Walsingham

Robbie williams makes pop songs, plays the publicity game, and doesn't get worked up about it. Fair play to him. I wont buy his albums, but I won't pee in his pint if I get the chance...

Elite: Bad command, and careless discipline can do for the best equipped unit. Ever heard of a place called Isandhlwana? British troops with repeating carbines and cannon were slaughtered by Zulus armed with cowhide shields, and short stabbing spears. http://www.rorkesdriftvc.com/isandhlwana/isandhlwana.htm The sanitised description of how the Zulus are found in the ravine, and the battle starts, isn't as good as the one reported by the cavalry themselves. The British patrol had been heading back to camp when one man dismounted to urinate behind some bushes. he rounded the bushes, looked down, and saw 20,000 zulus staring at him, who had ben keeping completely hidden and silent there for hours. I can't begin to imagine how terrifying that would be! If spearmen beating your tanks bother you that much, imagine they are actually just very small numbers of normal modern troops.

Sure Deus Ex is linear, but with just a little suspension of disbelief it carries a reasonable illusion of choice. Anyway, the real thing is the exploration of the environment, the mythos, and the range of tactics. I've played it three different ways (swordsman, sniper, and sneakthief) and found them all satisfying, which is rare indeed. Keep trying, Steve, I know you'll get the hang of the brainier options even if you can't shoot your way around. Note, for example, that you can literally guess some of the computer passswords if you think hard aboutt the characters who aceess them, and what else you have read in the game. I'm playing Civ3, as you know, and waiting on a more sophisticated Close Combat, possibly a sci-fi one, although I may be waiting some time. I'm not playing BG again for at least a year, so it will be a bit fresher; and I can't play Torment because I have lent it out.

I don't loathe Civ3. I just get aggravetd by how close it gets to being astounding. I mean, they're a clever bunch, but to be so near and yet so far ...it's maddening. And I really do not approve of the AI's negotiation skills. I was playing it this afternoon. babylon has 152 infantry, and 56 tank units. England has 10 infantry, and no tanks. England has a monopoly on spice. I offer a straight trade for silk, which England declines. I predictably overrun their pitiful state in a single turn, and commit genocide on their luckless people (see my comments on revolution). Now, what would have been so hard about recognising a massive imbalance of force, and a fair trade, and letting me have the damn spice? EDIT: it is possible that my habit of committing genocide makes the AIs dislike me. However, there is a difference between disliking someone from a position of strength and disliking someone who has combined air, land, and sea forces poised on your borders, and who is offering at least a face-saving compromise AND will assuredly employ said genocidal violence on you if you refuse.

That's probably the one of the most ludicrous comments I've ever read in these boards. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> And yet, curiously, it is one of the few comments that can be backed by clinical trials! I can't be bothered to go rooting around for the references just now, since you probably can't be bothered to read them. Just for starters try to write down what intelligence actually is. A clear testable definition.

I liked a lot about Alpha Centauri, but I before I twigged to the fact that an accomodation was possible, I used to get into these godawful knock-down drag out bitch fights with the planet, sweeping waves of terraformers culling the fungus, and hovering psionics armed death craft. Man versus mushroom *happy sigh* those were the days.

I am not going to do the IQ test because a) I am not convinced there is any such thing as intelligence. There is merely expertise, and self-confidence. b) IQ tests were invented by scientists funded by Nazi-sympathetic think-tanks, and used in eugenics programs. c) I've taken far too many IQ tests over the years and they all say I am much smarter than I have any right to be, or indeed think I am.

I've never read Carl sagan. But i'll admit its not a really original idea just on first principles. Commissar wins at playing the conspiracy game, by the way. To up the stakes I'd like to suggest that women eat socks and toilet paper, and they have to go to the toilet in pairs because angels live there (they're not in gents lavatories because of the smell) and one girl has to stand point.

I went through a stage where I was drinking a pint of coffee every hour. It works, but make sure you drink enough water.

You know this theory that somehwere out there is a super species that will arrive some day and help us make sense of everything, and enlighten us with art and wisdom? I subscribe to the belief that WE are that species, and the rest of the cosmos is waiting for us to get off our backsides and get out there.

Isn't ther a mace somehwere in BG with a description where some priest has it enchanted with the instructions "And enchanteth it. Enchanteth it so it shalt smiteth things ...most explosively." But I remembered one of my favourite quotes (evar): "We are all aware that the senses can be decieved, the eyes fooled. But how can we be certain that we are not being fooled at any particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in a tank somewhere, tricked all my life to believe in the events of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism?" - Project Pyrro; Specimen 46 Vat 7 activity recorded: mission year 2302 22467 - TERMINATION OF SPECIMEN ADVISED From Alpha Centauri

Anything with tanks. I just can't seem to get enough tanks.

DO Not read much of his other stuff unless you are seriously mormon. Orson Scott-Card is a fanatical mormon and he show it in much of his philosophy, especally in Folk of the Fringe, where everybody's favorite nightmare happens, MAD. While everything else looses technology. Utah becasue it's the "holy place" and because the mormons are a bunch of nutjobs, Still is a fairly capable civilization. with computer's crops and cars. The one thing i don't understand is how they can grow crops, the entirety of Utah is either desert or a Salt plain and they don't have any fresh water... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Obviously they grow fields of salt, and graze majestic herds of saltibeeste.

If he was around at night, flying at over 100mph, and had glowing red eyes, I am not sure that fear is attributable to some extra power of the eyes alone.

I know what you mean about el chupacabra. Very very peculiar. On the other hand, people do far stranger things every day...

"...as far as strategy goes, the military combat is both simplified and expanded on. Your units only have a single combat stat, so you don't have to worry about separate attack, defense, armor, or any of that. However, as an individual unit gains experience, you can train it with any number of upgrades. Some units can be taught to heal themselves and those around them. Or, you might opt to research the commando skill, which will eventually allow units to move through forests like they aren't there or use enemy railroads to slip behind the lines." I don't like the sound of that. I think knicking the system from Panzer General would have been a good idea. Units entrench to varying degrees, and different terrain causes different types of combat to occur. Armour, even modern armour, would be harder pressed to winkle out infantry and guerrillas from cities and mountains. While infantry would be stuffed if they were caught in transit in open terrain by fast movers like tanks or cavalry. And so on. I also think they missed the opportunity to involve logistics. It is supply of units that determines how they move on a map like that in Civ games, not their tactical speed. This would not just mean more work for the poor player, but give them more things to use, like natural lines of supply, such as the sea and great rivers. It would also add another element to research for warfare. So you are fighting with swords still, but have invented better oxcarts or the commisariat, or living off the land, and so you can out manoeuvre the opposition.

I have tonnes of old games, and tried endlessly to get them to work on XP. Many were the internet boards I visited, and endlesssly did I hear the advice "Change the compatibility settings" until me teeth were giving off sparks of rage. My solution was to purchase a bottle of good whisky, and trade it with a friend who had an old computer going spare. It now runs Win98 and sits patiently on a second desk for gaming.

Certainly. 58,000 paces then we shall commence slapping! But before you set off, understand that I was simply acknowledging that my reasons are probably not wholly internally consistent. But then, you got no choice about living, and no choice about dying, so worrying overmuch about how you do either seems a little fruitless.

I have to say, Aponez, that after fifteen years I have yet to finish Clauswitz' book. It has to be the most tedious and unnecessarily wordy treatise on warfare ever written by someone other than me. Sun Tzu said more in less time. I'm not saying he's wrong, since I've read commentaries on him, just that he should have got someone else to word it.

I still cheer myself up with the song Guybrush sings in Monkey Island 3. "Oh there's a... Monkey in my pocket and he's stealing all my change; His stare is blank and glassy, I suspect that he's deranged." Maybe these things just have to catch you at the right moment. :"> I don't know if this fits in here, but i do remember the sensory record in the mental brothel in Torment, where some sort of fleet is engaged in genocide, and the Captain says something to the effect of "You ask by what right I condemn these people to death? I say we have no right to let them live."

Three people died in that 'slap'. :angry: <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's how the game is played. A great many more people have died in 'slaps', and a great many more will. *shrugs* C'est la vie.

I don't think it's beyond the capacity of US intelligence* to get something like that wrong. I just happen to think the Chinese were due for a slap after the spying scandal broke. Thanks for the info about the van allen and so on. I never said I was an expert. And I obviously know they are getting old, fethwit I simply meant that they had been expiring in odd ways. I didn't bother to find out what ways, because frankly I don't think it would turn out to be anything significant. *Or anyone's intelligence, to be fair.

"Back and to the left" I didn't mention that one, because it is a conspiracy that HAS leaked.

I agree. When defending the honor or name of a nation, they often aren't really concerned with the well-being of it's people, but more so defending the concept of the country. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Sometime these interests coincide. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Which was my point, but better made, perhaps. I do have some demands in reverse, for example. If we started conducting genocide, or broadcasting live test-match cricket, for example, I'd not bother. But so long as we rank pretty high on my list of countries, I'm willing to protect and serve that.

You think you've got problems. I did a star wars test once and was told I was a fething ewok!