In NWN, I picked up Diamond edition. Is kinda fun running through Shadows of Undrentide, though not great. But I’ve been getting my butt kicked. I played around with a Cleric 4/Bard1/Red Dragon Disciple, and I am being crushed now that I’m fighting Slaad. I can beat some of them, but then the fomorians smack me around. I cannot actually hit the Myrmarces without a critical, apparently. The game’s loot mostly sucks, and while my AC and stats are fantastic, I just can’t hit and do enough damage. Is there anything real great ahead, or should I just drop it and head into Hordes of the Underdark?
I’ve been playing a copy of Sid merier’s Pirates (the newer version). This is also pretty fun. I figured out the controls, how to do quests, and I rule at fencing. However, I accidentally sold off my Flagship. My fully-upgraded Royal Sloop. I cannot seem to find another anywhere. Help!
OK, last we have Civ 4, with both expansions.
HOW IN BLOODY BLAZES DO I FRIGGIN WIN? I can deliver a beatdown by oplaying the Spanish, and using my Spiriual to jump from extreme economic to extremem militarism fast, delivering a beatdown with a massive number of badass troops. However, the upgraded AI has so far made trying to do most civs a living hell. I can keep up, but there’s no percentage*. Plus, the AI sometimes, somehow, manages to keep up with technology no matter what. How do I pull away from the AI? It seems like eveyr time I’ve managed to make peace and help everyone some huge coalition stabs me in the back. The AI never wants anything to do with me, even on Noble. Even my best friends insist on stupid trades (actually, I’ve frequently gotten better trades from my enemies than my friends)!
It’s been a while since I’ve played NWN 1 (and if you like it you should give NWN 2 a shot). Undrentide gets more linear, but also more fun at the end of and after the desert chapter.
Hordes of the Underdark, is definitely the best chapter of that series by a long shot though, so don’t feel bad about giving up on Undrentide to enjoy HotU. It’s a fantastic, epic level romp that’'ll have you booing and cheering!
NWN was close enough to D&D that a solo cleric/bard is going to have a rough time of it. Did you pick up one of the little buddies to help you out in the starting area? There’s a dwarven fighter/rogue, half-orc sorceror, and a paladin, as I recall. You might consider a restart with an ally planned.
Hordes allows you to start at 15th level, so you have a lot of variety as far as class, stats & feats are concerned. You can play around with all manner of odd builds and have a lot of fun with it.
Side-game for NWN: Play a monk, nekkid. The game has different scripts for all the people you interact with if you’re not wearing clothes.
Side-game 2: Play a grunt fighter type with as low an INT as you can manage. Again, you have different scripts, because with an low INT, me not speek gud.
For the main game in NWN and Shades of Undrentide, my best success was with a fighter w/2-handed sword, a sorceror, or a multiclass with 2 levels of rogue, then all monk levels.
Undrentide is just so-so IMHO. Underdark is really fun, and was the first sort-of ‘stab’ at the prestige classes. As for your difficulties… There may not -be- a trick. I learned the hard way with the first game that there are some builds that just get screwed. (I had a pretty uber warrior. Second to last fight, 2 mobs that I literally couldn’t make the fear saves against unless I rolled a 20. Thus, dead every time). It kinda sucks, but it’s the way it is.
Not much of a spoiler, but in the first scene of Underdark, you get all your gear stolen. I went into it with a monk with no equipment. You get your stuff back later, but by then you usually have better gear. I got to the box of ‘my’ stuff to find a normal robe and, I think, a knife that I couldn’t weild. I was puzzled until the ‘old gear’ was explained to me by my friends. My first reaction was, “Wait, I had gear?”
Pirates – the best warships usually belong to the Pirates’ … Blackbeard, L’Onnaise, Capt Kidd, etc. Or Baron Raymondo.
If your current flagship is a pile o junk, attack some bigger ship, like a freighter. The English ones usually have a decent number of cannons and space to work with, and are generally easy to take. Then just keep that ship, make it your flagship and go about your business – go on your quests, etc. And the first time you have a chance to fight a Pirate captain, or Baron Raymondo, or the other evil guy (but you’ll fight Raymondo way before him anyway) … make sure you win and take his ship and change it to your flagship.
In fact, as I write this, I’m pretty sure Baron Raymondo’s boat is pretty tricked out from the get go. If you defeat him and take his ship, you’re good as gold in the boat department.
Ahh, thank you for reminding me. When the new version came out I was too busy and too poor to get it. Then I totally forgot about it. I played the original so much. One of the best games ever made. I was a freakin Golden God of a Pirate. Could identify any map fragment instantly, use the wind to make any battle I wanted, and even single handedly take a 350 man treasure galleon, simply because if you never got hit, you could never lose while fencing, and I never got hit.
But I still wake up in a cold sweat thinking of Cartagena. Man that was hard, loaded with 1000+ soldiers in a fortress with heavy cannon out the wazoo. No matter how loyal and tough my crew was it was an ordeal getting enough Pirates together to make it to the walls without having them run away.
In Pirates my favorite flagship was always the Frigate. There was a special Frigate IIRC that had slightly better stats (a few more guns per broadside, slightly faster with a slightly larger crew), but any Frigate will do IMHO. I kept the other ships around simply for cargo (and maybe a smaller Sloop on off chance I needed to take a small pirate ship in tact due to having some named NPC I needed on board). With a Frigate though you can take on basically anything out there either bigger or smaller.
CIV 4 is harder to describe. Most times what I did was go for specific advancements in a specific order in order to optimize my technological progress. Also I would emphasize a defensive stance until I got the more advanced gun powder units which would minimize my overall costs. Also there are several ‘must build’ Wonders…and also a specific path for development of each city building and structure. It’s been a long time since I’ve played though so I don’t remember the exact order of advancements, wonders or city building programs anymore.
Yeah, I Googled it, but I wanted to highlight what was a extremely lazy post. Why recommend something without taking 2 seconds to explain what it is. Pet Peeve of mine.
I loved Pirates on the C=64. I know there are obvious differences in graphics, and variables, but how different is the new version? Is it the same but with more depth or is it mainly the same in name only?
If you are playing Civ in any flavor, I recommend trolling through the forums at http://www.apolyton.net. VERY helpful to understanding the game. Also, they have the Apolyton University, a series of scenarios designed to help teach you how to build up your Civ abilities.
There’s a few changes. Land combat isn’t impossible. Sneaking into a town triggers a mini-game where you sneak into town avoiding guards. You now charm governors’ daughters by dancing with them in a Dance-Dance Revolution-style game.
The biggest difference to me was the fact that the cutlass isn’t nearly as powerful in sword fights any more.
For experienced players of the old game, it may seem easy. On my first game I retired with every single possible achievement and I barely broke a sweat. Still the best game ever, though.
As to finding a Royal Sloop… screw it and find you a frigate. If you can find an English Ship-of-the-Line, do whatever it takes to take it, even if you’re English.
80% the same. There’s a “ballroom dancing” subgame to court the daughters which is a bit like fencing. Sneaking into town now requires you to actually sneak into the town and avoid guards to reach the tavern, governor’s mansion, etc. And the land combat game is now much harder than “sit on the opposite side of the swamp and tear apart the idiots who walk straight through it”. It’s not hard but it’s hard-er.
Sea combat is virtually untouched. Fencing is much the same with a few minor tweaks.
The dancing part wasn’t on my list of favorites. It’s sort of like the fencing though…you basically move with one of the direction keys based on the hand movements of your partner.
My own plan was to wait until I had suitably impressed some governors daughter then dance with her once, propose, and call it quits after that.
The dancing in Pirates is actually kind of cool, even if does get to be a bit of a chore after doing it enough times.
It’s mostly visual. You’re faced across from the Governor’s daughter as some vaguely classical sounding music plays in the background. As the music plays your partner does a little bob with the beat and gives you hand signals as to what you’re supposed to do. One hand out to the side, means you press the ‘4’ button to do a little step to the left. Both hands up pushing toward you means you press the ‘2’ button to do a little step back.
The cool part is that, depending on your dancing partner, they do put certain moves in predictable chains. So you don’t have to necessarily concentrate on the hand signals, if you know what’s coming. The other cool thing is with the right timing, you not only perform the step, but you do it with a little flourish. The more flourishes you chain together, the more the chick digs you. The more she digs you, the better the reward you get at the end.
The reward depends on the comeliness of the fraulein as well. A “plain” daughter will generally award you with the name of a criminal in some other town that you can fight for cash or a prize. A “beautiful” daughter will offer you an award right out of the gate.
By awards I mean the little doo-dads and tools you collect and use – Dutch rutters, fencing shirts, weather gauges, concertinas, etc.
Every once in a while you’ll piss off a daughter’s boyfriend by dancing with her too often and you’ll have to fence instead of dance.
Also, if you keep up the good hoofing with the right lady enough times, you can eventually marry her and settle down.
Could identify any map fragment instantly, use the wind to make any battle I wanted, and even single handedly take a 350 man treasure galleon, simply because if you never got hit, you could never lose while fencing, and I never got hit.