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Gaius Marius posted:I actually have to apologize to the Beefeater, I misread the article they posted. That said their and your point are total bullshit. The Literacy rate in 1950 means jack when the entire region has undergone 100 years of War, Revolution, Civil War, Warlords, Famine, Floods, Occupation and Exploitation. Yeah, for perspective the first postwar elementary corpus in Japan, roughly corresponding to the compulsory and public-funded education years prewar in what was considered a developed and fully literate great power, weighed in at 881 characters. Chinese with a corpus of a few hundred characters would certainly have been limited in pursuits like history and literature without some sort of further instruction, though not necessarily as much so as one would think given that the rarer or more technical a character is the more likely it is to be part or all of its own rebus, but I'd have a hard time calling that command of written Chinese more limiting than the ~1500 significantly less combinable English words used in VoA broadcasts or the ~875 used in ASD Simplified Technical English--and those are considered enough, respectively, to agitate for the spread of modern liberalism or to work in arms manufacturing. That said, literacy's being used as a proxy for mass technical and western-philosophical education, is it not? Maybe the best solution is to just give the Qing a more reasonable literacy rate but a strong malus to its effect unless education reforms have somehow been pushed through, or conversely to choose a different proxy for the whole world.
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Jun 1, 2021 02:27
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| # ¿ May 4, 2024 11:10 |
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SlothfulCobra posted:Alphabets are vulnerable to phonetic drift, but otherwise they'll still always give people a frame of reference when learning new words, and also are a lot simpler to get working in machines. I don't know if there ever was a Chinese typewriter, but I know that China invented movable type before Gutenberg, but apparently didn't have the same kind of printing revolution because it wasn't as easy for them to use. Chinese writing (especially traditional, while simplified introduces new blockscript versions of cursive, and especially older speech as pronunciations remain truer to the oldest form) also has a pretty solid frame of reference; most characters outside of the basic couple hundred are composed of two or more of those basic characters in a predictable way, either both giving meaning (休 rest from 人 person and 木 tree, 林 and 森 for grove and forest, etc) or one giving pronunciation and one giving meaning (country/guo2 from *kʷɯːɡ, 國, is ⼞ enclosure 或 huo4 from *ɡʷɯːɡ). Over 90% of the existing corpus is the second type, so while there's some awkwardness to producing print--though not as much as could be assumed given half-width, half-height, and quarter-sized versions can account for most of these--a semiliterate speaker encountering a new character is if anything going to have a lead over an alphabet-user, knowing not only the predrift pronunciation but also a rough category: 鮭 is the fish pronounced gui, 鱈 is the fish pronounced xue, and so on. Typewriting, both in Chinese and Japanese which as previously noted didn't seem to slow Japanese actual-literacy or game-stat-literacy much, was somewhat late but not necessarily outside of the target time period, and somewhat more time-consuming but not particularly complex to actually do (the user was presented with a crossing pair of bars over a typebox that would retrieve and strike the needed character.) The European printing revolution had more to do with the ease of radical authors picking up shop and moving to a more sympathetic court, yet still being able to easily smuggle their output back in, if a work became controversial, and secondarily with one particular book being the burning political question of the day, than it did with any serious material advantage at actually printing. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Jun 2, 2021 |
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Jun 2, 2021 06:42
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Mantis42 posted:tfw paradox releases a new save breaking update and you have to restart the run 20 years in In this context, isn't that just divorce?
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Jun 16, 2023 09:55
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I think you could go interesting places with forced disasters/CK partition around "era changes": reservations around tech trees aside, something like pottery+writing = settled, ironworking+horseback riding = classical, construction+migration? foreign trade? = migration, banking+divine right = renaissance, corporation+replaceable parts = early modern, industrialism+sociology = industrial, global logistics+(if we find out before the game releases the game probably won't release) = ~future~. Make them survivable to a degree that you'd expect a few AIs to pull through with heavy scars, and roll greats/majors over as formables.
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Sep 18, 2023 01:12
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Thanks for posting this. I watched the first five minutes and lost all interest in the game due to it not being a strictly-historical title - you can apparently do alternate-reality/universe stuff and get steampunk settings and underwater cities and stuff, which... meh, no thanks. I just want a civ-like that doesnt have annihilation combat or un-tethers recruitment from city production (choosing between building military units or buildings), has decent AI, a sane progression rate and tech tree (e.g. getting modern artillery before trains), and some other more minor things that are minor nuisances in a lot of these kinds of games. Flip it the other way around IMO, "certain bonuses, both long and short term, are almost definitely gonna collapse you in the short term" You have writing and pottery, suddenly (within the scales imposed by a stone-to-space campaign) the shrine to the sky spirit is now a tithe-taking, aid-distributing, armed-for-security temple of the sky god operating as an economic and political center and its high priest can probably tell the other traditional elders to gently caress off to an ice floe. Meanwhile, you don't have writing or pottery, politics stays stable at the cost of "your labor is all subsistence farming and their produce can't be kept turn-to-turn". You have ironworking and horseback riding, well whoops any noble and some of the more ambitious border tribes can outfit a rebel army that's all elites by your standards. Try to push that off, and the border tribes may or may not listen and anything that requires metal requires trade with another player that happened to get lucky and spawn on tin. You have industrialism and sociology, some of the industrial workers are going to start to apply the second to the first and at a minimum you've got wild unrest over form of government. Sure, you could just chill on industrialism until you're in a good place to manage this--just, you can't actually build factories, so good luck with that production. In terms of what can be tracked effectively in a board game, it would basically amount to spiking the unrest track (and probably changing how that track is interacted with) in return for a big mechanical payout. With a computerized sim, something basically like the Vicky3 cycle where by interacting with development you inevitably produce at least one powerful IG that has no patience for several of your starting laws. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Sep 22, 2023 |
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Sep 22, 2023 00:09
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Jabor posted:In theory the in-game music can be themed to what's actually going on in the game, which is not something you can really do with an external playlist. Could always split the difference--let mod tracks use the preexisting tagging system yet, or better yet include custom weighting code, then let modders convert the playlists and sidestep having to handle licensing oneself. One of the V3 megapacks apparently made some progress towards this, but they don't go into much detail as to how.
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Oct 19, 2023 12:03
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Synthesis: sliders with sticky notches.
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Apr 10, 2024 19:54
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The approach of "just never move the slider from 50%" also gives you no-fuss medium taxes, though. I don't think there's any more value in preventing people from constantly fussing over a tax slider than in preventing them from pausing the game and fussing for half an hour over exact troop movements, to be honest. Probably less, because overwhelming enemy command facilities through an operational tempo they can't coherently react to is an actually useful concept in strategic thought. But there certainly aren't many calls for no paused speed. Ideal, though, yeah, is pin-and-flag where the slider setting moves to produce the same output, throwing a warning if the inputs have changed significantly.
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Apr 11, 2024 02:54
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PittTheElder posted:Look just give me a 64 bit field so I can set the tax rate bits in the double directly. Ah, a self-adjusting slider that actually does nothing with no adm advisor, rounds to the nearest 25% with a level 1, and only self-adjusts if they're level 3. That's the stuff.
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Apr 11, 2024 04:48
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Jokes aside alike, I do think that illegibility is better implemented, both in game and simulation terms, as actions (even passive or automatic actions) reducing in variance than as first-order numbers increasing in accuracy, in part because the higher accuracy isn't that useful of a number to begin with. The difference between a hide or 石 of land and a modern farmer's tax return isn't that the first produces ??? and the latter's axiomatically stable, it's that the first produces on average rather than demonstrably this past year 240 silver pence worth of general produce (at, remember, legally fixed prices) or 180.4 liters of rice (or locally-assessed equivalent.) "This province can be levied for five regiments" transitioning to "this province supplies 5,000 manpower" is not necessarily bad, in part because historically the call was more like to go down for five regiments which could show up over- or under-strength, but face it, you're just going to combine them anyway to avoid the penalties and it's more useful to have the "levy troops" button produce 3,500-6,500 on a d100 table that gradually has its tails sliced off to create a 4,900-5,100 d4 table. HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:“all it does is add 995 more steps, five options is the same thing” and you’re exactly right with that - if you have those 995 irrelevant or fringe options, then simplify down and let players compromise between those fewer options instead of searching for their precise preference for 10x more time. Especially in single-player strategy games, though, the fun is the friction and the narrative it creates until it stops being fun, and the problem with broad proclamations is that each player can't stand not just different degrees but different types of friction. So "it's there if you wanna" is kind of the least bad of both worlds, because "I hate it and ignore it" and "I love it and spend most of my time with that window open" are satisfied and only "I hate it but I spend most of my time with that window open" types have a bad time--and it's (at least, I hope) a lot easier to learn to just get over yourself and hit the bricks than to completely rewire your tastes. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Apr 11, 2024 |
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Apr 11, 2024 05:40
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OddObserver posted:Not being able to precisely balance (or rather unbalance to the desired degree) your budget by tweaking the tax rate just right is one of the sources of friction in Vicky 3, IMHO. I'll cop to that, though I maintain my argument that "don't like don't click" friction-frustrates fewer people than "do like too bad". In terms of the other direction, (at least pop-?) historical simulationism, though, I'll also say that precise tax sliders actually land better for me in an EU than a Vicky IMO--the latter fits in a granularized "x pence per barrel as duly recorded and arguable in newly-reformed civil courts" age, but the first is the territory of legends from every culture about the bad king's overweening tax collectors not leaving until their quota was fulfilled and drat the actual law or the year's trade-ledgers.
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Apr 11, 2024 06:08
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That argument can be inverted, though--the problem with the button system is also that there are only three spots on the button-slider out of five "worth picking" in terms of being aligned to an immediate goal without fiddliness, "I want more of the output than I have now and don't care as much about the input", "I want more of the input than I have now and don't care about the output", and "I'm fine with things as they are." If there's only value in deciding whether you want to gain burgher loyalty equilibrium at the cost of ducats or ducats at the cost of burgher loyalty, sure, you're right. But if there's value in deciding between gaining 20 ducats at the cost of 20 burgher loyalty equilibrium or 10 ducats at the cost of 10 burgher loyalty equilibrium, the latter to be chosen when your yearly deficit is only 10 ducats, then surely there's also value in being able to gain 15 ducats at the cost of 15 burgher loyalty equilibrium when your yearly deficit is 15 ducats? E: And, again, the "auto" at least I'm envisioning isn't "let the AI pick", it's "having set a tax policy to raise 10 ducats from the nobles, double the arm-twisting in a bad year and drat the grumbling as long as 10 ducats still come in, and halve it in a good year and hey you're popular at feasts again." Essentially, the use of a slider in that context allows rather than forbids a goals first, numberfuckery second playstyle. E2: For an example, look at the "fifteenth and tenth" that formed the backbone of English taxation between 1334 and early 1514 and which persisted until 1624, or 177-287 years of the likely EU5 spread. It was nominally assessed on one-fifteenth of rural and one-tenth of urban production of movable goods, but in practical implementation it was assessed on a fixed valuation that produced a standard baseline assessment of approx. ₤39,000 in either that was then, as granular buttons, collected at rates as high as three-fifteenths or three-tenths (during the price spike of the immediately post-Plague era.) So elements of both systems--slider to determine the base value expected over the long term, double and triple buttons for emergency spending. This is definitely pushing too arcane for the average user as buttons within a slider, but as "set your tax rate in a context of essentially flat prices 1337-1550, per Bank of England stats" and "burn mana or immediate loyalty for a wartime or plague-time cash influx" it's got potential. And it would also set up a really interesting midgame transition as, around 1550, inflation does begin to occur (Spanish silver back from the new world?) and you need to struggle toward designing (okay this should just be a tech) and pushing through a direct and dynamic assessment instead of a fixed sum, with situational multiples, from each bottom-level administrator. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Apr 11, 2024 |
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Apr 11, 2024 06:28
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In my opinion, and eh my opinion I'm one person, that... Doesn't look strange? You're deciding whether you want 100% of the morale penalty and 100% of the pop happiness bonus or 100% of the morale bonus and 100% of the pop happiness penalty, so other somewheres along that continuum don't confuse, yes? And then conversely when you're angling for a flat production (say of taxes) it works in the context of "I'm placing what I need from this subsystem, the red number is what it costs me", with multiplicative or even exponential swings in costs per effect at the high or low end being pretty standard.
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Apr 11, 2024 07:40
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Also, on further thought isn't manpower 'uncertainty' based on that levy concieved as a ratio but legislated as a flat model too? The bad data wasn't so much 'we don't know how many people are here and that hurts our recruitment' as 'the explicit social contract itself is 20 manpower per block of land assessed at £100 produce per year, we have a solid number we will get that is a hidden wastage from the actual potential of growth areas and a visible malus to the output of shrinking ones.' ilitarist posted:My point is nonlinear dependency feels more, for a lack of a better word, immersive. There's an optimal value and beyond that you get diminishing returns, there's a minimal value beyond which you can't go. EU4 already has something like that in sliders, as in while army maintenance looks like it goes from 0 to 100 it really goes from 50 to 100 and you can't pay your troops less than 50% but at this point they're useless. There's no interesting choice there, at war you always go to 100, and I guess there's some choice for how much you fear possible rebels at the moment of peace, whether you go to 50 or 60% mantainance. Imperator/Victoria 3 choice of paying troops extra for diminishing returns is an actual interesting choice. You probably never go to low mantainance during the war, but you have to wonder if this war is worthy of paying your troops 25% more for mere 10% of increase of morale. It would be hard to do the same with sliders, unless you have notched slider with clear different areas. I guess they had something like that with EU3 national policies slider, but this one was very descrete and you couldn't affect it directly, you never made a decision on where on the slider you want to land, only if you're going to move it one step in any direction. You can just as easily have that with a slider, though, even without the notches! Middle is neither bonus and neither malus, left is all the morale malus and all the happiness bonus, right is all the happiness malus and all the morale bonus. EU4's lack of diminishing returns is not inherent to the system. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 09:11 on Apr 11, 2024 |
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Apr 11, 2024 08:24
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Red Bones posted:I've never actually eaten sliders. Are they common in the US? How large are they normally, compared to a regular burger? How many would a person eat in one sitting? If you order them at a restaurant, do they all have different toppings, like a little sample selection of the different burgers on the menu? We'd love to tell you, but we have burger buttons and can only select 0-, 1.6-, 4-, 5.6-, or 8-ounce patties.
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Apr 12, 2024 05:42
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PittTheElder posted:I'm actually pretty curious about this too, specifically the /s/ to /t/ switch. As far as I can tell by a simple wiki search the t is common throughout the romance languages (including Romanian?) while Eastern European languages preserve the s, with Greek in the middle with a theta in there Oxford's etymology has Othman as the Arabic pronunciation of Osman, medieval Greek going with the theta rather than sigma from that, and then medieval Latin dropping it down to a t.
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Apr 13, 2024 03:47
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SlothfulCobra posted:Kinda weird for them to be treated as a quintessential part of the American experience, since they're pretty regional. Quintessential America's, conceptually, kind of an "America before the '60s" thing, and that Minneapolis to New York via Chicago dogleg gets you what's at least drat close to "most Americans may not have one but did eat there when they were down in the city" even before allowing for older competitors or a decline as modern, car-centric fast food sprang up. Big gaps from that perspective are Pittsburgh and Boston.
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Apr 14, 2024 03:18
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Very. Some of the most absurd (subsidizing a loss-making industry gave it its bonuses while also instead applying a negative tax rate to negative profits, for example) have been squashed, but the economic sim is still basically nonexistent, the demand bars are supposedly now working as intended but as intended is not showing actual demand, you still need approximately as many elementary schools as C because they're just considered the job of any sim aged below about 20, and traffic/transit is beholden to "fun" decisions like "merging lanes requires a 90° turn" or "actually service vehicles only is only a negative weight and the negative weight is only -5 or so, they will still drive there to save going around a block."
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Apr 20, 2024 17:22
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HoI4's unquestionably a beer-and-pretzels (and specifically beer-and-pretzels, not vodka-and-chechil or sake-and-arare) sim at best, but to some degree I find that more forgivable, or at least more explicable, with something set in recent history--there is a very clear modern western doctrine, say, so its thought processes being the baseline for a game from a western studio even if they're not necessarily supported or if they don't match how even the west actually fought the war makes sense in a way that isn't nearly as clear as time winds back. It also makes for a very satisfying gameplay loop, which I think explains a good amount of the popularity. Take personal command of the things that go vroom and produce measurable swings in the overall war over the course of a few dozen ticks, regroup and repeat, rather than waiting on advancement counters or siege rolls.
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Apr 21, 2024 19:55
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