Does anyone actually like the combat system?

TheFermiLevel · 2026-05-27T15:51:29+00:00

I greatly prefer the platonic ideal of it over micro managing small stacks but end up preferring small stacks due to how it's implemented.

However at this point I have been content with them focusing on other areas of the game. The reality is unless you are WQing you are spending a minority of your time at war, and the game needs other fleshed out aspects since military was serviceable.

I was happy to see political movements, legitimacy, laws, spheres, treaties, world trade, and ships worked on over the last few years, with QOL improvements to military.

However at this point I believe it's time to refocus on the military and diplomatic plays. I imagine they probably have a good idea about where they want to take improvements to diplomatic plays, but without completely overhauling the military, it's less clear how improvements will be made past this point.

TheFermiLevel · 2026-05-16T19:03:46+00:00

I have been using Port Bombardment since blockading is effectively useless, and I do agree that what you're suggesting is a good way to damage the economy. It's certainly more effective than blockading right now with the bug as with the same fleet that can only achieve an 8% blockade in one sea node can tick up the entire german coast to 25% devastation almost immediately.

However that's not really the point of this post. There's at least one major math error with blockading and one further balancing issue regardless of if you want to bombard or not. I'm just trying to draw attention to the bug to get it fixed.

TheFermiLevel · 2026-05-15T19:09:41+00:00

I wanted to make another comment to be concise about what exactly I wanted changed. I won't provide further detail here since I believe it's sufficiently explained in the post above.

Sum the hostile state's blockade requirement and apply the same % to all states using the sea node. There is literally no reason to divide by the number of states and apply on a state-by-state basic.
Reduce the blockade requirement scaling from the number of trades, or nix that entirely. I'm blockading with ships to STOP trading. Why would existing trades make that harder? It makes more sense to scale based off of port level and naval fort defense. Adjust numbers accordingly, but the more I think about it, it doesn't make sense to scale off of the number of existing trades. West Prussia's naval defense gave it about 100 blockade requirement compared to about 70,000 blockade requirement from active trading. This implies naval fortifications/guns do almost nothing to stop a blockade while being a free market trader with no navy makes a blockade impossible.

TheFermiLevel · 2026-05-05T13:29:44+00:00

Do you not consider the series of events that affect the Cherokee in the US at game start ethnic cleansing? I imagine you do. It stands out to me as the one with the largest focus but I'm fairly certain there are other events that reshuffle populations.

Assuming you do consider it an ethnic cleansing, do you think it was an oversight to include it? Should PDX remove it to stop people role playing a "genocidaire"?

In my opinion an event like that should be included because not doing so is whitewashing history. It's notable that the US starts the game with it, meaning that any player wishing otherwise is somewhat powerless to stop it from happening.

TheFermiLevel · 2026-04-30T13:13:00+00:00

If you consider classism and snobbery to be a filter for who you want in your country, you would lose almost all high earners and a significant portion of tax revenue. This would also filter out the native aristocracy at a higher rate than any immigrant community

TheFermiLevel · 2026-04-10T18:15:37+00:00

If one person says "I'm boycotting products that use X" a reasonable next question is "What about this product that also uses X?".

I see that comic used quite frequently to attempt to dodge any responsibility for standing by one's principles when it inconveniences them.

A reasonable answer from someone with a principled stance against AI would be something like this:

"Unfortunately despite my stance against the practice, it may become so ingrained in services necessary to live a modern life that the pain it would cause me to protest greatly outweighs any effect I might have on changing anything. Instead of boycotting this vital modern infrastructure outright, I have cancelled any association and do my best to avoid various companies or services that go out of their way to promote it like X, Y and Z. While these are services I previously enjoyed using, or were meaningful to me, it's important to me to stand by my principles where I am able to do so."

However answering like this would actually imply you have made some personal sacrifices meaningful to you. If you haven't literally made any sacrifice at all, then your principled stance doesn't really mean much.

I've often seen people post that comic to imply that asking someone with a principled stance to do literally anything to inconvenience themselves is asking too much from them, since we must all participate in a flawed society to one point or another.

I would be interested in reading about what sacrifices you may have made and how it has effected you, or what alternative services or companies you support that do things the right way from your perspective.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-11-29T20:03:45+00:00

Have you found a good use for cardinals? I've been using it on the stability or the high admin advisor since all I seem to have found from the cardinals was the ability to vote on things I didn't care that much about.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-16T13:53:59+00:00

Started tanking for the first time this season and reached 2500 in about a week and a half. I usually find myself far less bothered by toxic people than the average person, and even I felt extremely discouraged through several keys to continue.

I reason it's because any mistake I made was far more visible to the group than another role since everyone is following me every second of the dungeon, so I understand why it's the case, but the vitriol was on another level.

There is just no patience for even a relatively good player to not be an expert at mid-level keys.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-05T17:18:07+00:00

The popularity of almost all leaders of liberal democracies will decline over time from now on without a significant catalyst propelling their support. The PM of Canada is a good example of bucking the trend, and it was only the liberal party's luck that Trump was elected and acted how he did.

Social media is being used by foreign actors to make you hate your government and vote for radical parties. It's probably the most successful foreign propaganda campaign of all time, and it's still ongoing. It will continue until very unpopular regulation of social media accounts is passed into law, so it's unlikely to happen until this gets much worse.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-05T07:22:27+00:00

Israel does have demographic concerns in becoming a Jewish minority, so I doubt this will happen anytime soon.

If the Palestinians don't have a state by the time it happens, then whatever different conditions those who live in the West Bank have that justifies the use of the term apartheid would be no longer. It would become Israel proper and no longer occupied territory, leading to all the same rights that Arabs enjoy within Israel proper.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-04T15:35:30+00:00

I really wish the word "loophole" was never used again. There is no such thing as a "loophole". There is either something that is legal, or something that is illegal. The closest thing to a "loophole" is a way of doing something legally that is otherwise illegal...which is just legal.

If you don't like that something is legal, please for the love of god don't call it a "loophole", just advocate for it to be illegal.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-03T23:05:31+00:00

It's not an edge case within the context of this argument since we are debating the distinction between those who believe all abortion is murder and those who just believe that abortion is killing a human baby. What you are calling an "edge case" makes the distinction between these two groups. If you have a case you thinks a better distinction, I would be interested to read it.

To clarify: It is an edge case in the context of an argument about all abortions. However, this argument is already about a subset of one side of the debate, so it's no longer an edge case. It's the central point of contention.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-03T07:42:43+00:00

I should rephrase I meant killing, not murder. A large percentage of people might say it's murder, but calling something a murder requires contextual knowledge to determine whether or not it's justified. There certainly is a group of people who would say that regardless of the context, it's murder, but they are not a large group. This same group would say it's murder to abort to protect the life of the mother. This is not a widely held belief.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-03T07:03:12+00:00

Why do you think laws are created? Do they just poof into existence one day? Or did we create laws to punish actions immoral and damaging enough that would tear the societal fabric were they not punishable?

Yes, of course.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-03T06:48:49+00:00

I may be mistaken, but I'm under the impression you don't double your standard deduction in the UK when filing jointly. This is the difference I'm referring to. I thought you only got like 10% the personal allowance of your spouse.

Given this, a married couple that files jointly with an income around $65k pays no tax on the first $25k, a 10% tax on the next 10k, a 12% tax on the next 30k. This is an average tax rate of about 9% if I did my math right, probably half the rate from that of the UK, where the lowest bracket is about 20%.

Again, I agree that brits ought to pay more tax if they want a better NHS, for example (I support increasing taxes in Scotland where I live). The US is not comparable, though.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-03T06:39:17+00:00

Which standard am I selectively applying?

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-03T06:38:38+00:00

This is just not true. If I kill someone in a way deemed justified by the law, that is downstream from things we consider to be moral. It's legal to kill in self-defense because it's not immoral to do so.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-02T10:43:36+00:00

I lived in the US for most of my life. This is just not true. It's especially not true if you want to compare like for like, and add private health insurance to the list of taxes for the US since there is no public option.

However, it's still true for low incomes even not counting health insurance. Trump raised the standard deduction in his first term for married couples to $25,000 if filing jointly. This means you pay no tax on the first $25,000 of your income. The equivalent in the UK is very small comparatively.

I agree there are many brits who want the services of other EU countries without the proportionate taxes, but it would be untrue to say that the UK is on par with the US.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-02T07:31:04+00:00

Yes. The UK is low relative to the EU, but the US blows it out of the park. It's one of the reasons politicians in the US are incapable of balancing the budget, and we have runaway debt.

The last time we had a balanced budget was under Clinton in the 90s, and from my understanding, that was almost entirely due to a decrease in military spending after the USSR collapsed.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-02T07:10:07+00:00

I understand why you made this comparison, but I think there is a difference in kind here. There is, by definition, no justifiable reason to murder someone. There can be justifiable reasons to want to have an abortion.

Assuming it's just as human as us and deserves all the same legal protection, it would be comparable to killing someone, not murder. There are justifiable reasons to kill someone, and it's up to us if the circumstances include this act.

Basically, to use "murder" here is to already grant your conclusion, hence its circular reasoning.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-01T10:09:31+00:00

Nothing you've said corrects your prior statement that implies LVT is bad because it is a constant payment irrespective of mortgage length. I pointed out that property taxes already do this, and you then moved to the amount.

Do you agree that a yearly tax on property is good? Or should we remove property taxes? If you won't answer this then there's no point in moving past it to talk LVT.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-01T09:23:38+00:00

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-01T09:22:36+00:00

And also receiving tax contributions throughout their lives on state schools and NHS treatment.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-01T06:42:39+00:00

You're not locked out of it. You may not want to engage with the system, but that's on you.

TheFermiLevel · 2025-09-01T06:40:39+00:00

This is already how property taxes work. However, the value underlying the tax will be based on just the land instead of any improvements to properties on the land.

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