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[Cheeetar]

Consider me corrected. Sorry!

[Persus13]

Does anyone think Europa Universalis IV or Crusader Kings II will drop lower than 50% this sale?
Also, which of the two would you recommend?
Gimme some pros and cons~

CK2 was definitely on sale earlier this month, and so might have been EUIV, and they seem to go on sale relatively frequently, at least every time a new DLC hits.

I like both personally (and have both), but I'd pick CK2 to recommend because it's less complicated, and a bit more fun in my personal opinion. However, with CK2, grabbing most or all of the DLC feels almost required, especially if you just like hopping around picking different rulers to play, (and making your own custom Norse Muslim Insane Genius ruler is fun), whereas EUIV you could probably do fine with just the base game and maybe Wealth of Nations or Star and Crescent? (Can't remember if that's the right name for the Muslim one) DLCs. EUIV is more complicated, but I played after I started playing CK2, so it was very similar. Also if you do get it, watch someone playing it on youtube instead of playing the tutorial, as you will probably get a better understanding of it then.

Ninja'd by Cheeetar and umiman, who said almost the exact same thing.

[umiman]

EUIV is about empire-building.

CK2 is about roleplaying as a person and a family... who happen to be rulers. A lot of people, including myself, find all the drama and innate storytelling material from this more personal approach more engaging though EUIV has its merits as well. For example, the type of gameplay you would experience in EUIV is how you slowly colonize the new world while racing against the French and the Spanish. In CK2, you'd be pulling your hair out trying to train your idiot son to be a proper ruler because he's going to fuck ove- whups. Too late. Your wife had you assassinated because she hates you after you told her to screw off when she tried to get you to hire her idiot friend as steward.

[Shadowlord]

Enemy Within definitely makes the game feel more complete and more like the aliens consider you a threat. It sounds like LW does a lot to make them actually dangerous as well, although I haven't tried LW myself.

Are CK2 and EUIV no longer totally broken? They both had new DLC/patches that broke major things a few months ago. (I noticed people complaining about stuff in EUIV being broken when checking forums to see if it was in working order after Paradox broke CK2)

[i2amroy]

Enemy Within definitely makes the game feel more complete and more like the aliens consider you a threat. It sounds like LW does a lot to make them actually dangerous as well, although I haven't tried LW myself.

LW = Epic. One of the best mods I've ever encountered for any game in terms of content and improvements to the game. I'm currently at something like 50+ hours into this play through of LW and I'm only just feeling like I'm starting to have things under control (and even now I feel like it I'm not sure to keep my forwards momentum things could turn ugly). It's awesome.

[pedrousz]

I thought I wouldn't spend money on this sales, but yesterday I bought spelkunky, today terraria (yeah, i didn't have it yet lol) and this xcom package is urrghhhhh....sdfasdf

i don't think I should, i played some enemy unknown piratebay edition long time ago, had a lot of fun, but I was pretty bad

but even so this long war mod seems so good...

and the expansion! there are more maps?

[i2amroy]

Long war adds quite a few maps yeah, and it takes many of the scripted only council mission maps and adapts them for the general map rotation as well. Even after 50 or so hours I've only ever run into a tiny handful of repeated maps.

[palsch]

Map list here with DLC maps marked. Long War puts more of them into rotation for other mission types. It also adds at least one multiplayer map as a special mission in the late game as a random/rare event.

I'd say I still run into the same maps quite a bit, especially the Roadway with a fountain, the Confounding Light train station, the two graveyards and the Newfoundland docks. Oh, and the fucking trainyard (notably that one mission with a Cyberdisk+drones as immediate contact, two Mechtoids and two Sectoid commanders as my second pod, then two pods of floaters patrolling into my squad while I tried to take them all out... on a medium). But then I also watch Beagle's videos and streams sometimes, so probably have seen several maps twice as many times as I've played them. It means you can learn the maps somewhat without them being particularly boring or the contacts being predictable.

Note that recent versions of Long War have introduced randomised starting locations, so now even familiar old maps can become randomised nightmares. Nothing like starting in the corner of the L shaped roadway map, surrounded by floaters and mutons... Spawns are more random now as well. Even council missions are less scripted in LW.

If you aren't particularly good I'd still say Long War is worth a try. It is harder in many ways, but evens out the difficulty curve somewhat, giving you more soldiers and tactical tools in the early game then ramping up the difficulty slowly. You can use second wave options or .ini editing to lower the difficulty a bit if the gunslinger sectoids are causing too much pain. Personally I think that normal with a couple extra tweaks (especially Commander's Choice) is ideal for casual and learning. Play without ironman but leave the savescum second wave option off is my preferred path. Lets you load in saves but uses the same RNG seed so you can't just savescum that 10% shot till it hits.

[Sirus]

Holy sheet, Dominions 4 is 75% off. Less than $9 USD.

[jhxmt]

Holy sheet, Dominions 4 is 75% off. Less than $9 USD.

Yup, spotted that one - it's been on my wishlist for a while (mainly due to Bay12 discussions of it), and now I have it! 

[RexMundi]

guess someone beat me to the dominions mention.
I'm starting a new players mostly game if you're interested!

[Sean Mirrsen]

Is Dominions that good? I mean, I can see that it's old and ugly, that's pretty much par for the course for really complex games. How does it compare to... say, Master of Magic? Civilization? What makes it good?

[BigD145]

Planetary Annihilation is 80% off, still has only one faction.

[RexMundi]

Is Dominions that good? I mean, I can see that it's old and ugly, that's pretty much par for the course for really complex games. How does it compare to... say, Master of Magic? Civilization? What makes it good?

Never played MoM, sadly. but civ.. It's less like civ then other games, as it's kidna got a risk feel to it, being seperate provence tiles.
like picking a nation gives bonuses in civ, similar are the different nation stats on this game, however most nations have unique troops across the board. Your pretender to godhood is custom made by you picking a base form, magic paths it knows att he start, whether it's imprisoned at start (basically more points to make him at cost of joining your nation x turns in), and finally their scales. Scales are big in that provinces under your religion drift to your scale. heat, luck, growth, magicalness, order/sloth, and i tihnk i'm forgetting one but oh well. god is made point buy each level in something good taking, and level negitive, like taking points in sloth, giving points.
the combat is all hands off between turns, best you do is give your troops orders to follow during a fight.
the ai is improving but not as good as real humans, the diplomacy furring a mp game on here is nice, trading magic gems, magic items, border agreements, things are nice.
Game has 3 major resources. gold that's stockpiled. resources per Provence that are not saved over turn. and finally magic gems of the 7(?) different magic paths. Research is done by mages as all research is magic. if your nation has no iron weapons, you're out of luck unless you find recuritables somewhere that do.
game is turn based, things happening in a set order for ALL players between them, so pbem is good for this game.

Hope this paragraph hhelps, and uhh, i can say lots more, but not sure if needed

[Frumple]

Is Dominions that good? I mean, I can see that it's old and ugly, that's pretty much par for the course for really complex games. How does it compare to... say, Master of Magic? Civilization? What makes it good?

Skim around the thread, check any of the (well over a dozen, now) B12 games in play with your buddies for AARs or diplomacy, discussions, etc., check one of the LPs for dominions 3 (like this one), of which Dom 4 is pretty much a straight upgrade, just... look around. Dominions in general is a lot like the Dwarf Fortress of fantasy turn-based strategy, albeit, perhaps, more accessible. There's whole bucketfulls of reasons why Dominions is something of a cult classic and generally acknowledged as one of the absolute best entries in the overall strategy genre.

I can't really find the words for it at the moment, but the dominions series in general, of which 4 is definitely the best (at the moment), is quite possibly the fantasy turn-based strategy game with the absolute greatest strategic depth currently on the market. It provides for both grand strategy and vicious tactical combat in a way basically nothing else does. It's bloody close to unique, oozes with flavor, and is just... just wonderful. MoM, Civ... they're games on a different level -- more localized, less epic. Not necessarily worse, but they're something like the Company of Heroes to Dominions' Hearts of Iron.

What makes it good is the variety of options, the thematic flares, the brutal combat, and the incredible amount of sheer dickery that can be done by any player involved in a game. Even in single-player you can experience absolutely epic moments that few to no other games can provide, and in multiplayer things get kicked up to 11 when you're dealing with another half-dozen (or more) people exploiting everything they can to make everyone's day absolutely miserable in the most amazingly engaging ways possible.

It's not for everyone -- the games tend towards fairly slow, especially in multiplayer, and the amount of micromanagement involved is a well known hurdle, especially in late game where even single mistakes can cause whole fronts to collapse (though it's marginally better in D4) -- but if you like grand strategy and fantasy games, it's something you want to check out.

Also, you can get the dominions 3 demo off this page. D3 is definitely a downgrade from D4, but it's close enough you can get a good feel of what you're getting into.