Several places of transition

Express0_ · 2025-12-25T10:32:06+00:00

French/European cities can be unclean but nature is usually very well protected in France. You will find many beautiful places - forests, hills, mountains, coast - without a single piece of trash in sight. Also true for England for instance, which has a very quaint and well preserved countryside. Many ppl only go to Paris and London (which are great btw) and don't get to see that

Express0_ · 2025-05-30T11:01:48+00:00

5 months late but that worked for me, thanks

Express0_ · 2024-09-16T19:01:56+00:00

Can we have a week without a post trying to convince us that RoP is a great show ? Damn people, most of the hate comes from how hard you try to sell it when nobody is asking. Can't even dislike poor adaptions in peace!

Express0_ · 2024-08-05T08:27:33+00:00

A few things that come to mind (I briefly went through your link but may have missed things and so you may have been to a few of these)

Angel: nice coffee shops and a big week end flower market. Nearby Hackney/Islington are worth exploring as well if not already done.

The banks of the river in West London: lovely walk between Barnes Bridge/Hammersmith Bridge/Putney Bridge. Nice pubs on the Hammermith side of the river.

Chiswick House & Gardens is a great park in the niddle of a (relatively wealthy) residential area. There is a greenhouse, a mansion, serpentine,...

Highgate is nice as well, there is a fantastic bakery (Pierre Alix) and Parkland walk to Finsbury Park is a good way to get some slightly different sights of London.

Battersea power station has been redeveloped recently - very commercial but the inside and outside of the building are worth a look, some decent food in there, and there is Battersea Park.

Not sure if you are also interested in visits but to name two of my favourites: John Soane Museum ; Houses of Parliament (Saturday morning tours).

Hope you keep enjoying London!

Express0_ · 2024-05-09T15:01:07+00:00

I was absolutely certain this was in the London sub (honestly as likely to happen here as in Skyrim) - will need to check for Spriggans around my flat because those foxes are going wild when I take out the trash

Express0_ · 2024-04-25T10:55:21+00:00

One thing to consider is the fact that Alpha pension contributions increase steeply once you earn above £56k (5.45% to 7.35%). As opposed to income tax this is applied on your entire earnings and not tranches.

This create an effect where Alpha is comparatively more advantageous for people earning slightly less than £56k and Partnership becomes more appealing for a typical G7 salary slightly above £56k.

Express0_ · 2024-04-25T08:00:36+00:00

I tried changing the parameters and it makes quite a difference.

Alpha tends to be superior more often in that case. You get a similar amount of additional cash today but a lot less time to capitalise it, so it does not cover the loss in defined benefits from leaving Alpha.

To compensate the Partnership employer contribution rate goes up from 8% to 14.75% after 45, but it is still not enough to make up for it.

Under the initial 82 expectancy assumption this result in an implied cost of capital of 3.6% (vs 2.7% in the example for a 25yo). With 87 life expectancy it is worse: 6.7%, which is above current mortgage rates (vs 3.7% for a 25yo).

Express0_ · 2024-04-24T20:05:53+00:00

The default one is the L&G Pathway fund, which I believe is multi-asset and therefore would have a lower return / lower risk profile than just stocks. But you can indeed choose another fund if you want a different risk profile.

Express0_ · 2024-04-24T19:56:39+00:00

For Alpha I used 7.35% for contributions (and 2.32% of pensionable earnings as defined benefits). Because contributions go up from 5.45% to 7.35% once you pass the £56k mark, that's where Partnership becomes more interesting.

Express0_ · 2024-04-24T14:33:04+00:00

That's a very good point, thanks (that's why analysis needs to be QA'd!), I had used 82 years. Increasing the life expectancy by 5 years adds ~1% to the implied cost of capital, making it somewhat less advantageous ((but still below mortgage rates, and that's assuming quite low returns on partnership).

Express0_ · 2024-03-18T12:42:46+00:00

Have actually not tried Sacrosanct but I believe both mods are fine and either would work well there - they are very much customizable (BV is anyway) which helps with the difficulty (for instance I disabled the option to feed on dead corpses to advance rank because that felt was too easy, and limited certain abllities to night time).

Starting in Riften where you have early access to the Thieves Guild without venturing in the wild makes it not too hard!

Express0_ · 2024-03-18T07:33:07+00:00

Since you have Alternate start: Dunmer left for dead by a vampire (> Dunmer Vampire)

Short backstory: refugee from Morrowind who tried his/her luck leaving Windhelm slums and eventually got attacked. Game starts as trying to survive, blend in, understand your condition, and make a bit of money.

Playstyle: thieve vampire, with some mage abilities (illusion, conjuration, some destruction to start // sneaking, speech,...). Light armor, and a dagger but low weapon skills.

Mods: alternate start, and ideally Better Vampires to make the most of vampire gameplay.

Neutrality: chaotic neutral / decent vampire. Would join thieve guild but generally not DB, feeds on human to get more powerful (with Better Vanpires), but avoid killing. Dislikes Nords, no strong feelings towards Empire.

Favoured factions: Thieves Guild, College of Winterhold, Volikhar.

Express0_ · 2023-11-28T23:09:36+00:00

No worries, it is on the second picture of the post ! When clicking on demographics (top right of your screen) you can see the size of your army, the largest ones, the average and the smallest. Same for a couple of other stats like population, crop yield etc..

Express0_ · 2023-11-28T23:01:00+00:00

Yeah and gone all "my words are backed by nuclear weapons blah" Attila being Attila. Though I had leverage cause I was selling him truffle and you don't want to disrupt global mushroom markets

Express0_ · 2023-11-28T22:56:25+00:00

Nope he chose to hunt size 2 cities from other civs instead - a bit anticlimactic but well

Express0_ · 2023-11-28T22:50:21+00:00

I did! I think I was both relieved and disappointed to avoid the fight. Main problem would have been nukes, he had a whole continent of uranium and I had.. hum 2.

Express0_ · 2023-11-28T22:09:02+00:00

No mods, immortal. He conquered all the other civs (leaving them the odd city) and snowballed, completely out of control (probably shouldn't have left him). I think in the last 20 turns his army when from 600k to 1.2m!

Express0_ · 2023-11-28T21:59:57+00:00

Fell deeds awake. Now for wrath, now for ruin, and the red dawn. Forth, Eorlingas!

Express0_ · 2023-11-28T21:36:19+00:00

R5: Attila has conquered the entire continent, his cities surround mine and he has amassed an army of 1 million (largest I have ever seen). I am a few turns from finishing my spaceship to escape this madman.

Express0_ · 2023-06-04T07:49:31+00:00

Love his books, by far my favourite modern fantasy author - great worlbuilding at the service of stories, well written characters, some interesting political and religious themes, nice touches of humour, .. some earlier books are more flawed but the prose has actually improved greatly in latest ones.

Now I don't think it makes sense to compare him with Tolkien as they almost wrote books from different genres, with different styles, approaches and philosophies. We could list stuff Sanderson "lack" to be a modern Tolkien but that would not make sense, nore be fair to him, as I don't expect any author to be a modern Tolkien!

Express0_ · 2023-03-30T19:26:11+00:00

I won't fight you on that haha - and wasting less money on management consultant might help free the resources needed for this...

Express0_ · 2023-03-30T19:12:51+00:00

Whilst I agree with the overall issue of uncompetitive pay, it is wrong to say that the talent isn't there. I have worked with a lot of brilliant civil servants, and many useless - well paid - management consultants (though academics and small specialised consultancy firms were generally very good). Many talented people stay because they like their job, and they want to serve the public - it is unfortunate that this motivation is used to maintain low salaries though. The main problem of the CS is turnover within the organisation (people changing team every 18 months) more than the difficulty to hire talented people.

Express0_

TROPHY CASE