juv3nal

random brainstorming about possible ways spies could be used (I don't necessarily think all of these are good ideas, but just random things I've thought about since the podcast): 1) diplomatic - this would be more meaniningful if countries/civs/empires could have, for instance, secret alliances - an interesting thing might be when trading with a civ and you ask "what would it take to make this work" maybe there is some more beneficial-for-you trade that the AI would relunctantly agree to that would be revealed by good intel. - spies could allow a general diplomatic bonus to persuading a civ to do something they otherwise might not be inclined to (declaration of peace/war/alliance/defensive pact/trade/etc.). I'm putting it out there, but I feel this one is dubious because it's already abstracted into the mechanic of giving cash gifts to a civ. (i.e. it would represent bribing or blackmailing key individuals, but net effect is same spend money->easier to get civ to agree to things) 2) production - not sure how beneficial gathering intel about this really is, but just mentioning it since it's in the current implementation - on the flip side, the ability to slow production via sabotage could be interesting 3) technological - instead of stealing a tech outright, maybe it gives you research points towards techs for as long as you are able to keep a espionage asset in place and undetected? also, if you are both actively researching the same tech and they are further along than you are, you should be able to get this bonus too even if it is a tech they have not completed yet. - sabotage again to slow the rate of another civ's tech progress? 4) troop position/movement - supplanted by satellites/sigint late game probably, but earlier and in a large enough map the limited unit sight range could make piercing fog of war more useful. The abstraction here is not that your spy would actually be in place watching the troops move (which would be better represented by some kind of stealthy scout/recon unit anyways), but that you have someone in position to see/hear orders being given. - maybe spies have the capability to feed disinformation, leading to RUSE-like tricks when the other civ is observing your activity? 5) assassination - maybe spies could sneak about undetected and assassinate great people? maybe potential for some kind of "martyrdom" side effect in the aftermath though? --- tangentially (i.e. not really related to espionage directly), I think it might be interesting if there were a diplomatic option to say "don't build this/develop this tech for x turns and we'll give you x gold/whatever" In real-life terms, I'm thinking of nuclear tech, of course, but in game terms this could be neat for the world wonder thingies that only one civ can have. edit: ooh...I just thought about a neat way the kinds of systems listed above could interact. say civ A has a secret deal with civ B (I give you x gold per turn for 20 turns if you do not research nukes). your spies could discover this agreement they could then discover that civ B is NOT secretly researching nukes, but could somehow plant evidence that they ARE and "leak" that to A ...shenanigans ensue!

I don't remember the book much at all (have no idea who Saul and Barney were), but then it's been like 20 years or more since I read it. I do remember however hopping between one character's first person POV to another's in mid-chapter which confused me the first time I encountered it (probably because it is also the first time I encountered it when reading anything for that matter).

re: the fez clock....you can disconnect from xbox live and futz with your system clock to get it to the right time. ah nevermind I was a filthy thread skimmer.

I don't think they were "real physics simulation," but from what I remember, I think the player can be by the .

I would say Nabokov is fair game, but the "greatest American novelist" phrasing strikes me as ambiguous: Is it a search for the greatest, nominally at least, American novelist? Or is it the search for the novelist who wrote the greatest American novel, by which I mean the greatest novel that is somehow quintessentially about America? In the latter case, I can imagine the hypothetical where someone who has never set foot in America could qualify. I think it's pretty clear that the Guardian is after the former, but I think the latter is more interesting. I love Bill Burroughs, for instance, but you'd be hard pressed to say, outside of his Billy the Kid obsession, that his books are about America or what it means to be American. They often aren't even set in America.

While I agree that my impulse would be to "find the best unit and stick with that," can't this be addressed by balancing? If the cost of generalist units is made prohibitive enough then people will look at the alternatives, no? I think it depends very much on the type of game. I see GTB as more of a puzzle game (in the same way that I think tower defense generally are puzzle games) rather than simulationist. In that context, the cost of trying out different possible solutions should IMO be minimal or it will only lead to frustration. i do agree about GTB failing to give comprehensible feedback despite its plethora of statistics though.

Oh Borges is the best. Also dead, so if you didn't already have Labyrinths, I would never recommend a small collection over the entire collected fiction. Oh, aside from portability reasons, I guess.

total damage: gratuitous tank battles civ v: gods & kings walking dead dream machine bundle might & magic: clash of heroes all for less than full price for a brand new AAA title. Not bad. Would have liked to have seen endless space go on discount, but I guess it's too new.

The sales keep shifting so I've no idea if it's still cheap right now, but I picked up Might & Magic Clash of Heroes for $3.74. I had been holding out for a version for iphone, but at that price, I won't mind too much buying it again when that version comes out.

I'm a leave this here: https://twitter.com/...824916182802434

So I just beat Thirty Flights of Loving. Like a boss. Twice including puffin mode.

Anthony Gallegos talks positively about Yesterday for a bit near the beginning of the latest RebelFM.

I've been playing the iphone version. At app store prices, I think it's not bad, but general impressions of the PC version are not favourable (it doesn't help its case that it's $30 versus $5 I think for the ios version). On the ios version it does some neat UI things like a button that reveals hotspots, eliminating pixel hunting. And double tapping on a location/object to "teleport" to it (skips the walk animation). Also story-wise, I quite like it though the puzzle design is definitely not great. I have read it is super short too, but I haven't finished it. as a point of reference, I didn't like what I tried of the runaway series and never tried any of their other stuff.

OK FINE if y'all are goin to put walking dead on a daily deal I GUESS I WILL HAVE TO BUY IT. Geez. Twist that rubber arm some more whydontchya.

I picked up might and magic clash of heroes at 75% off (~$3.75 I think) and the Dream Machine bundle at %50 off/$7.50. So wallet not hurting too bad. What I really want/hope to see is deep cuts on Gods & Kings (measly 10% right now) and Endless Space (regular price at the moment).

sometimes the web page will work through a normal browser when the client won't & vice versa, so that may be worth a shot.

looks like he wound up at valve https://twitter.com/ClickNothing/status/223257227488800768/photo/1

A basement lab. A crazy scientist named... ?

Nightmare Mode has a review.

It's touristy, but don't miss the Pergamon. It's more antiquities than art, but really impressive IMO. There's entire facades/arches/gateways reconstructed inside. https://www.google.com/search?q=pergamon+museum+wikipedia&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&rlz=1G1SNNT_ENCA392&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=9oj0T4LLKMWgrAH_yfHFAw&ved=0CEcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1280&bih=624

I bought it, but I confess I have barely touched it (other recent games in this category: Drox Operative, Resonance, Avernum: Escape from the Pit).

I read this recently. It's enjoyable enough, but pretty "light" material. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I think there was the potential for something more complex given that the basic territory has been tread before in things like Tad Williams' Otherland series and .hack

I am really curious about whatever the heck it was he was working on. I speculate whatever it was, was cancelled to throw more resources at 1313.

I could never get into Bioshock because I am a big wuss and it is scary. I even scared myself in the game because I ran into some bit of loose debris on the ground and it made a clanking noise. Needless to say, I'm not touching Amnesia with a 50 foot pole. I think I would be less scared if cleared areas stayed cleared and there weren't those random spawn-ins, but there are, so, yeah.

Oh I definitely agree with this. I was just going off on a tangent about one source of some difficulty in getting the uninitiated to appreciate video games. The fact that games don't generally try to say interesting things about "humans or our world" is certainly another, probably more influential source of that difficulty, of course. Though I think it could be argued that instrumental music or abstract expressionism are in some way similar in that they primarily engage on emotional & aesthetic levels.