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Ainsley McTree posted:I haven't played Civ 4 in a long time, but I'm about 99.9% sure that saltpeter isn't a resource in it. It was in 3, but not 4 I don't think. I don't believe gunpowder units require any strategic resources in 4. Yep, I was thinking of Civ 3. Iron still stands though!
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Feb 26, 2013 03:17
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Ainsley McTree posted:Or I guess to put it another way, how much expansion is too much expansion? It seems to me that food, fuel range & the availability of decent planets is the main thing holding you back, but if you can overcome that, go hog wild and colonize as much as you can? The main downside to early expansion is that most planets will not be as good at producing food as your home planet is, and so if you settle a barren rock you will have to convert citizens on your home planet into farmers in order to feed your colonies. There's no actual civ-like penalty to your tax rate or whatever just for having a colony though. Basically once you hit the mid-game and can terraform, you should settle 100% of the planets.
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Feb 26, 2013 03:19
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Nope, don't need strategic resources for Gunpowder units in Civ4. What you guys are forgetting here are: cottages. Cottages are probably the most important tile in the game. Cottages generate Commerce (aka those giant coins). The simplest kind of economy is the cottage economy, where the bulk of your research comes from spamming cottages everywhere. The best tiles to cottage are riverside grass tiles, but regular grass tiles are okay as well. The important thing about cottages is that they are a long-term investment. You need to build them early, and work them continuously, before they mature from a crappy +1 commerce tile up to a +5 tile. Another thing to note. If you want to evaluate the value of a tile, you need to mentally subtract 2 food from every single tile. This is because every single citizen eats 2 food anyway. So a grassland cottage is, in reality, a net zero food. If you want your cities to actually grow, you will need farms or a food resource. The most important building in the game is the Granary. What it effectively does is half the food cost of growing. Or, another way of thinking of it, once a granary is built, every single point of food that a city collects is doubled. Build granaries everywhere. They are crucial if you want a large productive empire. Don't be afraid of expanding and dropping your science slider. As long as you're increasing the number of commerce tiles being worked (by building cottages everywhere), just because you have to drop your science slider to pay for your empire's maintenance doesn't necessarily mean your net beakers per turn is decreasing. Remember, the way Civ4's expansion system works, every single new city is an investment. They first cost money in maintenance, but as they grow and throw up infrastructure (whether it be in-city buildings like granaries, or tile improvements like cottages), they pay for themselves and then more. With good management and smart expansion, your cities can pay for themselves very quickly. Finally, Civ4 is actually an argument in favour of short-term decisions and against environmentalism. Don't be afraid of deforesting your entire continent to put up cottages everywhere. The tech to improve forests is very late game, while early game, you're better off destroying those forests for a short term hammer boost. Use those forests to build more workers and settlers and granaries, and the occasional wonder. E: You don't need iron. Copper is more important this game, as it lets you build axes. Swords, on the other hand, are crap unless you're fighting archers (and even then, I'd rather use horse archers instead of swords).
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Feb 26, 2013 03:21
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Any tips for Dragon Quest 6? Specifically the DS remake.
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Feb 26, 2013 03:34
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Thanks for the MoO 2 tips, guys. One more for now--I know that when you uncheck the "tactical combat" box, the AI designs your ships for you, and you don't get the option to fight tactical battles. If you check the box, you of course get to fight the battles, but does the AI still design your ships for you? I mean I know you can do it yourself, but does it at least automatically upgrade your designs as you research new technology, and if so, is it at the same level as it would be if you unchecked the box? I want the tactical battles, but the ship design aspect is a bit daunting, and I wouldn't mind playing around with default designs at first to at least figure out what seems to work and what doesn't to make my tweaks from there...I just want to make sure that my default ships will at least be using new tech even if I'm not constantly updating them myself!
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Feb 26, 2013 03:56
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Mayor McCheese posted:Thanks! The series left a bit of stigma with me in regards to those spells rarely working. I would have never used them. There is one big lovely boss later on in the game (it will murder you the first time if you don't pay attention) where you desperately need at least Slow. Reflect is also worth grinding some levels to learn early, as there's a lot of bosses that can be cheesed with it, and some where it's nearly essential. If you press left or right while you're picking a target for spell selection, you will select the whole side, enemy or friend. This will cause you to use one spell on multiple targets, but the more targets, the less effective the spell in. The best use for this is using Cure, Cura, and Curaga (Cure, Cure2, Cure3, I can't remember what they're called in vanilla.) and spamming the gently caress out of it- you should never have a problem with money, so don't worry about using MP. When you get a new party member, it's worth it to spend a little while getting them up to the rest of your party. Especially early int he game, as they'll get slaughtered otherwise. Don't worry so much about equipment- most of the best equipment is just found by looking for treasure chests, although armor is a bit harder to find. Remember that Dark is hella useful, and once you have a healer in the party don't be afraid to spam that poo poo. I don't remember if this is for the PS1 or DS version, but the Sing ability is pretty drat useful, actually. The person who has it is pretty much made out of marshmallow, though, so keep them in the back row or they'll hide and be useless and awful once their HP is down. ... Why yes, I do play a lot of FFIV, why do you ask E: To be less spoilery. FluxFaun fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 04:10
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Sociopastry posted:FFIV You got some spoilers in there, man.
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Feb 26, 2013 04:16
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Ainsley McTree posted:Master of Orion 2 If you have archives, about two years ago I sperged out a massive post on how exactly to beat MOO2 99.5% of the time. In the meantime, a few general tips: There's no penalty for expanding like crazy. Still, that Barren high-grav planet will take a lot of work to become worthwhile, and colony ships require a lot of effort to build, so it's probably not worth it. Always hire Megawealth leaders. Always keep at least 100BC on hand in case a Megawealth leader keeps comes knocking. 10BC for free each and every turn is incredible. I mentally refer to Administrator Garron as "Administrator I Win", because if you hire him in the first dozen or two turns, you literally can't lose. Diplomacy is vital. Always, always go for a non-aggression, trade and research deal. You get $$$, they are less likely to decide to pound on you. Butter them up with a few tech gifts if you need to. Corrolary: never, ever choose repulsive when making a custom race. Missiles dominate the first half of the game, beam weapons the last. Fighters and torpedoes aren't bad, but they're not great either (except for the Plasma Torpedo, which is pretty good with the Enveloping modification). Don't use bombs or biological weapons, there's no need. Once you are in contact with several races, build spies and research spy tech. The other races will spy on you. Even is you are lovey-dovey diplomatically, they will still spy on you. You can request that they stop spying, but unless you have huge diplomatic bonuses they will probably refuse and may become angry. And, most importantly: do NOT buy Master of Orion 3. It's simply beyond horrible. MOO3 belongs in that special level of hell, next to Diakatana, E.T. for the Atari, and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing as one of the most awful games of all time.
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Feb 26, 2013 16:30
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Beat Deus Ex for the first time the other day, and one thing I would have liked to know going in is this: The game will give you a ton of skill points in the last 1/4 - 1/3 of the game, so don't fret too much if you can't upgrade all the skills you want to right away. The only skill you need to raise early on is whatever your primary weapon skill is. VV Oh drat, I would have loved to have known that trick with sniper rifles. Also I did know about blowing open doors but I was bummed that I couldn't really do it with the Dragon's Tooth Sword, when the Before I Know page for the game said I could. Maybe it was a Biomod/Shifter thing? C-Euro fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 15:32
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C-Euro posted:Beat Deus Ex for the first time the other day, and one thing I would have liked to know going in is this: The game will give you a ton of skill points in the last 1/4 - 1/3 of the game, so don't fret too much if you can't upgrade all the skills you want to right away. The only skill you need to raise early on is whatever your primary weapon skill is. I should also add that if you don't want to deal with cameras but don't want to bother with computers, get rifles to level 3 and a sniper rifle laughs at all things electronic. And don't be afraid to use explosives on doors to save lockpicks. If you're worrying about raising the alarm, well, nobody will raise the alarm if they're all knocked out or dead.
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Feb 27, 2013 15:41
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C-Euro posted:Beat Deus Ex for the first time the other day I would suggest the next step in your journey be The Nameless Mod.. Now I will admit you have to look past the premise, and I wont lie to you the first hour or so is pretty poo poo. But after that it's pretty much solid gold. I'd go so far as to say that the guys behind Nameless Mod understand what makes Deus Ex awesome more than the dudes behind Human Revolution. Well, that is in every aspect except for the voice acting and story. The gameplay and level design are top notch. Also you can be non-lethal the entire game which I think is always a plus.
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Feb 27, 2013 19:20
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I'm going to give Demon's Souls a shot now that I've finished up Dark Souls. Any tips for a first time playthrough just staying mostly away from PvP?
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Feb 27, 2013 21:11
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Nohman posted:I'm going to give Demon's Souls a shot now that I've finished up Dark Souls. Any tips for a first time playthrough just staying mostly away from PvP? There is no poise and there is no medium roll so you always want to stay just under 50% equip weight. Intelligence = attunement (increases your mana) and magic = intelligence (increases your spell power). Strength and Dex have their own dedicated weapon upgrade paths. Don't worry about the world tendency poo poo until you're pretty familiar with the game. You can do the levels in any order but 1-2, 2-1 and 4-1 are good to start off on.
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Feb 27, 2013 21:18
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:I would suggest the next step in your journey be The Nameless Mod.. Now I will admit you have to look past the premise, and I wont lie to you the first hour or so is pretty poo poo. But after that it's pretty much solid gold. I'd go so far as to say that the guys behind Nameless Mod understand what makes Deus Ex awesome more than the dudes behind Human Revolution. Well, that is in every aspect except for the voice acting and story. The gameplay and level design are top notch. Also you can be non-lethal the entire game which I think is always a plus. Here's seconding The Nameless Mod. Granted, the story is kind of weird; you're inside the (now defunct) forums at PlanetDeusEx, dealing with renegade mods trying to take over. And, it contains a lot of internet humor, which isn't everybody's thing (one of the items you'll find is 'lollerskates'). But, the maps are great, the gameplay is great, and it incorporates a lot of balance tweaks (the power conservation mod is always on, regeneration isn't uber-powerful). Best of all, it does what Deus Ex didn't; you get to make a real choice. About a third of the way through, you choose between 'good' and 'evil', and it affects the storyline and gameplay for the rest of the game. Some of the best dialog is the protagonist explaining his 'evil' choice to his former friends. Dang, now I'm getting the urge to resinstall...
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Feb 28, 2013 01:10
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So considering getting around to playing The Bard's Tale (2004) after buying it forever ago on iOS. Anything I should know (such as if the game is secretly bad)? I never played the older ones but this game being based on a super old rpg series makes me feel like there are tons of missables.
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Feb 28, 2013 08:39
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Xythe posted:So considering getting around to playing The Bard's Tale (2004) after buying it forever ago on iOS. Anything I should know (such as if the game is secretly bad)? I never played the older ones but this game being based on a super old rpg series makes me feel like there are tons of missables. It's a simplistic action rpg and has nothing to do with the earlier games. It's not a bad game but little swallow and repetitive gameplay wise. Assuming it's the same as the pc version: -Charisma is the least useful attribute. It gives you cheaper stuff but after the early game money shouldn't be an issue. -Max value for each attribute is 20, but there's +3 token for each of them so you shouldn't put more than 17 to any of them. Max character level is 21. -There's a dog companion you can get in the first town (I missed it). -You'll miss some bonus tokens and stuff, but the game isn't very difficult (on normal at least) even without them and you should be able to find most of the important loot without trouble. -The last shop is in Stromness and you won't need money after that. The point of no return comes soon after.
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Feb 28, 2013 12:53
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I saw a bit about Nier but not any mention of my main concern. One of the ending conditions is collecting 30 weapons... Is it possible to lock myself out of this at all?
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Feb 28, 2013 17:10
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Fumaofthelake posted:I saw a bit about Nier but not any mention of my main concern. I'm almost positive the answer is no. You get a couple weapons from sidequests, and there are a couple that you can find in the first half of the game, but I think they show up in shops in the second half if you miss them.
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Feb 28, 2013 17:18
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Xythe posted:So considering getting around to playing The Bard's Tale (2004) after buying it forever ago on iOS. Anything I should know (such as if the game is secretly bad)? I never played the older ones but this game being based on a super old rpg series makes me feel like there are tons of missables.
Fumaofthelake posted:I saw a bit about Nier but not any mention of my main concern. Nope.
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Feb 28, 2013 17:21
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Fumaofthelake posted:I saw a bit about Nier but not any mention of my main concern. Nope. Some weapons are "missable" in the sense that you can only find them through quests or the like in part 1, but any such weapons that you miss will appear in shops in part 2. Also, the endings that require you to have all 30 weapons are only available on NG++, i.e. after you've already beaten the game once (and seen ending A) and then beaten it again from New Game + (and seen ending B). So you've got one full playthroughs and two half-playthroughs (NG+ starts halfway through the game) to collect them all. Personally, I couldn't be arsed to collect all 30 weapons, and while there's a lot that's different between NG and NG+, NG+ and NG++ aren't, really. Unless you're in a really completionist mood, I'd recommend just getting endings A and B and then youtubing the other two.
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Feb 28, 2013 17:41
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Fumaofthelake posted:I saw a bit about Nier but not any mention of my main concern. Also, you won't have finished Nier till you play NG+ all over again at least twice.
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Feb 28, 2013 18:39
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Azran posted:Also, you won't have finished Nier till you play NG+ all over again at least twice. Yeah I can't remember if that's in the original advice, but it's pretty pivotal that you beat the game at least twice. One of its main draws is its story, or at least the mood surrounding it, and it adds new stuff to that in NG+. Don't skip it.
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Feb 28, 2013 22:46
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Yeah I know that stuff already. By the time I get to being able to do it I'll probably want to skip C and D and just youtube it but I wanted to check ahead of time just in case. Thanks all.
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Mar 1, 2013 01:46
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Picked up Mark of the Ninja since it was on sale today. Any tips for it I should know about?
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Mar 1, 2013 02:06
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WarLocke posted:Picked up Mark of the Ninja since it was on sale today. Any tips for it I should know about? Keep playing through the story; don't feel like you need to go back and get medals until you've gotten to the end and unlocked upgrades to make replaying older levels more interesting and fun
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Mar 1, 2013 02:22
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WarLocke posted:Picked up Mark of the Ninja since it was on sale today. Any tips for it I should know about? If dogs smell you or see you it doesn't set off an alarm, they just alert guards. So the dogs aren't as nasty as they appear at first.
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Mar 1, 2013 02:29
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Goons posted:Bard's Tale stuff I never used ranged weapons in games like these so wouldn't even have tried them out. I would have missed the dog too if I hadn't been alerted to his existence, thanks a lot!
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Mar 1, 2013 09:29
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Okay, feel free to point and laugh, but any tips for Diablo 2? I'm playing the worlds most depressed sounding barbarian, and I've just killed some woman called Blood Raven or somesuch at a graveyard.
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Mar 2, 2013 20:19
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zombieman posted:Okay, feel free to point and laugh, but any tips for Diablo 2? I'm playing the worlds most depressed sounding barbarian, and I've just killed some woman called Blood Raven or somesuch at a graveyard. Get some buds together for extra fun. You only have 3 respecs(1 per difficulty) ever so be careful how you use them. Some stats work on break points where you should only have specific values of, say, faster cast rate. You can usually find that information from Diablo 2 guide resources like d2jsp. Whirlwind owns. Look at synergies in the skill trees and invest in them as much as possible. Spam potions. Hell mode is hard if you don't have crazy gear or teammates. If you're playing offline try hitting enter or whatever the chat key is and typing /players 8. That sets the game to act as though there are 8 players present. Monsters will be much tougher, but also grant a ton of experience. You can switch to any number of players from 1 to 8 on the fly, so this is extremely useful for leveling up a lot when you aren't playing on battle.net. Vitality is the best stat in the game. It's a valid strategy to only get as much dex/strength as you need to wield the proper gear and then just crank vitality. It might look like you need energy for mana, but trust me, all you need is more potions.
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Mar 2, 2013 21:44
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Did Brink ever get a big patch to fix the wonky mechanics like the horrible recoil ramp-up and glacial supply regen or is it still just a completely lovely game?
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Mar 3, 2013 01:35
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zombieman posted:Okay, feel free to point and laugh, but any tips for Diablo 2? I'm playing the worlds most depressed sounding barbarian, and I've just killed some woman called Blood Raven or somesuch at a graveyard. Any random skills will suffice for normal, in nightmare you'll want to respec. Whirlwind is probably the most noob friendly skill. Put a lot of points in Battle Orders and keep it up at all times. Shout you can put a few in, every other war cry is a one point wonder at best. Don't put any points in energy - mana will be low for awhile but eventually you'll get gear to remedy that. Barbarians benefit the most from pumping every point possible into health. Hell difficulty is incredibly difficult for most characters that rely on self found gear and don't know all the systems inside out and minmax like crazy, and the post-hell content is virtually impossible for most classes without very specialized builds and gear, so unless you're willing to devote large amounts of time and/or money, consider Nightmare the end game. If you do want to play through hell, blessed hammer paladin or tri-damage trap assassin are the best classes for a self-found gear, solo playthrough. If you've any interest, I can write up a big trap assassin post. regulargonzalez fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Mar 3, 2013 |
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Mar 3, 2013 02:02
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Anything not already on the Wiki for Deus Ex: Human Revolution? If it helps, I've seen some of the game (a decent amount of Detroit and a tiny bit of Shanghai) in videos, so I'm not completely blind.
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Mar 3, 2013 02:27
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Artix posted:Anything not already on the Wiki for Deus Ex: Human Revolution? If it helps, I've seen some of the game (a decent amount of Detroit and a tiny bit of Shanghai) in videos, so I'm not completely blind. Get the Icarus landing system ASAP. It makes traveling all over the multi-layer city much less frustrating. Obviously get the typhoon, and buy typhoon ammo whenever you can. Make sure to have a powerful explosive or heavy weapon with you at all times.
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Mar 3, 2013 02:46
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Artix posted:Anything not already on the Wiki for Deus Ex: Human Revolution? If it helps, I've seen some of the game (a decent amount of Detroit and a tiny bit of Shanghai) in videos, so I'm not completely blind. There's a lot of back and forth on what's optimal but there's only three things a person needs to know A: Try not to dally before the first mission. It's timed. B: If you want to get the no-kill achievement, the intro counts. C: You get more than enough praxis so buy whatever sounds interesting to you. You'll get the most mileage out of jumping higher and punching walls but being stealthy doesn't produce a noticeable extra gain in experience (maybe you'll have 1 or 2 more praxis by the end of the game, there's only 3-4 really good upgrades anyway) and there's nothing wrong with switching up your play style because the game rewards experimentation.
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Mar 3, 2013 02:48
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HR is pretty well designed around doing a blind run and just doing whatever you think seems cool, to be honest. The bosses are the only exception and I think if you are doing a full stealth run you should either invest in Typhoon(as stated on the page, I believe) or feel free to look up the various ways to cheese those fights and auto-win them. Also, the easiest way to play the game by far is full stealth and almost never engaging with any enemies, if ever, but if you want to you can do an action run. It's best if you do use some stealth to set up your fights but if you want to shoot people, basically, go ahead.
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Mar 3, 2013 02:48
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OneEightHundred posted:Did Brink ever get a big patch to fix the wonky mechanics like the horrible recoil ramp-up and glacial supply regen or is it still just a completely lovely game? It got a pretty big weapon rebalancing patch (which made heavies actually useful) and some extra content, but I don't think supply regen ever got a boost. What do you mean about the recoil ramp-up? If I remember it was only bad if you made your gun way too heavy by just duct-taping every attachment you could onto it. What's your interest, by the way? It's absolutely a multiplayer game, and you'd be hard pressed to fill a server.
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Mar 3, 2013 02:52
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Anyone got anything for that Game of Thrones RPG and Borderlands 2?
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Mar 3, 2013 02:54
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Re: DX:HR, the stun gun will one-shot the vast majority of enemies. You can cheese bosses without the Typhoon by kiting them over a giant stack of frag mines or keeping a rocket around. Cloak is stupidly good. Hacking gives you a ton of XP and you should pretty much always hack machines or doors even if you have the password/code/key.Male Man posted:It got a pretty big weapon rebalancing patch (which made heavies actually useful) and some extra content, but I don't think supply regen ever got a boost. What do you mean about the recoil ramp-up? If I remember it was only bad if you made your gun way too heavy by just duct-taping every attachment you could onto it. My interest is that I like TF/Battlefield-esque games and it sounds like the game came out lovely, but with the potential to be patched into a solid game, but it pretty much got swept under the rug after its bad reputation and bad launch sent everyone fleeing. If they fixed the launch issues and people are actually playing it, then maybe I'll drop $10 or something on it, but if it's still poo poo or nobody's playing, then forget it. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Mar 3, 2013 |
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Mar 3, 2013 04:35
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OneEightHundred posted:If I remember, your weapon spread ramped up ridiculously fast if you weren't firing in bursts. Full disclosure of my bias: I thoroughly enjoyed Brink. Don't get me wrong, it had a lot of major problems that were never addressed, making it overall a bad game, but somewhere inside of it is a truly great game trying to get out. In my heart-of-hearts, I really believe that Brink's failure was a loss to the genre; it had some neat ideas that would have benefited everyone had they trickled out into other games. The burst fire was intended behavior. Assault rifles in particular were powerful and accurate but you had to police your bursts pretty strictly to stay effective. The problem was that weapon stats were never really well explained, so a lot of people didn't realize that slapping a drum magazine on would drop their maximum accurate burst count pretty severely, leading to complaints. It's kind of Brink in microcosm, actually: a good idea outweighed by a bad one. There's a pretty well-done customization system, with a number of outfits and color schemes to choose from, but because players didn't have identifiable silhouettes or color schemes to indicate faction, there's a red or blue aura around everyone, so it's tough to see what anyone else is wearing. Multiple systems are in place to make it fast and easy to change class to adapt to the demands of the battle and objective, but the level-up system forces you to divide your perks between classes, encouraging you to specialize in two, maybe three. Level design almost always gives you at least three different interlocking routes your objective, but escort objectives force you into predictable chokepoints anyway. Then there are the issues with the highly unoptimized graphics, jerky animations, bad weapon balance (that was massively improved in a patch, but still had room for improvement) and poor net code. If you love the genre, and are interested in design, it's definitely worth playing. Brink holds a lot of lessons about how game elements work together to make a final product, and also a bunch of really good ideas that aren't genre-standard. The single-player is just bot-matches, which will probably hold your attention for a couple hours, at least. I'd be surprised if anyone's still playing.
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Mar 3, 2013 05:37
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TehGherkin posted:Anyone got anything for that Game of Thrones RPG Focus on Perf and slashing weapons. The best weapons in the game fall into those 2 categories. I never saw any particularly good blunt or axes.
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Mar 3, 2013 05:42
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