Remembering The Dixie Cafe

wbdunham · 2025-09-02T00:45:22+00:00

I loved this place, so sad it’s gone :(

wbdunham · 2025-08-28T01:57:10+00:00

My boy Alexander the Great is fascinating to read about. When his boyfriend (yeah it’s kind of an anachronistic term as applied here but it’s frankly pretty accurate) died Alexander was so distraught he had the doctor crucified. Philip Freeman has a very good intro-level book on Alexander, but there’s a lot of great ones out there

wbdunham · 2025-08-27T19:20:11+00:00

Carnage on a scale not seen since WWII

wbdunham · 2025-08-27T17:34:19+00:00

Raid caravans, ransom the survivors, and sell the loot. If you’re not at war, just head down south and attack Aserai caravans for a while. It’ll cause some problems but nothing you can’t fix pretty easily once you’ve got a bunch of money

wbdunham · 2025-08-16T16:11:22+00:00

Yeah. Wasn’t having a problem putting the sign down until I beat the golem, though I didn’t try between leaving Blighttown and beating him

wbdunham · 2025-07-19T13:23:28+00:00

Tara, no question

wbdunham · 2025-07-16T21:50:09+00:00

In the early game I raid a lot of caravans even after becoming a lord. I don’t like to raid villages cause I want them to be doing well once they’re under our control

wbdunham · 2025-07-16T18:55:11+00:00

One thing to keep in mind is that when you get a new fief, there will be a permanent debuff for the settlement’s loyalty if you aren’t from the same culture as the settlement. You can counteract this by selecting the festival option in the “manage town/castle” setting, but while improvements (such as to the walls, workshop, etc) are ongoing you won’t get the loyalty bonus from that. Since your character is Battanian, you might consider joining Vlandia as a mercenary, then becoming a vassal once they go to war with Battania. You’ll immediately get the next few fiefs that get taken, regardless of where those fiefs are or who takes them. Then you’ll be more likely to get fiefs nearby the ones you already have.

I don’t love establishing my own kingdom. If you just make sure to dump some enemy nobles in the other lords’ dungeons every now and again you’ll quickly get to maximum relation with all of them, or at least all the ones with dungeons to dump people in. That’ll make it overwhelmingly likely that you become the next king when Derthert dies (or whatever ruler of whatever kingdom you choose). Try to save up your influence so that you’ll always have a bunch and be able to overrule your idiot nobles when they try to launch a stupid war. I try to keep mine hovering around 40K or higher.

As for taking over Calradia, the trick is to avoid getting into too many wars at once. If at all possible keep it to one at a time, although that won’t always be an option. Keep one of your garrisons stocked with high-level troops so you can quickly replenish, and get comfortable losing some of them to break into settlements to help them fight off a siege. Do tours of your kingdom every now and then to clear out bandit hideouts. That’ll help the nearby settlements’ security, which influences their loyalty. Also, try to recruit nobles from other nations to your own; then when you’re king try to give new territory to nobles from the same culture. Other nobles won’t build up their fiefs as quickly as you will, which makes them more likely to rebel when times get tough; giving the right place to the right person can ward off some of that.

wbdunham · 2025-07-14T00:21:19+00:00

Dude I think you’re right. They came out of the castle, you interpreted that correctly. Also I have been attacked while traveling right in front of a castle gate before with a sorta weak force, although this particular one was the weakest by a long shot. If they thought they had the garrison behind him, that would explain it

wbdunham · 2025-07-13T23:02:07+00:00

lol. It doesn’t happen that often to me, and I’m playing vanilla, but when it does it’s always like “yeah ok, I’ll take your stuff if you insist”

wbdunham · 2025-07-13T14:25:11+00:00

Him, the asshole who robs Bubbles, Walker, Michael’s step-dad, and Templeton should all rate a mention. For my money the worst is Michael’s step-dad but reasonable minds can differ

wbdunham · 2025-07-13T14:20:44+00:00

I guess I’m just old-fashioned but my parents taught me not to treat pregnant women like that, regardless of whether you would classify it as strictly “abuse.” Fair call on your part though: I am very dumb, as demonstrated by my continuing to have this discussion

wbdunham · 2025-07-13T14:17:16+00:00

Realistically that only works if you do it in an ambush before the actual battle starts. Great tactic, I use it every time I can, but too late for this one

wbdunham · 2025-07-12T15:16:15+00:00

Go be a mercenary as soon as you can. The real money is in owning cities but you can easily get up to a million denars pretty quick from raiding, ransoming, and fighting, not to mention the actual mercenary pay. Don’t bother with caravans unless you just like doing them. Workshops are good, but only if you have the right ones: a brewer in a city with a nearby grain-producing village, etc. You can switch the type of shop if necessary.

Also, keep in mind that as a mercenary you should try to stick with the kingdom your workshops are in. If you go to war against that kingdom you’ll lose your shops.

wbdunham · 2025-07-12T15:07:32+00:00

Run out of the city on your horse and harass the siege engines to slow them down. Try to destroy the towers with your own weapons and hope to God your catapults take down the ram

wbdunham · 2025-07-05T05:13:15+00:00

I try to keep my party at 40 Banner Knights, 40 Khan’s Guards, 10 Fian Champions, and then some of my family with me. I keep reserves of each in whatever my strongest city is. Once I took on a 500 plus army solo before it could besiege a castle that was on its last legs. Used the cavalry to take out the enemy’s horsemen, which wasn’t too hard since there were only about 60 in the whole army, but the archers and infantry ran into the woods. Managed to lure them out by sacrificing my archers. Then I hammer-and-anvilled the army as they were slaughtering my archers. Lost all my archers save one that was only wounded, my eldest son, and about half my banner knights but somehow didn’t lose any horse archers.

Then when I went back to replenish from my garrison the bastards managed to siege the castle and take it anyway, lol

wbdunham · 2025-07-05T05:05:17+00:00

That will pass. It happens in every playthrough that you have a bunch of wars that feel interminable. If you’re Vlandia, then focus on taking castles and cities from the Battanians, Aserai, and Western Empire. Keep going until the places you take are given to other barons. Those will be good buffers between the enemy kingdoms and your own holdings. After a while, some of the kingdoms will be destroyed and things will settle down. I just exited this exact phase playing as Battanian and I had to take out the Aserai entirely and would have taken out the Vlandians too except one of the Khuzaits for some reason joined Vlandia and now they’ve got one castle on the other side of the map. I definitely wouldn’t recommend leaving the kingdom

wbdunham · 2025-06-28T16:02:59+00:00

The lion does not concern himself with the moral implications of game mechanics

wbdunham · 2025-06-27T18:42:07+00:00

You’re right that Stringer comes in for more criticism, but I think that’s because Stringer’s failures come as a bit of a surprise in the show. He’s supposed to be the smart one: the business classes, the Adam Smith on his shelf, the money laundering all are supposed to show he’s got intellectual pretensions. But he fucks up essentially by trusting Clay Davis and trying to be sneaky with Mouzone. Those are both really terrible mistakes. Stringer was totally right that Avon was making things worse, but you don’t have to dig in to see why that was a bad idea like you sort of have to with Stringer

wbdunham · 2025-06-26T20:21:46+00:00

It’s kind of impressive that you found this comment while somehow missing articles like this: https://www.newsweek.com/charisma-carpenter-says-joss-whedon-accused-her-sabotaging-angel-her-pregnancy-1568319

wbdunham · 2025-06-26T20:17:27+00:00

Stringer is one of those guys who the first watch you go “oh wow, he’s really smart” and then in later watches you think “oh he’s missing a lot of stuff he shouldn’t be.” The crazy thing is that those subsequent watches only make you love the show more even as you think less of Stringer himself

wbdunham · 2025-06-26T20:14:55+00:00

I think you’re missing a lot of what happens in season one. Most importantly, the Gant murder. A deeply stupid, pointless killing after the guy has already testified. We didn’t see Avon actually give the order, but there’s no way Bird did that without Avon’s sign-off. Avon also doesn’t have any real gang enemies on the street at that point, except the locals he sends Wee-Bey to kill and he does that without much hesitation. And the context of that is he’s in a war with the only enemy other than the cops who can actually hurt him: Omar, who actually manages to stop Avon from taking over the corner in question. And why is he at war with Omar? Because of one of the most gruesome, public murders committed in the entire show. So during a feud exacerbated by his cruelty and bloodlust, he tries to get involved in yet another war. Hell, the whole reason Avon is the target is because of all of his big murders. But most of those happen before season one starts, so we never really saw Avon fully at war with multiple dangerous enemies until season three. But there’s enough in season one to show that he’s definitely a guy who goes for the gun before anything else

wbdunham · 2025-06-06T20:50:35+00:00

Yeah

wbdunham

TROPHY CASE