One of the ongoing issues people who want to discuss the nature of Islam or other cultures is that inevitably, someone will come on and accuse everyone else of being "racists".  The goal of calling people racists is always the same -- to prevent a given topic from being discussed.

I am not a racist. But I don't really care if people think I am. If someone wants to think I'm some sort of bigot because I'm not a fan of Islam then I'm perfectly okay with that.  The reason being, I only care about the opinions of people who matter to me. And the opinions of dumb people don't matter to me at all.  Someone who thinks a culture and a race are interchangeable is not someone whose opinion I value.

Personally, I find racism not just loathsome, but foolish. If you discriminate people based on their race, you are missing out.  As an evil capitalist, I wish there was more racism because it would give me, since I'm not racist, an economic advantage by allowing me to hire even better talent.  But racism isn't nearly as widespread as most people think today.  I can't imagine any company not hiring someone because of the color of their skin these days.

But culturalism is a different matter.  If race is the hardware, culture is the software. And I think some cultures are inferior to others. I'm a culturalist.  I don't like Islam whether it is practiced by caucasians, arabs, or africans because I think, as a whole, it promotes violence.

While researching for this article, I found an article (linked at bottom) that talks about this issue. Different cultures achieve different levels of achievement and prosperity. 

Now, some people might argue that who are we to say that those are measurements are valid measurements of what one society "better" than another.  Insomuch as they are also probably the same people who would argue that living in mom's basement until they're 40 doesn't mean that person is a failure. I mean, we wouldn't want to be judgmental right? 

I happen to be a big fan of western culture. It has created relative wealth and propserity and freedom for its citizens.  While it's not perfect and has a checkered past as it has evolved, looking at where it is today I can say "Not bad." 

But when trying to come up with tangible solutions to complex problems, it's not helpful when people start equating racism with culturalism. If we're not willing to stand up for our own culture, then we deserve what we get. 

Culture is something we choose (though most people are not aware that they're choosing). Race is something we're born with genetically. And like hardware, no matter how good it is, if you put inferior software on it, you'll end up with a poorer experience.

WinCustomize.com Magazine

The year is 2226 and the Epsilon Quadrant has an uneasy peace between the three major powers in the sector -- the Terran Alliance, the Drengin Empire and the League of Worlds. The war, intrigue, and destruction that follows came as both a surprise and yet preordained. This is their story.

My role in this is to act as the observer for the AI.  How they play, are the super abilities in Dark Avatar working? How are they balanced?  The goal of the super abilities is that they be exploitable but still be balanced. That is, they should be immensely powerful but equally powerful between civilizations.  My job as the AI programmer is to make sure that the AI is good at exploiting these super abilities as well.

Today, I will watch how the Drengin's Super Dominator matches up with the Terran Alliance Super Diplomacy ability against my Super Annihilator bonus as the League of Worlds.

A promising beginning...

My home world has a decent asteroid field nearby and some good planets not too far away.

The Drengin and Terrans aren't so lucky. They start out very close to each other.

A lot of people don't realize just how much balancing code there is in galaxy creation. We'll get people who want galaxy creation to work like world creation in Civ where all players are equally spaced.  So for those of you taking the time to read this, let me explain what I mean by a balanced galaxy...

The Terrans and Drengin are close together. That's a disadvantage. The Drengin adn Terarns have an asteroid field that is right between them. The Drengin have a class 11 world there is very close to them but the Terrans have more planets that are of high quality that are nearer to them than the Drengin's but are significantly further away.

While they are both relatively far away from me, I have to go through them to get to the bulk of the good planets. However, there are several good planets closer to me than them and there are more galacitc resources near me than to them.  Each game randomly generates a galaxy that is designed to be relatively balanced but not in the usual blatant "every player is equal in all ways". Each game is supposed to require some adaptation.

Some AI improvements

The Scout code has been improved for Dark Avatar which means the AI should get better at colonizing. That is one of things I am testing.

Preparing for Xenocide

My custom civilization has the Super Annihilator ability. This gives me the ability to research a tech called Spore Weapons which can be used to construct ships that will, on an undefended planet, completely wipe out the colony and turn it into a toxic world.

The first wave is away

By May 2226, the status looks like this:

1. The League: 5 planets with 50 points of use.
2. The Terran Alliance:  6 planets with 38 points of use.
3. The Drengin Empire: 4 planets with 27 points of use.

Starbases:

1. The Drengin Empire: Two resource starbases
2. The Terran Alliance: 1 influence starbase
3. The League: 1 Economic starbase

I have a significant advantage at this point. We will see how things continue.

The colonization phase in Dark Avatar is a totally different animal than seen in previous GalCiv's.  The first wave still occurs with players grabbing the freebie planets. But there's a lot of good planets that just require a specific technology.

The best planet in the quadrant is still unused by January 2227. That's because it is a barren world. So what is everyone researching right now?

• The League (me): Xeno Industrial Theory
• The Terran Alliance: Stinger
• The Drengin Empire: Advanced Computing

(I make some adjustments so that the AI will prioritize more if there's a really good planet nearby).

The Pre-Boom

One challenge I have to deal with soon is the fact that the AI doesn't yet deal well with yet.

One of my next projects is to rewrite the Starbase mode and the planetary improvement code to work more in line with how the game actually plays out (as opposed to theoretically how I thought people would play the game <g>). 

Though in the case of the planetary improvement code, that was one part of the AI I wasn't involved on until post release. The style in which it was written is very different from mine so I've always had a  hard time massaging the planet improvement code for the computer players. Dark Avatar is my chance to go and write it from scratch in the style I'm more used to.

My initial weapons flatform is the V-1 Uniter fighter.

vs.

vs.

It's still way too early to tell who is going to win the arm's race.

The Terran Alliance isn't yet ready to talk to me about signing treaties. I'll try back with them soon.

New feature: You can't keep going back and talking to races over and over. Only every few weeks can you (unless you're a Super Diplomat in which case you can go back much more often).

Concerned

One of the changes in the build I'm using is that trade routes grow in value over time significantly. The net result is that they can generate an awful lot of income now for players if they survive long enough.

I still lead the way in industry and research by May 2228, but the military power of the Drengin and Terrans has begun to grow significantly. It was time to begin my own build up.

The Spy Wars have already continued to progress. I've cut down the # of spies players get pretty dramatically. It doesn't change the fact that the player that is out in front is going to get walloped quite a bit.

The Drengin were gearing for war -- with me.  It was time to get into gear before it was too late.

The Drengin have specialized on missile weapons. So I begin researching counter measures for that -- point defense.    The Drengin are slowly catching up to me economically. I need to prepare my own assault.

My home world is full of activity.

It was an arms race.

My power is that I can conquer planets painlessly relative to my enemies. A few hits to key Drengin worlds and they would be down for the count.

And so it begins...

The first attack occurs quickly as my forces engage. It ends in victory for me.

The opening battles would see our 3rd generation fighters going up against each other. On the Drengin side they have the Kiklar-Fighter:

vs.

Across the quadrant, battles raged...

And I was getting smeared.

And having played evil, I now got the Terran Alliance on my back.

My spore ship took a world. But with both the Drengin and Terran's on me, there was little hope.

Their ships were meant to fight the Drengin Empire but they did just as well crushing me.

My equivalent ship, the generation 4 frigate was known as the Valiant class.

While considerably more lethal, I only have a few.

This is not a good scene. The Terrans and Drengin closing in on Paridon, my home world.

My last hope fleet...  7 ships vs. 18 in the first round.. 18 Drengin.  The Valiant was taknig out multiple ships per round but it wasn't enough.

I put the rest of my ships into a single fleet for a last stand...

My ships, optimized against Drengin weapons, managed to only receive 37 hitpoints of damage despite all of the Drengin ships being Frigates while only three  of mine being frigates. Unfortunately, I lost my fighters and this was just one of dozens of similar fleets.

This happens again and again. 99 shots fired vs. my 32 shots. But they can replace their 12 units, I can't replace the two Frigates.

It's over.

Now it's time for me to stand back and watch the Drengin and Terrans fight it out.

In the end, the Drengin Empire prevails. Admittedly, when there's only two civilizations, a super diplomacy ability is going to not mean much against the military dominator.

Conclusions

I wasn't playing particularly hard but the Drengin Super Dominator ability is a bit too powerful. I checked the code and it looks like it's creating too many ships so I tweaked that.  My slowness to get freighters out really bit me big time too as it gave the Drengin and Terrans a huge economic advantage that I didn't have.

If I had really wanted to win, I should have rushed them. That is really what the spore ship is all about. You get in there and take out key worlds before they have time to get their economy going.  I am pleased with how the new planet improvement system is working for the AI. Much MUCH better. No more adjusting at the edges, a whole new system.  Right now, only the Drengin have it (another reason the Drengin did so well).

Next up...

Finish the Super Diplomat goodies for the human player. Work on Super Breeder. And then get onto the Super Manipulator.

 

We're off to various places to celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends. We hope you all have a great day!

We are thankful to be part of a community of such great people. Thank you for sharing your lives with us.

I also wanted to let you know that the WC2K7 beta is up. It's still a beta but you can see what general direction we're taking. You can go here to see it and post here your thoughts.

A couple of years ago I wrote this blog about my own personal origins. In various debates on JU I know I come across as a total jerk. And there is a reason for that -- I am a jerk.  I'm not proud of being a jerk, it's just something I've come to realize over the years.  There are worse things than being a jerk though.

But what exactly is a jerk? A jerk, like most epitaphs, is someone who is not conforming to some rule of our society.  As a society, we have an unwritten set of rules of how people are supposed to behave.  I think a lot of people, especially men, are jerks. The difference is that most people have the good grace to at least try not to act like a jerk.

And I do try to not be a jerk most of the time and indeed, I'm not a jerk most of the time. If I'm around people I care about I'm willing to invest the effort to be a better person.  I think many people can relate to that -- more than would care to relate.  I know plenty of men and women that are cranky and impatient but do their best to soldier forth and not bite the heads off people.

But when I deal with strangers, I...just...don't...care. 

Being a jerk isn't about being malicious to strangers. When I play games on-line I never grief. I'll even go out of my way when playing RTSs to make sure the other person is having a good time. Being a jerk doesn't mean I'm not empathic. And I enjoy, for whatever reason, making sure other people, even strangers, have a good time when they're playing a game with me. So I'm not really being nice as a selfless act, I'm not because I like being nice to strangers.  I'm selfish. Self involved.

Being self involved is the essence of being a jerk. Or, I should say, being self involved and not having the good graces to conform to social expectations.

The inner jerk really comes out online.  If someone annoys me on my personal blog, I'll blacklist them.  I see people on JU all the time take holier than thou views about not blacklisting people. To me, those people just seem weak. But whatever. When I'm on my personal blog, it's all about me.  I'll happily debate someone who has very different views. A lot of my good friends are very left-wing and I enjoy their company. It's not about people agreeing with me, it's about having people who can intelligently discuss a subject and show some level of respect.

The older I get and the more I read, the more contempt I have for the average participant in on-line debates.  I understand most people are uninformed on issues and that most people are not very sharp. That's fine. But I have little patience for those same people who then choose to debate on some particular issue, especially politics. Debates on politics require some knowledge on history. And most people who debate politics can't be bothered to read history and that I find incredibly annoying.

And so, as a jerk, I am pretty candid about what I think about people's opinions.  There are a lot of people woh are just plain losers. And nice people don't resort to thinking other people are losers. But the fact is, lots of people are losers. Not most people mind you. If you randomly select someone, odds are you'll find they're a good and decent person. But it seems today we live in a climate in which it is impolite to acknowledge anyone as being a "loser".  To  many people, life is about unearned self-esteem rather than achievement.

Jerks, being self involved, don't tend to have endless compassion for strangers. I certainly don't.  I care not at all for people who don't work. If they're disabled -- truly disabled -- then I support helping them. But other people, no, could care less. They could starve.  Whether that be the third generation welfare mother with 4 out of wedlock children or the 40 year old drunk who can't hold a job.   I don't hold any malice towards these people. I don't want them to starve or be on the streets. No, it's just that I don't care if they are.  The gazelle who runs for its life and still gets killed by the lion I can have compassion for.  The gazelle that just sits there looking at the lion coming at them I don't have compassion for. Natural selection.

I have little patience for class envy either.  Someone being richer than me doesn't hurt me at all. Class envy is a symptom of being a loser. If you are jealous of the possessions other people have, then grow up and get a life and a clue. It's just pathetic when someone sits around moaning about "the rich". It's pretty rare to meet an American who grew up poorer than I did. But I never felt envious of people who had more material things than me. How does their wealth hurt me? Good for them I always felt.

I'm "rich" by any definition of the term but I didn't get there by being ruthless or money grubbing. I got there through the voluntary choices of literally millions of people who exchanged their money for the goods and services I produced.  So when I hear someone say that I should be doing "more" to help those in "need" I tend to have very little compassion.  The reason being that I resent compassion being measured in what PERCENT of my income I hand out rather than the raw total.  But that's a different topic.  The pont is, "rich" people don't become rich in this country at the point of a gun.  And money isn't everything. Too many people get fixated on money and it is ususally to their detriment.

Arrogance is another ingredient of being a jerk. And I'm really arrogant.  But again, the older I get, the more I realize that yea, I really do know a lot more than most people on the topics I participate in. And as a jerk, I just don't have the good grace to be polite or patient with people so I'm arrogant.  That isn't to say that I think I'm particularly intelligent or knowledgeable on all issues. I simply pick and choose what I want to talk about.

Another thing about being an arrogant, uncompassionate, self-involved jerk is that you make conclusions on people and can quickly decide whether what they think matters. And when I say "matters" I mean it in a specific sense (i.e. I believe everyone have the right to speak their opinion so in that sense it matters).

For example, a lot of the equivicators on the war on terror or taxes or whatever topic is being discussed don't matter. Their opinions are worthless. People who don't take a stand or have no firm principles don't matter in the real world. They're either working for the government in some way or they're probably some low level drone somewhere. Not always, but usually (20 years of experience in dealing with these kinds of people talking here). 

Having strong opinions or taking stands on issues or making decisions may not lead to success, but not taking a clear position and not making decisions leads to nowhere.  The world is run by people who make decisions.  You can tell people who don't make decisions because they're the ones who scream out about stereotyping or generalizing. People who make decisions know you have to generalize to get things done (right or wrong). So the instant I see someone screaming about generalizing  I know that that person's opinion is irrelevant and can be discounted.

To conclude this rambling essay. Being a jerk doesn't necessarily involve malice. I can't think of any people here on JU or elsewhere that I "dislike".  Not a single person.

I can't think of anyone or anything in this world that I "hate".  Being a jerk isn't about hating or disliking things. Quite the opposite, it's about apathy for me. I just don't care about things as much as society deems we should care (or more accurately, as much as people are supposed to pretend to care).

I believe the best system is the system in which we help each other by doing what is in our own best interest.  So while I'm not proud that I'm a jerk, I don't think me being a jerk harms anyone and in fact has helped people. I don't spend energy worrying about strangers. I spend energy producing. And by producing, I help people because of the nature of our system.  But I don't really care either way that that is the outcome.

Up on SDC now.

(Edit by kryo -- changelog posted by Boogiebac below:)

+ NEW: Tons of AI updates
+ TWEAK: Tweaked costs and such
+ NEW: Flavor Text added to components
+ NEW: Implemented Choose Launch Direction button on planet context
window
+ FIX: Fixed bug where you could fit more than the capacity on a ship in
the ship designer (float values are no longer used due to precision
errors)
+ FIX: Freeze-up in battle viewer
+ FIX: When declaring war from the trade screen, a senate vote will pop
up if you are not an imperial government
+ TWEAK: Tweaked crew numbers, ship mass, and ship dimensions in Ship
Intel Report screen
+ DEBUG: When new game is started, all missing shipcfg files will be
outputted to the debug.err file (DEBUG BUILDS ONLY)
+ NEW: Added flavor text for space cannon
+ FIX: Fixed potential crash in component flavor text function
+ CHANGE: Improve button for space miners only is disabled when there
are no more modules left to upgrade the base.  If you do not have the
tech required for a module and click the Improve button, a message will
pop up explaining why you can't upgrade the base and what tech you need
to research
+ TWEAK: made it so player receives Espionage Level-up messages again.  Had turned this off at one point because the Espionage Manager screen used to show your espionage level for each race, however it long longer does.
+ TWEAK: Super Ability Specifics
+ FIX: additional debug information for activation
+ FIX: more info in popup when activation fails (location of sig.bin)
+ FIX: took out serial check for now since SDC apparently doesn't save the serial number in the sig.bin
+ NEW: added code for super dominator
+ TWEAK: added DA serial to the information being sent to the metaverse
+ TWEAK: Galaxy setup window updated...still needs scenario window implemented.
+ FIX: Anomaly frequency adjusted: Now many more when abundant, less when rare.
+ TWEAK: New Improvement "Galactic Resort" checked in.
+ TWEAK: New Improvement Graphics checked in
+ NEW: 5 New United Planets issues checked in:
    -Anti-Aggression: Have to wait 1 week before attacking/invading in a new war.
    -Mining Loyalty: Mining Bases won't flip if closer to a player owned planet than a foreign planet.
    -Neutral Ground: Upon declaring war, all warships are removed from the opposing players    territory.
    -Open Trade: 2x trade revenue.
    -Open Tourism: 2x tourism revenue.
+ TWEAK: made it so that the spore ship is destroyed after one use
+ NEW: enabled "No range" mega event
+ FIX: Fixed a string not found error in ship intelligence report
+ FIX: Completed construction is cleared when a base is destroyed (you will have to start building the base from the beginning again)
+ CHANGE: Civilizations now have an inherent ability bonus from raceconfig.xml.  You cannot remove this bonus, but you can add to it using ability points in the setup screens.
+ CHANGE: Ability points available has been temporarily reduced from 10 to 5 (until we can balance this a little more)
+ CHANGE: When a planet changes ownership, all active spies are returned to their respective players

Each civilization is really unique at doing something. The super abilities are:

 

• Super Diplomat. Civilization is able to secure much better deals through negotiation that other civilizations.
• Super Dominator. When they go to war, they receive a group of Corvette class ships. The number they receive is based on their military power.
• Super Organizer. When they are attacked, all races of the same ethical alignment will come to their aid.
• Super Warrior. When in battles, they get the first strike ability. That is, their ships attack first and if their opponent survives only then do they return fire.
• Super Breeder. If their approval is 100% their population increases at 4X the normal rate
• Super Isolationist. Can colonize barren worlds and no foreign ship can travel more than 3 spaces per turn in their area of influence.
• Super Trader. Gets all the trade techs at start of game and gets 2X from trade.
• Super Manipulator. Is very good at getting other races to go to war with each other.
• Super Hive. Unlimited range and all factories are built in 1 week.
• Super Adapter. Starts out with aquatic and toxic world technologies.
• Super Annihilator. Can build spore ship which when used on a defenseless colony will eliminate all population and turn it into a toxic world of the same class.
• Super Spy. Gets an agent to start with and worlds are immune from agents.

(these aren't all impemented in bta 1 of Dark Avatar).

I'm in the process of updating the Galactic Civilizations II manual for Dark Avatar. The first manual was, as some know, written primarily by Tom Chick. The good stuff was by him and the whacky humor stuff by me.

Well, because time is short, I'm doing the updates myself so there will be more whacky humor stuff this time around.

Here's the description of the races in the rought draft.

 

• The Terran Alliance. The humans. Or at least, humans from a United Earth in the 23^rd century. They are the diplomats; the negotiators.
• The Drengin Empire. They are not, to put it politely, diplomats. They’ll gladly have you over for dinner as long as you are the main course.
• The Altarian Resistance. The Altarians are not humans though they are genetically very similar. They are doggedly ethical but not terribly tolerant of other points of view.
• The Arcean Empire. These guys are very very tough. Very honorable but not very interested in aligning up with anyone. They are the main rival to the Drengin Empire for galactic domination.
• The Torian Confederation. For thousands of years they were enslaved by the Drengin Empire. But having thrown off Drengin oppression in the pre-hyperdrive era, they now have the problem of the Drengin Empire being able to send massive fleets to their world. They are very erratic.
• The Yor. As sentient artificial life forms, the Yor are unique. They were created by the Iconians to help serve an ancient race known as the Precursors. The Yor have grown to detest all organic life forms and are very dangerous.
• The Dominion of the Korx. These guys will sell their own mothers to you. Or they would if they hadn’t already sold her to the guy who came before you.
• The Drath Legion.  The Drath were a sentient race that developed on the same planet as the Altarians.  But long ago, for reasons we don’t know, they left Altaria after nearly becoming extinct due to constant warfare with the Altarians. Ironcially, ethically, they are very similar to the Altarians. They’d probably get along fine now if it weren’t for that whole near wiping them out thing.
• The Thalan have come from another dimension to keep the humans from destroying the universe. Why they think the humans are going to wipe out creation hasn’t been explained and their PR people haven’t returned our calls.
• The Iconian Refuge are the ones who created the Yor. Unfortunately, they must not have had any science fiction stories on their world because if they had, they would have known that they Yor would have risen up and wipe them out.  The Iconians managed to flee and have only recently returned to the stars.
• The Korath Clan. The Korath are actually ruined Drengin. If, a Drengin can truly be ruined that is.  The Drengin are merely evil, the Korath are evil maniacs. According to extensive interviews, the difference can be summed up as follows: The Drengin and Korath would both want to eat you. The difference is that the Korath would want to eat you while you’re still alive.
• The Krynn Consulate are the new Jihad. As the galaxy becomes more unstable, this enigmatic race has been able to build increasing followings based on their doctrine of ruthless adherence to a strict moral code.

In many Islamic countries, intentionally murdering innocents in the name of Islam is considered acceptable by significant portions of the population. By significant, I mean near majorities or outright majorities.

Read the full report for the horrifying full stats.

The idea behind the Epic Generator feature of Dark Avatar is pretty straight forward:

Turn your game into readable story complete with HTML and images showing how your empire grew. 

But implementation, woha.  By far, this has been the most expensive single feature of Dark Avatar requiring an immense logging system to put together keys that can later be turned into a story. 

And after 5 months of work, I have a feeling it may end up getting cut from Dark Avatar.  It's really a matter of resources -- which is more compelling to players? It's a tough call. But the practical reality is that the Epic Generator really may need AI programming which would bring me into it.

The problem with bringing me into helping with the Epic Generator is that that means I wouldn't be working on the AI. And I think the AI really needs as much time as humanly possible.

So the Epic Generator is on notice -- we'll know within 2 weeks whether this feature is going to have to be cut or not.  It'll be a bummer if it is.  To my knowledge, no game has ever tried to retell the story of a given game with this kind of narrative before.  And there appears to be a reason for that.

If it does get cut, I'm sure there will be a lot of bummed out players. I know I'll be bummed out. I love this kind of thing.  Today, for instance, I spent a lot of time putting in flavor descriptions for ship components and such. It's pure fluff (like the epic generator) but it adds heart to the game.  I love that kind of stuff.

So we'll see how things progress.  We'll know pretty soon.