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Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
There is always occasional discussion of Distant Worlds whenever Stellaris is mentioned. Is that a game worth playing? I've always been interested in it, but I've always been a bit hesitant to sign up for a Matrix game since I'm particularly into their other titles.

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Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
Oh no! Being able to automate different parts of your empire sounds like an interesting idea, but I've always thought that it is probably something that works better in theory than in practice. I've never been one for wars in my strategy games, so leaving that to the computer while I focus on expansion or the economy is right in my wheel house.

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
But what if it was a vampire mmo...

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
My hope for HoI4 will be that it will be more friendly to first time hearts of iron players. Maybe I'm just bad at the game, but I've always found Paradox's WW2 games to be their most inaccessible - for whatever reason I've never really been able to get things click as well for me as they do in ck2 or eu4.

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

On the one hand, I usually think the HoI systems are the most accessible...

My problem may have been that I tried out HoI2, never managed to do well, and then wrote off HoI3 after its poor reviews. I plan on giving the fourth a chance, though, since I have been charmed by the dev. diaries and the thought of being good at a WW2 game has always been appealing to me!

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
Is distant worlds worth buying on the steam sale? I saw that it was some dollars off the other day, and I love me some empire building games, but I am scared by all things Matrix gaming related...

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
The genocide button is worth having just so Paradox can one day publish statistics about how often it is pressed and how many races noble humanity have genocided into the footnotes of intergalactic history.

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat

Sindai posted:

I hope nobody seriously believes Stellaris is that close to release unless you enjoy disappointing yourself.

I paid 10 dollars to post on an Internet videogames forum; Unrealistic expectations and crushing disappointments are my bread and butter in this life.

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
I am beyond excited for Stellaris, if it ends up living up to the expectations it sets for itself I'll be a very happy Paradox fanboy indeed!

I think it would be interesting if you'd be able to pick up games in the same galaxy of your first play through as a new race which recently gained the ability to colonize the stars. How great would it be to encounter a decadent and collapsed version of the empire you recently played through the week before?

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
Forget that starship building malarkey, here is the real Stellaris question: is there enough time in the dev cycle to include the new planet in our solar system that was just discovered?

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat

Empress Theonora posted:

Let's Play! › Bull-men are the epitome of civilization! Europa Universalis: Rome

The first thing you should notice about that thread is that it is 857 pages long.

Every so often I am tempted to go through that LP, if for no other reason to read a treasured part of forums history, but boy oh boy... At the very least I can be proud about being a Modernist during the old Hohenzollern LP. That has to be worth something!

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
So this may be a weird question, buuuut.... have Microsoft Surface Pro tablets caught up to being able to play Paradox titles yet? I am going to be in the market for a laptop replacement something this year and being able to play Stellaris or my beloved Crusader Kings would be incredible.

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
In CK2 I think the later 1080something bookmark is actually the top secret start date everyone should use. Byzantium is no longer a blob, the HRE is out of Italy and William the Conquerer is actually ruling in England and isn't about to be bumped out by those uppity Anglo Saxons anytime soon.

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat

Odobenidae posted:

I was reminded of that from your post and then fired up CK2 to start a game. I thought Italy was free too, but they're still under the HRE up until the 1337 bookmark. :smith:

Oh man, you're right! For some reason I thought the HRE had been booted out of Northern Italy at that bookmark but it looks like I couldn't be more wrong. Apulia is doing great, though!

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
My real hope for Stellaris is that the times of peace will be just as interesting as the times of war. I really think CK2 nailed it with the newly introduced council mechanic, and I hope that playing as a federation is somewhat similar.

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
How about a kind of Space Athens which is constantly being crippled by Direct Space Democracy? Now that's the empire for me! Give me a council of a trillion voters who are never going to be able to be pleased and govern the empire by their passions and mob rule

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
Man, I really hope that they make a Total War type game for VR someday. I really want to be a super nerd and do the Testudo Formation from the comfort of my parent's basement.

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
I think it is best to think of a Federation Navy as being like a retinue in CK2 - it is a standing army independent of levies, except in this case it is only accessible to the leader.

So maybe more like the Varangian Guard?

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
Not a big deal for we super nerds who drop :10bux: to talk about videogames, but the Stellaris team recently updated the minimum requirements for the game to:

OS: Windows 7 x86 or newer, Processor: AMD Athlon II X4 640 @ 3.0 Ghz or Intel Core 2 Quad 9400 @ 2.66 Ghz,
Memory: 2 GB RAM,
Graphics: AMD HD 5770 or Nvidia GTX 460 with 1024MB VRAM, Latest available WHQL drivers from both manufacturers,
DirectX: 9.0c,
Storage: 4 GB available space,
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card

From:

MINIMUM:
OS: XP/Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8
Processor: Intel® Pentium® IV 2.4 GHz or AMD 3500+
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce 8800 or ATI Radeon® X1900, 512mb video memory required, shader model 3 required
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 4 GB available space
Sound Card: Direct X- compatible sound card

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat

uPen posted:

I'm not going to go look at the stats to confirm but I very much doubt many steam users are still running core 2 anything.

Oh no doubt. I just saw the news posted on Twitter so I thought I'd pass it along here. Any news is good news!

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
I don't know, but I think a mobile paradox game would be the bee's knees

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
Absolutely. I have long resigned myself to never making money on the stock market, so now I just buy shares in companies I want to support. I've ponied up god knows how much in DLC over the years, time to go all in!

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
So how long is ck2 going to be supported with DLC? I'm not asking because I am mad about videogames or anything like that, but rather out of curiosity. It has been out for 4 years now, yeah?

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
The new game is Rome 2 and Wiz lost an office bet, so now he spends his days thinking about and programming AI senates which mimic goon Crete. A fitting fate for one who dared fly too close to the sun!

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
I don't know, I am pushing for the pseudoscience. I for one excited about the possibility of phrenology influencing the actions of the worker pops in V3.

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat

GSD posted:

I can't wait to see complaints about "Dolores Muwanga" being a possible name for Human President of Space.

I really hope paradox doubled down on the awesome African names just for that very reason. May your stellar empire be full of Dikembe Mutombo Wamutombos!

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat

Pimpmust posted:

We will make the Tellurian Empire great again :colbert:

We will build a Dyson Sphere around the solar system and the Selubrians are going to pay for it!

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
I mean, only a fool thinks it will be released this week; Clearly they are going to announce a steam open beta.

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
I think, more than most Paradox games, Stellaris will be one that lives and dies by its mods. We are all huge nerds here, and once things settle I expect that a larger number of players than normal will be spending time in their universe of choice (be it Star Trek, Star Wars, Warhammer 40k, or what have you) and a fair amount of the discussion about the game will revolve around our stories from those settings -- and in all of them we'll be seeing the expected races time and time again.

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
I'd appreciate a dedicated Stellaris thread! Paradox is starting to stream things about the game now, so it would be nice to have a spot to discuss upcoming events and all of that. Today, at 20:00 CET they are doing something called "The Rise of the Blorg Commonality: #1 Space Friends!"

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat

Ofaloaf posted:

I'm still hoping that Paradox gets a deal with Harry Turtledove, so I can play all those books I read when I was a teen:



My parents bought me this book for a plane trip when it first came out, all I can remember are the gratuitous sex scenes between a yankee and some docile chinese peasant on an alien spaceship or something. Needless to say, as a 13 year old boy I was hooked immediately.

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat

Sky Shadowing posted:

Is Turtledove actually any good? The only thing I've read from him is the short-story The Road Not Taken (which, if you haven't read it, is alternate history where FTL travel is super easy and the galaxy is controlled by Age of Sail level civilizations, that is, until one of them decide to invade modern-day Earth (because we just somehow never figured it out)).

I wouldn't call him a "good" author, per-say, but I think he is certainly acceptable in an airport trashy novelist kind of way. Turtledove is prolific enough that he has basically covered most of the alt. history tropes by now, so if anything strikes your interest in particular there is a good chance he has written 300 pages about it at some point. For instance, in one of his books he writes about the success of the Spanish Armada and how William Shakespeare joins the english underground and starts writing provocatory plays that get everyone all riled up. It isn't something you'd talk about at your weekly literary salon, but if you're commuting you could probably be doing worse!

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
So would the federation, or whatever it is called in Starship Troopers, be a poor man's collective of sorts or some kind of limited democracy? All of the citizens pitch in and donate years of their lives to the central government in order to be given votes.

Though I guess that comparison leans more towards democracy since people are not forced into government service, they are just incentivized to do so.

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat

Agean90 posted:

In my (limited) experience people speak whatever the accent of whoever taught them speaks. So if someone learns english primarily from the brits they speak it with a slight british accent, if you learn spanish from cubans you speak it with a cuban accent, etc.

Yeah, that's how accents get passed on down through the generations - or at least did before that Midwestern/General American accent took over television :argh:

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
Is how accessible is HoI 4? I wasn't smart enough to play HoI 2 and I skipped out on the third game entirely. Can the fourth be picked up and played reasonably well if I am familiar with other paradox games but am a straight up hearts of iron baby?

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
So this has little to do with videogames buuuutt.... I just finished watching The Tudors on Netflix. I've already seen both Borgia series, is there anything else I can be watching to wet my Western European historical soap opera whistle?

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat

Fuligin posted:

Wolf Hall

Thank you so much for this suggestion! Somehow Wolf Hall flew under my radar. It is so good; Damian Lewis should be in every period piece.

Hot Dog Day #82 fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Jun 22, 2016

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
So I am building myself a computer and, obviously, I spend a lot of my time playing nerdy map games. I know a lot of paradox stuff is limited by the CPU, so in that case does it make sense for me to pony up for an i7 6700k or would an i5 6600k still do? Sorry for the technical question, but I thought this was a good place for it since 70% of my gaming is Swedish made!

Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
Hana thanks, gents! I have more money than sense these days and computer parts with big numbers in them always strike me as being better than their alternatives. Thanks for putting me on the straight and narrow!

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Hot Dog Day #82
Jul 5, 2003

Soiled Meat
I want to hear more about the guy with 14k hours in CK2; he'd fit right in on the forums!

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