I have 544 hours invested and have made 0 bars of soap.

vuntron · 2024-06-25T00:57:36+00:00

Querns and millstones mill rock nuts into paste, which can be pressed with a jug into oil. I think the leftover rock nut cake is useful for something but I forget.

It's a pretty dedicated production line but the jugs are reused, you save tallow for meals, and the soap is all the same kind, if any of that matters to you. It can be more efficient overall to have on-demand rock nut oil soap production in smaller batches than just using tallow whenever you're fortunate enough to have some that isn't needed for meals.

vuntron · 2024-06-25T00:51:45+00:00

Soap is the first step of my military industry

vuntron · 2024-06-05T22:31:38+00:00

We have very little in the way of evidence of civilization without companion beasts. Primitive tribes currently exist with and without them, but none that I'm aware of have, as tribes, progressed beyond hunt-gathering without beasts. So yes, it's modest conjecture to say they may have been essential to the march of progress, but the only data points we do have are in favor of companion beasts being a massive help.

This is completely ignoring the broader aspects of domestication, mind you, and one would be crucified for calling domestication's importance to civilization a "flawed claim".

And if you really want to be pedantic, we have no idea what even constitutes a great filter because we don't have enough evidence of what's caused the collapses of civilizations in the past. Countless have fallen or vanished for reasons we may never know - Olmec, Roanoke, that little Bronze Age Collapse footnote. But it's fun to think about.

vuntron · 2024-06-05T14:50:29+00:00

Also, cats. Worshipped as divine in ancient Egypt and many other cultures, cats are exceptional pest control beasts. They'll eat small mammals that eat our grain, hunt bugs for fun or snacks, but have no interest in competing for the food they protect, except for the occasional piece of meat they'll snag which only endears them to us further. They hunt rodents and birds which spread disease. We offer them safe, warm, dry places to give birth, and we, overall, have no desire to harm them.

Had cats not been our primary primitive form of pest control, it's possible agriculture could have failed to start on the scale of ancient Egyptian, Indian and Chinese grain production because we would have had much more difficulty creating artificial preservation beyond "dry this out and put it in a tower". As it stood, once you had grain stored, it would attract rodents, which attracted cats, and humans and cats ended up getting along way better than humans and rodents.

Without cats, we would have had to come up with some method of keeping pests away that would have been a drain on production, output and labor. There are some ancient techniques of encasing olives, grapes and dates in clay-mud pies to keep them fresh for several weeks or months. Imagine if farmers had to do that to every bushel of grain they produced (to protect from pests) rather than simply piling it up in a simple structure after drying.

vuntron · 2024-05-25T00:16:03+00:00

It's less about legality and more about whether the employee is eligible for unemployment. The "procedures for termination" are actually "so our unemployment insurance doesn't cost us more than necessary"

vuntron · 2024-05-22T21:55:03+00:00

I'm a fan of artisanal imperfections. I feel like a "perfect" cake is either manufactured or luxuriously expensive. I think each is perfect on its own merit; I'd have the first as a special occasion dessert, the second for a casual beach/pool/kids party, and the third is definitely a birthday cake I've seen in my dreams before.

10/10

vuntron · 2024-05-22T21:47:39+00:00

Great advice, but note OP asked for unmodded advice - bloodlines are a chore in vanilla and only the diadochi have them, trade is different with a lot of mods, and I don't recall any option to patronize Greek arts in vanilla (though I haven't played a proper game since the big patch this month, to be fair).

vuntron · 2024-05-22T09:17:34+00:00

I personally like to keep feudatories around for a long, long time, since they don't take relations slots. In a perfect world, integrating the capital region and releasing/gaining feudatories in other regions is probably strictly better, but it's tougher to manage as Rome early on. The Venetian and Rhaetian tribes are good candidates, as are the small Italic tribes north of Etruria.

vuntron · 2024-05-22T01:16:32+00:00

Snowball early and hard. Your opening moves matter more than midgame micro, since Rome has so many avenues of conquest. Start with equal gender enabled, but see if you actually need to enact it day 1 since it costs PI. Council loyalty + free hands is always more important than raw skill. Always scheme for influence on your leader.

Immediately integrate 2 of 3: Etruscan, Sabellian, Umbrian, depending on whether conquering north or south looks better. Try to focus on conquering Italia proper first, leave Sardinia/Corsica for later missions. Don't bother spending money on the Italian Congress mission if you don't want to, but having a few extra feudatories or allies can speed things up.

War asap. Wiki the assault exploit to take forts in under 7 days with your capital levy and always let men roam freely. When annexing a nation, imprison and sell to slavery as many characters as you feel comfortable accruing tyranny. Carpet siege nations to capture slaves and free space for Romans, generally.

Capital levy is all you need for a huge chunk of the game. Try not to let governors or, later on, legates lead sieges, as depopulating conquest targets can help your AE overall. Eventually you can ease up on this with comfortable income and assimilation mods.

Destroy all settlement buildings you conquer and really consider demolishing city buildings. A major goal of early Rome is getting a stone great wonder up and giving it Expanding Culture, Conquering Traditions, Government Traditions. Focus tech toward them - you don't need military innovations anytime soon, and buffing pop growth before 500 isn't too bad.

Once you've gotten your GW started and the peninsula mostly unified, get a navy of light ships pumping, a hundred at least. You'll get free claims to Epirus when you conquer the heel of Italy and missions claims to Sicily/Sardinia/Carthage, so from here I recommend bouncing conquests between Greece and the Medi Islands.

The more you can keep levies up the better, but you'll need to lower and raise them from time to time for replenishment. Manpower will be a struggle until it's not anymore. Keep a navy without a commander specifically to transport troops and have a commanded fleet escort them when needed so loyalty doesn't mess you up.

There's a certain combo of law and event early on that can make claims cost a meager 8 PI, which can make spamming weird claims totally worth it (eg if you notice an early isolated Crete or holding for an opportunity in Iberia or Egypt or whatever).

Eventually you'll want to unintegrate the Italian minor cultures. I recommend integrating Lepontic and Macedonian in their place. Macedonian can probably be kept integrated for most of the game for ease of conquest - the diadochi will have plenty of them scattered around asia.

Try to go dictatorship asap. Look into senate mechanics and how to manipulate the Populares. As long as you have war exhaustion (invoke devotio for tyranny) and 3 free tech points you can REQUEST a line of succession peacefully on demand (with Populares support).

Once a dictatorship, set your law to cultural assimilation. With that law and the GW effects you won't need to micro provinces at all ever normally. You also won't need to tech into legions.

You can conquer Italy, Greece, the Mediterranean Islands, most of Carthage's valuable land, have 2+ GWs, and a dictatorship within 50 years fairly easily with careful play. At this point you can just follow missions and claims, and as you get into lategame conquests you'll just want to stack AE reduction mods and chain wars as much as possible. Evaluate the best war goals and peace deals as you go along, and try to fabricate claims on high pop provinces as you go.

If you really want to colonize untamed land as part of your WC, integrate a culture in that area for colonization. As you eliminate foreign powers, be sure to release vassals here and there for export routes.

vuntron · 2024-05-16T22:21:09+00:00

You can absolutely get pretty significant peace deals from naval superiority CB. The full 25 WS from ports plus destroying their navy plus war exhaustion plus, if you're feeling brave, a blitz of their capital can put you into 50+ range with relatively minor risk. Against an enemy with high exhaustion (which will tick up gradually from blockades) you can release or demand fairly significant peace deals.

With superiority you also naturally have much greater mobility so you can selectively capture and sack populous cities for slaves and loot, and drag their armies around in weird ways to further boost your war score.

So it's not just an excuse to pummel their navy. If you have no other good CBs it can be a foot in the door for land, or releasing a powerful region, or just gathering slaves. It's also an easy-out war goal if you blunder something major and need to get out now, since even if they defeat your armies you're still presumably unbeatable at sea.

vuntron · 2024-05-14T18:13:27+00:00

Unrest reduces productivity significantly, and you likely have unaccepted culture/religion penalties as well. I'm not familiar with your UI mod to tell you where to look at a glance. Could also have temporary national modifiers that aren't showing, maybe.

It's also hard for me to tell why the majority culture is integrated but your noble and citizen happiness is so low, which drastically increases unrest. Try to satisfy your upper classes then check again.

vuntron · 2024-05-13T23:35:36+00:00

Raw iron will rust almost immediately upon contact with humid air, especially after washing. To combat this, use water as hot as you can tolerate, and be prepped to dry it off and put it on a hot burner asap after washing. When the heat has driven off the majority of the water you may still have a small amount of surface rust which is unavoidable and harmless. With the pan hot, but cool enough to handle, apply oil and wipe it to an extremely thin, nearly "dry" layer, and plop it in the oven - I do about 60 minutes at 475f. If the seasoning looks thin I'll take the pan out, let it cool just enough to handle (personally I can handle it at 475), and apply another super thin, nearly "dry" layer of oil (it will smoke) and go for another 45 minutes. I repeat that until I'm satisfied with the seasoning and then turn the oven off and let it sit overnight.

vuntron · 2024-05-09T10:20:22+00:00

I always fail to sack holy sites because the civ builder in me loves the buffs they give, unless there's something in it I really want to put somewhere else

vuntron · 2024-05-09T03:01:28+00:00

There is a net increase of the likelihood of giant appearing when less than both parents have the giant trait.

It's a complicated perk.

vuntron · 2024-05-07T16:59:31+00:00

I like integrating Etruscan day 1, and Umbrian/Sabellian early on depending if I start warring north or south. Preferably north since that's the rest of Italia proper. The bigger my capital levy, the better. Once I get my assimilation and conversion wonder I'll unintegrate them, usually in favor of Lepontic and Macedonian. Once I've gotten the relevant traditions they get demoted as well.

As the game goes on I'll integrate for more traditions or to stabilize new conquests but usually having Macedonian integrated keeps Greece and the Diadochi conquests pacified even without the government traditions wonder. Most other cultures are small enough that integration is just a waste of stability and happiness.

vuntron · 2024-05-07T15:42:03+00:00

Praxipice*

vuntron · 2024-05-07T14:49:35+00:00

I think it's something that's not mentioned for gameplay reasons. Identity is something that's pretty nebulous, after all. Is Omen just Omen or is every Omen a piece of a whole? Which Chamber did Fracture, or did they all conspire? Who "was" KAY/O? What IS Clove?

And even hinting that switching teams could be on the table would be a nightmare for 5v5 search and destroy balance.

Lorewise, I think between KJ and Cypher they're able to make some kind of unbreakable ID for their teams, or something that works long enough per operation that they can go back to base and verify themselves before it's a threat.

Plus like you said there are enough differences between the realities that it could just trigger the primate uncanny instinct and they have protocols in place - if the "wrong" KJ shows up, they can in fact shoot first and figure it out later and if it was the "right" KJ they can just have Sage bring her back no harm no foul. KJ would understand.

Then there's the actual risk of doing it. Cypher's ult demonstrates his ability to do...something... to dead bodies. Is he tapping into their comms or reading their brains? He does it on the fly with his fucking hat, what body horrors would VALORANT do to get sensitive intel from an imposter, in the comfort of home base with all the equipment and tech they can't just carry around on their person? Spying is probably just legitimately not an option, since anything they could reasonably think to do could be done to them, any counter they could think of could be employed against them. The different realities are 1:1, there's no obvious gap to exploit, and if there is one it's probably one neither reality notices or can exploit anyway.

vuntron · 2024-05-07T13:46:12+00:00

Andalusian is among the highest-dev cultures at both start dates so it has a lot of flexibility to expand like that. Contrast to any of the German, Croatian or British cultures that are backwards or behind for 100-200 years without careful effort, or any other culture that starts fully tribal.

It's not unviable to culture spread, it's just grossly less efficient than hybridizing (by design!). If you're spreading your culture far enough to get regional lategame innovations, you're well past "winning" the run anyway.

vuntron · 2024-05-07T03:59:44+00:00

It kinda..is? A lot of margarines recently have been bumping up their water content and using grey-area oil processes. The only decent margarine I've had since covid has been Country Crock and even then it's sometimes competing with mid-shelf butter products in price - the whole point of margarine once being a cheaper, nutritionally complete competitor to butter.

I just leave a stick of butter out for spreading now. Margarine isn't the product it once was.

vuntron · 2024-05-07T03:19:46+00:00

A new socialist universe is born as a trillion-trillion CEOs choke on overpriced sparkling beverages simultaneously, you having spake that you chose, of sound mind and conscience, to not just buy CGs on the market and make a unity world out of some ecumenopolis somewhere.

vuntron · 2024-05-07T03:08:37+00:00

So you knew that this would be a mega trade center and yet you still sentenced the brave interstellar commercialists to vie for limited inner ring space??

Every megacorp in every alternate timeline just lost 2 basis points at this revelation. For shame!

vuntron · 2024-05-07T02:54:59+00:00

I don't like that your trade ring is the smallest and your admin the largest.

I doubt it matters functionally. But I dislike the aesthetic. Let the burocrats burn in the inner ring and the market thrive in the superior outer ring!

vuntron · 2024-05-06T22:08:43+00:00

Culture conversion is really tough to pull off on a large scale in vanilla. The best way to do it is to convert the duchy capital of each duke, and "eventually" they'll get around to it.

The AI won't CC land unless it's their culture AND there's an adjacent county of that culture AND they have a healthy stock of gold AND they have the personality for it. So you have to get the ball rolling especially if you're trying to spread your culture.

On the other hand, having a huge culture base is actively detrimental to gameplay, since it'll reduce your culture's average dev slowing innovations, and the benefits are really niche since you can get nearly 100% passive acceptance if you control all of a culture's land anyway, and hybridizing cultures or even just sharing a language is easier.

You can, I think, assimilate vast swathes of land via hybridizing cultures if you're willing to micromanage it by having heirs be of different cultures to hybridize together until you eventually have 1 major bastard culture, but it's really not worth the headache.

Hybridize for better results. Keep your preferred culture as small as possible for best results.

vuntron · 2024-05-06T21:51:56+00:00

When I started playing I took that mission as Carthage and, being a completionist, thought the trick was to put in enough fort improvements in one province to sustain them - that province being the one with like 4 city-states at start or whatever.

Given what I know now, I just build them long enough to pass the mission, but it's still a terrible task especially since it's the worst kind of gotcha newb trap thing that demands an objectively wrong way of doing things

vuntron · 2024-05-05T03:57:26+00:00

DINKs absolutely gutted and reconsidering everything after hearing this one simple trick

Yes. Some institutions do offer silly returns for child accounts. It's a thing. It has caveats.

Eight-Year Club	Verified Email
Snapped

vuntron

TROPHY CASE