I have completed my advanced readers copy signed by the man himself and filled with special artwork for club members.

Dark Tower VII is, well, with out revealing spoilers, is TERRIBLE!!

Worst letdown ever. We are talking Episode I Phantom Menace kind of bad. Near the end, with out giving it way, Mr. King himself recommends that the hardcore reader stop reading and never bother with the end of the book. And he was right. I should have took the warning and just put the damn thing down and forgot all about it. This one book pretty much destroys and cheapens everything else Stephen King has ever wrote. Awful, awful, AWFUL. Farking awful offal.

What is it, 12 more days till the actual commercial release? I can tell you right now, DO NOT bother getting this book. Just make up what ever ending you want in your own head, it'll be lots better. Reading this book will cause irreversable damage to your mind concerning every other SK novel.

What a prick.

What an insufferable self righteous stuck up flip your middle fingers at your fans little prick bastard.

I wasn't kidding about the warning. SK really does break from his flow to post a warning not to read further. Frankly, THAT SHOULD BE THE FIRST FARKING PAGE OF THE BOOK! YOU FARKING ARSEHOLE!! Ahem. Pardon me.

I am inconsolable. I am grief stricken, torn, and mourning the loss of one of my heros. And not Stephen King either.

Way to go. Completely destroy the whole series and every book that ties into it. Good job.

So much potential, only to stumble at the finish line. How sad.

Floody floody muddy muddy somebody please save all my animal buddies.

Seriously. FLOOD WATERS RISING!! Fraces is pissing all over the place. RAIN. Solid walls of sideways rain. Lake is turning into inland sea. I am concerned my home might actually become an island. Always thought it would be nice to have a moat... Water dangerously high. Inland sea actually has some pretty big waves whipped up by the wind. Power flickering. Sky switches from dull gray to witch green. Tornados spotted in area.

Blub blub blub bubble blub blub.

What the tech interest bonus translates to is that you get double the points for the first 15% of your current tech pool in that field, after that you get normal returns. Being able to double your investment in a given field is a powerful bonus indeed, especially for the early game (and certainly more manageable there).

This means that the optimal research pattern is to allocate 15% of the current progress and then increase it by 30% every turn. Why 30%? Because you invested 15% of the former sum, and those 15% were doubled.

However, you need a base before you can get the interest. What fraction of the total tech cost should you start out with? Of course, this depends on many factors. For techs that I want ASAP I use about 25%, this increases ~8 times in 8 years, giving me a 25% chance. For other techs I normally start out between 5% and 15%. Byt why not start out with a small base and gradually increase it (by increasing your investment by mor than 30% between turns)? I'm not sure I can prove that it's a bad idea, but I'll try:

Let's say you invest 300 BC in a fresh tech. The next turn you invest 400 BC, and the turn after that you invest 500 BC. On the first turn your pool increases by 300 RP, on the next turn it increases by 445 RP and on the third turn it increases by 611 RP. You have gotten 1356 points out of an investment of 1200 points.

Let's say you started out investing 800 BC instead. Next turn you invest 120 BC, then 156 BC. You get 1352 RP out of an investment of 1102 BC. This didn't delay your progress time-wise either. You had to make a larger initial downpayment, which delayed ship construction or colony development slightly, something you have to balance against the interest bonus.

Let's say you can make excess production grow by 8% (requires pretty good industrial and cleanup tech). Those 500 BC you didn't pour into research in the first example would yield a production increase of 40 BC. The next turn you spend more on research, so you lose 19 BCT (in comparison with the second example). The third turn you also spend more and lose another 26 BCT. So you end up with more production AND more tech by making a large initial downpayment rather than starting out small and increasing your investment gradually. I know this is just an example, but I think it holds water in general as well.

There are more factors to consider. When you need to slow down investment in a field that's maturing, you need new aspirants that have been built up, or you will have to slow down your progress. Or you can run into having spread over so many fields that you cannot use the full potential of the interest, meaning that you have spent too many BC on initial investments. You can never maximize this, but taking care not to waste too much of your money can give you an edge.

I have been browsing old threads on these two issues, and I have not found definite answers. Could you please verify or refute my theories?
1) What happens with your production when you send off colonists?
2) How is factory construction affected by Robotic Controls?

For the first one, I'm fairly certain that the game incorrectly assumes the production capability of all colonists to be 1 BC, so it immediately deducts 1 BC from all information displayed. If your colonists produce less than 1 BC then the production displayed is too low, if they produce more than 1 BC then it is too high. Actual production is accurate, though. This is why the eco information can change to both "Waste" and "+1 pop". You may have an adequate spending for a clean environment and still be informed that you're going to generate waste. If you care, you can probably get away with one click less on eco on turns where you send off colonists, provided that your planetology tech level is low.

Regarding robotic controls and factory costs, I have always had to pay the upgrade factories for all factories once discovered, even on new planets. When I reach 200 factories on a size 100 planet and I have RCIII the ind information changes to "Refit", but this doesn't seem to affect production in any way. I still produce the number of factories I could expect with the given allocation of ressources, none deducted for upgrading. I don't believe you have to upgrade existing factories either, though I'm not 100% sure on this.

EDIT: Forgot another one:

3) When you pour science points into a field that you have not yet started researching, the game deducts 10% of these, rounded up. This is usually a non-issue, but it helps explain why 1 RP never gets you started, as that 1 RP is eliminated every round without opening the field. It's also important not to pour a truckload of science into a new field, as that would amount to a small, but considerable, loss.

Please post reports in reply to this post. I hope you enjoyed your game!

-Griselda

I have read the rules section of the Imperium homepage, and I have a few questions/suggestions:

1) Would it be considered cheating to access the tech point count function of EDMOO? This does nothing that I would not be able to do manually, as it's easy to calculate the interest (and 1 click on the tech screen = 2% of the total budget). I run no risk of accessing any other information in EDMOO while doing this, as there is no information on the main screen or the tech screen.

2) Is missile abuse 100% legal? Hit'n'run raids on bases or fleets, and wimpy missile boat defense of bases makes the game way too easy. I like playing with missiles, but the poor AI and the way base attacks are set up make missiles overpowered. Beams and bombs also require more skill, IMO. Right now I play without missiles on ships at all. This does not them make them too underpowered, missile bases are still strong enough to warrant missile research.

3) Diplomatic victory. I know I'll probably run into massive disagreement on this one, but is it really rewarding to be able to win through diplomacy? Diplomacy is a fundamental aspect to winning the game by conquest, so it's important even if diplomatic victories are not used. I think diplomatic defeat is a great feature, though. Ideally, being elected leader should have been more like what it is in SMAC.

Thank you for your time.

So I was playing Mahjong solitaire... and I lost again. I've lost over 500 times in a row on a particular arrangement. In fact, I have never solved it completely. However, my previous best was 40 tiles left. Tonight I got it down to 20!



Rarely has a gamer ever been so pleased to lose.


I call that arrangement the Box. Here's a look at it.



I've played half a dozen Mahjong solitair games over the years. (There was even one that played actual Mahjong). This one is the best one so far. Purely random boards (so for some arrangements, you will often draw unwinnable puzzles), twenty arrangements, full screen, easy to see.

Of the twenty arrangements, only two are left that I've not beaten. The other one I call the Sheet.




Of the rest, the one I lose the most I call the Palace:



The Palace is one of my faves. I play it a lot when I want to lose but have an actual chance to win. I've beaten it maybe six or seven times out of hundreds played.

The easiest board is one I call Mounds. I've only lost there a couple of times.


Here's another hard one, Castle:



Castle is right up before Box in the rotation, so any streak of wins always ends at the Box. (If you beat one arrangement, the game moves you to the next one in its rotation).

Right before Castle is Target, a medium difficulty puzzle:



The fourth-hardest one, another one where I almost always lose, I call the House. It's the only one of the twenty arrangements that is not at least mostly symmetrical.


The fifth-hardest I call the Slant. This is another of my faves:



The Slant is so hard, it almost invariably puts an end to any streak that reaches it. So the longest streak (highest score) possible for a single run would go from the Slant to the Box. I've never made it all the way. The most puzzles I've solved in one streak is six. A full run from Slant to Box would be eight in a row. There is another hard one shortly after Slant, though. It's the standard pyramid puzzle that you are all probably familiar with:




There's Slant, then an easy one I call Lines, then the Standard pyramid, then the second-easiest in the game in a big X shape, then there's the Turtle:



Turtle's not as hard as she looks. Lots of free tiles to make matches. I win over half the time. After Turtle is Mounds, the easiest available, then Target and Castle, then the dreaded Box.

I've had two six-win runs. One went from Standard through Castle, dying at Box. The other went from Slant through Mounds, dying on Target. (Arrgh, so close to seven!


My best on Sheet is 20 tiles left. Now that's also my best on the Box. Some day... some day I be both lucky and good on the same night, and beat these monsters. Some day.


- Sirian

Then how about some good things about C3C?

1. Delayed map and contact trading.

I like this a lot. It makes exploration more important. It acknowledges advantage to who do exploration early and get more contacts. I don't like the original game that AI could just come and demand contacts from you. I like this change a lot.

2. The Seafaring trait.

I simply love this trait. Together with 1, this trait is the best with archipelago maps. On the other hand agricultural is too unbalanced and I'm a bit tired of that.

3. MGL

I like the change that MGL cannot rush great wonders anymore. Yup, it makes the game more difficult (especially things like Always War). When you see this, you should understand why they introduce SGL - it is simply the only way to rush great wonders and they don't want to lose that possibility. Arguably, this might not be a good idea, but it does have its reasons. With a knob to turn it off, I see not much reason to complain about it.

4. Armies

I love the new army. Yes it's powerful, but that's what it should be. Once you play C3C you will not tolerate the armies in vanilla or PTW anymore - they are just not good enough.

Note I don't like the fact that AI doesn't know how to use it - which looks like a regression as it used to do. But don't confuse this with the enhancement of the new armies.

5. Specialists

Not mentioning the new ones, I like the change of taxmen and scientists. They now actually make sense.

6. Bonus with amphibious attacks

More reason to build marines. Vikings become a great civ. Maybe still not good enough, but at least it's a good thing. I'm actually considering sponsering an SG to feature amphibious attacks, which must run better with C3C than PTW.

C3C has many bugs, and I'm disappointed in the patch situation, but I still prefer it to its predecessors.

While in the bank the other day, speaking with a bank rep, and the subject came up. Credit cards. Now most folks now how I feel about credit cards. I LOATHE credit cards. I see what they do to people's lives. I have never owned one. And I swore I never would.

I'll be damned.

I am starting to feel left out as many sites online for shopping are credit card only. I LOVE a good deal. I am a tightwad. I squeeze pennies into copper wire before I willingly let go of them. One might even call me stingy... But never to my face.

So I am talking to this bank rep who has known me for many years and she has tried time and time again to get me a bank card.

Her jaw hit the floor when I finally said ok the other day. Try it out, see what I am approved for. I am curious.

So she types into her computer for a bit, and we wait, and they bring me a truly lovely iced mocha latte (My bank has GREAT kiss ass service) and after a while, she gets a reply.

"Sir, we can enroll you in the Double Diamond Members Club with a Double Diamond Visa. Your starting approved credit limit is one hundred thousand dollars."

After bringing me some napkins to clean up the latte I just shot out my nose, and taking some time to recover, I find out that I can get no interest for one year and a fixed 13.9% interest rate for the entire life of the card.

I declined the offer.

After some wrangling and trying to explain to some very confused and put out bank reps, I finally took control and got a credit limit I was a lot more comfortable with. A Visa card, 500 dollars top end. Rate plus prime for interest. 10% cash return reward through the bank.

I was offered a diamond and settled for a cubic zirconia.

Now... What on earth to I bankrupt my self by getting into debt with first? 500 dollars of crazy money... Where do I start?

It sounds like my husband and daughter will be headed out on a "it's still summer until we get home" car trip this coming week. Usually, when I'm going with them, I have enough to do with packing that I don't worry about making stuff for the trip- we just grab some things from the grocery store and go. But, this year I will need to work, so I won't be coming along for the trip.

So, I'd like to make something for them to have on the ride (about 14 hours each way). I'd make cookies, but it seems like they might be kind of crumbly and messy. So, I was just wondering, do any of you have any "long car ride" favorites that you'd like to share? Any other car ride tips? We've been hooked on books on tape since Shadow let us borrow some of hers a couple of years ago (thanks again!, so I will be checking in at the library to see what I can come up with in that department.

-Griselda