I was already sold on Civ V before I went to the demo at E3. Civilization, in all it’s incarnations, is one of my favorite games, and I was really looking forward to seeing the newest version.

Civ V keeps the hex grids and city building we all loved in Civ IV, but adds gorgeous new graphics, new diplomatic options and city-states. One major change from previous Civ versions is the end of the unit stack. You’ll no longer be able to pile up every possible unit into a killer stack and then march over to fight your enemies. Instead, ranged weapons have been introduced to combat. You’ll still have diplomatic routes to make peace or to demand tribute. Once you’ve captured an enemy city, you’ll have the usual options to take it over or raze it, and a new option of installing a puppet leader to keep the citizens happy and also receive resources from your new friend.

Game demonstrators used the nuke on Montezuma, because everyone agrees that he really is a jerk.

Other political leaders are shown in gorgeous cutscenes, subtitled from their native languages. Or ignore the animations and just declare war. I couldn’t get a list of national leaders who’ll be featured in Civ V, but I was promised that they range from the famous to the obscure across world cultures.

Civ V will also include city-states, a new form of NPCs somewhere between the barbarian states found in Civ IV and the other AI or player-controlled nations. Players will be able to make trade alliances with city-states, try to gain their votes in the UN for a diplomatic victory, or just fight them and take their stuff. Political relationships will become more complicated with the addition of city-states, since your relationships with city-states will affect your standing with nations. I wonder if I’ll be able to use my Civ superpower of making every other nation my ally.

Since I don’t like combat unless I’m forced to it (Why conquer cities when I can just let them revolt and join my glorious empire on their own?), I was pleased to see new options for diplomatic, science and culture victories. For a science-track victory, spaceship parts are physical entities that need to be moved and assembled in one place. Civ V includes a new stat of Piety, which will work in conjunction with religion founding to affect political and religious relations, and therefore, the cultural victory conditions. No word on whether that will make Isabella any easier to deal with.

The game will be available on the PC in September, 2010.

Oh, and the promo swag was a Civ Addicts Anonymous button. No more turns!

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Civ V at E3

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I’m kind of jealous that with all the time I’ve spent waiting at Newark Airport (For Christmas 2006, I flew in on AirIndia, Stick came in on British Airways and we both lost our luggage), I’ve never seen a singalong.

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Newark Airport Singalong

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I’ve been hearing disjointed quotes from the now-infamous Palin resignation speech for a couple of days and I decided to read the whole thing myself. I’m not going to go over the whole thing, because I was much more confused after reading it than before. But the speech ends with:

In the words of General MacArthur said, “We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”

With my admittedly-limited knowledge of WWII battles, I sort of thought it referred to Bataan, and that seemed like a really odd choice for a speech about – I think – moving on.  So I used my awesome powers of quote-tracking (thanks, Living Pulpit gig!) and found out that the actual quote was from a Major General Oliver Prince Smith, as quoted in “Retreat of the 20,000″ Time, Dec. 18, 1950

I wonder if pointing that out makes me a big meanie Gotcha Journalist, or am I still a pajama-clad blogger in my parents’ basement?

Info via Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Time Magazine

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Shooting Fish

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The Chocolate Bean
280 Meeting St
Cary, NC 27518

I’m lucky enough to do a lot of my work via my laptop, so I’ve been looking around for a local coffeeshop with wifi. I’ve been shopping around, and discovered that Borders, Barnes&Noble and Starbucks all charge for internet. (I don’t know if this is a new worldwide trend or if I’m just spoiled by the free wifi in Chinese Starbucks but it’s pretty lame either way.)

Stick and I are fond of Caribou Coffee for the drive-though, mostly because we love Caribou’s Eli. He is wide awake when we aren’t. Also he uses complete sentences in the drive-through.

Then I discovered The Chocolate Bean. The Chocolate Bean looks a bit like Cafe Zarah in Beijing, with the monochrome modern furniture, but without the odd sandwiches, and with a gourmet chocolate counter and a gelato bar like this one we visited in Rome. It’s like a hip living room.

I’m not a coffee purist. I know some people think that adding hazelnut and caramel and amaretto and so forth dilutes the flavour of the beans, and to those people, I say, hello? Do you not realize you can drink coffeedrink desserts all day? You are SO missing out! Anyway, the Chocolate Bean has a long list of specialty coffees or you can add flavors to regular drinks.  In the interests of a fair review, of course, I had to try a bunch of coffees, and the boring Americano is nice too, but a cappuccino with hazelnut is definitely my favorite. The prices are better than Starbucks, too.

The Chocolate Bean doesn’t have Caramel Apple Crack but they do have my beloved pomegranate green tea, New York-texture bagels (not bread with a hole in the middle), and smoothies. Did I mention the gelato? Very Meg-friendly!

Overall, good coffee and snacks in a laid-back atmosphere. The only way it could be any better is if it didn’t look out over the parking lot.  Now, I think I was supposed to be getting some work done…

Edit 4/23: The Chocolate Bean will start offering paninis in May! Can’t decide if I should get them with smoothies like this Xidan cafe, or with gelato like our old favorite, Andiamo’s in Amherst.

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The Chocolate Bean

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This is right where Stick and I lived in Beijing! You can see the drum tower, the bridge by Qianhai, and my own private landmarks, like the exercise equipment and the bird cages on our old street. The narration is a bit annoying, full of comments like the news that Beijing is changing and the Chinese like big families, but it’s so lovely to see where we used to live. (Thanks to @ElliottNg for tweeting this!)

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Brick Factory Lane

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I have mixed feelings about Colleen McCullough. On one hand, she wrote the well-researched and racy Caesar’s Women and other novels set in ancient Rome. On the other hand, I haven’t quite forgiven her for Thorn Birds.

Now, I love Pride and Prejudice.The story is an understated comedy of formal manners and romantic expectations, plus nerdy girls everywhere agree that Mr Darcy is a catch. I love it because it also shows that the clever use of sarcasm can make any difficult situation better.

I was excited for some more brilliant Elizabeth / Darcy banter, and I was interested in seeing how the relationship matured. Would seventeen years of marriage to Elizabeth get Darcy laughing and lighthearted, or would she find that the dark, sarcastic, brooding type can be hard to live with? Are Jane and Bingley cheated by every servant, as Mr. Bennett predicted at the end of Pride and Prejudice?

I was hoping that bookish Mary would have some bluestocking friends and perhaps meet a nice professor or author for her love interest. Instead, she is kidnapped first by highwaymen, then by Darcy’s brutish secret half-brother, and finally spends most of the book held hostage by, um, a human-sacrifice cult living in the huge underground caves near Pemberley! (The Darcys just have endless skeletons in their closets, don’t they?). I had to check a couple times to make sure I was reading an actual novel and not internet fanfic.

The understated comedy was gone. Instead, characters with the same names as my beloved Bennett sisters had emotional blowup after emotional blowup. A blunt and uncontrolled Elizabeth Bennett Darcy shouting mediocre insults? Huh? Antisocial Darcy — who goes by the cutesy nickname Fitz — is networking with the house of lords as part of his campaign for prime minister, and trying to keep both his thuggish half-brother and mad, alcoholic Lydia Bennett Wickham a secret. One clever moment, when Caroline Bingley is dispatched to deal with pushover Jane and Bigley’s unruly children, is canceled out by bizarre actions by characters we know and love.

Writing a sequel to such a well-loved story would be difficult no matter what, and subject to readers insisting that that’s not what Jane / Elizabeth / Darcy / Mary would really have done. But, come on, a human sacrifice cult? In Derbyshire?

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The Independence of Miss Mary Bennett

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We don’t have cable (we wouldn’t have a TV if Stick didn’t need it for his console games) so I had to find out about the national rickroll through Twitter.

It is so awesome to see a nerd joke make its way into the Thanksgiving Day parade.

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Cartoon Network Rickroll

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Canadian comedians called Sarah Palin pretending to be Sarkozy. I’ve seen this a few places, and I wasn’t going to listen to this because radio pranks are usually stupid set-ups and the punchline is somebody saying a dirty word to a celebrity, which really isn’t my sense of humor. But I read a bit of the transcript — the conversation is long enough for exerpts from a transcript — and had to hear the whole thing. They have her on the phone for a long time, starting with a good French accent and some vanilla chat about the campaign, and then saying he can see Belgium from his house…and then just saying ridiculous things in a Pepe Le Pew voice.

It’s ok if you can’t listen to the whole thing, I just started to cringe and feel so badly for her.

There’s a terrifying Stepford Wife quality here because as “President Sarkozy” goes further and further off the deep end, talking about Hustler’s Nailin’ Palin documentary, she continues to respond with campaign slogans:

Masked Avengers: You know my wife is a popular singer and a former top model and she’s so hot in bed. She even wrote a song for you.

Sarah Palin: Oh my goodness, I didn’t know that.

A: Yes, in French it’s called de rouge a levre sur un cochon, or if you prefer in English, Joe the Plumber…it’s his life, Joe the Plumber.

P: Maybe she understands some of the unfair criticism but I bet you she is such a hard worker, too, and she realizes you just plow through that criticism.

A: I just want to be sure. That phenomenon Joe the Plumber. That’s not your husband, right?

P: That’s not my husband but he’s a normal American who just works hard and doesn’t want government to take his money.

This could be our next vice president. Please vote.

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Palin and “President Sarkozy”

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Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Joss Whedon’s new project, recently put out a call for supervillains to submit their applications. Stephen Follows sent me his villain, The Garnisher. It’s very Mystery Men, only with music. And garnishing.

The Garnisher – Application to the Evil League of Evil from The Garnisher on Vimeo.

Related: Stephen’s Space Chase

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Supervillian Applications

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Barbie just introduced me to N., a Stephen King story, about a psychiatrist and his patient, who might be saving the world or just garden-variety insane. The story is intriguing and it’s been turned into a series of short, comic book-style videos (adapted by one of the Eli Stone guys, too). It’s completely addictive, each segment is so short that you’re left panting to see what happens next.

Warning: The series isn’t complete yet! Be prepared for a cliffhanger!

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N.

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