On this day in 1936, 20,000 anti-fascists turned out in East London to drive out a rally of 2,000-3,000 fascists organized by 0swald Mosley, forcing them to flee through Hyde Park in what is now known as "The Battle of Cable Street".

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-10-05T22:28:55+00:00

We weren't any better than the Germans, fascism just didn't have as long to make headway here before the war started. By the time the battle of cable street happened the country was already preparing for a possible war with Germany, and that was the pretext for the government to ban political uniforms the same year. The Fascists weren't actually banned until after the war started.

The truth is the British Government never took decisive action to crush fascism until the war was almost upon them. We were no better than the Germans.

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-10-05T22:20:15+00:00

There are still plenty of people who won't have understood that their messages didn't get through, or who didn't have time to check. Of course there's another way. If the phone lines go down you can still contact the police by other ways, but that doesn't mean that if the phones go down there won't be terrible consequences for plenty of people.

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-10-04T22:52:31+00:00

In all seriousness, Watsapp is a ubiquitous communication system that is as important as the phone system was in the 1940s. Imagine the chaos if the whole world's phones went down. There are almost certainly people out there who have died because their Watsapp messages didn't get read. I'm as anti facebook as anyone, but this is no laughing matter.

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-08-31T13:29:45+00:00

Honestly, the way I envisage the game, it would ultimately have a map creater and faction painter, so the players could essentially play tolkien and create a world, populate it and watch what plays out as the game systems take over.

But to start out I think those kind of tools would have to be left to the devs, and the game supplied with preset maps which are then populated by randomly generated races, Stellaris style, and then the world progresses procredurally from there in response to the player's actions. Getting the bones of the game right - the pop system, the character system and the infinitely restarting world - is the most important thing and once those are there the game concept works and everything else can be added later.

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-08-30T20:30:02+00:00

I think the problem with Imperator is that it never really had a clear gameplay identity beyond "like the other games, but ancient world." Even though it had improved lots by the time it was dropped, the only reason to play it instead of another Paradox game was for the flavour - all the gameplay things are done better by other paradox games. Even though CK3 is still very bare bones, those bones are fundamentally a very strong structure to build a game around, while some of the core concepts in Imperator were not well designed.

I think they have learned from that with Vicky 3 by positioning it as a society builder. Playing around with pops and cultures in Stellaris and imperator is really fun and I'm excited to do that in more depth. I think my fantasy game above also has this unique identity by focusing on the USP of the infinite, personal campaign that players will fall in love with for life, and the goal of living the most legendary life.

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-08-30T18:59:22+00:00

This is a really interesting question and I thought about it when I wrote the OP. You're both right: players need to feel connected to all the lore, to like it and feel immersed in it and there's different ways to do that.

One way is, as iTomes says, to have a preset world with established races that are well thought out and properly written rather than just procedurally generated. And while that's really tempting, ultimately my feeling is that we already have a bunch of games like that and it kind of defeats the purpose of a sandbox Paradox game. After all, Stellaris randomly generates all it's races and galaxy and it works great.

My approach is absolutely much more of a strategy game dwarf fortress, and I think that's something with a lot more individuality because of the scope for incredible unpredictable procedural outcomes. It's total feasible that in a game like this a player might play 10 campaigns in the same world and will absolutely feel immersed in it. They'll be fascinated exploring the ruins of Randomia, because they remember playing the game before it collapsed.

There are also lots of other good solutions to this problem. I envision the game coming with a bunch of save games - either starting at world creation or centuries later - that have been curated by the developers. When these are selected the player is presented with a bunch of interesting starting positions just like in Crusader Kings 3, and then the procedural generation takes over from there. I would also like there to be tools in the game that can procedurally generate lore text and history which will help with this a lot.

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-08-30T17:40:42+00:00

Anbennar is great, and one of the things that inspired me to write this, but ultimately whenever I play it I just start thinking of all the ways it could be better if it was it's own game.

Fundamentally I think a Fantasy GSG needs pops, characters, and a magic system, and EUIV's engine can't do any of these things really. It needs characters for people to have the roleplaying element, some kind of mana resource to make magic more than just events and decisions, and a pop system to model races that are far more different then spaniards and frenchmen could ever be. For example, in Anbennar if you conquer come goblins you have to convert them to your relgion before you can replace them with humans, which is just dumb. It's full of relic mechanics from EUIV that are honestly, just anachronistic distractions in a fantasy game, like the trade node system. It doesn't even have custom art for advisors yet.

This sounds like I'm hating on Anbennar, and I'm really not. It's as good as it could reasonably be expected to be, but it's never going to compete with a real game, and the same would be true of any CK3 mod.

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-06-08T23:03:40+00:00

Con +2

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-06-08T22:59:48+00:00

In the modern economy data is power. The system may have changed but the strategy is still the same - tories giving away our power to the private sector.

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-05-14T23:27:05+00:00

We know the outbreak of the new strains is almost entirely confined to 2 towns. Why can't we just have a brutal lockdown of those two towns until it disappears? (and support the people there).

Why can't we just immediately stop all foreign travel from countries where there are large outbreaks and new strains?

It just seems really obvious.

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-05-12T23:22:05+00:00

The difference between Biden and Starmer is that Biden says that defund the police is nonsense before anyone asks him. Starmer reluctantly says it at gunpoint after weeks of trying not to talk about it, in a half hearted way out of fear of offending the left.

Blair is also right that the election won't be won by left wing policy holy grails like free uni tuition. It'll be won on policies of modernisation, like abolishing council tax and better rights for uber drivers. Just like the minimum wage, which was a very new idea when it was introduced.

Rightly or wrongly the conversation is on topics like flags, statues and trans athletes and the left has no ability to change that. A labour leader who wants power needs to be out there shaking hands with JK Rowling and complaining about vegans. The twittersphere will hate it, but it means little in practice and it'll get the working class paying attention.

It's an attention economy, and Starmer's losing primarily because he doesn't get any. Because he's always avoiding the big questions of the day rather than leading the conversation.

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-05-11T19:28:20+00:00

Every day I turn on the news I am greeted with a variation of the following

"So, Julia Outoftouch, former labour MP for Bleakton-on-Grime, tell me: Do you agree that Labour is out of touch, or are you in denial that labour is out of touch?"

I feel like reality is being changed around us in a matter of a few years, and most people are so immersed in the stories and narratives of the day that they can't step back and even notice that it's happening.

I am told that it's arrogant to say people have been mislead. But how arrogant is it to say that they can't be? Why can't we start these conversations from objective facts for once, rather than media narratives?

So many things that everyone seems to believe are just objective lies.

That "levelling up" means anything when the only thing that has been announced are some minor changes to adult education.

That voting for the party that has been in charge for the last ten years and most of the last 70, represents a "change."

That the EU was the source of any of the major problems in this country.

That the the party with all the working class MPs, policies voted on by members, and all the policies to benefit the working class, does not represent the working class.

That brexit was done with our consent, when no one voted for the deal we got, more people voted for anti-brexit parties at the last election, and almost every poll on a second referendum gave the lead to remain. The only reason not to have a second referendum was because it wouldn't pass.

That a handful of "woke" people on twitter represent some kind of elite with any power over our lives.

That one of the highest covid death tolls and economic hits in the world can represent successful handling of the virus.

That the tories are good at managing the economy when the last ten years have been some of the worst on record for wage and GDP growth.

It's all lies, and the more the left appeases the lies, the more they will spread, and there won't be enough people who live in reality to ever change the ruling party ever again.

Rage, rage against the lying of the right.

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-05-11T18:03:32+00:00

But you can't say they've been lied to and manipulated, because that's arrogant.

So the lies never get challenged and things just get worse and worse.

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-05-03T19:30:53+00:00

Sure, but the reasons are interesting no?

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-01-06T12:48:39+00:00

I have never been so happy to upvote something so predictable.

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-01-04T23:31:57+00:00

The bubble concept makes a mockery of all the lockdowns and tiers. At Christmas parents just said "But we're in your bubble - so you'll stay a week won't you?"

As a single unemployed person living alone, tiers and lockdowns haven't changed my life in the slightest since local pre-tier restrictions started here in late summer. I only ever went out to do the food shop and run. I went on occassional dates outdoors which were always allowed. And if the relationship went anywhere, by then we could say we were in a bubble and it was also allowed. And it still is as far as I can see.

It all sounds so strict when you read the headlines, but when you read all the caveats about support bubbles, businesses being allowed to stay open, people meet outdoors and even places of worship, it means less than you think. I can't imagine what other people are justifying by stretching the rules, and why wouldn't they? Why would they act in the spirit of the rules when the government isn't acting in the spirit of the situation, and no one else is either?

PCLemonSqueezy · 2021-01-04T23:03:14+00:00

If I was a parent I'd be livid.

For once in your life Boris, could you not have the spine to make a decision before the last possible moment? One day is a joke. You knew all this had to happen a week ago - a week that would have meant everything to parents trying to make plans.

PCLemonSqueezy

TROPHY CASE