jack

So, stellaris is clearly not an accurate model of reality, but it can still generate interesting observations.

Balancing the economy is a pain. You need energy and minerals to build anything else. But the more buildings you have, the more energy they use, the more population you have, the more food and consumer goods (made of minerals) you need. And you need to build surface mines/power plants or mining stations to get *more* energy and minerals, but they themselves cost minerals to build and energy upkeep. I think I am actually generating a surplus which is going on technological improvement and so on, but it's also possible I've just expanded a bit much and am only treading water, despite originally having a reasonable energy and mineral surplus.

And you need a military at least defensively, but that also sucks up a lot of upkeep. It is sadly easy to resent everything that costs...

I'm not sure what the right balance was, between researching technology first before expanding much (often recommended online), just sitting in place accumulating a surplus of energy and minerals whenever you run short, vs ploughing everything you can into expansion and hoping for the best.

I guess if I actually sprawl out into all the currently unclaimed systems around, I would outrace the other empires in size. But that would mean, I'd need to spend everything on expansion first, fall behind in tech, and maybe be easy pickings militarily. Ideally I'd establish some bulwarks to block off future territory. But how many bulwarks can I afford, would I be able to hold them?

Geopolitics

The relations with other empires are very abstract, an opinion (and a few related metrics) measuring how they react to you. A positive opinion means they're more willing to agree things, including things that improve opinion over time.

But if there's a really valuable choke point or something... I feel the urge to claim it for myself to just be on the safe side. Or to grab the uninhabited systems between me and Furry Napoleon, even if it temporarily increases tensions. After all, if I have a superior strategic position, I can be nice, but if they do, I don't *know* they'll be nice.

If we had a high trust already maybe we could play nice together. Especially for things like choke points if we trust each other to keep the borders open. I can trust their high opinion is not going to suddenly vanish, just like a trust actual people in the real world if they show themselves trustworthy. But there's no easy way of enforcing "this is my space even if I haven't built anything here" and the ethical thing of letting them have some and trusting them to be future allies not enemies is scary when you have no way of enforcing that.

Multiculturalism

What I *can* do is seek reciprocal free-movement-of-people with other friendly empires, giving me more varied population, and hopefully fewer xenophobes. I'm excited to see who turns up! And my empire is set to accept refugees -- I'm not sure when that happens, but I'm welcoming ready. More population is usually good.

What I like about Ingress

You can make plans and follow them. You can say, "I have ten minutes, let me see if I can grab keys for these four many portals" or "Can I fill this hole in fielding". In pokemon, you can't really set out to *do* something most of the time.

There's a big incentive to visit different and out-of-the-way portals which is really interesting. Getting keys for them, or linking to them, mean the portals are *different*, not just "go to whichever ones are closest".

You can look up where's an interesting place to go to.

What I like about Pokemon Go

Filling the pokedex and collecting high-level pokemon gives you a form of progress which you can always increase. In Ingress, the only form of permanent progress was levelling-up, which was fun at low levels, but it was about conquering territory which was always transitory.

There's three teams, not two. I don't know why, but that seems to make it a lot more fun, both in how gyms change hands, and in meeting people.

The flavour is really nice, I love seeing different pokemon.

When you get to higher levels, there's not quite such a cliff of "now it's too hard to level up, and there's nothing else to do, there's no point".

Problems I'm starting to have with Pokemon

I've had a *lot* of fun with it. But I am starting to find some problems.

The new scanner sort-of works. It at least tells you what's within 200m. But it seems like that's not *totally* reliable. And it doesn't seem to tell you pokemon in order. But that means, I never have the satisfaction of tracking a pokemon methodically. It's either "walk along the river" or "rush backwards to establish the edge of the circle, then dash in one direction, and either frantically search around 200m from the first point, or reach another edge and triangulate". It's not a *fun* process, it's aggravating.

You don't play only at pokestops.

I mean, it's realistic that you don't get good intermediate indications of progress, you just have to try your best and then wait for success. But getting positive feedback is one of the things that makes games fun!

Now I have most of the pokemon which often spawn nearby, there's a lot less point going for a little walk and capturing some. I used to take a little wander, catch a few, come home. Now it's "go and see if there's a rare one, there isn't". Or, waste a bunch of pokeballs catching pidgeys I don't really need.

And it's hard to *work towards* filling my pokedex. ETA: Either someone tells you where a rare pokemon spawns, or you just wander around and hope. Either way, you get a random success for no reason, followed by a long period of failure.

So I may stop. But I wish it would become possible to start over, while being able to switch back to my original account occasionally. Like, in Ingress, having multiple accounts even if it took time to switch was a big advantage, because you could put multiple high-level resonators on a portal. But in pokemon, it seems like it wouldn't make that much difference. I'm sure I *can* start another account, but it would be nice if it was officially supported, "yes, that's what you're supposed to do, we won't ban you". Maybe with a built-in delay for switching or something.

Yay, Where's My Water is great.

You start with a network of walls, dirt, water and pipes, and have to wipe away the dirt so the water ends up in the washtub, but it rings really true.

Simulated water physics has come a long way since I last played a physics puzzle game. It's maybe not quite realistic, but it works, it finds its lowest level, it squirts through narrow cracks, it spreads out on flat surfaces, and forms little drops, but doesn't get hung up on implausible bits of scenery.

And the puzzles are quite puzzly. They're not as hard as some puzzles, but they do the right thing in "here's a set of water, ice, steam, lasers, dirt, etc., here's the winning condition, can you put them together". There's normally one right solution, but it's not blatantly enforced like too many games, it arises from the components.

Game three

I choose a fiend with very high deceit. This allows him to subsist to a large extent on stealing resources from the other players without them knowing who did it. In exchange all my legions have a low movement rate. But about half way through I buy one of the really expensive legions which (a) has flying 3 so movement rate doesn't matter and (b) is a beast. And manufacture some vendettas, use deceit to stop other legions from moving either, and capture most of the places of power by flying the beast about.

Eventually it gets loose and runs amok (due to an event someone else drew -- fortuitously for them), but by then I have an almost unstoppable lead. I can't quite manufacture a blood feud against any other players to defeat them directly, but the game ends and I'm ahead on prestige.

Game four

I follow the somewhat-degenerate resource strategy. This involves taking several disadvantages, but bumping up the resource gathering as much as possible, and then spending most of the game doing nothing but gathering resources and raising stats.

I start off in a little cul-de-sac, and am SO passive I get walled up into two hexes, which is a mistake because I can't buy any more legions as I don't have anywhere to put them until I raise my deceit all the way to level six and institute some back-room dealing to manipulate of the neighbouring hexes to my side without starting a vendetta.

But at that point I have maxed out all of my stats, have six orders a turn rather than two, and own a startling array of artefacts. I use rituals to prevent any of the AIs from acting, use a ritual attacking the parliament framing my neighbour so he is excommunicated but I am not, roll over his stronghold, buff my expensive giant legion, and roll right over parliament as well. The AI is locked down and doesn't do anything. I win.

I think I need to play against some actual humans :)

"... but by that time Red and I had found a flame-thrower. There was wave after wave of zombies coming at us, but we retreated into the building, and I took the 'thrower and backed into a niche one side of the entrance, and Caroline retreated down a corridor away from me and found a good sniping position.

"I kept up a steady jet coving the entrance, and every zombie coming toward me. Each screamed as it caught alight and fled, flaming from me. A few got close enough I roasted them right threw before they could get away but most streamed crackling and popping down the corridor toward Red, bumping and tripping any of their not-yet-lit brethren and spreading the fire...

"Red was amazing. Her career had gone, but there she was, long frizzy red hair streaming in the wind, leaning boldly forward into destiny. I'd never seen anyone handle a laser rifle like Red; most people need to wait, to line up, but she could snap off shot after shot after shot, punching the brains out of each charred zombie in less time than it took to take a step.

( Read more... )

I really enjoyed writing those long musings on the history of the world. It's funny, I often do, though I'm not quite sure if they're *for* anything. They're deliberately too light on mechanical details for a roleplaying campaign and too light on plot for a book.

And they're a bit long for livejournal; it's almost automatic for your eyes to glaze over at the first paragraph and skip past.

I'm particularly curious to know if anyone did read them, and if so had any thoughts. (It's ok, pippa, I know you were going to tell me about the language later.)

(1) The names, the veil albicant, etc. Could they be less facile or less pretentious? Any suggestions? I like them for being adjective last if nothing else :)

(2) The religion. I tried to make a world with a more definite afterlife, but where Christianity is both immediately obviously relevant, and yet still a matter of faith and trust in God. Was anyone offended? Did anyone find it sympathetic?

(3) The renaissance. Anyone want to suggest any specific people to appropriate? I slipped Descartes in, but didn't try to give too much detail, I knew it wouldn't be accurate.

What does the renaissance mean for magic in the church today?

By Father David. At the time this was written, he was estranged from the Roman Catholic Church and taken in by the Church of England, but he still maintained many close ties and saw the Catholic Church as his home.

From the fifteenth century a renaissance swept Europe. The church attracted great thinkers who tore down the old superstitions, in Christianity, in science, and in magic, and laid foundations of deeper understanding which we build on to this day.

But at the beginning the papacy was also convulsed with politics of squabbling Italian city states, and the dying of the remnants of the old empires, and revolted against some of the most radical thoughts.

I looked out the flash game I wrote again (http://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/222925.html). Level 20 was hard, it took me half an hour to solve, and I *wrote* it.

I had some other impressions:

* Roguelike mode is very useful, without it its too tedious walking round levels that take a long time.
* You really need a "reset" key, it's stupid that you need the mouse
* Some of the interactions are too subtle. Beetles jump into a 1-wide chasm, but no further. Which makes sense, but it's not clear. I could add some more levels to pad it out a bit, that would be fun, but not every single level introducing a subtlety of behaviour. That was definitely the best effort/reward at the time, but it does mean it can be hard, or too quickly completed if it isn't hard.
* Pooh should be able to see at angles!

But when I found it hard, I remembered several people had been stuck on some level or other, but in the midst of a party I couldn't really help them. If you wanted to ask for hints, I can help you now :)

I have some (but not 10) new levels for my winnie-the-pooh flash game, and have gone back to experimenting with live action animation. Hopefully real people for CR and girlfriend, and (creepily) soft toys for the venemous animal characters.

The question is, if I manipulate pooh teddybear with needles to hold his limbs in various running positions for stop-motion photography, is that evil?

Is that why people believe cameras steal their souls, they just haven't broken the fourth wall enough?