Same here. Capital ships only, actually ;)

Never really felt that CIV was unpolished. Never much of a conquest player; so perhaps it was less obvious for me...

In Reply To #226

I don't conquest much either unless I am in a bad mood or playing Rome. I usually like to play England, and turtle myself in with longbowmen before getting large fleets to go and "intervene" in various other parts of the world.

But the diplomacy was a disaster on release. Shafer wanted the AI to be "mysterious" and "unpredictable", so it never shared any info on why a Civ liked or disliked you, like Civ4 did. All it ended up doing was making the AI play like a sort of randomised robot, making no sense whatsoever. They've gone some way to fixing that in Gods & Kinds and later patches, but as with a few changes they've made, they're doing it by essentially admitting that Shafer's idea was stupid and making it more Civ4-like, since that worked.

In Reply To #227

Mhh, guess I get your problem with the AI. More than once had a sincere "WTF" moment when a Civ choose to attack me. Still consider it a great game though. Haven't played a minute of Civ IV since it's release...

Ok... That's two computer installs in a row where GTA:VC hasn't worked properly...

I tried out Ragnarok 2 before...sucks.

So I went for some old school entertainment - flicking pages. Anyone read any of Michael Marshall Smith's novels? He has a real knack for leading me to believe every main character is FiN...a FiN who abuses electrical devices, often threatening to bin them. Hell if I know how he accomplishes this in every book of his.

Right now I'm reading his novel 'One of Us' which is about a dude (FiN) who works as an underground REMtemp; a dream job (get it) involving taking on the anxious dreams of others, ensuring they sleep well. However, one thing led to another and now he's transferring memories from clients to himself and returning them a few hours later. Why? Various reasons, some to allow criminals to pass lie detector tests. How can you fail a lie detector test if you absolutely have no recollection of what you did? And the shit has now just hit the fan, because he never knows what kind of memory he'll obtain beforehand.

In Reply To #230

I have read several MM Smith books, he does a very believable near-future.

(Only Forward is still his best)

In Reply To #231

Except the end. It was rushed because I get the feeling his whole 'jeamland' part mentally brain fucked him (and he's not the only one).

In Reply To #230

I tried reading hunger games, but somehow I couldn't get past the fact that I was annoyed by its first person writing. Funny because I never had a beef with that before.

So I turned to Stieg Larsson. Went through the first book in just a couple of days.

In Reply To #232

What I like is that both Only Forward & Spares managed to convince me they were detective novels, even though I should really have known better by the time I'd finished the first one.

Bit late to the party, eh?

In Reply To #234

Spares is on my list, it'll probably take me a couple of months to finish reading One of Us. I'm no Number 5. I also have his collection of short stories 'What you make of it' to get through at some point as well.

In Reply To #235

Guilty

"What ya readin' fer?"

In Reply To #225

When you play ACIII, I kind of want a minute by minute update concerning how much you hate killing redcoats and helping win the revolution for the colonies. By "kind of want" I mean "want it a lot".

In Reply To #239

I still haven't finished the "Road to Independence" tutorial in Empire: Total War if that helps to whet your appetite.