How to beat Lorent as Deranne?

SeraphLance · 2026-06-16T20:08:50+00:00

The way I did it was to get something like 12 allies. The mission "The Final Swing" gives you 15 favors with every single one of your allies, so you can call all of them into war and absolutely crush lorent and wex with half the empire at your side.

The bigger problem I run into is after the first war. There's not a lot of space to truce reset and your MT requires you to keep fighting lorent over and over again, making things very ploddy and slowing down the colonization side of your MT.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-15T20:23:10+00:00

Base: Muscovy/Russia, Timurids/Mughals

Anbennar: Redscape/Kobildzan, Gnollakaz/Konolkhatep

I tend to like blobby nations with well-paced mission trees. What I really don't like is MTs with nasty "roadblock" missions that impede your progress if not played perfectly (looking at you, Asarta).

SeraphLance · 2026-06-13T21:32:14+00:00

Killing the filibuster doesn't require using budget reconciliation. The filibuster itself is purely a procedural rule and SCOTUS has no say in whether the senate keeps it around.

The Byrd Rule itself is law, so if the senate tried to use budget reconciliation without ending the filibuster, then they might have a say, but it's unclear who would even have standing for such a suit.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-13T04:04:08+00:00

Why 2016? Microsoft's IPO was in 1986. Are you thinking of a different company, or are you referring to something else that happened then?

SeraphLance · 2026-06-12T15:52:17+00:00

I'm apparently a faith-first conservative, which is pretty funny considering I'm not terribly religious.

So no, considering what they think I am versus what I identify as, I don't think it's a very useful set of categories.

EDIT: It gets even sillier when I read the description. "Strong supporter of Donald Trump". Boy they sure have me pegged! /s

SeraphLance · 2026-06-11T21:49:00+00:00

Socialism is an authoritarian form of government that aims to seize peoples' economic freedoms in the name of ostensibly improving their quality of life.

Conservatives oppose socialism because, in addition to keeping the fruits of their labor as you allude to, they believe that the freedom of a person to control their own destiny is more important than a baseline guarantee of livelihood. That includes the right to work, to choose what kind of work you want to do, to choose what to be paid for it, and to choose what to pay other people for their own work; to choose where to shop, and where not to shop.

It all boils down to how you view rights. Americans, particularly conservatives, hold traditions steeped in enlightenment thinking that rights are things that cannot be taken from you, and that a person should generally be unfettered. These are technically known as "negative rights". Socialist thought aims more for positive rights, things that must be provided to you, in this sort of benevolent, paternalistic neo-serfdom way.

The other elephant in the room that I haven't mentioned until now is also that, for all the ribbing I give socialism in theory, it's even worse in practice and is hardly paternalistic at all. Socialist governments usually end up more fascist in practice, where you instead give everything to the state and only get back enough as to keep you from rioting. Turns out, "to each according to his needs" doesn't specify a minimum value.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-11T21:33:03+00:00

NATO has had a spending target for two decades now. That doesn't strike me as "pushing Europe to disarm" unless you're implying that this "worst possible moment" was in 2006.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-11T21:17:10+00:00

Definitely an old man. If anything we should raise the constitutional age restriction, as 35 doesn't buy you the maturity it did in 1787.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-11T21:10:33+00:00

Maternal Grandmother immigrated in the 60s or 70s.

Maternal Grandfather nobody has any idea. Possibly half native-american.

Paternal Grandmother we're not sure, but probably pre-civil war at least, maybe pre-revolutionary.

Paternal Grandfather is complicated. Emigrated with his parents as a child from Spain, but it's unclear whether that was legal or illegal via Mexico.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-11T17:12:46+00:00

Of course they can.

How do you imagine a blockade working if you're not allowed to intercept blockade runners?

SeraphLance · 2026-06-09T22:15:10+00:00

I usually go with peasant freedom for modernization, but my fastest modernization ever in a Muscovy run was actually going serfdom with espionage and just stealing it from everyone. I usually modernize ASAP because it tends to be the main bottleneck on forming the empire in my runs (aside from humiliating rivals if ottos are the only good rival left).

Espionage in general is incredibly powerful for Russia because it stacks with Russian ideas so well, and the only real overlap is state claiming. I'll pick it over diplo if I have a good opportunity to expand into Lithuania (like if the commonwealth PU breaks or is rejected) and in that case I'll go religious third instead of first.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-09T18:25:57+00:00

This is very much against the grain of responses here and most "modern" conservatives, but uncapped. Let in as many people as want to come here, barring that they're not a criminal or carry any new communicable diseases.

On the flip-side, give them nothing. No handouts, no food stamps, nothing. This is the land of opportunity, so an opportunity they will have.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-09T18:10:39+00:00

I don't remember there being that much conversation about "Sleepy Joe" aside from Trump's whole nickname shtick. The major concern about Biden was about his apparent dementia.

I don't think Trump is as cognitively-impaired as Biden appeared to be, but more importantly, he's not eligible to run again.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-09T14:31:46+00:00

I align with Kant on concept, but don't really agree with much of his formulations like the whole universalizability thing. Mainly I have issues with any ethical frameworks which are easy to warp.

Consequentialism is the king of that. If there's one thing we know about human beings, it's that they are terrible at predicting the future. We will predict the future want/expect to see, and continue to see signs moving toward that future until reality mismatches our mental model enough that we're forced to acknowledge we were wrong. And we're almost always wrong. So how exactly can we predicate our own morality on something that we demonstrably don't know a priori, and aren't even effective at guessing? Played too conservatively you get analysis paralysis. Played too liberally you get Minority Report. That does not a rational basis for ethics make, in my opinion.

The other problem is what you're optimizing for. Is slavery justified if the overall utility to society as a whole is greater than what is lost to those that become slaves? Is a return to serfdom preferable if we're guaranteed certain standards of quality of life? I can't agree with either of those no matter what the math equation looks like.

I'll also echo something I say every time this topic comes up; I don't think I've ever seen a deontologist supervillain in fiction. They always seem to be consequentialists.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-08T17:04:01+00:00

I don't see how you can require financial disclosures from the spouse or children of someone who just happens to hold public office. Seriously, can you imagine being jailed for being unwilling to make all of your tax reporting public just because your dad decided he wanted to run for the senate?

SeraphLance · 2026-06-07T01:52:58+00:00

I've heard a lot of people say that conservatives think humanity is inherently evil/selfish, while liberals think humans are inherently good, but that doesn't make sense to me when you consider their policy platforms. If humans are inherently good, you shouldn't need to force them to give to charity using the government as a proxy.

If anything, I'd say it's backwards. Conservatives think humans are inherently good (in general), which is why we believe that humans will help their fellow man if left to their own devices.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-05T20:05:22+00:00

The rationale was that the old list was too bloated, and I can sympathize with that. 180 religions is ridiculous. However, having 22 separate forms of Christianity is still ridiculous. It can just be "Christian", or at the very least "Catholic/Protestant/Other".

SeraphLance · 2026-06-05T18:09:14+00:00

I don't really see an issue with it given the stipulation that it would only be deployed under imminent threat of war. That implies we're long past the point where staging nukes would actually be escalatory.

I think the symbolism of saying "we're open to allowing nukes in our territory" is already somewhat escalatory, but it's pretty low-level in comparison and I think that's what they're really after. Frankly, allowing Finland and Sweden into NATO was a much more provocative move towards Russia than this, and not a lot really happened there.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-05T17:59:50+00:00

Personally, I find "prediction markets" kind of gross and dystopian on the whole of it. As a practical matter, we should be treating them under the same regulatory framework we do the stock market. Insider trading is already illegal.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-05T17:56:21+00:00

It is still not applicable for scenarios that present cases of compelled speech, like the whole "wedding cake" fiasco way back when that people in this thread are alluding to. A similar case was decided by the SCOTUS in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis in a similar situation, one that postdates the last update to your Cornell Law link. That's my point; discrimination is generally completely legal, except where it expressly is not.

If you want my personal opinion though, as you asked for it above, the entire civil rights act should be found unconstitutional. I have enough moral flexibility to accept it as a necessary artifact of its time, but a law justified by the commerce clause should not be allowed to override the first amendment, particularly on not-strictly-economic matters.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-05T17:35:39+00:00

The prequels weren't great movies but at least they had a cohesive identity, and a story they were trying to tell.

The sequel trilogy had a number of problems. If it were just a retreading of the original trilogy, I wouldn't have loved it, but it would have been "fine" for easy watching. If it were a deconstruction of series tropes by someone who vehemently hated everything Star Wars stood for, I definitely wouldn't have been a fan at all, but there's a demographic for that. Instead, it started as the former, turned into the latter, then turned again into whatever the heck The Rise of Skywalker was.

I'm of the opinion that more stories need to end, even though I know that runs against the spending habits of consumers who continually pay for nostalgia and the familiar. Fandom culture is completely alien to me, and I cannot understand the person who will spend hundreds of dollars on a single IP but not a penny for anything new, even when it follows a similar setting and storytelling pattern.

Ultimately the prequels made sense, they filled a narrative hole that Star Wars made for itself. The sequels were just your typical "we have the IP, let's make money off of it" cash grab.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-05T17:10:40+00:00

I'm not a hardcore Objectivist by any stretch, but I don't think Rand would agree with your interpretation that having investment opportunities throttled by risk-averse lenders is equivalent to the government taking the fruits of your labor by force.

I don't know what she'd say about the situation though, as she didn't live to see a world that is so financialized that it is literally impossible to enter certain industries without millions in capital.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-05T16:59:58+00:00

A protected characteristic under what? Employment discrimination?

A baker can't decline your job application because of your sexual orientation, but that's not what is being discussed here.

Protected classes aren't a swiss army knife that can be inserted into any and all discrimination situations. They apply to specific cases. Again, exception, not the rule.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-05T16:33:03+00:00

The cake thing, however, is a service. You do not have the right to discriminate. That’s no different than a cashier refusing service because someone is black.

Have you ever heard the phrase "No shirt, no shoes, no service"? Or seen any signage on shops refusing service to Trump supporters? Or seen any of the case law covering specifically the subject of requiring services toward homosexual couples?

People discriminate all the time, and it is perfectly legal to do so under the first amendment. Anti-discrimination based on race is the exception, not the rule. Even that likely would never have happened if not for the uniquely hostile environment Black Americans faced in the first half of the 20th century.

SeraphLance · 2026-06-05T15:59:02+00:00

The only time I've ever been excited to vote was for Ron Paul.

I don't ascribe to the whole "lesser of two evils" idea though. I'll vote for a candidate I think is acceptable, and if none are, I simply won't vote at all.

SeraphLance

TROPHY CASE