More Awesome Than You!

I've requested this before somewhere or other, but I think it got lost.  I would love a mod that gave outgoing and/or popularity sims some FUN when they were chatting to their friends, be it in person or on the phone.  If a Popularity sim lives for his/her friends, how come they don't enjoy talking to them?  It makes no sense!  In the same vein, very shy Sims should lose fun (not much, but some) when they have to chat for long periods.  I find making small talk extremely excruciating and I know my fun bar drops markedly if I am forced into doing it.  As it seems that other things which provide fun give more or less depending on the personality of the sim, surely socialising should be the same?  Can anyone think of anything a highly outgoing Popularity YA would enjoy better than 'hanging-out' on the grass outside the dorm with their friends?  No, neither can I. So how come they get no fun out of it whatsoever?

I never understood this either.

Give them to gossip - they enjoy it a lot. Instead of "talk-chat", order a couple of times "talk-gossip".

I'd like to see that as well Ancient Sim.

Makes no sense that outgoing sims don't garner fun from talking on the phone!

And that makes sense that shy sims would lose a bit of fun from doing the same.

Gossiping may create fun, but they don't do it autonomously very often and in the main it's not-so-nice sims that do it.  It's a particular problem when they're 'hanging-out' - they come back from class and do this and you can see their fun level getting lower & lower, yet you don't want to stop them chatting because they need to make a friend of this person to get in the SS or Greek house or whatever, so you have to either resort to cheats or cancel the talking.  Neither should have to happen.  I want the fun to occur when they socialise autonomously, not because I am directing them to gossip or whatever.

Too true. I love hanging out with friends, and I enjoy our discussions very much. Being somewhat older than the 18 - 45 year olds, we don't go in for sky-diving, canoeing, and such, but we do enjoy our very lively conversations. I hate playing pool, and I only play multi-player video (PC or console) when my daughter/son whine enough, so I do it just to shut them up :D

This would make a lot of sense.  If you have a bad conversation, on the other hand, then Fun going into freefall is a winner.

And generally, it'd be nice if sims got more fun or social from hanging around with friends than with total strangers. That's the whole point of inviting over friends rather than random people. You enjoy spending time with them.

I pay little attention to fun anymore. If it goes red while they're hanging out, it goes red. So what? There's always kicky bag, or just plain Kicking Stuff.

For me, skydiving is not something you do for fun, it's a mode of transportation. And if at first, you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you. Conventional canoe bores me. Unless there is ramming. RAMMING SPEED!

:D True, true, sky-diving is rather limited for second chances.

Ramming speed you say? Reminds me of the ancients galleones (sp?), where the prisoners and slaves were chained to their oars. I believe the attacking ship used ramming speed -with the aid of a few whip-lashes, with a real whip, strategically placed - (not to be confused with the modern-day whiplash due to accidents involving excessive speed).

That's actually a myth. Slaves and prisoners were not typically used in war galleys. Usually professional rowers were used.

I would imagine, if all the slaves and prisoners combined efforts and stopped rowing together, there wouldn't have been enough slave-drivers to force them to start again, and the enemy ship would have the advantage!

Plus there's the fact that rowing a warship efficiency in battle requires a level of discipline and training you won't get out of common prisoners or slaves. Thus why professional rowers were used. Galleys rowed by slaves were typically not used for war.

Oh, I know that they were not using prisoners and slaves in the actual battle-ships. In fact, the Romans were not even the first ones to use the galeere (galley, galleon). Clever as they were, they copied the design from the Catharges (I really don't know the english name for the Cathargian people) when a fleet of cathargian ships flooded, sank, and were stranded on the italian shore after a sea-battle in the Punic wars.

The slaves and prisoners were of better use in the mines and the commerce ships. It was just, shall we say, artistic rendering a la Ben Hur (and I don't even like Charlton Heston, never have). It makes such a better dramatic picture.

Well, you know, Romans were better on land battles. They resorted to naval warfare only because the Carthaginians were such a thorn in their side.

Notice that they invented the rostrum to be more "on their own ground" even at sea.

True, it took three tries for the mighty roman legions to burn and raze Catharge. It was however, a mighty army; unfortunately, the in-house discontent that led to the decline of the western empire was even too much for them to overcome.

How is it going breyerii? My sister just told me that she and her family are driving down to Meran for a week, the terrible wench. If you come across a short blonde with the name of Kerstin, smack her upside the head from me :D

It is arguable whether the Romans tried to raze Carthage all three times. Vernichtungkrieg (=war of annihilation) is quite a modern concept after all.

And the western Empire lasted centuries; more, the legacy will go on as long as history will be studied.

I promise you, I'll keep a strict watch on any group of German tourists I come across.  ;)

The Romans didn't do so well against hordes of vandals and goths either!  They seemed to need a structured battle plan, and if they didn't get it, they were unable to deal with the consequences.

Well, their overall record marks their army as one of the most successful of all times anyway. Implosive forces were by the time of the fall of the empire enormous, and the army itself mostly composed of mercenaries, often from barbarian tribes themselves.

I agree that Roman mentality wasn't - isn't - known for flexibility.

Bully you say :D
I happen to like their descendants very much, and even though they are not the most flexible, they are certainly the most giving and friendly people I've come across. You're talking about my favorite vacation country, so be careful (even if you are one of them :D)

Even if they didn't try to raze and burn Catharge all three times, by the time they finally got around to it, I'm sure they were more than willing to do it twice over. The Goths' were actually pretty patient with the Romans until they reached a breaking point. Proving that you can't supress anyone in perpetuity without repercussions. Good ol' Spartacus should have taught the ancient word at least that much.

Thanks for keeping watch breyerii, I wish I could join you.

The Rostrum is a Roman forum for giving speeches. You were perhaps referring to the corvus, an early Roman device used to facilitate ramming and boarding. The device was ultimately abandoned as the Romans gained more naval warfare experience because it destabilized the ship and thus made it prone to sinking in storms.

Not wanting to sound as though I'm overly patriotic, (I'm part Irish and part Scots, so don't have a big axe to grind for the English) but I would have said the British Empire at its peak was greater in many ways than the Roman one, and unlike the Roman Empire, which disintegrated into chaos, the British Empire grew into something far better - the British Commonwealth.  And despite the War of Independence, the US never broke its ties with Great Britain, which must say something for the strength of the relationship!

I think it has more to do with the fact that we speak the same language, sorta.

Maybe you're right, but they could have hated each other in English forever instead....

Yes, but that's hard to do. Sharing a common language tends to complicate matters. It's sort of like how even though we owe more to the French, and we've actually fought two wars with the British, we still get along better with the Brits than the French (who annoy us!). I tell you, it's entirely the language thing. That is first and foremost what hogties us together. When you combine it with the American tendency not to know any other languages, they're the only people we can actually talk to.

Well, I wouldn't have said that about languages - I've met loads of Americans who were far better at speaking other languages than the Brits - not so inhibited, I think.

Traveller bias. If you're meeting Americans regularly, you're meeting the travellers, which would disproportionately speak a foreign language, particularly when bound for Europe. I'm not really much of a language person myself, although I do know how to shout useful phrases like "SURRENDER OR DIE!" in a dozen languages. I also speak the universal language of gun. But if the British aren't much for foreign languages either, that would explain why they're stuck with their backward American cousins.

Now why on earth would you say "backward" JM?

I know a friend who can say "sh*t" in 10 different languages.  ;D

He's calling Americans backwards because we are backwards in many ways. Languages, for example - actually go into the States and you'll find that the number of people who speak more than Bad English is shockingly low. A second language is not required unless one wants to get into some universities, and then only two years of it is required, which is just enough for the average person to remember the word for 'dog' ten years later. Americans are generally monoglots - and tend to be proud of it, absurdly. Some of the more stupid ones actually get offended at signs/packaging featuring Spanish as well as English.

That annoyance goes both ways JM. The french have a law that prohibits businesses to advertise or publicly display signs in the english language, and Americans are the only western people the french insist on having a visa before they allow them into France. All other Europeans can enter France with only their ID card, or a valid passport at the most. At least that was the way a few years back.

I had an American friend visit us and 5 of us decided to go to France for a day or two. We actually had to bribe the border-patrol to let her in; she didn't have a visa, we forgot the French insisted on that for Americans. That was however, about 15 years ago, it might have changed meanwhile, but somehow I doubt it.

But since our country has been so slow at bringing back identity cards (why they ever got rid of them is beyond me!) British people are definitely second-class citizens in Europe as they have to show passports (and have them stamped in many cases)  and not merely an ID card.

It always annoyed me, too, that US citizens never needed a visa to enter the UK, but the US always insisted on one from UK citizens  - now surely these things should be reciprocal, and maybe that's all the French were doing - reciprocating!

That's basically why my dad learned what Spanish he knows. Or used to know. He's retired Coast Guard, so when he was XO of a cutter in the Caribbean, (The Durable, if anyone cares.) he had to be able to tell people "Put your hands in the air" and "Where are the illegal drugs/weapons immigrants?" even if he didn't speak Spanish. Though I seem to remember something about not actually ever learning Spanish. Something about threatening them with a shot gun . . .

I took a trip to Europe last summer. France, Belgium, and Germany. Everyone was very nice, and the signs on the transportation were in about a dozen different languages. Most people spoke English, too (To my great annoyance, since I didn't get much chance to practice my French) although that may have had some to do with my Dad's mangling of "Parlez-vous anglais?" and "Sprechen Sie Englisch?" (He actually knew German fairly well, as he lived there for several years in high school.) The menus and signs and things were mostly in French or German, except in train stations, but that wasn't a big deal because I've been able to read basic menu-ese since French I, Dad knew enough German to fill in the gaps between cognates, and we had a very useful phrasebook/traveler's dictionary with most of the words we ran into.

Honestly, French isn't that tough if you know English and a bit of the Latin you can pick up in textbooks and dictionary. Grammar's generally much trickier than vocabulary, but one can learn to read enough French to get around during a week in Paris, as my brother discovered.

It's having the right attitude that counts!  That's why immigrants to a country who make the effort to communicate are generally able to settle better than those who just want to recreate their own home village wherever they are.  The host community will in most cases (though not all, unfortunately) accept those who mae an effort to get along with them, but will often reject those who have made it clear that they have rejected them first!

Trust me veilchen, I know my modern day Romans. I live with one...


Well, here (http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=haaren&book=rome&story=manlius) is a brief recounting of how the rostrum (weapon) became the rostrum (forum); scroll down the page. However you were once again More Awesome Than Me: I had really meant the corvus.


The British Empire was larger than the Roman one, but also the world had, in a way, grown much larger. Few lands the Romans wanted remained outside their grasp.
Then, to say that the British empire "grew into something far better" could seem to imply that it was an evolution instead of a traumatic fall. Britain was spared internal chaos and multiple invasions, but the empire fell none the less.

Okay, it was a downward slide, but at least it was fairly gradual and gave most people time to adjust.  And most, though I admit not all, of the ex-colonies, have escaped the massacres that are still happening in some parts of the world.

Ahem, we're really transforming this thread into an arena for past glories...  :D

Rome declined slowly as well, if we consider that the downward spiral started before the III century (Commodus) and ended in 476.

Say, we should really put an end to our war of ghosts empires. We're talking about different stadiums of human history, trying to determine who was "better" seems quite an unlikely task.

You're right, of course!  And since empire-building is rather politically incorrect these days, perhaps the whole thing is better left in the past.