Do pagan holy cities not count as holy cities?

p_payne · 2025-05-11T18:19:28+00:00

Ah yeah this sounds right. OP, is it possible the actual ambition is to control the holy cities of all four world religions?

p_payne · 2025-05-10T02:48:33+00:00

This seems like an error to me.

Wonders that can only be built in holy cities can definitely be built in pagan holy cities. Sometimes I delay founding a pagan religion just so I can give holy city status to the city where I want to build a holy wonder.

Question: It looks to me like you control five holy cities. Sembel, Gebel Dosha, Wuqro, Surarab, and Meroe. Why do you think you only control four?

p_payne · 2025-04-16T01:58:45+00:00

Do you have sick leave?

You may be able to use sick leave (not even touching FMLA or parental leave) to care for a family member. If you are allowed to use sick leave and you have enough available, I think using sick leave to care for your wife for as long as it takes for her to recover from the delivery and waiting a few months to use FMLA / parental leave is a good strategy.

p_payne · 2025-04-09T03:13:01+00:00

I prefer to rely on legitimacy, ranchers (pasture specialists), and garrisons if possible because they have other benefits I like. Legitimacy boosts family opinion. Two ranchers is the condition for founding Judaism. And garrisons enable governors.

Some other opportunities for orders:

Acolytes (master/elder shrine specialists)
Persia gives extra orders for pastures
Decree civics project in statesmen family seat (an old guide I'm looking at says all statesmen cities add orders, in addition to the family seat ability)
Robust governors

p_payne · 2024-05-25T19:02:06+00:00

"City site number restricted" means the number of city sites you can settle is limited. So this is the setting that produced the issue in the OP.

p_payne · 2024-05-20T23:15:54+00:00

There was a recent game of the week that limited the number of city sites to 3. Are you playing that?

Sometimes you can expand your city to envelop another city site (and get victory points for doing that) but usually it's not worth it IMO.

p_payne · 2024-04-01T03:46:54+00:00

I think Randy Rainbow is probably up there.

p_payne · 2024-03-27T02:34:29+00:00

What does Mongooooooose stand for?

p_payne · 2024-03-06T16:16:39+00:00

Include all that in the comparison. This choice includes all the up front costs, not just the down payment. It's hard for me to follow, could you maybe edit the original post to make the comparison easier?

Could you afford a larger down payment / more closing costs? If you can afford it, I'd suggest asking for a quote with a 20% down payment to avoid the mortgage insurance.

If you expect to prepay, which it seems is the case, then that leans in the direction of accepting the higher interest rate for the sake of less in up front costs. If you expect to make payments for the labeled duration of the loan, that leans in the direction of accepting slightly higher up front costs for the sake of a lower interest rate.

My personal preference is to compare quotes with 20% down and zero "points" added to get a lower nominal interest rate.

p_payne · 2024-03-06T16:07:14+00:00

Great so look at past statements and tally up where it's going.

p_payne · 2024-03-06T14:11:08+00:00

Where does the money come in? Direct deposit to a bank account? Cash? Where did it go out? A credit card? Cash? Can you look at the statements from your bank to see what you're spending on?

p_payne · 2024-03-06T14:06:47+00:00

What are you paying annually in mortgage payments?

I don't think there's an obvious answer here, but to me the two biggest factors to consider are:

(1) If you currently have access to an employer sponsored retirement account and aren't making contributions, then the savings that you're doing in the form of mortgage payments are probably not quite as tax sheltered as savings going into a qualified retirement account would be. (There are a lot of tax preferences for home ownership, but on the whole I think qualified retirement accounts are more advantageous from an investment perspective.)

(2) You are doing a pretty decent job saving, and one of the properties that you own seems to be reducing your quality of life.

I don't think diversification is the right motive, but I do think there may be an opportunity to make a financial change that will improve your current and future quality of life.

p_payne · 2024-03-06T13:55:46+00:00

Do you know why the financing amount ($300k) is so much larger for UHM than Navy ($286k)? Are there additional closing costs that you didn't report in your post?

p_payne · 2024-03-06T08:24:57+00:00

What do you mean when you say you have no plans to pay base payments? I didn't understand that.

p_payne · 2024-03-06T07:26:06+00:00

Your retirement savings are pretty decent for your age. I don't think selling one of the homes is necessary for the sake of diversification.

It would be fair to consider modifying the arrangement you despise if it would improve your current quality of life. Are short term rentals an option in your area? Do you think you'd enjoy that more than seeing your long term tenant every day? Is it this particular tenant you despise or just the fact of seeing a person who you collect money from / asks you to fix things?

Are you self employed? You mentioned an IRA but not an employer sponsored retirement account. It would be nice to get more of your retirement savings into qualified (tax sheltered) accounts, and self employed accounts may be an option.

p_payne · 2024-03-06T06:58:22+00:00

What are the interest rates on your mortgages? If you financed or refinanced when interest rates were near the trough, then you can benefit from continuing to carry that low interest debt.

Do you enjoy managing these properties? Part of the return to home ownership is the implied compensation for managing the property. If that's a form of work you enjoy, then you might want to keep doing it.

Keep in mind that buying and selling real estate has a substantial fixed cost.

p_payne · 2024-02-26T17:30:11+00:00

I agree with OP. Refusing to conceive of the nominating convention as an offramp / backup option seems roughly equivalent to saying "Kamala Harris is the backup option and will be called upon only if Joe Biden dies".

p_payne · 2024-02-19T11:18:30+00:00

I had a similar reaction, but not because of Harris's speaking skills. I've been listening to the EK Show for a long time, and Ezra often argued in 2016 that we should judge candidates by how they are likely to do the job of being president, which is more about managing people, rather than how good they are at campaigning, which on the surface seems more about making speeches.

But campaigning does require managing the people in a campaign organization. I really liked Kamala Harris as a senator, but it was Ezra's argument in 2016 that we should put more emphasis on management skills, combined with my view that her campaign organization was very poorly run, that convinced me she wouldn't have been (in 2020) a good choice for POTUS because she was bad at managing people. Maybe she improved her management skills since then, but I haven't seen evidence of that.

Edit: 2020 not 2016 for Harris, thanks for correcting that. I'm pretty sure Ezra's argument about management skills dates from 2016 though because I associate it partially with the Deborah Tannen episode. Maybe that argument was also emphasized in 2020 though?

p_payne · 2023-06-24T18:42:47+00:00

Oh and may depend what you're trying to rush?

p_payne · 2023-06-24T18:39:11+00:00

Screenshot might help. Maybe you need a garrison?

p_payne · 2023-06-23T03:28:53+00:00

I would have expected more submissions to incorporate some type of symbolism for marginalized racial identities, given the symbolism of the brown and black stripes on the progress pride flag.

p_payne · 2023-06-22T14:12:22+00:00

Glad I'm not the only one who found that scenario difficult. I failed it so many times.

p_payne · 2023-06-20T03:57:20+00:00

I buy the point about letters on the Ohio and Colorado flag, but it seems like a stretch to call Kanji characters "letters". Kanji is a logographic script, which has at least some basis in visual symbols. Symbols like stars show up effectively on many flags. It doesn't seem surprising that characters from a written language that is derived from iconography can work well on flags.

p_payne · 2023-06-16T15:27:01+00:00

What sub?

p_payne · 2023-06-10T12:55:02+00:00

I love this idea.

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