I do.  Do people think sweet corn needs to be cooked?  Like, if you want it warm for butter slathering purposes, or grilled for charring, go at it, but it doesn't require cooking to be perfectly edible.

Based on what I heard directly from a pair of devs and what the lead said on stage, I doubt it. They seemed pretty definitive about the map outside of Europe being playable from the jump. They specifically mentioned govt types that would be assigned to some eastern tags. That said, obviously things can change.

I’m here at PDXCON and talking to the CK3 guys they are aware of this concern. I mentioned below that the map is actually slightly expanded from the current CK2 map. They have been talking a lot about doing some “addition by subtraction” in terms of losing some of the less well-loved additions, but also expanding on…

Yeah, not an unreasonable concern.  That said, I'm here at PDXCON and from a map size perspective they've indicated it'll start at the same extent as CKII, if not slightly larger.

They really do fall into the “hard to learn, impossible to master” category don’t they? Like I have a lot of hours in EU4, but I still don't fully understand the best way to approach combat, or trade for that matter.

I totally understand where you are coming from on this. I’ve spent years on various Total Wars and Civs, etc. and it did shockingly little to prepare me for the experience of EU4 or Stellaris. Adding to the issue is the fact that the various titles really don’t play the same.

It's EU4 for me, but yeah, I've lost work nights grasping for rulership over the HRE.

You are entitled to that opinion, though I think it's evident that I do not share it.

So are the shitty G/O Media masters now just bringing in freelancers on the promise that they can plug their shit for half a post as long as something goes up on the site?  How is this not marked as a fucking ad?

And if, as the article states, most of the players who left Lutheran for college ultimately obtained a bachelor’s degree, then whatever chunk of a secondary education they got must have been sufficient.  Former players seem to look back on their time at Lutheran as helpful and formative, and that seems laudable enough…

I feel like you're vastly underestimating the wider world of football's capacity to debase itself to "redeem" mediocre white guys.

They might exist without the Olympics, but the games are evidently expected to run the city almost 7 billion dollars, which is a frankly insane amount of money to spend when no evidence suggests that the city itself will see significant returns on that investment. And you can be damn sure that homeless and…

It would be in line with her level of commitment to her current voting rights work.  She seems like she's all in on that right now.

I wonder if it’s the kind of thing that will be more interesting years from now. For example, I’m not convinced that the Yankees 20th century dominion over baseball was always interesting to watch in the moment if you weren’t a fan, but years later as a historical artifact you can focus on the characters on the team…

While a lot of that, especially the last paragraph, seems like insanity to me, I recognize that’s because we view the game differently, and you’re right that’s valid and a good thing.

You’re probably right, I’ve never grasped the non-Spike mindset. It’s always seemed to me like Timmy’s/Johnny’s are out their deliberately playing Magic kinda bad and wishing everyone else would go along with it. That’s unkind, I know, but Timmy’s want to win games, right? Like, they want to win games, but more than…

There have been multiple ways to make spells uncounterable, and/or creatures/spells that are themselves uncounterable. This is all part of the game. The meta-layer of building a deck that can deal with counterspells, playing the game in such a way as to minimize the impact, that’s a thing. You don’t play an aggro deck…

AS someone who played MTG for a decade and a half, I’ve really never understood this complaint. Yes, having spells countered isn’t awesome, but the game isn’t about both players executing a strategy and smashing them up against each other until one of you dies. You modify how you play. You keep mana open to pay for…

Logan Cunningham is the voice of all of those narrators, so you'd just need the one guy.

There's definitely some tongue-in-cheek poking at Paradox, I remember some early Stellaris notes with a lot of "can you believe this wasn't already in?" type stuff.  That said, I think one of the reasons it works is that it doesn't feel mean-spirited, and that the shortcomings he's pointing out are often ones the devs…