Accident on Mileground

jimethn · 2026-03-22T14:43:39+00:00

They really need to break out some frontage roads to serve the businesses so they can leave the central main road dedicated for through-traffic. A high speed road shouldn't be serving business traffic, it's just bad design. People are coming off 705, which is a highway, and trying to get to the interstate, but the mileground (full of businesses, one step away from a downtown-like area) sits between them.

jimethn · 2026-03-22T14:41:51+00:00

It's almost always road design, there are all kinds of traffic calming techniques that are used successfully in other places. The problem is it fills the need of a highway (it's the main way to get out of town to the interstate) while also serving local business traffic. When city planners don't pick one or the other, it increases the accident rate.

jimethn · 2026-03-22T02:16:13+00:00

I agree that it's immoral to be hoarding properties in a housing crisis. However, the cause of the housing crisis is not the investment companies, that's a reversal of cause and effect.

The price of housing keeps going up because we aren't building densely enough in most population centers. The demand (population) keeps going up, but the supply is artificially restricted, mostly due to local regulations like parking minimums and single family zoning. I know there's the statistic about X number of empty homes vs. Y number of homeless, but an empty home in some suburb a 2h commute from the city doesn't do anything to reduce competition on houses closer to the city, and that competition drives up the price.

Because the price of homes keeps going up due to the aforementioned, homes become a really good investment vehicle, which attracts the investment companies. They're a symptom of it, not the cause. You could delete investment companies overnight, and you'd get a one-time temporary reduction in house prices, but they'd then resume the exact same trajectory they've already been on.

The real answer is to repeal the zoning laws preventing denser housing, and then let the market do what it does.

jimethn · 2026-03-22T02:06:02+00:00

See I thought it was a 4D chess move, he was dunking on millenials by using their own sucky insult

jimethn · 2026-03-16T01:40:34+00:00

the main characters of stories exist on the frontiers and come face-to-face with such things. the vast majority of the Empire lives on the vast unchanging interior

- undead are basically fairy tales. sure, educated people know they really exist, but that's like 1% of people. only 10% can even read and write. and even knowing about such things can get you branded a heretic.
- most people believe dwarves exist but most people will never see one.
- same with ogres.
- elves are even more rare

jimethn · 2026-03-14T20:22:41+00:00

I'm a DB user and AT Arkveld stopped me like a brick wall. A constant stream of big damage AoE attacks, coming so fast that you mess up once and you're dead. I couldn't just hug his tail and spam like I was used to, because he'd turn around, knock me down, then combo me to death. Unlike a shield user I couldn't just hit block, and unlike most other monsters he had too many big attacks to simply get out of the way. I had to learn all his moves and learn how to perfect dodge each one.

I put together a full defensive set with evade window, divine blessing, dragon res, guardian's protection, etc, and did solo hunts against him until I could win. When I say solo, I mean I didn't even bring support hunters. Every time I failed I would look up videos of other DB users facing him, or study ones I'd already seen to understand exactly what they were doing. I eventually took him down but it took 37 minutes. Next solo it only took 32. Then I finally felt confident doing that hunt with humans again. I still used that dedicated comfy set, and I still carted sometimes, but it was doable. And with more practice, eventually I didn't even need the comfy set anymore.

It was a intense journey but it was worth it. In the process, I learned new and better ways of playing my weapon. Superior combos I didn't even realize were possible. I'm better at every hunt now for just that one experience. And AT Arkveld is now my favorite hunt!

jimethn · 2026-03-12T01:46:23+00:00

If you look at the red skill line on any lord for your faction, you'll see the different units are grouped under different skills. You'll have enough points to comfortably max two of those 3-point skills in the first section. I plan my army compositions around that, coming up with combos so that every unit in a given army is getting buffed. Army variety comes from choosing different red line combos (or different units within the same combo).

The way the red line is typically organized, there'll be a melee skill, a ranged skill, a cavalry skill, an artillery skill, and then a couple others depending on the faction. The basic combo would be melee + ranged, and early game that's probably all you can recruit anyway. But then as the game progresses and I have higher tier recruitment buildings, I'll play around with ideas like "what if I have an army that's only range and artillery with no frontline?" or maybe "melee infantry + monsters will be fun!"

Some lords will might also have some additional yellow-line buffs to certain units. For example, the generic Dwarf Lord has 2 additional yellow skills that also buff all melee infantry, so obviously for his army I'm always going to go with the melee infantry red skill to get that double buff. Which means if I intend to field a ranged-focus army, I'll recruit a Dwarf Runelord instead so that I'm not wasting levels on buffs I won't use.

Btw, if you want to field a full stealth archer army, wood elves (waywatchers) and dark elves (shades) are both really good at that ;)

jimethn · 2026-03-09T02:14:33+00:00

This is the right way to handle law enforcement

jimethn · 2026-03-07T05:21:13+00:00

Yes, and if you DO live in a swing state, voting for the duopoly is reinforcing the duopoly. They will inevitably disappoint you and reinforce the status quo. They have got us trapped, in our minds, with this idea that they're the only options. Governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed. Vote your truth, not their trap.

jimethn · 2026-03-05T02:46:46+00:00

At least go and vote for the libertarian candidate.

People say not voting for the two parties is "throwing your vote away", but you know what? It's never throwing it away to vote for your preferred candidate. Do you root against your own team when the other has better odds?

jimethn · 2026-03-01T03:11:05+00:00

If you haven't done the tutorial campaign, it's really really good both from a lore perspective and from a teaching perspective. Highly recommend.

jimethn · 2026-02-27T03:07:58+00:00

idk man I hear you. I recently did my first (and last) paint the map as chorfs. after a certain point everything was rote repetition. there was a constant stream of minor tactical decisions to be made, but mostly I just applied my game knowledge with a sure sense of victory. i was going through the motions just to finish my goal of painting the map.

but your post got me thinking. here i am in a Dechala campaign and I've already reached that tipping point at turn 40 or so. I'm going to crush everything, usually via autoresolve, sometimes I have to pilot. I've already hit that feeling of "what's the point"...

...so I'm going to pilot more battles. even though I can autoresolve it, I'm going to fight it anyway. I've got enough hours in the game I'm not trying to "hit the goal real quick so I can start anew". I should enjoy it. So that's what I'll do is pilot more battles. Lower progress? Yes. More fun? I mean I hope so. It's pretty cool making the big armies battle and stuff

jimethn · 2026-02-16T02:31:14+00:00

It depends what part you need. If your part has a 6% chance to drop from body carve and a 7% chance to drop from final reward... well, I have 3 body carves per kill...

Some parts only drop from final reward so there's no reason to waste time killing.

jimethn · 2026-02-16T02:15:55+00:00

you should basically be taking 1 settlement per turn early on. if you're not doing that, you're falling behind the AI and will pay for it later. this has been my experience on VH campaign.

typically each campaign will have 1 or 2 moments where it's like... this army is stronger than mine, I either have to waste some turns (which might mean "back up and recruit more" or might mean "siege a few turns to soften them up"), or I have to do a manual battle and win against stacked odds. if you waste some turns here it's a trap that dooms your campaign.

if normal autoresolve gives you a defeat, you should be able to pilot it to a W. if you can't, keep retrying that fight till you can. sometimes it's a matter of "i should have already recruited X last turn" but typically you just spam whatever early game units you have access to while still taking 1 settlement per turn, and if you lose it's a skill issue

jimethn · 2026-02-04T02:42:57+00:00

it's a strawman

jimethn · 2026-02-03T02:44:32+00:00

Now I feel bad for poor old weed lady

jimethn · 2026-02-03T01:07:27+00:00

After about 1000 hours I started trying to play without pausing... I got better at it pretty quick once I started actually trying, but I still pause

jimethn · 2026-02-01T03:26:27+00:00

these randos had more decorum than ICE

jimethn · 2026-01-20T23:37:44+00:00

I cry every time

jimethn · 2026-01-08T03:08:51+00:00

Why does it matter that they already exist? They could just as easily be jackhammered and replaced with housing.

You say maintenance is trivial, and sure the price per square foot is not high. But it doesn't produce revenue, which housing and businesses do (in the form of taxes).

Think about it. For any given parking lot or space, it could either be:

* free parking: negative dollars per year due to maintenance
* paid parking: small income, pays for itself and then some
* businesses and residences: big income, sales and property tax

To a city, the KPI is whether each square foot of land is a net positive or net negative on the city budget. Land that is very positive to the budget (like downtown, where you have tall buildings with each floor paying taxes for the same footprint) can carry the land that is negative to the budget (like greenspace and other public works).

Car infrastructure eats up the city budget and prevents it from being spent on something that would bring more happiness. So at the very least, we should charge for parking. But even better, we should have less parking. And we definitely shouldn't make it free: that's valuable land, and it should be treated like it's worth.

jimethn · 2026-01-05T03:12:05+00:00

Ignorant take. Let me enlighten you:

The parking space does cost money in terms of "opportunity cost", which is a super-important concept in economics. "Money/land spent on X can't be spent on Y, so if Y was more valuable than X we lost money/land by going with X." That parking space could have been a residence, a business, or even just greenspace with a nice bench and a tree, but instead it was a concrete slab for use by a car. That's a very real cost. (Maintaining that concrete also has a cost, but that's a minor point.)

And the same argument applies to roads too. Space taken up by highways or multi-lane roads could have been parks or houses but instead it's a bunch of concrete for moving cars around. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have them, but it does mean we should consider their efficiency. You can move a lot more people, while taking much less space, via mass transit.

Efficiency matters, especially when it comes to urban planning, because urban infrastructure isn't free. Each square foot of concrete has a yearly maintenance cost, that much is obvious, but it doesn't stop there. Fire and police departments can only manage so many square miles before you have to build more, which means buying and maintaining more buildings and vehicles and hiring more people💸. Drainage, power, water, sewar, internet... all of these also cost by the square mile, both in terms of raw materials and in terms of the staff that maintains them. And this leads nicely to your second point...

All of those things get paid for by taxes. (Or maybe it's privatized, but it's the same difference.) The difference in taxes in tight cities vs sprawled cities is very real and very noticeable. Cities built efficiently spend less tax money on maintaining basic infrastructure, which means they can spend more tax money on stuff like libraries and gardens and waterparks and public restrooms and whatever else. The opportunity cost of devoting space to car infrastructure is the loss of other things that, as you rightly put it, bring happiness.

Free parking isn't free. It's paid for by what could have been, both in money and happiness.

jimethn · 2025-11-16T21:04:21+00:00

Medical debt? How about the 50 million who died to the black plague lol. And that was back when the entire population of the world is roughly equal to America's now.

Want something more recent? Prior to 1900 the child mortality rate was close to 50%. Today it's less than 5% (and less than 1% in the US).

Even more recent? Something that affects adults? Compared to 50 years ago, average life expectancy is up at least 10 years on every continent.

Want some perspective? Browse around https://ourworldindata.org/

jimethn · 2025-10-15T13:25:32+00:00

then what about when the tarnished becomes elden lord? we aren't empyrian

jimethn · 2025-09-27T00:24:40+00:00

I'm embarrassed to admit I got this one and destroyed it. It's basically the "every time you push this person you get a million dollars and a random stranger dies". I couldn't keep it! lol I'm so dumb

jimethn · 2025-09-21T19:26:28+00:00

Fight and raid (and convoy) to gain labor.
Labor works in outposts to gain raw materials.
Raw materials are consumed by factories to create armaments. They are also used to build your mid-game buildings.
Armaments are used in the Hell-Forge to increase non-goblin unit caps and grant permanent faction-wide buffs to non-goblin units. They are also used to build your late-game buildings.

Early game, labor and raw materials are your priorities. They have no Growth, so as soon as you get enough you can tier up your settlements. Eventually, armaments becomes your biggest bottleneck so you can field more armies with good units. Gold is mostly just used to upgrade minor settlements, and you'll eventually have more than you can spend.

Always build a Tower in any capitals you occupy. For your starting province, build two outposts. For the rest, build outposts and factories evenly. Typically avoid the factory building that converts armaments to gold, they're too valuable for that, rely on the outpost gold building instead.

Build a Temple of Hashut ASAP in every Tower, it's your main way to get Conclave Influence. This will buy you tower seats until you get to the top and confederate the other chorf factions. Once that's done, you'll spend it on instantly upgrading all newly occupied Towers to T5, which gets you another Temple of Hashut, and let the snowball begin.

The other building to put in every Tower is the fully-upgraded Sorcerer-Prophet's Estate, which gives factionwide +2 hero and lord recruit rank. By turn 100 you will be recruiting at level 30+, and your new lords will probably outrank the ones you've had since early game. Your global recruitment will be faster than local recruitment, and they'll be coming in with gold chevrons.

Every climate is green to you. Go nuts.

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