Enoch

I think I'm starting to get the hang of Civ 5, the rules of which changed a lot after a big patch last month. Started a game as Egypt on the medium "Prince" difficulty level, thinking about doing a Cultural game. Had a rather nice location for Thebes (coastal without too many workable water tiles, lots of grassland, some hills, 3 Silver, 1 Incense, and 3 Cows in the workable area, but no river), and didn't find any other nice city locations in the immediate vicinity (i.e., nothing that would grab more than one luxury or have a particularly high hammer production). So I'm going one-city Culture. I've figured out Research Agreement blocking (an arguably exploitative strategy whereby you research 25% of a tech yourself, which eliminates it from the random-selection options after a RA is completed), and developed a much stronger understanding of the various Social Policy options. For Cultural strategies, I've found a few big keys so far: get to the Renaissance Age as quickly as possible (Astronomy seems to be the easiest tech to make a beeline for) to open up the "Freedom" Social Policy tree. One of the Policies in that tree reduces new SP costs by 25%, so the earlier you get that, the faster you'll progress through the rest (and the rest of the tree is very good, too-- halving the food consumed by Specialists and doubling the Culture produced by any city that contains a World Wonder). Archaeology is the next target Tech, because it enables the National Wonder that increases a city's Culture production by 100%. What I'm currently struggling with is that I don't have a good feel for what portion of my Gold (most of which is made by selling all 4 of my local resources) should be going towards buying off Cultural and Maritime City State allies, and what portion of my Gold should be going towards Research Agreements with the other Civilizations. I also need to decide what my 5th Social Policy tree is going to be-- I've taken Policies so far from Tradition, Piety, Patronage, and Freedom. It'll probably be Liberty, if just for the free Great Person, but some of the bonuses in Commerce would also be useful.

Quite possibly. Another factor: What can you put in a TV commercial that immediately communicates to the viewer how a next-gen console is better than a current-gen one? The transition from PS2/Xbox to PS3/360 was immediately obvious, with the big jump in supported screen resolution. But the differences between a current-gen AAA title and a prospective next-gen AAA launch title are going to be more subtle. Sure, you'll get the smother textures and such that you currently see on games that scale up for top-end PC hardware. But that isn't going to hit audiences the way that the jump to HD did and immediately convince them that their old console is an outdated piece of junk. It's harder to sell "games can have levels that won't fit comfortably inside a shoebox" in a TV ad. And with online multiplayer being such a big element of console gaming now, people aren't going to have the incentive to upgrade unless it brings a critical mass of their friends/rivals/anonymous douchebags to play against/with.

Today I became an uncle! My little sis had a little girl a couple weeks earlier than expected.

I've observed that persistently since I installed FNV. Radscorps do it too-- the model glides around the map at a 30-degree-ish angle off the horizontal for some reason.

Yeah, I agree. Bethesda are good at recognizing after-the-fact that they've made a broken system, and they don't shy away from fixing their problems in later games. Sadly, to-date, the fixed versions always seem to come with new and different broken elements. Fallout 3 is probably the least-broken system of theirs that I've played, so that's a good sign. But returning to the core learn-by-doing mechanic for TES is probably going to be a step backwards. Anyhow, the best news about Skyrim I've heard so far is that they're going to continue their policy of modder support. Skyrim should be a solid experience after the mod community has had 6 months or so to tinker with it.

It was actually the very first Might & Magic for me. On my uncle's Commodore 64.

The only way I ever found to win the BG1 final battle was to abuse the fog of war and pull Sarro's buddies out one-by-one, until you get rid of the archer with the crazy rate-of-fire and a sackful of arrows of detonation. And abusing the fog of war is an even sillier exploit than spamming wands of summoning.

Magicka. I am really bad at this game. But it is entertaining.

Yeah, it's hard to argue that Troika's repeated screwups on the business side of things (dealing with flaky publishers, agreeing to too-tight deadlines, not scoping their projects to comport with said deadlines, etc., etc.) didn't hold back those talented developers who they did have on-staff.

My recollection of AD&D2E rules isn't fantastic, but I think the answer as to the important stuff is no. Some items (e.g., Wands of Magic Missile) are kosher for thieves, but I think that using mage scrolls and fancier magic items was a high-level ability, well outside BG1's range. Not sure about Bards, though-- they get some spell powers, and might even get to read scrolls, but I don't know about the better wands and such. Never really played with one.

Early-mid game, there isn't much that Wizards make easier. Late game, the best reasons to have a Wiz in the party are Haste and the capacity to (ab)use Wands of Monster Summoning.

Two sidenotes: 1) An alternate way to "make your own" wizard is to dual-class a particular thief who happens to have a conspicuously high INT. You'll lose her thief abilities until her Wiz level > Thief level, but she becomes more useful, generally. And BG2 assumes that she has taken this path. 2) Also be aware that ditching the "mage lady" might also cost you the Ranger. If it's the ranger & mage I think it is, the only way to split them up is to kill one off. Personally, I'd pick up the Dwarf and ditch the human Cleric. You could think of it as an alignment-based conflict with your Paladin. (IIRC, she's TN.)

Odd experience tonight: I had something that I wrote in an anonymous online comment quoted back to me. It was at a gaming session, and the guy running the game is a co-worker, but none of the other participants are. We got to off-topic BSing, as we often do, and he was relaying a story about a post on a blog that we both read. (He and I have discussed the blog in passing before, but that particular post was fairly recent.) He further related to the group that he was happy to see that someone in the comment section had made an amusing comment that particularly related to the agency at which we both work. I, of course, was the author of that comment, and for whatever reason I didn't own up to it. What unnerved me a little bit is that he recited the entirety of the comment exactly as I had written it. It's a somewhat befuddling thing to begin a conversation thinking "oh yeah, I read that post, too" and shift very quickly to "he's talking about the comment I wrote," "should I admit authorship?" and "holy **** he memorized the exact language I used." It's probably just be an odd quirk of his memory that he recited those couple of lines perfectly, but, even so, it is a decidedly weird experience to have a comment you posted anonymously recited back to you by a living person who does not know that you wrote it.

Lionheart nostalgia? .......................................<cricket noise> ................................................ <cricket noise> ............................................<cricket noise> ................................................ <cricket noise> ............................................<cricket noise> ................................................ <cricket noise> ............................................<cricket noise> ................................................ <cricket noise> ............................................<cricket noise> ................................................ <cricket noise> ............................................<cricket noise> ................................................ <cricket noise> ............................................<cricket noise> ................................................ <cricket noise> ............................................<cricket noise> ................................................ <cricket noise> ............................................<cricket noise> ................................................ <cricket noise> ............................................<cricket noise> ................................................ <cricket noise> ............................................

I'm in the midst of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series. I get turned off from scifi stuff from time to time because I can be something of a prose style snob, and so many of the well reputed scifi-type authors write rather dreadful prose. But I'm loving Wolfe in this regard. Also, I'm a sucker for a good unreliable narrator-- the book's sometime-overly-poetic flourishes would feel forced and awkward with standard narrative omniscience, but they work viewed through the lens of the protagonist's (most likely less-than-honest) recollection of events.

And this is why we can't have nice things. When RPG fans consider such a complete cluster**** of a rules system as only "the last 10%" of game development, it's little wonder why developers don't sink much effort in making systems that are logical, flexible, and reasonably balanced*, and that add to the fun of a game rather than distract from it. We just keep eating heaping bowls of **** and begging for more. * By "reasonably balanced," I'm not talking about MMO-level micro-balance. I'm talking about avoiding situations where the player feels like a chump for having put points in an ability that turns out to be flagrantly under-useful. Which was true for roughly 70% of the abilities in Arcanum.

Yeah, I'd say that there's a bit too much 'deciding the fate of kingdoms' and such to call TW "low fantasy." It's the flavor of high fantasy that sells itself as "gritty" and "dark" (read: castles have privies and people swear a lot) rather than "epic" and "heroic," but you're still slaying dragons and rescuing princesses. (You just get to see their **** afterwards.)

My only hesitation with regard to Portal 2 is how the original gave me motion sickness. I had great fun playing it, but I could only do so for about 45 minutes before I started feeling ill. The first was short enough that I could still make meaningful progress through the game and finish it within a few days of short-session gameplay. A don't know if I'll be able to take on a full-length sequel in a similar fashion.

Arcanum had a pretty interesting world concept, and some of the quest design was rather good. And I loved the soundtrack. Further exploration of those strengths would make for an interesting sequel. But none of the characters were particularly memorable; the pacing was terrible, with huge difficulty spikes creating points of frustration; and it featured quite possibly the worst RPG rules system I've ever seen. I give it some credit for elegance in the equivalency of attribute points, skill points, and spells/schematics. But half of the concepts they built into their character system appeared to have been thought about for a grand total of 45 seconds. ("We need two more items to make this ability area symmetrical with all the others... What do you mean, 'make them useful in gameplay?'" ... "Yeah, it totally makes sense that 18 separate hits for 2 points of damage each should yield several times the XP as one hit for 40 damage. And screw those guys who let their companions do the smashing for them!") RPG fans generally have a quite high tolerance for broken rule systems. But even we have points beyond which anger at the rules clouds our enjoyment of the game. And, on the broader point, Volo is right. Games that bomb like Arcanum did generally don't get sequels (especially those whose developers subsequently go out of business after 2 more bombs).

My game of Civ V wasn't really grabbing me, so now I'm doing some PC-maintenance chores, like deleting files I don't need out of my default downloads folder.

I'm giving Civ V another shot. The last time I played it was several patches ago, so I'm still figuring things out.

A bit more to report for Sat and Sun than there was for Friday. Had a few beers before and during dinner on Saturday, and afterwards, the wife and I switched to Manhattans. That left me a little achy on Sunday morning. But I recovered ably and got to business this evening. Made myself a Negroni while my dinner was in the oven. Dared to challenge its tradition as a before-dinner drink and had another after that. Then a Flying Dog Pale Ale. Then a serving of scotch (with a single ice cube-- or "on the rock," as I say it) from a nearly-empty bottle of Balvenie 15-year that some relative had given me. I've never been one to succumb to the silly reasoning that mixing different types of alcohol is more dangerous than drinking an equivalent amount of alcohol of a single type. But it did take me about 4 tries to type the word "silly" correctly. Will update with findings tomorrow.

I had never really done much cooking with eggplants before. Most of my eating experience with them has been either eggplant parmesan or baba ganoush, both of which are fine things, but not really anything that I was particularly motivated to try at home. But I bought one on a whim the other day, thinking that I would experiment with grilling it. Never got around to using the grill, but I'll be buying more of it soon. I sliced it into 1/4-inch half-rounds, along with a 3 yellow squash (seeded), half a red bell pepper, 3 plum tomatoes, half an onion, and 3-4 cloves of very thinly sliced garlic. Threw that all in a big bowl, salt & pepper, coated with olive oil, added a good dash of balsamic vinegar for added richness, a fistful of chopped parsley, and a nice dusting of freshly grated romano cheese. Tossed to combine, dumped it all in a 13'x9' baking dish, and added some more of the cheese to the top. Covered with aluminum foil, and put it on the lower rack of the oven that already had a half-done meatloaf in it. (Roughly 350F for about 25-30 minutes.) The result was absolutely awesome. Rich & earthy eggplant, complimented by the acidity of the tomatoes and by the still-a-bit-crisp sweetness of the squash and pepper, and all infused with the aromatic flavors of the garlic, onion, and parsley. I realized while eating it that, by simply using the vegetables I had on hand (and the spare heat that I was using for my meatloaf) in a way that made sense to me, I had essentially improvised the dish famously known as ratatouille. (The meatloaf was pretty good, too, although a little underseasoned. That left it rather upstaged by the vegetables.)

Part of me wonders whether Bethesda legal/PR has been taking their time reviewing and possibly editing the DLC's depictions of the LDS church. I mean, if FO2 had been a 21st century mass-market product, there's no effin' way the Hubologist bit makes it in. (And, really, that might have been an improvement.)

I'd answer that by saying that the nature of the hardcore-mode cloud in the Villa is that the dramatic tension doesn't release-- you're constantly worrying that you've messed up playing the resource-management game of doing enough exploration while preserving your health/stims/etc. Until I got the vending machine code for stimpaks, the only thing preventing me from being a nervous wreck was the assumed gaminess of the developers' motivations (i.e., "they want the game to be completable and fun, so they wouldn't expect me to be completely efficient in my health/stim/whatever conservation"). I don't enjoy having to make a choice between either constant worrying or having to soothe myself with meta-analysis. But, that's a personal preference-- I'm aware that there's a whole survival horror genre out there catering to people who don't agree with me on that particular point. Anyhow, I've now finished the episode, and I am, on the whole, a quite satisfied customer. I was somewhat disappointed with the reveal of . But I did find all of the joinable NPCs worthwhile to talk to, and thought that their conclusions were apt and somewhat satisfying. And the background story of the Madre was appropriately simple and bittersweet. (The teases regarding were a little heavy-handed, but that might just be because I exhausted nearly all the dialogues, and the DLC built in a little redundancy to make sure that particular message got through.)