Anym

Ooh, I've also been looking for that, but was always too embarrassed to ask.

I couldn't find the correct console command, I ended up ripping it out of the savegame with a text editor. That seems to have worked, at least. I just hope that doesn't lead to further problems somewhere down the line. Also, I got rid of the antipope that way, too, so I guess some good came of this after all.

Thanks for the answers. The Swedish crown has been through some troubled times in my game, so I guess there was a lot of opportunity for that glitch to occur. With all the crusading I'm doing and holy warring I'm planning to do, I think I can live with that Antipope and will leave it as it is for now. However, I think I've just run into another bug, one that isn't so easy to ignore: One of my vassals is the Duke of Prussia and one of his vassals was rebelling against him. But then the latter apparently died a natural death and I inherited the "Prussian Revolt" title from him. And now I'm screwed. Suddenly, most of the Diplomatic actions aren't available to me anymore, as one of the conditions is "Emperor Echmarcach the Great must not currently hold a Temporary title" and there doesn't seem to be a way to get rid of it. I can't grant it to anybody, I can't destroy it, I can't win or lose the War of the Prussian Revolt as that has properly ended, nor can I usurp, revoke or destroy the legitimate Duchy of Prussia to see it that would help. I'm afraid I'll have to back to and old save an hope the guy doesn't die before the revolt is resolved the next time around. Unless there's an easy way to fix this with console commands, I guess. I'm loathe to register for yet another forum, but if this goes on like this, I really might have to join the Paradox ones and start reporting bugs.

Two more things: During my wife's last pregnancy, "doubt beset me" as the game put it, and sure enough, she has not one, but two lovers listed on her "relations" tab. But when the child was born, he was listed as "my son" and I as his father. As he's also my heir, I'm wondering, does that mean that he really is my son, if the game lists me and my wife as the kid's parents, and also if it would matter if he weren't. If I die and he is a bastard, do I still get to play as him or would he gain my empire while I play on as some lowly count that actually is related to me by blood? Also, there seems to be an Antipope in Hamar that I can't seem to get rid of. His liege is the countess of Hedmark, who's religous head he is, but who I can't declare war on as she isn't independent. Her liege, the duke of Bergslagen, however, follows the Pope in Rome as does his liege, the King of Sweden, so I don't have a "Depose Antipope" casus belli againt them either. Assasinating the Antipope also doesn't help, as a new one will immediately succeed him.

That went well. I really shouldn't have worried. The rebels would probably have won just fine even without me. I just sped it up a little by taking Lancaster from the HRE at the same time. One aspect I had missed was that the reparation payment for its war against me put the HRE more than 900 gold in debt, resulting in their mercenaries abandoning them and (presumably) joining the rebels almost immediately. Ultimately, I ended up with Lancaster while Bohemia, York, Mercia, Hwicce, Northumberland, Modena and Spoleta all became independent. Although some of the English duchies not for long as I soon turned my attention towards them and now I'm only one county away (I think) from finally forming the Empire my grandfather dreamed of.

Sorry, what I meant was that there wasn't even an "Offer to Join War" button, presumably because it's a revolt war.

I've only gotten into Crusader Kings II after the most recent patch, so it's the only version I know (apart from the demo and what I saw in the streams, of course) and so far, about halfway through my first real game, I fortunately don't seem to have encountered any serious bugs yet. At one point, the game started referring to my King as Queen and some description text seems to be missing, but that's about it. Anyway, I'm writing now, because I've run into a situation, that I'm not quite sure how to handle. I'm currently the King of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Finland and Pomerania, but would really like to create an Imperial crown for myself, most likely the Empire of Britannia that I currently control 66% of, I guess. Unfortunately, my conquest of England was cut short when the Holy Roman Emperor inherited it (which was why I turned my eyes to Finland in the first place), who still had twice as many counties and thrice as many troops than me, so I never dared touch him. Now, shortly after my succession, the Holy Roman Emperor declared war on me which to my surprise I actually managed to win (which I can only attribute to a combination of luck and AI stupidity, really) and even better shortly before the end of that war the independence faction in the Holy Roman Empire, including most of what used to be England, rose up in rebellion. And as I would very much like to have an independent England for me to conquer again, I'd like to support them as best as I can, however I'm unsure how to best go about that. I can't seem to be able to offer to join their war and if I immediately declare war on the HRE again, the revolt troops seem to become hostile to me as well (unless that's actually one of the bugs mentioned above) and I'm not sure what else I could do. Is there a way to support independence revolts in other realms or should I just watch and wait and hope for the best? Should I send gifts to the revolt leader so that they can hopefully afford a mercenary company or two? Or go to war trying to carefully avoid all the revolt armies and only engaging the loyalists?

When playing a pure real-time game, I often wish it had pause. Without pause, they sometimes get to stressful for my tastes and also add a, however small, element of twitchy-ness to games that should, to my mind, be all about careful planning and deliberate choices. I realize that adding that sense of urgency or chaos is often the intention, but it often just isn't to my tastes. I find pure-real time works best in action-y games like Command & Conquer or Diablo that I can still enjoy without pause due to their slick interfaces and relative simplicity, but when it gets more complex I do prefer the system in Supreme Commander to StarCraft and wouldn't want to play the roguelikes that inspired Diablo in real-time. I agree that Crusader Kings and Total War are other examples where pausable real-time works really well: Mostly you can watch the game play out in real-time, but when you're new or something unexpected happens or a lot of things need your attention at the same time, you can pause and assess the situation before issuing new orders. When playing pausable real-time games, however, I sometimes end up wishing they were turn-based instead. Mostly if they are on a smaller sclae. For example in Baldur's Gate or Freedom Force, I feel you have to use the pause function too often, basically after every single action of each of your characters, which ends up losing all the dynamism gained by being a real-time game in the first place and interrupting the gameplay much more often than turns would. Again, that may be down to my personal play style and it's probably not strictly necessary to pause that often and you could probably finish the games without pausing at all, but having the option is still detrimental to my enjoyment. Of course, not having the option would probably mean that games became to stressful and/or difficult for me, e.g. Commandos, so in my mind fully turn-based would be the way to go in these cases. An excellent comparison would be Icewind Dale II and The Temple of Elemental Evil, as they both use D&D 3E-based combat systems but the former is RTwP like Baldur's Gate while the latter is turn-based like the PnP RPG.

Yes, that's the one! If you could upload it somewhere, that'd be great.

Before discovering Idle Thumbs, my favourite podcast was Stay Forever (German-language retro PC gaming). Besides that, I also enjoy or enjoyed Three Moves Ahead (strategy gaming), Rock, Paper, Shotgun Electronic Wireless Show (discontinued British PC gaming), PC Gamer UK Podcast (discontinued British PC gaming), Crate and Crowbar (British PC gaming), Major Spoilers' Critical Hit (tabletop role-playing actual play) and Alternativlos (German-language politics and technology). Also, would somebody happen to have a list of guest appearances of the Thumbs crew on other podcasts? Because I find that to be a great way to try out and discover new podcasts. For example, I mainly discovered the PC Gamer UK podcast because RPS' John Walker and Jim Rossignol were on some of the early episodes. On a final tangent, does somebody have a copy of episode 38 of the PC Gamer UK podcast? It seems to be missing from their archives and I already tried to mail them about it, but to no avail.

For me, it's this guy: I still find the ending of Wing Commander III where (spoiler) you pull the trigger to blow up the Kilrathi homeworld with billions of people on and above it to be one of the most despicable things I ever did in a game and it's exacerbated by the fact that when he's being captured by some of the survivors afterwards, he acts like a total jerk about it.

Maybe I am the kind of person who handles aged games uncommonly well, but I wouldn't say it has aged horribly at all. I only played it for the first time last year and would recommend you do, too, if you haven't already. I wouldn't call it a great game, but I found it to be a unique experience and full of interesting little ideas that you don't see much elsewhere. It has its share of flaws, but I enjoyed it enough to play it all the way through. That said, I can't really get excited about a remake. I would very much prefer a sequel (or a spiritual sequel), but can understand why that isn't an option for them and wish them well. Labta Ulukai afar! What but was that?

I disbelieve the tale of corruption, this has got to be an ARG of some sort. I should probably mention that I don't have any experience with ARGs and hope that posting about them, if this in fact is one, isn't a breach of some unspoken etiqutte. If so, I'm sorry and feel free to delete this post. That said, when I listen to the "corrupted" sample, I can almost, but not quite, make something out that sounds like a hint: "[...] nails it [...] really love this shit. Find out more at [...] idlethumbs.net [...] of Idle Thumbs preference [...] zip [?]" Is anybody else hearing this or is it just imagination and wishful thinking on my part? Unfortunately, I don't have any skills in audio editing, so I'm kinda stuck here.

Hi! I'm Anym. You may have heard my reader mail on episode 135. I only discovered Idle Thumbs with the Saga of Ragnar and am currently in the process of slowly listening through the entire archive in between the new episodes.