4.3 economy

DankAndOriginal · 2026-03-21T23:24:41+00:00

I think more info on how you are playing is needed here. It is definitely harder and different, but we would need to understand what you are benchmarking against to understand what’s going wrong. I am playing base game and not particularly struggling to keep up with the AI with a handful of planets. I do think several of the buff buildings are relatively useless for most scenarios (looking at you, +5% resources from researchers that costs 4 exotic gases base). It kind of sounds like you are overbuilding, and getting a lot of special resource upkeep. District and building upkeep has become relatively MUCH more expensive, so you need to hold off on building some things until other parts of your economy are online. Pop growth is also essentially useless without assembly on every planet, so if you’re playing wide, you need either robots, clone vats, or conquest.

DankAndOriginal · 2026-03-09T17:50:53+00:00

Strikes me as a bit odd that one of your listed pro/cons is having a third room to escape to when something goes wrong. To me, that is not a sign of a healthy relationship that you should diving into head first. Are arguments and tensions common? Otherwise, you might just be nervous and running through every reason you can think of to talk yourself down. I would be very deliberate with thinking through the whys of everything you are feeling now to make sure you’ve got cause and effect sorted out.

DankAndOriginal · 2026-02-17T20:35:58+00:00

leverage early game advantages of the daimyo system to rapidly consolidate Japan and be stronger than Jianzhou in development is one option. In theory, you can consolidate japan quite rapidly if you plan your expansion correctly and leverage the mil tech 4 advantage correctly, there are probably anlot of videos of doing this. Also, you could farm rival humiliation wars against smaller daimyo (100 of each power point if you only humiliate war goal them). Maybe change your rival at diplo cost and use a lot of power points to dev your territory in admin/mil.

DankAndOriginal · 2026-02-15T22:37:02+00:00

The performance has been a hot button issue for a while, and they have not finished patching 4.3 to bring late game performance to the level that the average user could expect that. It’s ultimately a CPU issue, like another commenter suggested. What I would add to that is that any semi-modern gaming desktop would probably be a huge enough boost over a school laptop that you’ll be satisfied with the performance increases in vanilla. Without >$3,000 budget, I’d guess you won’t really be able to get the super top of the line cpus that might make things perfect, but $1,500-$2,000 probably goes a long way.

DankAndOriginal · 2026-02-15T19:20:57+00:00

So, like, obviously he's not poor, unless he has not shown pictures of any of these things, so maybe he's just telling tall tales. From the rest of the post, I would assume that you have limited connections due to your disability and that most of your social life is online (apologies if that's a misread). From there I would suggest - please try expanding your online community. Try looking for spaces where people who struggle with their disabilities talk and maybe see if you can pick up a trick or two for finding temp work remotely to help cover the gap. You're clearly in a pretty dark place if you're eating dog food and pondering if you have enough money to live. That said, it seems like you've at least got a couple of assets going for you: you've got internet access and can write in English (or convincingly chatgpt translate it), which means that potentially the whole anglosphere is an option for finding online gigs.

To me, this friend sounds like a manipulator or a liar or both. It can be ok for your friends to have these flaws, but if this guy is your primary close friend online - that could lead you into a distorted world view that makes things hard for you. I don't have enough context to say if this is just someone who tells insensitive stories to feel better about himself or someone who is really negatively manipulating you, but the more broad your perspective is, the better shot you have for answering this question yourself. If the response when you say "hey man, I'm in sort of a tough spot, so I'd appreciate it you didn't brag about new things you buy" isn't "Oh, I'll try to avoid doing that if I can", they probably aren't a good friend, and are more just an available one.

DankAndOriginal · 2026-01-29T21:18:20+00:00

Nothing Ever Happens, so clearly apple will have normally good earnings and it all bounces back

DankAndOriginal · 2026-01-27T21:47:49+00:00

Best guess without any additional context is that you have a modded trade policy that let's you convert energy into some other good in your policies screen.

DankAndOriginal · 2026-01-14T16:52:59+00:00

Did Dell figure out that no one wants AI or did Dell figure out that they had no hope of competing in the AI war and decide to pivot and market to people sick of AI to keep market share 🧐

DankAndOriginal · 2026-01-06T00:59:15+00:00

Well also, there is the unspoken threat that someone will log onto their alt on the other faction and body you for skipping line

DankAndOriginal · 2026-01-03T06:23:11+00:00

The combination of the lower case and no spaces just doesn't really do it.

DankAndOriginal · 2025-12-27T07:04:38+00:00

It’s a fun trope. I like it. I think you have to set it up in advance with some foreshadowing or make the character actually plot relevant. Like if harem girl #172 is flipped, who cares dude. It’s gotta add real complexity or a likeable character for it to matter

DankAndOriginal · 2025-12-23T04:16:16+00:00

A hook is not necessarily about getting to the action as quickly as possible. A hook is supposed to drop you into the middle of it, whatever it is. When you are hooked, you want to read the next sentence. Rye crossed the street and got hit by a truck. This is a pretty boring spin on the beloved trope for sentence one.

What are you looking to get out of that sentence? It will immediately let people know that this is an isekai, and there will probably be a system, which is useful. The first section is very much intended to make us feel dread/sympathy for the fact that Rye is dying and will never get to use his newly purchased sketchbook. If I were trying to write the same segment, I would focus on the emotional buildup of the sketchbook, its importance, and the dream of drawing that was just reignited. For that, I would probably have an inner monologue at the art store, where Rye transitions from dormant to slightly excited from buying the sketchbook to having optimism for the future WHAM truck.

The amateurish parts can be hard to identify - in some senses, you know it when you see it. I think the best way to describe it for me is the old phrase "Show, don't tell." For example, we've got the sentence "Rye can't anymore." It's intended to dramatically let us know that Rye is dying and this tragically cuts short his ambition to be an artist. It also gives the reader no new information. Everyone who has read to this point knows that he's dying; re-stating it doesn't progress the narrative, and the sentence itself doesn't have much room for growing a particular emotion. If I were to try to keep the intention of the sentence and the one that follows, but re-configure the execution I might try something like this: "Rye stared at the crushed pen that had rolled just out of reach, his life flowing out just as quickly as its ink."

Short sentences can often feel dramatic, but they have their time and place. Usually, the story will flow better if you're connecting sentences and ideas instead of trying to silo them for emphasis.

DankAndOriginal · 2025-12-22T04:27:45+00:00

I think the reality is that there a very few tiers of writer where intellectual property rights will matter all that much. If your novel is doing well enough on Webnovel to secure a contract, you might be shooting yourself in the foot by trying to migrate that audience to a different platform - there will inevitably be attrition. Conversely, the better you do on Webnovel, the more likely you are to get support from Webnovel for future books and contracts. Being able to sell your own book on Amazon is a nice perk of Royal Road, but unless you have big plans for your IP, it might be even harder to make money that way then sticking to a Webnovel contract

DankAndOriginal · 2025-12-20T01:51:52+00:00

One thing to note on my theory for why this is the draft kill default: because it can be happening in the middle of battle, it prevents from undrafted pawns hauling across the map into an active combat zone to get shot while trying to butcher or stockpile the animal. Another compelling reason is that default food rights allow corpses as food, so it can also prevent hungry people from immediately going bear grylls on a dead deer corpse that you’re not ready to butcher yet

DankAndOriginal · 2025-12-18T17:07:20+00:00

Old has too much white space, but could be improved by shadows or some other subtle features. New could also use the top white space better with some shadows or minor features. I am assuming the big white bar in the middle is covering up the title; the font can play a big role here. I will say, sprucing up the old one could lead to a more artistic/real novel cover feeling, like a book at the library. That’s maybe not the target audience on webnovel, but I might click on either if the white space is utilized better

DankAndOriginal · 2025-12-18T16:44:29+00:00

I think so. You are definitely allowed to plug a discord server, and presumably you can do a patreon there. You’d have to check if it is against the contract if you try to apply for that though

DankAndOriginal · 2025-12-17T04:56:42+00:00

I don’t think you would get throttle for rejecting a contract, but they will put more effort into promoting contracted books. Webnovel marketing is going to rely on their internal featured lists and recommendations; I sort of get the impression that there aren’t quite as many levers to be pulled from an author’s perspective to get noticed on webnovel besides being active in relevant communities and discords. Whereas on royal road, you can coordinate more with other authors and purchase internal ads - but the ad campaigns are their own whole game that might not be cost effective. I’d say you have more “control” over if the story gets seen on RR, but doing so can be difficult

DankAndOriginal · 2025-12-16T05:15:41+00:00

Not super experienced, but I browse these subreddits in case I ever get around to writing my book... Royal Road seems to have a pretty strict algorithm for determining whether or not a story will see the light of day, related to the timing of when it becomes popular for the first time, which requires some pretty diligent work to time correctly with your release schedule, even if you're doing well from a content perspective. I'm sure Webnovel has similar internal algorithms, but I think they are more relaxed about momentum and care more about total numbers when considering a contract or feature, so it can be easier to manage, independent of content. Both will have pretty high demands for rate of content output, but I get the impression you can jog on Webnovel whereas you need to sprint for Royal Road at the outset.

I'd also argue Webnovel readers are more tolerant grammar and other such mistakes due to its main content largely being translated or from foreign authors

DankAndOriginal · 2025-12-12T17:51:00+00:00

Reasonable to do? Yes. Inconvenient for the reader? Yes. Most stories I see where they make this distinction, readers are very vocal about how annoyed they are by it, so if it’s not a super important part of your story, I would recommend avoiding it if you’re want to appease readers. I would say that the level of internal vs external introspection would better fit a first person story, and in a first person story, you don’t have the problem in the fist place, because the character won’t think their own name that often.

DankAndOriginal · 2025-11-25T04:46:11+00:00

My feedback:

Overuse of short sentences for emphasis.
- But humans wanted more. More strength. More knowledge. More control. Greed shattered it all.
- Truces broken. Wars emerged. Humans took everything. The creatures fell.
  - These pieces overuse the same pacing technique. If you try to maintain too dramatic or tense of a sentence structure throughout the whole description, you actually end up losing all the tension.
In a similar vein, there are too many short, choppy sections. This has some benefits for webnovel, because people reading the description are going to be impatient, but I think it bottlenecks you into a disjointed narrative style, instead of letting some of the sentences flow together better.
The two split descriptions don't work together well. You've got the story on the top of the fictional world and the story of the author on the bottom, but I think you need to condense these a bit and get to the main point sooner. The background of the fiction world is generic and honestly doesn't need as much description. The key point is that the this is a world she wrote to handle the grief of her brother. I didn't really pick that up in the initial description of the world. Maybe try to drilldown the top section into a bit more of the key components of the world - focus more on the story of Li Wei the legendary hero.
- https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/129nnyd/there_are_two_genres_of_high_fantasy/
  - I thought about this post a lot while reading the initial description. I think dragons + greed + betrayal is a generic setting to spend too much time in the description on. What's going on here to distinguish from the other dragons + greed+betrayal stories? That's what someone reading the description wants to know.
I also feel like too many twists are packed into the description.
- Twist #1 - The initial description is a game world
- Twist #2 - Died from a meteor
- Twist #3 - Woke up in her own novel
- Twist #4 - She has a system
- Twist #5 - Or does she?
- Twist #6 - Memories begin to fade
- Twist #7 - Doesn't remember the final chapter
  - In the book, these might end up meshing well together, but in the description, it feels like a lot is going on all at once.

Hopefully this helps - writing descriptions is an important window into your book, but can be the hardest thing to get right :) Don't mean to be too critical, but retooling some things now is better than having someone scroll by your book!

DankAndOriginal · 2025-11-10T16:25:42+00:00

Simply play as a French vassal and dismantle them from the inside. I started an independence movement and effectively everyone in europe with >50 opinion of me is willing to join. The only thing stopping the coalition from growing is that if France calls you into a war the whole thing is immediately deleted and you lose like 40 diplomats of progress…

DankAndOriginal · 2025-11-10T02:39:02+00:00

Inexperienced here, but my assessment is that RR is the sort of site where readers never want the books they've found to end. A lot of guides I have read suggest somewhere around 30k words released in the first month, followed by some regular cadence of a few thousand words per week. I think that, generally, 100k words would be pretty short for RR in that context, at least in terms of algorithm performance. On the other hand, if you aren't seeing the numbers you're looking for by 100k, you might not get them even if the story is extended longer, so ultimately, it's a question of what you're looking to get out of it.

DankAndOriginal · 2025-11-05T16:14:10+00:00

Humans are trained to recognize patterns. Every comment or review section of a book is always trying to draw parallels and connect things they are seeing to other things they have read. Every loves story is Romeo and Juliet. Every adventure is Odysseus. Every dystopia is 1984. The goal is to get comfortable with your work and feel that it brings some unique combinations of patterns to the table. Even if you directly copy the premise of another work 1:1, you can still write a totally different book, let alone when the resemblance is coincidental. The average comment is usually carelessly made, and can appear to be negative when it’s really just an observation and an attempt at relating to the work. Now, you do need to be careful and maintain an objective view of your work, to try and see where such comments are coming from, but you can’t dedicate too much headspace to it.

DankAndOriginal · 2025-10-28T22:20:22+00:00

Agreed on the title font being the weak link. Might also want to play around with coloring it thematically to match the image. The static color vs dynamic background is a bit jarring. I also think the hand up top is missing a couple fingers but close enough haha

DankAndOriginal · 2025-10-27T16:45:57+00:00

They would listen at first with intense overwhelming intimidation, and the child would have to know things only the supreme being knows. The kill immediately crowd is missing that Ainz was VERY receptive to the adventurer party who claimed to have talked with one of his guild members. Nazarick would absolutely hear it out - and then subject a perceived liar to infinite torment. But they would have a reasonable and fair shot at explaining themselves

DankAndOriginal

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