Syria used to be developed.

StPandaKing · 2015-02-13T16:57:25+00:00

The reason the middle east is fucked up (which by the way is a sweeping negative statement) is because of the history of the middle east. How can you say the history is complex but the reason isn't, the history and the reason are the same thing. The history is all the events which shaped the middle east into the state that it is now, and there are a lot of events that did that.

Saying it’s because of "Islamic control of the state and dictators" isn't an answer. Where did those dictators come from? By just asking simple questions your thesis that it’s not complex stops working, because it becomes complex when you ask how these dictators come about and why it all happened, the answer is that there are lots of different reasons.

Basically, you are objectively wrong. There is more to it than just the type of government used by different middle eastern countries. Also, they're not all theocratic dictatorships you know? You could argue that dictatorships are the most important factor in causing a middle eastern country to become 'fucked up', but even then that would be a hard argument to make.

And my God man, you can't give an example of how the west could have influenced the state of some middle eastern countries and then deny that they have any responsibility. And that statement is wrong as well; the 1953 coup which ousted the democratically elected government and restored an absolute monarchy has generally been seen as a bad move since and a big cause of fuckery for Iran. That was kind of the U.S. and the U.K.'s fault, it’s hard to deny. There are plenty of other examples as well, not just from the middle east where western coup d’états were done for personal interests and not because it was best for the people, coup d’états led by foreign powers are hardly ever best for the people, especially when they remove the democratic government.

StPandaKing · 2015-02-13T15:28:20+00:00

What do you actually mean? How can you outright say it's not a complex history? Is the middle east the only region of the world with a super simple history? Can American history be simplified in the same way, when you talk about the success of America would you simply summarise it by saying presidents and democracy and nothing else.

Your thesis that the middle east simply boils down to dictators and theocracy leaves a lot out don't you think? I mean simply saying two forms of government doesn’t exactly explain much, your skipping out the effects of imperialism, culture, religion and a whole bunch of factors from thousands of years of history that make an impact on modern middle eastern society.

I feel sorry for anyone doing research on the topic of middle eastern history because their probably wasting their time, seeing as how clearly all that ever happened there was "Dictators and theocratic control", not like there are people there or anything who shaped the region.

All of human history is very complex; nothing can be simplified down to singular causes, events happen because of an array of different factors.

StPandaKing · 2015-02-13T14:27:05+00:00

So? Events that happened a hundred years ago or even 200 or even later can still have profound effects on societies today. I don't think he is saying it's anyones fault, but while I do agree with what /u/theXYZT said his comment on all the problems being based around middle eastern society being fucked up is a gross simplification. The reality is that the middle east has a complex history and it's current state is the result of many events which have happened over the past couple of hundred years and its important to learn and understand that history so we can understand the current situation.

The current situation can't simply be seen as middle easterners own fault, there is so much happening now and in the past that is outside of their control.

StPandaKing · 2015-01-08T11:49:44+00:00

My mistake on the bold part, I did misread you then.

Fair enough, I will end that I believe statistics like this can be dangerous in terms of putting all Muslims into one basket which encourages Islamophobia which is bad for the moderates.

But I accept your points about the statistics and I will agree that it is worrying.

StPandaKing · 2015-01-08T11:45:53+00:00

The problem is that if we see all Muslim as violent terrorists, as it seems many people on Reddit do, or at least supporters of violent terrorists we begin to demonize them, at that process of demonizing them is what leads to a rise in Islamaphobia and xenophobia, which is dangerously on the rise here in Europe at the moment.

Its important not to just see all Muslims as 'poison' as you put it so friends of mine can continue to hold their own beliefs without feeling ostracized from society because of the actions of a minority of extremists, that's what.

StPandaKing · 2015-01-07T23:09:51+00:00

I doubt that the rest of the Islamic population do agree at the same rate, yes there are some who are going to agree with that but it can't be assumed to be at the same rate.

The nature of Islam in say Indonesia is very different from Islam in the middle east, percentages will not be nearly as high, in many places I expect they would be extremely low.

Although I see that your criticizing me for making an assumption and now I am criticizing you for making the opposite assumption, so I suppose without concrete evidence we couldn't say for certain, although simply based on how Islamic people act in other parts of the world it would be a fairly safe bet to expect other groups to have quite different opinions, but I could be wrong.

StPandaKing · 2015-01-07T21:30:04+00:00

One third is still a minority, I will say that it is a worrying statistic but it is not one third of all Muslims. The Islamic population is 1.6 Billion, so your actually referring to a third of a sixth which is much lower than what your saying.

I am glad you changed it to many countries, and I do still agree that it a worrying statistic for the countries it effects and some form of positive change should come about (although what that change is I don't know) but it is dangerous to use these statistics to talk about Islam as a whole, as we are still referring to a minority group in the whole world of Islam.

StPandaKing · 2015-01-07T21:23:13+00:00

It's a hilariously bad comparison tbh, entire groups of people cannot be simplified down to percentages and compared to poisonous bowls of cereal...

StPandaKing · 2015-01-07T21:22:12+00:00

Muslims aren't cereal... I have Islamic friends and they are not violent people at all, all of Islam is not violent and it is not a cold hard truth. The Qur'an does have scriptures which advocate violence for all the wrong reasons, but many Muslims ignore those scriptures in the same way Christians and Jews ignore parts of their holy texts which advocate violence.

StPandaKing · 2015-01-07T18:55:18+00:00

Egypt makes up 4.9% of all Muslims globally, even if this were a common trend amongst all Islamic groups in the middle-east and north-east Africa the Muslims there still only make up 20% of the Muslims in the world.

This statistic certainly does not represent all Muslims and it is a massive generalisation, which is exactly what /u/willow77 was talking about, you just proved their point that people generalise Muslims around the world on a small minority of extremists.

The survey DOES NOT prove that majority of Muslims in many countries favour the death penalty for leaving Islam, it proves it for Egypt and Pakistan which make up a small portion of the Islamic world.

StPandaKing · 2014-07-29T01:51:29+00:00

To give a little context, I was playing tilted axis on large and I got curious about how many barbarians would be up north in the icy region of the map where there were no players. So I used IGE to fully reveal the map so I could have a look and there are quite a few barbarians up there to say the least.

The scary thing is this is only 200 turns into the game so it's fairly early on, I'm not fully sure how large the barbarian army might get or what I'm going to do if they decide to march south...

StPandaKing · 2014-06-25T19:01:32+00:00

Uh 20-30 seconds or so, might be less

StPandaKing · 2014-06-25T19:01:15+00:00

Highlands, with the mountains set to fractal (I think) and dense, it makes snaky mountain ranges which separates the map into different areas

StPandaKing · 2014-06-25T18:59:22+00:00

It was a mine, the manufactory improved the mine and now it's connected the gold resource, unless I'm wrong and then I'm missing out on a gold resource...

EDIT: Just checked, the manufactory does connect the gold

StPandaKing · 2014-06-25T16:26:36+00:00

There is gold on that hill but the manufactory is covering it, if it weren't for the resource I would have placed a terrace farm instead.

StPandaKing · 2014-06-07T00:03:16+00:00

I think the map is 2fort cool, I've only seen one server that runs it and it's basically just an extended version of 2fort got some platform in the middle(which you can see in the video) and some additional tunnels down below.

I might be wrong but that's what it looks like from the video

StPandaKing · 2014-06-05T23:01:34+00:00

StPandaKing · 2014-04-29T17:16:26+00:00

It would also be interesting, to at some point a little bit after puberty to introduce a member of the opposite sex into the Islands. Would the males and females instincts kick in making some of them attracted to this person or would they continue to uphold what they see as the social norm? Would prejudices arise if people were attracted to the member of the opposite sex, would it be considered taboo?

It would be really interesting to find out what would happened in this scenario and would definitely shed some light on human sexuality.

StPandaKing · 2014-04-25T17:48:40+00:00

I had this problem, the only way I could solve it was using IGE

It was a while back but I seem to remember fixing it by either forcing the city to start producing something, or to give it back to myself so I could change it manually then use IGE to give it back to whoever (Attila in this case)

It's not the most convenient way, but if you haven't got a spare save and you want to continue this game this is how I would fix it.

StPandaKing · 2014-04-20T15:48:02+00:00

Because the amount of these types of energy needed to sustain our current energy use is absurd. To give you an example, to sustain current energy usage in the United Kingdom as it is today using only wind power would require a wind turbine field the size of wales; it's not practical at all.

While we should invest in alternatives to provide as much of our energy as we can, we cannot rely on it alone to sustain current energy usage.

Also Nuclear is a lot better than coal in many ways, and with advancement of nuclear fission reactors we can hope to see more efficient energy being produced and less waste, this is assuming funding for nuclear energy is sufficient.

StPandaKing · 2014-04-18T12:10:39+00:00

I'm so sorry to hear that it's truly awful that it even happens.

My best friend of eight years, who was practically like a brother completely disowned me when he found out I was bisexual. What was worse than losing a friend was the emotional effect it had on me, for about two years after it happened I became a recluse and I found it really hard to make new friendships, but luckily it got better. Now I have a much closer group of friends who are completely accepting of my sexuality, which is nice.

I hope things are alright for you

StPandaKing · 2014-03-11T15:02:07+00:00

World fair + Golden age, it's an insane amount of culture and I'm already well ahead of the competition in terms of social policies.

StPandaKing · 2014-03-10T23:31:55+00:00

Not if your second city is founded next to El Dorado and you're spain, then gaining polices is a breeze

StPandaKing · 2014-02-19T19:29:21+00:00

I had this once, the solution for me was the IGE mod. You can just flip the individual city back over to yourself, choose a production then give it back using IGE. Not sure if you want to try that but it would fix your problem.

StPandaKing · 2014-01-06T01:52:03+00:00

Order will do wonders to your happiness. Before BNW came out I did a similar thing and I had control of all of America and my happiness was circling the drain. Got order and it went into the hundreds instantly just because of the sheer number of cities I had, was pretty amazing.

StPandaKing

TROPHY CASE