If the anecdote and the law are both accurate, then that certainly goes to show exactly how effective all those stringent regulations are. It seems like this one would be simple to check.
You can just refuse to pay any other way except by card. There is not much a black cab driver can do in response to that, since they are now not even allowed to be on the road accepting customers if they don't have a working card machine.
I don't think that's an accurate description of the situation in London. There is almost unbridled development at the moment. It's going to markedly change how the city looks and feels. That's what people are reacting against.
Give London residents a choice between 400 pounds a month off their rent+reducing shop/restaurant prices and avoiding high rises changing the "aesthetic" and I'll guarantee the outcome of that poll.
This is not driven in any sense by democracy. Quite the opposite.
Not right now. Sadiq Khan seems completely comfortable talking about the housing crisis and not doing anything about it, and he's pretty much the only one who can.
If they announced (credibly) that they were going to build 75,000-150,000 new council housing units each year, house prices and rents would start to plunge.
If that were to happen they would have to be high rises and would be fought by the skyline campaign.
Sadiq Khan couldn't credibly announce that he was building 75,000-150,000 new council housing units each year because the money's just not there - that would cost tens of billions of pounds a year and his entire budget is only 11 billion (spent mostly on public transport and policing). It's also outside his area of responsibility; housing is handled by borough councils in London, and they don't have the money either.
Has anyone else seen a big difference between the original AoE2 and the Steam re-release? I swear that the AI is barely aggressive anymore, even on the most difficult setting.
The Forgotten expansion ships with a much improved AI. Expansion-less uses the old Petersen AI from the original game, and that isn't particularly intimidating anymore!
Original AOE2 and AOE2HD both started with the same AI.
AOE2 received a 'userpatch' that updated the AI allowing it to do more complicated things
The userpatch wasn't made my Microsoft so AOE2HD was unable too take advantage of it but 2 months ago there was a patch that made the AI very difficult and aggressive.
Still, the AI is unable to do certain things that the userpatch AI could do (using walls, moving deer, playing on forest maps etc).
You can add your own AI scripts. There is an entire community around AI scripting, if you want good AIs to play against. I believe there are also a few in the steam workshop.
Do you have a source for that? I've not heard that before.