BADLUCK'S PROFILE

I really hate it when games do over-the-top lighting effects...



... except when I do it.

lol, isn't that the way it always happens? Glad you figured it out, and also that you're enjoying it!

When is the last time the US toppled a democracy? I think there was some bullshit in Haiti in 91, but other than that, we're talking about Cold War stuff. I don't know a lot about the Cold War, but I feel pretty comfortable saying the NATO alliance were the good guys. The US might have been the least good of said good guys, but I'm hoping we're all far enough along here that we can at least admit America was better than the USSR.

While there were certainly ulterior motives, everything the US did was in the interest of preventing WW3 (meaning, keeping the communist sphere of puppet states small enough that another war wasn't realistic). And considering WW3 would have been literally the worst thing that has ever happened in human history, it's kind of hard to fault them for that.

That isn't to say petty politics and vendetta and corruption and other factors didn't come into play. They did, and criticism for that is absolutely valid. But the Cold War was a game, and the US didn't have the luxury of not playing to win.

There was every reason to believe that WW3 was right around the corner, and the choice was literally to become too strong for it to happen or to fight it. There was no third option. And yeah, that results in a lot of mess and death and what could legitimately be perceived as hypocrisy.

And on top of that, there were some bad moves too. Even if every decision was an honest attempt to prevent WW3 (and every decision wasn't), that doesn't mean everything turned out to be the correct thing to do.

Anyway, my point is this; it's fair to criticize the US's foreign policy, but it seems a little naive to boil it down to hypocrisy.

Democracy is good... unless it furthers the aims of a superpower that wants to start WW3. Despite all the confounding factors, I really don't think it's fair to boil that down to hypocrisy, and dismiss it as such.

As for Syria, it seems pretty clear to me that letting people get away with chemical weapons attacks is absolutely not acceptable. It also seems clear to me that this shitty, ineffectual missile strike from the US had nothing to do with that aside from convenience, and is an attempt to create plausible deniability as the evidence continues to mount that Donald Trump colluded with Russia.

If Trump actually did collude with Russia, this is obviously what just happened. And considering that the Steele Dossier now appears to be legitimate, not to mention the mountain of circumstantial evidence, this really does seem like the most reasonable conclusion.

What I anticipate is Russia pretending to want war with the US from this, Trump pretending to throw a few diplomatic punches, lots of fear-mongering (both as a distraction and a way to consolidate power), then a peace deal is "brokered" at the last minute, in which the US lifts sanctions on Russia, recognizes that annexed bit of Ukraine as Russia, with a promise from Putin to be tougher on Assad.

No WW3. Lots of corruption.

There's very little you can't do in rm2k3. It may be limited, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't cook something up. What's an affinity system? My guess is relationships.

Temple Telindra, "reskin" of the classic Refmap cathedral tiles. Really happy with how these came out. The only thing I think might be worth changing is the color of the walls, since it may be a little too similar to the original.