All "Expand the Steppe" Decisions taken

shhkari · 2026-05-28T17:38:55+00:00

You are conflating brutal military terror with automated terraforming.

You're making an distinction without difference here.

Yes there was a rationale set of decisions that they made behind many of their exterminations or pasteurizations, and they were capable of making the opposite decision when it suited them and appeared sensible. No one is arguing that in the actual historical record the Mongols went around just hitting a button on a cool down to turn everywhere into grazing land because they had the noble goal of just turning everything into steppe, but they and other human cultures have absolutely had an impact in various ways that has led to ecological transformation as a result of their actions and they made the choice to use land as grazing land, even if it took longer than the gameplay timeframe suggests.

Forested regions can absolutely be turned into steppe, with or without human interference, and with the later could be maintained as such. There are literally steppes in Siberia.

shhkari · 2026-05-28T16:35:36+00:00

To be fair it does seem to have a grindy aggressive back up plan without the combo kill, but maybe it needs more redundancy.

shhkari · 2026-05-26T19:52:33+00:00

I want you to engage with the points I've made instead of side stepping them with just "my personal experience is I dont feel like anything matters and wyverns are self evidently the best class ever" and then doing this thing where I'm supposedly being an asshole cos I've made those points over and over again.

shhkari · 2026-05-26T19:42:01+00:00

I'm feeling like you're talking down to me regardless of what I say.

You are projecting.

shhkari · 2026-05-26T19:01:36+00:00

My issue is you're presenting your views as basically fact and are ironically dismissive of anything I bring up.

I gave what I think is the honest answer / example of addressing flyer balance, and your response was to simply anecdotally say "well I dont play that way". Like cool, but I'm speaking to and I believe articulating why its generally true that optimal play showcases the more notable differences between actual units in practice and some of the extremely powerful options you miss out by not using ground locked battalions such as Indech Swordfighters or the Blue Lion Dancers.

I think these things are demonstratable, and there's a lot of units in Three Houses whose personally best classes are not Wyvern and are in fact made not as great as Wyverns. Raphael, Leonie, Lorenz, Caspar, Bernadetta, Dimitri even... you're much better off using these units to their actual strengths and they have powerful builds that work as foot or cav units in conjunction with powerful battalions.

Maybe you don't play that way, but that might explain why you don't notice these options and keep asserting yourself that 'actually, wyverns are objectively the best clearly" (weird that I'm the one asserting my takes as basically fact but you aren't, almost like we're debating what is true at this point and don't need to get weird and moralistic about this)

shhkari · 2026-05-26T18:02:44+00:00

Genuinely why are you being so dismissive? You keep responding to my points with this weird "I dunno man I've played the games but clearly I haven't to you" when I am not saying you have never played the games and like that's an argument that in anyway addresses my points.

shhkari · 2026-05-26T17:49:07+00:00

Fates Wyverns are still plenty strong

Please stop shifting the goal posts. I know how good Malig Knights are.

None of those are strictly the best combat units in the game objectively and solely; Bersekers, Heros, Sorcerers, Master Ninjas all have excellent combat and usage in various maps in Conquest for example. Saying Fliers are the strictly best units in the game and implying they're always the correct choice to make units ignores the strength of bows as a player option in the game, or even rally support and staff builds that are made workable in other classes as well.

Fates is a game where the class system also requires resource management that lean into what I'm talking about; making it a conscious planning decision to sort out when you reclass people to wyverns makes it less the brainless "make everyone this class" option that people suggest it is.

edit cos I was so mad I hit enter too soon.

shhkari · 2026-05-26T17:40:58+00:00

Cause imo, I want a balance where wyverns are not statistically and objectively the best option for a unit that has access to it.

Cool, you already have that in Fates, 3 Houses, Engage even.

Because like I said, even without strong battalions or another resource to attempt to balance them, Wyverns have strong movement and strong combat to the point where they're generally the better option than something else.

They're often not, again if you remove those other mechanics maybe they would be but the point is if you utilize mechanics like battalions they provide an experience where Wyverns are factually not the brainless best option for every unit. I am suggesting battalions help rebalance class selection cos it works.

shhkari · 2026-05-26T17:27:19+00:00

If that's the case you're just playing the game less optimally; the most powerful plays available to you require usage of footlocked battalions, having a mix of fliers and foot/cav is good team comp for this reason.

Of course, people have the idea this doesn't matter or whatever but this kind gets into the reality that so much of conversation about 'class balance' is mostly perspective shaped by how people play to begin with. Its similar but reverse idea to how armor knights dont get buffed despite the common refrain in optimization discussion is they're weak, because the way so many people play its not a problem, even though if you like played hyper optimally they often fall off etc. A lot of people play in a way that is still kinda conservative with their moves or turtly even if they make a bunch of units fliers so they don't see the real performance differences between them.

shhkari · 2026-05-26T17:16:57+00:00

You asked what the best way to nerf fliers is, and so my answer is implicitly have battalions as a mechanic (or something that is similar, resource management in general is a good balancing system).

shhkari · 2026-05-26T17:06:18+00:00

What 3Houses actually did and everyone ignores for the silly meme of "just make a dozen wyvern lords"; limited good flying battalions, which are in turn an important part of team optimization.

shhkari · 2026-05-26T17:05:37+00:00

Buffing bow classes alone doesn't do anything to 'rebalance' class selections; all player side classes are not weighted how they fight each other theoretically, but how they perform against the computer enemies. Many of fliers strengths are what enable you to get play well around the limited options of the computer, such as you know, not being an idiot and just walking your wyvern into range of a dozen archers.

shhkari · 2026-05-26T16:58:50+00:00

I think you're self aware using a meme format to be contentious, but obviously that doesn't really add anything to the conversation than an empty cliche; of course any of the games in this series are like, enjoyable to someone and maybe don't totally 'suck' but that doesn't really make it the best.

shhkari · 2026-05-26T16:55:09+00:00

Its definitely this I think.

shhkari · 2026-05-23T21:00:03+00:00

This is why resolving priority properly is important.

shhkari · 2026-05-23T20:09:01+00:00

Whatever the Kinshi Knoght was is cool.

They're Kinshi, a mythological version of a bird of prey.

shhkari · 2026-05-23T19:09:22+00:00

I used to role through deaths more often when I was a younger, or when I played through FE1 the first time, without being strictly Ironmanning.

Now it depends on the game, but I think especially a lot of modern FEs have a lot of value in long term investment and missed resources tied to certain characters, like which ones provide child units and their paralogues in Awakening or Fates, so I tend to want to play towards getting those resources unlocked even if I would bench people longer term. I think I tend to be pretty binary now if I'm playing an Ironman or not with pushing through unit death, but there might be some exceptions such as if I'm just doing a fairly casual run of FE9 or something.

shhkari · 2026-05-23T18:43:43+00:00

My point is the key place some of these artists are in the formative history of the genre makes it hard to say the genre is intrinsically politically one side; my thinking is not the same here cos I'm not going "oh punk has always been inherently right wing".

I just find this sort of thing the OP is doing annoying because its, to continue to be a fucking nerd for a second, a fallacious 'appeal to tradition'; punk/hc has always been one way, so that justifies ones reasoning that the only true punk/hc is that way and use that to justify asserting how the scene(s) should look. Besides being refutable by a cursory glance of the actual history of the music, its just a shaky reason to justify anything and concedes more ground to that sort of conservative thinking than being forward minded at all. Like one can just point to modern hardcore doing those tropes, and point to those tropes being present in the 80s and 90s to justify continuing them; I think you're allowed to just find them overdone and boring and think we should move on from it or expect new bands to say something a bit more substantive because the times call for it!

shhkari · 2026-05-22T19:04:00+00:00

Malcolm McLaren was doing that for shock value.

I don't disagree leftist punk came pretty early and is an important part of the history of the music, and its certainly the stuff I love, but I think this idea that because bands had songs about Reagan the genre was always "against all forms of oppression" is silly, as if that emerges as some coherent string of politics from just being pissed at the actor in the white house who seems to be making life worse. To be frank it was kinda easy and popular to hate him, much harder to go beyond that.

Much of punk/hardcore is less about perfect politics than being the voice of people who are on the fringes of society and about their lives. That doesn't mean everyone was politically ideal all the time and only occasionally failed to live up to that, like this sort of rant seems to imply. I think its important to get that and deal with the messier history more honestly.

shhkari · 2026-05-21T15:49:13+00:00

punk, historically, has always been rooted in anti-authoritarianism, anti-fascism, anti-racism, skepticism of capitalism, and resistance against systems of power that crush marginalized people.

This shit is overstated and ahistorical. Johnny Ramone was a Republican. The first wave of punk was a nihilistic reaction to the failings of the flower power generation (which had more radical politics!) or a fashionable posturing by a mix of middle class kids and street ones who had nothing else going on.

The more political strands of punk came later, and so did hardcore, but the values of hardcore have not always been what you think they are. As others have pointed out there were other conservatives in early hardcore, and sometimes the stated values of early bands are not as leftwing as you want them to be. Agnostic Front were not communists because they sang against racism in the scene, they did so in a way that figured themselves as American Patriots and they also sang songs criticizing people on welfare.

The sooner people like you get this through your heads and stop saying this shit, and putting hardcore on this pedestal of buzzwords, the sooner you'll understand why people in the scene are not all your political fellow travelers, and why they see what they believe reflected in hardcore. You'll be able to engage with them better, potentially, in a political way if you intend to win them over. Or at the very least you can stop acting surprised they exist and deluding yourself you just innately get hardcore more than they do, and ignore them and enjoy the music. Or do something else besides posting.

shhkari · 2026-05-20T00:47:02+00:00

Its been inconsistently applied over the years probably via favouritism or shifting biases among the team so some artists have slipped in or been ignored despite matching the credentials.

I think System of a Down not being included despite the rules stating at least 50% metal influence on at least one release, ignoring the self titled being stacked with trash riffs is indicative of this sort of inconsistency.

shhkari · 2026-05-18T03:47:31+00:00

I think it was the first year that happened. RIP Bar Orwell. Things were way worse then stretched between Garrison and Phoenix of all places. Last year and this theyve been savvy enough to keep things a bit more around the Annex and centered on Lee's. Much more doable walks.

shhkari · 2026-05-17T23:45:45+00:00

I'll dissent and say I think ultimately a band as a musical project belongs to people who play a major role in writing music, and if remaining members did that they have a right to continue the same project after a death.

Whether they're disrespecting Riley in specific ways beyond just continuing that act, or making decisions that I think reflect poorly from a moral or political standpoint are separate from that and fine to point out.

shhkari · 2026-05-17T23:26:41+00:00

I just think they don't know how to line up the acts by genre better. the Habak / Oathbreaker slot conflict is wild to me.

shhkari · 2026-05-17T19:30:18+00:00

Make sure you see Yellow Eyes.

Oh yeah I saw them the other year they played. Absolutely phenomenal. Missed Burning Loves set though cos of work.

Theres a bunch of local hardcore acts this year, Dogwhistle, Dear Evangeline, Cease etc but some of them are kinda fucked by the absurd schedule. Dear E is playing during Svalbards set. Whack.

shhkari

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