New patch

[hunt11]

or in the case of Hinnom just send as much food as possible too them and watch them go on a rampage

[lch]

QXel said:
But I highly doubt that Microsoft release a patch which ruins 70-90% of the games !!!

I wouldn't accuse M$ of _intentionally_ breaking things during their release cycles, although there usually is a long list of things that don't work anymore when they release something new. There is a lot of software for them, too, though.

I'd rather accuse M$ of bogging down their code trying to keep things from failing too much. I read this hilarious blog entry from a tech guy working at M$ a while ago where he described two cases requiring them to come up with workarounds to keep software running on Windows from crashing, which seems what they're doing for a job, more or less. If I remember right, the gist of it was that the devs at a specific unnamed big company (my guess is Borland) came up with an unorthodox workaround to get a window instance or something like that, like poking around the stack for that. A probable reason given in the comments was that this might have to do with having to work with closed source themselves. So the M$ guys had to debug the other's software, find out WHY it crashed, then understand WHAT they were trying to do, then include a workaround in Windows so that the program would continue to work instead of crashing. And then ***** about it online. Ahh, what a wonderful world.

[lch]

Follow-up on this, I found the article again. As I thought, I came across it on Raymond Chen's MSN blog "The Old New Thing". But since the search on that blog doesn't work at all (??) I wanted to write him an email about it and while googling for THAT I found the original thread "How Microsoft Lost the API War" on Joel on Software that links to "When programs grovel into undocumented structures..." on Chen's blog. Another link goes to "What about BOZOSLIVEHERE and TABTHETEXTOUTFORWIMPS?" there, which is also entertaining to read.

On behalf of games breaking upon Windows Updates, he writes about that in an older article named "Why not just block the apps that rely on undocumented behavior?", which is referenced on the Wikipedia article about him, too.

[SelfishGene]

I really like the Hinnom mythology. It's a cross between the Biblical antagonists of the Israelites, Vampire: The Masquerade's Antedilluvian 3rd generation fathers, and Warhammer 40k's Horus Heresy.

[thejeff]

I do like the mythology. The only nit I'd pick with it is the reference to "Celestial Powers". Seems to me "The Pantokrator" would fit better with the rest of dominions mythology. Nor does "Powers" go well with the Israelite background.

[Loren]

Can someone explain the Merkavah?

222 astral pearls for something inferior to a Seraph. You can get the Searph for 100 astral (wish) + 20 nature (GOR).


I also wonder if something happened to the AI. I'm trying out the Gath and things seem strange. I had just about surrounded Agartha's 3 provinces when they went to war--I had at least 20 at that time! In the other direction I found Panagea's two provinces, although I didn't get to smash him while he was that size because I was busy dealing with Agartha.

I finally dominion-killed R'yleh in year 12. His farthest expansion at that point was 11 provinces from home, a point he had attained years before--there are still neutrals out there that I am now collecting with R'yleh out of the way.

The map is Glory of the Gods. Nobody else has completed their research even though the world is approximately divided in thirds right now. Admittedly I am pressing my dominion over a good swath of their empire and I've got Wrath of God & Purgatory up but their research rate hasn't dipped since I cast them, they are just going slow.

[MaxWilson]

Hey, I just noticed that Gath's Benjamite slinger has precision 12 and ambidexterity. Cool.

"And the children of Benjamin were numbered... Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men lefthanded; every one could sling stones at an hair breadth, and not miss."

http://scriptures.lds.org/en/judg/20/15-16#15

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Loren,

It's 222 astral pearls for something that may (or may not) be inferior to a seraph, PLUS 4 super-awesome mini-thugs in their own right. The 4 Ophanim are definitely worth the price--in my test runs I had the Chayot just stand there watching while the Ophanim rolled over hundreds of chaff units everything in sight without taking a single wound as far as I could tell. You have noted that the Chayot has four forms and can survive a Soul Slay? That's not to say that somebody might not Wish for a Chayot directly, but I must say I'd rather have both the Chayot and his bodyguard. Call Merkavah is incredible.

-Max

[Omnirizon]

Damn MaxW!!

that's some impressive research and imagination from KO & JK to include something like that, and a good eye by yourself to catch it.

I'm trying to picture KO/JK reading their bibles while in preparation for making this new nation.

[MaxWilson]

Omnirizon,

Thanks! I can't claim much credit, though, because I've always thought the Benjamites were pretty cool. They slaughtered most of the other Israelites in the war, and it took the combined armies of everyone to fight them off. (Then the others killed off all of the Benjamines except for six hundred men.)

I agree, I'm also impressed. I'm sure KO and JK are always this thorough and I just don't usually catch it because I don't know anything about Japanese/Nordic/Aztec/etc. history.

-Max