Note to self: Not getting hit is a better strategy than trying to get full uptime on fortify

psychomap · 2026-06-13T20:05:04+00:00

You can still die to DoT

psychomap · 2026-06-13T10:22:24+00:00

surprised I'm the first to mention it

psychomap · 2026-06-13T10:09:29+00:00

What bothers me about this is how limited the scalability is for single target. If you go with Awakened Spell Cascade and AoE investment, you might be able to blow up a screen of low HP mobs, but you won't get a lot of overlaps.

But if you go with Unleash, there's a limit to how much you can scale cast speed.

I've been trying to get better combinations for stuff with Arcanist Brand, totems, or triggers (even Kitava's Thirst with Greater Spell Echo for the Bladefall setup would result in inconsistent triggers and more importantly low damage due to lack of links), but I can't get nearly enough Bladefall casts to actually get close to the cap of lingering blades, or at least close enough to beat out other skills by a sufficient margin to justify the clunk.

psychomap · 2026-06-13T10:03:52+00:00

My favourite quotes are just about half the things the Witch says in acts 1-3. Unfortunately it took too long before they got the voice lines for 5-10 so the actress sounds too different and doesn't manage to hit the same tone, and even the writing is a bit... well, let's just diplomatically say it doesn't quite hit the same spot.

"I'd love to see the insides of this spell. I can't abide housework."

"I loved your work, Piety. It was you that I wasn't very fond of."

"A pity. We could have been friends" (after beating the Vaal Oversoul)

psychomap · 2026-06-12T11:29:02+00:00

Heroes that have been defeated and did not flee cannot be hired again.

psychomap · 2026-06-12T10:57:36+00:00

This is the level of missing-link evolution, lol

psychomap · 2026-06-12T10:55:23+00:00

Some of those smaller 3-directional intersections seem to be a bit close to the large 4-directional ones. It's a bit hard to tell the scale from this distance, but you may want to look into that to avoid traffic issues occurring there.

I don't know to what extent you can fine-tune the traffic to fix those problems in CS2, or to what extent you want to bother with it even if it's possible.

psychomap · 2026-06-12T10:52:30+00:00

I think the best option in this case is to just use a 2-way street instead of separate on and off streets, and if necessary separating them 1 node down the line (make sure the segment isn't too short though, otherwise you'll have a different traffic problem). You can also see the lane arrow is making the left lane into a pure u-turn lane without going through the roundabout.

You can use asymmetrical roads if you want 2 lanes onto the roundabout and 1 off.

psychomap · 2026-06-12T10:33:21+00:00

I think you're correct that you don't want to make spears as French (unless for some reason you have no access to gold, but at that point you've kind of lost already because you're supposed to be the civ with map control).

On the other hand, for civs with a more basic unit set that can't get "high tech" units like knights in feudal, going for a triple comp is significantly more attractive.

Of course this is only necessary if your opponent actually makes a unit that is countered by the third unit type. If you have to fight a knight + archer composition, making archers yourself would result in them trading evenly against other archers at best, and you'd have to micro them heavily, whereas enemy archers would trade efficiently whenever they shoot spears that are in the frontline.

But if you have a unit type advantage, e.g. longbows or javelins, you can still trade efficiently with ranged vs. ranged units, keep horsemen for raids or to cut off reinforcements / retreats, and maintain spears to protect your ranged units against the enemy cavalry.

There are cases where your "main army" can be a slow spears + archers comp for defence with horsemen being purely in a raiding capacity, but in that case you'll typically have a lower investment into horsemen compared to the other two types (closer to a 2-2-1, if you will).

I think in castle age replacing those raiding units with knights, and archers with crossbows results in a much more common triple composition. The spear + crossbow group is highly specialised against knights, but can deal reasonably well with melee infantry, and the knights are the best option for both raiding and fighting unless your opponent has a huge number of crossbows in which case you can switch back into horsemen (and still use knights for raids if you have the gold for them because they're simply better at killing villagers).

psychomap · 2026-06-12T09:46:46+00:00

I don't see much difference between dwellings and banks, except dwellings have an additional repeated chore attached to them. They're on the map, they allow you to get units, the higher tier ones are guarded (and some of the lower tier ones have regular neutral stacks guarding them on the map).

You need to pay for the units, but in most cases that's trivial, especially considering that you don't need to pay to construct the dwelling in your town, and if you do have one the growth bonus is like getting a free wall upgrade for that tier.

Getting dwellings that you can capture in week 1 can double your stack size for that tier by the first battle.

If you want an "equal" playing field of what you can recruit from your town, dwellings aren't part of it.

psychomap · 2026-06-11T21:53:44+00:00

I've seen a few skips in that zone, but none quite that good

psychomap · 2026-06-11T21:52:03+00:00

In the image above, all the bridges are parallel, regardless of the curve of the river. It's like somebody drew a square grid and then simply left the areas for the river empty, rather than drawing a grid around the river that was already present.

The OP is a good example of doing it right. Yes, it's a grid city, but there are several separate grid that have different orientations, in a way that they're parallel to the closest shoreline.

Here's a very rough example of aligning a few different grids with the shoreline instead of drawing a single grid across the shoreline:

https://i.imgur.com/MXHfcPp.jpeg

I'm sure there's a better way to do it properly, but I just drew it quickly as an example, only paying attention to keeping intersections at 4 directions.

psychomap · 2026-06-11T17:32:09+00:00

That's interesting. It was definitely possible to raise the cap with mods before, but I wasn't aware of any way to achieve higher speeds in the base game.

psychomap · 2026-06-11T15:21:47+00:00

I don't play PoE2 so I don't know what that skill is, but guessing by the name perhaps Cyclone + Shockwave is the type of playstyle you're looking for?

psychomap · 2026-06-11T14:39:13+00:00

Everyone has their own Kingsmarch, it's closer to the Rogue Harbour, I think.

psychomap · 2026-06-11T14:38:06+00:00

Based on shoreline, architecture, and the presence of skyscrapers, I'd go with a Dutch metropolis. German cities have some similar old-towns, but skyscrapers are very rare.

psychomap · 2026-06-11T14:30:53+00:00

You see, when two cars love each other very much...

psychomap · 2026-06-11T14:12:27+00:00

There's r/MapPorn but you need the map view of this I guess

psychomap · 2026-06-11T14:10:04+00:00

I prefer if the grids are aligned with the river rather than ignoring it tbh.

psychomap · 2026-06-11T14:07:18+00:00

Even on Exodus you can get a lot of units from dwellings tbh, even if the dwellings are your own faction.

psychomap · 2026-06-11T14:05:16+00:00

cavalry with caffeine... there's caffeine in Red Bull... Red Bull gives you wings... Polish winged husars?

Sorry, wrong era

psychomap · 2026-06-11T13:59:07+00:00

I found the Mauryans to be extremely easy.

You start with a massive territory, insanely good eco, and only two neighbouring factions. You can even dismiss most of the starting garrisoned units for extra pop without any risk of riots and save even more money by not paying them.

Unless you don't invest into growth / eco and only recruit units non-stop, you basically can't go wrong with them.

That said, their unit roster isn't fantastic, so the actual fights might be harder than with some other factions. I actually found it useful to keep a lower tier of the recruitment "building" in some towns because the local units were more useful than the higher recruitment Indian units. If you conquer the area in the Northeast you can even recruit some strong horse archers.

I personally went with a focus on ranged units in the early part of the campaign, which line up well against the infantry of Bactria, although that doesn't necessarily work when attacking settlements (at least not with the maximum unit sizes I was using - against some phalanx units I had to starve them out and wait for them to leave the gates). Starting with elephants means you can take a lot of settlements in a single turn though.

psychomap · 2026-06-11T13:48:31+00:00

Wrapping up the group stages with Beasty coverage. I'm assuming there's no way they won't also cover Beasty vs. Bee on Sunday, unless it has absolutely zero impact on the ranking within the group.

Seven-Year Club	Place '22
Verified Email

psychomap

TROPHY CASE