Edgwyn

I am close to finishing A4 and I have some unfinished quests that are annoying me and I cannot seem to figure out how to finish them. 1. Ogre Discipline: I killed off all of the Ogres, but during the fight with the Mage, I had to retreat while he died. Both the Ogre Chief and Mage are dead, but I do not have credit for completing the quest. At this point would I have to reset a flag to close the quest? 2. Goblin Necklaces: Is it possible that I killed off the majority of the Goblins before getting this quest and therefore I cannot complete? I have run out of goblins to kill and I have only one of the five required necklaces. 3. Free the Chitrachs for the GIFTS. I have killed off all of the Giants, but I cannot figure out how to free the Chitrachs. There is not any dialogue options and I have stepped on every tile in the room. I cast unlock doors and nothing happens. What am i missing? Thank you

A few of Jeff's games pay a bit of attention to time passing (the older ones where you have to eat and/N:R where it grows dark outside and of course A3). For the more modern games, yes this quest was unusual in that the sense of urgency was not false, the way it is in most of the quests in the Avadons where you have as much time as you want to do side quests ignoring your main mission. I suspect that the intention was to force you to complete the mission without returning to the pylon to recharge, creating an interesting degree of difficulty. The concept in Avadon appears to be that you instantaneously travel hundreds to a thousand miles via pylon, walk miles to tens of miles by shifting maps (in hours or days) and cover feet to hundreds of yards (in seconds to an hour) within a map. Creating a time and date counter would make it more explicit, but I am not sure what the value is. I personally prefer the Avadon movement system to the A:EFTP movement system which I love compared to the movement system in A4.

While hovering over the spiderweb site waiting for A:CS to come out, I have noticed some changes. It looks like SW has automated its system where if you order from the game's page on their website, you have the choice of PayPal and Amazon and you are automatically sent your registration code. The order form option is still on the website and it accepts V/MC/AMEX, but it is hand processed, and so it might take a little longer to get your registration code that way. When Avadon 2 came out I did my order over the phone because I did not trust the web connection where I happened to be to keep my credit card info secure. So, it looks like there are still plenty of ways to pay Jeff directly the full price and avoid Steam for those of us who prefer to do so. How long this will last before SW goes to distribution solely through Steam/GoG/App Store/whatever you would have to ask them.

There are some of us who due to a combination of privacy/internet security and (at least in my case) ignorance of how to post a picture on the forums will remain cloaked behind our PDNs. I was probably within 50 or so miles of Alorael's lawn this summer, fortunately I did not get to close as I would not want him to hurt himself trying to pick a shell casing out of his grass in order to hide evidence of my demise.

Histomap is after all a 1930s product so it reflects the attitudes of its time.

I just finished a book by David Drake (Monsters of the Earth) and two books that he provided the outlines for (The Sword and The Chosen). I have been enjoying his Books of the Elements series, of course Mediterranean history in general and Rome in particular are his passions so the background of the Elements series is really strong. I enjoyed The Sword which was an adaption of Belisarius in a post-apocolyptic sci-fi setting and concluded a series of five books. There was a lot of detail in the books. I did not enjoy the Chosen nearly as much which was kind of a post-apocalyptic US, France, Spain and Italy versus the Nazis. Part of my problem with it is probably that it was covering 40 years in a single novel which does not leave a lot of room for detail.

I just clicked on Kelandon's link and did not get any error message. I am running Safari v8.0.2 on OS X 10.10.1

On Celts and armor, I believe that they cannot wear plate armor (at least I did not figure out how to get them to wear it), but can wear lesser armors.

I am not sure that I ever finished Ultima III (I did finish II and IV), and I know that I never finished the majority of the games that I was playing at that point in my life. Now I have far fewer games, so I finish more of them. Crusader Kings will never reflect very many achievements for me because I do not play it in iron man mode and that is the only way to get steam achievements. I agree with Lilith that those of us who have purchased the games directly from SW to be more likely to finish (after all, we have already lost our sanity).

It looks like only about 1/3 of the folks in the chart are still active as near as I can tell. There are some forums that I do not read, so I could be under counting the active members a bit.

On Civ V, which has been around for a fairly long time now, most of the basic victories (domination, space) are at around 25% achieved. It appears that a lot of people buy games on Steam and then just never play them much.

Congratulations on your 4,000th post, I guess that means I have around 10 years to go.

I would rather that Jeff focus on Avadon 3 than altering A:EFTP.

I am currently playing A4, and the tiles are fairly obvious. My occasional losses of APs are more due to the movement system picking a different route than I would have. If I was using keyboard for movement instead of point and click I would never loose an AP.

I answered yes, then realized that we weren't discussing the nationality.

Congress does not have policing power, Amendments 9 & 10 limit their power. The growth of federal power is tied to the interstate commerce clause which has been stretched and stretched. If someone can come up with a good argument as to how national data reporting is an interstate commerce function than congress can do it. Otherwise, it goes back to the old standby: if you want federal dollars you need to play by our rules. That is how many federal mandates are enacted such as speed limits, BACs, medicaid, etc.

Also, if you hook up to an external monitor, you may have to adjust some settings in your control panel and possibly hit F3 to switch between the internal and external monitors. I just replaced the screen on a laptop today. It took me 10-15 minutes (going slowly as I had never done it before). I purchased the replacement screen on Amazon for $52.

Yes, it is going to take a lot longer than you want it to.

I agree with Tevildo. I am of course completely unfamiliar with what anti-discrimination laws that Australia and its States/Territories have and whether any of them would be applicable in your girlfriend's case.

The BAC limits is the more recent example and probably the one that I should have used. The 55 MPH speed limit law set the precedent in 1974 and led to the song "I Can't Drive 55" and so was the example I grew up with.

This is very true, unfortunately, under our system the solution is not simple. Reporting at the municipal government level is voluntary, with little to no constitutional basis to enforce reporting. Often the way to get reporting has been through bribery, I mean through tying receipt of Federal Grant money to the execution of reports, similar to the way that Federal Highway funds were tied to the 55 MPH speed limit when it was implemented. Several of the national police organizations (that may be opposed to the idea for other reasons) have brought up the legitimate issue of administrative burden, though the estimates that I have seen show around 1000-1500 officer involved shootings per year which spread out amongst the 18,000 police departments in the US doesn't seem like that much of a burden.

I tried answering the poll leaving the LGBT question blank as none of the responses really reflect my position and I have the same concerns about appropriateness that Slartibus mentioned, but the system does not let you leave one question blank.

Lilith, I believe that society owes opportunities not outcomes, but then I know that you and I have very different economic views. Not all charities espouse pseudo-Christian values (pseudo in the case that you are mentioning since leaving someone in the gutter because you do not like them is un-Christ like) but much of the charity that we are familiar with is inspired by Abrahamic religions. That said, the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) for US government employees is currently going on. In recent years, there have been as many as 25,000 charities participating, representing lots of different viewpoints including LGBT organizations, almost every imaginable ethnic group, animal advocacy, medical conditions, etc. Randomizer, while there are charities that spend the majority of their funds on themselves, there are plenty of charities that do a very good job of helping people in an efficient and kind manner. In the CFC guide they publish the overhead rate for each charity, some of which are awful, some of which are great. There are special categories highlighting groups with overhead rates under 5% and under 1%.

People donate to charity for many reasons, for many, it is not to feel better about themselves. But if charity which is voluntary is so bad, then how is forced charity from taxes (welfare, dole, etc) better as opposed to worse?

As was mentioned by another poster above, the world made up their mind about what happened without any regard, and long before, there was any evidence. Just based on the Wikipedia summary of the death of Michael Brown, the most inflammatory witness accounts (Dorian Johnson, Michael Brown, Piaget Crenshaw, Tiffany Mitchell) do not match the physical evidence at all. The other accounts match the evidence much better. Quoting from Wikipedia: "On October 16, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an interview with a black Canfield resident who testified before the grand jury. The man, who did not want his name released, said he saw the entire event. Wilson drove past Johnson and Brown and then backed up again. A scuffle ensued in the police vehicle and Wilson's hat flew off. There was a gunshot from the vehicle, and then Brown ran down the street followed by Wilson. Wilson aimed his gun at Brown and repeatedly yelled "Stop", but did not fire until Brown turned around and stepped toward Wilson. At that point Wilson fired three shots. Brown staggered toward Wilson from 20 feet away with his hands out to his sides, when Wilson fired again. The witness said that Brown was already falling as the last shots were fired and that, in his opinion, the final shots were murder.[50] According to several people close to the grand jury investigation, seven or eight witnesses have given testimony consistent with Wilson's account. Details of the testimony were not reported. Speaking on condition of anonymity to The Washington Post, the sources said that the witnesses are all African American, and that they have not spoken publicly out of fear for their safety." If the above is true, then the only thing that concerns me is the potential pause before the final shot which is not mentioned in the above quote. Stopping shooting once you have started is extremely difficult, 99% of the time, human beings (especially ones with some training) continue to shoot until the person they are shooting is on the ground. The decision that somebody is threatening your life is made before the trigger is pulled the first time. In this case, it looks like there were either two of three such decisions. The first time was in the car, the second time was when (according to the above) Mr. Brown turned on Officer Wilson. The potential third is if there was a pause between the second to last shot and last shot. There is an audio tape that may or not be authentic that shows a three second pause, I am not sure that any witness statements support it. Officer Wilson would have had adrenaline running through his system and been concentrating on the front sight of his pistol and Mr. Brown's center of mass, not has hands, in fact Officer Wilson (or anyone else in a similar situation) could probably not testify to anything about Mr. Brown's hands once the shooting started. If there was a 3 second pause between the second to last shot and last shot then I would have concerns with the last shot; if the last shot was fired in close proximity to the other shots, and based on the witness testimony mentioned above, plus the physical evidence, then this does not look like an improper shooting. As to the death of Mr. Garner, I was taught that the fastest way to evaluate if someone is breathing is are they talking. Like the union rep said, if you are talking, you are breathing. If Mr. Garner did indeed say "I can't breathe" eleven times like certain commentators say he did, then he was lying at least the first ten times. My problem with this one is that it certainly looks like a chokehold to me and the NYPD had banned the use of the chokehold. While the argument that a reasonable person would not have thought that a chokehold would have killed Mr. Garner is true, Officer Panteleo was not supposed to use a chokehold at all which in my mind hurts the reasonable assumption argument. I do think that this one should have gone to a trial, although I am not confident that a jury should vote for conviction beyond a reasonably doubt. A wrongful death lawsuit has already been filed, and with the lower standard of evidence and culpability in a civil trial, I think that there is a better chance for Mr. Garner's family to succeed in the lawsuit, leaving a legal situation similar to OJ Simpsons (not criminally guilty but civily guilty).