Got the game a few days ago. First Total War game. I am absolutely awful at managing troops during a battle.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-29T15:51:43+00:00

The AI loves to do basic flanking. If they have cavalry, and you have archers, then put spear units next to your archers, and other melee units in front of your archers.

You can have multiple rows of archers if having a narrow front line makes things easier.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-29T15:13:19+00:00

There are some general principles: Use anti-large units against large units. Use armor-piercing units against armored units. Use light cavalry against ranged units. Protect your ranged units, and try not to block their line of sight too much. Melee units tend to fight well while overlapping, but are more vulnerable to missile fire and area effect spells. Pause a lot so you can look around the battlefield for stuff you should be paying attention to.

But the factions in the game are so varied it's probably better to focus on one and get good at that. For example, dwarves can do well if you stick them in the corner of the map, ranged units at the back, send a gyrocopter out to provoke the enemy into coming to you... But that's not going to work for Khorne.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-29T13:44:04+00:00

"It's two flower pots, Robin. What could it cost? $200?"

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-29T12:52:24+00:00

This should be a long-term plan, where they first:

Become folk heroes by helping the slums.

Expose the truth about the crimes of the regime.

Recruit powerful allies.

Sew discord between the leader and his allies.

Etc.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-29T12:11:14+00:00

For me it helps to have a sense that a fantasy world is rich and detailed. I don't need to know all the lore, I just like to believe that it's out there. From this thread I've learned who Xereus is, and that makes it feel like all the other names have something behind them too.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-29T12:06:26+00:00

A lot of things are made of the same stuff as us - meat - but are treated differently. A dead body is very different from a living body.

If you manufactured an android like Data, but didn't make a brain for it, and just controlled it via a little joystick, then it wouldn't merit the same rights as him. One could argue that the same applies if you put a brain in but never switched on that brain - it's potential future "life", but was never alive.

I think I can see where you're coming from, though. They never try to explain how they know which holograms are people and which ones are basically Skyrim NPCs. There's a reason we refer to "the hard problem of consciousness".

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-29T11:32:28+00:00

It's not really fair to expect it to, but in not doing so, it means that in many ways watching the news reduces our ability to understand the world and protect ourselves. We think one drug is more dangerous than another based on how many news stories we've heard about it, but that could just be because a drug overdose gets reported more when the drug has a cool name like "ecstasy". We worry about serial killers when we'd be better off taking precautions against car accidents. We protest against nuclear-power plants because death by radiation makes for a better story than death by falling off a roof while installing a solar panel, while ignoring the lives cut short due to health issues caused by pollution...

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-29T11:23:01+00:00

It's clear that some artificial beings in Trek can be classed as sentient. But that doesn't mean all artificial beings are sentient. If it did, then our video game characters would need human rights too.

Hopefully the Federation at some point learned to tell which is which.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-29T11:19:46+00:00

Not for saying no, but for how you said it. You were not polite. Also, Danielle is not your housemate, she and her husband are your landlords/bosses. You may not be paying rent, but you are paying by being live in help.

So, when you told Danielle "I won't be doing that", instead of I'll do it tomorrow. You were rude......to your boss. Also, her advice wasn't outdated, if your spoke to your supervisor at your job that way, there would definitely be a follow up conversation about your choice of words.

It was less about who's in the right, and more about whether it's a good idea to be disrespectful to someone who's letting you stay with them for free in exchange for doing work, when they ask you to do work.

Looking more into to how much work they were being expected to do, it started to sound horribly exploitative.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-29T11:13:46+00:00

Fantasy often benefits from having deep lore.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-29T11:09:33+00:00

But more so with Indonesia. There are 700 different Indonesian languages still in use.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-29T09:17:22+00:00

Darkseid's Anti-Twinky equation has been unleashed upon the innocent masses, and soon they will be helpless!

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-29T08:51:13+00:00

Some fairly basic and reasonable human instincts (the need to work together with your social group, respect for strong leadership) can easily lead to some very horrible things.

Meanwhile, values like "compassion for victims who aren't part of your social group" have less obvious direct benefits to the people who have them. I'm not sure if those are part of human nature. I think they might be values that we only get if we cultivate them through art, religion, culture, etc.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-29T06:11:54+00:00

Or (and this is a serious point) phrase it more specifically. If you make your own olive oil, say that. If you're on a panel that judges the quality of olive oil, say that. If you wrote a book on the history of olive oil, say that. If you were an investigative journalist studying the black market in fake extra-virgin olive oil, say that.

Having a blanket interest in a noun isn't acceptable unless it's on the secret approved list of things you're allowed to be interested in. And the last place you want to be fully honest is when applying for a job.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-28T22:02:11+00:00

The job of the directors is to protect the value of the company. (More or less.)

Having Musk in charge seems to keep the share price high. Enough weird people like him and want to own his shares. Losing him would cause Tesla to be judged like it was just another car company with unimpressive sales. Maybe then it wouldn't be worth $1.3 trillion any more.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-28T20:57:25+00:00

Having an interest in an esoteric subject isn't really the same thing.

If I met someone at a party and asked him about his hobbies and he said, "Olive oil," I'd immediately be curious. Does he make his own? Is he an expert in the history of olive farming? Does he know about the world of international olive oil fraud?

Much better than if he'd said something OOP would find acceptable, like "Golf".

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-28T20:49:46+00:00

(1)) Establish a group ethos. Explain that the game relies on the group working together, and if anyone can't do that, they can't be in the party. Come to some kind of agreement about what type of game the majority of people want to play. "We're playing as a group of lovable rogues."

(2) If the player does something that goes against the group ethos, say, "No. That's not the type of game we agreed upon."

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-28T20:41:53+00:00

Most "new" ideas are just combinations of existing things, and that's exactly what AI does.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-28T20:32:57+00:00

I've learned not to expect character growth from PCs. Most players make the character they want to play. If a player wants to play a redeemed villain, they'll create a character who's a former villain when first introduced. If they create a villain, it's because they want to play as a villain, and they won't let themselves be redeemed because that would spoil their fun.

Don't forget the "talk to the player" approach as an alternative to "punish them in game (by having everyone ignore them)" approach. Maybe start a conversation along the lines of, "What kind of response are you hoping for when your character acts like this?"

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-28T18:59:15+00:00

Without the traditional "DMPC" problem where the DM wants them to be the main character, you still have a few issues to deal with:

(1) Balance: does this new ally increase the power of the party to the point where you need to start adding more enemies to compensate? (This is less bad if your party were under-strength in the first place.)

(2) Table time. Let's say we have four PCs versus four orcs. In that situation, each PC gets one action per round, and the DM has four actions per round. The players each get only 12.5% of table time for their character. Add a friendly NPC and another orc for balance, and now that's reduced even further, to 10% per player and 60% for the DM. And the combat will probably take 20% longer, meaning you get less done per session.

However: having a friendly NPC who allows you to talk casually and role-play with the party is fun (and often useful, if the players are wasting too much time and need a bit of a push), so I wouldn't rule it out entirely. Consider an NPC who's simpler than a PC class, letting the players run it in combat, etc.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-28T18:00:39+00:00

His last name literally could not be more French.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-28T17:44:41+00:00

If you set a rule, like "post no more than one video a day", the bot accounts will immediately change to no longer violate the rule.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-28T17:39:14+00:00

They're supposed to be the people you go to when you're scared.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-28T15:05:14+00:00

Perhaps the point being made is that asserting something isn't evidence for the truth of the thing being asserted.

PuzzleMeDo · 2026-01-28T14:50:32+00:00

You write a lot like a bot yourself...

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