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[Rolan7]

Good point, I guess it's technically RTS with pausing.  I spend a lot of time paused 

What I meant is that it isn't a typical 4X expansion game.  With casus belli and the feudal system, expansion is designed to be slow.  It took me three RL days to form the kingdom of Ireland, and it was great!  Instead of steamrolling neutral territory with settlers/colony ships, I had to manage and marry off a family of troublesome characters. 

*Then* I wage war, using foreign allies gained through marriage.  And the conquered mayors/bishops are my vassals now, with their own families and ambitions.  If I don't overtax them, they spend their money to improve their holdings.  They're actual vassals!  It's a strange and unique game.

Aaaaaaanyway, is the DLC for CK2 really all that important? Especially for someone who's never played this before.

I haven't had a chance to play the DLC yet.  The game's very playable without it.  They include all the new DLC mechanics as free updates to the base game.  Having DLC allows you to play as different kinds of groups: pagans, muslims, or merchant republics.  I snatched it up but it's optional, they're already in the game but restricted to AIs.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

CKII is best described as a Grand Strategy in the vein of other Paradox titles with an emphasis on leaders and their courts. The gameplay takes place over a world map split into various provinces each having various characters to interactive with in various ways.
You must pick a single dynasty and lead it to success or ruin. You can only play as a single person from that dynasty at a time (until they die and another inherits) and if your dynasty loses all of it's power to another through bad succession you lose the game.

It's mostly about marriage, vassal management and intrigue. Getting strong claims or alliances through marriages is the reliable way of expansion for most dynasties. Intrigue involves plots for various ways to expand your own interests such as assassinations or revoking provinces owned by pesky vassals. It's a bit hard to explain because it's not truly a singular concept, I recommend the demo for anyone to try first.

If I were to call it anything it would be the "premier eugenic simulator" with the way I play.

[Chaoswizkid]

Aaaaaaanyway, is the DLC for CK2 really all that important? Especially for someone who's never played this before.

The original game is that you can only play Christian Monarchies.
The Sword of Islam allows you to play Islamic countries, which have different political and family systems.
The... whatever one that allows you to play the Byzantine Empire (and a couple others I think), which has a different political system.
The Old Gods allows you to play the pagan countries, most notably the Vikings, which have a TON of interesting playstyles, all quite different from the other three.

Paradox made it so that the game is updated with all of the new stuff that the expansions give, but you can't play as any of them, only face the AI with them, so they're worth it only if you want to play as those countries. This might seem like a crappy reason to make it DLC, but the new content releases with each were pretty good and involved rebalancing and changing a great deal of the game (Old Gods had technology be completely changed, for example), so the DLC costs is kind of covering the cost of continued legitimate development of the game.

[Neonivek]

What I meant is that it isn't a typical 4X expansion game.

Honestly the ONE thing it isn't is a 4X expansion game.

Intrigue involves plots for various ways to expand your own interests such as assassinations or revoking provinces owned by pesky vassals.

Intrigue is also presented in a 100% mechanical way. Characters do not act like characters but rather like automatons except in events. So if you are asking for intriguing intrigue, there isn't any.

It is hard to describe the game...

The game is like a simulation that has been filtered through a machine. If you was a simulation you aren't going to have one, if you want a strategy game it isn't here either. It is somewhere between those two concepts.

[Sirus]

Does it at least run better than some of the other Paradox titles? I've tried to play EUIII on a few different computers of various capability and it runs terribly on all but the best one.

[Chaoswizkid]

Does it at least run better than some of the other Paradox titles? I've tried to play EUIII on a few different computers of various capability and it runs terribly on all but the best one.

The only difficulty I've had with any of the big Paradox games is HOI3, which absolutely loathes alt-tabbing. It'll give me maybe an hour of solid game and then the GUI will crap out and everything will go horribly wrong. Of course, I play EU3 Chronicles, which I'm sure has most of its compatibility sorted out. CK2 was always fine for me, I think it has a pretty robust engine. Then again, I'm running a pretty darn good gaming rig, so I'm not sure how much my input helps.

[Sensei]

So, what did you all think of Reus? It seems like a pretty neat concept, but is it worth spending money?

[scrdest]

What I meant is that it isn't a typical 4X expansion game.

Honestly the ONE thing it isn't is a 4X expansion game.

Intrigue involves plots for various ways to expand your own interests such as assassinations or revoking provinces owned by pesky vassals.

Intrigue is also presented in a 100% mechanical way. Characters do not act like characters but rather like automatons except in events. So if you are asking for intriguing intrigue, there isn't any.

It is hard to describe the game...

The game is like a simulation that has been filtered through a machine. If you was a simulation you aren't going to have one, if you want a strategy game it isn't here either. It is somewhere between those two concepts.

It's a real-time with pause game on a Risk-style map that plays like The Sims designed by Niccolò Machiavelli

[Biowraith]

So, what did you all think of Reus? It seems like a pretty neat concept, but is it worth spending money?

I found it to be both charming, addictive, and a lot of fun... but with relatively low longevity - I got just under 20 hours of play from it before I moved on.  I'd say overall it was worth the cost for me (I got it at full price) as I definitely had fun for those 20 hours, so I'd happily recommend it at the sale price (depending somewhat on your disposable income), but it's probably not in the amazing-you-must-get-this category for many people.

[umiman]

It's a good puzzle game but there isn't much depth to it.

...

heeeheeehee...

[Hawkfrost]

Does it at least run better than some of the other Paradox titles? I've tried to play EUIII on a few different computers of various capability and it runs terribly on all but the best one.

If you need to, you can turn off trees in the settings.txt. The performance shoots up considerably.

[Vattic]

If it wasn't for this thread I'd of missed the sale on CKII, I've been eyeing it up for a while watching Let's Plays and the like.

So, what did you all think of Reus? It seems like a pretty neat concept, but is it worth spending money?

I found it a touch dry, but then I don't like min-maxing and it is largely the point of the game. It also didn't help that I tend to have long gaming sessions with massive breaks in between. With this game it lead to me forgetting details between sessions.

[Thexor]

So far I've been enjoying Reus... but there's a few aspects that are really obtuse. Seriously, would it kill the devs to have a tech tree readily available in-game, instead of making me pop off to the wiki? (Never mind that the wiki's pretty terrible, having at best stubs and data dumps for pretty much every topic of interest.)

Once I figured out the basics - how to manage greed, what some simple symbiosis combos were - I started having a bunch more fun with it. It's a very calming game, and I've been having fun pairing it with a secondary monitor and a Twitch stream to keep me amused. Still, I can't see where the depth comes from, besides figuring out how to complete some of the more ridiculous optional objectives ("5 tiles of water", yeah, if you ever bothered expanding over water tiles!).

[Blargityblarg]

So far I've been enjoying Reus... but there's a few aspects that are really obtuse. Seriously, would it kill the devs to have a tech tree readily available in-game, instead of making me pop off to the wiki? (Never mind that the wiki's pretty terrible, having at best stubs and data dumps for pretty much every topic of interest.)

Once I figured out the basics - how to manage greed, what some simple symbiosis combos were - I started having a bunch more fun with it. It's a very calming game, and I've been having fun pairing it with a secondary monitor and a Twitch stream to keep me amused. Still, I can't see where the depth comes from, besides figuring out how to complete some of the more ridiculous optional objectives ("5 tiles of water", yeah, if you ever bothered expanding over water tiles!).

Water tiles can be stupidly productive, stacking mackerel is onee of the easiest symbioses in the game.

[Brons]

I honestly think CK2 is the best game we've seen on sale. I have played hundreds of hours of that game and I still enjoy it. And I would also get all the DLC's but I wouldn't load the gameplay ones when first playing. Ease yourself into the game and slowly add more features. The gameplay DLC's are actually worth it.