After putting in a solid weekend with the game, I have to readily admit that it is quite the enjoyable game. Only having close to 600 hours with Cities Skylines 1, I am eager to spend time with this one There are quite a bit of annoyed peeps on the Steam discussion as well as the paradox interactive forums. Some of it is pretty well backed up...
This will not be a long article. I have been waiting for this game for a long time and spent my first few hours watching the tutorials as suggested by the game itself when I loaded the game. The game felt very sluggish and I was not able to make a very impressive attempt as even the mouse clicks were slow compared to the rate I was clicking. It was...
As of now, the best thing to have in the game appears to be lots of land, with very few rivers, oceans, hills and lots of dense forests that can be chopped and converted to coal. This may change in the future as fishing, prismatic liquid and military combat is added. However for now, pure flat land as far as the eye can see will be the goal. When t...
What am I playing these days?
Endless Space 2 from Amplitude Studios is a 4x turned based strategy game that has been consuming my time in the past two months.. Originally released in 2017, it's had a number of expansion packs and mini releases since. The game is reminescent of Masters of Orion 2 even down to having troop invasions of planets. It has a similar feel to civ6 and there have been a few nights I've stayed up for just one more turn.
It is a typical "explore, expand, exploit and exterminate" game. Space combat has a cool battle video sequence, however, I found myself skipping these after the first battle. After destroying a fleet that orbits a system, you then do a ground invasion. The twist from earlier games is this has improvements in gear for your ground assault including better use of technology, tanks and airplanes. This actually does make it more fun.
The game has several victory conditions including science, economy, conquest, wonders and total score, Generally, I just play until the game ends on its own. It does a good job of ending earlier rather than having tedium once it's obvious that you've won.
AI seems better on alliances and teams than Civ6
The game has a political system. I remember joining with a computer player on my alliance in Civ6 and my own computer ally had declared peace right as I was about to make major gains. This AI seems smarter in letting you obtain your gains and will send ships to your aid as well. The computer opponents seem to have their own personalities from the condescending Horatio to my favorites being the Sophons.
What am I playing these days?
Some friends and I are playing Path of Exile Crucible league after a long hiatus, at least 3 leagues. We are playing ice spear/freezing pulse, toxic rain ballista and ballista witch. On day 3 we made it into maps, but work beckons and hence we are not going as hard as some of the more intense players. It was a smooth game launch and the only kinks I've noticed so far are some "Bad Gateway 503" errors when trying to access the trade page. The Crucible mechanic itself seems vastly overtuned and I'm expecting it to be nerfed at some point.
The crucible mechanic itself adds a tree to an item of affixes which can branch randomly. Criticisms so far is that this is mostly a league for crafters as the strategy currently seems to run the crucible on base items which can later by enchanced through crafting (or sold to crafters) if the random branching is fruitful. Either way, there will be some interesting items this league, for sure.