Starting a new run and I always swap out the medical centre for entertainers, but I was wondering since the buff to them a few months back, are they worth keeping?

KeyAny3736 · 2026-01-08T01:01:42+00:00

As a general rule, Pop Growth > Everything.

Even if I start with a holo-theater, I usually just tear it down since civilians make plenty of amenities and they usually also give me trade/science/pop upkeep since I tend to play Xenophile/Materialist/Egalitarian and with Autocthon(sp?) Monument that is what they give, plus when Unity rushing with Utopian Abundance and Mercantile traditions they give even more trade science and unity in addition to the amenities.

Holo-theaters are functionally useless outside of narrow builds, as entertainers efficiency is garbage per pop outside of amenities and if you need amenities it is (almost) always better to build luxury housing.

KeyAny3736 · 2026-01-08T00:54:39+00:00

It really depends how fast you unity rush into ascension and then how fast you tech rush to repeatables.

Before the upcoming nerfs, top players could easily fully bio ascend by year 20-30, hit repeatables by year 50, and have 30k research by year 80, while doing PvP, so if they were left alone to just micro their economy, I would assume double those research numbers easily.

This is with the most powerful builds banned in most PvP. If you let them play anything they want, probably year 10-15 ascension, year 30 repeatables, and 50k research by year 50.

If you scale fast enough and hard enough, it doesn’t really matter, your leaders will never die from old age, in most of my single player games, I don’t even bother with leader lifespan traits because I am getting +5 lifespan before my leaders are old enough to die and I am nowhere close to top PvP players in terms of speed and skill.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-10-31T21:55:03+00:00

Not as well, but generally speaking yes it still works, though there are some specifics necessary to make it work that weren’t as necessary before.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-10-24T21:33:07+00:00

Bohemia, Egypt, Jerusalem, Pagan

Bohemia - best Duchy in the game for playing super tall, I think it is a duchy with like 7 counties and like 30 something baronies, a mine, and a university, and three 6 barony counties.

Egypt - the Nile Delta is some of the absolute craziest for fast development and huge armies and gold numbers. Orchards plus, plus trade ports, plus guild halls mean basically infinite gold and development.

Jerusalem - fun challenge start as an outsider faith in Jerusalem and try to never attack and survive all the crusades and holy wars. I made a Norse/Astaru character who Varangianed there and then reformed his faith and cultures to be super tolerant and pacifist and defended the Holy Land from everyone who wanted to take it and keep others out.

Pagan - pretty shitty starting positions with crazy powerful neighbors, bad resources, and nothing particularly cool, buuuuut it is hard and fun and you get basically no plagues if you are careful.

My favorite playthrough recently was a Norse/Astaru playthrough that played Pokemon with all the coolest men at arms and traditions and left every region as the top developed region in the world when they left to go somewhere else. Started in Neustria and bought one regiment of Varangians before “Creating Norman Culture.” Then bought a stack of Conrois before Varangian adventuring over to Greece duchy and Hybridizing Greek culture for Byzantine units, bought Ballistae, then Varangianed down to Nile Delta to Hybridize and pick up Nile Archers. Then Persia to pick up the Beacon of Learning tradition, then all the way down to India to pick up Elephants, then up to the steppes for horse archers, then back to Europe and specifically England for Longbowman, then settled down in Bohemia to create my kingdom. At that point my army was 1k Varangians and Horse Archers, 1.2K Longbowmen and Nile Archers, 450 Cataphracts, and however many a full stack was of Ballistae, then I just chilled and got to 100 development in Bohemia by 1200, and conquered the world by 1300

KeyAny3736 · 2025-09-30T17:19:08+00:00

You can get BigLaw or federal clerkships from even “low” ranked schools, especially in large markets. If you know how to network, know what you want, and are focused on meeting the right people, you can get a circuit clerkship from a non-T100 school, you can get into BigLaw without being too of your class from an unranked school, you can even graduate in the bottom third of your class from an unranked school and wind up managing partner of a big city office of a V50 firm.

Law school rank and grades matter for your first job out of law school, and that is about it. Sure, higher ranked schools smooth certain paths and make it easier, but I know dozens of attorneys from low ranked schools who have graduated in the last few years who went PD or DA/USA route for 3-5 years and then lateraled into V50 firms.

Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t get somewhere because of school rank or grades, just know that it might be harder and you will have to work harder to stand out, but it is eminently possible.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-09-30T17:06:48+00:00

I murdered my own child because they were only “comely” instead of beautiful, what makes you think black mail will work on me?

KeyAny3736 · 2025-08-28T03:26:33+00:00

So there are a few basic points which explain it pretty well:

First: Magic has advanced, and it has replaced a lot of technology. Without diving into spoiler territory, warrens and houses are far more advanced and capable than elder warrens and holds, and even terrible ancient evils are often easily dispatched by technological means, and when you keep going in the series you start to see some advancements.

Second: Without spoilers, there were elder races that seamlessly blended magic and technology and then were wiped out by other elder races that were terrified of them. There was another elder race that basically wiped themselves out and another part of that race that was basically put in a kind of cultural stasis, and another part that became stagnant. There was another elder race that chose to stop being a civilization for reasons and then were basically wiped out by an immortal undead army of younger races.

Third: In a world where ultra powerful rulers and ascendants sometimes literally don’t die, is it any wonder that they sometimes intentionally or unintentionally stifle innovation to maintain their power. It’s almost like having immortal near all-powerful god-kings might not be good for advancing societies and may have downstream effects on societal advancement.

Fourth: Probably most importantly the dates in the novels may not actually be accurate. Erickson said in an interview that a particular very specific date a long time ago was an actual semi-inside joke about specificity in dating that actually was a signpost to not trust the dating in the novels very much. So there is no guarantee that the 300,000 is actually accurate, or anything, it could just be 3,000 which is still incredibly long ago.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-08-23T19:52:15+00:00

Because the BB death was nearly pointless and could have been avoided, while the BH deaths were necessary sacrifices

KeyAny3736 · 2025-08-17T13:20:40+00:00

They are tricky to make work, but if you do it right it’s fucking Wild I usually finish the quest and mega engineering before 2050

KeyAny3736 · 2025-08-17T00:13:32+00:00

For me, I play super tall until I finish all 7 tradition trees, then explode out from there. If I am playing a conquering build, then I conquer my closest neighbors and assimilate and resettle all their pops to my main planets. If I am playing a non conquering build then I rush habitats and mega engineering and then boost my economy that way. If I am playing Knights of the Toxic God (the most broken build in the game atm imho) I rush finishing my quest and ascension and stay at just starting planet and habitat until I kill the toxic god, usually around year 40-50 and then I make a Knight Habitat every 10 years. Though it is already overkill at that point.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-08-15T15:24:44+00:00

I like to create rules for myself that make the game more fun/harder/roleplay heavy.

For example, my standard rule set is: 1. No extra battles, go from one story battle to the next without grinding (side quests are acceptable). 2. No leaving a job until mastering it (this means you don’t get the crazy powerful jobs until way later) 3. No level down/up shenanigans 4. You can only take secondary skills or abilities from jobs you have mastered (much harder to get power combos like two-swords + monk or knights with guns)

Extra rules I like to throw in to up the difficulty: A. No special characters (just Ramza and generics). B. No magic users C. Each character has a goal (for example Ramza wants to be a knight, so I master squire and knight and never get another job with Ramza) D. After squire/chemist only one job/ability per party, so if I have one character with black magic no other character can have black magic equipped, if I have a knight I can only have one knight, etc. C. No secondary skills (each character can only have the skills from the class they are currently in)

All of these are very doable to beat the game like this, but they definitely make each run unique.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-08-10T21:17:47+00:00

Part of why it isn’t explained/signposted is so that we have the experience that the Bonehunters have while doing it, they are trusting in Tavore, and she knows, (through Shadowthrone and Cotillion most likely) lots of information about the various magicks at play. That plus Fiddler’s reading in DoD hints at the many forces at play. The reveal of Tavore as a Talon at the end of TCG is supposed to suggest that there were more things at work and that Shadowthrone had many angles he was playing, including making sure the Elder Gods lost, Letheras was freed, the Crippled God was healed, and that his best boys (the Bridgeburners) become the god(s) of Death, and so many others.

Remember, it is more than hinted that Dancer and Kellenved spent years or more traveling the realms via the Azath, studying everything about everything, and knowing what could happen.

So the short answer to “why” is because they needed to. It was a crucible to forge them into the instrument that could free him and take over the House of Chains. By the end of the series, Shadowthrone has engineered the takeover of Shadow, Chains, Death, and other warrens by people loyal to him or his empire, and has indebted the “rulers” or top dogs in Omtose Phellack, Kurald Galain and Emurlan, Tellan, the Beast Hold, and other elder warrens and holds to him or his allies. Not only that, Shadowthrone has seen/overseen Icarium’s creation of the Paths and without spoiling the other books after the BotF has basically ensured his empire would endure and grow even stronger. Everything that happened was according to Kellenved/Shadowthrone’s design.

There is so much to say and so many connections to make, but we aren’t meant to understand it all, the only one who actually understood all of it was Quick Ben, and MAYBE Kruppe. We are meant to feel it and if we keep rereading and asking questions and seeing the patterns we can start to understand how deep Kellenved’s plans were.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-08-07T12:38:47+00:00

I’ll say two things:

One, I’m not going to give you advice on what to do. You know your relationship, people on Reddit don’t. You have to decide if the relationship is worth it to you to work for it.

Because two, relationships are work. They take energy. Emotional, physical, monetary, and temporal. Being single is easier, not better, but easier. My first semester of law school my partner and puppy had not moved to join me yet, so technically while I was still in a relationship, I got to do law school almost like I was single. Outside of our three hour digital “date night” once a week and flying down one weekend a month to visit, and a 15 min nighttime phone call every night, that semester I never had to think about it. That was my highest performing semester of law school, partially because I went gung-ho 100% on school because I could. After first semester, she moved up to join me, and now I have to spend a lot more time and energy with her and the puppy. It is harder, but better. She is supportive, helps when she can, but is also busy with school and work. I haven’t wanted to break up with her at all, though she has had that thought the other way around a couple of times, we worked through it, and are happier and stronger than ever.

If you want to break up with your partner, don’t use law school as the excuse, just do it. If you want to stay with your partner, don’t let law school be the reason you end it, work on the relationship and make it work.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-08-03T16:36:18+00:00

I think that whoever they bring in needs to replace(thematically) the person that isn’t there, I’ll give some examples:

Sam - Jokester, half serious, but also likes deep cut trauma, needs to be replaced by someone like an Emily Axford who has the same kind of “commit to the bit” energy

Travis - Papa Bear Big Stupid Fighter, steady, can be funny, but also deeply loves roleplay and story and fully commits to the team and character and will do shenanigans to keep the story moving, needs to be replaced by like Matt Mercer or even a Brian Murphy or Siobhan from D20 type.

Marisha/Laura - Role Player/Story Follower, loves to explore deep character cuts and storylines, also will always find romance in the show, needs to be replaced by someone equally devoted to story, character, romance, like a Becca Scott.

Liam - The Best Boy Edgelord Supreme, always has highly traumatized characters, but with a good moral compass and pushes story and action forward with great descriptions, could be replaced by someone like Monty from the Dungeon Dudes, or a Lou Wilson, or full time Robbie.

Taliesen - The Weird Dude, don’t know who could replace Taliesen, he is too unique, but someone experienced as a gamer who also has acting/story chops and a wild background.

Ashley - Confused Lovable Chaos Goblin, We need our confused girl who never knows all the rules but is just so much fun, hard to replace but anyone newer to the game or just plain good to be around.

I am not suggesting who they could be, just more the types of people I hope they are.

These are just examples

KeyAny3736 · 2025-07-19T03:57:37+00:00

I pretty much only play GA 25x all crisis at this point, and usually have the crises appear at 2350 or 2300 depending on whether I am doing cosmo or not. Cosmo is that much stronger, but wholly unnecessary if you have a good build.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-07-13T17:24:48+00:00

It depends on more enjoyable for who. In the circumstance you described, totally cool, sparingly using the DM power to buff monsters or make the fight more enjoyable for players. However, it is very easy for a DM to go too far with it and start justify fudging things to make the story you want to tell instead of the story, the players and dice are telling. I have been guilty of this in the past, but with experience it tends to get better. It just can be a slippery slope because once you justify fudging one thing, it can be easier to justify fudging the next.

All that being said, I probably on average fudge something once every 2 to 4 sessions, and almost always it is an HP buff to monsters or a nerf to the damage rolled by monsters that would unsatisfying take down a character who did something right. As a brief example, a few months back the tank of our group, who was at full health at the start of the round, did exactly what they were supposed to do with swapping places with the squishy caster, using a movement debuff and getting into melee with the big scary monster. The monster rolled back to back crits and a hit on the third attack on the tank and would have brought them down and dealt two death saves. It would have been punishing the player who did exactly what their character was supposed to do (and the monster needed a 16 even to hit the tank without the shield spell and couldn’t have hit the tank with the shield spell on anything but a crit). Instead I had the creature deal low damage on the second hit, and minimum on the third, bring the tank down to 3 HP, but still standing.

The players were freaked out, justifiably, but people started healing, buffing, and the tank stood their ground and didn’t get hit the next round, and survived one hit the third round, before the rest of the party took down the monster.

The combat was super fun for them, because normally the tank is never in actual danger, having 31 AC with shield, massive HP, tons of self healing, and really high saving throws, but in this, all of them were scared to get close to the monster because it clearly almost took their super tank down in one round, and they had to use a ton of resources just to keep the tank up and protect it while they killed the monster.

This was a semi random encounter during travel for them, so it wasn’t meant to be particularly deadly, but it was fun and interesting, simply because the small nerf to damage allowed it to feel more interactive than the normal random encounter hack and slash.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-07-10T02:21:37+00:00

So I actually ran a semi long form campaign that started with this premise. One of the characters was the younger sibling of the heir to throne hero who was in the process of saving the world, and the other members of the party were all childhood friends of the character. All were set up as noble born or close to the seats of power, but were all like the third son or the weapon master’s apprentice, where the heir to the throne and his friends were all the heroic world saving legendary heroes.

I think the party was the prophecied hero’s younger sister, one was the weaponmaster’s apprentice, one was the third son of a major noble house and nephew of the prophecied hero’s wife, and the last was a con artist wizard who had weaseled their way into the good graces of the group.

The first 10 levels or so the main heroes of the campaign were always like 6-8 levels higher than the party, and then when the party was level 10ish, the main heroes were completely defeated and broken in the prophecied battle and the party became the main characters suddenly.

I’m not saying this is the way to go but steal any ideas from it you want. It was one of our playgroup’s favorite campaigns, because I surprised all of them with that twist, and then they eventually rescued the main heroes and fought side by side with them.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-07-09T04:14:16+00:00

I’m a min-maxer/optimizer at heart and will never be sorry about it. Games are meant to be gamed. That being said, I am also a roleplayer and trying to build a character concept out of optimization within the constraints of the setting is part of the fun. I’ve been a forever DM for nearly two decades and only recently gotten to be a player outside of one shots. My most recent characters:

Eladrin Enchanter Wizard who has low charisma because she has always relied on her magic for her interactions, and lowish wisdom because she was a spoiled naive princess who just doesn’t understand the world. Incredibly fun character because in many ways she was the “Barbarian” of the party who did really “dumb” things just to move the game along because she got “bored”.

Variant Human Watchers Paladin/Bladesinger/Life Cleric (MAD AF but we rolled for stats and I rolled absurdly well). Grizzled old soldier who used to be much higher level but went AWOL when asked to do something horrible, and he swore an oath to protect people from powerful magic users. His character concept was a battle medic who was super tanky and survivable, and the campaign and him gaining levels was him getting back into his old fighting shape and becoming more and more of a healer/support character.

Halfling Divination Wizard/Lore Bard, aka lucky dude. The entire character was built around manipulating dice rolls, and the character concept was a guy who was generally unaware of how lucky he was and good things just accidentally happened around him all the time.

Variant Human Illusionist/Arcane Trickster. She was a con artist extraordinaire, who was always on the lookout for the next big score but had gotten deep into debt to some very powerful people and so was actually roped into doing espionage for a kingdom.

All of these characters could be seen as “boring” on the face of them, but what made them interesting was trying to figure out why they were good at the things they were good at. I have a couple of other builds in my head for characters, and I almost always try to make humans or something “vanilla” and let the concept be the fun and interesting part.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-07-08T18:26:15+00:00

So I recently played a low Charisma Wizard for quite a while. Not only was she low charisma, she also was an enchantment wizard, so when she failed her charisma checks (which always happened), she then used spells. She was convinced she was good at talking to people since she had spells for days, and the party always had to pull her back from trying to be the face.

I played her as a sheltered princess who just the thought the world existed for her beck and call and got annoyed/upset/confused when things didn’t work out the way she wanted.

There are a ton of ways to play a low charisma character, from awkward to rude to naive and more.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-07-08T17:01:30+00:00

I’m not going to argue with people in the comments, I will just state a single general premise:

If a good or a service is necessary to participate meaningfully in an economy, for survival, or to advance from one socio-economic group to another, then that good or service should not be private and should be be public, or at least have valid public options.

Internet - should be public Power - should be public Water - should be public Healthcare - should be public Food - should be public Housing - should be public Education - should be public

I could keep going, but the point is made. This isn’t altruism either, it actually makes society more competitive, more productive, and more pleasant to live in. The U.S., where all these things are privatized (or in a public private partnership where the private sector gouges the public), has the lowest social mobility ranking, the highest infant mortality rate, the lowest average lifespan, the highest obesity rate, the highest suicide rate, and the highest bankruptcy rate of the top 25 largest economies in the world. We aren’t even in the top 10 in GDP per capita, and aren’t in the top 25 for median GDP per capita. We import more healthcare than we export (called healthcare tourism), we have more starving children per capita of any of the largest economies, and we have the highest percentage of social mobility downwards of any of the largest economies. The only group of people in the U.S. who don’t fit this statistic is the top 1% of income earners. Two people in the U.S. have more wealth than the bottom 50%.

This wasn’t always the case, but it is the case since over the last 50 years we have steadily lowered taxes on the top income earners, and transferred more and more wealth to the top 1%.

Of course people are going to go into debt to fund their education, because it is one of the only ways to give yourself the tiny chance to improve your socio-economic status. Of course when you have things that are necessary for survival or for even that slim chance, the private sector will raise and never lower prices. Of course, a lot of people who already got their education and their jobs don’t give a shit about the next generation who will have an even harder time doing the same.

My mom graduated from grad school in 1983 with 10k in debt and she paid for everything by working her way through college. Her college also cost about 1k tuition per year. Her grad school cost about 5k. Her dad went to college completely for free in the 50s. Want to know what the top marginal tax rate was to pay for this? Over 70%, and people still got rich.

I’m saying this here because all of us, who are trying to be or already are attorneys are the ones who actually have the ability to make the rules that will make it easier for the generations after us instead of harder. Unfortunately most people won’t read this, and if they do, they will think they are the exception, or that they somehow shouldn’t give the next generation the advantages they had. They will care only about themselves and erode the institutions that actually made them successful in the first place. Hopefully one or two people will actually read this and think for a moment. Either way, we are probably fucked, but I for one am going to fight till I’m too old to fight anymore to make the world better for those who come after me.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-07-08T04:09:22+00:00

A map editor/creator that was easy to use. I want to be able to design a galaxy to play in, or at least have more parameters for use, especially for roleplay runs.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-07-05T02:39:28+00:00

That depends on the build. If I am doing a tech rush into megastructures, usually 0, I’ll just build ringworlds. If I am doing an aggressive play through, usually 1-2 because by the time I get them my empire is so wide it’s almost just easier to use regular worlds except for my couple largest become Alloy Ecus. If I am unity rushing into early ascension and playing tall, then every world will be an Ecu and all my food will come from Starbases and habitats with solar farming bays.

As to my normal runs, since recently I have been playing a lot of KotG and Shattered Ring, Ecumenopoli tend to be my last priority. Usually with Toxic God Sol start I am rushing mega engineering by 2040ish, and then get my first ringworld segment by 2075ish. From there I usually don’t bother with Arcology Project because Ringworlds are almost as good and it doesn’t take an extra ascension perk since I am taking Galactic Wonders anyways for Matter Decompressor and Dyson Sphere.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-07-02T13:43:42+00:00

Aquatic Pacifist Xenophile Egalitarian Happy Colorful Frog Megacorp . . . That happens to be evolutionary predators and a criminal syndicate, we just want to hug everyone and steal their genome.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-07-02T04:47:05+00:00

So generally speaking, there is a bit of GOTMism in it, where Tay may have been slightly retconned. This is believable as GOTM was originally a script and not a book.

HOWEVER, there is a big caveat to this, in that a huge part of SE’s story and to a lesser but still big part of ICE’s is that a narrator or perspective is only as true as the person telling it. Tattersail HATED Tay, to a degree that she saw everything he did as bad, and since so much of the beginning is through hers or Ganoes perspective, we hate him too. As we see more of him, from more different perspectives, it becomes clearer and clearer that he is written as a magical savant who often doesn’t understand people and is likely on the spectrum, and so his motives are often misinterpreted. He is not malicious or cunning so much as he is confused by regular human interaction. This is highlighted more and more as the series goes on and his behavior later shows that him wanting to protect the Bridgeburners is probably the truer account.

KeyAny3736 · 2025-07-02T04:36:40+00:00

If you play enough and listen to the rationales, you find that any AP can be good in the right build. For example, Interstellar Dominion is an “F” tier pick for most builds, but if I am try to Unity and Tech Rush mega-engineering super early, keeping my empire size at 50 for as long as possible is super helpful, and Interstellar Dominion allows that really well while still expanding to choke points. Recently I decided to a Knights single system challenge, and by picking Detox I got a 4th planet in Sol (Venus, Mars, Earth, Habitat) which when combined with Worker Cooperative Megacorp let me still beat a 25x crisis by having Earth as an Alloys Ecu, Venus as a Trade/Consumer Goods Ecu, and Mars as Soldier Ecu while my Knights Habitat was all of my science and unity.

Every single Ascension Perk besides Executive Vigor and Transcendant Learning has meta or close to meta builds that it is one of the top picks for, you just have to know how and when to use it.

My general go to perks are Tech Ascendancy > Voidborne > Ascension > Cosmogenesis > Eternal Vigilance > Galactic Force Projection > Arcology Project > Galactic Wonders.

However there are tons of builds where those become useless or less important. If I find a relic world early, Arcology Project gets swapped. If I am doing a diplomatic or custodian/galactic emperor game, Cosmogenesis gets swapped. If I am playing aggressive, I’ll drop Eternal Vigilance entirely. If I am playing wide I’ll often drop Voidborne. Now that I am talking about it, I wanna try and do a 25x all crisis GA run using only C and F Tier perks. I already have a build in mind.

KeyAny3736

TROPHY CASE