[tfehring]

Civ III is still my go-to activity for long flights with no internet - I've yet to find a better way to instantly time-travel forward 12 hours.

I haven't tried OpenCiv3, but I'm glad it exists - getting vanilla Civ III running on MacOS is a hassle and still has issues with e.g. audio and cutscenes. I also hope it leads to a way to improve worker automation. Managing your workers well is important, doing it manually is tedious, and the built-in Automate feature is really bad.

[b3ing]

I like Civilization games but they make 4hrs feel like 30min, so I can’t play them. Otherwise it would be the year 2060 already

[mr_toad]

I feel like my last words could be ‘just one more turn’.

[lossyalgo]

Wasn't that meme initially created by players talking about Civ games?

[butvacuum]

yes.

[huevosabio]

Yes, exactly I had to stop myself starting the game after 7 else I don't sleep

[philihp]

Can we settle for Factorio and 2028?

[butvacuum]

where do people derive replay value in factorio? I found It got entirely formulaic after my first run, and with SPM as the common measuring stick- its just "who sank the most time into a map."

I understand many people self sooth using it, and thats fine. Doesn't make it a good game for replay.

-- Somebody with more hours in ONI than Dosh has in Factorio

[AngryData]

For me its optimization and scale. Make resources farther, recipes 8x or whatever scale, try and make a factory that can eat and spit out insane amounts of materials. Try to keep up with the expanding need for raw ore and power against the increasingly powerful biter raids. Also there are some achievements for like not using lasers or using mostly solar, or go all out with the technically optional nuclear power plants.

[butvacuum]

1) getting enrichment spun up stings a bit.

2) I guess I can see how some people would like that. But, that's adjacent to what killed factorio for me- It feels like a "Low Code"/"No Code" programming solution to me.

[brobdingnagians]

Slightly tangential but recently I've gotten into the Ilwinter Game Design games Dominions 6 and Conquest of Elysium 5. I was surprised how similar but how different they are to Europa Universalis and Civilization respectively. Very interesting studies in horizontal game design where every faction has dramatically different gameplay strategies.

[jwilliams]

It used to be Factorio for me (I live in Australia, so long flights happen a lot). The problem with Factorio the flight isn't long enough! and the game bleeds into 100+ hours post-flight.

[mnw21cam]

Dwarf Fortress. That's really how to suddenly say "Oh, how did it get to 4am already?"

[lossyalgo]

DF gets all the news (rightfully so, it's an epic game that I've dumped a ton of hours into) but if you haven't already, consider checking out Songs of Syx. It's like DF but multiplied by 100. You can have tens of thousands of citizens, doing most of the things they do in Dwarf Fortress, and a lot more, including waging huge wars against the neighbors. The limits of DF kinda made me sad, actually, that you are limited to so few Dwarves (and don't say it's because you want to know the story of all of them, because after 30 or so you lose track of who is who anyways, so might as well up the limit from 100 to 50K, or more? ;) Songs of Syx has also routinely been getting massive updates since 2020 and I have a feeling the code is a bit cleaner so the solo dev can add features faster (unlike DF's code base which is, according to one of the new devs a nightmare to work with). It's a game that is never talked about but deserves a whole lot more love from gamers.

I don't mean to cast shade on DF, I really do love it, and am happy for its existence, I just think that DF fans should also look into Songs of Syx.

The defining difference for me are the generated stories in DF, which often are a lot of random trash but still give a feeling of a deeper meaning.

[AngryData]

As a long time DF veteran who has installed but never played Songs of Syx, you convinced me to boot it up.

[bpye]

I lost the best part of a week of my Christmas break to it when the Steam version was released a couple years back...

[SilverElfin]

> I've yet to find a better way to instantly time-travel forward 12 hours

I find it very hard to use a computer in the cramped tables of the plane. And the person in front always ends up aggressively reclining only when I have a laptop out. Plus I feel bad that maybe my bright light is disturbing the people sleeping next to me.

[hdgvhicv]

It amazes me that high paid SV techies won’t pay more to fly in premium or business

[dbetteridge]

Not everyone on hackernews is paid SV salaries?

That plus flights from Australia are expensive enough in economy, business class is easily 4-10x that cost.

[fc417fc802]

Aren't there any airlines traveling to and from Australia that offer something midway in between sardine and business class?

[dbetteridge]

Premium economy is a thing, but debatable on the sardine thing.

Basically closer to "old economy", where you have leg room and real utensils

[hdgvhicv]

Qantas offer premium economy, about 39” leg room and a few extra inches of width.

If I travel long haul personally I will always go business, booked wel in advance. It’s rare enough that the extra cost is worthwhile. Others spend the money on fancy cars instead.

[SilverElfin]

It’s incredibly expensive on international flights, right? A 12 hour flight sounds like something that would cost thousands for business class.

[hdgvhicv]

I consider SV property incredibly expensive but people pay it.

[stevage]

I remember being a high paid techie getting 19 hours of paid work done between Melbourne and New York, on a laptop in economy (and a long layover in LAX due to a storm). It was fricking glorious, most productive day of my life.

[lossyalgo]

How did you run your laptop for 19 hours in economy class without a power plug? Not even M-series MacBooks last that long.

[stevage]

I mentioned the layover in LAX. Also including an hour or two before takeoff.

[pintxo]

Not everyone on here is necessarily from SV?

[bpye]

When I fly transatlantic I don't mind paying to get an exit row or bulkhead seat, but even just premium economy is a much more significant increase in cost over economy, at least flying from Canada.

[cyphar]

Business class flights from Sydney to San Francisco cost A$6k, 6-10x as much as economy. Flights from Sydney to Europe are more like 3-4x (A$7k vs A$2k) but still ludicrously expensive. Good luck convincing your company to expense that for work trips, and most of us don't have SV salaries. Honestly, I still manage to get some work done on long flights, the more annoying thing is flights which don't have power outlets or WiFi.

If you are a point hacker you could spend the points on upgrades (which tend to give you better rates than buying base tickets) but then you're paying for a minor comfort improvement that you wouldn't pay for normally -- which is a textbook example of induced consumption and is playing into exactly how airlines want you to use points.

[bpye]

> flights which don't have power outlets

Or ones which do but the outlets are so loose they are practically useless.

[colechristensen]

The key here is seeing this mentioned and not time traveling forward until 6 AM Saturday morning.

[donw]

Yeah, that's what Factorio is for.

[ssl-3]

Factorio is a game about bird songs.

[playa1]

Sleep is the bottleneck.

[skeltoac]

You won’t get me this time.

[kilroy123]

How did I not ever think to do this? Such a good idea.

[felixthehat]

Yeah civ VI on my iPad with an apple pencil kills flights

[ddp26]

How do you manage the laptop + mouse?

[tfehring]

13" Macbook Air, I rarely use a mouse to begin with. Trans-Pacific flights usually have a few extra inches of legroom compared to domestic flights, so it's not that cramped even in economy (and obviously a non-issue in premium economy or business).

[Gud]

track point

[Der_Einzige]

The total war games are like civilization but with actually good combat. Especially if you get mods like DEI for Rome 2, RTR for Rome 1 remastered, etc. It's regrettable that we let the grimdark warhammer crowd define the series.

The paradox grand strategy games are like civilization but with real agency and at times straight up historical accuracy.

Meanwhile I have to deal with Ghandi actually nuking everyone (the bug is ACTUALLY REAL IN CIV 5, the best modern civ game!). Not sure why Indians aren't mad as hell at the whole series.

[wewtyflakes]

I have found paradox games to have uneven game mechanics; some run miles wide, some of them run deep, and many others are just very superficial, and there is no reliable indication which will be which when you are playing fresh.

[jjmarr]

Check out Terra Invicta.

It's like the modern-era Paradox game you wanted but all the mechanics synergize with each other.

Unfortunately it's a bit too complicated as a result.

[izacus]

There's no better story generators than those games though, even Civs don't quite compare.

[chongli]

I've put a lot of time into the Total War series. My favourite is probably Shogun 2. I will say that the combat is quite fun at first but once you learn ranged combat, artillery, and the "sweet spot" it falls apart.

Gets to the point where only defensive battles are any fun at all. Attacking just means you sweet spot your way to a flawless victory.

This exploit seems to be present in every TW game I've played, including Rome 2. It's totally ruined the series for me.

[mikeaskew4]

There goes my weekend…