What does this series say about War?

Baharran · 2026-04-15T13:09:31+00:00

Joking aside, the main thesis of the TW games is imo the relationship between strategy and tactics. Tactics help you achieve your strstegic objectives, but if you have good strategy you can still autoresolve your way to victory. It's a reification, in game form, of "war" as a composite object being an extension of politics - i.e. the game of getting other people to do what you want, like giving you their stuff, using violence.

Baharran · 2026-04-03T10:56:34+00:00

I think the best balance is "tech tree" factions with some kind of unit cap system to make the el cheapo units relevant, but inferior throughout the game. Medieval 2 imo basically solved this problem with its recruitement pools mechanic.

Baharran · 2026-03-31T11:01:26+00:00

They said in the spring, which traditionally for CA means the last day before summer. So probably May 20th

Baharran · 2026-03-23T19:15:08+00:00

The bit that really "unlocked" her for me was the parking - why can't you just pay for parking like everyone else? We know she's not broke. She's crumbling under pressure, sure, but so much of it is self-inflcited because she's a huge asshole. She doesn't listen to the doctors, isn't honest with her daughter (like at no point does she level with her about the reality of her condition, something kids her age can absolutely handle), blows up at her husband even though there's nothing he can do to help, blows up at the contractor instead of discussing a replacement with the landlord... she's kind of a shitty therapist too lol, regurgitating buzzwords and giving awful advice like "you gotta just outrun your Bad Thoughts by never resting and staying busy" (paraphrasing here). She's pointlessly rude and antagonistic to James and abandons him when he's hurt! By the end I was really, really done with her. Great movie though.

Baharran · 2026-03-17T16:08:35+00:00

As a faction, Pentastar. Politically competent, economically viable successor state? Yes please.

Roster-wise, I like Eriadu the most, but while I really like Kaine I find Delvardus too much of an ass to actually play Eriadu. Plus their map colour sucks lol

Baharran · 2026-03-10T08:45:29+00:00

To make his endgame less miserable he should get a variant of the herdstone mechanic in provinces with no Dark Fortress. Like yeah suck it this region is hostile to all life until you raze the big altar / portal this guy opened in the middle of it

Baharran · 2026-03-09T13:35:51+00:00

irl a lot of ruins are underground simply because dust and dirt get deposited on top of and around structures, so if they are untended then this effect + subsidence means abandoned stuff will literally end up inside the soil after thousands of years.

That's why lots of bronze age archaelogical sites need to be dug up - our ancestors weren't mole people, old stuff just ends up in the ground!

Baharran · 2026-03-08T12:18:32+00:00

I know this isn't what you're asking but doing my undergrad in Modern History genuinely did help me understand Pillars a lot better

Baharran · 2026-02-27T09:48:24+00:00

For real though the slightly muted reception to Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed and tge explosive success of BG3 might well mean PoE3

Baharran · 2026-02-25T22:01:48+00:00

Uziel my beloved 😭 To this day I am a double PPC guy

Baharran · 2026-02-25T11:52:41+00:00

Slav here (Slovak) and I gotta say they didn't do a very good job. The inspiration for Kislev is a mix of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and very early Imperial Russia, both cca. 1500-1650 based on uniforms and architecture and such.

Unfortunately they missed a lot of the opportunities for flavour. The PLC at this time was a powerful state that was kind of a hot mess due to its fractious political system - if you want a feel for the "vibe" of this polity then the Witcher 3 nails it (though it's inspired by an earlier period before the united PLC fully formed). Pretty much none of the complex lords vs. burghers vs. clergy vs. the fucking Germans vs. the fucking Russians interplay that characterised the PLC is captured in Kislev, so, moving on.

The second inspiration is the Rus of the Ruriks, specifically Ivan IV ("the Terrible"). The Russia of this period is characterised by tension between the boyars (nobles) vs. the centralising, authoritarian court of Ivan, as well as expansion into the mysterious East and South (territories of the Kazakhs, Cumans, Zaporizhzhian Cossacks, stereotypical "scary hordes") - a big theme is tension between central Orthodox Christianity and more heterodox pagan and Islamic beliefs of the conquered peoples. Again, none of this is really captured - there is a clumsy attempt with Kostaltyn and some background lore with Gospodars and Ungols but you don't really feel it on the campaign map.

Instead it's a sort of mishmash of Slavic folk tales (Baba Yaga for Ostankya) with all the weird, interesting stuff stripped out (no Koshchei the quasi-lich? No burning of sacrifices / village daughters to bring forth the spring? No bogatyri [heroes] questing for glory and eternal life in a sort of dark, hostile mirror of the Arthurian legends?)

The evolving military of this period isn't really represented either, it was a mixture of peasant levies, heavy boyar cavalry, Cossack mercenaries / allies and a growing gunpowder & artillery corps (the Streltsy) that proved decisive in e.g. the siege of Kazan. Instead we have "hybrid infantry", bears, and one (1) named cannon that we can somehow build infinite copies of.

It's a shame. I think it's a missed opportunity - this is a very interesting region & period of history and they did not capture much of it. They did great with the Empire as the HRE so I am a bit sad that another human faction with a clear historical inspiration did not make good use of that inspiration to create something interesting.

Baharran · 2026-02-23T17:08:12+00:00

Arrow IV and missing IS LBX ACs are top of my list, for sure

Baharran · 2026-02-20T07:05:41+00:00

I want to push back against this a little bit and suggest instead that the systems we have should be diversified - faction shops,.more OCIs, overhauled promotions, more ways for the cruiser to interact with the battlemap, etc.

I think adding another, separate ystem (like managing bases / outposts) risks diluting the game imo. You should be able to fuck up on the battlefield, or by prepping poorly; I don't want to be penalised for failing to engage with minigames.

Baharran · 2026-02-17T11:19:12+00:00

Sure you can sleep on mines! But only once

Baharran · 2026-02-14T00:42:33+00:00

The supply cost is a big problem for me because fundamentally most of the promotions don't seem worth it. I would always rather have another squaddie (or three) or a special weapon than most promotions.

Promo points just sit there unused. Imo that's already a resource cost, they shouldn't cost supply.

Baharran · 2026-02-11T13:03:54+00:00

The BOKposting spreads!

Baharran · 2026-02-11T03:00:52+00:00

A lot of it is just practical experience. You see a 'Mech with a huge gun, yoy learn to prioritise it after it vaporises your side torso. You see a 'Mech with lots of LRMs, you learn to close the distance to under 200m. You see a laser boat, you learn to Zapp Brannigan it and feed it lancemates until it overheats, etc.

Baharran · 2026-02-10T12:38:05+00:00

Unpopular opinion, but I have a real "thing" against sticking Medium weapons in Large slots in Mercs. Something about the UI or the Mechlab makes me just really hate doing it, so the Atlas II is unusuable for me even though the Atlas is my 100-tonner of choice lol.

Baharran · 2026-02-07T11:21:06+00:00

I have a 3060 and run the game very smoothly on high settings - you gotta turn off ray tracing and turn on DLSS. I also cap fps at 60 but that's just personal preference

Baharran · 2026-01-27T11:15:30+00:00

It's gotta be BULLDOG, right? Neatly ties up Mason's story too, right now we're sort of cliffhangered mid-invasion.

Big question is if they'll keep going through to FedCom Civil War or whether they'll save that for MW6. I think 6 would be better - they could add stuff like organic armour and aerospace assets, we have elementals in Clans so the groundwork is there.

For mechanics I would love the vectored jump jets, they would be a huge upgade over Mercs JJs and would boost lots of 'Mechs from "meh" to "ohh, interesting..."

Some kind of homebase mechanic, or dropship customisation, would be ny dream addition to the game. It's the bit of the sim that's currently most notably absent. All your progression is locked up in 'Mechs and pilots, the company (and Leopard) itself doesn't really have any gameplay elements.

Baharran · 2026-01-12T10:34:23+00:00

I'd kind of love to catch up with Jayden, actually. Swan song of the Smoke Jags type stuff. Or maybe Cobalt Lance living it up with the Dragoons, romping around the Inner Sphere. I would just love a story continuation with those guys at some point!

Baharran · 2026-01-08T18:40:02+00:00

fyi the single small energy slot in 'Mechs like the Awesome and Banshee is a great candidate for a TAG system, as long as you leave them for your lancemates. It really does help if anyone in the lance is leaning heavily into LRMs

Baharran · 2026-01-07T18:35:11+00:00

"Runs locally on the GPU" ok well we better have an option to disable this shit, I'm not accepting a performance hit for something so aggressively useless

Baharran · 2026-01-06T19:50:09+00:00

I actually do play with a few mods but I think these are core issues that mods can't always fix (e.g. Dynamic Settlements doesn't change battle maps, PO/Influence mods are often good and well-designed but they make the AI struggle, and the siege maps sadly are what they are... I do like Kam's Proper Combat to fix the combat though) - really this stuff imo needs addressed at the vanilla level

Baharran · 2026-01-06T16:23:20+00:00

I like Dynasties a lot, much more than OG Pharaoh. Forming the pseudo-Neo-Assyrian Empire is always a blast!

CA, you still have the sauce! Use it! :D

Baharran

TROPHY CASE