Your prediction on the invasion, WHO YA GOT?

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Ukraine has more tanks then when this bloodthirsty invasion started, if that helps people wonder who the winners and losers are here.

Russia has embarrassed itself in a way nobody thought possible.

[Jizaboz]

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Sure, anxiety may be running high in that picture, but clearly one family is still pretty mellow-yellow.

[pinback]

One of the most impressive new city-builders in the Banished style is called "Ostriv".



It's developed by a single developer, which is amazing. He's Ukrainian. His last update was that he was hearing explosions in the distance, he was okay, but his cat was freaking out. This was a couple weeks ago.

To sum up, don't expect any Ostriv updates any time soon.

[odyssia76]

Russia has embarrassed itself in a way nobody thought possible.

I think many people, including myself, thought it was possible. Russia has always been famous for inflated numbers, poor training, nepotism, corruption, bad planning, everything. But even being pretty sure of those things only means you think it is "possible" for an underdog to beat them, not "likely". I think a lot of people thought it might happen, hoped it might happen, but weren't ready to commit to it. Turns out we even still overestimated how much they had their shit together, and it may turn out that as tragic as it is, the invasion might be the catalyst for something g that needs to happen for world peace - Putin to be out of the picture. A silver lining, a "least crappy result".

[AArdvark]

Russia still has nukes to launch in the fourth quarter of this game

[odyssia76]

Russia still has nukes to launch in the fourth quarter of this game

True. The question doesn't seem to be if Putin is crazy enough - he is. I'm asking myself differenr questions about WHERE he would bomb, and with what weapon system? Between land and sub-based ICBMs, anywhere on the planet is a possibility. If his target were somewhere in the European theater, he wouldn't even need ballistic weapons; a cruise missile from a ship in the Black Sea would do fine. I think he might avoid it for a reason similar to Mutually Assured Destruction. He's probably not gonna start WWIII by bombing a NATO country. He's not gonna bomb himself, probably not some completely unrelated country. So realistically, unless he's crazy enough to risk his country's vaporization, his target would have to be in Ukraine. Unless he thinks the west doesn't have the balls to hit back after a first strike, which may be true since sane people know that no matter how mad you are, a second atom bomb doesn't remove the damage of the first.

So in that case his best bet would be a "small" tacnuke, a ground-launched "battlefield" weapon as they unironically call them. But really, how does that help him? Some random location wouldn't work. It would have to be Kyiv. And, really, that wouldn't be a "win" for him. It would men that his attitude was "well, if I can't have it, no one can," a childish sentiment right up his alley, a very Trumpian thing to do. He has very few options, and even fewer of them save him any face. It would be very tempting to him to nuke Kyiv to basically say "ok, fuck y'all- maybe I lose, but you lose, too. The sickly bear still has teeth."

[AArdvark]

Actually my point was that this war is being treated like some kind of game.

[odyssia76]

Actually my point was that this war is being treated like some kind of game.

A War Game?

It's a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

[AArdvark]

Winner!

[RealNC]

Russia still has nukes to launch in the fourth quarter of this game

It has some options before that. The first would be indiscriminate leveling of whole cities, not damage-limiting strikes. After that, they have the option of chemical and biological warfare. Then we get to nukes.