this video is made possible by hellofresh go to hellofresh.com and use code real life lure 12 to get 12 free meals including free shipping this is istanbul it's the largest city in the world with territory on two continents europe and asia more than 15 million people live here which makes it the seventh largest city in asia and the number one largest city in europe it's also one of the most famous and well-known cities that humanity has ever built it has served as the capital city for three great historical empires the romans the byzantines and the ottomans and it's been the largest city in the world on two separate historical occasions during both the 7th and 17th centuries today nearly 1 out of every 5 turks live in istanbul the city accounts for over half of all turkey's trade and it has an economy larger than the entirety of south africa most of istanbul's power and influence upon the world is rooted in the city's geography and excellent strategic location it's positioned directly adjacent to this the bosphorus straight a narrow water passage that divides europe from asia and connects the black sea with the aegean and mediterranean historically it's the only possible path that bulgaria romania ukraine georgia and the southwestern part of russia can use to reach the mediterranean sea and the global world ocean from there out of either the suez or gibraltar so obviously the bosphorus is absolutely critical to all of these countries for international trade but especially to russia the world's second largest exporter of oil who has to ship nearly all of it from their ports here on the black sea that remain warm and ice-free year-round the bosphorus is basically the only way for these large russian oil tankers to get out into the world's oceans but the strait is important to dozens of other countries as well because of this the danube this is the second longest river in europe and its mouth is located directly on the black sea the river flows for thousands of kilometers directly through important european cities like vienna bratislava budapest and belgrade and since 1992 it also connects directly to the rhine river and the port of rotterdam europe's largest commercial trading hub cargo ships traveling between shanghai the busiest port in asia and rotterdam the busiest port in europe will almost always travel through the suez canal and will then sometimes choose to pass through the bosphorus into the danube across into the rhine and then up to rotterdam all of this contributes to making the bosphorous strait one of the busiest trade routes in the entire world with more than three times the commercial traffic as the suez canal sees and it makes istanbul one of earth's most strategic locations but despite that turkey itself benefits very little from this possession today they literally make zero dollars from it they can't allow certain allied warships through it and in order to fix all of that turkey is planning on transforming istanbul their biggest and most important city into an island and here's why in 1923 after the first world war in the turkish war of independence the new turkish republic signed the treaty of lausanne which demilitarized the turkish straits and opened them up to unrestricted civilian maritime traffic but by the 1930s with the rise of fascist italy and her colonies directly off of the turkish coast the mediterranean's geopolitical situation had changed dramatically and turkey sought to alter the terms of lausanne this led directly to the montreal convention of 1936 which enabled turkey to re-militarize the straits in order to protect themselves from italy and it heavily restricted the ability of non-black sea adjacent powers from sending any warships through while it also guaranteed the free passage of all civilian commercial ships in times of both peace and war and outlawed turkey from ever being able to charge or collect any tolls or fees at the time this was a great deal for turkey because it all but guaranteed their neutrality during the second world war and it was a boon for the soviet union because it would end up preventing any axis warships from being able to enter into the black sea for the entirety of the second world war but over the decades since world war ii ended numerous controversies have been raised over the treaty's status immediately after the war ended the soviets demanded joint control with turkey over the bosphorus and a permanent soviet military presence there turkey rejected these demands but the soviets got clever the montreal convention established that no more than nine foreign warships with a total aggregate tonnage of 15 000 tons may pass through the bosphorus at any one single time so to cheese the system a bit the soviets would simply keep one of their own larger warships inside of the bosphorus at all times that would almost always maximize the 15 000 tons of foreign warships allowed inside of the bosphorus in effect this prevented any other powers besides turkey from ever being able to pass any warships through so turkey knew that they couldn't resist the soviet union's pressure alone and so in 1952 they decided to join nato which only further provoked the soviet's reaction towards the strait now being effectively in the hands of their cold war adversaries but the united states hasn't been very happy with the arrangement either non-black sea nations warships are severely restricted with ever being able to use the bosphorus including the united states ships with gun calibers larger than 8 inches are on the ban list so to get around it in the 1960s the united states sent missile cruisers through the soviets of course protested this but turkey argued successfully that the missiles aboard the u.s ships weren't in fact actually guns and that since such weapons didn't exist back in 1936 when the treaty was signed they were not part of the restrictions however the convention is still a hindrance to u.s military buildup in the black sea i mean the u.s navy is literally everywhere and they'd like to go for the 100 completion achievement in the black sea too but montreal limits their ability to send any significant large ships through the bosphorus like say aircraft carriers and submarines in 1994 the united nations convention on the law of the sea or unclose came into force that largely defines the rights and responsibilities of nations out on the world's oceans nearly every country in the world has signed on to this agreement except for notably turkey and the united states even though the treaty would place the bosphorous straight within turkish territorial waters and theoretically overrule the montreal convention and give turkey greater autonomy over administrating it they have always refused to sign it because doing so would also surrender nearly the entire aegean sea to greece's territorial waters while the u.s largely refuses to sign because it would place the critical northwest passage within canadian territorial waters rather than international waters so the turks are therefore legally still stuck with the clunky and dated terms of the 1936 montreal convention that restricts their ability to make any money and restricts u.s warships from being able to access the black sea america and turkey's interests are therefore both directly aligned with subverting both unclose and montreau so in order to get around both of them and have their cake and eat it too turkey could theoretically just build an artificial canal directly adjacent to the natural bosphorus strait this is because technically the restrictive terms of the montreal convention only apply to the bosphorous strait itself or so argues turkey by building an artificial canal directly next to the bosphorus and transforming istanbul itself into an island turkey argues that it could begin charging tolls there and finally begin allowing us and nato aircraft carriers and submarines into the black sea for the first time and this is all exactly what turkey is planning on doing with their istanbul canal megaproject which just began construction a few months ago back in march of 2021 the plan currently is to construct the canal 30 kilometers to the west of the bosphorus on the european side of turkey and make it 45 kilometers long from end to end for comparison the suez canal is nearly 200 kilometers long so from an engineering perspective the boss first canal is totally doable but turkey's stated reasons for constructing the canal however have nothing to do at all with bypassing the montreal convention as one of the world's busiest shipping lanes the boss first strait is almost always massively congested with traffic over 41 000 ships will pass through the narrow strait every year and when arriving ships usually have to join a queue and wait an average of 14 hours just to pass through and sometimes they have to wait for days when it's especially busy hundreds of ships will literally just be sitting outside of the strait at a time waiting for their turn to pass through and that's all without some idiot getting their ship stuck inside building a canal adjacent to the bosphorus would immediately help alleviate a lot of this traffic and turkey claims that it will be capable of supporting up to 160 ships crossing per day about the same number of transits that are currently just passing through the bosphorus it would also help divert a lot of the dangerous cargo passing through the bosphorus right next door to the istanbul city center 15 million people live nearby the shores of the bosphorus and as has been seen by incidents like the beirut explosion or the halifax explosion from the past dangerous cargo like munitions oil or fertilizer pose a severe risk of explosion during a collision event such an incident taking place in the bosphorus isn't entirely unlikely given the huge amount of oil and natural gas that russia ships through it not to mention russian and turkish warships submarines the huge number of transits per day the busy ferry traffic that criss crosses between istanbul's two sides and the difficult to navigate waters and most of these factors weren't even present in places like beirut or halifax and those still happened so probably better to divert all of that dangerous cargo west along a new canal away from the city center anyway the only problem to that line of argument is that turkey also wants to extensively develop the banks of the new canal with brand new real estate the entire canal project is a part of turkey's vision 2023 plan and once hopefully finished by then will mark the centennial anniversary of the modern turkish republic's existence the canal will link up with the newly constructed istanbul airport which when fully completed in the middle of the 2020s will be the largest airport in the world capable of accommodating 200 million passengers a year turkey expects that the canal's construction will cost approximately 15 billion dollars and it's monstrously controversial on the plus side the turkish government expects that the canal will alleviate congestion in the bosphorus strait speed up international trade divert dangerous cargo from istanbul city center open up more developed real estate and provide a way to finally monetize their geostrategic location with tolls and fees that could be as high according to them as eight billion dollars a year which would be 30 percent higher revenue than the suez canal generates for egypt but critics believe that well pretty much none of that is actually going to happen first of all constructing the canal is only going to serve a means for turkey to bypass the montreal convention not overturn it merchant ships are still going to be guaranteed free and unrestricted access to the bosphorous even after the canal is built so many people pretty rightfully wonder how turkey will convince people to actually use it turkey argues that the canal will basically serve as a quicker express lane that ships can move through to avoid the long wait times that are seen at the bosphorus and they plan to make the bus first wait times even worse to encourage the canal's use a little more the montreal convention grants turkey the authority to screen all ships passing through the bosphorus for sanitary and environmental safety so theoretically turkey could and probably would expand on this authority to make very very long sanitary and or environmental checks on all ships passing through the bosphorus but offer no such checks through their canal that people are actually paying to use still though it's feared by many that a lot of ships just aren't going to care and will choose to continue using the bosphorus for free even if the wait times are a bit longer it's sort of like how people feel about using youtube premium but that's neither here nor there anyway the canal itself will also necessitate the displacement of thousands of residents who currently live within its direct path it'll probably do untold environmental damage by contaminating istanbul's groundwater destroy a major reservoir that provides for one-fifth of istanbul's already strained drinking water supply and more interestingly some of the property along the canal's planned route is already owned by members of the qatari royal family and by this guy barat al-baryak the turkish minister of finance and the son-in-law of president erdogan himself meaning that he would personally benefit from the canal's resulting real estate development and even further china has ambitions with serbia and greece to potentially construct their own canal from the aegean directly into the danube river which if built would provide a way for ships to completely circumvent the entire bosphorus anyway by moving between the aegean danube and black sea i've previously made an entire video about this project and if turkey charges too much for their canal china might just end up building their own with the help of serbia and greece in order to get around it as a result of all of these factors the istanbul canal is heavily opposed within istanbul itself with one poll suggesting that a full 80 percent of istanbul citizens are opposed to its construction and a mere eight percent supporting it but the canal is also heavily opposed by many outside powers most notably and obviously russia turkey and by extension nato and the united states argue that the montreal convention will not apply to the new istanbul canal and that could theoretically enable massive u.s ships aircraft carriers and submarines into the black sea for the very first time right on russia's doorstep near critical locations such as crimea ukraine and the donbass region where russia is actively fighting a war naturally russia rather enjoys the current status quo then enables their warships to come and go as they please while restricting their enemies movements so they argue that the montro convention would still apply to the istanbul canal and that would also mean that legally turkey wouldn't be able to charge any fees or collect any revenue for their 15 billion canal investment so if the canal ends up being built it will probably massively strain relations between russia and turkey and also as a bonus probably jeopardize russia's monopoly of power in the black sea near their critical ambitions in ukraine because of all these potential foreign consequences 104 former turkish admirals and naval officers signed an open letter expressing their objection to the canal's construction citing that the montreal convention guaranteed turkish neutrality during times of war and prevented conflict from ever breaking out in the black sea between the united states and russia and that bypassing it could open turkey and the black sea up to future conflict but the very next day 10 of these admirals were arrested and jailed by the turkish government effectively quashing all of their resistance president erdogan and the turkish government are fully committed to completing the istanbul canal by 2023 which will change istanbul's turkeys and the world's geography and reality forever the boss first strait is vitally important for several industries and resources but perhaps none are as important as wheat russia and ukraine are the world's largest and fifth largest exporters of wheat respectively and together they export more wheat than the entire north american continent does combined the middle east alone absorbs more than 80 percent of these massive eastern european wheat exports which means that the vital flow of food to the middle east and money to russia and ukraine inevitably all flows directly through the bus for a straight and any disruption in that supply chain can prove to have catastrophic consequences like it did in 2010 that year russia and ukraine experienced a once in a century drought event that crippled their wheat production and in a bid to protect her own domestic wheat farmers russia temporarily banned all of her weed exports eighty percent of the middle east's wheat imports were suddenly and immediately cut off leading to widespread food shortages which in part contributed to the arab spring event that year that led to revolution and civil wars across the arab world any disruption in the bosphorus could hypothetically lead to similar events taking place which is why this tiny straight is so important to so many people outside of turkey at the end of the day everybody needs food and ideally you need to eat good food too i used to eat nothing but takeout because i didn't have any time to go shopping and prep and make meals so delivery was always the quick and easy alternative the problem is though takeout isn't healthy and it isn't cheap either so eventually i wanted to find a healthier cheaper and similarly convenient alternative and that's why i started to use hellofresh seriously i've been having meals delivered to my front door by hella fresh now for over a year and i've got dozens of recipes that i've collected from them it's so convenient because every week a new box arrives with everything i need in the exact quantities i need to make all of these different delicious unique meals it completely eliminates having to go visit the grocery store and it makes prep time so much faster so i can get a meal like this bulgogi pork tenderloin made in only 30 minutes hellofresh also dramatically cuts down on food waste by sending you the exact quantity of ingredients you need and overall the carbon footprint from one of their meals is 25 percent lower than one made from store-bought groceries you can find out why i've been using hellofresh consistently for over a year now when you go to hellofresh.com and use the code reallifelore12 to get 12 completely free meals including free shipping and even better you'll also really help support real life lore while you're at it enjoying your free meals thanks for


this video was sponsored by the great courses plus [Music] three basic facts defined Marcus Licinius Crassus is life first he was rich a billionaire by our standards second he used that wealth to support great politicians I've talked before about how he was secretly funneling money to Claudius behind the scenes but before that he did the same thing with Caesar and other populist s-- before him third Crassus his entire career was marked by his rivalry with Pompey it started decades earlier when Pompey took credit for a war that Crassus had won and over the years the grievances piled up and yet time and time again circumstance forced the two men to work together that brings us to their second consulship together in 55 BCE late in the year Crassus was getting ready to leave Rome and head to Syria for his five-year term as governor it was an open secret that once Crassus got to Syria he intended to go to war against the Parthians on the day of his departure a crowd confronted him led by a Tribune of the plebs the Tribune tried to use his veto to stop Crassus from leaving the city but another Tribune stepped forward and vetoed his veto the crowd blocked his way and accused him of going to war for his own personal greed they refused to let Crassus pass until Pompey showed up and calmed everybody down I'm sure Crassus found it super annoying that it was Pompey who had to rescue him one more grievance added to the list Crassus arrived in Syria early and started to get everything ready for his unprovoked war against the Parthian Empire in the spring Crassus took command of his legions and marched east his son Publius had come from Gulf with some Golic cavalry and was now serving as Crassus his cavalry commander the army reached the Euphrates River which marked the border between Rome and Syria and Parthi and Mesopotamia he crossed the river and just like that Crassus had started a war with the Parthian many of the nearby settlements had sizable Greek populations and were reasonably friendly towards Rome as Crassus approached with his army many of them felt comfortable surrendering to the Romans without a fight but it wasn't always so easy one city named Zeno da DM sent a friendly message to Crassus asking for a Roman garrison Crassus sent 100 men basically a Roman century to occupy the city when the Romans arrived the locals ambushed them and had them arrested later the entire century was executed when Crassus discovered what happened he showed up with his entire army he stormed the city and sold its inhabitants into slavery for the rest of the summer he marched all over Mesopotamia capturing settlements and installing Roman Garrison's at the end of the season he turned his army around and marched back to Syria in all his campaign was a success he left 8,000 Roman soldiers behind scattered throughout Mesopotamia in small Garrison's guarding his new conquests but one thing should have been bothering him so far the Parthian had not responded that winter the king of Armenia who was an ally of Rome came to see Crassus the king asked Crassus to consider invading through Armenia rather than through Mesopotamia he said that going through the mountains would give the Roman infantry a huge advantage against the Parthian cavalry if he agreed the King promised to provide Crassus with an additional thirty thousand infantry and sixteen thousand cavalry which would basically double the size of his army this isn't explicitly said in our sources but I'm sure that in return the Armenian King wanted a slice of Crassus conquests Crassus thought about it but in the end he refused his objective was to annex Mesopotamia and so far that was going pretty well our ancient sources all think that this was a stupid decision and I can't say that I disagree 46,000 Armenians is a lot of Armenians nevertheless the armenian king returned home and the next year Crassus crossed the Euphrates again with 43,000 men so far Crassus had made an effort to stay close to the Euphrates River but one day crisises Scouts came across signs of an army marching away from the river into the desert this must be the Parthian response some of Crassus ah's subordinates advised him to pull back into one of his garrison towns and gather some intelligence on this mysterious army but Crassus wasn't interested in that he ordered the Romans to march off into the desert in pursuit of the enemy army Crassus advanced at a breakneck pace he ordered his men to eat on the march and only let them stop for a few moments at any water sources Crassus his subordinates continued to urge him to turn around or at least stop at a water source for a couple of days but he ignored their advice after a time some of Crassus is scouts returned they reported that there was a huge Parthian army very close and that they were all on horseback Crassus ordered his men to deploy in a long thin line this was a pretty standard tactic since the mounted Parthian would have mobility on their side the Romans had to protect themselves against being flanked along gating the Roman line would force the Parthian to do the same which would limit the size of any Parthian flanking maneuver this is ancient warfare 101 but Crassus wasn't sure of himself the fact that the Parthian army was all cavalry was throwing him for a loop he changed his mind as his men were mid deployment he ordered them to come back he had them deploy in a hollow square this would allow the Romans to fight on all sides removing any danger of being flanked or even surrounded on paper this isn't necessarily the worst idea in the world but it's definitely unorthodox it's one of those it's so crazy it just might work ideas Crassus is subordinates tried to talk him out of it but his mind was made up the Romans square advanced is one until they caught sight of the partying army [Music] it turns out that the Roman Scouts exaggerated a bit the Parthian army wasn't that huge in fact it was considerably smaller than the Roman one there were only 10,000 para thien's facing off against 43,000 Romans most of the Parthian army was horse archers with some armored heavy cavalry mixed in the Romans were already in their little square so the Parthian cavalry was unopposed as they immediately surrounded them when they were in position they began to rain arrows down on the Romans from all sides Crassus responded by sending skirmishers forward to drive the horse archers away but the Parthian arrows forced the skirmishers to retreat the Parthians continued to pound the roman square with missiles now it's not quite as bad as it sounds the Romans knew this was coming they were shoulder to shoulder and everybody was protected by their giant shields most ancient archers could burn through their supply of arrows in like 10 or 15 minutes so the Romans just had to sit there and wait for this to happen then they could close in with the enemy and fight on their terms so they waited and waited and waited the arrows did not stop it turns out that the Parthian had brought a lot of arrows like a lot apparently they had a small army of camels with them each weighed down with thousands of arrows their only job was to run back and forth resupplying the horse archers they basically had an infinite supply this possibility never occurred to the Romans their shields still protected them from the worst of it but a small percentage of the arrows inevitably slipped through the cracks another small percentage would hit a shield at exactly the right angle and go straight through the wood not very many Romans were being killed but an alarming number were taking arrows to the arms or feet in desperation Crassus ordered the entire square forward maybe if they could get close enough the Parthian would have to stop shooting and pull back it didn't work the arrows continued to fall this was getting bad something needed to change so Crassus ordered his son Publius to take the cavalry and a legion and break through the encirclement Baratheon's Publius gathered his men and charged and it worked the Parthian horse archers turned and ran Publius pursued but it didn't take long for Publius to make an unfortunate discovery while retreating the Parthian archers could turn a full 180 degrees on their horses and continued to shoot their arrows this is called the Parthian shot and it was a devastating tactic especially in scenarios like this but Publius and his cavalry ignored the arrows and kept up the momentum chasing the Parthian zijn told the rest of the battle vanished in the distance then the retreating Parthian x' were joined by another group doubling their size the Parthian x' swung around and attacked it was all a setup Publius realized his mistake too late his small forest was immediately surrounded and the arrows began coming down faster than ever the infantry was totally pinned down Publius rallied the cavalry and charged the Parthian heavy cavalry responded and intercepted them the Parthian x' were armored and the Romans were not Publius is cavalry did their best but it wasn't enough Publius was badly wounded and the cavalry retreated they endured the Parthian arrows for a while longer but eventually the arrows stopped and the party and cavalry charged Publius men were in no condition to put up a fight five thousand three hundred Romans were left dead on the field and another five hundred surrendered to the Parkins Publius ordered one of his men to kill him so that he wouldn't be taken alive Crassus didn't know that any of this was happening all he knew was that Publius had broken through and that the Parthian had diverted some of their strength to deal with him then a messenger arrived he told Crassus that Publius was being overrun by the Parthians for time Crassus was unable to make a decision finally he ordered the entire square forward he would march to Publius is aid Crassus had no idea that his son was already dead as the Romans were getting ready to march a Parthian Horseman came forward he started riding back and forth in front of the Roman line he was carrying something a spear on the end of the spear there was a severed head it was Publius the Romans had endured a lot but this was a terrifying sight they began to lose their nerve a group of Romans broke away from the army and tried to fight through the encircling Parthians on their own but the Parthian heavy cavalry intercepted them and cut them down then the Parthian 's continued pounding the Romans with arrows finally the Sun started to set the Parthian pulled back they had rules against fighting at night and besides the Romans were on foot they weren't going far the Romans threw together a haphazard camp and collected their wounded there were a lot of them crisis was inconsolable he spent hours huddled on the ground unable to move mourning his son he didn't have the heart to face his men two of Crassus as legates came forward and told the army that they were taking command and that they had the full support of the rank-and-file Centurions I guess if you want to be technical you could call this a mutiny although Crassus didn't seem to care the legates decided that the Romans would march straight through the night the nearest town was car high which had walls and a Roman garrison if they could reach car high they would be safe they didn't bother taking down their camp they just left it behind along with anybody that wasn't strong enough to walk Crassus tagged along but didn't try to reassert his command nobody could see a thing in the darkness it was a mess people kept on imagining that the Parthian were attacking and sounding the alarm of the people that could walk a ton were wounded and after a while they had a hard time keeping up a whole bunch of wounded Romans were just abandoned on the March it was bad but by sunrise the next day most of the exhausted survivors made it to car high the parkings descended on the abandoned Roman camp there were still a bunch of wounded there and the parkings killed them then the Parthian fanned out all over the desert looking for roman stragglers and there were a lot of them some had been abandoned on the march and some had simply got lost in the dark the Parthian found one group of 2000 that was walking in the wrong direction they captured as many as they could the Parthian general figured out that Crassus and the rest of the army were in car high and went to negotiate he told them that it would be in everyone's best interest if the Romans just left Mesopotamia but just to be sure he wanted a formal peace treaty and he wanted Crassus to sign it Crassus didn't want anything to do with this he was a broken man but the Roman army was either near or past mutiny depending on your definition and they just wanted to go home they forced Crassus to go with the Baratheon's a small group of Romans went with him what happened next was very strange the Parthian general made an over-the-top display about how it was so undignified for a Roman general to be walking on foot he ordered a horse brought in the horse arrived and it was wearing a very expensive golden bridle like obnoxiously expensive this was meant to somehow humiliate Crassus for his wealth the Parthian general told the Crassus to get up on the horse Crassus tried to politely decline but the Parthian general insisted Crassus was like okay when he mounted the horse the Parthian holding its reins started running back and forth erratically smacking the animal and making it go nuts Crassus was hanging on for dear life the Romans stepped in this was weird and undignified and it had to stop as they approached somebody drew a sword there was a brief struggle and seconds later Romans and Parthian were lying dead on the ground Crassus had been thrown from the horse another partying came forward and drew his sword he cut off Crassus his hand and then his head [Music] later according to one account the Parthian x' mocked Crassus his wealth one more time by melting down some gold and pouring it down the throat of the severed head the party in general turned around and rode back east with his Roman prisoners he picked one Roman and told him that from now on he would answer to the name of Crassus he dressed his fake Crassus as a woman and hired a bunch of prostitutes to follow him around he then grabbed more Romans and dressed them as liqueurs or bodyguards and had them follow this fake Crassus as well he gave these fake lictors fake fasces which normally represented the power of the roman state affixed to the top of these fasces were the severed heads of other Roman captives the Parthian general took this horrific procession on tour through Parthian territory he called it Crassus his triumph in the end a Parthian army of 10,000 defeated a Roman army of 43,000 20,000 Romans were killed and another 10,000 were captured the legions Eagle standards were also taken which was an extra level of humiliation at the time it was one of the worst defeats in Roman history back in Rome Crassus his death came as a shock politically it changed everything the reformed fashion lost its most prominent financial supporter Pompey was now the richest man in Rome and within a year he would be distancing himself from Caesar and aligning with the Conservatives Roman politics would never be the same you baan surd by the great courses plus which is video streaming service that provides access to lectures from professors at many of the world's top universities they have a huge collection of courses on many different subjects including history one lecture that I liked was called the death of the Roman Republic which was in a course called the history of the ancient world show your support and receive a free one-month trial by visiting the gray courses plus comm slash Astoria civilus or by clicking the link


this video is sponsored by expressvpn find out more later in the video hey everyone Zach here from window central and welcome back to another video now today we're taking a look at ways to declutter and modernize the Windows 10 experience now to me and I'm sure many others Windows 10 feels very cluttered there's lots going on on the taskbar and in the Start menu there's lots of legacy programs installed behind the scenes and there's lots of weird defaults that windows sets that personally I don't think should be default and would like to change in fact always change when I setup a new version of Windows 10 so if we could why not do a video detailing my steps the things that I do to Windows PCs when I first get them to make them feel a little more clean a little more modern because remember Windows is a legacy operating system Windows 10 is just stuff that's been built on previous versions of Windows so there's lots of old stuff in here that I like to remove and there's lots of tweaks I like to download and install that make the Windows user experience feel a little more up-to-date so this is essentially a clean version of Windows 10 this sort of video story will work if you have a version of Windows that you've been using for some time as well it's all the same really just follow along and don't do things you don't want to do there's going to be some choices I make in this video that a lot of people won't agree with that's fine you don't have to follow every step I'm just showing you what I do to modernize and clean up the Windows 10 user experience so let's start with the taskbar to me the taskbar is unnecessarily cluttered out of box we've got things like this search bar down here which is unnecessary we don't need a search bar so we can in hide it will show the search icon but in fact we can go a step further than that and just simply hide the search icon entirely because we don't need it we can get access to search just by typing into the Start menu we still get it like that we don't need the dedicated button but I understand if you're somebody who prefers having the main button you can keep that there if you like but personally for me I like to remove it I like to have start I like to have Cortana and I like to have the task View button I know many people don't use Cortana so it makes sense for them to also hide the Cortana button as well in fact why not hired all of it if you really want to simplify it experience you can hide every single one of those and just have the start button but like I said for me I prefer having the Cortana button and the task View button there up next just go through and pin unpin things that you do and don't use on the taskbar I know a lot of people like to just pin everything to the taskbar for convenience but if you want to if you want a minimalist setup just pin the core applications the things you use everyday any sort of accessories and other things that you don't use all the time can then should be put into a folder in the Start menu for example so for me it's these four apps here everything else is happy in the Start menu the next thing I like to do is just hide the desktop icons just doing this can make the experience feel way cleaner especially if somebody has a hundred thousand different shortcuts on your desktop now if you use your desktop as like a scratch board for in-progress documents and whatnot then hiding the icons doesn't make much sense but if you're somebody just uses it as a dumping ground for application shortcuts just hide them or delete them if you want and then hide it I just prefer having a clean desktop wallpaper here because it just looks nicer in my opinion now moving on let's clean up the system tray the sister train is a very legacy part of Windows it's been around since 1995 with Windows 95 believe it or not it has come a long way since then but it's essentially the same thing we have our date and time we have a bunch of system applications sitting in the system tray that honestly shouldn't be there in my opinion the system tray is needed at overhaul for years but Microsoft refuses to give it to us because there's a few people who rely on its legacy feature set unfortunately but we can do our best here to try and modernize it so let's begin just by hiding things to do that just drag up the things you don't want like that and they'll go into the overflow menu and we're going the system icons here it will depend on your preference for me I don't need onedrive here and I probably also don't need the volume flyout now again depending on who you are you might prefer having those icons there which is perfectly fine you can keep them but we're trying to simplify the system tray as much as possible now what I also like to do to the system tray is customize the date and time format to make it look a little more modern don't get me wrong the current format looks fine I guess but I think we can do better so if we open Microsoft edge here and search for an app called tea o'clock on github we can download this from a user called white tiger we scroll down go to releases here press on 2.44 release candidates or the latest version that comes at that top press on T Capitol zip and this file before we actually run it however I like to create a folder in say the Documents folder or even just in the C Drive let's do it here called tweaks so these have a safe place to run in the background so let's go back to our downloads folder here and extract T clock into its own folder and then before we continue on with that move the T clock folder into the tweaks folder in the C Drive now to get T clock running we just press clock 64 here and this little window will pop up in the corner now you may notice that the format of the data time in the system tray has changed a little bit so from here we can customize the format of the date and time in the system tray now you can follow step by step or you can do your own thing it's entirely up to you but for me I like to go to time formats go to advanced clock format enable this tick box and change the format entirely so here's what I like to use I like to use mmm space D and a few spaces then H : NN space t t and you'll notice on the system tray there we now have a very simplified looking date and time if you don't understand what I just typed there's a help document here that you can click on which will give you an overview of all the different codes you can put into the format box which will provide you with different date and time formats and whatnot so I make sure you give that a read if that's something you want to dive into from here we move over to the clock text box and change the font I prefer using C go semi bold and then if we need to we can also change the font size depending on your screen resolution you might have to do to do that to make it seem more at home what do you think 9 or 10 I think maybe 10 looks nice though we could also just I don't have a space there to make it seem a little more at home is that too many spaces I think that's okay and there we have it so that's what our time and date looks like now on the taskbar actually it's 10 too big I can't tell on this you I don't 9 is too small we really did a 9.5 but unfortunately that's not possible I will keep it at 10 for now so there we go we can also adjust the width so if you're still finding that it doesn't look at home in the system tray you can actually change the positioning of the entire widget you these commands here so yeah you'll have to mess around with it to get the exact format you like but I think we've got what we want here there we go then we want to go down to about and make sure T clock starts at startup press ok and now we have a cleaner looking sister tray with our updated date and time format I think it looks really nice and of course it still functions exactly the same I think click on it and I will open up the calendar fly out here and we leave them right click on it to get access to a whole bunch of different areas in the system if that's what you want which is a nice addition as well but we still not done with the taskbar there's a couple of more things I like to do up next is a tweak called taskbar X which we can also get from github so if we just type taskbar X github and download this from Chris and 1998 go down to releases click on the latest one available press on release dot zip and then also do the same thing we did with T clock by moving its extracted folder into our tweaks folder in the C Drive so let's quickly copy you and paste you into tweaks we can then scroll down and launch the program taskbar X here and what this will do we can that press 1 anyway it's safe we'll Center the pinned and running apps on your taskbar and it also has a couple of customization options as well so if we click on taskbar X configurator here this will launch our Settings app app for tosspot X and from here we can customize a whole bunch of things so we can change the style of the taskbar so if you don't like the default theming of the taskbar you can change it to transparent which would just simply hide the taskbar but keep the elements of the taskbar on display we can also change it to a blur effect which just sort of removes the accent color but keeps the blur effect so if I move this window below the taskbar here you'll see that it still blurs similar to Windows 7 almost and then we also have acrylic which is similar to default just without your system accent color there as well so you can still see the taskbar a little bit here but for now we'll keep it at default because I prefer that we've got to change the animation of things so when you open up and up that isn't pinned to the taskbar like mics are still here you'll see things move over ever so slightly we can do it again here with say photos things would just budge over you can change the animation of that now I haven't really noticed much of a difference between all of these different animations but hey you might so I definitely recommend looking through it you can also change the animation speed so if you actually want it to be faster you can say make it 50 m/s press apply so now I want to open up an app again the animation will be quicker or we can make it slower we can make it 500 milliseconds which if you're somebody who prefers the spectacle of animation you can do that and it will move over slowly actually like that so I'm actually gonna keep it a longer animation speed I know some people hate animation speeds being long but hey in this case I think it looks nice we can also change the position of the centered icons here so if you're somebody who has a long system tray which in this case we don't we just cleaned it up you can make sure that the taskbar pinned icons remain centered between all of the buttons over here on the left and all the buttons on the right I actually prefer just leaving this off because I like having the taskbar icons pinned directly in the middle regardless of the system tray and stuff but you can compensate for that if that's what you want to do if we come down to your extra here there's a bunch of more different options you can choose to umm if you're somebody who's using multiple monitors there's a couple of options you can choose here only sent to promote our spot or a secondary taskbar you can change the refresh rate and a bunch more stuff click on apply and that's all good so we now have taskbar X running and now our taskbar is looking very very modern in my opinion okay so I think we're looking pretty good so far but we're still not done there's still more we can do to customize Windows 10 and the third one is with an application called power toys which is also on github funny enough if I could type github there we go so if you come in here go down to releases and install the latest release at the time we're going to install power toys this is an actual installer so we don't need to use our two weeks folder here give that a second to scan for viruses press on power toys and install it we can get access to a whole bunch of tweaks and stuff now I've done an entire video on power toys that you can watch by clicking on this card up here now but really what we're downloading it for today is the search UI that it provides because we've hidden the start bar search away and that's because we're going to install power toys as search which i think is a little bit better and clean and faster so give this a second to install so now we have power tools running you can check by going into the system tray overflow and seeing this icon power toys for click on that I hope not this program here make sure power to waves Run is enabled then we can customize the shortcut we use to enable it by default is set to alt space which i think is fine and we can also change the maximum number of search results I think six will be fine for this demo and now when we press the Alt key in space we should get this UI for searching and this will allow us to run any program we'll find any document on our system quickly and easily using a modern interface so if I want to search for notepad I didn't type notes and then we get notepad or sticky notes wonderful in does 10 etc etc I think this UI looks really nice so that's what we're using power tools for there's a whole bunch of different tools and power toys that you can use again we have a whole video dedicated to this program that you can check out the shortcuts guide is really nice if you present hold the Windows key we'll get an overview of all the different shortcuts you can use on Windows 10 in the current screen you're on which i think is great and there's again a whole bunch of other stuff there's a few things we don't need I think like we don't need the image resizer we can turn that off we can also turn off the keyboard manager we can turn off power rename it's unnecessary for what we want and if you want you can also turn off fancy zones or we can have it on it's entirely up to you fancy zones just allows you to have a bunch of grids that gives you easier access to managing the format of Windows so when I hold the shift key I can actually pin things in different areas on the screen I let go here that one out pin over there but again if you know it's not something you want to use that's fine you can actually disable it and for this demo we will but if that's something you want by all means keep it on that's entirely up to you so that's what we've done so far but we're still not done there's still more things I like to do to Windows 10 to simplify and declutter the experience now the next one's gonna be very controversial trust me I know but I do it for good reason I go down to the windows accessory folder I've right-click on notepad and I click uninstall don't panic there's a reason for this and I promise it will make sense in just a second but for now we're going to quickly uninstall notepad goodbye notepad we saved a full 700 kilobytes doing that and I think it's worth it but no the real reason I do that is because I like to install the Microsoft Store version now I know a lot of you of rolling your eyes at the Microsoft Store but the reason I do this is because the Windows Store version has an updated icon and we're all about aesthetics here at windows central so I like to have the store version of Windows notepad because it has the new modern icon and then the application is exactly the same for if anything it might have a couple of more features because it's updated more often than the built-in version Windows 10 I think that's the case and but this is gonna be the new default eventually anyway you're just getting ahead of the curve by doing this so once you've done that as you can see here we now have notepad installed in our Start menu and it's back in the windows accessories folder so it's still there so if you want to use it you can and now we open it we have the new icon down here and we can go to about notepad same old notepad just with a new icon and it works as you would expect so don't worry we didn't get no we didn't delete notepad for long it's still here and it's still the best notetaking application that has ever existed on the subject of that windows accessories father there's a lot of things in here that I just don't use and luckily you can't get rid of most of including Internet Explorer if we right click Internet Explorer and press uninstall we can actually uninstall it from this UI which i think is great because I don't use Internet Explorer as I'm sure you don't either and it's taking up 11 megabytes on our hard drive so let's delete it right away we can also delete most of these legacy programs including Microsoft paints now I don't do this but if you're somebody who really wants to declutter all of the the legacy programs you can do that from here so if I understood paints it will go away and obviously reproduce right here but since we have paint 3d installed do we really need legacy paints of course you could do this the other way as well if you don't want paint 3d you can uninstall that and keep the legacy version of paints and in fact can we actually undo this no we can't let's restart and then reinstall paints just to show you what else we can do so we're back into Windows here if we go into the windows accessories folder you will see that yes paint is gone but we can bring it back quite easily just by going into apps here go into optional features add a new feature and searching for paint again right so paints a full 3.72 megabytes install it there we go once that's done paint should be back in the windows accessories folder just where it was before there it is now the reason I did that is because if you're somebody who likes to go the other way for example like uninstalling paint 3d you can't do that and in fact you can actually elevates paint to being in the main apps list rather than buried in the apps in the windows accessories folder here to do that we just right click on paint go to more press on open file location' copy the shortcut and then just paste it in here instead press Continue and now paint should show up in the main apps list rather than in the windows accessories folder so if you're somebody who wants to do that you can and I think it looks pretty nice now again back to the installing under still in legacy stuff we've finally stored is an explorer we can only store all these other things we don't use them which I usually do but it takes a little while so for this video we don't but let's pretend we did now before we wrap things up I'd like to take a quick second to think this videos sponsor expressvpn we're all at home using the internet more than ever so it's important that you protect your privacy when browsing the web expressvpn is a super easy premium VPN service that works across Windows Mac OS iOS Android and more use Express VPN to access region restricted web pages and video streaming services and keep your browsing history private or without slowing down your internet it keeps your IP address hidden and with 24-hour support over 3,000 servers worldwide and no bandwidth limits you can use Express VPN whenever and wherever you need it you can get three months of expressvpn for free when you sign up for an annual plan using our link to get started today head to expressvpn comm forward slash windows central that's expressvpn comm forward slash windows central links are in the description thank you expressvpn for sponsoring this video so updates what I actually do surprisingly is enable light mode now I'd get it dark mode is best mode and that's true but when it comes to light to user interfaces they do look more minimalist and clean so if we enable light theme here you'll notice that T clock needs to be updated just the bit that takes just a couple of seconds go to clock text and change the color of it to just dark pattern types there we go that should be fine but I do this because like I said it just looks a little bit cleaner in my opinion I don't do this referee PC of course but in this case I think it looks nice now we need to update our wallpaper and there's a website called wallpaper hub that I like to use which has a whole bunch of different wallpapers for us to choose from I see we can find a nice clean one here in spire this looks nice download see download 1080p will be nice there we are save image as we save this to our pictures folder press on save showing folder set as desktop background and now we have this wallpaper as our default which I think looks nice now - you found this one which I like more so let's use this one instead save this as an image press save go back into our pictures folder here and set this one as the desktop background instead there we go I think that looks way nicer there's still a couple of more things I like to do when I setup a new version of Windows 10 if I go into our File Explorer here you'll see that by default it takes us to this sort of recents area which can often get cluttered with things like nonsense filenames and stuff and things we don't even need opening more like tea clock help so I just like to set I'll explore it's open to this BC by default I press on this here press ok next time I open file explorer it will take us to this UI which I think is much cleaner I was like to minimize quick access and just maximize this PC because quick access is more or less the same as this except it's not dynamic so you don't get nonsense folder names in there you just have the defaults here and they stay as this and they constantly stay like this so that's nice now going back into the apps list a real quick I also like to uninstall a bunch of applications that Microsoft just pre installs there are modern applications like 3d viewer I never look at 3d things on my PC so I don't need it uninstall I also like to uninstall mixed variety portal this is unnecessary on anything that isn't a dedicated VR machine so yeah just go through your apps lists check on things that you're not using and see if you can uninstall them not everything can be uninstalled unfortunately but most things can I think which is super nice there was a couple of other things you can do you can do things like hide the abscess did the Start menu just by turning off this setting here and that will make things look even more minimalist and clean and you can readjust your tiles and make them look however you want them to look the next week is really only for insiders as you can see I'm running a Windows inside a build here and I usually know what build I'm running I don't need to see on the desktop and there's a program we can download to hide that it's called a universal watermark remover let's see here so this is an application from win Aero it's a simple tool that just simply removes the watermark and that's basically it it is just a sort of vanity thing that just makes things look a little cleaner on the desktop you don't have to do this if you prefer having the watermark you can by all means keep it there let's go here run uwd install yes it was sign us out and you'll notice that the watermark is now gone from the desktop which i think looks pretty nice now let's super modern and super clean and everything is pretty awesome if we renamed we enable the apps list here quickly Microsoft is working on a minor UI change to the Start menu that will turn it from looking like this into looking like this now I think this looks much cleaner but unfortunately it's not something you can enable today it's currently in testing in the insider program and it will ship at some point in the future but it is being worked on so eventually you'll stopping you will look like this and I think it looks so much nicer you see it's just cleaner and more minimalist and it's everything a minimalist would want when they're customizing windows tend to look cleaner so I'm very excited for this it's coming soon but once it's enabled that's actually just customized this time when you just a little bit because I know that's what we want to see let's hide the apps list let's show more tiles as well and there we go that's a start money we literally just threw together in five seconds but you get the idea you can customize it in any which way you please and and make it look super modern so there you have it that's a bunch of stuff you can do to your PC to make it look and feel a little more modern again you don't have to do everything that I've done in this video you can pick and choose the bits you like and bits you don't like I know not everybody will like downloading third-party programs to change things that's fine you don't have to do that I know some people will absolutely hate uninstalling legacy things which again is totally fine you don't have to do that but it's what I do and I think it makes Windows look and feel great that's everything I've got for you today thank you so much for watching and we shall see you in the next one bye


the Samsung Galaxy S 9 plus only has 375 US dollars worth of materials in it but it launched at a retail price of 840 what and the iPhone 10 while actually a little cheaper to assemble at three hundred and seventy dollars retails to start at about a thousand what if you could buy a phone for much closer to its actual cost well it turns out you can welcome back to another installment of why the five pertinent friendly content are you guys buying this where today we've got one of the top-selling phones on Chinese e-tailer gearbest the 213 dollar you me digi s to not to be confused with the Samsung Galaxy s2 also today is this exciting opportunity to learn about madrenas coffee madrenas coffee blends specialty cold brew coffee Zin two 16-ounce grab-and-go cans for everyone's convenience actually just the convenience of their customers check them out and use offer code Linus to save 40% today [Music] the unis did G or me did G yeah let's go with them s to has hundreds of reviews awarding it four point seven eight out of five stars on average and you can order one of these puppies for just two hundred and twenty nap okay actually it depends what warehouse you order it from because gearbest is super weird but let's call it two hundred and thirteen dollars now based on the language of the bulk of the reviews the s2 has been a bigger hit in Russia Poland and Italy than it has in the fancy-ass US and day but that doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get ridiculed by your flagship fondling friends because the s2 doesn't look like a budget phone it has a six inch edge to edge display in the chic 18 by 9 aspect ratio and anodized aluminum chassis with a USB type-c port and it's got a dual lens for your camera right above the rear fingerprint reader and the internals aren't terrible either unlike some value smartphones it's got 64 gigs of storage and it's expandable via microSD in the dual SIM slot it has the same amount of RAM as the Google pixel - and it has nearly double the rated battery capacity of the iPhone 10 50 100 milliamp hours so in practice getting it to two days is a pretty easy feat now compare that to what budget phones were like just a few years ago the Samsung Galaxy s5 and the motorola moto e both launched in 2014 with a similar price differential to what we're looking at here except that the Moto e was 50% thicker than the galaxy s5 had half the RAM and didn't have a front camera at all so how then have companies like Umi digi which was only founded in 2012 managed to close the gap so much well there are three main reasons first the small brands avoid some of the expenses that eventually ricky'll down into the price of premier brand phones so they use off-the-shelf components instead of researching and developing their own cutting-edge tech they focus on online and guerilla style marketing instead of doing things like spending fifteen million dollars on a single Superbowl commercial they rely on established ecommerce platforms like gearbest and Amazon instead of trying to build out their own stores and they benefit from what's called the economies of agglomeration what that means is that since everything is made in and around Shenzhen China they have easy access to manufacturing talent and inexpensive labor without having to invest much in their own logistics the second way that Chinese companies keep the price down is by flat-out paying less for their components and now I'm not even necessarily talking about using older inferior technology I'm talking about using the exact same parts that could be in your Samsung or your Apple phone but for less money so how do they get a deal like that the answer is binning a big brand with a reputation to uphold will by the suppliers best parts they're a parts batches of thousands of units where maybe only 1% of them are likely to fail that manufacturer's quality checks but as for value brands like this one they'll buy batches with significantly higher failure rates and much lower price tags to match strategy number three for keeping the cost down is to just not make any profit on the device now Umi digi doesn't do this but Xiaomi famously sells their phones with zero profit margin in exchange for market share and brand recognition paying the bills ostensibly by selling accessories like head phones power banks luggage and really the slippers okay so does all of this mean then that soon there will be no reason whatsoever to buy a flagship from Google Apple or Samsung the answer is No no it doesn't because budget phones still have a lot of cut corners the s2 screen for example looks like it was just glued on to the front of a phone instead of being seamlessly integrated into the camp furred edges though in fairness once you put it into the included sandstone case that particular flaw melts away with that said there's no hiding the resolution the s2 has about the same number of pixels as the iPhone 6 from 2014 but they're spread over a larger area giving it about half the pixel density of the leading phones its size and this is noticeable when you're reading text and in particular in the way that Netflix seems to handle streaming content to this phone it looks noticeably worse than even other value devices and then there's the camera while it isn't a complete potato patch the dual lens business is basically a complete marketing gimmick because the bokeh mode doesn't do I mean it just doesn't work like at all it just kind of makes everything but the center of the frame blurry it's it's just stupid like look at this it's just it's just it's like rubbing Vaseline on every part of the lens that isn't the very center here nobody takes pictures like that I mean never mind not having a I assisted you know bokeh background removal there's no there's no I even there's no consideration of depth at all it's a total joke and then finally there's the support or lack thereof I was having issues with my pixel to excel and Google quickly effortlessly dealt with the RMA for me even offering advanced replacement I would be floored to hear a similar story about umi digi and as for software this thing is running Android marshmallow which launched in 2015 and it will probably run marshmallow forever but might not seem like a huge deal on the surface but Android didn't even have a built-in slight utility at that point and it's got Google now on tap instead of the assistant which you can't get unless you do this one weird trick that phone manufacturers hate so is it time for you to stop spending your life savings every time you need a new phone the you me two gs two is a mere stock if a little dated Android experience with almost no bloat and it's not even that slow so if you don't care much about the camera and some people don't I say it's time for us to take a long hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves do I really need the latest and greatest need is a strong word but the speakers are awful fast charging is a super nice thing to have and that oh man that Netflix experience I don't remember the last time I saw a movie look this bad and I like Marvel movies speaking of things I like I like telling you guys about Dollar Shave Club we all have our everyday grooming routines you know showering brushing your teeth we all have them but maybe you didn't know that Dollar Shave Club has all of your grooming products toothpaste body wash hair styling products everything you need to look feel and smell your best everywhere have you seen there one wipe Charlies yeah that's right the peppermint scented and Dollar Shave Club is basically giving away their daily essentials starter set to new members for just 5 bucks in your first box you'll get their shea butter body wash and one wipe Charlies butt wipes and you'll also receive their executive razor which includes their premium lady handle and a full cassette of cartridges after the first box replacement cartridges are sent to you for just a few bucks in them so check it out at dollarshaveclub.com slash Lynas we're gonna have that linked below so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also link down there as our merch store which has cool shirts like the one I'm wearing and our community forum which you should totally


hey there it's josh welcome back to let's game it out we're playing going medieval today a colony scene where you're just relaxing by the fire and unaware of the horrible things i'm gonna do so medieval we shall get first things first let's choose our settlement name field of screams and it looks like we can randomize our fun little shield here or we can make our own first let's start with a leg great and let's go with two legs oh how about this skull oh and let's give it a crown looking good and finally this custom which allows you to put your own pngs into the game i've already gone ahead and added something a little bit special can't go wrong with googly eyes we start the game with three basic settlers that come with their own skills and perks or whatever but i have a better idea it's called colonist roulette hello random strangers let's have an adventure together ah here we are in our brand new world and it looks like everyone's starting to get a taste for that free will i don't want them to have don't worry we'll fix that soon but before we turn this wonderland into a wasteland it's sponsor time it's raid shadow legends greetings to the melord available on thine holy platforms of ios android and pc and there's a new faction in town it's the bannerlords so i'm supposed to give you some backstory which you can see here but i'm just gonna give you the important parts you ready bannerlords new faction bannerlords from medieval europe bannerlords war against high elves oh and also bannerlords oh hey did someone say bannerlords you mean like this guy and this amazing warrior and this one and also this one oh my goodness my cup runeth over with bannerlords and i know this one looks like a lowly bandit but this one's my favorite because he looks like he's going to cry and my favorite thing about raid you mean besides the banner lords it's definitely swinging by the summoning portal breaking open one of these shards and yanking new champions out of the ether to do my bidding here have some armor now fight for me fight and probably die yes so this month in the roller coaster thrill ride that is raid there's a whole bunch of hot summer events and activities including a fusion event to get a new legendary champion as well as tournaments and the release of five new champions so to get started you can use the link in the description or use that qr code that's been hanging out this whole time new players get this epic hero shinaru and they also get an energy refill an xp boost 200k silver and one ancient shard you'll also find extra rewards in your inbox for the next 30 days in this thing this thing right here so thanks again to raid for sponsoring let's get back to the thingamajig so going medieval is one of those kinds of games where you don't actually control the people directly they just kind of look around and try to find stuff to do that's right that's a tree you can figure this out nope no you can't did you almost trip what happened there we do have a pretty easy way to give these people some purpose though which is this button up here jobs oh my goodness and what fun this looks like pretty much if we want to get someone to do a certain kind of job we just changed the priority to something lower and now they care about that more oh but i'm getting ahead of myself we haven't even given them something to do yet so this is all their worldly possessions when they get hungry they know to eat right from this pile of amazon packages oh i'm sorry i meant delicious packaged meals there you go brent and now back to being confused and that's because we have to give them basic tasks to do for example chopping somebody chop this tree looks like lucas is up to the task and as you can see a productive worker is a happy worker and of course now that that task is done they're all standing around again but we can't have him just idling around not when there's this whole forest to take care of let's see how big is this playing field anyway okay here's one corner here and then if we swing all the way to the right okay it's actually not that big wait can i just grab the whole forest to chop it would appear so every single tree is marked for chopping now that's the spirit chop it all down uh-oh starting to get dark and we don't have enough beds we better make some hay sleeping spots just one step up from sleeping on dirt and let's see where to put the bed ooh what about right there let's put a bed right there and right there and right there oh here comes modeling to build it right oh what are you sad from this okay lucas is coming to finish up the job what are you people doing the hell was that well where's brent is he coming to sleep over here too oh never mind looks like he's decided he's gonna be more comfortable spooning that pile of sticks never mind you deserve all that rest after all that tree chopping you d oh you're up and after a nice strong hearty breakfast and possibly alcohol it's time to build our beautiful beds which don't look at all like shallow graves now i realize they have this daunting task of chopping down all the trees in the forest but we have other things we need to do like meal prep oh boy let's start with a butchering table which i'm gonna put this right up against the sleeping quarters yes the perfect place to craft our meat snacks with a sharp hook right next to your face i love watching this all this chopping of wood all day while brent picks up stuff adds it to the pile contributing to our overall wood of 1548 oh settlers are exhausted are they can't imagine why there is a way we can get them to stop which is by scheduling you can make sure everyone has their own like little schedule thing the purple indicates what hours they're supposed to sleep and gray is just whatever they want now that it's hit 23 hours now they're off to bed up maudlin it looks like you snooze you lose have fun sleeping near the bucket rise and shine it's time for another day that's what i like to see great big sad faces hey sleepyhead get up maudlin oh you like sleeping do ya fine have it your way we're gonna schedule your entire day of sleeping if you like your bed so much why don't you marry it wait will she actually do this i guess now there's only one way to find out well so far it's eight in the morning she's still asleep despite all the rain coming down while having sad dreams isn't gonna help this you should have thought about if you had a passive aggressive god watching you from the sky or not oh hey she's awake oh i see her are you finally up to do some work oh never mind you were just hungry and off she goes right back to sleep we get it you've had a hard day well meanwhile we got to make some leisure activities or else people are going to get upset not that we care let's see we got backgammon oh and shrines how riveting well who am i to judge i am going to put them side by side though and we'll also put the backgammon tables right in the way hey guys less praying more building backgammon tables that's more like it see look now you can play and pray oh look at this new settler denny's didn't stop looking over his shoulder or is it dennis nad's denny's anyway field of screams is here to invite anyone to join especially those with shackles greetings denny's oh you're already sad you'll fit right in while these two sleepyheads enjoy the rain couldn't help but notice this prompt here that says enemies are coming bless you denny's you're gonna bring us all kinds of new friends so let's take a gander and what we have in the way of warfare so we could build these merlins here but i don't need something to hide behind or we could build these stick traps sharpened stakes are laid ready to skewer unfortunate victims and it takes 20 sticks to build do we have that 1583 yeah i think we have that welp i think we know what we're doing don't we yes we do make sure to build fast we only have 19 hours nine minutes till they arrive yes that's excellent work together just lightly tap that into denny's skull okay nice work you've done it not sure really how they activate it seeing as how our guys can just run right through it but i'm sure we'll cross that thorny bridge when the bad guys get here and now all we can do is play backgammon and pray or if you're modeling obviously sleep stand fast a raid is upon us the swarthy jailers wanted your villager denny's and their grand slam breakfast they had to pay for their crimes or your whole village would pay it's up to you field of screams folk took up arms making ready for battle uh yeah that's what we'll call that oh now you care now that the bad guys are here i see now luckily we can highlight all of our people here select an option called drafting them and now we have actual direct control of them quickly my friends run to the trap execute snake pattern alpha oh my god is this actually gonna work oh my god it actually is quickly lead them to the other side we shall win the battle this day with steadfast tactics oh yeah oh my god this really is working victory yeah yeah that's what we'll call that oh yes this is definitely how history's gonna remember it right the beleaguered settlers came under attack in the spring of 1353 two sworn enemies died during the fight let that be a lesson dummy oh yeah and take the hard way out too that'll teach you i like how this dude's leaving and all four of my guys are like oh no you don't and the whole time he's just like no stop well where were we how kind enough that these bad guys wait why are you all sad don't you like seeing your handiwork oh it turns out the answer is no no they don't like seeing that it looks like they get a negative three to their mood for seeing a dead body wait brent what are you doing over there oh i see you deposited this guy's corpse as part of our stockpile i mean it's not not an item we can use oh boy i have an idea hello butchering table let's add something to the production queue but we only care about one thing well technically two things and that's enemy corpses amount to produce forever oh really sad again why this time oh oh i see you're unhappy about butchering a human and let's not forget seeing a dead body oh and not having the latest fashion hey cry all you want just make with the butchering yep don't mind denny's everybody just getting breakfast ready ah and there it is delicious raw human meat now i also have a pile of red currants here and if given the chance they're gonna eat that instead for some weird reason but obviously we want them to eat the good stuff you know the carcass of their enemies so we're gonna go to manage up here and sure there's all kinds of things we can assign here but we only care about one thing managing food and we're just gonna select cannibal nummy nummy num delicious hey lucas how's it going oh you know just eating people okay bye let's not talk about this to anyone ever they're fine they're not happy about consuming human flesh but it appears it's still helping their tummy tum tum and his mood is joyful so who are we to judge well so far so good the chopping continues the eating of human flesh continues i also couldn't help but notice that people have a weird aura about them now the hell does this even mean rebellious why i guess they really don't like that consuming human flesh thing huh with that 7x multiplier so when your villagers are feeling rebellious that pretty much means that their mood is so low that they won't listen to you anymore but surely after you get all that human meat out of your system you'll just shake it off right oh see they just had to sleep it off and now that rebellious aura is gone quickly let's use their obedience to expand oh yeah much better now all we need to do is get someone to walk through it wait hold that thought influence rising flourishing field of screams grows more influential in the region with each day that passes what the hell what is this screen well there's us you can see by the legs for days and this is our influence spreading like a virus how do we even have 17 influence this is sure to attract more settlers and perhaps garner unwanted attention from other settlements bring it on i've been desperately waiting for this day how did this even happen how did we get 20 region influence how could anyone remotely care about these people and again we do have that innovative play and pray thing be still my heart the day has finally arrived armor glinted and penance fluttered each bearing three white crosses quickly everybody take your position first they prayed then they purged the faithless and what a brutal attack it is quickly they're reaching the end run to the other side this is why they call us the field of screams i will never get tired of doing this just watching as they march through and hurt themselves and by hurt i mean die what cunning and fierce warriors we are victory the beleaguered settlers came under attack in the autumn of 1353. three sworn enemies died during the fight which i would love to say was four except wilfred was somehow able to evade come on stop missing he's right there and off he goes i hope you guys are ashamed of yourselves okay so first things first we gotta bring breakfast over to the stockpile and then i think you know what happens next so this time around we're not going to be so hasty hasty to eat what's tasty and the main reason is we need to save up for winter while also getting new settlers and also helping bad guys live their best lives anyway with winter approaching we're gonna take a slightly different strategy we're gonna build something called a smoke house a building to hang meat and cure it with smoke from an open fire don't mind if i do and of course when we see what kind of meats we want in there we always know what kind we're talking about you might be wondering why we're doing it this way and it's because food that's smoked human or not can be stored for several months and good thing we got that started because winter has arrived they need to bundle up in warm clothing and heat their chambers to beat the chill warm clothing chambers the hell game do they think we're playing okay look i'll fix this up for you okay i acknowledge that it's a nice brisk nine degrees outside and we have these lovely things right here a clay container filled with glowing wood or charcoal for warmth and it has a heat output of 1800 i don't know if that's a lot or a little and i don't care but it doesn't matter because i have a plan ta-da surely this will keep you perfectly warm right well he seems to like it so that's a good sign right i'll take that as a no although i bet you're really warm well with your legs directly in the fire and all ah jordan's such a trooper doesn't waste any time collecting and preparing those resources oh this feels like a good sign look at that things are melting dennis is rebellious now and now he's eating more human flesh everybody wins again i ask how is this possible region influence 48.9 is this because we eat people and just like that we made it through winter that wasn't so bad was it everyone survived everyone's unhappy and most of the trees are gone now which is just delightful and you know what in celebration of your achievements and by that i mean surviving an entire winter technically outside we're gonna do it we're gonna build you a domicile kinda we're building more columns than walls instead we're gonna use these wooden beams build these straight across that'll do right it's called a pergola and i swear in the very far future it's gonna be all the rage you're welcome brent and actually i'm gonna do you all another solid too since you're always complaining about starving since you made it through the glorious winter of man flesh we're gonna refocus our diets and we're gonna make a field of cabbage i hope you like it because we're making a lot mmm gonna be so tasty i like knowing that by the time they're done with all this harvesting the first things they planted like five days ago is gonna be ready to pick they are literally never gonna be done planting this delicious cabbage although we should probably do something to protect this investment after all it's only a matter of time before all these settlements come wanting a piece so let's experiment with the next great tool in our arsenal and that's mining mark areas of train to be mined so it looks like you can't go to the very edge but i bet we can do all this so let's just try to do this little quadrant see what happens oh very nice just slowly carve each little piece out and before you know it they've carved out the whole thing that didn't take too long let's do some more a lot more let's make a moat all the way around i mean this can't possibly take too long right and that's gonna about do it and boy isn't this a tree nice smooth lines gigantic cliff walls and as far as i can tell there's actually no way in or out of here like if you're on the other side of the cliff wall you're perfectly safe you and all your cabbage and all the other things that life has to offer which might actually just be cabbage now that i see it now that we've got this beautiful moat just so curious what happens if bad guys show up and here's our chance the enemies have started their attack oh yeah is that what we're calling this because all i see is my framerate dying is this really your master plan to mill around while my frame rate dies because i gotta say if that's true it's a pretty effective plan defeat what settlers chose not to engage how is this defeat well whatever at least they left and gave me back my frame rate oh more ruffians want to try their luck huh we'll see about that oh no these ones came to armed with trebuchets no matter how bad could it be i mean they're all the way over there and they're oh huh turns out those catapults are pretty effective you guys are gonna let jordan live though right well that answers that question okay i'm willing to admit that was a defeat now please for the love of god tell me you're able to leave or you're just part of my village now okay that's fine you just stay down there and we'll just be up here doing cabbage stuff you know maybe they'll just die in like the wintertime well to no one's surprise these bandits appear unaffected by the cold but you also might notice there's a whole bunch more of them now that's cause people just keep trying to raid us which to combat this i moved our sleeping quarters to the dead center of the cabbage field so that not even the trebuchets could get us but hey the frame rate's unaffected so it works out although now i'm starting to have one of those questions one of those weird is there are limit questions like how many bandits can we have in here before things start getting weird hold on to your cabbage everybody because there's only one way to find out turns out quite a few it's like the starter npcs and an mmo started breeding and also unaffected by cold unaffected by age is there anything they want anymore oh you know what i have an idea let's do some building first we're gonna build a stairway and then build some nice little columns now we're going to lay down some floor pieces and now we've got a little platform that overlooks the ruffians you might be able to see where this is going now let's go get a volunteer hey denny's come here i have need of thee okay so here's the test i want to run we have our buddy here he's technically right above them so are they going to react at all if i deconstruct these three pieces we're about to find out oh there he goes well so far they seem to be leaving him alone uh you know i think that was a lie yeah he's fine field of screams indeed so i hope you had fun i know i did and i'll see you next