Bay 12 Games Forum

What's the longest game people here have run?  Anyone pushed the tech/tradition cost to the maximum as well as the game year times?  Tried it before and I find you get some weird challenges, especially if you don't try to min-max tech, don't have voidborne, and don't use population controls.  Especially if you layer on trying to provide housing for all of your population.

I prefer the CKIII events so far though, since they actually make you consider the various options a bit more than the CKII ones. It also makes sense the events are tied to your lifestyle, tgouhh the some of them are a bit clunky.”, such as “your friend has been hanging around near council meetings to get a good view of your leadership” which I would hope for considering they are a councillor.

Do wish they put a dash more dev into areas outside of Europe/Middle East as playing as someone on the far east end of the map does have the 'study ancient battles - ooo Thermopylae' event strike a bit strange.  Though since not many people seem to bring it up it was probably a good idea from a development allocation perspective and I don't really begrudge them for it.

(Also, general public polling wasn't terribly favorable to BLM to begin with for various reasons, so quite a few people are probably already in the 'I don't like either' camp.)

Actually, if I recall right I saw a history that BLM was polling somewhere around +6-8 at the start of 2020 (slow but steady increase since around 2012?), up to about +10-11% before George Floyd, said death spiking it to around +18-20%, then those 7% riots started and it dropped back to +6-8% by sometime August/September.  Think it had still been trending lower, but I lost the bookmark in the move from my last computer.

Considering a good chunk of the DNC is dropping varying levels of support for BLM and similar organizations now that the election season is over, if this more concentrated storming of the capitol building that only damaged a few windows and stole some drives does something while the large city-wide instances of rioting (93% of the protests were peaceful, but there's still 7% violent) that damaged a lot of buildings did nothing...

When factoring in support scale, things are probably going to get very interesting soon.

Quote from: Zanzetkuken The Great on November 15, 2020, 01:45:12 am

Think it may be a third option.  Basically every Republican president or presidential candidate has been called a nazi in some capacity for a couple decades, so normal conservatives started tuning it out.  Then social media started getting big, a lot of the early voices there were in cities due to those being major areas where high speed internet got installed.  Cities that have been pretty solidly democrat for a few decades.  This fucked with the in-person view of the overton window and as the standard range of conservatives started to trickle online as higher speeds spread out, they were seen as much further right than they actually would place if you did a national census of opinions.  This gets a massive block labelled incorrectly online.

I would like to use this space to urge people to spoiler extremely long comments so we can skip to the bottom more quickly.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I notice you talk a lot about people feeling rejected by traditional political definitions.

That's true, but I think we're trying to spot a shift in recent years where there isn't one. In fact things have not changed much since the coming of the modern party system, with Nixon, the Southern Strategy, and watergate. To wit, Nixon promised Americans both to "not get involved with foreign wars" but also to project strength; he promised an inherent contradiction of Strength abroad with "Peace", a powerful mixture for those burned in Vietnam. His southern strategy brought home those who opposed the civil rights act and the ending of Jim Crow without having to take meaningful actions to deal with it. His radical disruption of the global system built after WW2 through taking the US off the reserve system and plunging an international economic system built on that fact as a foundation into chaos appealed to many, even if they didn't quite follow the details. And as a result, he won with a result that no one before or since could replicate: 520 to 17 electoral votes, carrying 49 states, and winning 60.7% of the popular votes (his opponent didn't even break 40%: he was down to 37.5%). What else is interesting about this election? Turnout fell a whole 5.7% points from 60.9% to 55.2%; it has only on two occasions since even broken past this lower number, and only by a slim margin; turnout has never recovered from where it stood before.

You know what else is interesting? A majority of Americans supported Nixon being removed from office. A majority of republicans did not and never did. In the elections following, Americans punished Congress like never before or since: the rate of successful incumbents was down to 55%, which is literally not a thing that happens except in this particular instance; Democrats gained 49 seats in the House. But not because people suddenly loved democrats; it's because republicans turned on their congressmen.

Now who should come by Reagan in 1980? And he promises strength, peace, he promises optimism and "Morning in America", and he promises economic change, and he wins first decisively, and then in a (significantly less than Nixon) landslide. The senate of 1980 is coincidentally the same that was elected in 1974, and republicans gain 12 seats. Now why should they gain 12 seats, if the people who voted in 1974 were democrat-leaning enough to give them such a boost? The only real justification for that is that Republicans in 1974 didn't vote or punished their legislators, than voted for new ones. But Reagan, despite everything and being lionized even to this day as an icon of conservative thinking, did not win nearly as much as Nixon did. Because he's not Nixon. Then Reagan's VP HW Bush runs. He promises "A kinder, gentler" Reagan. He wins at first, with Reagan endorsing him; but after four years of being not-reagan (and certainly not Nixon), he loses. Quite handily for someone who was part of such a massive win. Why?

I'll tell you why. You know when Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998, it started in October and ended in December. It was a congressional election year, with elections being held in Novermber, in between those three month period of impeachment. That year Democrats won +5 seats; it's borderline unheard of for the party who has the presidency to win house seats during midterms, but he did. How? Why?

You know one of the most interesting things about W. Bush? Bush came into office after an election that was essentially a coinfip. Then he won in 2004 with the popular vote (the first republican since 1988 to do so! And there have been none after either!), and he won with 98% support from Republicans. But by the end of his second term his popularity had shifted to the low-20s. Bear in mind: Trump's support has never gone below 35%. Bush? He ended with 15%. 15% This, the first republican to win the popular vote since his father, bottomed out harder than we could even conceive of today. Why?

Why did Obama's popularity go up at the end of 2014 (after the midterms)? The Obama years were eight years of ranting at Obama from the right and indeed from the more progressive left about everything from drone strikes to his tan suit. But he ended with a positive approval rating, and it actually improved steadily from 2014-2016, when the only major policy changes at that time were the strikes against ISIS. Why?

Your argument is on the right track. But it's imagining a shift where there isn't one. Republicans in the last 50 years do well when they tap into the numbers who like the Nixon Archetype, and they fail when they don't or the Democrats do it instead. It's not a "silent majority" as nixon described it; it's definitely a minority, but in a world where turnout is lower they win pretty consistently. They want someone promising both strength but also don't like to actually be in protracted wars which invite criticism, yet at the same time they want deniable "Peace with honor" and don't care if we actually "win" in the longrun. They like bold economic decisions and certainly don't mind overturning international systems. They particularly like Presidents who tell the media and/or congress to fuck off. And above all they want a president who will make them feel good about the country. Trump checked every box there was.

But this year, which is on track (when the votes are certified) to be the first election to exceed 1968's Nixon election since, they didn't win. It was actually not even very close; we've had vastly narrower elections in the popular vote, and Biden's electoral vote lead will exceed's trumps in 2016. The haze of election day clouded the minds of many, but let me remphasize: this is not close. And why should that be? I think in the end the turnout will be the obvious and key part of this. The Nixon base is large enough to decide elections when turnout is around 50-55% and not when it's 60%; let alone the 64% we're on track to reach.

You've slightly misunderstood.  I'm not saying that the overall political spectrum of the nation shifted all too much, I'm instead saying that the overton window got completely fucked and caused a perception shift that has messed with the elected democrats a bit.

This economist article has details, but the particular chart I want to bring your attention to is annoyingly hidden under 'pay to subscribe to see more of the article'.  You can spot it for a second before that comes up, but you can't really get a good look at the thing.  I spammed different search terms and found this here that does show the chart.  It has relative conservatism has shifted by a couple percent (bounding a bit more right when Obama was in charge), but something went a bit weird with the dem side of the equation that starts out roughly in time with social media becoming bigger.

Mix with all the giants being in a major city causing them to be messed with as well due to the mentioned cities getting clued in big time first (and as I forgot to mention, the youth that are predominantly liberal getting onboard first as well) in turn messing with some power-tripping moderators thinking the prior overton was right, with all grabbing from that same pool thereby causing the inaccurate overton window to be forced to try to stick and causing no end of headaches as AI is tried to be put in said position...

I'm figuring its a 1/3rd chasing the false overton to try to remain 'left' on it, 1/3rd in battleground areas that don't need to chase it as they are safely 'left' on the more accurate local, and then about 1/3rd in with districts in between those extremes acting a bit as a bridge to keep there from being a split into two.

I dunno, I have personally noted a rather strong shift toward center-ish politics here in ameripol, what with the DNC being evicted from its "Ideologically untouchable!!" pedestal by several years of flagrant egotistical bullshit toward the electorate.


5 years ago, mentioning that the DNC was worthy of significant disdain would have gotten you buried up to your damn eyeballs in "FALSE COMPARISON!!!!!!!!!" retorts.  (I have stayed stalwartly centrist, all the same though.)  This is especially true if you phrased it like "It's not like the DNC is much better" or similar. (You could even mention Obama's relentless drone strikes on weddings, and his creation of concentration camps for kids, and still have gotten that treatment.)


These days, the consequences of allowing the executive to do evil unchecked has borne prodigious fruit under the Trump administration.  Trump rightly points out that he did not start those programs, he just used them.

People that pointed out that the executive should not have been creating those programs in the first place (raises hand), got kinda shouted down, that "nobody would ever do that" to justify their man's political adventures.
And yet, here we are.  On the heels of kicking that fucker (who used those policies to their full potential) out, with half the population wanting desperately to keep him in.



Owning up to the reality that both parties are insufferably corrupt, just one slightly less odious about it-- is essential if we want to actually, you know, FIX this damn country.

Things have certainly shifted, but I get the feeling it is less a balance of 1/5 Left, 1/5 Left-Center, 1/5 Center, 1/5 Right-Center, 1/5 Right, and is instead a case of 1/2 Center, 1/4 Left-Center, 1/4 Left with rare sprinkles of Right-Center and Right.  As you yourself note, you got caught up in those retorts a fair bit and as a centrist you were closer politically.  Intensity would only rise with greater distance, and with years of that even noting "things have changed" wouldn't really have too many people eager to come back out of concern it is just a platitude.  Once burned, twice cautious and all that.

I was wrong because you don't have to be a nazi to love the stupid orange cunt, as long as you're a stupid piece of shit, and we are sharing a nation with millions upon millions of stupid motherfuckers that function on the same mental level as a herd of cattle, a herd which don't seem to mind being directed into ever shittier situations by fucking nazis.

or

I was right to think nobody but a bunch of fascist fucking shitsuckers would willingly support that stupid orange bitchbaby shitnazi, but I vastly underestimated the number of people who are totally fucking down with riding the trumptrain into a fascist dystopian hellhole because there are apparently millions of these stupid garbagenazi racist pieces of shit out there.

Think it may be a third option.  Basically every Republican president or presidential candidate has been called a nazi in some capacity for a couple decades, so normal conservatives started tuning it out.  Then social media started getting big, a lot of the early voices there were in cities due to those being major areas where high speed internet got installed.  Cities that have been pretty solidly democrat for a few decades.  This fucked with the in-person view of the overton window and as the standard range of conservatives started to trickle online as higher speeds spread out, they were seen as much further right than they actually would place if you did a national census of opinions.  This gets a massive block labelled incorrectly online.

Now intermix this with the aspect that elected Republicans put into office not really shifting too much in overall placement on the spectrum as their base isn't too strongly present on the internet for a good chunk of time, but elected Democrats are tuned into it a lot because their areas have been there long term.  So suddenly on the campaign trail, you get them shifting their points to where the perceived overton window considers left in order to remain electable.  And this more rapid shift results in a gulf, and then a split forming with more and more of the population pushed into the far right of the perceived overton window and any labels that come along with it.

And then comes Trump.

Man doesn't act what's considered presidential in the slightest, and the media hammers into him and thanks to this shifted overton window thanks to them being centered in major cities, they hammer with the hardest labels.  Conservatives largely detached from social media consider it business as usual.  And then Trump starts deliberately feeding the media.  The media amplifies in turn.  And he feeds it in turn.  Media starts noticing the Trump Bump and starts to feed into it for business purposes.  Trump feeds it more.  Conservatives check back in for a bit and see the media having gone absolutely rabid.  Some try to calm things down a bit, but this train isn't stopping and the couple, extreme percent that make up most tweets go after them, presuming they are more diehard supporters with all the vitriol the shifted window causes.  At the same time IRL, they go "what the fuck is with these people?" and the extreme right 5% of America's populace are overall chill.

Then comes the election.

Most people check out for the voting.  There's some diehard trump supporters, but a good chunk of the vote is 'well, I'm voting on the rest of the ticket and need to vote for someone but fuck Hillary' and a contingent of spite for either the media or for how the DNC fucked over Bernie.  No one is expecting Trump to win, not without everything talking about Hillary being guaranteed.

And then Trump wins.

Everyone goes nuts, media most especially.  Trump starts getting hammered in the media and the dude kinda thrives in that.  This is the point that over 90% of the right is fully checked out of any mainstream media because they are completely tired of it all.  Occasionally they look back in, but things have only gotten worse.  And then stuff starts to infect its way into other entertainment as marketers think "seems to be popular so why not to get more money?"  This really starts getting to the conservatives as they are wanting to get away from it, and left with little option, their checking out starts to shift towards defense.

During this time, the die-hard trump supporters have not been idle, the furthest fringe taking things to some extremes.  This starts bringing all of the left wing into a fervor, especially the vocal extremes.  Things start pivoting to chase these extremes.  This is when conservatives start to trickle in from checked out to defensive and are met by this wall of extremes.

So now everything's in a complete and utter clusterfuck.  Mainstream media's chasing a lot of what the left that is in 'assail the dictator' mode cares about which is what Trump is doing and being done by the extreme right, while the Right with its now castle mindset is hearing what things Trump is doing right and what things are being done by people on the extreme left.  Everytime something comes up, everyone jumps in with partisan mindsets.  So where once there were once two halves that would have come together for a complete whole, people are operating under two completely different sources of information and rejecting what the other side is saying completely.

Now we come to the Center.  They are viewed a bit more on the right than on a whole nation survey they'd actually land due to the prior mentioned overton shifts, as much as overton can be used anymore in the absolute mire.  They try to maintain their central position, but since they are caught in the crossfire, they start getting pushed.  And with extreme left being on a warpath to stop the dictator and with them supported by hangers on, these center individuals can't really stay where they are.  Some move to support while others get shoved toward the conservatives manning the walls and get greeted by pretty chill standard conservatives, which starts to entrench them in the camp.  Sure there's some extreme right making forays out, but they are more seeing the 'bolt down the hatches' type of right-winger while only majorly coming across 'attack' type left-wingers.

This is not the least helped as some power-trippers in the silicon valley companies that run a lot of social media put some harsher punishments on right and center to 'do their part', which when mixed with the very authoritative state of moderation starts to fire up some internal American 'fuck the authority'.  Especially with terms and conditions being purposely vague to avoid suits making it hard to argue against that sorta thing, the use of AI rather than humans fucking with people, and a ban without limit basically being a death sentence to social life or in some cases like Youtube potential career and income being suddenly shot (both of which make any bugs causing this much worse on perception).

And this brings us to 2020.

First Covid begins striking.  Dems handle the early PR like utter crap.  Complaining about travel restrictions being purely xenophobic and in order to fight it encourage people to go down to the chinatown areas of cities that have them.  This backfires when Covid starts spiraling up out of control and tars them in the minds of conservatives and centrists.  They manage to recover a bit with the whole "Flatten the Curve" stuff.  However, a key point is that it would only be for two weeks, just to allow for hospitals to manage it.  Two weeks come and go.  We remain locked down.  The two mentioned groups thinks its fine, a bit more isn't that bad.  And then it comes to a month and more.  Antipathy from all the above crap plus anti-authoritarian starts to build and would continue to do so til election day.

At the same time, the George Floyd stuff happens.  At first, everyone's going in favor of reform.  And then the riots happen.  Conservatives start getting antsy.  CHAZ is set up.  Conservatives and the centrists had been pushed their direction start getting more antsy.  Mass protests start to form with not everyone having masks while at the same time a few weeks earlier there were complaints directed towards the minor faction of Conservatives that wanted lockdowns to end.  This pisses them off, especially once a narrative that the protests have lower rates of coronavirus spread that just sounds wrong.

All this comes to a head on election day 2020.  There's a few percent of Nazis, a lot more "want 90s" reactionaries that were the primary people Trump's loose plans were for, and a decent percent of dumbasses.  But the massive bulk is neither of them.  But the massive, massive bulk is from people that are just sick of what they've been hammered with for so long and want to give the biggest "fuck you" to the dems they can, and from what they can tell, the best way to do that is to try to get Trump the popular victory in addition to the electoral.

It better be hoped to high heaven that the election results were legit after the audits are done.  Because if things wind up being revealed that there was a large enough scale to flip the election?  There's going to be making some *ridiculously* pissed off people there.

---

Oh, little thing to show of the overton window stuff I've mentioned.  Is there anyone here that defines their own views as conservative?  May be a couple, but I get the feeling they may be pretty heavily outnumbered...

With an outcome like this, Trump won't be the typical unpopular loser in a presidential contest - he'll have a convincing (to his base, at the very least) argument that he actually won and could quite possibly remain the head of the party as a sort of 'government in exile'.

(And that's setting aside the potential conflict scenarios.)

Might wind up causing the Republicans to remain kinda held fully together as a result, while Democrats will be having a lot more trouble as the unifying thread of going against Trump will cause some fracturing between old guard Corporate Dems and newly minted Progressive Dems, exacerbated by Bernie being effectively cheated out of nomination twice now.

It's the mail-in ballots, same as why Pennsylvania and Georgia are still considered to be contested.

That is true.  But optically, looks kinda sus to see it to that sheer degree and as a result flipping the state guarantees that there will be challenges.

Just goes to show how deep voter suppression ran. This election's popular vote is already up more than 10 million from 2016 and it's not even over.

I'm hesitant to call it voter suppression when voter apathy can explain it.  Sheer level of anti-Trump got some energy back, but prior ruling party energy drain is a real thing.  H.W. was the last two presidents from same party in a row for decades, after all, and that was kinda Reagan coattails.  You have to go all the way back to Roosevelt and Truman for one party having the presidency for more than 2 elections besides that.