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Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore |
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greenline wishes he was playing civ 6 still
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ginger is empathetically not happy about ljubjana invading him:
oops, don't have a screenshot. just imagine there are 20 curraisers near ljubjana's territory. maybe I should rethink letting mmjd use my borders to attack... don't want that stack aimed at me.
since ginger's computer seems to be preventing me from logging into the game at the moment, have a Dunepost:
The Dune movies are an attempt to adapt the book that I found surprisingly engaging. Although a significant amount of detail is inevitably shed in the transition from words to moving picture, at no point did I feel when watching the two movies back to back that the details lost were essential to the meat of the story. Yes, the spacing guild was cut, and most of the mentats, but the fundamental ethos of the novel is still mostly intact. In the films you will still see the fall of a once great empire, the myth that unites a nomadic and scattered tribe into an unstoppable army, the trials and tribulations of living on a truly alien, desert planet. Some of the best parts of the movies are details added by the filmmaker, who already has an impressive record for science fiction dramas (Blade Runner 2049, Arrival). His depiction of the Saudarkar and the Harkonnen home worlds do an excellent job of showing, in a visual way, how alien humans can be. These planets were settled by what was one point the same species of homo sapiens that we all know and love, but was then transformed by that strange environment and by the culture that adapted to it to create a set of human aliens. If you aren't going to see the Dune movies, then at least watch the Harkonnen arena sequence on youtube, to get a sense of what I'm describing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS8JQ4Q20M4 This alienness of human cultures wasn't a feature of the original book, which showed them much more like typical tribes already known on earth, but feels like a welcome and compelling addition nonetheless. And all this detail is shown almost entirely just through striking visuals. A picture tells a thousand words, indeed. The second movie also flows better than the second half of the book, by including many scenes I had hoped the book would have, but didn't. There's a much greater sense of Paul learning the ways of the Fremen here, maturing to become the leader he ends the book as, rather than killing one guy and then cutting to the final battle. This means the end of the movie crams more details in than the book does, but I think the trade off is well worth it. The sophomoric scene in the book where Paul takes some of the water of life and raves about how cool drugs are is thankfully missing too. The experience is instead shown to be harrowing and almost deadly, which keeps the gravitas of the setting unbroken. The worst change made for the movie is seen in the character of Chani (yes, a nerd complaining about the Chani changes, how original). She serves as a mouthpiece for some very out of place modern messaging, telling the audience that the Fremen, the muhdajeen-looking guys uniting around a prophet promising holy war, are really big believers in "gender equality". This unfortunately feels like a compromise done to drive ticket sales in a film that otherwise is not concerned with compromising on its vision. An executive needed a big female star to sell tickets, so they got Zendaya, and Zendaya or her agent wouldn't sign unless she also gets to run around with a rocket launcher and talk about girl power, even if it clashes horrifically with the setting, all ultimately because modern audiences won't accept the female agency as seen through the Bene Gesserit as enough. Zendeya herself is a fine fit for the role, and her criticism of Paul near the end could have worked if phrased in better language, but sadly, it remains a stain on an otherwise stellar set of movies.
while i have slacked significantly in not building a moai city, i at least made sure to get the Epics built on time:
  I am in desperate need of another great person for a second golden age, so I am hoping to get good use out of the national epic city in particular. Ginger made peace with lljubjana, after the both of them must have done some serious warring with Cuirs being traded on both sides (Ljubjana seems to have turned his previously slow research around). I would like to march and eliminate Dreylin by concentrating my forces, but ljubjana is in a decent position to invade me now if he wants, so it is a risk I'm not willing to take. The best way to improve my situation is getting to better civics - serfdom / nationalism / rep would suit my empire much better than HR / slavery / bureau, but I need another great person and time to get there. On the other side of the world, superdeath and naufragger made peace. I'm not sure why - my espionage lead let me see that superdeath seemed to have a numerical advantage and a large number of knights ready to press forward into nauf's core, despite nauf seeming to hold a tech lead.
I've spent enough time ruining Dreylin's sandbox, so it was past time for someone to step in mine. Ljubjana declared war as I thought he might, taking one city and having 20+ cuirs in range to take another.
 He took significant casualties blitzing vs the longbows / spears I had defending, so I hope to be able to make a stand further back. I do at least feel vindicated in deciding not to support ljubjana in attacking Ginger as he repeatedly asked me to do, given how quickly he was willing to turn on me. I expected that not being able to make progress against Dreylin would have left me vulnerable to something like this. I just wasn't expecting it to happen so fast. For ages and ages, ljubjana was taking forever to reach any new techs, despite his city lead. Then suddenly, he is teching much faster, and has Cuirs he is using against civac. Then they sign peace without fighting a huge pitched battle, and he has ten turns to use those on me. Maybe civac will come to my aid when those ten turns are up. Or he might just join in finishing me off. It will be a struggle either way. I would like to ask lurkers if I had made some lapse in not being able to predict that Ljubjana would leap ahead as fast as he did. It felt like only a few turns ago he was attacking with a bunch of longbows. Or maybe I had missed something with my limited espionage vision.
Thus continues the deluge:
 Rather than pushing straight for Magnus, Ljubjana decided to run for my exposed cities (perhaps I shouldn't have built that road through the desert hills...). I don't think I can challenge his push, so I will cede those two cities and prepare for a fight at Magnus. If Ljubjana offers peace after taking those cities, I will wait and see if Ginger will intervene first. He is researching rifling right now.  The military disparity between me and ljubjana is sadly high enough that he can throw two monster stacks at me with impunity, while a third is no doubt on the way after taking my NE city. Seems like he is going for the kill here, not caring about what Ginger will do. I think I can counterattack the Cuir stack next turn, if he leaves it in range.  For the curious - the two combats were killing one sentry HA on the red dot, and killing one Cuir garrisoning the city with the blue dot (RussiaFreeTiles). I was checking the range on which I could hit the city with a big stack south, and my mouse acted up and sent my whole stack of catapults into the city.
Never mind, I'm an idiot. Made the classic civ 4 mistake of miscounting how far enemy 2 movers could move and left my cats in range and they got wiped. Stupid, but entirely deserved given that I was checked out of this game after the attack on Dreylin anyway. So at this point I'm dead and it's just a question of how this will play out affecting the Ginger / Ljubjana dynamic.
sub instructions:
I've played like complete shit for the past dozen or so turns. Lost most of my army then deleted all my workers and great person in a fit of despair. Only thing keeping the civ alive is that ginger intervened in the war vs ljubjana. So there may be some room for pushback.  Unfortunately I lost my sources of horse recently - the best offensive units are cats, maces, and pikes. Ljubjana had a massive cuir army that invaded, which is why all my surviving units are pikes. Now I only have a few cities left to whip or not whip for cats and other medieval trash.  Magnus is a former city of mine that I would hope could be reclaimed. So you would want to keep building cats and advance slowly. Since ljubjana is retreating, he may give up this city if can build enough cats up on this area. The situation may look daunting, but I guarantee you will not fuck it up worse than I did. |
