Metal Reviews

When playing as any Catholic faction, you have to both use and fear the Pope. When starting out, immediately send a diplomat to Rome and arrange an alliance. This should immediately gain you enough favour points to launch crusades. But don't! There are no non-Catholic rebel settlements near you and no faction in your vicinity has been excommunicated yet. Focus on taking out rebel settlements, perhaps dealing a quick deathblow to the Scots by taking Edinburgh (as you did), but be wary of displeasing the Pope with that. When the Catholic factions surrounding you attack you, as France, Spain and the HRE are doing in your case, wait until they are excommunicated then take some of their territories before they are reconciled. Better yet, launch a Crusade on them.

Oh yeah, and be wary of Portugal, they sometimes send small but potent (dismounted feudal knights, jinetes) forces per ship to Caernarvon. Dumbasses.

Oh yeah. I'm unimpressed with Spore. The Creature phase is poorly balanced and involves a lot of trial and error, and the graphics are rather crap for a 2008 game. I think I'm going to give the game to a ladyfriend of mine as a gift, more like her cup of tea.

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is fantastic, though. Zad, I think you'd like this one immensely. A snazzy cover system, plot sequences so good it's as if they're taken right out of Band of Brothers and a rather deep tactical gameplay make this one of the most immersive WW2 games I've ever played.

Hell yes, love the series, love that game. The kill shot camera work was a nice added touch too.

I don't have an allience with the pope yet, don't see the point since three have died over 7 turns. Managed to get an alliance with Spain but those fuckers are starting to target the same rebel cities as I am Also got France quiet by taking Angers, Bordeaux and Rennes but they just don't get the message. Thanks for the insight though.

The alliance you conclude is with the Papal States, not with the Pope itself... But it does gain you favour points for the latter. It's usually the first thing I do diplomacy-wise in any campaign.

Another tip: change a couple of castles on the British Isles to towns. The extra cash will help immensely, and the area is secure enough anyway.

Any opinions on the 'Kingdoms' Expansion?

I thought the British Isles and Crusades games were too easy (Americas was boring)...but wow is the Teutonic Knights campaign awesome or what?
NE Europe was made to be a bloodbath! Playing as the Teutonics or Lithuania is fun because you are guaranteed to be surrounded by hostiles. I love Novgorod, but their dvor cavalry is a bit overpowered.

Crusades easy? If you play one of the Crusader states, maybe. Byzantium and especially the Turks are a real challenge.

I think the Teutonic campaign is my favourite, recently I conquered that whole map with Denmark. Every faction has good options available to it, it's well balanced on the campaign map and with most factions internally, and the atmosphere is just superb.

The Americas are okay, but you can really only play with Spain. I wonder if there are some mods available for it which would allow you to play as England or France, should open up some more options. As far as the natives go, I only find the Apachean tribes fun to play, I really miss having cavalry with the Aztecs or Mayans.

I'm playing a Spyro game for DS, it's rockin'

Big sale on the Deus Ex games on Steam right now: http://store.steampowered.com/sub/296/

Maybe I could finally get around to play it.
Thoughts?

Do it. You'll love every bit of it, the first instalment especially.

I haven't played the Crusader game in a while, maybe I will give Byzantium a shot again. I may have played it on H/H instead of VH/H. The Teutonic Campaign, imo, was the best single thing in the franchise since MTW I was made. It is a challenge on VH/H difficulty for just about every faction. The atmosphere (just a cold, dark nasty campaign), as you said, is incredible, and the balance is brilliant.

Did you form the Kalmar Union as Denmark? The Teutonics have basically the best unit roster ever, they just have no money and generally end up at war with everyone. I took particularly satisfaction as Novgorod by beating the Mongols at their own horse archer game.

Yes the Americas just isn't fun for non-European factions. Britian and France should have been included.

Sorry my mistake. Gotta find a representative of the papal states though because Milan sackes Rome after like 80 turns. Britain is all town, nobody attacks me there for the moment but I have one army there just in case (since Denmark have almost all of N(E) Europe. France is getting owned big time and are confined to Paris and Rheims for now. The next pope elections are mine as well I hope since I have 8 cardinals now

Of course I formed the Kalmar Union. Hell, I even changed my capital to Kalmar eventually. Each time I play Denmark I form an alliance with Novgorod to protect the northern settlements, use Hamburg as a buffer, then focus all my attention on getting the settlements required to form the Union.

I just started playing as Novgorod, pretty cool. I still need to tech up a lot before I can tackle the Order jabbing at my western territories, so I formed a line of castles from north to south by taking Windau and converting some others. Also hilarious: a crusading noble was bearing down on me... so I assassinated the bloke, and his entire force promptly disappeared

Now, if only they'd take the trouble to release System Shock 2 on Steam...

Deus Ex I may actually pick up someday. How compatible is the Steam version with Windows 7? Also, are there any mods available that update the graphics?

Well, I bought the collection last night for my Windows 7 laptop (thanks for the heads up Zeth!) and had no problems with compatibility in the couple hours I spent with it.

I have been wanting to play these two games for awhile now, and this will be the perfect opportunity to get up to speed before the third installment comes out later this year.

The first Deus Ex is brilliant. I found the second deeply annoying and almost unplayable.

I've started out on a few, but since I've rarely got time to play, I never get around to finish 'em off. And some I just grow tired of.

Currently playing:
Far Cry 2 (Which is so inferior to FC 1 it's not even funny)
GTA 4
Broken Sword 4: The Angel of Death
Dragon Age: Origins
Football Manager 2010

I am thinking about just giving up on those and dig up my old NES and some Mega Man games instead. The nostalgia of old games is sometimes more appealing than the superior depth and graphics of the new ones.

Denmark has a pretty solid position, as does Novgorod. Both tend to stay allied to each other for a long time while they pick on the more centrally located factions.

Well done disposing of that crusader! I find Novgorod to have a good and interesting unit roster, though admittedly, they don't have the best infantry. Last time I played Novgorod I had peace with Lithuania, Poland, and Denmark until late, so I was able to bludgeon the Order and the Mongols into oblivion, and then could take on everyone else pretty easily. I now desperately want to play the campaign again, but it will have to wait a couple weeks. I think I might try the HRE.

I played HRE too for some time, pretty good starting position if you take Hamburg quickly. Afterwards you can crush Poland from both sides together with the Order. No additions to the unit roster from the vanilla game, sadly, but then again HRE already had the most powerful roster.

this thread got really nerdy

I didn't know it was possible, but it happened