How can it be advertising for a game that's closing down?

1: Decided that, since octarine was slightly more expensive than the other resources, it would be a brilliant idea for me, as a Revalon, to base my strat on building OCs and selling the octarine.

2: Looking at the market.  Seeing the "need" section.  Thinking that was a statement telling me what I needed.  Realizing I didn't know how to actually get 2,000,000 food two seconds into the game, and that I somehow must have screwed up my empire, as an economic collapse and utter starvation of the population was now inevitable.  Deleted.

3: Day before a war, I sent 128 million gc to an inactive guy with 9 planets because someone impersonated him in the chat and told me he needed aid.  Two weeks later, the guy who actually played that account said "Thanks!  That really helped my research funding!"

4: As an attacker, maliciously beat the crap out of this one family.  All was going well until I found out they were our allies.  It's always fun to try and explain that it wasn't betrayal.  It was stupidity.

5: A few ticks before a war:
Torqez: "Okay, so how many lasers do you have on your planets."
Me: "Lasers?"

6: Three weeks after I signed into this game, started flaming people in the forums, calling them noobs.  (Yes, this was when I first got internet access and gained that original power of anonymity... and proceeded to abuse it)

7: As attacker, spent a few days building up for a nicely sized army.  First attack: Forgot to send bombers.

and that means what for the rest of the world?

> [RPA] Arocalex wrote:

> Overlord

SPAWN MORE OVERLORDS!

@Ehawk

First, thanks for your input.  It's always interesting to hear input on these issues from the perspective of soldiers who are more a part of these issues.

1: In World War 2, Roosevelt had huge command of the media, partly due to media controls and partly due to media support for the war.  As a result, most war news had either positive spin or was left unspoken.  So the issue about the media reporting the bad news is definitely with merit.

But remember also that there is a fundamental difference in what we define as "bad news."  Nations with wartime mobilized populations tend to be much more accepting of casualties, in that large campaigns risking a large amount of lives were acceptable in order to win the greater war and save countless more lives.

Now, it's fundamentally different.  One life lost is bad.  There is no look at the overarching goals of the campaign.  Thus, unless you capture Saddam or make some major news headline victory, a battle is either a non-event (if it's a relatively simple mission) or a loss (if an American or a civilian dies), regardless of the actual military effects of the campaign.

As for the issue of the media's effect on soldier efficiency, I never really thought of that... though part of the issue there is inherent media bias: if every news agency was completely in support of the war, a mission that turned out less than perfect would be spun as a win, so the military didn't need to worry about it.  But yeah, I'm going to agree that the media today isn't helping with the war for the most part.

One question on this, though: Was there ever any difference between your effectiveness based on the news agency following you?

2: Compare this to World War 2.  Granted, World War 2 had the draft which satisfied much of the need for troops.  But above that, the American culture encouraged people to enlist.  As is my example with Great Britain, people who didn't enlist were ostracized.

Now, you're trying to sell enlistment to people by not even focusing on the conflict.  Yes, it's an effective strategy.  However, it tells a greater message about public opinion...

Frankly, the new wartime system is a terrible way to mobilize the nation, because it relies on choice without a cultural shift.  The military is probably fighting an uphill battle in recruiting using economic incentives, although they have good incentives, because it is appealing at the individual level.  At that level, your own life is the #1 most important thing.  Those kind of soldiers are bad because they expect the military to be a way to achieve the goals of the individual, not the nation, which just isn't the military's job.

OMG!  It's like a terrible Battlestar Galactica ripoff! 

No, The_Yell!  No Omega Particles for you!

> Schniepel wrote:

> Thank you for not at all answering my question.
Do medications have to be approved by any instance in the US or are they free to be sold when the developer says so?

Medications in the US definitely have to be approved by the FDA before being sold.  That's why we don't import drugs from other countries.

> avogadro wrote:

> how is this relevant if you think the next largest religion is just as guilty if not more guilty of it? what point are you trying to make? its still pretty clear that Christianity is the largest religion and Catholicism is the largest sect of Christianity.

Because the groups that would be misrepresented in these cases include religious affiliations other than Christianity and Islam.

If Morbo's argument is that a large enough portion of people who claim to be Christians fall in a category that is in fact a false claim, either because they are socially intimidated or because they're non-practicing members, then it means the number of atheists is vastly greater than what would be projected.

Are you really a Catholic if you only go to church on Christmas and Easter?  Are you really a Muslim if you no longer pray five times a day?

@LP

You only need one nuclear warhead to be strategically important.

With the V2 rocket, Germany would have been able to launch a nuclear warhead at pretty much any target in Europe, including Moscow and London.  One attack against Moscow would have wiped out the Soviet central command and taken a huge chunk out of the Soviet economy.  Considering that the USSR was centrally planned, there would have been a disorganization in at least the Russian nation's economy, if not the entire Soviet economy.  Furthermore, that's a huge blow to the Soviet military command structure, disorganizing the Eastern Front.

I'm not too sure about the potential applications on the Western front during the later parts of the war... maybe a reopening of the Battle of Britain?

> avogadro wrote:

> also, morbo, since when has Christianity been cool?

Um... probably every time in every region where Christianity was THE dominating religion... (I'm thinking Middle Age Europe...)

In regions where there is some social stigma against being non-Christian (which actually may exist in at least some regions... I know Italy has an extremely strong pro-Christianity stance), there probably is motivation for someone to say they're Christian, but not practice it.

It's pretty much like saying that Saddam Hussein was clearly the best choice for President in Iraq since he got 100% of the vote in the last election. 

Now, I'm not saying that the problem is purely a Christian issue.  In fact, I would say that Islam probably has a huge ratio of people claiming to be Muslim, yet being of some other religious teaching, considering the huge penalties for converting from Islam that exist in some countries (Afghanistan tried to condemn someone to death for converting from Islam).

1: Germany still had the V2 rocket as a launch mechanism.  Even if Germany didn't have air superiority, they could have still launched the rocket.
2: Debate 101: When the issue in question is a statement of fact, rather than a normative question, you can't argue it analytically.  Only evidence can win the debate.

Translation: I'm calling both of you guys out!  Sources on whether Germany banned atomic bomb development!