clyde

I've been playing the game very peaceably; so when the Inca (who have only attacked the Aztecs at the beginning of the match (they deserved it) amassed two rows of modern troops at my borders, and when my spies informed me that they were preparing to attack Vienna, I was confused. Sure I have blocked their access to most of the other Civs with my closed borders, but maybe they should give me a fair deal on luxuy goods once in a while, maybe they shouldn't have started their own religion. But war? C'mon. I'm the best thing these Civs have going for them. If it wasn't for my obsession with defensive-pacts, they would all be at each other's throats the entire game. Spain and the Shoshone would be wiped off the map! I've kept the peace and constantly propped up the smaller nations with sweet deals, caravans, and a religion that rocks. When I saw the signs of needless violence on my western border, I checked to make sure I had as many defensive pacts as possible. I think Russia's had slipped. We did the paperwork and got that cleared up. I hit "Next Turn" and Russia denounced the Inca. That was cool of them. I didn't ask them to do that. I figured I should do it too; solidarity. The nation of Austria DENOUNCES the Inca. Then something special happened. Spain denounced the Inca; the Shoshone denounced the Inca; the Celts denounced the Inca. I haven't felt this way from NPC's interaction since the goodbyes at the end of Dragon Age:Origins. It actually made me feel a tinge of being appreciated.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/detroit-must-ensure-it-does-not-contravene-human-right-to-water-un-official-catarina-de-albuquerque-says-9559768.html “At the DWAS Department — it’s not our goal to shut off water. We want people’s water on, just like they do; but you do have to pay for your water…That’s the bottom line.” I fail to accept this bottom line. It is my opinion that the bottom line is that people die without water access. Clean-water tech needs to step up it's game before we start getting charged for air too.

Regardless of what feelthedarkness actually meant in this exchange, what I thought they were saying is as follows:People aren't necessarily using new words to describe something that is already discussed; by reducing the vernacular that way, you may be missing the subtilites that the new words are attempting to emphasize. One of the reasons people may do this is to make themselves more comfortable by generalizing the particular perspective so that it becomes the norm with which they are familiar.

I just heard the term "ship" for the first time this week in reference to fan-fic about K-pop boy-bands. I can't tell if everyone has been using it this entire time and I just didn't notice, or ... I guess that's the only option. Here we go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_(fandom)

A big part of it is that I don't know how the other civ's personalities are programmed and I'm filling in the blanks. Thus far, no one with a quarry-religion majority has started a war with me. I don't know how much of that is because of the religion's influence, how much is due to me acting like those with the quarry-religion are more likely to be friends, and how much is just random luck. The thing is that even if religion is a very small amount of influence on the alliances, my ignorance and assumptions about the game's mechanics are allowing me to make decisions which end up strengthening alliances with those of similar religion anyway (through more flexibility in what I'm willing to give them in trade and such). How appropriate, that religion in Civ 5 only works of you have faith in it.

So within a month of finishing that Korea game last September, I started a new one as Austria. I didn't make it very far in, I met about five or so of the other civs, founded five cities and lost one to the Aztecs. The Aztecs took that city so fast and with so many troops, it was bad times. But after Montezuma captured it and razed it, I was able to bribe for peace and I tried to go back to life as normal. Rob Zacny sometimes mentions how once he is disabled in Civ, he isn't motivated enough to continue. I was convinced that I didn't care about winning, but when the Ottomans sent settlers into the area that my surviving cities surrounded, and once we entered a war when I murdered those settlers, I just couldn't continue. Everyone seemed so much stronger than me. My biggest accomplishment was a religion based on quarries. I lost interest in the game. Yesterday, I loaded the save and role-played as someone who had just now inherited the Austrian throne. The war with the Ottomans was over (I guess I must have played at least one session inbetween that time) and I was able to see the ability rather than the disability of the scenario. I asked around for friends and became friends with Spain (who is in the other side of the world) and Russia (my northern neighbor, there was a huge jungle buffering us). Like I said, the best thing I had going for me was my religion, so I started building shrines and temples in all my cities. Then the Great Miracle happened. I build some world-wonder that gave me three missionaries and (possibly another wonder soon after?) that made it so all missionaries coming from my capital could proselytize three times instead of just once. I got kinda excited and started getting a little bit preachy. I quickly covered the western hesmisphere with my faith. I don't even think they have that many quarries, but let's face it; this is the one true faith. The only thing they had heard about over there was Zorastrianism. I searched for its holy city and found none. I assume that the heathens were worshipping a dead religion that was based somewhere that Montezuma probably captured and razed. Something neat happened during the evangelization in the West, a great prophet of the quarry religion was capture by barbarians. I had to negotiate open-borders with two other civs to get my strike force over there to free him. It was an ordeal. As it was happening, I liked to imagine already-bearded guy getting a longer beard praying to a stone in the camp saying "Things are hard right now, but like with the quarries, great things come from hard things." We freed him and immediately spread as much faith in that region as is possible. To this day, that half of the world worships the quarry so hard that if I wanted to change my own religion, I couldn't dueto the amount of religious pressure over there. So at this point in the game, I'm just negotiating as many defensive-pacts as. I can and only one small skirmish broke out. I was able to focus on religion. I see that Islam is the big deal to the East so I start sending my missionaries to the Ottoman Empire on a regular basis. But it's a losing battle because Egyptian Islam's holy-city is (like) 8 tiles away from the Ottomans. This is where things got interesting. Austria's ability is that it can annex city-states for 500-600 gold if they've been allies for five turns. My empire is bordered on the east by three city-states lined up along the southern coast of a world-wide landmass. The last of those three cities is Bratislava which is about 6 tiles away from the Ottaman's southern-most city. My plan was this: -annex Bratislava -missionary the shit out of Bratislava -change all of the orgin cities of my four caravans to Bratislava. -make sure no one starts worshipping any false idols in Bratislava by keeping an inquisitor stationed there at all times (using them when necessary) Now all of my trade-route decisions are motivated by faith. I've completely converted the Ottomans (my religion's pressure is higher in all their cities) and I'm starting to influence Egypt's eastern neighbors. It's pretty awesome. This has made Bratislava the absolute focal point of the game. It's a city connected to my empire only by harbors, inbetween me, Russia, the Ottomans, the Egyptians, and the Shoshone. It has all of my caravans going through it and probably a few from other empires. The Ottomans are constantly flexing like they are going to take it, but the Egyptians want it just as much. I've filled it with troops and all of my defense-pacts are based on what is in Bratislava's best interest. I have one diplomat in Egypt and on in the Ottoman Empire, just so that I can spread their nefarious plans to the other civs and in some cases to each other. I just love this game so much. It's so different than my other play-throughs. I never imagined that a city-state that I annexed through diplomatic marriage in order to spread my quarry religion would become the focal point of 3/4 of the world's diplomatic decisions. It's so cool.

Why am I more interested in buying a second copy of Skyrim while it's $5 than participating in this. It makes no sense!

This is a incredibly deep (and interesting) subject. This gameification of sales is widespread. I used to work at Sears as a sales-clerk and most of that job is trying to figure out how to play a game of deep discounts through the multi-tiered timed sales and supply situations. I hated it then too. What it comes down to for me is that production and consumption are only valuable if they increase living-standards. Personally, I have a problem with the manufacturing of destructive desires. Of course there is a lot of debate about what is manufactured desire and what is destructive. Let's face it, I shouldn't be buying games at all; I should be buying toilets for women in India. If we are going to talk about gamers with disposable incomes that can't say no to titles they will never play as victims, then we should just go ahead and ask why people are buying bigger houses than they can afford or why third-world farmers grow ingredients for luxury goods rather than food. The gameification is widespread and possibly unethical.

This was a fantastic episode. If another opportunity comes up where two game-designers want to solve each other's design challenges by comparing notes, please have Rob mediate. This is a great example of how war can be modeled as a liability rather than a dominant strategy. When war is accurately modeled as a resource-siphon rather than a resource gain, it isn't a dominant strategy.

Titanfall now has a 48 hour trial on PC (of play-time, not a set date) http://www.polygon.com/2014/6/20/5826742/titanfall-is-available-to-play-for-free-on-origin-for-48-hours

I found myself wanting to strafe the ground as closely as possible, even with a disincentive to do so (death). Even though it's modeled off of a Flappy Bird system, I could see it going in a Tiny Wings direction just as easily (where timed collisions with the terrain are encouraged). Then of course the perspective begs for it to take on some Star Fox qualities, such as angling your wings to avoid obstacles and shooting. The thing that I would do if I was making the game is put in something that signifies your altitude clearly in relation to things you want to avoid or hit. There are a lot of ways to do this. -You could at a level laser-pointer that can be seen on upcoming objects at your current height. - the camera could be set at a specific altitude that acts as a median for the range in which the player would likely want to be (probably the altitude of the highest mountain) and then angle up when the player is above it and angle downward when the player is below it. This would give the player some idea of altitude. -Another way would be to give the player a shadow and give the bird's shadows too. This would probably help with gauging the terrain altitude. -Or you could use crazier solutions like having altitude be a factor for the pitch of a constant hum, upcoming birds could have the same and the 3d sound would allow you to know which tone you are trying to harmonize with.

That link didn't work for me either. But I was able to find it easily with the search. Are you going to continue working on this project? It suggests a lot of things to enjoy, but I think that picking one and tightening it up before doing so to the others would focus your vision. What would be your first priority?

There was a below-par korean drama where a pop-song was playing when dude was getting open-heart surgery. Years later, when he encounters the singer (who he can't stand), his heart palpitates every time he hears the song which she uses as her ring-tone. Ultimately, there was little to no chemistry between the actors.

Black Hole, Tales of the Arabian Nights, Ripley's Believe It or Not, and Theatre of Magic are all 1 cent if you purchase them inside of the Steam version of Pinball Arcade.

Is it ipad only? The link isn't working on my phone.

Now I know how IGN feels. Dominique Pamplemousse blew me away. I hate playing point-and-click adventures because I hate clicking on all the spots and I always get stuck. Deirdra Kiai didn't solve the getting stuck problem; I had to look up how to get the lawyer's name. And clicking on everything was sometimes tedious, but it was frequently entertaining because she sang about my selection. I just had so much fun watching a bad musical unfold with my pointing and clicking. Dominique Pamplemousse has a style I've never seen in a game and the cute, crafty, amateur-musical theme was just a fun place to be for an hour or so. If you play the demo, you'll get a sense of what type of thing it offers. As far as scale goes, it's what I would expect from a troubadour who shows up with a painted wagon that turns into a stage. Browser Demo: http://www.dominiquepamplemousse.com/demo.html

It's a point and click adventure where everything you click on makes a character sing a campy song about it. There are two puzzles that may require you to look the answers up. The tone is similar to watching a claymation you made with a friend during a sleep-over.

I love it, a thread of " Convince me to play game [x]". It's going to be like: - "Actually, it's not very good." - "Well... I appreciate your opinion, but I'm going to buy it anyway." I want someone to sell me on Consortium. I loved Mass Effect and what to play games that have more relationship-sim qualities and hard decisions than combat.

It sounds really cool. I have some questions: -When stocks are purchased initially, does the company whose stock is sold get the money from the sale? -Can stocks be resold at market-prices? -Can patents be sold or leased? If so, does the owner set a price or is it determined by the market? -Can buildings be sold or leased?

It's interesting to me that in both descriptions there seems to be an implication that the internet is where one finds their own limits. Since no one put up another scenario, I will: The last remaining elephant on earth has been given the ability to speak through much public concern and technologies difficult for us to fathom. She has settled into regular human-adult life as much as a last-of-the-pachiderms whose ability of speech is dependendent on an external device. The fame of her plight has long died down and people rarely recognize her on the street anymore. She was so busy with catching up with social-cues and inter-personal relationship capacity, that she somehow has never heard of the "internet". That is, until a random encounter with you in the Dulles airport. She asks you what the internet is. Edit: I just assumed that "Lemon Party" is NSFW. Now I realize it might be a band.

Let's take turns doing elevator pitches for the internet. After you've given yours, provide the person or scenario in which the next person must pitch the internet. I will, of course, provide the first mark: After convincing yourself to ride go to a faire that has set up a few giant robots in a Wal-Mart parking-lot. You find yourself finally getting on the ferris-wheel. Across from you is a young couple who may not even know that they are a couple yet. After some small chat, you discover that they have somehow never heard of the "internet". Explain to them in a few sentences what the internet is.

Couldn't think of a better place to put this. There's a bunch of amazing looking stuff to look forward to that I haven't heard of before, exhibited by Venus Patrol.

Some highlights:

One thing I like about the game was the mechanic where the teams are taking percentages of the victory-conditions from a central source and then from each other's goals. It's an interesting take on capture-the-flag.

Somewhat relevant: I asked my 8 year old nephew what he would want to be able to do in a computer-game (he's mostly exposed to free mobile games) and he said "I wish there was a game where you could be a soldier." He is obsessed with police and soldiers and large equipment-vehicles like bull-dozers. I was also looking through some of my artwork from elementary school and it often planes and missles and war. Interesting, here is the wikipedia page showing many Iraqi flags. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Iraq I don't think it makes Cine's concerns or arguments invalid, but there is obviously a general cultural tendency that DICE falls in line with (probably due to perceived consumer demand). When I was a kid, we would stuff as many magnolia seed-pods in our pockets as we could and then run around the woods grenading each other with them. There is something essentially fun about trying to hit each other with projectiles. Multiplayer shooters are a highly developed genre because there is something intoxicating about sneaking up on someone else or providing covering fire.