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Sir, there are war hammers in this game. Including one that hits like thunder.

Well, the scientists are agreed on the source of global warming, sure, if only the US does it it wouldn't matter; But just something like the EU disallowing pleasure cruisers that'd be the same amount of sulphur emissions of all the private vehicles in the EU. You have to start somewhere though, and I can't comment to much on the green new deal, it's not really interesting/relevant for me as a Swede after all, but if everyone would do their little bit you'd get a quite big total that might equal to if the US went back to a medieval feudal system

I will disagree about the climate there, it's pretty much the definition of apocalypse - the more of the Amazon that burns down the more ****ed we are aswell. But yeah, Capitalism or immigration, neither are world ending in of it's own.

Ok, more Crusader Kings 1. My king died. But before that, I was able to give more power to my 8 year old kid, than my schyzophrenic firstborn. For a while I had some chaos running around, got attacked by few rebellious vassals and Duchy of Bavaria. The result was, that right before the end of the war my Spy Master poisoned this new King before his 10th birthday... And my kingdom went to the hands of 1 year old and I had to give away more counties to my courtiers, just to hold high enough stability. One good thing came out of it... The reputation mechanics, give you some boost after the new heir takes the throne, so in about 15 years, I went from -8,5% rep to -1,5% rep and that made 4 new counts to ask for me to vassalize them, including Venezia. I took that opportunity. But after few months some random event triggered Realm Duress and everything went completely bonkers. I was able to defeat all the vassals which ran away and forced them to join the Kingdom again, but it was never ending spiral... I spent two hours trying to get out of this ****, but it was impossible, and more random events dropped my Stability to -3, and it was all ****ed... I had to reload back 5 years, before all this happened Is there anyone who can give me advice, how to solve the Realm Duress without Kingdom going completely to the toilet? EDIT: Nevermind, I have found my notes from 2016. To bad it was to late "The greatest effects on getting rid of realm duress are being at peace and have all your vassals at, at least 60% loyalty. Whenever your ruler dies, pause the game and check your vassals-loyalty, sent gifts to the ones who are most disloyal and then unpause the game again. "

Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. - H.L. Mencken

Take a guess what the general population of the Bahamas looks like.

I'm not really sure that talking to the Taliban is fine, unless that talking is going to get them to stop oppressing everyone in the areas they control. These aren't just cultural differences, there are some serious human rights abuses happening here.

Here less than one, as over 99% of plastic water bottles are recycled, where over 99% of straws are thrown in general waste.

Gromnir made a good point about how useful straws can be and I'd have to agree. In southern AZ where it's blazing hot and everything is super far apart straws are practically mandatory because everyone is always in their cars and taking the lid off is just asking for something bad to happen. Not sure but my local recycling place doesn't do straws but they will, of course, do bottles. You're in a bigger city so who knows, they might just load it all on a boat and ship it to another country.

Thank you again @Boeroer, you're advice are always top-notch

Im in the middle wrt straws. This one time I went to take a sip and a straw accidentally went up my nostril.

ShadySands, you are as a river unto your people. :big beaming grin:

Oops, I planned without the last DLC levels. Don't ask me why. In this case I would maybe pick Veteran's Recovery at lvl 2 and shift all the others one slot up. Yes, you can then pick Blooded at lvl 15. Dazing Shout is also ok... but 1/encouter... and I like it better to start the fight with a Dragon Leap. I'll edit my list.

Reprogrammable ink.

Oooooh, I like that list of freebies! Hopefully "lowering rent 10%" ---> ""lowering my mortgage 10%". I don't like cutting the military but Ill be dead by the time China storms California. Before I make a decision, does anyone have a list of the grab bag Bernie is offering? I don't want to miss out on some sweet sweat of someone else brow that he may be giving away.

Apparently you can't buy a Sleep Number bed (from a walk-in store) without giving them your mobile phone number (which means I alone couldn't buy one since I have no mobile #). And they were really insistent on connecting to your phone and this app for delivery messages. Claimed it would shorten doorstep delivery time or something. But not the delivery date, which ended up being 3 weeks from day of purchase. >.> The only reason hubby wanted one is because they have that 100 day period where you can return it for full refund if you hate it. I guess the way the world is going, if hubby dies before I do, I'll have to get my own mobile #. So hubby, don't die before me. Thanks.

You said dual swords or battle axes. Couple of thoughts about that: Good unique swords come very late. Good Battle Axes come fairly late. Except Rimecutter, which is awesome - but that's a random item (you might never get it) If it must be Swords and/or Battle Axes: the good thing is that both use the same Weapon Focus (Knight) - which is handy. Barbarians can pick Blood Thirst which favors heavy hitting weapons (that's mostly two handed weapons - it's very strong if you build around it). It also favors weapons which might destroy on hit (look at St. Ydwen's Redeemer which has a chance to instantly kill a vessel on hit - hits from Carnage also count Barbarians can pick Heart of Fury. It is very good and best with a dual weapon setup with the highest dmg per hit (usually sabres). If dual wielding is your thing: good alternatives for Swords/Battle Axes would be Sabres. There are good unique ones and most of them come fairly early. They also yield the best results with Heart of Fury. Their downside is the single damage type (slash damage). Bittercut has corrode/slash though (which is great). Another good pick is warhammers (good early uniques, great late unique one, two damage types). A Great-Sword build that is very fun to play is this: Also works well with your stats above. You do not need to be a Fire Godlike. That was mostly for stylish/theme reasons. Any race works. I saw that your INT is not very high. Carnage's radius depends on your INT score (like all AoE effects). Just saying. In the early game Barbarians do miss a lot of their attacks, also and especially with their Carnage. If you miss your initial target there will be no Carnage rolls. So try to target the enemy with the lowest deflection. Barbarians' starting accuracy isn't supergood. Carnage (as a passive ability) gains +1 accuracy with every level until it hits even better than your main attack, but in the early game it's missing a lot because it starts with -10 ACC (compared to your main attack ). Don't let that discourage you. With every level it will get better. Still your main focus as Barbarian should be to get additional accuracy quickly. The earlier you can stack it the easier the game becomes. For a fairly straightforward damage dealing dual wielding build you could take the following taletns/abilities: Frenzy Veteran's Recovery Savage Defiance (your CON isn't too high and Barbs have awful deflection. This can be your "oh s!hit" button if you see your endurance dropping too fast) Weapon Focus (Knight - or whatever weapon you want to pick) Bloodlust (usually triggers even after 1 kill, not 2 as description says. Speed bonuses from Frenzy and Bloodlust multiply with several other speed bonuses. Every additonal speed bonus (like from weapons) is golden) Two Weapon Style (speed bonus like I mention in the next point) Blood Thirst (very powerful, especially in tandem with Heart of Fury) Accurate Carnage (lets your Carnage have better accuracy than your main attack now) One Stands Alone (nothing better to pick at that point, it's pretty good though) Vulnerable Attack (you want to maximize damage per hit for Heart of Fury - see below) Heart of Fury (the best - if you have a Wizard with Combusting Wounds: cast that on the mob before executing HoF. Or wear a Ring of Searing Flames for tough encounters) Savage Attack (at this point you will have enough of ACC buffs from level/talents/party and items so the ACC loss doesn't hurt as much - you can swap this with Apprentice's Sneak Attack if you have party members you can CC a group of enemies for you - e.g. Wizard or Cipher. The CC then unlocks the Sneak Attacks) Dragon Leap (jump into the crowded mob, daze them and execute HoF right after that) Apprentice's Sneak Attack (will get triggerd by Dragon Leap - if nobody else in your party wants to put some CC on enemies to unlock its dmg bonus) or Blooded (if you have no problem with operating a lot with endurance < 50%. By now you will have a pretty big endurace pool so it's not that hard to manage anymore) Blooded Spirit of Decay/Scion of Flame/etc. (element of your weapon lashes) WIth the right items you might find yourself at 0 recovery suddenly when activating Frenzy. For example if you use Durgan Steel on your weapons and armor or find Gloves of Swift Action. At that point Blood Thirst might become redundant (as long as Frenzy and Bloolust are active). You can either retrain then and pick something else (like Thick Skinned) or you just stick with it: usually, when Frenzy wears out, you will again have some recovery (especially if you leave Vulnerable Attack activated all the time or are wearing thick armor like Plate or Brigandine). At that point enemies are already weak and more will drop dead. Then Blood Thirst can remove the remaining recovery. Frenzy uptime isn't that long alltogether. Note that when frenzied you can't see your remaining eundurance. What you can see though (once you hover over your char with the pointer) is a colored question mark. Green means healthy (>=75%) and so on. That way you have a bit more control. If the question mark turns red it's really time for a quick heal (from party member or Savage Defiance). One last thing: lashes are multiplicative dmg bonuses. Most other bonuses are only additive dmg bonuses to your weapon's base damage (that's the damage without enchantments, Might, quality and so on). Lashes on the other hand take all that and multiply it (usually by 0.25) and apply it seperately (has they have to overcome 1/4th of DR). So make sure to put a lash onto your weapons asap. It's a big dmg increase. If you want to use Bittercut then pick Spirit of Decay. Also apply corrosive lashes onto your weapos then. Bittercut gains an +20% dmg increase from Spirit of Decay and also all corrosive lashes will get a boost from 0.25 to 0.3 (increase of 20%).

Age of Grit is out in Early Access today. Thanks Shady for the copy.

Greedfall

I switched between Harbringer Robes and Devil of Caroc breastplate when playing assassin, depending on the encounter and how much damage you take, if your assassin barely if ever dies in a fight then you can decrease defense and increase offense and go for harbringers robe, if he dies too fast with harbringers go for Caroc breastplate

Yep. The oldest trick in the book to get people to supplicate themselves and surrender their liberty to the state is to convince them X is scary and only the State can save them from X. The Democrats do it with climate and capitalism. Trump with immigrants. Not that there are not problems. They are just not apocalyptic.

Now this is scary stuff. Even a lifelong Democrat is worried about what the democrats (and Republicans thanks to the Orange Menace) are driving at. James Clyburn said he didn't think the Bill of Rights would even pass today. He's right. And that is a huge problem. https://www.msnbc.com/david-gura/watch/james-clyburn-not-sure-if-bill-of-rights-would-pass-today-68476997604

took us a little over 2 weeks to get our guardian through near all story content-- skipped ilum save for the flashpoints. also skipped more than a few recruitment missions. finished ossus this eve. am likely to level-up three more characters before 6.0, albeit at a slightly reduced pace seeing as how such characters is already at 65. a few o' the eternal throne chapters, and the umbara stuff, were a kinda slow death and am not looking forward to repeating any time soon. got another house to paint before the rains start, but temps will be back ~100F by the weekend. maybe try the dantooine event and then get started on painting next week. umbara and the mecha stuff from eternal throne kinda makes us look forward to painting. HA! Good Fun!

It's funny. recently, I had to write a letter for a friend asserting that he and his wife were in a genuine relationship and that they weren't trying to defraud the government. Ridiculous since they've been married for a couple of years. I had to get my letter notarized, which isn't all that weird, but because it went to Homeland Security, the guy at UPS required me to swear an oath to attest the authenticity. lol I've had to swear oaths before, say enlisting in the military and serving on a jury, but never when I notarized anything. Surreal. I'm not anti-immigration, but I *do* believe in upholding our immigration laws and fixing a broken system. Unbridled immigration will break our backs. You can't legislate a safety net over several decades and then make it available as a right the first second someone steps foot in your country. It's not tenable. That said, I think the administration should go to great lengths to aid the Bahamas. They should also take utmost measures to ensure the legitimacy of the people who end up coming here. Trump probably shouldn't have said anything about it because the first two could have been achieved without further comment. That's how it is. People who hate Trump's policies should be glad he crows about them because it'd be a hell of a lot harder to beat him otherwise. Since the Dems are making disastrous policy proposals, they might well end up losing to arguably the most enduringly unpopular president of our lifetimes. You want to know a real reason to attack Trump? Domestic policy will right itself over time and, as long as the Republic holds, we can recover from even terrible policy. Foreign affairs need stability. I'm not talking a straight jacket. Being unpredictable and striking a little fear into your global adversaries is perfectly good. This debacle with the Taliban and Afghanistan is confounding. EDIT: It's true that I could be a deacon, Hurlshot, but my heart isn't in it now. I'll settle for singing in the choir. Maybe I'll join the Knights of Columbus? They're allegedly paramilitary and dangerous according to some. That could be cool. :sarcastic smile:

I found an Indian restaurant near the truck stop I'm at in Tulare, CA, and by restaurant I mean a trailer with a kitchen in it. They didn't have goat so I got lamb curry. It's quite tasty, certainly better than the fast food I would have gotten inside the truck stop. I freakin' love curry. Thai is my favorite, but I like Indian, British, and Jamaican curry too. (also, Steph Curry) As a truck driver, I get stuck eating the same fast food junk so often, as truck stops with decent restaurants are a rarity these days. Whenever I find some good food close to the truck stop I get really excited. Double bonus when it's something I really love, like curry.

Miscreant's Leathers is good. I guess Gipon Prudensco with "Fight Another Day" would be good as well.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-49555613 This was well said by Tom Hanks. I think it is a good practice to try and step back from our line of thinking once or twice a day and try to approach our thoughts differently. It's easy to fall into a rhythm of cynicism.

Dusted of my GOG copy of Crusader Kings 1 after 3 years, and continued to play my Gemer County -> Niytra Dukedom -> Hungary Kingdom campaign. I am closing to the end of the timeline probably 35 years to go or so. In the meantime, I have completely defeated Bulgar Muslims and vassalised and converted to Catholicism their sheikh. With that I got the title of King of Khazaria and now I am ruling over almost whole Eastern Europe most of the Central, and a big chunk of Italy, Sicilia and Malta, with some small inherited counties in the West and Africa. The biggest issue I have, is that my King is probably going to die very soon, because he catched plague twice in the last 50 years and his only valid heir is having schysofrenia. The son of the schysofreniac is only inbred, which lowers his stats, but well that makes a really big probability, that my kingdom will crumble before 1452 We'll see how much money it will cost to maintain my realm, after the schyzo takes over

Now I need to get everyone a magazine subscription so they can fight effectively:

Edit: Sorry folks, takes a couple of clicks on the image to zoom it out. And I'm fuzzy enough I can't be arsed figuring it out right at this moment...

I like unusual stuff.... unusual enough for me to like it

The woman of my dreams

Well, given that it's one of the games I regularly play a session of I figured I might as well share whatever I was running when I last logged out:

Have to admit my initial reaction was that I'd missed a new Mass Effect game featuring Tali and Garrus' love child who was not a fan of daddy's fashion sense, and that Bioware was ignoring the lore since only Asari can be Banshees. I'm so out so touch with MP gaming I thought it was probably Anthem due to the seeming slight embarrassment and had to look up that it was Warframe.

Found some cool ones if anyone has time to watercolor or just likes them.

Another one

My try. Probably not the best one but this is just my first try on this

Actually, that game's biggest problem is that Owlcat has never figured out what the game is supposed to be. At times it tries to replicate an authentic pnp experience where the player is supposed to get on with the bad rolls, but then it also takes save reloading into design consideration. The result is the numerous well-known balancing issues, difficulty spikes, and other "realism" nonsense. This is really sad, because I actually do like the game, and the dev's ambition is admirable. Ultimately, however, calling the game great is kinda laughable. The game is badly made from both conceptual and technical standpoints. The only good thing is the story (minus the companions), and the story isn't original.

Ok, thanks for that. I bought D:OS from Steam, installed it, tried it for ten minutes, found that it was completely uninteresting, got my refund (for a game that had been played for less than an hour) and never looked in that direction again. I have played maybe a total of five different titles within the past 20 years (that'd be BG, NWN, PoE, P:K and IWD, sequels included), and of those five, I would say two were a waste of time (IWD, NWN). The other three were good and enjoyable.

The really question, what would you like to see in a PK 2 game??? I know for one I hope they make one. I would be interested to see what Owlcat would do with an original story line .... I think it is only fair to say that PK story is so strong because it pulled from a well received campaign. To their credit the recreated it pretty darn well (not debating writing on their end or game mechanics as those seem to be the most hotly debated items when it comes to these games), but still they had a solid start. For that reason I give a lot more credit to Deadfire and its original story.

It can't be ignored that Owlcat worked on a far far tighter budget. One might make argument against making massive RPGs without resources to match the ambition, but crowd has spoken, game has been funded, and to be honest I have been fairly impressed with Kingmaker so far. It also cater to a very specific crowd - it is not bad thing in itself. Kickstarter games are a great place to do those kind of projects. I don't long for a faithful table top adaptation, but some people do. That's also a very backhanded compliment: "compared to X you are great!" Deadfire is great without being compared to other games. It is not "one or the other" situation.

The problem with climate change arguments is that they require humanity not to act like humans. The wife and I ran into a friend while we out some time ago. She was eating alone in the restaurant and, even though we were there for our anniversary, we joined her. When the server delivered our water, she asked if we wanted straws. My wife wanted one but I never ask for a straw since it seems to be a big deal to people. Our friend mentioned that she hated having to ask for a straw because she felt guilty and that's why she always had straws in her purse. I said not to worry about it because the impact of straws is negligible. It's the most silly assed hill to fight for. She then spent a few minutes lecturing me about how every little bit helps and I shouldn't feel that way. She wasn't rude and she was so earnest that I didn't even point out the irony that she brought her plastic straws so she wouldn't have to ask for them while I, who think the straw issue is actually counter-productive to the conservatism and responsible stewardship, eschewed the use of a straw altogether. Ban cruise lines? Why not? I don't use them! Ban air conditioning? Why not? I live in a temperate climate! Energy is a prime contributor to green house gasses! Ban needless use of electricity? Why not I don't... play games? …visit a gaming forum on my computer while reading others' posts on my large monitor? ...watch YouTube? Want to head out to a ball game? Electric cars! Wait, how do we manufacture those cars? How do we provide fuel (electricity) to those cars? Well, nuclear power is pretty damned clean, we can use that! "Never!" We talk about defeatist? The measures that might have any meaningful impact (by the climate police's own models!) would lead to more world strife than measures to mitigate the effects of climate change. ...And telling me that I should crumble the economy and global influence and power in my country because that's at least something only so the Chinese can become the world's sole super-power and then just increase their footprint by the whatever margin I lowered mine isn't an answer. If the models are right, defeat isn't the question. It's the inevitability.