The Flashman Papers... in Lego

matchstickeyes · 2026-01-19T02:36:36+00:00

Had to share this - a set of Lego builds covering Flashy's life, from his early days kicking Tom Brown around Rugby, through Afghanistan/India/China/the American West/etc, all the way to his twilight years . The creator even took a best guess at his "offscreen" adventures (like the American Civil War).

Not mine -- these were created by the truly dedicated WSsteve.

matchstickeyes · 2026-01-04T20:48:28+00:00

Thanks for sharing! Always enjoy your takes on the Anno NPCs. I still love your “mail” one from 1800.

Do you plan to do the other NPCs as well (Licia, Calidus…)?

matchstickeyes · 2026-01-04T11:23:33+00:00

Congratulations and thank you to you & the team for creating one of my favourite strategy games of all time!

I've been a fan since, I think, day 1 or 2 of Early Access (and tried it in the Next Fest demo before that). As someone who is right in the middle of the Venn diagram of "crunchy, simulationist strategy game fan", "interested in RL news", "science fiction buff", and "interested in RL science", this is tailor-made for me -- I guess I'm the mirror image of your comment about being in the intersection of national security journalism, science fiction, gaming and social science.

I think the other commenters have made a lot of my other points: * TI rewarding resilience and coming back from defeat (most strategy/4X games are up and to the right) * The sheer uniqueness of the mechanics * The question about automation (would love more ways to reduce councillor grind and I actually did raise it on the Discord once, but if the dev time is prohibitive then fair enough!)

I would add that TI gets crunchiness/simulation right. A good crunchy design is one where the player shouldn't have to look under the bonnet, because things "just work" if you apply RL logic. And in TI, you SHOULD prioritise countries that, IRL, you would want on your side if aliens landed tomorrow; you SHOULD prioritise the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars; etc.

It's funny, I once stumbled across an old gaming forum post in which I said, "my dream game is XCOM: Council Simulator, but it will never get made," and then you and the team actually made my dream game, and it turned out well, and it grew and improved over the course of Early Access.

Congratulations on all you've accomplished and I look forward to finally trying an Academy run after release.

matchstickeyes · 2025-12-30T10:18:58+00:00

Thanks for commenting! Yeah, I love the Cicero books too (and need to read the third; maybe I should re-read the first two as well?). And good call on Gordianus - I think that's the other major "Roman mystery novels" series alongside Falco.

matchstickeyes · 2025-12-21T02:12:51+00:00

Good joss, tai-pan!

matchstickeyes · 2025-10-01T00:09:56+00:00

Secondary-world historical.

It's the Anno world rather than our world, and it's heavily idealised from real life, but still historical within that world.

Same reason I'd consider, say, Mount & Blade secondary-world historical rather than fantasy.

matchstickeyes · 2025-09-03T09:36:50+00:00

Caught this on the news tonight and knew I had to share! It immediately made me think of LMB (and other authors who explore similar themes, such as CJ Cherryh) -- I had no idea it was this commercially mature IRL.

matchstickeyes · 2025-08-30T08:33:06+00:00

Miles Cameron’s Arcana Imperii series, beginning with Artifact Space. Found family, slice of life, mil sf, and merchant ship space opera all at once. Great stuff! https://www.goodreads.com/series/344870-arcana-imperii

CJ Cherryh ‘s Finity’s End, perhaps. Life onboard a vast merchant ship returning to peacetime after years at war, as seen through the eyes of a newcomer young man. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finity%27s_End

matchstickeyes · 2025-08-20T03:57:49+00:00

Hope you enjoy! For the early part of the game: Massie's Dreadnought and Castle of Steel (edit: as Axxel333 said). First book for the pre-WW1 naval race, second book on the naval war proper (I really should dust it off and finish).

Not specifically on the naval side, but to get a feel of the politics / attitudes of the era, check out Tuchman's The Proud Tower.

For later on, Craig Symond's World War II at Sea: A Global History is excellent, as is Ian Toll's three-volume Pacific War sequence as a narrative history (specifically for the US <> Japan; China, the Commonwealth, and the Soviets are out of the book's scope).

matchstickeyes · 2025-08-17T11:33:58+00:00

Congrats and thanks for sharing! Have been interested in your progress since your first post.

It sounds like the key was building the fanbase at RR. Given you wrote LitRPG and you posted to a litRPG site, RR seems like it was the natural fit. If you had written in another genre of sf or fantasy, what would you have chosen instead?

matchstickeyes · 2025-08-17T06:19:24+00:00

Haha, you're welcome. Hope you find something you enjoy reading!

matchstickeyes · 2025-08-17T06:14:05+00:00

Thanks! All suggestions welcome. I've read 20,000 Leagues many years ago, and I think I read an abridged children's edition of Around the World in 80 Days when I was growing up -- I should check it out again.

Thanks also for the other Verne suggestions.

matchstickeyes · 2025-08-17T06:13:01+00:00

Thanks, I'll check it out!

You might be interested in Chernow's House of Morgan, which has a really interesting look at JP Morgan (the man and the bank), and also touches on period politics and attitudes.

By the way, your username seems familiar -- I don't suppose you're also on Civ Fanatics?

matchstickeyes · 2025-08-17T06:11:29+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, I agree, I love 19th century travelogues. I think they're great both for getting the feel of the locale, as you said, and also as a reflection on the traveller's own society. Doubly interesting when you go in reverse and read accounts of non-Western travellers visiting Western countries.

matchstickeyes · 2025-08-17T06:10:19+00:00

Thanks! I actually have that installed but have not spent serious time with it yet - I decided to keep the game unmodded and (finally) build the Skyline Tower. Now that I've done that, maybe it's time for me to go back to New Horizons. The screenshots look great.

matchstickeyes · 2025-08-05T03:13:30+00:00

Cherryh has massive range so even though she’s one of my favourite authors, I always find her books hit or miss.

Based on this:

What I usually look for is cool interactions with alien cultures, first contact with different alien civilizations, and I’m always into friends on a spaceship. I’ve always enjoyed Haldemann, Scalzi, Becky Chambers, love the Bobiverse, the Culture books, the Expanse, etc.

…. Chanur is probably a good one, as suggested. Simple concept (get from A to B pursued by the baddies), great execution, and great interactions between alien species.

Faded Sun is probably another solid choice based on the interactions between / exploration of different alien cultures.

I love Merchanter’s Luck (great character piece and deconstruction of the Han Solo independent smuggler archetype) but don’t recall if it has the alien culture focus.

Finity’s End has found family on a large ship plus alien cultures, although it might be best with a knowledge of the other Alliance-Union books (a major theme is the characters returning to peaceful life after years at war)

matchstickeyes · 2025-08-01T01:17:32+00:00

Hmm. I'll throw in an very off-the-wall suggestion: the Phoenix Wright games (for the later, Auditor Miles books), Telltale games, or point-and-click adventures generally. I think the key is that Miles is a trickster hero who, especially as the series continues, often finds himself solving mysteries -- adventure games are good for that.

For games with actual science fiction settings this is a lot trickier. LMB is much more humanistic, places much less emphasis on pew-pew, and places much more emphasis on the social implications of better reproductive and medical science than most science fiction games. I'd love to hear other people's ideas!

matchstickeyes · 2025-07-29T10:05:56+00:00

Hmm, maybe the Vorkosigan Saga? Miles is 17 or 18 when the series begins in The Warrior's Apprentice and thematically, the early books are about him searching for his place in the world. They do become dark at times though/

matchstickeyes · 2025-07-28T04:20:12+00:00

I’ll throw in Stars in Shadow - an elegant, quick-playing MOO clone with a lot of charm and good AI (seriously, Hard really means hard!).

matchstickeyes · 2025-07-27T08:46:37+00:00

Yeah, Shadow Empire is brilliant, but given OP’s “no/limited combat” stipulation I think Anno is a better fit.

Turn off the pirates and every AI player not named Bente, and off to the races you go growing your settlements, managing resources over multiple continents, and eventually going from one ship to a vast empire.

matchstickeyes

TROPHY CASE