xzar_monty

It's quite hard to know how to take it (except perhaps as a blatant lie), but even if we completely disregard human lives, I find it curious that the sinking of the flagship Moskva, not to mention all the other stuff, still qualifies as "nothing lost". Nothing is a strong word, after all. (I don't speak Russian, so I don't know if Putin has literally said "We've lost nothing" or "We haven't lost anything", but they come to the same thing in the end.) https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-russia-has-not-lost-anything-over-actions-ukraine-2022-09-07/ EDIT: Rather strong legislative changes in Russia today / tomorrow: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/09/20/russian-lawmakers-approve-long-jail-terms-for-military-surrender-refusal-to-serve-a78843

The Kremlin was also very, very strong about Sweden and Finland joining Nato, but once the countries decided to join, nothing happened. (Yes, I know, they're not in Nato yet.) Any attacks in Crimea were also said to lead to "Armageddon" type stuff, when in fact nothing happened. And so on. So yes, there's been plenty of talk that has turned out to be without substance. One the delightful things about the video I posted above is the immediate turn that happens once someone's said "We must defeat Ukraine" and then gets asked "So do you want to go to war yourself?". That question finally starts a thinking process -- so I agree that general mobilization might not go well. But you're right: We'll see what happens.

Ok, fair enough, I see where you're coming from. My approach is different, I like the unpredictability.

Wow. Why? Any particular reason? I think they're mostly good fun.

Yes. Major escalation in Russia may be on its way.

It wouldn't be an invasion, in that case (in his opinion). Anyway, that was an extremely interesting comment, thanks a lot! Seems to offer more and more plausibility to the idea that Putin's circle of supporters is dwindling.

Yeah, I agree this is interesting. None of the stuff bothers me all that much, except of course it would be great if the AI was even a little bit better. The one thing that does bother me somewhat is that the game so obviously cheats. I mean, surely everyone who's played Civ for a bit will have recognized this; especially during wartime, many of the enemies do not follow the rules that you are bound by, as a player. And that sucks. (It sucks way, way more in P:K and P:WotR, by the way, if you ask me: I think Owlcat is quite nasty in some of its choices and I can't really see myself buying another title from them, even if they stop being associated with Russia.) I don't particularly mind the stack of doom phenomenon. I remember back in the day when I started ramping up the difficulty level and noticed that at some point you simply stop finding Settlers in barbarian huts. That is a noticeable step up in difficulty in the very early game. I don't remember which difficulty I wound up enjoying the most but I certainly never went all the way to the top.

One particular difficulty with all of this was recently well put by a British military expert: Russia will stop the war when it consider that its losses are getting bigger than its potential gains -- and Russia doesn't regard its own dead as losses. This has historically been the way Russia treats people, even its own people. From this, you can pretty much deduce how it treats its enemy. Well, cutting off balls is one way. (And yes, I am fully aware of what the Brits and the Germans, for example, have done in the very recent past. I wouldn't want Ilse Koch, for instance, to stand for Germany.) This is Russians themselves speaking (with a headline I certainly wouldn't have used yet). It is not pretty:

Russia apparently moves its submarines to safer locations. Interesting.

Yep. It's better to pay both more and less attention, in my view. Some of the details and turns are likely to make you wonder, in fact quite a bit, if you pay attention. Willing suspension of disbelief indeed.

There was some other Haer'Dalis content that was also cut. There is a mod called Unfinished Business that restores some of this; one notable incident is the murder of Acton Balthis that Haer'Dalis becomes accused of. The romance, however, is not restored in this mod -- perhaps the material has not been made available and cannot be restored from the game files themselves. (At least some of the Suna Seni material can also be restored, but not the romance itself, btw.) Also, I find it really interesting that of all the NPCs you can recruit, Haer'Dalis is the one that gives you the most direct hints about Yoshimo. Being an actor and all, he's pretty perceptive. As for the Anomen thing, I think it's quite nice how Anomen and Mazzy approach their ideals of chivalry and greatness from the opposite directions: Mazzy from a position of sincere goodness, Anomen from a position of insufficiency, as a compensatory measure / reaction. The results are precisely what you would expect: Mazzy is dependable and forthright, Anomen is an utter príck. (It's been a long time since I've played the game, so I may have misremembered parts of their backstories, but this was the sense I got when playing. I wonder if this juxtaposition was deliberate.)

Surely there's nothing to apologize for. 90125 is mostly very good. Yes is a great band. Heck, even the first non-Jon album Drama is excellent. The synth sounds are a bit cheesy, but the songwriting is first rate.

Here's a really good illustration of how different this war is to previous wars: all this documentation is available. I wouldn't want to spend much of my time going through all this, but it's astonishing to look at some of this. (It also shows that Russia's losses are, indeed, quite remarkable.) Dive in: https://ukr.warspotting.net/analytics/geography/russia/

Here's another one of those hard-to-believe pieces of news. I mean, it's not hard to believe that Wagner is recruiting 1,500 prisoners, as it fits the agenda perfectly, but this is odd:

The video is also classic 1980s in the sense of what the heck does any of this have to do with what he's singing about.

This, by the way, is a delightful little way of protesting against Putin and Russia: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russian-singer-alla-pugacheva-speaks-out-b2170143.html

Sounds more likely that Russia continues to shell quite arbitrarily and has almost happened to hit a nuclear power plant. This does not make it any less despicable, of course.

Amazing to think that the Yes of Fragile and Close to the Edge went and wrote Owner of a Lonely Heart. Which is a great song.

Is that still the best, btw? Obviously a matter of opinion, that, but my sense is that there's a consensus. I tried Civ5 or Civ6 for a bit and it was just so obviously so much poorer than Civ4.

Yeah, fair point. Also, if the article was saying the opposite, it could be a US media outlet wanting to downplay Iran's capabilities. Agendas. Those damned things.

Whether these numbers are precisely accurate or not, it appears that the Kharkiv offensive indeed was a huge blow for Russia.

Here's a report from a pretty good source. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/putin-xi-speak-summit-uzbekistan-2022-09-16/

After Bucha, there was no doubt that this was going to happen, and it's going to happen again, and again. But it's still heartbreaking, I agree. Just when you think a nation could not be more despicable, Russia demonstrates that it can. The British Ministry of Defence has just posted that "in the last seven days, Russia has increased its targeting of civilian infrastructure even where it probably perceived no immediate military effect". Losses on the battlefield -> let's just kill and destroy what we can. The Indian response to Putin's war was somewhat positive, at least. EDIT: a somewhat interesting report on how Russia has been emptying bases around St. Petersburg and taken the equipment toward Ukraine. If Russia seriously feared an attack from NATO, it obviously wouldn't do this, and if NATO seriously wanted to attack, the past months would have been the perfect time. But of course Russia has no fear of NATO outside propaganda, and of course NATO doesn't want to attack. https://yle.fi/news/3-12626182

This was precisely my feeling, too. It was actually hard to believe what I was seeing, everything was so stereotypical. I was sort of half-expecting the game to give me a hint to show the developers were doing it deliberately and that everything was a joke. Now, that sort of hint might have been a bit tasteless, I agree. But every now and then I still wonder: is this what the developers regard as good writing, or are they having a ton of fun coming up with this stuff? I'm still not sure, like at all. This feeling persists throughout the game, but it was definitely at it strongest right in the beginning. I'm going to make a guess now as to the point where you're definitely going to get wiped out on Core. There's going to be some gnashing of teeth involved, too. Consider that guess made (I'm not saying what it is 'cos it'd be spoiling). Btw, the water elemental is indeed cheesable, and at least one of the ways (the only one I know) felt like such a letdown to me.

So, a correction is in order here, given what you just said: the products I referred to are not meat products. That's a different discussion.