Tale

Went to the dentist. A tooth busted on Monday. I haven't been to a dentist in a while, but the checkup went better than expected. Only one cavity and it's too small to do anything with. But I need a deep clean and a crown for the busted tooth. With a quote that's making me take the idea of dental medical tourism seriously...

It's always the Contingency. There's this one little corner of space that has had the most hilarious trouble with unrest. It was once a pretty decent small-to-mid size empire. Now it's something like 6 or 7 different empires, most of which are only a single system. And the Contingency appeared smack dab in the middle of that. They're doing fabulous at cleaning up the borders, I tell you. And as usual, they end up appearing right in the middle of my empire, then right at the border between me and someone who hates me, and then only attack me from that position. I don't know how this keeps happening. Their last hub was over where my ally met the Caretakers. And they focused on attacking the Caretakers, so all is right with the galaxy. This is the strongest crisis I've ever faced, but I'm also fielding the strongest fleet I've ever had, due to a great willingness to go overcapacity. Now that I've destroyed all of the Contingency hubs attacking me and my allies, I've cleaned up the Caretakers and taken their space for myself, and I'm leaving the last one alive to clean up all those pesky empires that are trying to create a Federation against us. This game is turning me into a monster, I think. My Determined Exterminator allies don't seem too bothered by the Contingency. With the threats to our own empires resolved, they decided we should attack the largest empire left on our side of the galaxy. I can't say the same idea didn't occur to me, after all I was checking if I could demand vasslization a mere month earlier. Nope, too big. This should help.

Indifferent dumb. I generated a small number of flat whats.

For those asking about The Cloverfield Paradox, I'm 1:14 in. It's dumb.

I really enjoyed Altered Carbon. I won't be buying the blu-ray or anything, but I will binge a season 2 if it gets it. I'm on to The Cloverfield Paradox now.

I'm addicted. New game of Stellaris. I'm playing Driven Assimilators again, but the different thing about this one is I force spawned two Determined Exterminators. We're best friends! And have conquered over half the galaxy. With some temporary help from an Awakened Empire, we've crushed 3 out of 5 Fallen Empires, then turned on the AE and have crushed 4 of them. I have Machine World terraformed the Spiritualist Holy Worlds, leaving the Spiritualists with only a single world to seethe and rage upon. Currently trying to figure out how to get to and help a Machine Uprising a couple empires over. Federations are kind of funky. It's a federation of me and two Exterminators, but they tend to refuse to fight wars when one empire gets stuff and they don't. And they don't want anything if the empire we're fighting is far from them. Killing meatbags just isn't enough for them. So it has to be some neutral goal where nobody gains anything, like Humiliation or Liberation. Or... Vassalization. So I can conquer whoever I want, so long as I let the meatbags live serving me. This seems inappropriate for Exterminators. But it's working out for me because I get to take all the gains in the future when I eventually integrate. The real theme behind this campaign is organic zoos. I started the game trying to conquer empires before the exterminators did so I can save the inhabitants. And now that I've started Machine World terraforming everything, I'm moving the organics to habitats above their home systems. I also lucked out by getting The Preserve and have built my own preserve type system on a ringworld. These will be safe from the terraforming. By the time the game is over, there will be less than 20 of any organic species left. Aside from the three "best" specimens that I gave a full ringworld quadrant to. Fun thing about getting The Preserve is one of the Exterminators gave it to me. He was the main defender in a defensive war, so he could have kept it to himself. Such a nice gift.

Did someone say RANDOM Video Game News?!

This takes place before RDR by my understanding.

The genocide was probably when I assimilated them all into the Hive, then tinkered with their genetics to make them useful. At this point I'm simply consolidation. I have the tech to change portraits, so I might even preserve some of their appearances and names in my new master race.

Stellaris still. This time I'm playing a Hive-Mind because it's the last type of empire I haven't played, other than an exterminator type. And I just don't want to dragged into eternal war, so it's unlikely I will play that. I'm already at the Crisis stage, this time it's a 2X crisis. One Contingency hub popped up in my territory and I eliminated that first, needing to make several goes at it to test my fleet and reduce the strength of the defense fleet. Another hub popped up on my border and started attacking me as much as my neighbor. It became priority 2. I've now reclaimed all worlds it took for the hive, including the neighbor's planets, and have started testing my new fleet comp against the defenses. Still going to have to do this in waves, it seems. The last two hubs are far from my space. And they've been kept contained by the two Awakened Empires running around. A decadent Xenophile and a Custodian Machine Empire. Despite the Xenophile's problems following the conclusion of War In Heaven (that I singlehandedly won for it, you're welcome), it's managed to build up its fleet to a level I never saw during the actual war. 200k. The custodians are fielding similar fleets. Neither will attack a hub, which are typically guarded by 300k fleets, but they've taken and retaken a couple times over the surrounding planets. The League of Non-Aligned Worlds has been busy with a machine uprising in my neighbor's territory. The same neighbor the Contingency appeared on the border with. These are the only guys left that still hated me and had power. Now neither is true of them. It's amazing what losing your border systems and frontier outpost can do to relieve border friction. Despite this war, I somehow slipped myself into the League. I had to get in the hard way, since I rejected the call to neutrality back in WIH. So I think my strategy is going to be waiting for their machine uprising to end, rallying the Federation to me, and using them as a meat shield to protect my fleet while I clear out the hubs. Oh, and I've now assimilated a Psionic pop into the hive. Just one initially, but I've already started breeding it. Soon I will be purging the lesser races of my empire and replacing them with Psionic substitutes. Just need to make sure I have the strength to handle the backlash once the atrocities begin. Fun fact: It's the neighboring species I've been talking about that used to hate me. I am about to turn their entire race into GODS

I liked that trailer so much I bought the song on Amazon. It's still on one of my jogging playlists. Thought the game was horribly mediocre, though.

I've now pre-ordered a Hunter, Kratos, and Crash.

Dragonball Fighter Z is tempting me, but I keep having to remind myself that I don't particularly like fighting games. I also still need to get through God Eater 1 and 2. So I should avoid MHW. It looks nice, though.

I finally found my chance. The Xenophiles that were overlording me attacked the Berserk Caretakers. Their fleet weakened I declared a war for my own independence and won! The galaxy would soon be mine! I'd join up with my old federation as soon as they got out of their war and then.... Then the Materialists demanded I be their vassals. And their fleet was fully intact. SON OF A! Good thing about Materialists though is they don't care if I go to war. I can finally start fighting instead of just funding wars again.

Doctor said I just have vertigo. Here's some exercises and a prescription. No flu, no ear infection.

Someone mistakenly flipped (or forgot to flip) a switch somewhere, and the expansion that was due for release on the 25th was actually released yesterday. Not sure if it's still live and if so, if it will remain that way, but so far, I seem to have access to the expansion content. I may have to give Endless Space 2 a second chance then. After I do a Vaulter run of Endless Legend. I thought the Vodyani story was dumb, but I remember vaguely liking Broken Lords.

There are three Awakened Empires in my current Stellaris game. And there is no War in Heaven. First the Xenophiles did an upstart awakening. They seek to make everyone sign a peace treaty, so when you become their vassal, you can no longer declare war. I was eager to join, because I didn't want to fight them and I was hoping they'd conquer systems for me. The first war they fought was against my old Federation. They gave me 3 systems (and 6 planets), all the ones they demanded from the war. Then they gave me 3 planets from a neighboring Federation in their next war. Not very Xenophilic when you realize I'm a synthetically ascended race. I'm turning all the conquered into robots. After the Contingency arose, the Fallen Machine Empire awoke as berserkers. They've declared war on the one psionic empire I liked. But seem really stupid. They fought and won that war, had 11 systems ceded to them, but didn't gain any planets. It seems like all they did was kick the natives off the planets and the systems returned to control of the regular empires. Then the Materialists woke up to fight the Contingency. This has actually put a damper in my plans. The plan was for me to swoop in and steal planets the Contingency had purged. But with both the Materialists and the Xenophiles going at them 300k fleets, the Contingency is getting creamed. The fun part is I don't see these 3 ever going to war. So once the Contingency is destroyed, the galaxy is going to get interesting.

A seemingly benign lump on an internal organ will do that to you. Gotta keep an eye on it and make sure it stays benign.

I'm at a point in life where I'm scheduled to get a yearly MRI. I have no problem going to the doctor, it's the bills that worry me. But since I have insurance (thanks Obama!), a simple visit to the general practitioner isn't as scary as it used to be.

I have no other symptoms. No fever, no congestion. Sometimes diseases do present with few symptoms. The flu is going around and I did go jogging in the cold the night before this started. But I'm inclined to suspect an inner ear issue.

I've been feeling dizzy since wednesday. It was so bad yesterday that getting out of bed felt like I was drunk. This morning I almost felt completely recovered. Almost. Then I took a car ride... It was unpleasant. I think I'll be making that doctor's appointment.

Ooh, you have The Fall. I recommend that one. And the second part should be coming out relatively soon. If one of you guys doesn't grab that soon, I will. My existing copy is PS4 and I was thinking about double dipping when the sequel came out.

The humor of the original Fable turned me right off. Maybe I'm not British enough to get why yelling out Chicken Chaser a billion times is funny.

Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters The first part of a planned Godzilla CG animated trilogy written by Gen Urobuchi. He's known for writing some pretty dark stuff. Premise is that when the monsters arrived, mankind was offered help by two alien races who also lost their planets. Together they failed to fight off Godzilla and abandoned the planet. Now they've returned to try again. And it was pretty good. Not fantastic, but a great starting point for a trilogy. I love the Mechagodzilla references at the beginning.

I need an intervention. My latest game of Stellaris is as dictatorial science nerds. Giving your leaders short lifespans is annoying at first, but quickly becomes irrelevant. I used to have leaders die every couple of years. But I haven't had a leader die since I made them all cyborgs. And now they're about to all become synthetics. And since I did the worm in waiting line, I have a bunch of colonizable worlds in my home system. I've got two science planets up and running already, doing my third as a mining planet. Half of the galaxy research, though I feel like I'm horribly behind. I've only kept up by scanning the remains in war. I've started a federation of technocracies, which is kind of nice. Except one of them has rivaled the two machine empires in the game, so now I can't get those guys to join. Makes me sad. Another positive note is that I'm sadwiched between the Materialist FE and the Xenophile FE. They both love me and have given me ships. The Machine FE also seems to enjoy giving me... questionable rewards. These are never very helpful, but I take the chance every time.