GameLog 163 & 164

Mount & Blade (17h) - Built up to 19, but reminiscing with Ben regarding the old M&B modifications made me dig up some mods for warband, particularly autolooting. Tried Diplomacy first, but it looked like the autoloot stuff was only once you set up your own feifdom. A little more digging revealed the open source project that combined Custom Commander with Diplomacy and others. Just getting started again and have picked up most of the companions and horsified them. Didn't notice a huge speed increase when they all had horses, so there might be a different travel calculation ?


Elemental: War of Magic (15h) - Dominions had me hankering for Civ5, but having a dig for something similar reminded me of this Stardock game that had just come out. Picked it up with some credit left over on impulse, and started playing before reading the reviews. Yep, it's pretty bad. Lots of little interface issues and barely any documentation. Went digging for a way to kick in the dynasty system and found out a lot of people were having the same issues.

Brad Wardell apeared on a recent Three Moves Ahead podcast to 'face the music' and I can sort of see where he's coming from, but the mistakes are amateurish. Coming off a very in-depth game of Dominions 3, I felt that this title was a long way behind even indie titles. It reminds me of Hinterlands in ambition and execution.

Downloaded the new version and I'm still getting interface issues like cities being named another city on the map, or images of heroes chinging between turns. Still feels early beta ...


League of Legends (10h) - Social game now. Had some epic 1Hr+ games on the 3v3 including a 1Hr 10 games last night with ben. We started off Ok, but got behind by level 6. Once againa rampaging Xin was dominating mid game. Eventually we turtled up and managed a couple of clean kills. In the last 20 minutes we were on top, but still almost lost the core to a desperate push. Luckily an inhibitor came back and locked it off just as it was about to fall.


Dominions 3 (10h) - Playing as Caelum, I raged all over the guys through the tunnel that had declared war on us. Wiped them out and now looking at either going further west or down through a peaceful neighbour to protect a weak link of my empire. Even though there doesn't seem to be any diplomacy, I've noticed in the last game that if you don't build up on the border of a neighbour, they will tend to leave their border undefended too, a sort of pact through demonstration of motives? Happy with that if it's the case, makes the AI a bit smarter than I'd thought.


Bejewelled Blitz (2h) - Filler after work before tea ...