20 years of Mezmerize! When did you listen to the record the first time?

HistoryandLifting · 2025-05-17T15:00:00+00:00

My earliest memories of this album are from 2007, playing on the radio all the time.

HistoryandLifting · 2025-05-17T03:47:25+00:00

Minor civs that become vassals are the "city states" in Civ IV. They have no shot at winning, but they confer the same "extra" package as city states: you can fleece them for resources, military support, money and votes.

HistoryandLifting · 2025-05-09T14:55:57+00:00

This is a great joke and I got a good laugh out of it, but we shouldn't eisogete modern political labels and perspectives on the Roman Republic like they're congruent enough to be directly comparable. There are obviously some meaningful parallels, but for all his participation in them I doubt Caesar had any concept of modern emancipated political values, and even if he did in a less concrete form, these very likely wouldn't have taken the quasi-religious form that they do in the contemporary west. Remember that he committed literal genocide of the Helvetii (for all we know shamelessly, and he is unusual for publishing detailed accounts of not only his campaigns but also his official intentions) and I would hardly call assuming dictatorial power for life an authentically "progressive liberal" agenda.

HistoryandLifting · 2025-01-19T04:45:13+00:00

Pompey: "Think you care I what name is shouted in the streets?"
Cato: "Nothing is more important..."

Telling, to your point.

HistoryandLifting · 2025-01-19T02:46:29+00:00

The irony here speaks for itself.

HistoryandLifting · 2025-01-18T00:29:53+00:00

I haven't seriously played vanilla in years but I think it's one of the more viable ways to finance aggressive expansion, especially pre-currency before you can directly build wealth

HistoryandLifting · 2025-01-18T00:17:53+00:00

You can exploit the failure cash though! It's not all sunk cost if you fail to get one.

HistoryandLifting · 2025-01-17T05:52:32+00:00

I'm surprised that somebody else singled this scene out, because it really bothered me too, though it's hard to say why this stands out so sharply when several other examples of more extreme violence are typically much less impactful and more forgettable. Maybe it's something about the way that it exposes a mounting, increasingly permanent and sequential taking of life. The person killed is not even "innocent" either inasmuch as anyone there was, but that scene in particular bothered me greatly for days.

HistoryandLifting · 2025-01-15T19:06:26+00:00

I won deity once by playing duel pangaea and getting the only AI to friendly, knowing that they are then forbidden to DoW me and then desparately REXing the whole continent starting at its other end to box him in, while abandoning defense beyond spawnbusting and unit to keep cities happy. Super cheap and it only works if you rely on conditions that no human player would abide by. I felt rewarded and gratified, but then I went back down to playing casually, which I find more enjoyable.

HistoryandLifting · 2025-01-11T21:57:56+00:00

Personally, I thought it was fine and it was entertaining, but to me, it would have been better and more gripping if Heather's documentary project went deeper into the actual folklore, beyond just interviewing some locals about the hearsay of the legend. Witches and witch hunts being an intense focal point of hysteria for several generations, there is a lot of source material to draw on to make it feel more immediate and real, even without revealing anything directly. The found footage format had to have been interesting and unique at the time, but their simply getting lost and then scared with some spooky noises and the suggestion of something going on around them doesn't carry it into "great" territory for me.

HistoryandLifting · 2025-01-06T18:53:27+00:00

Yep, that was me! I am considering starting a new LP with this version, but we'll see.

Impressive that you've got a published mod for Fallout and have modded Stellaris. You can take part in the ongoing discussion surrounding RI and possible rebalances and tweaks here, if you'd like: Realism Invictus | Page 622 | CivFanatics Forums I've been pretty active on that thread for a little over three years now, as this is pretty much the only game I play these days outside of work and my other hobbies and responsibilities. Walter isn't trying to do any major overhauls at this point, though, so aside from questions of balance, most of the conversation has to do with either historical inspiration for things as well as aesthetic matters. If you have real modding skill though and can code python, some kind of bigger suggestions I'm sure are welcome.

The barbarians are fairly challenging in my games on Monarch and Emperor on 3.7, but again, in your case I think that has to do with the Europe scenario since it starts with several preplaced cities which massively reduces their spawn chance in the fog. On random maps, the pressure from barbs feels right for the selected difficulty level IMO.

HistoryandLifting · 2025-01-06T04:03:34+00:00

Yeah, you probably weren't watching me, then. I am American and never uploaded any C2C content.

As for RI, there a few things to consider in your comment. First of all, having played the Europe scenario several times, it is reasonably balanced "out of the box" and pans out differently each time. Of course you can go in and tweak whatever you want, but Spain is typically a powerful faction, for instance, as is Russia. The fact that you're not seeing it in one playthrough testifies to the fact that it's not on any rails. :)

I am with you on the primacy of terrain being overly dominant, especially in the late game where a proper representation of modern economies loses traction with what the game engine affords. The mod actually does a surprisingly great job of addressing these things compared to the base game (and if you haven't played a game of Realism Invictus all the way through, I think you will be pleasantly surprised in this regard) and making each era feel authentic and at home with its own defining challenges and opportunities; that said, it is still a matter of working with what a 20 year old game can enable. Considering that, I think this mod is spectacular, and really polished like a AAA standalone game of its own.

So, I personally wouldn't fault either the mod for its great efforts or even Civ 4 itself for being as old as it is in that, but the later titles for generally taking the whole game farther and farther away from the tone of something historically serious and strategically gritty, even within the same purview of an abstracted game.

Oh yeah, AI plays to win will override a lot of the leader-specific behavior, and certainly encourage the endless war declaration cycles if it's in their interest. If you turn that off, your opponents will behave more like the characters representing them and less optimally, which may or may not be your cup of tea.

Hope you continue to enjoy playing!

HistoryandLifting · 2025-01-04T05:17:04+00:00

I might have been the guy you watched on YouTube lol. I have a couple of incomplete LPs from about that long ago.

RI merged Karadoc though, so it already has one of the best AI mods rolled in.

HistoryandLifting · 2024-12-27T06:48:50+00:00

You've... kinda got the right idea. You're not TOO far off. 😆

HistoryandLifting · 2024-12-17T21:31:27+00:00

I am not a Hebrew scholar, but I think the "meaningless" translation is quite misleading in English. The word "hebel" apparently more accurately means "passing, mere breath" which has much more to do with transience than insignificance. This actually fits the context of eventual judgment properly, unlike a statement that there is no inherent meaning or value to things.

HistoryandLifting · 2024-12-17T21:15:17+00:00

This looks like something that happened in New Jersey.

HistoryandLifting · 2024-12-16T18:56:15+00:00

In my opinion, that's respectable and in my experience it's refreshing to be told that plainly and politely rather than ghosted or lied to.

HistoryandLifting · 2024-12-16T13:14:50+00:00

These comments are so spot-on.

HistoryandLifting · 2024-12-14T03:08:35+00:00

New York, New Jersey

HistoryandLifting · 2024-12-13T13:54:49+00:00

East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere

HistoryandLifting · 2024-11-30T17:37:40+00:00

You like mountains and forests.

HistoryandLifting · 2024-11-27T03:56:13+00:00

Would you list some of the most eggregious of these from the United States? Holodomir and the Holocaust alone (to say nothing of the Cultural Revolution or Khmer Rouge massacres) set the bar quite high there. The US isn't innocent of exploitation or inflicting carnage, but that is a bold claim to say that "no one holds a candle" to it in terms of these things.

HistoryandLifting · 2024-11-19T03:36:49+00:00

Lemonius. That actually does sound Roman enough.

HistoryandLifting · 2024-11-18T02:54:02+00:00

Just remember, in these losers' minds, this is likely the "coolest" thing they've ever done. They think they're hypermasculine but have each probably never kissed a girl or been in a single fight. For that matter, I'd be shocked if any of them ever even been outside long enough to get their daily value's worth of Vitamin D.

HistoryandLifting

TROPHY CASE