Was that a hint for the game or for... well, ... nevermind.

There's not much in Scandinavia in the Old Gods start, no Suomi, Norge or Sverige. If you manage to form either country, you're a good way towards understanding how it works.

Free advice on how to behave in general.

Yea, I think I got the hang of it. :) I'm playing as Suomi (Voitto Korhonen), so that Finland and Scandinavia will have the label "Suomi" over it on the long run. :D But that's really a challenge, because he's a count starting as a vassal. Well, you can get independence quite easily, especially with the defensive bonus that the Finns have. But being a count, it's damn hard to grow big.

Could that have saved my marriage? http://straland.com/images/smilies/wrongroom.gif

Ok, as soon as you can claim the Duchy of Finland, your land is called Finland, no matter where you start from. So I didn't have to start as a silly little Count of Suomi. [lol] But I did so anyway, and before the death of my first character I was able to claim the title Duchy of Finland! So although the counties were divided amongst the sons, the oldest, being Duchy, kept rule over all. [yeah]

I think I'm getting the hang of it. :)

You've overcome the first major obstacle. The next big trick is to marry your children to heirs to lands you want. Figure out how to push claims.

One tip: it might seem smart to give your heirs some land and lower your demesne size. From experience I can tell you that's not wise until they have produced a heir of their own. I'll leave that up to you to figure out why, though in this context "experience" means "miserable failure".

I've picked up Football Manager again, 2015 this time. It feels like old times. WC 2010 spoiled football for me, but the WC 2014 changed my perspective again.

See attachment: Finland's wet dream. :D But as you can see not exactly everyone accepts the situation. I had to give up Sweden a bit earlier, because the Duke of Karelia (my very own brother [cry]) was claiming independence. These factions will cause more of a fight, but if I will be able to manage them, I will come out stronger, since I'll have counties to claim from them.

I'm addicted. Thank you very much, Shabba(!) :p

Glad you like it :cool:

I'm playing a bit of Football Manager 2015 nowadays. Good old times...

I'm quite heavily digging into Dragon Age Inquisition. The game is extremely big. I would roughly estimate it to be probably two to three time larger than Skyrim. Graphics are very good and combat enjoyable. However, the enormous multitude of side quests are a bit overwhelming and somewhat on the tedious side. I think, I need to get some horses to make my life easier. Just have to kill that dragon to get through to the stable master.

Two guys from my TF2 team play that as well. It sounds pretty deep. Personally I'm not into fantasy games: I love Fallout, but I found Skyrim tedious. The VATS is what makes the game for me though, and the lack of it makes Skyrim more like a action game.

Speaking of which, that LotR action game should be pretty good.

It is not that deep. It plays as if you read an interactive fantasy book or watch an interactive movie/series. Also, visual quality is top notch, I'm actually stunned as I seldom enjoy just the visuals. In DAI, I can walk and just look around. They have had a few very talented artists contribute to visuals. Music is good also and blends nicely to the world. Overall, I have a complete unhindered sense of immersion.

The game is on the demanding side through. I have to tune a couple of settings from high/ultra to medium to prevent GPU from overheating and I have 760GTX. Then after that, CPU started to overheat a little bit, on all 8 cores) but it is manageable just with upping the fan speed.

Gameplay is a hybrid fusion between Drakensang series, Neverwinter Nights 2, and Elder Scrolls and of course previous Dragon Age games.

Have not tried multiplayer yet as the controls are somewhat cumbersome. The camera is completely detached from the character movement and there is no option to reattach it, so you've got to run with right mouse button pressed at all times. I wonder how long my mouse will survive. A generic 3-dollar mouse I tried in the beginning lasted for two sessions of 4 or 5 hours each after which the right button caved in.

I have to say that buying a good mouse is one of the best decisions I ever made.

A reasonable $40 mouse lasts about a year for me if I play Mass Effect 3 multiplayer regularly at least once a week.

My Logitech MX518 broke, and that model turned out to be unavailable so I bought the G400 instead. I think I did five years with it. It's a bit expensive, but it's still cheaper than buying a new one every year.

I have had 400 some time ago that I got for $40 on big sale somewhere. It lasted about a year and cannot say I liked it. I now have sensei raw, it is lighter and slides better. Buttons are not that good though. It is not that easy to find a good mouse these days for me. The only one I really liked was razer so maybe when sensei breaks, I go back to it.

Also, a Russian friend of mine quit gaming as he was really addicted and his family forced his hand. So, he gifted me quite a few games on steam through gamersgate. The list includes:

Dishonored (Bethesda's take on Assassin's Creed afaik)
Banner Saga (weird strategy)
Wasteland new (and old that comes with it by default, I have not played the old one)
Baldur's Gate II remade edition or whatever (I liked the original BGII a lot when it was published first)
Risen I and II (Two Worlds refurbished in Drakensang universe)
Demonicon, but that one I already played (not a bad game but combat is awful).

Not sure what to do with all this stuff, as I got to quit working to be able to play all that. I think I am all set for the next year or two considering DAI and its multiplayer. Multiplayer for DAI is very addictive. I played seven hours on Sunday without any breaks which is close to a record for me.

I liked Dishonored, I bought that last year. It does play like a console port though. But the art style is good, cartoony works for me.

I played a little bit of Risen like an hour and a half. Not a bad game according to my first impression. It is very Drakensang-style and I like that. No +5 greatsword or level 36 heavy armor there or "stop time, run around, kill everyone" magic. Quests are awful though and graphics are very mediocre. But overall impression is good.

Also, spent about an hour in Banner Saga and it is annoying. Outcome of events seems completely random and not linked in any way with what you think might happen if you decide to do this or that. Of course, there are multiple walk through sites out there but that would ruin the game complete for me.

I don't know either game. On an unrelated note, Endless Legend is RPS' game of the year: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014...ndless-legend/

I played Endless Space, which I found promising but not very addictive. This might be worth trying.

I'm almost finished with South Park. If you are a fan of the series, it's a great. It's like living 3 episodes with a little RPG fighting and mazes. Although, I would have liked tougher and longer dungeons and more side quests.

If you are not a fan or never watched, don't bother.

The more I play DAI, the more I like it. It is very big and long and very well done with brilliant writing and voice acting and very good story for the main questline with multiple ramifications/decision points. The outcomes are very variable and NPCs do quit or die in the process. It is actually quite convoluted.

Now, by about mid-game as where I am, it turns into something similar to Kingdom of Amalur hybrid with Warcraft as combat is becoming more action-style and I don't normally pause it as I think I'm overleveled. However, this is my own fault as I went to some areas where I should not have until much later in the game and manages to gain a couple of extra levels after some very hard battles. But then, you can play is as you wish, it might be played differently. I did have to respec a couple of NPCs due to difficulties in major battles against dragons and that was on normal difficulty. On nightmare, I guess, there would be a need to pause much more frequently in almost every battle.

I also started a bit of multiplayer. It is glitchy in its current state but very addictive and quite challenging. Does not rival Mass Effect 3 multiplayer but comes quite close. A bit slower paced though and less precise. What I mean about "precise" is that it is hard to position your character exactly where you want it to be and make him do exactly what you want him to do. Well, I have not mastered that yet probably. Keep in mind that it is essentially a console game. Mass Effect for PC was different from its console versions most due to targeting but DAI is more on the similar side and targeting and line of sight is very console-like. Meaning, it is weird and occasionally unresponsive to controls. There is also a huge amount of stunlock and a lot of attacks stun you or knock you off.

Been playing a lot of XCom lately. There is a community mod called Long War which effectively triples the material in the game, custom skins, abilities, tech tree, it's gigantic. And glorious. If you've ever loved XCom, this is great. Greater. And some.

I might buy a game or two during the sale, last minute, but I'm still not sold on getting ACU and CivBE right now.

I tried to love the new XCOM, but I've come to the conclusion that isometric view reminds me of the eighties.

Did I mention I've played a lot of Payday 2? It's a bad shooter, but it has a lot of depth. I've also been playing Borderlands: the presequel, which is just a reskin of Borderlands 2. It's a bit better as a shooter, but it doesn't have a lot of depth. It's very nice when you like doing a lot of damage.

Thanks for the heads up. I will look into it

I just spotted grahamiam playing this!

I finished main game and Daud DLCs on normal, cannot be arsed to play on harder difficulties. Quite funny at times, but I frequently run out of patience and start killing guards left and right messing it up. I think I finished 2 or 3 missions only without killing anybody.

Bought it during sale and played one game. I think it's a nice game from what I saw. Will play more when I have a bit more time in a few weeks. The game could use a toned down tile set though, sometimes it's a bit hard to see stuff cause all the graphic details are getting in the way.

I've bought SanctuaryRPG in a daily deal 2 weeks ago. I can really recommend this game. It's an ASCII roguelike, with a good story and a really good battle system with surprising depth. This game shows it is possible to make a game that will suck you in without HD graphics. They did put quite a lot of effort in their ASCII art though. :) Friendly priced at € 8,- as well.

I bought Dying Light. Or rather, I was forced to buy it. I don't like horror games, but this reminds me more of Fallout than of L4D. And did I mention my re-emergent Football Manager addiction?

How were you forced into buying dying light?

Peer pressure.

I'm playing Risen I on hard difficulty. It is quite a masochistic experience must admit. This game is brutal. But despite a lot of temptation, I have not switched to normal yet.

Now that I have about 30 consecutive seconds to play a game, I found FM15 to be quite a good game. Somehow I'm aware that I'm not doing anything but spreadsheet balancing...

For Americans/Canadians eh among us, there's a hockey version of this game in the works: store.steampowered.com/app/301120/ I haven't played it or it's predecessors (maybe I can be bothered to try it), but it seems very similar as FM. If you're into spreadsheet balancing (and who isn't), give it a try.

I finished Witcher 3. OMFG, this is best game ever. Provided your PC can handle it. But even on medium settings, it is gorgeous.

started on The Witcher I a while ago. Quite like the game but then Fallout NV and EU IV got in the way :)

I'm back to playing FM15 with the (quite absurd) goal of winning the Champions League with a team of regens (for those not in the know: the youngest players are 15 when the game starts; during the first season new 15 y.o. are spawned; pick them up and nurture them for the first team). It's a great game to think about when you're not playing.

I'm also playing Overwatch since about half a year. Man, that game is so bad and boring compared to Team Fortress 2. If TF2 wasn't intrinsically broken right now there wouldn't be a reason to play Overwatch... but it's fun to shoot some stuff.

There's a new version of Football Manager, and it has fantasy football draft. Brilliant.

Still playing FM15 though, won another Champions League last week: 4-0 against City. Number of reloads: 2 (apparently the correct number of center forwards is 2, not 1), number of regens: 5.

Also playing Cities Skylines with my 5 y.o. [worship]

I am playing from time to time old "Railroad Tycoon 3" with my 5 yo...

But Cities:Skylines I bought with the latest humble bundle, so we might give it a try together...

I've been playing Destiny 2 on PC lately. A bit of some mindless fun. I like the game, even though it's far from perfect. I hope Bungie improves on it with time. Anyone else tried it out?

I tried the open beta. I figured it is something like Borderlands, but without humour.