Quoting: STiATWell, I think there is quite enough justification. In example, at least you'd have to get the slaves to a friendly port to enable to bring them to the slave market. You'd have to have a unit "locked" by having to guard the prisoners bringing them to the port (at least), if you decide to take anything of the village when you sack it. That would spread you thinner, and your troops could be attacked, slaves saved on the way there. Even more, from a game concept, villages having been raided would produce nothing or at least less during the year after having been sacked.

I've seen the AI sack settlements a few times. They do it something like one in ten times, it feels like. Not that that I lose settlements that often :D

As for the slave idea that sounds like it could quickly become something tedious to deal with if you have to deal with that from either side all the time. I'm okay with the abstraction in the game.

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Quoting: STiATThat's something other I don't like. You get money by raiding smaller settlements. That was not the main reason to raid back the days (and there was little money in those), the main reason was to gather food for winter and slaves.

Yeah, the game doesn't really model slavery save for that one building chain in Dublin. It's a big part of the Viking raids and the history of the region but there probably wasn't enough gameplay justification to add it in. I also would have liked a stockpile of food mechanic or some sort of buffer since losing one of those smaller settlements during other people's turns can put you in the red if you've got a lot of troops.

QuoteTime goes by too fast too. It does not take a quater of a year to travel a few miles.

There's a mod that splits up the year into more turns in the workshop that deals with that. Though it didn't bother me that much because I chalked it up to just general gameplay balance due to the province density. They wanted to give armies room to maneuver without always running into something if I had to guess.

Quoting: Vadi"delegate a part of your forces to AI control" how?

Create a group with units, then you can assign orders to the group with a button on the interface.

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Quoting: no_information_herePlease take all my comments below lightly. I love your reviews and I think our taste in games is similar in a lot of ways.

Don't worry about disagreeing, I'd never claim to be objective about matters of taste :P

I get where you and others are coming from and I certainly respect that people's preferences in their entertainment can be different than mine. That's why in the reviews I write up I try to explain why I felt a certain way. That's so that even if you disagree you might, at the same time, understand how you might feel about the same thing in a game. It's also why I rarely reply to comments in articles (though I read most of them) unless they're asking me to talk more about something I might have brushed over or trying to correct me on something objective (like a launch option, driver issues or whatever). People should be free to voice their opinions as it's often helpful for other gamers to see how different people feel about a game that they might be curious about.

As a final aside: I personally am unconvinced by the "soulsvania" subgenre you just mentioned. While I loved Hollow Knight, I found Salt & Sanctuary clunky and I bounced off it after about two hours. I think I understand why people would love it and I plan to give it another shot some day but I think it's a good example of how even people with similar tastes can differ in opinion for specific examples :)

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Quoting: tuubiThe thing is, Rogue Legacy doesn't work very well for me. It just bores me in the same way sandboxes do. Not enough sense of progression or accomplishment. I don't get at all the same feeling from it as I get from a traditional metroidvania. It's a competent platformer of course, and it clearly takes cues from the metroidvania genre. I just think it leaves out something essential and replaces it with something lacklustre and tedious.

I loved the sense of progression I got via both via upgrades and the generational character gameplay twist. By the end of the game I did feel a lot of accomplishment for all the effort that it took to get there. Exploring the castle was fun as were the quirks the game threw at you, it never felt tedious to me. Since we had opposite experiences it looks like we're going to have to agree to disagree :)

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Quoting: no_information_hereI know I sound like a grumpy old man, but there are too many games coming out that claim to be both Metroidvania and Roguelike. Everyone wants to have a catchy new thing to advertise, but this just doesn't work.
[...]The word is going to lose all meaning.

Genres are ambiguous and ill-defined as is and we could spend all day talking about what constitutes an RPG, for instance. I don't think that roguelike/lite elements or whatever term you want to apply for procedural generation and randomization is necessarily a bad combination with these sorts of platformers. I mentioned Rogue Legacy in the review and that's definitely a metroidvania that works really well because of the randomization, not in spite of it. Maybe it's the exception that proves the rule, as I don't think I've seen another game pull the combination off well, but I just don't think that it's as black and white as you're putting it. And this is coming from another grumpy old man who thought that Hollow Knight was likely the best game of 2017 ;)

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Quoting: Sn3ipenImperator: Rome, their newly announced grand strategy is also confirmed for Linux.

I think "confirmed" might be overstating it a little. It wouldn't be the first time an icon on a store page on Steam was inaccurate ;)

We got press materials from their PR firm and have reached out to Paradox to make sure their other announced games will be on Linux. When we hear back from them, if they confirm it, then you can expect an article stating as much.

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Quoting: lucinos

QuoteI should also quickly note that I had a technical issue on my Arch install.

can you please give some info about your hardware?

It's clearly a library issue as it works on Ubuntu and not a hardware/driver issue. Updated the article to include a workaround.

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Quoting: dirkdierickxNot easy to find good shoot'm'ups on linux? Then you haven't been looking!
skyforce (both versions) is excellent, sterreden is frustratingly good, syder arcade is short but nice, etc.

Skyforce was alright but I was underwhelmed by the upgrade system, syder was likewise ok and I haven't gotten around to buying steredenn (been on my wishlist for a while). The greater point is that it's something of a niche genre, doubly so on Linux. I can think of maybe about 8-10 shumps that have ports. The steam store is unhelpful as there's no way to just filter top-down or side-scrolling shoot 'em ups but I don't think I've seen many more. Certainly not ones that look fun. I'd love to be proven wrong if you have more recommendations though :D!

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPIf you play bad, you should be last and not get bonuses for some strange kind of rubber-banding to push you back into the game that you rightfully lost due to wrong decisions.

I don't know how you can reach that conclusion. I did add plenty of conditionals like "if" and the sentence that follows that paragraph you quoted mentions that it can be a fun challenge. If you play like rubbish you can't expect to do well. Losing cities to rebellion isn't exactly a reward :P

The game just gives you a fighting chance to pick yourself up.

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Quoting: MeissnerEffectI have Stellaris but none of the DLC. Suggestions for which DLC to buy?

I think Utopia is the only one really worth it. The rest are nice to have, sure, but you're not really missing anything with the cosmetic DLC. Things like Synthetic Dawn are only interesting if you plan to play as a synth. If you don't, you can also ignore it.

Quoting: buenaventuraI just bought Europa Universalis IV for 10 euros at their awesome Valentine's Sale (which wasn't even advertised here as far as I've seen?) and I am just getting into it. Feels like a typical "mega nerd dad game" that will just devour my nocturnal life, so Paradox, expect me to buy some DLC real soon!

I've been on a EUIV mini-binge recently myself. The time just flies on by :D . You might want to do a little research on what DLC you want, since the PDS model is pretty a la carte and you can pick and choose whatever interests you the most.

Quoting: libgradevI don't think their approach to DLC helps them personally... I own Stellaris but I've held fire on buying the DLC as they *just keep coming* and this seems to be a recurring theme...

For these titles I tend to wait for a 'collector's edition'.

You'll be waiting for years yet, then. The current PDS model is to keep supporting the game with free content and updates for years (much like Cherryh is a massive overhaul) but that's paid for by DLC every couple of months. Crusader Kings II came out in 2012 and it's still getting content patches thanks to continued DLC sales. I'm a pretty price-conscious gamer and don't have that big of a budget to spend on games, so the stuff that doesn't interest me that much I tend to pick up in the regular sales. It's not uncommon for the older DLC to be at least 50% off. I mean, I think there's valid criticism of this model but PDS' position pretty straightforward to understand and unlikely to change.

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