LadyCrimson

Is it fixed now? I had bizarre login issues last night, tried to post a few times, issues prevented me, figured it would be fixed later, whatever it was. Glad it was. Good work. That said, I was amused when the entire thread was inserted into the "reply/make a post" box.

The last couple nights I have woken up to find myself on the floor. Once from my low mattress, once while on the higher couch (hubby walked down the hall to find me sprawled on the floor, blankets strewn around lol). So far I have not injured myself, bruised a hip a little. It's probably more like half-rolling, half sliding off, I suppose. When I was a kid (up to 10ish) I used to roll out of the bed/onto the floor frequently - didn't usually wake me up, I was just on the floor in the morning. Once fell off a top bunk during a trip, that sort of stuff. Ha. At some point in my early teens I started sleeping like a stone, generally never moving, blankets totally undisturbed etc, Apparently I'm reverting to childhood again. Pfffft. Well if I'm lucky it won't continue much. If it does I'll have to put pillows/pads by the bed/couch etc. since I'm not 8 anymore, more likely to injure. Sigh.

Re: Hogwart's - I had a lot of fun with it (even tho for myself, I also had a lot of crash issues ) but it is rather simplistic. To me more of an causal adventure romp game vs. an rpg - no true choices/consequences, no real depth. I've seen the movies (they were ok, nothing that memorable for me), haven't read the books, am not a potter universe person. Game is light fun, but not something one is probably going to replay, as example. But I definitely had a lot of fun with it. =========== Patron journey continues (I have nothing better to do apparently) - to kind of repeat myself, since I'm a city builder "efficiency" person, my main long term goal is usually about just expanding the city/population until it fills a map or performance tanks. I have maybe .05% interest in making realistic/pretty towns. But it's easy to 'master' the loops, and the cycle (in Patron) is about once a year you get more workers trickling in etc. In other words ... it's 2024. Why do modern city builders still limit you to only 10X speed? I think we can handle 20x now. Why? Why? Also, why do ppl in houses complain about no schools when there are three schools other within radius (I build four, overlapping radius), and only the one is totally full? Just go to one of the other ones. Or ppl who complain there's no houses when there are like 10 empty Shelters. Idiots. Bad design/glitchy AI or something. Irritating.

Re: AI - I feel like half the short docs. on YT now are AI-voice generated. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's a little creepy, sometimes I can't tell/could be wrong. But point is, it's feeling weirder and weirder wondering if there's an actual human being behind the narrator. I suppose it shouldn't matter simply in terms of whether I like watching a short doc, but just saying. Feels weird.

Farthest Frontier is still on my list because I like Crate Ent. I trust them to make a good/decent game. That said, from the getgo I wasn't sure if they were making a city management game I'd personally be into. I think you can essentially get a sandbox mode out of it turning dangers and combat off, but still. Not sure at all, even when it comes out of early access. I can't remember if you've played the old Impressions city builders or not? There's at least less of the population happiness management - I mean it's there but it's more of a generalist thing and not difficult to pacify or almost largely ignore (at least in freeplay). Or at least, I didn't find it so. But then I do find some aspects of the "management" part of efficiency "fun" as long as it's not overboard. I liked Banished and I'm glad it rather revived the genre, but I'm tired of the whole "city building survival" concept. I don't care about earthquakes or floods or invading armies or skill trees or research paths. Just give me the buildings and a map and let me figure out what I think is best/most fun. To me that was the whole point of such games - sandbox, not to provide a gamey gameplay RTS challenge with the city building. I also like city builders to be smaller scale myself. Stuff like City Skylines I have no interest in. EDIT: the few building simulators I've seen that are much simulator vs. management are either too mechanics geek tech-y/complicated or too simple (almost to mobile game simple). So yeah...maybe for different reasons but I find if difficult to find modern ones that I like beyond an initial run too. Although some of that may be because I find them all largely too easy to "master" by now. They've spent more time trying to insert more gamey gameplay or difficulty/time roadblocks and zero time on how to make the process of designing a city/layout more fun/interesting. eg, more terrain or resource challenges perhaps. Everything that conceptually worked in the ones from 20+ years ago still basically work in the new ones.

Got to over 1000 total population in Patron. including all the farms and such, that might be about 1/6 of the map. Although one could do much better space management if not trying to cater to citizen needs with churches and multiple schools and universities everywhere as I was attempting. >.> But I'm reaching the point where game performance is dropping (at 4k, from 60+ fps to 40-50ish). Which is better than at release, where I think I noticed performance drop at only 400-ish population. Guessing my CPU would start to uber tank at maybe 2000 population. Typical cpu-bound performance limits aside, the way the game works isn't really conducive to playing the same map "forever" re: any challenges or designs etc. I don't get the same sensation of wanting to continue ala Caesar/Impressions series. You reach the may as well start a new city/map much more quickly. That said, it's still a pretty fun/decent city builder, fairly typical of the current genre workings. I mostly don't like the nonsensical/time sink research tree workings.

@Keyrock Maybe you're in the throes of video-game-diet syndrome? Jokes aside, if the weight loss is simply coming from eating a bit less then usual, I wouldn't be overly concerned yet. Something else that can come with aging - obviously varies person to person - can be phases of "eating is too much bother" or less interest in food as a kind of mental entertainment, so to speak. Although I don't think I've ever had a sense of feeling like eating food itself is offputting, myself. I usually just feel like it's not worth the bother to do the whole process of making food/sitting around eating. The act of eating isn't giving me any emotional enjoyment at times, so I'm totally not motivated to do it, even if the belly is grumbling. I end up kind of forcing myself to eat when it happens. That said, if eating is somehow physically discomforting and/or your weight loss feels disproportional to caloric intake and activity levels, a check-in with docs is always advisable. Or if it continues for too long etc.

Posting just because: 2:26 "Yeah our clothes are now trendy today ... ... because we just never threw them away." Too true. Edit: it is funny how Genx is seems largely forgotten (public references I mean). Ppl go from Boomer straight to Millennial.

Patron - the game rather defeats my attempts mega-expansion, even the smaller/less land maps, because of the way workers have to actually walk/travel from their designated house to workplace. And you can't control where anyone lives. So at the start, when all jobs are close to houses, it's very efficient re: production ratios. Only need a few farms for a long time. But as you try to spread/grow, with new housing areas way over yonder/over a bridge/river, where resources are, the AI will give a lot of new jobs to people who may already live in houses eons away. Occasionally a family moves houses, but not very often. Inefficiency rises, so now you need twice, thrice as much production workers to keep up the same production ratio, simply because of walking distance, making it frustrating. Or eventually a downward spiral. Complain about building/work access/radius etc methods in Caesar all you want, but it's actually much more efficient/flexible for huge cities. >.>

Patron was never a graphic showcase, especially if you do the photomode zoom in close up views/textures, ew. But it has improved visually a bit, I think animations and some added details. Although, straight-down to try and show a whole huge area just looks like every other grid-based Banished clone. Tons of houses. >.> Apparently it takes a lot to "feed, clothe, and luxuriate" ... 300 adults/youth/children - with some excess to sell. There's more farms not in pic. When I zoomed into a town one winter, I noticed someone built a snowman. Some Xmas trees around here and there too, heh.

---When you can sleep thru the night all of a sudden, you may sleep for 12 hours one time and totally ruin your sleep/wake schedule again for a while. eg, "oh look, it's dawn again." ---Me: "It just hit me that all your (heavy, cotton, short sleeve) t-shirts are grey/it's all you wear (nearly entire closet is grey). When did that happen, you used to have blues and beiges too at least." ---Hubby: "They fit like I want and it's only color they came in. I ordered some more this week too." ---Me: "Oh - I figured you were color coordinating, y'know, the grey hair." *runs away*

Watched 1st episode of Netflix's 3 Body Problem. I didn't hate it. I didn't like it overmuch, either. More specifically it didn't catch my interest enough to care. Much more typical current US series style/methods, which I'm no longer very fond of. It's not that it's bad per se, it's just boring. At least that Chinese version was above average interesting visually for a while and started out intriguing, even if it became over extended re: run time to sell more adspace or whatever. Maybe it becomes more interesting in a few episodes. Probably won't watch more to find out.

This is going to sound silly but apparently the best hip-therapy move for me so far was: folding a small dishtowel into a narrow rectangle and sticking it long ways under the middle of the extra cushion I have on my deskchair. You know how most office/desk chairs (and car seats, and some living room chairs etc) have that dip/higher sides, or even a slant, like a racing car (which I hate, why do they do that)? My hips are small/narrow enough that before long I have a dip within that dip. Hubby, for example, gets much more even/flat across the chairseat wear. So I buy cushions. They just mold to the chair and simply end up with a dip within a dip too. I would guess that creates too much outer hip pronation or something. I know when I get up after sitting for an hour or more sometimes I feel like my pelvis (walking) is really thrust inward/back. Exercises for "hip pronation" I saw on YT didn't help at all. Anyway, just that tiny bit of extra height in the middle and the cushion feels flat/not dippy, my pelvis doesn't feel pronated when I get up, etc. I've slept through the night several nights in a row. They're still stiff and somewhat achey but they don't want to/feel like they're going to pop out of socket with the barest of motion shifting now. Bizarre. But hey if it works. Maybe exercise/s will be more effective now. When I was younger, body could cope with constant "dippy" chairs, now it can't or something. We'll see.

"Viggo, Western? Maybe." (28 seconds into trailer) "Wait, is this a sappy romance drama of the sort I don't enjoy?" (30 seconds into trailer) **(fully) Written and Directed by Viggo** ....now I must check it out. (and it appears to be a sappy love+revenge movie). I still need to watch Falling, too, which was his directing debut (also, co-writer). But it isn't as much in my potential wheelhouse as a Western, plus I watch so minimal TV/flim now, so haven't gotten around to it, even w/Lance Henricksen as a co-star interest pull. Maybe when this comes out for rent I'll do a double-bill.

Note: I'm a product of my time - while I try not to overuse/buy plastic packaged products, will reuse packaged containers, am aware of microplastics etc, it's pretty difficult to avoid as a consumer, and I'm sure I don't do as well as I absolutely could. eg, I'm a part of the problem, as a consumer, no denying. That said, the mantra of "Reduce, Reuse and Recycle" has not taken the "reduce" part to heart at all, especially when it comes to manufacturing. We could go at least go back to glass for a lot of products. I'm not entirely sure if using more paper - eg, liquid detergent vs. powder packaging - is better or worse (trees, processing process), but I'd guess (?) better at least in terms of overall environmental waste/poisoning. Maybe I'm wrong. But for gosh sakes, does stuff like small wires, cpu's, every beauty product ever need to be surrounded with five+ inches square of plastic, and do we really need plastic container "six packs" of tomatoes etc?

The ratio of one to two still largely applies. It's the distance cartpushers or buyers have to go that affect how fast production fills up markets or warehouses. Individual houses only consider distance to markets. Markets tries to get from warehouses/granaries but if not available, they will march directly to the farm/resource buildings, no matter the distance, so if farms or glass makers are far from markets... On the flip side, I find in C4 that you need a lot less warehouses(or none) if tightly packed production areas (glass, furniture etc) since production grabs directly from resource buildings making warehouses redundant. You only need warehouses for storing things to sell or lots placed close to markets so market workers won't travel across the map to grab directly from production buildings. Edit: so doubling down on warehouses/granaries near markets - not production areas - so you have more than one trying to get each type of good - helps to prevent empty markets. EditEdit: multiple markets also helps early on. I typically used two food and basic goods markets near pleb housing blocks. Yet another edit: to clarify, resource buildings (timber, farm) do not deliver resources anywhere, like they did in C3. It's more the opposite. A warehouse/market lady/furniture worker etc, has to go there and take out directly.

Patron - a few more tries. That Tech tree is now a giant mess, much of it nonsensical. You get Stone Quarry almost immediately, but can't build stone houses or stone wells until you've gone far far down the research path. Which is a singular path (with some optional side branching). I don't care about about this or that but must research it just to get to stone wells etc. Can't even build a *wheat farm* unless you research a bit down the tree. Major money/time grind. I get that it might be fine/cool if using the "objective goal path" playmode (that didn't exist before). And it's fine doing it once or twice. Different. But for "Sandbox" mode it's just aggravating if you want to play more than one map. Repeating it 10, 20x is just, no. I did however find a cheat table where I can make research instant, so I load up a map, place Town Hall/nothing else, give resources, research everything I care about in 3 minutes, reset resources to almost nothing, save map, exit cheat table. There. It would have made more sense for there to be multiple Tree sections, like this one for housing, this one for production, this one for percentage bonus perks, something like that.

Patron, city builder - Don't take the following wrong, I still find it some fun, but there are gripes, because I'm a cranky old woman. ----Started a new Sandbox-play map (not interested in having questie objectives added to sandbox). Remembered what I liked about it. Then about 12-15 game-years in, I remember the thing that actually annoyed me the most. The never ending population increase forcing you to build ever more houses, quite rapidly. eg, you have zero ability to control the pace of *when* you want to expand a lot. Not even a little. I suppose one could build just six-eight houses and nothing else but Shelters after (they don't procreate if living in Shelters), hm, maybe that'd work. ----I saw a "Map Editor, On/Off" setting, but there is no map editor, at least not in-game? ----the available maps are still not extensive, but at least there's a few more ----The tech tree wasn't too bad at release, now it's become kind of a nightmare regarding being forced to research/take tons of stuff I don't care about just to reach certain housing upgrades. And not being able to click on more than one at a time, argh. ----The main difficulty of Patron is the very start of a map. The first winter or couple of yeras could be a struggle depending on map and choices. but...even after all the patches... ----apparently, in general, the "make 5-10 tobacco farms (plus some food farms ofc) and a few Docks as early as you can" still works. You can just sell tobacco in huge lots for 100k+ before too long, and buy almost everything vs. create it yourself. ----Also, outside of city-scaping and personal goals, there's no real reason to build/use 80% of the stuff in the tech tree. You could make a thriving giant townscape with 98-100 in all scores, with nothing but peasants and wheat/fish, forever.

Caesar4 - I think the biggest advantage it has as a city builder is that (I think) population doesn't age, in terms of available labor aging itself out of the workforce. In C3, after about 10 game years your workforce seemed to age almost overnight and suddenly you didn't have enough workers on a massive scale, even if your population # was the same. There were ways to mitigate/fix it but its a limit you had to remember re: taking too long or on freeplay maps. It's also nice in C4 to be able to have houses here but put industry buildings on the other side of the map if you want, because walker-employment access isn't a thing. Still, C3 is the much better game. C4's pace can also feel tons slower (downtimes) and I still dislike its early 3d map size/building size/other restrictions etc.

Of interest to probably no one but myself: I've been messing about in Casear4's largest "freebuild" map, Roma. C4's mechanics are quite different from C3, and I don't recall C4's nearly as well. So it's taking a while to remember how to be efficient with housing and service blocks vs. terrain. After a few tries over a couple days I had a nice result of 6k population,nothing special, but I thought the layouts worked well/could apply to other maps. Then I curiously looked up an old save file of Roma from 2012 and looked at it. My brain deflated and went "oh, yeah, like that..." I now have a vague memory of doing this - may have even posted here, dunno - but it was an attempt at getting the "highest" supportable population one could get on Roma-map w/resources and all the trade ships available (vs. "pretty"). Which is why at the top of first picture is a zillion gatehouses taking up that whole land area, to suck up excess workers. The point all being, is that totally forgot about and I have no idea how I came up with/managed all that. It must have taken a lot of planning/nerd-ing and my current befuddling brain can't conceive of it. It's just a weird sensation. Also ... 50K+ population plus all those buildings - C4 may not be 2d like C3, but like I said in another thread already, try getting that in newer/current city builders without dropping to 5fps.

Streets of San Francisco, Pilot episode Good old fashioned crime show. I've seen it and a smattering of other episodes of it before, I'd guess in syndication while in grade school, but it was a bit before my time in terms of "following" it every week to see every episode. Think I'll try (slowly) working my way through the first season.

That is still occurring for me, and posted videos. Although I recently discovered that if I click a page back on the thread (eg, page 12 instead of 13), then click back-button to return, they then show up in thread like they should. Edit: the initial thread loading or reloading of a page makes them disappear again.

I don't think I'd associate Alien with Gorns, but nuTrek ... are the Gorn something a lot more scary now or something? Besides being very strong I mean. *google* ...oh.

Alien: Romulus - this only makes me think of Star Trek. And the word "nope." Although, there's always the chance it won't suck ... but still, nah. I idly wonder however what an Alien and Star Trek universe crossover would be like. *pause* nvm, just stick with the Borg. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice - Hm. Well, the title joke is amusing and at least they have original director/actors involved. And Danny Elfman. I loved the first one back then, it was fun, but not sure my nostalgia wanted more. Although, there's always the chance... <---that's my mantra re: everything, now.

Yeah if you needed high safety rating that was a pita. Although I remember if you were by a river you could just build a bridge and mini-wall off the far side of the bridge, then draw walls around your actual city to the edge of the river on the other side (had to go to the water, not a river-rock). That counted. And there were a lot of buildings (farms and such) that most of the time you didn't have to wall off, but I don't remember if you had to wall in almost every single thing (farm workers included) for 100 safety. Once you have cash rolling in you can wall off practically the entire map sometimes, leaving several edge tiles open for invading armies to spawn, but that just gets silly.