Solium Infernum - out on Wednesday OMG!

[Jaron]

Purchased!

[Drakken]

If it gets Tamas and Berkut's seal of approval, I'll buy it.

[Jaron]

If it gets Tamas and Berkut's seal of approval, I'll buy it.

What about Jarons?

Also, do I need to remind you what games have Tamas' seal of approval?

*cough* Vanguard *cough* Origins *cough*

[garbon]

AGEOD WWI

[katmai]

If tamas likes it, it's crap!

[Tamas]

Ha-ha-ha. You people were still acting as emo consoltards over the map of EU3 when I claimed it's better than its predecessor, now that fact is beyond debate. I told you Warhammer Online would sink like a rock before it even got released, etc.

I went to bed early and woke up early to try this thing.

It is not AE in Hell, that is for sure. A single military unit, a legion, is a stack on its own meaning you can't stack them into a bigger army, and you can't just start a battle on your hearth's content, so this is not a wargame like AE.

My first 3-4 tries were aborted early because I could not participate properly in what I anticipated as early rush. Now I think it ain't that important to rush, unless your avatar is geared toward that, but it is important to snatch up any weak place of power (they have defensive values to fight with you when you enter) nearby, and you must move around with your initial legion sensibly, claiming any chokepoints and such.

In my current game which I am to abort soon, I am playing a charismatic Baron with the public goal of Greed. I have bough the secret goal of building the Machine of Gluttony during the game, but only have one page of its manuscript so far. My guy is charismatic because I was sick of my earlier avatar's (a Prince with high intellect, ie. good ritual-performing) very low intake of resource cards when I sent out for tribute.
As the game stands, an other player went way ahead of us others in Prestige. I have tried to call Vendetta upon him because I could get at least one palace of power from him, but the bastard just keeps accepting my demands of a resource card, or my insult in front of the Conclave (you can only do each once per 5 turns against a given player), giving me some of his prestige, but the difference remains enormous, so I will just start over.
Especially because it is not easy to optimize your avatar as a noob (you need to create one before hitting new game btw, there are no pre-created player avatars, or I could not find them).

So there is a lot of thinking and planning involved seemingely, the default 2 actions per turn gives it a card-driven boardgamish feel to it ("dammit if I move both of my legions, I can't ask for tribute, then somebody may snatch that juicy praetor off the Bazaar before me, but I need to close off my territory from those other bastards"). The various personal victory conditions, attributes, perks, legions etc. give tons of options, but obviously I am pretty far from discovering if there is balance among them.

[Jaron]

I hardly think the EU3 map is "beyond debate". The only part of that map that is beyond debate is that it sucks and it sucks hard.

[Tamas]

I hardly think the EU3 map is "beyond debate". The only part of that map that is beyond debate is that it sucks and it sucks hard.

I meant 3 being better than 2, dude

[Tamas]

My current game will be a good test to see if the AI can react to the victory situation and not just follow its own thing regardless of the outside world.

I modified my Charisma guy: I raised myself to mid-level rank (marquis), but dropped all perks save for the one which translate my charisma into loyalty bonus for my legions, and raised my charisma to 3. This means when I send out for tribute, my minions offer me 5-6 cards and I can choose 3.
This is quite the thing, and right now I can't see how to compete against this with a low charisma avatar, but obviously there has to be a way.

Okay so with this new avatar I got very lucky at start. While I captured a lightly defended place of power nearby, I got enough resources to buy the walking fortress which gave my starting legion enough push to capture an other place of power nearby. Right now I have 40 prestige, while my 3 opponents has 10 each. I have Greed for victory condition, so I need to stockpile 50 resource cards to get another 30 prestige at the end of the game. Two of my enemies has envy for victory condition, which means they have to steal stuff and such. The 4th has pride, which basically (if I understand correctly) means he gets 50 prestige at the end of the game if he has not concluded diplomatic deals at all during it.

So as things stand, I will run off with this game unless they do something. So, good AI test, as I was saying.

[Berkut]

Who gives two shits about the AI though?

[Syt]

Just bought this. Fuck you, Tamas.

[Syt]

Now, if they system would let me download the installer .... first download attempt was under 10 k/s, the other one was faster at first, then slowed down and stopped after 14 of 99 MB. Great start.

[Tamas]

Now, if they system would let me download the installer .... first download attempt was under 10 k/s, the other one was faster at first, then slowed down and stopped after 14 of 99 MB. Great start.

it was very slow for me too, took an hour, but no errors

[Tamas]

Halfway into that game (there is some kind of token which gets drawn every once in a while, when the sum of this token values reach 15, the game ends), I do seem to be the favourite target of harmful stuff (some asshole stole my walking fortress, and my Intellect got decreased by 1 permanently) but my lead is still massive, so these attempts are a bit lackluster.

lol an event: the Conclave decided on a war against heaven, each player must designate a legion to be part of the invading army

[Syt]

And download died again.