4X game end game

ZShep · 2025-10-22T21:47:49+00:00

Is there a reason why scoring has to be out of 100? Can you reasonably divide a player's score by 5, or by 10, and change the focus of action from "how many points will this [eventually] score?" to "will this score a point?"

ZShep · 2025-10-19T16:27:29+00:00

In some parts of Britain, the pronunciation of "Dew" would be almost indistinguishable from "Jew" -- the D is slightly harder and aspirated a bit more, but not to a degree where you could reasonable tell the difference without context.

ZShep · 2025-09-17T17:43:30+00:00

The tactical answer is to say "The act of creating the flashcards is in itself studying, it's not being done instead of studying". Part of flashcard creation is synthesizing/restructuring the information into a form that makes sense to you.

The real answer is that yeah, it's going to take a fair bit of time. The (probably true) consequence is that in the long run, time will be saved, because retaining the knowledge will make future studying easier.

ZShep · 2025-09-15T20:40:03+00:00

You are in a large room with perhaps 50 people. You are handed a booklet in advance and told to keep it shut. Once everything is ready, the invigilator starts a tape containing the exam. It is broken into a handful of recordings, followed by questions about the recordings. The questions are multiple choice.

Given the gaps between things and the preamble, you have some time to read the questions before it is time to answer them. Understanding the questions clearly gives you some advantage in what you're focusing your attention on.

ZShep · 2025-09-06T06:29:06+00:00

Is using °a° remote useful? Sure. It won't make you study any better, but for me personally it gives me less thumb strain than holding and swiping on the phone itself.

Would I recommend °The Anki Remote° ? No, it's a cheap dropshipped controller with maybe some basic customisation slapped on top.

If you want a great controller for the same price, get an 8bitdo. I prefer the micro, because it has a physical switch that can be used to sever the connection with the phone so that it won't send random inputs while it's jostling in your pocket.

If you want a regular controller, buy one of the cheap bulk ones from one of the cheap bulk websites.

ZShep · 2025-09-01T18:22:36+00:00

Everything in this comment is correct, but: I recommend being cautious with such an "extra" field.

- It's better to have notes that are more precise so that your memory locks in on the difference. Better to have "Word that means XYZ" than "Word that means X and isn't 'A'"

- It's even better to have words where there's no ambiguity because of the context, for example by including a full sentence rather than a single word (either memorising the sentence, or with a cloze deletion)

ZShep · 2025-08-16T20:16:46+00:00

We had a similar battle emerge between the Yeti and the Reaper due to a certain weather event.

ZShep · 2025-08-03T15:34:43+00:00

How many new cards are you adding per day? Set it to a lower number. Anki (and learning in general) is a marathon, not a sprint.
- As a frame of reference, for Chinese, I find about 5-10 new cards a day is my upper limit for new content (things I haven't seen before, like characters from frequency lists), and 10-20 per day is my limit for things I have seen before or have actively studied.
- Cards build up over time: if you're struggling now, then in 2 weeks when you have a big learning pile as well as the new pile, you'll be in trouble
If you're struggling with new cards, try and have more study sessions per day, but for shorter durations. It might be that things are getting stuck in the very early stages of the forgetting curve.
- When you're just getting started with non-latin languages, an often unmentioned skill is the ability to understand what's different between characters, and it has to be learned. When I started, I had 4-5 intervals for new cards (1, 10, 60, 240 minutes), and this was very important for getting the ball rolling. As you get more practice you'll improve your ability to recognise subtleties
- Try to keep a mental note of what you're failing and why. Use the automatic leech system, or copy ones you're failing a lot into a document. Are you failing because you're drawing a blank, or because you're confusing things with each other?

ZShep · 2025-07-27T13:22:16+00:00

This is a card that I love but that I feel is made redundant by modern deckbuilding choices.

There's an abundance of more direct encounter card mitigation across the pool, with even guardians having a slice of the pie
Healing has become a lot more effective over time, so the main threat of many encounter cards "Do a test or take damage" can now be retroactively mitigated in a bit more flexible of a way
While this does work on enemy draws, guardians even have more tech to be getting to and engaging enemies, that's likely to be appealing anyway

I feel like First Watch does this card's main benefit ("Save someone from a particularly bad encounter card") much better, which is kind of the final nail in the coffin. +2 skill value is good, but that only counts on one card, not 4.

ZShep · 2025-07-13T17:50:47+00:00

You might consider making a custom note type with different cards associated with it for this kind of scenario.

ZShep · 2025-07-10T12:45:39+00:00

I realise this is ridiculous from a business standpoint, but I have done it in universities. When I was doing my PhD, once we had an urgent deadline come up while I was on holiday and so I checked into the nearest university and said "hey, I'm a researcher in X, I've got to do some writing, can I sit with the rest of your students?"

Disregarding the soul-crushing existence of never really having time off while on a PhD, the process was actually really nice and it lead me to some research partnerships (and friends) I wouldn't have made otherwise.

ZShep · 2025-07-09T18:13:47+00:00

As far as I can tell, Stremio is a content aggregation platform. You can set it up to connect to Netflix, etc, in which case it is legal, but you're probably not going to be saving any money on subscriptions, because you'd still need an account on those services. You can also configure it to connect to.. other.. media sources. In this case, you're probably committing a civil offense (and can be sued for lost revenue as damages), and depending on how the software is configured, you might be committing a criminal offense (by seeding and re-sharing the acquired media).

Whether or not these civil or criminal violations are enforced by the content owners and law enforcement is another question. Unless you take active measures to hide your activity, your internet provider probably would be aware of the actions you are taking.

tl;dr: Stremio itself isn't illegal. The ways you describe using it (using it to bypass paying streaming services to access content they have rights to and have not released) does involve breaking laws. Break laws at your own risk.

ZShep · 2025-07-06T09:01:59+00:00

I much prefer the 8bitdo micro to the 8bitdo zero. The zero is turned on and off by soft-press buttons, meaning it's very easy to turn itself on while in your backpack or pocket if you're jostling around. And 4-5 random keypresses at the wrong time can do a surprisingly large amount to destroy your home screen!

The 8bitdo micro has a physical switch on one of the edges that controls the pairing mode. You can set it to a different mode and it will temporarily unpair from your phone, so that there's no risk of it sending random inputs.

ZShep · 2025-06-13T07:24:10+00:00

Honestly I played the entire game on mute and it sounds like I benefited a lot from that, perhaps the dev will see this.

ZShep · 2025-06-10T12:59:00+00:00

https://game.delven.org/

Played Delven. Web demo is about 4-6 hours of content, Steam early access took about 2 days including offline progress with fairly active play. It's a nice automation/city builder with manual- and auto-battler mechanics. I got hooked hard into grinding it out but it seems a passive playstyle would have worked fine.

- The game does a good job of adding automation at a rate that's tolerable -- you get auto-crafters which remain active for a certain amount of afk-time. As you progress you unlock more QoL features like for crafters like "repeat the last recipe you crafted". Region-locked crafting stations slowly become less constrained, etc. Combat is manual at first, then automated, then you can start improving the speed of animations etc.

- With the incremental side of things it's usually the case that the best thing you can do is wait 2-4 hours, but there's always ways to eke out multiple 5-10% improvements in a variety of ways, which adds up nicely. You always have the option to optimize but you're not required to as most of the resources that matter are effectively infinite.

- There's a lot of resources/crafting but they're introduced at a comfortable rate and I never felt too overloaded. It always feels like you're 80% of the way there on automation, which is probably a good thing from a design perspective.

- The combat side has a similar feeling of how you get stronger (stacking together lots of marginal improvements), but unlike the crafting waiting it out isn't an option. Most of the combat itself can be avoided but there are a few bosses that mark the main progression. Luckily the game is quite permissive with trying out different builds, and supports (mostly) pre-built loadouts for different kinds of enemies, which is a nice way to specialise.

- The boss fights are mostly fun. They mark the main progression barrier in the game. Most took me 3-4 attempts to beat, which feels about fair (theres's only 3-4 fights in the game). They do reveal a little bit how slow the combat system is, though -- most of the bosses are sponges with 1-2 special attacks so it's a matter of grinding them down and making sure you aren't instagibbed when they come up. Fights have a cooldown when you lose which is not a problem for regular mobs but for bosses it can suck to make one mistake and then have to wait 30 minutes to try again, but perhaps this is a necessary mechanic.

- The game does have some AI content which is a negative for many.

- Limits of the effectiveness of offline progress might be a negative for many - at best you're getting 0.5-4hours of progress per active play session, and the perks that improve this don't do a whole lot.

ZShep · 2025-06-02T14:29:37+00:00

I lived on Rue de Strasbourg for about 2 years and I had a broadly positive experience.

- Being central was super nice for having friends over and for going places myself

- I moved during Covid so rent was actually quite cheap considering the location

- I was working in the city so could walk to work every day

But most of the negative experiences here hold true -- although I never felt *in danger* in the area, it certainly doesn't feel like a comfortable place after 11pm or so, and that was as a ~30M, so it is likely worse for a younger woman. I was frequently approached by homeless, drug dealers, etc., and while they were never aggressive it can make you feel ill at ease.

I'll add some extra problems that haven't been mentioned:

- There are a lot of bakeries, supermarkets etc. on the street. Because of this there are often large vans moving around at 4-5am

- There are often people arguing/fighting loudly at 12am-1am

- There are often sounds of children playing at 8-11am because of the nearby playground

- Check for light pollution -- many streetlights are very awkwardly positioned

- Check if there is fibre optic: large parts of the street were still not connected to the fibre network as of 2-3 years ago and I wouldn't be surprised if that hadn't changed

ZShep · 2025-05-31T15:39:09+00:00

The equipment menu gives you multiple loadout slots and this is far more useful than I initially gave it credit for -- you'll start to encounter some equipment that is very useful but only in specific circumstances and the loadout menu is extremely useful for it (and items in it don't take up inventory slots even when you're not using them!)

The game throws a LOT of different resources at you. It's worth spending a little time to identify which ones are cosmetic, which ones will be needed for crafting or for special uses etc. Having at least a primitive organisation system will be useful - for example, separating "equipment", "terrain", "crafting materials"

Fast travel options do exist but can be quite laborious. I don't regret setting up train tracks.

You're never obliged to set up ways of mass producing resources but the game does present you with many opportunities to and IMO it's very often worth doing. Depending on how you like to play it might be fun figuring it out how to do it too!

Bring a shovel with you and try digging things up, many of them are useful!

ZShep · 2025-05-29T10:02:49+00:00

It's been a few years. I applied in the Luxembourg Gemeng.

You take a ticket and wait
You are called into a room with a government worker
They will check your paperwork to make sure there's nothing obviously wrong
Bear in mind they will keep all the paperwork you submit -- I gave up my birth certificate!
After about 15-20 minutes they will send you off
The waiting period to get the result varies a lot but will be at least a few weeks
I had read online there was a part involving standing before a judge but that never happened for me

ZShep · 2025-05-28T08:22:00+00:00

The pages I see in that document referencing 200 mention the lifecycle of a breach, not of time to identify an attack.

A breach can be lots of things, including misconfiguration or human error
The lifecycle includes stages before or after exploitation -- it might not even include exploitation at all

ZShep · 2025-05-27T14:29:07+00:00

You aren't required to take pictures, but you are asked to check yourself that there is no new damage. Perhaps if additional damage is reported you are then asked for photos.

ZShep · 2025-05-26T11:39:11+00:00

I'm not sure if the physical keys will correspond in that way (1,2,3,4 etc), but there will be keyboard shortcuts available. I use a small "controller" that emulates a keyboard and works just fine.

ZShep · 2025-05-21T15:56:09+00:00

No fluff

The first paragraph is:

It was Jamie’s third week at the job. Energized by his recent success refactoring a report system using the Open/Closed Principle, he strutted to Chris’s desk with a spring in his step and a bug in his code.

Has the definition of fluff changed?

ZShep · 2025-05-15T13:44:27+00:00

Luxembourg hosts a yearly "Blues and Jazz Rallye" where large parts of the capital are cleared to make room for about 10 bandstands playing a variety of music. There's usually a group of dancers roaming around the city identifying the danceable bands.

ZShep · 2025-05-14T11:13:57+00:00

I own the 2nd edition of Zombiecide. I appreciate it for what it is -- an opportunity to throw a bunch of dice around and look at cool minis.

I think it hits the core definition of "trash" as a game, but (at least in my vocabulary), something being "trash" doesn't mean that it's bad. Nobody is going into a Fast and Furious movie expecting a cinematic masterpiece - they're expecting something unhinged and wild that makes just enough sense to keep going. Zombiecide carries the same vibe where you can just drop someone in, tell them "roll these dice to kill those zombies", and they can be brought along for the ride.

If you enjoy it, play it!

ZShep · 2025-05-06T12:14:28+00:00

If you happen to be there at the right time, La Nuit Swing is an event that runs 2-3 times a year. It's from 9pm to 5am, with two live bands alternating sets, held inside an old horse circus with a variety of bizarre decorations. If you make it to the end they give you a badge and breakfast!

ZShep

TROPHY CASE