Monday, August 31, 2009

GameLog 109

Knights of Honor (35h) - Sand'y sitting opposite playing Crusader Kings and reading AARs. CK is in almost every respect a deeper strategy title, but KoH is still compelling at some level I haven't put my finger on yet. Greig mentioned the limitation of the 10 knights in your retinue, and I think that comes into it at some point.

Currently playing through hard mode as Zeta as I thought it would be more a hotbed than the usual Scotland expansion. Started off being at war with Italy and there were a few touch and go moments once they polished off the top of Spain. Eventually could beat them back enough to make a second army to flank over and grab their Spanish expansion. By the time truce was called I'd nabbed another 4 provinces from them. After another messy All vs All battle for the Italian boot, I managed to come away with with the whole top of Italy and into Austria, Germany and Bolivia. Now the crusade have me tagged and I nearly lost a province to a crusade siege when everyone else was piling on me.

Up to ~28 provinces and a mile ahead in most of the scoring departments. Only way to lose looks like being pulled into a 5 vs 1 battle, so I'll try to pick my battles carefully that I know I can steamroll quickly and return to peace. Named bandits and crusaders are a PAIN. If they get your province they set up another kingdom and potentially grab other provinces out from underneath their previous rulers (no matter who they were). Lost a couple of provinces to a rebel attacking someone ELSE and claiming one of my provinces in the establishment of the kingdom. That's annoying. Not sure what you can do about it.


Tower Bloxx (1h) - Cam likes it and he plays well for a 4 y.o. The judgement of motion swing and coordination of tapping seem like good skills to learn. Sometimes he can stack together 7 or 8 in a chain, but then totally miss the tower. I'd like to see it as a psych experiment.

Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 (1h) - More Cameron help