Humodour

Civ 4 still contains more than enough history to make you think twice about a lot of things repeatedly. Maybe it's those quotes each time you research a tech. So cool.

I thought so too, but I imagine there is a bit more to it than that. The other thing is, what the US can do, and what it should do are not the same thing. China will likely penalise the US in some way if they continue publishing pollution levels. The US may decide that it is worth it. Who knows.

With all of what Humanoid said above taken into consideration, just remember that one of the more fun aspects of games like Civ and Age of Empires is also role playing. So don't get too involved in the mechanics just yet when there is still the game's general atmosphere to take in. It's beautiful and fun. The other thing is: you decide what difficulty you play on. Nobody knows unless you tell them. You could play on Warlord forever and have a blast while Enoch plays on Prince or whatever repeatedly. I'm currently getting comfortable on Noble, but that's because I have these weird foibles when it comes to gaming. I don't play the evil route in role-playing games, and I don't want to sacrifice my workers in Civ via slavery. But sometimes its nice to see more to a game than pure numbers, as fun as that can be.

This site is one of the more useful: http://www.civfanatics.com/ I am about to start a game as Carthaginians. They pulled me in this round (I go back to this game every few months and try a different style each time) because their leader has a huge amount of extra commerce (+1 gold on any +2 or more gold tile - which is a lot of naked tiles and ALL cottages), and the +1 happiness (+2 with monument) seems dead useful (way more so than extra culture or health) because extra happiness directly translates to extra workers when things are getting dire. Extra workers are far more flexible than extra health or culture. What leaders do you guys choose and why? For what victory types? I do miss India's fast workers.

Ah yes, thanks for reminding me. I need to try this out. Fail a lot. Keep trying. Honestly there is too much to this game to begin to explain to somebody who hasn't played at least one game of it. For a start, there are like 5 different ways to win. And they ARE different. A cultural victory is completely different to a religious victory or a combat victory or a land coverage victory. Although they all share things in common, they'll all want different technology lines and different leaders and different types of city specialisation.

I think it's fair to say that I didn't imply a country's level of development is tied to a single statistic (whether technological or otherwise). But the thread is about future Internet growth in various country, hence why the statistic of Italy's internet adoption popped up. As I said, the Italians could all be out simply enjoying life in other ways, instead of being on the Internet, thus Internet adoption levels are not indicative of a country's developmental status in theory (there actually is a medium-strength correlation between Internet adoption and developmental status, but this correlation only serves as a general guide and can't in any way be used to determine which countries are developed or not). Italy's actual issues are what led me to list it among other nearly-developed countries in the first post. A society where corruption is rife (slightly less corrupt than Brazil and China) and political, social, and economic life are all heavily influenced by organised crime cannot be considered fully developed. Not to mention Italy's many other problems (which, to be fair probably stem at least partially from the corruption and Mafia). Still, whether we agree or not on Italy being developed, what is noteworthy is that Italy has maybe another 25 million people to add to the Internet yet. It will be the single biggest source of addition of future Internet citizens in the EU, as all other large EU countries have much higher Internet penetration rates. Also of note in this regard in Europe are Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine, but none of these are in the EU.

http://www.csmonitor...r-is-in-Beijing That's pretty bold of the Chinese government. I loved this bit (paraphrase, but surprisingly not by much) "we're a developing country so we're allowed to have extremely unhealthy air pollution levels".

I categorise Italy as "nearly developed" because it has a lot of political, economic, and social problems that are far more reminiscent of developing countries than a developed country. Sure, it's a part of Western society, and a part of Europe, and has a high GDP, but does that automatically make it developed (remember this discussion is over whether "nearly developed" is an inappropriate title, so it's not as if I'm implying Italy is down there with Egypt or China)? The power that forces like the Mafia exert over Italian life are definitely NOT characteristic of a developed country. Also, only about 50% of Italians have Internet access (2010). So it's definitely not a developed country in that sense. But maybe the Italians are just too busy out enjoying fine wine and pasta to worry about arguing semantics about development on the net. Still, I think there's a bit of a misleading notion floating around global thought that if a country is in Europe, then it is developed. Edit: perhaps as a more elucidating case study, how many of us would consider Greece a developed country among the likes of New Zealand, Britain, the Netherlands, Canada, France, Germany, or the Scandinavian states? Certainly, Italy's problems don't appear to be as bad as Greece's. Yet. But it's food for thought regarding what classifies as 'developed' and what doesn't. And can a country that was once considered developed (relative to its peers at a certain point in time, as the term has no meaning otherwise) fall out of the 'developed' category as its peers advance and it does not, or indeed if its peers stay static and it falls behind?

Civ 4. I've heard not-so-good things about Civ 5. Civ 4 is amazing. It's turn-based, though. As somebody who came from Age of Empires 1/2, it was a bit of a shock to the system. When I truly devote myself to finishing a Civ 4 game, I often forget to eat and sleep. It can be pretty harsh on the body - the games go for hours. It's more like lots of little games in one, since you go through the ages and that repeatedly shakes things up.

Diablo 3's average user rating on Metacritic is 40%. Thoughts?

I believe it is an interpretation of the Gorillaz song "Fire Coming Out Of A Monkey's Head":

But Psychonauts is so awesome! I never completed it either. Can't remember why. A crash? A disk failure? Oh well, time to polish it off now!

The developers of the Humble Indie bundles, as well of the devs of the games sold within the current bundle, discuss piracy, Linux, how much is too little to pay, etc in this article (actually a summary of a Reddit discussion). Worth reading, especially given the content of this current thread. http://mashable.com/2012/06/01/humble-indie-bundle-reddit/

That's fair enough. I own most of them all already on Steam, too. But I paid another $50 just because I want to support what these guys do, and the fact that they actively provide me with Linux games and in this case even make them available in the Ubuntu Software Centre! Without DRM! If you don't pay them much, then please try not to actually COST them money - use BitTorrent to download the games instead of their server bandwidth (they provide a torrent hash). Cost them money? You're talking like they have millions of $ of costs for downloads. I'm talking like it costs them money to process the hundreds of thousands of downloads they receive in a span of two weeks. Which it does. Bandwidth isn't free. Nor is site maintenance. Nor is customer support. Nor is producing the games in the goddamn first place! I'm pointing out that if you're a sufficiently large cheapskate, your 'contribution' can end up meaning they don't even break even on getting the game to you via their servers. So if you are going to be a cheapskate, or even if you aren't, just use BitTorrent to download the gigs worth of data to help these guys out a bit. Now quit complaining about feeling guilty after reading my post and either buy the games OR DON'T! You have the option to pay as much or little for these excellent quality games provided in an excellent quality format as you bloody well please, but don't come on here feeling insulted because you paid them bugger all. I WILL treat you like a tosser for doing so. I did. And I'm paying again because they've added Linux support. Good for you. Now go do that instead of having a cry about it on here.

That's fair enough. I own most of them all already on Steam, too. But I paid another $50 just because I want to support what these guys do, and the fact that they actively provide me with Linux games and in this case even make them available in the Ubuntu Software Centre! Without DRM! If you don't pay them much, then please try not to actually COST them money - use BitTorrent to download the games instead of their server bandwidth (they provide a torrent hash).

Will there be a Linux version? All the Kickstarter and Humble Bundle games have one, and for the Humble Bundle games the Linux version makes as much money as Mac and Windows because Linux users choose to pay more.

Sounds great. I love CD Projekt/GoG.

All these games work on Linux, too. Grab it here: http://www.humblebundle.com/ Please don't be a **** - pay at least $20.

Things these days are built with planned obsolescence, either physically or functionally (e.g. mobile phones). It's disgusting bad in terms of the resource cost (and hence environmental cost).

Yes, that is a good way to spin it so that Russia doesn't look as bad for actively supporting a regime that endorses large-scale rape, torture, and child murder.

Read thread. Council of Europe != The EU. Britain can drop out of the EU all it wants. It would still be in the Council of Europe, unless it wants to drop out of that, too.

When I buy games I want to be able to play them 6 years later, regardless of what happens to the company that made them. When I buy games I want to be able to play them regardless of what happens to the Internet. When I buy games I want to be able to play them when I don't even have access to the Internet. Steam is the extreme limit of what is tolerable with all this (with an offline mode and most games being trivially easy separate from the Steam DRM from), and even then I've recently made the decision not to buy non-Valve games on Steam any more and use DRM-free stores like Desura, GoG, etc instead. Blizzard shoots right past that tolerable limit. I think I know where you can take your false dichotomy and shove it, Gfted. The online requirement is a deal breaker because it's a really stupid technical requirement (as I'm sure was extensively established on these boards when Ubisoft first tried it), regardless of the existence, or not, of a desire not to be jerked around by a corporation dictating what I can (or rather can't) do with a product I've paid for. Blizzard wants to shift games from being a purchased commodity to being a rented service. Screw that.

You made a logical fallacy here. Using the legal system because you are unhappy with a video game is moronic. However, EULAs don't exist to prevent people from using the legal system when they are unhappy with a video game. Such people would sue and fail with or without EULAs. EULAs generally exist for more nefarious purposes: to (attempt to) strip away genuine consumer rights.

This time they've killed another 32 children, all under ten, as well as at least another 60 people, many of whom were also teenagers and young adults. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18224 I guess these children were 'lucky'. Unlike the hundreds of children before them that Bashar's regime has slaughtered so far, most of these ones seem to have avoided being tortured and raped first. ****, I think I feel sick. Does the Syrian regime think that they can fix their country's problems by murdering people by the thousands until only loyalists are left? The sad thing is, we'll probably let them do that, won't we?

I find EULAs an interesting concept. "By clicking agree on this document, you agree to forfeit the following legal rights: any avenue of using the legal system against us". Seems legit, right?