Alex
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Posts posted by Alex
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The Dark Wyrm attack the nearest character, so I normally cast Arcane Shield L3 on a fighter and send him/her in to take them on in melee. If you have good archers, that will help you to take them out sooner.
The Abyssal Slimes are more annoying, I think - they can swarm you in some places.
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Because honestly I don't have the time to understand, draft, amend, or vote on legislation. It's a full-time job.
This is indeed something that could plausibly be a problem. It's a bit like open-source software versus commercial software by professionals who work full-time on it, with the additional twist of millions of enthusiasts versus hundreds of professionals.
Then again, what did people know about the long-term consequences of the abolition of slavery, just to take an example?
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The really big problem with direct democracy, however, has nothing to do with voter stupidity or laziness. It's an inherent mathematical problem with democracy, called the Discursive Dilemma. The classic example of the Discursive Dilemma serves to illustrate the very general point:
Suppose a third of the electorate wants to raise taxes, maintain services, and balance the budget. Another third (roughly) wants to cut taxes, cut services, and balance the budget. The remaining near third of the people wants to cut taxes, maintain services, and borrow money.
Each of those three roughly equal policy platforms is at least self-consistent. Each of them could in principle be carried out. There's at least some kind of case to be made for all three of them. And every voter is both rational and honest. They set their priorities, and are willing pay for them.
But look at the majority vote:
Raise or lower taxes? Lower them, by a whopping majority.
Cut or maintain services? Maintain them, by a whopping majority.
Balance the budget, or borrow? Balance the budget, by yet another whopping majority.
The clear majority of the people is in favor of a flagrant impossibility: cut taxes, maintain services, and yet balance the budget.
The majority vote by direct democracy is idiotic, even when all the individual voters are rational and honest. The problem is that there is no 'the' majority. There are three different majorities, on each of the three different issues. And there is nothing that forces these different majorities to thresh out a compromise platform that, as a whole, is at least possible.
Representative democracy, and more than that, party politics, is necessary to prevent democracy from deteriorating into irresponsible wishing for the impossible. Direct democracy is logically disastrous.
If you replace "voters" by "legislators", you would have the same problem. Of course, a budget is not made that way.
The US government shutdown shows that politicians are not necessarily responsible either.
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The bad guys don't need to bribe all the passengers with gold. They can just dazzle them with glitter. After all, that's what the captains do with the gold they get from the bad guys. The bad guys could just do it themselves, directly.
The voters can evidently be swayed by the glitziest TV ad campaign. After all, that's what all the bribery in US politics is about. Congresspeople aren't taking cash to buy themselves speedboats and whiskey. They're taking campaign contributions, which go to buy TV ads, which are worth buying because they work. If they didn't work, there wouldn't be a corruption problem in US politics. Since they do work, direct democracy won't help.
There are already many issues on which the politicians and the majority of their voters have different opinions, that's a fact we do not need to speculate about. Is that just because the bad guys can't be bothered to make enough propaganda? If an ad tells you to vote for one stranger rather than another stranger, you might not care all that much. Maybe the politicians are not all terrible people, but the system corrupts them.
Let me turn the question around: What advantages does handing over legislative power to someone else have? If someone offered you to become a minor and have a legal guardian, would you accept if you could elect a new guardian after four years?
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The bad guys can afford to bribe the captain, but they can hardly afford to bribe all the passengers.
Also, the system has inertia - few people would vote for an unknown single-issue protest party even if they agreed with it on that single issue. And those who benefit from the current system are those who finance and report on electoral campaigns.
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If every issue were put to a national vote, the government would get even less done than it does now.
Depends on the technical implementation, I suppose. Millions of people have a keen interest in politics. Also, much of current politics is such that it wouldn't be missed.
As an American, I think direct diplomany is a horrible idea. Then we'd just have government run by Fox News, which doesn't sound like fun for anyone who isn't a rich cis-male straight white protestant.
Corporations are not citizens, why should they be allowed to spew political propaganda? On a related note, the City of London still allows corporations to vote in their local elections: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London#Elections
The "free" news corporations are owned by the same elite that owns the politicians. That includes both the left-hand sock puppet, who screams that straight white protestants are the problem, as well the right-hand sock puppet, who screams that [insert scapegoat here] is the problem. It's all a smokescreen - divide and conquer.
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The so-called "financial crisis" and Snowdengate have convinced me that while representative democracy is still better than outright tyranny, albeit more hypocritical, the time has come for the people to have more of the good stuff, namely democracy.
Why is the will of the people somehow not democratic enough, whereas the opinion of a few hundred bankster-sponsored kleptocrats under the surveillance of NSA Pinkerton "security" contractors is law?
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Wait, you killed the Servant Mind in the same zone that Phipps is in? That would explain a lot.
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Hm, my canister rush char is at level 42...not that bad.
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The pros and cons of doing a "canister rush":
Pros:
-You'll get access to some powerful creations roughly 10 levels earlier. Killing worms and Fyoras in the Pacification Fields with a Gazer is fun!
-You can get high-tier creations to level 61, and even some mid-tier creations to pretty high levels. Plated Clawbugs in the mid-50s with 1000HP? Why not?
Cons:
-You'll have someting like half the essence when you do get access to the powerful creations.
-You will probably be around 5 levels lower even by endgame, even if you do bother to backtrack to the newbie areas. You might just miss out on that 7-Trall party or that level 64 Eyebeast or Rotdhizon!
If you care about PC strength and overall party strength by the endgame, get as few creations as late as possible, and complete all optional areas. Branching savegames can cut down on the tedium (e.g. do the Whitespires thoroughly ONCE with a mech/leadership solo character, then keep that savegame).
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Travald mine needs Mechanics 16.
Some do (there are three, IIRC), but one of them needs only Mechanics 13.
Also, you can get another Infiltrator's Cloak early, without fighting, from a nest in the Mountain Crossroads (NE corner, near the Alpha).
8 in Mech/Leadership + Tinker's Bauble + Tinker Gloves + Infiltrator Shield + Infiltrator Cloak = 10 Leadership, 13 Mechanics, enough to get through Travald's Crypt without fighting.
You will need to fight some clawbugs for Dhonal's Band. Then you can get The Infiltrator's Tunic easily. Now you have 12 Leadership, 14 Mechanics.
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(Split into two posts due to quoting limitations, will continue later.)
- Gorash-Kel (a fortress in the middle of the map) can be accessed via swamp zones with minimal fighting. Go South from the North Mera Rd to the Northeastern fen, then west to the Northwestern fen, then south
- With some trial and error, it is possible to loot most of Gorash-Kel in combat mode. In particular, make sure you get the Farsight Plate (northeast corner of fortress), Blademaster charm (middle), Shaped Blade (northwest corner in the crystal blue box) and Mandrake Tincture. You can steal the Shaped blade without being noticed by the camping Unbound by starting from the lower right hand corner of the room, approaching and opening it in combat mode, and then returning to the lower right hand corner of the room.
A lot of reloading to get those moderately useful items is not everyone's cup of tea.
- Forge a Runed Athemyst on the Shaped Blade to give it the acid drip effect. This will give you the most damaging melee weapon for some time.
- Optional: Kill Felik in the Northwest Corner of the Lower Noyde pass for the Best body armour you will have access to for a while - the Thahdskin tunic. The +2 bonus to strength allows you to wear heavier stat boosting armour for no skill point investment. If you don't feel like doing this, stick with the farsight breastplate.
- You can now access reduced training prices from Quothe. It's worth buying +2 spellcraft, one point of unlock, regeneration aura, heal and lightning aura.
- Essential canisters - Ice Spray (North Mera Road)
- Discover both ends of the Shadow Road. One is in Kaz, on the east side. Avoid the guards by going into combat mode. Make sure you use the Create Vlish canister. The other entrance is in Penta on the west side. Use some living tools. Report back to Rawal for the terror spell.
The leader in Penta will unlock the door if you aid them and have not found the other entrance yet. Slightly counter-intuitive; check the scripts to see if I remember correctly
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A great concise walkthrough!
I was replaying Geneforge 5, and realised that it is easy to suffer from burnout, particularly on Torment. Not only is it the largest Geneforge game, it's relatively non-linear, which means that it's easy to waste your time on stuff that isn't important, and miss stuff that is important.
Well, say goodbye to the BS. I'll turn your character (ideally a sorceress/lifecrafter, as they are the most effective in GF5) into a lean, mean, fighting machine.
Well, perhaps not playing on Torment is a choice to consider. This also makes a lot more builds viable, not just "rush to the nearest war trall canister and pump out war tralls as quickly as possible". Rushing to get the powerful creations and shaping-boosting items early is definitely one possibility. However, it's probably sub-optimal if you care more about boosting your main character's level than leveling up your creations; a "deadweight shaper" is not the only option. Some creations will probably hit the level cap anyway - why the rush? If you just play "normally", you'll have a lot more essence when you do get acces to the powerful creations. Also, if you do care more about creation strength, getting the Girdle of Victory is probably best.
General advice
- Don't buy points in creations/spells from a trainer, unless they are necessary and cannot be found from a canister. Don't know which ones are necessary and can't be found from a canister? Don't worry, that's what the no BS walkthrough is for!
Agreed, mostly. In the long run, you can accumulate enough gold for a lot of training, but saving your pennies can make a big difference early on.
- War tralls are by far the best creation in the game. They have high HP, moderate resistances, a powerful long range attack, and are the cheapest 5th tier creation. If you play your cards right, you can have one 15% into the game. Until this point, avoid accumulating too much XP. Once you have war tralls, you can revisit previous areas and clear them up with ease. Alternatively, you could go with shock tralls.
- Mental magic is crucial to surviving on higher difficulty levels. Daze (later Strong Daze), Terror, Dominate (later Charm) and Mass Madness are instrumental for crowd control. Almost every enemy can be terrified/charmed, excluding golems and undead. You want to accumulate enough spellcraft and mental magic skill so that you can reliably terrify/charm/daze any enemy in the game which isn't immume to mental effects.
- The protection provided by heavy armour is over-rated. Therefore it is not worth investing in strength just to wear armour with a higher defensive rating. Always prioritise stat point bonuses provided by equipment over protection. Most notably, shields and body armour in this game are complete cack. If you're ever encumbered, unequip your shield first, then your body armour.
Not if you play a melee character, which is quite playable on Normal.
- The creation strength bug in this game has been *fixed*. In previous Geneforge games, creations did not benefit from bonuses to creation strength provided by items. Now creations do benefit from items that are supposed to provide strength bonuses.
Also, items that boost creation stats can get these above 30. Useful if you level those tralls up to level 61.
- High leadership and mechanics are crucial on Torment. Even if you optimise your character for combat, you will be grossly outclassed by many enemies throughout most of the game. I have included leadership/mechanics recommendations for each zone.
- Your character's power will increase steadily as their intelligence/spellcraft/essence increases. You will gain huge jumps in power for every war/shock trall you create, and when you acquire mass restore, charm, strong daze, essence lances, and essence blade. Invest most of your skill points in intelligence, spellcraft, and mental magic. The equipment you wear should also provide boosts in these key areas.
- Don't forget that you have thorn batons! It's very easy to neglect them when you can access lightning aura and searer, but they are fantastic against physically weak enemies. They have a higher multiplier than most attack spells and good ancillary effects. There are also a number of early game items which give big bonuses to missile attacks. Most importantly, horde reapers.
If you have a lot of tralls, I'd wager you're better off casting spells than shooting thorns most of the time. You're the only party member that can buff, heal and use most mental attacks.
Early game (Drypeak Mountains)
Your aims in the early game should be:
Having fun?

1. To access Mera-Tev by completing Rahul's main quest line in the Foundry without accumulating too much XP.
2. Complete the Shaper test in the Testing Grounds, and access the Battle Reward (Speed and Searer)
- To complete the main storyline and access Mera-Tev, you'll only need to visit Minallah, Isenwood spire, the Promenade, and the Foundry (East, West and Core).
I think you can skip the Promenade.
- Bump your mechanics and Leadership up to 6 ASAP. This will be ample for all encounters in Drypeak.
Leadership 5 is enough. Mechanics 8 is enough for the entire game if you don't mind some equipment swapping.
- Turning Mehken in to Rahul as a rebel will net you one of the better rewards in the game (+1 to strength and endurance), with no long term consequences.
- Artilas, cryoas or clawbugs are the best creations for this part of the game. If you're a sorceress, stick with artilas to avoid sinking points into Fire Shaping. Character classes who start with 2 in Fire Shaping will get best returns from cryoas. You can purchase two points in Create Fyora very early, and find a book of Create Fyora in the Foundry Promenade.
- Purchase one level of Protection, Cure Affliction and Burning Spray. These spells are crucial for most of the game, and you can't find any canisters for them.
- Important canisters include Wrack (East Foundry) and Essence Infusion (Isenwood Spire)
- Hold off investing in Spellcraft. You can access a trainer for it very early in the Mera-Tev.
- There are no *must have* items in Drypeak, as you'll be getting much better gear soon enough in Mera-Tev and Storm Plains. However, the Apprentice Belt, Nimble Sandals, Carnelian Gloves are worth using for the short term.
- The hardest battle will be against the Servant mind in the West Foundry. To beat it, recruit help from the soldiers in the southwest section, use a wand of weakness to increase damage taken by mind, stack acid and poison ancillary damage (acid spray and searer, respectively), and use fyoras/cryoas.
IIRC, the servant mind is immune to poison and resistant to fire. Wrack (or Wand of Weakness) can help at least with the latter, though.
Early-mid game
Your three primary aims in Mera-Tev are as follows
1. Complete Astoria's series of quests to access the storm plains
2. Access reduced price training from trainer by raiding Gorash-Kel
3. Discover both entrances to the Shadow Road
- A mechanics and leadership of 9 is ample for most encounters in Mera-Tev.
- Koski on the North Mera Road is one of the harder bosses relative to your level. Pay him off for 5 coins, then recruit help from Tasha nearby
8 in Mechanics and Leadership (without equipment) is enough for the entire game; a little bit more can improve the pacing of the game, though (and reduce equipment swapping during combat).
You can just sneak past Koski without paying, and come back with 7 vlish or plated bugs.

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Colchis changes earlier than that - between day 1 and 2, although it's probably a glitch (the helpful shade and most of the slimes are absent on day 1).
Around day 10, Kriszan gets slightly damaged: The boat repair shop gets destroyed, and there is also some minor damage to some other walls, IIRC. Some time later, the unicorn horn questgiver and some shopkeepers get killed. However, you can beat the slime plague long before day 10.
Bolton does get affected, at least if you don't solve the slime plague.
Shayder is hit hard by the roach plague and Sara the mage disappears.
Hectar is destroyed.
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It's Hardiness in Avernum 3, too - the encumberance and AP penalty are displayed in the lower left part of the character sheet, and you can see how encumberance decreases as you increase Hardiness.
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Ring Wars: Episode I (a.k.a. The Hobbit) - 7/10
I disliked the clumsy attempt to make it "family friendly"; decapitations are OK as long as you add in potty jokes, it seems. Radagast was disgraceful. The action scenes were too many and too cartoonish. The White Council meeting was OK, but I got the impression that Gandalf was somehow romantically involved with Galadriel, which was...weird. I liked the tough-as-nails dragon, though.
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Leadership and Mechanics are especially helpful for a solo character, and Agents are supposed to be a bit sneaky.
In the later games, Speed gets nerfed but you gain daze spells to help you with crowd control.
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Paolo in Pergies only has low-level priest spells (up to Summon Shade). Zacharias in Gale is the only seller of these spells I know about.
The fourth stone circle teaches Divine Fire at level 3 to all characters who have 10 or more in Priest Spells, even if they don't know the spell at level 1. If they have less than 10 in Priest Spells, they still get Divine Fire at level 2.
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A Sholai mage in G1: "I shoot *garbled* from my *garbled* and cover my enemies with *garbled*!"
The loyalist ending in G1, when the fate of the Taker leader is described. Does that make me a terrible person?
Thahd dialogue tends to be good for a chuckle. For example, in G4, there's a guard thahd can be persuaded to think that you might be an expected visitor, after which it is too filled with "self-doubt" to respond if you try to speak with it again. You can also simply beg for mercy:
"Please don't hurt me. I beg you!"
"Beg? What beg? Don't understand beg." You spend a minute trying to explain the concept of begging for mercy to the creature. Eventually, with care and patience, you get the concept across. The thahd isn't buying it.
"No. Nothing in orders about beg. Kill. That what I do. Kill."
Astoria's taunt in G5:
"Ghaldring. I am Astoria of the Shaper Council. I declare you to be a rogue creation, of a variety declared Barred by Shaper law. You are forbidden. You will now be absorbed."
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Avernum 1: Cap at level 40, reachable without too much trouble with a party of four. Double positive traits might be too much, though.
Avernum 2: Cap at level 50, with a drastic slowdown in xp gain after level 45. I think a typical party would reach level 48 or 49 - this is probably the game where traits have the smallest influence on character level at the very end.
Avernum 3: I'm not sure what the level cap is. I had a maximum xp bonus character in a party of four that got to around level 100. Probably above 100, but it's been a while. A party of four with xp penalties close to maximum still got above level 50. By the way, when you reach level 35, skill point gain drops from 8 per level to 6 per level.
Avernum 1 to 3 don't lower experience based upon the difference between your level and the monster's level. You can hit the level cap and then need to use skill potions to get more skill points. However there are very few things that you still need by that point.
In Avernum 3, at least, level difference has a large impact. A level 1 character can level up from killing a few slimes, but around level 10, it's down to 1 xp per slime. This is readily seen if you recruit Hsska as soon as possible - at first, he'll gain xp at a much slower rate than the rest of the party.
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I haven't had time to play most games I have on GOG and Steam. I haven't finished all Spiderweb games, either: Avadon, Avernum 4-6, Nethergate.
I own The Witcher 2 from when I bought it but had no computer capable of running it, then a computer capable of running it but no Windows. Now I can technically run it on a Mac, but the Cider performance is so underwhelming I think I'll still wait. And my old Windows XP CD is missing. Maybe I'll have to pay for Windows 8, but I don't have to like it.It has been ported to OS X now:
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Originally Posted By: BMAOriginally Posted By: AlexWell, even if those noble savages hadn't been the object of colonialism, they would probably have found out at a later date that other people have cars and refrigerators, and wanted to have them, too.
While it's a fact that the colonists did bring with them some technological advancements, it would be unfair to assume that the colonies would otherwise, even now, be backward and leaf-clad.
(I hope I understood what you meant, correctly)
We may well be in agreement.
Development with colonialism tends to cause environmental issues.
Development without colonialism tends to cause environmental issues.
Note the redundancy.
Also, it would be unfair to disregard the positive aspects of development. Stone Age barbarism (a stage which not all victims of military conquest were in when subjected, of course) is like constant genocide and constant world war - albeit in smaller, more isolated worlds. Development has been nothing like genocide, if you look at the big picture, more like a mass breeding program - particularly for non-white people, actually! The population of the Americas is almost 1 billion today. -
Originally Posted By: DantiusOne of the points that Diamond makes is that the people of Eurasia didn't get civilization because they were so much smarter than everybody else, but because they got lucky and got beasts of burden, crops, climates not hospitable to disease, and natural barriers. Any people that got those resources would have hit the world-historical jackpot and wound up ruling the place.
Better beasts of burden might be beneficial to economic development, but they neither prove nor disprove anything about the intelligence of Eurasians, nor do they explain the vast intra-Eurasian and intra-American differences in development.
Jared Diamond does have other opinions about race and intelligence, though:Originally Posted By: Straight from the horse's mouth
From the very beginning of my work with New Guineans, they impressed me as being on average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is.
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That is, natural selection promoting genes for intelligence has probably been far more ruthless in New Guinea than in more densely populated, politically complex societies, where natural selection for body chemistry was instead more potent.
Edit: There were horses in North America, too, but they disappeared around 10000 to 7600 years ago, according to wikipedia.

A2: Crystal Souls Trailer on youtube
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I would like to see a remake of Averforge 3.5 (Avernum 4), with proper outdoor maps this time around.