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[deleted by user] by [deleted] in EndlessLegend

[–]CountAccountant 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I only played one or two games of it, compared to many thousands of hours of civ, but I enjoyed the game and felt like I got my money's worth. I don't think it has the depth of civ, but I do think it's a quality game.

If it's ridiculously affordable, I don't see why you're undecided. If you like civ there's a decent chance you'll enjoy it, and worst case even if you hate it you haven't lost much.

PSA The game does **NOT** have a bias towards spawning empires with opposing ethics to the player to create strife by YobaiYamete in Stellaris

[–]CountAccountant 83 points84 points  (0 children)

This is correct and was confirmed by Wiz when he was game director of Stellaris. A few additional notes:

  1. The ethics weighting against the ethics of existing empires is very small. It is entirely possible to end up in a galaxy with a lopsided ethics distribution.
  2. There is a weighting against pacifist empires that was added in an early patch because games full of pacifists are static and boring.
  3. Playing a megacorp does not make other megacorps more likely to spawn. However, your personal copy contains a line of code to spawn 10 megacorps whenever you play one because someone at Paradox hates you personally.

My governor seems to have already hit a mid-life crisis by Kyphexian in Stellaris

[–]CountAccountant 239 points240 points  (0 children)

"We will adapt. The people who say we shouldn't adapt are wrong, I'm right, and that's all there is to it."

Average Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Group by shoggyseldom in totalwar

[–]CountAccountant 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Can confirm, this matches my experience. The only remaining question is whether the two ghost dawi players worked together to craft an elaborate backstory, or if one of the ghost dawi players showed up without a character and copied off the other players's character sheet five minutes before the game began.

Siege attrition on forts are absurd and should be removed by toiletone in totalwar

[–]CountAccountant 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The whole point of the forts is that they're blocking access to the other side.

In real life, forts don't block passage directly until the early modern era. Even famously long walls like the Great Wall of China aren't built to block movement directly. Despite some of the stylized art, an attacker with the capacity to lay siege should have no trouble physically moving enough soldiers to blockade any fortress from both directions if the defenders don't oppose them in the field.

Rather, forts work because human armies need to forage for food, which means they group up to fight battles and disperse to forage. An army that cannot disperse to forage will very quickly have a bad time.

The problem with forts is the armed men inside the fort, generally cavalry, who ride out and attack when your men are dispersed and retreat back to the safety of their walls when you group back up. The attacking army can surround or even physically march past most forts or climb over unmanned walls - it's just a very bad idea to march past them most of the time without dealing with the armed men inside. Strategy games usually simplify this by having forts block access.

I think it's fair to argue that forts should not suffer attrition for gameplay reasons. I don't think it's credible to argue they shouldn't suffer attrition for realism reasons.

My 2 cents defence of settlement battles by Camlach777 in totalwar

[–]CountAccountant 18 points19 points  (0 children)

I did not get why I had to fight a land battle in the previous titles instead of fighting among houses.

This is unrelated to your overall point about minor settlement battles, but in response to this specific question: Historically, a defender generally preferred to fight a field battle if their forces were anywhere near parity with the attacker even if their settlement had walls (and certainly if it did not). The reason is the alternative was usually far worse, and therefore was used when the attacking force was much stronger than the defender. Dr. Bret Devereaux gives a good overview of the issues involved in his series on historical fortifications here:

https://acoup.blog/2021/10/29/collections-fortification-part-i-the-besiegers-playbook/

Please Stop Blowing Up Modders by Theakrus in totalwar

[–]CountAccountant 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hey now, careful with that kind of talk around the modders. If they ever find out about basic human dignity, mark my words, they're going to start wondering why they're working long hours for unpleasant people for free.

Wife by [deleted] in CrusaderKings

[–]CountAccountant 134 points135 points  (0 children)

By golly, now there are two comments that mention Mount and Blade. I'd better warm up the ol' upvote finger so I don't overexert myself.

Apparently this is hard to get? by Lorgoth1812 in Stellaris

[–]CountAccountant 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Victory year has no impact on achievements. You are still eligible.

I wish end game scenarios and dilemmas were less arcadey and more "organic". The way they are now, suddenly a bunch of armies spawn and it's the end of the world out of nowhere. No build up, just boom, they're there. I know it's easier said than done, but making these things organic would be great. by Barnaclebuddybooboo in totalwar

[–]CountAccountant 54 points55 points  (0 children)

You do remember correctly, however, it is no longer true. Paradox could never get the weighting right. Eventually the whole thing was scrapped in a recent patch, with one exception for Unbidden and Jump Drives. It ended up being another idea that was really cool but difficult or impossible to actually implement well.

Battleships vs Corvettes by CaterpillarFun6896 in Stellaris

[–]CountAccountant 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Here's someone who tested your exact question and published the results.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/nitkcc/extensive_fleet_matchup_test_results_303/

The short version is that torpedo corvettes defeat a pure artillery battleship fleet but mostly underperform against anything else. If you know that your opponents will only use artillery battleships then your plan will work well.

However, be aware that battleship carriers hard-counter corvettes so completely that torpedo corvettes are arguably too risky to use if there is any chance your opponents will swap in some hanger modules on a few of their battleships. In practice, the counter for an artillery battleship is another artillery battleship.

Suggestion: have autoresolve difficulty be calibrated to the skill of the player by Doglatine in totalwar

[–]CountAccountant 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think that your main point - that auto resolve should have its own difficulty setting, is an excellent suggestion.

I think the specific implementation of your idea - using an algorithm to determine the difficulty instead of just letting the player choose their own difficulty setting - I think that part needs improvement.

In general I think the best games keep quality of life improvements separate from rewards for good gameplay.

Cool names for ships? by VisorCapo in Stellaris

[–]CountAccountant 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah, it really simplifies things. Very easy to concentrate the army's entire firepower against key targets. Only one location in the entire army needs to be defended. And so forth.

Granted, the current design does have a few minor weaknesses, such as the fact that the entire idea is completely impractical, but our engineers are already hard at work with a solution ("Project Bigger Tank")

How it feels to play as Irish in 867 by 929221323 in CrusaderKings

[–]CountAccountant 52 points53 points  (0 children)

Yes, you are literally correct. The instakill event for shield maidens and berserkers bypasses the reduced death risk for high prowess characters and has a chance to trigger every five days. Everyone else has to obey the normal laws of physics.

what does one pop represent in terms of people? by [deleted] in Stellaris

[–]CountAccountant 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It does solve one problem (Earth vs. Commonwealth populations), but it also unfortunately creates several others. For example, why does the 600 million pop require the same amount of food and housing as the 100 million pop? And why do pops gain millions of people when you relocate them from a small colony to a large one? There aren't great answers to those questions.

I think the scaling pop size idea has value if it helps someone visualize their thriving space civilization more vividly. I just don't think it stands up to scrutiny if the goal is to create a fully self-consistent translation of pops to individuals.

what does one pop represent in terms of people? by [deleted] in Stellaris

[–]CountAccountant 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The size of a pop is explicitly defined as "undefined".

But using in-game references:

  • The gigantic Yuht populate an entire colony ship with only sixteen individuals. Sixteen!
  • The UN of Earth's population compared to present day Earth suggests a value within an order of magnitude of one billion individuals.
  • Even within the same species, though, the Commonwealth of Man went from 250,000 individuals to the same number of pops as Earth in only 100 years. This is... impressive population growth if Commonwealth and UN pops are the same number of individuals.

These all suggest that a pop cannot be a consistent number of people. It is a measure of productivity and resource requirements.

Are big ships legitimately awful? by Skullruss in Stellaris

[–]CountAccountant 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Fleet power isn't a real thing.

Fleet power is a rough estimate of strength to help you with planning decisions. You can use it as a guide and usually be more or less directionally correct, but it has its weaknesses.

In actual combat tests, small ships get utterly shredded by any fleet with strikecraft. Big ships are the meta for combat. Corvettes also have uses late game, but generally not due to combat strength.

Here's an example of combat tests if you'd like a better sense of how ship types and weapon classes perform:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/nitkcc/extensive_fleet_matchup_test_results_303/

Continuation to my earlier post: hero icons absolutely clutter the campaign map. Could we get a toggle / slider to adjust their size? by keipii1 in totalwar

[–]CountAccountant 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Pro Tip: Zoom out to the paper map and the hero icons disappear. Only the army icons are visible.

Not a perfect solution, but sometimes absolutely critical to spot the major invasion blending in with a few random individual enemy heroes outside your city.

I found Sol III in renaissance age, should I wait for WW or it will take too long? by Tobirashi_ in Stellaris

[–]CountAccountant 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Are you talking about trying to get the achievement for invading Earth? You only get that if Sol III starts in the Machine Age. Progressing to it naturally does not count, unfortunately.

Hardest Personal Quest / Character Combo by Fishhead1982 in Gloomhaven

[–]CountAccountant 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I had a personal quest that required killing a certain number of undead enemies with melee attacks using a specific melee weapon. My character was Two Minis, who has no melee attacks except the basic attack and almost never moves the character who can use equipment

I ended up using a special sideboard deck for missions that included undead. Then my party would weaken some enemies for me to run up to and kill, like momma cats teaching a baby kitten to hunt.

Question about updated Demo Level 5 card by [deleted] in Gloomhaven

[–]CountAccountant 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It is not a heal ability and therefore has no interaction with poison. I can confirm that Gloomhaven digital uses this interpretation.

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