Edgwyn

I have been doing the remix beta as well, and have found it harder than the base game. That said, with my TM, Sorcerer and BM I was able to beat the blind Titan on the second try and 100 Claws on the first try with that party. I think that it would be harder with the Shaman and Shadowwalker instead. The shaman does not have as good AofE spells as the Sorcerer. The Sorcerer's AofE spells were critical to my getting rid of the normal wolves first and quickly before focusing on 100 claws. Then the Sorcerer focused on the spirit wolves as they appeared with his firebolt. TM created and kept alive a couple of turrets to provide extra damage and to absorb extra damage, while attacking spirit wolves when they appeared with sword or throwing stars. BM focused on 100 claws for the most part, using the extra damage abilities to inflict more pain, which the redone SW does not really have. And of course during the turns when there were no wolves to kill, everyone focused on damaging 100 claws while drinking healing potions/elixirs.

The Pact and its Avadon Hearts/Hands/Eyes should never have been used for internal policing. The people in the countries that make up the Pact were not interested in a strong central government that they perceive as taking away their rights and whose servants have ultimate power and no accountability and only do "good" if they are paid. If the Pact had been founded like NATO then it might have survived, although as the perceived threat from the Farlanders dropped, so would everybody's interest in paying for it, just like NATO. In another forum I gave my opinion that the while I am a Pact loyalist (while wanting to curb the excesses of Avadon), the Pact is doomed unless a new threat emerges that is so overwhelmingly powerful that it causes the majority of the rebels to put aside their differences. If that happens, the Pact would have a short window during and an even shorter window after the crisis (assuming it successfully dealt with the crisis) to make structural reforms, arbitrate disputes and build unity among the people of the pact in order to survive. My backup plan was to take as much of the resources of Avadon as possible and try to hold Dharam against assorted problems until everyone is exhausted from killing each other.

The Pact was a victim of its own success. It was established for the singular purpose of keeping the Farlands down. It succeeded to such an extent that many citizens of the Pact do not perceive a threat from the Farlands anymore and therefore do not see a need for the Pact. The Pact does not appear to have done much to bring the people of the Pact together. They did create the free road system which is a measure that theoretically would help with mobility and therefore interaction between the people of the different states, but that interaction just does not seem to have happened.

Yes, you need all of those things to build a good steam engine, and in addition to the tight tolerances, there is a limit to how much useless impurities you can have in your metals or you will end up with weak areas. Of course if you do not care about the engine going anywhere you can just over design it by a large safety margin, but you still need the ability to weld.

You are correct, there has to be far more people to support the economy that is indicated. For that matter, there has to be a lot more rooms in Avadon. While the dining facility might be big enough for the staff, the only rooms for hands seem to be the ones for the six characters, yet there has to be billeting for a whole bunch of hands, eyes, hearts and support staff.

Oh great Emir, peace be unto you (I read the second screen not the first one, and it has been six years since I last had the doctrinal differences between Sunnis and Shias straight in my head). Do not forget the viper that you have in your midst. Abu-Bakr betrayed his last liege. While his last liege was an infidel, that does not mean that Abu-Bakr can be trusted. I believe that it is time to announce that Abu-Bakr betrayed his master (something that positively horrifies you) and so you have decided to inflict the full punishment as specified by Sharia upon him. Remember oh Emir, dead men tell no tales, and an ambitious and moderately effective spy could find employment with your noble brother.

In addition to the lack of encountering Nathalie, I have some issues with that picture being her. While it is certainly a sorcerer with a wounded arm. Nathalie was white blonde not yellow blonde and her face was substantially thinner in her portrait in Avadon 1. Also while her quest implied some long term damage to her arm, she was fully using it for the rest of the game. While certainly hair style and expression can change, the picture in Avadon 2 does not, to me anyway, look like Nathalie plus two years. The pictures in Avadon 1 G137 and G427 are quite different from the picture in Avadon G173. The hair color is closer to that of the PC Sorcerer, but she is even skinnier than Nathalie. While I would have like to see the old characters again, I believe that they all left Avadon right after the immediate mess of the attack was completed. None of them were loyal to Avadon, and their loyalty to the PC would only last so long, especially if the PC was killed on some sort of mission.

The Greeks, Romans and Assyrians had at least a limited access to petroleum products, they made limited use of them in warfare and construction. The Egyptians and Babylonians had access to Bitumen from the dead sea area and used it for some construction and water proofing. A lot of their incendiary devices were sulfur based, not naphtha based, but they did have at least some access. There were also aware of the use of Bitumen in construction. The Byzantines made very effective use of what is most likely a mixture with Naphtha, but of course that was 1000 years after the height of the Greeks. The problem with most fossil fuels is that they require refining to be particularly useful.

If I remember correctly, you are fighting other things at the same time that you encounter her and you have to kill the other things without killing her, which limits how you want to use area of effect attacks and turrets.

I had this happen to me in the first Avadon as well, so I suspect that it is an issue with the engine.

I find it really hard to gauge how much change this would make. Therefore I will take the indispensable man theory to its illogical conclusion. So, without Sir Isaac, there is a dramatic slow down in England's scientific advancement and industrialization. The low countries and the Holy Roman Empire lead the way in discoveries. With less scientific advancement and industrialization, England is financially weaker then what we are used to and the Royal Navy's navigation capabilities are less. The '15 and the '45 still failed, but the English's weaponry advantage over the highlanders was much smaller and so the battles were bloodier and the campaigns were longer. This further weakened England compared to history. While the unified Great Britain remained a trading power due to the influences of being an island nation and continued to establish colonies across the globe, these were all weaker. Despite its own failings, France in the mid 1700s was able to secure its foothold in Canada and the lands of the Mississippi. Meanwhile a resurgent Holy Roman Empire was becoming the industrial power house of Europe. The American Revolution was successful with support from the Holy Roman Empire and France, seeking to pare back Great Britain's far flung empire. With the fall of the crown of France, a series of coalition wars broke out in Western Europe. The War of the first coalition resulted in a draw with the nations of Europe surprised by the French military reforms. The resurgent Holy Roman Empire learned from its mistakes in the War of the First Coalition and successfully employed its financial and technological advantages to forge the Second Coalition which proceeded to stop the French forces short of Italy ushering in another brief peace while Napoleon seized power. The Holy Roman Empire gathered together the third coalition which successfully defeated the French Navy at Sea, though at the cost of almost the entire Royal Navy. It was also successful in pulling Batvia and Switzerland out of the French Empire and led to another brief period of peace. Finally, the Fourth coalition succeeded in overthrowing Napoleon and restoring the Bourbons to France. The Holy Roman Empire was the strongest power in Europe and other countries started to conspire against it. When the Holy Roman Empire invaded France in 1870, Russia immediately came in on France's side, forcing a two front war. The HRE successfully defended itself and was able to seize a small amount of territory due to its far superior military-industrial complex. This set the stage for WWI which ended with Eastern France under the control of the HRE, and the collapse of the British, Ottoman and Russian empires. When a former Corporal from Bavaria attempted to seize power from the HRE dynasty, he was imprisoned and executed and Europe entered a time of peace.

Sorcerer and Shaman can use their bows and javelins to attack at a longer range then they can with firebolt and spirit claw. Technically, firebolt and spirit claw are their melee attacks.

Great Caliph, peace be unto you. I must disagree with your noble advisor Lilith. At 37 (being ignorant of the game mechanics) you do not have much time left on this Earth to father many sons. You need to find wives soon and carry forth the line of the Prophet blessed be his name. States have fallen many times when Allah the merciful and loving kind has called away fathers whose sons were not ready to rule after them. While it would certainly be ideal to find a rule with a daughter who has not been blessed with sons, I do not know that you can wait for such a happenstance. May your Caliphate grow until it is the true Caliphate of all Islam. Concurring the Kurds of Gilan will expand your Caliphate without exposing you to additional powerful enemies something that concerns me for when Karen falls to your righteous sword. Concurring Gilan will also put you on the border of the heretic Yazidis. They should be ripe for the plucking.

There are a couple of reasons why it is not necessarily odd that Robert's Rebels do not seem to be affected by Konstina's Rebels. 1. Few rebellions are ever monolithic. The conditions that lead to rebellion often cause multiple segments of society with wildly divergent different causes to rebel at the same time. This contributes to the difficulty in executing a counter-insurgency campaign as the groups do not share motivations and are therefore not susceptible to the same kinds of persuasion. The different rebel groups all contribute to the death by a thousand cuts but are not coordinated. Sometimes they mostly ignore each other, sometimes they actively oppose each other and spend more time fighting each other than the government security forces. If the rebellion succeeds, then typically the best organized, best financed, most powerful faction takes control. Then, it destroys all of the other rebel groups as they are likely to be a threat to the stability of the new revolutionary government. 2. Operational security. Most of the classic insurgency manuals emphasize operating in a cel structure. Information flow up and down may or may not be very efficient, but information flow sideways is often poor. This is considered acceptable because it reduces the risk that the capture of a single low level rebel causes the loss of the entire organization. A rebellion does not need to (and does not want to) execute large complex operations involving the majority of its personnel until it is in a position to truly overthrow the government.

In terms of Moorcock as an influence on Gygax, one of the supplements for 1st Ed AD&D was Deities and Demigods. Stats for Elric and his sword were listed in there in a whole pantheon. Lovecraft also had a pantheon as well as did Greeks, Egyptians, Norse, Indian, Native American, etc. The Greyhawk specific deities came later and the Forgotten Realms specific Deities much later. I remember there being a whole listing of influences in the back of the 1st Ed DMG, but I do not currently have access to it. The influence of Tolkein seems undeniable to me. While the first edition AD&D rules and the Basic D&D did unfortunately use the term "Race", "Species" could be more accurate as long as you are not to concerned with (or willing to give a fantasy/magic exception) to the issue of being able to bear cross-species off-spring that can have off-spring (half-elves and half-orcs). As a species, Dwarves were Lawful Good, Orcs Lawful Evil, Elves Chaotic Good and Goblins Chaotic Evil. That was in part based on some fantasy works were Goblins were the opposite/evil copies of Dwarves and the same with Elves and Orcs. Player characters of Dwarves and Elves were not limited to those alignments, but could be different, so be extension, not all Orcs and Goblins had to be LE and CE respectively. That said, for most players, AD&D and D&D were not about hard moral decisions, but about killing monsters, gaining loot and having fun.

In terms of Moorcock as an influence on Gygax, one of the supplements for 1st Ed AD&D was Deities and Demigods. Stats for Elric and his sword were listed in there in a whole pantheon. Lovecraft also had a pantheon as well as did Greeks, Egyptians, Norse, Indian, Native American, etc. The Greyhawk specific deities came later and the Forgotten Realms specific Deities much later. I remember there being a whole listing of influences in the back of the 1st Ed DMG, but I do not currently have access to it. The influence of Tolkein seems undeniable to me. While the first edition AD&D rules and the Basic D&D did unfortunately use the term "Race", "Species" could be more accurate as long as you are not to concerned with (or willing to give a fantasy/magic exception) to the issue of being able to bear cross-species off-spring that can have off-spring (half-elves and half-orcs). As a species, Dwarves were Lawful Good, Orcs Lawful Evil, Elves Chaotic Good and Goblins Chaotic Evil. That was in part based on some fantasy works were Goblins were the opposite/evil copies of Dwarves and the same with Elves and Orcs. Player characters of Dwarves and Elves were not limited to those alignments, but could be different, so be extension, not all Orcs and Goblins had to be LE and CE respectively. That said, for most players, AD&D and D&D were not about hard moral decisions, but about killing monsters, gaining loot and having fun.

It always seemed to me that the default position in D&D and AD&Dv1 was to be Good, with lawful substituting for Good in D&D. Of course many of Gygax's characters were actually Neutral.

No, The Guns of the South is a completely separate work. The Southern Victory series follows the Alternate History conventions as opposed to Guns of the South and World War which do not.

I did not go as far as Mr. Turtledove did and have some slightly different assumptions. He had the North fighting multiple wars with the confederates, where our starting position was that the Civil War did not happen. He also had a revolution in Utah and the North flirting with socialism much sooner then in reality. In terms of the CIA's involvement in the development of Latin America, you are ignoring 100 years of US involvement/interference in Latin America prior to the creation of the CIA. I personally believe that in our scenario, both the USA and CSA would have pursued fairly isolationist policies towards Europe and been more focused on expansion in Caribbean and Central and South America, with the South engaging in those efforts first. Without a war between them, I do not see the US and CSA taking opposite sides likely in WWI and later too likely. I suppose one could write a novel about the US and CSA competing for influence and territory in the Western Hemisphere with lots of proxy wars, a cold war period and occasionally a hot war. To me though, given a peaceful withdrawal of the CSA from the USA, the fact that slavery was not that big of an issue for many folks in the North, I expect more of a peaceful coexistence like with Canada. Given that belief, I do not see that much difference in WWI. We played a fairly minor role and either half of the country could have done what we did. WWII is of course a different story. Both the USA and CSA had large cultural ties to Great Britain, but separately they would not have the resources that enabled the Allies to defeat the Axis. The CSA's ties to England may very well have been stronger, given that Great Britain would have been the first or at least one of the first countries to extend diplomatic recognition. The USA may still have been a rival against Japan. You could end up with a scenario where USA is drawn into WWII due to an attack on Pearl Harbor and the CSA is drawn into WWII to help Great Britain. USA would have beat Japan, CSA, GB and USSR would have beaten Germany, but it would have taken another year or so, due to the lack of industrial capacity unless the USA and CSA started working together. You could end this book with the USA and CSA deciding to become a single superpower. In terms of post WWII history, the CSA with its colonial empire would be less likely to push for the termination of the European colonial empires in Asia and Africa. The rise of communism in Europe and Asia would be relatively the same, though potentially all of German would be in the Soviet sphere. If the USA completely ignored the WWII in Europe, it might have been able to extend the civil war in China, but I do not think there would have been much change there. The big difference would be that Cuba would be part of the CSA as states along with potentially other nations in Central America that have experimented with Communism, so there would be less of a foothold in the Americas.

There are a fair number of them around, including three in Nicodemus's area on the main floor of Avadon.

Harry Turtledove covered a successful secession of the South better than I ever could, that said I will opine a little bit. Based on "US chooses to accept . . . rather than face a costly war", then the civil war did not happen. Without the war, I do not believe that West Virginia would have broken away from Virginia. The US would have retained the non-confederate states and territories, the CSA would have been very quickly recognized by Great Britain. Recognition by the other Western European states would have followed. With the population of the South limited in their ability to move into the Western US, they would have revised their plan to turn Cuba into three states and would either take Cuba, or since a portion of the CSA's leaders had experience with taking territory away from Mexico they would have done that. Which course of action would depend in part on who they were relying on for manufactured goods and how much influence Spain had versus France. In terms of the two countries getting along, the main source of tension would have been slavery. The CSA being pro slavery and part of the USA being anti-slavery and harboring run-aways. It is very unlikely that the USA would have adopted the emancipation proclamation or passed the 13th-15th amendments to the constitution without the Civil War. I believe that slavery would have remained a source of tension for a while, but I do not believe that it would by itself cause a new Civil War. The failure of the USA to return runway slaves to the CSA could be used to heighten emotions if the CSA decided that it needed to expand North instead of South. I believe that an expansion South would have been more likely with the CSA coming to dominate the Caribbean and eventually incorporating Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico and possibly Panama and Nicaragua. The USA would still have Alaska and Hawaii. The Philippines would not become a US possession if the US allied with Spain against the CSA. If relations with the CSA were good, than the US would seize the Philippines.

Maybe we can have all of the hands show up to the next council session in their Black Tower issued gear and see if Lyneaus has indecent exposure laws.

I to get frustrated when a cleave attack effects characters who are not next to each other and believe that it should be changed to only affecting characters who are in adjoining squares.

I believe that the Sunni's were dominant at the time, at least in the Mediterranean basin, so I would go with them as there will be enough problems dealing with the crusaders and mongol hoards. May be start in the Nile Delta region.

I am sure that it only costs 100 coins a month after advertising that the first month is only 10 coins. Maybe Redbeard will turn the pylons into towers as well.