PC games you're playing now....

[duncan]

Hi everybody

Since I don't have internet access at home (no Legion Arena), I'm playing some no-slitherine games while waiting for Legion II...

1.) Vampire, the masquerade: Bloodlines.

I always liked Fallout and when Troika's Temple of Elemental Evil came out, I played a lot because of some good turn-based D&D fights, but the game had its problems...Vampire is made by the same people, Tim Cain et al, and it has good role playing, but actually it's a FPS and it has some heavy combat...I'm liking it but I'm strugling to finish those fights...


2.) Crusader Kings

Very dissapointed with this. I loved Europa Universalis II, but I didn't like Hearts of Iron. When Victoria came out, I had mixed feelings about it, but now I think it's good, with some bugs and issues that spoil the game. But Crusader Kings was boring. I'm giving it a second chance, because it has an overpowered Bizantyum, but It seems like "Sims in Middle Ages" with a few things to do other than marry your nasty-looking daughters and sons and watch them grow up.

3.) Football Manager 2005

Got Everton FC to Champion's League in my second season. I like the GUI, but it always seems to me that the results are calculated before the match, no matter waht you do... ...I had the same feelings with the previous CM. Buy some key players, even if their statistics look poor compared to the crappy players you've already have and some kind of magic makes them play nice football. Watch your team win everything and restart. Some long loading times too, but I don't care, I listen to my mp3. Just giving up with it.


Three games but not the same satisfaction I got with Spartan/Gates of Troy, Lords Of The Realm II or Europa Universalis II and the Mongol Empire mod...


Bye

[efthimios]

Apart from the occasional SPartan/GoT, the last couple of weeks I play:

1)UFO Enemy Unknown. I am trying to play without save/load at all, apart from when I save just in case. This means, as it has already happened 3 times, that even if I lose my full team on a mission, I will not load a previous save game, but continue. IT has already cost me 2 Interceptors, 3 transports, and apart from the 3 full 7 team +1 tank teams, about 10 or so other soldiers. Had some GREAT fun though.

2)C&C Generals+Zero Hour, it is remarkably enough the only online game I can play behind this stupid firewall/proxy server, and only with a direct connection with 1 person, else the security system is activated and I am kicked out of the network...Still I play with a friend of mine and having fun kicking AI ass.

3) 1Nsane, I got it yesterday for free from Codemasters and it is a fun though silly arcade racer.

4) Civilization III Conquests, I play a game every 2-3 days (that is 1 full game then half a week or so of break), and it is still one of the best games of its type. I am worried about the IV in production, but at least I will always have this one. And Test of Time. (I love that you can go to the other planet and fight the aliens, pity the CivIII does not have this as an option) (Microprose why did you go?)

5) Rally Trophy. I am not very good at it, which is strange for a rally game for me, but it is fun.

6)This game is always in this kind of list, Colonial Conquest (ST version). I am playing this game since 1987 and don't plan to stop any time soon. My favourite game of all time. I find a couple of hours every week to play this gem.

[admin]

Clarification of Legion Arena

* Legion Arena was planned as an online only game
* Due to publisher interest we decided to add a single player game, so you would buy it in a box from the shops, with no internet requirements.
* As publisher interest has been so great, we're focusing on the one player boxed game to make that as good as possible. As a result we're canning the online version as its a lot of work, for little benefit in comparison.

In summary - Legion Arena is not an online game and does not require an internet connection.

[efthimios]

WTF? Wrong thread?
Thanks for the info though! Wow, very interesting changes. I am not sure how much sense makes if you are not going to allow some form of competition, to name it Arena though. Also, wouldn't this make it a "light" version of Legion II? I was going to get Arena before, and still am, but I am now very curious what you are going to do with it.

OH, if you decide your post was in the wrong thread and delete it, feel free to delete this reply as well

[duncan]

Wow, Legion Arena offline!!! I was completely unaware of this....supposedly about my I don't have internet access at home (no Legion Arena), ...

Civ III Conquests was good, but I didn't enjoy it because it was me against the whole world or a peaceful game..like Civilization II. I did not know about the others, anyway I'n not that much into racing games (I have enough with the real rush hour )...oh, and Generals, RTS is not for me... . And the screenshots from Civ 4 were rather ugly.


BTW, it would be nice to know something about Slitherine people likes and dislikes in games...I always like to know what are the fav groups of my fav rock/pop/psych/soul artist

Bye

[efthimios]

I used to have the same problem with Civ. "Why on earth is everybody against me?". I found the solution by becoming militarily strong at all the times. When the AI sees you are not an easy to defeat country, it will think twice before attacking you. Also, diplomacy is a HUGE part of the game. Many times the AI will enter war against you because of better diplomacy with them than you have with them. Don't forget them. My last game was wonderful, I had 2 early wars against the egyptians and the ottomans. I not only managed to defeat them but conquer them and had a continent almost for myself. The byzantines had about 5 cities too. I usualy don't play friendly with the byz but it was in my best interest to do so. So I was in the 17th century, and there were apart from me as a superpower, the summerians, and also the hittites. The french were ok, and the indians were powerful. For almost 150 years there was constant diplomacy and espionage, while increasing the military strength. In the 1950s I was first in score, mlitary power and science, but second to culture. Not only that but the summerians who were first had just a few thousand cultural points to win the game (I had a few less) and there was enough time for them to do so! I managed to form military protection pacts and with a last minute alliance I attacked the summerians with everybody else on my side Unfortunately for me they had MANY tanks and a much better airforce. I couldn't get near their islands and two colonies I had near them, were constantly on the defensive. I was shipping troops and tanks by air and could not go into the offensive. The war continued without a big change till 2020 or so. Then they did a move I didn't expect, they nuked 2 of my cities! I was pissed off, I didn't want to use nukes but I was ready for it. I had 12 nuclear submarines with nukes onboard waiting off his coasts, plus about 10 icbms. I used all 10 icbms and leveled his 5 largest cities. After two turns he managed to nuke my capital with a rogue nuke. I used all my remaining nukes from the subs and sent him back to the stone ages. In 2050 the game ended, I destroyed or captured about 8 of his cities and all the rest were small villages by now. I won by score while he was like 10 points or something before winning a cultural victory!


The other games I mentioned you should try them if you can. Xcom in particular is amazing, while Colonial Conquest I could help you with an ST version of it. I love my atari ST

[leonidas]

Clarification of Legion Arena

* Legion Arena was planned as an online only game
* Due to publisher interest we decided to add a single player game, so you would buy it in a box from the shops, with no internet requirements.
* As publisher interest has been so great, we're focusing on the one player boxed game to make that as good as possible. As a result we're canning the online version as its a lot of work, for little benefit in comparison.

In summary - Legion Arena is not an online game and does not require an internet connection.

I find this message from "admin" VERY hard to believe for the following reasons:
1) It's April Fools day (April 1st).
2) The other folks from Slitherine have the green slitherine logo.
3) It's not posted in the Legion Arena forum.

Anyway, to answer the original question: I still play a lot of Gates of Troy/Spartan. Played the Grand Campaign and the 1300BC campaign to death. Right now, I'm probably the only one who plays the colonization scenario (I've modded it to take out a lot of the starting nations like the Imbrians, Lemnians etc as they were colonies--I have fewer states with a LOT more area to colonize. I get some pretty cool end games with this). I also still play EU2. I have decided that Victoria was a splendid idea but poorly implemented one, so with the little time I have left (I have a wife and 2 kids) I play some Imperialism 2 (now that's an oldie but goodie).

[efthimios]

I completely forgot about the date.

I tried to like Victoria, I did. I found it though very hard to do so. When I would get a small country there wasn't enough to do and when a large country there were too many things to do. Combined with the real time of the game (I still believe it would make a better game as a TB one), and the constant pausing, I have it in my collection just to collect dust (or something). I do not find it as bad as Hearts of Iron, but still bad.

I never played Imperialism 2. I never liked enough the first one, though I could always just install it again. I wonder if it works under XP.

[duncan]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI ... 83-3211026

About Civ 3, I never used diplomacy at al, that's right. Only for trade, tech and such. I'll give it a chance (yet another...). Nice mini-AAR, thanks.


I'll investigate about X-com .


About April's fools day, one word: wow. In Spain it is December 28th (fake news in the newspaper, jokes and everything) so I missed that point

[pyros]

Clarification of Legion Arena

* Legion Arena was planned as an online only game
* Due to publisher interest we decided to add a single player game, so you would buy it in a box from the shops, with no internet requirements.
* As publisher interest has been so great, we're focusing on the one player boxed game to make that as good as possible. As a result we're canning the online version as its a lot of work, for little benefit in comparison.

In summary - Legion Arena is not an online game and does not require an internet connection.

I find this message from "admin" VERY hard to believe for the following reasons:
1) It's April Fools day (April 1st).
2) The other folks from Slitherine have the green slitherine logo.
3) It's not posted in the Legion Arena forum.

LOL... LOL...LOL
This probably is one of the best forum post that I have read up today!

You make an announcement and nobody believes you... just incredible !!

[pipfromslitherine]

It's true

Honest!

Cheers

Pip

[pyros]

I want to see some identity...there

Anyone can make a fake Slitherine logo nowdays... LOL

[leonidas]

It's true

Honest!

Cheers

Pip

Now THIS post I believe. I guess some of us were in shock and didn't want it to be true....Still the way it was announced did seem a bit....unusual and caught a number of us by suprise to find such a major announcement in an off topic thread and not in the Legion Arena forum on this board (perhaps it was on the other board before the switch). Oh well, apparently I made Pyros's day Good luck, and I'll certainly buy a copy.

[pyros]

Cheers Leonidas

It was indeed April 1st !!!

Your logical statement was correct, it was only some extraordinary coincidences that played their part in this conspiracy...

[timdekker]

but was it or was it not an april 1st joke.
and if not, do we have to buy it in the store now???

[anguille]

but was it or was it not an april 1st joke.
and if not, do we have to buy it in the store now???

No it wasn't a joke. The game will be avalable in shops and the from Slitherine when released. They are still dealing with publishers as far as i know so it may take some time before the game is released.

[anguille]

Apart from Legion and Spartan (Chariots of War will have to wait until i finish my Legion campaigns ).

I am playing now:

Knights of Honor (medieval strategy)

and

Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds (have to finish the campaigns before the movie comes out! )

I also play some battles of Lords of the realm III from time to time.

[duncan]

I tried Knights of Honor demo and I liked the feel of this EU2-esque game, but I was terrible when fighting in real time (my fault). I would love to battle with those varangian guards. What kept me from purchasing KoH was its price (it has not gone down) and the crazy AI: in the demo, after playing five minutes or so, everyone went mad and start attacking neighbours (or not) without reasons. Playing as Scotland, Kiev declared war on me (even if I wasn't aware of their existence). I had a look at the diplomacy and they were at war with 15 or 16 other countries too. Same for almost any other countries. No alliances, only fights. This was discourageing for me. I heard that the following patches fixed this a bit.

[SMK-at-work]

RTW, CMAK, DBAOL

[dbt1949]

Personally I'm more of a wargamer and 4xer than anything else.I have Legion Gold,Cow and Spartan/Troy and about 20-30 other tiltles ranging from old ones like Star General,Operational Art of War and the old Talonsoft Campaign series to the newer HPS and Matrix games wargame titles.
MOO2 and GalCiv are there as well as Civ3 series,Knights of Honor,UFO and some Shrapnel games titles.
I really am pretty enthused about the Slitherine games tho. I'm lousey at Legion and CoW but I still like to play them.
I love ready about you alls strategies and tacties and your AARs.
Keep em coming!