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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1604 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 19, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Video game thread

What are you playing this week?

I uninstalled Slay the Spire 1 and 2. I realized that the games (mainly sts2) took up a lot of time and capacity due to my need to play optimally, without giving me much joy in return.

Started and finished a Civ V game instead. I got around 30 wonders, because I was playing on a more relaxed difficulty than usual.

Tried out The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales (demo) briefly. Dismayed to find it has no ultrawide support. And they call it HD-2D yet all the characters are pixel art style. Might play it in 16:9 on my TV at some polnt. They've priced it very highly, and it has denuvo, so I might wait for a deep discount further down the road.

I was finally able to beat deity on the new civ 7 test of time patch. I did the Pachatuchi + Nepal combo for a culture win. The new patch makes the AI bonus on deity much stronger. They city spam really hard and playing wide seems to be the unequivocal best strategy much to my disappointing tall-playing inclinations. I've come close before but this is the first time making it over the finish line in time.

Some friends and I have put together a valheim server, I'm enjoying building viking themed castles in it lately. Really letting my creative juices flow.

I can't get into any civ after civ iv, the last civ with stackable armies. It's just so much more satisfying to walk around with a doomstack, and the map is visually simpler and easier to understand at a glance compared to later civ games.

I couldn't stand the doom stack armies, I wanted that feel of using the terrain and flanking enemies, battle lines like I'm a roman legion, and the "hold the line!" feeling. I hear less of the Civ IV purists these days, its mostly Civ V boosters, which I don't understand because that version was deeply unbalanced around wonderspaming

I consider Civ IV the mechanical high point of the series before it began its slide into bullshit. The main reasons why I stopped playing Civ IV and have since been waiting for the next big 4X are battles and wonders. Battles in Civ IV are, IMO, too hard to follow. Civ CtP had much more legible battles by way of limiting stack sizes, and resolving fights as all VS all instead of sequentially 1 vs 1. And I've never ever liked the win-more nature of wonders.

Speaking of, Civ CtP is IMO the underrated champ in terms of atmosphere and historical scope.

Civ IV has terrain, but it's only used defensively. Main usage was defending against enemy doomstacks with a mini-stack, and it's kind of fun estimating what you actually need to safely hold the enemy back. There's also that wonderful feeling where you perfectly estimate the minimum defense needed and you bait the AI doomstack into engaging your fortified-to-the-teeth city for a total loss.

To get the a good hold the line feeling I prefer the total war series.

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