Recent content by Pale Violet Light

As I recall, they also (tried to) make use of the microbial strategy, with spectacular results!

While I am enjoying Mechanicus, every time I played I couldn't stop myself thinking “why aren’t I playing Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters again”? So now I am, sorry, Mechanicus. Chaos Gate is the best turn-based tactics game I’ve played in the past 15 years; I can’t keep away.

I enjoyed SMAC, but something about the modular unit design didn’t work well for me. I prefer the quasi-historical grab-bag of Civ units.

I’ll immediately undermine my own point by saying I would have ranked Old World, a rather complex Civilization-Crusader Kings hybrid, as number 1, had I been allowed.

Gandhi’s propensity for nuking may have been exaggerated, but I have a much more American outlook.

Civilization is the original and best. Complexity =/= goodness. And if you want to argue, well, my opinions are backed by NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

Never? Now that sounds like a challenge to my spongy brain. There’s at least a 76% chance that I think any two characters whose name starts with the same letter are the same person. 27 different people and I’m done.

A life well spent. At least it’s not Reddit!

This seems pretty unlikely - adding sodium to water is a pretty explosive way to make a soft drink. It seems more likely to come from sodium bicarbonate, which will give the needed fizz, albeit with less opportunity for fun pyrotechnics.

With no disrespect, when you were doing your PhD they were probably still using punchcards to run the computers - can this meaningfully be said to be the same technology? (This is an actual question not an attempted gotcha. Well, the first part is just a needless jab at your immense age, but the...

Going through my backlist and having a crack at Mechanicus. Pretty cute squad-based tactics game in the 40k universe. Your squad gets overpowered real fast, and I wish they’d implemented a cover system, but otherwise a lot of fun.

Useful for what? Making uncanny valley images? Writing bad cover letters? Humans can already do this handily.

A soda jerk is someone who gets too worked up over the correct use of the term “soda jerk”.

I hadn’t seen one in decades until I visited my German friend ( in Germany). But he mostly used it to make disgusting fizzy water, not delicious diabetes-inducing sweet beverages.

Was always a little cool on The Farthest Shore: it felt a little like a retread of the first book, just on a larger scale. And also I wanted to know what happened to our girl Tenar, not some dumb prince.