Too much to play, not enough time-the Friday thread

[undercovergeek]

ha, good tales CommandTent, i have never played 2 games alike

Amidst stabbing my relatives and building little villages in Anno i bought the Civ IV package from steam this weekend - thought id give this BTS add on that everyone loves a try

Should be able to start tonight - im opting for Winston Churchill and leading the English to greatness

[MetalDog]

^What difficulty, ucg?  I just started Monarch after years on Prince.  It's a pain in the butt, however, I am learning to build cities and improvements in the proper order.  Otherwise, you fall WAY behind in the Tech race.

[undercovergeek]

^What difficulty, ucg?  I just started Monarch after years on Prince.  It's a pain in the butt, however, I am learning to build cities and improvements in the proper order.  Otherwise, you fall WAY behind in the Tech race.

iirc id opted for warlord - is this a bit of an easy level? i think warlord is 3rd and then its Prince - having played away my mid 20s on Civ 2 it was always warlord, but then again i always won!

do you recommend Prince

[TheCommandTent]

ha, good tales CommandTent, i have never played 2 games alike

Amidst stabbing my relatives and building little villages in Anno i bought the Civ IV package from steam this weekend - thought id give this BTS add on that everyone loves a try

Should be able to start tonight - im opting for Winston Churchill and leading the English to greatness

My only issue now is I can't seem to assassinate my one son who I don't want to take over when I die and time is running out.  Do you know of anyways to improve the odds besides sending the Spymaster to his province?  Also I would like to start a plot to off him but there is not option for that in the intrigue menu.  Do you know if there is a way to create a plot?

[Jarhead0331]

How is AC3?  I heard there was some long load times, is that true?  Trying to decide if I should hold off for the PC version, assuming it is a good game.

I have only played through the opening sequence and I'm really enjoying it so far.  Its pretty tight and linear until you get to the Colonies, but then it really starts to open up.  There are a lot of loading sequences, which does get annoying, but they aren't too long so its acceptable.

[undercovergeek]

ha, good tales CommandTent, i have never played 2 games alike

Amidst stabbing my relatives and building little villages in Anno i bought the Civ IV package from steam this weekend - thought id give this BTS add on that everyone loves a try

Should be able to start tonight - im opting for Winston Churchill and leading the English to greatness

My only issue now is I can't seem to assassinate my one son who I don't want to take over when I die and time is running out.  Do you know of anyways to improve the odds besides sending the Spymaster to his province?  Also I would like to start a plot to off him but there is not option for that in the intrigue menu.  Do you know if there is a way to create a plot?

can you change the succession laws?

[PanzersEast]

I did not have a lot of time this weekend, however oddly enough I got back into Blood Bowl after cleaning my games and stuff up.  I deleted a ton of stuff and decided to just stick to those things I enjoy without having to feel like "I wasted money" and probably did but I am not going to force this issue... anyway I picked this back up after only play it a few times and really enjoyed it. 

I started a campaign with Chaos and am (Legion of Chaos 1-0-1) right now in my tournament.  I know there was some gripes about the AI, however if you play by house rules and with the randomness of the dice it is pretty fun.... although the AI can do some questionable things.



PE

[Grim.Reaper]

How is AC3?  I heard there was some long load times, is that true?  Trying to decide if I should hold off for the PC version, assuming it is a good game.

I have only played through the opening sequence and I'm really enjoying it so far.  Its pretty tight and linear until you get to the Colonies, but then it really starts to open up.  There are a lot of loading sequences, which does get annoying, but they aren't too long so its acceptable.

Thank you...at this point will likely hold out another 7 days and just get the PC version, but glad it looks promising.

[Kushan]

Playing some CKII last night reminded me why I enjoy it so much.  My ruler gets married to this girl who really helps out in the stewardship department the only problem is nobody actually saw her before the wedding and she turns out to have the dwarf trait.  Apparently my vassals aren't really down with this.  Before I can decide what to do about this she starts having kids.  One boy and one girl, both who have the dwarf trait.  Well this is not going to go well.  How am I suppose to become a great dynasty when all my heir needs step stools to see anything.  So I decide its time to go shopping for a new wife.  The only problem is my current wife.  She was easier to take care of then I thought, apparently most of my court aren't fond of her dwarfism and were eager to join my plot to "retire" her.  My, get this, court chaplain even arranged for her carriage to be attacked by "highway men" and things just so happened to get out of hand and my poor wife got an arrow in the back.  So now I find another wife and we have two sons back to back, unfortunately the son from my earlier marriage is still my heir.  So needless to say I am not plotting his untimely death...  ;D

Did I mention that while all this was happening the world around my duchy, which is part of the Byzantine Empire, was going to crap.  Apparently a number of the Dukes and Counts got together and rebelled against my liege and it fractured the lands around me into a number of independent realms.  As I was busy offing my dwarf wife I never got in on this faction's plot.  So naturally I did my duty for my liege and took a couple of counties that just so happen to aid me in creating the Kingdom of Bulgaria.  Now I'll just have to figure out how to do that without incurring the wrath of the huge stacks of Byzantine armies.

This game is just awesome!

If you want to make things really interesting, try and have 2-3 successors have no diplomacy and stewardship skills. I've gone from having my rulers be marshals, stewards, and chancellors of the HRE to having total incompetents.

In my game the Spanish have formed the Hispania empire and have taken all of Spain and a huge amount of northern Africa. Last I checked they were cutting there way through the desert towards the southern most provinces on the map.  The HRE has taken Carthage and is working its way towards Egypt's flank. The Byzantines have gone ape sh*t. They hold most of southern Italy, and all of turkey and Anatolia. They've also taken a good chunk of the provinces around the black sea and have starting cutting into southern Russia. They haven't made anymore progress towards the holy lands in awhile. There's been 4 crusades for Jerusalem, but they have all failed. Some have had some minor success but have all been beaten back. The Muslims in that area are still a little to monolithic IMO. From what I've read one of the major reasons the 1st crusade had any success was that the Muslims at the time were divided. Not so in CK2 and I think the sword of Islam DLC has made that even more worse. The Muslims also don't seem to be as affected (if at all) by the low supply limits of the provinces in the area. I went on one crusade, but lost half of my 20k+ troops before I even made contact with an enemy army.

[MetalDog]

^What difficulty, ucg?  I just started Monarch after years on Prince.  It's a pain in the butt, however, I am learning to build cities and improvements in the proper order.  Otherwise, you fall WAY behind in the Tech race.

iirc id opted for warlord - is this a bit of an easy level? i think warlord is 3rd and then its Prince - having played away my mid 20s on Civ 2 it was always warlord, but then again i always won!

do you recommend Prince

I would play a few games on Warlord to get my bearings then go to Noble.  I'm pretty sure Noble is baseline-no bumps for either you or the A.I.  If you decide you like it and want some MP, I'm always up for that.  We can prolly scare up a few more, too.

[TheCommandTent]

ha, good tales CommandTent, i have never played 2 games alike

Amidst stabbing my relatives and building little villages in Anno i bought the Civ IV package from steam this weekend - thought id give this BTS add on that everyone loves a try

Should be able to start tonight - im opting for Winston Churchill and leading the English to greatness

My only issue now is I can't seem to assassinate my one son who I don't want to take over when I die and time is running out.  Do you know of anyways to improve the odds besides sending the Spymaster to his province?  Also I would like to start a plot to off him but there is not option for that in the intrigue menu.  Do you know if there is a way to create a plot?

can you change the succession laws?

I could but I like them they way they are, I just don't like the son who will inherited everything. :)  Perhaps I won't ever let him get married so his brother takes over when he dies :)

[MengJiao]

The significant other is out of town this weekend, so it will be Civ IV MP and CK II (the same as it would be if she was IN town, just more :-)

I'm looking at an assortment of possibilities, roughly in this order:

Moscow '42
Crecy
Fontenoy
CarrierCommand

The three-day week-end actually went:

Crecy (the French lost!)
Fontenoy(training exercise  (I gave up!))
And then surprisingly, I became interested in how well the Churchill IV with
a 6-pdr and APDS can do.  It did very well in a ATS (Scottish Corridor) training exercise
so I checked it in  CMBN: CWF (which seems more reliable than ATS)  and again: the
Churchill IV does okay against STGIIIs and Marders at least on defense.

So I ordered ATS Stonne Heights.  Maybe the Char B-bis will do okay.  Nowhere to
check that really (outside of reality where it didn't do so well).