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Author Topic: National LCS Revisited (4.07.4 Beta Release!)  (Read 108616 times)

Liberal Elitist

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Re: National LCS Revisited (4.07.3 Beta Release!)
« Reply #225 on: August 08, 2013, 10:37:18 pm »

When I read this, the first thing I thought was it was a spambot that latches on to anything mentioning bugs. Anyways, thanks for the fix. Gotta wonder what JSF is up to right now.

LOL no I'm not a spambot, I'm a programmer, and I've been fixing bugs and enhancing things. Jonathan S. Fox saw me posting in another thread, where I had a bunch of code posted and wanted write access to the project, now I've got write access to the project, so I went ahead and fixed a bunch of things all in one day, in a frenzy of hyperactivity. From his post, I'd say Jonathan S. Fox is doing fine, just a little busy, judging by his post. I wouldn't be worried, he seems to be up on things and know what's going on. But I have to admit, I am curious myself about what he plans on adding to the game next, I've mostly been fixing bugs, he tends to be the one to add major new features to the game, plus he's the one who releases all the official builds and has been the lead programmer for years.

I've played the game for years, but the source code isn't entirely new to me, I used to download it to try and figure out how the game worked and what the most effective strategies would be, and I've contributed a lot to the LCS wiki. I only started contributing to the source code itself on, oh what was it, July 29th or so was when I started playing around with the code for this, I think. In fact I only started using Code::Blocks, the IDE I use to edit source code and compile and build the project, after looking at the README file in the source code and seeing that the 2 recommended ways to edit this project are using M$ Visual Studio and Code::Blocks, so naturally I went with the open-source freeware choice. I've done lots of playing around with the code since then, including plenty of stuff that I later discarded, and it's been a good opportunity to use my programming skills (and perhaps even improve them) after a period when I hadn't done programming and was gradually getting rusty from not doing it.

I've got a degree in Computer Science that I got in 2004, I used to program a lot, but ever since I graduated college that year, I never got a job in the software field and have done hardly any programming at all. But this is a good way to keep my skills from getting rusty, it's like, if you study a foreign language, but then don't use it for several years, you start forgetting it. I actually had a job interview with the company Google about 4 years ago but I was way too rusty at programming to be able to do the programming challenges they gave me, and in fact I found it unbelievable that they would even consider someone as unqualified as me, with no work experience in the software field and who stopped programming the moment I graduated college. I used to spend half my free time programming, back in the 90s, when I was a teenager.

So at this point I'm trying to see which open-source projects I can usefully contribute to (i.e., projects that could use a few more programmers working, where the code isn't that hard to figure out, and which I find interesting enough to work on). Liberal Crime Squad is actually perfect for me, easily meeting all those criteria, unlike most open-source projects out there. (For instance my favorite web browser is Firefox, but working on it would be a much more daunting challenge, plus it's got loads more code, and I don't quite feel ready to work on a big project like that one, at least not yet.) Liberal Crime Squad is a small enough project in terms of the amount of source code to look over that it's easily doable to read all of the source code and become familiar with it, unlike some larger projects. This makes it about a million times easier to fix bugs or add features than with a much bigger project. Plus, despite its small size in terms of code, it is quite an excellent game with a loyal following, a loyal following which I have been a part of for years, so I am also VERY familiar with Liberal Crime Squad from an end-user's point of view. I have played other open-source games, but a lot of them are basically dead projects where new versions haven't come out in quite some time, while Liberal Crime Squad has been an active project for years and is still going strong.

And despite the relative simplicity of this game, the regular updates to it and the wide variety of different strategies to playing it that work really give it endless replayability. Another advantage to this game is that, since it doesn't have sound, I can listen to music or streaming Internet radio or podcasts while I play it. Plus its CPU usage is low most of the time (unlike most games and gaming console emulators, which typically gobble up close to 100% of your CPU), so it's an excellent game for multitasking. I can play it at the same time as running 10 other programs and not have any trouble. And as for it being text mode, I've always had an affinity for text mode stuff, back when I was a teenager and spent lots of time programming, all my programs were written for DOS, and I'm still kind of nostalgic for DOS. This game reminds me of DOS, but in a very positive way, it reminds me of everything I liked about DOS.

Anyway, before I started working on programming this, I was one of the people who would propose ridiculous new features (like that nuclear button nonsense earlier in this thread) or complain about certain bugs without actually contributing anything, but I realized, I ought to actually use my programming skills to do things instead of just demanding things of other people who have less spare time than me, and not putting in any effort myself to improve the project. Plus it really gives me a sense of pride in a job well done, and I feel much better now that I'm actually contributing to this project and helping improve it, than back before when I was just asking for new features or pointing out bugs and demanding other people do the coding, while not putting my own programming skills to use at all and just being lazy.

So, that's a very lengthy explanation of why I'm working on improving Liberal Crime Squad, this wonderful game that I've enjoyed for years, which is endlessly replayable, and keeps getting improved all the time, by the lead programmer Jonathan S. Fox as well as a number of other contributors, which now includes me. It's nice to have something productive to do for a change, where I can actually contribute to something other people enjoy, since I'm usually so lazy, at least this way I'm giving something back to society. There are other things I could do to give back to society such as volunteering at various things locally, but I think working on this project is much more enjoyable, especially since I don't have to deal with other people face-to-face and I can actually use my skills, for once.
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Jonathan S. Fox

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Re: National LCS Revisited (4.07.3 Beta Release!)
« Reply #226 on: August 09, 2013, 06:25:21 pm »

When I read this, the first thing I thought was it was a spambot that latches on to anything mentioning bugs. Anyways, thanks for the fix. Gotta wonder what JSF is up to right now.

I'm alive and kicking, got a bit burned out while working on LCS so much over the last couple months. I'm taking a break, which may be short or medium. It won't be endless. Part of me would like to rush the rest of the National LCS features into place, but I know I'll just burn out more and becoming increasingly unproductive if I try to force myself to do that, so I've decided to kick back and work on another project for the time being.

Right now I'm studying engine architecture to improve my skills in an area where I didn't get the proper training in college. That was my own fault; DigiPen provides great instruction in that, but I didn't take it. I'm currently working to fix this and gain an increased mastery over the technical structure, the architecture and engineering, of games as software.

Also, this thing, which may or may not ever become anything:



Character art by David E. Gervais. The blue dots are projected movement of the swordsman in order to avoid the rough terrain, and the illuminated area is the possible movement range of the swordsman, taking into account terrain.
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Liberal Elitist

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Re: National LCS Revisited (4.07.3 Beta Release!)
« Reply #227 on: August 10, 2013, 07:58:05 pm »

Also, this thing, which may or may not ever become anything:



Character art by David E. Gervais. The blue dots are projected movement of the swordsman in order to avoid the rough terrain, and the illuminated area is the possible movement range of the swordsman, taking into account terrain.

Reminds me of the game Fantasy General (1996 DOS game that looked somewhat similar):



Fantasy General likewise had the feature of having an illuminated area that was the possible movement range of the selected unit, taking into account terrain. In the above screenshot, however, no unit is selected, so the illuminated area is your field of vision instead (the areas with darker terrain are covered by fog of war so you can't see any enemy units there). It also had similar terrain elements such as rivers, mountains, and forests, and had various types of units including swordsmen and mages, just like the screenshot you posted. It had a hexagonal grid of tiles, somewhat similar to your brick-like arrangement of square tiles.

Your screenshot also reminds me a little bit of the first 2 games in the Warcraft series (not Warcraft 3 because it has 3D vector graphics instead of 2D sprite graphics) and the first 5 games in the Final Fantasy series (Final Fantasy 6 had taller sprites and Mode 7 graphics for when you were out on the World Map so it doesn't look much like FF6). But it has a major difference from all those games, in that the tiles are arranged like bricks instead of in a rectangular grid.
« Last Edit: August 11, 2013, 12:52:36 am by Liberal Elitist »
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Insanity X

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Re: National LCS Revisited (4.07.3 Beta Release!)
« Reply #228 on: August 13, 2013, 02:27:38 pm »

so this happened
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Liberal Elitist

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Re: National LCS Revisited (4.07.3 Beta Release!)
« Reply #230 on: August 13, 2013, 11:36:05 pm »

so this happened


The Onion has a story about this too: Markets In Turmoil As Price Of Money Skyrockets To $90 A Dollar. It has a neat video too. So if anyone asks about this bug just show them this video.

Oh, and I fixed the bug (spent about 2 or 3 hours on this one, good thing I have loads of free time). It's fixed in the latest revision, revision 710. So yeah, thanks for the bug report! Couldn't have done it without you! Can't fix bugs I don't know about, after all... you did half the work by finding and identifying a bug and providing a screenshot.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2013, 02:36:03 am by Liberal Elitist »
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EuchreJack

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Re: National LCS Revisited (4.07.3 Beta Release!)
« Reply #231 on: August 14, 2013, 02:45:58 am »

Also, this thing, which may or may not ever become anything:



Character art by David E. Gervais. The blue dots are projected movement of the swordsman in order to avoid the rough terrain, and the illuminated area is the possible movement range of the swordsman, taking into account terrain.

Reminds me of the game Fantasy General (1996 DOS game that looked somewhat similar):



Fantasy General likewise had the feature of having an illuminated area that was the possible movement range of the selected unit, taking into account terrain. In the above screenshot, however, no unit is selected, so the illuminated area is your field of vision instead (the areas with darker terrain are covered by fog of war so you can't see any enemy units there). It also had similar terrain elements such as rivers, mountains, and forests, and had various types of units including swordsmen and mages, just like the screenshot you posted. It had a hexagonal grid of tiles, somewhat similar to your brick-like arrangement of square tiles.

Your screenshot also reminds me a little bit of the first 2 games in the Warcraft series (not Warcraft 3 because it has 3D vector graphics instead of 2D sprite graphics) and the first 5 games in the Final Fantasy series (Final Fantasy 6 had taller sprites and Mode 7 graphics for when you were out on the World Map so it doesn't look much like FF6). But it has a major difference from all those games, in that the tiles are arranged like bricks instead of in a rectangular grid.

It reminds me of an old DOS game, but I can't put my finger on it.

scrdest

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Re: National LCS Revisited (4.07.3 Beta Release!)
« Reply #232 on: August 14, 2013, 04:21:41 am »

Also, this thing, which may or may not ever become anything:



Character art by David E. Gervais. The blue dots are projected movement of the swordsman in order to avoid the rough terrain, and the illuminated area is the possible movement range of the swordsman, taking into account terrain.

Reminds me of the game Fantasy General (1996 DOS game that looked somewhat similar):



Fantasy General likewise had the feature of having an illuminated area that was the possible movement range of the selected unit, taking into account terrain. In the above screenshot, however, no unit is selected, so the illuminated area is your field of vision instead (the areas with darker terrain are covered by fog of war so you can't see any enemy units there). It also had similar terrain elements such as rivers, mountains, and forests, and had various types of units including swordsmen and mages, just like the screenshot you posted. It had a hexagonal grid of tiles, somewhat similar to your brick-like arrangement of square tiles.

Your screenshot also reminds me a little bit of the first 2 games in the Warcraft series (not Warcraft 3 because it has 3D vector graphics instead of 2D sprite graphics) and the first 5 games in the Final Fantasy series (Final Fantasy 6 had taller sprites and Mode 7 graphics for when you were out on the World Map so it doesn't look much like FF6). But it has a major difference from all those games, in that the tiles are arranged like bricks instead of in a rectangular grid.

It reminds me of an old DOS game, but I can't put my finger on it.

Looks kinda like square-based Battle for Wesnoth with 8-bittier graphics.
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FinetalPies

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Re: National LCS Revisited (4.07.3 Beta Release!)
« Reply #233 on: August 14, 2013, 09:08:30 am »

Y'know it's funny, because the spaces are literally squares. But I would still consider it to be hexagon-based.
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My Name is Immaterial

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Re: National LCS Revisited (4.07.3 Beta Release!)
« Reply #234 on: August 14, 2013, 10:39:39 am »

Y'know it's funny, because the spaces are literally squares. But I would still consider it to be hexagon-based.
Hexed based style?

so this happened


The Onion has a story about this too: Markets In Turmoil As Price Of Money Skyrockets To $90 A Dollar. It has a neat video too. So if anyone asks about this bug just show them this video.

Oh, and I fixed the bug (spent about 2 or 3 hours on this one, good thing I have loads of free time). It's fixed in the latest revision, revision 710. So yeah, thanks for the bug report! Couldn't have done it without you! Can't fix bugs I don't know about, after all... you did half the work by finding and identifying a bug and providing a screenshot.
Its not a bug, its a feature. Also, does the revision fix the president and CEO problem?

Liberal Elitist

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Re: National LCS Revisited (4.07.3 Beta Release!)
« Reply #235 on: August 14, 2013, 09:35:11 pm »

Its not a bug, its a feature. Also, does the revision fix the president and CEO problem?

Actually it was a bug, and it's now fixed, I assume you were joking about it being a feature (yes, quite the nice feature, to be able to sell money in exchange for money, wonder what the current dollar-to-dollar exchange rate is). :P

The President and CEO problems were fixed in revision 692 by jonathansfox and revision 693 by blomkvist back on July 6th. Of course, since the current beta, 4.07.3 beta, is revision 690, released on June 29th, you probably aren't using a version that has those President and CEO fixes, since I doubt you downloaded the latest SVN revision of the game off SourceForge. Don't worry, that stuff was fixed over a month ago (and not by me, jonathansfox and blomkvist deserve the credit for fixing it). ;)

If you want to try out the latest SVN revision that has all that stuff fixed, I explained how earlier in this thread, clicky clicky.
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NES630

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Re: National LCS Revisited
« Reply #236 on: August 14, 2013, 10:18:23 pm »

Some ideas:

Washington DC
- White House
- Capitol Building
- Pentagon

Los Angeles, California
Hollywood
- Movie Studio
Orange County (needs car)
- Corporate HQ
- CEO House

New York, New York
Manhattan
- AM Radio Station
- Cable News Station
- Central Park (replaces public park, larger map)
- Downtown Apartments
Long Island
- Airport
- Factories
- University District Buildings
- Normal Apartments
Outskirts (needs car)
- Nuclear Power Plant

If you are gonna use !!MAJOR!! cities, you might want to familiarize yourself with some geography. Case in point, Long Island is not a city. It is a massive landmass in New York. Might want to change Long Island to Islip or something, or just cross it out entirely.

Also, for New York, a bunch of suggestions. Central Park should be massive. Or just use Battery Park if you are lazy. Definitely change university district to Greenwich Village or Soho. Cable News Network can become NBC Studios at Rockefeller Center. Latte stand could become a street vendor. (Nothing says New York like hot dogs, kebabs, and knish!) Make the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island infiltratation sites as well, with raids there bringing incredible amounts of heat and juice for anything. Prison should be Rikers Island. Possibly Governor's Island as well for a really neat abandoned safehouse. (Fun fact: Comes with some several hundred year old forts! Also, it was basically abandoned in 2009, except for a couple of Nation Park Services tours.)

Finally, new mechanic: boats. To visit any of the island locations: (Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island/Etc.), you should have to jack a boat instead of a car. Basically, just duplicate the car mechanics but make them usable only for locations accessible by water. Speedboats would be ideal, but just as a joke, add slow-ass rowboats with no escape chance for epic, high-octane, and downright impossible to survive rowboat chase scene action.

Of course, I'm commenting on an old-ish post, so I might have been beaten to all these suggestions already.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2013, 10:28:54 pm by NES630 »
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My Name is Immaterial

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Re: National LCS Revisited (4.07.3 Beta Release!)
« Reply #237 on: August 14, 2013, 11:02:35 pm »

Its not a bug, its a feature. Also, does the revision fix the president and CEO problem?

Actually it was a bug, and it's now fixed, I assume you were joking about it being a feature (yes, quite the nice feature, to be able to sell money in exchange for money, wonder what the current dollar-to-dollar exchange rate is). :P

The President and CEO problems were fixed in revision 692 by jonathansfox and revision 693 by blomkvist back on July 6th. Of course, since the current beta, 4.07.3 beta, is revision 690, released on June 29th, you probably aren't using a version that has those President and CEO fixes, since I doubt you downloaded the latest SVN revision of the game off SourceForge. Don't worry, that stuff was fixed over a month ago (and not by me, jonathansfox and blomkvist deserve the credit for fixing it). ;)

If you want to try out the latest SVN revision that has all that stuff fixed, I explained how earlier in this thread, clicky clicky.
I tried the revision out with an old save and the CEO/President thing was still broken, but that was probably why. When I finish this game, I'll switch versions.

And yes. I was being sarcastic about the feature/bug thing.

Jonathan S. Fox

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Re: National LCS Revisited
« Reply #238 on: August 14, 2013, 11:43:45 pm »

If you are gonna use !!MAJOR!! cities, you might want to familiarize yourself with some geography. Case in point, Long Island is not a city. It is a massive landmass in New York. Might want to change Long Island to Islip or something, or just cross it out entirely.

Also, for New York, a bunch of suggestions. Central Park should be massive. Or just use Battery Park if you are lazy. Definitely change university district to Greenwich Village or Soho. Cable News Network can become NBC Studios at Rockefeller Center. Latte stand could become a street vendor. (Nothing says New York like hot dogs, kebabs, and knish!) Make the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island infiltratation sites as well, with raids there bringing incredible amounts of heat and juice for anything. Prison should be Rikers Island. Possibly Governor's Island as well for a really neat abandoned safehouse. (Fun fact: Comes with some several hundred year old forts! Also, it was basically abandoned in 2009, except for a couple of Nation Park Services tours.)

Finally, new mechanic: boats. To visit any of the island locations: (Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island/Etc.), you should have to jack a boat instead of a car. Basically, just duplicate the car mechanics but make them usable only for locations accessible by water. Speedboats would be ideal, but just as a joke, add slow-ass rowboats with no escape chance for epic, high-octane, and downright impossible to survive rowboat chase scene action.

Appreciate the suggestions, I had a lot of trouble laying out cities logically and appreciate a degree of local awareness (my only first-hand experience is with Seattle, which ironically is the city that the game is based on normally). As for Long Island, I'm not that ignorant of the geography. :P As a subheader under NYC, I was talking about Brooklyn and Queens, and not trying to depict "the City of Long Island" or something like that. I agree that it's too vague though, and I think I did change the name to be more specific when coding it.
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Liberal Elitist

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Re: National LCS Revisited (4.07.3 Beta Release!)
« Reply #239 on: August 15, 2013, 05:09:05 am »

I tried the revision out with an old save and the CEO/President thing was still broken, but that was probably why. When I finish this game, I'll switch versions.

And yes. I was being sarcastic about the feature/bug thing.

Ah, it doesn't really work that well with old saves. You should start a new game. It's best to play games that were started in the same version as the version you are playing. So here's some advice on when to upgrade the version of the game you have: right after winning or losing a game, before you start a new game, or you could just delete your saved game if you aren't that attached to it (the save.dat file) and then upgrade to a newer version of the game. If you use a save game from one version in a different version you'll have problems. Which is exactly what happened. If you are playing a game of Liberal Crime Squad on an older version and you're REALLY into it, then finish the game on that same version BEFORE you upgrade to a newer version of Liberal Crime Squad.

And yes, I could tell you were probably being sarcastic. But hard to be sure on the Internet, since there isn't any body language, tone of voice, or other nonverbal cues that make sarcasm much more obvious when people are talking in person.

Appreciate the suggestions, I had a lot of trouble laying out cities logically and appreciate a degree of local awareness (my only first-hand experience is with Seattle, which ironically is the city that the game is based on normally). As for Long Island, I'm not that ignorant of the geography. :P As a subheader under NYC, I was talking about Brooklyn and Queens, and not trying to depict "the City of Long Island" or something like that. I agree that it's too vague though, and I think I did change the name to be more specific when coding it.

Well Brooklyn and Queens make up the western end of Long Island, and all of Long Island (including Nassau and Suffolk counties) is part of the NYC metro area, just like some northeastern parts of New Jersey, counties slightly north of NYC in New York State such as Westchester County and Rockland County, and if you really want to be inclusive, even southeastern parts of Connecticut can be included in the NYC metro area.

I personally live in upstate New York (WAY upstate, nowhere near NYC, takes 2 hours to get there under ideal circumstances, if the weather and traffic are both good, and if the circumstances aren't ideal, more like 3 hours). I've been down to The City a couple times but not that often. In my part of upstate, we refer to New York City as "The City", even though technically the place I live is ALSO a city. But one with a much lower population, so, not a REAL city. I can also take about a 2 hour drive to get to Buffalo, and if I add on a third hour of driving, Toronto up in Canada. Personally I like Toronto better than NYC. Canada is just more... civilized. Here in the U.S., so many people act like uncivilized barbarians.

So yeah, back to the game, I was thinking... how about cross-border incursions into Canada and Mexico (as well as excursions by boat from Miami to Cuba)? The idea here is, the LCS is a rebel group against the U.S. government, basically. Lots of times rebel groups against the government of one country have safe havens in neighboring countries (for instance, Columbian rebels known as the FARC in Venezuela, Ugandan rebels known as Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army in the Congo, Afghan rebels known as the Taliban in Pakistan, Nicaraguan rebels known as the Contras in El Salvador).

Certain places in Canada and Mexico are very close to the U.S. border. Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and Montreal, Canada are 2 examples. Plus Cuba is very close to Miami by boat, so Havana could also be a safe haven for the LCS. So I'm proposing adding those as places the LCS can visit in multiple-city mode. Now, assume for the moment that the U.S. land border crossings that you can cross by car are fairly secure and it's much easier to get across if you have wanted criminals and stolen goods if you take a boat. So for Montreal you take a speedboat from the sparsely populated northern part of New York State to Montreal along the St. Lawrence River, for Ciudad Juarez you take a speedboat from El Paso, Texas across the Rio Grande, and for Havana you take a speedboat from Miami through the Caribbean. The U.S. government has no authority in any of those neighboring countries, although the governments of those countries might take an interest in the LCS. Cuba is very hostile to the U.S. government and would welcome any left-wing group trying to undermine it, such as the LCS, especially if you can explain yourselves to them in Spanish. Mexicans have many grievances against the U.S. regarding the War on Drugs and the way the U.S. government does border enforcement and treats illegal aliens poorly, and Ciudad Juarez is a lawless city of rival drug gangs where the Mexican government has no power and the murder rate is sky-high, a perfect safe haven for the LCS if you know Spanish. Montreal is the capital of French-speaking Quebec, an area of Canada that is very very very liberal and where the locals hate the English language and want to talk in French very much, and have a very negative opinion of the United States, another perfect safe haven for the LCS as long as you can learn French. So obviously French and Spanish would need to be added as skills to the game to operate in these 3 safe haven cities in neighboring countries. There would also be dangers. In Cuba, you might get suspected of being American spies and locked up, if your Spanish and Persuasion skills aren't good enough to convince them that you really are a left-wing rebel group from the U.S., and the Cuban regime would always be monitoring you carefully and have government minders at all of your bases in Havana; if you initially succeeded in persuading them you are on your side, they'd be a good safe haven, unless you committed crimes inside Cuba and the watchful regime found out that you weren't being gracious guests. In Ciudad Juarez, violent drug gangs fight each other for territory, and the only way to succeed there is through violence and having the LCS take over the city by force. The Mexican military and U.S. forces don't dare step foot in Ciudad Juarez. But the violent drug gangs in Ciudad Juarez operate internationally, control vast amounts of Mexican territory, and are not to be taken lightly, and some of them have infiltrated the Mexican government at the highest levels (as well as lower levels too). In Montreal, you have to be very sympathetic to the people of Quebec, talk to them in French, and champion their cause to win their loyalty, although that should be very easy if you know French; however, they are still a part of Canada, which, as a whole, is a nation allied with the United States, and Canadians from other parts of Canada are suspicious of the French-speaking people of Quebec and don't trust them. But Quebeckers don't trust English-speakers, so as long as you speak French there, the locals will be on your side. However, Canada's national government is based in Ottawa, not that far away, so the Canadian national government is the main threat in Montreal. The people of Quebec tend to be rather pacifist so too much violence inside Quebec could alienate them, unless of course it's against the Canadian national government, which they want independence from. If the LCS is extremely successful in Montreal it could result in Quebec becoming an independent nation from Canada and even more of a safe haven for the LCS; however, at this point, the U.S. military would most likely become openly hostile to the nation of Quebec and probably mount a full-scale invasion relatively soon, since the U.S. government would know that the LCS is the reason Quebec is independent, that the LCS's main goal is regime change in the United States itself, and that the newly independent nation of Quebec provides safe haven to the LCS and refuses to back down. Another consideration is that too much activity or time spent in safe havens in neighboring countries could hurt the public image of the LCS inside the United States, given the fact that many Americans are xenophobic and hardly anyone wants foreigners interfering in our politics.

So, to summarize, I'd add Montreal, Canada, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and Havana, Cuba to the game as cities, and French and Spanish as new skills based on Intelligence, and each of those 3 cities would have unique characteristics as a safe haven for the LCS outside the United States but very close to it. This wouldn't all be implemented at once, it could be implemented more gradually. And yes, the game itself is in English, that would not change, we'd get around this by saying "So-and so says in Spanish, ..." and then having text in English in the game itself. If your French or Spanish skill is really bad, it would have the "So-and so says in Spanish, ..." text and then you'd have some really stupid-sounding stuff in English with bad grammar, which would often be quite humorous, and then people would react very negatively to it.
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