentagon in Irvine, as I figured it'd be good for our future war efforts. Which we should be doing, since that's our best chance to win, besides score. Built Dikes all over the place, with the help of Universal Suffrage. They're just too good. Anyway, regarding the war effort... Messed up a couple of times. Hammurabi originally had only sligtly more defenses than in his last city, so it was just a question of how fast I could get my Trebuchets there. He tried to circle around with a Knight and a War Elephant, but no big deal. But I had forgotten about the 2nd explorer, which Hammurabi promptly killed, and got a Great General for it. It just delayed the inevitable anyway, and I razed Akkad... But not before he capitulated to Wang Kong, who declared war on me, along with his other vassal, Tokugawa. Not that they had much to attack with (2 Knights and 1 Galleon)... I eventually made peace with them, as I figured the distance from the Obsidian lands would make the war effort rather pointless. It'd be better to attack Egypt first. I placed the attack pile next to DOOM, near the Egyptian border. I also made a new city, to the place Enoch recommended. There were a couple of events, but nothing big. Anyway, the big question... City specialization. Geez, what a mess. Here's what I'd recommend doing with the cities, and what some of them are actually already doing: Irvine & Crossroads Keep - Commerce->Science. Cottages and Windmills (Windmills with Electricity give +2 commerce, +1 with Financial). Oxford and Wall Street should go to these cities, slightly depending on whether you'll be continuing with Bureucracy. DOOM - Commerce, and science if you're going to play with more than 50% of commerce going into it. Port Avellone - Specialists. Farms. Peragus & Meatytown - Hammers->Armies. The other cities aren't that specialized yet, I think. So, anything to ask? Or did I mess up anything? GodEmperorFeargusAD_1750.zip

Okay, will do in 3-4 hours.

I'll take a shot at it, if there are no objections?

Actually, they revamped the AI for BtS, so it should be exactly the opposite... and I have been finding it such as well. Maybe you've been playing against AI with personalities that don't trade much? Also, Noble is the default, average, difficulty setting... I have no idea why everyone seems to prefer Prince though. I might also be interested in playing Civ4, but not a succession game. Pvp for me.

Transmutation.

Inferior in stats, but their hair options are just too funny to not try one.

Apparently not... IIRC some dev said so at the Bio boards. It's different from PnP. Basically... BAB's at level 30: High PnP: 25/20/15/10 MotB: 30/25/20/15/10/5 Medium: PnP: 20/15/10 MotB: 22/17/12/7/2 Low: PnP: 15/10 MotB: 15/10/5 So, it's a rather big boost to warrior-types, with little change for others. Well, all in all, it does come down to what Gromnir says; the fixed range for randomization means it just doesn't work with the huge level range. EDIT: I don't care one way or another myself, really. I think a CRPG is going the wrong way from the point it starts trying to implement a PnP set literally anyway.