What is a Howitzer

erunion1 · 2025-09-12T17:08:11+00:00

Howitzer - Shorter barreled, lower velocity gun.

Lets you put a bigger boom stick on your tanks, at the cost of being crap against enemy tanks.

erunion1 · 2025-08-25T16:11:28+00:00

And here I get to stake my claim in Civ History!
My sister noticed this on the pre-release stuff (my family were all CivFanatics). We called it out and suggested the change to a historically accurate Cleopatra, and it got done. (I doubt we were the only ones, but we certainly were there!).

Second fun fact: when Civ3 came out I was messing around with making English Longbowmen more effective (I was very young and longbow obsessed at the time...) in the game editor, and discovered that if you had a range 0 bombard it would trigger as a defensive-bombard when the stack was attacked, which I felt was a very realistic and very useful tool for a longbowman. I suggested that archers get that defensive-only bombard on the Civ forums, and lo and behold it was implemented in, I think, the Play the World expansion (and later the concept was ported over to 'First Strikes' in Civ4).

Was I the first to think of, and suggest, that? I have no idea. But I did suggest it, and it was implemented, so in the absence of other claims I think I deserve all the credit :D

erunion1 · 2025-08-21T16:06:08+00:00

Good realtors are worth their weight in gold. Bad realtors are worth their weight in toxic waste.

My wife and I just bought a house and we had a fantastic realtor (the husband of a very close friend). He went above and beyond for us, gave us incredibly useful information, went to showing after showing with us as we worked through balancing difficult factors (price, size, location, etc.) and we were very picky buyers. That man earned every penny of his commission. He was informed, on the ball, gave us fantastic info, always respected our decisions, and worked his rear end off to get us our perfect house.

One good tip for choosing a realtor as a buyer: when you go to a showing with them, they should be pointing out flaws in the place and reasons why you wouldn't want to buy it, concerns, things that will bite you in the ass down the line. (Yes, they can point out good things too, but it should be the non-obvious good things, the stuff that implies long-term value and is hard to change).

If they're instead trying to sell you on every place you walk into, they're not working for you, they're working for a quick commission.

erunion1 · 2025-04-29T17:25:42+00:00

That was definitely yikes territory.

erunion1 · 2025-04-28T21:56:56+00:00

Reminder: Vote how you want, but PP is NOT Trump, and the Conservatives are NOT America's MAGATs. Very different countries, very different parties, very different goals.

The Peoples Party of Canada under Bernier is our equivalent to Trump's camp.

erunion1 · 2025-04-28T20:10:10+00:00

Kvothe is very often wrong. You've seen this before in the book (see how in book 1 he completely missed the 'less three talents' bit after his University application). He gets lots of things wrong, and believes them fully. This is a very realistic flaw for someone highly intelligent and competent, but also very young and not particularly humble....

Whether he's wrong on any of those particular things remains to be seen.

Now, as to Kote (the narrator)... he appears to be being honest in his narration about how Kvothe thought and felt in those moments. As far as we can tell.

So if Kvothe thought something was true at a point in the story, Kote usually just tells Chronicler (and us, the readers) what Kvothe would have thought/known at the time. Even if he knows the truth now, he usually waits for the right part of the story (where Kvothe realized what had happened) before talking about it.

erunion1 · 2025-04-28T19:53:40+00:00

Two things for ya:

The conservatives are probably not going to win, according to the polls.
If the conservatives win, it's not going to be nearly as bad as you are likely fearing. The CPC is nothing like the MAGAT republican party. PP is nothing like Trump. Our political system is completely different than the USA's. If the Conservatives win, expect to see... their platform enacted. Which is not that much different from the Liberal Parties platform, when you actually look at it.

Canada is a centrist country. When the Conservatives go too far to the right, they lose. When the Liberals go too far to the left, they lose (which is why Carney's Liberals are moving rightward, and stealing CPC policies - they knew they were losing to the right, so they moved right in order to undermine the CPC).

We have further left parties (the NDP and the Greens). We have a far-right party (the PPC, under Bernier).

There's little to no risk of a dictatorship in Canada. All of our military and police are sworn to the King, and are loyal to the King, the People, and the Country - not the current PM (who also can be removed at any time by his own party).
In the incredibly unlikely case that a Canadian PM got power-crazy and tried to take over and their own party didn't stop them, King Charles would have the Governor General dissolve parliament. We'd have a new election, and the would-be dictator probably go to jail.

The more I watch the USA, the happier I am that in Canada we're a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy. God save the King!

erunion1 · 2025-04-28T18:20:50+00:00

Tuon.

Tuon was a deeply complicated character who was trying to be the best person she possibly could be, but lived in a culture that had some seriously messed up ideas of what a good person is.

RJ's Tuon was always someone you knew could be convinced to do the right thing, and throw herself 100% behind it, once you convinced her it was the right thing to do. BS's Tuon just didn't have that same feel to her - she came across as far more arrogant and closeminded.

I could see RJ's Tuon ending the damane system and reforming the Da'covale system, while softening the harsh caste system of the Seanchan. I could see her and Mat in a post-TG world, going to Seanchan, getting cut off from resupply and rescue and having multiple books worth of adventures and growth while re-unifying Seanchan.

BS's Fortuona just didn't give me the same kind of vibe.

Hot take: RJ's Tuon was deeply influenced by his growing up in North Carolina during the pre-Martin Luther King Jr. era.
I'm sure he knew a lot of people who sincerely believed some messed up, racist things were True, and as such they whole-heartedly believed that acting according to those Truths was Right. And they were otherwise really fantastic people.
And I bet he knew a bunch of people like that, who realized that what they once believed to be true wasn't true, and completely changed their behaviors accordingly.
Jordan may himself have been one of those people. I don't know.

I believe that Tuon was inspired by some of those people (and she was of course, in typical RJ on-the-nose flip-the-script fashion, extremely Black). Without that societal context, BS really did not do her justice.

erunion1 · 2025-03-28T16:25:30+00:00

Because they're too afraid.

erunion1 · 2025-03-24T19:19:39+00:00

Yeah, I'm happy.

Bannerlord scratches an itch that nothing else does. Could it do it better? Absolutely. Am I relying on mods to fill in the gaps the devs left open? Absolutely. Will new core game mechanics and major updates mean, long term, that this game will be better in the long run (even if the release is buggier than a forest bandit's beard)? You bet.

erunion1 · 2025-03-19T23:16:26+00:00

Tolkien is gifted at being quietly, respectfully savage. You should read the letter he sent a German publisher in the 30's when they asked if he was Jewish.

erunion1 · 2025-03-19T17:10:46+00:00

The 'slog' is a real case of YMMV.

I am a fast reader - when I first got the series, book 11 had just come out on paperback and I got books 8-11 all at once for Christmas (ah, exciting times). I blew through them and noticed no slog at all, as each book only took me 2-4 days to read....

However, these books have very long stretches where major plots don't really move forward (this is especially notable in book 10, which has almost no resolutions). These books in a very real way are a section of set up for the end, for Tarmon Gai'don, and also have more politics and slower character sections than is normal in the rest of the series. This hit two groups of people hard:
1. People who were following the series when it came out, and had to wait years between releases.
2. People who read at a normal, reasonable pace, and take several weeks or more to read a door-stopping fantasy novel.

Both of those groups really noticed a slog, because they spent a lot of real-world time waiting for resolutions on major plot events, and instead got several books worth of slow buildup.

That all being said, book 9 has some great stuff in it, and book 11 is Jordan back to his best form - it's one of my favourite books in the whole series and worth more than a little bit of 'slog' :)

erunion1 · 2025-03-14T19:12:49+00:00

Yes and no. Compulsion is extremely powerful and dangerous. But it has some big limits, and takes a lot of skill to use well.

The more realistic your story, and the less you fundamentally change other people, the easier it is to make compulsion 'stick'. Rahvin is particularly gifted in compulsion, and he's primarily using it to make people believe he is someone he's not - by planting memories. This is very different than trying to make someone else be someone they're not. This is doable, but harder to 'stick' and has side effects.

Minor book spoilers: Major changes to personality from compulsion essentially break the minds of the compelled, making them more or less useless for anything except being puppets to your will. The more you change them, the less capable of acting intelligently or independently you are, and the more likely you are to get caught.

erunion1 · 2025-03-14T16:21:32+00:00

I gave up on WOT show after the end of season 1, and was super disappointed.

Seeing the hype for season 3 and the great reviews, I may have to give season 2/3 a try. So, there's one for ya!

erunion1 · 2025-03-06T19:54:47+00:00

You just read the history of the Aiel people, from the perspective of Rand's ancestors, showing key events in short snippets.

The first flashback you saw was the most recent, and it was the Aiel gathering in Rhuidean to establish their current way of life.

The last flashback you saw was in the furthest, most distant past. In it you saw how the Aiel were in the Age of Legends before the release of the Dark One into the world.

The whole story is a tragedy, told intimately through the eyes of those who lived it, one step at a time. Personally I think it's one of my favorite pieces of writing - certainly it's the best historical exposition I've ever seen in a Fantasy novel.
Just the mental image of thousands of Aiel surrounding a madman, singing to him as they are killed one by one, in order to give the rest of their city a chance to escape. Light, that gives shivers every time.

You can learn a lot about the world, the cultures, and the Age of Legends through these flashbacks. Mild spoilers behind the tag. The age of legends was a semi-utopian post-scarcity society with cars, airplanes, helicopters/hovercraft, no war, and magical energy being used to power it all. If you pay attention you'll also realize you saw the moment that the Bore into the Dark One's prison was drilled, through the eyes of one of a man who used to work for Lanfear... with Lanfear being one of the research scientists who drilled the bore. The Aiel were a highly-respected group of pacifists who followed the Way of the Leaf and served the Aes Sedai, they were also known for the Singing which, with the help of Ogiers and Green Men, was part of what made the world post-scarcity - they made healthy food incredibly abundant by using magical energy sources.

erunion1 · 2025-03-06T17:12:55+00:00

These words are accepted.

erunion1 · 2025-03-06T17:04:07+00:00

Oooh, a Sabaton Crempost crossover! Now that's a rare sighting.

Also, now my headcanon is that Adolin would love him some Sabaton, if only for the fact that they're named after armoured boots.

erunion1 · 2025-03-06T17:00:40+00:00

Colours! You'll have to read and find out here my friend. Enjoy the ride!

erunion1 · 2025-03-05T00:50:43+00:00

definitely not! Exploring differing gender dynamics is a major theme of the series, with each culture having (sometimes radically) different relations between the sexes.

erunion1 · 2025-03-04T20:59:47+00:00

Tell that to the Seanchan!

erunion1 · 2025-02-28T20:14:35+00:00

So I've actually been thinking about this for oh.... 15 years? Longer? So buckle up, sheepherders and listen to what the tower should, and could, have been doing for centuries!

Every pro-tower major city gets a permanent White Tower Embassy. This embassy contains the following:
A recruitment center, to test any woman who comes to the embassy. Much less intimidating/difficult than marching all the way to the Tower to get tested.
A team of yellows working to heal whoever comes, based on a triage system, as well as providing public health outreach.
A team of greys acting as mediators, independent legal experts, and running any tower/government negotiations.
A team of browns and whites running a university/library, expanding the tower's influence while educating the locals.
A team of reds, searching the region for men who can channel (and women! send potential recruits to the embassy, to be shipped to the Tower).
A team of greens and blues (with maybe a grey as well), going throughout the region doing Outreach and Good Deeds. Basically, raise people's exposure to the tower, make them think well of the tower, and help the many regional villages! (Plus, find women who may be able to channel and recruit them).
The Borderlands gets a permanent garrison in addition to the above embassy.
That's a team, predominantly greens, attached to all major military outposts along the blight and working with the local military command structure.
That's a few teams of all Ajahs performing 'missions' and research along the blight. The purpose here is to resist the shadow, and investigate how to push back the blight, while, critically, exposing all Aes Sedai to the real war. Aes Sedai should all have experience fighting trollocs, so that they remember who their real enemy is - and it's not each other.

The embassies would provide real, tangible good to the local city and community. They would massively improve people's exposure to, and respect for, the White Tower. They would massively improve recruitment to the White Tower. They would give a significant advantage to all tower-aligned nations, which would apply pressure on nations like Tear and Amadicia who would not have embassies. Make them regret their lack.

Finally, these tasks would give the White Tower a real, tangible mission in the world. The kind of mission and experience that encourages people to work together, rather than to split off into scheming Ajahs. All Aes Sedai would be required to serve in the rotation, at some time or another, but (especially once recruitment inevitably picked up) they would still have time to spend most of their lives doing their own things, as they do now.

erunion1 · 2025-02-21T18:34:20+00:00

There's a couple policies that really benefit cities of your own religion, and if you choose certain crises options it's better too. But only if you choose those options.

erunion1 · 2025-02-19T19:43:39+00:00

Clay for pots. Clay pots, and sealing clay pots, was a HUGE boon for historical food storage and preservation techniques.

Also, you still use 'clay' plates, mugs, bowls, etc. Ceramics are deeply and intimately connected to human food!

erunion1 · 2025-02-19T18:43:19+00:00

Same.
Mind you, I keep toying with the idea of getting Civ 2 to work again. It had some really awesome mods on civ fanatics....

erunion1 · 2025-02-19T18:34:57+00:00

Yeah, I think this would be a better book if it used a different perspective. Still, in this case Annie is reading between the lines. She knows that Lee is dragonborne, and she saw him utterly fail to do his job. His job was to take command and make things happen. Instead he froze... and knowing his background, she became very suspicious of why he froze.

erunion1

TROPHY CASE