My Little Pony XCIX: Leakier Than A Changeling Bathtub!

[Forum Explorer]

That you ignore this or write it off as "inconsistency" shows once again how deficient your materialist conception of history is, how what you're really doing is playing with jargon to justify a pre-conceived notion. My opinion of you at this point is as Marx's of Lafargue and Guesde.

Well I've got a new record holder for classiest insult I've ever heard.

Spoiler: Have a Rarity

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[Rater202]

People... Maybe back away a minute?

You're debating the socioeconomic and politico-economic factors and history of a cartoon for five-year-old girls and the parents of the same.

I think you're both overthinking it significantly at this point.

[Forum Explorer]

People... Maybe back away a minute?

You're debating the socioeconomic and politico-economic factors and history of a cartoon for five-year-old girls and the parents of the same.

I think you're both overthinking it significantly at this point.

Nooo, don't stop them. I'm actually learning a fair bit about the history of industrialization.

[Rater202]

Nooo, don't stop them. I'm actually learning a fair bit about the history of industrialization.

That's what books are for, me boyo.

[Forum Explorer]

That's what books are for, me boyo.

But I'm too busy reading to read.

[Aotrs Commander]

Guh. I am still struggling with HoI4, though at least I've got to the point I am sort of able to win wars now. Small ones, anyway? It takes so painfully long to justify on anyone, though, so the strategy of of "turn stuff facist, then annex without dragging other factions in" doesn't really work... Especially as Italy joined the Japanese faction a little before I could justify them (was trying to clear out Europe a bit, then tackle the Soviets, THEN going back to the allies. Clearly doesn't work, even with PP bursting at the seems because civilian difficulty...)

Think, at least, I'm in a better position that I was, but that's hardly saying anything, is it?

[DigoDragon]

But I'm too busy reading to read.

Also, I imagine trying to read while on a boat could lead to seasickness.

[Forum Explorer]

Also, I imagine trying to read while on a boat could lead to seasickness.

Honestly it's not too bad. Working on my laptop or tablet is leagues worse for seasickness. And I have to do that as part of the job.

[Schismatic]

Well I've got a new record holder for classiest insult I've ever heard.

Spoiler: Have a Rarity

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Which would be fine if all they had wasn't insults.

[b_jonas]

Hey guys!

There's not much I can say, I just want to check in to say that I'm still here. I don't come here often, mostly because I still haven't continued watching MLP. I do intend to return and watch the rest later. I do look at ponythread regularly. I saw there was some silence for a while, then someone brough up the Flim Flam brothers, a recuring controversial topic, and that of course generated a few pages of discussion.

I'm still struggling with ordinary things in my real life, and it's exactly because I haven't been able to do anything notable why I couldn't tell you any interesting stories. I hope this will change soon.

There was at least one noteworthy event I can tell you about, but it's not a nice one. My grandmother became ill the last weekend. She had to stay in the hospital for more than a week. Her condition really scared me at first, especially the way she talked to me the afternoon after the night when she got in. But she's improved since, and they'll probably let her out from the hospital early next week, and she'll be able to continue her usual lifestyle.

In the meantime, my parents just arrived home from a one week long skiing holiday with the extended family. That includes my niece, who turned one year old recently, and a two year old child. Obviously most of the time was spent on the usual grandchild playtime, and only a little on skiing. My mother really enjoyed this vacation. She deserves it too, with how much she's usually overworking herself.

Also, let this post remind myself and everyone else that the writer G. Szabó Judit died nine years ago on this date. That means I've last met her eleven years ago. Time is flying too fast. I've already told you about my two meetings with her earlier in ponythread. May I never forget those.

[Appleshy1973]

Spoiler: Episode 200

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[Aotrs Commander]

Yaay. After much effort, I have beaten the Soviets. Problem is just me and the allies left (and Mexico) is already justifiying on me, so not a lot of time to see if I can even re-position to try and hold them off...

Is Equestria at War, like, harder than regular HoI4? 'Cos it's taken me the better part of 80 hours to get this far...

[gmoyes]

Yaay. After much effort, I have beaten the Soviets. Problem is just me and the allies left (and Mexico) is already justifiying on me, so not a lot of time to see if I can even re-position to try and hold them off...

Is Equestria at War, like, harder than regular HoI4? 'Cos it's taken me the better part of 80 hours to get this far...

It is a bit harder in a couple ways. For example, there is an extended tech tree as well as new technologies for racial magic that you have to manage. The AI is a bit smarter than the base game and more reactive. And you can't rely on historical fore-knowledge like you can for base HoI4. Even knowledge of MLP doesn't really help as like 3/4 of the setting is original content. Otherwise, (with a few balance tweaks) it plays just like the base game.

While I haven't played them (though I should at some point) I heard that the Kingdom of Wingbardy is a good starting country. Playing as one of the members of the River Federation might also be a good idea as it allows you to safely play politics and build up for a while, before uniting the federation to become a major juggernaut.

Honestly, Equestria at War is probably equal to Kaiserriech for quality HoI4 mods, it even surpasses it in a few aspects. The only thing that holds it back from being more popular is that it's attached to MLP. It's awesome, but plenty of people won't touch it because it has ponies plastered all over it. It really too bad.

[Aotrs Commander]

It is a bit harder in a couple ways. For example, there is an extended tech tree as well as new technologies for racial magic that you have to manage. The AI is a bit smarter than the base game and more reactive. And you can't rely on historical fore-knowledge like you can for base HoI4. Even knowledge of MLP doesn't really help as like 3/4 of the setting is original content. Otherwise, (with a few balance tweaks) it plays just like the base game.

While I haven't played them (though I should at some point) I heard that the Kingdom of Wingbardy is a good starting country. Playing as one of the members of the River Federation might also be a good idea as it allows you to safely play politics and build up for a while, before uniting the federation to become a major juggernaut.

Honestly, Equestria at War is probably equal to Kaiserriech for quality HoI4 mods, it even surpasses it in a few aspects. The only thing that holds it back from being more popular is that it's attached to MLP. It's awesome, but plenty of people won't touch it because it has ponies plastered all over it. It really too bad.

And that's what I was afraid of. Given that the AI appears that it is already better than me and I've had to increasingly, as multiple aborted attempts at Germany have been made (and I've had, like, half the HoI4 forum helping me), to switch to more historical to even have some chance of getting off the ground. If there's not a longer run-up before the war is mostly likely to break out, there's a fair chance it might be just too hard to make it fun trying to play for me. (I am not a fan of having to constantly re-start - the four attempts I had at Germany were enough; a fifth time and I might well have written it off as "nope, too hard, not worth it." HoI4 is very unforgiving of errors (especially in what focus you take and when) because of the tight timeline and having to learn by trial-and-error is not something I particularly like doing.)

[Rater202]

Dear Princess Celestia.

Today I learned that both steamed hamburgers and literal steamed hams are actual things that exist.

Spoiler

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So, it's been a bit. How's everypony doing?

[DigoDragon]

Today I learned that both steamed hamburgers and literal steamed hams are actual things that exist.

Humans are good at doing stuff without asking why they should do it. XD

So, it's been a bit. How's everypony doing?

Wrapping up my spring vacation. Well, not much of one really. I mostly did house work, but it was stuff that needed doing, so at least I accomplished that much. Guess I'm not very good at spending vacation time doing vacation things.

Spoiler

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[Aotrs Commander]

So, it's been a bit. How's everypony doing?

Knocked Hoi4 on the head for a bit after 85 hours and an evening carefully setting up to try and fight the allies only to have my lines broken in the first three days.

So I thought I'd have a break and play SotS for a bit.

First game, abandoned because I'd apparently just forgotten (since been been a year or two since I played SotS1) where to draw the line on colonies being too expensive to establish and the AI showing up with 55 ships. (Which actually showed in hinsight how poor my starting location was).

Second game, In the first twenty turns, the ONE colnised world I'd found that it was even POSSIBLE (i.e. was not classifed as "prohibitiely expensive") was locked behind one of the FOUR alien menaces.

And it turned out that, with the starting forces I had, apparently colony traps WIL automatically kll one of your ships, since in ten-fifteen reloads, one seemed invulnerable to all damage.

Hahahaha, SotS.

(Then, to stuck the knife in, I hadn't seen and Von Neumanns at all in any of the games, so I thoguht they hadn't spawned. I had one encounter and was like "oh, well, pants") and then on turn 134, a VN berserker showed up to wipe a colony. I rage quite for the nightm went back yesterday and did a massive build up... And it didn't show up. And then finally did, like ten turns later. So my steady expansion turned into a straight rush to anti-matter and dreadnoughts and to hope I had access to Impactors so I could reinforce my garrision fleets to be able to take one just in case. )



The positive news was, after a good five hour's of work sorting the Phystyulons on the shorter legs (rather the the other alternative), the volume saving appears to have been just barely enough to get away with, so that's at least time not wasted...



Edit: Really, Ubisoft? You needed to send me THREE identical emails to tell me that you have decided to further anti-consumer by saying that your club card points now expire after two years and that I should use my all of 84 points on something before some of them expire?

[Appleshy1973]

https://www.equestriadaily.com/2019/...its-grave.html

[gmoyes]

So Aotrs, perhaps to inspire you to play more HoI4 and maybe to brag a bit, I'd like to share my last run through of Equestria at War.

Following my own advice, I chose to play as the Kingdom of Wingbardy, which is pretty much Italy, right down to the naming scheme. They can go with any of the 4 ideologies (Fascist, Communist, Un-aligned and Harmony (Democratic... ish)), though their historical path is Fascist, which I followed as well (with Beakolini in charge). Ate up a couple of neighbours, who are rather unimportant and whose sole purpose is to be eaten by me. I then made an alliance with the Minotaur Kingdom, who also aren't really important or have a real world equivalent. I then conquered the Kingdom of Griffonstone, who is pretty much Poland and is meant to be eaten by one of it's more powerful neighbours, either myself, the Griffonian Empire (pretty much the German Empire) or Prywen (Communist Romania).

For a bit of context, the Griffonian Empire can grow to be the biggest powerhouse on the continent, but it first has to annex its former vassals. Whether they go after their northern vassals or southern ones first depends on who takes over the throne while the heir comes of age. In this case, they got their southern ones first giving me a border with them through the former Griffonstone territory. However, when they went to annex their former northern vassals, that's when I struck, pincering the empire between myself and the independent duchies. In the end, we each got half of the empire's land, divided by the the big river that split the empire in half. Luckily for me, the capital of the empire was on the southern half of the river and I claimed it. While I didn't notice it at the time, this would later allow me to claim myself as the Griffonian Empire.

In this bit of a breather, other thing around the world were happening. Prywen (Communist Romania) was overrun by the River Federation (A loose collection of nations sort of like China in base HoI4, but can unite under one nation through diplomacy), the former Griffonian Empire vassals were defeated by a Harmonic alliance of the Aquelian Republic (France), the Skyfall Trade Republic (Netherlands) and the Griffonian Republic (the Griffonian Empire's democratic government in exile), while Stalliongrad (a communist state that declared independence from Equestria) ended up going down the path to peacefully reintegrate with Equestria (America/UK).

However, the great war between the Changelings (Nazi Germany) and Equestria broke out. Taking this opportunity, I took out New Mareland (the Australia to Equestria's UK, which is a direct neighbour to me), which brought me into a war against Equestria. The Changelings were steadily pushing in from the west, to I took the chance to invade the former lands of Stalliongrad from across the sea and attack Equestria from the northeast. This allowed me to soon claim Equestria's industrial centers of Manehatten and Fillydelphia. Equestria always takes forever to capitulate and it's misery to fight through the snow of the Crystal Empire (Canada), but between me and Chysalis, we crushed Equestria between us with the Crystal empire falling soon after. I claimed the former Stalliongrad land as well as the northeastern seaboard of Equestria including the industrial hub of Manehatten.

Now there 4 major powers in the world, myself, the Changelings, the alliance of Griffonian republics (literally named the Entente) and the fully formed River Federation. However there was a small alliance to the north of my new found Equestrian land, Nova Griffonia (a former colony of the Griffonian Empire), Yakyakistan (Mongolia) and Pingland (...penguins). Up until now, I've pretty much followed what the Wingbardy focus tree gave me, so I had to manually justify and declare war on them. I took them out without too much difficulty, though at this point I gave up on annexing them directly, instead I puppeted them as the micromanagement was getting to be a little much.

So with the northeastern third of the Equestrian continent under my control, I turned my attention back to more domestic matters. The Entente would be a tough foe to crack, especially with a major river crossing to make. For some reason the Aquelian Republic didn't join the war right away, so advancing into the other two nation's territory was leaving a flank somewhat exposed, but soon enough they joined and I was able to hold. It was quite the slog to beat through them, but thanks to the ponypower and industry I picked up in Equestria, I was able to drain their ponypower and equipment enough to weaken them and eventually beat them. I claimed the other half of the former Griffionian Empire's lands for my own Empire and puppeted the former republics.

So now with half of the Griffon continent under my control, I turn my attention back to the Changelings. With the conquered Equestrian lands, Chrysalis' army is perhaps even with my own. Still, my army is better equipped and I'm a little smarter than the AI. It is quite the slog fighting through Equestria, especially with my battle lines messing up for some unknown reason. Fortunately, my puppets manage to invade from the south while I push from the north across Yakyakistan territory. It is a bit of a slog pushing tanks through snow, but it was rather lightly defended and it was able to attack the core changeling lands from the north. So even though the Changlings held half of Equestria, they fell after I captured the major core cities. With that, I now owned all the land on the Equestrian continent.

And that's where I called it. All that's left is a few minor griffon kingdoms that aren't worth going after, the River Republic that I'd be able to run over without much difficulty, and the Dread League (a literal undead hoard) who only declares war on its own terms and I'd be able to beat easily. It was fun and the first time I've taking over the world in any HoI4 game.

[Aotrs Commander]

I am still bein' Space Whales, at the moment. Despite some tedium, I'm at the "mop-up" phase now, though it could be a few hours still.

There is something relaxing about having Liir Dreadnoughts with ten Impactors each just demolishing stuff from a great distance...

And hey, it's not qute genocide, since SotS does have more to it that I remembered, and there IS a point to keeping the other aliens around. I'm nt sure I'd ever realised that you can max out your civilian population without burning resources by having your own species on the notch before that happenes and filling the rest of the space with aliens which don't burn your resources! Great!

I did have to dump 80 (yes, that's not a typo) biome colonisers on the one colony at the choke-point in the middle of the hourglass galaxy I'm playing on (Minutte would approve the shape, I'm sure (see, there's a pony reference I'm on-topic)), because the stupid humans insisted on running their dreadnought up and concentrating on wiping my colony out (completely ignoring my ships) faster than I could kill them. 'See you do that now it's fully colonised, ya buggers! (And also, shortly, chock-full of defences, since that maxed out the infrastructe and took care of any terraforming, allowing me to start building right away. Plus I accidently made one too many construction ships, so one will also be arriving shortly to make military stations and, if I'm lucky, asteroid monitors. And I'm gonna have a load of mining ships come dump resources on it and turn it into a nice little power house to hold the line... Though once I've conquered the top half of galaxy, I think I'll just start wiping the humans (who appear to have taken the bottom half, both of the human powers I set spawned there), rather than conquering them. That'll be relaxing too! As the game didn't see fit to give me any biowarfare beyond Beast Plague this time (the one time I might actually have used it...)

[Adderbane]

Spoiler: This could be fun

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[Appleshy1973]

With the brandnew Equestria Girls special over S9 awaits next saturday.

[zimmerwald1915]

With the brandnew Equestria Girls special over S9 awaits next saturday.

Thoughts on it? I thought it was fairly high-end EqG.

[Adderbane]

Spoiler: New Special

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Idiot Ball or Genre Savvy, that is the question. The special had some funny bits, but a lot of the side scenes without RD, Sunset, and Twilight felt like the time could've been spent better elsewhere. I would like to see a full version of that song though.

Spoiler: My Little Avengers

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[Aotrs Commander]

With the brandnew Equestria Girls special over S9 awaits next saturday.

Wait, what?

Why does no-one mention these things beforehand on ponythread anymore?



(It's bad enough the amount of effort for gain trying to track down the shorts scattered everywhere, even when it's mentioned they're around...)

[Rogar Demonblud]

Honestly? I don't care about s9. I can't remember pretty much anything about s8, and 6 & 7 are pretty hazy as well. So if I'm not engaged, it sounds like a good idea not to engage further.

[Aotrs Commander]

Flipping typical, innit? Whatever you do, you can garentee it'll take half-an-hour to an hour longer then you have to win. I can't quite finished murdering all the humans with my space-whales until tomorrow, dang it. I would liked to have finished tonight for a clean slate in the morning, but no...

Humans, you can't even die without being conveniant, can you? (You see this is why I'm wiping out the humans, not capturing their planets, see? (It has nothing to do with them being the only other power left at all...))

[Thanqol]

The Hearts of Iron mod, Equestria at War, is really fantastic. The production values are immense. It feels like a more complete game than stock HOI which is weird as heck to say.

An Equestria playthrough is massively focused on politics and internal reform - the big war against the Changelings is progressively harder the nicer Celestia is, but if you go all out Sun Tyrant the war is vastly easier. But then there's a whole branching political path based on what kind of sun tyrant you are, how you deal with the resistance, force-Ascending Twilight and then sending her on secret missions, and culminating in an apocalyptic war against the next continent over.

But what's just as awesome is a Griffon Empire playthough. It's a really challenging run where you start with a crumbling empire, pretty soon half of your provinces declare independence, and then you've got to slowly reconstruct your empire piece by bloody piece. It goes from a tiny economy minor to a continent spanning hyperpower who then has to throw down with a fully militarized Equestria or Changeling Empire; it's a flawless gameplay progression.

I have never had even half as much fun with the core game.

[Aotrs Commander]

Woo! Space-whale victory!

SotS has such a sucky "game over" screen.

The Hearts of Iron mod, Equestria at War, is really fantastic. The production values are immense. It feels like a more complete game than stock HOI which is weird as heck to say.

An Equestria playthrough is massively focused on politics and internal reform - the big war against the Changelings is progressively harder the nicer Celestia is, but if you go all out Sun Tyrant the war is vastly easier. But then there's a whole branching political path based on what kind of sun tyrant you are, how you deal with the resistance, force-Ascending Twilight and then sending her on secret missions, and culminating in an apocalyptic war against the next continent over.

But what's just as awesome is a Griffon Empire playthough. It's a really challenging run where you start with a crumbling empire, pretty soon half of your provinces declare independence, and then you've got to slowly reconstruct your empire piece by bloody piece. It goes from a tiny economy minor to a continent spanning hyperpower who then has to throw down with a fully militarized Equestria or Changeling Empire; it's a flawless gameplay progression.

I have never had even half as much fun with the core game.

Which is lovely and all, but as I can't even Germany with the entire PDX forum's help on historical (in all except the furthest places) on the easiest difficulty (after 85 hours and numerous re-starts), I'm going to struggle to do something even harder where there probably isn't even a "you should approach it this way" sort of thing. EaW is a long way off, I fear.

[Thanqol]

Which is lovely and all, but as I can't even Germany with the entire PDX forum's help on historical (in all except the furthest places) on the easiest difficulty (after 85 hours and numerous re-starts), I'm going to struggle to do something even harder where there probably isn't even a "you should approach it this way" sort of thing. EaW is a long way off, I fear.

Just, like, put everyone on the front line and draw giant arrows into enemy territory and hit go whenever the icon is yellow or better.