Think your local, state and federal politicians are too grasping? Well if it’s any consolation a government with its hand in yourpocket is nothing new, in fact it has been going on for at least…at least…a thousand years Only difference now is that the definition of “rich” has been quite widely widened to include the not-so-rich, like, perhaps, you.
Back when Bill the Conqueror sent what must have been an army of auditors to every settlement in England to compile the Domesday Book the result was little more than a handful of rich folks worth soaking (not our characterization. See below.) And these worthies could also benefit from “patronage.” The king knew it and used it to his advantage. Patronage, considering what there was for the king to offer at the time, could easily be translated in modern terms to the phrase “government services.” And lately the term might easily also be translated synonymously as well to “government bailout.”
But don’t take our word for it. This is from the The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, edited by Kenneth O. Morgan (quoted from the Oxford University Press paperback edition, 1988, starting on page 143):
Patronage was lucrative, Men offered money in order to obtain what the king had to offer: offices (from the chancellorship down), succession to estates, custody of land, wardship and marriage—or even nothing more concrete than the king’s goodwill. All of these were to be had at a price, and the price was negotiable. Here was an area in which a king could hope to raise more money by consistently driving harder bargains. In these circumstances any document which told the King how rich his tenants were would naturally be immensely valuable. Domesday Book is just such a record—and it showed that half the value of the whole country was in the hands of less than two hundred men. By fining these men heavily when they were in political trouble or by offering them what they wanted, though at a price, the king had found a practical method of soaking the rich. Of course the information had to be kept up to date and throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Crown found ways of ensuring that it was. For example, one of the surviving documents produced by Henry II’s administration is the delightfully named ‘Roll of Ladies, boys and girls’. Thus to a hostile observer like Gerald of Wales the king appeared to be ‘a robber permanently on the prowl, always probing, always looking for the weak spot where there is something for him to steal.
In the spirit of the season, some toy-related clips:
First, from the epic saga about a manchild’s love for his bike. And perhaps a subconscious partial inspiration for our domain…
Infinity!
And a lovely bittersweet song about outgrowing the objects of your youth, from the object of your youth’s perspective. By Sarah McLachan from Toy Story 2.
An interesting bit about the restoration of a vintage poster…
And a little song about a kite, any kite will do in a pinch, as long as it flies…
Online strategy game publisher Matrix Games has granted us a press account, so you’ll be seeing our usual as-much-review-as-it-deserves treatment of some of their titles. They distribute the efforts of independent developers as well as update and modernize fine vintage strategy titles from the halcyon days of the ’90s(?)
Well they sure don’t make ‘em like they used to and Matrix Games has been burrowing into that niche. The first title we’ll cover is Carriers at War, a game we bought back when it was new. And it seems like that was the last pure strategy Pacific Naval game ever released. Can that be?
An overlooked western Last Train from Gun Hill pits Marshall Matt Morgan, played by Kirk Douglas, against rancher and town-owner Craig Belden, played by Anthony Quinn. Written by James Poe, who also scripted Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Bedford Incident, you may see mention of a famous hanging speech. I couldn’t find it anywhere and so transcribed it from Netflix Watch Instantly.
As with nearly all westerns, sort through the horses and the shoot-outs and the unavoidable genre cheesiness you’ll find some tense drama and some fine writing. This one was somewhat ahead of its time in 1959, with a racial edge. Marshall Morgan’s Indian wife is raped and killed by two men on a lonely road. Their son witnesses and rides home on one of the horses, which has a distinctive saddle. Morgan knows who the saddle belongs to, his old friend Belden, who he hasn’t seen in years. He goes to Gun Hill and finds out one of the killers is Belden’s son. He’s wants to bring him in but the father will not allow it. Morgan manages to subdue Rick, the son, and is “holed up” with him handcuffed to a bed in the local hotel, which is surrounded by the elder Belden’s hired men. The younger Belden sneers at Morgan, tells him he’ll never get out alive and then claims he had no way to know it was his wife he’d killed, that she was just a “damn squaw.” An enraged Morgan chokes him near to death, then stops himself.
Belden mocks him again: “Don’t take no guts to kill a man when he’s cuffed.”
And Morgan replies:
“Takes guts not to. Be too easy on ya. You die too quick. I know an old man who’d like to kill you, Belden. The Indian way. Slow. That’s how I’m going to do it. Slow. The white man’s way. First you stand trial. That takes a fair amount of time and you’ll do a lot of sweatin’. Then they’ll sentence ya. I never seen a man who didn’t get sick to his stomach when he heard the kind of sentence you’ll draw. After that you’ll sit in a cell and wait. Maybe for months, thinking how that rope’ll feel around your neck. Then they’ll come around some cold morning, just before sun-up. They’ll tie your arms behind you. You’ll start blubbering, kicking, yelling for help. Won’t do you any good. And then drag y’out in the yard, heave y’up on that platform, fix that rope around your neck and leave y’out there all alone with a big black hood over your eyes. You know the last sound you hear? Kind of a thump when they kick the trapdoor catch and down you go. You’ll hit the end of that rope like a sack o’ potatoes, all dead weight. It’ll be white hot around your neck and your Adam’s Apple will turn to mush. You’ll fight for your breath, but you haven’t got any breath. Your brain will begin to boil. You’ll scream and holler. But nobody’ll hear you. You’ll hear it. But nobody else. Finally you’re just swingin there’. All alone and dead.”
Vae Victus (”woe to the conquered”) is the Paradox Interactive add-on to the Rome-era application of its landmark Europa Universalis strategy engine. Here’s a link to the summary of the enhancements in the upgrade.
Wouldn’t you know it that the day we’re sure to get this post up Paradox releases the first patch for Vae Victus. It’ll have to wait. We won’t have a chance to play it just yet. But from the readme it appears that the patch will merely refine and enhance the refinements and enhancements outlined below.
First off, as with all the EU titles, help comes in the form of the highly interactive roll-over information there is no in-game help or online manual. Hover over just about anything in the game interface and it will explain itself. The one drawback to reliance on this with an add-on is that any set of new features can get lost unless you know were to look for them. So read the readme and start with a run through the highly detailed tutorials, which are are more of a familiarization tool than a simulation of play.
There is an obviously smoother, less wildly combative but nonetheless deadly AI. You may find after a long successful inland campaign that a very powerful Carthage awaits you if you don’t knock them out early. It’s hard to ignore tha barbarians, the colonization opportunities and the easy tribal country pickings to the north, but you may want to force yourself.
New to the game is an extensive and engaging Senate system. You’ll spend the first few hundred years as a republic, where the Senate can be more a hindrance than a help, unless handled just right. There are factions to deal with and many of the random events effect their strength, gaining or losing seats depending on your decisions. If your Consul (a single one, not historically accurate but cleaner) is of a particular faction then some abilities will gain modifiers. The two most powerful factions at start are the Military and the Populist. But if you work on it you can arrange for the occasional Mercantile Consul or a Religious one, enhancing diplomatic and omen powers respectively.
Vae Victus: Roman Senate
Personalities, feuds and family are a bit more prominent, and you’ll want to pay a little more attention to this aspect of the game. There’s enough here that you could immerse yourself in it.
A welcome refinement is the addition of Regions. Your micro-management will be reduced, since you now have only to name and track the dux of several regions rather than a governor of each of dozens of individual provinces. Management is streamlined yes, but civil wars can be more dangerous as whole regions may now leave the fold and take the local legions with them.
Bottom line: As much of an improvement as you can expect. It’s been patched. We’ll start a new game as soon as we can.
We haven’t seen it and don’t intend to. Why? Because you could tell from the trailer you were going to be lectured at. Message delivered. Ho hum. Special effects will be more of the same and Keanu Reeves ditto. Double-triple ho hum. Sitting through the TV ads during football games was plenty enough.
Here’s a link to the Rotten Tomatoes page on it for more actual reviews.
While the original, thoughtful and thoughtfully paced, The Day the Earth Stood Still carried a warning about a real threat – the potential for nuclear self-destruction – that the between-the-lines sci-fi of its day was reticent to utter, this update would obviously hammer us into our multp[lex seats with a loud Earth-revenge effects based on the purely speculative voodoo science that is incessantly amplified by the cultural frenzy over climate change (nee global warming.)
So, basically the original retains more relevance than the update. Fancy that.
It underscores the ongoing trend of atrocious updates to classic sci-fi movies, more a sign of Hollywood’s aversion to risk than it’s desire to make good or original stories into films. (Take it from a struggling writer.) They’ll make them but that doesn’t we mean we have to go see them.
Here’s a timely behind-the-scenes skin-of-his-teeth saga writing of one of the biggest book/movie combos of all time. Timely around here because son Chuck, 15, just finished reading The Godfather. I had read it at around the same age, snuck it out of the elder Bill Shear’s sock drawer. Times have changed.
Mount & Blade - the first of the GamersGate titles we’ll review here – is an action/role-playing game independently developed by TaleWorlds and distributed by Paradox Interactive. For what it may lack in spiffy state-of-the-art graphics it more than makes up in interesting gameplay.
You’ll start as a solitary wanderer in a non-fantasy, roughly medieval world, and from this near-naked state you can improve armor, weapons, amass followers and build yourself into a powerful warlord. The same castles through which you had trouble getting past the gates may someday be the ones to which you lay siege, and conquer.
Getting there is the challenge. The tutorials are good, and combat with blade and bow, on foot and on horseback is not difficult to learn, but putting the skills into practice in the game may prove to be an early barrier to some. It’s a little bit beyond that easy-to-learn-hard-to-master threshold, as the application of what you learn will require some hand-eye coordination. And the battles have consequences. If you ‘re defeated you may lose valuable game-time while your character is enslaved or imprisoned. And there is no option for abstracting battle results as in the Total War series.
Plenty enough of the postings on youtube.com and the trailer below will give a good idea of how fighting in the tactical screens goes…
So except for the above comment and the tip below we’ll say no more. For those who wish to devote the time and who are not debilitated by 3D action-game vertigo, like yours truly, the investment is well worth the effort, since the premise is unlike any other game, and the execution is admirable.
There’s more to the game though than the fighting.
There have been other story-style set-ups in other games but this one works better than any we remember. The handful of questions about your upbringing and misty past create your character’s background and lead right into the skills screen, with point bonuses based on the answers given. After the skill screen you get to decide what the character looks like, with some simple decisions about haircolor/style and facial shapes and sizes, and sliders to draw the features along a range between extremes. Play more than one game and you’ll have to go out of your way to make one character looks the same as another.
After that you’re placed on the strategic map, armed with little more than your wits, some food, a horse, a sword, a bow and just enough scraps of clothing to maintain modesty. This map is in three dimensions and can be zoomed and rotated, but its graphics are flattish; it’s not designed for much more than deciding what your next move will be. On the map you’ll see the castles and villages in the area, the major terrain features that may affect your movements. You will also see – and often, have a chance to avoid – other roving bands – various varieties of thieves and thugs, as well as warbands belonging to the local chieftains.
Mount & Blade Strategic Map. Use the Training Field for in-game practice.
You will also be able to enter a training area In the game where time is taken but your efforts may be rewarded by minor skills increases, and more importantly, after leaving the tutorials behind, you can continue to refine your own real-life skills. handling a sword or bow on foot or horseback.
The controls for weapons-handling are fairly straightforward and simple – for the sword, left-click to start your wind-up and left-click again to swing. On horseback though, everything changes, because you also must control the horse:
Tip: When on horseback in the tactical screens, movement and facing of the horse is controlled by the WASD key combination just like for the character alone on foot. Facing of the rider is controlled by the mouse. When on horseback and wielding a sword, you’ll need to maneuver with fingers of the left hand on the WASD to as close as possible to your target, while at the same time facing the rider and timing the mouse-click swing just right. Avoid some initial frustration around how to best achieve a hit by paying attention to the position of your mouse cursor with relation to the center-line of the horse. Your rider will swing to the opposite side of the side where the mouse cursor rests. So if your target is on the horse’s right side, you must be facing right, yes, but your mouse cursor will have to be to the left of the center of the horse to allow your rider to swing on the right side. And vice versa.
In the villages talk to any villager to get a general idea of the village’s prosperity but you’ll go to the Village Elder for any quests. Hover the mouse over the Elder himself for a handy meter showing his attitude toward you.
Mount & Blade: Entering a village
Through the Village Elder you can take on the offered tasks, or not. If you take them on you don’t have to execute them in order but they will have time limits. You may be asked to get some wheat for the village or perhaps teach the villagers to defend themselves and help them to fight marauders a la the Seven Samurai-Magnificent Seven-Bugs Life movies. The villagers will learn from you if you have mastered the skills yourself. And eventually, when you take this task, you will be faced with the reappearance the bandits, and your trained villagers, with you as their leader, will have to fight. You may also get different types of tasks from a prince of a castle, such as collecting taxes from a nearby village. In this quest you will earn part of the taxes you collect as a commission, which can be quite lucrative. Also the villages and castles will be where you recruit your followers, trade for food and weapons and pick up information about the local conditions.
Though the graphics on the strategic map are merely adequate this is where you’ll receive reports of the regional political situation – who’s at war with whom. On the tactical map the character figures are not as life-like as you’d expect in this day and age but the landscapes are stunning. Athough some of the hilly regions seem a little pointier than normal.
Audio-wise the effects are adequate but effective. Riding a horse can be fun and your mount will be quite responsive, with whinnies and snorts when appropriate; the sounds of walking, then trotting, and then galloping hooves will be feedback on speed.
Conclusion For those with an interest in 3-D non-fantasy, Middle-Ages role playing action, though the sword fighting and horseback ridng may require some mastery of hand-eye skills to do well, a look at Mount & Blade would be well worth considering.
Domesday Book, history, taxation | bshears December 31, 2008 | 
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