HA! I finished it!

[airboy]

Finished Age of Wonders 3 - easiest setting playing a Warlord on a medium map.  It is really easy to get your heroes killed off if you are not careful.

I kept restarting.  Extra large and Large maps are massive.  Medium would be a "large" map for many 4x games.

[RooksBailey]

I finally finished Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising!  Gee, that only took...years and years. LOL! Typical me. I am awful when it comes to finishing campaigns (I guess this is why I like sandbox games with no defined campaigns). And like all my campaign games, this one I abandoned right in the middle. LOL! Well, I got tired of looking at it in my Steam library and decided to finish it once and for all. And I did. Yay me.





Chaos corruption never was an issue for me as I am loyal to the Undying Emperor.  O:-) However, I did use two pieces of tainted weaponry for an extra edge in the end, but I counter-acted the taint with a suitable blessing.

Overall, I still stick by my initial opinion than DoW 2 is inferior to DoW 1 when it comes to the battles. Despite Relics intent to give the game a more tabletop feel by making the battles smaller and more terrain-dependent, in reality I found most of the battles to still involve blob warfare without regard for terrain as with DoW 1, but on a smaller scale. Really, the only thing that truly saved DoW 2 from being a totally inferior experience was the loot system. This is the one contribution that was worthwhile to the franchise. I have to say that Relic did a superb job adding tons of loot, each with a detailed description/lore of the weapon/armor/blessing that was perfectly in keeping with the 40K universe. Finding and equipping this stuff really made the game feel very much like a traditional RPG even if the battles were not as much fun as the original. And the possibility of being corrupted by tainted weapons in Chaos Rising was a nice touch!  Added a bit more complexity to the loot system.

Between DoW 2 and Chaos Rising, I got something like 47 hours of game time.  Subtract maybe ten for a handful of skirmish games, so that leaves around 37 hours between both campaigns. Not bad at all content-wise!

Now I am off to DoW 2: Retribution.  Yeah, I know: I will abandon the campaign halfway through again. But I am curious to see what changes Relic made as they did say that Retribution was their attempt to make DoW 2 more like the original with bigger battles. I will say that I was surprised to see over 700 people online playing Retribution last night! I had no idea it was still so popular!

Another realization occurred to me: With Retribution, Dawn of War might be my most played franchise ever. I played and completed all that DoW titles up to Retribution. I think that is a singular honor! And I have to say it is kinda neat that the franchise has never deviated from its Blood Ravens focus. It is satisfying to play a DoW title and come across the same characters again and again. When I booted up Retribution last night, I immediately chose the SM again even though I really would like to try the IG for a change. I just couldn't abandon my team of Space Marines after all we've been through!   I need to see how this campaign affects them!  :)

So...any word on Dawn of War 3?

[-budd-]

only campaigns i've ever finished have been wargame campaigns. Well done..such tenacity. Usually i get to the middle than want to start over when i get back to the game just to get to the middle again

[RooksBailey]

only campaigns i've ever finished have been wargame campaigns. Well done..such tenacity. Usually i get to the middle than want to start over when i get back to the game just to get to the middle again

That's exactly what I do, too!  That is why I like sandbox games: it is much easier to start again after a long layoff.  Lately, just in the name of finishing some of these games, I have forced myself to resume from my last save whether or not I remember what the heck is going on.   :)  Most of the time the stories in these games make no sense anyway, so what difference does it make.  LOL! 

Thanks!

[Anguille]

Finished a game of CIV IV as Rome while on holidays in Rome....lost to the Phoenicians who launched a sneaky attack about 50 turns before the end of the game.

[MetalDog]

I, too, lost a Civ IV game yesterday.  I was Bismarck of the Germans.  I was playing on Monarch.  Small map.  My immediate neighbor, the Native Americans, lost two of their cities to me, including their capitol.  That seemed to set them off and they immediately outdistanced me in Culture and Research, so, when they declared war 50 or so Turns later, they steamrolled me and I Retired.

[-budd-]

Fun campaign, pretty tough or i just suck. The chinese farm was the last one, i went from minor victory to major defeat. Advancing up a long road, in the dark and in the fog with 2 visibility on a tight schedule. I made it to 3 VP's got held up at the fourth, there were six all together. I did let myself get held up defending some of my VP's when i should of kept pushing.
The other major defeat was attacking fixed positions along the suez canal. I pulled the plug with 3 turns remaining to preserve my force when i realized i just wasn't going to make it.

[JasonPratt]

Rooks, I think you'll really appreciate Retribution; it caps off the story that has been going off and on since the very first DOW1 campaign.

Also, you can go back and play the campaign from the perspective of any of the included teams, which is sometimes quite a hoot. (Or you can start that way, if for some reason you want the Eldar or the Orks or the Imps or the Nids or Chaos to finish out the story rather than the Blood Ravens. I don't recall any specific big revelations about the mysterious origin of the Ravens, unfortunately.)

[Anguille]

Finally won my Horizon campaign by council election in turn....1002!  :o

Can now focus on Grand Ages Medieval.... :D

[MetalDog]

Congrats, Anguille!  That's some serious dedication there.  1002 turns?!  WOW!

[Anguille]

Congrats, Anguille!  That's some serious dedication there.  1002 turns?!  WOW!

Thanks

[Sir Slash]

Yes, good show young man. Lets show these damned machines what humans are made of and whip their butts at some more games.

[Huw the Poo]

I just beat Hexcells!

I'm quite pleased with myself because I generally suck at puzzle games and this one got bloody difficult toward the end!  At one point I'd stared at the screen for about half an hour without clicking a thing. :)

[-budd-]

impressive, I'm in the home stretch.

[Con]

I just finished Witcher 3

It has...............................................................................consumed me!

Con