The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[crazy canuck]

Okay... so my wish list is a game that's not singularly focused on military victory, where there's some complexity and nuance but the initial learning curve isn't massively steep, and where it's possible to actually finish a game rather than getting stuck in an endless grind.

Probably something other than a Paradox game, just for a change of pace.

Distant Worlds 2 sounds like it, maybe, with the optional automation? GalCiv4 with governors sounds alright too, but it's not out yet...

Endless space 2 is probably best then.  Even with automation DW2 has a steep learning curve.

[Syt]

In Alliance of Sacred Suns, the devs insist on game over-ing you when your character dies. This is guaranteed to sunk their Steam reviews. Also when I tried the demo like a year ago, it seemed quite complicated to operate.

Galciv4 though, sounds interesting with the changes, thanks for bringing it up Syt, I assumed it to be a Galciv 3 clone.

I saw that about AotSS (only playing one character), but I'll withhold judgment on that for now. I think it could be an interesting wrinkle to the formula where you have to make sure your limited time counts for something, unlike CK where you're tempted to rush your inept character to an untimely death. Of course it depends on how much you can do during your reign. I don't think the game will be "too short" for it. As I understand it, you start your character at age 18, and turns are one season, i.e. four per year. If your character rules for 60 years (age 78), that's still 240 turns which seems plenty.

My concern is more whether there's enough replayability. It seems there's fixed scenarios, though not sure how much you can customize your games within them. If you can choose enough different options, or starting positions which force you into different play styles then that might not be a problem, though.

On GalCiv4 I'm a bit careful yet. GalCiv3 took DLC to get really good (IMHO), and while I think it's one of the best current gen space 4X games (not that there's much competition) it lacks the flavor that e.g. Stellaris (esp. with mods) has. Again - very much my personal opinion. And I still think back to Stardock's attempt at fantasy 4X which ended up really disappointing. They had some great concepts for Elemental: War of Magic, and pared them back bit by bit before release, and the game was all over the place in the end. I was rather hyped for it, and bought the novel pre-release (which was quite bad), but I still have the little pewter dragon sitting on my desk, so there's that. They later released Elemental: Fallen Enchantress, which was more traditional, and overall a lot better, but still quite "meh." They tried twice more with Sorcerer King and Sorcerer King: Rivals (the second being an enhanced version of the former) where they try to turn the game into an asymmetrical one - you're a fledgling ruler trying to build up forces to topple the evil overlord before he can finish the world ending ritual, while making sure not to cause him to smack you down before you're ready (similar to Colonization, or AI War). Not a bad idea, but again - mediocre implementation.

Their GalCiv series does a lot better, so I try to be optimistic, but I will wait to see how it shakes out. Then again, it will come out on Epic first, so it will be at least another year before it's on Steam, I guess, which may benefit the game in terms of post-launch updates.

On that note: remember when Stardock had its own online shop and launcher? I had forgotten about it. Wiki says they sold it to GameStop who later pulled the plug on it.

[Syt]

Btw, I still like Civ: Beyond Earth. Sure, it's not Alpha Centauri (but what game is), but with the DLC it's fun for a game or two every now and then IMHO.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I never really enjoyed Civ: Beyond Earth.  Was just boring.

[Tamas]

My main problem with Beyond Earth is the same as with Planetfall: for some reason terrain tiles seem washed out and hard to distinguish/focus on.

[Solmyr]

Bret Devereaux posted a rather detailed takedown of the claim to historical accuracy that Expeditions: Rome makes: https://acoup.blog/2022/04/15/collections-expeditions-rome-and-the-perils-of-verisimilitude/

[celedhring]

Bret Devereaux posted a rather detailed takedown of the claim to historical accuracy that Expeditions: Rome makes: https://acoup.blog/2022/04/15/collections-expeditions-rome-and-the-perils-of-verisimilitude/

Damn, I was interested in the game but reading this it would probably piss me off.

[HVC]

Played some galciv 4. Early release/paid beta. I recall now why i stopped playing 3. Ai ignores borders at it annoys the hell out of me. Why even have a open border diplomatic option.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I just fired that up the other day and quit for similar reasons.

[crazy canuck]

[quote author =Solmyr link=msg=1363768 date=1650114305]
Bret Devereaux posted a rather detailed takedown of the claim to historical accuracy that Expeditions: Rome makes: https://acoup.blog/2022/04/15/collections-expeditions - rome-and-the-perils-of-verisimilitude/
[/quote]

He claims that the game claims to be historically accurate. But he never actually sets out where the game makes the claim he claims

It's pretty freaking obvious after about the first half hour that the game is making no attempt to be accurate.  And anybody who has even a passing Knowles about the history of Rome would immediately realize that fact.

For somebody who spent a lot of time analyzing the game and they sure don't know much about it. Which makes me question his further claim that he actually played it for about 50 hours. I think it more likely how do you spent a bunch of time trying to figure out ways to criticize the game for his article. Nobody who has played the series would try to criticize it for something it is not trying to do. This series has never try to be historically accurate. Rather it uses and historical setting to create a fun game.

The equivalent would be criticizing XCOM for not getting the United States historically accurate in every respect.

[Solmyr]

He explains how the game makes the claim in the section titled... "Making a Claim".

[crazy canuck]

He explains how the game makes the claim in the section titled... "Making a Claim".

This is as good as he gets "the claim being made here isn't simply one of silent presentation, the game's steam page promises a historically inspired story of political intrigue."

It never makes the claim to historical accuracy.  He makes a claim the developers never do and then criticizes for not meeting his claim.

They do in fact make a game that is "historically inspired".  But only a moron would think this game was trying to be historically accurate.  A well known personage dies in the opening segments of the game.  That should be a tip off to even the most obtuse of game reviewers that the devs were not trying to be historically accurate.

[Josquius]

If I read historically inspired I expect The Great or 1917, not Apollo 13 or Rome.

[crazy canuck]

Well if you were one of those who didn't think HBO Rome was historically inspired, then no game that uses Rome as a back drop is going to please you.

[garbon]

You getting a kickback, CC?