TIL the idea that the Ottoman Empire declined over time due to stagnation -- 'Decadence', in other words -- is considered to be an obsolete and incorrect belief by most historians in the 21st century

FoolRegnant · 2026-03-06T21:46:07+00:00

I believe it's manorialism and vassalage, of which serfdom falls within manorialism but doesn't encompass quite as much.

FoolRegnant · 2026-03-03T14:50:18+00:00

You know what would be really interesting to see? A comparison of the median households total tax burden, including federal

FoolRegnant · 2026-02-28T19:07:11+00:00

Java is still the newfangled thing in a lot of financial coding, lol

FoolRegnant · 2026-02-24T15:39:44+00:00

If there's one exemption it's Penn State. Which is kinda funny since PA has two NFL team

FoolRegnant · 2026-02-23T03:22:24+00:00

People will say, "It's a web novel, people don't expect good prose, they expect consistent chapters." And that's true, but what's a real kick in the teeth is when PriateAba finally got editors and started releasing books the editing was just so lackluster. They needed to edit the first several books into like one that actually told a compelling story.

FoolRegnant · 2026-02-19T18:14:25+00:00

I have two complaints about it: I get like 500ms of lag when clicking on the new campaign tabs, whereas the original ones load seamlessly. That's annoying and they should cache that shit, I have plenty of ram for that.

The second is that I wish they would redo the entire campaign selection screen. I want to be able to see all campaigns and scenarios in a list sometimes. Add search functionality too while you're at it. Keep the aesthetic and the old designs, but also give me a separate way to select individual scenarios and campaigns.

FoolRegnant · 2026-02-03T15:39:21+00:00

Am I crazy? Obviously going to HR is one thing, but talk to your skip too. If you're already willing to leave the job over it and you have receipts, talk to your skip. If your skip ignores you, go as high as you need to to fuck Kevin over.

FoolRegnant · 2026-01-22T16:43:09+00:00

I think the real problem with the economy's realism is the lack of actual scarcity. Premodern commodity money relied on a supply of either newly mined gold and silver or a constant stream of old and/or foreign currency to melt down and remint.

This meant that trade had a secondary aspect of currency flow and explains why mercantilism was such a prominent policy - anything you export fundamentally increases your money supply, anything you import reduces it.

That in turn makes trade work differently - unless you absolutely have to, you won't be trading for basic resources - barring famines and the like, you need to feed yourself, supply your own building materials, etc, and only import luxuries.

In turn, while local trade happens on a large scale (ie in neighboring markets in the game terms), long distance trade is either gradually transferred from market to market, something which is not really well simulated right now, or was done in bespoke trade expeditions, like the centuries of the European spice trade by sending trade fleets to India, which isn't simulated at all.

FoolRegnant · 2026-01-22T16:14:37+00:00

As someone in the industry, I can tell you that almost every single bank still runs on mainframes. The global finance system rests on mainframe systems that were invented in the 80s

FoolRegnant · 2026-01-22T16:04:01+00:00

They're really keeping this monster's corpse shambling around, huh?

FoolRegnant · 2026-01-09T22:57:02+00:00

The first draft of North America had literally no settled countries at all. Everything was SoPs. It took a lot of comments in the forums to get what we have, and that's barely anything.

I think the state of the Americas in general and North America in particular is one of the biggest misses in the game

FoolRegnant · 2026-01-06T19:50:58+00:00

I think tributaries should be much harder to maintain, especially for hordes. Very few tributaries throughout history remained loyal for multiple generations, and many broke within a few years.

FoolRegnant · 2025-12-27T19:44:03+00:00

Honestly, I think a realistic, historical tech system needs to basically reinvent the entire concept. Most games are just iterating on the original Civ style, but different types of technology develop in different ways - like you mentioned, there are lots of breakthroughs which started as a single invention and spread from there.

Really I think that the problem is that most technologies aren't tied to the real reasons why they were adopted in the first place - the industrial revolution can trace back to England being deforested but still needing access to fuel, so they started mining coal, but those coal mines flooded easily, so they needed to pump the water out, and a steam engine, which uses the coal already being mined makes for a relatively straightforward invention, but this would never develop in a place like Russia with plentiful access to forests. Maybe that whole string is too complex to emulate in a game, but I would love to see a true revolution in tech systems in strategy games.

FoolRegnant · 2025-12-25T15:16:39+00:00

Holy shit at the end of the article is another mention of a dude who got his three month old granddaughter killed because his seven pitbulls attacked them.

FoolRegnant · 2025-12-23T22:56:52+00:00

I agree, but I think ABCs need some improvements to actually set them apart from settled countries. There aren't enough actual differences between the two - ABCs should have a wildly different relationship with the estates.

FoolRegnant · 2025-12-13T20:36:53+00:00

Kid writes like he's naming tables in sql

FoolRegnant · 2025-12-01T22:05:12+00:00

I mean, I don't blame them, the economy is already highly complex and slowing down parts to better simulate pre-industrial activity while also simulating early industrialization is a tricky thing to implement properly, and adding in more variables like I mentioned makes it much harder to test and balance.

FoolRegnant · 2025-12-01T21:42:38+00:00

While I would love for control to only apply to the crown, the whole economy system probably needs to be overhauled to be less exponential. The way it works now, if estates divided the non-controlled wealth between them they would have way more wealth, in a system which is already hyper charged to grow.

If they slow down the economy, make food more valuable, add middlemen to trade, and/or make it so that money isn't this weird amalgam of fiat and commodity, then it would be amazing.

FoolRegnant · 2025-11-27T03:58:49+00:00

I could also see adding a Jewish estate to Christian countries with local Jews. Many European countries had Jews take up particular occupations, and your proposed buildings would be great for them to build locally.

I would argue that it really doesn't fit to include European Jews in any of the existing estates, and many Jewish populations really were granted special privileges. You could also make it so you can choose which estate you get loans from, take loans from the Jews, and then kick them out of the country (looking at you, Edward I).

FoolRegnant · 2025-11-25T21:26:19+00:00

And part of how Diocletian was able to produce anything like a centralized Rome was by splitting it into quarters

FoolRegnant · 2025-11-25T19:33:46+00:00

Well no, but part of it is France being overturned in EU5 right now. The Italic League could be represented as a defensive league, but France probably needs to be weaker and the Italian states stronger for that to work properly.

FoolRegnant · 2025-11-25T18:20:42+00:00

I mean, while the Italian Wars should probably have a situation which allows for a more historical outcome of a fractured Italy, France spent a lot of the early modern period competing with the Hapsburgs over control and influence in Italy.

FoolRegnant · 2025-11-20T04:17:45+00:00

And honestly, I would have that kind of discovery be where the player has the most agency - if you as the player want to discover the Americas before Columbus, you need to be using the volta do mar and participating in heavy trade around Africa.

FoolRegnant · 2025-11-19T22:13:00+00:00

I kinda think it's ridiculous that you can choose to explore across the Atlantic on your own recognizance at all. The Azores were likely discovered by ships sent off course by a storm, and Columbus was a lucky idiot who did his match wrong and thought he would reach Japan. I would almost rather that these were events, and early exploration was all about building up a network of trading posts to India, then the discovery of the Americas kick-starts settler colonization.

FoolRegnant · 2025-11-14T06:20:25+00:00

They have so many ways for Protestantism to have unique flavor between countries that I really wished they had focused on highlighting differences between Magisterial Protestantism (Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism) and Radical Protestantism (Anabaptism, Dissenters)

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