Brick Fight

I like this guy lately:
 

 
Low on production values, but he has simplified visuals that help to convey things that are difficult for your average person to imagine in their mind.

Yeah, today's actually my birthday, as well.

I knew the Dems were making huge mistakes, but I'll come out and say I thought it didn't matter.
 
I honestly couldn't have predicted it. I'll save my own feelings for another time as this whole campaign has driven me nuts and I can't hear another opinion on it including my own. Just this past Sunday, I had to listen to every conspiracy theory you could imagine from people at my church. I have feelings on Trump, but it's who is going to be around him that worries me. Pence sickens me. We could have a cabinet that includes a gallery of weirdos like Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback, Sarah Palin, or Ben Carson, many of whom worry me more than Trump.

I honestly think people don't have faith in themselves. You know how if you had doubts about yourself, you would just shit-talk your co-workers, friends, acquaintances, other kids at school, etc.? Well, now we have this media that's accessible to anyone 100% of the day and leads people to believe that they're now part of the system. Now people who barely scraped by with a high school education or even less genuinely believe that they are smarter than any "expert" politician, scientist, military personnel, etc. and can beat their chests about it to other average yokels who then keep up the momentum. There's even a term that describes the trend: The Law of Group Polarization. This is the idea that any people of a like-minded group who spend enough time in the same chamber will eventually escalate their narratives and shut anything else out. It's a part of the human condition, whether the bonds are formed over identity, politics, ideas, or other factors. Hell, we see it with Wehraboos and Commieboos. 
 
(I was mostly reminded of it because I finally watched The Mist recently it's a pretty good movie)
 
Americans need to re-learn the concept of "I don't know." Try to ask what someone's opinion is on something that you're positive they have no information on. Regardless of having any correct or even any amount of information on the subject, odds are that they'll take a position that they won't move on depending on how well you argue for them, or how persuasive any information you supplement your argue with is. Depending on how stubborn they are, they will not move from that position and absorb or make up any information that they can because they've formed too much of an identity around that idea that can be proved wrong so easily, and can jump onto the internet to find like-minded people to support them and feed into that cascade. All because they couldn't admit to "I don't know."
 
(full disclosure, I'm still guilty of it and hate when I catch myself doing it)

Then I overshot because I just hear it a lot, so sorry if it came off as combative. I do think we're hitting a bit of a generational gap right now and things in general are just gonna be loud and crowded until the boomers thankfully die off. Until then, it's going to be a miserable 10+ years of their retirement. I've so far been propagated by two different militia guys (once at the museum, once at a gun store) who worked in the "second civil war" line, so I've genuinely heard it. I love living and working in Pennsyltuckey especially when it comes to the scenery, but the social interactions leave a lot to be desired.

It's most likely going to be a nothing burger. Comey pretty much admitted that even he was covering his own ass by rushing out the letter before election day so it would seem like he was witholding information.
 
 
 
What on Earth has Dilbertman ever done or said that I should have the confidence in that he's right about this? What should I believe if the guy who wrote Beetle Bailey says the government's gonna gas us in our sleep? Do you honestly see your average jackoff quitting their job, loading up their guns, coordinating the logistics of a large-scale terrorist organization and just attacking military or civilian targets? Or do these things that people like DIlbertman say exist to make us feel like we're part of something bigger? I feel like if the average person would say "If Hillary wins, odds are the Right will buckle down and barricade progress in different areas of the government," and I feel like if I were to even disagree with that, it's reasonable and possible. It just feels more satisfying and makes us feel more important to say "if this candidate wins, we'll all be mass-murdering each other and fighting the government."
 
Rolling Stone did an article on this sort of thing recently where they interviewed neurologists and other scientists who studied physiological and behavioral developments in people who followed the 24-hour news cycle, and results were interesting. People who followed the cycle tended to be more anxious and quick to anger, while areas of the brain that respond to "fear" (more as anxiety) noticeably swelled in response to attempts by internet/cable/radio news to instill fear or (more accurately) anxiety to get people scared and coming back for more. But when they were cut off from this type of media and their echo chambers, their behavior tended to revert. They were less anxious and their neurological make-up responded in kind. 
 
Hell, Gingrich confirmed it recently when he got into that ridiculous debate where he basically said "People may be statistically safer, but they don't feel safer." The point he was arguing was dumb, but overall, he was kind of objectively right in that sense. I've been reading Terrorist Next Door by Daniel Levitas off and on since the Bundamentalist thing, and you'd be surprised to hear the kind of thing that would happen back in the day. Post-WW2 in the South, there was a rash of synagogue and black church bombings that went completely ignored. Take into account things like the civil rights movement and pushback, The Red Scare, and other social unrest that sometimes resulted in localized violence, and it feels silly to think that we're going to have some kind of Civil War because Black Lives Matter blocked a road or some Trump supporters slapped some people or a person that people don't like becomes president seems really silly.

I like this guy lately:
 

 
Low on production values, but he has simplified visuals that help to convey things that are difficult for your average person to imagine in their mind.

You know how the Brits used to line up officers in front of that old Challenger tank and made them list any faults they could find? The Republicans should do the same with this picture:
 
http://i.imgur.com/MUnSCw5.jpg
 
There are so many things wrong with it, and they couldn't have not seen it coming at the time. Things I can come up with:
 
-This is either a statistician's nightmare or sick fetish dream. Most primaries are between two people and some occasional outliers, and the frontrunners push for support to beat each other and to eventually suck up the outliers' voters when they inevitably bow out. In this case, where the hell do any of the losers' votes go to? At the end of it all, Trump won majority, but only with 40% of the vote because it was so split.
-Tell me exactly how different one of these is from the other enough to make the choice anything but "I see them the most on the news so I guess I'll vote for him."
-Out of all of these, how many of them can't seem to get a sentence across without sounding like a lunatic.
-Out of all of these, how many of them seem to actually want to perform one of the most difficult public services jobs ever versus how many of them want some media exposure for personal gain?
-How many of these people don't have a video of them saying something incredibly nutty or racist?
-How many of them seem to have some kind of idea out of really juicy soundbites?
 
...to name a few
 
On the other hand, the Dems are in a bit of a split with their caucus system. It's effective in making sure some nutso candidate doesn't take the title against their will, but you also risk losing a large amount of people who wonder how much their vote means in the party.

The more I see campaign stuff from Battlefield 1, the less convinced I am that they'll mess it up. It seems respectful and bombastic. It's apparently trying to go the CoD 1 route of breaking up the scenery by following different scenarios and actually making unique characters.
 
The dialogue is corny and the trailers look sappy. Fortunately there's no sign of BF4's light-speed stupid dialogue ("Boots on fucking ground, Recker. Boots on fucking ground!"). Also no signs of the plot of BF3, which is probably the dumbest plot I've seen in a game.
 
I honestly want to know what happened to the guy who wrote Bad Company 1. That game was never more than it needed to be. We were part of a penal battalion in a bit of a light-hearted Kelly's Heroes world where we were just fighting the Russians because we needed a backdrop for explosions where we weren't killing "terrorists." Since we were in a penal battalion, that meant that our supporting characters were two troublemakers and a dad-figure volunteer sergeant who all got along despite their differences because they seemed to somehow survive their shit details. Being that far down the hill, you're in a tug of war where your Superiors either spurn or support you. One minute you're part of an armored assault column for a big battle. Next minute the evac meant to extract you and your hilarious drunken dictator you took hostage is refused for unknown, leaving you to steal his golden chopper and go through a relatively free-roaming vehicle section. It was a nice framing device that paced out lone wolf and high-action sections of the game well. Considering that enemy armies were almost always better-equipped than you, the difficulty could change, keeping it from being a constant uphill slog.
 
Bad Company 2 tried to emulate this, but it just fell short in a lot of respects. Mostly what I'm saying is that DICE is the first AAA studio to really do WW1, and they've never done serious particularly well.

It's always difficult to come to the compromise of something like "Keep a brutal dictator in place otherwise Sykes-Pycot will come back to haunt the world." 

The root of the problem here is with women voters. They're the largest, most reliable block. You lose the woman vote, you lose period, especially with the angry Yam-Person chasing away every other block. Nobody wants to be associated with this except for bloggers and media types who make their money off of the Ouroboros of Outrage. You're going to see a lot of Republicans distance themselves to try to find some kind of save and possibly a boost from it. Hell, short of Hannity, I even see Fox News seeing it as their chance to cut the Donald chain they've been stuck to. I never bought into the "Trump as a Clinton agent" theory but god damn if this isn't starting to convince me (joking). At this point, Republicans only have sub-sets of white males interested in voting for him in any large number, and I'd be genuinely surprised if anyone else even considered to split their votes down-ticket.
 
My guess has always been that Donald doesn't want the presidency. I can't imagine that man wants to participate in four plus years of the hardest civil service known to man for an reason other than what it means for Donald and what Donald's wants. He thought he could get his face out there for promotional purposes like Palin for some self-promotion, but it snowballed. He was getting paid, and found out he could hold meetings in his own locations for some layers of tax benefits. Then he started winning states and realized he could drag it out further. If he didn't win, he could run independent and split the vote like he promised, or tank the general election if he won the primary. What would genuinely happen if he won? Who could he actually pick for appointments, and who would actually accept and be approved? What would diplomatic missions or military briefings look like?

source your quotes

No training at all. I sometimes think I have a decent grasp, but I'll always receive some information that shows how little I know. Besides trying to find out on my own to try and sound smart, I worked part time for a lawyer who handled this sort of thing which taught me what was illegal, and I would chew the ear off the cute girl in accounting at one of my chef jobs when we had to go over finances or if I wanted to know how to save money on taxes. Essentially, the Times wasn't wrong, but they have a word limit to adhere to and lack of public knowledge of this kind of thing plus our penchant for stopping reading at the headline, the average person takes away "Donald lost a billion dollars." Essentially his businesses messed up super hard to the point where over a few years, his stocks dropped to less than one percent of their previous high point, and posted massive losses. But since they got their deductibles in line, losing that hard can be beneficial. If you've ever wondered why crashing businesses didn't have to declare bankruptcy or close down this could be one of the reasons and it's one of those things that small business owners don't take advantage of enough.
 
I'm only assuming such a massive NOL was on the pre-audited returns, or I would be blown away since the pre-audit was most likely the much higher number. EIther way, I'd need to see the post-audited papers plus an idea of what their finances looked like leading up to 1995 to make any sort of opinion on what happened. Considering the losses happened over quite a period of time, he could have had similar filings in previous/following years that carried around to different places, which would explain all of the audits they've received to make sure it's being properly assigned. 
 
The losses are sort of troubling. The thing is that the $900 million is not the issue, but the losses themselves. You can cover taxes, but losses and debt accrued are a different story. Essentially, that debt can be paid off, forgiven, or bought out/renegotiated. If that debt is still around payment may seem likely as he accrued several billion in debt in the years leading up there and would likely still be paying it off today, maybe after renegotiation. Forgiveness would likely invalidate some of the benefits he received. He filed chapter 11 three times between 1991 and 1992 so renegotiation to a fair payment seems possible. A buyout is a serious accusation as there could be illegal wrongdoing if it is a conflict of interest and I'm not going to make that kind of accusation.

He reported a net operating loss in 1995 of $916 million. Net operating losses are the difference between deductions and collectable income and can be carried forward 18 years, or if you pass certain checks, backwards 2 years. He essentially would have been an idiot if he didn't use it, but it's worth it to note that a lot of it came via a series of horrible business decisions that lost countless amounts of money.

Depends on the state sometimes. Like he said, there are broad interpretations here in Pennsylvania. I've been doing Poll Watching since I want to say 2006, and I've seen a few incidents of participants over-stepping their bounds who usually back down when you tell them to sit or you'll call the police. Around here, it's usually mentlaly unstable middle aged guys harassing young kids and non-whites, or dorky college students unaware of how poll watching is actually supposed to work and aggressively proselytizing. It's taken fairly seriously and the police will usually have them vacate if it ever comes down to it. One of those nutters I was talking about turned out to be missing for several days, off his meds, and carrying around a large knife in his backpack. Every election day you'll hear some cable news or blogging parties try to make a big deal out of isolated incidents (fuck, Fox News still pulls up that footage of some Nation guy like 10+ years ago who was there for all of a half-hour before being vacated), but it's usually exaggerated. 
 
It was bad pre-'64 from what I read. There were direct violent threats, actions, and harassment of minority groups and it got largely overlooked.

Depends on the state sometimes. Like he said, there are broad interpretations here in Pennsylvania. I've been doing Poll Watching since I want to say 2006, and I've seen a few incidents of participants over-stepping their bounds who usually back down when you tell them to sit or you'll call the police. Around here, it's usually mentlaly unstable middle aged guys harassing young kids and non-whites, or dorky college students unaware of how poll watching is actually supposed to work and aggressively proselytizing. It's taken fairly seriously and the police will usually have them vacate if it ever comes down to it. One of those nutters I was talking about turned out to be missing for several days, off his meds, and carrying around a large knife in his backpack. Every election day you'll hear some cable news or blogging parties try to make a big deal out of isolated incidents (fuck, Fox News still pulls up that footage of some Nation guy like 10+ years ago who was there for all of a half-hour before being vacated), but it's usually exaggerated. 
 
It was bad pre-'64 from what I read. There were direct violent threats, actions, and harassment of minority groups and it got largely overlooked.

They're under investigation by some European consumer rights group right now for both false trailers and promises. Steam is also thrown in because they continue to display false advertising. I mean I'm okay with it, but you know they're only going after it because they're big, but not too big. I hardly expect Ubisoft would end up copping something like this for one of their fake trailers. 
 
This always seems to be a thing with space games in particular. Fans get mega-hyped and ask about features and the developers don't want to say no. See Star Citizen for the ultimate example. I think the big reason why so many Shitizens hate Elite: Dangerous so much is because the developers said no once in a while.

Yeah, media polls are always bad and mostly serve to work up the base. Poll companies are kind of tearing their hair out these days since they were traditionally land-line calls, so they miss out on large amounts of demographics right now. They have plans to try to beat it, but they hardly have their bases covered. FiveThirtyEight is pretty good, but they have a habit of chickening out of unsure races.

I really don't know. A lot of it is booked on a whime and I guess the idea is "we can slip them in here, so let's do it." In 2008, we called in to get Bill and Obama and other dems to do speaking arrangements, and we got whiplash at how quickly they responded and booked us. We even started calling for equipment and seats and stuff and found out that they booked pretty much everything we needed not long after the phone call. I mean, I guess the quick response most likely had to do with us being the main campus at Penn State, but even then we were taken aback. 
 
Looking at campaign schedules gives me jet lag. Trying to imagine pretty much not having a single off-day as you're darted around the country talking to the press every day and huge crowds sounds like one of the most mentally exhausting things I can think of. You'll pretty much be in transit a majority of the time trying to make sure you don't say the exact wrong thing and turn on to find that someone on cable news is calling you the worst person ever for putting dijon mustard on your food.

1) Because you and I have no stake in it, if at least relatively. A comment about him admiring Putin, touting Putin's 80% approval rating, or seen schmoozing with the man has little bearing on us, but it will get a lot more attention in places where it matters (either in country or in political systems), for whatever it's worth. Kind of like how nobody in the West really cared about Bush's "crusade" remark, but it was supposedly frequently featured in Al Qaeda recruiting outlets.
 
2) I didn't mean to sound like he'd be put up for charges, but his staff would most likely see visits and inquiries from related parties and get a "seriously, don't do that another time."
 
3) I won't get into the case if it's positive for him or not, but it doesn't change the fact that it is potentially a serious issue. See the Azerbaijan oil visit scandal, and the Iranian deal memo controversy as recent examples. Interference with foreign policy is a serious issue.

If you ever wonder why politicians tend to give milquetoast non-answers on things like this, building and re-building foreign and domestic policy is an almighty fucker of a task. It's very underappreciated, but international politics is one of the most difficult functions of the government. You need the right military, the right military moves, you need to bolster one ally while not pissing off anyone around them. You need to find the best and brightest human beings alive with almost supernatural diplomatic and political skills, with knowledge of every inch of the land they're involved in, and what it means to the rest of the world. You need the full cooperation of military and political infrastructure working like a ballet to get little jobs here and there done of the course of decades. If I could put it in better terms, imagine if we had Patton and Monty running SHAEF instead of Eisenhower and Tedder, and you'll understand why people who actually have a chance of being president are usually more tight-lipped on this sort of thing.
 
On topic, it is openly insulting to Poland, Romania, Estonia, Finland, and other Central and Eastern European allies who've been diligently building up to join NATO and depending on not having a few tens of thousands of "AWOL volunteers" or whatever flooding through their eastern borders. Yeah, he made this country look awful with his talking points meant to flame up the far right, but he is now actively undermining international politics by acting as a self-declared diplomat, which is potentially illegal. Congress gets in trouble with this every so often, but no charges are ever filed, since it's serious stuff that could result in heavy punishments. Since it's mostly for political points from politicians ignorant of the law, offenders usually kind of disappear off the spectrum or are relegated to being party votes until their career is over. It's sort of why Hillary refused the Meixco invitation that Trump accepted, Congress will usually only go on low-key official visits, and why Presidents don't do international tours until after their election. My guess is these trips are going to become rarer as stern men in black suits start showing up at his headquarters. 

So I've been practicing editing and such lately to try to get a Youtube thing off the ground. One project I'm working on is putting together a review of the Total War series, and so far I guess I'll put a condensed version here for kicks:
 
Rome 1: This one tends to age poorly and well at the same time for me. The battles have aged surprisingly-well, and even outdo modern TW battles in some ways. My favorite feature in particular is how when a unit that's beating another unit will keep advancing, they slowly push the frontline backwards and envelope the enemy. It both looks really cool and creates tactical situations that allow for satsifying encirclements. The campaign map is so much more simple than later games. You can build any building, anywhere, so less fucking around waiting forever to replenish units and build armies that becomes really obnoxious starting with Napoleon.
 
Medieval 2: Kind of torn on this game. The battles can be clunky, as the intentionally slow moving speed of units can make it unclear if your orders went through, and the pathfinding (especially in towns) is absolute garbo. But they absolutely nailed the feel of armored units just wailing on each other. Like Rome 1, the grand strategy component is something I've grown to like very recently, as it is simple and just serves to get into big battles.
 
Empire: I got this one surprisingly late, and I wished I hadn't. I understand a lot of the issues people have with this game, but I'm enjoying just how crazy is it is in terms of unique units and how cartoonishly weird the campaign map can get when you take a turn and just noticed that Prussia just gifted Poland to the Iroquois Nations. This is a personal gripe, but I hate how this started naval battles in the series. As a campaign thing, it's just more time I have to spend building and recruiting. It would be fine if the naval battles weren't like watching twenty blind sloths trying to mate in a pool of molasses. They're plodding, buggy, and I never understood why I won or lost a single one of these in terms of mechanics.
 
Napoleon: It's alright. The musket gameplay of Empire is really refined and expanded-upon here, and is really fun to engage in. Unfortunately, something about the presentation is just very dull. It's all well put-together and gets you into lots of battles and all that, but I feel like they made Empire and felt like they had to make this game. This is kind of where I started to have gripes about the campaign map, too. It becomes very time restrictive while also forcing you to spend much more time planning and clicking and planning and clicking, rather than getting into massive battles.
 
Shogun 2: Probably the most well-presented TW game. The music, art, graphics, and design just show that this was a passion project for the entire team. Unfortunately for me, this one upped the game in terms of piddling around on the campaign map, as you had to carefully plan cities to get you the right types of units. This results in certain moments of the campaign forcing me to spend about a 1:10 ratio of time in favor of carefully planning cities and building armies versus actually fighting in battles. This is a shame, because the battles are beautiful, with some unique units that are fun to utilize in creative ways. Unfortunately, this game highlighted issues with the engine for me. As the first melee-focused game in the series to use Empire's engine, the battles are locked into these animated 1v1 duels that look like a bunch of inflatable punching clowns trying to have an orgy. The units will only fight on a pre-determined frontline. None of the push-back in Rome 1 and Medieval 2, and it just looks alien in certain situations. I overall do have a very positive opinion on this game, but there are a few things in retrospect that I wish it did better.
 
Rome II: I wasn't around for the release of this game after seeing how awful of a reception it got, but I bought it recently, and was pleasantly surprised with how much I like it. The campaign map is thankfully simplified again, and the game actually gives people nice tutorials. The UI is also very well laid-out for both battles and the campaign map. The battles are a mixed bag. They apparently had a massive problem with the "duel" system from Shogun 2 in this game that basically busted as the battles were hurt both in terms of look and function by some AI features and the fact that units were hardlocked into 1v1 duels only. This is apparent in new builds of the game by the fact that each unit has maybe one or two slow "attack" animations of them awkwardly jabbing their weapons, but you no longer have the issue of a unit of five spearmen holding out against a thousand surrounding swordsmen because none of the swordsmen can use numbers to gang up on them. This was improved, but the look of the battles is very disappointing. The static nature just means two units fight, one wins. Flanking is only really helpful for morale shocks, and doesn't give you as much of a noticeable killing edge as Rome 1/Medieval 2. Also, what were once passive abilities like heavier charges for cavalry, are now special activated abilities, that you have to switch on each time you want to use them. So unlike earlier games where a cavalry unit's charges were more powerful the faster they moved, you now have to charge, then activate a special ability one by one for each cavalry unit. A really dumb system. Overall, I really do like the game. I just wished that the battles didn't look so bleh.
 
Attila: God, I wish I could like this game. They did some really neat things with the battles here, but it feels like the developers just didn't want us to play them this time. No, most of the time you will be on the campaign map, fussing over politics, building farms that piss people off more than empty lots, and trying to predict how the AI will cheat next. The AI has been pumped up to ridiculous levels, only engaging you if they have the auto-resolve completely in their favor. This results in enemies using pixel-perfect cheats and bullshit to sneak 5,000 huns through a 1 mile space, torch your settlement, and move 4 times normal distance to be out of reach of anyone. There's a reason why this is the only TW whose gameplay I've extensively modded. It's a shame, because the battles have interesting pace, ranged units are much more interesting/useful, and the changes to morale and exertion are really cool. That, and there are different types of factions to play that all play differently, like the nomadic tribes that can liberate or dominate factions as they tear west across Rome to find permanent settlements. It's just that the map is flat and shitty, and the enemy is given a plethora of cheats that make it unplayable unless you have them removed. Probably the game in the series with the most unrealized potential. There's a reason why so many TW playing channels have like 10 campaigns from all the other games, but like handful of unfinished ones for this. It just feels like they forgot the battles existed, and got too swept up in the post-Dark Souls "Please stomp my balls" wave.
 
Warhammer: Brought my faith back to the series. There's so much love and polish here. The battles once again have weight and clash to them, the map is strategic yet barebones and I spend much more time fighting battles than I did with S2/R2/Attila. Factions play differently and units all have some kind of interesting use. The flat map returns from Attila which kind of blows, but it's the one thing I really think of that I greatly dislike.

So I've been practicing editing and such lately to try to get a Youtube thing off the ground. One project I'm working on is putting together a review of the Total War series, and so far I guess I'll put a condensed version here for kicks:
 
Rome 1: This one tends to age poorly and well at the same time for me. The battles have aged surprisingly-well, and even outdo modern TW battles in some ways. My favorite feature in particular is how when a unit that's beating another unit will keep advancing, they slowly push the frontline backwards and envelope the enemy. It both looks really cool and creates tactical situations that allow for satsifying encirclements. The campaign map is so much more simple than later games. You can build any building, anywhere, so less fucking around waiting forever to replenish units and build armies that becomes really obnoxious starting with Napoleon.
 
Medieval 2: Kind of torn on this game. The battles can be clunky, as the intentionally slow moving speed of units can make it unclear if your orders went through, and the pathfinding (especially in towns) is absolute garbo. But they absolutely nailed the feel of armored units just wailing on each other. Like Rome 1, the grand strategy component is something I've grown to like very recently, as it is simple and just serves to get into big battles.
 
Empire: I got this one surprisingly late, and I wished I hadn't. I understand a lot of the issues people have with this game, but I'm enjoying just how crazy is it is in terms of unique units and how cartoonishly weird the campaign map can get when you take a turn and just noticed that Prussia just gifted Poland to the Iroquois Nations. This is a personal gripe, but I hate how this started naval battles in the series. As a campaign thing, it's just more time I have to spend building and recruiting. It would be fine if the naval battles weren't like watching twenty blind sloths trying to mate in a pool of molasses. They're plodding, buggy, and I never understood why I won or lost a single one of these in terms of mechanics.
 
Napoleon: It's alright. The musket gameplay of Empire is really refined and expanded-upon here, and is really fun to engage in. Unfortunately, something about the presentation is just very dull. It's all well put-together and gets you into lots of battles and all that, but I feel like they made Empire and felt like they had to make this game. This is kind of where I started to have gripes about the campaign map, too. It becomes very time restrictive while also forcing you to spend much more time planning and clicking and planning and clicking, rather than getting into massive battles.
 
Shogun 2: Probably the most well-presented TW game. The music, art, graphics, and design just show that this was a passion project for the entire team. Unfortunately for me, this one upped the game in terms of piddling around on the campaign map, as you had to carefully plan cities to get you the right types of units. This results in certain moments of the campaign forcing me to spend about a 1:10 ratio of time in favor of carefully planning cities and building armies versus actually fighting in battles. This is a shame, because the battles are beautiful, with some unique units that are fun to utilize in creative ways. Unfortunately, this game highlighted issues with the engine for me. As the first melee-focused game in the series to use Empire's engine, the battles are locked into these animated 1v1 duels that look like a bunch of inflatable punching clowns trying to have an orgy. The units will only fight on a pre-determined frontline. None of the push-back in Rome 1 and Medieval 2, and it just looks alien in certain situations. I overall do have a very positive opinion on this game, but there are a few things in retrospect that I wish it did better.
 
Rome II: I wasn't around for the release of this game after seeing how awful of a reception it got, but I bought it recently, and was pleasantly surprised with how much I like it. The campaign map is thankfully simplified again, and the game actually gives people nice tutorials. The UI is also very well laid-out for both battles and the campaign map. The battles are a mixed bag. They apparently had a massive problem with the "duel" system from Shogun 2 in this game that basically busted as the battles were hurt both in terms of look and function by some AI features and the fact that units were hardlocked into 1v1 duels only. This is apparent in new builds of the game by the fact that each unit has maybe one or two slow "attack" animations of them awkwardly jabbing their weapons, but you no longer have the issue of a unit of five spearmen holding out against a thousand surrounding swordsmen because none of the swordsmen can use numbers to gang up on them. This was improved, but the look of the battles is very disappointing. The static nature just means two units fight, one wins. Flanking is only really helpful for morale shocks, and doesn't give you as much of a noticeable killing edge as Rome 1/Medieval 2. Also, what were once passive abilities like heavier charges for cavalry, are now special activated abilities, that you have to switch on each time you want to use them. So unlike earlier games where a cavalry unit's charges were more powerful the faster they moved, you now have to charge, then activate a special ability one by one for each cavalry unit. A really dumb system. Overall, I really do like the game. I just wished that the battles didn't look so bleh.
 
Attila: God, I wish I could like this game. They did some really neat things with the battles here, but it feels like the developers just didn't want us to play them this time. No, most of the time you will be on the campaign map, fussing over politics, building farms that piss people off more than empty lots, and trying to predict how the AI will cheat next. The AI has been pumped up to ridiculous levels, only engaging you if they have the auto-resolve completely in their favor. This results in enemies using pixel-perfect cheats and bullshit to sneak 5,000 huns through a 1 mile space, torch your settlement, and move 4 times normal distance to be out of reach of anyone. There's a reason why this is the only TW whose gameplay I've extensively modded. It's a shame, because the battles have interesting pace, ranged units are much more interesting/useful, and the changes to morale and exertion are really cool. That, and there are different types of factions to play that all play differently, like the nomadic tribes that can liberate or dominate factions as they tear west across Rome to find permanent settlements. It's just that the map is flat and shitty, and the enemy is given a plethora of cheats that make it unplayable unless you have them removed. Probably the game in the series with the most unrealized potential. There's a reason why so many TW playing channels have like 10 campaigns from all the other games, but like handful of unfinished ones for this. It just feels like they forgot the battles existed, and got too swept up in the post-Dark Souls "Please stomp my balls" wave.
 
Warhammer: Brought my faith back to the series. There's so much love and polish here. The battles once again have weight and clash to them, the map is strategic yet barebones and I spend much more time fighting battles than I did with S2/R2/Attila. Factions play differently and units all have some kind of interesting use. The flat map returns from Attila which kind of blows, but it's the one thing I really think of that I greatly dislike.

So I've been practicing editing and such lately to try to get a Youtube thing off the ground. One project I'm working on is putting together a review of the Total War series, and so far I guess I'll put a condensed version here for kicks:
 
Rome 1: This one tends to age poorly and well at the same time for me. The battles have aged surprisingly-well, and even outdo modern TW battles in some ways. My favorite feature in particular is how when a unit that's beating another unit will keep advancing, they slowly push the frontline backwards and envelope the enemy. It both looks really cool and creates tactical situations that allow for satsifying encirclements. The campaign map is so much more simple than later games. You can build any building, anywhere, so less fucking around waiting forever to replenish units and build armies that becomes really obnoxious starting with Napoleon.
 
Medieval 2: Kind of torn on this game. The battles can be clunky, as the intentionally slow moving speed of units can make it unclear if your orders went through, and the pathfinding (especially in towns) is absolute garbo. But they absolutely nailed the feel of armored units just wailing on each other. Like Rome 1, the grand strategy component is something I've grown to like very recently, as it is simple and just serves to get into big battles.
 
Empire: I got this one surprisingly late, and I wished I hadn't. I understand a lot of the issues people have with this game, but I'm enjoying just how crazy is it is in terms of unique units and how cartoonishly weird the campaign map can get when you take a turn and just noticed that Prussia just gifted Poland to the Iroquois Nations. This is a personal gripe, but I hate how this started naval battles in the series. As a campaign thing, it's just more time I have to spend building and recruiting. It would be fine if the naval battles weren't like watching twenty blind sloths trying to mate in a pool of molasses. They're plodding, buggy, and I never understood why I won or lost a single one of these in terms of mechanics.
 
Napoleon: It's alright. The musket gameplay of Empire is really refined and expanded-upon here, and is really fun to engage in. Unfortunately, something about the presentation is just very dull. It's all well put-together and gets you into lots of battles and all that, but I feel like they made Empire and felt like they had to make this game. This is kind of where I started to have gripes about the campaign map, too. It becomes very time restrictive while also forcing you to spend much more time planning and clicking and planning and clicking, rather than getting into massive battles.
 
Shogun 2: Probably the most well-presented TW game. The music, art, graphics, and design just show that this was a passion project for the entire team. Unfortunately for me, this one upped the game in terms of piddling around on the campaign map, as you had to carefully plan cities to get you the right types of units. This results in certain moments of the campaign forcing me to spend about a 1:10 ratio of time in favor of carefully planning cities and building armies versus actually fighting in battles. This is a shame, because the battles are beautiful, with some unique units that are fun to utilize in creative ways. Unfortunately, this game highlighted issues with the engine for me. As the first melee-focused game in the series to use Empire's engine, the battles are locked into these animated 1v1 duels that look like a bunch of inflatable punching clowns trying to have an orgy. The units will only fight on a pre-determined frontline. None of the push-back in Rome 1 and Medieval 2, and it just looks alien in certain situations. I overall do have a very positive opinion on this game, but there are a few things in retrospect that I wish it did better.
 
Rome II: I wasn't around for the release of this game after seeing how awful of a reception it got, but I bought it recently, and was pleasantly surprised with how much I like it. The campaign map is thankfully simplified again, and the game actually gives people nice tutorials. The UI is also very well laid-out for both battles and the campaign map. The battles are a mixed bag. They apparently had a massive problem with the "duel" system from Shogun 2 in this game that basically busted as the battles were hurt both in terms of look and function by some AI features and the fact that units were hardlocked into 1v1 duels only. This is apparent in new builds of the game by the fact that each unit has maybe one or two slow "attack" animations of them awkwardly jabbing their weapons, but you no longer have the issue of a unit of five spearmen holding out against a thousand surrounding swordsmen because none of the swordsmen can use numbers to gang up on them. This was improved, but the look of the battles is very disappointing. The static nature just means two units fight, one wins. Flanking is only really helpful for morale shocks, and doesn't give you as much of a noticeable killing edge as Rome 1/Medieval 2. Also, what were once passive abilities like heavier charges for cavalry, are now special activated abilities, that you have to switch on each time you want to use them. So unlike earlier games where a cavalry unit's charges were more powerful the faster they moved, you now have to charge, then activate a special ability one by one for each cavalry unit. A really dumb system. Overall, I really do like the game. I just wished that the battles didn't look so bleh.
 
Attila: God, I wish I could like this game. They did some really neat things with the battles here, but it feels like the developers just didn't want us to play them this time. No, most of the time you will be on the campaign map, fussing over politics, building farms that piss people off more than empty lots, and trying to predict how the AI will cheat next. The AI has been pumped up to ridiculous levels, only engaging you if they have the auto-resolve completely in their favor. This results in enemies using pixel-perfect cheats and bullshit to sneak 5,000 huns through a 1 mile space, torch your settlement, and move 4 times normal distance to be out of reach of anyone. There's a reason why this is the only TW whose gameplay I've extensively modded. It's a shame, because the battles have interesting pace, ranged units are much more interesting/useful, and the changes to morale and exertion are really cool. That, and there are different types of factions to play that all play differently, like the nomadic tribes that can liberate or dominate factions as they tear west across Rome to find permanent settlements. It's just that the map is flat and shitty, and the enemy is given a plethora of cheats that make it unplayable unless you have them removed. Probably the game in the series with the most unrealized potential. There's a reason why so many TW playing channels have like 10 campaigns from all the other games, but like handful of unfinished ones for this. It just feels like they forgot the battles existed, and got too swept up in the post-Dark Souls "Please stomp my balls" wave.
 
Warhammer: Brought my faith back to the series. There's so much love and polish here. The battles once again have weight and clash to them, the map is strategic yet barebones and I spend much more time fighting battles than I did with S2/R2/Attila. Factions play differently and units all have some kind of interesting use. The flat map returns from Attila which kind of blows, but it's the one thing I really think of that I greatly dislike.

Anyone with a brain saw that coming. Economists like Krugman were warning of it for years, but it got dismissed as "liberal media bias" or whatever. Even the average dipshit could watch HGTV and wonder why throwing a single piece of track lighting in a kitchen added $25,000 to a house price. When I go to back to my hometown in Jersey, every year more houses look like crap; they need paint, the yard is uncut and full of weeds, the windows are dirty, etc. It's fairly obvious the entire town is renting because anything within an hour of NYC costs ten million dollars because realtors said it was worth that much. A guy whose probably most reliable source of income was property, and most likely inherited a certain amount of his property would understand what was going on and how he could work it. And considering how crooked the system behind the crash was, I don't mind that he made money off of it. There's plenty of other shit to find reprehensible about him.