See, I always thought Behemoth was just a very butch woman. Sure, she had a deeper voice and tougher build than you would normally expect, but I just wrote it off as "Of course she does, she is a Mechwarrior." I guess I didnt hear about that whole situation and since it seems like it never made it to the launch thing, I didnt even know.

And I hope you like Age of Darkness. While I still like TAB, there is just a certain character to AOD that TAB just doesnt have and I cant really explain it. I also think the whole "Expand by day, hunt by night, prepare for the Death Night wave" flows a lot better and more naturally, so it makes it simultaneously easier and harder. Mostly because your best units are melee instead of ranged, so it forces you to get in close, while TAB was just about setting up a gun line and hoping you had enough DPS.

The tranny mechwarrior is one of your starting four and based on the tranny lead developer.

Well shows you how much it really doesnt stand out, at least to me. Because I am only just now learning this (which one BTW?).

Got any particularly good new properties to recommend?

Sticking to strategy and totally new IP:

Age of Darkness: Final Stand: Takes the style of They Are Billions, but improves it in just about every way, with a better gameplay loop and some more strategy for dealing with the Nightmares compared to TABs zombies (basically, there is a day/night cycle where Nightmares are tougher at night but can drop rare loot).

Call to Arms, and Gates of Hell: Ostfront: Putting them together because Ostfront is technically a paid expansion to Call to Arms, but absolutely worth it. Both are made by the devs of the Men of War games, and so are supposed to be "realistic" RTS games, as in your guys with rifles arent going to kill a tank. CTA is modern military/War On Terror era stuff, while GOH is Russian Front WW2.

Iron Harvest: Literally WW1, Dieselpunk Company of Heroes. Walkers were invented instead of tanks, and each faction plays significantly different from each other, so you can hop around and actually have a different experience. The campaign is also pretty good.

Also not a strategy game, but I love Project Wingman, which is a love letter to Ace Combat and improves on the best aspects of the game and even fixes some things from AC. Its also got a story worthy of its master, and there too in some ways passes it.

I mean, the most fun of Paradox games is always doing the wacky shit like that, and everything with Vicky 3 shows that that will still be present, considering most of the AARs they have done so far have had just absolutely batshit things happen. I already have a few of my own playthroughs thought up for when the game actually comes out.

I am also happy that it seems like Paradox is continuing to live up to its name. Because they are still woke as a company. Meanwhile, Vicky 3 is going to have some of the most intricate options of building up your nation and its chosen population, so narrow in fact that you can almost get to the point of saying "Fuck this guy in particular" and even bring new people into slavery for no other reason than the memes.

Although somehow BattleTech managed to fit in a tranny pilot and a hijab wearing engineer, so who knows.

Weeellll, I am gong to mildly defend that one. Yes, the game gives the option for trans Mechwarriors, but frankly? I have played dozens of campaigns and recruited hundreds of Mechwarriors, and I think the game has rolled me a trans pilot exactly once. So its not like they are trying to shove it in your face.

As for the engineer, remember this is Battletech. Its been lore for decades that in the thousands of years humanity has been in the stars, things like religion have come to be just a thing, and most people dont have issues with each other as now the lines are drawn on your sector of space (Glory to Marik, death to Kurita!) and your planet. Did they make the engineer a Muslim for woke points? Probably. But its at least something that can be justified due to the setting, so at least to me it avoids the usual obnoxious nature of virtue signaling and I can live with it.

how fucking sad is it that everything I'm looking forward to is a sequel? I hate that new properties are automatically suspect in this day and age.

True, most of the games I have been interested in are also sequels. But I have still had a decent amount of original properties that I have enjoyed recently, so they still exist.

I am good, but thanks for the offer.

I am planning to. At the moment though, I am about to be moving out for the first time to live on my own, so I am going to be holding off for some time until I get on my feet and determine my expenses, living conditions, etc. I dont foresee any sort of major issues with this situation, I am just taking the "abundance of caution" route so that I can ensure I dont have any sort of drastic issues.

I think that's a premium segment I haven't listened to yet.

I wouldnt know. I am not a premium member yet, but I do know they have covered Rousseau in some of their premiums segments. But the part that I heard was from a few days ago where some Dem congresswoman had told the BBC that what was happening in the US was an "Ideological Civil War", and Carl was just quoting Rousseau to show that she was more right than she may have realized. He also pointed out that, at least for many of the thought leaders of the modern Left, this was deliberate.

Specifically, Carl cited the Critical Race Theory bible that he read through and how there was an essay in there from one of the CRT Founders where their argument was essentially "Well, yes. From a Lockeian point of view, the US is working perfectly fine, and the things it is doing wrong it is slowly but surely correcting so that it has the more perfect republic of Locke. But I hate Locke and think we should have a republic as designed by Rousseau, so we must destroy the status quo."

EDIT: On the note of that CRT essay, Carl apparently did a non-premium, longform breakdown of it on their other channel. See here.

I am also going to be very honest with Netflix: Its also, IMO, a lot more hit than miss. They have a pretty decent anime library, and some of my favorite movies where made by them (specifically, The Highwaymen, Wheelman, Extraction, and Polar). So I do stick around with them.

Also, I still have yet to see Kai, but I still enjoy it being popular. Because the company I work for is one of the ones that got contracted to make merch for the show, so it directly helps me that its doing well.

Which also means the first communist, since fascist are just honest communist (or communist are dishonest fascist. Take your pick).

But I never really understood just how insane Rousseau was until I heard them cover more of his stuff including quotes on the Lotus Eaters the other day. I had remembered hearing about him and getting some vague understanding when we covered political theory in Middle and High School. We talked about Hobbes vs. Locke vs. Rousseau, and when I saw that Rousseau's baseline argument amounted to "The natural Man is peaceful and just, and it is society and civilization who corrupts him", I very quickly came to the conclusion of "Oh no, he's retarded" and moved on to the intricacies of Hobbes and Locke since they were at least speaking sense.

Then they started talking about him and had some of his quotes on Lotus Eaters since a lot of the modern Left has (knowingly for some and unknowingly for most) returned to Rousseau, and that its part of the reason that they seem so crazy to the average American who's civilization and ideals are based on Locke. And as I heard more of Rousseau speak, the more I realized that if I ever got the time machine and was allowed to kill a single person in history, it would be Rousseau.

As Cicero notes, the law falls silent in times of war. As Clausewitz notes, this is because the law does not apply to your enemy, because the law is a moral force, and they are outside of your moral framework.

Its even more explicit than that. Rousseau, who is the prime source of pretty much all modern Left-Wing thought, explicitly stated that anyone who does not follow the directive of the state is therefor not a moral actor and must be treated as an enemy of the state. This due to the fact that "the state" is supposed to be the will of all of the people of the state.

This is where that leads. This is where that always leads. And at this point, while I believe the backlash will come and freedom will be restored, I can only hope that some of them suffer consequence and that history is not kind to them.

There is always the chance it could be Rocco as well. He is still gunning for Tim even after being fired and while in a lawsuit with him, and Rocco is absolutely crazy enough to do it.

TLDR:

NASA landed the Perseverance Rover on Mars, gaining a wealth of new data regarding the planet. It also included the Ingenuity Flyer, which preformed the first powered flight on another planetary body and gave airborne data about the planet.

NASA also launched the James Webb Space Telescope, which will have a significantly longer range than any previous space telescopes, and can see into light wavelengths that has previously been invisible to sensors. Poetically, it launched on Christmas Day.

SpaceX further refined their launch techniques to make space launches significantly more cost effective. Additionally, they finally managed to land their Starship module, which will be able to carry the heaviest payload since Saturn V while retaining the reusability of their Falcon-class rockets. These various methods of cost control will make the goal of space travel, exploration, exploitation (satellites, space stations, and hopefully eventual planetary bases and asteroid mines) that much more likely.

The Ozone Layer has continued healing and is significantly strong than it was even a decades ago. Of course, you wouldnt know that if you listened to the MSM or the climate cultist.

New technology has been introduced that allow us to grow coral reefs through the usage of healthy coral populations, then seed the new coral into damaged reefs. This has already helped many reefs start recovering from decades of damage. Once again, you would have never known this from listening to the usual suspects.

Microbes in the ocean are evolving the ability to be able to digest plastic, and it has already caused a noticeable jump in water quality in the regions where the microbes exist. Said microbes also seem to be evolving faster in more polluted water.

Not covered in any direct article, but brought up by one of the host. The Amazon Rainforest has seen its plant life absolutely explode in response to increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

Imagine how much of the shit the elites and Globalist are doing would have stayed in the dark and not been dealt with until it was too late if some mediocre game journos and game devs had just admitted they had a problem keeping it in their pants.

There are SO. DAMN. MANY times that stuff like this happens and it would just be so much easier for people if they swallowed their pride or at least came up with a convincing BS backtrack out. But they dont. And that just makes it all the more head shake worthy.

Its like these people dont even know homebrew exist and that we are just going to ignore whatever bullshit lore they come up with. I have two different campaigns I am running that we just flip between whatever we feel like doing.

One is set in a Renaissance sort of era (firearms are present and a threat, but still fairly rare outside of Dwarven lands, early industry is present, trade is growing, etc). One kingdom had a law that actively discriminated against magic users until recently, with the party being partly responsible for that change. The Dragonborn Kingdom has an actively enforced caste system where those who are closest to Dragons are treated the best (Lizard Folk, Dragonborn, Dragonkin, and Dragons, with Kobolds being slaves and untouchables). Orcs are literally just Warhammer Orcs. The Drow have their own subterranean empire and are responsible for the vast, overwhelming majority of the black market and slave trade in the world, but there is a small group rebelling and trying to take the empire down because they follow Eilistraee, the only good Drow goddess. And the overall threat is presented by Demons, whos goal is the destruction of all life, lead by the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypses. Famine (a man who silver tongued his way into achieving demonhood), War (a woman who seeked strength, made a pact with demons, and then killed the demons and took her place in demonhood when they came to collect), Pestilence (who killed many demons with a plague and only gave them the antidote if they gave him demonhood), and Death (who is an eldritch being who is unknown to even the Demons).

The other game is set in a magi-tech, Steampunk Wild West sort of world. I made and balanced guns to be the main form of combat, trains are the main form of long distance travel (although airships are the luxury way of travel long distance). There is easy movement between nations, but outlaws still inhabit the outlands. One nation is the United States with all that implies for 1880's America. The Southern Continent used to be enslaved to the Elves, but they launched a violent revolt with the help of the Dwarves, and eventually drove the Elves back. But the Elves set off what was basically a Magical Nuke as they retreated into their homeland, and it still causes significant magical disruption to this day. The Elves have now become violently isolationist due to this. Orcs are more like Elder Scrolls Orcs, where they are still warriors, but they have a code of honor and can live in general society with varying levels of discrimination. And the Drow are still Drow as outlined above.

SJWs would probably need the vapors seeing either of my worlds, especially since I dont hold back and you will absolutely hear normal people complaining about "Those filthy knife-eared bastards" or "Those degenerate scaled beast". But DAMN, we have fun. And my party has done some really strange BS over the years, but it makes for fun games with interesting narratives.

Now that I am thinking about it some more, our relationship with France kind of reminds me of brothers (at least my brother). We would fight, kick each other, and try to establish dominance over the other, but if someone else did something to one of us, the other would step in to defend them. I suppose its fitting since the US and the modern French come from similar ideological backgrounds, so one could argue we are brothers.

And fair point on Africa. Actually, IIRC, a lot of African nations hold shockingly high opinions of the US. I just looked at the most recent poll, and there are 3 African countries in the top 11 (the top 11 being Vietnam, Israel, The Philippines, S. Korea, Poland, Nigeria, Hungary, Italy, Ghana, Tanzania, and Japan). Also a lot of Asian nations, which I think just backs up the point that has been made by many that Americas future is in the Pacific.

Yeah, 1800 was one of the first games that Epic poached from Steam when they started doing their thing a few years ago, so you can only get it on Ubi's store or Epic store.

I have heard good things about 1404, but that is not really my style in terms of time period, so I havent played it. Just that a lot of the community holds it up as one of the best along with 1800. 2070 is pretty forgettable and you can easily skip it.

2205, I am going to break from the main Anno community and say that I like it, and that it is a very good place to start for someone totally new to the series. It gets hated on for being "easy" because a lot of the processes that you would normally have to worry about are automated in it, specifically your transport lines (you set the destination and the goods being moved, and the AI moves it for you). It also gives you an exact breakdown of how much input goods you still have before you reach a break even point, but I personally think that is fine. And to be honest, "easy" is not necessarily bad. Sometimes I will play it just because its fun to watch the little things happening in your factories or cities without having to keep an eye on your trade routes to make sure someone isnt shooting at your ships.

I will add, the economy itself isnt necessarily complex. The complexity of the game comes from trying to get the most income out of the most efficient factories you can make. Additionally, as you work your way up the pop ladder, the inputs become more complex, and so you having to make it all efficient gets more difficult.

To use 1800 as an example:

Farmers (your most basic workers), need Fish, Work Cloths, a Market, and for luxuries needs a Pub and Schnapps. Fish are gained directly form fishing docks, Work Cloths are made by having a sheep farm feed a framework knitters, and Schnapps is made by a potato farm feeding a distillery. The Market and Pub are a radius on the roads connected to them. Fairly straight forward.

Investors are your highest ranked pops, which pay the most but have the most complex demands. To really drive this home, the most complex item they want is a Steam Carriage. To make this, you need to have an Iron mine and a Coal mine (or 2 Charcoal Kilns) feed an Ironworks. Then, you have 2 Copper and 2 Zinc mines feed 4 Brass Foundries. These resources then get combined at an Engine Factory to create 3 tons of Steam Engines. THEN, you combine a Logging Camp and 4 Rubber Plantations (which only exist in the "New World", and thus require trade routes) to make 8 tons of Carriages. THEN, you combine the Steam Engines and Carriages in a Cab Assembly Line, which makes 4 Steam Carriages per minute (IRL minutes being the tic for the game timer). Also, the Engine Factory and Cab Assembly Line need to be connected to a power grid, which means yet another line transporting oil by rail to a power station. But each Investor residence will pay $180 coins per Steam Carriage, so you can make absolute fat stacks off of them, especially if you do tricky shit to make your line more efficient and/or less costly.

All of this is a long way of saying, they are good if you are interested in more economic focused city builders. And if you are still on the fence, you can always hit up Youtube and look up some videos to see for yourself.

France is probably a better ally to the US than Israel is.

Over time, I have come to the conclusion that France is weird as far as allies go. We butt heads constantly. We shit on each others culture frequently. We make fun of each others people and history. And sometimes we even start threatening to throw hands. But then when someone else threatens one of us, the response of the other is more or less "Hey, only I'm allowed to bully him!"

But the over all point still stands. As time has gone on and my patience for the worlds bullshit has waned, I am come to agree with a theory I have heard recently: Cut off almost everyone in that chunk of the world and give them the finger, with the UK and France being our only allies in the area. Then turn American foreign policy to look at the Americas and the Pacific, and if anyone comes calling not from those regions, just tell them "not my problem." My only addendum would be cutting in the Czechs, as they seem to be moving in a positive direction and seem to value freedom and liberty.

First off, I will agree with u/CptLightning that Frostpunk comes highly recommended. You are in charge of "the last city on Earth" after an ice age grips Victorian Age Earth, and you have to decide how far you will go to make sure the city survives (with everything from balancing survival and freedom, to just straight up making a Fascistic Dictatorship or Machine Cult Theocracy).

For other options: I would say Anno 1800 would be a good fit. Your playing as the CEO of a Crown Company (think East India Company for an IRL example), and your responsible for building up your company towns, and you make most of your money by supplying your workers with the goods they desire. But you cant have a single island to do it, because not everything grows there. For instance, my current playthrough, my main island can grow potatoes (used to make Schnapps), wheat (used for bread, malt for beer, and livestock fodder due to a DLC I have), and peppers (can be combined with beef to make goulash, which is then canned and sold for high income pops). But my factory workers demand beer, and hops dont grow on my island. So you need to either found a new island that can grow it and ship it in, or trade with one of the other AI corporations.

I am also about to upgrade to Artisan pops, and they demand rum. Guess what doesnt grow in Europe? Sugar. Know what rum needs? Sugar. So I am about to set out and go colonize some Caribbean islands to start setting up some Rum trade. And on this note, while some people try to say Anno is a city builder, and that is certainly part of it, as you can probably tell, its first and foremost an Economy sim.

As for something not yet out but will probably scratch your itch, I would recommend Victoria 3. It is more of a society and economy simulator, and you can set up colonies or just go full French and trade directly with the natives instead of having true colonies. Or you can conquer it all for queen and country. Or you can play as the people attempting to be colonized and try to alter history and hold your own sovereignty (as alt-history is a staple of Paradox games). Hell, you can even enslave the natives if you want to make it that much easier and embrace your inner Belgian.

half of it is mindless "I get stronger when I yell", "oh no! now there's an even MORE powerful bad guy! What will we do?!", or "Kyaa, senpai!"

You say this like its a bad thing. I dont always want some epic on the human condition. Sometimes I want to just turn my brain off and watch two dudes punch each other at light speed so hard that one of them is sent flying to the literal moon (or did you think it a coincidence that One Punch Man ended up being extremely popular?).

And its not like anime is devoid of shows with serious topics. Fullmetal Alchemist deals with war crimes, government conspiracies, death cults, and an evil lead by an eldritch abomination. Demon Slayer is about an orphaned child going through hell and high water to keep his only remaining family alive, even though she is technically now a demon. Hell, even the ones that seem like jokes on their face can be serious. Fire Force has significant amounts of fanservice and joking downtime, but the main plot revolves around (spoilers) >! an extremist religious cult mass murdering people to perpetuate their own religion. !<

Which is the main reason Anime is so popular, IMO. It can be serious, or it can be fun, or if they are skilled they can walk the line between both. The amount of American media that can do that in this day and age can be counted on your fingers.

And so far, their stuff has been damn good. Not much is out yet, but the stuff that is is some of the best strategy gaming I have had in years.

There is also something to be said about how their attempt at top down control of an environment fails just as much as their attempts to control just about everything else. Its the locals who usually understand their own environment and its needs.

For instance, here in Kansas, a lot of the environmentalist types have been trying to ban control burning for years. They claim it creates significant amounts of pollution, that it "destroys nature", and that it harms wildlife. Meanwhile, fire is essential for the prairie to continue to exist, as all of the native species of grasses and trees have evolved over millennia with fire so either their roots are deep underground or they are hardened against fire, while any invaders burn to ash because that is not their way (and we hold off the Red Cedar scourge for one more year). Even the Native Americans, who are pseudo-deified by the environmentalist for being "one with nature" burned the prairie because it allowed for easier movement and the fresh grass brought the bison herds.

Additionally, they also pitch a fit over cattle grazing in this region. This despite the fact that cattle are the only reason the prairie still exist. They wanted to plow this all under and turn it into farmland (because unfortunately, all the properties that make good prairie make good farms), but the soil was so shallow and rocky it didnt work here. So they brought in the cattle to graze, and as it turns out your average bovine has a very similar grazing pattern to the bison. So they managed to bring the prairie back up to its former glory after decades of decay thanks to the near extinction of the bison.

But no, some central bureaucrat talked with a scientist who has never been here who says we are clearly morons who dont understand how much harm we are doing and that we need to stop being naughty children and listen to the smart people now.

The technical knowledge of previous civilizations is lost, particularly if the language is no longer readable.

The one that is always amazing to me is that we know that Roman Concrete is significantly stronger than anything we make now. As in, to make anything even near its durability, we have to use steel-reinforced concrete, because normal concrete wont even get close. But no one knows how to make it! Even the ROMANS THEMSEVLES forgot how! And that is honestly the thing that terrifies me more about all of the push for "diversity" into all these industries. That some diversity hire is going to break something, and then no one knows how to fix it, and now we just have to live with inferior quality planes or steel.

but in reality is simply existential... ... to them. We'll be fine.

Yep. Especially since I live in one of those places where the food comes from. Because speaking around here, the only shortages that have been noticed due to the supply line issues has been luxury items like electronics. All of the basics, like clothing, food, and fuel are readily available. And while fuel is more expensive than it used to be, everything else is actually largely the same price it has been and shows no sign of prices going up. So if the collapse comes, I will at least still be able to eat. Meanwhile, the cities will probably descend into absolute anarchy as people resort to extreme means because they cant exactly eat their brand new Iphone.

I got about an 8% raise, after everyone and their dog at my warehouse was complaining about how we didnt make anywhere near as much as other jobs in the area. Additionally, they also announced a "retention bonus" where we will be getting a $500 bonus each quarter for an extra $2,000 per year, as long as we stay actively employed with the company.

On top of the fact that there hasnt been a ton of inflation in my neck of the woods (other than gas), and I would say I am doing pretty well. Also going to start living on my own in a place I am renting out starting next month.

I think most right thinking people do. Hell, I would even say a lot of the talk about how “climate change doesn’t exist” is about the Lefts Gaia Worship stance on the issue. For my own stance, I am a TR-style Conservationist: We should absolutely protect wildlife and maintain areas of pristine wilderness. But for the benefit of both the Earth and humanity. And that we overcome pollution with technology and efficiency, not punishment and returning to monke like the Climate Cult wants.

TLDR: Nuclear Reactors or you are a lying cultist.

Like, the switch from Trump to Biden is honestly doing more for Trump now than it would if he had won.

This cant be overstated. The whiplash in quality between the Trump years and the Biden year has probably produced a huge amount of "Never Democrats", in much the same way as the flip between Carter and Reagan more or less destroyed the Lefts momentum for decades in the US. Like you said, there has been a growing trend I have noticed among a lot of normies where they are starting to come out and actually say "You know what? I think I would rather have the mean tweets and cheap gas." And on a level of the broader culture war issues, I know Gen Z-ers IRL who 2 years ago were Woke Communist that are now Anti-Woke Libertarians. Because they look at everything that has happened in the name of their ideology wielding the power of the government over those years, and now they are saying ".....I changed my mind...."

Can everywhere be saved? Probably not. California was given the chance to save itself, and they decided they would rather keep riding their delusional reality all the way into the ground like its the end of Dr. Strangelove. But we saw Virginia flip to the right by almost 14% compared to just a year ago, and the same trend in New Jersey, which only BARELY held the line (and it may not next time, since you may have right-wingers come out realizing its possible). And considering the national momentum, I dont foresee that changing any time soon.

We will just have to put "Liberate the West Coast" on the to do list like this is HOI4.

Not necessarily an in-depth analysis, but something I picked up through a variety of different sources. Apparently, all of those woke comics, books, movies, etc. The Woke and the Twitterati actually DO consume them. So why do they always collapse and lose money hand over fist you might be asking? Well, its quite simple, and they openly say it if you dig deep enough and look at their side of Twitter: rampant piracy.

After all, profit is theft comrade. So how dare you expect me to actually pay for this comic book. Oh, you are going broke because of it? I guess I will throw some money at your GoFundMe to help pay some bills, but maybe we should just make a society where that isnt an issue. I look forward to your next comic....but I still aint paying for it. What do you mean there wont be another comic? What do you mean its canceled? Because it did make any money?! Those filthy fat cats at Marvel and DC! How dare they! This is just proof that we live in a society!

Just an aspect of these types that I found interesting. Also very illuminating to their general mindset as "people".