Walsingham

Well I knew I wouldn't be agreeing with you for ever, Hildegarde. Certainly the views of 20% of the popn. should not be ignored. However, they should also not be able to dictate against the views of the remaining 80%, as I'm sure you'd agree. On balance I feel the burden of being reasonable ought to fall on them, and to count themselves rather lucky if they don't get completely funted in the deal. They ought to be more pleased with the fact they will have a degree of autonomy from their fellows in North and South than angry that they can't tell them what to do any more. Regarding a fundamntalist state, this would be extremely undesirable from a perspective of fostering democracy. However, I think it would have a couple of useful implications. 1) No-one could accuse us of deliberately rigging such an event. 2) No-one could accuse of being anti-islamic or anti-democratic 3) Rather a fundamentalist regime influenced by the increasingly moderate Iranians than one adhering to al-qaeda/talib doctrine.

I think Kumquat is winning me over. [i never thought I'd say THAT] The conclusion of a 1984 study in the UK (Operation Brave Defender) was that after about three days of the breakdown of civil order people would do what we've seen in NO. However, I do think that we are seeing a division between particularly the cops and these people. The reports by the BBCs guys on the ground was that the cops dropped off food and water at gunpoint and threatened people who asked them questions. I would argue this is because a lot of people in the US regard poor people as having mainly themselves to blame. therefore there was a lack of stored goodwill to fall back on when things got hairy.

The typical decision is something like "We have 100,000 left in our budget. We can screen 50,000 men for testicular cancer, with a projected result of saving 500 lives. Or we can send one little girl with a rare brain disorder to California for a treatment which has a 10% chance of letting her live 20 years." Government is full of decisions like this. There is no room for philosophical nicety or time for endless debate. The spotlight goes on you and you have to choose.

I'm not suggesting it isn't a functional nation. I'm just saying it is far less homogenised than we give them credit for. Us Euroweenies have a tendency to treat the States like a very large Belgium or something.

My impression is that opinion is becoming increasingly common. Anti-establishment opinion appearing on mainstream media, I don't know.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/4218686.stm The woman steals a lorry for no reason, then runs from police and is caught red handed. Her mother claims she has been found guilty only because she is a gypsy!

Ooota goota, Solo?

Yay for this thread!

I envy you the fact you will eb playing this for the first time. My advice: relax and smell the flowers as you go through. Talk to people and even experiment with people just because they are there to go into the party. I enjoyed playing evil, and if you do you won't want the list Darque gave. I won't spoil the fun by telling who you should have, but you won't necessarily want them. My advice is to take a fighter thief, two proper fighters (plus yourself as fighter) a mage, and a cleric for healing. Don't rely on clerics or druids to provide battlefield support fire. They're crap in BG1. Note that you will need trap defusing at some point in teh expansion ( I won't say when) so bear this in mind when developing your thief. My only caveat would be that you should take Minsc (and Boo!) irrespective of aligment. Do not worry about the fact that annoying witch appears to go with him. There is a 'certain' bottle or two of poisonous material you will find around the same time as his quest and she can be discretely poisoned. He will not leave the party if this happens.

Agreed. I think that it was basically a multiplayer game that they tacked some 'AI' onto to sell to singleplayers. Blech. I'd play Alpha centauri, but I can't find an XP compatible version anywhere.

To take devil's advocate, is it actually good that the media rant at us?

Lucius, the States really isn't the same. There's very little which binds them together in reality. The legal system has the biggest influence, followed by the media, but after that... Go visit New York, followed by Juneau, followed by Miami. I'd say they were no less divergent than Amsterdam, Trondheim, and Marseilles. Language notwithstanding,a nd even that is changing as immigrant commmunities are increasingly sticking to tehir native tongues.

Not really news, mate. But worrying nonetheless.

Meta has a point. reminds me of a story I heard on the campaign trail earlier this year where a farmer took a shotgun into a hospital and told a consultant to just go out and shoot his wife. this is essentially what a cut-off would mean. On the other hand there are already some treatments the NHS will not fund. Typically these are those that have a slim hope of success (clinically speaking) and cost a lot of money. I like your point about actually encouraging risk-takers. This is very true. It is a sad symptom of the emasculation of our society that we regard anyone who makes a noise or gets worked up about stuff as dangerous.

ROCK!

Good point, Fishboot, but couldn't you in fact exploit that by having some really key people not voiced at first, thus throwing off the players?

I have tried googling their pages, to no avail. I guess it may be too deep in teh system to be modded. In any case i don't mind things being hard, but it makes all planning and strategy pointless. The only logistics approaches that have any effect are cutting out the key resources, and even then, because of the 'free' magic goblin workers the Ai can still cheat! I'm about *this* far from uninstalling it and giving my copies to charity.

http://www.somethingawful.com/ According to the somethingawful team their drive to get funds for Katrina flood relief was hampered first by the Paypal group shutting down the donation system, and then informing him that a) The Red Cross could not receive the aid money. b) Paypal would be taking a cut. This is disgusting, yet totally typical paypal behaviour in my opinion. Not sure if that counts against board rules, but I'm willing to risk it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4360461.stm A shot in the arm for those sick of the human race.

Has anyone ever heard of a mod that prevents the AI players from conductng tehir horrendous cheating? I'm talking about their capacity to produce units at fixed rates irrespective of actual resources available to a given city, or indeed time available. Or their tendency to create wonders at unrealistic rates, or terraform <sic> terrain without sending out workers. This sort of stuff. I have tried everywhere I can think of outside of joining a civ III forum. I believe in you guys more. Help me out.

I was just about to ask this very question. I only have an onboard 512 mag RAM intel graphics chip. Morrowind runs fine. Will Half Life run OK?

Part voice acting is justified. But voice acting for every muppet in a city? You're kidding, right? Keep the budget and planning for the key persons. Party NPCs and really funky bad guys.

Thanks for the update on that, Hildegarde. I may have not read it properly, but what is your viw on the federal nature of the constitution? So far as I can see it is a pretty sensible reaction to the divided nature of the country. Over time I expect it will drift together, as all federal groiupings have a tendency to do. My feeling about Sunni objections is that they should be keen to accept this compromise rather than provoke a civil war which they would lose without intervention from naighbouring Sunni states. Unless this is exactly the plan: to ignite a conflict, scare off the coalition and bring in say Syria... If that is the gameplan then we can expect many more deliberately inflammatory acts.

And to think you still find people who advocate Anarchy as a political platform.

Full voice acting does add to the quality of the game, but I don't think it really presents value for money from the company's perspective. Maybe the snooty professional reviewers have it high on their lists, though, which is very important. BTW, Roshan, mate, no offence but that is the last time I am struggling through your damn keyboard shenanigans. Clean out the gunk, buy a new keyboard, but I'm not reading any more of your posts till you do.