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Thanks. Heard of a Total War but haven’t tried it. I use to roll my own bleeding edge x86 units but I’m Mac these days. Not on Steam. Does TW work on Mac? How about HoI, Mac friendly? I haven’t run a Parallels on my Mac for a while now. Would I need to get myself the latest version to go there without creating doing the dual boot thing?
 

Steam has a fairly extensive Mac game library.

Hearts of Iron IV and Total War: Rome bot have Mac versions on Steam.

My only caveat would be I am not all that fluent in Mac hardware, so I couldn't tell you what will run well and what won't on a Mac, I do know that the Total War series is far more graphics intensive than Hearts of Iron IV so check the requirements before buying.

In summation:

Total War: Rome (Remastered) - Graphics intensive

Hearts of Iron IV - Brain Intensive



(In theory you could buy the non-Remastered Total War: Rome and it would be significantly less graphics intensive)
 
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Well, I think I basically won PalWorld this morning.

I hit level 50 this morning and decided to do an overland boss sweep to collect any I had missed or hadn't found yet. I came across a mechanical dragon in the NW part of the map and after a long fight and expending most of my Pals, I captured it on my second try at 5%. The dragon turned out to be legendary and after unlocking its tech I can now ride it and it is blisteringly fast. Not only is it fast, but it have a special rocket attack that I can use while flying, allowing me to farm enemies well out of their own range.

I guess the only thing left is to kill the rest of the tower bosses, but that will most likely be simple now with this dragon.
 
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The graphics capability of the 2020 intel cpu based 3.7g and its Radeon card should be up to the challenge. What I meant was I don’t run Steam currently so do either or both games have native Mac OS versions? I’ll check. Thanks. Truly.
 
Are you locked into RTS? I mean there is a ton of turn based "digital Avalon Hill" type stuff, but not so much RTS. A couple of my favorite turn based AH type games:




Edit: Just thought of this after I posted, this is real time and great:
 
Redress said:
Are you locked into RTS? I mean there is a ton of turn based "digital Avalon Hill" type stuff, but not so much RTS. A couple of my favorite turn based AH type games:




Edit: Just thought of this after I posted, this is real time and great:
Click to expand...


I’m not running Steam. I have in the past (though long ago) and found it a pain to keep it from turning my system resources into the 5 on the California coast type of computing. (IOW, slow as molasses in February).

I prefer items I can purchase and belong to me that I don’t need a third party layer to run them through (because if I want to drop the intermediate layer the games aren’t mine to use anymore).

I’ll look back into it though.
 
No Mac versions. That’s been the trouble straight along. It don’t know why. It’s not like it’s hard to Piet to Mac OS on Intel chips.
 
Steam has a Skyrim SE sale- its available for $5 on a limited time. I bought a copy for my son so he can play and mod his own PC now.
 


OK, here's a brief strategy guide for Iratus.

My ideal battle group (left to right): Fallen Dhampir > Ghoul > Werewolf > Tank (Bone Golem or Black Widow)

Top minions to take:

Ghoul- an excellent DPSer. She can move back and forth along the line and can be good anywhere. Her special ability can instakill any non-boss with 30% vigor left, and it heals her 100% too. A must have.

Werewolf- best all around damage dealer. Can also move back and forth along the line, and great special abilities that can attack twice per turn, debuff armor, and ravage the back lines of the enemy at up to 300% damage in a single hit. The one weakness is their low vigor, and they need allies or artifacts to heal.

Fallen Dhampir- another good all around S-tier minion, with multiple attack abilities and can heal by lifestealing with select stances and attacks. She can fight well all along the line too. Blood Phantasm has similar abilities and would make a good substitute if you cant create Dhampir yet.

If youre in the early game and cant build any of these, then a Reaper is a good low level damager to begin with. Bride of Iratus is also an excellent sniper as long as she stays in the rear, but beware of her low vigor.

Tanks: Bone Golem has low offensive capability but is a super damage soaker. Can heal on its own too, so its almost impossible to kill.

Black Widow is also very good- slightly better offensive capabilities than the golem.

If you cant get either of them during the early game, then Dark Knight makes a decent tank, provided you armor it up. It pairs good with a Skeleton too.

Stress damage dealers: you also need the occasional stress attacker to take down those with heavy armor. I would recommend Mummy- they can fight from any position, has high vigor and versatile attacks.

As far as leveling up Iratus himself, focus on the buffs for your minions first, then work on getting spells, unless its your first game.

There you go, good luck!
 
Confidential to @PoS:

Last year sometime I had given you a few options for WH40K games to play and, if I recall, you ended up enjoying GLADIUS - Relics of War quite a bit because it let you play as races other than Adeptus Astartes. Back then I had suggested you try the game BATTLESECTOR because it was the closest thing on the market to a WH40K table top experience on the PC. At the time you didn't like the options because it was limited in race selection and specifically it focused on the Blood Angels.

Well, I'm back to suggest you look into BATTLESECTOR again because in the last year of so they have add a considerable amount of content including a number of new races/factions and a custom campaign mode.

Granted, the custom campaign mode won't have all the bells and whistles of a developer created campaign, but it will at least allow you to play a campaign of sorts with any race available, and some of the custom modes appear to be a gauntlet style where you keep facing harder waves of enemies... so I can't vouch for that, necessarily.

That said, as of today here are the races that the game includes:

Blood Angels
Adeptus Sororita
Demons of Khorne
Necrons
Orks
Tyranids
T'au

Obviously I bring it up now knowing you are a T'au admirer, and now the game will allow you to play the T'au against a good number of your most hated factions. Haha!

The whole game with all factions appears to be about $60. The base game + the first 3 DLCs is on sale for $28, and the three DLC combined are about $30 total.

I'm getting ready to fire it up and try out one of these custom campaigns. The "Planetary Domination" campaign looks promising. You choose a faction and 2 opponent factions on a sort of hexagonal chess board and go about conquering hexes, each representing a turn based combat map.
 
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Last Epoch hit 1.0, and I am going to start my spin to win Void Knight as soon as I finish patching. LE for those unfamiliar, is a cross between Path of Exile and Diablo. More skill tree complexity than Diablo(which is not hard to do), but not the nightmare that PoE is for the skill tree. Large focus on crafting for gear. Better graphics and controls than Diablo.
 
Reactions: PoS

I got a Spin to Win void night to level 90 in the beta and he is very good, but I never expected my Incinerate Sorcerer to be as good as he turned out to be. By level 80 I had his incinerate to 150,000 DPS...

Granted, he was a glass canon.

When I get time to play this weekend I might try something new.
 
Just throwing this in here, no clue what to think of it except...LoLz?

 
Redress said:
Just throwing this in here, no clue what to think of it except...LoLz?

Click to expand...

I may not play it much, but I'm going to buy it just to reward the creator.
 
A quick run down on BATTLESECTOR for anyone interested:

First, all the new races are very well modeled, and play much the same as you would expect in the table top version. The downside of that is that there are definitely races that are easier to play than others.

Orks are probably the weakest of the factions in the game, suffering, like in tabletop, from a weakness in mid-tier units.
Necrons are the most well rounded faction in the game with strong units at every level
Tyrranids have enough ball-buster mechanics to make them adaptable to any enemy and sport some truly terrifying high end units.
T'au are fairly well rounded but, like the tabletop, they struggle in low point battles because their low end units are weak.
Blood Angles are fairly hard to play because of all of their units, only a handle are more than situational. Playing Blood Angels means you rush to Plasma tech or you die.
Battle Sisters as maybe worse than Orks because I have a hard time getting any of their units to command the battlefield. They are all made of tissue paper.
Daemons of Khorne has sort of the same issues as Blood Angels, but their high end units rival Tyrranids in power.

When I play Blood Angels there are really only 2 units that are essential: The Apothecary, The Plasma troopers. The only reason you buy anything else is because you have the "Coherency System" enabled that basically penalizes you for taking too many units of the same type. An army of basic Plasma Rifle troopers and an apothecary or two can chew up even the biggest units.

Tyrranids have the melee units that can drop a cloud of poisonous gas that injures all enemies around them and makes then very hard to hit with ranged weapons. When you deploy a sufficient under of these in your army it feels like heating.

I think my main problem when playing this game is I have to be OK with losing units. All WH40K battles are battles of attrition, and winning with half your units still alive is a major victory but always feels like a loss to me.

Now, on to the one game mode I have played enough for a full opinion: Planetary Domination

While the IDEA of planetary domination is good, and is probably fun as a multiplayer game, it is too small as a solo game. A game of planetary domination seems to reach end game too fast and wants you to cap out at 2000 point armies. The mode was probably designed to play out in multiplayer where you spend a lot of your time watching your two opponents battles play out.

I wish the world was bigger.

That said, the actual battles, especially with other people, are always fun.
 
Reactions: PoS
This is making my mouth water lol

However... I think I'll wait until it goes on sale. The price of the base game is fine, but buying all the DLCs (and you cant play this game without them) increases the total by 400%, and thats just a ****ing ripoff. I have one moral absolute, and its never to get ripped off by money hungry game sharks, so I have the patience to wait. Lots of other games out there to pass the time with.
 
The pseudo-debacle surrounding the launch of Last Epoch is actually a great thing for the gaming industry. The lesson that every company should learn from the Last Epoch server issues is that it is a great idea to have a solo play, serverless option for your games.

Helldiver II is a great game but suffered badly because they had launch week server issues and no way for players to play the game otherwise.

Last Epoch has had massive serve issues on launch week, but they are still getting good visibility on YouTube and Twitch because people could still play the game.

There are so many great games that would benefit greatly with off-line, solo gameplay.

Unfortunately so many business models now require online mode since in-game cosmetics markets are entirely for show to other people... there is little point for cosmetics in a solo play through.

Anyway, I was up earlier than usual this morning and had a few hours before the dogs usually get up, and decided to try out Last Epoch 1.0. I then discovered that online play was still down... but I was still able to play! Imagine that...
 

Yeah, I saw that the total bundle cost in $71, that is a bit steep unless you have a group of friends and plan to plan with them regularly. For me Battlesector has become a game that I fire up occasionally to run a skirmish, but I still have a few new game modes to test out including the campaign editor. Maybe one of those will end up hooking me again.
 
Last Epoch thoughts, having now played all 5 classes to at least level 10(and fairly well beyond in a couple cases):

Classes, from least favorite to most:

1: Primalist: this class most likely, from looking at skills and such, gets much better later, but through level 10, it is boring and underpowered. Last class I took to level 10, and still the most deaths along the way, and playstyle was basically leap into a group, then spam attack while you and wolf minion oh so slowly kill the mobs. I suspect this class benefits more than most when they pick a masters(druid, shaman, or beastmaster).

2: Mage: huge step up from primalist. Many different possible setups just in the early levels, I went with a fireball/elemental nova build, throwing fireballs at range, then taking out packs close up with elemental nova. Fun and intuitive, once you get used to wards and how to get the most DPS, is easy to play and fun. Specializes into sorcerer, spellblade or runemaster. I will probably got sorcerer first of the 3 as it most closely matches the playstyle before mastery.

3: Sentinel: spin to win is real, and works nicely. Leap then spin is easy to do and works well. Masteries are void knight, Paladin and forge guard. If you do not like spinning, has several other viable options.

4: Acolyte: Oh boy is the acolyte powerful. Once you get bone golem, all you need to do is run around and pick up look while your skellies and golem handle everything else, including elites. The masteries are necro, warlock and Lich(which looks really cool to play...go into reaper form, slowly losing health, which you try and leach from mobs, when you run out of health you revert to human...reaper form has of course perks).

5: Rogue: So much fun, dashing around and through enemies(dashing through low health enemies kills them instantly) and then using your melee attack ability which is three attacks, the first of which creates a fire explosion around you. And you can drop smoke bombs to blind enemies and give you haste. Almost as powerful as the acolyte, but more fun. And of course, there are other playstyles you can use, such as a bow user. Masteries are marksman, bladedancer and falconer. Probably the first class I am going to push.

Continued due to character count limit in next post:
 
Continued from previous:

Other good things from the game: the stash is nearly perfect. You buy as many tabs as you want using in game currency(not real money like PoE) that are fairly cheap. You can organize and color code and label all the tabs, and there are search functions. I have spent too much already because it allows me to pack rat and organize my loot in a massively anal way. I cannot say enough good about the stash.

Even better is the loot filter. Far and away the best among aRPGs. First filter I made just hides normal drops. Making the filter can be done easily by anyone, add a condition, select hide, then select rarity, then common. Edit it in a bit to hide both common and magic...this edit can be done in even less time. My acolye wants especially gear that buffs minions, so add a new condition, set it to emphasize, and what color you want that loot to appear so you notice it, then set it to emphasize affixes, which opens a search box, enter minion, and select alll the affixes that you might want. This one might take one or two minutes tops, is awesomely handy, and so easy anyone can do it.

Lastly is the skill system. You get passive skill points every level(plus as quest rewards from some quests up to a limit). Pick the passive you want from a few possibilities. As you get enough points, occasionally new ones open up. When you pick a mastery, you can add points to any of the masteries, but only the selected mastery all the way to the end. What is nice is that it is generally pretty obvious what you are going to want...you can make your own very viable builds without spending too much time thinking about it. Specialization skills open up at levels 4, 8, 20, 35 and 50. Using my acolyte as an example, the first specialization was Summon Skeleton(for obvious reasons). Note I could already summon skeletons, but by specializing the skill, it opens up a skill tree for that skill, so I got 1 more skeleton from a specialization point, and then took a skill from the tree that halved the number of skeletons, but made them bigger and more badass. Each skill has a skilltree that can buff that skill in many different ways. For example, my mage has the fireball skill specialized. I can go down one path and get multiple fireballs each cast. Another path makes them faster casing and cheaper. Another makes them home in on enemies, another makes them also do lightning damage. And you get enough skill points that you can mix and match, so that you can have for example multiple homing fireballs that cast really fast and cost very little mana. It sounds complicated, but is actually kinda intuitive, and unlike most aRPGs, unless you get really stupid, you can make a viable build as you go along without using any guides.

So yeah, good game. Cheaper than Diablo 4, but better in almost every way. A solid 4 stars out of 5.
 
I have a bunch of games wishlisted on Steam for that very reason. Just waiting for the sale. Thankfully they email me when one goes on sale.
 
Reactions: PoS
Oh, I almost forgot: that looks alot like Darkest Dungeon. Is it like that? If so, I am interested.
 
Reactions: PoS
Redress said:
Oh, I almost forgot: that looks alot like Darkest Dungeon. Is it like that? If so, I am interested.
Click to expand...
Yes it is! Iratus is everything you like with DD, but without the bad.
 

I'm jumping between my Disintegrate Sorcerer and my Necromancer.

Mostly this weekend I'll be playing my Necromancer named Merrydeath.

The Last Epoch Acolyte/Necromancer is what the Diablo 4 necromancer should have been. The LE minions are far heartier and useful than they are in D4.

If I recall when I played Necromancer in the beta to ~Level 70, you do kind of hit a wall, but based on how screwed up all my other classes were when I revisited them pre-launch, I'm not ruling out the real possibility that the problem was me.
 
So I played a lot of LAST EPOCH this weekend and I eventually started to get bored/annoyed with the Acolyte. I think the issue I was having is that I feel like the Acolyte more than any class it heavily gear dependent,, or maybe I was just unlucky. Eitherway she ground to a halt around level 30. I was having a really hard time having strong minions and also not being fairly useless myself.

I decided to start another mage/runemaster and go with a bunch of spells I hadn't used before to see how they work. I'm now a convert to the spell STATIC. The spell has a power-up function that is driven my how far you have walked since the last time to cast it. At level 20 right now and when I have full charge it does a 5000+ damage AOE. I can mostly clear everything by simply kiting them into a group and casting it. Lost of fun.

Haven't dug too deeply in to the who Rune mechanic but it also seems to be very AOE driven, which is OK by me.

So my suggestion for anyone playing is to try out a static Mage/Runemaster. It's a lot of fun!
 
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