Megalomaniac even more devilish stuff

Capital city: This can be any town you have under your control provided that it has a Market, Church, Castle, and Town Center. Usually the largest city under your control will be the likely candidate. This function is allowed as soon as you are made king. The capital city becomes the imperial capital when you are made emperor. The capital city gets some automatic defensive advantages to a normal town. It automatically gets a wall around and paved streets at no cost to you. When defending the capital your troops will get a bonus on damage. The bonus on damage does not apply to mercinary forces. Once you town is made a capital it's church becomes the ecclisiastical center of your kingdom and any the first priest there or created is the bishop.

Road: These greatly increase your ability to move troops and goods to other town and regions. Speed is dubbled on roads. There are three types of roads. The dirt pathc is what is first available to you. It increases movement by 10%. The leveled path increases movement by 25%. The stone road increases movement by 50%. In order to build roads and bridges you need a royal architect, yet another npc. These are created in church schools. You need to have at least one to make any roads and the more you have the faster you can build roads since you can dispatch them to different regions for construction.

Bridges: Spendy and time consumming but worth the effort. Note that both roads and bridges can be destroyed. Bridges come in two varieties. The simple trus-bridge and a drawbridge. Both take time to research. Both types can be upgraded to fortified bridges that give more hit points.
Drawbridges can be further upgraded to tower-bridges that have some offensive capabilities.

Encampments: This is really a type of stance you can order an army into. If you order your army to encamp then they will erect tents, picket there horses, and dig a trench around their paremeter. This heals them very fast and provides a defensive bonus if attacked. It takes time to encamp, similar to erecting a trebuchet. They cannot move unless given the order to break-camp.

El Presidente' SCHRUB!

The dufus is at it again! Just when you thought that the failed Texas athletic supporter couldn't get any worse he rises to the occasion! Today we learn that he has slashed the budget for traking Russian nuclear material! Thats right boys and girls, our beloved dufus has cut programs that help us track plutonium, uranium, and warhead stock piles in Russia. Even his republican appoligists are backing away from this stupid move. What an idiot. I don't know who's worse Bush or that Rice chick. Of course Rice's role as national security adviser is perfect for her since she has sooooo much experience comeing from that intellectual think-tank otherwise known as the Chevron Corporation. Bush should be impeached before he starts WWIII.

PS I am not going to capitalise dufus since he is not worthy of a proper noun.

More additions to Megalomaniac

Once you are king you can also bribe the church. In AofE churches and the clergy go around making troops well and converting the enemy to your cause. Fine and dandy but the real church had other attributes. Forinstance Henry VIII made himself the head ofthe church of England thus gaining for himself a cut of all that lucerative collection-plate doe and taxes paid by pesants to the chruch for using church owned land to live on. The first cleric you create in your captial city is the defacto bishop. Once he is bribed you are the head of the church and you can get 20% of all the doe collected. This doe is a function of how many people live in your kingdom. Another thing you can "research" in the church is Simony and Indulgences. Simony is the charging of fees for religoius services. Indulgences is a bribe a person makes to God so that they get a few years off of pergatory. Both Simony and Indulgences were frowned on by the historic church but accepted nonethless as means of making more doe. Simony and Indulgences at 5% each to the level of doe you can collect from the chruch. Be aware that if your personal glory rating falls to below 10 those you have bribed will cease being your buddy and you will lose the benifits.

Homage is another thing to help you make money and control other kings. If you conquer a kingdom its land is added to your kingdom and its king, if not killed, is made a vassel to you. As a vassel this petty king must make payments to you on a yearly basis. the payment is 1 gold peice per person and structure existing in that kingdom. If you order the king to make more farms and people the king will then have to come up with the payment. if the vassel cannot come up with the doe the computer will tell you this and you can decide to ignore it and let him pay what he can. Tell him to reduce the exess towns and population (kill them all) so that the payment eqates to what is actually existing in the kingdom in question. If you choose
the former then your glory rating increases ir you say 'fuck you pay me!" then your glory rating falls but your kingdoms renown rating goes up.

As a vassel the king must also come and send troops to fight for you if needed. A vassel's troops behave just like your own troops. Vassels may also ask you to help them if a unfreindly comes raiding them. If this happens you can: Ignore them, Tell them to fight it out with their own troops, help them by sending your own troops in. Ignoring their crys will not cause them to leave your service, but your glory rating will suffer. If too much is destroyed that will adversly impact the income from that kingdom. If you tell them to fight it out with their own troops they will do everything to kill the enemy including invading that other territory and destroy it. This is risky for a couple of reasons. One the vssel might noght have enough strength to do it. Two they might kill off a potentially lucerative kingdom before you have a chance to conquer it and make that king a vassel. Sending in your own troops allows you to control things. Your glory rating goes up if and the renown rating goes up if you win. With your own general there you can order the vassels troops to do your bidding.

General is a special unit, like an assasin or a bishop. If there are no generals then the army is under the direct command of the king. As your power grows you will find it tiresome, likethe boy with his finger in the dyke, moving from mini-crisis to mini-crisis. A general is handy in that you can order him to control a given group of troops. You go to a seperate map screen and order him, via way-points, to carry out numerous functions. Example: You create a general in a Barracks (big buck but worth it) You select the troops (unlimitted number) and place them under his command. Then you go to a strategic map screen that shows the world minus all the graphic bullshit. On this map you draw the route he will take to his objective. You order him to move under stopping to attack nothing along the way. Once at the objective, say attacking a castle, you tell him to "lay seige" then you tell him how long the operation will last. If he takes more than 50% casulties he must retreat to the start location. If he is there for more than three months he must retreat to the start location. Once this is done he takes charge and goes about his duty. the point is that you are free to do other things whille the general is doing your bidding. Generals can also become emperors.

Further details on Megalomaniac

The opening scenarios using the halflife engine pit you in an every-man-for-himself set of battles. Your regiment will not attack you nor will they come to your aid if you get in trouble. Most are outdoor battles but a few would require you to hack your way into a stronghold or burn down a town etc.

The REVOLT chapter of the game adds a high degree of complexity to the game. The preceeding chapter of State Building is basically a clone of AofE.

In the Revolting chapter I made mention of assasinations, mercinaries and bribary.
Assasins are special units that you can create in a town structure called a beer hall. The assasin costs big bucks but can move through enemy terriroy without getting killed unless he is found out buy an Intelligence officer. This unit is also a beer hall creation and is the unit designed to counter an assasin. The assasin unit is a single use npc in that he will die in his attempt even if he is successful. Assasins are armed with a crossbow but it is not a long range weapon and so the assasin needs to get close. It is also an autonomous unit in that is out of your control as soon as you turn him loose. You go to your list of kings and generals and select the dude who is to be assasinated. Once that is done the assasin travels on his own to the location of the hit target and will try as often as he can to kill the guy until he is killed or dies killing his mark. If
you wish to call him off you will haveto hunt him down with your own forces and kill him. If the assasin is able to kill his target your plot will not be discovered and the nation the mark once lead will not attack you. Should he fail there is a 50% chance that the mark's country will launch an attack against you. And your personal glory rating will fall too.

Mercinaries were always a popular way to bolster your army if you were a poor slob of a king. Macheavelli didn't think much of mercinaries and warned against employing them. In the game I use Macheavellian rules for mercinaries. You can hire them from freindly lords for a specified length of months. Once they are in your command they will attack anything you order them to attack. Yet if they are outnumbered they will break and run. If the are garrisoned near a town, even one of yours, and they are not under orders of some kind, they will begin to attack the locals and burn buildings. If there receive no orders for more than a month they will go wild and you'll have to kill them. Mercinaries are best used for bolstering a force for use in a pitched battle where you have the upper hand. They pay no attentioin to your personal glory rating. Once their term is up they automatically leave and return to their home land.
Bribes can be a most effective and less violent way to revolt. In the game, during this chapter and onward, you can bribe any npc in the world. You can bribe clerics, knights, kings, castles, beerhalls, anything as long as you have three things. Money, a high personal glory rating, and your army must have a high renown rating. In otherwords you not only need the money to buy but the nature to intimidate. Bribed troops are loyal, unlike mercinary forces, and will fight even in death defying battles. However they cost more to bribe than mercinary forces cost to hire. The cost to bribe is tied to the stats you have and the stats of the king under whom they are presently serving. Once bribed they will remain yours unto death unless your personal glory rating falls below 10. In that case even your own troops will abandon you. Bribing kings is tough unless you have a huge amount of cash and the power to back up the cash with the not-so-subtle threat of war.

The chapter of Monarchy, where you have to attain the throne of your kingdom, adds further complexity. You have all the tools at your disposal that
you gain during State Building and the Revolt, but you also have to start paying attention to your kingdoms overal world rating. There are fifty kingdoms on the planet and your kingdom fits somewhere in that order. If you want to be emperor you have to get you ranking to number one. Not every kingdom who is listed as numero uno is an empire. Not only does kingdom have to rate number one but it's army must have the highest renown and the monarch must have a high personal glory rating. Once you have acheived that then you are, without doubt, the emperor of the world. As you claim more territory and vanquish your foes your kingdom expands and it gains in rank and stature. You should do freqent comparrison rankings with your neighbor states. If you see that you are inthe acendency you can try to bribe a kingdome off or take it over. If your overall rating (GRWR) is twice that of a neighboring state they may wish to have you become their overlord. As overlord you gain all the advantages of the wealth and troops of the subjegated kingdom without having to conquer it. If you decide to conquer a state you must reduce it unitl its GRWR is low enough so that it seeks
refuge under your rule. Only a kingdom that is adjacent to your domain can be subjegated without conquest. As king you must also continue your role
as leader by establishing farms, towns, castles, etc. You can also send exploration ships out to check out the big wide world. As your exploratio parties find more kingdoms your ranking will change.

Once you have beceom emperor your characters day are numbered. Eventually it will die. In selecting a successor you go to the list of generals and kings and you can literally select anyone under your control. You will notice there each character has a personal glory rating, an army renown rating, and a kingdom ranking. You want to pick a person who has high ratings. The higher the rating the less chance for a civil war to break out upon your death. However you also are given the age of each character. Since the life span, throughout history increases, at each time you choose the age matter changes. In the beginning the average life span is 45 with a maximum age of 65. So one way to choose is to takethe youngest leader with the highest rating. That way your emprie won't change hands to often. If you choose king Ulfwaln the sextagenerian he may rule well but may die before he can choose a successor. The main thing is that you don't know when your character will die. The likely hood that your emperor will die in a given year increases as he or she gets older. Chooseing a new emperor is an ongoing problem you will face many times in this phase of the game.

The last number you must deal with isthe world civilization level. It is a summary of all the ratings of all the kingdoms of the world. The higher that number the longer people live the less lieklyhood of war or plague and the higher all your emperors rating become. As this number rises new technology and society emerges. The main thing to emerge is the Senate. Peace leads to people demanding freedom. However, as in real life, the npc population is still pretty busy just tryingto survive. The kings are the first to see the need to cooperate with each other to achieve goals. You will be asked if you will permit a senate being founded. if you say no, depending on your rating, there might be war.

Bills do not come to you that often. The bills that come and their nature depend on the overall level of cililization of the empire.

I'll let you know of any other rules that pertain to this cool game ofthe future.

Megalomaniac

Title: Megalomaniac
Style: Realtime / Turn based game of global domination and overlordship Number of Players: 1+ human and 1+ai

Setting: Real and or vitual worlds generated by editor or random generation.
Description: You select a nationality to belong to. You select your sex. The computer generates some specs for you and your character apears in the ranks of a regiment of skirmishers. The view of the coming battle field uses the Half-life engine. You can see your other cohorts. They all seem hell bent on marching off to attack an enemy you spy to your front some 100 yards away. The battle ensues and you must fight your way to survival. If your side wins then you advance to the a new rank in that army. If your side looses, but you live then you are enslaved and have to escape a camp. If you escape then you advance to the next rank in your army.

Next you are given the choice of infantry or cavelry. The cavelry gives you great speed and increases the damage you can inflict on the enemy, but reduces your manuverability and the types of weapons at your disposal. Once you choose you are put in the ranks of a like regiment of either infantry or cavelry. If you choose a Pike then you are part of a pikemen regiment etc. You fight another battle. If you live and are victorious you are advanced again. If you live but are captured then you must escape from the dungeon of a castle.

If you live you are put in command of the regiment inwhich you have been serving. Now you have control of how the regiment attacks. There are nine other npc's to order around. Now the game takes on the AoE engine accept closer up. You can equip your fighters with varioius weapons and armor depending on availability in the location and the type of regiment you command. Before the next engagement you can go to the lord general and get a map of the area and see where your regiment fits into the overall battle. The battle begins and you must acheive your regiments objective with at least yourself serviving. If your side looses you are put in the tower to and you must escape.

To live is to be rewarded! The lord general makes you a brigade commander. Now you have three regiments under your control. You can select the type of the two new regiments; infantry, cavelry, skirmishers, archers, seigers. The next battle is for you to fight alone. Your brigade is sent into a distant march to acheive a goal. Once the goals is achieved you are sent to your next assignment. Each one is slightly different requiring you to use different tactics and skills. As you achieve goal after goal your brigade recieves new equipment, skills, and renown. The renown level will become very important in the near future.

After ten or so campaigns, if you have lived, your brigade has become famous throughout the kingdom as a kick-ass oufit. You recieve word that the king is dead and that three sons of the dead king have split the kingdom and are waring with each other to claim the crown. You are given three letters, one from each prince, begging you to fight for their cause. You must choose which to fight for.

Once you choose you are put into the army of that prince. Each prince has a different demeaner and this changes for every game. Because you are the most notorious lord general in the land you are put in charge of the entire army of said prince. You must fight and defeat each of the other princes. You must also build units as they are lost, develope technology to serve them, and keep them supplied. Your view of the kingdom is broader now resembling the AofE engine.

The other princes are fighting not only you but also one another so you can use this to your advantage. Since you are the lord general now you have brigade commanders to deal with. You must order them to move their own mini-armies into position and fight. The more you are victorious the more they listen to you. The more you loose the less likely they will be to perform.

After you are victorious, of rather if you are, then the new king gives you a domain of your own to govern. You can take your old brigade with you. It is a remote location that you are expected to develop and defend. You must build some towns and fortifications and fight off the nasties that try to attack you. After your domain reaches the status of State, you can go and try to win over as many troops of the kingdom as you can and then try to dislodge the old king from his throne. IN short you can revolt! From a strategic standpoint the deck is stacked against you. The king has lots of troops and castles. However there are "other" options. You can use an assasin to rid the kingdom of it's monarch. If you have enough doe you can try to bribe the troops to your favor. If your really loaded you might try to bribe the king himself. The more succesful you are as an administrator of your domain the more easily you can grab power. You can even use allied lords from other kingdoms to help you in your quest for power; beware of using too many mercinaries they need doe to keep working for you and they don't like hanging around doing nothing.

If you revolt you better do some daring victorious fighting or the troops you have won over will defect back to the king. Should you loose your revolt you will be put back into your state. Your state will be plundered and you'll be poor and without troops. You'll have to rebuild all that to fend off the nasties that want to take your lands. You can always revolt again since there is no time line here.

If you should be successful in ousting the king, the crown is then thrust upon your head. You now are the king! but the king of what? A pimple of a kingdom on the world stage. The world map beckons and you see your kingdom as just a tool. A tool you can use to build an empire that will span the globe! You see those neighborning states who dislike you and those you have good trade relations with. How do you start? Do you build a mighty invasion force and attack? Or do you launch trade missions and build alliences through commerce? Unlike AofE the economic power of your domain has a direct impact on your ability to through your imperial weight around. In the Megalamaniac world there are dozens of other states, some small, some vast, all striving for the same thing. Your state always has a rating. The higher the rating the closer your kingdom comes to being seen as the seat of empire.

Should your kingdom flourish and gain wealth and military might you have other options given to you. You can order a neighboring kingdom to attack another kingdom and fight to the death. You can tell them what to build. Be wary of sending another naiton to it's doom. Your power also comes from victory. If your commands result in failures then you kingdom's rarting will fall and you might get ordered around yourself. Should this happen you can always say no. But then you will have to be prepaired to fight that king who did the ordering or suffer sanctions or blockades.

When your kingdom reaches the summit of power and it is seen as the seat of a world empire, and you are seen as the emperor, things do not stop. The world needs structured government in order to advance. You could systematically genocide your enemies out of existance but that would leave the world in a barborous state that would cease to be under your control. Your empire can only exist as long as the nations that make it up continue to exist. Yet empires are not nation-states. They are an ensamble of states each with competing voices and goals. Your task as emperor is to maintain the glory of your domain and keep the states in line. A never ending task?

Well sort of...You see, although the game has no time limit your character does have a lifespan. And when he or she is old, and scared up, they will eventually die. Another task you have is the choosing of a successor. If you do not do this intime your empire will be ripped asunder by civil war and one of the petty kings will be thrown up as the new emperor, the seat of government will move to that region and you will be faced with dealing with things from that standpoint. The wise thing to do is go to the list of kings and generals and choose the one who you like the best and move them to the imperial seat before you die. The civil unrest will still happen, but war might be avoided.

As your empire continues forrests are harvested and regrown, as long as you don't cut down too many trees. Fisheries will also recover should you not over fish them. And the population can get huge as long as you maintain a balance of people to resources.

Somethings to worry about: If you choose to lead the armies of the empire yourself your army will get a big bonus in strength and damage infliction. However if you are killed then the empire will devolve into civil war and the next strongest lord will be the new emperor. Once you are emperor you can, at any time,. choose your successor. This is something that should be done prior to your death but not to much in advance. If you choose to far in advance the person may be killed in a battle and you can only choose once. This means instant civil war upon your death. The other problem with choosing a successor to early is that the guy instantly gets a big head and if you faulter in your managing the empire he of she might decide to attack you and take the royal purple for themselves, ergo civil war. Try not to choose a successor until your old and gray. Once chosen you choice is made and cannot be undone.

As the empire keeps the level of civilization steady things progress and new technology and society will develop. After a long period of time your kings decide to tell you that they want to meet in a capital of some kind to better govern the empire. This is the begining of a senate. YOu can choose the location of the captial. The senate will start sending bills to you for approval. These bills establish law, army barracks locations, new weapons, advisements on wars that shouldbe fought etc. You can always say no to them and some of them you should say no to. But if you thwart their will too often you may face civil war. As the senate continues to develope the emperor will have to spend more time dealing with them. You can always kill them all but you better have a huge personally glory rating. Each emporor has one and it increases with good decision making etc. However even if you kill the senate it will simply reconvine with a new bunch.

After another long time interval the kings begin to relinquish power to a new class of leaders who, up unitl now have been weak little snot balls. The class is town mayors. Each town has had a mayor since its inception with a town center. Spontaneously the empire has an election and the senate gets bigger as these mayors are elected. The kings still command your armies but are now nolonger involved with infrastructure. The civil senate gives you bills far less concerned with military matters and more concerned with benifits for society establishing university systems, graineries, hospitals, civil police forces, and most ominously, restraint on the powers of the nobility. Right now you can order a king to take his army and attack another king and nobody, as long as you have a high glory rating and you kingdom has a high power rating, will thwart you will. If you aquiess to this bill to regulate the king's power they will tell you no more often and when they do say yeas it will only be after a vote by their populations. This makes for even more intrigue. You can send in your own army and terrorize the poppulation into follwing you. But terror is a double edged sword. If you do this too often you will be on the road to civil war.

Another landmark bill to come to you is the civilization of the army. This puts building of arms and armies under the control of the senate and as emperor you must get senatorial approval for war. This may stick in your craw and hence will not be a bill signed soon by a typical megalomaniac. Should you aquiess to the senate your personal power in the senate will fall, ergo they will be able to now overide your vetoes. Yet civilization rating of the world increases so that your empire gains more stuff and culture. If yo usay yes to this in order for war you must get a majority vote in the senate then get your commanders to get their kingdom's assent to your request. You can avoid the second vote by leading the troops yourself but watchout for the unlucky arrow in the head. Your old brigade, long considered the preatorian gard, can still be lead by you without any such voting though in this empirial world a single brigade is mighty small. The significance of this bill cannot be overstated. The relinguishing of power by the emperor to the senate means the begging of the end of your dynasty as a real force. It will benifit the world but not you.

The last bill you will see is a bill ending the title of emperor. This bill is triggered, as are all the bills, by the level of civilizationi of the world. At this point there is no need for a dictator any more. By this time you, as emperor, are advising the senate on what to do not the other way around. You are given three choices. You can say no and try to hold on a little longer, you can auger in and give up the throne entirely, or you can ask for a general election on the viability of your throne. If you are a glorius emperor you may pull off the coup of coups and become a constitutional monarch. You will have the palace, the gold, and the respect, but none of the stress of governemnt. At this point the music swells and the game is at an end. If you choose total abdication you are lionized as the father of the new world and eventually will be the focus of a new religion. If you choose the first course you will be asked again, in a year, if you still hold on there will be war. This war will pit you against your enemies and most likely will lower the civilization rating to the point where there is no senate. However your death will be the main goal of the war and if you die and your empire has a low civilization rating a civil war will ensue.

This game is not a single night game. It could take weeks if not months. The game time is quite slow compared to AofE. But the rewards are huge. As the game progresses you go from a petty skirmisher to the hights of empire and then death. Then you will be personified by numerous emperors, each with names and character, you will face struggles in war and at peace. You will plot and face plots. In the end you will face your own
dynasties oblivion and how you deal with that final struggle will tell the ages that will come what kind of an empire it really was.

Who makes the game?

Nobody does. It needs to be made. For now it resides in the software of my own brain.

The big Dufus Caves again

Our dimwitted, fart smelling, Dufus of a president has now caved to the meat industry and relaxed testing of school lunch meat for samonella poisoning. According to the Big Dufus, and those pitchforked imps who advise him, our kids can drink more arsenic and consume more bacteria and breath more pollutants. But hey the corporations that bought our Dufus of a president will get a break. I hope all those idiots out there who were moronic enough to waste their vote on Nader realise how much he fucked things up. Was it really necassary to allow our nation to ingest more poison just so the green party could prove a point? As lacklustre Gore would have been, all this shit that has gone down in the last few weeks would not have happened. I hope all the Naderites enjoy their arsenic. What the greens need to do is infiltrate both the democratic and republican parties. Not waste their time and votes in lofty circle-jerks that accomplish nothing. A divided opposition to corporate power is the surest way for them to walk over us all. We need leadership that moves us in the right direction. This takes time. The greens seem to think that revolutionary change will happen if only their side would be listened to. Clap-trap! In a country of 280 million people and opinions it takes a long time to move the naiton in any direction. Millions agree with Bush?! Does this make for watered down laws and national direction changes? Yes but even though these bits of legislation are watered down and murky they were at leasst moving in the right direction. Now, with leadership who should where NASCAR like jackets with all the corporate sponsor logos, we are seening 12, and in some cases 20, years of right-direction legislation dulled down even further and stopped or reversed. Opposition to this power cannot be divided again no matter how illustrious the candidate for the green party happens to be. I hope these people see that there was a clear difference between Gore and Bush. I'll toast Nader with the arsenic.

Rant now finished.

Notes from afar: Interesting thing about living in the sticks

At night it is fucking dark. I mean holy crap it gets black out there. On a cloudy day where there is no moon the metro area is nothing but a really faint gray haze to the west but around our house night is seriously good in its attempt at earasing reality from view. I guess thats why so many farms have those damned anoying vapor lamps. Yet even when you stand in the light the surrounding area is as dark as the inside of "W"'s empty head. One hartening sound you hear is the din of hundreds of frogs all hoping to get layed. What I can't figure out is how all ofthem start and stop at the same damn time. MY two dogs find the area a bit of a mystery. "Where is our turd filled backyard?" they yelp.

So far so good.

Bush is so @#$ Stupid and so are the Excite freaks

To those of you who might agree with the freaks in the Excite forum I do not apologize for the following rant:

I use Excite as my news service and the place I go to to answer stupid polls. I have to say that I am almost diametrically opposed to almost every poll result on Excite. The latest poll is "Do you favor the air strikes to uphold the no fly zone in Iraq." You are given the 'yes' 'no' or 'not sure'. I answer no because I think that the airstrikes are bogus and nothing but saber rattling from Bush II "son of Bush". Going to the forum to discuss this stupid poll I find that all the turds in it are tape recorders playing back the one-liners and non-policy-positions of Bush and his lame assed staff or the non-policy of the jerk that was in the office before him.

How can America choke down the nonsense that Iraq, or for that matter at little saudi terrorist Binlawden, are real threats to us. If anything they are nats, anoying but hardly worth the trouble to swat at them. Meanwhile we have real trouble brewing when Russia fires off a missle that could contain a multi-cluster warhead. Of course we don't have a response to that now do we. We can't send a carrier task force to rattle our sabre at
Russia. Here we have a nation whos military hasn't been paid in years. A nation that is racked with nazi-like nationalism and xenophobia. Compared
to Russia, Iraq is a sublime and steady rock of predictability. So what do we, the Super-power, do? We opt to forget about the anti-balistic missle
treaty and toy with the idea of igniting an arms race with the very county who's population blames us for it's troubles. Back in the soviet days the Russian people harbored no hatred for us. They hated their government but not us we were the good guys. Now, after having their economy ruined via disasterous foreign intervention, and a load of anti-american propaganda fed to them by the old authoritarian socialists, who are now saying "we told you so." they don't like us much and won't take to listening to America when it tells them what to do.

It was a nice thaw while it lasted, at least for us.

As for the dunderheads who are devout believers in the golfwar credo of "make my day" foreign policy, they are going to be in for a very rude
awakening when the power they rattle their sabre at just stairs at them and rattles back. In my opinion the cold war is an unwinable and unstoppable
war. We thought the enemy was soviet Russia but the real enemy is oblivion. It might come out of Russia or China or out of the US itself. We will forever be struggling to keep ourselves from falling off the edge of sanity and ending the world. I hope the struggle lasts forever, because if it ever ends we will have fallen off that edge.

Continuing onto another topic: Schools

"Do you favor school vouchers to allow kids to go to private schools?" No fucking way. Vouchers are little piddly-diddly amounts of money that will not send an east LA latino to private school. Vouchers will only help rich people. Do they really expect me to believe that a $500 dollar voucher is going to help me send by kid to St Mary's? Hardly. That might pay for one weekend school retreat but that's about it. Bush is a skankhead for pushing the lie on people. Give my district a voucher of 100% funding and I'll support it. Bush is for schools what Tonya Harding is for good-sportsmanship. Keep your goddam tire iron off our school's kness you texas small-peckerd bastard.

The dunderheads online want good schools but think that they shouldn't pay any property taxes to support them. They want to go to the store and get all their food free, and they get cranky if they lose a board game, and their development has been arrested at the age of fifteen and has been scentenced to life, and they are pissed because they have to pay $1.55 for unleaded while the world pays $4.00, and they eat 25% of the worlds resources, and they want to live forever, and they all want to be the emperor, and they all want to have the deathstar,and they all are puzzled why the rest of the world is sick of them.

fini

Age of Empires

[4]

Game scale (1-5) 1 being totally sucky and 5 being Il Magnifico

I load game and skillfully leave the documentation in the box since I know how to rule the world and don't need any rule book to tell me how to do it better. I quickly grasp the concept of fornicate more pesants to do all the grunt work. I make all the mistakes a would-be ruler makes. However I learn form them. Soon the turd slurper CG-enemy comes-a-knockin on my town's door. A cute little regiment of briton infantry from the evil Aethelfrith. I spent about a nano-second trying to be freinds with this scumbag only to have him rebuke me. Since my town is amply protected by multiple gard towers most of the enemy is dead before they get to my town center. The morons that do find their way there are horrified to see a castle defended by a dozen or so longbowmen. I guess the CG Aethelfrith considers them the lost regiment since none of them return alive.

Meanwhile, not very far away, I have my army corps of engineers. This is an army of nine peasents surounded by heavy cavelry, crossbowmen, and pikemen. This corp specializes in shock construction. Since I am trading with two other CG idots, one of whom is stupid enough to be freinds with me, I am roling in gold. I cant spend the stuff fast enough. Stone is trading at the 4 to 5 gp's per stone and I don't really care. I buy it by the 100 stone. My engineers mercilessly begin to encircle CG Aethelfrith's town with a dozen towers and a castle or two. He freaks and launches ilconsidered attacks against all the fortifications but it is no use. He's doomed. I send in me occupation force in and slaughter all the peasents and monks, blast down the churches and the pathetic CG Aethelfrith gives up. The Black Prince sends in some monks to pick up relics that are now up for grabs.

The Black Prince is my bro. He's been my freind and we have made a happy alliance for a long time now. So what do I do? Change my status with him to enemy and kill his monks and take the relics for myself. Then I go back to being freinds with him. His kingdom is richer than mine but it is harmelss so I don't worry about him. After thrashing one CG enemy I take my ACE south into more enemy territory. I build a couple castles on two opposed escarpments and then wall off the region. The little green pukes down there are like locusts chopping down trees. I decide to make them the new enemy of the moment and send an army in to hurt them.
There is a big battle around their town cetner, wich is destroyed, but I have to withdraw to the saftey of my to forward castles. By the time my army has regrouped I have created more troops to repalce the dead. I then run into the population limit. I need a bigger army so I go to my own town and kill peasants. I then build seige engines and send them south to serve as artillary support for my invasion army.

Meanwhile the green fuckers are attacking me and I loose a castle. So what! I build another one. I discover, to my fiscal horror, that two of my trade carts are missing. That little green fucker killed'm. I build three more after killing another lumberjack peasent, and send them to the green turd to trade. My town is practically a ghost town. About half the peasents are with my invasion army as engineers.

The artillary has arrived at my marcher castles and I imediately launch my strengthened army in two divisions at the green gothic enemy. I order all units to stand ground. I find this to be the best offensive order of all. It forces the dickwad computer into attacking you and, like the civil war battles of old, the battle hardware favors the defender. Each division splits into two wings and creartes a kill zone about the size of the enem town. My two huge divisions keep good order. Gothic attackers are killed by the knights and swordsmen while the longbowmen sweep the town of villagers. The artillary blasts down another town center and then a barraks and a stable. The computer, being the stupid bastard that it is, cannot get it into its head that might makes right. All it would have to do is mass it's own forces and drive north around my army and it would force me to abandon the attack so I could save my own city. Or it could, as general James Longstreet used to say, hit me "on the end" and break my fomration apart.

What does the might dual PIII 750 do? It sends irregulars to slap at me as if to say, "icky human go away and stop hurting me." I am grossly disappointed in the lack luster tactics of this green foe. I break off the attack and retreat to give the PIII time to regroup and come at me. I want a more interesting battle. Nope. I finally give up and move my army back in.

When I deam the moment right I order all the knights and infantry to be as agressive as possible and they sweep though the area killing things. I
order the artillary to cease fire so as not to hammer my own troops into the dirt. I box them up in longbowmen and move one division back to the
marcher castles. Then I move the other east, and in a moment or two the green dude gives up.

Now it is noly the dufus Black Prince. My bro, compadre, commrade in arms (thats a joke I asked for his help once and he didn't do squat.) So what do I do with him? I send in the ACE with seige engines and blast open a big space in the center of his domain. I build a big fortress with two castles and I garrison half my invasion army inside it. I Shut the gate and leave it alone. I turn the diplomatic status to enemy for a moment or two and let the garrison and casltes, spew arrows all over the place killing the princes peaseants and soldiers. Then I go back to being freinds with him. He starts to build more soldiers and every once in a while I go in and teach him who's emperor.

So do I like this game? Hell yes I like it. However I would change it to make it better in a couple very important ways.

1. To make this game live up to its name I would allow for a CG enemy state to be terrorized into surrender but still have it's own troops. If your own domain loses to many troops then this enemy ceases being under your thumb and revolts.
2. As your territory increases you should automatically be given the opportunity to appoint NPC governors to regions. These governors would do your bidding. You give them an order such as: Defend region from any incursion. They then use the regions resources to do jsut that. Or you could say: Attack neighboring region. The governor will do it. However if the empire becomes too weak they me split off and become enemy states that you have to reconquer.

Familyman

This film should have been the crowning turd in the waterpipe but it was not. I liked it. It was an idea that has been done to death but was done so well that I just came out feeling good. When he woke up in the messy bed and the kids were screeming and running through the house that was great. That was real. I thought "man would I want to stay in that world?" Then I remembered that I do live in that world. The guy chose it over the millionaire lifestyle. I guess I like the movie because of just that action.

Big Kahuna

[6]

You know this film had great acting and terrific dialogue but salesguys jsut don't get all cerebral when they are out in the field. Sorry that is bullshit. They don't postulate on the existance of God or their own lives meaning. All they do is sleep, sell stuff, eat food, go to bars, shit and go bakc to sleep. Taking this film on face value you'd think that sales guys are fucking monks in polyester, their eye's trained heavenword. Not so. This film was a pet project by one of my favorite actors Mr Spacey. Remember I think Spacey should be a Jedi. He'd kick ass.

Castaway

You know this film is so sucky that I wish I could cast it away. What a waste of film, story, actor, etc... It didn't show me anything I have seen before. My idea for a castaway story is that the guy ends up on the island and all he has is one fedex package. he opens it and finds college text books for a physics professor. After burning a couple he decides that he might as well read them since he might go nuts. So after 4 years he has read and re read them. They range from Max Born's book on Einstien's Theory of Relativity and textbooks on quantem mechanics to cosmology. In the package there is a treatise, written by a cambridge mathamatician. It is an attempt at a Grand Unified Theory, a theory linking quantem mechanics with general relativity; a theory of everything. It is unfinished. After four years of solitude the castaway is now, not only an expert spear fisherman but a phycisist. Without the external nonsense of the modern world his brain has adapted into a hunter gatherer / physicist of the highesrt order. Then he stubs his toe on a rock. This seeming trivial injury is fatal in his current surroundings. He knows it. So he does what he can to write down on his cave wall the equations necassary to describe the workings of the cosmos. As he finishes the camera tracks back out accross the ocean and out into space and you are left with the irony that the secret to the future of the universe is housed in a cave on a southpacific island.

Gone in 60 Seconds

[2]

Dull dull dull or god it was dull. I kepts waiting for the KR500 and you had to wait all the way to the end and then they CGI'd it over a bridge. Sucks.

The Perfect Storm

[3]

As soon as I finished the book I knew this was going to be a film and I knew it would suck. The Book is written in a very journalistic way and reads more like a magazine article than a novel. It is a great book. Junger goes into ocean mechanics, history, and fishery detail that is totally lost in the movie. For instance his anecdotal info is riveting as well. Take the time a rogue wave blasted out the bridge windows of the Queen Mary, that's 90 feet above the water line, and she came within a degree or two of capsizing. Or the time, in the 1850's when a fishing boat came across a note in a bottle with the last words of a crew that hadn't been heard from in a year. One of the more interesting twists in the book is Junger's description of how the people left behind have to willfully extract the men from their lives. It is just a mater of faith that the men are dead since no boat, or bodies were ever recovered. The film also plays fast and loose with the facts. First of all there was no distress signal sent from the Andrea Gail. The rescue helicopter that picked up the crew from the yacht was not enroute to the AG but to a japanese fisherman when it went down.

But despite all that the film just wasn't interesting. The characters were dehumanized. The filmmaker had a clean slate for dialogue since none of the men survived. Yet all he could do was bullshit lines that weren't memorable at all. There could have been much made of the fact that, aside from Tyne, all the other men didn't much like fishing. It was a dead end job that they wanted to get clear of as soon as they could. Bob Brown's character was accurate but his animosity toward Tyne is not. Most sword boats are only in port for afew days at a time anyway.

Vice Presidents

Ford: pardon's Nixon and loses to Carter.

Bush: wins war against a dumpy little nobody and loses to Clinton.

Gore: Comes off as smart during VP-hood but reverts to Og the Cave man in Florida.

Andrew Johnson: Follows assasinated Lincoln and is Impeached.

Lyndon Johnson: Follows assasinated Kennedy and wins big against Goldwater, but blows great society with Vietnam.

Truman: Okay he's a nice guy and a straight shooter but his lack of attention to the details of the founding of Isreal has lead to fifty years of the crap that is going on over there. And bombing Nagasaki!? Not to mention the 50,000 troops killed in Korea.

Probably the best VP to take the helm from a President was Theodore Roosevelt. But even he gave us a legacy of overseas intervention that is dubious at best. He almost got that thrid term as an independant. What is it with them Roosevelts?

Usually VP's make lousy Presidents or, at the very least, one-termers. Early on it was the secretary of state that was slated to follow his boss. But look at ol' John Adams. What did his federalists contribute? He gave us the Alien Sedition Act making it a federal crime to criticize the government. Thankfully that dead waterbuffalo was repealed.

Even when they come back form the dead they usually cause problems. Look at Nixon, the zombie of American politics. For a while it looked as though not even a silver bullet could rid the nation of that dude.

I don't think we should allow members of the current Executive Branch the ability to run for office for at least eight years after their term ends. Frank Roosevelt hadn't been in an administration since he was secretary of the Navy under Wilson.

Washington...well...there was no administration for him to follow.
Lincoln was not a part of any administration.
Jefferson: Okay so this guy was minister plenipotentiary to France but he was Jefferson. And he didn't have an easy time either.
Andrew Jackson was just a war hero.
Ike: Just another war hero.
Grant: war hero
TR: yeah he was a VP but he was also a war hero

X-Men

As far as I can tell this movie is totally historically accurate. Interesting effects, though I feel sorry for the poor bastards in any effects lab. No effect is cool anymore. They're so predictable that your brain just says "oh thats an effect...now what" This movie is okay. I guess I give it a 6. One of the better comic book movies.

Gladiator

[6]

Okay so this is a remake...sort of:
1964 "Fall of the Roman Empire" gets an 8

This movie starts out with the final vitory of Marcus Aurelius over the germans and the untimely death of Marcus Aurelius. The hero of this film is the general Livius. Livius vows to carry out Aurelius' wishes to reform the empire. Commodus shows up and fucks things up and the two end up in a duel in Rome, surrounded by praetorian gard. Commodus dies as does Livius. In 1964 things are more pragmatic for after the duel a new emperor is proclaimed and the so goes rome. The art direction for the 1964 flick is awsome and is probably better than Gladiator.

Truth: Commodus was chosen by his father to succeed. Commodus was as much a fighter as his father and had taken part in numerous battles. He was not the eldest of Marcus' sons but he was the only one left alive at the time of his father's death. At nineteen he was not very experienced at statecraft. He fell victem to his position and, like a later Nero, let the power go to his head. He did fight many gladiators and killed all of them. He was a powerful warrior but rather simple minded. He was murdered but not by a gladiator . He was drowned in his bath tub by a hired assasin. Despite his murder he was a very popular emperor. The commoners loved him. The Senators hated him. His reign signified the end of the golden age of the Roman Empire. The five good emperors that preceeded him spanned 84 years. I think there was around a 25 or 30 in the next 100 years. I would fault Marcus Aurelius for this. He, alone of the five good Emperors, chose his son to succeed him.

The movie: Rome never looked so good. Nice costumes, cool fight scenes, good acting, awe the glory of Rome! I just wish the story was more interesting. Once I new it was a remake I new the end. A few months back I read the Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus and there is so much material in that book that would make a great movie....oh yeah...I forgot....They made I Claudius. But still there is a lot that could be done with that bombastic, hauty, splendid Empire.

President Who?

I don't want to tell you who to vote for but just let me say that if you want:

Drilling in the arctic.
No increase in the minimum wage.
No tax cut.
Increased regulation against organized labor.
No progress on national healthcare.
No progress on inner city poverty.
No attention payed to developing alternative fuels.
Money taken away from public education and given to the rich to offset their private ed costs.
No reform of campaign finance laws.
No vision of national community IN short no leadership.

Then, by all means, vote for Ralph Nader.

I am voting for Gore. Why? Well the answer is clear. Subterfuge. I do not like Gore much, although he is superman compared to the dickwad Bush. Witchever candidate wins the man is going to be a very weak president. He will have to deal with a deadlocked congress and will have no mandate to do jack shit. However if Gore wins then in 2004 I can confidently predict that John McCain will be the parties nominee of choice. If Bush wins then, no matter how badly he sucks, and he will suck, he will be the nominee in 2004. Who will apose him? ON the democratic side I see no fire or intelligence. Monkeys would be flying out me ass if Nader some how became a viable force. No it would be a D vs Bush race and it would produce nothing, just another lost opportunity. So I am wanting Gore to win so I can have the pleasure of ousting him in 2004.

Vote Gore for McCain in 2004 !

Magnolia

[6]

Really long and well acted. Did I mention this film is long? Another dark little movie. It's long too. I don't know how to take the ending. It has one of the most truely surprising and bizzare endings of any film I have ever seen is it a good ending? I am not sure about that. This film is really long.

Orphans

I don't know what I detest more, films that truely suck or films that are merely lame? The former gives me more ammo to hurl at it, but getting that ammo mean actually watching it. The latter gives me little ammo but is damn boring that it might be a worse experience that watching a really bad film. Well whqat have I got to tell you this week about the cinematic epics I did watch?

Orphans: A Scotish movie so scotish it needed subtitles.
(1-10) gets a 8. The scotish dudes just know how to make good dark-humor.