Sporefrog

I was at least pleased to see all of his glares at both parties of congress for their blockading (republicans) and floundering (democrats). As far as the rest of the speech, I think Obama claimed to have ended the use of torture. While he did sign an executive order to that end, I'm not entirely sure whether it was as definitive as he made it seem. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/promise/175/end-the-use-of-torture/ To Salmon's point about corruption, Obama has constantly called for an end to lobbyist and special interest influence in Washington. Whether anything's actually being done about it, going to be done about it, or how widespread it really is, I have absolutely no idea.

Originally Posted By: SoT Maybe I'm a cockeyed optimist, but my scenario for a century or two from now is this. We've stabilized the environment by finding more efficient technology, the world human population is stable at around 10 billion, and Asia is First World. Average temperatures are several degrees warmer, farmbelts have shifted around, and there are dykes around a lot of coastal cities. Life goes on okay. I think I pretty much agree with this assessment. The only conflicting factors that I can envision would be some sort of horrendous degradation of world relations and a resulting dark-age inducing nuclear showdown. Originally Posted By: Synergy There is increasing dialog in the sciences of late around the very notion that crisis itself is one of the most potent agents of evolutionary advance. Any sort of population bottleneck can lead to rapid evolutionary change, for the simple reason that genetic variation exists in all populations and taking a small random sample will amplify any currently uncommon traits that the survivors happen to have. This isn't necessary for large evolutionary change, nor is large evolutionary change necessarily (or likely to be) a good thing. I think the areas where I seem to disagree with you the most are when you seem to either anthropomorphize nature a bit too much, or seem to think the development of life is somehow directed. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter though

I'd say that I am interested in hearing Synergy's mentioned underlying tenets for his beliefs, however I get the feeling there's a long history of conflict behind asking such questions In the meantime, back to VHC's original post. I think there's definitely a place for both underlying moral arguments along with practical "what you can do" arguments for any topic, as others have said. I think the moral arguments are probably the most common for environmentalism, but that's not necessarily a problem. As Alorael said: who is your target audience and will they gain anything from this line of attack? As for the argument itself, I have a few qualms. Originally Posted By: VHC Nature is instead composed of self replicating entities that (group selectionists aside) could not care less about the survival of a species or the world. Unless you are assuming that humans are not part of nature, isn't it a little ironic that you're literally making a statement about how nothing in nature cares about the world in the middle of a call to arms to care about the fate of the biosphere? As far as our ability to impact the world as a result of "thinking, reasoning, and learning," unlike someone said earlier, I think that's a perfectly fine statement. Specifically, our ability to make both physical and mental tools (the scientific method, steam engines, nuclear bombs) has given us extraordinary power, but the basis for doing so is definitely rooted in learning, reasoning, and thinking. I'll stop there for brevity's sake.

Remember that game where Marlenny and I agreed to back down instead of backstabbing each other, and she backstabbed me? Oh wait, that was four different games.

Originally Posted By: Marlenny With that said, I figured out who Sarachim was within 6 hours of the start of the game (and we were already allies ). I'm eagerly awaiting the game when you two are irreconcilable enemies.

I'll keep a running tally unless some mod can change it or something. I can't seem to.

Good call, can I undo it? I could just edit the post with the running tally if not

I felt like not knowing who anyone was added a greater sense of mystery and thrill to the game, much like my first few games. Did you guys like it? I horribly failed at guessing everyone's identity. I didn't guess a single one correctly. 12 for, 5 against.

Originally Posted By: Lilith Originally Posted By: *i Okay...then what do you propose for fixing charity? I do not want to see any 120 coin trades on the last day that don't help anyone. Make coins rarer or more important to other roles so that they can't so easily afford to give charity. The problem that leads to charity in the first place is that most roles have coins that they have little use for. Coins are given away cheaply because people don't value them highly. I'm not sure I agree with this, though it probably is highly role-dependent. I think what leads to charity is people's desire to let as many people win as possible. We don't typically ruthlessly kill neutral but disposable roles when we're in a position of power.

Originally Posted By: *i Okay...then what do you propose for fixing charity? I do not want to see any 120 coin trades on the last day that don't help anyone. One could simply leave it to the moderator's discretion to disallow a victory gained through excessive charity.

Originally Posted By: Surefire Arrow By the way, DLs, a tip for you: next time let the Commander do the attacking, not the Mage. Honestly, the only reason it mattered was because the shadow leather single-handedly won all your battles. Think about it on a role with both stealth and mage. Mage ignores armor, stealth has high attack but low defense. Shadow leather makes it so all the downsides of being mage and stealth evaporate. The commander still would have lost attacking you.

Originally Posted By: Last Acolyte I hated being the Adventurer. It has lots of enemies, the victory conditions are quite demanding, it makes it hard to trust anyone, since all factions who you don't explain yourself immediately to you will probably get rid of you out of fear you want to assassinate their leader... I honestly thing the task of being able to explore 2 regions is insufficient. I've always dreaded getting adventurer myself, just from looking at the victory conditions. I've never actually been adventurer though, so I can't comment. I think other people have done quite well at it. I believe Marlenny means Commander not Blademaster And yes, I think the DLs did the only thing they needed to not do: raise suspicion of themselves. Keeping quiet or befriending known empires would've both been better.

Hahahaha, good show. I crashed and burned and sank. So much for the darkside. We randomly killed Rowen by complete chance, sowing Gladwell's defeat, then proceeded to get poisoned (Creator) and smash face into the Shadow Leather (me). Utter, complete, failure. Can't wait to play again

REGISTER SPOREFROG YES

Originally Posted By: Sarachim Would anonymous AIM accounts be allowed? I was thinking it might be a nice change for me to try things without using AIM. It's certainly different deceiving people in real time vs through PMs.

Honestly, if your play style isn't working, change your play style. I tried playing stealthily and failed miserably. Then I went towards huge alliances and have been much more successful. Now I'm going to change again for next game again, to see what happens

Antidote, 15 gold coins. Artifact, 60 gold coins. Shanker casting protection on the anama priest: priceless.

Originally Posted By: Monroe I'm surprised the Anama were willing to have Machrone. He has so little to offer being a worthless fighter with a barely useful ability. And yet his goals really require him to put himself out there, exposed to danger. I feel sorry for all his past and future players. Having people on your side and not working against you is always a good enough motivation to recruit someone. That, and information is the best currency in Northern Isles.

Also, was RCCCL's attack as balanced as it should have been 19, really? Seems like there were items flowing everywhere too.

Originally Posted By: Marlenny I had previously decided to stop the huge alliances (100% of the time involving Sarachim), since it makes the game entirely too easy, but I keep falling into them again and again. This, many times over. STUPID HUGE UNWIELDY ALLIANCES, RAWRAWRAWRR. Also, going anonymous will prevent me from immediately wand of deathing my own DL partner if Marlenny and I happen to be on the same team next game.

I'm trying to think of some incentive to keep people Shanker protects from simply backstabbing her and joining a faction, while reaping full rewards from her buffs.

My medicine, it tastes good. *shakes fist at Marlenny* I thought that was a great game, though I've noticed as more games are played with the same people, it's a lot harder to separate each game without previous biases leaking in. To this end, I would be interested in playing anonymously next game. Does one simply have to just make a new account? I'm unfamiliar with the details of the forum so I'm not sure. I was thinking of something along the lines of simply creating a new name, and registering and playing with that one. That way people will not even know who registered. If people are interested in giving this a try, it's not even necessary for everyone to do this for some anonymity to be achieved. Any thoughts or ideas?

Braaains?

Can somebody inform me what time zone the boards are in? I'm in arizona time (MST) and I always have a problem figuring out when 24 hours have passed from the start of the game

Feel free to hit me up on AIM: "str4tegerist"