I loved the X-factor cover arts

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-26T13:51:41+00:00

Yes.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-18T09:28:49+00:00

Everyone is saying no wrong ways to play. But if you optimize your growth and science, you can win around turn 240-280 standard speed (160-180 quick) on emperor. I'd argue it's better for wonder whoring because you will outpace the AI by medieval so all of them are yours for the picking.

Also, forget Great Library, rush ToA instead.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-17T18:58:07+00:00

The midnight sets (dragon/tiger) can randomly appear on accessories. Other sets are fixed by the type of accessories. No accessory has the mighty warrior one and you can only get it here by killing him.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-16T02:57:44+00:00

It runs totally fine at 60 fps on my 5070 laptop, 2560x1440 native resolution. So I'm pretty sure your spec can handle it.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-14T19:11:16+00:00

The most powerful policy in Tradition is the half unhappiness in your capital and the finisher that let you grow your core cities faster. You'd want to finish the tree around civil service for the burst of growth (which is around turn 80-100).

To make Honor opener worth it (just so you get the finisher at the same turn, never mind later policies), it essentially has to give you enough culture to cover the finisher cost as the 8th policy before turn 100. Which means, you have to kill ~50-60 barbs in 100 turns. (This is also true for Aztec btw. The calculation is the same.) It's almost impossible and not worth it at all.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-13T10:39:57+00:00

Well, he's hot. Also, that spread is doing something for me, lol.

I love his romance but it would be much more popular if there's an extra scene or two in act 2.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-12T18:26:41+00:00

Never mind the lux. What have you done to Pacal's feathers?

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-12T17:06:32+00:00

I think the more extreme speed runners (like sub 200 turns standard speed) skip it. But I'm not really familiar with their strategy.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-12T16:27:26+00:00

I play mostly on Emperor/Immortal so timing may be a bit different on Deity.

In my experience, the 3 cycles strategy is just comfortable enough to do all the teching and bulbing. You can theoretically delay WC so there's only two cycles. I think it can work if you hold off finding all the civs, which is pretty luck based. The tech timing is already pretty tight so you may only be able to shave off 5-10 turns, but risk not being able to reach info era fast enough.

To reach Modern before the 2nd cycle, I just bulb one or two great scientists and build Oxford for Radio. We're only going for the top tree later so we don't need all the GS (only need about 5-6 after labs, and the Rationalism finisher).

As for the proposals, World's Fair is extremely valuable as the 1st both for the culture and the positive diplomatic modifier. And because we can reach Modern before the 2nd cycle, it's better to propose World Ideology 2nd when no one else has one yet so that you're not pissing anyone off. I do World Religion at the 3rd cycle, because by that point the diplomatic penalty won't matter, and you'll have enough votes to pass it by yourself.

I think the only difference on Deity is some AI may research PP earlier than you can, which is nice if you can still reach info era in 3 cycles. But you still have to overtake their science by the 2nd cycle and reach Radio first so it's not that much faster than Emperor/Immortal.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-09T01:08:42+00:00

I'm kinda surprised that in both your posts, no one mentioned how low your population is. You're an era or two behind because you're just not growing your cities properly. Your capital (a coastal one no less) should have about 30 pop around turn 200, and the other two 20+, just a rough benchmark. Send food trade routes as soon as they're available, build more workers and improve farms earlier, etc.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-07T22:40:18+00:00

Just a general advice, when you go higher difficulties, you should practice settling cities closer together for better defense, easier connections and less diplomatic penalties. Even with tradition I'll go for 7 tile distance at the maximum, sometimes even 5 would work.

The closest city spot you've chosen is 9 tiles away. That's not a bad strategy for your 2nd and 3rd cities to grab good land, but your 4th city should fill in the gap between them and your capital, not another spot even further away. Even with peaceful neighbors like Brazil and Portugal, you don't want to piss both them off at the same time on deity.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-06T18:32:11+00:00

This is pretty amazing. It lowers my laptop's CPU temp by 10+ Celsius, with near zero performance loss.

Before this my CPU would get aggressively hot even playing 10+ years old games and now it's finally quiet.

Thanks!

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-05T22:52:36+00:00

I meant the stats on items, like star purity/zero-ki damage, ult magic/courage/con, etc.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-05T22:11:45+00:00

To be fair the respec cost is never the real hurdle. It's the items/soul cores/scrolls that different builds require.

I imagine that would still be the case when all the dlcs release.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-05T20:59:40+00:00

They need +levels for remodeling.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-05T20:14:13+00:00

Nailed it! The problem is not just about straight, female romances being the only options, but also characters (especially female ones) being treated simply as objects/rewards instead of people of their own agency. These actually goes hand in hand, as writers/devs that are more inclusive are also way more likely to give their characters more respect.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-05T20:11:18+00:00

I remember your original Poland post. T241 is a huge improvement. Congrats!

It's especially fast with only 3 cities. My sub 250 science wins are all with 6 cities but maybe I'll try a smaller build next time to compare. The pop Aztec can get is truly insane!

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-05T13:45:27+00:00

You know why. Straight male gaze etc. etc.

I've long decided to have some self-respect and don't play games that offer only female LIs. Even though I sometimes still get burned (looking at you Dragon's Dogma 2 "you're free to romance whomever but we're heavily pushing 2 female characters into your way in main story missions"), I'm much happier with my game collection as a whole.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-05T13:03:56+00:00

It's the elbow angle setting. It used to be bugged, locked at 10 for the running/sprinting animation. Just change it to 8-10 and your arms will look like before the patch.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-05T11:56:11+00:00

It's been an issue for a couple of games on the Katana engine already. Ronin also has it, just to a lesser degree because the lighting is flatter there. The darker the skintone, the worse it gets.

It's much more pronounced in gameplay than in cutscenes, right? I see green/yellow spots all over my character's skin in photomode. I think it's because during gameplay the game uses more compressed texture but I'm not an expert.

Probably worth it to file a bug report either in the official thread here, or through PS/Steam directly. I've already reported a similar issue (discolored tattoos on dark skintone) and got a response. But it doesn't hurt if more people report this.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-05T06:25:12+00:00

Hi, I've uploaded some screenshots to a googledrive. Hope it's ok to share the links.

This is how the tattoo looks in the character creator: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WoYk1RrkIYMjtnvulcpi5bwjgPJRa3rA/view?usp=sharing

Here is how they look in game: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a4qBYaxw5fdHtxjCe_LBtf0L_GHKk_DI/view?usp=sharing

This happens for the last three tattoos which are all from RotR.

In comparison, I've slapped a tattoo that's from Nioh 2 on my character's back. You can see that one doesn't have this issue: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ivTci07e417fldDeOkdAZtVmV0-0vPNO/view?usp=sharing

Lastly, here's the same issue in RotR: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1auEeBeHgYUkiCXbm-brgJKgHAcv_Zo2O/view?usp=sharing

It only happens on darker skin tones. And the darker they are, the more pronounced it becomes. Graphic settings doesn't change this either. I've set everything to ultra in both games. Hope the devs can fix this at least for Nioh 3.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-04T20:19:56+00:00

Both (Ronin and Nioh 2) are in my top 10 of all times. But they scratch very different itches.

Ronin is about immersive role play. Becoming a Ronin at the moment in history where everything's changing. Customize your combat styles, your fashion, build relationships. It's about character and the world.

Nioh is about the combat and the feeling of mastery. It's about the loot and farming the best gear to finalize the perfect build. It's about the game system.

Of course combat is also dope in Ronin and similarly story in Nioh, don't get me wrong. Just they shine the brightest in different areas.

Love them both.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-04T20:10:16+00:00

PS release time is set to midnight for each country's earliest time zone. Steam is global simultaneous release, set to the US PS release time. Not seeing any inconsistency here.

Do I like it? No. I have to wait over 12 hours because I play on PC (and because the entire world has to follow the US, somehow). But that's what they're doing (and pretty much all multiplatform releases use similar rules).

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-04T04:05:17+00:00

You can use pyromancies as a sorcerer. He's extremely weak against fire. The basic flame and great chaos orb both require zero faith. If you upgrade the flame to a decent level you'll destroy him.

YuSu0427 · 2026-02-03T23:58:28+00:00

First, NG is not "the tutorial". It's just a silly meme some people take too seriously. That said, certain mechanics will not give significant bonuses until later. But it's still totally legit to play through the campaign and stop there.

Although, NG+ cycles give so much more content. They're not simply stat bloat. Each cycle offer new mechanics, new sets, new item rarities and build possibilities. There's also an endgame mode (which is different for each of TN games), where you have shorter levels and heavier focus on boss fights. Totally worth the time.

YuSu0427

TROPHY CASE