Humodour

Individuals can file for bankruptcy too. Defaulting would tear Iceland 10 new arseholes. I don't see your point.

Fascinating insight there genius.

I like this idea. This way China could annex half the USA. If the US state credit rating goes down to the same as Greece, sure go for it. China and Japan will roughly own 75% of the US land 50%, actually. And that's only public debt.

The Greek politicians may be corrupt, but the Greek people are possibly even more so. It's a cultural thing and something they'll need to change. The citizens there will have to start treating tax as a compulsory thing, for instance. Another example is the ridiculous rioting they do every few years because they are angry that things aren't free.

Cheers Enoch. I just played a game on Chieftain, learnt a lot. Yes, my score was 7 times higher than the nearest AI by the end, and it was a tad boring, but I learnt a lot. And I got to send a rocket to space! Although I could have conquered everybody a lot earlier if I wanted. Tanks vs archers lol.

This game is a testament to the fact that people like complex, hard-core games and that such games are financially successfully. Quit trying to sell out, Obsidian! Edit: And thanks Tig! I'll stop asking questions now. I have enough info to beat the comp at Noble, so time to try.

It's hard to build cottages. Either it's the wrong tile or it won't grow (no person inside? but it says 'STARVATION' when I go to the city screen, but there's cows and corn around that have been improved...). And how many mines should I build? Is it safe to build as many as possible? Because my location has craploads of hills. And is it OK to build cottages on tiles without gold? Should I always aim for tiles with a gold piece or does it not matter for cottages? How do I use water tiles? They have a lot of gold.

Excellent info! This link makes sense now: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/earlygrowth.php

Oh god, there's a La Rouche party in Australia. Have a read, I promise you won't be disappointed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Electoral_Council

*ahem* I don't get it. The first paragraph of that link states: "Abiogenic petroleum origin is an alternative hypothesis to the prevailing theory of biological petroleum origin. Most popular in the Soviet Union between the 1950s and 1980s, the abiogenic hypothesis has little support among contemporary petroleum geologists, who argue that abiogenic petroleum does not exist in significant amounts and that there is no indication that an application of the hypothesis is or has ever been of commercial value.[1]" wut Well, yes. It's difficult enough to reliably estimate the current global reserves of oil, and that's with the current development of relevant tech and the volume of prospections being done each year, so you'll excuse me if I'm a bit skeptic on estimations of retrievable Uranium deposits. The sun will also run out of fuel eventually, heh -- I remember some report from an international agency that claimed that currently surveyed Uranium deposits could provide enough fuel for the next twenty centuries. In the meantime we could make do with "fast breeders", if alternate energy sources were expensive enough. Thorium is cool too. Oh yes, IIRC there's enough uranium to last a few millenia at current consumption rates. But if we increase our reliance on nuclear energy (I think you'd be lucky to be close if even 10% of global energy was produced by nuclear today) that time-frame could shorten by an order of magnitude unless our estimates of reserves are wildly inaccurate (which is possible - countries like Australia haven't done all that much analysis because of the sheer volume we already know is present in just a couple of locations)

Oh wow, you bloody legend Enoch! Thanks heaps. <3 Hmm regarding automation, can I automate road building at least? That seems something reasonably safe to do and I believe there's an option for it. Also, so when units and buildings in a city cost too much, I need to chop down more forests? Is there any other way to gain hammers? Is that what mines do? Commerce isn't gold? So cottages are in fact the best way to get techs fast? The Finance trait would seem to be invaluable now. What else impacts on production? When I first plonk down settlers upon starting a new game sometimes things take ages like 34 turns for a Settler, 20 for a worker, sometimes even worse! Whilst other times, rarely, I've seen Settlers only cost 17 production. I dunno if this is just a quirk for the first round or what but it's confusing. When you say have one city be a GP city, does that mean have farms everywhere on that city, not cottages or mines?

For somebody with a very strong head for numbers, patterns and rules, I am surprisingly bad at this game. Could somebody give me some tips? I think starting with an explanation of how the Production and Science resources work and are acquired and spent would be a good idea. And I also need to know how to use workers. I've been just hitting 'automate' on them but it looks like that's not very efficient. My favourite leaders are the Dutch and Pericles (Greek). Culture/Finance for the Dutch which is good all-round. Culture/Philosophy for Pericles, plus the Odeons, which makes them a culture and special person powerhouse. Too bad I don't know how to make specialists or anything.

Australia should annexe New Zealand. Just sayin'.

Not really. It's quite the contrary if you ask me (and I have lived in Belgium for a couple of years). Actually, there's absolutely nothing to like in this country: the weather is horrible, the architecture is "cold", Wallonia is dirty, lots of criminality, excessive bureaucracy, ineffective administration and I could go on like that forever... Way to spoil my dreams.

I'm disappointed that Belgian women aren't mentioned. They are hotties.

'course not... though am not certain what a geographysicist does. many states in the U.S. boast larger populations and economies than does some euro nations, but ask a euro 'bout illinois or even california and you gets some pretty wild misconceptions. am recalling that as a child we took numerous trips from western north/south dakota to pennsylvania as we had family living in chicago and pittsburgh. same distance traveled in europe could result in us passing through ten or more different nations. ask a typical euro to give their insights regarding individual states in the USA... or even ask 'em 'bout the multitude o' central and south american nations. be prepared for some blank stares and wacky answers. we brief taught in europe... started off our academic journey with a misconception that euros were better educated than their American counterparts. it is possibly (maybe) true that the average taxi cab driver, or manual laborer in barcelona or amsterdam is possessing superior knowledge to those similarly employed in cleveland or detroit, but our experience revealed that the typical euro university student is no better educated than those in the United States. HA! Good Fun! ps when did spanish women become "hot"? I love Gromnir's rants about the glory of America. I just glaze over after the first couple of sentences and picture a bitter old man screaming "GET OFF MY LAWN" to some kids walking by as he waves his shotgun around menacingly.

**** me that's scary. So what about the HEU they didn't pick up? Let's hope and pray it went to Iran and North Korea, because at least they seem to be all talk, no action - beholden to at least some small degree by their citizens and military and the desire not to be wiped off the map). I would be scared ****less if this stuff has been falling into the hands of terrorists instead.

Here is an example of just how useless carbon capture and storage seems to be: http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensl...f-1225860166734

Single Transferable Vote was invented in Britain (known as Hare-Clark here after the Brit who invented it and the Aussie who implemented it) and is one of the fairest forms of voting around. It's preferential and proportional and also involves directly electing members. It would seem to be ideal for you, Wals. Hare-Clarke does not consider political affiliation - you vote for the candidate, not the party. The upper houses of Australia's states and federal parliaments (i.e. the Senate) allow the voter to choose between directly voting for and preferencing candidates via Hare-Clark (known as 'below the line') or simply ticking a multi-member party list with a preference flow among candidates and political parties determined by the party itself (but distributed according to Hare-Clark). This is a combination of the two forms which Zoraptor mentioned above. Tasmania and the Capital Territory are the exceptions - they both use Hare-Clark only, and they do so to elect their governments, not to elect the house of review. In the lower house, Australia uses preferential first-past-the-post (preferential plurality) voting, so even if you simply cannot bring yourself to ever consider any form of prop rep, this would seem to be the next most sane electoral reform to implement. This would prevent situations like in Canada, where 60% of the voters vote for left-leaning parties, yet the largest single party is the Tories with 40%, hence they form government. Will of the people my arse! Anyway I'm tired so I've probably made mistakes in explaining this, or confused a concept or two. Edit: Seems like STV was invented independently in the same century by some Dutch bloke. But nobody cares about the Dutch.

Tell that to India: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf53.html In reality, thorium plants can't even go critical (though the freak-out is understandable given how fresh Chernobyl was in people's minds), and neither can most modern uranium reactors (by design). Even then Chernobyl was an exercise in poor maintenance. It also looks like THTR they were using an old design for the thorium reactor, though the cost blow-out could have been due to the fact it was essentially a pilot, or simply poor management. I'll read up on it one day.

This one can. Agreed, which is what the NBN is - fibre, wireless, satellite, and I suppose copper, with the majority obviously being fibre. It's a good idea. The NBN is a tier 1 provider, so it won't compete with or replace ISPs. Let me put it this way: this internet filter acts on the http protocol only. When was the last time you saw child porn accessed from a website? It's all done via P2P, and often by darknets, which has been repeatedly pointed out to the government. And I really hate the "for the children" defence because it's so hollow. Instead of trying (and failing) to block polite society from being aware of the problem (while ****ing up normal internet access and putting in place a censorship scheme to be abused by future governments) just so politicians can brush the problem under the carpet (while the offenders continue unhindered), we should be investing the large sum required for this madcap scheme into actual action on the issue - improved law enforcement, nailing the problem at its source (which has proven to be very effective in Australia in the past, even without extra funding). Australia does not have a 'paedofile' problem, so why this sudden wildly disproportionate move? And it's interesting that everyone from Google to child protection groups are speaking out against this filter. It's nothing but a social conservative vote grab.

It really irks me that all Australian political parties are anti-nuclear, because we own 25% of the world's uranium, and 25% of the world's thorium. We also use coal almost exclusively for energy production. Nuclear energy would make so much sense in Australia it's not funny.

Not to mention his retarded plans to scrap the NBN (National Broadband Network). The NBN is a brilliant idea which voters, industry, academia, and communications companies support (except the copper-line monopoly Telstra, which was itself a previously government entity). NBN = fibre to the home with guaranteed speeds of 100mbps for 90% of Australians and wireless/satellite for the rest (remote areas, min speed 12mbps). Then if we ever needed to upgrade in future (e.g. to gigabit) we'd just replace the switches (not the fibre, which supports up to the speed of light obviously). And it legally has has to be sold to private industry (with no single majority single stakeholders) after 10 years anyway, and is 49% private from the outset, so a maximum public cost of $22 billion over 8 years to taxpayers in the country with the lowest public debt in the Western world... ****. Abbott would like to see Australia remain in the dark ages, and Rudd would like to see Australia become some sort of Internet religious police state. Yaaaaay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network

http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/344247/sh...4304&fpid=1 Read it. Absorb the slime. Bask in the sleazy evasion. Read in awe as he answers none of the questions asked in the 3 page interview. It's ironic because he's trying to introduce Internet censorship "for the children" yet he looks like a paedophile. If I had kids I certainly wouldn't let him near them.

The day he got brought back in by Brown was the day it should have been apparent that Brown will do absolutely anything at all to stay clutching power. And I say that having voted for the S.O.B. There are two deal breakers for me voting LibDem. Firstly their position on defence can be most charitably described as 'committed pacifist' or - from my philosphical standpoint - stark raving mad. They are fixated on a nuclear disarmament schtick from 1993 that by disarming we can somehow exert moral authority to disarm people like Iran and N Korea. They have also stated that they want an immediate return of troops from Afghanistan, and regard CURRENT operations as the 'end phase'. Which is just illogical, given the way that the dynamic at the moment is very much in flux. It's pure irresponsible pandering. In both cases they might just as well put their faith in a cupful of magic beans. The second deal breaker is that they are insisting on a shift to proportional representation. There are many arguments against this, but the one most likely to sway the average person is that it takes away our ability to vote for an actual person. MPs become inescapably party machines, rather than only being party machines when they lack any moral or intellectual foundation. They argue, reasonably enough that they get a big percentage of the vote yet few MPs and say this isn't fair. I say it's not unfair. Any more than it's unfair that only one party gets to form government. Each MP is voted in in turn. If only a handful of LibDem MPs are liked by voters then buck up, don't try to fudge the rules! I have very deep misgivings with all parties, but it's a choice between a morally and intellectually bankrupt group, a morally 'sound'*, but intellectualy dwarvish group, and a bunch of morally unsound but intellectually accomplished group. *If by morally sound you mean it sounds good at dinner parties. The troop and nuke thing is fair dice. But I strongly disagree with you on the proportional representation thing. Take a look at how Australia's parliament works - lower house (which forms government) has elected MPs via preferential voting while the Senate (house of review) has proprtional representation. It works really well. Failing that, can't you at least get a working parliament like America (for all America's political system's flaws, they can at least claim to have fully democratically elected houses). You guys and Canada have such a messed up system. I also have a very different view of how prop rep works. It's not that a handful of voters like Lib Dem, they have close to the same level of support as the other to main parties - at the very least it's a large amount. The problem is the voters are spread relatively evenly around the UK. Under proportional representation those people would get their say rather than being consistently ignored. It's not 'fudging' the rules. You also say prop rep encourages parties rather than individuals. Which is ironic and confusing because it's easier for individuals and smaller parties to gain representation under prop rep. Prop rep eleminates the two party system. It disempowers party-line voting.