CK3's next DLC is finally coming out in a little over a week!  Since the new patch is going to break old saves (and I've managed to get sick again so there's been little to no movement on Socotra), I'm not planning on continuing the Socotra game any further because the save is going to be invalidated in a little more than a week.  There was a lot of positive feedback from the Socotra game, and I plan on starting a new game with the Royal Court DLC.  I plan on using the game to explore some of the differences in culture and the new Grandeur mechanic.  Its an interesting combination because the culture changes encourage conquering and expanding, but Grandeur encourages "building tall".

What I would like your help on is deciding where I should start.  I plan on starting on the 1066 start date, and have a few ideas on starts that would be interesting to play with this in mind:

Count Herbert of Vermandois - the Last of the Karlings.  This will be a tough start, as we start as a one-province count under the King of France.  But perhaps we can return to some of Charlemagne's glory.

Beg Muhammad Abbaszde of Ghur - So this isn't actually the start I have in mind.  What I would like to do is to recreate the Khwarazmian Empire and bring them back to their former glory (maybe not kill the Mongol envoys this time), but I'm not at all certain which leader to start as in 1066 to be true to their origins.  I'm not an expert of the history and my internet sluething has only brought me to Anushtegin Garchai - an individual who supposedly they derive from, and was alive in the time, but whom I have not found in the CK3 1066 start.  So instead I would start with Beg Muhammad or someone similar and attempt to recreate my own version of the Khwarazmian Empire.

Prince Erik the Heatlhen of Sweden - one of the last Asatru rulers, making us one of the last true Vikings in 1066.  This could be interesting to play as a "tall" manner -trying to stay alive as the last Viking realm among a sea of Christianity.  Then again, just staying alive could be interesting as we are the only Asatru faith duke in the Catholic kingdom of Sweden.

Other?  Is there another leader or area you would like to see?

Hi Everyone,

Since this spell and creature does not appear in documentation, I am adding it for everyone service,

Thanks!

I am not sure it is a bug or not for Allora, who is a Champion with a bow, currently has magical ranged attack. but it seems a bit weird.
She should have physical ranged attack like Shuri (=Huntress).

And she must be superior-compatible to Shuri, but she is rather weaker than Shuri because she does not have a fixed ability of enhanced damage.
So she needs to have 'Powershot' ability like Shuri, and having 'Guiding Beacon' is also better because Champions are basically leaders.

And in my remember, she has +3 basic ranged and defence compared to Shuri in original MoM.
Her basic defence is 8 which is ok in this point but not for basic ranged. 
But her basic ranged needs to be increased to be better than Shuri's ranged.
I think this can be compensated if 'Guiding Beacon' is given to her.

Suggestion:

1. add loot when winning battles -> like gold and mana?
2. better diplomacy -> pay tribute (gold per turn) for peace?

Over at rpgcodex.com we are setting up a SMAC PBEM. If you want to play make an account there and then tell me here so I can add you to our PM on that forum.
SMAC = Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire, it's a really underrated and old style entry in the civ series but it has lots of deep mechanics like elevation, sea level rise, the ability to raise and lower terrain thus incidentally rerouting rivers, psionic combat side by side with mundane, ability to outfit unit chassis with different types of weaponry, army, and gear, and much more.

I haven't bought a lot of new games in a while..... but every time I see either of these I kind of want to try one of them out. So the simple question is which one would ya'll recommend?

I've loved Pins CK3 write ups, but I 100% would try at a low difficulty probably for either game.

Streamers showed off/leaked incoming runewords. We don't know if these are average, high or low rolls, that is yet to be seen.



First off the Flickering Flame in a 3socket head armor (stating the obvious in the screenshot). It looks particularly useful for a fire golem and corpse explosion user since they count as fire skills, or a fireblast throwing assassin. It uses a vex though, so it's more for capping off a farmed up character's build than for something to plan for.



One interesting part is how the displayed level 8 aura would make all minions fire immune. It could easily solve the fire nova and firestorm of Diablo killing all minions


source: https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-2/news/fl...ted-325667



Second, Unbending Will in swords of 6 sockets.



This means that of the one handed swords only the crystal sword-dimensional blade-phaseblade comes to mind, while the two handed swords only have the great sword-executioner sword-colossus blade trio as the possible candidates. The taunt looks like it's designed for act 5 mercenaries.



source: https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-2/news/un...ted-325631



Next up, Wisdom.



The piercing, cannot be frozen and mana steal combined with mana per kill point to a thrower or a bowazon, and the runes are not exactly high. This is probably the easiest cannot be frozen choice for other two hander users and dual wielders too.


source: https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-2/news/wi...ted-325636



Another bowazon item, the Mist runeword for bows. It is a beefy high-end runeword using the second highest rune in the game, although it has less attack rating boost than faith, less damage, less attack speed from the aura, and no Ignore Target Defense. On the other hand it has piercing attack, more all skills, more all resists, and a bit of vitality to go with it.


source: https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-2/news/mi...ted-325643



Now for a lower-end runeword: Pattern.



Pattern is very low runeword. barely higher than Ancient's Pledge, and has all resists and a half-decent enhanced damage to top that off. It IS stronger than most rares you can shop at late normal at least, with the obvious drawback of not being able to upgrade it to exceptional. Faster Block is interesting too, although the lack of mana steal means that a nice rare may still be preferable over this in some cases. I imagine it's nice for an early game Tiger/Claw assassin that will be actually a viable way to play with the changes to charge-up skills.


source: https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-2/news/pa...-ii-325658



Finally, Plague.



Another Cham runeword, so the online item shops are probably projecting increased sales and preparing their bots for ladder start. Not much else to say. It's big, beefy, and endgame like the rest of it's kind.


source: https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-2/news/pl...ted-325668

Hello, I am asking if anyone here would like to take my slot in the Civforum game that is currently being planned. It looks like it will start in either late January, or early February. The game contains:
- fun new settings!  
- fun new opponents!  

That's not all, you also (optionally) get:
- faithful dedlurker Amicalola! Although I am also more than happy to sit out completely. 

If you're interested, here are the settings: 

So my currnet computer is very, very bad. It plays DirectX 9... reasonably well, and pushing, hard, DirectX 11 with some degree of stability if I am doing absolutely nothing else. However, it does OpenGL fairly fine, and in all the (admitedly, not much) more graphically demanding games than CoM2, in which it is an option, I often see great improvements in stability and speed when I play with it.

So, of course, in DosBox that was an option, but how about the new engine(d) CoM2? I looked files everywhere and while I can find some configurations and mess with things, I got nothing on render method.

Now, the game is playable, specially as I play it, windowed (the archaic pixel style is very pretty, but on such a huge UI, I prefer it to be a bit on the smaller side). I am not having significant problems playing, at all. But I do get some slowdown, specially on what seems to be particle effects (spell effects, wizards presenting themselves on the mirror, etc), so any improvement I can get will be welcome.

Hi,

I would like to express my opinion, that it's frustrating to play vs nature wizard at higher than average difficultly levels, it prevents you from using selected heroes and training them which is one of the main fun aspects of the game.

you hire and kill (in order that they not offer to join you again) about 10-15 heroes, until you find the heroes you want. then you train them, invest on training them. and then you face a nature wizard, which can cast crack call a number of times (also web if you have flight which in higher difficulties often you don't) and bans this hero from servicing you again (not resurrectable). all the effort you put to find the heroes you want down the drain, why would I use heroes in the first place if they just get "disappeared" and not able to join me again in after a fight vs a spearman?

This forces you to focus on not playing with heroes when playing nature wizard which in my opinion ruins the fun of the game.
This and the fact that AI don't suffer from rampaging monsters and can expand as much as he/she wants while you are forced to expand very slowly while using super defense against these super strong rampaging monsters also takes away from the fun part of the game IMO.

I would like to suggest a fix for the crack call - make the hero resurrectable, costs about 330 mana, not a cheap price.
and a fix for the monsters is that the AI also be attacked by super strong rampaging monsters going to his weakest city as well.

Thank you,
Barak.