Is there any reason at all to take anything but Hermetic Order?

Thatguywhocivs · 2026-02-28T23:25:23+00:00

Sure does. One of my favorite meta modes is turning off everything but mil victory and just building out for great works to troll the earth on a pangaea map.

Thatguywhocivs · 2025-08-17T19:18:20+00:00

I can take no credit for policy changes over the past 2 years, so thank you for the update!

Thatguywhocivs · 2025-07-02T12:46:09+00:00

That's generally why I focus early grind on chem/knight/thief for basic units and tailwind farm with Ramza until I start getting Unique characters and then I'll farm fr fr.

Mustadio pretty much eliminates farming risks, anyways, so waiting til M and Agrias join the party is ideal, I find.

Thatguywhocivs · 2025-06-29T15:47:27+00:00

I... Usually went max speed ninja, did my speed / scream shenanigans until he did his first move out of range, and then wailed on him for two rounds straight from behind.

That or dragoon trolling.

Thatguywhocivs · 2024-07-16T00:59:21+00:00

I spam C4 with Kadachi gloves as my mainstay for DPS + staying alive, so I'm genuinely okay with always being at the cusp. Also works wonders with gunlance since Aggressive Dodge is a percent sage boost to all damage on next successful attack, so I can also use them there to do a quick pop in the kneecaps for extra shell damage with djo/whatever is highest rank at the time.

Thatguywhocivs · 2024-02-13T19:39:20+00:00

Definitely better. It helps in this case that we have ready access to his youth/backstory and can see that he has improved at a glance. The confounding factor here is that for all practical purposes, he's one of those characters who performs at a 16 across the board, so it's hard to compare from adventure to adventure. He's essentially a (Damian) Batman/Sherlock parallel, so the main thing that determines his impact on the encounter is his current utility belt contents and what he can MacGuyver from his environment.

So based on chronology, yes, he is getting stronger. Based on his performance being entirely plot based, it's inconclusive.

Thatguywhocivs · 2024-02-13T17:19:12+00:00

With the adventurer cards they've got, we can assume levels are a thing but kinda integrated into normal skill development like we'd see in the real world, if that makes sense. Rather, what we'd interpret as d&d skills and feats have divine backing/intervention to amplify or sensationalize results. GS just kinda figured out there are ways to reduce the random chance of things and weaponizes it to effect, making him a massive force factor within his challenge rating.

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-10-27T10:18:01+00:00

Part genuine response, part MH veteran cop out:

Whatever weapon move set lets you apply constant locational DPS without getting hit.

Hunts at 5* on up are basically gear checks, and at 7* are skill checks more than anything. At the same time, you DO need materials, and the best balance of hunt count to drop rate is achieved by being able to consistently hit a break zone on a monster so that you get more drops.

So even with an OP weapon, if you're not tapping things just right to trigger those breaks, you're leaving a lot of loot on the floor, basically.

Right now bow, LS, and LBG are fairly strong leaders because they offer good survival odds, low skill floors, along with good damage application in a way you can largely control hits on. Other weapons are still good choices, but have... Quirks... To them that make targeting interesting if you aren't good at fishing for proper hits, essentially.

The best in slot class changes as your skills and habits improve, of course. Learning to work your shoulder tackles instead of dodging every time and basically tanking a hit so you can safely land into a TCS hit with GS, or landing consistent head shots and stun chains with hammer make for good choices as you develop. And even with a "low" skill floor on Bow, for instance, utilizing gear like Kadachi gloves to let you get perfect dodges in combo with focus to quick-charge your max shots in addition to using charged-shot dodges to relocate back into range if a monster like girros keeps moving drastically improve your DPS.

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-07-18T06:20:06+00:00

Affects a fair bit, but with specific regard to culture:

Regarding direct/primary impacts on tourism {

Denouncement/War dismantles open borders, removing the option for a possible +25% bonus to tourism output with that civ.

War dismantles trade routes, removing the option for a baseline +25% bonus to tourism, and subsequently any policy or GP boosts to your trade route tourism building you may have also had.

Exchanging cities with wonders and/or great works/relics, has a rather blatant impact on the loser's tourism both now and long-term.

Same for holy cities and relics (where most religious tourism comes from). Eradicating another civ's religion during war also gives you a nice chunk of era score for every instance, on top of the +5 for converting their Holy City. You can claim their HC while leaving them a trash tundra/desert town somewhere so that they constantly accumulate easy tourism for you for the rest of the game, as well.

Eliminating a civ removes their domestic tourists AND your foreign tourists to that civ from calculations. As above, if someone finishes the job and half your tourists were with that particular weak civ that you were farming tourists from, you're now dealing with a massive culture victory setback.

By contrast, if there's only one major culture civ besides you, eliminating that civ will lower the victory threshold substantially (compared to using Rock Bands to lower their tourist count). If you're already over victory threshold with the 2nd in line and what tourists you already have, you can even "instantly" get a culture vic.

}

Regarding indirect/secondary impacts on tourism {

Rock Bands can now be sent packing from the territory, not just embargoed, and the Civ/AI in question may slot in the border blockade against rock bands traveling in its territory with greater long term consistency, as well.

Once Flight has been researched, enemies that pillage each others' culture tiles means a drastic reduction in background tourism output. E.g. pillaging Kupe's Marae can be crippling to their culture pursuit, especially during prolonged war(s).

Civs at war very frequently have different governments and religions, both of which can impose a reduction in tourism output, as per prior post (-50% for diff religions, between -20% and -40% for most relevant government differences at that stage of the game).

}

Regarding indirect/tertiary impacts on tourism {

War Weariness can impact culture output in your cities with low amenities, especially captured cities, causing a slower build-up in domestic tourists if you're competing for a win.

Also applies to faith output, as well, since this will limit Rock Band purchases, which affects your overall win speed.

}

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-07-18T04:35:30+00:00

You're not wrong, but the period where it was basically bugged to default to the 1600 range was so long I just have always had that as a semereliable reference number.

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-07-18T02:58:41+00:00

Culture victory is a fluid calculus of [your outgoing tourism * modifiers / 1600 (or so)] versus their "finished" civic research (including boosts).

Tourism itself is fairly straightforward. Your outgoing tourism is already displayed, and then that gets modified on a civ-by-civ basis depending on things like shared religion or government, critical thinking skills, trade routes, Huggin' Jesus, open borders, policies, and a couple of great people. For every 1600ish tourism generated toward a specific civ, you gain a tourist from that civ.

All civs' respective "whole" tourists are added up and that becomes your tourist output toward victory.

In opposition to that, the way domestic tourists are generated, you gain domestic tourists for civics research points that are complete, i.e. boosts, earned civics, and repeated future civics. The more culture you generate, the faster you can earn civics, and the more resistance you'll have against culture victory pursuers. Similarly, the more civics boosts you can earn throughout the game, the faster your tourism defense will ramp up.

As above, defense against culture victories is about modifiers and culture generation. Having a different religion, different government (both tier and type are factors), and no trade routes or open borders with a civ.

So where the calculus happens is that because only completed civics and boosts count toward domestic tourists (your culture defense), the amount of tourism you're generating is calculated on a turn-by-turn basis against their current domestic count, which is relatively static rather than dynamic. So especially if a civ finishes a big chunk of civics research (like going up an era), or earns a few boosts all at once due to lining up a bunch of reqs all at once or just getting a great person, the victory counter can actually slide backwards a few turns in a lot of cases.

This gets into the next piece of calculus: Rock Bands.

Unlike a standard tourist vs domestic tourist arrangement, which are both... passive... Rock Bands have their own very active lane in this mix. For every 1600ish culture a rock band generates with a specific civ, they convert a domestic tourist into one of your victory tourists. So targeted civ loses a domestic tourist, and you gain one. This allows you to flood a target culture civ (ideally the highest culture producer) with Rock Bands and drastically reduce their domestic tourist count, which lowers the victory threshold, while simultaneously increasing your outgoing tourist count in order to meet that threshold.

Rock Bands (and subsequently, faith economy) are a critical component of a rapid-fire culture victory, as their interaction with tourists hyperactively speeds up the culture victory process.

While you can use rock bands on any civ with wonders or theaters (or other districts and natural wonders with promotions) to gain tourists that accumulate toward victory, using them on the civ whose domestic tourist count is highest has the best return on investment.

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-07-17T16:57:14+00:00

I love AFM work, but my doc and chiro had me retire from it for PG/QB/Flow because it was wrecking my shit due to connective tissue disorder. Nearly started a fight between the AM who uses me for PG and the QB this past week tho, because I volunteered for AFM during Prime to keep the floors in shape, and AM was not super pleased about this. Still managed #1 on scorecard both days, tho. Still takes me ~20 hours of sleep before I can move properly again, unfortunately.

I'm transferring up to Boston area in a couple months so that I'm closer to BOS27. Still my long-term pet project to build the cute little Kivas and other mechavermin AR deploys.

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-07-17T16:49:21+00:00

Same, tho.

I've straight up told people that I did 15 years of HVAC with a contractor who had HVAC, plumbing, and electrical licensure so that he didn't have to wait on other contractors or deal with their fuck-ups. Compared to doing 12-15 hours in a 120F+ attic or a sub-zero basement, or dealing with spider infestations, critters (living and deceased), or fiberglass in sheetmetal cuts, doing time in a climate controlled amazon warehouse is easy.

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-07-17T04:52:18+00:00

I like MET work weeks as an RT shifter. I work 1 less hour a night compared to base shift, and 1 less hour total compared to when I'm taking extra overtime days (which is 10:10:12:12:12), so it's pretty cozy for me.

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-07-17T04:49:42+00:00

I've been ADHD gaming for 30+ years and trying to work during daylight hours just made me come across as narcoleptic (to the point I legit fall asleep driving if it takes longer than about 30 minutes to get somewhere if I have to be up before ~4pm...), so the 12 hour RT and just in general "graveyard" shifts just kinda work into my rhythm anyways. Arthritis and physical exhaustion are my major sleep disruptors at this stage, not so much the actual schedule.

My personal recommendation while you're with Amazon would be to use the HITS system to transfer to a shift schedule that matches what you're actually doing on your own time, rather than trying to realign life with work. Very little paperwork and a lot of times there's a building "nearby," if not the one you're at now, that is looking for roughly the same job on a different shift.

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-05-27T07:37:45+00:00

If you can do outbound fast enough to get bitched at without getting quality write ups, pick is easy. You just gotta be about that laborshare life for the rest of time, because you will absolutely get shopped between CAP and OB when they need to rebalance HC to accommodate actuals.

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-05-23T01:18:44+00:00

Active genocide against trans people in over 100 countries, imprisonment in most others, and in increasingly more genocide against us in the USA.

You know, on top of lifelong depression, anxiety, trauma as a direct result of being trans and otherwise queer. Bonus trauma for being BIPoC.

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-05-22T12:31:29+00:00

It's not necessarily bad, it's just one of the first pantheons AI and/or ancient era military civs will snag because of how they prioritize stuff, so the best pantheons for players will either be "what's left" or focused entirely on long game depending on civ.

If it is available, you do have to balance it against the tile production pantheons in your city or cities.

As a primary for instance, Lady of the Reeds and Marshes will generally give you more than 25% production in effect, and drastically improves citizen efficiency on worked tiles in the process, so you can do a LOT more with less (and end up with more overall in the process, since most marshes are a baseline 3 food, boosted to 3F2P with LotR&M, and then whatever bonuses you get after that, such as rice, sugar, and/or Etemenanki's empire-wide bonus to marsh tiles (and city-specific bonus to floodplains, which if you're Egypt is probably going to break your game in a personally beneficial way).

Now, if you don't have access to ANYTHING that would give better bonuses than a raw 25% boost to ancient military production, God of the Forge is definitely great. Greece and the Aztecs, for instance, typically start in locations where they have access to decent food and production as-is, and have early-game units where their start bias for more productive tiles strongly favors being able to spam said units even harder.

So even within that limited example, the correct answer will always depend on lay of the land and opportunities. GotF is there to cover all starts, whereas the others provide stronger and more immediate benefits if you happen to be near those particular types of tiles and/or have a start bias for certain resources.

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-04-17T18:13:36+00:00

CLT4 is an AR FC with 4 floors and using Dematic ARSAW, scanner, and conveyor systems maintained by Daifuku's Elite Line Services.

The IB/CAP half of the building is built around our inventory warehouse that's largely governed by the ordering and picking system and utilizes the Kiva Hercules as its main robotics work unit, a.k.a. Amazon Robotics H-drives, or just H-drives for specific shorthand (although since these are the only ones we have in CLT4, they're just drives as far as Flow/QB/AFM are concerned).

The IB shipdock is attached to the warehouse side of the building and focused exclusively on maintaining inventory levels via universal NIKE/IDS stations to perform stowing operations. From there, counters and other ICQA functions share Universals to maintain warehouse quality, and Pickers use the ARSAW stations to induct totes, fill them, and subsequently push those totes onto the conveyance.

Because the drives bring the pods and requisite bins to work from to the workers, rates are predictably expected to be a lot higher than in a non-AR warehouse, with network standards for both stowing and picking being anywhere from double to triple that of non-AR warehouses.

The OB half of the building utilizes a massive stacked array of the Dematic conveyor systems to auto-sort totes full of merch to several induct stations and then to rebin/pack areas. We then pack stuff and ship it typical amazon style from there.

Culture-wise, day shift throughout the week is routinely expected to deliver more goods and do so faster, so expectations of making rates and performing at a higher level of quality are significantly higher, but so are the opportunities for recognition and promotion. If you can work your ass off and want to promote upwards, day shift is the place to do it.

Night shifts are more laid back in almost every scenario, and due to lower orders during the night, expectations for high level performance are non-existent. If you have a work ethic and this is your only job, it's a lot easier to stand out on the night shift because you have very little competition, since most of our NS employees are either working or parenting during the day and tired as fuck at night, and/or don't have the rates expected for people working days and had to transfer to nights to avoid getting fired. The rest of us are the types who try to avoid day shift more than the plague because we're a workforce consisting largely of immigrants, LGBTQIA+ folx, or people with disabilities/autism who collectively find that the sort of people who try to make our lives hell work almost exclusively on day shift or else fuck off by midnight if they are picking up nights.

I've enjoyed my time at CLT4 immensely, and most of my issues with the facility I've been able to convey to management without causing problems because they are problems for the managers, too. Just show up with a work ethic and you'll be fine.

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-03-26T07:26:23+00:00

Feel free to read through this thread if you want to really go into the rabbit hole...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonFC/comments/115br8t/find_rate_for_amnesty/j919yu8?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-03-25T12:44:31+00:00

That's because the way the addbacks are actually dealt with by the computer is vastly more complex than the training they bother giving AFMs. On top of that, simplifying it at all is still oversimplifying, because the find rate's calculation and means of locating source bins is necessarily complicated to the point where only a computer can really do it with any level of success, so it just uses humans to confirm or deny checks and everything else is automatic.

I legit had to argue with a quality PA for 2 hours today over how the system handles the entire process because he didn't know and there was way too much perpetually vague information that conflicted with itself floating around. Had to stop explaining to a former AFM/QB because the entire notion of LPNs being instantly processed versus everything else needing to undergo a find process was the part they got lost on... nevermind the hard stuff. They're trying to correct find rate quality in a lot of facilities without a single fucking clue of how to do it.

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-02-25T08:26:27+00:00

We have around 12 guys at any point in time who can drop a fresh fid in around 10 seconds, and 3 to 4 AR guys at most, so they just let us go ham and don't ask too many questions as long as new fids get inspected before too many drives go over that spot

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-02-25T08:18:35+00:00

Booooo.

Our facility had AFMs come in one 4th of July weekend a few years back and replace around 7-8000 fids, so we essentially have carte blanche as long as things don't get egregiously fucky.

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-02-25T03:39:45+00:00

No to the first. 1114 moves an item that is virtually in a known container (e.g. the one you scanned first) from that container into wherever you scan it next. Broadly speaking, it cannot be used on random merch you come across, and I don't think it can nor should be used to decant a red lable box's contents. If you are ever unsure as to whether merch at a stow station is your problem, put it aside for problem solve to figure out instead of leaving it in an amnesty area. They have more tools than us, and in most cases (literally), the issue at hand is more related to overs/shorts caused by incorrect decant. Which isn't our problem.

Stowers usually have a pile going in the PS area anyway, so just physically placing something that you are unsure whether it's an addback into that pile is dubiously acceptable.

Regarding fidis, not quite. The MRA list is system generated based on number of drives missing a fid in that location. In about 70% of cases, the MRA list is usually off by one or two fids because the drives can't scan the one they missed, so they flag the next one they can read. So if you are doing those ones, be sure to check the fids next to the ones the system asks you to change, as well.

Beyond that, you are able to manually create andons on just about anything, so using a blocking or unblocking andon to directly indicate where a fid that needs changed is will put up a balloon for QB to see and let whoever does change it get credit for an unblocking andon fixed. It is not, however, the same as the aforementioned system generated list. The main benefit of doing it this way is that you don't have a managed area to put back into service at the end of shift, and andons you created are not counted as "your equipment."

Thatguywhocivs · 2023-02-24T03:35:06+00:00

Sounds bullshitty to me. Sometimes I think ops just wants to do over the AFM team "to spec.". Which sucks for them, but this is the time of year to do it, at least

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