GameLog 179 & 180

Fantasy Wars (52h) - Hooked by the infantry upgrade system and the tactical combat optimisation. Not sure why I kkept playying this one rather than going back to elven legacy, but it was fun!

Civ V (27h) - New patch was supposed to improve the AI. Played through an interesting campaign on 7 difficulty with England. Their shipping bonus didn't seem to make tooo much difference, but 3 rang archers are AWESOME. Started sharing an island with Alexander (Greeks), and he decided it was war time just as my longbowmen arrived. Apart from a little maneuvering, I couldn't have asked for a better time. He challenged 1 city until I had the archers in place, thenn I rolled him back and took his capital before he sued for peace. 10 turns later we were at it again anf pushed him right off the island without loss.

Dwarf Fortress (20h) - Fleshymines met a sudden end when I was set upon by 3 raiding parties at once. The game seems way more agressive now and that's the firt time I've been forcibly removed rather than bailing over heavy losses. They didn't stand a chance .. and it made me sooo want to play again. New place is up to 75 strong again and has a massive drawbridge to lock us up tight in case there's a massive raid again. My 2nd level archer compound seems ineffective though as they just want to rush out instead of plugging away from their tower. Preparing for a new entryway across the river as it already looks like a fortress.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm (10h) - Vargoose (50 hunter) - I'd been thinking of giving this one up before the next month's paydate as the ability for it to put me to sleep is disheartening, but the flooded thousand needles questline got me interested again. Just about finished Felwood.

Grotesque Tactics (5h) - Another steam sale. Storyline was pretty funny, but the tactics seemed off. There doesn't seem to be a rationale why you could start the turn by moving all the way to the back of your movement zone, wait, then after the AI have advanced come in and move as far forwards as if you were at the same positon as at the start of the turn (effectively doubling movement)

Minecraft (5h) - Sam started up a server on his netbook, which lasted less than a day before major lag issues kicked it into the void. Another 1-tree challenge too.

ToME 4 (5h) - As the winner of Roguelike of the Year, I picked up ToME again to see what had changed. Hmm a signin? why? Could it be? .. YES! A roguelike that finally does an autosubmit! I last played ToME back in 2008(7?) when the rebuild of 4 was being aired for the first time. It looked like it was going to be a long way off and it seems like it was. A number of good things have happened though and with a real-time module I'm very tempted to dump the HTML5 code and build Notorious as a realtime ToME mod. As I've been playing there has been more and more opportunities to leverage existing roguelike characteristics much more than I was planning. Even if it's a proof of concept it would seem easier to get up and running.

Academagia (5h) - Interesting life simulator that reads like a Harry Potter book. Nice feel to it, and you need to read through all the stuff to get the most out of it. Might be worth a rerun, but there's so many games waiting to be played ...