acemuzzy wrote:

How does shogun 2 compare to Rome if I've not played a tw game before? Worth £25 vs £5? Better AI etc as well as grafx?

You should of bought Shogun 2 in the recent Play.com sale, it was only £3.99. The best price I can see online right now is at GAME.

The newer TW games have slightly better new-player experiences and a more streamlined campaign map. With Rome I find that it is important to be methodical and organised when doing stuff on your turn, just so you the game doesn't take all of your time when your empire gets large.
They're all really good games tbh, you can't go wrong with any of them.

Keep in mind that if you have an older spec PC or a laptop Shogun 2 might not run so well unless you drastically lower the settings like I have had to. Whereas with Rome I can actually run it with everything on maximum (except AA, it doesn't need that).

Something that I noticed yesterday in Shogun and Napoleon that I haven't seen in a TW game before was that bodies were disappearing! It's apparently down to the unit detail setting, I think it needs to at least be on high. It's one of my favourite things about the TW series so I consider it a bit of a cardinal sin, but I guess that's what you get for having a low end machine.

Has anyone played Medieval II and it's expansion? I'm installing it again as it's the only one I haven't really played yet. I'm wondering if I should play the original game or just the expansion "Kingdoms". Sometimes expansion packs are just extra campaigns and sometimes they are big additions to the base game.

GurtTractor wrote:

Has anyone played Medieval II and it's expansion? I'm installing it again as it's the only one I haven't really played yet. I'm wondering if I should play the original game or just the expansion "Kingdoms". Sometimes expansion packs are just extra campaigns and sometimes they are big additions to the base game.

Kingdoms is made up of 4 (I think) different campaigns.  There was one set in the Americas fighting Aztecs and such.  I recall the one sent in ancient Britannia being a personal favourite, plus playing as Norway gave you vikings!

You just have to wait for those sales, which can be a problem for me. I am impatient and impulsive. Still, buying Fall of the Shogun from Steam is £24.99 but from Amazon it is £10. Missed revenue, right there.

That was on sale for a tenner a few weeks ago on Steam, I'm sure it'll come round again.

For those of you not tight fisted enough to read the bargains thread, anyone fancy being the fourth person in a Tochlight II four-pack purchase?  £11.25 yo.

Sit rep re 2010 Macbook gaming potential: poor to buggered.

Shogun 2 cost me £4 so not a great shame really that it runs like a total turd on my current version of boot camped Win7. Took minutes to load, sort of crashed (screen left stalled on an early splash screen, forced it back to desktop as haven't got a del button to ctrl alt del, tried returning to Shogun from task bar and it eventually booted) Incredibly slow on the menus, checked the options and it was already on min everything. When it eventually got to game the engine itself seemed ok but fairly simple looking and started chugging like a bitch regularly. It just left me feeling that it would have an amazing potential with a decent setup and all sorts of effects going everywhere. 
I'll make sure I've given it a shot on DX9 but I'm thinking of deleting it for now. Shame. 

Also picked up the Gods and Kings for ~£10 off Amazon and found that that Civ5 still just about runs ok on the ol' girl. Wether it'll still run after the DLC turns up is up for grabs but hey.. Civ is still good crack anyway. 

Now I just need to find £2,000 for a shiny new Macbook Pro or £2.50 for a acceptable gaming rig. Hmmm… Maybe..

Hmm, yeah I have pretty much the same spec as you, but it's definitely playable for me. I'm on the fence as to whether I should wait until I have a better PC to play it, as having bodies disappear at less than high unit detail settings is really annoying.

You could try Napoleon, out of the current engined TW games it is supposed to be the most well optimised, and so far I can confirm it runs a little better than Empire or Shogun 2, but if your having problems with Shogun then I doubt it'll be much better.

Your best bet is Rome. I can run it at maximum settings, and it only gets a bit slow in very large battles. It's still an absolutely great game, I think it's been my favourite so far though that may be because I've been running it without diminished quality. There's nothing quite like the cannons in ETW and NTW though, they're huge fun to use.

Turns out my PC will run BF3 on Ultra.

Never had a decent PC before. I thought this OEM thing was a bog standard card.

Humerous. Why did they cancel your order?

Guys,

Bought a copy of Metro 2033 off eBay for £6. The case says it's a Games for Windows title, but when I install it it brings up the Steam client.

Put the code in that was inside the box and it's installing.

I've now checked and the Xbox site doesn't list it as GfW, and neither does the Wiki page.

Have I basically bought a fake disc with a Steam code in a box? Or do boxed PC games go through steam for activation now?


I'm not fussed about earning Achievements in a game I've already earnt achievements in just confuzzled.

Sorry, yes there was a DVD, but it wouldn't install till I put the Steam code in.

It's now patching it from the internet automatically, which is handy I guess.

Lots of boxed games need Steam to install. It installs from the disc but activates through Steam. And some boxed games that install with Steam also need to use GfW, which is just fucking ridiculous. If you're keen on your xbox gamerscore etc, GfW games add achievements and score to it.

I don't think you can change your Steam name, although I notice I have one 'core' name and then my Kowdown id. I have no idea how or when the second one got on there.

Never heard of a way of telling Steam to turn off the pc. If you find one, share it as it would be useful.