Prediction Thread

That sounds like what they tried to do before golden ages were introduced. Golden ages started out as dark ages but they turned out to be intensely un-fun to play through so they turned them into golden ages and flipped the debuffs. I think a pandemic mechanic would be like that or would have to be so nerfed as to be pointless.
 
I don't see much a way that they can do it well. Civilization isn't a game that does well with disasters unless it's in mods. The random event system in Civ 4 did alright but even then, the bad results were leashed.

Did somebody say disasters and mods?
 
That sounds like what they tried to do before golden ages were introduced. Golden ages started out as dark ages but they turned out to be intensely un-fun to play through so they turned them into golden ages and flipped the debuffs. I think a pandemic mechanic would be like that or would have to be so nerfed as to be pointless.
They still have dark ages alongside golden ages. I really like the golden ages/dark ages because it really incentivizes exploration. It also punishes turtling and isolated starts. The way the lighting/coloring of the map changes based on the ages is pretty cool too.

Anyway, I predict that some sort of pandemic mod is in the works.
 
Civ3 by the end had plague. It was mostly annoying.
 
Civ3 by the end had plague. It was mostly annoying.
Cause there was far too little of this:

bring-out-your-dead-gif.gif
 
Oim not dead yet!
 
I've heard that for a lot of mobile/free-to-play games, they make most of their money from a small subset of high-spending players. They're sometimes referred to as "whales."

One of the whale was my 6 years old sister's son, who use his mommy phone and bang it buying in-game diamond, my sister paid 1000 usd or something, she is in huge shock and you cannot really angry at the culprit.

Yes. A lot of games are getting greedy with it too. The costs of microtransactions are skyrocketing. It's insane.

I started playing Star Trek Fleet Command on my phone and it's actually a really well put together game. The issue being... everything is designed to make you pay. Forced PvP, and you can buy the things that make your ships stronger. One ship can't even be earned for free, you have to buy it... and it is over 3x the strength of other ships of the same level. Eventually, your upgrades start requiring refined resources, and you have to manually mine the unrefined resources. This takes hours, and you can be attacked while mining. Your ship gets destroyed, you have to repair it (which costs resources and time) and you lose the mining spot. Well, that's annoying, but wait, there's more! You also lose the majority of the resources you've mined. Spent the last 6 hours mining 12000 crystal? Congrats, you get to keep 350 of that. The cheapest refinement costs 3000 minerals, and you get ~100 refined minerals from it. You can do this once every ten hours. The cheapest upgrade costs over 300 refined minerals.

The game would be amazing if it weren't designed to milk you dry.

You can skip the timers and such by simply buying the resources you need with latinum. 300 refined minerals is something like 75 latinum... which costs over $10. Before I uninstalled the game, the "sales" offered to me were all over $60. Two packs were over $130. And you only get marginal return from this. Maybe a million parsteel, which you use for building, and at that point each building upgrade costs 60k+ parsteel. You get some research points, again, not that much. Some resources, again, not that much. Recruit tokens, which are like lootboxes. You get maybe five boxes worth of recruits, which get you cards, which get you the chance to unlock officers for your ships. All randomized. All for the affordable and very fair price of a quarter of your rent. For some pixels that don't even dramatically change your gameplay experience.

It's really frustrating, actually. If it were simply a money grab it'd be easy to ignore. But the developers actually made a good game. Allow for PvE, remove the paywalls, and you've got a game that will give you at least a month of entertainment. 40+ hours, easily. And I would be glad to support a developer who does that. I'm not opposed to buying microtransactions. But c'mon. They built something good and then went in with a studied hand to add obstacles to your enjoyment, all designed to pressure you into paying them money. And the money they pressure you to pay is just an astronomical amount. It's garbage and unethical.

It's not just "kind of a scam", it is a deliberately addictive gambling mechanism designed to make people spend money they don't really have in small enough increments for them not to question their own behavior. It's toxic, it's disgusting, and it's making the wrong kind of people billions of dollars.



Kids and people with psychological problems are targeted directly, because they're the most vulnerable people and at the same time the most promising "whales".

I predict that the coronavirus isolation is going to produce an epidemic of microtransaction-game addicts.
 
It seems that many services will and are already long distance. I wonder if this year applying to university will be online as well.
 
It seems that many services will and are already long distance. I wonder if this year applying to university will be online as well.

I don't know what university education is like in Latvia.

However the Corvid 19 lock down will likely burst the UK university bubble.

People will start saying why should I take out a student loan for £9,000
a year when most of it can be delivered over the Internet for a pittance ?
 
I thought everyone already knew you aren't really paying for the education, you're paying for the piece of paper you get after 4 years
 
I fear it'll get worse as white men become an increasingly irrelevant minority, I don't see them giving up power without a fight.

Hard to put up a fight when you're on a ventilator in a hospice unit. Geeze that's morbid and I apologize but that's how I feel this will be resolved; they will get old and die. Sure they will pass on the enthusiasm somewhat to their kids but not enough to matter.
Well this interaction took on a whole other angle with Covid... :sad:
I predict the Equal Rights Amendment will be put into the constitution after passing legal challenges at the Supreme Court.
I no longer believe this prediction; I now think Roberts will invalidate the ERA even though it's finally passed the 2/3 threshold for being added to the constitution.

I predict that in 2021 DC statehood will pass the Senate and House (again) but Roberts will issue a stay on it becoming a state due to a GOP lawsuit and will ultimately uphold the lawsuit and block statehood.

Some mutually exclusive predictions:

I predict Trump will lose pretty badly in the upcoming election, mount an attempt to stay in office but the GOP will finally break with him and show him the door. He will claim asylum in Russia and flee the US to avoid tax evasion and other charges.

I predict Trump will lose in the election but claim vote rigging and Chinese interference invalidates the results. He will successfully stop the electoral college from meeting and therefore the House will have to vote on a winner. Unfortunately under these circumstances, the House is mandated by the constitution to vote by states rather than individual members. Thus, with more state delegations under control of the GOP than the Democrats, Trump will win an illegitimate second term.
 
The Fed is going to break its one rule, cast off the fiction that is our current capital markets, and buy stocks before June 30th.

Index funds or ETF's, not individual stocks*

It's July. Did this one happen?
 
Some mutually exclusive predictions:

I predict Trump will lose pretty badly in the upcoming election, mount an attempt to stay in office but the GOP will finally break with him and show him the door. He will claim asylum in Russia and flee the US to avoid tax evasion and other charges.

I predict Trump will lose in the election but claim vote rigging and Chinese interference invalidates the results. He will successfully stop the electoral college from meeting and therefore the House will have to vote on a winner. Unfortunately under these circumstances, the House is mandated by the constitution to vote by states rather than individual members. Thus, with more state delegations under control of the GOP than the Democrats, Trump will win an illegitimate second term.
I call shenanigans on this. Making two mutually exclusive predictions is not making a prediction at all. Under Supreme Prediction Law, timeless and sacred, blessed be its holy name... You must pick one prediction and stick with it until you change your mind and pick a different contradictory prediction. You can not validly have two contradictory predictions hanging out there in the ether at the same time. Its an abomination against nature and the space time continuum. Retract I say! Retract! Retract! :gripe:
 
I predict that:

(1) Donald Trump will, recognising his irretrievable polling position, withdraw in September 2020 citing health grounds.
(2) Mike Pence will be quickly slotted in to take over as GOP candidate.
(3) Joe Biden will choose an unimpressive partner before unraveling under pressure in a sad but disconcerting way.
(4) Mike Pence will therefore be elected as a not particulary inspiring but safe candidate.
 
With all due respect, that does not sound like the Donald Trump of the last 40 years.

Edit: I predict he will stay in the race, but I can’t guess as to the outcome of the election.
 
That is the safe prediction and may well be correct.

I admit my line is an outlier.

Let me explain. When his business ventures started to go belly up,
his policy was for him and his closest cronies to take what they could,
let the business venture fold and the other investors take the hit.

He just does not seem like the Captain who goes down with his ship.
He may decide I'll quit POTUS while I'm ahead rather than face defeat.
 
I call shenanigans on this. Making two mutually exclusive predictions is not making a prediction at all. Under Supreme Prediction Law, timeless and sacred, blessed be its holy name... You must pick one prediction and stick with it until you change your mind and pick a different contradictory prediction. You can not validly have two contradictory predictions hanging out there in the ether at the same time. Its an abomination against nature and the space time continuum. Retract I say! Retract! Retract! :gripe:
I know, I know. I just truly seeing it go either way. Really it comes down to the GOP leadership and whether or not they will meet the ultimate test of party over country. Based only on their actions to date, I'd say they would back him. Based on very recent developments (and especially with respect to the absolute meltdown of leadership in our current crisis), I am beginning to hope that they would ultimately do the right thing.

The other thing with my second prediction was that I wanted to introduce the notion that a hanged-up election does not automatically mean Pelosi becomes President, which is a notion that a few of us (including myself) have discussed and believed would happen. I've read some articles that have pointed out it is only under fleeting unlikely scenarios where that would play out, it's much more likely that if Trump throws a wrench in the process that the House would vote to install Trump due to constitutionally-mandated procedures which would make the House vote as state blocks rather than individual members.
With all due respect, that does not sound like the Donald Trump of the last 40 years.

Edit: I predict he will stay in the race, but I can’t guess as to the outcome of the election.

That is the safe prediction and may well be correct.

I admit my line is an outlier.

Let me explain. When his business ventures started to go belly up,
his policy was for him and his closest cronies to take what they could,
let the business venture fold and the other investors take the hit.

He just does not seem like the Captain who goes down with his ship.
He may decide I'll quit POTUS while I'm ahead rather than face defeat.
I don't agree with EnglishEdward's prediction but I do agree that bailing when the going gets tough is exactly in line with Trump's behavior.

My prediction is about the results of the United States Air Force's (USAF) launch competition which should wrap up in Q1 of 2020. The USAF is having a competition to see which rocket companies will be able to sell rides to it for national security missions. They will pick two winners with a 60/40 split between them for contracts. The competitors are:
Update:
The Air Force still hasn't made a decision on this competition and now Congress has been trying very hard to muscle in on the competition and make it such that even the losers would get funding to continue developing their rockets. Why? Because one of the primary goals of nationally-funded space activities (whether civilian or military in nature) is to be a jobs program. One of the competitors (Northrop) on this program definitely will shut down this rocket effort if they don't get government funding and it is likely that a second competitor (ULA) would as well. It seems that only SpaceX and Blue Origin would continue their programs in spite of a launch - SpaceX because of ongoing commercial success and Blue Origin because it is entirely bankrolled by moneybags Bezos.
 
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