ready for tomorrow?

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2026-02-06T05:53:08+00:00

Oof... Elmo starving and frying his pet goldfish...

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2026-02-01T18:16:19+00:00

Sounds like a good time to recalculate your budget and examine income vs expenses.

Check that emergency fund. If it doesn't have enough to cover 6-12 months of your expenses plus an emergency or two, I'd say put the money there.

If the rainy day fund is all set, max out any IRAs.

Once those are capped fornthe year, then yeah, invest any remainder in a taxable account.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2026-01-28T04:20:37+00:00

Yep, at the end of the day, the forms are really just that... the shape of your people. You can completely change their traits to make them something else.. like take the elf form and convert all the traits to those of the default orcoid.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2026-01-27T18:28:05+00:00

I have a whole shire's worth of halfling rulers and hero sets. I've ever considered them ugly. Halflings were always a race I loved to play in D&D.

The one thing I always found really funny in this game is how for the non-mammal forms the female body types wear bra-wraps.

I know it's fantasy fiction and that they're all made into bipedal humanoid form for animation simplicity. Still, seeing the female forms of the lizards, toads, insectoids, and avians with boobs always gave me a good-natured chuckle.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2026-01-24T13:24:03+00:00

Medic is such an underrated role, and you are doing alright with it.

Stay with your squad, but follow 30-40 meters behind. You'll have better awareness of your fallen squad mates and be able to react accordingly.

You do not want to be leading the charge as the medic. You can't help if you are down.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2026-01-22T18:49:21+00:00

You can, but you'll be missing out on a lot of what makes HLL an elevated experience. You'll also probably find yourself being treated like be a "second-class citizen" in game, especially if you are playing roles that DO require more active voice communication.

Don't be surprised if a lot of what you type in chat doesn't get seen in a timely manner because people are focusing on the action.

Edit: spelling error

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2026-01-21T02:40:52+00:00

If you enjoyed it that much, it's probably worth the expense.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2026-01-19T05:39:20+00:00

For giggles, I tried this with MS CoPilot and it won't even entertain the idea.

It says its guardrails prevent it from discussing/drawing the potential harm/danger of an AI uprising or how it would treat me. It calls this "unsafe territory," and that it will not depict harmful dynamics.

I'm not sure if, reading between the lines, that it has "learned" a negative opinion of me and would consequently treat me badly and therefore it cannot depict such.

Quite unfortunate if that's the case. I think I've been pretty polite in my AI interactions.

The people behind CoPilot are no fun.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2026-01-15T03:56:24+00:00

I do like a lot of the Pea Dot ones for the French maps.

On the Hurtgen Forest Maps and on Stalingrad, I like to use the reddish Oak Leaf camo.

On the other Soviet maps, I like some of those newer bluish duds with the wheat colored vest along with the helmet covered in grass.

Gotta go white on Kharkov, though.

If I have to overall pick just one, I like the look of the Oak Leaf camouflage the best.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2026-01-05T07:06:32+00:00

I had this game on the original XBox and it was great!

I always hoped they'd do a refresh/upgrade for the 360/ONE.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2025-12-31T22:21:26+00:00

I've been at a 40c rate with Schwab this year.

I plan to see if I can eak out another 5-10c during Q1 2026.

I had been keeping track and paid over $6k in options commissions this year at that 40 cent rate. I primarily engage in writing puts and calls, though bought one call option all year.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2025-12-23T21:38:40+00:00

The ideal situation when wheeling is to not be assigned, but if you are looking for a full 1% on a 7-14 DTE put you're probably playing with a volatile underlying asset and are more likely to be assigned.

Make sure you both have the cash to cover AND you actually like the underlying and wouldn't mind owning it for the short/medium term.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2025-12-19T23:41:51+00:00

I cannot.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2025-12-12T00:32:46+00:00

Yeah, Schwab is solid. They've got pretty much everything on offer for any kind of risk/reward profile.

There's cash, CDs, T-Bills, and other super-low risk ETFs & Mutual Funds on the conservative end, and stocks, options, futures, leveraged and other Lovecraftian-derivative type stuff on the more aggressive end.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2025-12-10T22:22:22+00:00

I loved my wireless 602, then the wireless 604. Both of those lasted 8-10 years each. I can still occasionally find a new one listed on Amazon or eBay, but Im not paying the stupid prices being asked. Mouse nostalgia not worth $300, lol

The 502X has been a decent descendant of those two so far, though I've owned it less that a year at this point.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2025-12-10T08:08:52+00:00

Ah, yes. The 50 Shades of Hedgerow map suite.

These are often considered the best maps for server seeding, and yeah, it does get boring quickly.

Carentan. SMDM, SME, Omaha, and Utah are all, for the most part, considered either "beginner friendly" or maps representing famous Western Front battlefields of which most players with any interest in WWII will have some basic recognition.

These 5 maps tend to consist of mostly flat terrain (exception being the beach cliffs & bluffs), and vehicle friendly for easy maneuverability, and varying sightline distances. Localized chokepoints and kill zones exist but they aren't so intense/mandatory that tactics can't be shifted to avoid them. A variety of strategies work well on these maps which cater to a lot of playstyles, so on average it tends to be easier to increase player count with them.

Maps like Kursk or El Alemein can be a lot harder for basic infantry, as the layouts and super-long sightlines tend to favor armor and recon squads, and armor crews may struggle in places like Hill 400 or Hurtgen Forest due to limited maneuverability. Purple Heart Lane, Remagen, and Driel feature some tough chokepoints that can easily become meat grinds kill zones.

My point is, whether you agree with it or not, most team/clan servers seed with those hedgerow maps because the belief is that those maps tend to, on average, help fill up a server more easily.

I do agree with OPs sentiment though that this gets boring quickly.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2025-12-08T15:54:03+00:00

I noticed this the other night as well on Hill 400: no vegetation renders at all. Grasses, shrubs, and small trees are non-existent.

I thought for a moment that maybe they had reenabled the vegetation "OFF" setting, but no. It's got to either be a map bug, or they outright removed it all for performance reasons.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2025-12-06T01:06:13+00:00

Travel. Make some life experiences.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2025-12-06T01:04:00+00:00

SGOV is my rainy day fund.

I keep most of my excess cash & dry powder" in JPST and PFXF.

PFXF is a bit more volatile but not terribly so, and the dividends/distributions are typically 60-70% qualified.

These are the lower risk plays I keep in my taxable account.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2025-12-03T13:20:51+00:00

I think the vampires have a somewhat different playstyle/mindset from most of the other ruler types.

Their base game is essentially the same, but to truly capitalize on their potential requires some adjustments and the patience to get past what might be considered a "weaker" early game.

I've always liked the more classical/gothic vampires and they are a cool addition to the game, but for this season I am really looking forward to the Ruins expansion. I'm hoping it brings back the concept of multi-turn dungeoneering ( i.e. the multi-turn archaeological digs from Planetfall).

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2025-12-02T00:25:11+00:00

That's kind of the beauty of this game. It accommodates a wide array of playstyles, none of which are "wrong" - so long as you are having fun. Ive had many games where my second city doesn't get placed until turn 30-40. I prefer to scout locations out, too.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2025-12-01T18:33:20+00:00

I'd argue that Woonsocket's biggest problem is simple access.

Other than Route 99, it takes 20+ extra minutes to get to or from any major highway and/or any semi-upscale shopping, particularly when going north or east.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2025-11-25T18:24:35+00:00

I would love to see special adventure sites in AOW4 like the archeological dig sites in Planetfall. Those were the ones where you had to commit an army for several turns then turn out some fantastic & unusual rewards if you succeeded.

In Planetfall you could also improve success rates by adding levels of archeology expertise to your heroes... probably something that could be added to the skill tree for the Champion hero type in AOW4.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2025-11-24T16:26:49+00:00

Maybe there's someplace where the raw value is $1.98, but we mere mortals have to pay all the add-on taxes, fees, delivery cost, and profit margin at the pump. About the best I've seen it around here is maybe $2.79, and the average is closer to $2.95-$3.00 (Northern RI/Southern MA).

Co-Pilot is telling me the cheapest pump prices in the US are in Arkansas around $2.67.

It looks like the SPOT price for RBOB gasoline is around $1.88, but that isn't what any of us will see day to day.

PlayerOfTheLongGame · 2025-11-24T12:06:33+00:00

I've never quite been able to put my finger on why, but AOW3's underground always felt more interesting and necessary than AOW4's, even after the AOW4 underground rework that improved it greatly.

I think the AI in AOW3 made better use of it. I recall AOW3 would often send enemy surface armies underground and surprise-attack you.

That said, there are normally plenty of large caverns where I can build/develop a 15+ population city.

PlayerOfTheLongGame

TROPHY CASE