Gorgon

I'm getting some trade ships together with a fleet of 4th rate ships of the line to go smash a pirates nest and put together some trade, hopefully bringing in more money. Trade is basically a mad dash for the trade theater slots in the first few turns, then eventually your cities with trade ports take over. I managed to get 8 of them in the beginning as the English, with a bit of luck and help from the pirates killing off the others, that gave me 9k in trade income every turn. Of course you have to be careful not to go to war without making sure your enemies cant block the channel. Now in control of most of India as well as Scandinavia, plus 3 islands in the Caribbean, research is going much faster with 4 universities, I have more money than I can spend. Not much challenge in beating the victory conditions left now.

I was defending a star fort from the French retaliation, and had two rockets in the centre firing at them. They began climbing the walls en masse at one concentrated position and broke through, which I was pleasantly surprised with... until they ALL ran past my remaining forces, down the steps, and all ran at the artillery. Which let my remaining forces regroup and close in on them shooting from all sides. The AI seems very sensitive to where your artillery is or where your general is, but so much so that it doesn't think about the rest of your forces. I don't get naval battles anymore because they all stay in their ports, and if I blockade they never fight back. Hell even if I let them be they don't really come to you. The AI is *seriously* broken on the water and it always has been; CA is just rubbish at it. I would in fact be happier with a mod with some setting where the entire map is land with lakes and rivers, but with very detailed and rough topography. If you take the port with infantry it forces the naval battle, the ports aren't usually garrisoned so you just need one unit of anything to force a naval battle while blockading a port.

Yeah, island real estate is a good catch, you will never have to defend it. I have to say I'm a bit disappointed in artillery. All it seems to be able to do is to alter the AI response a little, and take down buildings. The most you can hope for is a handful of enemy casualties even if you have concentrations to aim at. One time I had massed 3 of those short range anti infantry pucker guns aimed at an approaching enemy mele unit, pirates I believe. A great clamor of smoke and noise ensued and I mouse over the enemy unit to see how many of them could be left. 5 casualties, 5.... The pucker guns were then summarily overrun and destroyed. Not worth the upkeep or the slow campaign movement. Naval warfare is fun, except that it takes way too long, ships seem to be able to withstand 20 or 30 broadsides before anything drastic happens. I'm hoping that improves once I can field first and second rate ships of the line. It also gets overly complicated with more than 4 or 5 ships total.

I dunno, they seem to compensate rather well by banging the war drums. To me the notion that Capitalism develops liberty and democracy from economic liberalism is ideology, not established fact.

That depends, I think you are reading too much into the word, I didn't intend to subdivide into personal liberty versus redistribution of wealth. Surely you can't have equality without human and civil rights.

Unregulated Capitalism is not anarchism, that would insinuate a lack of control in other areas. It's likable to the gilded age in the US for instance. Random google link http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/gildedage.html

Well yes, the notion that Capitalism invariably increases equality is bollocks.

Well, we have been doing the dialogue and trade approach for nigh on 20 years. The Chinese don't seem to keen on the the representative democracy/free trade formula which we have come to believe, perhaps in our own arrogance, is where all countries will end up eventually with globalization and western cultural influence. Not that a hard stance would be any more fruitful, but there is an argument to be made that our engagement with the Chinese does nothing at all to steer them towards democracy or human rights. They are content to do things their own way, which is as much as you would expect from anyone.

D.ick Turpin, the Tudor highwayman And his faithful sidekick Swift Nick.

My god 'This game is currently unavailable. Steam error'. 'Updating steam'. (non responsive update progress bar) 'please check your internet connection'. (it's fine) This is really pushing it. My first and last game with steam.

After the last patch the game hangs my computer whenever I order one of my ships to board. This is bad. Can't risk damage to my HDD as a result of powering it off manually all the time.

What am I supposed to do with trade ships, leave them in the ports they were constructed in, leave them on top of a green line indication a trade route, Sailing them to neutral trade ports only get's me the option of going to war. Far as I have been able to tell sailing them onto the trade route does not increase the route's revenue, but neither does increasing the number of trade ships docked at a trade port

Is that 'the road to independence'

I dunno, I kinda wish there were less ships in the average naval engagement. It all gets out of the players hands pretty fast. So far it's pretty confusing, don't like the land combat particularly much. Why can't I have all of my unit volley at the same time to stop a cavalry charge dead in it's tracks, or follow the volley with a charge of my own. More formations and units are researchable, but it seems like an unreasonably long wait with boring line infantry. Cannons aren't much use, not even massing 6 of them made much of an impression. Maybe they get better.

'Connecting to steam account 'suckmywetfarts'...' hmm... maybe I was a bit hasty.

There is an XP version for students that is freeware now I believe, it ain't even illegal.

Regardless, it looks like it's doing it, at x1 speed. Installer still active, about 20% to go now.

I also noticed my drive doesn't make the usual noise, maybe it's dying. Failed a few burns too recently.

It's installing,, at one 1 kb/sec. Is this normal, it's been nearly an hour and it's still on disk one.

So I got the game at a reasonable price from a games shop, and I realize there is a deluxe version with more units. Bunch of rip off artists. There is bound to be a hack to include those units sooner or later, too bad I won't get to use em anytime soon. Won't have time to play until the weekend, unless I give in to temptation sometime tonight.

I imagine this is the same kinda deal, more a test of manhood than a deliberate provocation from the government, who likes to spin nationalist and anti American rhetoric, but doesn't like it when things get out of control.

One of my dad's friends was arrested, kinda last minute, for shooting at the USS Reagan with a BB gun. Apparently they were arguing whether or not to return fire when the harbor police showed up. True story. He got laid a lot that year for his efforts.

Evil dead 1 and 2 (essentially exactly the same movies) are hilarious, army of Darkness is merely ok. And don't forget Brisco County Jr. Hercules and Zena slipped past my radar because, well, I'm not 13 years old.

You have been de-clawed, at your own request. Now guess how much appealing to common sense is going to net you compared to mod buttons.