The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[grumbler]

I don't think we have a Age of Wonders 4 thread, so I will put this here.  I am having fun with it, but I always get hammered in the mid game.  I think my problem is I keep waiting for the better units to unlock before build a sizeable military, and I guess I should be spamming out low tier units from the start.

That's a problem I have in these kinds of games as well (which was why I loved Leonardo's Workshop in Civ 2).  Better is the enemy of good enough.

[Syt]

Thanks 

Just keep an eye at your running expenses. This can become quite expensive otherwise, but normally it should keep you covered till you reach more powerful units/spells and/or your heroes are leveled up.

[Tamas]

I did not know this about Age of Rifles: https://normkoger.com/rifles11.txt

Among the command line options I need to figure out how to apply in Dosbox:

"oldrules+": (Experimental Simulation Rules) Decreases killed and wounded and
replaces them with stragglers and unit cohesion losses. Turns on long reaction
ranges and advanced reporting options. Increases severity of fire combat, but
additional losses are channeled as stragglers and loss of unit cohesion.
Morale rules are strengthened. Artillery units tend to abandon their guns if
overrun rather retreating from melee. Units are eligible for frantic fire in
response to fire attacks by adjacent enemy units. Note: It is extremely difficult
to move units in the face of enemy fire when this switch is on. Assaults are much
more difficult to launch, and due to the stronger morale rules overall casualties
for battles are significantly reduced. If you set oldrules+ and wish to return to
the SSI supported default rules, set "oldrules-" on your command line.

[Syt]

Interesting. 

[Syt]

Btw, you can find a zip of the Wargamer scenario depot for the game on the Internet Archive. Just Google for age of rifles scenarios download and it should pop up. The archive file is a bit of a mess, and not sure if everything is compatible with 1.4. I tried opening an OOB file with uniform references and it breaks the game.

[Syt]

SCS is currently working on three expansions for American Truck Sim: Nebraska, Arkansas (both previously announced, I think), and now also Missoorah:

Previous trailers for the other two:

Also, once Illinois is added you can finally retrace the Griswold trip to Wally World. Chicago and East St. Louis would be the only "main stops" still missing.

With those three states they have a lot of "empty space" covered already.

[viper37]

Galactic Civilizations IV had a small special for Christmas time.  -20% for the base game, and all the expansion to come in 2024.

Jesus, that 129$ dollars on games I just spent.  Sure, I bought the BlueCoats for 1,69$ in that.  But I don't think I've ever spent that much on video games in any one time.  I'm not even sure I bought that much in any one year

It does not seem a radical departure from Galciv III.  Not like, say, the Dragon Age series.  But to their defense, having seen Galciv III evolve, having participated in its bug correction and AI balance, it's amazing how these games evolve over time.

They said they would no longer develop Galciv III two year ago, but they are still fixing stuff and introducing minor new features.

[Syt]

BlueCoats

Played the original (North & South) on a friend's Amiga against each other so much back in the day.

I still mean to get the comic books again. We had a bunch of Tuniques Bleues comics when I was a kid, and they were (with Asterix, or movies as discussed elsewhere) one of the things that got me into history early on.

[Zanza]

Is GalCiv IV better than Stellaris?

[viper37]

BlueCoats

Played the original (North & South) on a friend's Amiga against each other so much back in the day.

I still mean to get the comic books again. We had a bunch of Tuniques Bleues comics when I was a kid, and they were (with Asterix, or movies as discussed elsewhere) one of the things that got me into history early on.

I played it on Nintendo with my cousins and our friend.  I bought it for the nostalgia factor because it was so cheap.  I've read it was 5hrs of gameplay with the expansion, so I don't expect much.  1 vs 1 or 2 vs 2 maybe for the mp part, I haven't paid much attention.  I expect to play a bit with my younger cousin, again, for nostalgia's sake. 

Yeah, the original comic books got me interested in history too, along with Asterix.  So funny.   Basic strategy: artillery to soften the enemy, infantry to pin them in place, cavalry charge from the flanks to finish 'em.  It still serve me to this day in most games.

[viper37]

Is GalCiv IV better than Stellaris?

I can only speak of #3, I haven't had the chance to play Galciv IV yet.

And I have not played the gazillion DLCs of Stellaris, only one or two.

It's a more streamlined game, less minute micro-management in the small details.  #4 has further refined this as you need to assign a governor to a planet in order to manually change their production, otherwise, the AI will take care of this.  Not sure how that works exactly.  I'm still out of a gaming pc.

So, anyway.  I haven't played a lot of Stellaris, but I found the AI to be smarter in Galciv3 than in Stellaris, and even in the late game, unless you absolutely want to achieve a domination victory over the huge star system, there were options to make it less tedious.  But if you wanted to conquer every single planet, yeah, you could do that and win that way.  Generally though, you could expand your influence enough to flip the enemy planets.

The trick was to get there once you cranked the difficulty.  The AI was smart enough to adapt to your strategy and counter it early on when you had multiple opponent.  What it was weak on was gang up on you very early on to crush you.  I always managed to bribed them, and exchange enough tech to survive.

The most interesting part of the game was always the ship creator. You can design your own ships and/or import ship models as mods from Steam Workshop.  You always have crazy talented people making ships from all kind of sci fi universe like Warhammer, Gundams, The Expanse, BSG, Babylon 5, Star Trek, and the less well known stuff. 

[Tamas]

I have found Galciv4 better than Galciv3, even significantly so, if that means anything.

[viper37]

I have found Galciv4 better than Galciv3, even significantly so, if that means anything.

Great.
I'm totally out of computers now, except the office one. 

[HVC]

Is GalCiv IV better than Stellaris?

The "borders don't matter " thing in galciv annoys me. To the point I rage quit often.

[viper37]

Is GalCiv IV better than Stellaris?

The "borders don't matter " thing in galciv annoys me. To the point I rage quit often.

They're soft borders

You get penalties for crossing other nation's borders, and eventually they dow you.  The harder the difficulty, the quicker this happens.
Also, influence is a thing.  In #3, they could flip your planets.  Don't know about #4.