Introduce yourselves!

[generalolaf]

I've been here a while as a grand strategy/4X gamer, but I guess no harm in re-introductions.

I'm a 17-year-old high school student from Wellington, New Zealand (university student starting next year). I've dabbled in games since I was about 7 but city sims were never something I really explored. I tended to go through phases of totally obsessing over a game, then abandoning it for the next - I've been an avid player of Age of Empires (II, III, Mythology), Civilization (4, 5), EU (3, 4), CK2, dabbled in Minecraft and Spore, among others. I played Sim City 4 once when I was too young to 'get it' and was scared away by that a bit. Coming back to the genre with this after six years of never playing a city sim at all is going to be really interesting and I'm intrigued with where this looks like it's going.

I also write (never managed to keep anything going in terms of an AAR on these forums, but I want to be a novelist), bike, play and follow (field) hockey and follow football (my local team in the Australian A-league, the Wellington Phoenix, as well as Swansea in the Premier League.) I love games like this that allow you to create a world where in theory, so many interactions and stories can come from and weave into each other. I don't care for goals, I play games for an experience and a journey. This looks like it might deliver, so I'll stick around and see where it all goes.

 

[TotalyMoo]

Hello, very nice to meet you all! There's tons and tons of stuff I want to ask many of you, but I have to pace myself, hehe. So here we go!

Hey. I am Sotrax. I am 22 years old and I have a completed vocational training as an 'transport expert'. Actual I work as an busdriver in the most beautiful capital, Berlin. Public transport is not just my job, it's my vocation.
I played Cities in Motion 2 ad nauseum and actual it's Train Fever that steals every free minute. I really can't wait for Cities: Skyline, and I hope that the transport part will be not just a minor feature.

Haha, wow, you really seem to live for public transport! Hoping to see some good feedback on that part of the game from you

I'm also a stroke survivor. Gaming has actually been part of my physical therapy; a fun part.

This might be too personal, please don't feel any need to answer, but how does gaming work as physical therapy? Is it to recover parts of your body locked away by the stroke, or something completely different that I am overseeing?

On the pc, I mostly play old games but that's because I didn't have the money to buy a new gaming pc (nor could I find the hardware, again I'm from Venezuela) but last year I traveled to New York and got myself a good high-end pc, and a couple of games.

How hard is it to find hardware in Venezuela? Are there no stores you can import from, or is it too unsafe with such expensive stuff in the post? I've always wanted to visit your country, so would love to know more!

I'm Matthew - 15 (16 on October 6th) a Junior in High School (just started 11th grade today) (...) I am 50% Indian(Dravidian) 25% African (Jamaican) 12.5% Dutch and 12.5% Chinese - witch is what happens when you live in a immigrant nation such as the US.

Nice to see more young people in our community, you seem very mature for your age. Also that's a very interesting heritage, maybe a bit too personal but I really wonder how this mix of ethnicity looks physically

I moved to Papua New Guinea when I was 6 months old, left when I was 12. The experience resulted in me having a very different outlook on the world in relation to my Aussie peers when I moved to boarding school.

Interesting part here, what would be the main takeaway from living in PNG - would you say? Was this what made you want to pursue journalism?

and tower defense.

Got any suggestions what to play here? I've always loved the Bloons series as well as other flash-games but would love a more proper Tower Defense. Also old WC3 mods like Elements TD etc. were amazing.

 

[Goldiva]

Got any suggestions what to play here? I've always loved the Bloons series as well as other flash-games but would love a more proper Tower Defense. Also old WC3 mods like Elements TD etc. were amazing.

Two that I keep going back to... Desktop TD and a more "proper" one Fieldrunners 2.

 

[TotalyMoo]

...

I could never get into Fieldrunners 1 or 2, I don't know why but it just feels too generic and... I don't know, not fun. Will check out Desktop TD, thanks!

 

[Marov84]

Hey. I'm Mariusz, I'm Polish. I live in big city of Poznań. I'm 30 old years. I was graduated in political science with a specialization in journalism. Currently not working in this profession. At the moment I am a civil servant and I'm working in The District Inspectorate of Construction Supervision for the city of Poznan. I have knowledge in the field of construction law. I love many types of games: SimCity all series, Cim 1 and 2, Caesar III and IV, Tropico etc. I've always loved simulators cities. I liked to build cities and see how they grow. I'm waiting on the computer game of Cities: Skylines.

 

[OmarVP85]

How hard is it to find hardware in Venezuela? Are there no stores you can import from, or is it too unsafe with such expensive stuff in the post? I've always wanted to visit your country, so would love to know more!

You need dollars to buy american products. If I want to buy dollars with my currency, I need to buy a plane ticket to US (which are scarce and VERY expensive), go to a bank with a burocratic hellspawn of papers and documents, and pray to God that the government approves my adquisition of dollars before the date I'm supposed to travel. There's been cases were people buy the plane ticket, two months before they're going to travel, and the government still fails to approve their dollars in time.
So most of us have to go through the safe way: black market dollars.
The thing is, that official dollars are at a fixed exchange rate of Bsf.49.98 (actually Bs.6.000, but that's another story) for $1.00.
Instead, black market dollars are at random exchange that one day can be Bsf.70.90 for $1.00 or even Bs.88.09 for that same amount.

Another thing is our wages. I'm currently on minimum wage, my family has money but still I like to buy things with my own money. So I'm earning Bsf.6.540.60 monthly.
Last time I checked, a basic market basket is at roughly Bsf.18.000.00 (before buying trivial stuff, I need to think about feeding me), and that is if you find basic stuff like flour, milk, chicken, since there's a shortage of those.
A plane ticket for let's say.... Miami, is at Bsf.21.007.00, and I'm not gonna bother with checking how expensive is a cheap hotel in Miami (Which is like a 5 star hotel in here, I mean Detroit is an utopia compared to Caracas).

So yeah, I heard tales of friends I got in North America telling me that they worked for 3 months selling couches at a furnitore store and in that time could afford a trip to Europe.
If I want to do that, I'll have to work for decades... literally since this currency is weaker day after day.

You always wanted to visit my country, well...

Don't.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/dat...ork-crime-free-day-deadliest-cities-worldwide
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/world/americas/23venez.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.eluniversal.com/nacional-y-politica/140618/german-national-killed-in-shooting-in-caracas

I wasn't joking about Detroit.

 

[Jokurr]

I'm a 27 year old mechanical engineer from Canada. The original Sim City was one of the first computer games I ever tried back in the early 90s and I've been a fan of the genre ever since.

 

[TotalyMoo]

A lot of interesting stuff.

Oh wow, you really have to travel outside the country to acquire dollars? Sometimes it's hard to understand how privileged us westerners (especially Scandinavians) are! Would you buy black market dollars from some kind of shady dealer or are they widely available where you live?

Also I didn't quite understand the market thing, do you mean that one trip to the market would mean roughly 3 months of salary for you? That sounds insane!

I'm very impressed you manage to game with that situation, how does the internet work over there, price and speed wise, if I may ask?

Venezuela would be part of a planned round trip from Cuba -> Guatemala -> Venezuela -> Colombia -> Peru -> Uruguay (so some traveling via bus/car/train and some flying). Maybe a dumb idea since it could be dangerous, but would still be amazing.

Sorry if you feel all these questions are intrusive, I'm just very interested in just about everything.

 

[matlockman]

Interesting part here, what would be the main takeaway from living in PNG - would you say? Was this what made you want to pursue journalism?

Three reasons:

a) when I lived there we only had four channels on TV - BBC World News, CNN, ABC (Australia) and the local channel. Every afternoon from grades 2-6 I would get home from school and watch at least an hour of BBC News.

b) At school, the first thing that our teacher would make the class do every morning was watch at least 10 minutes of news.

c) The day-n-night different between Australia and PNG in terms of poverty and standard of living. It's really made me appreciate civilisation a lot more (actually it's another reason why I love city-builders so much)

Those three things I reckon are the biggest reasons why I'm fascinated with TV and journalism. In a developing story, only today my friend and I decided we were going to start a blog together about stuff.

edit: in terms of taking away from PNG, definitely both a better understanding of poverty and more grateful for how lucky most people in the West are.

 

[Svip]

Ooh. This thread is making me feel so uninteresting. I guess that is the burden of being Danish.

But let not this post be entirely vain, have a look at this car (which happens to be mine):

 

[TotalyMoo]

Three reasons:

a) when I lived there we only had four channels on TV - BBC World News, CNN, ABC (Australia) and the local channel. Every afternoon from grades 2-6 I would get home from school and watch at least an hour of BBC News.

b) At school, the first thing that our teacher would make the class do every morning was watch at least 10 minutes of news.

c) The day-n-night different between Australia and PNG in terms of poverty and standard of living. It's really made me appreciate civilisation a lot more (actually it's another reason why I love city-builders so much)

Those three things I reckon are the biggest reasons why I'm fascinated with TV and journalism. In a developing story, only today my friend and I decided we were going to start a blog together about stuff.

edit: in terms of taking away from PNG, definitely both a better understanding of poverty and more grateful for how lucky most people in the West are.

Would love to read that blog if you want to share, you sound like an interesting person to follow

So what kind of journalism are you looking at? I'm an avid follower of VICE (yes I know some people hate them) due to the extreme and less conventional situations they report on, and how they do it, so if I ever tried to get into journalism that kind of reporting would be my goal - you sound a bit similar but maybe there's something else?

It's a very, very healthy habit to keep checking the news. I hope you're spreading it to your friends!

 

[TotalyMoo]

Ooh. This thread is making me feel so uninteresting. I guess that is the burden of being Danish.

But let not this post be entirely vain, have a look at this car (which happens to be mine):

Ooo, I'd feel like a badass in that car.

Hey, Denmark has a lot of bikes at least! And smells like cow dung (sorry, it really does). And is expensive... And your language is hard to understand.... Actually how do you stand living there?

 

[matlockman]

Would love to read that blog if you want to share, you sound like an interesting person to follow

So what kind of journalism are you looking at? I'm an avid follower of VICE (yes I know some people hate them) due to the extreme and less conventional situations they report on, and how they do it, so if I ever tried to get into journalism that kind of reporting would be my goal - you sound a bit similar but maybe there's something else?

It's a very, very healthy habit to keep checking the news. I hope you're spreading it to your friends!

That's the great thing about blogs. They can be about anything and any topic. I already have a story in the works about teenage depression (for a Uni assignment), so I reckon that could be one of my first published stores.

When we get it up and running I'll send you a link

 

[Svip]

Wait, wow, really? It was offset just like that? Looks like it's been moved by human hands. That's cool.

Not all of Denmark smells like cow, of course, but driving through to Germany - especially the rural areas - you will find yourself wishing for a wunderbaum real quick.

That's Jutland. In Danish we have an expression, »lugter af Jylland«, when it smells like that.

 

[Crotalidae75]

Wait, wow, really? It was offset just like that? Looks like it's been moved by human hands. That's cool.

Not all of Denmark smells like cow, of course, but driving through to Germany - especially the rural areas - you will find yourself wishing for a wunderbaum real quick.

Yes, the rupture (earthquake) moved a massive portion of California (everything west of the San Andreas fault) northward by about 5 full meters.

I wish I didn't live in such an earthquake prone region, but it is what it is. The SF Bay Area is especially bad with dozens of faults besides the San Andreas. Some are very dangerous. The Hayward fault is overdue for a major event, in fact. Oakland lies right under it, and is extremely vulnerable. In 1868 the Hayward fault generated a 6.8-7.0 quake and did some serious damage despite the low population at the time. Now, it's a much more serious situation. There are over 8 million people in the region, and the odds of a major quake in the next 30 years is at least 63%. Estimates on potential damage by the Hayward fault run up to $165 billion USD.

It's worrysome.

The state is absolutely riddled with fault lines. But, it is also what gives it its unique and varied terrain --

 

[TotalyMoo]

That's Jutland. In Danish we have an expression, »lugter af Jylland«, when it smells like that.

Denmark has more than one county? But it's tiny!

(On a sidenote; me and a couple of friends tried to start a Danish Mountain Climber Society and get a grant from the state, never worked out very well...)

 

[TotalyMoo]

Yes, the rupture (earthquake) moved a massive portion of California (everything west of the San Andreas fault) northward by about 5 full meters.

I wish I didn't live in such an earthquake prone region, but it is what it is. The SF Bay Area is especially bad with dozens of faults besides the San Andreas. Some are very dangerous. The Hayward fault is overdue for a major event, in fact. Oakland lies right under it, and is extremely vulnerable. In 1868 the Hayward fault generated a 6.8-7.0 quake and did some serious damage despite the low population at the time. Now, it's a much more serious situation. There are over 8 million people in the region, and the odds of a major quake in the next 30 years is at least 63%. Estimates on potential damage by the Hayward fault run up to $165 billion USD.

It's worrysome.

The state is absolutely riddled with fault lines. But, it is also what gives it its unique and varied terrain --

Cali is indeed beautiful. I've only been so San Fransisco (mostly mountain view) and a brief visit to LA - driving the coast road between those two cities - but I really want to see more of the rural areas.

So do people build a lot of earthquake "secure" houses or how do you manage with such frequent events? Is it really that dangerous if you're well prepared? I've never experienced more than a tiny (some furniture moved) earthquakes so I don't know how bad the medium sized ones are. Of course you can't be safe from a major event, but I'm uncertain when it comes to the more common ones.

 

[Crotalidae75]

Yes, there's a great deal to see here. There is also quite a bit of rural areas, and many small towns, despite our population (the greatest in the US at about 38 million). Of course, most of the valley (Sacramento and San Jaquin valleys in the centre of the state) is agriculture.

As for earthquakes and dealing with them, major earthquakes are not very frequent. However there are small ones every single day, as you can see --

Major quakes like 6.0 or greater are pretty infrequent. The last major quake in the Bay Area to do heavy damage, was in 1989 (before the Napa quake about 3 weeks ago, that is). It struck during the World Series baseball game between the Oakland Athletics ("A's") and the San Francisco Giants. It also damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings, collapsed a major double-stacked freeway viaduct, which killed dozens of people, damaged one of our major bridges between Oakland and SF, and injured some 3700 others. It was very costly, dealing about $6 billion USD in damage.

As you can see, the upper level of this highway viaduct pancaked onto the lower, killing dozens of people.

That was the Oakland Bay Bridge. It's the main link between San Francisco and the mainland*, so it's collapse was a pretty big problem.


As for preparing for quakes, there really isn't such a thing as an earthquake proof house. Seismic retrofitting only is designed to prevent the building from collapsing and killing everyone inside. It certainly doesn't mean it can't be damaged in a major quake. Unfortunately at power levels over 7 magnitude or so, there isn't much can be done. Many of the buildings in the recent Napa quake were retrofit but still suffered pretty severe damage. Sadly, many of our historic buildings, including the city hall dating from the 1850s, took a fair amount of damage.

Also, it's important to note that the epicentre for the 1989 Loma Prieta quake was well south of Oakland and San Francisco, in the Santa Cruz region, about a full 100km south of San Francisco. I was 140km north, in Fairfield (in the North Bay) and I sure as hell felt it.

Saying I felt it was a huge understatement. Never in my life have I felt the ground roll as if it were water. It was very, very, strong. And yet, even so, even stronger quakes can happen in California. In any case, I am 39 and have lived here most of my life, and have only felt a handful. Most of those were minor, and the only one that was serious was the Loma Prieta in 1989.

* aside from the BART trans-bay tube (the subway). For some reason, it wasn't damaged, as far as I know. Also, the tube is still being retrofitted to make it stronger against possible quakes.

 

[Svip]

Denmark has more than one county? But it's tiny!

Of course! We used to have 7. Now we have 'regions', and only 5. Still people from Copenhagen wouldn't consider the rest of Denmark... Denmark.

Here is a helpful map:

(On a sidenote; me and a couple of friends tried to start a Danish Mountain Climber Society and get a grant from the state, never worked out very well...)

Denmark is technically flatter than the Netherlands, because Limburg and some other Dutch provinces are quite hilly. The highest point in Denmark is 170.9 metres. Only Monaco doesn't match this height difference (highest point in Monaco is 140 metres), although it is on a much smaller area than Denmark. So if we calculate the difference between lowest and highest point and divide by total area, Denmark is the flattest country in Europe.

 

[TotalyMoo]

Of course! We used to have 7. Now we have 'regions', and only 5. Still people from Copenhagen wouldn't consider the rest of Denmark... Denmark.

Here is a helpful map:

Denmark is technically flatter than the Netherlands, because Limburg and some other Dutch provinces are quite hilly. The highest point in Denmark is 170.9 metres. Only Monaco doesn't match this height difference (highest point in Monaco is 140 metres), although it is on a much smaller area than Denmark. So if we calculate the difference between lowest and highest point and divide by total area, Denmark is the flattest country in Europe.

That map is totally not helpful, now I have loads of questions!

Isn't kopenhagen the place that should have "DRUGS" written all over it, or are the streets no longer filled with needles (not to mention Christiania)?

Why are there lots of people called Brian?

What part of Greenland is at war with Canada?

Are nice cars cheaper in Sweden?

Do you have troubles with Malmö gangs coming over to Copenhagen to wreck havoc?

What does a Danish hipster look like, and do they smell like stale coffee and an absence of dental hygiene like in Sweden? Also are they as "PC"?

Do Danes living close to the German border speak German?

What part is it that smells like cow? I see a lot of fish, where are my milk bringing friends hanging out?

What's that herring place? I had no idea there existed a Danish island there, is that map really for reals?

Danfoss?