What are you playing now?

[Shryke]

Oblivion still. I installed some nice nature mods. The scenary looks great.

 

hehe i've picked up many strange habits in that game

 

only ever fighting zombies with my fists

chasing down deer and trying to get them to run off cliffs to their deaths

always jumping on dining tables and kicking cutlery everywhere

jumping from rooftop to rooftop trying to avoid the ground for as long as possible

never ever ever ever killing Mr Snips (aka mudcrabs)

[Enoch]

More Civ4:BTS. I lost interest in my Darius game, and restarted as Hannibal. (Whose trait combination and excellent unique building probably makes him the best leader in the game, if you can manage to get most of your cities on the coastline.)

 

Anyhow, the game is on a Standard size map, Fractal map script, Epic speed, at Monarch difficulty, with the default 7 civs. Drew a very nice starting area. My continent is shaped like this:

 

  |
 |
--------*

Elizabeth is in the far north with the Zulus just south of them, and, West to East, are the Aztecs, the Russians (Stalin), the Greeks (Alexander), and Me, Carthage, where the * is. The Incas are the other Civ, and they have their own island that is reachable by Galley to the NW of Aztec lands. It's a very aggressive slate of opponents (Alex, Monty, Shaka, and Stalin are all complete bastards), but my starting position will let me take them on one at a time.

 

So, I scouted out my area and managed to place my first city quite close to Greece, near the only copper resource I could find (Iron would later show up next to Carthage). That and a barbarian city that popped up to my SW helped focus Alexander's expansion towards the Russians in the West, and left me lots of room (with lots of luxury resources) to settle peacefully. I even built a couple early Wonders, which is unlike me. Stonehenge and, most importantly, the Great Lighthouse are both in Carthage. The Lighthouse (+2 trade routes in coastal cities) is absolutely godly on maps where you can build lots of ports (which I have), especially when combined with Carthage's unique building (replaces Harbor, +50% trade route yield, +1 trade route). I avoided founding a religion so that I can pick the one that will help me most diplomatically. Thus, Stalin's Buddhism (ha!) has become the dominant religion in every civ but England (Confuc.) and Incaville (Hindu).

 

But I got a little too focused on my internal development in the early "Classical" period and let my "power" rating slip. Alexander invaded. I beat his invasion force back pretty quickly, and fought to a stalemate for a bit while I finished a few important technologies and built up my forces. My kickass trade routes had given me a strong tech lead. Once I had some Catapults on-line (and razed his Iron Mine), he started to crumble. I eventually let him capitulate with 2 cities left along the Southern coast. As for the others, Stalin and Shaka (my best buddies) have been at war with Liz on-and-off. Monte has had an occasional scrape with the Incas, but I don't think that any cities have changed hands (the Trireme I sent scouting found them both contained on their repsective sides of the sea separating their homelands.

 

Now, I'm rebuilding my infrastructure and building up a strong lead in technologies. The Incas are my only real threat as a tech rival (the other Buddhists are drowning in unit costs and Liz is perpetually besieged due to her heathen Confucianism), but they don't have the land area to support a particularly large population. This may be the first time I've had this strong a lead this early on a Monarch level game. Now I have to decide if I want to play out the string peacefully and shoot for space, or leverage my tech lead into a military juggernaut that will roll over Stalin and Shaka for a Domination victory.

Edited March 24, 2008 by Enoch

[Pidesco]

Must shake urge to install CIV....

[Musopticon?]

Uh-huh.

 

I have yet to buy the expansions, in fear of addiction.

[Pidesco]

Actually after Enoch made his other earlier CIV post I installed the game and BTS almost immediately. I then suffered a bout of extreme guilt and responsibility, and uninstalled it about two minutes after starting it up. Maybe I'm getting old.

[Musopticon?]

Tell me about it, I've had an urge to install Rome:Total War and a ton of mods ever since I took a hiatus about year ago, but each time I insert the cd into the drive and the Gold edition autostart screen pops up, I suffer a guilty episode, harking back to a year of doing next to nothing except playing Total Realism, posting about it here. And I just can't bear an addiction of that magnitude again.

 

4x games should be given to players only with prescription.

[Enoch]

My addiction problems are mostly kept in check by the fact that I don't enjoy the endgame very much. I come back to the game every few months, but eventually the tedium of the late game drive me away again.

 

 

Addendum to the scenario above: I am starting to get worried about Stalin. He seems to like me well enough in diplomacy, but he has a very large army that has just come back from war with Elizabeth, and I've caught a couple spies lurking around my territory that I think are his. I have recently gotten my second good production city up and running (it took a while to carve it out of some former-jungle) with the Heroic Epic, so that town is producing units non-stop to boost my Power rating and deter an invasion. I may not get any time to play tonight (have to do some shopping and make some tapenade to bring to an office potluck tomorrow), but when I fire it up again, I'll try to post a screenie or two to further tempt you all.

[Tale]

Uh-huh.

 

I have yet to buy the expansions, in fear of addiction.

I love Beyond the Sword. I hate that I suck at it.

[Llyranor]

My favorite 4X is still MOO2. Civ4 was loads of fun, especially in co-op, but it didn't end having as big an impact to me.

 

I'm thinking about picking up Civ Revolutions on DS when it comes out. Civ in portable format, hmmm. Not sure if that's such a great idea, though.

[Pidesco]

It's instant life destroying addiction that you can carry anywhere with you. If I had a DS, I know I wouldn't buy it.

[Tale]

I'd be heavily surprised if the portable version played anything like the full fledge. Has anyone read up on it?

[Llyranor]

Apparently the 360/PS3/DS versions are all supposed to be exactly the same in terms of gameplay. They've probably been streamlined/'simplified' compared to the main series, though.

 

To be on-topic, I just ordered DMC4 for 360 and Nanostray 2 (shmup) for DS.

Edited March 24, 2008 by Llyranor

[Deadly_Nightshade]

I'm playing "update video drivers," and then "test them out and see if there is any bugs."

[Bokishi]

I'm playing "update video drivers," and then "test them out and see if there is any bugs."

 

my favorite game lol

[Pidesco]

I am now playing BTS and it's clearly, everyone's fault but me.

[Dark_Raven]

Fallout.

[SteveThaiBinh]

With the transitioning-with-familiars/animals fixed, I'm revisiting NWN2 as a druid. He's neutral good, and I'm having trouble keeping him from going too lawful to stay a druid.

I don't want to have him work for Moire, so I just need to do the Watchman route without being particularly law-abiding.

[Gorth]

With the transitioning-with-familiars/animals fixed, I'm revisiting NWN2 as a druid. He's neutral good, and I'm having trouble keeping him from going too lawful to stay a druid.

If you have Qara in your party, you should be able to get a few chaotic points by agreeing with her actions in general.

 

Edit: The merchant with the imps at the Academy should also be able to provide you with a bit of chaos.

Edited March 25, 2008 by Gorth

[SteveThaiBinh]

Thanks.

[Pidesco]

And that's one Civ game done... It's now 2 in the morning.

[CoM_Solaufein]

Oblivion still. I installed some nice nature mods. The scenary looks great.

 

hehe i've picked up many strange habits in that game

 

only ever fighting zombies with my fists

chasing down deer and trying to get them to run off cliffs to their deaths

always jumping on dining tables and kicking cutlery everywhere

jumping from rooftop to rooftop trying to avoid the ground for as long as possible

never ever ever ever killing Mr Snips (aka mudcrabs)

I like watching the night sky among other things.

[Enoch]

And that's one Civ game done... It's now 2 in the morning.

You're welcome.

 

Also: What, no details?

[thepixiesrock]

I'm playing through NWN2 as an Assimar Socerer/Eldrich Knight. I don't know if choosing the prestige class was a good or bad idea, but I wanted to make a spell casting character that didn't rely soley on casting spells.

[Pidesco]

It was a game on Chieftain that I just started to get a quick fix, so that I would work afterwards. That didn't go according to plan.

 

It was really easy and pointless of course, given the very low difficulty.

 

Details: Small Pangaea, Suryavarman II was my Civ, Ragnar declared war on me once, and lost his entire attacking army with that little prank. Cultural victory around 1900. 15000 points. It's really easy to get high points in Civ IV. If I won a similar game in Civ 1, I'd get a Dan Quayle rating.

[Enoch]

15,000 is high points? Pfft. Try a half-million!

 

 

I only got time to play my Civ game for a half-hour or so last night, comprising about 10 turns of peaceful development.

Edited March 25, 2008 by Enoch