u/Bezant

I enjoyed the solar cycle as kind of fun puzzleboxes, but I love latro so much more.

He's a much more likeable character than Severian, there are a lot more moving depictions of friendship (Seven Lions is the fuckin man), love, and loss throughout. There are still the Wolfe staple mysteries and unreliable narrator fun and things to think deeply on and catch on rereads, but it's not a 50 layers deep meta game that requires 80 reads and hours of research online to begin to unpack.

The memory piece is much more integral to the plot than Severian's perfect memory (which is usually 'hahaha he's lying here', or 'this omission reveals something about his feelings or what he wants to portray').

I feel and hear it in the driver footwell when the weight shifts, front to back or turning. It isn't just move>clunk, but sometimes will intermittently do it mid turn etc. When I bounce the car hard by the bumper, or move the wheel in the air, I don't hear anything.

Feel like I have replaced most of the front suspension at this point, and almost all the stuff I've taken off has been in great condition. It's an 85 with 130k.

Replaced:

• Guide rod mount & bushing

• Lower ball joint

• Lower control arm bushing

• Wheel bearing

• Idler arm bushings

• Center link

• Motor mount

Checked the engine shocks

Checked the spring is seated correctly in the cup

Checked that the steering box mounting bolts are tight

Slightly tightened the steering box 1/8 turn

The upper control arm rubbers and sway bar rubbers all look solid

Phokas dynasty will go on to have a big role in the Byzantine Empire, but at the start youre just a single count of Seleukia.

In a very good place to expand quickly into wealthy Syria against the fragmented muslims, while also having a good challenge as they will join holy wars. If you push too hard you'll have to deal with abbasids and tulunids.

You can easily marry into strong Byzantine dukes for allies, or take the metagamey route and marry the Bulgarian princess for a killer bloodline and an alliance with her dad and 4-5 uncles in one marriage.

Once you have a decent power base you can easily make a play to be basileus, go independent, or even go catholic to have some crusades help you finish off the Levant.

Trying to picture how you earn this. I feel like Ummayads would be wiped out before you could finish enough of them because the wars take so much land. Is there any trick to getting enough reconquista wars to happen?

my thought would be to make some small independent dukes and give them the gold they need

They used levy_size in the modifier instead of global_levy_size, so the +30% doesn't work. The +20% from Adventurer correctly uses global.

You can see it when you hover over a holdings levy under "Owner Modifiers"

Easy fix if you don't play ironman...

I am sure we have all run into the issue of getting too strong and running circles around the AI, waiting for threat to tick down.

I recently played a norse game where I unified scandinavia % reformed and split it between my kids, gave one the fylkirate, invaded england and gave it to a kid, made a merchant republic in antioch, went catholic and placed a relative in lotharingia on a crusade. Papal invaded italy and gave it to a genius cousin. Placed a female claimant matrimarried to my uncle on the Byz throne. Then next ruler was norse again and invaded giga france and gave southern france to his uncle.

It was a lot of fun going in between religions, dealing with mixed religion vassals and allies, trying to help relatives be stable and keep their kingdoms together. Definitely still a little op with the crazy retinue count and raiding money. (-60% cost/time is insane for maxing out your patrician manor). But stayed a lot more engaging than just blobbing.