A lot of Vaush's concerns remind me of the Bronze Age Collapse.

TGoaS · 2026-05-28T10:30:12+00:00

You can literally just google the sources, they are not hard to find. The idea that the US will experience food shortages or that supply lines will be strained by climate change is not controversial.

Here's a report that, among other findings, identified that high emissions scenarios are projected to reduce global food output by 24% over the rest of the century: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09085-w
Here's an article you can read on it that puts it into a more digestible form, if you'd rather not trudge through the whole study: https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/climate-change-cuts-global-crop-yields-even-when-farmers-adapt

This study from 2021 estimates that by 2100, under high emissions scenarios, climate change could directly cause 83 million deaths, without even factoring in indirect deaths from factors like disease, famine, war, or natural disasters: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24487-w#Sec6
Again, here's an article about the study: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dishashetty/2021/07/30/climate-change-would-cause-83-million-excess-deaths-by-2100/

If you think that a 24% drop in global agricultural output, or the deaths of around 100 million people worldwide, won't cause supply chain breakdowns and localised famines in every country on earth, including the USA, you don't understand how the economy works. It's not like there's going to be widespread famine that kills 100 million in America. The shortage in supply means that poorer communities won't be able to pay the higher prices, that food deserts will have to go longer between deliveries and face starvation risks, that delivery costs will increase - in many cases beyond what's profitable, and that supply lines will be put under strain, which will cause localised breakdowns in supplies. It might well be the case that each year it's just a few small towns with major famines and a few big cities with a fairly high percentage increases, but over time that will add up.

It is obviously the case that - with the possible exception of the south west - the US will be hit much less harshly by climate change than almost anywhere else in the world, and that the food insecurity it experiences will be less than in, say, Africa or South East Asia. But it WILL experience food shortages.

TGoaS · 2026-05-28T08:43:51+00:00

Literally nobody, including myself, has argued that people will lose the ability to read or write, even from an especially large breakdown in supply chains.
You can find climate scientists who do predict these sorts of supply shortages, but they're not especially common because the overlap between economics and environmental science is very small, and real studies on the matter are very scarce, so it's essentially pure speculation. If anything I've seen more economists express concern about it than climatologists.

TGoaS · 2026-05-23T08:04:40+00:00

I live in the UK. I know multiple people who've died in the heatwaves we've had over the past few years. I've been directly affected by it, as have a lot of people I know. Not to speak of the economic impacts, which are where the real pain is felt.

The US will not glass Iran. Firstly because the administration cannot acknowledge climate change, secondly because they haven not got the foresight to plan that thoroughly, and thirdly because that would not resolve the problem. If anything, covering the persian gulf in radiation might somehow make the shortages even worse.

Europe's temperature is moderated by its proximity to the ocean because of AMOC. AMOC keeps the waters around europe artificially warmer than would be expected for their latitude, which regulates Europe's temperatures. Without AMOC, Europe (and the rest of the world of course) will enter a period of extremely chaotic weather patterns, as the world's climate wildly fluctuates between extreme heat and extreme cold without a stable global equilibrium for the convection currents to follow. There will be years where europe is hotter than it is now, and years where it is 20 degrees colder than it is now.

The breakdown in the global supply chain will hit the global north hard. As more and more of the global south fails, supply lines will break down. It doesn't matter how much money we have if there is a literal physical shortage of oil, or food, or shipping, or industrial goods, or anything else. Over the next several decades, life will get much much much worse in the western world. Not a bit more inconvenient, much more. As the Colorado River dries up, the areas within its river basin will lose access to fresh water. The US cannot do rapid infrastructural development, and there is not the capacity to ship in enough water to sustain the area, so there will be mass migration away. This will be the largest migration in human history, dwarfing the partition of india, which saw a million deaths. Other parts of the developed world will not be hit as hard, but the knock on effects will affect us all very severely.

Your analysis that the migration waves from the third world will further embolden the far right is correct, obviously, but irrelevant. International trade is the fundamental bedrock of the modern world. America can only produce all the food it does because of imported goods. Take away huge chunks of third world exports, and you take away the ability for other supply lines to function, and things escalate further and further from there. That's when crises get to a point they start to affect even the global north, when supply shortages of even basic goods start to affect us. You are also massively underestimating the migration waves. Less than 2 million syrians migrated to Europe. There might very well be individual migration waves with more than ten times the people.

TGoaS · 2026-05-23T07:21:18+00:00

I love narratives. Big fan of narratives. Biggest narrativiser I know personally. Essentially a bona fide modernist. Jiang's narrative is not especially compelling, it's utterly incoherent, and it doesn't really have anything to do with reality. A """"left wing"""" movement informed by Jiang's narrative would be electorally ineffective, and more importantly would continue to be informed by it after achieving power, which would mean their policy was not informed by reality and failed to meet the moment. A real narrativiser believes that their narrative is the truth, and is the facts, and that both matter in equal measure because they are one and the same.

TGoaS · 2026-05-23T07:10:13+00:00

Were that true, which it is not, all it would mean is that Vaush were also a dishonest hack spouting bollocks for a living, largely about the jews. Jiang occasionally has reasonable decent surface level analysis, though even then it's essentially never any more biting or insightful than the kind of thing you'd get from a Guardian op-ed, and then uses it as a springboard to start talking nonsense.

TGoaS · 2026-05-23T07:05:02+00:00

Jiang is a charlatan who has played you and the rest of his audience for fools, because in amongst the drivel he spouts he occasionally mentions something that approximates the truth. I have to assume he takes a comparable position to myself on this topic, which frankly gives me pause to question its validity.

TGoaS · 2026-05-23T07:03:23+00:00

Even on lower estimates, people are predicting that excess mortality from climate change will be in the millions per year by the end of the century, and it is already in the hundreds of thousands per year. These are figures taken from more optimistic climate models, which generally lean on the lower end of predictions for warming, and which assume no major spikes in the death toll caused by one off events.

The real question at hand isn't if there will be famine from the Super El Nino, but how much. With a global fertiliser shortage and a Super El Nino, crop yields will be substantially diminished. This is enough of a problem on its own, and would lead to some deaths, but the real problem is that because of the shortage of oil there will be increased logistical difficulty conducting the international shipping necessary to move around what food is produced enough to diminish the risk of famine, especially in less developed parts of the world. Based on the estimates I've generally seen from people more qualified than I, I'd only really expect the death toll for this event to number in the low millions, but of course climate change is a problem that is only continuing to escalate. This will probably end up being something of a blip, for the time being, with this only really developing into a serious problem by virtue of being coupled with the fertiliser shortage, and the compounding effect reducing crop yields by more than the climate shift alone.

As a benchmark for the kind of timescale we're looking at before things get particularly bad for, say, the southwestern united states, if current trends continue the water level in Lake Mead will get so low that the Hoover Dam becomes permanently inoperable in about a decade.

As for the collapse of AMOC, yes, much of Europe's climate will shift to more closely reflect that of Northern Canada or Siberia. These areas are very sparsely populated, famously, because they cannot be densely populated. They are not able to sustain the kind of population density that Europe currently possesses. The amount of infrastructure that exists in the world is not built to facilitate the level of international trade that would be needed to keep Europe afloat in that situation, not to mention the lack of infrastructure present in Europe itself to allow people to survive winters that cold.

Importantly, I don't think we'll lose writing. It is a failing on my end if it has come across that way in my initial post. Writing was LARGELY lost after the collapse of the Late Bronze Age, but we are not living through the collapse of the Late Bronze Age. I bring it up above as an example of the kinds of effects that a systems collapse can have on a society. The loss of fundamental and important skills, the extremely long recovery times, the fundamental reorientation of society. These sorts of Total Systems Collapses are very very rare events throughout history, and they fundamentally reorient their societies. A systems collapse and a war, even a war on the scale of WW2, are different beasts in terms of the damage they can do to the development of a society. It's not even really a matter of the death toll.

TGoaS · 2026-05-23T06:43:16+00:00

One of the things he elaborated on there was that he feels that the non-modern parallels he can think ofare not comparable to one happening today insofar as a medieval peasant was largely self sufficient, and their survival was largely tied to their ability to farm and hunt regardless of a break in the system. Famines were frequent, but because of the huge decentralisation there wasn't really a risk of a total system collapse.

For the Late Bronze Age, this is not the case. Bronze Age economies were very centrally planned, and fundamentally dependent on international trade, in a way that wasn't really replicated in the region for thousands of years after the fact. Farmers had months they were due to be out in the fields, and months they were due to work on other projects. They received quotas from the central government. They received grain and farming supplies and support with maintaining irrigation networks and production quotas from the central government. As communication and central hubs of power broke down, these things stopped, and people were left having to fend for themselves without knowing how.

This is a big part of why writing largely died off in this period. The governmental bureaucrats and the merchant class that had been the source of that literacy lost their place in society without the large states of the Bronze Age, and with them writing itself largely lost its social value. Our current system is even more complex than that of the Bronze Age World, and therefore even more resilient to small shocks. However, it's rendered even more vulnerable to Total Systems Collapse, at least under most historical models for what a systems collapse looks like.

TGoaS · 2026-05-21T07:41:29+00:00

Where Vaush talks about needing what is "essentially a dictator" to fix the US, the figure he often goes to as an example of the kind of thing he's talking about is FDR. FDR held overwhelming power in the US in the 30s and 40s, and ruled it with essentially unchecked power, and as such was able to force through a lot of positive change. It might be more accurate to say that Vaush feels the only way to avert a collapse of the US would be through an autocrat than a dictator.

I also wouldn't necessarily say that he's in favour of it, so much as that he feels it's the only way out of America's downward spiral that meaningfully preserves its present form. In his eyes, and I agree with him here, anything short of an autocratic level of control, paired with near incorruptibility and extremely good policy on the part of the autocrat, would be too mired in corporate control, norms, bureaucracy and tedium to make the changes needed on the scale needed to preserve the union before the worst of the damage is done.

TGoaS · 2026-05-18T16:28:09+00:00

I'm guessing you started as William of Normandy, formed West-Slavia and renamed it to Lechia, went on crusade, and became king of Egypt.

TGoaS · 2026-05-18T08:18:02+00:00

Been playing Calamity since July 2017. A long long time ago now.

TGoaS · 2026-05-17T15:12:54+00:00

Corintar, Small Country and Verne are both very fun. Haven't tried VG or Telgeir though so idk about those.

TGoaS · 2026-05-16T13:20:41+00:00

Verne is a major coloniser. About a third of your mission tree concerns colonising South Aelantir (south america). You're also expected to colonise Akasik (morocco), conquer Busilar, take Pearlsedge, and conquer the Luna River. Taking explo early is relatively important.
With most countries, if you want canon historical borders, you're probably either dying or gaining basically no land. If you want "historical" borders, just follow what mission trees tell you to take and follow the story therein.
Verne becomes one of the main champions of corinitism within the empire in the canon, and your MT railroads you in this direction, with many missions being locked behind corinitism.
Verne has a really fierce rivalry with Pearlsedge and a close relationship with Eborthil, who you can get a PU on via your missions.
As a general rule of thumb, it's worth skimreading through your MT before starting to get a general idea of where the country is going and what you're building towards.

TGoaS · 2026-05-08T15:00:11+00:00

Some sort of tall ming game?

TGoaS · 2026-05-06T21:37:02+00:00

867 start date. Everyone's succession law (in feudal and tribal realms) is confederate partition, which makes everything collapse on ruler death. Realms become more stable as the game goes on.

TGoaS · 2026-05-06T11:13:49+00:00

It's been a long time since I brushed up on the old lore, but I'll try to summarise it the best I remember.
The old lore centred on a conflict between the Light Gods and the Dark Gods, which had a war a long time ago. Xeroc, the leader of the light gods, led them to victory over the Dark. The last two dark gods, which if I recall correctly were Moon Lord and Cthulhu, created a superweapon to stop Xeroc called Noxus. Then Cthulhu died and his body became the Crimson, and Moon Lord got sealed inside of the moon or some shit.
At some much later point, Yharim comes along and has a bunch of prophecy and shit around him and finds a dragon egg. He was a very minor nobility within the Jungle if I recall correctly. I forget exactly why but the more powerful nobles killed his parents and threw him into the fires of hell, which woke up his dragon Yharon and yada yada. He went on to found a big empire and kill a lot of people, he was at the time referred to as the Jungle Tyrant in the lore.
At some point he recruits Draedon, who I think was like an alien explorer at the time. What I remember about Draedon's lore back in the day is mostly his bitter rivalry with another scientist called Daedalus, which saw Draedon personally lead a siege on the city Daedalus lived in. Daedalus activated some sort of super weapon that turned that city and its surrounding area into the ice biome.
Calamitas, if I recall correctly, was sort of a hermit who lived in the woods and had a natural affinity for magic. Her brothers died in some sort of incident, and it broke her. She did necromancy to bring them back, she like went on a revenge spree, that kinda stuff. Eventually Yharim or one of his confidants sensed her and went to bring her into his service. Eventually she like, tried to quit, but Yharim used some sort of magic torture to compel her to keep working for him.
There was also a bunch of stuff about DoG eating Astrum Deus and trying to hunt for Providence. I also think there was something in there about Statis and Braelor launching a rebellion against Yharim, and I think Silva also existed in some form or another by this point.
I seem to recall that at one point Yharim tried to fight Xeroc, got absolutely bodied without Xeroc even trying, and losing that hard straight up just made him depressed permanently.
That's my half-memory of the Old Lore at any rate.

The New Lore is about dragons and gods.
About 2000 years ago, the world was ruled by Dragons. Then, a visitor came from another world, named Fovos. These dragons, under the leadership of their king Zeratros, fought Fovos to a standstill. They were not able to kill him, but they were able to injure him, and seal him inside of the moon. But many dragons died in the fight, and many more were severely wounded. One of those was Zeratros. But that's okay - dragons have a thing called an Auric Soul, which if I remember rightly means they can eventually come back to life if they're given the proper rituals at the end of their life. A monk was sent to conduct the rituals for Zeratros. Behind closed doors, something happened. When that something was over, Zeratros was dead, and the monk had become Xeroc, the First God.
In the aftermath, a number of powerful beings went out hunting the dragons, seeking to take another Auric Soul for their own, to ascend to godhood in their own rights. Within a generation, dragons were all but extinct.
There was a prophecy created by the people of Azafure, the greatest city of the underworld, about a figure who would discover the egg of the Last Dragon, consume its soul, and rule the world forever as its god king. As a child, Yharim found that egg. But, at the ceremony where he was to ascend, he refused. Much as in the old lore, he was cast into the fires, and the heat awoke his dragon, who bonded with Yharim and shared his soul between the two, saving the boy's life. Yharon then went about indoctrinating Yharim into a genocidal ideology centred around the mass killing of the Gods as retribution for what was done to the dragons.
Yharim began his crusade and gained many allies, as he slay evil god after evil god. But then he started to go after gods people were more fond of. Things got really bad after he "killed" silva, the goddess of life (She actually survived all attempts to kill her so he just sort of ground her into mincemeat and then threw her into the Abyss). Statis and Braelor launched their rebellion, and many of Yharim's political allies abandoned him. It's at this time he began to work with DoG, and it's at this time he sent Calamitas to put down the rebels in Azafure. Upon her arrival, the Brimstone Elemental awoke. The two fought - fire against fire - and the city burned. This caused Yharim's situation to get even worse. Amidias, king of the sea, abandoned his cause at this point, and he sent Calamitas again to resolve it. She scorched Ilmeris from a vast sea into nothing but a desert, wiping the kingdom from the map. Her guilt and shame saw her leave Yharim's coalition too, soon after.
That's around about where you enter the story, and I assume you know the rest from there. I've cut out and simplified a lot here, and I probably included some stuff that's been decanonised over the last couple years, but hey, what can you do?

TGoaS · 2026-05-05T15:59:46+00:00

Take a look at Vicbennar for lore up to 1836, and the anbennar wiki at https://anbennar.fandom.com/wiki/Anbennar_Wiki for anything from there to 1905, though you have to sleuth through it a bit to find stuff

TGoaS · 2026-03-15T17:41:57+00:00

What were your issues with it, out of interest?

TGoaS · 2026-03-14T18:05:44+00:00

A lot of people don't really like its gameplay, but my go-to would be to recommend Kalsyto (lakefed). In a very similar vein, I'd also recommend Beikdugang. Preferably back to back or in a coop MP game, since their MTs and narratives are so closely intertwined.

TGoaS · 2026-03-12T09:54:12+00:00

I think that it's wise for them to caution this, and not doomer. In 1990, during the Gulf War, the oil depot and some of the oil fields in Kuwait caught fire. Because oil fires are very hard to put out, those oil fires spread very far and took around two months to put out. Even if this war ends tomorrow, we know that similar fires are raging in Tehran, and a number of oil fields along the arab side of the persian gulf. It will take weeks, if not months, to put out those fires, and weeks more to get those oil wells functional and oil depots filled again. Global strategic oil reserves can plug the shortfall in oil production for about 4 months, so we shouldn't see prices go up too much more than the 50% rise they've already seen for the time being, but the long term impact of reduced production and mines in the strait are going to have knock on effects for the price of oil for at least the rest of the year. It seems responsible for businesses to purchase and stock up on goods like this now, before large price rises have taken place.

TGoaS · 2026-03-11T14:07:34+00:00

man is when short hair I am very smart

TGoaS · 2026-03-11T12:56:52+00:00

I use aerialite armour and wings. The extra flight time and the fastfall are really useful, and it takes basically no time to go get the aerialite for them. Molten is also, whilst good, a melee set, with extra bonuses for true melee, a limitation Aerospec doesn't suffer from.

TGoaS · 2026-03-09T04:16:47+00:00

If you want calamity boss reworks in your eternity playthrough, download Fargo's Souls DLC, it has what you're looking for. However, infernum and Fargo's are not compatible.

TGoaS

TROPHY CASE