I loved this series so much. I remember being struck by how you managed to have the protagonists keep making *good* decisions and still face long odds. No passing of the idiot ball to keep the plot moving!

@himself.bsky.social had a nice essay on this too.

crookedtimber.org/2014/04/30/e...

"When an honest man finds he is wrong, he has two choices: Stop being wrong, or stop being honest."

Many a pundit faced this choice and made their decision long ago.

Thanks!

I overlooked this game completely.

How important is the DLC? The full bundle is a non-trivial expenditure.

Heh, obviously population growth will immiserate us or create a planet of ant-like slaves. The only options.

Ironically, I just read Anderson's Margin of Profit a couple days ago, noticed the naive trust in a simple arithmetic to predict the future. But was more fun, because it had space pirates.

I'm afraid to ask, but what were those letters?

It's a strategy human players use in some games (mostly cRPGs IME), get a big foe you can't beat up close to chase one character/unit around the map while everyone whittles away with ranged weapons.

It's a really boring way to win a battle, but it'd be worse to counter it.

IMHO one of the constraints on game AI is that you want to use strategies that are reasonable to play against, not optimal.

You could absolutely do an AI that could figure out how to kite human players, or entrench and sit in a defensive spot with infinite patience, but who'd play that game?

There's an alternate universe, better than this one, where the new threads Johnson introduced in TLJ were actually woven together into something that reinvigorated the movies. Instead of returning control to Abrams to undo it all.

It's 2, regardless of the fact that they *also* have all those things. Like AI, whether the things he says is true or not is beside the point.

Reminds me a bit of the first Father Brown story, where the gimmick was Flambeau the criminal (and the policeman) expected the priest to be naive. The priest wonders what they think he hears in the confessional, that he'd be shocked by sins out in the real world.

Harlan Ellison's Shatterday is up there.

Journalists know how to make something news if they want to. You interview politicians about the substance of the protests, say "growing numbers" are participating, mention "outrage" and combine them with declining poll numbers.

Repeat for few weeks protests are the top story.

I've had great sessions where we were all mad at the dice or even the GM, but afterwards it was clear that was part of the fun.

Can't think of a single time being mad at a rule made for more enjoyment.

Finally, my favorite history of the year: Wiemer's Theoderic the Great.

I'm a dilettante, so pleasantly surprised to learn that there were still enough written sources in 6th century Italy for a skillful historian to write a compelling narrative. A sort of non-fiction prequel to Lest Darkness Fall