First impression is that I’m drinking from a firehose.

I started a game as Rome, cause you know, Rome rules.  The game looks and sounds good, though not a whole lot different than Civ V.  Sean Bean’s narration is a nice addition mind you.  The overall presentation is fairly solid, though a few of the menus aren’t terribly intuitive.  Research/Civics selection menu is slightly too big for my tastes, as it’s hard to see the relation between all the items.  Selecting a city can be confusing in all the options/buttons.  Backing out of menus isn’t done with ESC most of the time, but with an on-screen button.  These little UI tweaks are more of an annoyance as compared to the rest.

The core systems work mind you, and are quite intertwined.  Builders and Settlers work very similar to before.  Roads provide some benefit (Rome rules).  Merchants travel for trade.  Emissaries are in for city states.  Still confused as to how I can deal with other nations with only a few clicks.  There’s a lot of “I want to do this, but I need to do this, and this, and this first”, which is both cool but also frustrating.

Combat is a good example.  With 6 nations on the map, I know that a military way forward is going to be required earlier rather than later.  To that end, I went down the military route and had catapults, bowmen and legion up fairly early.  Taking down the Barbarians is fairly easy, including their little towns.  I figured I was ready to take down a city state.

I was wrong.  Even with 3 catapults, 3 bowmen, 2 legions and a great general, it took nearly 10 turns to take down the city.  And it was the weakest city, only at rank 3.  I saved before hand, to be able to go back and apply what I learned. And what I learned is that an early military attack doesn’t make sense unless you dramatically outnumber the opponent.  I was nearly 2 ages above my opponent and it wasn’t enough.

I’m going to have to rethink my strategy.  It’s a fun game, but when I hit that hurdle, I shut down for the night.  That is honestly the first time I shut down a new Civ game.  Not sure how to read that…

WoW

The Rogue’s class quest requires a run through Maw of Souls and Black Rook Hold.  DPS queues are 30 minutes.  My DH tank is under 2 minutes, my Monk healer is instant.  So doing it as DPS, not so much fun.  I’m on the “5x 12 hour quests” phase now.

Now that I hit 110 with him, I have zero interest in doing group content with him.  If I could assign a negative number, I would.  I like the Rogue, sure.  Outlaw has it’s nice perks when you get a solid roll.  It just pales in comparison to playing a tank or a healer, and my time is much better invested both of those rather than another alt.  I’ll keep the artifact research going mind you, maybe come back to it near the holidays.

Speaking of holidays, I’m on 15 runs of the Headless Horseman without a mount this year.  That’s on top of the ~50 runs over the years.  Luck is not on my side.