Video Games General

"Is it wrong to watch a dying man's ass fertilize my fields?"

That might just be the best Sseth quote since this one from the Morrowind review.

 

Got the Chaos Dwarfs Mod for Dominions 5, and I am having alot of fun.
Seeing hordes of disheveled slaves driven towards enemy lines, so they can soak up arrows and magic and your actually valuably troops, like Infernal Guard or Immortals can get to work unmolested, is alot of fun.

Lots of slaves die, but hey: Meat is cheap, and the lives of Dawi'Zharr are too valuable to be spent without due cause. My losses are catastrophic each battle, but since no Dwarf dies I couldn't give less of a damn.

 

It's all fun and games until the slaves dying or running hp routs the rest of your army.

 

Not if you put them under separate commanders, and these commanders (The Slavers, which are rather cheap to recruit from any Fort Province) have the Taskmaster trait which offsets their Morale deficit, and makes it less likely they rout.

Basically, I shove all the Slave units into their own Fodder Armies under a Chaos Dwarf Slaver, and put the true and proper Dawi'Zharr under the command of either a Chaos Dwarf Captain or Overlord. Then, I arrange the Slaves into a big ol' Pile of Violence (because most of that despicable, lazy rabble, namely the Orc and Goblin Slaves, have the "undisciplined" trait, which makes them unable to do formations, and sorting those without said trait out would be a waste of time) at the front of my battle line, and put the valiant and awe-inspiring ranks of Chaos Dwarfs in the Rear, Crossbows in the back, melee troops in front, and Hobgoblin Wolf Riders or Bull Centaurs (should I have some) at the left or right flank to act as Cavalry, set to attack their rearmost units.

Usually the Ogre and Orc Slaves, the only Slaves that are worth a damn in combat, have weakened the enemy so much that they break before the Fodder does, or the Fodder is so depleted that even them routing wouldn't change all that much because the next wave would consist of either Chaos Dwarf Warriors, Infernal Guard, or Immortals, and good luck breaking any of the latter two.

Honestly? Normally I don't like playing "Slaver" factions in games, but the Chaos Dwarfs are just... I don't know, I didn't have so much fun with that game since I bought it! I feel like a fucking Evil Overlord, and I'm grinning all the way.
Once I finish this game, I might try my hand on the Skaven, which are part of the same Warhammer mod. Looking at my current tactics, I should be right at home.

 

That's not how hp routing works. That's how normal routing works but an hp rout is basically when your army's total hp falls under a specific percentage of the hp you brought when you started (I've heard 75% but I'm not sure). It's how MA Ermor armies can rout in spite of them having no morale barring the leaders. Basically, if you bring a 1000 meatshields and 10 elite troops if enough of the meat shields die the elite ones will run anyway in spite of taking no damage or losses unless they're berserk or the like.

 

Ah, that. Must have misread your post then. Well, I actually accounted for that.

Only about half of my average army is made up of Fodder, and most normal Chaos Dwarf Units (as in, anything that isn't a Hobgoblin or Bull Centaur) has 13 to 14 HP, while the most common Slaves (Goblins, Humans) have only around 7 or 8, with the odd Orc which has 13, and the rare Ogre outlier that has a whopping 34 HP (there are at best 4 or 5 Ogres in a Fodder Unit, often even less, since the selection is randomized).

To crunch some numbers:
Usually my armies are lead either by two Castellans (basic Commander Unit for the Chaos Dwarfs), which have a base Leadership of 80 each, or a single Overlord, which has 120. Meanwhile the Slavers, which command the Fodder, have a base Leadership of 50, and most Armies have two or at best three of those with them.

This means, assuming every commander's roster is filled to capacity, and all units are healthy, that the usual army has 120 to 160 Chaos Dwarfs and 100 to 150 Slaves, coming in around at 220 to 310 Units total. Even if all Slaves were all to die, the Chaos Dwarfs themselves, who would still be standing because the Slaves soak up all the spells and arrow fire, would still make up at least 50% to 55% of the entire army.
I'm excluding Bull Centaurs and Enslaved Giants here, since they are utter ass to haul from the Capital, the only place they can be recruited from, to the frontline, as well as any Mages that might be attached to said army, since they and the units attached to them I prefer to keep in the rear.

So even if all the Slaves were to be slaughtered down to the last man (which is hard to do, even with the occasional friendly fire incident due to the Chaos Dwarf Crossbows), I am still a rather comfortable distance away from the hp threshold.

Of course, these numbers increase as the commanders gain experience, but that is a bit difficult to quantify on the fly.

 

So Noah Caldwell-Gervais put out a video looking at the Resident Evil series.
It's his longest vid after the Red Dead series look over (4h), clocking at 7h 28min.

 

If this video is seven and a half hours long, you're going to need to put in a summary of who this guy is, why I should care about him, and what the video is generally about before I even consider watching it, especially with a title as vague as "A Thorough Look At Resident Evil".

 

Heh, yeah, fair.
Hmm. Not sure how to describe it, I'm always awful at that stuff.

He rather thoroughly goes through what's in the games, how they do their things and how well/bad they work, how they change along the way for series, sometimes a bit on how they compare to similar games, about their history, reception, and legacies, and things of similar vein.

Does that work?
He has a short 25min video on Doom 2016 and a 23min video on Alpha Protocol if you want to try something shorter.

 

Yoooo Alpha Protocol. People fucking slept on that game, was really fun and the different variables and outcomes of descisions/outcomes and such were pretty cool to figure out yourself and a major part of the attraction for me. Tried dozens of attempts and variations to save Madison and assumed she was always going to die, but found out a couple years after if you get juuuust the right set of variables apparently not!

G22 was always my favorite in it, Sis's really subtle background plot hints especially, shame we won't see a sequel to see what all the Saint George and the Dragon hints would lead up to.

Also as another casualty of the Music Industry(Supernatural just aint the same with the replaced music) nowadays your only way to get the game is via ebay, or much more easily pirating because the Music Rights contract expired.

 

Look who wasn't actually dead, the trailer.

 

... That ending tune was from Metroid Prime.

 

It's a leitmotif from Metroid's title theme I think.

 

huh, so it is.

Still cool

 

So we're taking on an actual Chozo Warrior? That's pretty cool.

The scene in the trailer makes me a bit suspicious the plot's going to blow it, like that other game that doesn't exist, though.

 

I'm getting some Prototype 2 Murder Your Maker vibes from this.

 

I'm guessing these are the implied rebellious and/or warlike Chozo from one of the gallery pics from Samus Returns.

 

I'm not watching any more trailers or seeking out more info about the game. I want to walk into it blind. Which will admittedly be difficult once it releases because I don't have a Switch and don't expect to have one for a while.

 

It might be good. Dwarf RPG game.



Weird but interesting armored core meets monster zombies.

 

.......So I went on Steam, was gonna look up that Mecha Knights Nightmare. Decided to check the suggestion box on the store front page first.



...HOW DID I MISS THIS!?

 

In case anyone's interested Blasphemous is getting a new free chapter added on December 9th. Came with a pretty cool trailer and music to it:

 

Nice! I hope we get to fight whatshername and take the sword back. It was necessary to give the nation a measure of peace, after all.

 

Crisanta of the wrapped agony and yeah it'd be nice to get a final showdown in. Though that'll probably only last for however long until the Miracle decides to pull another "twisted paths thing" when it comes to granting someone's prayers.

 

I think the whole misery of Blasphemous only happened because the pope turned his back ln the faithful and the Miracle itself. Surely the sacrifice of the penitient one would be sufficient to spare the people a second disaster?

 

From what I recall of the story and sites carrying the lore, the pope/high pontiff viewed the faithful of the church as being insufficiently devoted and so turned his chair on them and in all likelihood prayed to the miracle for things to improve. He turned into a tree and burned for 90 days creating a mountain of ashes. The remaining leadership saw the now empty throne and stampeded up the mountain of ash towards it to take the position but the mountain started moving and consumed them and everyone in it before spitting them out as the monsters you fight throughout the whole affair.

And well, he got his wish. The unfaithful echlisiarchy perished and the person who took the throne was one utterly devoted to the miracle and who inspired new faith in it via his actions. There's a lot of cases of the miracle granting wishes in a twisted manner such as Altasgracias the three women made one. There's a reason you get told "twisted are were and will be the paths of the miracle" repeatedly. While praying to it might give you what you want, you can expect it to be twisted in some manner and in all likelyhood painful.

 

And I am surprised no one has mentioned the much bigger announcement in the trailer. Work on an official sequel to Blasphemous has begun with a release date set for 2023.

 

This Phoenix Wright LP is amazing.

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=pl4rx7gry_xh_tgbta-cpjfshcpda7y6v0

 

It's finally out and I get armored core vibes with EDF style fighting. Average voice acting but meh.

 

Nice. It is closer to Armored Core 5 than AC4, but that is fine. I am totally looking forward to more mecha walker action.

 

Having did buy it I liked it more than that online gundam game on the playstation.

Control was quite easy. It could do with a robotic voice saying activating combat mode and providing some indication of energy or ammo usage but it's a start.

Armored core customisation? It's absolutely there. Not a good mech bay soundtrack but likewise I can cut the developer some slack for that.