We also believe the dynamic macro environment has contributed to a more cautious consumer

Am I getting this right? Is this double speak for “the government is fucking up so badly, people try to save some wealth for the inevitable fall of society”?

Yeah, I think that’s a lesson a certain orange parasite never learned.

Maybe that’s part of the reason why his businesses failed?

What? Are you insane?

You should replay it. It is imho the highlight of the series because of a few changes compared to other civ games:

• Focusing on the terraforming and colonisation of alpha Centauri allowed them to have an actual story where you uncovered stuff about the planet and its indigenous lifeforms while you played. It’s from the 90s, so there is no branching storylines, alternative endings or stuff like that, but even after repeated playthroughs it’s nice to have some progression that’s more than a tech tree.
• Having only seven leaders (and having them all in every game, no smaller or larger games) might seem weird and tbh, larger maps feel a bit empty. However, each technology, city improvement or wonder gives you some (well narrated) text bits of one of them, giving them so much more character than the leaders in your average game of civ. The hatred for Miriam has become a meme, which wouldn’t have happened if these characters weren’t extremely well written. Ironically this is imho of of the reasons why the add on didn’t work as well - the few bits that were added for each of the new factions just weren’t enough.

Although there are more differences, like eg a unit design workshop, the game loop feels quite similar to civ. It’s like they took civ 4, polished it and just decided to make it… Dunno, meaningful. And while that’s not per se relevant for in game decisions such as “where to settle” or “what to build”, it just makes the whole experience so much better. It’s still my comfort game that I boot up for another play on my deck every now and then.

Has there even been a Civ release that was great at the start?

Does Alpha Centauri count as a civ game?

Every single day it’s that fucker again. I’m from Europe, technically he shouldn’t have any direct impact on my life and be an occasional footnote about what’s going on on the other continent. And yet here we are, day after day wondering how much better the whole world could have been off if only one jerk had had slightly better aim.

Do you know about gaming consoles? 3D accelerator cards? Graphics cards? Or… CD ROM drives?

People have been buying hardware to play a certain game for literal decades. The games are called “system sellers”. Games so good they sell hardware. It’s usually even the opposite: if your hardware doesn’t have such a game, it doesn’t sell (atari Jaguar anyone?).

Crepés

I don’t think that’s a German term.

Republican lawmakers in Arkansas have introduced a bill that would allow lawsuits against anyone who […] use a student’s chosen name that is different from their birth name

Did you just call him Bob? Robert, call the name police! Now!!

Et tu brute force

Forgot to add the link?

Here, you dropped this:

/s

That was discontinued after two iterations. Was going to switch to ios just for their mini range after years of Android, then saw that they got rid of small phones as well. Like, what would I gain by switching ecosystems if I know that the next phone is still going to be huge?

BTW, I settled for an S24, which is considered “small” now but still way too big, but at least Samsung has a decent one handed mode that doesn’t hide half of your screen like ios or stock android but instead decreases the whole screen to bearable sizes:

Still feels like the damn clown mask meme, where, after years of increasing phone sizes, they now add a stupid software feature to virtually decrease screen size to remain usable.

I’m not deep enough in that topic, but for mildly entertaining criticism of that whole thing: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NKYxdzSNqzE&t=343s

Me too, man. Me too.