Walsingham

Good on you, mate. The only people who crap on someone just for having a job which they consider socially inferior are the lowest form of spiritual scum. But it's very very easy to fall into the trap of accepting their definition when you're actually doing the job. You don't, obviously, and I applaud you.

I really liked district 9 and am to but it when I have some spare cash. But the last part of the film was utterly without any content besides flying bullets. Which was a real shame considering how nuanced I felt the first part was.

Or he actually is the alter ego of Michael Moore, having fun pretending to be a communist. I may not have the highest regard for MM's grasp of fact, but I don't think he's ever claimed half the revisionist weirdness that LoF has.

As a matter of fact I do support the notion that some countries shouldn't be allowed nukes. Because, you know, their politicians are chosen through a process of byzantine violence and psychotic intrigue rather than talking toot and being bought by corporations. Our politicians are fat flatulent cats, but they are house cats. A lot of countries don't have anything less than tigers. Actually, I just noticed the time. I'm probably talking rubbish.

I was about to hop all over you, then I realised your post was very interesting. Congrats.

I just read on the BBC that someone from 4 Rifles was killed yesterday in Afghan. I know several guys in 4 Rifles and it's very weird/sad. On the plus side my back is noticeably better today.

I have this really vivid image in mind of a turtle behind you stopping in mid stride and then turning sadly away.

I'm with you there. Weren't we discussing this in the PnP forum? To make it seeem natural you start with elevation, then you imagine water flowing through it. Water makes for humans, and humans then move along the water, linking up. Later they begin making paths and tracks between settlements. Settlements on big bits of water, and especially on the way to places end up being biggest. Not, as Boo points out, because they are parachuted into inexplicable places. EDIT: Actually I forgot something - defensibility. Post-apocalypse has to have water, food, and also some way of keeping the rad bastards out. So Megaton almost makes sense. Essentially I'd expect either hill forts with plenty of guns, or isolated settlements would be hidden and only emerge occasionally to forage.

Why has this thread got a picture of a photocopy of my buttocks in it?

I agree that it sucks in some respects. I mean how ****ing hard is it to include the location of a target in a quest note? Although thsi wouldn't be so much of a problem were it not for the long and torturous walks you have to do looking for things which are often tiny on screen. but ultimately the fighting is challenging but fun. So it gets my vote. On the plus side I've been levelling up my character's mental spells and reached the conclusion that I lucked out when I picked them*. Sure there are a lot of biffing powers, but biffing is why I have an army. Mental powers let you do things like turn invisible (although you can't move). This meant that when I had to get through a particularly tough defensive cordon I ran, turned invisible, waited for the guards to disperse, then legged it forward only to disappear again. Like playing 'whats the time mr wolf' with Satan. Nerve wracking, but ultimately I am sure it was the only way I could have got through. You can also summon illusory copies of yourself which aids immensely when you realise you've picked the wrong fight and need to go running away like a small girl. On the other hand, as usual the charm spells are a waste of time. I haven't seen a single one work. In general I'd advise picking healing spells/skills, since this will improve survivability and take the strain off sustainability. But as I say, for special operations fun, go for the mental enchantment powers. Weapons wise as usual you get more buffs if you equip a shield. On the other hand you have to have shield skills to do this, and that takes away from your skill points which you need focussed elsewhere. I think heavy armour and a 2H weapon works well. I chose 2H blunt, because I like the style, but 2H blades are definitely more common. *Although I really didn't think through my other choices and now have random skills in small blades and bows which I simply won't use. This game specialises like crazy.

Given that we've already established that LoF hasn't convinced anyone on the forum, and doesn't seem likely to, I suggest a hypothesis to make sense of his continued 'senseless' posts. They are nothing to do with convincing anyone and advancing communism, and everything to do with fuelling a sense of victimised entitlement. An undeserved entitlement given that he declines to illustrate a single practical step of sacrifice he has made to actual benefit his fellow man rather than sitting about planning how best to rule them.

That's a gross oversimplification of the situation in Iran, mate. The office he holds may be a sinecure but he has turned into far far more, in large part through his backers in the IRGC. As in most authoritarian regimes the secret police, the praetorians, play a huge role. But it would be childish to deny he also speaks to a substantial portion of the populace even if that's because they are also ill-informed dingbats.

I recently bought Spellforce platinum from STEAM and while I hate to do down the efforts made by the chaps who've written walkthroughs I've noticed what I think are serious weaknesses in their grasp of potential strategies for this surprisingly excellent RPG/RTS. I therefore thought I would try to write a bit of a guide myself and thereby earn the abuse I richly deserve for criticising the work of better men. This is just a general guide, rather than a detailed campaign walkthough. Which I thought might be less spoilerrific anyway. I'm also going to assume a pretty high level of intelligence from the reader by going to the theory rather than hand-holding every practical application. 1. The golden rule The aim of all combat is to knacker operational weaknesses in the machinery the enemy intends to use by applying a locally superior force. Doing this means leveraging the right factor/s from point three. 2. Kick him in the nuts The machinery the enemy will use is of three types. He has production facilities, assault groups, and defensive groups. In almost all cases the enemy will eventually resupply assault and defensive groups almost as fast as you can kill them. By which I mean the rate of supply increases the longer time you spend on a map. I don't know why this is, but it can get bloody dangerous, even if the units in question are quite weak. Therefore in every case you MUST prioritise the production buildings, and do so as soon as you enter a map. How you do this will depend on leveraging the factors from point three. 3. Fighting Factors As in all forms of combat, you must get your head round several factors in your armies. These will permit you to achieve locally superior force and achieve your aim: - Lethality - Manoeuvreability - Survivability - Sustainability - Know wotz - Tempo - Undermining your enemy's fighting factors N.B. To appreciate all thes factors in play the best way is to watch the MST3k episode with the film The Killer Shrews. 4. Lethality Lethality means how effective your groups are at killing enemies. There are attack type vulnerabilities in the game, but they make sod all difference so far as I can tell, as I found when I accidentally ran a group of fire casters into a fire dragon. Obviously you need to observe how much damage each shot causes, but for group combat a far more important point is how great the range on a weapon is, and what the rate of fire is. Because your aim is to achieve and sustain as high a total output as possible. This may sound obvious, but this underpins three things the other strategy guides seem to ignore. 4a. Firstly, melee units might sound cool, but their killing range is only arm's length. This means that in a straight scrum your actual damage is limited to your front line. So in a narrow valley your fifty strong army of elite dwarven elite becomes a mere handful with along queue behind them. By comparison, a large mob of archers can typically apply their entire number to a single target. Which more than makes up for their comparative weakness (see survivability and sustainability). 4b. Every time an attacker moves or a target dies the process of targeting preparing and firing (either ranged or melee) must begin again. Different units have very different targetting and preparation times. Elves may look very cool, but compared with upgraded dwarven defenders they take an age to retarget and fire. The effect of a mob of elves is dramatic, the effect of a mob of dwarves is... industrial. like a meatgrinder. 4c. Your civilian workers are respectable at destroying buildings. Buildings are your primary target. Workers are fast off the start, and almost free. You work it out. 4d. Something everyone should agree on is that lethality trumps survivability. The best way to not die is to kill the other guy so fast that he can't apply enough force to kill you. 5. Manoeuvreability Manoeuvreability is weird, because although everyone moves at the same speed the movement AI is rubbish. Remember that your main aim is to bring superior local force to bear. This means getting all your chaps onto the target at once wherever possible. On the whole this means appreciating how disorganised your army will be every time it goes through a narrow pass such as a ford or valley, and grouping the most important (i.e. archer) units into small subunits of between 9 and 10. More than this and you not only have trouble targetting them, but they will also jostle each other on arriving at a destination, throwing off their ability to shoot! Move your army in bounds, from point to point, doing recce, and for the love of God don't get caught by an attack when on the move. Finally, when you DO intend to start a scrap use expendable skirmishers to pull an enemy onto you, rather than you moving to them. 6. Sustainability Units in spellforce often need specialist resources to build, and a lot of waffle has been written about mastering these in each quest. Provided you leverage the fighting factors correctly you can win with tier one units (I assume you don't need help to get the most basic resources like wood). What should concern you far more is how fast you can produce a unit, and how quickly you can get it concentrated with its mates. Because of the nature of the game and most maps this means low tier units are often actually better because they build fast. It also means that you want to assemble and take casualties close to your production points. Unfortunately, war being generally a bit annoying you won't get to do this much unless you are losing. Once you have got into the fight the aim is to have the enemy apply his lethality to units which can be quickly and cheaply replaced. This is important, because you should have already spotted that the units which take the damage and the units which dish it out don't have to be the same. This means that civilian workers, being free and bloody quick to build - in addition to being the only units who can be relied on to stand f***ing still - are my top tip for the shield wall. When you form a campaign plan for a mpa keep in mind that you want to either ensure your lethality is so good that you don't need replacements or that you are always fighting big battles near reinforcement. A further point to keep in mind is unit cap. This can be expanded by building HQ upgrades, but to begin with you won't have many warriors compared with your civilian worker cap. Again, I don't wish to sound callous about sending peasant levies to be slaughtered on an Imperial Guard scale but... 7. Survivability This is pretty simple. Be big and tough, and don't die. Expensive elite units are usually a good idea for taking damage in the front line, but keep in mind that they are expensive to replace (see above). Personally I'd rather have a cheap disposable front line of pressganged peasants. 8. Know wotz This means three things, and with the utmost urgency 8a. Know the ground layout, i find the overhead view and map almost completely useless, so I drew some sketch maps and plan from them. It also helps later for marking where quest givers live and so on. But mainly ground defines where you fight and how you fight. 8b. Know where the enemy is. Remember that in order of priority you need to find his production centres, keep an eye on assault groups as they form and march, and in doing that you'll almost certainly know where the defensive groups are. 8c. Once you know the above bloody well do something about it. Find out when the production centres are weak and hit them fast. 9. Tempo I cannot stress enough how important it is to make a quick start on hitting the enemy and not let upuntil near completing a map. This doesn't so much apply in the early maps, but once you hit midgame you simply cannot rely on simply taking punches from an intact enemy machine. Later on tin the game it is time to think about your overall campaign. This means earning XP and cash. you get both in small quantities even if you don't kill an enemy yourself. Put simply I find it convenient towards the endgame to settle in for a bit of organised baddy farming. Find an enemy production facilty, restrict their exit to one choke point, then prepare defensive works on a massive scale. If you do the job properly you should be able to leave your entire force in position and go away to come back levelled up, and with the ironing done. You can also make a literally staggering quantity of cash (presumably by selling all the corpses of your foes as fertiliser. If this seems unfair just consider that it's the enemy who has unlimited resources which you are only defending yourself against. A small word of warning is that if you choose too small an enemy to farm then they will peter out to a trickle. So make sure there are healthy breeding quantities of zombies etc. 10. Undermining the enemy's abilities This means making every bad thing which could happen to you happen to the enemy. 10a Lethality - make him fight on a narrow front. Use valleys if you can, but HQ buildings can be set up to narrow an access point. 10b Manoeuvre - make him change directions, make him run around, and especially round corners. His force will get strung out and confused. In particular I forgive elves a lot because their ice towers and ice archers freeze an enemy in their tracks for a split second. Which may not sound much until you see a barrage of ice going in, and the enemy is literally frozen in place to be minced by arrows/throwing hammers. 10c Sustainability - in theory you'd want to hit him in his expensive units a long way from home, but the enemy produces so quickly that this is irrelevant. Go in hard and fast for his production centres. 10d Survivability - You can and should prioritise on a basis of lethality /toughness. As every good child knows you always kill the wizard first. I don't need to tell you this. 10e. Know wotz - the enemy is pretty dumb. Kill his scouts so you get maximum time to build your own forces. Use skirmishers and decoy groups to get him chasing shadows into traps. 11. Turning the principles into a game plan Using all these principles my operational format is generally as follows. You are probably a bit more mentally agile and could handle more ambitious applications. Step 1. Using just my avatar and any party members I will mount a rapid recce assault on any small production facilities, prioritising those which make ghouls. I hate ghouls. This works by leveraging my manoeuvreability and the fact that by mid game your avatar should be able to get in, destroy a building and get out without dying. Do NOT engage in attrition at this stage. Just get in and knacker the spawn buildings. You can mop up any defensive forces at your leisure. Step 2. Very swiftly you should have a rough idea of where your HQ will be and the general lie of the land. Pick an area which you can operate easily in and try to make sure it has two distinct flanking sectors, with two distinct choke points. One is going to be defended against. the other is going to get comprehensivley pwned as fast as possible. Now begin setting up the base. My first ten civvies form a suicide squad to follow my avatar around; the whole generally being referred to as kampfgruppe Bastard. Any after that are set to gather the basic prerequisites. The aim there is to get a decent tempo of resources so I can sustain both defensive and attacking operations. Step 3. By now the enemy will have got defensive groups up and running in earnest as well as a few tiny assault groups. You should begin using towers to cover the choke from the defensive flank, and have a flying platoon of fighters to mop up attackers. Do not be afraid of building cheap buildings just to absorb enemy attacks. Step 4. Meanwhile KG Bastard should hoof about, nailing enemy spawn points. Your civvies will get horribly slaughtered, but they can be quickly and cheaply replaced between attacks. Just remember to hit the production and bug out. Don't hang around glory hunting. Step 5. Hopefully your defensive preparations will have been keeping pace with attacks from the defensive sector. Remember to apply all the rules about knackering the enemy's fighting factors. So for starters you should always try to get the enemy to bog down in the defensive kill zone. Early on this shouldn't really tax you but later youw ill have lots of options. Ice towers, tree farms are quite a sneaky way of breaking up attacks, ice archers, and counter attacks by bait mobs of civvies. This last means that when an attack starts you send a group of three civilian workers haring out past the attackers. This will often split his force as some run off after them. Step 6. If all is going well you will now have eliminated the production in your designated assault sector. This now effectively becomes a quiet sector, although you may want to mop up so you can better exploit its resources. make bloody certain, that there are no hidden back routes or spawn areas lurking in the hills and valleys. Step 7. Now recce the defensive sector with suicide squads of screaming civilian workers. This will show you what you need to hit, and what you can safely farm for XP and cash. Step 8. Build your resources, build your favourite army. Step 9. 'Invade' the defensive sector. Use your military forces to kill baddies, and your civilians to wreck infrastructure. Step 10. Bottle up the baddies in your baddy farm. Go do the washing up. Come back. Step 11. When the baddies eventually give up, kill them. Step 12. Smile broadly.

Well, exactly.

Screw you, man. You let him have New Jersey. Alaska's awesome.

I'd like to make it clear that I am very sympathetic and haven't just started a tabletop stopwatch to time how long it is before you're in bed with some other hot rock chick.

It's great to know that our judges haven't lost their turn of phrase.

You eat FOX breakfast cereal, don't you?

Best opening sequence since the Blues Brothers.

I'm really confused now. Did Kor share with his local paper, and if so, why? We've got, like SCIENTISTS and stuff on here. We're like the social equivalent of Bond's Q department. Shryke: "Pay attention, double oh seven"

Oh for the love of...

The Bronson film soundtrack. Perfectly captured my mood.

I would argue that mishmash of ideologies is your strength, and your national character. As, unfortunately, is the attempt by various sections to homogenise the whole. An impossible, and pernicious effort.

Chatted a friend out of his depression temporarily. We always end up giggling like madmen, talking about crazy visions of things. Listened to the whole Bronson soundtrack and loved it for the first time. You know how that happens? You listen to something ten times, then you finally get it? Anyway, I decided to look up some Bronson trivia and found this fantastic interview with Tom Hardy about him talking to Bronson on the phone. , even if the language is what you'd expect from a lifetime criminal.

I literally can't BELIEVE that they didn't use Andy Hamilton as Tyrion. In case yo don't know the dwarvish comedian Andy Hamilton then check minute 4 on this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HgK6nX7iA4