(no subject)
Civ4 arrived yesterday not long after I posted my entry, but I was a good person and did all the housework before I installed it. And then promptly played it all afternoon and most of the early evening (when I wasn't cooking, anyway). First impressions are that it's sufficiently different that there'll be a learning curve - which is a good thing :) I used to use a modified ICS strategy (Infinite City Sprawl) that meant I wound up with 20/30 cities with a core of a dozen or so that were full improved - this new game is weighted so that's not likely to be a possible strategy, and I've got a game all the way through to 1100AD now and I've not yet got a city that's made every building possible, and I've only got 6 or 7 cities. I'd read stuff that suggested one would have to specialise cities, and it certainly looks like that'll be the case - so I have to think about that a bit more. The addition of religion is done well - I'm not sure yet if it's a good idea to found every religion one can, so one can build lots of the Great Prophet wonders (you need the holy city for the religion to do so), or if it's better to hang back on the techs that lead to the religions and found one and stick to it. I've not, so far, found the barbarians as big an issue as sagima was saying, but then I may well be playing on an easier difficulty level (I'm playing on Settler at the moment, which is the easiest and which gives you hints & tips which are useful to help me figure out what the implications of doing whatever are while I'm learning how it works).
Before the game arrived (ie before J went to work) I finished off my current book - "Dragon" by Steven Brust. Another Vlad Taltos one, and the one immediately before Issola in publication order. I liked the way there were three time periods running through the narrative - each chapter opened with a bit about the end fight, then went back to explain more about how he'd got into that situation anyway, and there were a few interludes which told of the aftermath and were quite a bit later than the other two narrative threads. Now I've run out of Vlad books that are in the library ... need to see what Waterstones have and think about if I really do want to use the remainder of my tokens to buy them.
We went out to Furry in the evening, even though we were both playing computer games till about 20 minutes before we needed to leave. It was quite a quiet evening, relatively speaking, slow to fill up. Possibly coz of the weather - cold enough that you'd not bother leaving the pub till they kicked you out I think. It was still busy later though, and quite a few people who used to be regulars were there, and not some of the new ones. After about 1am it went very old school indie - we had some Stone Roses, some Blur, some Charlatans, some Happy Mondays. We danced for a bit, right at the end, then headed home having (for a change) not drunk much too much.
Civ4 meant I didn't enter the last two icon contests - well, 100contest hasn't closed entries yet, but I'll be playing rather than icon making I think ;) iconartistic closed voting, winners here, the theme was Shapes and I entered:
it kinda bombed - fewest points over all. I did better with last weeks 100contest entries though, the theme was to add a single word to the icon that summed up the feeling of the icon. My favourite of the two I entered was this one:
but the other one won "Best Use of Theme" :)
Before the game arrived (ie before J went to work) I finished off my current book - "Dragon" by Steven Brust. Another Vlad Taltos one, and the one immediately before Issola in publication order. I liked the way there were three time periods running through the narrative - each chapter opened with a bit about the end fight, then went back to explain more about how he'd got into that situation anyway, and there were a few interludes which told of the aftermath and were quite a bit later than the other two narrative threads. Now I've run out of Vlad books that are in the library ... need to see what Waterstones have and think about if I really do want to use the remainder of my tokens to buy them.
We went out to Furry in the evening, even though we were both playing computer games till about 20 minutes before we needed to leave. It was quite a quiet evening, relatively speaking, slow to fill up. Possibly coz of the weather - cold enough that you'd not bother leaving the pub till they kicked you out I think. It was still busy later though, and quite a few people who used to be regulars were there, and not some of the new ones. After about 1am it went very old school indie - we had some Stone Roses, some Blur, some Charlatans, some Happy Mondays. We danced for a bit, right at the end, then headed home having (for a change) not drunk much too much.
Civ4 meant I didn't enter the last two icon contests - well, 100contest hasn't closed entries yet, but I'll be playing rather than icon making I think ;) iconartistic closed voting, winners here, the theme was Shapes and I entered:
it kinda bombed - fewest points over all. I did better with last weeks 100contest entries though, the theme was to add a single word to the icon that summed up the feeling of the icon. My favourite of the two I entered was this one:
but the other one won "Best Use of Theme" :)