sesquipedalianThaumaturge

There are certainly some rationalists under those misapprehensions, but there are also plenty who’d agree that what OpenAI is doing is terrible (I certainly do). Heck, Eliezer himself is out there calling for international treaties banning AI development. That’s hardly “minor changes”.

DE is great but I feel like its political elements work so well because they’re not very blunt. The writers clearly put a lot of effort into making communism in the game less appealing so that the conflicts would be more interesting.

Which hierarchies and systems does he dismantle? Looking at my copy of the appendix the only descriptions of his policies I can find are a bunch of nice things he does specifically for the Shire.

I did (while romancing him) and I was happy with my decision. He will try to make you his thrall but you can refuse, though that may create other difficulties.

(Not a writer, just curious) How does the censorship system in China work from your studio’s perspective? Do you submit games to an office for approval before publishing, or do you they publish specific guidelines that you follow internally, or do you just put out whatever and it’s rarely a problem?

Any guesses why Japan is like that?

What are some of the unintended consequences you would expect? It seems to me like not many units without kitchen access would get built due to limited demand, but some people would appreciate the lower rent and prepare most of their food with a rice cooker and a microwave.

One summer I lived in a basement apartment that didn’t have a kitchen, and I occasionally used my landlord’s kitchen, but I think it still should have been legal for her to rent the apartment to me if she didn’t let me do that.

Which is an odd side effect of a mechanic which I think is supposed to help smaller forces needle larger ones.

That makes sense, I agree other parts of the game are more important. Just, if you run into an army that’s 1/3 - 1/2 the size of yours, a battle is kind of a tossup (you only have +1, maybe worse due to morale) but an all-out harry is usually a costly but nearly guaranteed win in a few days.

Maybe I’m just misunderstanding how the movement rules apply, but I thought the harrying army can avoid battle while still harrying (otherwise a large force being harried by a much smaller one can just respond by starting a battle and crushing them).

Harrying the enemy back speeds up their destruction, if they try to close or flee the harrying army can maintain the range due to the target’s movement penalty, and often they won’t be near a stronghold. I guess you could split your force but then you’re just feeding detachments to the harriers.

Well the army of 4,000 doesn’t have a lot of options, since they can’t force a battle and they have a week of moving at reduced speed before they’re pretty much destroyed. I like the idea of skirmishing detachments having to regroup for a while if they fail though, that does seem like it would help.

Though I certainly could just be wrong about what commanders want out of an engagement most of the time, I haven’t been playing for long.

I’m assuming a mix of infantry and cavalry, so the overall ratio is close to 1:1. I totally agree that 30% casualties is a lot, but the smaller force would take close to 100% casualties, so if you’re not under time pressure it might be worth doing that and then proceeding to your objective freely.

I’m not sure how much that would actually happen in practice, but it seems like an odd capability for large armies to have and I don’t really know what it would represent in-world.

So for example an army of 10,000 might prefer to trade ~3,000 casualties for a highly likely win against an army of 4,000, rather than risking a battle where they only have +1 to the roll. And unless they’re near a friendly stronghold the smaller army can’t really escape or force a battle.

Makes sense. The main concern was that a larger army with lots of detachments smoothing out randomness could use harrying to force an attritional fight with a smaller one, where they trade troops basically 1:1 until the larger army has a huge numerical bonus and can finish them off with a battle.

*sorry, reverse the colors.

Can Red’s commander tell you “if Purple harries me, I will move my army to fight a battle with them”? And can Purple’s commander tell you “if Red tries to start a battle while I’m harrying, I will move my army away”? And if each of them give those orders, what happens?

This is maybe best saved for the stream, but could you give an anonymized or theoretical example of how an engagement involving harrying would play out in your game? The Cataphract servers I’m in are having a fair amount of debate about how that rule is supposed to work.

If I went back in time 6 years and told my past self that today we would have machines smart enough to flatter individual people effectively, I think past me would be pretty impressed (and worried).

Yeah, at the very least you need a montage or something. But I would prefer to actually spend some episodes on it, I think the Elves’ experience of Melkor at Cuiviénen is important for later events. Also it would be good to set up Elwë and Melian’s relationship.

I think starting with Cuiviénen would be ideal. Besides that, I think the obvious choice is somewhere between Fëanor’s birth and the pardoning of Melkor.

But in order to deter the kidnappers, you have to create uncertainty about whether you’ll pay! Committing to it beforehand is just incentivizing people to hold your spouse for ransom.

A Tumblr post from user discoursedrome that reads: they're always bringing experts or activists on the news to agitate about porn and there's a standard script for this that's like "I think sex education is important, I'm not anti-sex, but so much of this porn is violent and misogynistic if not outright illegal, and it's far too accessible to our children" I want to see someone finally be brave enough to say that the government should just make its own porn for teenagers that accords with community values, so they don't have to go to these shady places to get it. I think the government porn would probably be pretty bad but I would be so eager to hear about the process of designing it. there would be so many stakeholders and consultations. in canada it would have to be bilingual

So you think Trump could tell the Air Force to assassinate Gavin Newsom via drone strike, and they would just do that without objecting? Why hasn’t he made himself dictator then?

Fair, that’s not what I was imagining but I guess it does qualify as helping round people up.

I have, yes.

I live in LA, and I’ve seen the troops here, I just haven’t heard anything about them helping round people up. I would definitely like to know if that’s happening though.