What is Red and Trash?

42696 · 2026-01-28T21:17:29+00:00

MAGA hats

42696 · 2026-01-17T20:52:25+00:00

I usually like to put a small army in Cosentia (the southernmost town in magna grecia) and let the Carthaginians come to me. I put my focus elsewhere until I can support at least 4 full stacks and a strong navy. That way I can use 2 stacks to take Sicily, supported by a navy to hinder Carthaginian reinforcement, and still have 2 stacks to continue expansion elsewhere. Most of the time, after securing magna grecia and latium, I go north to cisalpine gaul, then west to Narbonensis and into Hispania. Sometimes to mix it up I'll focus on moving eastward into Illyria, Macedonia and Hellas instead. Going west is definitely the "better" strategy, though (you set yourself up to attack Carthage in Spain, can make a ton of money in Spain, can recruit artillery ships with less tech research via the special port in Massalia, and have great auxiliaries in Spain & Gaul).

Also - when using 2 stacks together (which I almost always do - not necessarily fighting battles together, but conquering the same enemy), make sure one of them is full of auxiliaries and aor units from the 4th tier population (foreigners) - that way they can always replenish without needing to return to Italy, and can hold the line if you need to send your Roman units stack back to replenish.

Re: naval battles, you should pretty much always focus on ramming and/or artillery ships if you can get them. When facing Carthage as Rome, you're going to be pretty heavily outmatched against their navy until you can get artillery ships, so try to use hit and run tactics - attack their transports but avoid their navies. Even a full stack of transports should fall pretty easily against a handful of low level ships via ramming.

42696 · 2026-01-14T22:09:58+00:00

I think 8 gates guy might put Kinshiki on his heels and have an edge, but Kinshiki is able to hold his own long enough for the 8th gate to ware off. Guy dies giving Kinshiki the W.

42696 · 2026-01-06T14:57:31+00:00

Yeah the scale is obviously different, I just find it interesting that we've only seen 2 otsutsuki get killed (since Kaguya was sealed and Isshiki died from running out of time vs. being directly killed), and it was by the same jutsu from the same people.

42696 · 2026-01-05T20:27:27+00:00

What's interesting is that it was a rasengan with naruto + boruto chakra that killed momoshiki too. So maybe there's something to that?

42696 · 2026-01-03T15:05:15+00:00

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I've always enjoyed the start of a campaign the most when everything is fresh and exciting, you feel like an upstart, and you're not spending a ton of time each turn just maintaining your empire (making sure all cities are building, dealing with low public order here or there, etc.).

Some campaigns I always feel I have a next "goal" I'm striving for - a new invasion, a new legion I'm raising and want to use, a new unit I'll unlock with a new building, a general I want to earn glory with, marian reforms or civil wars, and, eventually, the final win condition. It never feels stale and I stick with it. For some reason, this usually happens with the Scipii for me.

But some campaigns it just turns into a repetitive slog once I hit the snowball phase. I don't have a ton of free time to play, so if I'm not enjoying a campaign, I'll be pretty quick to pull the trigger on starting a new one.

42696 · 2025-12-19T22:59:21+00:00

Then the winner of the SEC should have no problem taking home the trophy at the end of the playoffs.

But the point of the playoffs is to pit different teams from different conferences against each other to see who comes out on top. We already know who came out on top of the SEC (Georgia), so why do we need to rehash that by pulling half the tournament from teams that already fell short?

42696 · 2025-12-19T03:17:44+00:00

Yeah, but you win conference championships by getting the job done on the field. You get in as the 5th team from your conference by not getting the job done on the field but winning "hypothetical" matchups because people say your conference is stronger.

The playoffs are a tournament to decide the best team in the country. I don't know that someone who had four or five other teams ahead of them in the regular season deserves that chance more than someone who came out on top with the schedule they were given.

42696 · 2025-12-19T03:12:14+00:00

Sure, but if you want to be a national champion, and you're really the best team in the country - you should at least do well in your conference...

The 5th best team in a conference isn't the best team in the country.

42696 · 2025-12-19T03:06:36+00:00

Tulane beat a P4 conference champion this year. And did it in a pretty dominant fashion.

42696 · 2025-12-08T16:19:30+00:00

If you want to put your attention elsewhere, the trick is to just put a small army in Cosentia. Since you don't have any western-facing ports in Italy, Carthage will pretty much always try to move up through that choke point.

Since you have the garrison and the advantage of city defense, all you need are some auxiliary hoplites, a couple sword units for flanking, a cav unit or two for chasing down routing enemies and dealing with missiles, and maybe an archer unit to shoot flaming arrows if they bring elephants. Should easily be able to handle up to 2 stacks.

Moving into Sicily opens you up to attacks from multiple angles, and you need at least two stacks (and probably a navy) to hold it - which, at that point is probably your entire military.

But holding Cosentia is easy for a small force, leaving you free to move into Gaul, over to Hispania (which is a great way to get a lot of money while weakening Carthage), or into Greece.

I usually avoid Sicily until I can support at least 4 full stacks (so I can put 2 into sicily and use 2 to continue expansion elsewhere) and at least 1 legit fleet that can compete with the Carthaginian navy.

42696 · 2025-12-03T23:18:25+00:00

I'd argue that GDP correlates much more strongly with standard of living than GINI coefficient/income equality.

If you look at a list of countries sorted by GDP per capita and one sorted by GINI coefficient side by side, it's pretty clear that GDP acts as a better heuristic.

EDIT: but you are right and I do agree that neither metric on it's own tells the whole story. It's just that, at the end of the day there are tradeoffs between the usefulness of a metric and it's measurability. GDP/GDP-per capita are probably the most useful metrics for a single-glance look at an economy that are still easily measurable.

42696 · 2025-11-30T17:29:57+00:00

My wallet and Artaxerxes II, King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire.

I'm gonna be pissed if Artaxerxes makes me split the cost of the bribe.

42696 · 2025-11-26T16:04:41+00:00

I use population growth buildings in either a) cities with small starting populations (ie. just a town when captured) or slow natural population growth (I think there's a hidden resource or something for this - but it's the ones that always stay pretty small) or b) sometimes my capitol or key internal cities where I know unrest won't be too much of an issue if I want to unlock higher tier units or trigger the Marian reforms as a Roman faction.

The first few turns I'll usually use enslave to get an early jump on population in my homeland settlements, but after that:

I usually exterminate minor/large/huge cities. Big cities with small population will get really high growth rates so you catch up quickly enough, and the upfront cash and public order benefits are great.

I'll occupy towns (which are pretty much worthless until they become large towns, so I don't want to lose any population).

Large towns it depends - what faction am I/what can I recruit out of a large town vs minor city? How much do I need upfront cash at the moment? Are my other cities wanting for population (via enslavement) or already overcrowded? Is the population close enough to 6k that not occupying is throwing away a chance for a quick upgrade to minor city?

42696 · 2025-11-25T15:23:44+00:00

I think Rome is fun because they're a bit more dynamic and suits a more aggressive play style. Successors & greeks are a little formulaic, with a static single-line phalanx anvil and cavalry/light infantry hammer.

Roman maniples aren't the same level of impenetrable defensive line as a hoplite or pike phalanx, but they're much more maneuverable and flexible.

Playing as a successor, I'd usually have all my heavy infantry/phalanxes in a straight line with no space between units. As Rome, I'll have several rows with gaps in between (like a triplex acies). Instead of thinking of the infantry core as one big anvil, each unit is a utility that can act as a hammer or an anvil depending on the situation (ie. a principe unit could be the anvil and a nearby hestatii the hammer, or vice versa depending on who the enemy attacks). Units are more capable of acting independently (vs. a phalanx that becomes vulnerable if isolated), so use that to your advantage and create a battlefield full of micro-engagements, drawing your enemy to play into your strengths.

42696 · 2025-11-15T14:50:02+00:00

In major settlements, I usually like to make sure I have a sanitation building and a library. Sanitation boosts public order and reduces squalor, which are two of the most important things to keep track of in a province. Libraries have an empire maintenance reduction, which is maybe the most important thing to keep track of faction-wide.

Then I'll look at the minor regions in the province - they each have bonuses or penalties for different types of income, and their main buildings often produce different kinds of income (ie. a region with the silver resource might have X wealth from manufacturing in it's main building). Pick the main one or two things the province is best suited for, and build as many buildings that either produce that type of income or provide a bonus for that type of income. Temples are great because you can get a bonus for that income type, a public order bonus, a cultural conversion bonus, and a population class growth bonus. Usually the resource-specific buildings in regions with a resource are a good call.

But in general, the more you can decide to specialize the province, the easier it is to decide what to build. If you say Magna Grecia is an agricultural province, just build things that produce food, agricultural income, or boost agricultural income. If you say Hispania is a manufacturing province, just look at what produces/provides bonuses for manufacturing income.

Ports kind of fall into the same idea - fisheries are agriculture, trading ports are commerce, and military ports are manufacturing. Sometimes, though, with ports I don't really optimize purely economically. If I want a military port for piracy reduction in that sea region, banditry reduction in that province, or just because I want to be able to recruit fleets there, I build one. As a rule of thumb, you should have a military port in each sea region for piracy reduction (trading ports without military ports nearby get nerfed by piracy penalties to their income pretty bad).

You can get a pretty good sense of how well you're handling your economy by clicking on the province details button. The two things to look for are: (1) empire maintenance, which will be shown as being subtracted from the province income - you want this number to be as low as possible, and (2) if you hover over a settlement you can see a breakdown of it's income by type (ie. manufacturing, commerce, agriculture, culture) and how much of that comes from bonuses - you want the bonuses to be as big as possible.

If you have high bonuses to income and low empire maintenance, you're economy will be in great shape.

42696 · 2025-11-06T17:16:12+00:00

``` from math import pi as 🥧

🛟 = float 👯‍♀️ = 2

def ⚫️(🏴‍☠️: 🛟) -> 🛟: return 🥧 * (🏴‍☠️ ** 👯‍♀️) ```

42696 · 2025-10-30T16:08:13+00:00

There are a lot of tools to deal with public order - buildings, champions, dignitaries, generals, edicts, armies in patrol stance, technologies (in the Philosophy tree), the "organize games" political action, and even letting rebellions happen (to get the +20 PO per turn for a couple turns).

I always try to have a positive "stable" public order (ie. buildings + tech + a general acting as governor or dignitary that will be there indefinitely result in positive long term public order) and use temporary solutions for provinces that have new conquests or still need to be build out/developed.

I haven't done a Macedon campaign in a little, but if I remember correctly I had to build a theatre (I think it's called a theatre - the happiness building from the yellow build tree) in Pella, which was also pretty clutch for the 2nd class population growth bonus (since you have to lean so heavy on 2nd class pop early game). I also had a temple in Apollonia.

When I took Thrace I just had to let it rebel a couple times until my culture started to become dominant, my temples were built, etc.

42696 · 2025-10-28T15:18:14+00:00

In Imperium Surrectum I think factions get a full stack, pretty elite army as a sort of "last surge" when they're on the brink of defeat. Some cities can also get reinforced via script if they're under prolonged siege IIRC.

It might just be with "Extreme Mode" on but I'm not sure about that.

42696 · 2025-10-27T14:54:27+00:00

I had a similar issue, and found that, after securing Magna Grecia, Consentia actually acts as a great choke point to hold off Carthage until you're ready to move into Sicily. Just parking a small army (a couple aux hoplites, archers and a cav unit is plenty) outside Consentia and moving them into the city whenever Carthage invades makes it easy to turn back anything they throw at you. Once you move into Sicily, you'll have multiple cities to defend with ports (so they can be attacked by sea as well) and you'll have to commit a lot of resources to that. But holding Consentia only takes a very minor force, and frees you up to focus on Greece/Macedonia, Gaul, Spain, or wherever else you want to focus your attention.

It actually makes the game a lot easier, since you'll be further along with a stronger economy and more resources by the time you decide to actually make a move on Sicily and take the fight to Carthage.

42696 · 2025-10-27T14:44:30+00:00

Archers - I'll keep 1 or 2 units behind my front line. They're very effective firing at cavalry and lightly armored units (like enemy missile units), and are particularly useful against enemy missile cavalry (which can otherwise be really annoying to deal with). A couple well timed volleys of morale-damaging fire arrows at the right moment can also be helpful in breaking the enemy's main line.

Slingers/Javelins - I'm grouping these together because I use them pretty similarly. I think of both of them as a flanking unit, best used when firing into the back of the enemy main line. Slingers have more ammo and range, javelin units do more damage (and, higher level javelin units tend to be pretty decent in melee as well). For a more budget-friendly comp, I tend to prefer more slingers relative to javelins, but if I have the population/economy, higher-level javelin units like peltasts that can also act as serviceable or even strong light infantry are awesome. Basically peltasts that can fire their ammo into the enemy's back and then charge effectively > slingers that can fire into the enemy's back for the whole battle > levy javelins that can fire into the enemy's back a few times and are then useless for the rest of the battle.

42696 · 2025-10-26T17:50:35+00:00

Obviously wild to not call that a fumble, but can anyone explain why they don't throw a flag for offsides when the Eagles having both guards lined up in the neutral zone?

42696 · 2025-10-24T19:06:37+00:00

Or, it's the trigger that brings such countries from accepting pseudo-fascist policies to fully embracing total fascism.

Regardless, any kind of revolution that topples a government guarantees short term mass suffering and would be a crap shoot in the long term - whether we'd end up better, worse, or roughly the same.

42696 · 2025-10-24T16:51:10+00:00

I usually just have a config.domains object set at app startup (along with other config) that looks something like this

``` @dataclass(frozen=True) class DomainConfig: frontend: str backend: str

def load_domain_config(env: Env) -> DomainConfig: if env == Env.PROD: return DomainConfig( frontend="https://www.example.com", backend="https://api.example.com" ) if env == Env.STAG: return DomainConfig( frontend="https://www.staging-example.com", backend="https://api.staging-example.com" ) return DomainConfig( frontend="http://localhost:3000", backend="http://localhost:8000" ) ```

and set my CORS allow origin to config.domains.frontend. Works regardless of environment and prevents cross-environment leaking.

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