Nope. You can subscribe/post/comment on any community on any instance. There is one small seam though: if you're the first person to subscribe from your instance, you need to put in the full URL of the community (https://lemmy.ml/c/gaming, for example) to pull it into your instance.

After that, everybody on the same instance as you will see it when searching for communities just like it was local.

EDIT: Oh, forgot to mention: make sure the search is set to "All", not "Communities" when you do this.

I have a challenge for you: next V3 game you play, try using your standard of living as your score. The game becomes DRASTICALLY different once you do that. Do you stick to laissez-faire, which is generating stupid numbers of free buildings while leaving everyone but the capitalists in the dirt, or do you rip the scaffolding off and see if your economy has grown enough to support everyone?

Playing this way is less a line-goes-up simulator, and becomes more of a game about timing and plate-balancing.

I am definitely a hard-liner when it comes to meat. I do find it harder to be such a hard-liner with other animal products, even though I'm aware of the conditions in dairy factory farms. I do agree with you, I'm just saying it's difficult.

I guess by that definition I'd be an aspiring vegan :))

The issue isn't access to raw ingredients, when we have the time my gf and I do cook vegan food (we made a vegan butter "chicken" just a few days ago). The issue is when we go to a restaurant or order takeaway due to work obligations and being super busy, there are no vegan options and normally 1 vegetarian option laden with cheese.

I tried being vegan, but it's basically impossible in Eastern Europe. I settled for just being a vegetarian trying to reduce my cheese & milk consumption and made my peace with that.