PopTop. Railroad Tycoon 2&3 and Tropico 1&2. They got bought by 2K, which eventually killed the studio. The Railroad Tycoon series is dead. Tropico is still around, but I’m not excited about the latest interation. Some of the guys tried to kickstart a new Railroad Tycoon but it didn’t fund. Phil Steinmeyer was an underrated developer, though I believe he’s retired today.

It’s too bad it worked out that way. I think they could have been on the level with Paradox as far as strategy games are concerned, but focusing more on economic games, city builders, and the like. On Steinmeyer’s blog he said he didn’t think there was demand for heavier games anymore about mid 00s. That might have been true then, but so many games out now prove that wrong.

Yeah, mechanism is a lot more objective way to classify board games. We can argue all day about, say, what exactly a wargame is, but what games have hex grids, area control, and resource managements is a lot easier to agree on.

I haven’t played the expansions, but I thought the base decent. It was more interesting than your average Euro, but it didn’t blow me away either. I’d say buy it if your into the theme.

Must be a day of the week that ends in y.

I haven’t made the 2 to 3 jump yet. I’m waiting for the war patch, which is coming decently quickly.

Yeah, modded Minecraft is still a big deal. You can join us over at !moddedminecraft@sopuli.xyz if you want. The mod Create is a big deal right now, and rightfully so. It may well be the greatest of all time, as far as Minecraft mods go.

!strategygames@sopuli.xyz

Edit: didn’t mean to make this a comment reply instead of post reply, but it still counts

There’s a pair of Beatles albums in this list. I don’t mind “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” or “Revolution 9,” but “Tomorrow Never Knows” on Revolver counts for me. Frankly, it’s the worst Beatles song. I prefer the Daniel Johnston and Jad Fair cover of it on It’s Spooky to the Beatles version. It’s just that bad.

I love the mix of shocked and disappointed reactions.

Yeah, it’s hard to get people to care about stuff sometimes. Sometimes you just have to let it die.

Tichu is the bomb, literally.

Mostly just Minecraft out of the box. I feel that resource packs and certain performance mods like optifine could be accurately referred to as “vanilla with optifine” or “vanilla with such-and-such pack.” Once you get into datapacks or Forge or Fabric or hacked clients, it’s not vanilla.

Serverside, it’s a little more dodgy. How many server plugins can you have before it’s not vanilla?

That said, I don’t think there’s much reason to play Java Edition over Bedrock other than mods or wanting to play on older, pre-bedrock versions. Then again, I almost solely play modded anymore so I don’t have a lot of vanilla Bedrock under my belt to compare the two.

Gotta love the projection. “They’ll do to us what we did to the Indians!”

The trigger happy mergers probably helped me more than they hurt. At one point I dumped a spice company in the chaos and took the cash lead, letting me get a bargain on a rubber merger. It put me back into the game, but it wasn’t enough to take the win.

I have played Bus at three. It’s been awhile, so I can’t say too much about it. That said, I do remember having fun at that count.

As far as expropriation, I felt confusion more than anything. It got better as the game went on, but it does take a moment to wrap your head around it. Still, I though it was an interesting mechanic.

New plays were:

• Mahjong
• John Company
• Sol
• Nana
• Kreigbot
• Kremlin
• Lifeboats
• Category 5
• Fresh Fish
• Santiago

Nah, I probably won’t make it to Pax Unplugged. I will be at Age of Steam Con, so I might get a play in there.

Horseless Carriage is great. SoPac is one I still need to try. There was a copy at DoamCon last weekend, but I didn’t get a game in. I did get West Riding Revisited in, which is excellent. It’s one of the few cube rails to have minor and major railways. I’d like to see it licensed, but it’s a little unlikely

My list looks similar. Splotter is at the top. I did preorder Horseless Carriage back before we had much info about it and don’t regret it. John Bohrer would be up there as well, but though various connections I’ve played enough Winsomes to know they aren’t an instant buy. (Iberian Railways, Italian Railroads, and 1836)

Tangent, but I’m very split on 1836. The opening is incredible, but once you get past the first stock round all the interesting decisions have been made.

Magical Athlete is always a good time. I’ve only played it once, but it’s fun.

I see