What are you playing now?

[GhostofAnakin]

Second play through of Mars: War Logs.  I get a kick out of how everyone I talk to thinks Mary is an airhead.  The voice actress sounds like she's 8 years old.

[WDeranged]

Haha, I tend to have my archetypes that I prefer too.  I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people do.

 

My problem with the Legion is that I find it so impossible to reasonably motivate my character to join with them.  I think they are a bit too extreme.

 

Yeah, I like Caesar's idea of synthesis and god knows it might work but I can't get into the end justifies the means mindset required.  No doubt I'll try the Legion one day, lack of quests was another thing that concerned me but the options for NCR sabotage open it up a bit.

[LadyCrimson]

Remember Lords of the Realm 2? I kinda wish someone would make a game kinda like that, again. That is, turn-based, plus if I didn't want to, I didn't have to do the on-field combat part (there was an EZ button, just lose more armies to the RNG). Yes, sometimes I'm lazy. Mostly tho, I used to love the farming/building up my armies in that game...the little cow and plowing the field animations per turn and all that...in fact, think I'll go play it.

[Humanoid]

 

Haha, I tend to have my archetypes that I prefer too.  I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people do.

 

My problem with the Legion is that I find it so impossible to reasonably motivate my character to join with them.  I think they are a bit too extreme.

 

Yeah, I like Caesar's idea of synthesis and god knows it might work but I can't get into the end justifies the means mindset required.  No doubt I'll try the Legion one day, lack of quests was another thing that concerned me but the options for NCR sabotage open it up a bit.

 

So Kaizar's ending was a green explosion?

 

I only fairly recently had my first playthrough of NV in which I actually accepted his invitation, and started doing some quests for him. And even then I still wiped out his entire camp (sneak sniper rifle kills) except the named NPCs - he didn't mind though, and the game proceeded as normal. I could tell myself I did it for moral reasons, but in reality it was for the gold and XP. And the Ballistic fists. Especially the Ballistic fists.

 

As for Lords of the Realm 2 - I've never played any games in the series. Were LotR3 and Lords of Magic bad sequels or something? Incidentally I've been thinking of playing Warlords 3 lately, a game I only ever played the demo of back in the day, but am curious about now that I have the capacity to understand its arcane-seeming rules. But I don't think it's available for sale anywhere. (And irritatingly, searches are polluted with a majority result for the Battlecry games, screw RTSes)

 

And (geez this post is wandering all over the place in topic), I think I'm going to retain my Roche playthrough as my 'canonical' one. It was my first taken option, but I also felt it fit better into the game - a pressure-packed siege situation as opposed to the alternate path which felt like the "here's a town, go do some random sidequests" feel typical of RPGs for the past 40 years. Plus killing the fat king, which is to say, allowing it to happen, was one of the better moments in the game. I liked that there was limited exposition of what I missed in Chapter 3, including having no investment in not killing the dragon. I killed it, because it was some dragon that happened to try to kill me, open and shut case.

[LadyCrimson]

Never played LotR3. But after taking years in development processes (wasn't released until 2004, according to wiki), it was turned into a RTS (not turn-based) and was very different from #2 gameplay wise. It did get decent reviews at the time, I think.

 

LotR2 was admittedly simplistic but I really liked it. It had a faint touch of city-build feel to it, even tho you weren't actually building per se. The time/turns to build castles/move around the map, population happiness, waiting for population to tick up again after sucking peasants out for armies, hiring mercenaries,  etc.

[Humanoid]

Lords of Magic was a 1997 spinoff so it'd fit the normal sequel timeframe pretty well, and I remember positive reviews from print magazines back in the day, not sure how similar the gameplay would be to its parent though.

[LadyCrimson]

I bought Lords of Magic, realized it wasn't at all like I thought it was going to be (slightly more akin to HoMM, where you explore a map with an avatar?), and shelved it. So I can't comment on it. It wasn't all that well received initially, partly because of the single-map structure, although I think it might have been looked at more favorably as time passed.

[LadyCrimson]

Here's 10min. from someone's Let's Play of LotR 2. Gives you the idea of the non-combat part (combat/siege was done on a separate map/format). I loved that flute tune, too.

 

 

LofM

 

(4 minute mark for gameplay)

[alanschu]

Remember Lords of the Realm 2? I kinda wish someone would make a game kinda like that, again. That is, turn-based, plus if I didn't want to, I didn't have to do the on-field combat part (there was an EZ button, just lose more armies to the RNG). Yes, sometimes I'm lazy. Mostly tho, I used to love the farming/building up my armies in that game...the little cow and plowing the field animations per turn and all that...in fact, think I'll go play it.

 

The total war games might be something you find interesting then?

[Humanoid]

Is it actually viable to play Total War games skipping the RTS part? (Assuming there's an autoresolve function) Guess it'd be like playing Dragon Commander in a similar way.

Edited February 7, 2014 by Humanoid

[ShadySands]

That's how I usually play them

[alanschu]

Yup, definitely an autoresolve.  Given that I find it can be pretty easy to exploit the AI in a lot of the real time battles, some argue it's a more interesting game that way.

[Humanoid]

Huh, definitely wouldn't have thunk it. It turns my opinion of the series from "no interest whatsoever" to "hmm, could be worth trying on a cheap instalment someday." Speaking of which, any specific recommendation on which game in the series such an approach would work best with?

[LadyCrimson]

After "everyone" kept telling me I should try it, I bought Total War:Rome Gold disc set at some point. I think I got to the first tutorial and thought it was more RTS than I wanted (at the time), but I should give it another shot since I barely did anything.

[melkathi]

I bought Lords of Magic, realized it wasn't at all like I thought it was going to be (slightly more akin to HoMM, where you explore a map with an avatar?), and shelved it. So I can't comment on it. It wasn't all that well received initially, partly because of the single-map structure, although I think it might have been looked at more favorably as time passed.

 

 

I enjoyed Lords of Magic. though factions and heroes were totally unbalanced. An an Air Rogue the game was a breeze (doh stupid puns write themselves). As a Fire Warrior not so much.

 

The game came witha  pretty neat Map Editor though. If the internet had been more widespread back then, allowing for larger communities , easier hosting, upload and download, you probably would have seen a lot more user-made content for the game.

[Bartimaeus]

Yup, definitely an autoresolve.  Given that I find it can be pretty easy to exploit the AI in a lot of the real time battles, some argue it's a more interesting game that way.

 

This is the problem I have with Total War games. My 300 against their 1500...I lose 10-20 guys and the enemy loses 1200-1300.   The AI is always stupid in that it tends to rush ahead with its cavalry if it has great superiority, which leads to me quickly trying to take out said cavalry, which then leads to me picking off their ranged units with my cavalry with only lines of infantry to weave through...which then typically leads to me charging one unit of infantry from two opposing sides, causing them to rout, and then again for another unit or two, which subsequently causes a mass rout. I always build my stacks with Cavalry in mind, and tend to win every battle and always feel like I'm cheating. 

 

"Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance." -Sun Tzu, the Art of War

Edited February 7, 2014 by Bartimaeus

[Rosbjerg]

Closed due to length, continued here.