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Latest Comments by Philadelphus
Possible Paradox grand strategy livestream in the works, community input wanted
5 July 2016 at 7:43 pm UTC

Oh, are we allowed to participate? That'd be cool. I've got EU IV and CK II, though I have about six times as much experience with the former. One possibility, like you mentioned, would be for everyone to play in the same general area of the map, and have some sort of themed challenge, like everyone play in the HRE, or everyone play in central Africa, or India, or something like that (I'm thinking of EU IV here, I don't know what something similar in CK II would be like).

I also wouldn't mind seeing a stream of Stellaris or HoI IV.

Also also, if you're thinking of going with the once-a-week-over-many-weeks thing, you might consider looking in the Paradox Multiplayer sub-forums for the game you choose. People there have a lot of little rules for dealing with situations like when one person can't make it one week (are you allowed to attack his or her computer-controlled country, or not?) that you might want to adapt as some ground rules. Just a thought.

GamingOnLinux turns 7 years old on July 5th! We are going to celebrate in style!
3 July 2016 at 1:31 am UTC

Is there some secret to getting Livestreamer working? I tried it today with a random Twitch.tv stream just to see if it would work and it just gives me an error, even while I'm watching that exact stream in Opera at the same time:

$ livestreamer twitch.tv/catilena1890
[cli][info] Found matching plugin twitch for URL twitch.tv/catilena1890
error: No streams found on this URL: twitch.tv/catilena1890

I tried with all the permutations of "www" and "http://" I could think of at the beggining of the URL as well, same result, and closed the stream window in case it was messing with Livestreamer. Tried it with a few different streams, still no luck. I'm just confused why it couldn't pick up the stream when the browser could just fine.

Some essential mods to try in XCOM 2 that don't break the balance or change gameplay
30 June 2016 at 8:39 pm UTC

Wow, I am currently subscribed to 41 mods, after going through the list a while back, and I still hadn't heard of Quick Soldier Info or Show More Buff Details, both of which sound good.

In the interest of mods that don't really change game balance, here are a few more I'm using:

1. Show Enemies on Mission Planning
This just replicates the information from the Shadow Chamber from the screen where you select a mission to the screen where you select and outfit your soldiers. If you're like me, you used the information to select a mission and then immediately forgot it when outfitting your soldiers. This mod will help your prepare for the enemies you'll be facing without a whole bunch of tedious screen switching.

2. More Maps Pack
3. World Expansion Project: ADVENT
4. Maps by Vozati
Several mods that add additional map plots and parcels to the map generation pool, just to spice up your locations a bit.

Mods that technically change balance a little bit:

5. Stabilize Me!
This mod lets soldiers stabilize a downed soldier who is carrying a medikit with his own medikit; i.e., no more bleeding-out deaths for your single medic while his comrades stand around looking helpless. I feel like this should be in the base game.

6. Haywire Protocol bug fix for turret control
According the ability description, Haywire Protocol is supposed to make hacked turrets remain yours forever, however, by default they only remained hacked for a few turns, just like mech units. This mod fixes that. Note that having a hacked turret remain yours indefinitely isn't as big of a game-changer as you might think: since turrets are stationary it's likely only get two or three (mostly ineffectual) shots off before your front moves past it and it can't help you any more. It does save you having to kill the thing when the hack wears off, though.

A new Civilization VI video shows off England, they aren't talking about the Linux release for now
29 June 2016 at 5:58 pm UTC

Quoting: Mountain ManXCOM 2 was a Day 1 release. Why wouldn't Firaxis do the same with Civ VI? I suppose it doesn't really matter to me because I see no reason at all to prefer Civ VI over Civ V with its expansions, and I really don't like VI's cartoon aesthetic. Besides, the Civilization series just feels a bit shallow after getting hooked on Paradox's ridiculously deep and complex grand strategy games.
I feel pretty similar, although the art style doesn't particularly bother me. While this looks like a quite decent game I already have Civ V and all its expansions, and don't really feel the need for a new version yet (though I like that VI is keeping the archaeology, that was a fun addition in V). Discovering Paradox's grand strategy games two years ago hasn't helped me either. Though having been a fan of the Civ series since Civ III, I might pick it up after release when it goes on sale, or when a major expansion comes out.

Go on a fishing adventure in Marinatide, on Steam Greenlight and coming to Linux
28 June 2016 at 7:14 pm UTC

Cute-looking game, I voted for it on Greenlight. :)

Europa Universalis IV celebrates Midsummer and a million copies sold with a free music DLC
23 June 2016 at 8:07 pm UTC

I don't know Swedish so I can't understand the lyrics, but they're great-sounding songs all the same. They kind of remind me of some of Beethoven's Lieder. They should be a welcome departure from the normal EU IV music.

XCOM 2 - Alien Hunters thoughts, prepare to get frustrated
23 June 2016 at 1:09 am UTC Likes: 1

So, I have the DLC since I got the season pass and have started a game with it but haven't done the cave story mission yet so I haven't seen the rulers yet. I seem to recall there was an option when starting the game to have the cave mission or not, maybe if you don't enable it they can show up randomly? They're not supposed to until after you do it, since it introduces you to them (plus voice logs from Dr. Vahlen). I guess the option is there so you don't need to do the whole mission on subsequent playthroughs, but then maybe the rulers just show up randomly.

Jake Solomon talked about the rationale for making the rulers attack after every action in one of the streams Firaxis did around the time it was released. I think the gist of it was that if you just have a unit with a whole ton of HP, players will set it up so it discovers them on the enemy turn, then take all of their actions on it and take it down in one turn (like people tend to do with Sectopods; they're dangerous if they get a turn off, but set up the encounter right and it's possible to take one down in one turn and have actions left over). Hence the idea was to break out of the usual mold for experienced players, by not letting them simply cheese every fight in the same way.

And hey, if you don't like it, that's fine. I may not enjoy it myself when I get to it, I still need to see. Just wanted to explain the rationale behind it (that it's a way to give experienced players a new type of challenge where their usual strategies don't work as well).

A third of Valve now working on VR, still no Linux support
21 June 2016 at 8:09 pm UTC Likes: 1

I suppose those of us who don't care about virtual reality can look on the bright side: 2/3 of Valve is still working on things that aren't VR! :P

An interview with Paradox Development Studios about supporting Linux
19 June 2016 at 10:45 pm UTC

I've got over 600 hours in EU IV, and I think the only Linux-specific bug out of the handful I've reported was the graphics issue with coastlines looking bad half-a-dozen major versions ago. I only got interested in PDS games with EU IV, right before the point I seriously decided to switch from Windows to Linux, so while my purchase might have counted as a Windows sale I've played >99% of my time on Linux.

Resolution added to the user stats page, please update your profiles
19 June 2016 at 6:16 am UTC

Heh, does resolution get multiplied by the number of monitors you have? 'cause I've got two…though, I guess it would be difficult to account for people with multiple monitors with different resolutions.

(Tongue in cheek, in case it wasn't clear. :)