my dad posted:

Gygjas! Since the projections keep the boosts the casters got from boosters before casting the spell as their baseline (but not the boosters themselves), they can actually pull it off.

Alternatively, if you have a pretender that's already got those, paths, too.

You can do some funny/infuriating poo poo with projected blood, like hellpower horror bombs.

Cerebral Bore posted:

also if you want to do the projection+gifts from heaven thing i feel like you could pull it off pretty easily with ea or ma celestial masters

Mister Bates posted:

DF is actually an extremely good example of how to do the poo poo that Songs of Syx does in a gross and creepy way well

Beliefs and values are culturally determined, and a person's values will in large part reflect the society they were raised in, with some variation for personal convictions that might differ from societal norms. These norms also can and do change over time from the situation at game start, so while multiple dwarven civilizations, for example, will have broadly similar ethical outlooks, they will almost never believe exactly the same things about everything. None of it is inherent - it is possible to, for example, raise a goblin in a dwarven civilization, and they will have dwarven cultural values such as highly valuing craftsmanship. Some individual personality traits are species-determined - goblins are, on average, less altruistic than dwarves, for example - but it's a range, not an absolute value, so you'll still see a lot of variation among members of any given species.

People also transfer between civilizations extremely frequently, through a number of different mechanisms, from war to kidnappings to simply moving to a new location, and these transfers are not species-restricted, so it is almost impossible for any civ in the game to remain an 'ethnostate' for very long unless they're just extremely isolated. It is completely normal for a 'dwarf' civilization to only have a plurality of dwarves, especially in a world with a long history - and goblins' propensity for kidnapping people and raising them in the goblin civilization means it's entirely possible for a goblin civ in a long-history world to have no goblins in it at all. For that matter, positions of political authority are not species restricted either, so it's not unheard of to end up with, say, an elven king of a dwarven civilization, or a dwarven lord of a human hamlet, or a cockatiel man baron or something.

This applies to the player's fort as well, where you are all but guaranteed to end up with non-dwarven citizens sooner or later unless you actively try to keep them out.

The game actually does model racial animosity in its world simulation, and even systemic oppression, as well as responses to that - people can be oppressed for religious beliefs, chafe under the alien cultural values of a foreign civilization, launch rebellions against those foreign ways, etc. - but it's just part of the simulation, it's one more lever that can be pulled, it doesn't get any special emphasis.

The end result feels pretty plausible. On average, most civilizations are going to be majority from one species, but not necessarily; on average, most civilizations of the same species are going to have similar ideologies and codes of ethics, but not necessarily; on average, most people living in a certain civilization are going to have values and cultural beliefs that match that of the civilization, but not necessarily. You'll see kind, altruistic goblins, dwarves who love nature and the natural world, elves who hate it and value craft and industry. When civilizations - or people - do diverge, it will often be for a specific reason, and you can often track that reason (in fort mode the game will just straight-up tell you the cause of any ethics shift an individual has, in legends mode it can be harder to track down).

Comparing a game unfavorably to Dwarf Fortress, one of the best video games ever made, is a bit unfair, but it really does compare especially poorly there

umpire's commentary posted:

The Recon Battle: Part 1

NATO plan posted:

Zeppelin Insanity posted:

The NATO plan was as one might expect: obsessed with "individual initiative" and far too many terms to "aid" that decision-making rather than having a coherent plan in the first place. I won't post the whole plan, but here is a tease.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Lol at the saps on the other side of Zeppelin Insanity having to deal with their opfor getting general staff planning

Poor bastards will never know what hit them

quote:

BearsBearsBears posted:

I see that the NATO side's immediate instinct was to create a powerpoint slide deck with an incomprehensible amount of acronyms.

atelier morgan posted:

not sure if i'd describe smashing through the only line of resistance and now about to flank the nato formation as a 'wasteful' use of firepower, considering that's exactly what you bring the shells for

Cerebral Bore posted:

most realistic part of the game system imo

BearsBearsBears posted:

I see that the NATO side's immediate instinct was to create a powerpoint slide deck with an incomprehensible amount of acronyms.

Orange Devil posted:

I think they played their role really well.

Next scenario play as Cubans and do all your planning with some lines in the sand and complain the Russians use way too many arrows.

Also, did y'all court martial that recon command?

CN CREW-VESSEL posted:

tbf, the test of wartime is that peacetime militaries produce and promote people, some say 30-50%, that do get confused, throw up their hands, and blunder into disaster when combat begins. It’s covered in The Psychology of Military Incompetence.

There was a British staff officer under Sir John French who shot himself after the first two weeks of combat in the summer of 1914.

Mister Bates posted:

was there a French officer named Jean British

stumblebum posted:

i thought the anglos were on the relatively higher end of segregated commoner ownership?

Endman posted:

I’ve been playing a lot of Manor Lords, which I am terrible at, and I’m wondering if they’re going to add any ability to designate common land.

Or is my Anglocentrism showing again and that wasn’t really a thing in medieval Germany?

BearsBearsBears posted:

One thing I found odd in Manor Lords is that there is a dedicated woodcutters building that produces firewood and your peasants can't chop their own. I always feel like games like that force you to specialize your labor real early. As I understand it, peasant families would produce most of the goods they consumed within the household including things like firewood, clothing, and beer. Increasing labor specialization should be something that happens as you go from village to town instead of something that's mandatory from the start of the game.

JonBolds posted:

Joe or Jolene Peasant was often not allowed to cut down a tree on their own initiative. Those are the Lord’s trees. Thus your woodsman or charcoal burner who is allowed to cut and sell firewood/make it into coal as their job. It was an effective check on speed of deforestation. This is why the heroic guy in little red riding hood shows up to kill the wolf with an axe!

But… peasants were allowed to walk around picking up loose sticks and branches and things to supplement their firewood. Once it hit the ground of its own accord it was fair game. The term “windfall” comes from this!

A more isolated tenant farm would cut their own firewood from the land they were on. But a castle town like in manor lords probably had a family whose job was woodcutting.

Also these rules varied wildly by place and time! My knowledge here is anglocentric.

BearsBearsBears posted:

So it would make sense to have anybody allowed to cut firewood until you (the lord) decide that's enough of that nonsense and make a decree that only the foresters can do it.

Dwarf Fortress is a game that I think does labor specialization pretty well. You start out with few dwarfs and most of them need to do multiple jobs. As your fortress grows you wind up with labor specialization to such a degree that nobody even does their own hauling anymore.

Stairmaster posted:

to end all wars is on sale for ten bucks on steam how bad is the ui in that one

Dreylad posted:

The dev was also wise enough to consult with a bunch of historians to get a good sense of the social history he using as the scaffold for the game but recognizes that it isn't "historically accurate" since that's a loaded term, and functionally meaningless in a computer game.

I think he did good job capturing some aspects of mid to late medieval living. The game also isn't feature complete so it'll be interesting to see how he fleshes out region specialization.