Strategy & Wargames - middlebrow autodidact "history buffs" who yearn to pull levers

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Strategy & Wargames - middlebrow autodidact "history buffs" who yearn to pull levers

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Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Danann posted:

Magnasanti (as mentioned in that video) being the extreme example of an ideal SimCity has got me thinking. IRL both parties in America are pretty much cop supporters with the George Floyd protests after all being sparked by police behavior in a Dem city in a Dem state. And in Magnasanti, extreme police funding is how the city is able to sustain itself despite being a satanic charnel house. It would not surprise me if SimCity would have came up in the childhood memories of the middle and lower functionaries of the two-party-for-one-party-state and they have absorbed the assumptions postulated by SimCity into the real world. Magnasanti in that respect would seem like the logical endpoint of what our neoliberal elites would love.

On the other hand, the other necessary city funding to keep Magansanti afloat is public transportation. It has absolutely abolished streets, parking, etc. and hence relies completely on subways to move population around (though apparently underutilized in the simulation). Destroying a high-value industrial sector is too much to ask of our neoliberal elites and SimCity's non-simulation of the movement and production of goods also means that Magnasanti wouldn't be economically viable.

Magnasanti is an extreme example but it does expose what's desirable in an education system that will incorporate SimCity in the teaching of its youth.

The other thing about Magnasanti is its dependance on services from outside the map. All of the pollution is generated elsewhere. It gets all of its utilities from neighbors. So aside from being a domestic fascist hellscape, it's a hellish Imperialist state without. One can only imagine how miserable it is to live in one of Magnasanti's tributary states.

Or, possibly, perhaps Magnasanti's largest trading partner is a People's Republic using Magnasanti's financial wealth to fund its own development, with ideas of building a better future...

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 has issued a correction as of 14:12 on Aug 30, 2022

# ¿ Aug 30, 2022 14:10

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 16:16

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

gradenko_2000 posted:

you can delete the coal and oil plants in your own cities (and this by itself skips over a huge part of the issues blocking action on climate change mitigation)... but the big question would be how do you get everyone else to turn theirs off? do you even turn yours off if you know everyone else isn't?

nuke their cities

also its too easy because everyone would just build the nuclear plants. the AI isn't burdened by ideology the way we are, except for the meltdown chance, which should be negligible.

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 has issued a correction as of 14:42 on Sep 22, 2022

# ¿ Sep 22, 2022 14:39

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

KaptainKrunk posted:

what the gently caress do you guys actually do in paradox games besides sit on max speed and click prompts?

i usually pause the game and stare at the screen trying to make a decision

# ¿ Sep 24, 2022 21:57

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Apparently in CK3 if you declare an independence war on your liege, and then that liege loses a war for his kingdom while you're fighting, your liege will switch to the victor.

But the independence war will continue, and winning that war against the weakened loser (who has just become a vassal of the new liege equal in status to you) will make you 100% independent as if the intervening conquest never happened.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2022 19:00

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

i feel like the new monarch who had you as a vassal two months ago would have something to say about that

i mean it seems like your liege losing a war of conquest should automatically end your war of independence inconclusively

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 has issued a correction as of 02:01 on Oct 14, 2022

# ¿ Oct 14, 2022 01:35

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

The most important thing about the Civil War is that it wasn't necessary because industrialization would have to caused the South to give up slavery anyway. All boomer dads know this.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2022 17:05

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

An economic system Marx would be proud of!

# ¿ Oct 25, 2022 16:21

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

gradenko_2000 posted:

the next important thing is that when you research things, for example "Intensive Agriculture" from the Production tab of the Technology Tree, it will unlock new "Production Methods" for your industries

once you unlock these new production methods, what you'll want to do is to go back to the Buildings tab, and then click on the buttons representing the production methods used by the industry, and then checking if it has a positive effect on the profitability of the industry. If it does, adopt it.

(this used to be "automated" in Victoria 1/2, but now you have to do it yourself)

as you unlock more technologies, keep checking back on adopting better production methods

___

it took me one false start going up to 1854 before realizing this basic economic design, and going up to 1847 as Chile following this game plan from the start, I was able to increase their GDP from the starting 905k to 1.3M and getting up to a healthy budget surplus... which you can then use to do things like spending it on bureaucracy and education and the military

I don't know about trade yet

Each step up in production method requires a new good, which requires you to trade for it, which requires Bureaucracy points, which require expanded government buildings, which cost a lot of money.

edit: holy poo poo a trade agreement eliminates the bureaucracy cost of trade routes with that country. that's huge.

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 has issued a correction as of 14:36 on Oct 27, 2022

# ¿ Oct 27, 2022 13:43

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Mandoric posted:

The world at the end of (the war at the end of) an era.

Mistakes: Many.
- Early dev whether or not the Shogun approves gets Japan off on an extremely strong midgame footing, but the Shogun never forcefully disapproves, just lets you work yourself into a soft failstate where they'll stomp out of government, preventing you from either passing reforms that further disempower them or pissing off the growing industrialist and samurai interests enough to kick off a historical Meiji Restoration. Around 40 years midgame were spent just cycling RGO/factory dev and waiting for the politics timer.
- I never really managed to deal with the peasant economy or severe research constraints as a whole due to this; SoL is passable just due to PM changes keeping everyone fed but eh.
- Around another 20 years was spent focused on bullying what was left of the US. Bullying for territory is extremely suboptimal even if it's good territory; you get one state unless you can bait them into actual war and still get your five-year truce timer and huge bad boy points (I think my BEST foreign relation, barring an incongruous protectorate in Parma I took on a lark as my wargoal in a Cut Down To Size play from the Two Sicilies and then they collapsed, is -1500.)
- Because of the research constraints only allowing for one military path, and how fatal being behind in land tech is if you can't swarm, my navy's loving dire and my economy did tank hard when I attracted convoy raiding while waiting these out.
- I didn't think to start spam-coring after going multiculturalism/separation of church and state, so this also meant regular rebellions to clean up after the main war.

Successes:
- Every other major except the Qing was buried by near-continuous civil conflict, so while I'm nominally the fourth GP--in a dead heat with the UK for 3rd--if I wanted to map paint I have a clear path through just continuing to shred Russia and Qing.
- Cut Down to Size seems to just not work if you don't share a land border; everyone but Russia, I didn't even seriously mobilize, just was able to wait them out and WPed.
- If you don't have major unprofitable sectors to subsidize, and starting from enforced autarkhy encourages this, forcing through Council Republic rapidly gets you to a 100% legitimacy 100% voteshare national unity government dominated by the unions.

Systems s:
- Autocrats who leave government rather than kicking off a civil war, but still have autocratic legitimacy.
- I don't mind the war system per se, but:
-- Lots of the fate of all Kamchatka resting on 2000 dudes from two 400k armies meeting in some forest for the scheduled battle that month. But the AI definitely doesn't care about whatever limited supply system there is, and will flood their 400k in to pingpong a more reasonably sized force to death.
-- Fronts get extremely weird around impassable/seas. Holding Okhotsk but not Kamchatka or Transbaikal, you cannot march east as it's considered part of the Transbaikal front; conversely, if fighting in Hokkaido the front gets split sometimes into west and east of Asahikawa, and woe unto you if your general gets reassigned to the east and needs to do a full redeploy to hold a thrust coming toward/through Sapporo.
- And you will be fighting in Hokkaido if you're Japan, as you can't actually colonize it until after your reform process kicks in and the Euros will snag it and Sakhalin first. But you get a reclaim state claim on Sakhalin? But not northern Hokkaido?
- Apparently can't garrison unruly islands against separatism; you get booted out and have to land again.
- If you're naughty, everyone will want to cut you down to size. Even people on the other side of the world with no navy.
- Conceding a Cut Down to Size war definitely isn't just returning all conquests within the prior 10 years like the tooltip says. Might be conquests from targets who you've conquered from in the prior 10 years, or past 10 years plus uncored, but I'd been keeping my plate spinning and lost literally everything when I tried it.
- AI doesn't dev unusual resources well at all; if you want there to be oil or opium or even rubber in the world you basically have to conquer somewhere that has it and dev it up yourself. Opium kind of stands out because unless you start extremely early you have to be able to take either the British or the Qing.

For my next run, I'm going to manually disassemble the US and then try and take one state up.

how did you get to the end? you just play at speed 5 and never pause? maybe that's what im doing wrong.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2022 13:39

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

i had to fight a civil war to enforce separation of church and state when the Armed Forces and the Catholic Church got together and rebelled.

fortunately i somehow still had an army to fight them off with despite it being the Armed Forces in revolt

that was almost one playthrough out the window

# ¿ Oct 28, 2022 16:56

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

I have also entered into a customs union with GB as Chile, but now I have no idea what's going on.

I was using the trade interface to track my domestic consumption through the details tab to check for deficit or surplus.

Now I have no idea what my domestic consumption is. Is this somewhere else?

# ¿ Oct 28, 2022 20:25

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

If i want to exit the customs union at some point i will have to ensure adequate domestic supply to keep my economy going.

I can see consumption of a given commodity per State but I can't see consumption nation-wide.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2022 21:06

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Because I'm dumb here's what I've gathered about Customs Unions.

1) Daddy sells all your inputs to you, if they're available, at their market price. Daddy also sells you all the things your pops need that you don't have. Daddy buys all your surplus output. This costs 0 bureaucracy and 0 convoys.

2) You can use your own convoys to do other things like undercut Daddy if something he sells is too expensive. You can also sell things you don't have. For instance, you can sell Silk to Qing even though you don't make Silk. I guess this means your merchants go out and source Silk from Daddy and sell it to Qing for a profit, so you can use Custom Unions to do arbitrage.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2022 00:09

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

oscarthewilde posted:

the more I think on it, the more I believe Vicky 3 operates from an almost Fukuyama/Koj�ve-esque dissociated point of view. it�s true that the economy as a whole operates from a fairly Marxist point of view (it adequately, if impersonally depicts original accumulation and the first transition to an industrialized capitalist economy), but the way the player interacts with the economy is so clinical and detached in the way it�s pretty much a 21st century venture capitalist simulator. when you research some new kind of production method, implementing this new method is as easy as pressing a button. before you do this, you�ll first calculate whether doing so is sufficiently productive and efficient, without understanding the fundamental changes it would involve. you�re not just producing 150 more �clothes� each month, you�re imposing new methods of repression and force to make sure you�re employees are as productive as can be. it pays lip service to working conditions and quality of life, but as long as the factory is productive enough it�ll pay the workers a decent wage (the notion of fair wage is itself a ideological, a historic figment that relies on a conception of man as homo economicus) and that should be sufficient. it�s weird how, on the one hand, it�s much more interested in �people� than Vicky 2 or Hearts of iron, with its weird and frankly unnecessary 3D animated incredibly uncanny valley characters, but still treats your pops as interchangeable figures on a spreadsheet.

its true that switching from hand sewing to power looms does not cause a mass-casualty event like it should

there should be a lot more starvation in this game. like a lot. there should be as much starvation in this game as there is incest in CK3.

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 has issued a correction as of 14:00 on Nov 3, 2022

# ¿ Nov 3, 2022 13:58

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

1stGear posted:

After some initial teething problems, I'm enjoying UBOAT more than I thought I would. Couple questions though:

1) Is there any point to plugging random military ships other than money/medals? To be specific, I encountered a convoy of some destroyers and corvettes and since I was bored I used two torpedoes on one of the destroyers. The explosion was pretty and evading the rest of the convoy was fun, but it didn't count towards my tonnage objective. Am I at least making things easier for me in the long run by destroying military ships or am I just better off saving my torps for freighters?

Unless it's a carrier or a particularly vulnerable battleship, do not engage military vessels. Your mission is to sink freighters.

1stGear posted:

2) How am I supposed to handle the research aspect of the game? Do I just have to wait for having 6+ officers so I can leave one behind or do i want to get the projects started as soon as possible and just do some boring patrols while I'm an officer down?

Do you want upgraded toilets or not?

# ¿ Dec 6, 2022 14:01

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Tekopo posted:

SH3 with Grey Wolves was probably one of the best experiences that i've had with a subsim ever. I also liked SH4, even unmodded, since the flow of the campaign was so different from SH3

Being locked inside the sub, crouching down in the control room while depth charges rock the boat, takes it to another level. It's very hard to play like that in UBOAT.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2022 18:02

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Yes but it's awkward.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2022 18:04

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Aren't you going to get nuked?

# ¿ Dec 19, 2022 16:29

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

skooma512 posted:

I'm finding Second Front kinda tricky. Every time I move a squad around they surely get hit and break and that's already more or less game over. Hardly any cover and no smoke grenade mechanic (so far).

Can I do something about mines or are my boys just going to get randomly blown up?

# ¿ Feb 5, 2023 18:47

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Raskolnikov38 posted:

doesn�t one of the silent hunters have an American pacific campaign

in that case you're whitey sent to kill the yellow man

ww2 convoy raiding doesnt have any good guys

# ¿ Feb 9, 2023 20:02

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Lostconfused posted:

Company of Heroes was always sus, I think I remember hearing or reading some poo poo about how they just wanted to show how they were just regular brave/heroic soldiers in the market garden campaign.

Not that I really took note of it at the time, but the signs were there.

The SS brothers are also big landowners. They cry about the family estate at some point in the campaign. Just blood and soil boys.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2023 23:24

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

They cribbed everything from Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan. That's why it was good.

For CoH2 they cribbed poo poo movies like Enemy at the Gates.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2023 23:30

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

There's no cishets in foxholes.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2023 19:08

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Zeppelin Insanity posted:

What the hell kind of game did you guys play where the Germans were overpowered, because it definitely wasn't Company of Heroes 1 multiplayer. The balance overall was decent, but Americans were the real overpowered standout, by far. Massed riflemen were drat hard to beat, and they also had cheap Shermans and Calliopes that didn't cost fuel.

Did you all play 4v4 annihilation or something

Anyway the only moral way to play was Random because then if you ended up as Germans it wasn't like you chose to play as Nazis

For a while when you banked the 1000 for Blitzkrieg it was game over even if you were down to 1 point.

Calliopes were massively OP though.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2023 00:14

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Frosted Flake posted:

I started KSP when the earth was flat and there were like 7 parts, on the recommendation of Games, I think, so I get what you mean. It took a long time to get to where it is.

I suppose I�m asking more why they didn�t wait until they had at least the content of the final build of KSP 1:1, everything except the interstellar stuff I guess. You can�t even do career mode now.

The stuff you can do you can't really do. There are so many weird bugs like the game pausing when you go to 1x (sometimes), showing the game: paused and game: resumed notices 2 or 4 times instead of once, Camera mode auto-selecting Orbital when you go to launch, "warp to point" not turning off time warp if you pass into the Mun's SOI, the Parts view is unscalable and just plain doesn't work for fuel tanks. Stuff that new players would undoubtedly encounter during their first play session. Lots and lots of small things.

They have a real conflict going on with their UI art direction. There's this low-fi 70s inspired dithered aesthetic in some UI elements that clashes with how crisp everything else looks. The game looks great though. It feels good when it works. If they don't give up on it I think it will turn out.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2023 17:36

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Stairmaster posted:

I got Second Front and these scenarios seem hard????

Yes I think the trick is you have to get enemy soldiers to rout into the field of fire of your other troops to get kills but I gave up before I got the hang of it.

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 has issued a correction as of 21:34 on Apr 21, 2023

# ¿ Apr 21, 2023 21:32

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Frosted Flake posted:

The most controversial recent book on that period of Roman expansion in recent years is one that applies the barest material analysis and considers class lol

Also shows why you have to know German in the discipline, since the one citation the reviewer uses is a German one.

e: I forgot to highlight the relevant bits, but the last full page is the one where the reviewer becomes uncomfortable with elite agendas as the driving force behind the expansion of Rome, either cutting deals with foreign elites, or fighting wars because they benefitted domestically as politicians or generals. The Social War was this system breaking down, and would be great for a COIN title.

Hudson's latest book, The Collapse of Antiquity, covers the Roman Empire with an explicit material and class analysis.

# ¿ May 13, 2023 23:42

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

I hope they model how allowing the rich to buy up the land of all your smallholders and enslave them through usury reduces the size of your recruitable population and causes your empire to collapse, requiring your rulers to periodically declare mass restoration of freedom and land.

I'm sure they will do that just as sure as they definitely have the foggiest idea of how battles were even fought back then.

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 has issued a correction as of 12:20 on May 27, 2023

# ¿ May 27, 2023 12:18

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

I assume half of those are drawn from the CIA Actions deck.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2023 12:45

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

KomradeX posted:

Thats fair, but also funny

Itnis funny that the first one is a loss condition considering how mnay Libs are desperate for it

marvel avengers rear end game

# ¿ Jul 1, 2023 01:52

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Bi-Partisan Co-Op Counter

# ¿ Jul 3, 2023 19:02

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

drat somebody tell the committee they can't give out the nobel peace price to principals of countries at war

# ¿ Jul 5, 2023 16:34

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Tekopo posted:

is kaiserreich the racist one?

kaiserreich is the one where ya boi mussolini fights on your side for best communism

# ¿ Jul 14, 2023 21:47

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

i dont remember any of this from Terror from the Deep

are lobster men problematic?

# ¿ Jul 20, 2023 23:49

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

How does the scenario play out if you do absolutely nothing?

# ¿ Jul 28, 2023 16:33

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

why does that make you lose

whats a level 4 rogue state

whats their backstab crit bonus

# ¿ Jul 28, 2023 16:42

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Sleekly posted:

i went for this on p500
https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1011-next-war-iran.aspx

which does sound fun but i notice a certian US ally is missing lol

goblins and hobgoblins don't like it when you out that they are both orcish peoples

also seems to be missing the bugbear nation of syria

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 has issued a correction as of 21:17 on Aug 5, 2023

# ¿ Aug 5, 2023 21:13

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

grog dev says "go outside" lmao

# ¿ Aug 10, 2023 21:22

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

The Chad Jihad posted:

Super sperglord Empire at War mod Thrawn's Revenge just had a big update. Thrill at a star wars game where a Tie Fighter is rare and exotic because every random weapon ship and character from every part of a dead setting has been added. I am currently sieging Mon Calamari as the Greater Maldrood, an imperial splinter faction I've never heard of who use red star destroyers

That terrible RTS? LucasArts threatened to sue me for pirating it.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2023 01:52

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 16:16

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Mister Bates posted:

one of the most revolutionary (heh) things W&R does is honestly the way it handles cars and traffic.

like, shitloads of city builders have attempted to do agent-based traffic sims, with Cities Skylines being the most well-known example right now. The simulation in CS cheats a whole lot, though - not only is there a quite low agent limit and everything above it just teleports to its destination, but the agents themselves will also eventually teleport if the commute is too long, and badly gridlocked traffic will eventually literally disappear, preventing a badly designed intersection from completely killing a city. Most importantly, CS does not really simulate parking at all - yeah, there are parking spaces, but they're basically aesthetic, an agent will still reach its destination even if there is not actually parking there, the car will just disappear into the void.

In Workers and Resources, every single thing driving on the road is fully modeled, and it does need to physically reach its destination, and when it gets there, there does need to be a parking space for it to park. They also all need fuel, a requirement CS and other city builders generally do not model at all.

It sucks! Trying to build an American-style car-centric city, in a game where all traffic is modeled and none of it is abstracted, sucks! It's not just that you need shitloads of roads. It's that you need to devote massive amounts of space, labor, and resources to building acres upon acres of parking lots loving everywhere. It's that you need to place gas stations everywhere, figure out how to keep them supplied with fuel, and plan for the traffic going into and out of them. It is a nightmare to design and will pretty much always have massive problems with congestion you could avoid by just using fewer cars, plus shitloads of additional pollution, plus all of the extra labor and resources you have to expend supplying the hungry hungry cars - the fuel, the asphalt, the steel for new cars.

by simply making all of the cars actually have to go from point A to point B, the game accidentally(?) makes a political statement

it does abstract one thing: people have to go from Point A to Point B, but they don't have go back from Point B to Point A. People teleport directly back home when their shift is over, so only the morning commute is accurately modelled.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2023 01:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Strategy & Wargames - middlebrow autodidact "history buffs" who yearn to pull levers

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