[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[El Grillo]

Happy birthday, cheers and enjoy

[Krill]

What it means is that cronyism is alive and well, like we ever needed the reminder. And you have a long time yet to watch it. Congratulations on surviving this long. It's all downhill (it was always down hill from day zero, just thee pace starts increasing).

[williams482]

I'm kinda skeptical that "EP vision is so balanced" is a specific comment on the tactical situation of this upcoming war in this game, mostly because that seems like an unnecessary in-game communication which if anything hurts their situation?

I see Ginger has more EP total than you while Dreylin has less, so I suppose it's plausible. But I'd be working from the theory that those (GG?) unit names are just general Civ IV comments.

[ljubljana]

yeah.... if they are communicating with anyone then WE are the target of it, since drey lacks open borders. i'm not sure why it would help them to give out info like this either, but maybe they're just doing it for fun and figure the game situation is already pretty set in stone

i will say that the LAST unit name (no GG, they haven't fought at all all game) was "CHA is so balanced" on a combat 2 + formation knight.... which did unnecessarily reveal genuine info about the gamestate (that all theie mounted units have 8 XP for the third promo). so if they do genuinely have EP vision on drey, then telling us so is not inconsistent w the pattern so far, even if i don't understand why they'd want to

thank you for the birthday wishes friends! can't wait to find out what the first chronic illness of my 30s is going to be  based on how my feet feel this morning plantar fasciitis looks like a strong contender

[ljubljana]

i feel that winning a civ4 game would be sufficiently special to justify having been alive

[Krill]

i feel that winning a civ4 game would be sufficiently special to justify having been alive

I'd say aim higher. Civ is often just cerebral opium, but at best it is art. A well played, well documented game is a piece of culture and can be cherished as such, but it cannot be the core part of a reason to live. As Thrawn says (I'm not following the sig), struggle upwards can be rewarding and allow this artistic expression. But sticking ones head in the sand and using civ as escapism whilst everything else deteriorates is simply self destructive.

And Plantar Fasciitis is no joke. Get your shoes sorted and new insoles, if you sit behind a desk all day at home, get actual shoes to wear in the house and wear them all the time.

[aetryn]

i feel that winning a civ4 game would be sufficiently special to justify having been alive

I'd say aim higher. Civ is often just cerebral opium, but at best it is art. A well played, well documented game is a piece of culture and can be cherished as such, but it cannot be the core part of a reason to live. As Thrawn says (I'm not following the sig), struggle upwards can be rewarding and allow this artistic expression. But sticking ones head in the sand and using civ as escapism whilst everything else deteriorates is simply self destructive.

And Plantar Fasciitis is no joke. Get your shoes sorted and new insoles, if you sit behind a desk all day at home, get actual shoes to wear in the house and wear them all the time.

Agreed on both points. Whatever you are yearning for, escaping into video games isn't going to get you it. You'd likely wake up in a few years, realize video games were fun but ultimately unsatisfying, and be sad that you waited longer to deal with the real need. At least, that's how it worked for me.  Keep searching, and you might find it. Video games are fine if you can keep it as a hobby - something you do when you have downtime from important things in your life and need to rest anyway. Anything more than that is a trap and a snare.

And as someone who has struggled with Plantar Fasciitis a lot, yep! I take off my house shoes when sitting for long periods of time but nearly always wear them when walking anywhere, even across the room. If over-the-counter insoles don't help, make an appointment with a doctor. I had to get special insoles that drop the front of my foot lower than the rest of it, which looks and sounds weird but apparently solves some structural problem with my feet.

Meanwhile, no use speculating on what Ginger means by his unit name. We simply can't know who has EP vision on who or whether Ginger is just making a general statement with his unit names. Since we can't do anything about it, don't worry about it.

And happy birthday!

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

i feel that winning a civ4 game would be sufficiently special to justify having been alive

I'd say aim higher. Civ is often just cerebral opium, but at best it is art. A well played, well documented game is a piece of culture and can be cherished as such, but it cannot be the core part of a reason to live. As Thrawn says (I'm not following the sig), struggle upwards can be rewarding and allow this artistic expression. But sticking ones head in the sand and using civ as escapism whilst everything else deteriorates is simply self destructive.

And Plantar Fasciitis is no joke. Get your shoes sorted and new insoles, if you sit behind a desk all day at home, get actual shoes to wear in the house and wear them all the time.

Agreed on both points. Whatever you are yearning for, escaping into video games isn't going to get you it. You'd likely wake up in a few years, realize video games were fun but ultimately unsatisfying, and be sad that you waited longer to deal with the real need. At least, that's how it worked for me.  Keep searching, and you might find it. Video games are fine if you can keep it as a hobby - something you do when you have downtime from important things in your life and need to rest anyway. Anything more than that is a trap and a snare.

Same. 

I can put my money where my mouth is here, too - remember I dropped out of PBEM20, a game I think I very likely could have won had I seen it through to its conclusion, in order to chase my dream around the world. It's a choice I would make 1000/1000 times. You can find joy in games, but to really find satisfaction you need to find purpose. There's a reason the Lotus-Eaters were horrifying as long ago as the Odyssey.

[ljubljana]

ahh well. you guys are very sweet, and i'm grateful that every so often i get to tap into your non-civ related wisdom as well

as escapist cognitive drugs go, i guess this one is at least less of a dopamine grind than most. especially with all the reporting involved, which i think contributes meaningfully to keeping my technical writing ability competent, which is a skill i might not otherwise be actively practicing had i not tricked my brain into so doing by attaching it to GAME. and i think there are other ways in which RB has made me a more analytical person that are probably transferable..... not long ago i had a final-stage job interview that stemmed from a referral from someone who's good graces i got into mostly because i was the only one in our social circle who could beat him at board games.... which in turn was true largely because of PBEM20....

but i know a LOT of people, including past and maybe future iterations of myself, who are into worse things. idk what the median age is of RB-ers (i have long suspected i'm younger than average but MAYbe not by much) and this could be doomer-zoomer-boomerism talking, but i think it's rough out here.... i have friends who are wired into social media for 12 continuous hours most days and for whom it definitely fits the "is this interfering with your social and professional life" criteria that i've heard used to identify addiction in an abstract sense (eg independent of the choice of stimulus). part of the reason that my career ambitions are kinda scaled-back and aimless right now is that, as a computer person by educational background, i get the strong sense that society generally, and these friends specifically, would be doing better if there were FEWER of me than are produced naturally by market forces the jobs i've had in the industry have not really disabused me of this either, nor do i really buy that the need to choose SOME compromises to make for the sake of financial stability frees me from the ethical implications OF that choice, yknow?

re the fasciitis, it MIGHT not be plantar, the presentation is a little odd... the pain i have fits qualitatively with online accounts, but it's in the wrong location, in the center of the foot rather than towards the heel. not sure if that's within normal variance or not, but probably worth trying OTC insoles (which i was unaware existed) just to see what happens, yes?

[ljubljana]

AAAANYway, what turn is it again?



well, i know i'm supposed to do this soon, but.... why does SD want all my gold? is it just so i won't accept and ginger won't know they're coordinating against them? but i think it's still too early for me specifically to cancel our deals, which are open borders and wine/ivory - now that we've made the fish-fish devil deal, i think we'd better respect at least the letter of it and avoid doing anything that could be perceived as aggressive. it's also kind of a giveaway that we're not intending LONG-term friendship if we cut off OB like that... MAYbe the wines deal would be fine to cancel as we've acquired native sources in GT's territory, but our borders haven't expanded to claim them yet so i'm not sure. i also have a sense that it's more harmful to ginger to wait until they've drafted enough to be DEPENDENT on the +2 happy from ivory to keep their cities happy, and THEN cancel, than it would be to cut them off now... idk, interested to hear lurker thoughts on this



whatever GT is doing in aksum, it has not been whipping more iron units with their SD iron, which we are now about to cut off as per williams' suggestion. what happens if they've got 50 hammers into a pike there when we cut it off, btw? does it turn into hammers in a less advanced unit, or is it just lost?

either way attacking in the next 2-3 turns is looking ok. we're not winning every SINGLE time in my 15-catapult sims but it's a good majority, and that's with them having one more xbow and pike in the city in the sim than it looks like we will face in reality. we are dropping off the 15th catapult this turn. i do not think next turn is correct as our pillaging longbow will be out of position and we have 3 troops on boats including a 16th cat, but the turn after is looking good. also due to the way worker positioning has worked out, attacking next turn vs two turns from now doesn't make a difference in terms of how quickly our stack gets to the east, since we can't road over to aksum quickly enough in the former case. only downside to playing it safe is that's one more turn for GT to change their behavior and start drywhipping archers...

when you read this GT, sorry for making you play through all these "lose in slow motion" turns like this.... i promise i'm not out here to make you suffer, the reason i haven't killed you yet it genuinely because the sim says we can't yet



soooo this is pretty much how we're "bootstrapping" all our dubious filler cities and GT conquests lol. gondar just got its castle up this turn, matara's is also 2t out. i went ahead and started the internal ones at cities that have econ multipliers up, so hoshoryu and abi (takakeisho too but it has 2t on our only knight first lol). kirishima could have started the grocer but even though it's worth like 17 gold, 150 hammers for a 17 gold building that is zeroed out on about a third of turns when we're doing research is not it i think. it's worse than a 50-hammer, 3.75 gold castle (hoshoryu/takakeisho), and while it's maaaaybe comparable to a 3-gold castle it represents 3 such castles, and right on the border in a city we could lose in the event of ginger war. i started a catapult instead

unfortunately the nature of the aksum meatgrinder is such that we probably can't start all muskets, all the time when we hit gunpowder as we need a replacement cat wave as well. but i WILL start muskets in all the cities that are NOT on cat duty