Grand Strategy

Any idea how to get a hold of this now (and does it even work with windows xp)?

 

Alright, I trust GE and Trash, so will try EU3 and AACW. Emperor of the Fading Suns I'll put on deck, and AOW I'll put in the hole.

 

You could search torrent sites, last time I found a copy pretty easy, and game works fine under xp.

I really recommend the game to everyone, its one of those overlooked gems. The strategy part of game is great, you could achieve victory by several means like conquest, diplomacy, trade, magic, ownership of holdings like guilds and temples. You could win the game by having only one province and never going into a war.

The game featured three difficulty levels, each one had not only better A.I. but more options to play with. For example on easy you could only do basic stuff like diplomacy, trade, adventures and battles. On medium you could use magic, build forts, build trade routes etc.

Battle system is a mix of warhammer and chess, quite simple and not much of a challenge since there are few overpowered units like elven knights.

One of major features of game are rpg style adventures where your lord and few of his lieutenants go searching for artifacts. The core mechanics are also quite simple but quite fun, dungeons are quite diverse not only in style but also in quality. Some maps are great and filled with secrets others like a certain forest long, boring and repetitive.

The best part of the game is the strategic map and for it its worth playing, the battle and adventures are weaker and optional, battles can be auto resolved and adventures ignored.

Its one of my favorite games for simple reason that you could choose one of dozen of nations and experience completely different game.

I would also recommend this, a quite good game with strong Dune vibe. A.I. is quite poor, there is a patch that fix it a bit but its still quite bad.

 

Distant Worlds is quite fun, but make sure you patch it to the latest version (the devs added some useful features and fixed a couple major bugs).

Also for all you 4x gamers: keep an eye on Elemental: War of Magic! Release date is the 24th of this month. It's developed by Stardock and resembles the classics like MoM (or for the younger generation AoW).
It will also feature tactical battles.

 

Some members here seemed to have been beta testers and posted some not so good impressions. Mostly about the game being too ambitious for its own good with many of the mayor features being cut or at least trimmed down severely. Was going to be a must buy for me, will check it first now.

 

Has anyone played latest beta, how I understand with each beta version they added additional features?

 

Stardock is always pretty good with post release support, so I'm getting Elemental anyway.

 

Last time I played the elemental beta, about 5/6ths of the game wasn't active. Including no magic and only 2 tech fields to research. Too early to comment.

 

Victoria 2 is out today. Seems really good so far, more of the same with a better interface and nicer graphics, though the 3D stuff is unnecessary. Kinda laggy on my laptop, which runs other, more demanding games, smoothly.

 

Wait untill you get into the second half of the game and have conquered some other nations. The cracks in the facade will then show themselves. Nationalistic revolutions seem to be pretty buggy, which means that you can keep on conquering without the need to keep the occupied policed as much as should be. Meaning that as soon as you become more powerfull you'll be able to steamroll through. Game is also severely focused on western powers, which makes playing anything else rather boring.

Early game is decent enough if you enjoy the whole economic model and all that though.

 

Anything wrong so far that can't be fixed Trash? I've only played a few hours, and have a conservative style of play (as opposed to an anarcho-liberal habit of throwing bricks at the police)? I'd expect any Paradox title to have a superpower, due to balancing /testing issues. Is it the same one, or are you the steamroller?

 

To be honest, I never played Victoria for the warmongering. Usually just picked a poor country and fought tooth and nail to make it prosperous without conquest. If the sequel can provide that much, I won't complain.

 

I distinctly remember seeing a quote from someone from Paradox who said that they switched to 3D (related to EU3) because stores wouldn't even stock a 2D game with "real games" anymore. Does anyone know what I'm talking about and could they point me to where this was said just for the sake of reference please? I believe it was on the forums, not in an interview.

All I can find is articles indirectly referencing the quote, not the actual quote itself.

 

It would be very funny if it wasn't so sad.

In related news, it has also just been announced that they have renamed 'Vainglory of Nations' into 'Pride of Nations', to make it more approachable . 0/10.



But perhaps one should not bash Paradox for that, but todays gaming proletariat.