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Blog Your Current Game

Tried a Stellaris run with some of the new, hideously-overpowered stuff available in the latest DLC. Virtuality ascension for machine empires makes you able to create population out of thin air, just build something to create the job opening and it will fill. In exchange, you get a penalty to pop output that gets larger with each colony you have, so there's a limit of 6 or 7 colonies before a new one actually reduces your total output. Of course, if those 7 colonies are six ring world segments and an ecumenopolis, that is a staggering number of pops with huge output...

and none of it matters if you are playing a 25x strength All Crisis run and the new crisis type - Cetana the Nanite Queen - is the last one to spawn.

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I had a navy size of over 21,000, fleet power over a hundred million easily. Combined bonuses against Cetana of something like +250% damage. She absolutely curb-stomped me. Her shields, armor, and hull all regenerated faster than I could damage them, and she had five fleets defending her with over two hundred million power each.

I feel like there's something in her crisis settings that is double-stacking multipliers.
 
Still playing around with a few builds in Diablo 4. I've moved on to contemplating meme builds.

By meme builds I mean non-competitive builds that stray far from the meta and only really excel at doing one thing well and stupidly. I am trying to impose some dumb rules on myself like using as many unique items as I can just so that when I find something interesting it will be hard to replicate.

I started down tis road when I was fighting to find a new build for a Sorcerer I was tinkering with. He has been struggling from the very beginning because Sorc seems to be one of the most meta-required classes. There resource generation is so poor in general that you have to dedicate a lot of gear to mitigating that, which leaves you far less slots to address survivability and damage... so with a minor number of slots, you are stuck with the handful of over performing items/builds.

I found a unique ring that was kind of interesting because it essentially turned mobs with DOTs into bombs. This meant that to utilize the skill I would have to, I though, switch to a fire build since burning is the only source of DOT for a Sorcerer.

Then I realized that that wasn't true. Sorcerer has enchantments that allow you to imbue yourself with a skill that adds a new passive bonus. Most of those enchantments seem fairly targeted, like you need to cast the skill to get the passive. But there is one enchantment that applies burning to every enemy you do damage to.

I added that enchantment to my Sorc, who was specced to electric, and it was wonderful mayhem. Now all my tiny little passive sources of damage set enemies on fire, and the ring effect means that at random they cause explosions.

I'm now considering adding thorns to my build since, in theory, every time an enemy hits me they will be set on fire....
 
Currently playing Tropico 6. Its fun to be a "benevolent" dictator. I remember playing the first one for a few days before realizing it was pointless lol. This one at least has goals.

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For your enjoyment:

 
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PoS' Tropico 6 Guide

OK, after a bunch of false starts, I think I finally figured it out. The key to making money is all about choosing the right industry. Math is 2 resources for every 1 factory, like having 2 plantations for whatever factory building you set up. While its always good to have a diversified economy, this is the key. Also build a teamster building near your industrial centers for every 100 population- they are the movers of your economy so you cant do without them.

Colonial Era: It's all about rum and wooden toys. So build 2 sugar plantations for every rum distillery, and 2 logging camps for every toy shop. Also build a newspaper to progress to the next era by going independent. 2 rum and 2 toy shops and youre good to go. And most of all, grab the Stonehenge wonder, you get unlimited trees with it, so its a resoruce that will never run out, because youll need it in the next era.

World War Era: Shipyards and cigar factories. Boats are the biggest moneymakers, so with Stonehenge, just build a shit ton of logging camps and lumber mills, and have at least 4 shipyards and youll have all the money you need. Rinse and repeat.

Once you got those things going, youll be swimming in mucho dinero and be able to buy anything else you want.
 
I've been distracting myself today by watching videos of people playing the new Elden Ring DLC.

I've never played the game because I simply don't have the reflexes, but I have watched enough videos to get an idea of what works and what doesn't and to casually critique various styles.

I was watching one guy who created a video to show everyone his sorcery build that destroys every new Elden Ring boss and I had to chuckle to myself when he opened his character page to go through the gear he is using:

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... I mean, if I have gathered anything from watching people play Elden Ring over the last year and a half it is that ANY build works when you max out all stats....
 
I've been distracting myself today by watching videos of people playing the new Elden Ring DLC.

I've never played the game because I simply don't have the reflexes, but I have watched enough videos to get an idea of what works and what doesn't and to casually critique various styles.

I was watching one guy who created a video to show everyone his sorcery build that destroys every new Elden Ring boss and I had to chuckle to myself when he opened his character page to go through the gear he is using:

View attachment 67516964

... I mean, if I have gathered anything from watching people play Elden Ring over the last year and a half it is that ANY build works when you max out all stats....
....LOL

Reminds me of the OG Skyrim feedback loop where you could make a potion that enhances enchanting, and enchant an item to enchance alchemy. My pro strat for playing on the highest difficulty: have a bow so powerful that it one-shots dragons.
 
....LOL

Reminds me of the OG Skyrim feedback loop where you could make a potion that enhances enchanting, and enchant an item to enchance alchemy. My pro strat for playing on the highest difficulty: have a bow so powerful that it one-shots dragons.

That was an even more absurd loop in Morrowind. There was no cap and there was pretty much a potion for anything. You could boost alchemy, then brew a potion of luck, then alchemy, then luck.. and finally, when alchemy is in the trillions, make a potion of leaping and leap right into a stack-overflow crash.
 
So I have been playing around with a game I played many years ago, and is STILL in early release called Planet Centauri

Planet Centauri is a Terraria clone, and a pretty good one. I haven't really gotten too deeply into the latest release, but they have the same sort of interesting gear progression that Terraria has (start in the stone age, end with laser rifles, etc.) but adds a color coded loot quality and crafting system to the mix.

On top of that their real differentiation is that they have added an automation element to the game where you can build simple machines to do tasks for you. Essentially you can build windmills or hand cranked machines to do multi-stage automation of complex tasks.

I haven't gotten into the automation side of it yet because so far it seems like if all you want is a Terraria clone then it will fill that void just fine without automation, but it seems like maybe there is something for the Factorio folks as well... though not nearly at the level of Factorio.

I haven't gotten far enough in this patch yet to know everything that has changed in the last 2 years, but so far it seems rather fun.
 
I’m looking for RTS games without RPG involvent. The next level real world conflict recreation to test previous military strategy or creat one’s own. The digital Avalon Hill stuff. Also the next gen Civ games, Age of Empire, Command and Conquer. Civ 6 isn’t feeding the fix any more :cool:.

Any notions? I’ve looked but I’m not finding. I’m I missing any candidates in the RTS venue?

Thanks.
Do the next gen civ games have countries that can actually be allies instead of being demanding ****ers who backstab you when you dont give em stuff?
 
View attachment 67514388

PoS' Tropico 6 Guide

OK, after a bunch of false starts, I think I finally figured it out. The key to making money is all about choosing the right industry. Math is 2 resources for every 1 factory, like having 2 plantations for whatever factory building you set up. While its always good to have a diversified economy, this is the key. Also build a teamster building near your industrial centers for every 100 population- they are the movers of your economy so you cant do without them.

Colonial Era: It's all about rum and wooden toys. So build 2 sugar plantations for every rum distillery, and 2 logging camps for every toy shop. Also build a newspaper to progress to the next era by going independent. 2 rum and 2 toy shops and youre good to go. And most of all, grab the Stonehenge wonder, you get unlimited trees with it, so its a resoruce that will never run out, because youll need it in the next era.

World War Era: Shipyards and cigar factories. Boats are the biggest moneymakers, so with Stonehenge, just build a shit ton of logging camps and lumber mills, and have at least 4 shipyards and youll have all the money you need. Rinse and repeat.

Once you got those things going, youll be swimming in mucho dinero and be able to buy anything else you want.
But, you gotta have an airport, and that takes forever!

I just checked, I had Tropico 5...and all the others, just bought 6 with some free DLC in the Steam sale.
 
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But, you gotta have an airport, and that takes forever!

I just checked, I had Tropico 5...and all the others, just bought 6 with some free DLC in the Steam sale.
Just follow my guide, and dont forget to diversify your economy. Good luck, El Presidente!
 
Picked up ONCE HUMAN on Steam (can't argue with free!) and have been playing it this morning.

So far I quite like it. I'm not a guy who spends money of skins, so I am playing the game for free... if I continue to like the game I may buy something just to reward them, but we'll see.

Also, I'm aware of the EULA outrage, but really they are just telling you what everyone does already. Most of the people who are outraged by the EULA happily use TikTok, for instance.

It's worth pointing out that the real danger in the EULA is entirely dependent on what information you give NetEase to begin with. As such, I figure my enjoyment of the game will come to an end whenever I need to reset my account for whatever reason since that is the only path that NetEase has of getting important PII from me.

So, the game...

It's quite fun. It seems kind of like a mash up of The Division, Conan Exiles and Secret World.

The combat in the starting area seems a bit too easy, but I'm playing on a relaxed server, and the unlock tree has some very weird choices that can lead to bad decisions. For instance, early on you can unlock "advanced Ammo" that adds more damage and crit chance, but that ammo is only compatible with weapons that are unlocked further down the tech tree. I ended up spending points to unlock the ammo and spend a lot of resources crafting the ammo for my SMG only to find that the ammo doesn't work. Bummer.

Anyway, it's a fun and weird game and worth trying, given that it's free to play. Just don't send them your government ID. 😆
 
7 Days To Die 1.0 review and complete beginners guide:

7 Days To Die has spent 11 years in early access. The 1.0 release version is out on experimental now, with the release coming later this summer. Anyone can play 1.0 through Steam(if you bought the early access obviously). It is a survival crafting game, ala Ark, Rust, V Rising, etc. Ark is probably the closest comparison, except instead of dinosaurs, it has zombies. It also kinda has a real Fallout kinda feel, first person combat with lots and lots of blood, plus the remnants of pre-catastrophe civilization, with a dark and foul mouthed sense of humor. The twist to the game is hinted at in the title: every 7 days, at night, a zombie horde is going to attack you. And by "horde", I am talking dozens and dozens of zombies(over 100, though it depends alot). Players build bases to fight the zombies that take full advantage of all the zombie coded logic, and it still is nostop action and requires careful but fast paced play for about a half hour real time. Every block in game is destructible, and zombies will destroy blocks between you and them if they cannot get to you any other way. Horde night is a blast, edge of the seat tension as you try and balance killing zombies with repairing the damage they are doing to your fighting position.

Horde night is not all 7 Days To Die has to offer though. Horde bases are often not the best base to do your other activities in, so you can have a whole other base. And you have a metric ton of shapes you can build with, allowing for some really imaginative bases. Want a drawbridge to enter your base? You can do it. Want electrical traps to zap zombies that get too close? Can do. Want it to look like a medieval castle? No problem. Want to just use an existing ingame building? That is how I do it, no problem.

And in addition to the crafting aspect, there is plenty off zombie combat, and a quest system that will keep you busy(though the really good quest rewards have all been nerfed, probably for the best). Complete 10 quests and get a bonus reward(take the bicycle, it is game changing), and access to tier 2 higher difficulty quests. New to 1.0 is a set of challenges with help guide new players, and is really nice, if kinda odd at times. You can at times really feel the 11 years of development in both good and bad ways. Balance is pretty nice, and it guides players innto starting well, but the game looks 11 years old too. It does not look bad, and some of the animations are pretty great, but it definitely looks dated.

Overall, it is a game not for everyone, but if any of that description above sounds interesting, it does what it does well, so is probably worth picking up. A solid 3.5 to 4 out of 5 stars.

Beginners guide in next post:
 
7 Days To Die Beginners Guide:

Before you start your first game, it may be a good idea to adjust some settings. There is a ton of things to learn, so making things a bit easier so you can level faster and learn what skills do might not be a bad idea. You can make horde nights happen at 10 days, or 30 days(or every night) to give you time to get your feet wet before having to deal with one. Then either select a pre-made map, or a randomly generated map(the random map generator has gotten pretty good at making maps, and is much faster than it used to be, taking just a couple minutes on my PC) and start the game. You will spawn in in your underwear, with a note, a torch, food and water. Hit the Y key to bring up the challenge menu, which will walk you through the tutorial. Follow what it tells you to do, and you will end up with your first armor, a melee weapon, a bow, an axe to harvest resources. When you finish the tutorial challenges, it will give you 4 skill points, and point you to the nearest trader. Head there.

A couple things to note: the tutorial has you make a club for a weapon, but you can make most melee weapons right at the start, so pick what you prefer, even if it is not a club. Personally I like spears as they hit at longer range. Some people swear by sledgehammers. Knives are another favorite. This leads us to skills, and skill magazines and books. It can be a bit overwhelming, but here are some basics. Each level you get a skill point, and 4 more for finishing the tutorial. Each skill has 5 levels, with perks associated with that level. I mentioned I like spears, and taking Spear Master is a decent choice for me. Taking a point in that increases spear damage, reduces stamina usage when using a spear, plus bonuses to power attacks. Most importantly though is that more spears will appear in loot, and far more important than even that is spear skill magazines with appear more often. The more skill magazines you read(up to 75 for spears), the higher quality of spears you can craft, which is mostly how you get better spears( I have yet to get a spear better than what I had crafted, but my luck is not always great). Most weapons have 3 types, with 6 levels for each type. For spears it is stone spears, iron spears, and steal spears. A level 1 iron spear is usually better than a level 6(legendary) stone spear.

So, back to skills. Your first 4 points, I would take 1 point for a melee weapon, whatever you think you want to use, 1 point in archery(bows are really usefull for a long time, with much easier to attain ammo than firearms for awhile) 1 point in advanced engineering(because forging magazines are extremely high priority, and that is understating it), and the last point in either Master Chef(for cooking skill books), or Rule 1: Cardio for more stamina regen while running, Healing Factor for health regen. You will want I think all of those early on, plus a level in 1 type of firearm(I usually go pistols). Don't sweat it too much, you are going to level fairly quickly, giving you more skill points to spend. I would tend to avoid the loot focused skills like Lucky Looter for awhile, and definately avoid Pack Mule, as you can cap carry space with armor mods.

Continued due to character limit:
 
Here is the rest:


So anyway, head to the marker indicating where the trader is. Along the way, loot pretty much anything you find, with particular emphasis on bird nests for feathers(used to make arrows) and eggs(bacon annd eggs is a food recipe you get early, and a decent one) and tree stumps(use your axe to chop them down, they have a 20 % chance to give you honey, which cures infection). When you get to the trader, before introducing yourself, loot everything in his base. He is really rude, so deserves it. When you introduce yourself, it finishes a quest, and you get a shovel as a reward. Asking for a "special quest" gives you a quest that will use that shovel. Before you go, sell a bunch of your crap to him. Keep stones, wood, feathers, eggs, food, water, any weapon mods, cook pots or grills(if you got very lucky in loot...I never do, but some people seem to have great luck on that stuff). All books and magazines should be read. Books give you perks, magazines advance your crafting skills.

Head to the quest and complete it. It is easy, just digging for loot which will contain some food items as well as the quest item. Return to the trader and get a firearm for your efforts, and access to more quests. I usually take the closest Fetch, Clear, or Fetch and Clear quest. Fetch quests send you to a building and ask you to get a trader satchel from it. You do not have to clear the whole building(called PoI), but there are some reward boxes hidden away somewhere in the PoI, usually at the endpoint. Clear quests you have to kill all the zombies in a PoI. Fetch and clear combine both. Loot everything at the PoI, and along the way. Before you leave on that first quest, build a storage chest just outside the trader compount and stash everything you do not need on you right away. Be on the look out for scrap polymers(can get by chopping tires with your axe among other ways), short iron pipes, and duct tape(or cloth scraps and glue to make duct tape...never sell either as you will need a ****ton of duct tape). You need those for a dew collector which will solve your water issues. You also want a cook pot and a grill. Youtubers seem to find these first PoI they clear. I never do and have to buy them from the trader). Do quests during the day, once the trader closes, clear out the closest PoI that looks usable for a base, and after clearing it, craft and put down a land claim block in it so zomebies no longer spawn there. This is were you will do your crafting, put your crafting gear(campfire to cook, forge, workbench, cement mixer, etc), dew collecter, and a bunch of storage boxes. There is a bunch of challenges in the challenges window to guide you along(and when you complete a full row of challenges and you will get a reward from the trader next time you stop, and the row of challenges associated with building a base can be done easily that first night).

This will get you to day 2 and give you a good start. Don't hesitate to ask if you have questions. I do recomend the game, at 25 $ I think it is worth it.
 
So a correction to the mini review of ONCE HUMAN:

It turns out that the ammo I thought I couldn't equip just had a really non-intuitive way to equip it. All is right with the world now.

Also, as I find blueprints for new weapons I'm finding that, unlike most games, they all have rather effective use cases and will result in, I think, a lot of people having unique gear sets for their play style.

Being a slower reflex old man, I have adopted the Sniper Rifle and Revolver build. The Sniper rifle can clear the outside of a compound at a safe distance, and the pistol carries a nice punch and reload speed for clear inside of buildings. It's also a nice build because it is efficient on ammunition.

I also like, though it is silly when you think about it, that you can relocate your base whenever you feel the need, and the land claim area is small enough that you end up with player-built towns popping up across the map.

Anyway, still fun, but needed to add the correction.
 
I've put a considerable amount of time into ONCE HUMAN now and have progressed through.4 bosses now.

This will be weird for me to say this but... the boss fights are too easy. I'll always admit that I am bad at FPS and Action games because I am slow, but I haven't had a boss fight yet that I wasn't able to cheese my way through.

Essentially I haven't met a boss yet that wasn't fully invested in ranged combat over melee, and as such well generally fall prey to sniper game play. A boss with a minigun has no hope against a sniper build. One fight I just parkoured to a spot that the boss' adds couldn't reach and then chopped him down with my sniper rifle. He would go through phases where he would release adds who would not be able to reach me, then I would destroy their portals and he would start blasting me with his minigun which, at that range I was, would hit me 1 out of every 20 rounds. All the while I and take off 5% of his health per sniper round.

I would go back and rerun missions to farm loot but for one problem: While gear drops in dungeons can be nice, you can't repair them. I have a really nice sniper rifle that I keep in reserve for boss fights until it breaks.

I'm still enjoying the game but I think it would have been better as a solo game rather than an MMO... at least so far, anyway. I haven't faced a boss that was a challenge solo.
 
So I started a new run in 7 Days To Die, more focused on just a few skills(to get more skill mags for those skills early), and mostly to go with a hand built base(essentially a platform zombies cannot get onto...they cannot jump onto ladders, so a ladder minus the bottom couple sections stops them but I can jump that far...still have to kill them or they will destroy the supports trying to get to you, but no zombie surprises while focused on crafting). Day 4 in game, I am working on my base, thinking I had enough supports. I proved to be wrong, had too much weight hanging out from the supports, and the whole base collapses. I am not even sure why, it should have been plenty sturdy. I lost literally everything. All my storage crates with everything I had gathered(including a lucky Legendary part needed to craft legendary gear) gone. Dew collector, gone. Forge, gone. Gunna be a new restart tomorrow. For tonight, too frustrated to play.
 
I've been playing ONCE HUMAN exclusively for about a week now and I'm currently level 43 out of 50.

Some more updates on how it's going (in no particular order):

A bad Bug, but a good Developer?

- There is a rather unfortunate bug in the game as of the latest chapter (they release a new chapter each week) that has broken a key feature in the game, namely the ability to relocate your home base on the fly. When it is working, if you find a place on the map with a lit of features you want, you can go into the build menu and choose to port in your home base. This makes regional explori9ng much easier. Unfortunately the new update introduced a bug where some one your base pieces my not port, which break the ability to move your home.

- This bug and one other have shown that the developer is definitely customer friendly... possibly TOO friendly ... when it comes to compensating people for major bugs. My house was hit by the bug and I put in a ticket. The bug still isn't fixed but the developed backed a virtual dump truck of in-game currency to my base and stuffed it in my mailbox.

The Map

- This map is rather huge. Only the first two regions of the planned 6have been opened and it's already gigantic (about half the map currently open). You can teleport between teleport pylons or from your home to any teleport pylon, but they cost in-game currency that can run scarce until you figure out the game.

- They have motorcycles, cars and trucks in the game you can build to help you get around but they are made of tin foil and get the same gas mileage and a Ford Explorer with a hold in the gas tank... but still better than walking everywhere.

Been living all my life living in a Tinkers Paradise

- All weapons that you can find in drops or crafting have 5 tiers that determine the level you need to be to use them. They power increases a lot between tiers.

- You can also calibrate your weapons to raise the power level within every tier with tiers of calibration... at maximum calibration within a tier you have a weapon roughly similar to first level calibration in a higher tier.

- All weapons in the game are mod-able to let you add scopes and silencers and extended mags that boost range, stability, accuracy... etc. etc.

- Higher tier weapons have one of several styles that can mean added status damage (fire, frost, etc.) or a status effect (weapon fires faster the longer you hold the trigger... weapon damage increases after looking through the scope... etc.). If you recycle a higher tiered weapon, one of the things you get from it is a card that you can use in the calibration menu to change your weapon (of the same type) to that other style of weapon.

Clever Girl

- While you can by weapon mods in various shops in the bases around the map, you can also find puzzles around the map that will unlock specific mods.

- Most of the puzzles are rather easy, even for the legendary mods, and some of them are just dumb or broken... so don't5 waste your currency buying mods if you don't mind spoilers. There is an interactive map for the game that tells you where all of the puzzles are located and what they give you.

Not So Clever Girl

- One of the weak points in the game is the lack of intelligence of the trash mobs in the game. Most of them don't react to gun shots, some don't even respond when you shoot them.

- While this is annoying, the bosses and elites tend to behave smartly most of the time, and missing specific mobs at least bum-rush you.


In conclusion: This game is really actually a lot of fun and the content is absolutely massive for a free to play game. There is a potential for pseudo-Pay to win in some of the game mechanics that haven been unlocked yet, but right now there is a nice balance of resource grinding and fighting that just hits right for me.

Again, the game is free, so if anyone decides to join, I'm on North American server PVE01-00041, my character name is Fley.
 
Well, the fixed the House-move bug in a patch this morning. Now the big issue with a lot of people is ow the game will handle seasons.

I'm not really sure how I fee about it, but as currently planned, there is no "Enternal" server like in other ARPGs, or a persistent world like in MMOs.. you will essentially lose all items and gear at the start of each season. You keep your skills and ell of the blueprints you have learned, but the grind starts again at level 1.

This system seems to be half way between the ARPG system where you have to start over to experience the new season, and the MMO system of adding new maps to explore with a persistent character.

I'll keep playing tis character to get as many blueprints, I'll have to see how I feel about starting the grind over for levels, though.
 
Mention something about the game you're currently playing... whether its a recap, review, impression or anything anecdotal.:
Took Trevor to the strip club.

A young man in our office was playing Grand Theft Auto 5 on his new PS5 remote controller during a lunch break. When I asked about it, he gave me a tour. It connects by wifi to his Playstation console at home wherever he goes. He let me try GTA5. I crashed my car, carjacked another, then went to the strip club.

It is easy to see why these games are so addictive. I love watching, but I will continue staying away. For me, it would be like crack.
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7 Days To Die has left early access, and comes with my seal of approval. Kill zombies, build a base, and survive, all done pretty well. Not the best game ever, but pretty darn good.
 
7 Days To Die has left early access, and comes with my seal of approval. Kill zombies, build a base, and survive, all done pretty well. Not the best game ever, but pretty darn good.

I never played 7 Day to Die because the game just looked bad. Just looked up the 1.0 and it looks substantially better.

I may give it a try.
 
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