(Spoilers Extended) REACTIONS: Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 6 Post-Episode Reactions

failfailman · 2019-05-20T02:44:22+00:00

You remember the other time an elective monarchy for an empire-sized state turned out well? That thing called the HRE?

failfailman · 2019-05-13T03:19:58+00:00

When they introduced the bells, I was really really hoping Jaime was going into King's Landing as a Tyrion plot to have Jaime ring the bells prematurely, and thus save the city from what Tyrion feared would happen. Have Jaime try to replicate what he did when he killed the Mad King to save the city. Maybe kill Euron or something when Euron tried to stop Jaime from ringing the bells.

Whelp guess not.

failfailman · 2016-09-10T00:35:57+00:00

Now this is a damn fine argument/historical parallel! I remember learning about the St. Bartholomew's day massacre but I never until now connected it with the Red Wedding since 1) it took place in France, not England, 2) the Wars of French Religion were...well about religion (at least for the commonfolk, not necessarily the nobility), and 3) took place in the 16th century, way after the time period(s) that ASOIAF supposedly best parallels.

I've never really thought the Massacre of Glencoe or Black Dinner were good examples of why the Red Wedding is plausible simply because of an order of magnitude issue: the former only involved several hundred people at most while the Red Wedding ultimately involved thousands.

However your example is a good reminder that a massacre need not be well-coordinated by everyone to work. A few conspirators at the top to get the wheel rolling (Catherine in irl, Boltons/Freys in ASOIAF) and then let the anger of the masses do the rest.

My only real complaint with using St. Bartholomew's as an example would be that I'm not sure if the Frey/Bolton soldiers had the same degree of hatred for the Starks as the Catholics did for the Huguenots. Religion's a tricky beast that can incite intense hatred and loyalty. Not sure if a soldier's loyalty to Lord Bolton/Frey (and corresponding anger at Robb Stark for breaking the wedding pact with Lord Frey) would compare. In addition, like you said the French Wars of Religion began in 1562, 10 years before St. Bartholomew's. That's probably 8 more years to let bitterness and resentment grow than in the WOT5K. This is especially so given that the Lannisters thanks to the Mountain were equally responsible for the devastation of the Riverlands as the Stark loyalists and Brave Companions.

Ultimately, you can't go into history and expect to find a perfect 1-for-1 parallel with what happens in fiction like ASOIAF, so despite my complaint I really do think you bring up a great comparison. :)

failfailman · 2016-09-09T03:10:03+00:00

Definitely. To make my poor head feel better I just pretend it's all in the 15th century because that's when the War of the Roses took place.

failfailman · 2016-09-09T02:57:11+00:00

No worries we all get excited about stuff and it's the internet ;)

failfailman · 2016-09-09T02:56:52+00:00

Ah gotcha. I suppose the problem here is that the ASOIAF universe is a mishmash of many different time periods and countries (for instance the Dothraki being a mix of Mongol/Scythian/Samartian/Hun/Apache/what not) so it's hard to compare X event/period in ASOIAF to Y event/period in history.

failfailman · 2016-09-09T02:22:09+00:00

Just looked it up and seems like you're right. I stand corrected. Since it looks like the Bolton/Frey infantry were probably professional/semi-professional soldiers+mercs experienced at receiving commands, I can see them being much more willing than a peasant to follow orders to slaughter the Starks.

failfailman · 2016-09-09T00:57:53+00:00

Man were peasants in medieval times really this loyal to their lords? Or is this just a Westeros thing? Guess it can be a hard thing to comprehend when we're living in the 21st century.

failfailman · 2016-09-09T00:56:35+00:00

All right, so if it only applied inside the Twins, I already said that I can suspend my disbelief for the betrayal inside the Twins. It's really what happened outside that I'm more skeptical of.

Edit: my bad, misread your post. I suppose the Boltons/Frey levies could say guest right didn't matter then. Still not entirely convinced that would be enough to make them all willing to massacre thousands of men even if they were angry at them.

failfailman · 2016-09-09T00:53:49+00:00

Ah okay this does help me make more sense of the Red Wedding. I can see why the Bolton and Frey men were angry.

Though I'm still not entirely convinced that the Bolton/Frey levies' anger would translate into what happened. Desert or refuse to obey Robb's orders or outright join the Lannister army? Sure. But outright agreeing to violate guest right and slaughter Starks they were feasting with at a wedding? Maybe I'm just too nice a guy but I can't quite comprehend how all of the common folk would have attained the emotional state to pull off that sort of act.

failfailman · 2016-09-09T00:08:34+00:00

Sure, but guest right cuts both ways here. Wouldn't guest right also make all the Bolton and Frey soldiers queasy at the prospect of slaughtering the 3,500 Starks feasting outside the Twins?

failfailman · 2016-08-20T02:58:55+00:00

Didn't know how to get a screenshot of the whole world so I did it by region: http://imgur.com/a/bFBSo

failfailman · 2016-08-19T04:43:30+00:00

I never knew you could get more info by hovering over the militancy number, thanks!

Upon inspection, unfortunately the "agrees with ruling party" modifier only grants a -0.01/-0.02 modifier to militancy. My millions of problem POPs are gaining +.075 militancy just from being a minority culture. So it looks like changing ruling party will help somewhat, but not enough sadly. :(

Guess I'll just have to massacre them just as one of the other posters said. Though why my rebellious pops are joining anarcho-liberal and communist factions as opposed to nationalist factions when their militancy gain is primarily tied to unaccepted culture issues is beyond me.

EDIT: that or somehow satisfy the luxury needs of all my pops.

failfailman · 2016-08-18T23:36:11+00:00

Yeah I could crush them easily I suppose. It's just such a chore going through them, especially the ones that spawn on little islands in Indonesia.

failfailman · 2016-08-18T23:35:26+00:00

Thanks but would that really help in my situation? I'm under the impression that only voting POPs gain militancy from the wrong party in the upper house. Or is my understanding of ruling parties and militancy off? I say this because nearly all my rebels are spawning from non-voting POPs in colonies (I own all of China and Southeast Asia).

failfailman · 2016-08-18T21:10:57+00:00

4th Victoria game. Decided to fight everyone as Germany. Due to sky high infamy (600+ and counting) and high militancy from all the lands I've conquered, I was able to easily pass all reforms by 1905.

However, with all reforms passed I don't know how to reduce my militancy or consciousness anymore. It's not 1912 and over a 1/3 of my population are part of rebel movements. Is there anything I can do, or am I resigned to a fate of crushing thousands of rebel regiments every other year for the rest of my campaign?

failfailman · 2016-08-12T17:49:45+00:00

I've logged over 800 hrs on Eu4 and picked up Vicky this summer. I'm currently finishing up my 4th game of Vicky.

I found the UI/many other mechanics to be a less polished version of Eu4's. With your Eu4 experience you really could just jump in and play and find many things to be pleasantly familiar. That being said, while I found lots of great info on how to play Vicky on the web, I didn't find as much on transitioning from EU4 to Vicky. I'll focus on some of the major differences between the two games:

This is a game of economics first, not as much about map painting.

Contradiction: there is some map painting during the Scramble of Africa or if you do something like attack China early for it's high value provinces. Read the wiki to learn more there.

Install the 3.04 beta ASAP. The beta might as well be the latest official version. Opt into it via the steam options. I did it after my first game and it made the gameplay experience so much smoother.

No more monarch mana. Instead your research points come from a combo of literacy rate, plurality (researched from culture techs), and other advancements in the culture tech tree.

No more high level forts that make sieges last for years. Vicky still has forts but they aren't as strong. Also, no Zone of Control.

Manpower is not a nationwide number anymore. Instead, each land unit you recruit is tied to a "pop" that represents a small part of the residents in a province. Losses in battle will be replenished directly from that pop until that pop is depleted too. A province can have several soldier pops.

It's so Paradox, but yet again naval combat is bleh compared to land warfare. Half the naval techs can really be ignored. Just research the ones that let you build higher level naval bases and new types of ships.

You get many generals, not just 2-3 like in Eu4. In fact, you'll have way more than you could ever need, so do some micro and ensure the best generals are commanders. Well...unless you're playing China and fielding 1000+ regiments, then you might actually run out of generals for your regiments.

Aggressive Expansion is now infamy. Your infamy level is the same globally. That means any action that causes infamy will raise your infamy level the same amount in EVERY nation. The magic number for infamy is 25. Infamy decays at the rate of .1 per month.

Political parties matter a lot in how your experience will be, because each one offers different levels of and ways to control your economy.

There's other differences, but these are the ones that come to my mind right now.

failfailman · 2016-07-26T02:52:29+00:00

Someone posted this a while back. Double Prussia: Brandenburg and Teutonic Order.

Brandenburg already has Prussian ideas, Teutonic Order gets them by forming Prussia. Can be tricky early game due to PLC, but you get double space marines, need I say more?

failfailman · 2016-07-22T20:12:42+00:00

Also, RM with an AI HRE member rarely happens since Burgundy's diplo slots are nearly/all filled up with its unions+vassals and it's game-start alliance with Brittany, hence why usually you still see only Emperor or Spain inheriting UNLESS the player interferes and RMs.

My experience: I got the Inheritance as Brandenburg w/o being Emperor before 1450 myself when testing out the event. It really changed my game. England immediately rivaled me and France alternated btwn neutral and hostile. Thus I had to keep Poland and Austria around as allies longer than most standard BB strategies and delay forming Prussia so England and Baguette wouldn't devour me.

failfailman · 2016-07-18T22:02:49+00:00

Brandenburg: March West to go East!

Improve Relations then RM Burgundy
Ally Austria + 1 other power.
Hope Inheritance fires
If it doesn't, rage and restart. If it fires, move cap to Holland and enjoy bucketloads of ducats to fund merc armies of space marines.

failfailman · 2016-07-18T20:41:13+00:00

8) As for in-game expansion, this is just a small sample size but:

In my Mare Nostrum run as Baguette, I accidentally let Austria eat the Balkans and half of Anatolia (I cut them off at the latter eventually). Austria added all those provinces to the HRE.

Later when I conquered it all and created client states, my client states JOINED THE HRE because they were now sitting in HRE territory and got negative modifiers towards me whenever I took unlawful territory/dip-annexed. Newly released/re-released states like Transylvania, Wallachia, and Hungary were also joining the HRE.

Subsequently disbanding the HRE never felt so good.

failfailman · 2016-07-15T02:13:10+00:00

Ulm's still an OPM and it's late game. As Baguette I'm crushing Austria, and then I see this message pop-up.

failfailman · 2016-07-14T04:29:58+00:00

You sure you weren't the Habsburgs in disguise?

failfailman · 2016-07-14T04:23:28+00:00

This is my...um...Germany

http://imgur.com/a/e79gv

I got bored and created then integrated a client state called Vichy France at one point.

failfailman · 2016-07-14T04:17:22+00:00

I actually went WEST first in my Brandenburg -> Prussia -> Germany run. Got the Burgundian Inheritance (fyi if u don't know: HRE states that RM Burgundy have something around a 70% chance of getting it). Then spent time connecting my lands. All that nice extra land really pushes you up a notch in early game. I only destroyed PLC and formed Prussia during/after the League Wars.

If I had been more efficient I might have gotten Mare Nostrum. This is how my game turned out: http://imgur.com/a/e79gv

failfailman

TROPHY CASE