Bay 12 Games Forum

Yeah, I was looking at it from an industry wide measure more than personal or consumer viewpoint. Way I see it, if the industry's becoming more efficient, it's getting better. That efficiency may not manifest in a way that's congruent with my personal tastes, but I'm willing to admit coherence with the preferences of a niche market does not a healthy industry make. If they're getting better at making bank per buck, they're getting better at providing desired product per dollar invested. That might not necessarily manifest as more higher quality games -- it may just mean less low quality ones are being produced (/invested in), which I would still accept as a sign of less suckage.

It... kinda' depends on the pretender, uh. Which is a bit of a non-statement because duh, but yeah. Awe alone probably isn't that useful* -- it's awe+fear that's the big one, or AoE/multiple attacks (Dragons, tramplers) with bucketloads of HP. One obvious mistake you might be making is forgetting scripting -- doing anything but charging forward and attacking is a good way for early pretenders to die due to fatigue accumulation (which is a good way for an early SC to die regardless.). An at-least minor E bless is strongly desirable for fatigable early-expansion pretenders.

And yeah, looking at it, an annuki of love and war would be kinda' terrible for out-of-box early solo expansion. Low prot, relatively low HP, no AoE and only two attacks, fatigable (and worse, flying, which chews up fatigue like damn), and a pair of built in route bait. Also low defense! She's got basically nothing built in except the awe that makes for a good army killer. About the only annuki I'm seeing that would be semi-decent at immediate expansion might be the sweet waters one -- water elementals are pretty beefy vs. indie chaff.

What you're looking for with an early soloer is being hard to kill (which needs more than just awe -- a virtue, ferex, would probably do a lot better) and having either a means to flat kill indies or make them route (though the former ties in to the latter, of course ). Fear and AoE or trample, plus high defense/protection (either/or, or preferably both) and/or high HP, is what you're looking for in most cases. An Annuki of L&W has... well, none of that. She's got the awe and a middling amount of HP, but basically nothing else.

E: It's not something Ur has access to, but if you're looking for an absolutely sterotypical 1st-turn expander you need look no further than the Ancient Kraken. Fear, bucketloads of HP, tons of attacks and an AoE poison effect (which stacks up even more morale checks over time). It can usually take one province a turn, every turn, until there's no more water provinces to take.

E2: If you're looking for a first-turn expander for Ur, I'd say your best options would be the Virtue (though that's a bit riskier due to no-prot -- it looks like you might be able to turn-2 forge a black-steel breastplate, though. E3: Could definitely turn 2 a 'zerker pelt, which might be an even better idea.), the dragons, or the Shedu, or maybe the scorpion king (especially with some water bless, I guess. The def's a lil' low).

*It's an opposed morale check of some sort, so yeah, it's not perfect. It would do jack all vs. skellie spam, ferex, and it doesn't get really sexy until it mixes with some means of morale damage -- like a bit of fear.

Ha. If 1 in 10 projects turned out good, it would be beating the industry standard for the last twenty or so years by an incredibly large margin

I remember those demo CDs. Upward 200 game demos, of which maybe 3-5 were worth even the slightest of damns.

That is some level shiznit right there, M.

So hey, ZK. That spoiler thing it... it didn't seem to work out. For the rest of them, I apologize. Your wishes as OP were immediately trampled, and you didn't deserve that.

Ha ha ha. I've never even seen a single episode of Firefly. Thanks Kaij >_>

Not really sure if I ever will, though. I still instinctively cringe when I see the title. Bloody Anthony and that freaking book.

But yeah, that's mostly it, last I checked. People just get invested in a particular character for whatever reason, and then one of the major reasons they're involving themselves in the subject matter is removed and the bob's yer uncle. Even if the quality remains the same, the person in question is no longer as attached to the story and subsequently not as interested in expending the effort to acknowledge that quality.

Sometimes, though, quality does legitimately reduce -- especially in pieces that are heavily built off character interaction. Losing a character, especially a major character, can cut off or reduce major plot venues, ultimately leading to a less complicated and quite possibly less interesting story. 'Course, if the character is someone that's inhibiting the selfsame interactions, well...

Nah nah, not to that, more to the "Watch yer votoms, I'll go do something else" statement. I'd say give the original a try, just in case the new stuff is just... not as good.

I'd say you're cool dismissing at-least that twenty minutes of video. It was kinda' silly.

Deffffiinnitely the wrong board, Hans.

This was annoying to find. Took a bit to get a breakdown by percentage, by state. Same year, even, which is nice. Raw population numbers might be more useful (to get a breakdown of spending per old person), but that would take more effort >_>

See, the thing I'd note as re: WTH is going on, is that Montana has almost the exact same demographics (it's even got less young people!), but better than 40% less net deficit. And the trend continues -- by all rights, something more than just "there's a lot of old people" is going on. Unless spending on the elderly has some sort of threshold point where it suddenly balloons like mad, the demographic difference just doesn't seem to really support that much of a discrepancy.

And hell, Texas has one of the youngest populations, and yet has the second highest total spending (though in its favor, a comparatively low net deficit.). Louisiana, the second worse by percentile, is below the median (I think, anyway) national age demographics for old people, too, though several of the next few down are above it.