Inspired by the CRPG Club, the GWJ Strategy Club now has a Retirement Throne Room.
Here's your chance to catch up on titles we played in the past and still get credit. You can play any of the following games and gain a rank with a few caveats:
1. You will need to post your experience playing the game.
2. In the spirit of fairness, you should try to finish a retired game's campaign to get credit within reason. We recognize that some strategy games can take hundreds of hours to beat, so don't feel like you need to go that crazy.
3. Please send me a PM if you finish a past game so that I can get you credit.
Looking forward to hearing about your adventures!
Eligible Games:
Battletech
Endless Space 2
Age of Wonders: Planetfall
Imperator
Into The Breach
Frostpunk
Qvadriga
Warhammer 40K Mechanicus
Crusader Kings 3
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark
Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children
I’m actually playing a game of Endless Space 2 right now. Got to like it a lot, after playing it with the club. For all that, though, I’ve never finished the game.
Okay if I contribute my campaign in progress, or should I start from scratch and write about it for the Retirement Throne Room?
The GWJ JRPG Club 2.IV Remastered: Let Us Grind Together! | Backlog
Either is fine with me. Looking forward to it LastSurprise!
My backloggery
All right, I decided to start a new game in Endless Space. Whenever I get started, I tend to pick either the Vaulters - spacefaring nomad humans, and one of the playable races in Endless Legend - or the Vodyani - basically a group of sentient trees. I think they were awakened to space travel by first contact with an alien race, and they have a quite unique mechanic: in order to settle new star systems, they need to entwine them with celestial vines, which makes those systems part of the Vodyani network, makes travel between planets faster, increases diplomatic pressure on enemy systems that are entwined, etc. It's conceptually weird, but I tend to think of it like Norse mythology. We're all living in Yggdrasil and I'm at the heart.
As things stand, we're twenty turns in.
Above you can see that one nice thing I got, from the jump, was an asteroid field that gave me +50 industry on my homeworld. Excellent little boost.
The GWJ JRPG Club 2.IV Remastered: Let Us Grind Together! | Backlog
Damn it this is such an enabling thread
Begins reinstalling Endless Space 2 and BATTLETECH
My Trump Comedy Blog: The Trumpalogues
Erm. Aren’t the Vodyani the space vampires and the trees the Unfallen?
cRPG Club |Strategy Gaming Club
Haha, whoops! Yes, the trees are the Unfallen, which is what I'm playing as.
The Vodyani are the "virtual" race that simulate copies of themselves. I've never tried playing as them. Maybe they are the space vampires? I guess the Cravers could be described that way too, though I picture them more like a plague of locusts.
The GWJ JRPG Club 2.IV Remastered: Let Us Grind Together! | Backlog
Good stuff LastSurprise! I've been away the past couple weeks but I'm looking forward to seeing how everything works out! Now I need to get back to Arbiter and get my perfect streak.
My backloggery
All right, back in! The tale of the Unfallen continues, from turn 20 to turn 42:
Seems like there's an Academy of Heroes somewhere, but I didn't find it:
Meanwhile, I've been exploring a ton of curiosities:
The Unfallen, as you all might know, are pacifist by nature. In fact, as I type this (at turn 42), more than half of my Senate is made up of pacifists. But my peace-loving tendencies are challenged by two things: the "aggressive" settling of the nearby Lumeris (not actually aggressive, just taking systems I'd like) and the spawning of the Seek the Unique - Part 1 quest -- which awards a hero. As I'm not playing the Sophons or Vaulters, I can't complete this quest by searching curiosities. I can only achieve it by colonizing two unique planets. And, right now, in my corner of the galaxy, I can only see two: mine, and theirs.
Heroes are so, so valuable, and ... bye bye, principles.
My vines reached Giasar by Turn 37, making Giazar the second system I've settled. Settling on Giazar made me fail a quest to search a quest marker there, which was for the best: it would have triggered.
This is a great system, by the way, as I will have access to Hyperium as soon as I research the requisite tech.
And as I prepare for war, the Unfallen choose fire, not light. Meaning that I can get access to special firearms that will basically jump me a couple of technological stages in the military quadrant. (The Pacifist reward gives a module that lets me gain Influence by destroying command points in space battles, which strikes me as less useful than something that helps me win those battles -- at least in the short term.)
As I write this on Turn 42, I've also entwined Procyon, wihch is the final system between me and the Lumeris (Koyasil [my homeworld] - Asteroid Field - Giazar - Procyon - Jenes [their homeworld].) On my way!
The GWJ JRPG Club 2.IV Remastered: Let Us Grind Together! | Backlog
So ... I abandoned the game that I was playing. I got mired in a conflict with the Lumeris that I wasn't fully prepared for, and several turns out from the end of that "gain a hero" quest, I could tell I was going to fail at it. That sort of setback often prompts me to restart, as I did here. So I've restarted and I am playing as the Vaulters.
I'll post more of a story soon, hopefully this weekend. But I'm somewhere between 60-80 turns deep, and have just started a war with the Horatio. I'm much more confident in this game.
The GWJ JRPG Club 2.IV Remastered: Let Us Grind Together! | Backlog
Finally I beat a regular Old World game! On second easiest difficulty but what the hell it's still a win. Obligatory victory picks.
My backloggery
I've decided that this month ahead, I want to dive into the 4X games I've been meaning to finish, but that I keep getting distracted from. So, the first order of business: actually finish an Endless Space 2 campaign. Back at it as the Vaulters, who are my go-to when starting up a new game. I've played from Turn 1 to Turn 61. Screen shots are spoiler tagged to avoid clutter.
On starting, I discover a bunch of planets clustered around the Rejuvination Field. I’m going for Qarius because I can see the titanium, and I want that right away. To the left of Quarius, and straight down from the Rejuvination Field, we have two systems that harbor minor races. And as it turns out, this constellation is tiny.
Turn 5:
A new world: I choose the Sentinels (Militarist) option, to build 4 military structures. This will probably take a little longer than building the scientific structures. But, again, this gets me titanium.
I make a point of exploring widely at the beginning, and quickly discover a pair of unique planets: Bigeli (in turn 13) and Sahar (in turn 18). No Auriga, though, which I usually discover very eary.
Turn 28: I assimilate the Kal'Tik'Ma (to the left of Qarius) after addressing their prophecy of doom. This is one of my favorite sidequests: the minor race is convinced that the apocalypse is coming, and you prevent it by basically showing them some real science.
Turn 33: I finish building those military structures and the next Vaulters mission -- destroy a pirate lair, or sympathize with the pirates. Usually, I go with option #2. But that will take 12 turns minimum, and here I don't even have enough money or influence to get started right away. So, time for the pirates to die. Unfortunately the game chooses a pirate planet that’s outside of my starlanes, which will make it take longer for me to get there. (Note: the reward for clearing this version of the quest is Hellraiser Torpedos, and I have plenty of titanium to arm my ships with them.)
Also, I assimilate the Z’Vali on Tylus (down from the Rejuvination Field.
Turn 46: I destroy the pirate lair (it took me 13 turns, so this was the faster option!) and begin the Search for Auriga queust. Search, indeed: I still haven't found it! I don't think I've ever started this quest without already knowing where Auriga is. Definitely going with the "observe" option, as I love the Geological Vault improvement.
The map highlight says it's down and to the left of Corvus, in an area just beyond where I've explored:
Turn 47 (the next turn): I find Auriga:
Usually, as the Vaulters, I make a point of colonizing Auriga. It's already colonized this time by the Lumeris, but it's a low-priority planet: it's by itself in the system. Fitting.
Turn 61: The Standoff -- The galaxy is getting more crowded, and I finally obliterate the pirates at Sahar (one of the unique planets, above. I manage to swoop in with my colony ship and settle it right away, because the Sophons are en route and about to steal it out from under me. They settle in around my system just as I bring in my fleet, hopefully to prevent them from launching a ground assault. Here's the location of the standoff, and you can see our fleets highlighted in the bottom left of each image.
Also on Turn 61, I choose to save Opbot DV8. I always choose to save Opbot!
The GWJ JRPG Club 2.IV Remastered: Let Us Grind Together! | Backlog