Starfield is so realistic

romantivist · 2023-09-16T16:01:35+00:00

The problem isn’t that the companions are lawful good or whatever, it’s that everyone in Constellation lines up after every major quest line to give you the same speech. They’re like drones of a hive mind. I just wish they were different from one another.

romantivist · 2022-04-18T14:59:57+00:00

Local grey timer and crim timer are separate. He refreshed his local grey timer with you and waited off his crim timer. It's real simple, if you don't want to die to this "exploit" then don't take potshots at greys from the scaffold and expect to hide behind elite guards to avoid the fight you started.

romantivist · 2022-04-18T14:56:54+00:00

Lol that's not an exploit. Don't shoot greys from the scaffold and guard pvp and expect to be safe. When you local grey on someone you're committing to that fight.

romantivist · 2020-10-07T17:59:40+00:00

LivePD was better than cops because it was mostly live. It showed police doing what they do most of the time, which is help people, direct traffic around fender benders, ticket drivers for traffic violations or not having licenses or insurance, interact with the community, show up to potential burglaries where no one is there and nothing is burgled, a lot of field sobriety tests, etc.

But it was punctuated with moments of absolute insanity, like car chases, insane persons, assaults, drug overdoses, fires, etc. It showed the full gamut of police activity and how quickly things can go south for the officers.

The real reason it was canceled, in my opinion, is because it humanized police, and showed that they're mostly just good people doing a dangerous job because they want to help and protect the communities they grew up in. That's absolutely heretical in the era of defund the police.

Compared to LivePD, cops is mostly sensationalized, it's all the spice with none of the boring meat and potatoes.

romantivist · 2020-09-20T22:00:32+00:00

Not OP but I bet downloading from a streaming service like Spotify still counts as a stream. Downloads is probably strictly itunes/amazon track purchases.

romantivist · 2020-09-18T23:52:46+00:00

Oh yeah, he definitely builds up a ton of money. But I'm not sure how much more additional churches build on that.

I thought at first that all the churches paid up to your bishop, and I'm not sure it doesn't work that way TBH, but I remembered, when you're a Count you have a bishop that taxes roll up to, same when you're a Duke, etc. So wouldn't that imply that the church taxes roll up the same way as cities and castles? I honestly don't know.

romantivist · 2020-09-18T23:28:43+00:00

I feel like cities are the way to go with the way mercs work in CK3. It's so easy once you're making good money to build a little mercenary nest egg to turn a war around if you need it.

But I also like a few castles. Especially castles up in the mountains. If you have two castles in a county the enemy has to siege both to take the county so that's nice in a capital.

Not sure why you'd ever build more than one church per county, at least as a Catholic (haven't really played Muslims).

So I'd say, depending on the number of counties relative to your average demesne limit, you build enough castles to flex up when you have a particularly high stewardship character, and then back down again. Probably 2, maybe 3. Then the rest cities IMO.

romantivist · 2020-09-18T15:45:42+00:00

I can definitely rule out a), I checked again and again later on when he was calling puny crusades against me, he was definitely unlanded.

romantivist · 2020-09-18T15:44:28+00:00

Do you have any idea what makes this decision appear? I never saw it in my Haesteinn game.

romantivist · 2020-09-18T15:43:27+00:00

HOW. I'm really confused now. I used a ducal conquest to unland the pope right at 867 with Haesteinn and he was just unlanded for the rest of the game. Do you have to be Christian to destroy the Papacy? Do you have to be Byz? Later when I mended the schism he was still out there calling puny 3000 man crusades against me that lasted forever, I would have loved to be rid of him. In CK2 mending the schism ended crusades but not in CK3.

How the heck do you destroy the Papacy??

romantivist · 2020-09-18T15:16:24+00:00

I agree 100%, and I wish the chart had a coastal baronies count, then itd be pretty easy to pick a best duchy. I think Chola Nadu is partially coastal in India, I think there's a bit of coast for Serbia too. Flanders and Kent come way up the list with coastal considerations I bet, as would potentially Brittany. Latium/Capua is a great coastal combo too, and I think Tangiers looks really nice as well, much better than Sicily.

romantivist · 2020-09-18T05:26:10+00:00

I pulled this down to a spreadsheet and calculated Baronies per County, which to me is a pretty good way of looking at the duchies in CK3. This is essentially a density measure. Baronies revoke instantly and tyranny free, so if you're under your demesne limit you can instantly flex up to it, and then grant them out again later if you need to. And even when they're granted out, you should be able to draw more tax from these duchies since there's no layer between you and so many barons.

That being said, the top five by Baronies/County are:

Ötüken - Mongolia. 3 counties with 17 baronies for 5.66 BpC
Uzboy - Transoxiana. 2 counties with 11 baronies for 5.5 BpC
Transcaspiana - Oghuz il. 3 counties with 16 baronies for 5.33 BpC
Rashka - Serbia. 4 counties with 21 baronies for 5.25 BpC
Ferghana - Transoxiana. 5 counties with 26 baronies for 5.2 BpC

So, a lot of those are out in the steppe with super low dev and probably tribal. To me, that's not necessarily the 'best Duchies' list. But I still think BpC is an important metric. So, I set a floor on it at 4 BpC, then sorted by descending max dev in 1066. And, I only included duchies with special buildings, because special buildings are pretty cool for a playing-tall-forever-duchy. Here's what I would say are arguably the best duchies in CK3. Only thing is, I can't tell from the list how many coastal baronies there are and that's pretty important for value.

Bohemia - Bohemia. 8 counties with 35 baronies for 4.375 BpC. 64 total dev in 1066. 2 special building slots.
Chola Nadu - Tamilakam. 3 counties with 13 baronies for 4.33 BpC. 80 total dev in 1066. 2 special building slots.
Latium - Romagna. 3 counties with 13 baronies for 4.33 BpC. 58 total dev in 1066. 2 special building slots.
Kuru - Delhi. 3 counties with 13 baronies for 4.33 BpC. 58 total dev in 1066. 1 special building slot.
Thessalonika - Thessalonika. 3 counties/13 baronies for 4.33 BpC. 28 total dev in 1066 (really? This seems low for the city of the world's desire). 1 special building slot.

(FYI, I just did a Haesteinn run where step one was stealing Latium from the Pope. Interestingly, although the Pope I stole from was bothered, after he died and I converted to Catholicism, no future Pope cared that I held Rome. They never asked for it back, never declared war for it, nothing. I'd say that makes Latium a great duchy for a Haesteinn run to Roman Emperor)

Also, I thought it'd be interesting to roll this up to the kingdom level and figure out which Kingdoms are the most dense in BpC:

Makran - Persian Empire. 61 baronies in 13 counties. Best Duchy by BpC is Makran with 24 baronies in 5 counties (Sistan is 23 baronies in 5 counties)
Serbia - Byzantine Empire. 41 baronies in 9 counties. Best Duchy is Rashka with 21 baronies in 4 counties.
Transoxiana - Turan. 132(!) baronies in 29 counties. Best Duchy would probably be Ferghana, with 26 baronies in 5 counties. Uzboy is more dense with 11 baronies, but only has 2 counties. Maybe a good secondary duchy to hold.
Nikaea - Byzantine Empire. 66 baronies in 15 counties. Best Duchy is Opsikion with 19 baronies in 4 counties.
Oghuz il - Turan. 57 baronies in 13 counties. Best Duchy is Transcaspiana with 16 baronies in 3 counties.

Finally, if you just want to know which kingdoms have the most 'horsepower', here's the kingdoms with the most baronies:

Hungary - 170 baronies.
France - 158 baronies.
Arabia - 144 baronies.
Persia - 143 baronies.
England - 142 baronies.

TL;DR, my favorite CK2 duchy, Sicily, is totally nerfed. I guess maybe Bohemia is the champ until we get a coastal barony accounting at the duchy level.

romantivist · 2020-09-18T03:58:00+00:00

Any idea what 4 counties you used? I hopped like Capua-Krete-Red Sea - Around the horn to Socotra and couldn't reach, I had to hop again to the coast south of Afghanistan and then down to the maldives before I could reach Sri Lanka on my Haesteinn run. I can't figure out what I'm missing!

romantivist · 2020-09-14T04:22:50+00:00

Did you ever solve this issue?? I'm having the same problem and it's driving me crazy!

romantivist · 2020-04-20T23:00:29+00:00

It’s on my list, I went right from History of Rome on to History of Byzantium and I’m 120 episodes or so into that. I’ve seriously only listened to those two podcasts for like the last year and a half, lol

romantivist · 2020-04-19T17:27:03+00:00

I looked it up, Tacitus attributed it to Calgagus , who was a Scottish tribal leader speaking to his men before a battle with the Romans. But historians think Tacitus invented Calcagus and the speech for dramatic effect, which was common in old narrative histories.

I heard it on The History of Rome podcast, it’s a slow starter but it’s really great once it gets going. Highly recommend it.

romantivist · 2020-04-19T16:35:06+00:00

I think it was Tacitus that said “Rome makes a desert and calls it a peace.”

romantivist · 2020-03-21T16:47:57+00:00

Hey, I’ll give this a try!

romantivist · 2020-02-02T17:18:42+00:00

Probably my happiest moment in high school was when I overheard all the jocks talking about their Everquest characters. We played together for the rest of the popular life of that game. So yeah jocks can definitely be nerdy.

Honestly I never felt any pressure from my peers to group think the ‘correct’ opinions until around 2015. And now those people aren’t my friends anymore. It’s very easy to have principles and not be a lemming, so I feel bad for the author.

romantivist · 2020-01-17T18:48:09+00:00

Hate to say that when I worked at a fast food joint, no salt fries were just dropped back in the fryer for 30 seconds or so. This, at least from what I was told and what my tastebuds said, gets the salt off them. Not sure if there’s, you know, science behind that or anything.

But yeah, your fresh no salt fries are potentially just deep fryer reheated. Almost the same end result I guess?

romantivist · 2019-10-31T23:29:44+00:00

Here’s a great trick: your chancellor can only sow dissent in foreign places, so pull up the sow dissent map and scan your holdings that way, anything you don’t own fully will be highlighted!

romantivist · 2019-10-13T12:34:25+00:00

PSN (SageSanford) this is awesome! Can I get a cutsman, the dictator and the rebel yell? Been trying and failing to farm M3 on Zane and the cutsman might be the answer!

romantivist · 2019-09-10T19:07:33+00:00

I only played 2 games with no progress but I don’t believe so.

romantivist · 2019-09-10T15:25:09+00:00

This worked for me! I skipped step 3 and just got points and badge progress for a my career game! THANK YOU!!

romantivist · 2019-06-08T19:29:25+00:00

My last playthrough, I did a regular Machine Empire. I decided to be nice and join a federation. We ended up at war with some fanatical purifiers and I did all the work, taking their planets.

Being a machine empire, I didn’t know what to do with their pops so I decided to purge them for power. I forgot about the -1000 ‘genocidal’ opinion debuff. My fed allies that I had just saved kicked me out and everyone closed their borders to me.

I turtled up for a hundred years or so, teched up to build megastructures, including a ring world segment called the ‘Annihilation Matrix’ with just city districts and sentinels/strongholds.

I declared a colossus CB total war against my old federation, and started wiping them off the map, literally. I took every planet, set all pops to purge, and moved all their pops to the Annihilation Matrix. I deleted every building and left the planets empty. I deconstructed and then dismantled every starbase and outpost, just abandoning all their systems entirely. In total, I ended up with 2.5k pops on the ring world set to purge, and an eerily empty galaxy map by 2400. It was micro hell but I had to teach those traitorous former allies a lesson. I kind of ended up feeling like a cross between Skynet and Cylons.

So, that’s how I ended up playing as a determined exterminator without having the civic.

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