melkathi

What's the issue? I am against tacking on in general. Unless it is the only option. What's your drywall, what is inside it? How old is it?

Meh, about the Dune game. Devs making a huge deal about having Atreides in green because they are "true to the book" then make Harkonnen red instead of blue (or blue/orange). Some of the advisors also are the farthest any depiction of the characters has ever been from the book. Take your liberties. But then don't spend all that effort patting yourself on the back for having green uniformed Atreides because you are staying true to the book. Water-fat devs...

And so it begins. With a visit of a very confused butcher. Who may be thinking what you think she is thinking. And indeed was thinking what you thought she was thinking. And everyone is shocked at how the nice floor was ruined.

Maybe they got inspired by Paradox and make everyone DLCs. Or they got inspired by themselves and make everyone an amiibo...

Wrong thread...

I think you mentioned it happened, but not what.

The round bit was storage. Most likely grain. The rest are walls from various phases, from likely 800 BC to around 1000 AD. The site was a pottery workshop in antiquity. I have 5,5 wells underneath my foundations (half a well is under the neighbouring building), and we even found a large slab of unused clay. We found traces of the old road, and the clay pipes of the antique water line still have water trickling along. Don't tell the archeologists I posted this, but this is back from 2009 when we had the dig:

No idea, it was another of those games that had me roll my eyes.

So I don't need to feel bad for having googled all veterinarian ladies in Guard Dog's vicinity to make sure we on the forum approve of who he is dating?

This is me: https://kerameion.gr/ But what with Covid and all, I am expanding my activities.

With how corrupt our government is, I might as well just mail our prime minister a check every three months, allowing him to completely dismantle the tax authority and cut out the middle man and tedious pretense of taxes being meant to be used for the state and not to line the pockets of his family and friends.

I did not play it, so can't say. The whole series of games seems like a bad taste cash grab catering to people who think they are cool or edgy or what the kids call it these days, for playing games that stand up to established societal norms, even if they don't know what established, societal or norm means.

My curiosity got the better of me, and since a friend still pirates games (and then wonders why people don't take him seriously when he wants to earn money as a designer himself), I decided to look further into Expeditions: Rome and just how much I would dislike this. The positive about Rome is that it is the most evolved of Expeditions games. You play three military campaigns in three different parts of the world, with different aesthetics. You carry over everything, though you will have to rehire your praetorians when you muster your legion once more. There is no timed content, so you can play at your own pace and you are clearly warned that a chapter ends, so you can complete other things. Great example of Devs listening to the players. Characters become powerful, so as your character's reputation grows, you also feel that reflected in what your character can do. There is cool loot. The five story companions should all grow on you, while staying humans of that era. There was no attempt to create a Morte or HK47 to be cool. The story premise works. What if a certain well known historic figure died before getting a chance to become well known and your character and their antagonists ended up reshaping history. The female playthrough works. If you play a woman you may even have to arrange a marriage to be able to own property through your husband. That said, the writing is all over the place quality wise, and the plot becomes worse as the game progresses, even while the gameplay becomes better. During your third military campaign the plot will be a nonsensical mess, which is a shame, as the game has been steadily improving. The mess culminates in one of the worst mission designs accompanied by the worst plotting, where even the NPCs tell your antagonist that his actions make no sense. You are given the mission objective to die honourably in combat. Problem is, that as in many RPGs, late in the game you may find it quite hard to lose (I clicked skip turn 20+ times) and keep fighting endless waves of enemies who die as they show up (as I mentioned above, there is cool loot, for example a unique bow early on that refunds overwatch shots, allowing a high crit chance archer to kill whole waves of enemies as they rush towards you). All that to lead into a nonsensical Deus ex machina situation for your character to be saved and ruin both gameplay and plot enjoyment at the same time. To add insult to injury, that is then followed by you having to skip time resting, to heal up your injured party. Which leads us back to the bad random events design, which very often simply is the same event triggering again and again to cause injuries to your characters and force you to return to camp and heal them, wasting time. How many times your experienced party can slip on slippery stones, breaking bones, is beyond me. The game gives an unfinished impression, to no little part because of the constantly repeating small number of random events, that add nothing but interruption of the game flow. Voice acting improves in the third act. Mainly because they didn't tell non Romans to try and sound foreign. So from the terrible voice work for Greeks and the bad voice work in Egypt, it improves to mostly the indifferent voice acting you actually want in a game: the voice work that doesn't make you think about it, instead just allows you to hear what is being said and play the game. Because in the end, that is all that is needed, no whistles and bells, just voice acting. So I would give the game a thumbs sideways. A big thumbs down for the antagonist and the way the plot progresses in act 3, which closes with a bad impression a game that after a mediocre first impression works hard to overcome that first impression and make players enjoy it. I guess you can't stop Devs from shooting themselves in their own feet.

Yeah, Sex with Hitler showed up on my Steam that way. Even with the adult block on. But if I want to go to the store page for a Fallout game or similar, I have to age verify.

I think I started a new job. Not entirely sure. Also not entirely sure what I'll be doing. But that I am good at. If suddenly I get money, I'll know I started a new job.

Yes, the dimensions of each fork are 2cm width x 9,5cm height, so they are small enough in the original as is. On a screen with a crummy photo taken with my phone, they are harder to see. And yeah, there is 658 of them, which makes things even harder. I think the fox is the easiest to spot.

After over a hundred hours, here it is: https://www.deviantart.com/melkathi/art/forkcat-and-friends-906272109 Waiting to do a proper photoshoot so I have something I can work with and possibly print out for a couple of friends as a poster.

I'm waiting for MW5 to show up in the list so Chill and I get a lance-mate. (from next week I should get more time again so we can shoot mechs)

Welcome to the glasses gang! Some say we have the best taste in games.

Skyborn? That bugged out on me at some point and broke my save games I keep meaning to restart it.

Re-evaluation of Expeditions: Rome The tooltips continue being bad and the tutorial pop up information straight up wrong. Archery continues being overpowered. If you have high ground. The legion combat mini-game is meh and extremely random, without tactical choices having any true, predictable impact. The battles have 4 phases: Forming up for the fight, two complications, and a conclusion. At the start of each phase you pick one of three random stratagems from a pool of stratagems for that phase. These have various effects such as increasing your legion's defense or aggression, increasing survival rate of casualties, outright killing enemy troops (and sacrificing some of yours to do so), as well as how the fight ends (chase down fleeing enemies, plunder corpses, do a last stand...). You also assign a centurion as commander for the fight and his skills and perks will affect things. Reloading the battle will give completely different outcomes. The same centurion who before had a survival chance of 69% and no chance to get any loot, may suddenly have a 100% survival chance and great loot chance. You may have already effectively beaten the enemy, so go complete defensive in the second complication to mitigate your casualties and end up with an additional 500 dead, when a stratagem that actually sacrificed legionarii has you lose a quarter of that. It is meant to represent the chaotic, unpredictable nature of combat, but it breaks immersion once you realize that you do not have to use any tactics, instead just quicksave before the battle then click random buttons and load until you get a desirable outcome (few casualties and a common loot chest (the higher two tiers of loot chests are actually not worth it)). While you are traveling on the map random events will trigger. Some are good, some are bad. Some are good in the effect they have for you, such as giving you loot, some are bad in the effects they have for you, such as injuring party members. Some are bad in how they are conceived. A random event that gives you a choice of ignoring the slavers, buying slaves from the slavers or attacking the slavers, is a good event as it is interesting. An event where you just read some text about happening upon a temple and getting a blessing from the priest is a bad event, because it is simply a wall of text to give you a boost. An event that gives you a wall of text to describe that while crossing a river a companion slipped and broke their arm is very bad - it simply interrupted your gameplay experience to give you a penalty. An event that has a pack of foxes raid the camp of armed soldiers, and even injure a praetorian... seriously? Are game devs competing into how much idiocy they can cram into their brains before gamers call them out on the sheer stupidity? That said, if you are into Expeditions, it is a good "Expeditions" experience. Miles ahead of Vikings. While the legion gameplay is meh, having that legion gives you a proper expedition feel - you are not just a glorified adventuring party. The premise, inserting your character into the historical what if timeline isn't bad. And they tried to get it all historically accurate. The voice acting is often bad. Any non-roman characters were just given the brief: "Sound foreign. We don't care what that accent is supposed to be, as long as it sounds foreign." This is jarring at times. For Archelaus and the random Greek soldiers I had to turn the sound off. But without VO, the game improves a lot. I read somewhere that the game starts with the worst part of the game. This may be true. Especially the first fights are meh. I disagree with a reviewer who waxed on about how amazing map designs are for other battles after the first. Though I have to admit they tried to make some fights stand out. So: The game tries to do a lot of things. It tries to learn from the mistakes made in Vikings. It is definitely a better game than Vikings. So if you inexplicably thought Expeditions: Vikings was a good game worth your time, the only reason you shouldn't play Rome is a rare allergy to all things Roman. Or having better things to do with your life, like playing board games with your children. If like me you weren't a fan of Vikings, possibly wait for a sale. While it tries to do a lot of things, somehow the devs manage to not get anything really right or at least enough things not right enough to create this impression. They tried to get Bruce interested in the game and have added companion romance options. They have also tried to lure LadyCrimson, by having a sidequest involving cats. There is even an early game over involving cats. They really tried to make this game special. And if you look past the early game and hear past the voice acting for the Greeks, it shows.

Brits are (seen as) the worst. Predominantly due to the Thomas Cook groups that aren't just loud, but get so drunk and act in such ways, it is impossible not to judge them. It is so bad, they get that rep even in destinations where these groups never appear (for example Athens). On top of that they are the most likely to cause problems while they are sober: try to blackmail or con hotels or restaurants into giving them freebies. The UK is the only country where the government would send out email alerts to hotels in popular tourist destinations with warnings of what cons were popular the previous season. Chinese aren't liked mostly for the fact that on average nobody makes money of them; they usually have all travel planned out through whatever agency/site they use in China and don't stray into anything outside that package. They don't eat at local restaurants, they don't use taxis, having a Chinese private driver instead, they don't use random hotels. They even bring their own instant meals in their suitcases. Russians are still not used to traveling to the west freely, so can be awkward. They aren't sure if they should be entitled to something or not, so can come over as super-entitled and immediately re-adjust their attitude to super-apologetic. Unless of course they are filthy rich. But the filthy rich are a group that transcends nationality (see UAE below). UAE/Qatar etc are also two opposites packed into the same person. You'll only ever encounter really wealthy tourists, who are also well educated. Their vacation is also an escape from strict social norms, so they are happy to see you and be worldly. At the same time they grew up with servants on hand at any moment, so they are not used to not being waited on. For hotels that means the messiest rooms you'll ever step in. But often they are also to some extent aware that they do things "wrong" so try to make amends for that in being super-sweet and great tippers. I even had guests offer to tell a woman I was interested in how awesome I was and that they traveled all this way just to let her know she really should go out with me. US Americans are usually not as bad as people fear. I think they are well aware of the image of the entitled US American who in action movies walks up to the terrorist hostage taker and demands to be let go because they are American - and obviously end up the only dead hostage. Or the line "If it weren't for us you'd all be speaking German now," which can embarrassingly lead to the other person continuing the argument in German. On top of that, Europe, with the many countries so close to one another, seems to inspire a bit of awe in people from the huge countries, as it is far easier for people to have "abroad" experience. That said, US Americans are the second most likely group to try and con businesses out of money, including disputing credit card charges at hotels, and walking out of cafes and restaurants without paying. Still, in no way at a large scale as Brits. German men can be truly entitled. They are the same way at home as well, but abroad, especially in a poorer country, they can really let loose their entitlement. They also put a high emphasis on the educational aspect of a trip though, so instead of an entitled git you may encounter a walking encyclopedia or a sponge who will soak up every tale the locals tell them with genuine interest. Israelis depend on their age. Middle aged or older couples are great, as are families with adult children. Families with young children can be difficult, as the children seem to have a high risk of being spoiled, jumping up and down on furniture etc. Mind you, most parents seem to no longer feel compelled to be on the clock as parents during vacations. Teenagers and young adults can be hell, if they are male. Complete disregard for rules like "no smoking" etc, grinning at you while breaking them. They are the most likely to party like there was no tomorrow. I am still finding glitter all over the place two years later. If I had a choice, I'd probably work with Australian families exclusively, with Orthodox Jews over the weekends. The former are super friendly, while the later are so happy they find a property where the owner/staff understand their no-electricity on Shabbat requirements and are willing to work something out (I cover motion sensors with hats for example which is all that is necessary).

Yeah, racism is a thing. At least in Greece which has been a bit of a backwater. It occurred to me when I returned on holiday while studying in England, that at the time (late nineties) in Thessaloniki I had never encountered a non-caucasian.

The important question is: when is G's birthday? Barcelona is great, especially with good weather, so you can spend time strolling through Parc Güell. London you can do in any weather - if it rains cats and guard dogs, it's just normal weather. And for the various museums you'll be inside anyway. I haven't been to Seville. I never even finished Ceville on the PC come to think of it. Obviously super secret pro tip: Athens. It includes lunch with melkathi.

In the important news segment: Troubleshooter Devs have started work on a cosmetic costume pack dlc. Due to increasing community pressure they may even charge for it to fund work on the content dlc.