VIDEO Strategy Games

So I've been gaming more than usual lately. My favorite genre of games has been, for quite a long time, strategy games. This means mostly, but not exclusively, RTS's. I thought it might be nice to have a general strategy (and tactical, if you like) game thread where people can talk about their gaming experiences, what they're playing, what they want to play, and so on.

Right now I've gotten a bunch of new games from the Steam sales this and last month, plus a few retail games purchased in the past few months.

Empire: Total War, with all DLC
Crusader Kings II, with most DLC and all expansions except for Sons of Abraham
Europa Universalis IV, with all current DLC
XCOM: Enemy Unknown, with Elite-Units DLC
Civilization IV: Complete Collection
Age of Empires II HD, with The Forgotten expansion.

Speaking of that last one, I purchased it mainly for the expansion. I already have the original AoE II... it's one of my favorite games and is actually the game that got me into strategy games in the first place. The game I got after that, Age of Mythology, is quite probably my favorite game of all time. Medieval II: Total War and M2's mod Third Age: Total War (absolutely amazing LotR game) are the other two contenders for that title.

Right now I'm playing with all of my recent purchases plus Medieval II and various mods for it. Since I just got AoE HD and XCOM yesterday in the Steam sale they're the new kids on the block and will have the most play-time. I'm especially excited to play the new AoE expansion campaigns, because it's the first new AoE content in six years (AoE Online doesn't count!) making it a BIG DEAL to me.

What are you guys playing right now?

 

I've been away from my RTS stable for a while, but the mainstays have been Age of Empires III, Total Annihilation, Spring (both NOTA and 1944), and Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. Of the latter two, Spring's been buggy for me ever since the most recent set of engine updates and I somehow managed to delete SupCom off my computer, which needs to be rectified. With the exception of Spring 1944 all those games have a strong naval combat component, which is my primary strength - usually a challenge not to get rushed to death early on when the enemy has a land route to my base. On some AOE III maps I end up pulling a Rebel Alliance move by transporting my explorer and some workers to an island, building a new base there, and eventually allowing my starting town center to fall.

 

RTS is my favorite genre. I have Homeworld, 0 A.D., Age of Empires with Rise of Rome, Age of Empires II with The Conquerors, Age of Mythology with The Titans, Command & Conquer: The First Decade, The Battle for Middle-Earth, The Battle for Middle-earth II with The Rise of the Witch-King, Supreme Commander with Forged Alliance, Total Annihilation, Empire at War with Forces of Corruption, Galactic Battlegrounds with Clone Campaigns, Dawn of War with its three expansions, and StarCraft with Brood War.

Homeworld is a 3D space-based RTS from all the way back in 1999, and one of my most favorite games of all time. I love so many things about Homeworld, especially the story, the music, and the gameplay. As I understand it, its sequels, Homeworld: Cataclysm and Homeworld 2, didn't quite live up to the expectations of the original, though I would get them if I could find them.

0 A.D. is the spiritual successor to Age of Empires, currently in development by Wildfire Games, the makers of the Rome at War mod for Age of Empires II. 0 A.D. is everything I expected Age of Empires to become in the future, especially before Ensemble Studios was closed and we were given Age of Empires Online, which I didn't even bother with.

Age of Empires, Age of Empires II, and Age of Mythology, what more do I need to say, they are classics, and I have been playing them quite a bit lately. Though I only got Age of Mythology a few weeks ago, so I am not very good at it yet. I actually haven't played the Rome at War mod yet, because I am afraid of breaking my install of Age of Empires II. I may get Age of Empires II HD and The Forgotten in the future, but I don't like Steam. I really wish they would have given us an HD patch, like Firefly Studios did for Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader, and had not made The Forgotten require Age of Empires II HD. I will probably end up getting Age of Empires III eventually, but I honestly believe I am probably not going to care for the new mechanics very much.

I mainly play Generals and Zero Hour, though have played all of them at one point or another, but the older ones, especially Tiberian Dawn, are rather difficult for me thanks to their old school graphics. It is sad that Generals 2, I refuse to call it anything else, was shutdown, though I wasn't playing it.

I primarily play The Battle for Middle-earth with The Dwarf Holds mod these days, though I am definitely expect great things from the Special Extended Edition mod for The Battle for Middle-earth II.

I got irritated when the non-Steam version of SupCom Gold I purchased from Impulse, before it was bought by GameStop, got switched to the Steam version just to continue multiplayer support. Though I do still have the original non-Steam version of SupCom itself installed. Which is all I have really played, beyond a brief test of FA after switchover occurred, that didn't really impress me with the UI changes and since I don't really have a computer that can even do SupCom itself justice.

I have hardly played Total Annihilation, though I definitely plan on changing that in the future.

My primary interest with Empire at War these days is the Phoenix Rising mod for Forces of Corruption, especially since I don't even really care for playing the vanilla games without an edited DAT file.

I like Galactic Battlegrounds a lot, almost preferring it over Age of Empires II due to the Animal Nursery (which 0 A.D. will have in the form of the Corral with additional qualities similar to Relics from Age of Mythology).

I haven't played Dawn of War or its expansions very much, but I will definitely play them more in the future, and the Warhammer 40,000 universe seems very interesting.

I am simply not very good at StarCraft, though I want to improve at it and to obtain StarCraft II eventually, since I do love the StarCraft universe.

 

Glad to see I'm not the only BFME fan still around! What are your favorite mods for the 3 games? Always looking to try different stuff.

 

Well, I am very particular about mods, with the two I mentioned, The Dwarf Holds for BFME and the Special Extended Edition for BFME2, being my main ones. TDH is probably my most favorite BFME mod, it adds an Erebor faction and makes the other factions pretty much how I though they should have been to begin with, and a new campaign is currently being developed. SEE is being rebuilt from the ground up, so I would definitely keep an eye on that one. The other one I am keeping an eye on is The Horse Lords for BFME2. I haven't found a mod for RotWK that has really caught my interest yet. The 3rd Age is the last bastion for BFME at this point, and the main home for all of these mods; they even came up with a way to revive multiplayer, though I haven't tried it yet.

 

I used to play Galactic Battlegrounds, which did use the AoE II mechanics. Loved assembling curb-stomp armies, especially with the Empire - went to town once on the Gungans after they'd occupied 3/4 of the map; unfortunately for them I held off their assaults long enough to produce a doomsday army that included 20 AT-ATs. Yousa gonna die.

AoE III (with the Asian Dynasties expansion) I enjoy mostly because of the naval battles. The various game mechanics (like shipment cards) I'm not necessarily keen on, but they do allow you to customize your bonuses for a certain type of fight. For most playable factions I have two sets of cards; one naval-centric and one army-centric. I've mostly played the British, with Japan coming in second and France in third.

Total Annihilation is just an all-time classic. Granted, I have a lot of fan-made downloadable units installed, so in a number of respects my copy is pretty well mutated. I also have a unit patch installed - either the 500 or the 1500, which makes it a lot easier to build a respectable military. Of course, until it went dodgy on me Spring has overtaken it. For those who aren't familiar, Spring was a fan project to take TA and remake it on a 3d engine, and by this point it has a lot of the features of Supreme Commander and some very useful additional ones. For instance, there's a function that allows you to take first-person command of almost any unit; nothing like personally driving a Krogoth through an enemy base or sighting down the barrels of a Vulcan as you mow down a ground assault with a gatling heavy artillery piece. There are various games available for the Spring engine; NOTA is a revamped version of TA (the most obvious differences being in the ships, which are now a LOT more impressive) while Spring 1944 is a WWII conversion. There has been a Star Wars game titled Imperial Winter in closed-beta testing, but at last check development appears to be stalled or defunct.

SupCom with the Forged Alliance expansion was fun for pretty much the same reasons as TA and Spring - over-the-top weapons and the ability to build massive quantities of mechs, tanks, ships, and planes. UEF fit my style the best; the Atlantis and Fatboy were two of my favorite units in the game for the sheer Holy **** Quotient. I beat the campaign with two out of the three factions; in the case of the one mission where Dostya bites it I found it amusing because by the time the "20 minutes to extraction" timer went up I had generally curbstomped all seven surrounding enemy bases into oblivion.

 

I have BfME I and II with Witch King, but I've never tried any mods for it. Honestly I'm pretty lacking in tech savviness, and didn't get into game mods at all until relatively recently when I started trying them out for Medieval II: Total War. I'm still rather noobish regarding mods, so there's a lot I still don't know about them. I'm certainly very wary of personally editing my own game script in the slightest way (if I can even find it!) so I'd love suggestions for the various games I have to increase their replayability.

Aside from the BfME games and the ones in my first post I also have normal AoE II with Conquerors, AoE III with War Chiefs (for some reason Asian Dynasties has always been one of those games I always almost buy before choosing something different...), and Empire at War (sans expansion).

I know there are a lot of gaps in my strategy collection. This is both because I also buy non strategy games and I just don't have a lot of money to buy games at all in general. This binge of purchases in the past couple of months has been unusual; I usually buy fewer games than that in a year, or longer. There are a lot of games/series that I want to get C&C, Starcraft, Warcraft, Warhammer 40k, Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, Rise of Nations/Legends, Cossacks, Company of Heroes, Hearts of Iron, Homeworld, Victoria 2, Sins of the Solar Emjpire, Tropico, Anno 2070, Black & White, Empire Earth, American Conquest... the list goes on and on and on. Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander, and Sins of the Solar Empire probably top the list. I've played many games in historical settings; that's where I started, and that's where my main interests lie. But I've found over time that I've wanted more modern stuff. After playing lots of sword and archery games I wanted more gunpowder and artillery. And now I'm wanting more futuristic things: big mechs and orbital lasers and starfighters. But mostly the mechs. I still love the games in older times, though, and that won't change; my favorite strategy game series are still Age of Empires and Total War, after all, and all of the games in those series are high on the priority list for me, including the older ones. I'm actually a bit ashamed that I still haven't gotten the original AoE, but oh well.

On a side note, maybe it's a good time to talk about Empire at War, considering where we are. I know you guys probably all love it, but for some reason it just never did it for me (which is why Forces of Corruption isn't high on my buy list, though I do want it). It's probably my least favorite out of the strategy games I own. I do love the space combat (though I almost always play as the Empire because Star Destroyers) but it does get repetitive really fast. And the control points in the ground combat were always a bit of a hassle. I have gotten used to the ground combat a little more over time, but I'd still rather play something different anyway. I know Company of Heroes has something kind of similar (or at least I've heard)... I really want that WWII setting, though.

Honestly tops on my priority list for making a new strategy game would be a GREAT WWI game; that sounds highly appealing to me. I know Napoleon: Total War has a mod for one that I really want to try, which is one reason why NTW also is one of the toppers for my to-buy list. I kinda want something a bit different, though, in the end. I adore Total War, but I don't know how well the TW games would lend themselves to trench warfare...

 

I forgot about Sins of a Solar Empire and the Stronghold series. I have Sins and the two micro-expansions, but my computer, which is better than my parents' computer, doesn't have internet, so I can't patch it or install the expansions yet. I would get the stand-alone expansion, Rebellion, but it is only on Steam, so I am not in any hurry. Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader are awesome, and I have the rest of the series except Stronghold 3, which is again, only on Steam.

 

Played XCOM a bunch today. Three Captains (and a bunch of other soldiers I wasn't at invested in) died. Curse you Mutons!

Also started replaying the William Wallace campaign in AoE II HD. For the hell of it since it's been awhile. I figure I'll go through them all again and culminate with the new ones.

 

Just to ask, how many folks play against live opponents online or over LAN? I've only done that a bit with Total Annihilation and NOTA. Does make things a lot more challenging than exploiting an AI's weaknesses. Generally speaking, if I can survive long enough to build up my defenses I have the AI beaten and it's merely a matter of toying with it until I have my order of battle laid out to specifications.

The game design itself also makes a difference. TA, Spring, and SupCom have infinite resources - metal spots never run out and there's no cap to energy production. An AI is quite capable of coming back from the brink of defeat if I let it recover. By contrast, in AoE III the AI's economy has often sputtered by the time I launch my attack; its settlers have stripped their territory of resources and their military has been bled white. At that point, then their settlers get slaughtered because they try crossing my well-fortified lines to gather resources.

 

I almost never play online, mostly because I don't consider myself very good. But I'm also not a fan of the common tactics used in online games for a lot of the games I play (read: RUSHING).

 

Yeah, for me half the fun of strategy games is getting deep into the build tree. I don't care if it's more efficient to smash the other guy with Tier 1 units in the first 5-10 minutes or if on paper a giant experimental mech is less effective than an army of smaller tanks and bots.

I want fleets of giant battleships hurling broadsides.

I want an armada of giant submarines that can surface and launch an entire air force.

I want an army spearheaded by rolling juggernauts or giant walking mechs that crush everything in their path.

I want to watch as an enemy armored assault comes within range of my waiting defenses and gets utterly shredded.

That is fun. Mathematical analysis (seriously, I've seen strategy guides for SupCom that break out the calculus) is not particularly fun for most of us.

 

I am a solid tactician, but have a really bad tendency to try to get the most out of a smaller army and to outlast AIs by abusing their inability to deal with fortifications. 0 A.D. released a new Alpha, Alpha XV Osiris, just in time for Christmas.

 

One of my favorite maps to use with Spring NOTA is a rather good one of Middle Earth (well, the northwest quarter); Gondor and Mordor are both glorious defensive starting positions. I usually set it up so I start in Gondor and then expand into Mordor, while I put the AI around Angmar or just northeast of there. That gives me some nice high ridges to set up a vicious line of artillery and antiair defenses, and the Bay of Belfalas is a large protected anchorage where I can set up shipyards and keep much of my fleet out of harm's way. Harad, Khand, and Umbar are excellent rear areas where I place fusion plants and aircraft factories. For bonus points, Mount Doom is usually crowned by a giant artillery cannon firing tactical nukes.

The result is usually a humiliation conga as the AI marches hordes of units over a fixed route towards Gondor (Misty Mountains to Moria to Rohan), where most of them get annihilated between Moria and Rohan by a long-range rapid-fire plasma cannon or two. Enemy naval forces have to pass through confined waters rounding Eriador and run into my waiting fleets of battleships, cruisers, and submarines as they attempt to move south. I believe Erebor is on there, and I usually capture and heavily fortify it to draw off forces from Gondor and Mordor. Of course, that was back when I used the generic RAI AI that was fairly dumb; there's now a NOTA-tailored AI that's a lot more aggressive early on.

EDIT: Excellent fanmade trailers for Spring here.

NOTA:

Spring 1944:

 

Me and my brother play Rad Soldiers on the iPad. Pretty fun.

 

The discussion got me looking into the Spring forums, and apparently the Star Wars: Imperial Winter mod was put up as a public beta release. I tried it out last night; still a few bugs (worker and construction droids don't seem to repair damaged units when commanded to, can't get first-person control) and the build trees are incomplete (no advanced fighters or ground vehicles, and no goodies like dark troopers). http://www.imperialwinter.com/

The AI for it also seems off; at first I played Rebels vs. Empire and it was an utter cakewalk. Then I tried playing Empire vs. Empire and got utterly curbstomped several times; I had barely gotten my stormtrooper barracks up and running when mobs of stormtroopers and battle droids (the Empire also has access to a droid foundry with B1s, B2s, droidekas, STAPs, crab droids, and Hailfires available) started besieging my base, followed by a few light tanks that took me down for good. Had to load a map with a water barrier, and even that just bought me time while the tanks traversed the strait. I wonder if the difference was in how the Imperial and Rebel factions start; the Empire has a fixed garrison HQ while the Rebels start with a mobile command vehicle. The AI might have known where I lived and gone for the rush win.

 

Got Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance back in action over my break - I've been meddling with it a little. One of the things I've noted is that while the AI in that game can fall prey to many of the same errors as standard RTS AIs (building lots of non-amphibious land units on island maps, piecemeal movements and attacks doomed to failure in the presence of a massed force of player units or strong defenses), it will go for the throat with early-game rushes, nukes, and experimental units. Not building antinukes in bulk or having a contingency force available to take down an experimental in a hurry, even at a seemingly early stage of the game, might doom you. I had one match where, after valiantly holding off multiple aircraft rushes and a few raiding light artillery units, a Seraphim Ahwassa experimental bomber obliterated my starting base in one shot. I was still struggling to get production of T2 units going when the same bomber then obliterated my second base. Cue ragequit, seeing as I had no economy and just one T2 naval factory left. Other times, a thankful emphasis on getting some anti-nukes built ASAP saved me from a seemingly endless rain of ballistic missiles (well, endless until I retaliated with either airstrikes or my own nukes).

The other thing I like about SupCom is the fact that you can get some truly gigantic maps; it removes the "knife fight in a phone booth" aspect of many RTS titles where you're jostling up against the enemy from the get-go and your base is one broken defensive line or flanking maneuver away from being under siege. It also means you have space to maneuver; you can assemble forces of hundreds of units and strike from multiple angles.

 

I mostly play RPG's and RTS/TBS. When it comes to strategy, the ones i play the most is Medieval 2, Civ V, Xcom Enemy Withing, Shogun 2. Recenlty picked up Fall of the Samurai, and having a blast. I didn't know it was that fun

 

So after a month of playing (about 130 hours in-game) I've completed my first full game of Europa Universalis IV, as France, playing from 1444 to 1821. To those of you unfamiliar with EU IV, think of Risk and Civilization married together, only a billion times more complicated. It's a so-called "grand strategy" game that essentially lets you play with history for hundreds of years in a level of complexity that blows practically every game (that isn't also made by this developer) out of the water. The scope is enormous; you can play as literally hundreds of different nations all around the world (in a world that spans thousands of individual and unique provinces) starting at any point between the two dates I said before. Being the age of discovery it heavily factors in technological advances, colonization, trade, and even religious evangelism. It also gives you lots of freedom since there's no set goal in the game; you decide what you want to do. Generally for me this means paint the map my state's color. I picked France after two aborted games as Castile and England/Great Britain because it's supposed to be one of the easiest for beginners. And I have to say I'm very proud about how it turned out in the end.

Behold, the great French Empire!




Aside from France itself, I have holdings on five continents. I'm the hegemon of North America (from sea to shining sea ) with only Great Britain in the north claiming any substantial territory (did I mention I completely conquered the Shawnee, Iroquois, and Aztec peoples? It was cake because of their inferior tech). I rule more of Africa than any other, with Spain trailing behind me. If I had some more time I would have finally finished off the Mali menace (I ate bits of them in several wars... one final push would have finished them, but I had European concerns to deal with). I own a sizable chunk of India, and laugh at Gujarat and Vijayanagar, daring them to try and provoke me, for I will demolish them with my disciplined armies. I finally wiped Ming from the map and so have a decent Chinese colony... if I had had some more time I may have gone after Manchu, that orangeish nation to the north. I have much of the Pacific island region, bits of Australia, and most of New Zealand (Portugal beat me to one last bit, and since they were my ally for a long time I let them keep it). And, yes, that is me in Galicia, and in Bohemia (I got it in a personal union, with my ruler becoming their king through royal marriage; Poland will also be mine by the same route in about thirty years). In Europe I also have the Balaeric Islands, though that isn't very clear in those shots.Nearly three hundred provinces are under my domain, more than any other nation. Over the game I vassalized (and subsequently annexed) many French minor nations, Brittany, Provence, and Savoy among them, and also Ceylon, Swahili (after beating it up in a few wars), Galicia, and a small southeast Asian island nation that I'm embarrassed to admit I've forgotten the name of.

Overall the only nations that pose a threat are the Holy Roman Empire (a severe continental threat; I cannot beat them in Europe, so I've built my alliances around combating them and focus on defense and trying for a white peace when they declare war on me), Russia (but they're my allies, so it's okay), and Spain (though I've finally outstripped them recently). The Netherlands and Great Britain remain dangers because of their navy, which is why I don't try to invade their home provinces, though the Dutch lost all of the American southwest and Mexico to me, and the British lost Texas long ago), but overall they're nothing to write home about.

I do have a few regrets, mostly due to the lack of time to complete things as the game always ends on January 2, 1821 (the day of Napoleon's death) without mods. I wish I could have captured Spanish New England... I would have done so if I hadn't been sidetracked in the last 15 years by wars with the HRE. I also would have liked to take the rest of the Philippines from them, and their bit of territory in northeast Africa, and California, and maybe even the rest of Central America if possible. All of that would have taken at least two or three wars over a couple of decades but it would have been well worth it (they uh, they can keep Kamchatka if they want it ) . I'd have liked to take some more of India from Vijayanagar (the yellow guys on the subcontinent) and Gujarat (the tannish ones). I would have liked to go to war with Morocco and taken some of their land. I never got around to taking that last province in Java from Aceh (or wiping them and Brunei out, like I had planned to way back in the 17th century). I'd have liked to have been able to see Poland get integrated around 1750 (the annexation would start around 1743, but it would take several years to finish... it's a bit annoying because I could have originally gotten it before game end but they split with me after a few decades when I kept them fighting one of my wars for too long, so I had to fight a Reunification War and restart the process ), so I could more directly challenge the HRE in Europe. And, perhaps most of all, I'd have liked to finish off Mali once and for all, since I'd been fighting and conquering them since the early 16th century, and could only do so a bit at a time because of the game mechanics. And I regret never being able to vassalize and annex Milan before the HRE took cohesive form and they became part of it... I spent decades, maybe even a century trying to work it, but it was not meant to be. But in the end I still have a mighty fine empire, and I'm proud to have managed it even with all of the learning mistakes I made.

I think I want to try Portugal or Austria next. The former will be brilliant for colonizing, and the lattergets control of the HRE, and I've seen what that can do in Europe in the late game.

 

I'm more of an action-adventure/RPG gamer, so XCOM is really the only strategy game that I play consistently. I enjoy that one a lot though, have got 4 playthroughs done through the end.

I myself prefer to watch others play strategy games. Stuff like StarCraft II and Civ V. Particularly enjoy the commentated ones that go through what the player is planning.

 

Yeah, I need to get back to my XCOM game. I've been pretty absorbed with EUIV the past couple of weeks so I've been neglecting it. It's still my first playthrough. I'm going to be going to the alien base soon, so that'll be fun. I decided to wait a bit and grind as well, so I'll be going into it with plasma weapons and maybe titan armor instead of lasers and carapace, which is good. I'm only playing on normal difficulty for the first run. As it is I've lost a lot of good soldiers...

I like watching videos, too. Honestly I watch close to as much as I play. Actually, watching Total War Let's Plays on youtube (originally for tips in my own games) is part of what really rekindled my drive to play strategy games last year. As it is I subscribe to a lot of youtube LPers, mostly for Total War but also for EUIV, CKII, XCOM, Civ, and some others. It makes me kind of want to do it myself, honestly, but I know that A. I'm not that good, B. my computer isn't a great gaming rig and I can't afford to upgrade it, C. I don't have any technical know-how anyway for things like editing, and D. there are a lot of other things my time would be better spent on, so alas it's just really not meant to be.

 

I think my interest in RTS games influenced my entry into RPGs - I like how as opposed to shooters that genre mostly includes pauses to let you think out your moves. I've never been very good at or very fond of having to rely on button-pushing frenzies.

Commentary videos usually serve to remind me why I'd get my tail handed to me most of the time in a match against a live opponent - most of the ones I've seen are practically decided in the first few minutes as one player gets an edge and then chokes off his opponent's economy. I'm experiencing that to some degree after playing some land-only maps for SupCom Forged Alliance that are only 20x20 km instead of my favored 81x81 km island maps; the map is small enough that enemy scouts and raiders are at my door in minutes and T1 aircraft can reach my base. I find that if I don't start off right in the first few minutes, I'm screwed against even a mid-level AI. So far what seems to work is producing a glut of T1 engineers and T1 mobile AA guns, using the extra engineers to set up mass extractors outside my defense perimeter (as well as some token defenses) and the mobile AA to secure my base against T1 bombers. The extra mass extractors keep my economy afloat while I tech up to a point where my fortified base can support itself, and keep enemy units busy while I replace the T1 mobile AA with shields and fixed T2/T3 AA emplacements.

 

I recently bought Napoleon: Total War and TW Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai (I still don't have the base campaign, but it's a standalone expansion). I started up a campaign as Satsuma in Fall of the Samurai to get my feet wet with the new mechanics, with the goal of conquering for the Emperor and putting all of Kyushu (and surrounding one province islands) under my direct control. So far it's going well... I've got everything but the two provinces in the northeast of the island, which are held by the other main Imperial faction in Fukuoma (or however it's spelled). I can take them and their province on Shikoku without crippling them, since they have a decent presence in Honshu.

So far the battles have been fairly standard... kind of a mix between Empire/Napoleon and Medieval II, with the combination melee/gunpowder fighting. My best victory so far has been a siege defense against a force that outnumbered me 2:1, with two different armies attacking from opposite directions. It was a bit touch and go for a bit, when a lot of their Yari spear units made it onto the walls, and I had to throw my matchlocks into melee, but I was able to rout them by retreating most of my men to the second level and firing down on them. Revolver Cavalry are awesome, by the way.

On a sidenote, I absolutely love naval bombardment. That's helped a lot in a few battles.

I've also been played a lot of EUIV, as usual. After my France game way back when, I tried and failed at Portugal and Castile, before having a very successful game as Austria where I conquered (or diplomatically annexed) most of Europe before the deadline.

My best campaign in EUIV, however, has been my second try as Castile/Spain. It had the lucky nations turned off, so the "historically lucky" nations didn't get unfair bonuses, but other than that it was played on normal difficulty. It started as me just wanting to form Spain, beat France, and have a decent colonial empire. As this was going on I became more ambitious, and decided I also wanted Italy. I then ended up getting a foothold in Ireland, and decided, to hell with it, I wanted the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula for myself. All was going well, and I then decided on my last and hardest goal... becoming the Holy Roman Emperor, and try to unite the Empire. I was able to accomplish most of my goals, and the few that were unsuccessful, were only barely missed. This is despite the numerous mistakes I realized I made in the game. Anyway, here're some screenshots, because I'm proud of it.



The dark green is all under my direct control. The light green is made up of vassals. I barely missed on wiping Portugal off of Iberia, because I betrayed them too late, and truce times got me, but I got a very lucky random PU in 1819, less than two years before the end date! As for France, their European holdings are confined to Paris itself, though it's actually occupied in my current war (as is Treviso in Italy, from Venice), and I could take both in a peace deal at the time of screenshot, meaning only Venezia itself would be missing from my Italian ambitions. As you can see I also have some random provinces in Jutland, taken from The Hanseatic League, mostly for rather lazy reasons (I was already at their borders, couldn't cross, and was in the process of rebuilding my transport fleet, so I figured I'd go to war again, because, why not, I am strong enough!)

I also had all of continental South America (not counting a native province that revolted back):


And lots of North America (everything solid yellow is mine, everything yellow and blue is French but occupided by me in the last current war, and everything yellow and red is occupide British territory). The solid red in Oregon is part of GB proper, with one of them being the new seat of the British throne. The Comanche (brown blob) have westernized.


I also hold some of India and the Pacific, though I came to it late because I stayed in South America for too long. Aceh, Pegu, and Tibet are my protectorates. Japan has westernized.


My final territories are in Africa. Mali, Kanem Bornu, Kongu, and Mutapa are all protectorates. Kilwa has westernized. The French, seeing themselves surrounded in Paris, moved the throne to Cameroon.


Finally, like I said, I did eventually barely manage to become Emperor, and was barely able to pass two reforms (after three had been passed by Austria), up to the point where no internal wars may be fought in the Empire. I think passing this when I did was a mistake, since a lot of the territories blobbed, and ideally I would break them back into the smaller principalities. I would have done this by fighting their non-Imperial allies, but I didn't have enough time due to truce timers. Anyway, the current Imperial holdings:


Except the road to becoming Emperor made all of the member states hate me (primarily from me eating Italy), so it's rather unstable now...

Those are people I have "aggressive expansion" with. A lot of aggressive expansion.

One final thing of note happened in this game, though it was mostly outside of my control.

You know how the Habsurged gained most of their land through strategic marriages? Well, in this timeline, it was actually the Trastámaras of Castile who spread far and wide...

They rule over not just Spain, but the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Swedish Empire of Scandinavia, and the Muscovite Empire! They also ruled over Savoy, Toulouse, and Finland at times, before their annexation, and barely missed the throne of Great Britain once. Only Scandinavia, Savoy, Toulouse, and Portugal were done with my direct intervention... the Russians and Finns spread from the Swedish branch, and the Poles from the Portuguese branch (I think).

To fully understand the implications of this, here's the political map of Europe:

I rule over Iberia, Italy, the British Isles, and France, and am the Holy Roman Emperor, making me the suzerain. The Commonwealth (my main late game nemesis), is the second most powerful nation on Earth, holding most of Eastern Europe. Muscovy is relatively weak, due to Portugal colonizing most of eastern Siberia (ugh), but still stretch to Mongolia offscreen, and in any case those Portuguese holdings also count. Now include all of Scandinavia, Portuguese Mexico and Southeast Asia, and you have the mightiest family on Earth. Indeed, they rule over all of Europe barring Friesland (not in the Empire), Hungary, and the western Balkans (and Iceland, if you want to include them).

To me this is almost my best achievement, or it would be if I was doing it! Certainly if this was CKII it would be magnificent (and hilariously unstable). Out of my personal achievements, I would have to say conquering Italy and becoming the Emperor were the most satisfactory, because of the time and effort needed to do both. When my king was finally crowned Emperor 45 years before game end, it was an enormous relief, and despite the hatred from within the Empire, my vassalized electors ensured that his son also became Emperor, and so it will continue.

So that's my personal and familial empire. I'm aware of a number of major mistakes made throughout the game, but despite it all I still did amazingly well. It's the best I've done in the game so far.

Some other time maybe I'll post my Germany game (currently 2/3 done), or another game altogether. I recently got Tropico 1-4, Banished, Sins of the Solar Empire, Game Dev Tycoon, and Sid Meier's Pirates as well (I bought a bunch of games over the summer), so I have a lot to play around in, strategy/sim wise.

 

Huh, that's a lot of blobs. I'll admit I'm not really a fan of EU4 though...kinda still prefer EU3 myself. One of these days I'll post one of my own games in there (currently rampaging through the Mid-East and Turkey as Armenia).

Currently, as far as strategy (and Paradox strat at that) goes I'm addicted to Darkest Hour though. So much variety in that game with the right mods. As one should expect, considering it is basically a big, sanctioned, mod for Hearts of Iron II.

 

I only got into Paradox last year, so I only have EUIV and CKII now, though I do want to get Victoria II and Hearts of Iron III or IV (when it comes out) at some point. Of the two I have, by far the one most played, and that I'm better at, is EUIV. Compare about 30 hours played in CKII (though I do want to play more) to over 400 in EUIV... that said, I still consider myself a novice, and make a lot of mistakes.

There are a couple of EUIV mods that I like a lot. Extended Timeline is a huge overhaul that goes from 58-2014 CE (playable to 9999). Superstates drops all of the individual states and provinces of the U.S., Canada, and Australia into 1444 and lets them fight amongst themselves, and, eventually, the Old World. And then there are some good cosmetic mods like Even Better Terra Incognita. I actually have a lot of other mods subscribed to in Steam Workshop that I haven't gotten around to yet, though...

I'd definitely be interested in seeing some of your games. Armenia is also a nation I've been interested in playing at some point (though not until I'm a lot better!).