I’ve had a go of the demo version of Dominions 3 - it’s really really good and it’s also clear that I’m not going to be very good at it. I’m not wonderful at being tactical and learning the nuances of battle is probably beyond me. Very glad I tried it but I think I probably won’t get it as I’m unlikely to really get good at it.
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Dominions is the more intimidating one by far. I found it much easier to get into Conquest of Elysium.
In CoE, all those stats are crunched down into basically damage vs. armour. You have zero tactical control over preparing for combat, everything is just lined up in front/mid/rear ranks and follows a default script.
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Ahhh interesting. I might grab CoE when it’s next on sale in that case.
The biggest difference, though, is that Dominions is primarily a multiplayer wargame (though also an excellent solo game as a result), while Conquest of Elysium is primarily a single-player… roguelike wargame? It can be very unfair and random, way more so than Dominions. It doesn’t have as good an endgame as Dominions, but it is fun to mess around with.
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Here’s an example of a game I just started. My base was a deserted port in the snowy region up top. I’m a high cultist with like, 1 cultist, 10 spearmen, and 5 archers. No income, and no population for human sacrifices.
I’m next to a magic academy, which I have no chance of conquering right now.
I headed south, looking for port towns and hamlets to conquer, leaving my home port completely undefended. If a wandering giant crab or something had rolled in, the game would have ended right there.
I found some lightly-defended hamlets, taking them over and introducing cult worship. Coastal hamlets will very slowly produce mad fisherman and hybrids that are mostly useless in a fight. More important is the slow ramp up of human sacrifices.
I found a pirate port, Earthbay, which is well-defended with ballista and bowmen, and will generate armed groups to raid ports - a major independent threat I can’t do anything about right now.
I then found a town, Fowanshire, and the capital of Elysium, Marsonia, which in this game appears to be run/defended by a hoburg council (think military hobbits with some skill at building and animating metal men). Both way too tough targets for me, and annoyingly prone to generating armed groups that recapture and defend nearby population centers.
I kept going, and finally found a port town with a defence I could beat, and did so with heavy losses. I have a new base of operations. With no military left though, I’m in a sorry state, but enough time has passed that I have enough human sacrifices to perform my first ritual. The high cultist (my only amphibious unit) heads out alone into the deeps to perform the ritual, and some dwellers of the deep answer, and do not kill him, which is fortunate.
Back in the running, I’m heading back to land to look for my next target, as the ones I passed by are still too tough to tackle.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the map, a team of two AI opponents are doing similar things, and I just have to hope I can ramp up faster than they do (the difficulty and number of opponents, and whether or not they are allied, is all customisable).
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My wife and I played it on the Switch in couch coop mode and for a long time it was our favorite evening activity till we got to the point at which we had done all of it.
But I would be willing to start over again on a different farm layout after the next patch with more free stuff comes out. And maybe with another year in between 
It is a great game indeed. My favorite part was optimizing our farm.
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Started playing Helldivers 2. I remember the first one being cool, and the only reason we don’t play it anymore is that my mate hit a bug that cleared his progress, and he didn’t want to have to work his way back again. Which is a fair point. Anyway, when I heard the game had a sequel, I thought it would be terrible (what, no top down view?). But it’s actually a lot of fun.
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New games have delayed my planned return to Wrath of the Righteous. Guess that was always gonna happen. Not much Dave either.
Instead I’ve been playing Wartales, which is a great little TRPG about running a mercenary company. It’s a lot like Battle Brothers but less randomness and without the cringey writing around women (and you can have female mercs - I never quite understood why BB didn’t do this, and combined with some of the writing, yeah I doubt I’ll be coming back to that one). No late game crises in Wartales though, which is a shame, but each region has it’s own little story to progress. I’m in the final non-DLC region and it’s holding up very well. Would recommend for sure (though i’d perhaps suggest adaptive difficulty as region-locked forces some rather long fights toward the end).
Last Epoch, picked this one up on a bit of a whim as I’d been wanting to play a Diablo-like and it popped up on sale at Fanatical. It’s really good! Manages to be more interesting and more going on than Diablo 3, and less complex than Path of Exile (which I’ve bounced off multiple times). Diablo-like with time travel! Though to be fair the time travel is more in the story than the mechanics. I’d recommend holding off if you want to play online though - it’s another new release with server issues, which kind of seems to be the vibe of 2024 so far… I’m not sure it beats Grim Dawn, which is probably still my favourite Diablo-like, but it certainly seems more user friendly than that one in a lot of ways.
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Another vote here for Grim Dawn, which is absolutely fab.
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I really got into Elden Ring the last few weeks. It is such a great game, I love discovering all the little things in all the different (hidden) spots all over the world.
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I just finished a full play through of Surviving Mars (through to maxing all terraforming parameters). We had a potentially lethal plague this time that nearly wiped out Earth, and I enjoyed every minute. It’s not that hard but it may be one of my favourite games ever.
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I am spending way, way too much time on the now-official Homecoming server of City of Heroes. Just… way too much time.
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One week later and Elden Ring is still taking a lot of my free time (didn’t login to the forum for four days, something which happens rarely).
Such a good game, every time I close the game I think about all the places I still want to explore in it.
Love it
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Oh in other news, not sure if to mention it here or in the wot are you watching post.
Age of Empires 2 has a huge tournament this last week, Hidden Cup V organized by T90 and today on Sunday are the finals. If you like watching high quality RTS games (and enjoyed AoE 2 at some point in your life), then you should watch some of it:
Twitch (there is a YouTube live stream too).
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I’ve spent over 60 hours in Helldivers 2 so far, and I’m still enjoying it. It can be tough at times, especially with full friendly fire, you have to be a bit careful with dropping highly explosive bombs. Lots of opportunity for griefing obviously. A friend of mine was playing with two of his mates, so now I have a regular group and don’t have to worry about people being dickheads. We still occasionally kill each other, but it’s part of the fun. Turrets shoot at enemies and they don’t care who gets caught in the crossfire.
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@Benkyo Conquest of Elysium 3 and 4 are both on sale pretty cheaply on Steam at the moment. Is it worth holding out for 5 or are these broadly as good?
I think 5 is worthwhile. They aren’t that different, but each does build on the last, and are just the same, but better. 5 goes for half price frequently enough.
That said, at 50% off you’d still be looking at more than double the price of 75% off 4, so if you just want to dabble and test out the water, it’s not a bad option.
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Yes, I’m tempted to grab it for that price and have a play.
KeeperRL - Think Dwarf Fortress + Dungeon Keeper. The graphics are basic, the gameplay weirdly absorbing and… oops, that’s another two hours making a dungeon just to die to a goblin. Damn you permadeath!
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I’ve recently been sinking into Crusader Kings III. I’ve previously bounced off II so I really wasn’t sure but there’s a couple of other Paradox games that I adore (Stellaris, Surviving Mars) so I thought I’d try it.
It turns out that III feels much more accessible than II, and the tutorial is very good. I’ve realised the main point is the generation of a story - trying to ‘win’, as in a traditional 4X, would be very frustrating but if you roll with the punches and roleplay your character then… goodness me it’s one of the best story creators I’ve ever played. Memorable moments from my short hours so far include:
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spending years finally getting my Pope-imposed archbishop to actually endorse me, only to have him almost immediately drop dead of tuberculosis, along with the next 4 replacements in the following 2 years.
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being a gnat’s whisker away from being crowned King of Ireland only to get testicular cancer, become a eunuch and die in fairly quick succession
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roleplaying the deceitful son of my sadly departed father in the now divided kingdom to quietly have my brother murdered so I can steal back the Duchy of Leinster and unite Ireland once again, only to have the murder plot exposed and having to pretend it was my spymaster’s idea all along, gone rogue.
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having a feast in honour of the said brother to try to repair the now rather fractious relations between us, but accidentally derailing the speech at the end to say it was actually me that was the real hero here (Make Ireland great again!), leading to my brother becoming my sworn nemesis.
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my sworn nemesis being taken hostage in a Viking raid and oh dearie me I don’t seem to have the money to buy him back just now oh well
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celebrating finally becoming King of Ireland, just as my father wanted, with a wild hunt, only to be bitten to death by a wolf leaving my 11-year old son to now deal with the fractured kingdom and his really-quite-pissed-off-by-now uncle.
I suppose you could argue it’s ’Video Game of Thrones’ (and I think there’s a mod to make it specifically that) but I’m actually enjoying it as a not-that-inaccurate mediaeval history simulator. Shame, shame on a conquered king.
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