Sunday, Dec 17: Our last two events of the year close tomorrow. I will not be around to post closing threads later tonight, but feel free to begin to post your reports any time after 11PM Eastern, or your local equivalent.
We will then be off for a couple of weeks and return with new events in January. This is how we've done things since we opened in 2002.
Each currently available version of the game has issues. Griselda and I understand that. Being able to do something about it, especially something effective, is another story. Core Game 161 has some bugs and a few exploits and imbalances. Warlords 208 is still being sorted out but has a version of Blake's AI upgrades that is obsolete and a "work in progress", along with whatever else I haven't kept track of. Blake's AI mods are a moving target as yet. Each of these is troubled, and not settled.
You will all just have to cope! Sorry to be blunt about that. Discussion is OK, but keep it level headed.
My absence is easily explained. I've been dealing with a family crisis. I expected this news to filter out without me having to do it, but that did not seem to have happened. Perhaps everybody in the know was waiting on me to choose a time and manner. My father, who was living with me the past seven years after suffering congestive heart failure in 1998, suffered a massive stroke in October. Since then he was back and forth between the hospital and a nursing home. He lost all control of his affected side. We had cause for hope at times, but the hopes never materialized. He caught pneumonia this past week and died of heart failure early yesterday morning. He was 66.
Although the crisis has passed, in most senses, I still have a lot of extra things on my plate compared to a few months ago. Although I cannot give RBCiv the kind of attention I have at times in the past, I still feel it is the best course for the community to stick with the tried and true. Griselda can handle the logistics and I can handle choosing scenarios and setting the schedule, overseeing the rules, etc.
There are not likely to be any rules changes unless the major slice of our community agrees on both problems and solutions. I have not seen any such consensus forming in any given area, so I've maintained a "first do no harm" policy and let time try to heal the wounds (via patches, or an emerging consensus). For the middle term at least, this will continue to be our approach. If we arrive at a stable and virtually problem free build, on any version of the game, I will probably steer everybody to that. Until then, it's pick your poison, and different people see it differently.
I hope you all enjoy the reports this week, then have a happy holiday season. Looking forward to a bit of a renewal early next year. I still believe the Civ4 glass is half full, rather than half empty, and that there is a lot of good gaming to be pulled from it.
- Sirian
We will then be off for a couple of weeks and return with new events in January. This is how we've done things since we opened in 2002.
Each currently available version of the game has issues. Griselda and I understand that. Being able to do something about it, especially something effective, is another story. Core Game 161 has some bugs and a few exploits and imbalances. Warlords 208 is still being sorted out but has a version of Blake's AI upgrades that is obsolete and a "work in progress", along with whatever else I haven't kept track of. Blake's AI mods are a moving target as yet. Each of these is troubled, and not settled.
You will all just have to cope! Sorry to be blunt about that. Discussion is OK, but keep it level headed.
My absence is easily explained. I've been dealing with a family crisis. I expected this news to filter out without me having to do it, but that did not seem to have happened. Perhaps everybody in the know was waiting on me to choose a time and manner. My father, who was living with me the past seven years after suffering congestive heart failure in 1998, suffered a massive stroke in October. Since then he was back and forth between the hospital and a nursing home. He lost all control of his affected side. We had cause for hope at times, but the hopes never materialized. He caught pneumonia this past week and died of heart failure early yesterday morning. He was 66.
Although the crisis has passed, in most senses, I still have a lot of extra things on my plate compared to a few months ago. Although I cannot give RBCiv the kind of attention I have at times in the past, I still feel it is the best course for the community to stick with the tried and true. Griselda can handle the logistics and I can handle choosing scenarios and setting the schedule, overseeing the rules, etc.
There are not likely to be any rules changes unless the major slice of our community agrees on both problems and solutions. I have not seen any such consensus forming in any given area, so I've maintained a "first do no harm" policy and let time try to heal the wounds (via patches, or an emerging consensus). For the middle term at least, this will continue to be our approach. If we arrive at a stable and virtually problem free build, on any version of the game, I will probably steer everybody to that. Until then, it's pick your poison, and different people see it differently.
I hope you all enjoy the reports this week, then have a happy holiday season. Looking forward to a bit of a renewal early next year. I still believe the Civ4 glass is half full, rather than half empty, and that there is a lot of good gaming to be pulled from it.
- Sirian
Fortune favors the bold.
