ping

We can ban them Just for one day We could be BANNED Just for one day Ground Control to Major Wraith Your account's banned, there's something wrong Can you hear me, Major Wraith?

Banned for not mentioning YGOTAS. In America. Ooooooooo, Wraithyboyyyy~

It's only real AC if small numbers are better! *yells at cloud* Ignore that my only actual P&P roleplay experience was with a system that was only developed because a big German boardgame publisher didn't want to cough up the licencing fees for DnD

"Armour Class", I believe. Didn't know that the Observer was an oldschool DnD player.

While ðe idea seems very good, ðe usage of ðis accursed symbol of oppreshin makes me wonder how serious ðe faiþfulness is regarding ðe cause.

What hypocrisy: By banning for mentioning Cold Steel, he mentioned Cold Steel himself, yet he refused to follow up with a self-ban! How despicable! BANNED!

In Civilization V, there's a fair number of ways to boost a city's food output, which directly translates into population growth. Most percentage-based boosts apply to the food surplus, i.e. food produced minus food eaten by the already existing population, with only two sources applying their bonus to the entire food production: The Temple of Artemis, a world wonder, and the Aztec's unique building, the Floating Gardens. Interestingly, the Gardens are actually stronger than the Temple - +15% instead of +10%. This technicality in itself isn't particularly interesting, but it leads to an unexpected "best playstyle" for the Aztecs, who in the hands of the AI are one of the most aggressive civs around. Because in Civ5, additional cities reduce how large you can grow each individual city, going around conquering your neighbors directly strangles the Aztec's biggest strength, the ability to have their cities grow faster than any other civ. A 15% bonus might not sound that impressive, but it has a great impact on the "produced minus consumed" difference dictating population growth. In an ideal Aztec game, you happily sit on your four core cities, teching up and winning the game that way. Now, they do get something out of warfare - namely, killing enemy units provides them with a bit of culture gain - but the prudent way to go about warfare is to sit back, kill whatever the enemy sends at you, and not to bother capturing any cities.

Yeah, Poland is great fun for that precise reason. Tourism game? Getting through Aesthetics without sacrificing tech, great. You got a (good) own religion? Full piety is pretty neat. Full Commerce is also very nice to have. The ability to always open Rationalism the turn you reach Renaissance isn't too shabby either. Huh, interesting. I don't think I've ever heard about the possible Crowley connotation.

Yeah, but the Inca in such a mountainous environment are just not fair Nevermind that this is the Inca in such a mountainous environment with the Temple of Artemis, which is an ungodly amount of growth. A 40-pop capital is really great; the same 40-pop cap plus four expands that are all as big as the AI's capitals is insane. ...have I mentioned that I really like the Inca? Poland's seven free world wonders (an admittedly slightly overly dramatic way of describing their free policies, but the Oracle is a fairly decent wonder to build) or NebuCHADnezzar's super early free Great Scientist are great and all, but there's something about the food and production yields that an Incan city in a good neighborhood can get. Hmmm... wasn't "Safer Sephiroth" a mistranslation (gee whiz, a translation error in FF7? What are the odds!) that should've been "Seraphim Sephiroth"? If so, we need a silly distortion of "Devil Sephiroth". "Debile Sephiroth"? "Defo Sephiroth"? "Deffi Sephi"?

Since I've been reading up on Baldur's Gate stuff over the last couple weeks or months, here's a selection of BG2 quotes that most likely won't come up in my LP even if I carry on to the sequel... [It probably won't surprise you that (a) most of those are just short snippets of much, much longer dialogues, and (b) Jan is a fairly love-him-or-hate-him character]

As a small addition to support this, Shinon and Gatrie leaving the company, and the former being reported to "explode" at the news, also shows that Ike inheriting Greil's leadership position wasn't taken for granted by everybody. Titania was informed beforehand, Soren seems to have assumed it (although he might be rather biased in favour of Ike), the bros accept it because they consider the group family. One could argue that Greil thinks that Ike is incredibly talented at this whole "leadership" thingie and that he didn't set up Titania as a (at least) transitory leader because he didn't expect to bite the bullet so soon, I guess. But the point still stands that Ike becomes the group's leader because his dad wills it so, and wills it so without Ike having done anything to deserve that merit. -- I think it should be mentioned that the idea that the main lord is "of special blood" has been established in the series since the very first game. Marthipan is the only person capable of wielding Falchion. Plus, only his sister (extended to some additional princesses in the remakes) can use the Aum staff, reinforcing the point that there's something innately exceptional about any royal. I have no reason to doubt OP that Alm has only really gained his super-mega-specialness in Echoes, but then Geneology comes and brings back the "nobles are of special blood" trope back with force.

Finally a win on Immortal Although "Inca on Highlands map script" might count as cheating. I was also kinda lucky that my second-closest neighbor, China (the green civ) ended up in a perma-war against Venice - not entirely sure why, although I'd speculate that China didn't want to peace out because they were at a massive army advantage, but couldn't use it because I didn't let them through my lands, which means that Venice was pretty darn impossible to reach. In any case, that allowed me to be fairly greedy with not building a ton of military without getting murdered like I usually get on this difficulty. Lategame timings weren't perfect I guess...? Could've started bulbing Great Scientists a bit earlier (had 3 or 4 left after getting the last necessary tech; can't remember how the cost to faith-buy them increases exactly), could've started a permanent golden age earlier (22 "wasted" turns, considering that I still have a Great Artist left). Money worked out pretty well though, allowing me to buy the last remaining spaceship parts immediately after researching Particle Physics. Still, quite happy with this game.

Well, oðer languages are plain silly. For example, German somehow made ðe "V" pronunciantion (see? Anoðer alleged "T" which is half of a "SH" sound) ambiguous wiþ boþ being covered already: by ðe "F" or by ðe "W". Answer me ðis: would you listen (ANOÐER "T" which is unpronounced) when ðis kind of language offers advice?

Ðis is very easily proven wiþ 2 obvious pieces of evidence: 'Muricans revel in making fun of ðe "Bri'ish" (clearly, ðere is only one manner of speaking in ðe whole UK. Ðey do so while calling ðem "ðe Briddish" ðemselves. Easily, one can deduce: ðere is akshually no "T" on eiðer side of ðe ocean. Auþors of reading primers came up wiþ all ðis wiþ one goal: Make ðe English language more complex (by a miniscule margin), and even more weird. I hereby call upon every Englishman and 'Murican: Rise up versus ðis Tyranny!

The German word for a hammock, 'Hängematte', is a funny little piece of etymology. The word can easily be read as "hanging mat", but it has the same origin as the English term: Hamáka, which is what Caribbean natives called it. The vile slaver Christopher Columbus initially brought the word to Europe, and as early as 1529, it had migrated to Germany as 'Hamaco' or 'Hamach' (ch as in Loch Ness). But because those words sounded unfamiliar to German ears, it then shifted to the coincidentally very fitting compound word.

Maybe the most successful pirate of all time was Zheng Yi Sao, a Chinese woman who effectively commanded the Guangdong Pirate Confederation between 1807 and 1810. The confederation was forged by her husband Zheng Yi in 1805, and after his death in 1807, Zheng Yi's adoptive son Zhang Bao ('adopted' in a Garon-esque sense, although the kid was already 15 years old at the time) officially took over, while factually deferring to Zheng Yi Sao. According to Wikipedia, the Confederation in 1805 numbered 40-60k pirates and 400 ships in total, with Zheng Yi Sao commanding 1433 pirates and 24 ships personally (although that number is from 1810). In 1810, the pirates negotiated a surrender to the Qing rulers, but from a sufficiently powerful position that allowed them not only to achieve a total amnesty, but also a payment in pork, wine, and money for the grunts, as well as a lieutenant rank in the Chinese military and personal command over a small fleet for Zhang Bao. It also allowed Zheng Yi Sao and Zhang Bao to officially marry - they had been in a relationship since Zheng Yi's death, but as Zheng Yi's wife, Zheng Yi Sao was legally considered to be Zhang Bao's adoptive mother, which was annulled after these events. The whole affair isn't quite as gross as it probably seems, by the way - Zhang Bao had already been 18 years old when Zheng Yi Sao and Zheng Yi had married. Anyway - Zhang Bao died twelve years later, after which Zheng Yi Sao lived a peaceful life as the owner of a gambling house.

Great Library on Emperor is a gamble, but it can work out if you're lucky. In this case, I got only one settler before building it, hoping that the spot to the left wouldn't get taken by Babylon. It helped that they took their first expo elsewhere, which iirc went down before I started Great Library. Used the Library to bulb Mathematics, researched Currency before Philosophy. As the Dutch, entering Medieval with Guilds isn't too bad anyway (I normally go Civil Service, then Theology, or vice versa if I want to go for Borobodur/Hagia) because that's the prerequisite for Polders. Stonehenge just happens to not be taken when I had finished Petra (775 BC) and the National College(550 BC). Guess none of the civs were particularly religion-focused. Notre and Chichen... well, at that point, I've been having an awesome science game. I'm actually not sure if a fourth city would've been helpful. There wasn't any great spots left (in particular none at a river), so unless I would've tried to conquer Persepolis, it wouldn't have added all that much. Oy. That's a "6" in the difficulty setting right there.

Marie Antoinette, queen of France, caught a lot of public ire a couple years before the French Revolution started thanks to an affair that she had nothing to do with. Basically, a con artist (the Comptesse de la Motte) tricked Cardinal de Rohan by promising him to arrange a correspondence with the queen and then faking her replies, in a tone that suggested that Marie Antoinette had fallen in love with the cardinal. To top it off, when the cardinal pleaded for a personal meeting, the Comptesse hired a lookalike to pose as the queen during a nightly meeting in the gardens of Versailles. After conning the cardinal out of some money "for charity work done by the queen", de la Motte then presented a letter in which the queen asked de Rohan to act as an intermediary for the purchase of an incredibly valuable diamond necklace, one that had been offered to and refused by the queen prior to this whole affair. The jewelers assumed that the queen would pay them later, and de Rohan assumed that the man fetching the necklace was a servant of the queen, the husband of the Comptesse smuggled to necklace to London in order to sell its diamonds. Unfortunately for the queen (and, really, the entire royal court, given what's to come), despite the entire fraud being more or less exposed in its entirety, everybody assumed that the whole thing was actually an intrigue with the queen at its center: It was well-known that she actually couldn't stand the cardinal, so people thought that she had been using the Comptesse to ruin his reputation. De Rohan was acquitted by the parliament but still stripped by the king of his abbey and some honours he had received, which reinforced that notion.

Highest population in the world with only three cities. Polders are fun.

True, but Order's happiness comes more quickly and, as you said, with fewer otherwise useless buildings. Monument happiness is guaranteed +2 happiness in every city (if the monument in a captured city is destroyed, it's super cheap to rebuy), while Arsenals and Military Bases for Autocracy's Lv.1 happiness tenet are something that I hardly ever build. Even with the tenet, that's a lot of hammers for just +1 happiness each. Young Pioneers is also basically guaranteed +2 happiness in your core cities, and buying a Workshop in conquered cities isn't too expensive, either, so +1 there is pretty much a given, too. This frontloadedness gives you more freedom to go for economic tenets, I find. Worker's Faculties and Five-Year Plan are both really nice. It's not as if you don't need science and hammers while you're warmongering.

BEHOLD! Wraith's greatest fear: Order is excellent for domination, honestly. You get a lot of happiness from the Lv.1 tenets, which I personally value higher than Autocracy's direct warfare bonuses. (Plus, I don't like playing as the nazis out of principle)

ftfy Mmm, cookies.

On that sad day, I'd still be more articulate than that wheezing husk

Well...