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Name: I'm hoping to remain a bit more anonymous you can call me null :)

Age: 30-40

Gender: CIS Male

Location: USA - eastern time zone

School/Job: Software Engineer

Likes: see below

Music: my Top 5 arists from Spotify Wrapped (2023) -

Hot Mulligan, Taylor Swift, Taking Back Sunday, The Wonder Years, Julien Baker.

TV/Movies: Mostly dramas. My Girl likely started my appreciation and Forest Gump solidified it. Some of my favorite shows .... Parenthood, This Is Us, A Million Little Things, Gilmore Girls. I also enjoy some more "mystery" type stuff like Black Mirror, Servant, Severence.

Video Games: I really enjoy survival video games but some games I've enjoyed. Divinty Original Sin i / II, Baldurs Gate 3, Elden Ring, Fable 1, Civlizattion games

Board Games: I enjoyed the typical board games growing up (monopoly, checkers, chess, uno, risk, etc) but as an adult got pretty into more niche' games. My all time favorite board game is Res Arcana. Some others I enjoye... Terraforming Mars, Dinosaur Island, Gloomhaven, Heroes of Land Air & Sea.

Dislikes: Rude humans. If you don't believe that humans are all equal despite race, religion, sexuality , gender , etc...then we aren't likely to be friends.

Pets: I love animals and have pets.

Anything else: Just looking for a bit of community here as I start journaling again.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

erembour

I'm Weronika, I'm 44 years old and I love drama movies and turn-based strategy videogames such as Civilization, but I mostly play RTS these days. I have pets as well, a dog and a cat, and I post about them from time to time.

What do you say? :)

From:

nullexception

Hello,

Which RTS games do you prefer? The only RTS I think I spent any ammount of time in was Command and Conquuer 3. I LIVE for the turtling :D I never did try warcraft but I would prefer that lore / setting. Oddly enough I did play Heroes of Newerth which was based on original Dota that was from a warcraft (3?) mod/map :D

I've subscrided, added. Hope I'm doing all these things right but once I know how to check my "feed" i'll make sure I'm reading and replying. Hope all is well!

From:

erembour

All is well here!

Age of Empires 2 is, I think, one of my favourites of all time. I have the whole series including AoE4 but I feel none of the others live up to AoE2. I do like AoE3 though. It stands out.

As for other RTS games I play religiously, the Anno series is first on my list because I love production chains and economic complexity that make it impossible to go from 0 to 100 within 10 minutes and conquer the world before having a civilisation to be proud of (I despise rushes). My favourite Anno game is Anno 1404.
Others high up include similar games/series such as The Settlers (esp. Settlers II and III) but also Company of Heroes, Stronghold, Hearts of Iron and most recently: 0 AD.

The very first RTS game I played was the original Command & Conquer and it is what made me fall in love. I still play the series. I also played Warcraft a lot in the past and I definitely recommend it! Solid worldbuilding, I just prefer more historical settings nowadays.

Other games I play include Dungeon Keeper and Theme Hospital which really steer towards a different direction but are still quite fun. I'm also an avid The Sims-player (1, 2, and to a lesser extent, 3) and love city builders like Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic, the Tropico games, and Ostriv.

I've added you back. You can check your "feed" by clicking on your reading page, all journals you're subscribed to should be displayed there.

I hope to see you around. :)

From:

nullexception

I did finally see the "reading page" thing so now I can stay a bit more up to date, thanks for the tip!

I played AoE very briefly but I cannot remember which one it was. I have game pass so i know its on there. While C&C is possibly my fav I will say I enjoyed the feel of AoE more than Starcraft...that game is just a whole different level of difficult :).

On the "production" route I feel waaaay finnicky on that one. I haven't been able to stick around for anything past early to early-mid game in most that I've tried. Banished was one that I did enjoy and then Ostriv feels similar just prettier but with less content. Manor Lords is one that I've been following and even if I don't spend tons of time in it I do think it's going to do well. Also is coming to game pass :)

Have you heard of desynced? It kind of marries the production (automation) and RTS. I've spent about 7 or so hours in it but other games took me away - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1450900/Desynced_Autonomous_Colony_Simulator/

I also really enjoyed satisfactory. I've let the game idle a good bit to beef up stuff but I have 95 hours on it atm.

Here are my most played steam games - https://imgur.com/a/fWT3t37

The main game sI'm rotating between atm are Icarus (survival) Elden Ring (we all know :D) and Mario Wonder.

Icarus - GOt this before it was open world and was only mission based. Really enjoying it as an open world game.

Elden Ring - i must've picked this game up and put it down for 3-4 different play throughs now...here's to hoping i finish this one :D

Mario Wonder - such a great game. My only gripe is that I wish they resreved yoshis to find eggs and use like in the SNES Mario Bros...that one was magical :). I've already finished all the stages with the exception of the one left to unlock after I finish getting all the tropihes to unlock it.

From:

erembour

You're welcome!

I love production chains. I also love war. That's why out of all the similar games I most love Anno and Settlers because they provide me with both (and city building! To some extent, at least). I do really look forward to Manor Lords and I've played a lot of Banished (over 900 hours) though I feel Banished gets boring after you've got a nice city and the survival part is just about over. Ostriv is still in development so it's bound to have less content but I feel the developer is really going somewhere with it. I'm happy to be along for the ride, in any case. :)

I never heard of desynced but from what I see it looks like something I'll lose myself in haha. In a good way! I love customisation.

StarCraft... I know that when it first came out I couldn't wait to get it and then I played it a few times and I do remember enjoying it, but I never bought any of the newer ones. I definitely enjoy AoE and C&C more.

Is satisfactory good? I haven't played it yet, I'm usually hesitant about first-person. I've played some first-person games but after a while they get me dizzy and leave me with a headache (on the other hand, it may be good to have something limiting my game hours other than the pressure of getting enough sleep before work, haha).

I've never played Icarus or Mario Wonder but I love Elden Ring! It remains one of my favourite games that isn't my usual repertoire so to speak.

From:

nullexception

There's a lot of tabletop games that would scratch the "production chain" itch. I"m not sure if you've tried more in depth ones but my favorite is Res Arcana. In that realm they usually call it engine building but its very similar.

That's A LOT of Banished :D. I have a hard time sticking w/those games but Ostriv had a good flow to me for me at least.

Desynced has a TON of content and I didn't even get to the combat but it absolutely has a lot of gather t1 to make higher tier stuff on repeat.

Satisfactory is my favorite "production" style game. You start out just smacking the ore deposits yourself and then set up smaller mining drills that have very small space. After that the next step is to make a big drill that has a conveyer belt output, which goes to a smelter, which goes to a constructor and it just keeps on going. They just released Unreal Engine 5 update, its a beautiful looking game. You don't HAVE to make things nice and neat but that is usually the direction people take...its a challenge because you keep expanding.

Did you finish Elden Ring? If so just once or multiple times. I'm trying to finish it with ending for Renni.

From:

erembour

Haha, yeah I really like Banished. It can be hard to stick with them for me as well sometimes so I end up playing for a few days or weeks and then abandoning it for a few months to a year, repeat. Ostriv has a better flow (it is more modern which typically helps with that) to keep playing.

I haven't played such tabletop games, unfortunately. The problem with tabletop is that they aren't single-player and I don't have people willing to play with me, sadly. I know I should go out and find people somehow but I have a busy life and I'm not the most capable when it comes to forging friendships and finding people to play with.

I finished Elden Ring twice. I got the Melina/Age of Fracture ending (first playthrough) and the Lord of the Frenzied Flame one (second playthrough start to finish, but like fifth or sixth overall). I'm trying to get the others ones, but it's been a while since I played (haven't touched it since June).

Satisfactory does sound like something I'd like... I'll have to check out some gameplay videos and see if the first-person is too bothersome. Long live the internet!

From:

nullexception

Ironically... there are a LOT of single player tabletop games. Some of the best ones can be played solo... but i ahte playing alone :(. So now i must mention them!

Gloomhaven - this will likely be one of the most monumental shifts for board games. The game took a huge risk and it paid off in a major way. I think it's likely better with a group but plenty of people have solo'd it.

Terraforming Mars - one of the better engine builders that has a good solo mode

Agricola - I'd actually suggest this one and just using the app version of it. Its pretty true to the board game and gives a nice glimpse of what a solo board game may look like.

Mage Knight - wowzers this is such a well done game but the rulebook is a monster. I've literally had to use a laptop and ctrl+f on rulebook podfs to make it through.

Kudos @ multiple endings for Elden Ring. I haven't playe din a baout a week or so but I'm at goderick. I need to level up a bit so I went south of the first starting point where you first see the open world. I really wish I would've stuck w/this game when it first came out. Some friends were doing their own play throughs and talking... i was pretty depressed and not able to enjoy it back then.

Satisfactory is great, maybe this post will help with third person - https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/hi0yi6/third_person_mode/

From:

erembour

I will look into those! I never saw good single player games back when I was actively looking for them and I never looked back. It's obvious the tabletop game works has changed since! Exciting.

I hope you're doing better now.

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