No Pokemans, but I upgraded my PC, so been doing PC gaming. Stupidly grandiose historical PC gaming!
Crusader Kings 2 - Now that I can run more than 80 or so years along without crashing, I've decided to do a Petty Kingdom of Wessex run. The biggest issue facing my line is twofold, first is that most of my folks don't seem to be capable of living very long. It is not uncommon for my dudes to not see their 30th birthday, and 40 is rare. The nice thing is, if they make it that long, they're probably gonna gun for their late 60's. Of course, this leads to the other problem. My line runs heavily towards girls. I once had the joy of dealing with a -20 cumulative modifier for having a Duchess with a female heir.
Run started off pretty standard. Get a claim on Hwicce so that I can swallow up that duchy and claim the third bit De Jure if Mercia ever looks weak. Then move over into the lesser areas of Kent, Essex, and East Anglia. Of course, as this is going on, marriage ties and religious squabbling leads to getting a respectable chunk of Wales, including Powys and Deheubarth. Sadly, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. One marriage attempting to bring the Duchy of Upper Lorraine into my holdings led to a problem when the Duchess of UL gets assassinated by some Flemish person. This means that my heir goes down there and when his time to shine happens, he brings three horrible things with him. First, he's German, not properly Anglo-Saxon like any respectable person. Second, he's decided he likes being under the King of France, and holds on to his leige. Third, he replaces the kick-ass inheritance law of Primogeniture with fricking Gavelkind. Bastard.
Fortunately, the Gavelkind doesn't actually matter too much since the lack of children I'm facing means that there's only one time that my holdings get split. And five years after that happens, the primary heir dies childless, reuniting the holdings. Also fortunately, the granddaughter of the surviving brother is Judith of England. Now, sadly, Charlemagne's Empire, this time, didn't split. So by the time Judith starts her rule, she's under the Emperor of Francia, who seems to be happily trying to grab and crush all the Kingdom titles under him. Judith instead is the one who manages to get the upper hand on Mercia, and forms the Kingdoms of England and Wales. While there's still some resistance from the Mercians, Northumbria accepts her rule. Her Great-Grandaughter Aegwyth the Great, manages to finish up the job, forming the crown of Ireland, and being part of a successful faction demanding independence from Francia. While she doesn't quite finish the job, her son Gryth then moves north into Scotland, and manages to take enough to claim the title Emperor of Britannia. All by 1024 AD.
And that's where it stands, and will stand for a while because...
Civ 6 - Got this, played a game as the Romans under Trajan. Definitely feels like there's a lot more room for more civs, or even for civs to have more than one ruler. But that's for future expansions. While there's a lot of new features, I'm digging the card-customization for the governments, and the past governments influencing the abilities of future ones. Also feel like I'm just now starting to figure out how the districts are supposed to be working. Though I do like the added interactivity between the map and cities.
It's also weird, but I feel like I'm noticing the affects of Trajan more now that I'm finished playing him than I did while I played him. Roads aren't super trivial to build now that they're not a worker function anymore (also, now that workers are limited use resources) but instead are built by trade routes. But the All Roads Lead to Rome thing connecting every new city to Rome if it's close enough is subtle, but powerful. Same with Trajan's master builder trait which just gives every city a free monument, so they have great culture growth with minimal effort.
