Ah so that's the fourth one, thank you. I couldn't remember but I knew it was based on Ancient China. What a wonderful period in history that is not explored as much as many others. And it looks like the request has many votes! If you've not voted on it yet, I suggest you do so, fellow city-building fan:).

Thanks for the link, mate. Yes, I'd added my own vote a short while back, but it's good to see the numbers are also still growing. It'd be great if GOG could make this happen, or if not, perhaps post a message like "Give it up, folks, it ain't gonna happen." Something, anyway. It frustrates me that customer communication on GOG is generally a one-way street.

I'm having a great time wih the citybuilders - there are a lot of game genres I'm simply crap at, so it's nice to find one I can actually play. ;-) I'd love to have seen a Central American/Andean version, or a Celtic/Norse one. (I wonder if there'd be much interest in getting an open source one going, based on a similar engine to, say, Pharaoh?)

Ain't it the truth? It's like Tolkien meets Neuromancer (with a dash of China Mieville). I'm almost to the end of Dragonfall-director's cut and I've loved it all the way. This and Conquistador are the best written games around for my money.

Yes, cyberpunk worlds are my favorite, and I also like fantasy themes about magic, elves and stuff. Shadowrun blends it together with such taste and elegance. And this grim noire atmosphere fits perfectly for Sam Watts' murder investigation.

Actually I finished both Shadorun [Returns] campaigns and start over with differently skilled character and on extra hard. Oh it is so much fun now to play.

Never heard of Conquistador, how good is it?

Well, it's turn-based combat set in the 16th c. You play an adventurer landing first in Hispaniola then progressing on to Mexico. You can play it different ways: hard-assed conqueror or tolerant diplomat. As you wander about you have to make camp each night, making sure you have enough soldiers on guard duty, patrolling, or hunting depending on the terrain. The combat is fun, not as fun as Shadowrun (that would be asking a lot) but enjoyable none the less.
The background for the characters is what really stands out. They all have different traits and will react differently to your actions depending on their personalities. For example, if you are open-minded about native customs your more pious characters will get upset.
Of course the game does take some liberties with history, which is fine by me; I honestly wouldn't want to role play Cortez. You can play either as a man or a woman and the gender split is about 50-50 as far as available party members go.

I started playing X-Com (OpenXCom) yesterday evening around 8pm or so. When I next checked the clock whether I should maybe go sleep already... it was 4:15am. Nice! :)

So I got little over three hours of sleep last night, luckily coffee seems to keep me going at work.

Yes, I see now X-Com can indeed be addicting, just wanting to see a few more finished researches, or wanting to capture a few more aliens... For some reason I lost China and later also India to aliens (they made a pact with aliens), so now I am thinking whether I should load an older save game in order to make a sixth base somewhere in the China/India area...

And I was doing so good otherwise already, I already had an Avenger ship with plasma cannons with 14 PSI-resistant soldiers with Flying Suits and Heavy Plasma rifles + lots of stun bombs, and my four bases were already building four Plasma Defences, Wave Decoders, Anti Grav defences etc. And then out of nowhere, it says in the monthly report (which was rated excellent BTW) that China has made a pact with aliens. Daaamn. And later the same happened also to India.

I presume you can't get a country back if it makes a pact with aliens, right? What determines whether a country makes a pact, ie. how can you prevent that? China and India were a bit in the shadow between my bases, which are located in US, southern Europe, Australia and South Pole (because there is one alien base there which I am milking for Elerium).

You can't get them back no, and from what I've read there isn't much you can do stop infiltration missions either. Infiltration missions involve a whole range of ships, and by shooting these down you can only temporarily delay the infiltration mission. Infiltration missions are preceded by scouts from what I know, so perhaps shooting these down will help. I'm not sure whether an alien infiltration mission can actually fail. In my last game I used to get quite good ratings most months, and I got pretty far without losing a funding nation (though, come to think of it, that was in TFTD).

Luckily by midgame you don't really need nation funding anymore and create more than enough funds by selling captured and manufactured equipment.

Trying to finish one more game of Civilization 3, but this time at emperor difficulty. Going well so far. The world, except China, stands united against the Celts and conquest for world domination. Luckily they don't seem to have oil, which is what sparked the war when they demanded it from me. So now it's battleships against galleons >:D

I've never played the full version of AOE3 (I've been itching to buy it), but what you just described sounds like so many of my past experiences playing RTS games. AOK's campaigns gave me a lot of headaches, and just thinking back to such maps as "Into China" and "The Horns of Hattin" gives me minor PTSD. Getting attacked all over the map, villagers dying in droves before I can respond, and enemy siege units causing havoc right outside my field of vision - all while the "you're being attacked" fanfare is going nuts. I had too much of an ego to lower the difficulty back then, and I suspect that won't change anytime soon.