Roseluck
also there’s no one for me to ship on Equus
(all subjective here, you know the drill, and spoiler tags just in case)
So I’ve been playing Equestria at War since Christmas.
At first I expected I’d never bother with Griffonia since it’s 100% made up (save for Griffonstone) and I was only interested in playing the Crystal Empire. I use only the crystal ponies from Stellaris’ MLP mod, after all.
Predictably enough, because life is irony, now I’m having fun in Griffonia (yeah, you’re gonna see River Swirl fanart from me) I’d rather never go back to Equus. Not because the Crystal Empire’s ‘story tree’ is outdated to the point of being boring (at least if you don’t go down… another path), oh no. Even if the devs updated the country beyond my wildest dreams, it wouldn’t be fun for me to play because of everything else on Equus.
It’s not even just the Great War between the changelings and Equestria, though I do consider it the albatross around the setting’s neck for reasons I won’t delve into. It’s also that there’s so very few countries on the continent, and they’re (almost) all so big, that there’s next to no variety compared to the many smaller nations in Griffonia. The only variety comes if Equestria breaks down in a civil war, which isn’t guaranteed to happen.
I feel railroaded when I play the Crystal Empire. Always prepare for the Great War, unless Chrysalis somehow gets ousted. Either way, because there’s only the yaks to the north and not!sovietland to the east when it comes to NOT punching lightyears out of my league, the steps are always the same.
Knock out the yaks, then the polar bears and penguins (who’re so weak they basically only exist as free real estate for the REAL countries), then Nova Griffonia, with Stalliongrad somewhere in-between because they’re also out of my inexperienced league from the start. Basically, the railroad tracks always go north-west.
Then, after that, changelings, deer and finally Equestria. Whether they’re still united or are going through a civil war… did I mention that a lot of content for the Crystal Empire’s story tree comes from being puppeted by either of the two big sides? Yeah.
It’s actually more fun (for me) to just ignore the big three and invade the other continent through Nova Griffonia. Which is what I did AS Nova Griffonia, incidentally.
I still love the mod, a MLP strategy game was something I wanted for years, but I’m gonna stay in Griffonia for a while… And in Zebrica when it shows up.