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  1. - Top - End - #751
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    Aotrs Commander's Avatar

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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    The new Prusa 23 Mk3S printer is online and mostly working, finally, which means I can actually start getting on with useful work again.

    I say mostly, because it is currently basically Being A Trixie - it hates wheels.

  2. - Top - End - #752
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Has anyone else picked up the season 10 comics yet? I've been enjoying learning more about Zecora's backstory and the trouble between her and her friends. And the comic seems to introduce Kelpies and Abada's as new types of creature (or maybe they were introduced or referenced before, but I just don't remember...).

  3. - Top - End - #753
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Game news: Renegade Game Studios, who do boardgames, deckbuilding games, and TRPG and has already done some Power Rangers licensed products, announced an expanded agreement with Hasbro which involves their soon to be announced "5th Edition compatible" Power Rangers RPG as well as forthcoming products for G.I. Joe, Transformers, and My Little Pony.

    No word if the MLP line will include a new TRPG, though the timing does look to coincide with the MLP G5 introductory movie.
    Blue Star Topaz is my name
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    The Herd's my destination

  4. - Top - End - #754
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    SamuraiGuy

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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    so apparently this week marks Ten Years of MLP:FiM

    🎈 ✨ 🎉 🎑 🧸
    Ponies not only make ME want to be a better person than I was before they entered my life, they make me want to HELP OTHERS be better people too.

    And that is a GOOD thing by any definition.

    full size avatar

  5. - Top - End - #755
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by otakuryoga View Post
    so apparently this week marks Ten Years of MLP:FiM

    🎈 ✨ 🎉 🎑 🧸
    Neat! Ooh! Ooh! It's like a birthday party, right? Or an anniversary? A birthaversery! I've done one of those before! Time to grab the party cannon!🎉
    Many thanks to Meto30 for sketching this amazing piece of art, and for allowing me to use it as my avatar!

  6. - Top - End - #756
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Session 6 of Shadowtrot, in where we beat up some mooks and acquire new shipping material:
    https://youtu.be/imv8FVfXcFM


    Quote Originally Posted by Form View Post
    Has anyone else picked up the season 10 comics yet? I've been enjoying learning more about Zecora's backstory and the trouble between her and her friends. And the comic seems to introduce Kelpies and Abada's as new types of creature (or maybe they were introduced or referenced before, but I just don't remember...).
    I have not, though I think I saw a couple preview scans of the zecora comic on EqD. I did finish the season of Pony Life. Eh, it was okay. Nothing to write home about. I think all the better episodes were towards mid-season.
    Digo Dragon - Artist
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  7. - Top - End - #757
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by Form View Post
    Has anyone else picked up the season 10 comics yet? I've been enjoying learning more about Zecora's backstory and the trouble between her and her friends. And the comic seems to introduce Kelpies and Abada's as new types of creature (or maybe they were introduced or referenced before, but I just don't remember...).
    Only just got #90 this morning, still haven't caught up with the last few issues.


    Also:
    Spoiler: May have corralled Prusa into largely behaving
    Show



    Never even remotely tried printing that on the Replicator.



    Still a bit iffy in that it doesn't want to print much on the edges, but its working.

    Also today marks the point that my direct sales catalogue (as opposed to the webstores) is actually finally up-to-date with the 144th moderns after three years since I started... Now just got to do all the scifi...

  8. - Top - End - #758
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by DigoDragon View Post
    Session 6 of Shadowtrot, in where we beat up some mooks and acquire new shipping material:
    https://youtu.be/imv8FVfXcFM
    Starting the sessions with a short radio news broadcast is a nice touch. Allows for a little bit of extra worldbuilding and enhances the immersion.

    I might steal that idea and pass it off as my own if I ever run an RP session myself again.

    I have not, though I think I saw a couple preview scans of the zecora comic on EqD. I did finish the season of Pony Life. Eh, it was okay. Nothing to write home about. I think all the better episodes were towards mid-season.
    I know what you mean. Kinda feels like a lot of those episodes went in one eye and out the other. It's not that Pony Life's bad, it's just not as emotionally satisfying and engaging as the main show or the Equestria Girls spin-off even.

  9. - Top - End - #759
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    Flumph

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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by Aotrs Commander View Post
    Spoiler: May have corralled Prusa into largely behaving
    Show



    Never even remotely tried printing that on the Replicator.
    That's small... Did it need much cleaning up?

    Quote Originally Posted by Aotrs Commander View Post
    Only just got #90 this morning, still haven't caught up with the last few issues.
    I've cancelled my comic order - I'm not really in a position to get the things, so I'm letting it lay. I might catch up with the grapgic novels in due course.
    Warning: This posting may contain wit, wisdom, pathos, irony, satire, sarcasm and puns. And traces of nut.

    "The main skill of a good ruler seems to be not preventing the conflagrations but rather keeping them contained enough they rate more as campfires." Rogar Demonblud

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  10. - Top - End - #760

    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    I switched to graphics a while ago just due to the hassles of trying to get singles through Diamond. I've since found I prefer having things in a more durable format (Most of my Fell's Five singles disintegrated from over-reading).

  11. - Top - End - #761
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by Manga Shoggoth View Post
    That's small... Did it need much cleaning up?
    Surprisingly, having very carefully added the supports entirely manually, it was't too hard to remove them. That it did it at all, let only so well, is the great achievement of the Prusa so far.

    Don't know if this shows particularly well (naturally, finding a decent picture of something I've just printed in both Prusa and Replicator is inconveniantly harder than it ought to be...), but here's a comparison, Prusa vrs Replicator 2.

    Spoiler
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    Prusa



    Replicator 2


    (The Prusa is noticably better in person, but you know my look with photos... I am eventually looking at a light box - likely using the shell of the Rep 2 as the frame - but that's kind of on the back burner at the moment...)



    We've not tried 144 infantry yet, but that'll be another acid test. (At the moment, I'm in the final stages of spruing up the moderns (now all finally updated) for The Shop3D (my other, newer (better, because its not Shapeways and therefore cannot be anything but) wesbtore) - and speaking of the Chieftain Mk 3, that's the next one on the task list...)
    Last edited by Aotrs Commander; 2020-10-07 at 02:20 PM.

  12. - Top - End - #762
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by DigoDragon View Post
    Session 6 of Shadowtrot, in where we beat up some mooks and acquire new shipping material:
    https://youtu.be/imv8FVfXcFM
    I just barely managed to catch the end of the stream on Sunday, so it was wonderful to get context on that. I loved the artwork for Stellar Wind! It was so cute to see Nebby's reaction to her too. I was surprised that Scorch was friends with Madame Mimi: perhaps she's a bit more complicated than meets the eye.

    Shipping material? I may be brain farting on this bit, but who was being shipped with whom?
    Many thanks to Meto30 for sketching this amazing piece of art, and for allowing me to use it as my avatar!

  13. - Top - End - #763
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by Form View Post
    Starting the sessions with a short radio news broadcast is a nice touch. Allows for a little bit of extra worldbuilding and enhances the immersion.

    I might steal that idea and pass it off as my own if I ever run an RP session myself again.
    Heh, I do have fun with those news broadcasts. I can foreshadow upcoming events and touch upon past events the PCs affected. By all means, steal that idea! :3


    I know what you mean. Kinda feels like a lot of those episodes went in one eye and out the other. It's not that Pony Life's bad, it's just not as emotionally satisfying and engaging as the main show or the Equestria Girls spin-off even.
    Yeah, that's about the sum of it. The series has its moments and did some of its own world building, but that's all I remember, the few moments of it all.


    Quote Originally Posted by BlueHamsterBean View Post
    I just barely managed to catch the end of the stream on Sunday, so it was wonderful to get context on that. I loved the artwork for Stellar Wind! It was so cute to see Nebby's reaction to her too. I was surprised that Scorch was friends with Madame Mimi: perhaps she's a bit more complicated than meets the eye.

    Shipping material? I may be brain farting on this bit, but who was being shipped with whom?
    Mimi is a complex character. She's very shady, which is normal for the kind of characters you'll find in the shadows, but still has a heart and loyalty to certain things. If anything, she keeps her word.

    No one shipping yet, but several players found Stellar to be very cute and made comments behind the scene about if she's available.
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  14. - Top - End - #764
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by DigoDragon View Post
    Heh, I do have fun with those news broadcasts. I can foreshadow upcoming events and touch upon past events the PCs affected. By all means, steal that idea! :3

    Mimi is a complex character. She's very shady, which is normal for the kind of characters you'll find in the shadows, but still has a heart and loyalty to certain things. If anything, she keeps her word.

    No one shipping yet, but several players found Stellar to be very cute and made comments behind the scene about if she's available.
    My favorite broadcast so far has probably been the one about the brown and red paints spilled in the streets just for the pun it led up to.

    Huh, I'm getting sort of a hag/Baba Yaga vibe from her now (certainly helped by the accent): she sometimes does bad things, but if you get on her good side, she can be quite helpful.

    Oh! Ok: so I haven't gone mad... yet. I can see why there have been questions about availability! My crack ship here is Smirkfluff, mainly for how Nebby may react, though I can see Nivix having more in common. Lethe also seemed to like the cut of her jib.
    I look forward to seeing where, if anywhere, that goes.
    Many thanks to Meto30 for sketching this amazing piece of art, and for allowing me to use it as my avatar!

  15. - Top - End - #765
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Birthday card for sister needed picture. She likes unicorns (not necessarily pony-ones).

    Spoiler: Found on "unicorn" on google image search
    Show


    Yes, this is what I went with.


    AM I DOIN IT RITE

  16. - Top - End - #766
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aotrs Commander View Post
    Birthday card for sister needed picture. She likes unicorns (not necessarily pony-ones).

    Spoiler: Found on "unicorn" on google image search
    Show


    Yes, this is what I went with.


    AM I DOIN IT RITE
    Beautiful.

    I see Twilight has been playing with perilous powers of a polymorphous variety again.
    Many thanks to Meto30 for sketching this amazing piece of art, and for allowing me to use it as my avatar!

  17. - Top - End - #767

    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Looks kind of like the t-shirt Rich had on the Cafe Press store about being a princess on a unicorn. Which I got for my wife and daughters. So I approve.
    Last edited by Rogar Demonblud; 2020-10-10 at 12:25 PM.

  18. - Top - End - #768
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Ponies not only make ME want to be a better person than I was before they entered my life, they make me want to HELP OTHERS be better people too.

    And that is a GOOD thing by any definition.

    full size avatar

  19. - Top - End - #769
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by otakuryoga View Post
    Ah, good stuff. Of course Pinkie Pie is drawing the tracks in front of the carts as they travel along it. It's always good to see new fanmade content. ^^
    Last edited by Form; 2020-10-12 at 09:43 AM.

  20. - Top - End - #770
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Ponythreaders with long memories will recall I started my first game f Crusdaer Kings 2, ages (four years) ago, in which I was running up the second Roman Empire.

    I finally finished up the last sixty or so years left.

    Spoiler
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    Certainly, it has taken more time than any other game I have ever played for a single playthrough from start to finish (and until this year and I binged on BattleTech - only stopping since the lastest version of the mod I was using basically broke everything - it had the highest logged hours of any game, period). It started back before Reaper's Due, and has continued with every expansion since. It has taken a lot of hours, countless reloads and some occasional save-editing, but I finally got to the end.

    Which is somewhat impressive when you consider that I bought CK2, and this run was particularly for, conversion to EUIV to give me a good leg-up on world conquest.

    Everything was enabled (as it came!) except Conclave. I didn't start with that and early on, I wanted the control over the hiers that was better with the non-Conclave education system, and later on, I was so far in I really didn't want to start implementing all the laws from scratch. So that will be for next run. Defensive pacts got turned off very fast, since they did nothing but annoy me (as EVERYONE in the world joined them spamming my notifications) and didn't stop me expanding anyway. AI seduction got turned off about halfway through, the first time I actually went as far as save-editing, because I was not having my (so excuricatingly carefully prepared and the best I think I'd managed) heir being given an incurable disease.

    It started in 769, when old Konstantinos of the Byzantine Empire apparently took leave of his sense and changed his dynasty to the Rubyhasta (rumours that it involved some sort of skeleton with a big magic fire-tube are entirely unsubstantiated) and started on a project to restore the Roman Empire.

    By the time it ended, it had reached a considerable extent.



    The border-gore is a bit horrific internally, though.




    Kingdoms...



    Pretty much got Miaphytism everywhere, bar a sudden surge of heresy towards the end.


    Total lack of Catholicism is going to make the EUIV run... Interesting...? When I get to it. (Might wait until the next sale and maybe pick up some of the expansions I haven't got yet, as now I have a bit of motivation to have a play again, and frack knows I need SOMETHING to look forward to at the moment...)

    Culture was majority Greek, since Roman culture came in way too late to get spread - Rapacious adopted it as soon as he could, but it was late in the game.


    Dynasty was shocking (after all that children-squirting) overwhelming Rubyhasta...



    The early stages were doing the necessary to get Roman Empire up and running. Emperor Nefarious estabished the change from Byzantium to Roman Empire in 861.


    A bit of a dip into Cathar (for equal rights for women in terms of ruling and inheritance) for a while allowed the Roman Empire to be more egalitarian - why waste 50% of the population's talents? - and set forwards on Cognatic Elective, and after that is was switched to Miaphyistism (because I wanted to play Coptic in EUIV). (Had EUIV got the later buffs to other religions it did when I started, I likely would have gone Cathar from the start.)

    I also ended up embarking a little metaphorical crusade of my own, to wipe out the pagans, because I was SO sick and tired of being literally constantly raided. I had no initially intended for this to be nearly world conquest, but by the tim I'd done that, I was figured, "the hell, might as well keep at it."

    On early accidental boost was inheriting, quite inadvertently, the kingdom of Italy, which gave me an extra buff. I have no clear idea how that happened, it was early on enough I wasnt even particularly trying.

    About half-way-through, when the Reaper's Due hit and it became an option, and I made a concerted effort to hit immortality. Sadly, then Empress Lich (the aforementioned superlative hier and the only Empress I managed to have) didn't quite make it - but her grandson Rapacious did.



    He ruled from 1092 (immortal but five years later), accompanied by Idunn, his immortal girlfriend. (Since it wouldn't let him marry her.) Eventually, they were joined by Torhild, another immortal (who'd been around for over a thousand years, she was 1400 in the last year of the game!) whom Rapacious started out rivals with, but basically seduced into being his second immortal lover. (He could have married her, but at that point, it seemed unfair to Idunn...)

    Rapacious ended up as the head of the Hematic Society, which was of benefit mostly at the end for the easy way to get rid of Stressed and Depressed, which the RNG kept thrusting on my every five minutes. I'd got so mch esoteric lore, by that point I realised I could do that, that aside from keeping ingredients in stock, it wasn't a problem.

    Needless to say Rapacious had A Lot of children. (At the end, the corwning moment was three nearly simultaneous births from Idunn, Torhild and then the final wife, Dou Mao'er. She was the first wife in a while Rapacious actually liked(and a chain of imported imperial wives). I did not even bother to attempt to count. Throughout nearly all the game until the last, I embarked ona genetics program, having gotten Genius early on and determinedly spreading it to all the children. (That caused A Lot of reloading.)

    Also, yes, the idea of naming all the male children with words using in -us (ala Asterix the Gaul) and all the female after types of Undead (and then non-wife children after my Pokémon) was funny to start with, until I realised how often I'd be doing it... Prob'bly wouldn't try to be so funny next time...



    I would not, either, do a massive empire this way again. At the start, I spent ages picking people for every holding and searching a realm for the best candidate for viceroyalties. At the end, I was just finding one that was half-way reasonable (and in the last stage, young) and dumping fresh counties ob whoever was proconsul with all the lower-landed titles and leaving it to them.
    It got SO tedious, having to reassign the viceroyalties every time someone poped their clogs, or strip off duchies because I was trying to dejure drift kingdoms out of existance. That was something I started to do a little late, in hindsight - I would have been better, I think, having a few stronger vassals to start with (but then I might no have been able to keep them in line so much). So I would create the kingdom title, hold on to it unil it was titular, then destroy it. Creating the kingdoms of Fortunaia, Strellenia and Lichgloria (after the rulers) was fun, but in the long run, I'd have been better just dejure drifting and existing one an re-naming it to reduce the overhead.

    With concerted effort, I was slowly winning the de jure race, getting kingdoms slowly out of the way (it was on 100 years drift until there were less than a hundred years left in game and I dropped to 50). I had considered dropping to ten in the last decade, but when I actually got there, I couldn't be arsed.

    I did get screwed up by the addition of extra content in that regard though. Aside from a load of extra tiny kingdoms I had to drift out, I ended up with about four or five titular duchies that I couldn't get rid of, attached to kingdoms. So I had to keep those and the kingdoms they were attached to, since it was far to late to do anything about it by then.


    Far more titles than Rapacious would have liked...

    Even keeping taps on the creatable ones was trying, as they exceeded the tool-tip...


    (There were also some random places that used to be countries that were wiped out by the patches - they disappeared from the map, but characters were still attached to them, and a couple of times I can to try and get them out of my vassals menu by finding the characters to transfer vassal.)

    The vassal count was a problem, which is why I went to larger and larger vassals, as you can see by the game end to the east. I kept it at around 43 most of the time, giving me a little bit of room. But there were so many, it became a problem finding the odd count or viceroyal duchy that slipped out during change of proconsul.



    The demesne was, aside from Latium and Thracia, spread out widely to attempt to maximise technology transfer spread. I just barely managed to max out all the tech by the end of the game (military had long lagged behind the others, since for a long while, it was Rapacious' worst stat).

    If I did an attempted WC or massive expansion again, I would either go full-on tyranny and damn the penalties to economy, or find a different approach. (Imperial elective wasn't, I think, an option, for example, when I started and I wasn't going to rock the boat at that stage. Though Conclave would probably help in that regard too.)



    As time went on, the retinue did most of the heavy lifting, with the levies of the vassals doing the rest. By the end, Rapacious had fifteen legions, each composed of 40 Pike and Archer units.



    The Mongol Hordes triggered, but seemed to never materialise - I suspect perhaps somethign happened to knobble Temujin before ti got started. Likewise, the much fearer Aztec invasion ran straight into the Roman Legions, got a sound beating and then sort of stood around for years and years not doing anything,until they sort of just disappeared. *shrug*

    (Rapacious filed them away under "problems to deal with in a few centuries...")



    The last century was the hardest and most tedious. Having to babysit everything was a source of constant frustration and reloading and I went for long periods between playing (the time before last, a single session that covered about five-ten years in Feburary). This time, I picked it up about sixty years or so to go and made it through a good chunk fairly easily. I was mostly interested in getting to the bloody end, so I forced myself to drop the obession with the genetics program and started turning down every "observe the stars mission" which cut down on my need to reload. It went reasonably okay, and I made good progress.

    Until the last twenty years. Which were marked by the RNG throwing an absolute screaming strop all the way through (it was, to be honest, such a period as why I'd left off at the sixty-seventy year mark for months and months at a time). Every five minutes, a proconsul would die (of natural causes or disease, DESPITE at that point I was explictly picking young potentials JUST so they woudl last out) or it would try and frack over my character or ones of the girls. I did more save-editing than in any stretch previous and EVEN though I was letting most stuff go I'd previously have meticulously reloaded for, I was still having to reload repeatedly on some stretches, because it would not get the hint. (And I will NOT, at the best of times, an ESPECIALLY not in a year that has done nothing but throw real-world bad RNG at me, let random numbers dictate whether I can have my fun or not. I'm afraid I am just not one of those people that finds "making the best of a bad RNG job" to be fun. Honestly, if PDX had not made it possible to save-edit, I honestly don't think I could have ever played these games to the extent I have, as I'd have just rage-quit after a while.)

    (In one stretch - in fricking 1447, five years from the bloody end, a scant few months from the end, and of the end of the "see the realm prosper" period, it said "there a revolt, there a revolt, a proconsul is killed in a duel, Idunn dies, Idunn dies, bad reputation with stargazing; " at this point, frack off RNG, it was going to give me what I wanted because I wasn't going to let it win.)

    I got through an ABSURD number of spymasters during this period, to the point I didn't DARE use a proconsul.

    (And in the last six months we had a "Idunn is going to be killed" thing, whuch I wasn't bloody having and that point. Apparently, because DESPITE them being friends at some point, RNG had decreed Mao'er was now rivals with Idunn and Torhild. If it was any early than May 1452, there would have Been A Save Editing again.)

    (I am also going to straight mod-out the Fat trait (already found a mod for it), since I was absolutely FED UP by the end of it being stuck on me (and Idunn - and I save edited it - and the fat modifier - off her THREE. TIMES.) And after - having cleared it off me an expliectly not had any feasts or anything - it tried to dump in on me again, with the choices of "you get fat, you get fat or you get different penalties (I reloaded). I'm not having that again, it just annoys me. As it is apparently impossible to shift (hard diet does nothing, I did it twice - no effect - and so did Idunn). So, that's going out the window, because frack that. (I understand it's not better in CK3, since I accidentally posted there looking for a solution the other day, because it sounded like exactly the same.))



    Despite a stirling effort, Great Works arrived just a little too ate for Rapacioys to be able to complete any, though he very nearly had completed the first (and shy one day - of course - from finishing the penultimate stage).



    As you can see, I didn't get a total conquest. Poland was a bit of a pain - I somehow managed to get it to be a tributary, and thus it was sort of stuck there for most of the latter half, but whatever. (Guess who gets integrated right at the start of EUIV!?) I - or my vassals - slowly pciked away at all the independant powers, until there was only China and its tributaries left.

    In the closing years, I picked away at the Western Protectorate - though not as rigourously as I could have. I probably could have taken China if I'd really wanted to, but I was sort of saving that for EUIV to do it, like manually. By the end, I'd got it down, but it was still a few more wars away. I could have truce-broken, but it really wasn't worth 60k presitdge.

    The last war, in 1450, was a last-minute dash to take Kambampet from Orissa, the last of the three remaining powers (tributaries to China) as a bit of tidying-up. The Roman armies were very nearly (bar about a hundred shy on one unit) back to full strength by the end.




    Something of an oddessy, then. Still, next playthrough, I'll have learned a lot, and as CK2 is now finished, at least there won;t be any more stumbling block laid out by expansions. (That said, that I was ABLE to run this through to the final patch is something that I can only tip my helmet to the devs for and offer my profuse thanks. )



    Next run-through will likely again be potentially EUIV set-up fodder. Though this time, I intend to start with a premise along the lines of "but what if Idunn (who got here immortality at 16) - or someone like her - but was a countess?" And the aim will be to take the character, starting from low, edited stats (but probably with some inheritable ones to start out) and see how much she can improve over time. The scale would be to essentially keep her realm to just her demesne, in a relatively quiet corner of the world. She'll be Pagan, so I have have some fun Making My Own Religion and doing stuff, and we'll see how we go.

    (You can perhaps see why I've not even looked at CK3 yet (hell, I've bought but not touched Imperator...); there's at least one more run of CK2, I think, but given the hours I've had out of it, even if I never played again, it'd have earned its money's worth.)
    Last edited by Aotrs Commander; 2020-10-12 at 01:44 PM.

  21. - Top - End - #771
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by BlueHamsterBean View Post
    My favorite broadcast so far has probably been the one about the brown and red paints spilled in the streets just for the pun it led up to.

    Huh, I'm getting sort of a hag/Baba Yaga vibe from her now (certainly helped by the accent): she sometimes does bad things, but if you get on her good side, she can be quite helpful.

    Oh! Ok: so I haven't gone mad... yet. I can see why there have been questions about availability! My crack ship here is Smirkfluff, mainly for how Nebby may react, though I can see Nivix having more in common. Lethe also seemed to like the cut of her jib.
    I look forward to seeing where, if anywhere, that goes.
    Heh heh that may be my favorite news broadcast as well. Writing comedy is hard, so the good jokes that land are usually ones that took a long while to develop.

    I think the Baba Yaga vibe is a fair one. Hopefully the players go back if they decide to buy some magic stuff. She gave them a sample of the wares she carries.

    I try to keep out of having any ships cause I wouldn't want to discourage anyone. Rather just let the players be the ones to make the move when they feel comfortable.
    Prepping next session for Sunday and I decided to edit an encounter to make it more interesting by adding a familiar NPC. Also, a little silliness inspired by something I saw on YouTube.
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by Aotrs Commander View Post
    Ponythreaders with long memories will recall I started my first game f Crusdaer Kings 2, ages (four years) ago, in which I was running up the second Roman Empire.

    I finally finished up the last sixty or so years left.

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    Certainly, it has taken more time than any other game I have ever played for a single playthrough from start to finish (and until this year and I binged on BattleTech - only stopping since the lastest version of the mod I was using basically broke everything - it had the highest logged hours of any game, period). It started back before Reaper's Due, and has continued with every expansion since. It has taken a lot of hours, countless reloads and some occasional save-editing, but I finally got to the end.

    Which is somewhat impressive when you consider that I bought CK2, and this run was particularly for, conversion to EUIV to give me a good leg-up on world conquest.

    Everything was enabled (as it came!) except Conclave. I didn't start with that and early on, I wanted the control over the hiers that was better with the non-Conclave education system, and later on, I was so far in I really didn't want to start implementing all the laws from scratch. So that will be for next run. Defensive pacts got turned off very fast, since they did nothing but annoy me (as EVERYONE in the world joined them spamming my notifications) and didn't stop me expanding anyway. AI seduction got turned off about halfway through, the first time I actually went as far as save-editing, because I was not having my (so excuricatingly carefully prepared and the best I think I'd managed) heir being given an incurable disease.

    It started in 769, when old Konstantinos of the Byzantine Empire apparently took leave of his sense and changed his dynasty to the Rubyhasta (rumours that it involved some sort of skeleton with a big magic fire-tube are entirely unsubstantiated) and started on a project to restore the Roman Empire.

    By the time it ended, it had reached a considerable extent.



    The border-gore is a bit horrific internally, though.




    Kingdoms...



    Pretty much got Miaphytism everywhere, bar a sudden surge of heresy towards the end.


    Total lack of Catholicism is going to make the EUIV run... Interesting...? When I get to it. (Might wait until the next sale and maybe pick up some of the expansions I haven't got yet, as now I have a bit of motivation to have a play again, and frack knows I need SOMETHING to look forward to at the moment...)

    Culture was majority Greek, since Roman culture came in way too late to get spread - Rapacious adopted it as soon as he could, but it was late in the game.


    Dynasty was shocking (after all that children-squirting) overwhelming Rubyhasta...



    The early stages were doing the necessary to get Roman Empire up and running. Emperor Nefarious estabished the change from Byzantium to Roman Empire in 861.


    A bit of a dip into Cathar (for equal rights for women in terms of ruling and inheritance) for a while allowed the Roman Empire to be more egalitarian - why waste 50% of the population's talents? - and set forwards on Cognatic Elective, and after that is was switched to Miaphyistism (because I wanted to play Coptic in EUIV). (Had EUIV got the later buffs to other religions it did when I started, I likely would have gone Cathar from the start.)

    I also ended up embarking a little metaphorical crusade of my own, to wipe out the pagans, because I was SO sick and tired of being literally constantly raided. I had no initially intended for this to be nearly world conquest, but by the tim I'd done that, I was figured, "the hell, might as well keep at it."

    On early accidental boost was inheriting, quite inadvertently, the kingdom of Italy, which gave me an extra buff. I have no clear idea how that happened, it was early on enough I wasnt even particularly trying.

    About half-way-through, when the Reaper's Due hit and it became an option, and I made a concerted effort to hit immortality. Sadly, then Empress Lich (the aforementioned superlative hier and the only Empress I managed to have) didn't quite make it - but her grandson Rapacious did.



    He ruled from 1092 (immortal but five years later), accompanied by Idunn, his immortal girlfriend. (Since it wouldn't let him marry her.) Eventually, they were joined by Torhild, another immortal (who'd been around for over a thousand years, she was 1400 in the last year of the game!) whom Rapacious started out rivals with, but basically seduced into being his second immortal lover. (He could have married her, but at that point, it seemed unfair to Idunn...)

    Rapacious ended up as the head of the Hematic Society, which was of benefit mostly at the end for the easy way to get rid of Stressed and Depressed, which the RNG kept thrusting on my every five minutes. I'd got so mch esoteric lore, by that point I realised I could do that, that aside from keeping ingredients in stock, it wasn't a problem.

    Needless to say Rapacious had A Lot of children. (At the end, the corwning moment was three nearly simultaneous births from Idunn, Torhild and then the final wife, Dou Mao'er. She was the first wife in a while Rapacious actually liked(and a chain of imported imperial wives). I did not even bother to attempt to count. Throughout nearly all the game until the last, I embarked ona genetics program, having gotten Genius early on and determinedly spreading it to all the children. (That caused A Lot of reloading.)

    Also, yes, the idea of naming all the male children with words using in -us (ala Asterix the Gaul) and all the female after types of Undead (and then non-wife children after my Pokémon) was funny to start with, until I realised how often I'd be doing it... Prob'bly wouldn't try to be so funny next time...



    I would not, either, do a massive empire this way again. At the start, I spent ages picking people for every holding and searching a realm for the best candidate for viceroyalties. At the end, I was just finding one that was half-way reasonable (and in the last stage, young) and dumping fresh counties ob whoever was proconsul with all the lower-landed titles and leaving it to them.
    It got SO tedious, having to reassign the viceroyalties every time someone poped their clogs, or strip off duchies because I was trying to dejure drift kingdoms out of existance. That was something I started to do a little late, in hindsight - I would have been better, I think, having a few stronger vassals to start with (but then I might no have been able to keep them in line so much). So I would create the kingdom title, hold on to it unil it was titular, then destroy it. Creating the kingdoms of Fortunaia, Strellenia and Lichgloria (after the rulers) was fun, but in the long run, I'd have been better just dejure drifting and existing one an re-naming it to reduce the overhead.

    With concerted effort, I was slowly winning the de jure race, getting kingdoms slowly out of the way (it was on 100 years drift until there were less than a hundred years left in game and I dropped to 50). I had considered dropping to ten in the last decade, but when I actually got there, I couldn't be arsed.

    I did get screwed up by the addition of extra content in that regard though. Aside from a load of extra tiny kingdoms I had to drift out, I ended up with about four or five titular duchies that I couldn't get rid of, attached to kingdoms. So I had to keep those and the kingdoms they were attached to, since it was far to late to do anything about it by then.


    Far more titles than Rapacious would have liked...

    Even keeping taps on the creatable ones was trying, as they exceeded the tool-tip...


    (There were also some random places that used to be countries that were wiped out by the patches - they disappeared from the map, but characters were still attached to them, and a couple of times I can to try and get them out of my vassals menu by finding the characters to transfer vassal.)

    The vassal count was a problem, which is why I went to larger and larger vassals, as you can see by the game end to the east. I kept it at around 43 most of the time, giving me a little bit of room. But there were so many, it became a problem finding the odd count or viceroyal duchy that slipped out during change of proconsul.



    The demesne was, aside from Latium and Thracia, spread out widely to attempt to maximise technology transfer spread. I just barely managed to max out all the tech by the end of the game (military had long lagged behind the others, since for a long while, it was Rapacious' worst stat).

    If I did an attempted WC or massive expansion again, I would either go full-on tyranny and damn the penalties to economy, or find a different approach. (Imperial elective wasn't, I think, an option, for example, when I started and I wasn't going to rock the boat at that stage. Though Conclave would probably help in that regard too.)



    As time went on, the retinue did most of the heavy lifting, with the levies of the vassals doing the rest. By the end, Rapacious had fifteen legions, each composed of 40 Pike and Archer units.



    The Mongol Hordes triggered, but seemed to never materialise - I suspect perhaps somethign happened to knobble Temujin before ti got started. Likewise, the much fearer Aztec invasion ran straight into the Roman Legions, got a sound beating and then sort of stood around for years and years not doing anything,until they sort of just disappeared. *shrug*

    (Rapacious filed them away under "problems to deal with in a few centuries...")



    The last century was the hardest and most tedious. Having to babysit everything was a source of constant frustration and reloading and I went for long periods between playing (the time before last, a single session that covered about five-ten years in Feburary). This time, I picked it up about sixty years or so to go and made it through a good chunk fairly easily. I was mostly interested in getting to the bloody end, so I forced myself to drop the obession with the genetics program and started turning down every "observe the stars mission" which cut down on my need to reload. It went reasonably okay, and I made good progress.

    Until the last twenty years. Which were marked by the RNG throwing an absolute screaming strop all the way through (it was, to be honest, such a period as why I'd left off at the sixty-seventy year mark for months and months at a time). Every five minutes, a proconsul would die (of natural causes or disease, DESPITE at that point I was explictly picking young potentials JUST so they woudl last out) or it would try and frack over my character or ones of the girls. I did more save-editing than in any stretch previous and EVEN though I was letting most stuff go I'd previously have meticulously reloaded for, I was still having to reload repeatedly on some stretches, because it would not get the hint. (And I will NOT, at the best of times, an ESPECIALLY not in a year that has done nothing but throw real-world bad RNG at me, let random numbers dictate whether I can have my fun or not. I'm afraid I am just not one of those people that finds "making the best of a bad RNG job" to be fun. Honestly, if PDX had not made it possible to save-edit, I honestly don't think I could have ever played these games to the extent I have, as I'd have just rage-quit after a while.)

    (In one stretch - in fricking 1447, five years from the bloody end, a scant few months from the end, and of the end of the "see the realm prosper" period, it said "there a revolt, there a revolt, a proconsul is killed in a duel, Idunn dies, Idunn dies, bad reputation with stargazing; " at this point, frack off RNG, it was going to give me what I wanted because I wasn't going to let it win.)

    I got through an ABSURD number of spymasters during this period, to the point I didn't DARE use a proconsul.

    (And in the last six months we had a "Idunn is going to be killed" thing, whuch I wasn't bloody having and that point. Apparently, because DESPITE them being friends at some point, RNG had decreed Mao'er was now rivals with Idunn and Torhild. If it was any early than May 1452, there would have Been A Save Editing again.)

    (I am also going to straight mod-out the Fat trait (already found a mod for it), since I was absolutely FED UP by the end of it being stuck on me (and Idunn - and I save edited it - and the fat modifier - off her THREE. TIMES.) And after - having cleared it off me an expliectly not had any feasts or anything - it tried to dump in on me again, with the choices of "you get fat, you get fat or you get different penalties (I reloaded). I'm not having that again, it just annoys me. As it is apparently impossible to shift (hard diet does nothing, I did it twice - no effect - and so did Idunn). So, that's going out the window, because frack that. (I understand it's not better in CK3, since I accidentally posted there looking for a solution the other day, because it sounded like exactly the same.))



    Despite a stirling effort, Great Works arrived just a little too ate for Rapacioys to be able to complete any, though he very nearly had completed the first (and shy one day - of course - from finishing the penultimate stage).



    As you can see, I didn't get a total conquest. Poland was a bit of a pain - I somehow managed to get it to be a tributary, and thus it was sort of stuck there for most of the latter half, but whatever. (Guess who gets integrated right at the start of EUIV!?) I - or my vassals - slowly pciked away at all the independant powers, until there was only China and its tributaries left.

    In the closing years, I picked away at the Western Protectorate - though not as rigourously as I could have. I probably could have taken China if I'd really wanted to, but I was sort of saving that for EUIV to do it, like manually. By the end, I'd got it down, but it was still a few more wars away. I could have truce-broken, but it really wasn't worth 60k presitdge.

    The last war, in 1450, was a last-minute dash to take Kambampet from Orissa, the last of the three remaining powers (tributaries to China) as a bit of tidying-up. The Roman armies were very nearly (bar about a hundred shy on one unit) back to full strength by the end.




    Something of an oddessy, then. Still, next playthrough, I'll have learned a lot, and as CK2 is now finished, at least there won;t be any more stumbling block laid out by expansions. (That said, that I was ABLE to run this through to the final patch is something that I can only tip my helmet to the devs for and offer my profuse thanks. )



    Next run-through will likely again be potentially EUIV set-up fodder. Though this time, I intend to start with a premise along the lines of "but what if Idunn (who got here immortality at 16) - or someone like her - but was a countess?" And the aim will be to take the character, starting from low, edited stats (but probably with some inheritable ones to start out) and see how much she can improve over time. The scale would be to essentially keep her realm to just her demesne, in a relatively quiet corner of the world. She'll be Pagan, so I have have some fun Making My Own Religion and doing stuff, and we'll see how we go.

    (You can perhaps see why I've not even looked at CK3 yet (hell, I've bought but not touched Imperator...); there's at least one more run of CK2, I think, but given the hours I've had out of it, even if I never played again, it'd have earned its money's worth.)
    Too bad that you would miss out on interesting naming conventions like Maurice, Anastasius, Manuel, and Michael.
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  23. - Top - End - #773
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by t209 View Post
    Too bad that you would miss out on interesting naming conventions like Maurice, Anastasius, Manuel, and Michael.
    ...

    No, you've totally lost me there, sorry; drawing a total blank. The significance of those names is...?

  24. - Top - End - #774

    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Emperors of Rome in the later years.

  25. - Top - End - #775
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by DigoDragon View Post
    Heh heh that may be my favorite news broadcast as well. Writing comedy is hard, so the good jokes that land are usually ones that took a long while to develop.

    I think the Baba Yaga vibe is a fair one. Hopefully the players go back if they decide to buy some magic stuff. She gave them a sample of the wares she carries.

    I try to keep out of having any ships cause I wouldn't want to discourage anyone. Rather just let the players be the ones to make the move when they feel comfortable.
    Prepping next session for Sunday and I decided to edit an encounter to make it more interesting by adding a familiar NPC. Also, a little silliness inspired by something I saw on YouTube.
    Seconded on comedy being hard: dad jokes are about the best I usually manage myself.

    She did seem to have an interesting collection of goods in that package she gave them, but only time can tell if they go back. It would be interesting to learn more about this wrangler of magical creatures.

    That makes sense: RPGs stop being fun when you feel like you can't play the way you want to (within the limits of reason and social contract of course).
    Oh? Interesting! I look forward to seeing what happens. Good luck with the prep!
    Many thanks to Meto30 for sketching this amazing piece of art, and for allowing me to use it as my avatar!

  26. - Top - End - #776
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by BlueHamsterBean View Post
    Seconded on comedy being hard: dad jokes are about the best I usually manage myself.
    Dad jokes are an excellent subset of humor and ideal for embarrassing the kids, which, let's be honest here, is the true purpose* of dad jokes.

    *True and noble purpose!

  27. - Top - End - #777

    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    I thought the true purpose of Dad Jokes was making everyone in earshot make a Save vs Groan at -4.

  28. - Top - End - #778
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by Form View Post
    Dad jokes are an excellent subset of humor and ideal for embarrassing the kids, which, let's be honest here, is the true purpose* of dad jokes.

    *True and noble purpose!
    Quote Originally Posted by Rogar Demonblud View Post
    I thought the true purpose of Dad Jokes was making everyone in earshot make a Save vs Groan at -4.
    I said the best I could do was dad jokes. I didn't say people never laughed.

    I find it hard to plan jokes though: people only seem to laugh (or fail their save vs. groan) when I make them off the cuff. Anyone else have that experience?

    In other news, thanks to the recommendation of Ponythread, I've been reading through The Changeling of The Guard and just caught up Monday... just after it was updated... leaving off on a massive cliffhanger... Sigh I suppose you know you've found a good fic when a cliffhanger hits you like this. Thanks Ponythread.
    Many thanks to Meto30 for sketching this amazing piece of art, and for allowing me to use it as my avatar!

  29. - Top - End - #779
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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by BlueHamsterBean View Post
    I find it hard to plan jokes though: people only seem to laugh (or fail their save vs. groan) when I make them off the cuff. Anyone else have that experience?
    I did a standup comedy act on 2 occasions during my high school days. First time went well, the second time not so much. People usually do laugh at jokes I crack off the cuff during normal conversation, though. So yeah, I can relate.
    Last edited by Form; 2020-10-15 at 09:49 AM.

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    Default Re: My Little Pony C: Friendship Carries On

    Quote Originally Posted by BlueHamsterBean View Post
    She did seem to have an interesting collection of goods in that package she gave them, but only time can tell if they go back. It would be interesting to learn more about this wrangler of magical creatures.
    At the very least, I should keep phoenix stats within reach. I think Nebby would love to see Scorch again, and in a few sessions I am guessing that the party wants to find that hidden Shirewase lab in the hills.

    Completely unrelated: anyone else remember The Kool-Aid Man's nemesis Scorch?


    Quote Originally Posted by Rogar Demonblud View Post
    I thought the true purpose of Dad Jokes was making everyone in earshot make a Save vs Groan at -4.
    Dad jokes are flexible with multiple uses. :3
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