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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: March 17th, 2024

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  • Based on your enjoyment of management and strategy, Paradox’s grand strategy games might be something you enjoy. Same publisher as Cities Skylines. There are four main series of them, each with their own mechanics but enough broad-scale similarities that knowing one helps with the others. They are:

    • Crusader Kings, set in medieval Europe, North Africa, and about half of Asia. This one is the most roleplay-heavy, as you play as a succession of characters within a feudal dynasty rather than a country
    • Europa Universalis, set from the European Renaissance up to the end of the Napoleonic wars. The whole world is playable, and exploration is a big mechanic
    • Victoria, which covers the world through the rise of industrialism. This one is the most simulation-heavy, focusing gameplay around economic development and the diplomatic manoeuvring of great powers
    • Hearts of Iron, which is the Second World War game. This is the one to go for if you want to play the military side of things

    What distinguishes them from strategy games like Civ and Age of Empires is the greatly-reduced abstraction. There’s no expectation of every starting point or playable country being balanced; if you start as Belgium in Hearts of Iron, you’re going to have to do something clever to not get steamrolled by Germany. There’s also no win condition beyond what you set for yourself. When I start a game of Crusader Kings, I’m not trying to win the game, I’m saying to myself “let’s see if I can unite all of Britain and Ireland under a Gaelic ruler”

    All Paradox games have quite a lot of DLC, but the base games are solid (often now including several of the earlier DLCs for free, in the case of older games) and they go on steep sales pretty often. If there’s not a specific time period or mechanic that sways you towards one of the games, I recommend Crusader Kings 3 for the best new player experience






  • Probably a literal one, I like hillwalking and am clumsy

    Metaphorically, it’s guitar tonewoods. If you’ve got a solidbody electric guitar you can make the body out of a goddamn breezeblock and it’ll sound absolutely fine. Whatever difference the body/neck material makes is negligible compared to strings, scale length, pickups, resistors, and amps. Acoustic guitars are another matter, but for solidbody electrics it is 99% delusion and marketing







  • Yes, but it’ll be a bit rough because I did not follow a specific one:

    • 600g white bread flour, 400g water, 7g dried yeast, 15g salt
    • Activate the yeast by warming half of the water and sprinkling the yeast on top. Leave for five-ten minutes. There should be some bubbles.
    • Mix everything, knead enough to get it homogenous
    • Cover and put in the fridge for 12 hours. I left it overnight
    • Take the dough out of the fridge, divide into six
    • Shape into balls, aining to get a taut upper surface. I am not sure how best to explain this. You’re kind of folding the outsides into the centre of the bottom
    • Cover and leave to proof for an hour
    • Half an hour into the proof, preheat the oven with a dish of water in it. 220 C / 430 F
    • 45 minutes into the proof, make the paste for the top. Mix 50g rice flour, 5g sugar, another packet of dried yeast, 10g sesame oil, and just enough water to make a spreadable paste. Spread over the top of the dough, taking care not to squash them
    • In the oven for 22 minutes



  • I’d also add that CK3 is a step above most Paradox games in terms of beginner-friendliness. Everything has a tooltip defining what it does, and most of the game-specific words in that tooltip have tooltips of their own. It’s not like the older games and their “lol keep the wiki open and good fucking luck” approach to explaining themselves


  • Since the kW part can cancel out, the resulting kWh/kWp value is basically measured in hours. There are 8,766 hours in a year and half of those are at night, so these numbers would make sense if you think of them as “this is how many hours of peak production equivalent you will actually get each year”. You’re in the Sahara, you get the equivalent of 2,400 hours of peak production. You’re in Finland, you get the equivalent of 1,000 hours. If it actually magically ran at the peak production value all year 24/7, you get 8,766.


  • I enjoyed it, but it felt like it could’ve done with some editing.

    Spoilers in which I try to figure out how I'd fix it, as if I know anything about this

    Timo and Kai in particular both disappear for large stretches of the film after getting enough attention to be significant parts of the film but not enough to satisfactorily conclude their storylines. Maybe combining their roles would have worked? Replace Kai’s brief romantic interest with Timo wanting his “friend” back. Timo wants Mickey 17 specifically because he won’t push back on Timo’s bullshit. That way the now-combined storyline for that character gets to feel much more complete and we’re probably also taking less time to do it because we don’t need to introduce Kai