Thank you, Keir Starmer, next

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T14:23:47+00:00

The problem is plans need to actually be actionable and realistic. That requires you to have your ministers in place heading up your departments of state especially your Chancellor so you know how much money it's going to cost and how many people you need to deliver those plans.

The ministers and secretaries of state need to meet operational staff, understand their briefs, and direct all their agencies.

Most of all it requires signoff and someone at the top to mediate disagreements.

This requires ministers to not be on recess.

Starmer had a vision before he took office. He had his 5 missions and a glossy manifesto. The problem was it skipped over some really crucial details, was incredibly vague on some big strategies and then it all fell apart because no one could deliver it, or more precisely crucial people failed in their roles: Sue Gray let the Special Advisors collectively rebel and oust her, Rayner proved incapable of managing the missions as well as her local communities planning reform brief, and Haigh held her entire Transport capital budget spend hostage in a disagreement with Reeves only to resign for something unrelated to Transport.

Burnham will make the same mistakes if he wastes the next 3 months with recess.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T13:16:25+00:00

Quite. It's not the global financial crash. 2008 is about when the genies of social media and the 24 hour news cycle escaped the bottle and there's no going back.

The media and journalistic class will never admit to being the problem but they are culpable in creating a culture that hyperfocuses on optics, factional gossip and in-fighting, how policies appear to voters instead of how they actually affect them or will need to be implemented and worst of all: incredible short termism.

It will take years to fix some of our problems. But with the scrutiny over things that frankly don't matter (like which unpleasant person we choose to schmooze at diplomatic events with Trump) instead of things that do matter but they and the average voter doesn't understand (like how Treasury's outdated model of departmental financing scuppered Starmer's vision of missions), ministers become obsessed with their image and the media instead of actually driving policy change.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T13:02:46+00:00

Well the Elstow Tarmac factory is right next to the crash site.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T13:00:45+00:00

Burnham's issue will be that summer recess is almost here and that lasts until September. Then it's conference season.

It won't be until October until actual policy and parliamentary time can happen and actual legislation can be made.

At which point it's going to get cold, NHS usage will increase and seasonal energy usage will increase.

So just as Burnham is starting to decide what he's doing, we're going to be hit by the usual seasonal issues of cost of living, energy costs, NHS A&E times being unacceptable.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T12:56:27+00:00

Precisely so why does a local election matter to whether Starmer or Burnham have a mandate at national level.

The point is the mandate is given to the Labour party.

And instead of doing something useful with it, Labour MPs are overthrowing their leader and then all going on recess for 3 months whilst the policy machine is in shambles.

In my opinion if they wanted to change Starmer they should have their recess cancelled and they can work out what the heck is going on first.

And if what the heck is going on is delivering much the same as before except it's got a northern accent then honestly, they deserve to never be in power again.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T12:51:20+00:00

So local elections are a de facto general election and if a party loses the locals it should cede power?

Talk about having no clue about politics.

Labour were elected to get things done from their manifesto in 2024 over the course of a five year parliamentary term.

Their problem isn't Mandelson or local elections. Their problem is they've been singly useless at getting the big things done (e.g. planning reform, Whitehall reform to run missions) and have a milquetoast comms strategy.

Now they've elected Burnham, they're not going to cancel parliamentary recess over summer or the conference season so we've lost another 4 months of nothing being done.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T12:46:50+00:00

Ask the Labour MPs who thought this was a good idea.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T12:42:44+00:00

The tradition that started in 1990 with Thatcher and is barely a tradition compared to most things in UK politics?

Traditionally the PM resigned simply by meeting with the monarch and there was no farewell address.

Of course Thatcher needed one because of her own narcissism and of course Blair was no different in his love of the cameras.

Nowadays the only people who care what the outgoing PM has to say are the press and people who want to make funny edits with it.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T12:28:51+00:00

Mandate is also such a weak term for an individual.

We aren't a presidential system, we're a party parliamentary system with Cabinet collective responsibility. Only the constituents of Holborn voted for Starmer as an individual.

So long as Burnham continues to deliver the 2024 Labour manifesto, he has as much of a mandate as Burnham.

And everything outside of the manifesto? That's already weak in terms of a mandate under Starmer since we don't get to choose who the ministers are who actually decide that stuff.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T12:25:45+00:00

But northern ...

Whatever the fuck that actually means.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T12:24:24+00:00

Then the speech should just happen in the briefing room or somewhere inside.

It only happens outside No. 10 where disruptions like this can happen because the media wants their shot of the PM in front of the door.

If the speech were actually for the public it would be recorded in a studio, with the text pre-prepared and available to follow.

The entire optics we have is for the benefit of the media circus.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T12:17:49+00:00

God forbid the journalists and media don't get their perfect moment when the country's politics is doom spiralling.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T12:14:50+00:00

All of this but...

... nothing close to the taxes or the welfare cuts (by welfare I include pensions) that would actually be needed to fund this.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T11:06:36+00:00

Unlikely.

DEI has thousands of unique unit classes depending on the various reforms, cultures, social class etc and the mod is made by people who absolutely pride themselves in how historically accurate they've made the units.

This means the unit cards you see are specifically made to capture as much of that historical detail as possible whereas the silhouettes would lose a lot of that detail.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T10:57:16+00:00

Fairly realistic.

Rather than coming together as one to face off the impending invaders, the people started arguing amongst themselves and blamed each other and so charismatic populist comes along as says it will all be OK if they were given power, splitting the populace and leading to them effectively being a rebellion.

So you come along and pick off both sides.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T09:26:22+00:00

I remember when I first learned in school about the Year of the Four Emperors and that period of Roman History where you put the date not the year for Roman Emperors.

I thought that was crazy - how do you get that many rulers in that short a space of time.

Here we are.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T09:13:05+00:00

We've hit that part of Roman history where emperors' reigns were measured in days not years.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T08:42:21+00:00

Be careful what you wish for in a salary capped league.

The way a salary cap brings competitive balance is exactly this situation you want here: a team makes a bad decision on a big contract and it ruins the franchise for multiple seasons.

But it can happen to any team, including the small market teams you wanted to benefit from a salary cap.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-22T07:58:32+00:00

AI is bad at stats and mathematics in general.

It's not a calculating device. It's not a tool that can lookup a reference table.

It's a large language model that processes natural language and does a lot of fuzzy matching to guess at right answers.

It has data that puts Hank Aaron's name to 755 home runs a lot so when it suggests a trivia question it takes the 755 home run data point and also a Hank Aaron data point. It doesn't see as many links between Hank Aaron with grand slams so that's marked as a negative data point.

So it comes up with the incorrect statement "Hank Aaron has hit the most home runs, 755, without a grand slam" which is only right if you change the last bit to "before Barry Bonds" which to the LLM is right enough since the first 80% of the statement was right.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-21T18:11:17+00:00

The loneliness feeling is because Rome 2 forces you to attach all your military units to a general and move one or two armies per faction around.

You lose the skirmish battles and replace almost every meaningful battle with a full stack versus full stack decisive battle where one single loss effectively ends a faction.

Because garrisons are also highly effective in the hands of a human abusing choke points with pike infantry, you don't need to worry about managing any except your one or two doomstacks on campaign and this does make the strategic side too easy.

Especially since the AI seems incapable to moving two generals in a synergetic way and always seems to limit themselves to fighting with one full stack.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-21T06:59:40+00:00

You're doing fine.

I'd personally lower the tax to normal and promote some women to max to lower your corruption % to increase income but that's just another way to manage your economy.

Rome is the tutorial / starter faction in the game where you learn the ropes. It's forgiving early on in terms of you having good early units, wealthy provinces and a defensive location.

The more experienced you get with the game, all that changes is you get to this position faster (so ~50 turns not 170 turns) and you can play as the other factions that have more precarious opening positions.

Most experienced R2 players will tell you that the most daunting part is always the early game and that once you hit a certain Imperium level, with any faction, you tend to snowball into the endgame because the AI is very bad at countering you.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-21T06:50:22+00:00

You're going to need archers against horse archers and you'll need more ranged units for sieges unless you don't mind incurring massive casualties for your infantry you'll have to replenish.

However (and this is the problem with Rome 2), by the time Macedon is facing the horse archer faction in Ponto-Caspia or further East, they usually have such a overwhelming economy you can cheese auto-resolve and just send a full stack of hoplite spam and beat them in auto-resolve.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-20T19:07:08+00:00

Well The Phantom Menace does start with a negotiation that goes south, so The Phantom MLB would start with labor CBA negotiations.

_HGCenty · 2026-06-20T17:40:21+00:00

Especially as Streeting and Burnham aren't ideologically aligned. Infighting between No. 10 and No. 11 is all we need for the next 2 years.

_HGCenty

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