edit: thanks for the awards. I'd be a dick to take credit. Go check out the one-man-band who actually wrote it---I've been reading for a couple months, good stuff https://bestinterest.blog/explain-the-big-short/
(Best Interest) This post will explain the Big Short and the 2008 subprime mortgage collapse in simple terms.
This post is a little longer than usual–maybe give yourself 20 minutes to sift through it. But I promise you’ll leave feeling like you can tranche (that’s a verb, right?!) the whole financial system!
Key Players
First, I want to introduce the players in the financial crisis, as they might not make sense at first blush. One of the worst parts about the financial industry is how they use deliberately obtuse language to explain relatively simple ideas. Their financial acronyms are hard to keep track of. In order to explain the Big Short, these players–and their roles–are key.
Individuals, a.k.a. regular people who take out mortgages to buy houses; for example, you and me!
Mortgage lenders, like a local bank or a mortgage lending specialty shop, who give out mortgages to individuals. Either way, they’re probably local people that the individual home-buyer would meet in person.
Big banks, such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, who buy lots of mortgages from lenders. After this transaction, the homeowner would owe money to the big bank instead of the lender.
Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)—deep breath!—who take mortgages from big banks and bundle them all together into a bond (see below). And just like before, this step means that the home-buyer now owes money to the CDO. Why is this done?! I’ll explain, I promise.
Ratings agencies, whose job is to determine the risk of a CDO—is it filled with safe mortgages, or risky mortgages?
Investors, who buy part of a CDO and get repaid as the individual homeowners start paying back their mortgage.
Feel lost already? I’m going to be a good jungle guide and get you through this. Stick with me.
Quick definition: Bonds
A bond can be thought of as a loan. When you buy a bond, you are loaning your money. The issuer of the bond is borrowing your money. In exchange for borrowing your money, the issuer promises to pay you back, plus interest, in a certain amount of time. Sometimes, the borrower cannot pay the investor back, and the bond defaults, or fails. Defaults are not good for the investor.
The CDO—which is a bond—could hold thousands of mortgages in it. It’s a mortgage-backed bond, and therefore a type of mortgage-backed security. If you bought 1% of a CDO, you were loaning money equivalent to 1% of all the mortgage principal, with the hope of collecting 1% of the principal plus interest as the mortgages got repaid.
There’s one more key player, but I’ll wait to introduce it. First…
The Whys, Explained
Why does an individual take out a mortgage? Because they want a home. Can you blame them?! A healthy housing market involves people buying and selling houses.
How about the lender; why do they lend? It used to be so they would slowly make interest money as the mortgage got repaid. But nowadays, the lender takes a fee (from the homeowner) for creating (or originating) the mortgage, and then immediately sells to mortgage to…
A big bank. Why do they buy mortgages from lenders? Starting in the 1970s, Wall St. started buying up groups of loans, tying them all together into one bond—the CDO—and selling slices of that collection to investors. When people buy and sell those slices, the big banks get a cut of the action—a commission.
Why would an investor want a slice of a mortgage CDO? Because, like any other investment, the big banks promised that the investor would make their money back plus interest once the homeowners began repaying their mortgages.
You can almost trace the flow of money and risk from player to player.
At the end of the day, the investor needs to get repaid, and that money comes from homeowners.
CDOs are empty buckets
Homeowners and mortgage lenders are easy to understand. But a big question mark swirls around Wall Street’s CDOs.
I like to think of the CDO as a football field full of empty buckets—one bucket per mortgage. As an investor, you don’t purchase one single bucket, or one mortgage. Instead, you purchase a thin horizontal slice across all the buckets—say, a half-inch slice right around the 1-gallon mark.
As the mortgages are repaid, it starts raining. The repayments—or rain—from Mortgage A doesn’t go solely into Bucket A, but rather is distributed across all the buckets, and all the buckets slowly get re-filled.
As long as your horizontal slice of the bucket is eventually surpassed, you get your money back plus interest. You don’t need every mortgage to be repaid. You just need enough mortgages to get to your slice.
It makes sense, then, that the tippy top of the bucket—which gets filled up last—is the highest risk. If too many of the mortgages in the CDO fail and aren’t repaid, then the tippy top of the bucket will never get filled up, and those investors won’t get their money back.
These horizontal slices are called tranches, which might sound familiar if you’ve read the book or watched the movie.
So far, there’s nothing too wrong about this practice. It’s simply moving the risk from the mortgage lender to other investors. Sure, the middle-men (banks, lenders, CDOs) are all taking a cut out of all the buy and sell transactions. But that’s no different than buying lettuce at grocery store prices vs. buying straight from the farmer. Middle-men take a cut. It happens.
But now, our final player enters the stage…
Credit Default Swaps: The Lynchpin of the Big Short
Screw you, Wall Street nomenclature! A credit default swap sounds complicated, but it’s just insurance. Very simple, but they have a key role to explain the Big Short.
Investors thought, “Well, since I’m buying this risky tranche of a CDO, I might want to hedge my bets a bit and buy insurance in case it fails.” That’s what a credit default swap did. It’s insurance against something failing. But, there is a vital difference between a credit default swap and normal insurance.
I can’t buy an insurance policy on your house, on your car, or on your life. Only you can buy those policies. But, I could buy insurance on a CDO mortgage bond, even if I didn’t own that bond!
Not only that, but I could buy billions of dollars of insurance on a CDO that only contained millions of dollars of mortgages.
It’s like taking out a $1 million auto policy on a Honda Civic. No insurance company would allow you to do this, but it was happening all over Wall Street before 2008. This scenario essentially is “the big short” (see below)—making huge insurance bets that CDOs will fail—and many of the big banks were on the wrong side of this bet!
Credit default swaps involved the largest amounts of money in the subprime mortgage crisis. This is where the big Wall Street bets were taking place.
Quick definition: Short
A short is a bet that something will fail, get worse, or go down. When most people invest, they buy long (“I want this stock price to go up!”). A short is the opposite of that.
Certain individuals—like main characters Steve Eisman (aka Mark Baum in the movie, played by Steve Carrell) and Michael Burry (played by Christian Bale) in the 2015 Oscar-nominated film The Big Short—realized that tons of mortgages were being made to people who would never be able to pay them back.
If enough mortgages failed, then tranches of CDOs start to fail—no mortgage repayment means no rain, and no rain means the buckets stay empty. If CDOs fail, then the credit default swap insurance gets paid out. So what to do? Buy credit default swaps! That’s the quick and dirty way to explain the Big Short.
Why buy Dog Shit?
Wait a second. Why did people originally invest in these CDO bonds if they were full of “dog shit mortgages” (direct quote from the book) in the first place? Since The Big Short protagonists knew what was happening, shouldn’t the investors also have realized that the buckets would never get refilled?
For one, the prospectus—a fancy word for “owner’s manual”—of a CDO was very difficult to parse through. It was hard to understand exactly which mortgages were in the CDO. This is a skeevy big bank/CDO practice. And even if you knew which mortgages were in a CDO, it was nearly impossible to realize that many of those mortgages were made fraudulently.
The mortgage lenders were knowingly creating bad mortgages*.* They were giving loans to people with no hopes of repaying them. Why? Because the lenders knew they could immediately sell that mortgage—that risk—to a big bank, which would then securitize the mortgage into a CDO, and then sell that CDO to investors. Any risk that the lender took by creating a bad mortgage was quickly transferred to the investor.
So…because you can’t decipher the prospectus to tell which mortgages are in a CDO, it was easier to rely on the CDO’s rating than to evaluate each of the underlying mortgages. It’s the same reason why you don’t have to understand how engines work when you buy a car; you just look at Car & Driver or Consumer Reports for their opinions, their ratings.
The Ratings Agencies
Investors often relied on ratings to determine which bonds to buy. The two most well-known ratings agencies from 2008 were Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s (heard of the S&P 500?). The ratings agency’s job was to look at a CDO that a big bank created, understand the underlying assets (in this case, the mortgages), and give the CDO a rating to determine how safe it was. A good rating is “AAA”—so nice, it got ‘A’ thrice.
So, were the ratings agencies doing their jobs? No! There are a few explanations for this:

1. Even they—the experts in charge of grading the bonds—didn’t understand what was going on inside a CDO. The owner’s manual descriptions (prospectuses) were too complicated. In fact, ratings agencies often relied on big banks to teach seminars about how to rate CDOs, which is like a teacher learning how to grade tests from Timmy, who still pees his pants. Timmy just wants an A.
2. Ratings agencies are profit-driven companies. When they give a rating, they charge a fee. But if the agency hands out too many bad grades, then their customers—the big banks—will take their requests elsewhere in hopes of higher grades. The ratings agencies weren’t objective, but instead were biased by their need for profits.
3. Remember those fraudulent mortgages that the lenders were making? Unless you did some boots-on-the-ground research, it was tough to uncover this fact. It’s hard to blame the ratings agencies for not catching this.

Who’s to blame?
Everyone? Let’s play devil’s advocate…
​

• Individuals: some people point the finger at homeowners, saying, “You should know better than to buy a $1 million house on a teacher’s salary.” I find this hard to swallow. These people, surrounded by the American home-ownership dream, were sold the idea that they would be fine. The mortgage lender had no incentive to sell a good mortgage, they only had an incentive to sell a mortgage. So, it’s hard for me to put too much blame on the homeowners.
• Mortgage lenders: someone knew. I’m not saying that all the mortgage lenders were fully aware of the implications of their actions, but some people knew that fraudulent loans were being made, and chose to ignore that fact. For example, check out whistleblower Eileen Foster.
• Big banks: Yes sir! There’s certainly blame here. Rather than get into all of the various money-grubbing, I want to call out one specific anecdote. Back in 2010, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein testified in front of Congress. Here it is:

To explain further, there are two things going on here.
First, Goldman Sachs bankers were selling CDOs to investors. They wanted to make a commission on the sale.
At the same time, other bankers ALSO AT GOLDMAN SACHS were buying credit default swaps, a.k.a. betting against the same CDOs that the first Goldman Sachs bankers were selling.
This is like selling someone a racehorse with cancer, and then immediately going to the track to bet against that horse. Blankfein’s defense in this video is, “But the horse seller and the bettor weren’t the same people!” And the Congressmen responds, “But they worked for the same stable, and collected the same paychecks!”
So do the big banks deserve blame? You tell me.
Inspecting Goldman Sachs
One reason Goldman Sachs survived 2008 is that they began buying credit default swaps (insurance) just in time before the housing market crashed. They were still on the bad side of some bets, but mostly on the good side. They were net profitable.
Unfortunately for them, the banks that owed Goldman money were going bankrupt from their own debt, and then Goldman never would have been able to collect on their insurance. Goldman would’ve had to payout on their “bad” bets, while not collecting on their “good” bets. In their own words, they were “toast.”
This is significant. Even banks in “good” positions would’ve gone bankrupt, because the people who owed the most money weren’t able to repay all their debts. Imagine a chain; Bank A owes money to Bank B, and B owes money to Bank C. If Bank A fails, then B can’t collect their debt, and B can’t pay C. Bank C made “good” bets, but aren’t able to collect on them, and then they go out of business.
These failures would’ve rippled throughout the world. This explains why the US government felt it necessary to bail-out the banks. That federal money allowed banks in “good” positions to collect their profits and “stop the ripple” from tearing apart the world economy. While CDOs and credit default swap explain the Big Short starting, this ripple of failure is the mechanism that affected the entire world.
Betting more than you have
But if someone made a bad bet—sold bad insurance—why didn’t they have money to cover that bet? It all depends on risk. If you sell a $100 million insurance policy, and you think there’s a 1% chance of paying out that policy, what’s your exposure? It’s the potential loss multiplied by the probability = 1% times $100 million, or $1 million.
These banks sold billions of dollars of insurance under the assumption that there was a 5%, or 3%, or 1% chance of the housing market failing. So they had 20x, or 30x, or 100x less money on hand then they needed to cover these bets.
Turns out, there was a 100% chance that the market would fail…oops!
Blame, expounded
Ratings agencies—they should be unbiased. But they sold themselves off for profit. They invited the wolves—big banks—into their homes to teach them how to grade CDOs. Maybe they should read a blog to explain the Big Short to them. Of course they deserve blame. Here’s another anecdote of terrible judgment from the ratings agencies:
Think back to my analogy of the buckets and the rain. Sometimes, a ratings agency would look at a CDO and say, “You’re never going to fill up these buckets all the way. Those final tranches—the ones that won’t get filled—they’re really risky. So we’re going to give them a bad grade.” There were “Dog Shit” tranches, and Dog Shit gets a bad grade.
But then the CDO managers would go back to their offices and cut off the top of the buckets. And they’d do this for all their CDOs—cutting off all the bucket-top rings from all the different CDO buckets. And then they’d super-glue the bucket-top rings together to create a field full of Frankenstein buckets, officially called a CDO squared. Because the Frankenstein buckets were originally part of other CDOs, the Frankenstein buckets could only start filling up once the original buckets (which now had the tops cut off) were filled. In other words, the CDO managers decided to concentrate all their Dog Shit in one place, and super glue it together.
A reasonable person would look at the Frankenstein Dog Shit field of buckets and say, “That’s turrible, Kenny.”
BUT THE RATINGS AGENCIES GAVE CDO-SQUAREDs HIGH GRADES!!! Oh I’m sorry, was I yelling?!
“It’s diversified,” they would claim, as if Poodle shit mixed with Labrador shit is better than pure Poodle shit.
Again, you tell me. Do the ratings agencies deserve blame?!
Does the government deserve blame?
Yes and no.
For example, part of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1992 mandated that the government mortgage finance firms (Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) purchase a certain number of sub-prime mortgages.
On its surface, this seems like a good thing: it’s giving money to potential home-buyers who wouldn’t otherwise qualify for a mortgage. It’s providing the American Dream.
But as we’ve already covered today, it does nobody any good to provide a bad mortgage to someone who can’t repay it. That’s what caused this whole calamity. Freddie and Fannie and HUD were pumping money into the machine, helping to enable it. Good intentions, but they weren’t paying attention to the unintended outcomes.
And what about the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), the watchdogs of Wall Street. Do they have a role to explain the Big Short? Shouldn’t they have been aware of the Big Banks, the CDOs, the ratings agencies?
Yes, they deserve blame too. They’re supposed to do things like ensure that Big Banks have enough money on hand to cover their risky bets. This is called proper “risk management,” and it was severely lacking. The SEC also had the power to dig into the CDOs and ferret out the fraudulent mortgages that were creating them. Why didn’t they do that?
Perhaps the issue is that the SEC was/is simply too close to Wall Street, similar to the ratings agencies getting advice from the big banks. Watchdogs shouldn’t get treats from those they’re watching. Or maybe it’s that the CDOs and credit default swaps were too hard for the SEC to understand.
Either way, the SEC doesn’t have a good excuse. If you’re in bed with the people you’re regulating, then you’re doing a bad job. If you’re rubber stamping things you don’t understand, then you’re doing a bad job.
Explain the Big Short, shortly
You’re about 2500 words into my “short summary.” But the important things to remember:
​

• Financial acronyms suck.
• Money flowed from the investors down to the mortgage lenders, and the risk flowed from the mortgage lenders up to the investors. In between, the big banks and CDOs acted as middle men and intermediaries.
• When someone feels like their actions have no risk, or no consequences, they’ll behave poorly (big banks, mortgage lenders)When someone is given what seems like an amazing deal, they’ll take it (individual home owners).
• CDOs are like empty buckets. Mortgage payments are like rain, filling the buckets. Investors buy tranches, or slices, across all the buckets. If mortgages fail, then the buckets might not fill up, and the investors won’t get their money back.
• CDOs are intentionally complex. So complex, that not even the people grading them understood what was going on (ratings agencies).
• Buying insurance on something your do not own is a behavior with potential for abuse (big banks)
• Buying insurance on something for more than it’s worth is a behavior with potential for abuse (big banks). This is where most of the money in the financial crisis switched hands.

And with that, I’d like to announce the opening of the Best Interest CDO. Rather than invest in mortgages, I’ll be investing in race horses. Don’t ask my why, but the current top stallion is named ‘Dog Shit.’ He’ll take Wall Street by storm.
If you don’t mind my cussing but you do like this content, consider subscribing to the email list to get these articles (and nothing more) sent to your inbox every week.
I hope this post helped if you were looking for someone to explain the Big Short. Thanks for reading the Best Interest.
​
Source: https://bestinterest.blog/explain-the-big-short/

Main account to D2
Second account to D1

Preface

I'm just an average dude with average aim and average scores. This isn't a pro guide, just a compilation of tips and observations I made for myself that can help regular players with very average skills such as myself. You can skip the history part if you're not interested.

History

I've never really been great at FPS in general. I never played any cs, but I played lots of BF4, BF1 and Apex. I played a little Overwatch and some COD Warzone as well but all these games seemed to lack something. That something, I found in Valorant. When I got in the Beta, I was super excited until I realized... I sucked.
I started out as Iron 1 and it took me a month to get out of Iron. I then somehow quickly made it all the way to gold 1 before the end of beta. I then flopped around between gold 1 and plat 1 all throughout Act I. During this act, I started climbing more and more consistently, from gold 1 at the start, to diamond 2 currently (with my act rank as D1 currently).
Also, I should mention I used to always play with my friends, most of the time duo queuing but also stacking up to five regularly. Out of all my friends, I was never the best, they were always the ones top-fragging and popping off more than I ever did BUT I also rarely bottom fragged. About a month ago, I stopped playing with them and only ever solo queued from then on. After that, I noticed a significant improvement in my gameplay and my rank followed along as I went from gold 2 to diamond 2 which is like going from the 55th percentile to the 95th percentile.
Finally, I made a "smurf" account in Act I for when I wanted to play alone. That account has been exactly the same rank as my main since the start of Act II even though it has 10x fewer games. I also kept playing on my "smurf" after ditching my friends but only when I was feeling like I was having an off-day and didn't want to sink my rank on my main but somehow both my ranks evolved at the same pace and both hit diamond within 4 days from one another.
Anyway, here's what I learned:

General advice

1. Try to solo queue. Every player has habits, and this often causes people who duo regularly to get used to each other's playstyle, which leads them to cater to each other's habits. This locks you down in a certain playstyle and very often prevents you from trying new strats or simply developing new skills which makes you less flexible and causes you to get absolutely smashed when someone figures you out. By solo queuing you'll be forced to play along with more different types of players without having the option to rely on your friend for whatever reason.
2. Don't think you have to carry every game. This is the reason I included both my screenshots. You can clearly see that I VERY RARELY top frag, yet manage to win very consistently. I'll talk about it in the macromechanics section because a part of this success is in how I play, and the other part of it is in the mindset. This is all about the attitude. We've all had moments where we get absolutely shit on for 5 straight rounds and it feels like we've excreted our will to live but this is not a reason to give up or start trying to play funky games. Keep trying. Legit close your eyes for 15 seconds during the buy phase, take deep breaths and let go of your attachment to the outcome. Which leads me to my next point:
3. Stop paying attention to the scoreboard. I personally do this, and I know a lot of people also do this. You'll look at the scoreboard and see yourself sitting at 0-6 and tilt, or you'll see yourself at 6-0 while your sentinel is on 1-7 and tilt. Stop. Don't. Your score, or someone else's score, isn't an indication of how useful you/they are. Even if you're "playing like shit" because you're not hitting your headshots, doesn't mean you can't be useful.
4. Don't be toxic. I know right? Like that needed to be said! Well, I think it needs to be said. Too many of you are toxic without realizing it. That's because you don't go nuclear, but instead just sneak in passive-aggressive remarks that intoxicate your teammates and make them tilt. There's no need to sarcastically congratulate your teammate for finally getting their first kill on 7th round. They know more than you what went wrong and you pointing it out only antagonizes them, it distracts them (as they think of what snarky comment they can make next time you die) and makes them spectate you every time they die (so like, every round) just looking for what mistakes you can make that they can burn you for. It's always better to say something positive and reassuring like "good job, don't worry about the early game, we got this" than something inflammatory. This makes a huge difference in your odds of winning. Playing 5v5 is a whole lot easier than 4v5.
5. Communicate. Pass the info along, let your team know what you see, tell them your intention. Way too many times do people stay silent and say things like "look at your minimap, are you blind?". This isn't a moba with a low TTK like LoL, here, you often have to hold angles where if you even get your eyes off your crosshair for just a quarter of a second, you're dead. In a tactical shooter like this, for equal skill, the team with the better coms will win 99% of the time. The more useful information your team has, the better their decision-making is going to be.
6. Dodge. I know this one is going to be controversial but it has to be said. Don't be afraid to dodge lobbies that don't feel quite right. The quickest dodge? 4-stacks with large rank disparities. They are not a good bet, ever. First of all, because they're highly likely to be on discord just talking with each other and not sharing info with you. Secondly, because they're unavoidably going to be toxic towards you the minute something goes wrong. And finally, because (as far as I know) the system assumes that 4 stacks are supposed to be more coordinated, it'll place you against a better team of solos overall. But 4-stacks suck. They're not coordinated, they're just friends that decided to play together and who are kind of just doing their own thing anyways.The other times I dodge is when I'm alone at three divisions above everyone else. These are usually kill-race duels between you and the other team's highest rank, just competitions of who can carry the hardest. Also, and this isn't confirmed info but pretty much all elo systems in the world work like that: being the highest rank means you're a candidate for lesser elo gains on a win and greater elo losses in defeat. It's a high-risk, low-reward situation, it's boring and I'm so glad that they announced that they will restrain the rank division gap that people can queue with in ranked because I cannot stand another Diamond 1 player telling me "it's ok bro, trust me he's gold 1 but he's really good for his rank".
7. Get the right mindset. You're not better than your rank shows, winning doesn't mean you played well and ranking up doesn't mean you're better overall. Assume you can improve and focus on improving - not winning. Caring more about the outcome than about the process won't get you anywhere.

Macromechanics

1. Pay attention to the scoreboard. I know I literally just told you the opposite, but this time it's for different reasons.A) Look at the money and make sure to manage your team's econ (e.g. if someone is about to bust the 9k limit, have them buy for a teammate with low money). This probably seems obvious to most of you, but managing your econ is something I've seen diamonds do much better at than golds. Even plat players will sometimes be selfish and not say anything even if they should offer to drop someone. This isn't a major game-changer, but it definitely helps and it's super easy to implement.B) Look at the enemy team's econ. You can eventually predict who's gonna have a shotgun, when Jett's gonna ult, which opponent has util, etc. This will help your decision making down the road and can easily win you rounds.
2. Don't think you have to carry every game part 2. As shown above, I rarely top frag, yet consistently win. This is because I always play for the round, not the frags. I do my best to look for plays that give my teams opportunities, space, time or info. You can do things such as splitting up the opposing team with util, forcing someone to watch the flank, creating distractions, scouting, flanking, etc. Each of those techniques probably could have their own youtube tutorial and I'm sure there are a bunch out there, but I mostly learned these from watching pros and asking myself why they do what they do.The one thing all these techniques have in common is they require you to stay alive. If you're trying to flank and aggressively challenge enemies and go for kills and die, you're giving the opposing team opportunities to win. If you see a hard push coming to your site and decide to stand your ground and die without being traded, it's bad even if you get a kill. It's (almost) always better to retreat and use util to delay the push until someone can support you. I won't go through every situation, but the general idea is STAY ALIVE and give your team a chance to support you or at least trade you/utilize your death.
3. Play for the round, not the frags. I mean as a duelist, enter on site first and create space for your team, even if that means dying. As a sentinel or controller, make sure to follow your duelists, support them and place yourself in situations where you can trade them when they go in.Stop trying to get free kills on the rotation while your team is trying to take a site, all it does is pad your kda and boost your ego. It doesn't mean you can't look for rotation kills or flanks while your team fakes a site, but if they commit to a site you need to stop sitting in a corner trying to get a free kill from across the map. Especially if you're the duelist or breach that the team needs in order to enter on site.
4. Learn how to play for retake with your specific character. Very often, you can secure half the site for your team, which creates space for your team to retake the site after a plant. For example, if you're Brimstone on bind A site, smoking off u-hall and mollying the entrance as the opposing team commits to site almost guarantees that you can keep control of it while they plant, which significantly reduces the number of angles your team has to check before going for the defuse. Similar plays are available for a lot of champions, the key is staying alive and holding the amount of ground you can. It's very often better than to peek, maybe get a kill and then die and force your team to retake blindly while having to check every angle possible.

Micromechanics

There's a million small things like don't run after faking the defuse because it'll tell your opponents that you didn't stick it, or don't slow peak around key corners, or don't not hit your shots, etc. But honestly, I suck. I'm not good at micromechanics.
The one thing I started actively practicing which has significantly improved my results is crosshair placement. This is something that I feel is the biggest most significant improvement most people can make in a very short amount of time that will net them a lot more kills. Just put your crosshair where you think the adversary is going to be before you peek around a corner instead of slowly turning around the corner. When holding an angle, put your crosshair where you think the adversary's head is going to be when he peeks out of a corner. You'd be surprised how many more kills you get just by using pure reflex instead of having to actually aim.
Anyway! I hope this helps someone!
Edit: Woah that's a whole lot of awards! Thank you guys, I didn't expect that!
Something else I should mention that I forgot: Don't overplay. I rarely do more than 3 games a day and I take at least 5-10 mins between games. This is a rhythm that works for me, maybe it's more or less for you, but chaining back-to-back games for hours on end never yielded great results for me. Just getting up and getting the blood moving a little bit helps a lot.

Transcribed some thoughts I felt were relevant.
Introduction

• Hezbollah can't be a militia against Israel and Syria but also a Lebanese political party. Hezbollah shouldn't think it's stronger than it is.
• I salute the Lebanese Army for keeping stability.
• Hezbollah must show that it respects Lebanese in their entirety. Hezbollah has clearly shown in these past days that the opposite is true.
• No one has been up to the task given to them. All of them were saving their own hide and clan. They will not succeed.
• I will take note of this collective treason. They carry entire responsibility.
• The 1st September plan is still on the table. It is the only option and there is no alternative, so it stays on the table.
• End of October fund raising conference is still scheduled.
• Meeting on Lebanon within the next 20 days. We will demand the results of the Aug.4 explosion investigations and ask the results be published.

Q1

• I think Saad Hariri was wrong to put a religious aspect to a specific ministry. This was not agreed in the plan. I concede that eventually, Hariri did compromise and backtracked. We should recognize that.
• Amal and Hezbollah explicitly decided that nothing must change. At every single step they said, "We will name our ministers". Berri admit to us that this was a condition of Hezbollah, that he played along with. I know who decided, Hezbollah. I understand that this means Hezbollah decided to not respect what they told me, face to face and eye to eye.
• If the Lebanese political elite are betting on a certain change in the US political field, they're also wrong. Because with each day, an agreement grows more complicated and chaos seems nearer.
• Time for a second try, for the formation of a government of mission without any connection to the Lebanese political parties

Q2
There are several options.

• A government without shiaa representation. This is not realistic, because Lebanese leaders are afraid of Hezbollah and are afraid of war. Can I promise to protect them using the French army? No. So this is not realistic.
• Option 2 is to return to a political government. It will be a status quo, and reforms won't work.
• So, it's not because I lack imagination but as long as there is no deeper crisis in the region (to shake things up), our option is the only option on the table. Gathering the parties around a government of mission.

Q3

• Do we have time to rebuild a new Taef? (Which was originally designed for the Sunnis, but has now been captured by the Shiaas?). No, we simply don't have time. It's too late. This is why a government of mission is the only solution.
• Taef was not meant to be a system entrenching corruption, but that's what it has done. And superimposed on this system is a system of terror, that Hezbollah has imposed.
• [In response to a Qstn whether Iran forced Hezbollah to entrench]. I cannot tell which role Iran had to play, I have no proof to be able to say anything. Did Hezbollah entrench itself because of Hariri's move or is it because of regional considerations, I have no proof.
• [You] are right that the non-coordinated sanctions by the US have tensed things up, and made things harder to move. Which is why my line is to coordinate with all players involved [including Iran], to get a joint approach.
• There is another approach, endorsed by some, which advocates for immediate war on Hezbollah. The logic is to attack Hezbollah and bring Lebanon down with it. I think this is an irresponsible approach, because Lebanon has already went through civil wars and no one can really tell how that'll end up.
• Advocates of this approach believe the compromise is impossible, and thus war is the only option. We must avoid this escalation.
• I also add that Hezbollah and Lebanon's Shiaas also face a historic choice; whether they want a democracy in Lebanon or if they also want to follow this approach towards the worst.
• Today, the choice is in front of Hezbollah and Berri. If they decide for the worst, there's a risk that they create the worst. (Civil war)
• Today, this system doesn't work. Today, a dozen of people are sinking an entire country and its people.

Q4.

• In a month or a half, we will re-assess. In 4-6 weeks, we will see if we must take a different approach that fundamentally re-assesses the situation, but I still think the time for such an undertaken is inopportune.

Q5. [I will not transcribe this in much detail. This will also be in the 3rd person, not 1st as above. I'm tired, and he's repeating what everyone already knows. Economic reality.]

• Discusses the Lebanese economy. Repeats what many of our experts said about the Riad Salameh Ponzi Scheme, the lack of reforms, the collapse of the banking system, the banking system being beholden to Lebanese politicians, the way money was smuggled out; etc.
• Notes how the banking system managed to suffocate the Lebanese system. Explains the Ponzi scheme. States that all Lebanese politicians did in the past few weeks was try to maintain this system, which exists only to smuggle their money out.
• Lebanon cannot make it without international aid, and when reforms are implemented the International community will inject aid; whose monetary value will be "massive".
• [Macron] believes a rebound is possible, but only if the political class understands that they must give way to reforms or the end is now. Then, there are shocks that will hit Lebanon, internal or external, that he's been trying his best to stop.
• No one will help Lebanon as long as it operates this way.

Q6. [Back to 1st person]

• I believe the government of mission should represent every sect, because a secular government is simply not possible in Lebanon; let's be real. But the important point is that none of those in the government are beholden to the traditional parties/clans as hostages.

Q7.

• [In response to a question asking why he accepted a delay]. I could throw the towel and give up, tell the Lebanese they're on their own. But know what happens then? Either a return to the current governance or civil war. So I will maintain this pressure.
• It is much easier for foreign powers to destabilize Lebanon as long as there is no government in place. And we see today the games played by Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.
• I don't have proof of specific orders from abroad, but what I'm saying is that the less governance the more space for foreign powers to occupy. And this won't be for the best, but the worst.
• So you ask me, why didn't I abandon them to a system of terror? 15 days, you're on your own in the hands of Hezbollah. No. [I will not do that.]
• I engaged with Hezbollah as a political force, for the first time. I don't want to say there's no hope for a political breakthrough, what I want to say is that over the past 10-15 years Hezbollah has maximizes its power by playing on its ambiguity.
• What I mean by ambiguity is where Hezbollah is a militia, terrorist group, and political force at the same time. So Hezbollah MPs in Parliament have to clarify their game. They cannot pretend to be the democratic representatives of a democratic nation by terrorizing with weapons, and you cannot stay on the table for long if you don't honor your engagements around the table.
• I cannot say what choice Hezbollah made, it would be irresponsible. But if they indeed choice the worst path, then I must abandon this initiative and indeed join the worst path. [US strategy implied]
• I don't agree with them, but they are here. It's not I who put them. It's a segment of Lebanese who support them, whether by choice or by fear; and I respect that. And it is also the other Lebanese political forces, who in a way, allowed all this to happen. And there are some who decided to become hostages of Hezbollah in an explicit fashion, and no longer run their own political parties.

Q8.

• I believe the policy of sanctions and terrorist designations is an instrument of American diplomacy that has its limitations, as we've seen.
• I think that when we want to try to improve a nation, we must talk to all its constituents; and Hezbollah is a part of it.
• The main question posed to Hezbollah is, is it solely a political party or is it a terrorist force dictated by Iran? I still want to believe a breakthrough is possible, which we should see in the next weeks.
• I am not naive, but it is important to go to the very end before making impactful conclusions.

Q9.

• When I first submitted my initiative, I did talk to Rouhani and discussed our terms. But I did not ask him to intervene with Hezbollah, because I wanted to maintain my coherence. I always defended the idea to keep Lebanon outside regional politics, and I only asked him to avoid negative interference but I did not ask him to behave as if he were a Lebanese political force.
• All the exchanges I had with the other neighbours in the region had a similar vein, where I shared the terms of the interference and asked to avoid any negative inteference.

This was exhausting. Alot is missing, but this is the gist of it. I will refrain from adding my opinion in the OP, outside the few interesting points I bolded.

Today i have a confession to make: i'm a little bit of a minmaxer. And honestly, i think that's a pretty desirable trait in a DM. The minmaxer knows the rules, and exploits them to maximum efficiency.
"But wait, what does that have to do with spell use in society?" - someone, probably.
Well, the thing is that humans are absolutely all about minmaxing. There's a rule in the universe that reads "gas expands when hot", and suddenly we have steam engines (or something like that, i'm a political scientist not an engineer). A rule says 1+1 = 2, and suddenly we have calculus, computers and all kinds of digital stuff that runs on math. Sound is energy? Let's convert that shit into electricity, run it through a wire and turn it back into sound on the other side.
Bruh. Science is just minmaxing the laws of nature. Humanity in real life is just a big bunch of munchkins, and it should be no different in your setting.
And that is why minmaxing magic usage is something societies as a whole would do, specially with some notable spells. Today i will go in depth on how and why each of these notable mentions has a huge impact on a fantasy society.
We'll go from lowest level to highest, keeping in mind that the lower level a spell the more common it should be to find someone who has it, so often a level 2-3 spell will have more impact than a level 9 spell.
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Mending (cantrip).
Repair anything in one minute. Your axe lost its edge? Tore your shirt? Just have someone Mend it.
Someone out there is crying "but wait! Not every village has a wizard!" and while that is true, keep in mind any High Elf knows a cantrip, as can any Variant Human.
A single "mender" could replace a lot of the work a smith, woodworker or seamstress does, freeing their time to only work on making new things rather than repair old ones.
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Prestidigitation (cantrip).
Clean anything in six seconds. Committed axe murders until the axe got blunt, and now there's blood everywhere? Dog shit on your pillow out of spite? Someone walked all over the living room with muddy boots? Just Prestidigitate it away.
This may look like a small thing, but its actually huge when you apply it to laundry. Before washing machines were a thing housewives had to spend several hours a week washing them manually, and with Prestidigitation you can just hire someone to get it done in a few minutes.
A single "magic cleaner" can attend to several dozen homes, if not hundreds, thus freeing several hours of the time of dozens of women.
Fun fact: there's an interesting theory that says feminism only existed because of laundry machines and similar devices. Women found themselves having more free time, which they used to read and socialize. Educated women with more contacts made for easy organization of political movements, and the fact men were now able to do "the women's work" by pushing a button meant men were less opposed to losing their housewives' labor. Having specialized menders and magic cleaners could cause a comparable revolution in a fantasy setting, and help explain why women have a similar standing to men even in combat occupations such as adventuring.
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Healing in general (1st-2nd level).
This one is fairly obvious. A commoner has 4 hit points, that means just about any spell is a full heal to the average person. That means most cuts, stab wounds, etc. can be solved by the resident cleric. Even broken bones that would leave you in bed for months can be solved in a matter of seconds as soon as the holy man arrives.
But that's nothing compared to the ability to cure diseases. While the only spell that can cure diseases is Lesser Restoration, which is second level, a paladin can do it much more easily with just a Lay on Hands. This means if one or two people catch a disease it can just be eradicated with a touch.
However doing that comes with a cost. If everyone is instantly expunged of illness, the populace does not build up their immune systems. Regular disease becomes less common, sure, but whenever it is reintroduced (by, say, immigrants or contact with less civilized humanoids) it can spread like wildfire, afflicting people so fast that no amount of healers will have the magic juice to deal with it.
Diseases become rare, plagues become common.
​
Continual Flame (2nd).
Ok, this one is a topic i love and could easily be its own post.
There's an article called "Why the Falling Cost of Light Matters", which goes in detail about how man went from chopping wood for fire, to using animal fat for candles, then other oils, whale oil, kerosene, then finally incandescent light bulbs, and more recently LED lights. Each of these leaps is orders of grandeur more efficient than the previous one, to the point that the cost of light today is about 500,000 times cheaper than it was for for a caveman. And until the early 1900s the only way mankind knew of making light was to set things on fire.
Continual Flame on the other hand allows you to turn 50gp worth of rubies and a 2nd level spell slot into a torch that burns forever. In a society that spends 60 hours of labor to be able to generate 140 minutes of light, this is a huge game changer.
This single spell, which i am 99% sure was just created as an excuse for why the dungeon is lit despite going for centuries without maintenance, allows you to have things like public lighting. Even if you only add a new "torchpost" every other week or month sooner or later you'll be left with a neatly lit city, specially if the city has had thousands of years in which to gather the rubies and light them up.
And because the demand of rubies becomes so important, consider how governments would react. Lighting the streets is a public service, if its strategically relevant to make the city safer at night, would that not warrant some restrictions on ruby sales? Perhaps even banning the use of rubies in jewelry?
Trivia: John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in history, gained his wealth selling kerosene. Kerosene at the time was used to light lamps. Gasoline was invented much later, when Rockefeller tasked a bunch of scientists to come up with a use for some byproducts of the kerosene production. This illustrates how much money is to be had in the lighting industry, and you could even have your own Rockefeller ruby baron in your game. I shall call him... Dohn J. Stonebreaker. Perfect name for a mining entrepreneur.
Whether the ruby trade ends up a monopoly under the direct supervision of the king or a free market, do keep in mind that Continual Flame is by far the most efficient way of creating light.
​
Gentle Repose (2nd).
Cast it on a corpse, and it stays preserved for 10 days.
This has many potential uses, from preserving foodstuffs (hey, some rare meats are expensive enough to warrant it) to keeping the bodies of old rulers preserved. Even if a ruler died of old age and cannot be resurrected, the body could be kept "fresh" out of respect/ceremony. Besides, it keeps the corpse from becoming undead.
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Skywrite (2nd).
Ok, this one is mostly a gag. While the spell can be used by officials to make official announcements to the populace, such as new laws or important news, i like to just use it for spam. I mean, its a ritual spell that writes a message on the sky; what else would people use it for?
Imagine you show up in a city, and there's half a dozen clouds reading "buy at X, we have what you need", "get your farming supplies over at Joe's store" or "vote Y for the city council".
The possibilities are endless, and there's no way the players can expect it. Just keep in mind that by RAW the spell can only do words, meaning no images. No Patrick, "8===D" is not a word.
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Zone of Truth (2nd).
This one is too obvious. Put all suspects of a crime into a ZoT, wait a couple minutes to make sure they fail the save, then ask each one if he did it. Sure its not a perfect system, things like the Ring of Mind Shielding still exist, but it's got a better chance of getting the right guy than most medieval justice systems. And probably more than a few contemporary ones. All while taking only a fraction of the time.
More importantly, with all the average crimes being handled instantly, the guards and investigators have more time to properly investigate the more unusual crimes that might actually involve a Thought Shield, Ring of Mind Shielding or a level 17 Mastermind.
There is a human rights argument against messing with people's minds in any way, which is why this may not be practiced in every kingdom. But there are definitely some more lawful societies that would use ZoT on just about every crime.
Why swear to speak the truth and nothing but the truth when you can just stand in a zone of truth?
Another interesting use for ZoT is oaths. When someone is appointed into an office, gets to a high rank in the military or a guild, just put them in a ZoT while they make their oath to stand for the organization's values and yadda yadda. Of course they can be corrupted later on, but at least you make sure they're honest when they are sworn in.
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Sending (3rd).
Sending is busted in so many ways.
The more "vanilla" use of it is to just communicate over long distances. We all know that information is important, and that sometimes getting information a whole day ahead can lead to a 40% return on a massive two-year investment. Being able to know of invasions, monsters, disasters, etc. without waiting days or weeks for a courier can be vital for the survival of a nation. Another notable example is that one dude who ran super fast for a while to be the first to tell his side of a recent event.
But the real broken thing here is... Sending can Send to any creature, on any plane; the only restriction being "with which you are familiar". In D&D dead people just get sent to one of the afterlife planes, meaning that talking to your dead grandfather would be as simple as Sending to him. Settling inheritance disputes was never easier!
Before moving on to the next point let me ask you something: Is a cleric familiar with his god? Is a warlock familiar with his patron?
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Speak With Dead (3rd).
Much like Sending, this lets you easily settle disputes. Is the senate/council arguing over a controversial topic? Just ask the beloved hero or ruler from 200 years ago what he thinks on the subject. As long his skeleton still has a jaw (or if he has been kept in Gentle Repose), he can answer.
This can also be used to ask people who killed them, except murderers also know this. Plan on killing someone? Accidentally killed someone? Make sure to inutilize the jaw. Its either that, being so stealthy the victim can't identify you, or being caught.
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Note on spell availability.
Oh boy. No world-altering 4th level spells for some reason, and suddenly we're playing with the big boys now.
Spells up to 3rd level are what I'd consider "somewhat accessible", and can be arranged for a fee even for regular citizens. For instance the vanilla Priest statblock (MM348) is a 5th level cleric, and the standard vanilla Druid (MM346) a 4th level druid.
Spells of 5th level onward will be considered something only the top 1% is able to afford, or large organizations such as guilds, temples or government.
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Dream (5th).
I was originally going to put Dream along with Sending and Telepathy as "long range communication", but decided against it due to each of them having unique uses.
And when it comes to Dream, it has the unique ability of allowing you to put your 8 hours of sleep to good use. A tutor could hire someone to cast Dream on him, thus allowing him to teach his student for 8 hours at any distance. This is a way you could even access hermits that live in the middle of nowhere or in secluded monasteries. Very wealthy families or rulers would be willing to pay a good amount of money to make sure their heirs get that extra bit of education.
Its like online classes, but while you sleep!
Another interesting use is for cheating. Know a princess or queen you like? She likes you back? Her dad put 400 trained soldiers between you? No problemo! Just find a 9th level Bard, Warlock or Wizard, but who am i kidding, of course it'll be a bard. And that bard is probably you. Now you have 8 hours to do whatever you want, and no physical evidence will be left.
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Raise Dead (5th).
Few things matter more in life than death. And the ability to resurrect people has a huge impact on society. The impact is so huge that this topic needs topics of its own.
First, diamond monopoly. Remember what i said about how Continual Flame would lead to controlled ruby sales due to its strategic value? This is the same principle, but a hundred times stronger. Resurrection is a huge strategic resource. It makes assassinations harder, can be used to bring back your officials or highest level soldiers over and over during a war, etc. This means more authoritarian regimes would do everything within their power to control the supply and stock of diamonds. Which in turn means if anyone wants to have someone resurrected, even in times of peace, they'll need to call in a favor, do a quest, grease some hands...
Second, resurrection insurance. People hate risks. That's why insurance is such a huge industry, taking up about 15% of the US GDP. People insure their cars, houses... even their lives. Resurrection just means "life insurance" is taken more literally. This makes even more sense when you consider how expensive resurrection is: nobody can afford it in one go, but if you pay a little every month or year you can save up enough to have it done when the need arises.
This is generally incompatible with the idea of a State-run monopoly over diamonds, but that just means different countries within a setting can take different approaches.
To make things easier, i even used some microeconomics to make a sheet in my personal random generators to calculate the price of such a service. Just head to the "Insurance" tab and fill in the information relative to your setting.
With actual life insurance resurrection can cost as little as 5gp a year for humans or 8sp a year for elves, making resurrection way more affordable than it looks.
Also, do you know why pirates wore a single gold earring? It was so that if your body washes up on the shore whoever finds it can use the money to arrange a proper burial. Sure there's a risk of the finder taking it and walking away, but the pirates did it anyway. With resurrection in play, might as well just wear a diamond earring instead and hope the finder is nice enough to bring you back.
I got so carried away with the whole insurance thing i almost forgot: the possibility of resurrection also changes how murders are committed.
If you want someone dead but resurrection exists, you have to remove the vital organs. Decapitation would be far more common. Sure resurrection is still possible, but it requires higher level spells or Reincarnate, which has... quirks.
As a result it should be very obvious when someone was killed by accident or an overreaction, and when someone was specifically out to kill the victim.
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Scrying (5th).
This one is somewhat obvious, in that everyone and their mother knows it helps finding people. But who needs finding? Well, that would be those who are hiding.
The main use i see for this spell, by far, is locating escaped criminals. Just collect a sample of hair or blood when arresting someone (or shipping them to hard labor which is way smarter), and if they escape you'll be almost guaranteed to successfully scry on them.
A similar concept to this is seen in the Dragon Age series. If you're a mage the paladins keep a sample of your blood in something called a phylactery, and that can be used to track you down. There's even a quest or two about mages trying to destroy their phylacteries before escaping.
Similarly, if you plan a jailbreak it would be highly beneficial to destroy the blood/hair sample first. As a matter of fact i can even see a thieves guild hiring a low level party to take out the sample while the professional infiltrators get the prisoner out. Keep in mind both events must be done at the same time, otherwise the guards will just collect a new sample or would have already taken it to the wizard.
But guards aren't the only ones with resources. A loan shark could keep blood samples of his debtors, a mobster can keep one of those who owe him favors, etc. And the blood is ceremoniously returned only when the debt is fully paid.
​
Teleportation Circle (5th), Transport Via Plants (6th).
In other words, long range teleportation. This is such a huge thing that it is hard to properly explain how important it is.
Teleportation Circle creates a 10ft. circle, and everyone has one round to get in and appear on the target location. Assuming 30ft. movement that means you can get 192 people through, which is a lot of potential merchants going across any distance. Or 672 people dashing.
Math note: A 30ft radius square around a 10ft. diameter square, minus the 4 original squares. Or [(6*2+2)^2]-4 squares of 5ft. each. Hence 192 people.
Getting hundreds of merchants, workers, soldiers, etc. across any distance is nothing to scoff at. In fact, it could help explain why PHB item prices are so standardized: Arbitrage is so easy and cheap that price differences across multiple markets become negligible. Unless of course countries start setting up tax collectors outside of the permanent teleportation circles in order to charge tariffs.
Transport Via Plants does something very similar but it requires 5ft of movement to go through, which means less people can be teleported. On the other hand it doesn't burn 50gp and can take you to any tree the druid is familiar with, making it nearly impossible for tax collectors to be waiting on the other side. Unfortunately druids tend to be a lot less willing to aid smugglers, so your best bet might be a bard using spells that don't belong to his list.
With these methods of long range teleportation not only does trade get easier, but it also becomes possible to colonize or inhabit far away places. For instance if someone finds a gold mine in the antarctic you could set up a mine and bring food and other supplies via teleportation.
​
Major Image (6th level slot).
Major Image is a 3rd level spell that creates an illusion over a 20ft cube, complete with image, sound, smell and temperature. When cast with a 6th level slot or higher, it lasts indefinitely.
That my friends, is a huge spell. Why get the world's best painter to decorate the ceiling of your cathedral when you can just get an illusion made in six seconds?
The uses for decorating large buildings is already good, but remember: we're not restricted to sight.
Cast this on a room and it'll always be cool and smell nice. Inns would love that, as would anyone who always sleeps or works in the same room. Desert cities have never been so chill.
You can even use an illusion to make the front of your shop seem flashier, while hollering on loop to bring customers in.
The only limit to this spell is your imagination, though I'm pretty sure it was originally made just to hide secret passages.
Trivia: the ki-rin (VGM163) can cast Major Image as a 6th level spell, at will. It's probably meant to give them fabulous lairs yet all it takes is someone doing the holy horsey a big favor, and it could enchant the whole city in a few hours. Shiniest city on the planet, always at a nice temperature and with a fragrance of lilac, gooseberries or whatever you want.
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Simulacrum (7th).
Spend 12 hours and 1500gp worth of ruby dust, and get a clone of yourself. Notably, each caster can only have one simulacrum, regardless of who the person he cloned is.
How this changes the world? By allowing the rich and powerful to be in two places at once. Kings now have a perfect impersonator who thinks just like them. A wealthy banker can run two branches of his company. Etc.
This makes life much easier, but also competes with Continual Flame over resources.
It also gives "go fuck yourself" a whole new meaning, making the sentence a valid Suggestion.
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Clone (8th).
If there's one spell i despise, its Clone.
Wizard-only preemptive resurrection. Touch spell, costs 1.000gp worth of diamonds each time, takes 120 days to come into effect, and creates a copy of the creature that the soul occupies if the original dies. Oh, and the copy can be made younger.
Why is it so despicable? Because it makes people effectively immortal. Accidents and assassinations just get you sent to the clone, and old age can be forever delayed because you keep going back to younger versions of yourself. Being a touch spell means the wizard can cast it on anyone he wants.
In other words: high level wizards, and only wizards, get to make anyone immortal.
That means wizards will inevitably rule any world in which this spell exists.
Think about it. Rulers want to live forever. Wizards can make you live forever. Wizards want other stuff, which you must give them if you want to continue being Cloned. Rulers who refuse this deal eventually die, rulers who accept stick around forever. Natural selection makes it so that eventually the only rulers left are those who sold their soul to wizards. Figuratively, i hope.
The fact that there are only a handful of wizards out there who are high enough level to cast the spell means its easier for them organize and/or form a cartel or union (cartels/unions are easier to maintain the fewer suppliers are involved).
This leads to a dystopian scenario where mages rule, kings are authoritarian pawns and nobody else has a say in anything. Honestly it would make for a fun campaign in and of itself, but unless that's specifically what you're going for it'll just derail everything else.
Oh, and Clone also means any and all liches are absolute idiots. Liches are people who turned themselves into undead abominations in order to gain eternal life at the cost of having to feed on souls. They're all able to cast 9th level wizard spells, so why not just cast an 8th level one and keep undeath away? Saves you the trouble of going after souls, and you keep the ability to enjoy food or a day in the sun.
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Demiplane (8th).
Your own 30ft. room of nothingness. Perfect place for storage and a DM's nightmare given how once players have access to it they'll just start looting furniture and such. Oh the horror.
But alas, infinite storage is not the reason this is a broken spell. No sir.
Remember: you can access someone else's demiplane. That means a caster in city 1 can put things into a demiplane, and a caster in city 2 can pull them out of any surface.
But wait, there's more! There's nothing anywhere saying you can't have two doors to the same demiplane open at once. Now you're effectively opening a portal between two places, which stays open for a whole hour.
But wait, there's even more! Anyone from any plane can open a door to your neat little demiplane. Now we can get multiple casters from multiple planes connecting all of those places, for one hour. Sure this is a very expensive thing to do since you're having to coordinate multiple high level individuals in different planes, but the payoff is just as high. We're talking about potential integration between the most varied markets imaginable, few things in the multiverse are more valuable or profitable. Its a do-it-yourself Sigil.
One little plot hook i like about demiplanes is abandoned/inactive ones. Old wizard/warlock died, and nobody knows how to access his demiplanes. Because he's at least level 15 you just know there's some good stuff in there, but nobody can get to it. Now the players have to find a journal, diary, stored memory or any other way of knowing enough about the demiplane to access it.
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True Polymorph (9th).
True Polymorph. The spell that can turn any race into any other race, or object. And vice-versa. You can go full fairy godmother and turn mice into horses. For a spell that can change anything about one's body it would not be an unusual ruling to say it can change one's sex. At the very least it can turn a man into a chair, and the chair into a woman (or vice-versa of course).
But honestly, that's just the tip of the True Polymorph iceberg. Just read this more carefully:
> You transform the creature into a different creature, the creature into a nonmagical object, or the object into a creature
This means you can turn a rock or twig into a human. A fully functional human with, as far as the rules go, a soul. You can create life.
But wait, there's more! Nothing there says you have to turn the target into a known creature on an existing creature. The narcissist bard wants to create a whole race of people who look like him? True Polymorph. A player wants to play a weird ass homebrew race and you have no idea how it would fit into the setting? True Polymorph. Wizard needs a way to quickly populate a kingdom and doesn't want to wait decades for the subjects to grow up? True Polymorph. Warlock must provide his patron 100 souls in order to free his own? True Polymorph. The sorcerer wants to do something cool? Fuck that guy, sorcerers don't get any of the fun high level spells; True Poly is available to literally every arcane caster but the sorcerer.
Note: what good is Twinned Spell if all the high level twinnable spells have been specifically made unavailable to sorcerers?
Do keep in mind however that this brings a whole new discussion on human rights. Does a table have rights? Does it have rights after being turned into a living thing? If it had an owner, is it now a slave? Your country will need so many new laws, just to deal with this one spell.
People often say that high level wizards are deities for all intents and purposes. This is the utmost proof of that. Clerics don't get to create life out of thin air, wizards do. The cleric worships a deity, the wizard is the deity.
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Conclusion.
Intelligent creatures not only can game the system, but it is entirely in character for them to do so. I'll even argue that if humanoids don't use magic to improve their lives when it's available, you're pushing the suspension of disbelief.
With this post i hope to have helped you make more complex and realistic societies, as well as provide a few interesting and unusual plot hooks
Lastly, as much as i hate comment begging i must admit i am eager to see what spells other players think can completely change the world. Because at the end of the day we all know that extra d6 damage is not what causes empires to rise and fall, its the utility spells that make the best stories.
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Edit: Added spell level to all spells, and would like to thank u/kaul_field for helping with finishing touches and being overall a great mod.

Back in March, long before a short seller would raise questions about electric-truck company Nikola Corp. and hasten its founder’s exit, early investors in the company were expressing concerns of their own. Those investors, led by mutual-fund giant Fidelity Investments, were worried that Trevor Milton, for all his brash visionary talk and Twitter braggadocio, lacked the ability that Elon Musk possesses to deliver these sorts of newfangled products to market. They lobbied successfully to remove him as CEO before the company’s June IPO and for Milton’s father to leave the board, according to people familiar with the matter. When the deal was done, Milton only held the title of chairman, the post he resigned this month.
The back-room negotiations show that Milton’s past was a concern to investors months before General Motors Co. executives placed a bet on the company in a US$2 billion deal carved out after the IPO. They liked Milton’s vision and his ability to raise cash and felt the venture was safeguarded from his shortcomings in operations by his push upstairs, say people familiar with the matter. Nonetheless, the events that have unfolded since the short-seller report, with Nikola’s stock plunging amid a steady stream of negative headlines, have exposed just how high the risks still were.
Now, it’s up to former GM Vice Chairman Steve Girsky, whose blank-check company VectoIQ took Nikola public via reverse merger in June, and Nikola CEO Mark Russell to stabilize the business and regain investor confidence. The plan with GM was to use Nikola’s hot stock and Milton’s ability to raise money to build a hydrogen-fueled trucking business with GM’s technology.
“There is obviously someone on the diligence side who isn’t going to get a nice bonus this year,” said Reilly Brennan, founder of the venture capital fund Trucks Inc. “The best possible thing if you’re a shareholder is that Milton is no longer running the company and you have Girsky as chairman and GM providing technology.”
The GM deal was originally scheduled to close Sept. 30, and the automaker has said it plans to carry through, but that timing may slip, say people familiar with the matter. BP Plc is still engaged with Nikola in talks to partner on a network of hydrogen fueling stations for fuel-cell trucks the company hopes to sell, but also is slowing the pace for a deal, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. BP and GM declined to comment.
Milton’s tale reads like a Greek tragedy. The report by short seller Hindenburg Research accused Milton of overhyping Nikola’s technology and has prompted investigations by the Justice Department and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A cousin has accused him of a decades-ago sexual assault, which he denies. The company’s value peaked at US$30 billion and is now worth about US$7 billion.
Girsky and GM Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra have both said publicly that they did plenty of due diligence. People familiar with the matter say that GM found out when scouting the deal that it had better batteries and fuel-cell technology but joined forces because Nikola had a working semi truck and access to capital markets. In addition, GM will get paid to build Nikola’s Badger pickup on existing assembly lines. Milton was so excited to get the Badger pickup program moving that he signed a deal that heavily favored GM, one of the people said.
Nikola’s stock and GM’s US$2 billion stake are worth less than half what they were on Sept. 8, when the deal was announced. Milton’s own stake is worth US$1.7 billion, down from almost US$5 billion at one point.
Milton said in a June interview with Bloomberg News that he grew up in modest surroundings in Layton, Utah. His family moved to Las Vegas when he was very young and he lost his mother to cancer shortly after moving back to Utah in the sixth grade. He wrote on Twitter he didn’t finish high school, earning an equivalency certification instead, and later dropped out of college. His Twitter account has since been deleted.
He grew up in a tight-knit Mormon family, according to Aubrey Smith, his first cousin. She went on social media recently and accused him of sexually assaulting her in 1999 when she was 15 and he was 17.
In a public account on Facebook and Twitter, and repeated in a phone interview, Smith said that Milton came onto her at the funeral of their grandfather. He took her shirt off without permission, Smith wrote, and then he touched her inappropriately before someone knocked at the door and she ran out.
Milton denied the allegations through a spokesman.
Smith said Milton raised money from family members to get his start. He founded and ran several businesses, including a home-security company that Milton claims he sold for US$1.5 million. Next, in 2009, he founded an e-commerce platform called Upillar.com, which Milton claims “pioneered the shopping cart online.”
Then he got into clean propulsion but ended up embroiled in litigation with dHybrid Inc., which he founded in 2009. The company retrofitted diesel vehicles with natural-gas-burning turbines, claiming the dual system had greater efficiency.
But a deal with Swift Transportation Co. in 2010 ended in court when Swift alleged dHybrid defaulted on a US$322,000 loan and that it retrofitted only half of the agreed vehicles. The case was dismissed in 2015.
Milton later tried to sell dHybrid to a company called sPower in May 2012 but that, too, got mired in lawsuits after sPower backed out and accused Milton of exaggerating its technological capabilities.
Amid the litigation, Milton started another company with a very similar name, dHybrid Systems, selling it in 2014 to Worthington Industries.
During an interview with Bloomberg in June, Milton said that dHybrid Inc. was a success but conceded that, “we ended up closing that one down because of some litigation.”
His next startup was Nikola, founding it in 2014 in Salt Lake City before moving to Phoenix. Emulating Musk, he took the name from the electricity pioneer Nikola Tesla, and the company was soon billed as the Tesla of Trucks. His plan was seen as potentially disrupting the entire transportation industry by making trucks that ran on batteries or hydrogen-fuel cells. He also planned to build a network of hydrogen filling stations.
Friends and Family
Milton had friends and family members working for Nikola despite resumes that didn’t match the job. His brother, Travis Milton, is director of hydrogen and infrastructure. His LinkedIn profile shows that most of his experience was being “self-employed” in Maui. The short seller, Hindenburg Research, said that Travis Milton poured concrete as a contractor. Milton’s father Bill was originally on the board but stepped down when VectoIQ took the company public.
The company’s stock prospectus said that Nikola had awarded more than 3 million stock options “to recognize the superior performance and contribution of specific employees.” The list included Travis Milton and an uncle, Lance Milton, the document said, acknowledging that they are relatives.
As Milton went public with Nikola’s technology, questions soon arose involving his claims about the company’s fuel-cell system. He bragged in an investor video in 2019 that the company had created “what other manufacturers said was impossible to design.” But while Nikola holds patents in fuel-cell and battery technology, most of its planned hardware was coming from German supplier Robert Bosch Gmbh.
Nikola Demonstrations
It became clear that Milton had gotten ahead of himself. A 2016 demonstration showed a truck that didn’t have a working hydrogen-fuel-cell system and was missing key parts, people familiar with the matter said in June. Milton said at the time that the parts were removed as a safety precaution.
In July of this year, he recorded a video of the semi truck in which he ran alongside the vehicle as it coasted at low speeds in a parking lot. Aping Musk’s combative social-media persona, Milton took a shot at his detractors saying, “these damned trolls, I wonder if they are going to apologize to everyone for the lies they spread the tens of thousands of comments about how fake we are.”
Girsky said in the webcast “Autoline This Week,” in which Bloomberg participated, that he has been in Nikola’s fuel-cell trucks and that they work.
Still, when the GM deal was done, GM will be supplying all of the technology for every global market except Europe. Nikola’s pickup truck, called Badger, will use GM’s Ultium battery, and the semis will run on a fuel cell developed by GM and Honda Motor Co.
Since Milton’s departure, Nikola has billed itself more as an integrator of other technologies into its Badger pickup and semi trucks.
For GM’s part, the automaker is protected from any financial downside. GM got 11 per cent of the stock for no cash investment and gets paid for its technology. If Nikola fails, GM won’t lose a dime.
Milton has remained silent and is out of the company. He unknowingly presaged his own downfall in the June interview with Bloomberg: “Part of becoming a better person in life is losing everything you have got and having nothing left.”
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/nikola-founder-milton-s-fall-reveals-what-his-backers-feared-1.1500376

The humans seemed relatively easy to infiltrate. Shave his fur, dye his skin, undergo extensive facial reconstructive surgery... Some would have said that last requirement made infiltration far from easy, but Egil's great-uncle had needed extra vertebrae added to his neck and a prosthetic tail in order to infiltrate the Raquids before their assimilation by the Cultivators' Combine. Egil was shorter and stockier than the human norm, but there was enough variation in the species that he should be able to pass with only the occasional double-take. A species that had obviously never developed the germ theory of disease couldn't possibly have sufficient medical sophistication to detect the internal differences in his anatomy.
​
That assumption proved to be in error. Every career path that might lead to an inside look at the human military capabilities was barricaded by the need for a physical exam, either to make sure he wouldn't kill himself trying to do the job or else for their "health insurance". Egil escaped detection at the unexpectedly thorough initial exam by feigning a panic attack (apparently these humans regarded phobias as a disability to be worked around rather than a character flaw), but he found himself relegated to the less bureaucratized sections of the human economy.
​
Even the criminal element proved instructive--but in a way that Egil found most disheartening. The weapons available on the civilian black market were sufficiently advanced to make any ground assault a bloodbath. Presumably these were inferior to what the human militaries possessed. Worse, a non-negligible percentage of the humans he observed in hostile interactions with each other displayed sufficient spite to destroy resources they could not prevent a rival from seizing.
​
"We have limited time," Egil reported over the hyper-com he'd set up. "They are currently scrambling to preserve the remnants of their system's fourth planet's productivity. Once they realize that the effort is futile, they will almost certainly begin expanding their agricultural efforts on the third. From what i have seen, they will be unwilling to restrict themselves to starvation rations, and the population density is already much higher than we had thought possible based on their current land usage. Although they have not yet fully exploited their potential arable land, we can assume the clock to have started ticking.
​
"Unfortunately," Egil continued, "despite their minimal space based infrastructure, their suborbital weaponry is sufficient to render a ground assault useful only for population reduction. We also cannot count on orbital superiority to cow them into submission: too many of them score too high for spite. We could exterminate them if we were willing to glass a farm world to do it; we cannot assimilate them by force."
​
"You look unwell, Egil," the officer taking his report said. "Is it merely fretting over our collective future if we cannot obtain this world and its resources?"
​
Egil shook his head and answered, "I am unwell. This planet's fungi and bacteria are astonishingly prolific. I had a great deal of difficulty in finding quarters that could be adequately sanitized. I finally had to resort to removing all non-essential wall materials and furnishings, and i've been buying disinfectants in quantities that are getting me odd looks from the neighbors. Despite my best efforts, however, i've developed severe diarrhea, and the antibiotics i'm taking are becoming ever less effective. I'm already taking the maximum unsupervised dosage; i would appreciate an opportunity to consult with one of our medics about whether i should risk going higher.
​
"I would advise against medical evacuation," Egil continued. "This is not something to risk introducing to the home ships."
​
The recording officer bowed his head in acknowledgement. "That's an exemplary conduct medal, at a minimum, should the worst come to pass. Obviously the preferred reward would be a long life--but such is not within our power to grant or withhold. I will see about arranging a medical consultation window."
​
--------------------
​
Egil awakened in a human hospital bed with multiple IVs feeding him fluids. Three of the humans in the room had dark suits and postures that screamed 'security'; three wore white coats, gloves, and surgical masks; and one wore a business suit and gave the impression of being some kind of diplomat. There were also multiple cameras and microphones and screens apparently intended to allow two way communication.
​
"He's awake," someone noted.
​
"Well, Mr. Extra-terrestrial," one of the doctors said, "i don't know whether to thank you for giving us a new class of antibiotics or chew you out for giving us a strain of C. diff that's already resistant to it. Although i suppose the C. diff is doing a pretty good job of that for us."
​
" 'Already'?" Egil asked groggily. "This resistance to the antibiotics is something you expect to happen?"
​
"We usually get a year or two after introducing a new antibiotic before resistant strains start turning up in awkward places, but yes, it's inevitable. The resistant strains already exist in trace amounts--even in the one case of a completely synthetic class of antibiotic--they just suffer from sufficient metabolic penalties that they can only proliferate in the presence of the relevant antibiotics."
​
"I see," Egil said. "You haven't exterminated your microbes because you can't, not because you don't know they cause illness. This explains many of the seeming contradictions. I suppose that putting enough chlorine in your water to kill all the microbes rather than most would exceed your own threshold of toxicity?"
​
"Precisely," the doctor answered. "That isn't our only reason for not attempting to exterminate all microbes, however. Pathogenic strains are a minuscule minority among microbes; most are harmless or beneficial."
​
"Beneficial!" Egil said incredulously. "What possible benefit could a parasite be?"
​
"Some of our gut microbes break down complex sugars that we can't; others produce essential vitamins. Most help inhibit the growth of pathogenic strains; some help regulate our immune reactions. There's a skin bacteria whose whole job is to help calm the inflammatory response to minimize the risk of overreactions. I'd bet that when your people first exterminated their micro-flora, they saw a massive spike in allergy rates."
​
"I am not a historian," Egil said. "We lose maybe ten percent of our children to severe food allergies, however. Not because we don't know how to treat them but because supporting that many with chronic conditions would jeopardize our ability to support everyone else. We keep hoping it will be bred out of our population--but we've been hoping that for over a thousand years."
​
"Brutal," the diplomat said. "But based on your research notes, i can see why your people feel they don't have a choice in the matter."
​
"You know, then," Egil said. "Why go to all this trouble," he indicated the medical equipment, "for a spy?"
​
"Because we want a channel to open negotiations through before your people's warships arrive. Your comm gear is both bio-metrically coded and password protected, which means we need you alive," the diplomatic explained. "I won't deny that we're all indulging in a little schadenfreude at your diarrhea problem, but we'll be a lot happier if you can convince your people to hand over enough medical data for us to keep you alive." He looked to the doctors. "How hard is that going to be, anyway?"
​
"Hydration is straightforward enough," a different doctor than the one that had addressed Egil previously answered. "But we're guessing at the electrolyte balance. We can work out the normal nutritional requirements based on his supply of emergency rations and supplements--but what's needed for maintaining good health can be different than what's needed to replenish one's reserves after a major illness."
​
Egil nodded slowly. "The recommended solution for mild diarrhea is similar to what's in your sports drinks; it's assumed that there's no point in including severe cases in the basic emergency medical training because you can't do anything if you've passed out, anyway. Was that how i was found out?"
​
"No," the diplomat said. "You were buying household disinfectants in suspiciously large quantities. Large enough to get you on a terrorism watch list. It didn't take long to determine that you were using all that bleach for its intended purpose, and were only in danger of accidentally gassing yourself--but by then it was equally clear that you were spying for somebody, and that you weren't making your reports in any known language. At least that nasty little C. diff infection you've got exonerates you from suspicion of planning a chemical attack."
​
"Is it untreatable, then?" Egil asked. "If my antibiotics don't work, and yours don't work either..."
​
The first doctor answered, "The most effective treatment for recurring C. diff infections is a fecal transplant. Although C. diff has a frustrating ability to survive on surfaces and is immune to alcohol based sanitizers, it is fairly weak against competing micro-flora. Unfortunately, we don't know which microbes are harmful and which are benign in your species. Obviously, none are absolutely essential, since you haven't died off from the lack of gut bacteria. You said it's been a thousand years since you exterminated them--that may be long enough that your species has lost the ability to interface properly with mutualistic microbes. On the other hand, since you haven't been able to breed out the susceptibility to fatal allergic reactions, it's possible that your immune requirements haven't changed enough to matter. But trial and error testing on a sample size of one is problematic on both ethical and procedural counts."
​
Egil nodded slowly. "I fail to see how you could make things any worse than they are now. Even if you decided to send me home, i would refuse to go--i will not risk introducing this pathogen to our ships. But if my condition seems stable, it might be prudent to defer any such experiments until after we have opened channels for whatever negotiations you think are possible."
​
"Your people need food, correct?" the diplomat asked.
​
"Yes," Egil said. "All of our home ships and capital warships have extensive hydroponic sections, but that's only enough for starvation rations. A single farmworld can double our food supply to something comfortable."
​
"Uh-huh," the diplomat said slowly. "How many people do you think our planet currently supports."
​
"Based on how much of your arable land you're actually using, around five hundred million," Egil answered. "Double that if you're on starvation rations--which from my observations, most of you clearly aren't."
​
Everyone in the room, security men included, struggled to not burst out laughing. "We passed the one billion mark approximately two and a half centuries ago," the diplomat explained. "We're well past eight billion now; i can't remember if the estimate is flirting with nine billion yet. Figure eight and a half billion plus or minus a couple of hundred million."
​
Egil sat up so hard that one of the IVs threatened to pull out. "That's impossible!"
​
"Let me guess," the diplomat said. "Your people took the same kill everything approach to crop pathogens that you did to personal ones, didn't you?"
​
"Of course," Egil said. "Microbes are dangerous; every civilization exterminates them once they realize how disease is transmitted."
​
"Many diseases are caused by microbes," the first doctor said. "Not all of them. Some are genetic, some are idiopathic--and some are caused by not having enough of the right microbes."
​
"And when you wiped out the environmental microbiome," the diplomat said, "you also wiped out the nitrogen fixing bacteria and the fungal networks that share nutrients between plants and the microbes that break down dead organic matter so that the nutrients can be recycled. No wonder your people kill planets so fast."
​
"To keep a planet productive for a hundred years is a feat we have finally learned to duplicate reliably. It is the pinnacle of multiple civilizations' accomplishments."
​
"And for how many millennia were these planets fertile before your ignorance touched them?" the diplomat demanded. He practically snarled, "How much do your people need to live--per year, that is."
​
Egil named a figure, and everyone in the room stared at him in disbelief. Probably wondering how a single planet could supply that much. "That's all?" one of the doctors said, not quite under his breath.
​
"And how many planets have you used up?" the diplomat asked.
​
"I'm not sure," Egil said. "Based on the number of species in the combine, it must be over seven hundred. Probably higher, since some did not survive long enough to be absorbed. Sometimes because they refused to assimilate, sometimes dead before we discovered their world, sometimes reason they died off unknown."
​
"If i thought there was any chance we could make up the tech difference in time," the diplomat said, "i'd tell you all to go to hell. But since there's no way we can pull off space superiority before your fleets arrive, i'll have to settle for a small wager."
​
"What do you think you have to wager with?" Egil asked.
​
"Our planet, of course," the diplomat answered. "You advised your superiors against conquest by force just based on an incomplete knowledge of our conventional weapons. You missed the fact that we still have stockpiles of nuclear weapons large enough to go scorched earth in a way that only the microbes your people are so terrified of could hope to survive."
​
"Nuclear weapons?" Egil asked. "What, like weaponized fission reactors? As good as fission reactors are for power to fuel ratios, we wouldn't risk using them on any ship that might end up in the same system as a farmworld, just from the potential severity of the accidents."
​
"We deployed two of them in combat," the diplomat said. "Not sure how many got detonated in above-ground testing before we decided that was a bad idea. Doesn't seem to have done any but localized harm, and that for a shorter duration than many of us expected. Mad as it is, mutually assured destruction is the only true strategic defense there is--otherwise some idiot just has to think he has the upper hand to get a lot of people killed trying to take your stuff."
​
"We cannot risk the possibility that you are not bluffing about your willingness to use these weapons," Egil said. "But we equally cannot afford to leave empty handed. What do you propose?"
​
"Ten years," the diplomat said. "We give you the amount of food you have stated, and you give us cargo ships and the coordinates of these no longer fertile worlds. If we get these planets producing food again, we keep half of them. If not, we keep feeding you from ours."
​
"What is to stop you from taking these cargo ships and turning them into warships?" Egil demanded.
​
"What is to stop you from taking all the worlds we restore, if we do not?" the diplomat returned. "If you could somehow make us all disappear while leaving earth untouched, you would gain only a single planet that you would use up in only a single century. But if you take this wager, you get hundreds of planets to feed from, and the knowledge of how to keep them fertile."
​
Something had been nagging at Egil, and he finally identified it. "You lie. Your system's fourth planet. You have not been able to save it."
​
"Save it?" the diplomat asked puzzled. "What do you mean, save Mars?" Then he realized, "You think it started habitable?" The other humans echoed his incredulity. "We're terraforming it. Until we accidentally introduced a few microbes with our rovers, that place was dead as a doornail."
​
Egil fainted. The idea was just too preposterous.
​
----------------------
​
Terrance took a deep breath as he prepared to address the UN general assembly. Despite the alien Combine's bizarre ignorance of basic ecology, he had the feeling that they were the easier group to convince to accept his proposal.
​
"Fellow humans, for generations we have speculated on the whether might life might exist elsewhere in the universe. For generations we imagined what a first meeting might be like, whether they would find us or we would find them. Whether they would be better than us, or worse; whether they would be like us, or too alien to understand.
​
"One of the scenarios we imagined was that they might find us as an adult finds a wayward child carelessly destroying the things he needs in order to survive. That they would lecture us on how we have been destroying our environment and teach us how to live better.
​
"Instead, we have learned that at our worst we barely put our ecosystem into the scratch and dent section, while they have done--this!" The screen behind Terrance changed to display a selection of dramatic views of the aliens' former farmworlds. Some were dust bowls, some were deserts, some looked like the immediate aftermath of a forest fire or volcanic eruption. All were barren.
​
Terrance continued, "Every one of these worlds was, within living memory, as green as our earth. But these aliens believe that any organism that is not useful is a pathogen or a pest to be exterminated. They believe that any organism with no known use is useless. They don't even understand that grass-eating animals need their gut bacteria in order to digest cellulose! As a result, they destroyed every organism that contributed to the survival of their food crops and animals.
​
"Having exhausted the last of their worlds, and being able to produce only starvation rations from their ships' gardens, they have turned their attention to our world. Allowed to have their way, they will do to earth just as they have to each of these worlds.
​
"As you know, space superiority is a well nigh insurmountable advantage: this is why we have treaties prohibiting space weaponization. These aliens are not party to our treaties, nor will they see any reason why they should be. Our only advantage is that they need our world intact, and we can, if we choose, put up enough of a fight to go out with a blaze of glory instead of the slow century long withering away they intend for our world."
​
Terrance waited for the delegates to absorb the implications and then added, "We do have one other advantage. The amount i was told they require per year to feed their population is only a tenth of our global production."
​
That got everyone's attention. "So i propose we make a wager with this Cultivators' Combine. We give them the food they need. In return, they give us ships so that we can travel to these worlds they have destroyed and begin restoring them. If we succeed, we keep half the planets. If we fail, better to have us doing the farming here on earth than them. And, of course, we can set aside a small fraction of those ships to reverse engineer to start building fleets of our own--just in case these aliens try to weasel out of their agreement when we win the bet."
​
Terrance signaled that he was finished, and ready to begin taking questions.
​
"How many planets are we talking about?"
​
"Twelve hundred and sixty-seven," Terrance answered. "I left the question of what should be done with the odd one to this assembly's more subtle diplomatic skills."
​
"How are the worlds to be divided?"
​
"I made it absolutely clear that their choosing their half first was unacceptable," Terrance said. "Whether it is better to draw a line on a starmap or to play 'i choose one, you choose one' with them is something i defer to your judgement, as well as being a question that may have a different answer after we've been working with them for a decade or so than it does at this time."
​
"I understand why you think these planets are salvageable--at worst, it can't be any harder than terraforming Mars; but why do you think it can be done so quickly?"
​
"Invasive species," Terrance said, getting a laugh. "Really, though, these are habitable planets. They still have breathable atmospheres and robust magnetic fields. They just need a planet-sized dose of probiotics. And there are enough of them that we don't have to waste time arguing over the best way to go about it, the way we are with Mars. We can try one plan on one planet, a different plan on another. As long as we aren't exporting seed-stock faster than earth can replenish it, we can't lose."

Hey everyone, I am a former Wall Street trader and quant researcher. When I was preparing for my own interviews, I have noticed the lack of accurate information and so I will be providing my own perspectives. One common pattern I see is people building their own algorithm by blindly fitting statistical methods such as moving averages onto data.
I have published this elsewhere, but have copy pasted it entirely below for you to read to keep it in the spirit of the sub rules. Edit: Removed link.

What it was like trading on Wall Street

Right out of college, I began my trading career at an electronic hedge fund on Wall Street. Several friends pitched trading to me as being a more disciplined version of wallstreetbets that actually made money. After flopping several initial interviews, I was fortunate to land a job at a top-tier firm of the likes of Jane Street, SIG, Optiver and IMC.
On my first day, I was instantly hooked.
My primary role there was to be a market maker. To explain this, imagine that you are a merchant. Suppose you wanted to purchase a commodity such as an apple. You would need to locate an apple seller and agree on a fair price. Market makers are the middle-men that cuts out this interaction by being always willing to buy or sell at a given price.
In finance lingo, this is called providing liquidity to financial exchanges. At any given moment, you should be confident to liquidate your position for cash. To give a sense of scale, tens of trillions in dollars are processed through these firms every year.
My time trading has been one of the most transformative periods of my life. It not only taught me a lot of technical knowledge, but it also moulded me to be a self-starter, independent thinker, and hard worker. I strongly recommend anyone that loves problem solving to give trading a shot. You do not need a mathematics or finance background to get in.
The trading culture is analogous to professional sports. It is a zero sum game where there is a clear defined winner and loser — you either make or lose money. This means that both your compensation and job security is highly dependent on your performance. For those that are curious, the rough distribution of a trader’s compensation based on performance is a tenth of the annual NBA salary.
There is a mystique about trading in popular media due to the abstraction of complicated quantitative models. I will shed light on some of the fundamental principles rooted in all trading strategies, and how they might apply to you.

Arbitrage

One way traders make money is through an arbitrage or a risk free trade. Suppose you could buy an apple from Sam for $1, and then sell an apple to Megan at $3. A rational person would orchestrate both legs of these trades to gain $2 risk free.
Arbitrages are not only found in financial markets. The popular e-commerce strategy of drop-shipping is a form of arbitrage. Suppose you find a tripod selling on AliExpress at $10. You could list the same tripod on Amazon for $20. If someone buys from you, then you could simply purchase the tripod off AliExpress and take home a neat $10 profit.
The same could be applied to garage sales. If you find a baseball card for $2 that has a last sold price on EBay for $100, you have the potential to make $98. Of course this is not a perfect arbitrage as you face the risk of finding a buyer, but the upside makes this worthwhile.

Positive expected value bets

Another way traders make money is similar to the way a casino stacks the odds in their favour. Imagine you flip a fair coin. If it lands on heads you win $3, and if it lands on tails you lose $1. If you flip the coin only once, you may be unlucky and lose the dollar. However in the long run, you are expected to make a positive profit of $1 per coin flip. This is referred to as a positive expected value bet. Over the span of millions of transactions, you are almost guaranteed to make a profit.
This exact principle is why you should never gamble in casino games such as roulette. These games are all negative expected value bets, which guarantees you to lose money over the long run. Of course there are exceptions to this, such as poker or card counting in black jack.
The next time you walk into a casino, make a mental note to observe the ways it is designed to keep you there for as long as possible. Note the lack of windows and the maze like configurations. Even the free drinks and the cheap accommodation are all a farce to keep you there.

Relative Pricing

Relative pricing is a great strategy to use when there are two products that have clear causal relationships. Let us consider an apple and a carton of apple juice. Suppose there have a causal relationship where the carton is always $9 more expensive than the apple. The apple and the carton is currently trading at $1 and $10 respectively.
If the price of the apple goes up to $2, the price is not immediately reflected on the carton. There will always be a time lag. It is also important to note that there is no way we can determine if the apple is trading at fair value or if its overpriced. So how do we take advantage of this situation?
If we buy the carton for $10 and sell the apple for $2, we have essentially bought the ‘spread’ for $8. The spread is fairly valued at $9 due to the causal relationship, meaning we have made $1. The reason high frequency trading firms focus so much on latency in the nanoseconds is to be the first to scoop up these relative mispricing.
This is the backbone for delta one strategies. Common pairs that are traded against each other includes ETFs and their inverse counterpart, a particular stock against an ETF that contains the stock, or synthetic option structures.

Correlations

Correlations are mutual connections between two things. When they trend in the same direction they are said to have a positive correlation, and the vice versa is true for negative correlations. A popular example of positive correlation is the number of shark attacks with the number of ice-cream sales. It is important to note that shark attacks do not cause ice-cream sales.
Often times there are no intuitive reason for certain correlations, but they still work. The legendary Renaissance Technologies sifted through petabytes of historical data to find profitable signals. For instance, good morning weather in a city tended to predict an upward movement in its stock exchange. One could theoretically buy stock on the opening and sell at noon to make a profit.
One important piece of advice is to disregard any retail trader selling a course to you, claiming that they have a system. These are all scams. At best, these are bottom of the mill signals that are hardly profitable after transaction costs. It is also unlikely that you have the system latency, trading experience or research capabilities to do this on your own. It is possible, but very difficult.

Mean reversions

Another common strategy traders rely on is mean reversion trends. In the options world the primary focus is purchasing volatility when it is cheap compared to historical values, and vice versa. Buying options is essentially synonymous with buying volatility. Of course, it is not as simple as this so don’t go punting your savings on Robinhood using this strategy.
For most people, the most applicable mean reversion trend is interest rates. These tend to fluctuate up and down depending on if the central banks want to stimulate saving or spending. As global interest rates are next to zero or negative, it may be a good idea to lock in this low rate for your mortgages. Again, consult with a financial advisor before you do anything.

Bannerlord is a great game that is currently plagued by some serious issues, from glitches and bugs to simply not bothering to explain its own mechanics. Without any mitigation or forewarning, these little problems can really snowball and ruin your experience. I've compiled this list of tips and tricks to help other players get around some of these problems and also to maximise your fun while the game remains in early access.
 
I've separated everything up into categories so that you don't have to dig through too much to get to the stuff you're interested in. Also, stuff that's relevant to new players only is marked with a [NP] in front of it, so you can skip that if you already know the basics.
 
Edit: Wow, I hit the 40000 character limit so now I have to add more tips as comments instead!
 

How Stats, Skills and Perks work

[NP] Your character's progression consists of increasing stats, skills, focus, perks and levels. Stats govern your base aptitude in a set of three skills. For example, the Vigor stat affects your aptitude with one-handed, two-handed and polearm skills. Skills represent your ability with that particular skill. For example, the Bow skill affects your aim with the bow and the Steward skill directly affects how many members you can have in your party. Perks are essentially special abilities that are awarded at specific skill levels, e.g. 25, 50, 75 and 100. Sometimes you will get to choose between two perk options. Make sure you check whether a perk is implemented before you choose that perk! (See paragraph below) Lastly, focus points allow you to increase your max skill level with a skill and also provide an exp multiplier, making you gain skill points faster. Note that if you try to train a skill that's reached its limit, it will grow very slowly and eventually stop growing altogether. Thus, you need a constant investment of both stats and focus points to max out a skill. Since your stat and focus points are limited, I suggest you prioritize only a few skills to max out, and accept that the rest will never be fully completed.
 
[NP] In the character creation screen, the various skills are grouped by stats (in bold, above the individual skills) and each specific skill can have up to 5 focus points assigned (the vertical bars). Each skill you can learn is limited to a max number which is determined by the combination of stat and focus points you have for that skill. With full focus (5 bars), you will need about 6-8 stat points in a skill to allow you to completely max it out. Furthermore, the perks available for each skill are only partially implemented. This means that investing points into some skills is currently useless. To see which perks are implemented, I recommend using a site like https://www.bannerlordperks.com. At the time of writing this post, the entire "Cunning" stat has zero perks implemented, making it virtually useless to you. If you're new, I highly recommend getting points in Social, Vigor and Endurance. Social (specifically the charm skill) allows you to convince nobles to marry/join you more easily and improves your troops' morale (leadership skill). Vigor is your basic melee combat stat, which you will use a lot in the early game and especially in the arena. Lastly, endurance allows you to improve your movement speed (riding/athletics) and is necessary for smithing (skill), which is a really useful mechanic that I highly recommend you try. Another good choice is Control, if you wish to be a ranged character.
 
So how does leveling work in Bannerlord? Well here's what the Skills screen looks like using the character (C) menu Using skills with slowly increase your ability with them. The more focus points you have in a skill, the faster it's skill points will go up. Furthermore, your character will gain "exp" every time he/she gains skill points. Or more accurately, exp in this game IS skill points. That is to say, training the various skills is the only way to level up. NOT killing enemies, as you might have first thought. This means you can level up just by trading, smithing, running around, or leading armies. You don't even need to fight simulated battles mostly, though doing so will award you with tactics points and some combat skill points. Every level you gain will award you with either a stat point, a focus point, or both. You can spend these points to increase the relevant stat or skill focus bar. When you have points to assign, they will show up on your character screen. In the earlier screenshot is your NPC brother who you always start with, though his name and appearance is randomized. Because I chose the "assign perks myself" option, I can choose his perks right away (represented by little numbered shield icons next to his skills that tell you how many perks are available to choose). You'll note that to the left and right of the "Skills" table there are weird icons with the number 0 next to them. The left number represents stat points to assign, and the right number is focus points. Your new character will start with 1 free focus point to assign. To assign a focus point, select the desired skill and click the "+" sign. REMEMBER: No choices will be saved unless you click "Done", and you can revert all changes made so far by clicking the curved arrow between "Done" and "Cancel". To assign perks, click on the shield icons in the banner in the middle of the skill page and a popup will appear. Click on the perk you wish to choose - again making sure it's actually implemented first - and then when finished click "Done" to finalize your choices. Don't forget that you can use the left/right arrows to assign skills and perks for your NPCs too!
 
One more thing about perks. The "Governor" perks DO NOT APPLY to your character, because you can't be the governor of any of your cities/castles. Thus, don't pick governor perks for your main hero unless they also come with side-abilities that you want.
 

Starting the Game and the Main Storyline

[NP] The various factions each come with a special ability. You can use all troops from all factions, so don't worry about being shoehorned into any particular troop type by your choices. Instead, focus on the ability you'll get. Not all abilities are made equal and not all factions are equal either. Currently, the Khuzait faction is kind of OP due to the AI being too dumb to figure out how to handle horse archers, so select them for an easier early-game. Vlandia gets bonus troop exp, which means you can promote veteran troops faster than others. Empire skills are building-focused, which means you need to own fiefs to really gain any benefit from using them. Sturgia are... faster in snow. Also their troops are supposedly weaker than normal (this will eventually change), so pick Sturgia if you're a masochist. Battania are kind of situational with their forest boost (so maybe don't pick them either), and Aserai get trading bonuses, so pick them if you want to be a merchant or just like money.
 
[NP] Clicking the various family options will show you the potential change in stat points and focus points that you will gain for that choice. You will have about 7 different choices to make before your character is ready to play. Try to pick choices which focus on your ideal stats and skills while minimizing the other ones. Here's a sample character I generated using the stats I recommended earlier. Don't worry too much about making perfect choices here, since you will gain many more stat and focus points throughout your game too. Plus, you'll use most of the stats/skills at one point or another. After this, your brother will ask if you want to do the tutorial. The tutorial only teaches you how to fight, so if you already know that you can skip it.
 
If you follow the story you will play through a storyline quest for a while until you've rescued your siblings and experienced the execution mechanic in action. Then you will have to chase down a bunch of clan leaders and lie to two special characters who will never interact with you again once you've made your final choice. However, and this is something I want to emphasize heavily: You do NOT need to make a choice about what to do with the dragon banner immediately. In fact, I strongly recommend you do NOT make a decision until you're very well situated in the game. Why? Because it starts a doomsday timer that you cannot slow down or affect in any way, and when it runs out 3 factions will declare war on you all at once and try to grind your entire faction into the dust. Instead, forget about the story quest and just enjoy the game at that point until you are extra powerful and ready to take on the world. Once you succeed at that quest I'm pretty sure you win the game, and if you start it before you're ready you'll be in for a world of hurt.
 

The Campaign Map

The game has a really useful feature called the "Encyclopedia". Press 'N' to open it when in the campaign screen. If you want to track down a notable figure, you can search their name or clan in the search bar and it will tell you where they were last seen. Anytime you speak to another noble or visit a settlement, town or castle, it will update the rumours of where that noble was seen most recently. This will allow you to track down anyone with ease. You can also see if they were taken prisoner, got pregnant, or switched allegiances recently. Furthermore, you can use the Encyclopedia to check nobles' relations with you or each other, allowing you to single out the nobles who hate their liege and are ripe for conversion to your kingdom. You can also use the encyclopedia to check troop upgrade paths, details about cities/settlements, and info on minor factions, who are like secret clans that you can recruit if you choose to be your own kingdom. All in all, it's incredibly useful for planning your next move.
 
There's a circle next to city/settlement names in the overworld and the encyclopedia. Clicking that circle "bookmarks" the city/settlement, which means you can easily find it on the map. Clicking it again removes the bookmark.
 
[NP] If you hover over any of the symbols at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, you can get detailed info on how the values are calculated. The symbols are, from left to right, money, influence, HP, troops, food and morale. The money icon will show you your daily income vs daily expenses. Influence will show your influence gain/loss over time. HP is your own health and recovery rate. Troops shows what troops you have in your army. Food shows how much food you have and morale shows what's affecting the mood of your soldiers. Using these icons helps you figure out what you need to do to make their values go up instead of down.
 

Fighting Battles

Against minor enemies like looters, it's usually relatively safe to use "Send Troops" instead of going in there yourself. You won't gain tactics skill from this, but your troops will gain all the exp instantly instead of spending 5 minutes fighting first.
 
[NP] You can issue commands to your troops by using the F keys. F1 is the movement menu, F2 is the direction menu, F3 is the formation menu, F4 is whether or not to use ranged weapons, F5 is mount/dismount for cavalry, F6 enables AI control, and F7 allows you to split your groups up and assign the split members to other groups. (e.g. split infantry and assign half to "heavy infantry"). You can also use the number keys (i.e. 1,2,3 etc) to select specific groups of troops to give orders to. 1 is infantry, 2 is archers, 3 is melee cavalry etc. Any non-mapped number selects all troops. This allows you to have fine-grained control during combat. HOWEVER for the most part the numbers and relative experience of the two armies is the deciding factor in how a battle goes. Sometimes you can use the terrain to your advantage, but mostly your tactics will do very little to actually affect the battle's outcome, especially in sieges where taking control of the AI will completely break their ability to use siege equipment and attack or defend properly.
 
Some basic strategies for manually commanding troops during simulated battles are as follows:

• The lazy way: Immediately press 0 and then F6 at the start of a battle. Your troops will do their own thing and you can just run/ride around increasing your combat skills without having to worry about managing battles.
• The terrain way: Place infantry in front of your archers and put your archers on high ground. The archers will pick off lots of enemy troops before their infantry get close enough to do any damage, and your infantry will protect the archers when the troops finally do arrive.
• The big brain way: Research your opponents' army composition and culture by riding close (but not too close!) to their army to scout them. For example, Sturgians generally will have lots of shield infantry while Battania will have a lot of ranged folks. Figure out the counter infantry type (e.g. for shielded infantry it's heavy 2-handed weapon infantry. For heavy 2-handed infantry it's archers. For cavalry it's spear-throwers. For archers it's cavalry, etc) and fill your army with those units. Engage in wholesale slaughter. Note: This works best when you have a fief garrison you can switch veteran troops in and out of, because rookies get rekt even with a "type" advantage.
• The OP way: Get just zillions of horse archers, select them at the start of the battle and press F6. The horse archers will run up to the enemy, fill them with arrows, then run away again and repeat. Currently there's no really effective AI counter to this and they will just bleed troops while you sit there wondering why you're even there.
• The "No 'I' in team" way: If you're helping another noble in combat, their troops will automatically be on F6 mode. And you can't do anything about it, either. If you don't want their troops to get completely wiped out, it's best to set yours to AI mode (0 then F6) too. Otherwise they WILL charge the enemy archer wall with their 15 sturgian recruits...
• The "Actually, my troops are more valuable" way: Conversely, if you are helping a noble but don't actually need their troops to win (i.e. you have a huge numbers advantage), don't auto send your troops and use whatever your usual strat is. They'll get wiped out but at least you won't lose your precious troops!

 
You can cheese simulated battles by abusing the "Retreat" command. Hold "Tab" to bring up the stats menu, and press middle mouse button to get your cursor back. Then you can click "Retreat" to teleport your entire army safely out of the battle. Then you can restart the battle with the number of troops remaining from before, but both armies are placed far away from each other again. Combine this with a lot of archers, and you can whittle the enemy numbers down before they reach your army and then simply retreat and start over again until the odds are solidly in your favour. This lets you overcome basically any odds so long as you ensure your opponent takes more losses than you do each time.
 
Levelling up your troops can be tricky as the experience system isn't very clear as to what gives the best troop exp. However, the following things seem to work fairly well: * Some of the Leadership perks grant lots of free exp over time. In particular, Raise the Meek will rapidly turn all of your lowest-level troops into higher-level ones over time, and the level 225 one, Companions, basically gives you the Vlandian empire troop exp bonus, which stacks with actually being Vlandian * Steamrolling fat groups of looters using "Send Troops" is relatively safe and usually awards a handful of troop upgrades each time * Beating nobles' armies when you have about a 2:1 ratio of your troops to theirs is also usually pretty safe and the higher-level troops they have with them yield much more exp * Winning a siege will be extremely costly in terms of deaths, but the troops who survive will gain tons of experience. Defending a siege will be less costly due to having the home turf advantage, but it's harder to engineer those to occur * Doing hideout raids and taking along a group of only archers is a great way to level up those 9 archers, so long as you don't aggro the entire hideout at once. Just make sure you use F4 frequently to enable/disable "Fire at will" or they WILL try to shoot bandits at the other end of the map and summon the wrath of god down on you * Keep your troop morale high by buying lots of different varieties of food. I'm not sure if morale is fully implemented yet, but you won't have the awkward issue of your troops all running from a difficult battle at least
 

Building your Clan

[NP] Your clan has a ranking in the clan screen (press L), shown at the top right. Earning renown increases this ranking, and every new level adds more soldiers to your armies and other useful clan perks to your arsenal. Max clan rank is 6, but you won't get there for a very long time. The easiest way to gain renown is through winning large battles, so battling lots will quickly raise that renown score.
 
The game doesn't tell you this anywhere, but you can have your family join your party by visiting them in whatever city they are hiding in and talking to them (or left-clicking their portrait in that city). Your brother in particular is basically a veteran soldier right from the start of the game, so adding him to your party will give you a huge early-game boost. His high steward score also increases your party size by a lot, so having him around lets you field more soldiers until your own steward score catches up. Later on, set him up as governor of your best city/settlement to give it a huge boost.
 
You can recruit companions at taverns in major cities. Not all companions are created equally, so I recommend using a companion guide to figure out which ones have skills that you want. You can also manually check their skills by right clicking the character's portrait from the city screen or searching them in the encyclopedia. That way you'll know what they are good and bad at before you go through the long dialogue with them. I personally find the tacticians/stewards most valuable as you can make them lead armies for you (more on that in a bit), and the ones with high trade are helpful because you can create caravans with them for bonus income during peacetime. You can only recruit your clan level +1 companions at a time, (e.g. 2 at clan level 1). This means you should be very picky about who you hire.
 
If you have joined a kingdom (or started your own), you can persuade other factions' nobles to betray their current faction and join yours. For this you need three things: High charm, luck and money. Save your game. Speak to the noble and say you have something to discuss. Ask about their liege. This will lead to a skill challenge where you have to get 4 successes in 4 attempts (either 100% successes or at least 1 critical success). This is entirely RNG, so choose the highest % options and pray. Or load back a lot. If they hate their monarch you'll have a very high chance of succeeding in at least 1 of the 4 challenges. Once you've successfully convinced them, you then need to bribe them. The bribe usually is about 100k denars, but can go all the way to more than a million denars if they own lots of land (because your team gets the fiefs too when they convert). Unless you're insanely rich, use the encyclopedia to find the poorest, most disenfranchised nobles and you'll discover that you might be able to pay them even a single denar and they'll happily convert. Beware, others can convert YOUR allies too, so try to make sure you give every noble at least one castle to keep them happy and on your side. Also if you save a lot and see the message that a noble has left your kingdom, you can load back and often they won't leave the second time.
 
If you release a noble whom you beat in combat instead of taking them prisoner, you will get a 6-7 point relationship increase with everyone in that noble's clan. Doing this is an excellent way to butter them up for future conversion to your kingdom.
 
Convert the head of a clan to your kingdom and their entire clan will also convert along with them!
 
You can use your influence points to put policies in place that suit you before adding others to the clan. In the Kingdom menu (K), you can go to the policy tab and scroll through the various policies there. Basically, most policies either benefit only the ruler, benefit only the vassals, or adjust your kingdom's rates (e.g. tax rate and growth rate). If you're going to start your own kingdom, take this chance to vote in all the royalty-favouring policies before you add people who disagree with you. Conversely, if you're a vassal, you want to add more vassals to the clan and THEN vote in all the vassal-favouring policies. Both of these strategies will not only increase your influence gain rate, but also make it much harder for a rogue AI to steal powecities from you later on in the game. It will also prevent you from getting disliked by other nobles from voting against their wishes since they won't even be in your kingdom yet.
 
As a male character, you can marry a noble to have her join your clan. I'm not sure if it's the reverse situation for female heroes or not (i.e. you join their clan). This provides two main benefits. One, you gain another party member to bring along in battle, and two, you can make babies (heirs) who will inherit your stuff if/when your character dies. If you end up playing for enough time you can also eventually add those heirs to your party once they've grown up enough. To woo a noble, simply profess your love to them then return and visit them a few times. You'll have to pass charm checks to woo them properly, so as always, save beforehand! Eventually they'll tell you to talk to the clan leader, and then you'll barter for their hand in marriage. Usually it's pretty cheap.
 

Kingdom/Clan Management

Did you know that war declarations can be avoided (by sort of cheating)? If you save often and then suddenly get war declared on you (or by your kingdom on someone else), just load back to that save. It's a (low) random chance for war to be declared so there's a strong likelihood that the next time you get to that point in time literally nothing will happen. This allows you to avoid all wars that you don't want! Since the game AI is so bad right now, sometimes this is the only way to save your kingdom from utter annihilation.
 
You can equip the companions in your party with awesome gear too! This took me 40 hours to realize, but on the Inventory (I) or trade screens, there are arrows at the top that let you select a different character to equip. This works with the Character (C) screen too, allowing you to assign perks or stats/skills to your companions.
 
In your clan management screen (L), under the parties tab, you can assign your companions to various roles within your party. Generally, this causes the game to act as if your own skill with that particular role is the same level as the assigned companion. For example, if you assign a companion with 80 medicine skill as surgeon, the game will cause you and your troops to heal as if you had 80 medicine skill. Keep in mind that if you don't assign a party member to a role then you will gain the exp for doing that role. In other words, it's a trade-off between gaining free experience and having your party be more effective on the campaign map. The one role in your party you definitely don't want to assign a companion to is Quartermaster, because that trains the Steward skill which you want to raise as high as possible.
 
You can create separate parties under your clan management screen's "Parties" tab. This allows you to send companions off to raise armies and gain exp all on their own without your intervention. You can also assign them to their own personal role within that party (even the Quartermaster role!) for bonus exp and it won't affect your own exp. Parties have three major benefits that make them very useful. Firstly, they will recruit their own troops for you! The max party size is dependent on the companion's steward skill and your clan rank. This means that with enough time you can create an allied party that's virtually equal in size to your own army. Secondly, those parties can be summoned to your army on a whim (click the flag icon down the bottom right of the screen - you must be in a kingdom to do this) and it costs 0 influence! Thirdly, the parties automatically will go around fighting battles for you and increasing your own influence and reputation. I highly recommend creating at least a few parties. There's a few downsides to be aware of, however. Firstly, you pay all the troop wages for the other parties. This can get VERY expensive if you're not at war and constantly defeating armies for money. Secondly, like any roaming entity, your companions can get attacked and captured by enemy armies. If that happens, you have to wait for them to escape or be ransomed and then track them down in whichever city they end up in to reclaim your companion. This can be very annoying. Lastly, if you're a vassal, your liege can actually summon your companions to their army, thereby using your hard-earned troops for their own personal gain! That's the price of being a vassal though.
 
Sometimes you cannot assign roles to party members through the clan screen. This tends to happen if you assign a companion to a role and they die in battle. If this happens, instead select them in the party screen (P) and talk to them. You can assign them roles from the conversation menu instead.
 

Making Money

[NP] In the early-game you will find the tournaments in city arenas to be almost impossible to win. However, with the power of save/load and determination, you can win big in tournaments by betting on yourself every round. If you win the tournament, not only will you get a sweet prize but you will also be several thousand denars richer. At least until your reputation catches up to you and they start offering less and less money for your bets.
 
The best way to make money in Bannerlord is smithing (once you've unlocked enough recipes and have about 140 smithing skill). Early on, the stuff you produce is worthless, but as you start making tier 4 and higher weapons you will discover combinations that create weapons work up to 100k denars in value! Make a handful of these and you can go around from city to city, buying up all the expensive armor while still walking away with 20k+ more denars each time. There are many guides to smithing that can be found elsewhere, but here's a few minor tips:

• Try not to sell anything you make that's worth less than 10k denars. Otherwise you will encounter these items as arena prizes which will generally make it harder to get the rare arena prizes (e.g. special horses and armour). Instead, smelt it down.
• 2h swords and javelins seem to be a great money maker once you hit T4+
• Smelt the weapons you loot from battles if you need the materials for smithing. Even worthless rusty iron spathas can be broken down into huge amounts of valuable materials.
• No matter how many days pass from traveling, none of that will allow you to be able to smelt again once you've hit the limit. This means that even if you come back 3 months later, if you haven't rested in any villages or settlements in that time, you will not be able to continue smelting. You MUST click "Wait here for a while" and just sit around for a day or so to get all of your smithing stamina back.
• Weapons worth 100k make decent bribes for bringing nobles over to your side, but expect about a 30% value loss when using them this way. If you just straight up give them money it's cheaper overall.
• Smithed weapons are not necessarily better than the ones you can buy. Sometimes they will be, but smithing mostly gives you the ability to trade off damage types and attack speed on weapons. For example, you can increase a sword's length and swing damage but it will reduce it's swing speed and thrust. In other words, smithing is useful for making very specialized weapons, but not for making some OP magical sword of head-lopping.

 
The second-best way to make money is by thrashing other nobles in combat. If you're at war, target every enemy noble you see whom you can easily beat and trounce them. Not only do you get money and items for beating them, you can also ransom them at taverns for even more money. You also get money when you capture cities in sieges. Naturally, when you're at peace, you'll find it much harder to make money this way.
 
You can purchase workshops in cities and have them produce goods for a small profit (around 75-125 denars per day). It generally costs about 13k denars to buy a workshop, so it won't become profitable for approximately 140 days. Because of this, if you wish to use workshops you should select cities which you are unlikely to be at war with for a long time (e.g. your own faction's cities!). After all, if you end up at war with a faction, all of your workshops in that faction are stolen from you. To buy a workshop you must physically walk around town. If you hold alt you will see three semi-random workshops throughout the city (e.g. wine press, brewery, smithy). If you walk to one of these shops during the day you will find NPCs loitering around nearby called "Shop Worker". Talk to the shop worker and tell them you want to purchase the workshop.
 
To decide which workshops to build in which city, examine the fiefs which feed into that city. You can also use a workshop guide, but I find these aren't always correct due to frequent patches. The bottom line is this: Pick a city which has at least one source of workshop materials (e.g. grain, sheep, hardwood) in its settlements. More than one source is even better. Next, buy a workshop and select the type that uses that material. For example, grain is used by breweries, and wood is used by a wood workshop etc. Then, you wait. You can check the workshop's profitability from the clan tab (L), but remember, don't expect it to become super profitable anytime soon. These are long-term investments.
 
Another way to make money is caravans. Caravans are more profitable than workshops, but come with significant risk, especially if you're at war with anyone. Basically, you assign a companion to manage a caravan (which costs 15000-25000 denars to make depending on the troops you assign), and the caravan will travel from city to city buying and selling goods. Companions with high Trade skills are essential here. While travelling, the caravans can be attacked by looters, bandits, and worst, enemy armies. If the caravan is captured, you'll have to go rescue your companion or wait for them to be released. Then you'll have to spend another 15-25k to get the caravan going again. Basically, don't do this if you're a warmonger. Anyway, to form a caravan, talk to any merchant in a city and choose the "I want to form a caravan in this city" option. Caravans will net you varying amounts of money, and the income will not be every day, but in my experience they are more profitable than workshops and much more annoying to keep track of.
 
If you have a high trade skill, instead of making caravans you can be a caravan. Load up on sumpter horses which increase your max load, and then use trade rumours (talk to civilians hanging out in town markets) to determine the best places to buy and sell stuff. Buy low, travel, sell high. If you make 30 denars per sale and sell 100 trade items, that's 3k of profit. If you make 100 denars per sale, that's 30k profit! Again, keep in mind that cities generally only keep 20k-30k denars on them at a time, so if you take too many goods you will not be able to sell them all.
 

Siege Warfare

Holding the alt key highlights both important people and weapons that are lying around. You can use this during sieges to replenish ranged ammo and locate nearby interactible things.
 
You can use the siege weapons that your army/city has built. This will train your throwing skill and also open some neat opportunities. For example, you can use catapults to smash siege towers! It takes 4 hits to achieve but boy is it worth it!
 
Catapults and trebuchets can be aimed left and right but also have a red gauge on the side which affects the distance that your shots travel. You can change this bar using W/S to choose how close or far to shoot. Generally you want the distance to be less than half the red bar because your targets are a lot closer than the range on the siege engines.
 
When defending a city you will notice piles of rocks (called merlons) lying around upstairs in the gatehouse. You can take these rocks and drop them on enemy troops for massive damage (400+). You can also use them to smash the battering ram with a few good throws, thereby protecting your gates.
 
You can place your troops before a siege by pressing the numbers (e.g. 1 for infantry) and then clicking where you want them to go. However they just run back to where the AI would have put them anyway, so it's not worth it right now. But someday it might actually work as intended!
 
Is the castle you were staying in being beseiged by overwhelming numbers? You can sally forth to attack, use archers to pick some troops off, and then retreat from battle before their enormous army starts hacking your party apart. Repeat this about a dozen times and you'll have a much more manageable enemy to fight, with very few casualties on your side. For the love of god though save before you try this. Also note that, due to a bug, when you sally out of the castle you'll be plonked onto the overworld map when you retreat and won't be able to get back in without sacrificing troops.
 

Misc

• Save often. Make multiple save files so that you can jump back in time up to half a year if need be. Sometimes bad decisions (e.g. a war with a much stronger faction) take a long time to bite you in the ass.
• Buy lots of (non-sumpter) horses. As long as you have at least a 1:1 horse to troop ratio, your campaign movement speed will be hugely increased, allowing you to chase and catch foes must more easily.
  • Although the tutorial teaches you to buy grain, don't just buy grain. Instead, buy even amounts of every food you can find. That means grain, dates, beer, cheese, butter, oil, meat, fish etc. This will do two things: Grant you huge amounts of Quartermaster exp every day, and also keep your troop morale maxed out, meaning they won't run like cowards from a difficult fight
  • If you can get your leadership to 125, you can unlock the "Disciplinarian" perk. This allows you to promote bandits into regular military units, which at the minimum makes them as useful as recruits. Some bandits, however, can become very powerful military units, such as bushwhackers, freebooters and forest bandits turning into the much-beloved Battanian Fian Champions!

THINGS NOT TO DO

• Don't give anyone the dragon banner before you're ready to fight the whole world. That also applies to founding your own kingdom by completing the relevant quest.
  
• Don't put companions in the Quartermaster role of your party. Otherwise you deprive yourself of an easy way to gain Steward exp, which increases your troop size.
  
• Don't buy workshops in cities you plan on warring with anytime soon, because once war is declared you automatically lose those workshops.
  
• Don't make caravans if you want to go to war a lot. The enemy nobles will target your caravans mercilessly.
  
• Don't leave siege weapons you've built out in the open to get destroyed one by one. Instead, click on the weapon immediately once it's finished and choose "Send to reserve". Once you have 4 weapons built, place them all simultaneously and watch the mayhem unfold!
  
• Don't fight battles where your army strengths are similar (unless it's really important to do so e.g. you're defending your own fiefs against a siege). You will lose a lot of good troops this way, and if you instead fight easy battles you'll get way more rewards with way less casualties in the long run.
  
• Don't execute nobles unless you want to make the game harder on yourself. They breed like rabbits and everyone hates you when you execute someone. Plus there's a good chance they'll execute you too if they capture you in a fight after that. Releasing other nobles grants the most benefit to you by far, even if it's not as satisfying.
  

 
And... that's it for now! I'm sure I forgot some tips but I'll edit them in as I remember. At the very least it should open up some new gameplay avenues for some people, and maybe make things a little less stupid for others. If you made it to the end of this very long post: well done!