Gorth

Ah yes, speaking of Her Royal Importantness and Australia... I only just found out this afternoon that I have Thursday off because we celebrate the death of the queen (or mourn it or whatever). Then a bit more than a week after that we get a day off to celebrate her birthday. Somebody better get the calendars updated for next year (the various states celebrate her birthday on different dates, to fit into some gap where there are few public holidays, so it's a different date from state to state, but would probably be tasteless anyway to keep celebrating)

It is England we're talking about. A few centuries makes little difference. If you thought the US has weird laws, how about these English laws (that are still in place, even if not enforced): 1. When a whale or sturgeon becomes beached, it must be offered up to the reigning monarch. An obscure 14th century statute called the "Prerogativa Regis", or "the King’s Prerogative" gives that all whales and sturgeons found on the coast are technically the property of the Crown. 2. It's actually illegal to be found drunk in the pub. Ever since 1839, it has been against the law to be inebriated whilst on a licensed premises. 3. For some reason, it's illegal in Scotland for a boy under the age of 10 to see a naked mannequin. This classic relic from the old "decency laws" we used to have in Britain serves to prevent the corruption of our oh-so-innocent youth! 4. In the Metropolitan Police District*, it's illegal to carry a plank of wood along a pavement. This also includes poles, ladders, and placards! *The Metropolitan Police District = all of Greater London excluding the City of London. 5. Easter Sunday must always be the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April. This is outlined in the Easter Act 1928 and cannot be changed (although IRL it always does). 6. It is an offence to handle a salmon and look at all suspicious. This is covered by the Salmon Act of 1986... YEAH. 7. It's illegal to walk cows down the street in the daylight. Under the Metropolitan Streets Act, farmers and proud pet owners are not permitted to walk their cows through the streets between 10am and 7pm, unless they have a note from the Commissioner of Police. 8. Members of Parliament are not allowed to wear a suit of armour inside Parliament! This is an antediluvian law to stop nobles and other parliamentarians from threatening the government with armed force. 9. Firing a cannon within 300 yards of a private dwelling is a big no-no. If you're caught playing with your firearm of a greater calibre than a common fowling-piece near someone's home, you could be fined £200. 10. You're not allowed to fly a kite in a public place within the limits of the metropolitan police district. This one falls under The Metropolitan Police Act 1839, a massive fun-sucker of a piece of legislation! 11. The Metropolitan Police Act 1839 also says that it's breaking the law to knock on someone’s front door and run away. Remember knock, knock, ginger? Yes? YOU'RE A CRIMINAL! 12. You are not permitted to "linger" after a funeral has taken place. In 2015, a man was charged £160 for staying an extra 20 minutes after his wife's service had finished because he had prevented the gravediggers from doing their job. 13. There's a law that prohibits the act of gambling in any British public library. This includes any form of gambling and also foul language! 14. It's illegal to be drunk and be in charge of cattle in England and Wales. This is basically like the "don't drink and drive" of it's day – don't get sloshed and drive a carriage/ride a horse/herd cattle! 15. It's illegal to jump the queue when waiting in the ticket hall of the tube. It's a cornerstone of TFL's official by-laws! 16. In the UK, you're not allowed to dress up as a police officer, sailor, or soldier even if it's for a costume party or for the purposes of stripping. The Seamen's and Soldiers' False Characters Act 1906 renders it illegal for a person to pretend to be in the armed forces, and the Police Act 1996 says the same thing for anyone dressed as a fake copper. 17. It's actually breaking the law to pay with your phone at a drive-through whilst your car is still running. Say you were to lean over and pay with your phone at a drive-through, and you left your car engine running and handbrake unlocked, you're technically using your phone whilst operating a car and that's illegal in the UK. 18. It is against the law to have a pigsty at the front of your house. According to the Town Police Clauses Act 1847, it's actually illegal to keep a pigsty at the front of your property unless it's somehow hidden away. 19. It's actually illegal to import potatoes from Poland to the UK. This dates back to a big scare in 2004 over ring rot outbreaks on Polish farms. 20. It's an offence to beat or shake your carpet or rug in the street in London. The Metropolitan Police Act 1839 strikes again! You can shake your doormat out, but only before 8am. 21. It's still illegal to allow your pet to mate with a pet from the royal household. It used to be an executable offence up until the death penalty was abolished in 1965! 22. You are not permitted to slide along snowy or icy streets within the limits of the metropolitan police district. You can thank that pesky old Metropolitan Police Act 1839 for this one too! 23. You can be fined up to £1000 for hanging your washing across the street in the UK. Yet ynother statute from that fine Town Police Clauses Act of 1847! 24. And lastly, it's illegal for any cab in the City of London to transport rabid dogs and/or corpses. And cab drivers also have a legal responsibility to ask passengers if they have smallpox or the plague! And many more. One of my favourites is this one: "Yes, as bizarre as it may sound, according to an outdated English law, it is perfectly legal to shoot a Scotsman under specific circumstances. Still, there are certain factors that must be present. To begin with, you must be located in York. One of the strange UK laws claims that only in York if they happen to cross paths with a Scotsman, people are allowed to shoot him with a crossbow. Please note, however, that shooting Scots on Sundays remains forbidden. Or at least with a bow and an arrow… The same law claims that any Scotsman caught drunk or armed on Sunday, can still be shot, just not with a crossbow." From The Guardian: "Peculiar laws allowing the killing of Scotsmen in York (providing they are carrying a bow and arrow), forbidding anyone from dying in the houses of parliament and permitting women to go topless in Liverpool - if, that is, they work as a clerk in a tropical fish shop - survived the Queen's speech yet again yesterday."

I actually knew Jon from his collaborations with Vangelis before I heard Yes Edit: That was a decade and a half before the internet

Yes. I always make sure to get the weekly allotment of hellknights. They are my main hitters in my armies Too stingy to pay the 2000 gems for an extra reroll though, but it also never seemed necessary. Is there some for me not obvious benefit to clerics? The times I've tried using them, they become the instant bullet magnets and die before anything else (despite having close to 100hp each). Mind you, I never had large stacks of them, so they rarely make it past second round. Maybe my generals healing skill makes their lay on hands (other) skill redundant?

A bit of 80's nostalgia...

So, we're back to 2018 living standards? Edit: It may sound like a facetious comment, but the article didn't put any absolute numbers of the regress

On normal difficulty, the health bar of your army (in the upper left corner) seems to match the infirmary capacity (which you can expand by building in the outposts). I try to heal up as much as possible before end of combat for the same reason. As an old Heroes of Might & Magic commander, the principle of army composition is familiar. The larger the unit stack, the better. Hence trying to focus on a few, useful unit types (that are in regular supply) and then create "Death Stars" (a few, like one or two, all powerful units). In my current game, I have two. Getting those two generals leveled up also meant the third general got left by the wayside, just exploring paths, as the remaining enemy armies are way to strong for the 4 stacks he can command. I could swap stacks between the latter and one of the powerful units, but I just don't see a need for it. The only odd troop type I've kept around is the barbarian warriors. Once you get enough of them to survive initial strike from enemy generals, they hit like a hammer. For the rest, archers/marksmen, shield bearers in defensive mode (to soak up damage) and black knights to do all the killing. I never found any use for scouts (die immediately), inquisitors (nobody expects the Mendevian Inquisition), clerics (they spent all fight self healing but were too few in numbers to last more than 3 rounds) etc.

Sounds a bit like a game without a plan, other than we would like to make a game in our own setting, that isn't an isometric game, but not much decided after that... i.e. no "vision" that the team is eager to implement. Would it be better to release in a state like Alpha Protocol (lots of individual ideas that just doesn't mesh to make a whole game) or rather drop it entirely?

Cleared out Wintersun (in the 7th attempt). Luckily there was a small safe space you can use to buff up in before the pre-battle dialogue starts. All the shields, blesses, communal cats graces, bulls strength, blur, displacement etc. i could drum up and throwing a lot of acid attacks up front before the battle starts (Nenio and Sosiel could sneak up to the trigger limit without triggering it). I noticed most acid based spells ignores magical resistance, leaving it up entirely to saving throw. I can't remember what I picked for Sosiel, but Nenio definitely has greater spell penetration. What she doesn't have is elemental alignment (yes, that's what the currently AWAL Ember has). It didn't help half my party was crippled before the encounter and two of them on deaths door (because I had been running around too long, away from Drezen) Edit: Picked up Ember on the way, she was busy converting the forces of The Abyss to become better people... couldn't really get myself to mock her. Choices were a bit limited after all, good, evil or lawful. No neutral or chaotic gains (unless you consider not gaining one of the other alignment points as a de facto gain) Edit2: Someone mentioned grabbing the cat. I could have sworn it was a cat, but it has grown a bit and is now a tiger

Wintersun isn't far from the location then. I just got this boss fight which turned out to require a bit better preparation than what I showed up with

Hehe... yeah, I got to the point too where some templars decided to run away with my old flame, Ember. After first searching the temple (hey, templars - temple, amiright?), the two houses and the abandoned building for hiding templars and their prisoner, I started searching places I haven't visited on the world map. Currently at Wintersun, uncovering some fishy masquerade going on Edit: Speaking of old flames, ye gods, Daeren and Sosiel are some pushy guys. Went from polite attempts to say no to definite "shutdown", not interested. Edit2: If Greybor or Regill starts hitting my barbarian, I'll do the facepalm thing... bring me some women dammit!

Continuation from old thread:

Who says it's a choice? Maybe some stuff for thought... why do people love a leader? It's not like that leader benefit them in any way. Conversation moved to next thread incarnation:

How wrong does a judge have to be, before getting removed from the job? Edit: For me, the judge referenced here would be an obvious candidate. Like someone completely out of their league or nurturing ambitions of a life in politics after the courtroom....

It's a question of statistics, isn't it? Assuming the Russian army is rotten to the core with nepotism, corruption and archaic doctrines, so it is really only fighting at 25% efficiency of what it's numbers would otherwise have suggested. Same thing with the Russian airforce and navy. Projecting unto the nuclear arsenal, 25% of 5900+ nuclear warheads (2022 estimates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction) hitting something is still a lot of damage.

I have neither of those two names in my party, but the little friendly Babau pops up for me too. Confused me the first few times, wondering where it came from. In the end, I just decided it was one of Arueshalae's (sp?) old lovers from the abyss, missing his (ex-)girlfriend Edit: Could it be related to the mythic path (trickster in my case)? The "closet" meetings, that are part of the trickster path are hilarious. I could just imagine a real world, human cabinet meeting working exactly the same way

Yeah. I decided to play my very first game on the default/normal difficulty. Feel no need to show off my non existing d&d skills in an orgy of self inflicted pain… I leave that to the Slaanesh worshippers

Got my FireFox sorted out (backed up favourites, uninstalled, deleted everything in the three AppData subfolders that had Mozilla and or Firefox in it, then reinstalled and imported favourites) Also got my gfx card repaired... mostly because it was two and a half years old and i had forgotten it had 3 years warranty One of the fans had started vibrating so badly I could hear it upstairs (my pc is downstairs). I.e. not good. Ordered a replacement fan from a company that specializes in gfx card fan replacements (no kidding, such companies exists). Replaced the card, pc and... black screen. I'm sure the left over screws I had from the gfx card were unrelated to it Pulled out the card and put in my old 1050 card, using that for a week and a half while mulling over what to do. A new card was definitely not on the budget at this point in time (I really would have expected it to last 5 years before upgrading my 2070 to something more contemporary. Took the card apart again, touched and wiggled everything, reassembled the card (still without finding a purpose for my new spare screws) and put it in my pc. Magic! Now it works again and I can hopefully wait at least another year and a half (at least) before splurging a small fortune on a new card and or pc. Off to the local Games Workshop store tonight for a few games of 40K Kill Team with some new found friends.

Don't worry. The instant party wipes comes later. Following by gnashing of teeth, head scratching, guide reading and listening to advice in the pathfinder thread

Chernobyl was one of those things that couldn't really happen. It took so much combined human stupidity and ignorance of the workings of the reactor to "provoke" the disaster. And when the (entirely man made, not an accident or coincidence) disaster started happening, all the wrong decisions were made to stop it and as a result exacerbated it. Level bombing the reactor with a squadron of B52's or the tectonic plates deciding to split apart underneath it couldn't have created outcomes as bad as the human operators managed to. Worst case scenario?... Sweden will get some new porn habits.

"There are no Ukrainian infidels in Moscow. Never!" - Russian Information Minister I do think Putin will take to using part of the nuclear arsenal against Ukraine before that happens though. Also why I believe it to be the main reason Biden will not send any toys to Kiev that can hit Russia from afar, because he expects a similar outcome. Defensive warfare support only. @Zoraptor yeah, I wouldn't put it past the west to support Navalny. Just what Russia needs. An ultra-nationalist, whose first bullet point on the agenda is to kill off all Muslims living in the Russian Federation and the the second bullet point being to unite all Russian speakers in a Großrussia.

Oooh, didn't know it was that good as a "damage sponge". Thank you for the heads up. I might just stick with it for now then (since, the game comes with built in cheat mode in for of respec of everything short of gender iirc). I might down the line consider bulwark and boar, but honestly, he looks just awesome on a triceratops I'll keep my dino as a wrecker until such a time where I feel like it needs more help staying alive It's all a thematic thing after all, a reckless, raging, chaotic barbarian on a wrecking mount and inspiring ferocity in his party members (envision Ember on fire, charging at the enemy while yelling "Murder death kill! Murder death kill!")

Already got second thoughts about my triceratops riding barbarian. Don't get me wrong, the cool factor is enormous, but his natural fast movement speed on foot feels wasted. I suppose a pet would make sense if not used as a mount, but a giant centipede feels out of character and Regill is already the resident raptor champion. Time to test run another barbarian configuration (while still relatively manageable at level 10) for a bit. I have no idea how to manage time and money in the crusade part btw. The only things I sort of pay attention to is whether or not demon armies are about to lay siege to a place or, as happened once so far, the crowd gets restless if I don't conquer a fortification every 30 days. I'm getting closer to the end of my second 30 day period and have an army capable of taking the next fort once the middle flag turns yellow. No idea if it really matters or not, but I'll just pretend there is a bit of urgency and the people wants to hear constant good news from the front. Explored most of the locations now in the first bit of the map (minus the DLC) and wondering if I head south or southwest next (there doesn't seem to be a direct road west) Edit: Not quite true, there was a place with a puzzle I need to solve, that couldn't be solved in the first visit. I got a tonne of bricks with green runes (iirc) in my inventory and also a dozen knives of no value, but with some rather amusing backstories (since they weigh very little, I decided to hang on to them for now)