Spoiler
Show
You have to ask why they went with cruddy Pain and not Naruto himself, which would make far more sense under the circumstances, and wouldn't be as insulting to Pinkie...
Hey, I just realised, though this episode is totally fuelling the fire of the whole Pinkuto schick, ain't it?
Fifth Equestrian Civilisation
Spoiler
Show
Dear Twilight Sparkle,
You will be glad to hear I will be coming home soon, with our objectives achieved; I hope you haven't had too much trouble in my absense (especially as it has only been two days from your perspective!)
After securing Gao, Bleakbane spent a long time martialling our military forces, while I tended to improving the citizens and the counryside with our weath factories. I sent out some more colonists to found Ponyville - by the sea, which is nice! That gave us some much needed salt, because I can tell you, I really needed some of that! I offered some to Bleakbane, but he just looked at me gone out! Different species (and living verses Undead!) I guess!
While we waited for our railroads, we sent a colony ship all around the world, trying to find a new place to settle, and after circumnavigating the whole globe, we finally found a small atoll with some nice resources just off the south coast of one of the Songhai cities!
By that point, our trains were running (in case we needed some reinforcements), and I had assembled to squadrons of Wonderbolts under the command of Silver Lining. Songhai denounced us again, and complained we were massing on the borders. Bleakbane denounced them right back (and we found that England and sevral other countries liked them as little as we did!) And then Bleakbane launched the attack with our new artillery. This time, weight of numbers and technology told, and our forces were able to take crush their last two cities with no losses, and then march upon and liberate the citystate, and wiping out the Songhai altogether.
After that bit of excitement, however, it was a very uneventful run. Neither I nor Bleakbane felt it was worth launching a large naval force to conquer the other contient (though for different reasons!) So we simply settled in, built lots of trains and raised the standard of culture and living for our citizens. By 2009 AD, we were in a position to build a magical friendship project that would unite the whole world. But we held off for a few years, because Bleakbane wanted to see how far we could get with the spaceship parts first - and he really wanted to build a Giant Death Robot, even if all they did was stand around Gao!
But eventually, in 2028, we completed the friendship project and made all the humans happy and contented, and left them to it. Blakbane did a logn analysis of my rule, and compared me to Augustus Caesar, which I think was a complement!
Anyway, I feel quite refreshed, and ready to deal with anything the real Equestria can throw at me, and ready to resume my duties! unless you and Luna have managed to burn the palace down while I've been away!
No, but seriously, if you have, you are going to the Moon so hard.
See you soon my dear,
Your loving mentor,
Princess Celestia.
(Both the Wonderbolt had names, but I can't remember the second one, and with how slow Civ V is, it's not worth loading it up again to check! That other music, by-the-by is the CMC theme, with Art of the Dress being the "war" theme, which is hilarious and also awesome.)
Civ V
Pros: Being able to choose to do the production and science instead of being shutned into it at the start of the turn is an improvement; the extra flexibility means it's easier to save, for example, and I did like the fact it didn't move to the next turn while there were bits to do. Bigger city radius is, I think just about a net positive, but probably means you need a bigger map. Ranged fire is I think a net improvement, stacking issues nothwithstanding, as are the improved city defences. Also, being able to buy improvements independantly (and several a round) of the production queue is really handy. Land untis requiring no transports is massively better; naval warfare was always a massive pain in the earlier versions, and even shipping workers around if you had one square on an island was annoying. Religion/social policies were MUUUCH better.
Cons: Still not convinced about the no-stacking, neutral to the chance to hex. Less data available, and I found the interface actually less helpful than civ IV, and missing a few bits. (Like in Civ IV - and Alpha and Civ III - you could Alt+U to upgrade all the units of one type. Tried that, but it didn't seem to work. Maybe there's another key or something I just missed.)
Didn't like the fact you can't rename units in Civ V. While it's not a thing I used heavily in Civ IV, I did use it to name my high level units for ease of identification. Great Generals are way less effective than in Civ IV (and most Great People are generally.)
Waaaay long to load (even just to the main menu, not even the saved games!) Don't like the lack of direct citizen micromanagement; I preferred being able to make them work exactly what squares I wanted in Civ IV.
Overall, a bit of a giggle, but not earth-shattering (nor as bad as I'd thought it might be.) Not better, overall, than Civ IV, but even so, some areas of improvement. (If they took some of the better ideas of Civ V and added them into Civ IV to make Civ VI, it could be astonishingly good.)
Plus, this dry-run gave me a much better idea of what to do for next time (larger map, better Civ - sorry Equestria, but you kinda suck with that ability that I got to use like, twice during a 380-odd turn game) and go for Tradition straight out of the gate instead of piety (which I did because I'd gotten a bit behind on the Faith and I wanted to snag a good pantheon before all the decent ones went!)