kingysilvers

Dare I ask, how big is the French military in that game? I imagine the Timurids are also going to be a pain given how much they've blobbed up, the AI seems to be a lot better at holding together huge nations since the patch. I've been playing more CK2 than EU4 for the past couple of weeks. I know a lot of people criticise EU for the whole "map painting" thing but at least it gives you constant targets to go for, I've found with CK that I tend to set a goal (e.g. "become the king of England") and it's good fun getting there, but once that is done I don't really have anything pushing me to play any more. Any tips from the CK players to keep things interesting?

Novgorod, bold choice. France does seem to be very strong since the 1.6 patch, also the new rival system is interesting. I decided to pick the rather easier Russian nation for my first game since the update:

Bit of a long shot this but does anybody happen to know any Brum based drummers looking for a band?

If you're into math rock, Alpha Male Tea Party are playing at The Flapper tonight. Should be a corker.

To replace Hazard? Off to PSG for €75m according to this report: http://www.francefootball.fr/news/Hazard-psg-les-details-d-une-rencontre/470665

I like the idea of Keane as assistant manager. My concern is when Lambert inevitably gets the sack and Keane gets promoted to the top job.

... What is this, and where do I get more of it?

Addison's Disease. It's the perfect storm of being super rare, presenting with symptoms that can easily be mistaken by GP as something much more minor, and also being able to kill you. The few years in the run up to landing in hospital, and the landing in hospital business was not much fun. That said, now I just take my medication a couple of times a day and things are all cool, I have a friend with Crohn's Disease and speaking to him makes me thing I got off fairly easy when it comes to the autoimmune lottery.

I did actually almost kick the bucket a few years back, as I was only 23 at the time so it made me think about this whole bucket list type thing. The main thing I wanted to do was record some music, I'd played music for years but none of the bands I'd been in had ever lasted long enough to make it into the studio, so that was top of the list. I guess that one appealed the most as it's something that could potentially outlive you, it's nice to think you've got something out there in people's record collections to be dug up at any time. Other than that it was the obvious stuff like travel, New Zealand appealed just because it was about as far from the UK as you can get and I was lucky enough to do that one through work, Canada had always seemed interesting to me too and I funded that one myself. Also there were a few gigs I wanted to see, Wu Tang Clan as that's mainly what I passed the time listening to in hospital, Half Man Half Biscuit, and also The Fall, before Mark E Smith does his own bucket kicking. There are still plenty of bands I'd like to see but I'm mainly hoping for reunion shows on that one. But yeah, facing your own mortality does make you focus on these kind of things a bit more. That said, now a few years have passed it's not so much at the forefront of my mind and I will happily spend far too much time lazing around playing Football Manager.

I went to the Melt-Banana gig at the Rainbow Warehouse in Brum last night, it was absolutely mind blowing. The combination of strobe lights and blast beats coming out of a huge PA was pretty damn euphoric, you're in for a treat tonight.

Wow, that's a really interesting map, I really need to give VeF a go. Also well done on gaining so much and not running your manpower into the ground, something I do all too frequently.

Aha, it's nice to know I'm not the only one investing a silly number of hours in these games! hoaxn, it's always the Russians for me, they blob up so big, so quickly, and are so hard to attack that they always become a powerhouse. Very good point on the AI, too. In Civ it always feels like the AI has to use cheap tactics to get ahead (which is basically how the harder difficulties work), whereas in EU4 it feels like the AI is just better at playing the game in a lot of cases. tarjei, I'm guessing it's Shenryyr's videos you've been watching as he's been doing a lot of VeF games lately? That guy is stupidly good at all things Paradox related.

There was a lot of interesting chatter about QPR and the impact promotion will have on them on the latest Football Weekly Podcast. Basically how going up could be terrible for them as they have a very expensive, but relatively crap squad and a potential £50m hole in the balance sheet with the FFP penalty (they can keep appealing but it will have to be paid at some point). It will be extremely interesting to see what happens to them next year, there is already a lot of speculation about them signing Rio which indicates lessons haven't been learned at Loftus Road.

Three great songs for the price of one.

I've never really ventured into this games forum but I thought I'd see if any other Villains are into the weird world of Paradox Interactive games. For those wondering what the hell I'm talking about, they mainly produce grand strategy games that make Civilization look like something you'd pick up from the Early Learning Centre. You normally start at some fixed date in history where the world was at some interesting turning point (1066, 1444 etc.), you can normally jump into any state/nation/dynasty that was in existence at the time and begin your attempt at world conquest on a very nicely designed world map. I've mainly been playing Europa Universalis 4 as it seems to be the easiest to get into, you play as a nation and though a combination of war and diplomacy (okay, mostly war) takeover as much of the world as you can. I've also tried Crusader Kings 2 which is very highly rated, not being totally up to speed with the finer details of the feudal system means it has been a bit more of a struggle though. So yeah, anybody else out there been suckered into these epic time sponges?

Given the history with the tweets, two jokey ones which were then deleted followed by the "my agent speaks for me" one I'm guessing very little of this is from the player himself. Instead he's being very badly advised by an agent looking to line his own pockets from Touré signing huge contracts on a yearly basis.

Wow, that was some bleak listening.

If there is, it appears nobody has bothered to tell the press.

Going off on a slight tangent but I saw this cool article the other day that goes over the hit rate of gossip across various newspapers. It's more related to transfer rumours but some food for thought on the level of cynicism that you should apply to this stuff, plus I'm guessing some distraction from this thread might be needed for most of us. The headline stats: Newspaper - Accuracy The Guardian - 34.8% The Independent - 33.5% The Times - 26.7% Telegraph - 26.8% The Sun - 21.9% The Mirror - 20.8% Daily Star - 20.7% Metro - 12.6% Basically, they're all pretty poor. The broadsheets are generally better but they are all throwing a lot at the wall and only a bit of it sticks. I know this is all stating the glaringly obvious but it's cool to see somebody doing some research on it.

Anybody else think it's a bit strange to get somebody to fly all the way over to the US, just to buy them a dinner and sack them? If he is getting the push then that could have all been handled in the UK by PF.

Aha, apologies. Half the ones on the first page didn't want to load for me yesterday.