BrerRabbit~SPARTA~

Correction, Bibracte/Cenabum/Namnatum forms the Province of Celtica.

In TS last night someone (I forget who) was having some trouble and asking a number of questions, and since the game doesnt clearly spell these answers out Ill try and do so here. Note on parlance. In Rome 2 a region is a single zone with single town/city. A region is always tied to one or two other regions to form a province. Ill explain later how that works. First, a minor question that will tie back into the larger lesson about regions/provinces. "Why cant I recruit cavalry?" OK, so first you have to have the correct building in order to recruit cavalry. So for me, playing the Averni of Gaul, I need to build Enclosed Land, and then Horse Pens, which will then allow me to recruit light cavalry in that region. I can only recruit that light cavalry into an army that is in the region that has the Horse Pens building. This changes later with provinces which Ill now try to explain. Regions/Provinces When you click on a town/city you own you will see in the region window that pops up one or two other regions that your region is associated with. These regions form a Province if and when you control all those regions. Once you establish a Province you gain all manner of benefits and your faction gets a large bump in power. For example, in my Averni campaign, I have managed to capture Bibracte, Cenabum, and Namnatum. So now I control the Province of Bibracte/Cenabum/Namnatum. First, gaining control of my first Province bumped up the number of generals, admirals, and agents I could have. Also, it allows me to set a Province wide Edict to get extra bonuses (I chose Bread and Circuses, so those regions are having a celtic disco party and getting fat and drunk). Lastly, recruiting of forces now became much easier. I had a Horse Pens in Bibracte, but I could only recruit cavalry when my army was in Bibracte. But now that Bibracte is part of Bibracte/Cenebum/Namnatum I can recruit cavalry into any army in that Province. So, when starting your campaign keep an eye on what regions are tied together because forming Provinces are key boosting your power. Anyway, I hope this helped anyone with questions. Im learning the game myself so if Ive made mistakes here please correct me. Cheers.

Grrrr. I was trying to post a youtube vid in here and I cant get it to work. Cant remember the "fix" someone told me about. Can we get a working YouTube/media button already?

Roger that Custard, I just want to see who all is up for multiplayer. In the past with Sparta most seemed to do solo with Total War games.

A few interesting tidbits about The Division's backstory. DarkWinter was a real exercise run in June 2001. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dark_Winter And Directive 51 is also real, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_and_Homeland_Security_Presidential_Directive Fake news reports were created and shown to the DarkWinter participant role players to add to the reality of the exercise. Anyone hip to the world of conspiracies will find some interesting things in this. Lastly, there's a great Agentine dark comedy about a flu pandemic called Phase 7.

Well ROME 2 is almost upon us. Id like to see a show of hands of who all in Sparta is going to get the game, and who is interested in some multiplayer battles/campaigns. In what other game can you command a Legion, and rule Sparta?

COH 2 kinda fizzled. W:ALB however is a big success and we've got a lot of people playing. Some of us have been distracted from W:ALB by War Thunder - I for one am splitting my gaming time between those two games.

There's an older fire engine for sale near me. Ill swing by later today and get a pic and post it. Fire fighting equipment is always cool as hell. Anyone watch EMERGENCY! when they were kids?

Playing the campaign will help you to a degree - much more than the tutorials. If anything, it will teach you the various units, and how to make due with less. I suggest playing the full campaign, "War in the North," on at least hard setting. The following is a message for all those having trouble in multiplayer (that is, if your losses are consistently higher than your kills) let me give you some advice (take if your leave it, but I think its fair to say that Ive a better kill/loss ratio than anyone else we play with, and this is how I do it): Brer's (aka Gora sahib's) three maxims for success in digital warfare 1. "Git thar fustest with the mostest" - N.B. Forest Despite his activities post Civil War, there's no doubting Forest was a brilliant cavalry commander. What Forest's military maxim is telling us is that arriving at the critical location first and with more stuff (or more firepower) will generally allow you to carry the day. This concept is particularly applicable to W:ALB. Here's how to apply it. First, when starting a match, look at the terrain and layout of the map in the area you've agreed to take for your team, and determine what will be the critical locations in that area you need to occupy to take and hold that area. These will be the places you need to get to "fustest." Second, determine what units will best allow you to take and hold said area - this will be your "mostest." I can not emphasis more the take and hold. It is not take, abandon, and attack. Job one is to take and hold your assigned area. 2. Patience is a freaking virtue A young bull and an old bull are standing on a hill looking down on a pasture full of cows. The young bull says, "Hey, old man, lets run down this hill and fuck one of those cows. The old bull shakes his head had says, "No. Lets walk down this hill, and then fuck them all." Be patient in W:ALB. If theres some voice in your head saying "I should be doing something" but you dont know what it is you are to be doing, then DO NOTHING! It is 1,000 times better to sit and hold than to go off on some half baked attack. Conducting successful attacks (that is attacks that dont bleed you dry) in W:ALB take a lot of skill and practice. If you are unsure about how to attack, if you dont know what you are attacking into (i.e. you did not properly recon the area), if you dont have the proper forces to attack (combined arms of tanks/infantry/arty/air/helos etc), then for the love of Mike, DO NOT ATTACK. Be patient and wait for the best opportunity to attack. More likely than not the guy opposite you will get bored and conduct a shit attack and lose a ton of units. Giving you a reward for your patience and the best opportunity for you to now attack. NOTE: this does not mean you sit on your ass at the start of a match. The early phase of a match demands swift movement to the critical areas. So applying maxims 1 & 2 your actions for the opening and middle of a match should be: move to critical locations > set up kill zones > wait and look for opportunity. 3. It takes as many tools to dismantle a house as it does to built it. Attacking in W:ALB is tricky. Yes, you may get lucking now and again with rushes, or gimmicky tricks, or with massed mobs of tanks without support. Yes, sometimes you can take advantage of a situation with ad hock forces at your disposal and attack and succeed. But if you want to consistently attack successfully without suffering horrendous losses, you have to employ the 5 Ps. Proper Preparation Prevents ... blah blah, you know it. Have all your tools ready for when you attack. Remember, if your foe is good at all he will have already set up a kill zone of tanks, ATGMs, AA, AAA, infantry, helos, etc etc etc. So if you just blunder into this blind and with out a variety of units, shit will turn ugly fast. Combined arms is your friend. Being able to call on the whole variety of firepower in W:ALB is the best way to break a defense. And again, take your time. A hurried and uncoordinated attack will end in tears and cries of "OMG such-in-such unit is OP!" When really it was your own inept attack that resulted in all those burning tanks and downed planes. * Retreat is NOT an ugly word A final comment. If you are being pushed out of an area, learn to understand when its time to just bug out. Pick a good location for a new line of defense and set up there. There is no shame what-so-ever in retreating. It is far better to abandon a sector, and set up a new defense, than to wastes tons of units and points trying to hold onto something you are going to lose anyway. Cut your losses and pick new ground. Chances are you will get payback later in the match. More units and points are wasted in this way by new players than even in sloppy attacks, dont throw good money after bad.

Some of those are Japanese. When I was living over there my favorite bar had "hot sand" on the menu.

That Division game looks ... amazing.

Its not ventless. That pic just shows the model with the vent out back into the wall. Wendy and I will be getting a top vent.

Now THAT will get me to dust off the wheel.

So, my fiancee and I are looking to install a gas fireplace/stove in our new home. We've been doing some shopping around and have an idea of what we want but I thought Id shake the Sparta idea tree and see if anyone has any thoughts, advice, experiences to share. Our current favorite is the Heat-n-Glow Paloma: http://www.heatnglo.com/en/Products/Paloma-Gas-Stove.aspx

Skaz and I signed up for our first ranked battle last night - 2v2 team ranked. For some retarded reason we were paired against two very high ranked players (the game doesnt let you see the opponents rank till after the match). To say these guys had their shit together would be a massive understatement. But their terrible ping first got one kicked mid-match, and then the other kicked 3 min before time ran out. So we "won" despite getting our butts kicked. Ranked games have such an intensity to them that I dont know if Skaz and I will be trying again - we may just be happy with our 1-0 record and retire.

This game goes to freaking 11. The campaign is freaking great. Multiplayer is freaking great. Best buy of 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbVKWCpNFhY

Some official news. Game launches tomorrow. Wednesday 29th, at 6 PM (Paris time, GMT+1), which should be noon EST. They will be ditching command starts altogether so there will be no unit unlocks in the live game, all units will be available to players right at launch. And then theres this badassness: Anyone looking to do a 1v1 campaign let me know.

Well, it sucks that now theyve said there wont be a co-op aspect to the campaign at launch. There will be 1v1 in campaign mode though. There may well be co-op added later. But here's a teaser to the campaign ... looks cool as hell:

Well, if we want to talk about the real kings of geek/nerd art rock, there's no one close to My Barbarian:

Hop into the Wargame channel sometime Raven. Im always playing this game ...

Call it nerd core, geek rock, whatever. I think its great. Name the game to earn old school gamer cred:

Im an American. I dont follow football. It was clear what happened and an excellent moment in sport. That said, Ive never been able to get too excited about watching other grown men chase a leather ball around a field of grass for obscene amounts of money (be they American or European or whatever).

Just gotta say, tired FireFall, and in my opinion, Defiance is a much better game. Neither are particularly outstanding though.