The Very-Many-Questions-Not-Worth-Their-Own-Thread Thread 36

[Mouthwash]

If you're looking at Total War mods, I'm obliged to stan for Europa Barbarorum rather than Rome: Total Realism. EB was the granddaddy and has always been a more extensive and, in my opinion, better-put-together and better-researched mod than RTR. As hard as it is to believe, EB both gets the history right and makes the gameplay significantly more fun than in the vanilla game.

It has a sequel, though: Europa Barbarorum II for M2TW, which is more detailed and includes the evolution of government systems. For example:

 

[Birdjaguar]

^^^ Damn, I may need to try that out and I might have to spend less time playing POE.

How current are the graphics?

 

[MaryKB]

Do you ever see squirrels so morbidly obese everywhere, or is this just an American thing? I've had this [not so little] fellow visiting me, I don't know how he gets by being so overweight.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I've never seen a morbidly obese squirrel anywhere in the US. I mean I'm not a squirrel whisperer but I would have noticed absolute units like that about.

 

[rah]

Yeah, there is enough wild life in our neighborhood that fat squirrels become someone else's meal very quickly. So no, we also don't see them very often either.

 

[Birdjaguar]

My brother was feeding about 30 squirrels at my mother's house this fall (along with bunches of birds). Well in November six foxes made an appearance and poof! no more squirrels. Easy prey for smart foxes.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Saw a fat rabbit the other day. Thought "cold is now a greater concern than any predator."

 

[Michkov]

Is it winter in the squirrel picture? Winter coats tend to be fatten the animal.

 

[shadowplay]

Do you ever see squirrels so morbidly obese everywhere, or is this just an American thing? I've had this [not so little] fellow visiting me, I don't know how he gets by being so overweight.

I believe they try to fatten themselves before the food becomes more scarce as winter rolls on.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I believe they try to fatten themselves before the food becomes more scarce as winter rolls on.

A common practice in the animal kingdom.

 

[Mouthwash]

^^^ Damn, I may need to try that out and I might have to spend less time playing POE.

How current are the graphics?

Very good for a twelve-year-old game, and the engine uses actual collision (which TW games afterward lacked).

 

[Michkov]

Do they? I thought squirrels hide caches of nuts and seeds to feed on during the winter not fatten up.

 

[Dachs]

It has a sequel, though: Europa Barbarorum II for M2TW, which is much more detailed and includes the evolution of government systems.

Yeah, EB2 is delightful. EB1's government system was revolutionary for its time and the second game does it even better. I also like the much more detailed era system for unit recruitment, the map icons, and the more extensive scripting for missions. The slightly less-suicidal AI is a bonus.

I just wanted to point out that EB exists, rather than get lost in the weeds of whether a partially complete EB2 is better than a fully complete EB1; either is more fun, more historically accurate, etc. than RTR is. It's not really a competition, I suppose, since modern RTR looks an awful lot like EB1 did (and there's been cross-pollination of ideas and textures both ways as I understand), but like I said, I stan the hell out of EB.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I downloaded a program that shows a calendar for any month:

Anyone know the reason for the earliest month being January 1583? It's arbitrary enough that I'm guessing it's a technical limitation.

 

[Traitorfish]

I downloaded a program that shows a calendar for any month:

Anyone know the reason for the earliest month being January 1583? It's arbitrary enough that I'm guessing it's a technical limitation.

Best guest, that's the first full year of the Gregorian calendar, which was introduced in October, 1582. Probably the way the program is built doesn't allow them to display partial years, and handling the Julian/Gregorian handover would be too niche interest to be worth the effort.

(Cards on the table, I didn't know off the top of my head that the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582, but the date seemed about right and Wiki confirmed it.)

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

That makes perfect sense. Thank you.

 

[MaryKB]

I downloaded a program that shows a calendar for any month:

Anyone know the reason for the earliest month being January 1583? It's arbitrary enough that I'm guessing it's a technical limitation.

Ooooh you've got me so very curious now, I want to try building something in Excel to do this and see how far back I can go.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I mostly just use it to look up the weekday of specific dates. It's quicker than using one of those online calculators.

 

[Michkov]

I have a strange day with the internet intersecting my recent youtube watch history quite a bit. For the calendar interested:

Also for aimee, I find just plugging the date into Wolfram Alpha quick and easy. Mostly because I have it in my mini search engines in FF.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=16+jan+1487

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I was actually working on this page again. Glancing over at a calendar set to the month I needed is a bit quicker than plugging a whole bunch of dates into a weekday calculator or Wolfram Alpha. I'll keep that in mind for the future, though.