Gormongous

It's generally agreed on the Reddit, Steam, and PS4 forums that there's some scaling in terms of patrol density and alarm spawns, but no one knows the exact details or is able to test it. There's also a general sense that killing some of a patrol before the alarm is sounded and killing all of a patrol before the alarm is finished reduces the subsequent spawns, but that is also not fully understood.

Yes! I try to 'dive every night and it's great fun.

Empire at War is good on its own, but mods (which probably took inspiration from Star Wars: Rebellion) made it great by including more ship types, more characters, and better interactions on the strategic layer. As for the RTS layer, the space battles are fun and cinematic, but the ground battles are boring and floaty. It's hard to believe that the two came from the same developer.

This is a bit of a generalized comment, but the part of me that loves irony in its truest definition has gotten a kick out of the people who cheered the death of the old Expanded Universe canon — because they felt that it involved too many retreads of the original trilogy's plot structure, too many uses of the original trilogy's characters as lynchpins and/or MacGuffins, and too many superweapons that functioned only to raise the stakes and to be destroyed — absolutely losing their minds at how much they love The Force Awakens... which could be said to have all of those same faults.

I think, for me, the issue with "spoiler culture" in a nutshell is that you articulate this concept as a "right" (meaning, I think, that it's up to others not to transgress it with you) instead of a "freedom" (meaning that it's up to you not to let others transgress it). The frustrations that I often see expressed towards aggressively (rather than just preferentially) spoiler-adverse people is that others didn't properly protect them from the natural consequences of their own actions (for instance, reading a movie-themed thread on a forum or an article about a specific film after said film's release date), which they blame that on everyone but themselves. Very rarely do I see someone just bust out an out-of-nowhere spoiler that has no context in the discussion and, though it means nothing to me nine times out of ten, I can understand expressing some irritation about that. However, the usual situation, and the one for which I find it difficult to feel sympathy, is someone listening to an episode of Idle Thumbs where Metal Gear Solid V is explicitly listed about a topic of discussion and then complaining that they were spoiled about... well, anything from that game. Why did you listen if you weren't prepared to hear something? The reasonable series of actions to take, if you don't want to be spoiled on a work, is to avoid any potential source of spoilers, no matter how unlikely, and mark them down for consumption after you're done with the work itself. People who expect critics, fans, and the internet at large To broaden my point a little, I don't think that "spoiler culture" as an ideal is particularly a problem, but the most fanatical members of any culture tend to be the ones that determine its public impact, and those people with "spoiler culture" are the ones who regularly wrote into the Quarter to Three movie podcast, which discusses one new movie in depth per week, complaining that they spoil the movie when they talk about it, prompting Tom Chick et al. to make ever-more-clear warnings that this podcast about Sicario will spoil Sicario. That is, the most vocal proponents of "spoiler culture" have taken an extreme position about what is a spoiler and expect critics, fans, bloggers, and the internet as a whole to cater to that position in any manner of discussion whatsoever. I find that immensely disheartening, just in itself, in addition to my problems with the theoretical premises of hardcore spoiler-adverse people that a state of total ignorance is the ideal state for artistic appreciation of a work and should be actively encouraged and that the fundamental action of the plot is what a work is "about."

Cordeos has the right of it, Nick. The vast majority of the DLC for Crusader Kings 2 is simply the cosmetic addition of music, portraits, and unit models. The ten larger and more substantive DLC entries generally enable different religions/cultures than Latin/Orthodox Christianity and different start dates from 1066 and after, without affecting gameplay otherwise. To be honest, none of them are as good as the base experience of a Latin Christian lord in the High Middle Ages, so the only "essential" DLCs are Legacy of Rome (for professional standing armies called "retinues"), Sons of Abraham (for the massive addition of events for Catholicism), and Way of Life (for more events and the "lifestyle focus" mechanic). Personally, I love when Nick talks about CK2 because I know the game well enough to see the cheats that Nick's memory has made with the narrative. France does not start out as an elective monarchy, which is what Nick describes when he talks about the count/duke of Anjou being next in line for the throne, so it's clear that there was a faction revolt against France's law of primogeniture succession (probably owing to the minority of Philip I, an unhistorical sticking point for the AI due to the mechanics of reign duration and regencies). Actually, I wonder if Nick was elected King of France (rather than inheriting the title) because his wealth and power as King of England made him a desirable candidate and because he was still eligible for the crown through his possession of the duchy of Normandy... Anyway, the Aztec invasion triggered by the Sunset Invasion DLC (to be frank, Paradox's only "bad" DLC for CK2 because of its unhistorical gameplay and silly writing) only happens between 1250 or 1350, rather than a generation after 1066, so there are maybe a hundred and fifty years that Nick has skipped at some point in his story... It's also difficult to recommend starting points for CK2. Paradox's default recommendations tend to be the rulers at a given point with the most power to have influenced history, rather than the most interesting scenarios to play out. As Chris points out, everyone recommends Ireland in 1066 as a starting point because you lack the power to make any mistakes that'll really ruin your game. For an experienced player, the problem is to find a lord with enough power that you don't have to spend the first generation or two waiting and watching, but also not have so much power that you're immediately body-slamming all your neighbors to death (I'm looking at you, HRE, you're the biggest disappointment of all). Between my professional studies and my time in the game, I feel like the most interesting starts for 1066 are: King Boreslaw the Bold of Poland. You hold a self-contained kingdom that is relatively stable if not wealthy. You have all the pagan lands to the north and east available for expansion, but first you have to deal with your brother, the duke of Mazovia, who holds the richer half of your kingdom and is next in line for the crown. King Svend of Denmark. Another self-contained kingdom. Norway will be occupied for the next fifty years with the struggle for England, whereas Sweden will be occupied by the inevitable revolt of Erik the Heathen, duke of Uppland. The Holy Roman Empire will come calling for Holstein once it's done depriving France of the Low Countries, but that's enough time to get some powerful alliances and possibly pick up some Baltic lands to fund a larger army, so long as your bastard son, the duke of Jylland, doesn't get in the way. Any of the five German stem duchies, especially Duke Otto of Bavaria. All of these duchies are able to expand within the empire and keep it weak in order to make themselves strong, but the crown of Bavaria is within especially easy reach of the duke of Bavaria if you can conquer Carinthia. Once you're big enough, the decision is whether to break free of the empire, probably crippling it for the rest of the game, or become emperor yourself and use your numerous personal holdings to make a truly powerful empire. The kings of Castile, León, or Galicia. Any of the three is heir to the two others. Kill your siblings or work with them in an alliance to capture the entirety of the Iberian peninsula, then look to France or Morocco for a greater empire. Duke Guilhèm of Aquitaine. You hold three duchies and own the counties for two more. That's as many as the rest of France combined. Philip of France, the boy-king, is your liege but has no de jure power over you, so it's up to you to become kingmaker in the still-new kingdom of France or to break away and become your own king of Aquitaine, to expand into the fragmented lands of the crowns of Aragon and Burgundy. The only problem? You're forty-one years old, with a wife of thirty-two, and your only heir is your seven-year-old daughter Ainès. Duchess Matilda of Tuscany. You own a third of the extremely rich crown of Italy, but you are a woman in a time when being a woman was even worse than being a priest or a commoner. A prudent matrilineal marriage with a talented son low in the line of succession of some other title will allow you to annex the surrounding bishoprics and towns, maybe even the weakened duchy of Lombardy, and give your son (or daughter, if you want to keep the streak going) a crown for his baptismal gift. Duke Boso of Provence. Of all the lords in the fragmented crown of Burgundy, you're the best positioned to unite them. You hold two duchies, but you have a different culture from your liege the Holy Roman Emperor, making him likely to take notice in a way that he wouldn't with the stem dukes of Germany proper. Expand slowly and marry wisely, so that you can become king without the emperor coming for your titles — or so that, when he does come, you can fight back! I won't be online for most of the holiday season, since I'm taking a break from the internet in general and the forums in particular for the holidays, but once the new year comes, my offer in the Random Thoughts about Video Games thread, to be a helpline via voice chat for a new player streaming their CK2 game, still stands. Ninety-Three and I tried multiplayer, which was workable but not great for the tendency of him to ask, "What's this button do?" and for me to answer, "What button?" and for us to spend the next five minutes trying to get on the same page. A stream would be so much easier! I also agree that Europa Universalis 4 seems like a game that's more Nick's jam. As opposed to Crusader Kings 2, which is all about the individual and the family as vessels for power in the Middle Ages, EU4 makes the state itself, expressed in CK2 as a gestalt made out of the personal possessions of multiple people, the fundamental vessel for power. Therefore, EU4 is much more forgiving than CK2 when the player chooses to act against their perceived enemies, because there's not the concept in the former's systems of the state as a heterogeneous entity that needs to balance the interests of multiple people. You can just attack the person who threatens you without the worry that the person threatening you works for you and therefore you have no basis to attack them, regardless of how they feel about you.

Where was the real-world complexity missing in my actual posts, or are you just going to come in and arbitrate the contents of this entire discussion in generalities? Bjorn, Jenna, and I all specifically argued against a magical ethnic character to native cuisine, instead focusing on complexities of cultural background and the erasure of identities. Disagreeing with us by saying that shit is even more complex than the complexity that we already described is not a thesis about anything. It's a thought-terminating cliche meant to preclude further discussion by painting it as too difficult. That's intellectual dishonesty, in my experience. And I'll thank you not to psychoanalyze me over the internet. That's cheap and ugly to do. Engage the specifics of what I actually say, rather than impugning my motives for saying them.. is what I'd say if I ever was going to post in this awful clusterfuck of a thread again.

I think I'm done with this thread for good, honestly. It is constantly full of concern trolls worried about making white people unhappy if we ask too much of them without giving them a lollipop for being decent human beings otherwise, not to mention accusations that I'm writing something off entirely if I point out that any part of it is problematic. I shouldn't have to post Sarkeesian's disclaimer for Feminist Frequency, but maybe I should. I don't know, I know this shit is hard. I'm white, straight, male, and well-educated if on the poorer end of the socioeconomic scale. I grew up with a lot of problematic shit and only came to feminism late in my mid-twenties and still make mistakes, but I try and so I have varying levels of patience for those who don't. I know, that's my bad, and I probably ought to be better. Also, I really just don't know how to participate in a conversation where I say that culture is complex and you can't really discount a variety of contextual factors rather than just skill in preparing traditional or national cuisines, like many people do when discussing food and its preparation, and in turn I get obliquely accused of "infantilizing" and "magical" attitudes towards other cultures for... I don't know why. I was under the impression that food is one of the few clear-cut areas where gentrified appropriation actively harms minorities' economic opportunities and societal visibility, but apparently that's just how the world works and I shouldn't raise a fuss about it. Sorry for that, too, I guess.

The entire premise of social justice is that white (or straight or male) people have done shitty stuff in the past and need to be more mindful around other cultures and subcultures, now having knowledge and awareness of that, and also to be mindful that it's impossible not to act harmfully with the privilege that one has. We live in an oppressive society, meaning that partaking in that society oppresses certain other peoples and identities. You don't have to accept that premise, if you don't want to accept it or if you think it asks too much of you, but I don't really know why you're posting in the Social Justice thread then. Not that opposing views aren't welcome, but this forum also doesn't really see much of people posting in the Feminism thread with comments about really liking boobies in media and it being inconvenient for them not to be able to say so.

I'm not asking for it to "stand up" to anything. I'm saying that, in a world where China was literally partitioned between Western powers, its people drugged with opium, and its resources exported to fuel non-Chinese industries, there's a more complex and more troubling dynamic to non-Chinese people making Chinese food and it still being considered just as Chinese. The rest of your post is interesting, but I think the evolution and fusion of native cuisines is a sharply different process from white people making the food of (and profit from the food of) people of color, right? Also, taking both Japan and Italy as examples is... odd? One modernized in the late nineteenth century and then was functionally destroyed and rebuilt in the 1940s, the other unified in the mid-nineteenth century and was also functionally destroyed and rebuilt in the 1940s. I'm sure that makes them poor examples for how cuisine "naturally" evolves, even though war is, of course, natural.

Weird, but not the same. It's not like French cuisine and its practitioners have been denigrated for centuries, first as the food of less-than-human minorities, then as "trashy" food for poorer people, then as "exotic" food for everyone.

I think that's a point of nuance, though, and the problematic argument that I hear much more often is that the raw skill of the chef (and not also their background, their identity, their community, and their surroundings) is what determines the deliciousness of a certain dish, regardless of its culture of origin. That attitude is very entrenched, it seems to me, and probably stems from the globalization/populization of "high" cuisine starting in the 1960s and 1970s. I definitely see how it could be frustrating (even infuriating) to a lot of minority communities for a variety of reasons, especially when the assumption that a talented white chef can take a class on sushi and be the next Ono Jiro makes said white chef a ton of money. It's the Social Justice thread. There's no participation without regret, which makes me wonder why I appear so often in it. Probably because I hate myself?

I've found that people, particularly white people, are weirdly defensive about the supposedly apolitical and egalitarian nature of food and its preparation. It's taken as given that speaking a foreign language properly, learning a craft skill native to a foreign culture, or learning a foreign discipline of academic study requires some basic familiarity with that foreign culture to approach competency and a deep knowledge of it to achieve mastery. However, even the oblique suggestion that someone who grew up seeing, eating, and cooking a dish in the culture that spawned it has some advantage over... well, anyone else in making and/or appreciating it gets everyone up in arms that food belongs to the world and that culture should be proud that other (white) people even give a shit about it.

Yeah, that's the funny thing about SNAFU. It's not good, not really, but it's subtly different in the way it structures its interpersonal relationships and emotional arcs that makes it weirdly intriguing to anyone steeped in the rom-com genre of anime. As to what exactly is "inscrutable" about SNAFU, it's not really the characters' general motivations, which are obvious and largely essential in their depiction. It's more their specific motivations in a given scenario and how those motivations affect their subsequent behavior. For example, a freshman girl comes to the Volunteer Club for help getting out of a "prank" that her friends have played on her by nominating her in a no-contest race for student council president. Hikigaya, who is self-hating after years of social isolation and sees acceptance of his own self-hate as a superpower, immediately volunteers to give a terrible endorsement speech that'll turn everyone off of the unwilling candidate without the embarrassment of her having to reject her own nomination. Yukino and Yui dislike this, because they are each nurturing a quiet love for Hikigaya and are tired of seeing him hurt and humiliate himself, so Yukino rejects Hikigaya's plan and proposes that she run for president against the freshman. Since Yukino is an intelligent and respected girl who has been looking for ways to "perfect" herself in the image of her talented older sister, in order to please her family, this also makes sense, but Yui freaks out, thinking that Yukino becoming president will mean the end of the club and her own return to social isolation... so Yui decides to run for president, too? Neither of them seem particularly happy about their candidacy, but maintain that each are the best solution to the problem. And then Hikigaya, looking for a way to make everyone happy, forges a petition that convinces the freshman that she has widespread support in the school and tells her a bundle of lies to make her believe that being president will be fun and easy. She decides to take the job, Hikigaya informs Yukino and Yui, and everyone's just kinda... disappointed, maybe even a little angry at him? Not for tricking their erstwhile client (they seem to regard Hikigaya's actions as the "ideal" solution) but for preempting their own plans with his tricks. Yukino makes a little sense. Other characters talk about Hikigaya robbing her of a purpose by acting how he did, but surely Yukino doesn't need some flimsy pretext to run for president if she actually wants it. Still, she becomes almost catatonic in later episodes as she wrestles with this "lack of purpose" and dealing with it turns out to be the final arc of the second season's plot. Meanwhile, Yui is also estranged from him for... reasons? I don't know. And Hikigaya won't apologize because... reasons? I don't know. He's never been slow to apologize before, albeit in an impressively grudging way, but now suddenly he's troubled enough to ask his little sister for advice about women and yet not troubled enough to take direct action. I guess taking indirect action is more his character, but... You get the idea. The general motivations and dramatic situations are presented in fairly plain fashion, but it's way too easy to lose the thread of the specifics, not least because the characters by design are unforthcoming about why they feel and act the way they do. That's actually what makes the end feel weirdly unsatisfying, even though I like its refusal to play into "love conquers all," because the group's decision is to trust each other to try and become friends with who they all really are, as opposed to who they want to be or who they think others want them to be, and that seemed like... what they had already been doing, the whole show? That's a general problem with anime, though — characters who act like friends often insist they aren't friends until some plot point gives them the opportunity for a formal declaration of friendship. Maybe it's a thing with Japanese social mores? I don't know. Penguindrum is such an odd bird. I agree, with you, that there are a bunch of strong and interesting elements that don't seem to cohere at all, as if there are too many ingredients in the stew throwing off the taste. My conclusion was that Ikuhara had way too many leftover ideas lying around from Utena and lacked the confidence to pare the list down into something more consonant with itself. Still, when I was researching the anime for my OP project, I came across a series for critical posts (for instance, on the symbology of fate and on the historical outlook) that suggested to me a deeper meaning. Maybe one is there, but Yuri Kuma Arashi reaffirms me in my belief that Ikuhara's juice is just less than it has been before.

Yeah, I grew up in Texas hating Mexican food (before my time abroad in college made me ravenous for it) and I never had a problem with being forced to eat it, except when my mother would inexplicably make "Mexican Treat" (read, "cornbread casserole with salsa instead of tomato sauce") in defiance of my hatred.

I will say, however, that it runs flawlessly and my six-year-old computer handles it with absolutely no strain whatsoever.

Well, I was also kicked from a couple of difficulty 9 games last night, one for my level being below eighteen and another for dropping in with a laser weapon. People are just shit sometimes, maybe we can try it tonight!

Although I know most of us are in and out with Arthur Chu, he penned a really good article pointing out that Donald Trump is more Henry Ford than Adolf Hitler (and that that's maybe worse for the US).

I don't know why people complain about overuse of words on a podcast, unless it's genuinely stifling discussion. Sometimes, someone on the Idle Thumbs podcast says something is "interesting" as a means of precluding further analysis, but Chris saying that something is interesting because of something else is not remotely a problem. Maybe it's that same guy who complained that the Thumbs tell too many jokes and then laugh at them too much, what a grouch... It seems to me that every Breckon episode these days Breckons more than the one before it. Breckoner and Breckoner...

I will say, after my experience tonight, that this game does have some of the densest pubs I have ever met in an online game. Maybe I just have been very good about curating my multiplayer experiences over the past half-decade or so, but jeez! Five times in a row I dropped into games with multiple guys just standing in the middle of the map, calling in mech after mech to fight off the neverending waves of enemies, and then they'd explicitly kick me for "not helping" by bring stratagems other than a mech. In the second-to-last one, the host wondered openly why the mission hadn't ended, even though he'd completed all the objectives. He hadn't completed all of the objectives and was nowhere near the extraction point anyway. Christ...

Only Yesterday, one of Takahata Isao's masterpieces with Studio Ghibli, is finally getting an American theatrical release and a dub, which may probably pave the way for its first R1 DVD/Blu-ray release. This is huge news. Only Yesterday is beautiful and charming and a truly excellent film.

I agree that "angry and bitter virgin or celibate" is perhaps a partial means for understanding the pathology of individual members of #GamerGate, but not for the movement as a whole. There are an overwhelming number of virgins and celibate people, even ones who are angry or bitter about the fact, that do not terrorize and harass anyone.

And also like Monaco! A well-played game of Monaco is slow, methodical, and uneventful. That game's at its most fun when there's one or two talented players carrying a bunch of newbies who keep fucking stuff up, but that's hard to arrange. What I like about Helldivers is that the twin-stick controls and the general chaos of the game makes it very hard to arrange truly perfectly play. One bad (or ricocheted) shot kills a teammate and things easily disintegrate from there.

Honestly, I tend to feel a little let down when a combination of good tactical movement and strategic awareness makes the wait for extraction too quiet. Sure, it never lasts, because enemies all over the map are drawn towards Helldiver beacons, but there's always a bit of a sigh when the crescendos of expected and actual action don't match up.

I think about this all the time. Even just reading the essays from the AV Club rewatch of Deadwood has a feeling of peeking behind the curtain of consummate craft, so I almost can't imagine the pleasure of my favorite podcast network talking about my favorite show. Still, I might be misremembering, but I think Chris has commented in the past with one of the two principal reasons that people don't watch Deadwood: "not into westerns" or "watched a couple of episodes and nothing seemed to be happening." I'm sorry if I'm wrong about this, Chris. Also, watch Deadwood. It's not a western and it's impossible not to be hooked following Wild Bill's arc.