Calax

He is the best game designer of all time, who no one talks about. He was the lead in System Shock, designer and programmer in Ultima Underworld 1 and 2, and had a hand in most other LGS projects from Terra Nova to Thief. His part in Deus Ex was minor, as far as I know. He's not known because his role in various games is bit unclear. He's programmer and designer, but I guess most think he's just programmer. For example in Ultima Underword: Producer: Warren Spector Director: Richard Garriott Design: Paul Neurath Doug was one of the programmers. In Ultima Underworld II he's already leading the team with important positions. Project Leader: Doug Church Lead Design: Tim Stellmach Design: Doug Church, Paul Neurath Lead Programming: Doug Church Producer: Warren Spector Director: Paul Neurath System Shock: Producer: Warren Spector Project Leader: Doug Church Lead Programmer: Doug Church Warren Spector might have been given credit that actually belong to Doug Church. From Thief onwards, Ken Levine (sort of) takes his place so quality stay high during his run all the way to System Shock 2. Only thing I can't figure out is DeusEX. Doug and Kenny are gone, Warren remains. Lead Designer is Harvey Smith. Then come DeusEx Invisible War and all bets are off. What really happend between those two games? Your basic consolization (that we see in every game nowadays) maybe? Or was the input from Doug so important for the DeusEx - credited Special Thanks (Additional Programming and Design Input) Doug Church - that he still played the key part in what made that game so great. In DeusEx Invisible War Doug didn't do anything, but got credit in Special Thanks. Please... Unless you know the man STFU.

doesn't "kunoichi" mean "woman" in Japanese? It's how ninja are generally referred to if they're female.

Sooo, this is only tangentially related but apparently after the quake the Japanese Emperor (who I thought had been ejected after Hirohito/Showa) did make a televised appearance to the nation to tell them to buck up and work together. For some reason it strikes me as odd that Japan still has a monarchy, but then it's one of those things that NEVER comes up in ANY way shape or form in the US except during a WW2 unit in high school.

The AI is REALLY aggressive at the start. On hard or legendary guys who would regularly smash through the previous games are getting canned in 3 turns on Total War Center. GFY. Good For you? Great Friends Yippee? GodFrey Yayoi?

Restarted my Shogun game, Traded out Date for Chokosabe. My segmented empire would have worked if I'd not been so backwards about growing my armies. My current Chokosabe game has me rockin out on my starting island, and then I'm in the process of an "invasion" of Satsuma. I say "invasion" because the nations over there are all christian and a couple of the provinces had Buddhist rebellions that I took advantage of. Only problem now is that due to nearby influence, I've got to keep making monasteries and pumping out monks to keep a few of my regions Buddhist, Including my capital (because I allowed foreign trade, the Europeans brought in Christianity). One thing I think I forgot to mention was the revamped "family tree". Now, instead of M:TW2's or Romes tree where it starts with your first faction leader and then you can pick from any of the cousins, or anyone REMOTELY connected to your blood line, you only have the immediate family of your Daimyo that matters and then his brothers as generals. It's kinda cool actually. I admit, I was happy a few turns ago because Motochica Chokosabe finally came of age, so in my head I can say that this guy is rampaging around Satsuma conquering towns. And I have mostly figured out how to defend castles. Basically you just stay inside and have a whole PILE of katana soldiers and a few archers, the archers do damage from the walls until the enemy is literally climbing to get em, then back off and the katana soldiers charge in and smash. Of course I've only done this once or twice and it was against a HUGE stack of Yari Ashigaru (I was using Yari Samruai, and a few naginata). The big thing here is that if you're catching the enemy as they JUST finish climbing the walls your soldiers can just tear them apart because they aren't a mass yet. This leads to pretty hefty morale damage that usually ends with them starting to flee before the last soldiers are up the walls. The main fight I pulled this off in I had 800 men against 2600, I managed to kill about 1900 of the enemy before loosing finally.

Technically they're Shinobi/Kunoichi. They're basically the covert ops of Japan (classically in the Warring states period). There were a few clans that were ONLY Ninja basically (Iga being one of the most famous). After the end of the warring states as the Shogun ended up employing them as an internal security team that hid itself as his household servants. According to Stephen Turnbull they were drawn mainly from the lower classes. They were a Role more than anything, the best ninja were known to come from Iga and Koga.

And yet actual historians completely disagree with you, go figure. And either way, half of what you said didn't in any way invalidate what I said. As I pointed out two of the most famous were from the era of warring states, and while they weren't the traditional Black Pajama archtypes they were still the heads of their chosen houses, and the average member of the ninja clan was a simple farmer. Seriously, if you're gonna give a story like what you are, give a source.

You do realize he is not someone taken very seriously right? On a tangent I've been waitying to see who would be the first to blame the quake on global warning. I donno, but it was pretty amazing to see how fast people were happy to say that it was justice (against the Atheists, or just the Japanese in general)

Played more of Shogun 2. Still getting the hang of it all, had a few issues because of the food system (basically you have to maintain a food surplus otherwise people go crazy and end up rebelling) But overall am doing well. I wish Steam was better about hot linking screenshots. Anyway I'm currently near turn 100 and am splayed out along the southern edge of eastern Japan. Managed to snag a FEW of those provinces because their lord got stupid and they rebelled. Nice thing about that is that usually when they rebel you're talking MASSIVE amounts of Yari Ashigaru (militia spears). http://steamcommunity.com/id/Calaxprimal/s...680317403460044 The guys in white are ALL Yari Ashigaru being slaughtered by my swordsmen (2 units of Katana Samurai, 2 of Date No-Dachi, and 1 Yari Samruai). One thing that's gotten more interesting are the sieges. I mentioned this before but no longer are you required to bring along siege equipment to blow up walls. BUT the castles are now tiered: http://steamcommunity.com/id/Calaxprimal/s...619/?tab=public That's a good example as it's one of the larger castles in the game, It's got a full moat around it so you have to use one of the bridges to get to the walls, then you have to take a total of 3 tiers of the castle to actually reach the keep. and ALL of the castles have something like this rather than just walls. http://steamcommunity.com/id/Calaxprimal/s...157/?tab=public http://steamcommunity.com/id/Calaxprimal/s...3457960?tab=all http://steamcommunity.com/id/Calaxprimal/s...2654030?tab=all (an example of scaling the walls on a tiny fort) Right now I'm the most powerful nation on the map, but I have a few challengers. The Mori, Chokosabe, and Takeda are all near my strength (subtracting my vassals) and I've recently had a few setbacks. My faction leader was killed twice because he got ambushed by somebody MUCH bigger and I'm kinda sucky at castle defenses (should probably practice more). I've got two power bases, one is Iawate (I think tha's the province) which was my starting zone, the other has become Mikawa, mainly because it's right in the middle of everything and thus a great location to build up. I am thinking of moving my captial there to make it easier to get my generals to the front because I'm so segmented right now. Also, I have found a very fun new unit. http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/59468031...E08E9796B3EFCB/ Basically they're grenadiers, but instead of shot-putting the grenades they actually slap em into a sling and fling the suckers so they explode on what you want (in that shot they're impacting on the gateway to a castle I'm sieging).

Wot?

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/03/oconnor-a...his-matter-end/ the Feds in Aussie land are getting ready to pull rank about a 18+ bracket for games to be sold there.

There's a entirely different team working on ME, so leave that crap for DA3. I think if they ever released a product like that the internet would probably explode. Wow, nobody mentioned Metal Gear in this!?

They've changed the AI so it's not always auto-war with neighbors, they respect your soverignty. I've been going through Total War Center's forums and looking at the threads there and apparently, if you're going to try to start at Very Hard, you're almost totally boned. At that level the CAI does go back to the "Player must die" mentality and quickly gets you stabbed in the head by everyone around you. On normal they're more respective about things, but you have to be pretty smart about picking what you do diplomatically, If you break a treaty you loose a pile of honor and have a modifier against you that makes people dislike you. I have learned to manipulate the Battle AI a bit thus far to start sniping generals. Its cheap and can be a bit dangerous but *shrugs*. Basically I've been pulling my general and exposing him, and instantly the AI bee lines for him, so I pull my general back behind the lines and the enemy general (the fastest unit) lands in a pile of ashigaru (spearmen). One interesting thing is that you CANNOT let your units go running around away from the general for to long in fights. If they're away from the morale buff they've got a fairly good chance of breaking just from standard fighting. Seems stupid I know but *shrugs*

Wals, you do realize that planning for an earthquake in the magnitude of 9.0 is damn near impossible right? There have only been 3 such earthquakes that have EVER been recorded, and the amount of power cut loose by them is just.... insane. 6 or 7 is plannable, but once you're up that high, the sheer amount of damage that's going to be done is just gonna throw any possible plan out the window. 9.0 is approx the power of 474 MEGATONS of TNT being detonated. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqi...001xgp/#details There's a link to the US Geological Survey article. According to them the only earthquake near this strong in this area was in 869. And that's simply theoretical.

Played a bit after restarting as the Date clan (that's Dah-Teh). The quests are back, but instead of being assigned by the pope or whoever, it's just sort of suggested that you do something and it gives you rewards. Sometimes it's just a standard unit, but other times it can be something like "20% increased trade income for the next 5 turns". They also put in random events for your nation. I had two total, one that was my merchants coming and asking me to invest in foreign trade (the off world trade routes from Empire and Napoleon have been replaced with ones that go to Europe), and I got to pick between either investing in foreign trade or investing in domestic policies for different right. The other one I got was an entusiastic young man appeared and begged me to take him on as a leader, I could either take him on for 1k gold, or just pass him off. Militarily as the Date I started up north with the Mogami already at war with me (It seems that no matter what when you start a new game one of your neighbors will be at war with you). I proceeded to curb stomp them in a series of battles that had me capturing their two territories. They did have an issue with the fact that as I was trying to get to their second settlement they kept charging at me with a whoooole lotta Bow Samurai with only a few melee units, while my entire army is almost the exact opposite. I managed to beat up three armies total like this, but it's not exactly as easy as it was in Rome or M:TW2 where archers could do damage but it took a bit of working to actually see it done. Meanwhile here, I've had two units of archers literally kill/break a couple of units that were charging them across open ground simply by volume of fire. Castle fights have been re-designed again. I haven't attacked a larger castle, but even the smaller ones are rough. ALL your units can now scale the walls (no need for rams, or other on site siege engines), but getting them to the walls can be a bit crazy (the archers doing SO much damage off the bat, plus being in an elevated firing position) and when you do get to the top, you're gonna take some damage from any units in the castle. By the way, ALL the castles are basically built on mesas. Think that for almost all of the castles you'll fight. Now then, in the campaign they've got a style for buildings similar to the one found in napoleon. You're given a set number of slots for the town itself (decided upon by the size of your castle in the area) and you can also order construction of what (in Napoleon/Empire) would have been an individual part outside the city, from within the city so you don't have to hunt all over the campaign map for every horse breeder, arms house, and cultural center on the planet. Generally you're going to want to specialize your cities due to these limitations. You won't be having a city that'll be able to produce everything under the sun at max level. Anyway, I'll come back to this as time goes on. Here's where I'm gonna be tossing my screenshots when I remember to take/upload them. http://steamcommunity.com/id/Calaxprimal/screenshots/

Smarter.... I screwed up and let myself get sucked into a fight on a mountain with my opponent because you don't see any of them detaching units to fling at you piecemeal. Campaign wise I'll have to get back to you as I haven't really played much.

I played about an hour and a half as the Shimazu, ended up taking on the one comp I started out as hostile with, then got attacked by the two MAJOR powers in the region, and lost. Overall it seems pretty good, the fun of the melee fights is back (instead of constant repositioning of units to get flanking shots with rifles). Although it is a LITTLE rough to get used to the fact that the main interface is so different. Gone are gentlement and the research colleges, they've been replaced by a simple "arts" list. You get Zen and Military arts that give you different bonuses (basically civil and military obviously) Instead you get Metsuke (cops), ninja, and Geisha (I think). The game is sweet, I'm gonna restart when I get a little bit more time.

Trying to decide what clan I want to go for in Shogun 2 I can pick from the Shimazu, Mori, Date, Takeda, Uesugi, Oda, Tokugawa, Hattori, or Chokosabe. I'm thinking I'll go for the Shimazu because of their location (the very south) and their bonus (extra special katana troopers). At some point however I'm gonna end up jumping in as the Takeda simply because the Takeda (under Shingen at least) were friggin awesome. To bad there isn't a Sanada clan.

THEY WERE [legal age of concent]! GET IT RIGHT!

Honestly, on a party game like DA I usually just outfit my main and backup characters and then junk everything else and lord help me if I run into a situation where anyone else needs to do something. I think progressive loot works when you've got a VERY small number of slots to fill. But when you're running at the level of WoW or DA it just gets annoying (but then wow is built around the gear as a major form of progression so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanzo_Hattori Hattori Hanzo, Lord of the Iga clan of ninjas and the primary retainer to Ieyasu Tokugawa. In history he is known mainly for saving Iyeasu's bacon when the Takeda had him cornered at Mikatagahara (Ieyasu ended up loosing a LOT of his retainers during this fight) by drawing upon the locals who were part of the Iga clan. Also, he was more a spymaster rather than an actual agent in history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotaro_Fuma Kotaro however, worked for the Hojo. In history he is mainly known for causing CRAZY amounts of chaos in the armies of the Toyotomi during their siege by attacking the guys in the middle of the night so that they didn't know who was going after them. The castle still fell in the end. Legend has it that Fuma actually managed to kill Hanzo in a naval raid. And for the record one of the gates at Edo Castle (in modern Tokyo) is named "Hanzo Gate" after Hattori Hanzo.

So you're looking at ninjas as if they were created and existed solely after Japan industrialized (due to american power)... Interesting choice there sonny. The ninja were around back when the Tokugawa shogunate (who were deposed during the forced industrialization) was in power, in fact, two of the most famous ninjas in history actually existed at that point, one as a direct subordinate to Tokugawa and the other as the guy who killed the first (Hattori Hanzo and Kotaru Fuma to be exact). *Sigh* And you were calling me blind.

It's important to remember that this is only for elementary school and that this is not meant for the higher educations.. I don't think we are quite ready for this in high school/college or universities yet. My point was that the kids would be ill-equipped once they got out of the school to move up the educational ladder.

They worked a variety of jobs, but one of the major ones was being farmers/landscapers because it was something that people rarely saw (well, they'd ignore the guys in genera). Hell, ALL of the ninjas weapons are based off of items for various jobs, kunai were co-opted from masonry work, the scythes were taken from landscaping/farming... that sort of thing.

Do we in fact really need such systems at all? To a degree, yes. I mean it's great on a small scale when the kids learn that way, but when you have to consider just how many kids you're talking about in this situation you're gonna need to broaden your learning necessities.