See post http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...#pid853793

I believe there is a possibility that the Chaos Sorcery dual realm combination might need some improvement, so I'm trying to organize my thoughts and hope everyone helps with that here by answering the following questions.

1. Do you think Chaos+Sorcery is underpowered and/or not fun to play and needs additional synergy between their spells in the early game? In other words, is there even a reason to do something?
2. Which common or uncommon Chaos or Sorcery spells have a unique enough effect that a similar spell from the other realm would not benefit from whatever change we might implement? (We want to only alter how the two realms play together, without affecting mono realm gameplay)
3. What kind of effect from the other realm that matches the realm's capabilities could be added to indirectly boost those spells?
4. Which Chaos or Sorcery common or uncommon spell do you think could be altered in the first place? All the spells serve a specific purpose and have been tested for balance for a very long time, so careless changes are almost guaranteed to do more harm than good at this time.
5. What existing synergies are there in the two realms for common and uncommon tier spells?

An example of what kind of change I'm looking for, if any, would be Sky Fires gaining the effect to reroll curse resistance rolls and becoming Fate Mastery, an effect that does almost nothing to Chaos (and very little even for Life, Sorcery or Nature) but improves its synergy with Death significantly. The other example would be how Chaos Channel and being undead can coexist on units, making them count as both Chaos and Death units to receive buffs that affect either.

My thoughts :

1. Considering I haven't played the game for the past year or so, I'm far from being certain but I think yes. the overlap in spells between the two realms is massive (see linked post) and while I remember adding synergies for this realm pair, almost all of them were for mid and late game spells. I overlooked the early game as "that's where it should be difficult, this realm pair has the strongest late game" but it's very possible that the early game is too weak for higher difficulty levels now to last until the late game. Most of the powerful early game strategies have been made more balanced so it's not as simple as being carried by a strong early normal unit or hero anymore, or at least that's what I think right now. However I definitely do tend to overthink stuff so I might be wrong.

2. Phantom summons, Focus Magic(only casting ability buff), Blur, Flame Blade (only direct combat stat buff), Fire Elemental, Gargoyles (high armor), Philosopher's Stone (skill buff)

3. Some form of global and cheap attack buff could make Phantom Warriors much more powerful. A creature with casting ability or many figures and a magical ranged attack could make Focus Magic better. (I don't think adding a new create should be considered this late in the development though), Flame Blade would be powerful when combined with many defensive buffs on a low attack high figure unit. Fire Elemental would benefit from enemy units failing to do magical damage, activating the relevance of Weapon Immunity. Gargoyles would be drastically stronger if their attack could be buffed. Additional casting skill already benefits Chaos a lot, but mana crystals and range penalties for casting can still be a bottleneck, so improvements on those would have synergy with Philosopher's Stone.
As the two realms have many redundant common and uncommon spells with similar effects, a way to skip researching these "duplicate" spells or replace them with other spells could be beneficial. Chaos randomly shuffling spells in the research book would fit the realm's abilities. (However this is definitely a way too drastic thing to implement)

4. This is the hard part, idk. Disrupt could use some overhaul I guess. Not much else I can think of. However buffing Disrupt makes defensive gameplay in the early game harder which would make Chaos/Sorcery even harder to play so it is very likely to backfire.

5. Gargoyles with the high armor benefit massively from Blur and as they fly, also from having missile immunity. Sorcery can provide the much needed Resistance for Fire Giants to be viable against Death, Sorcery and Life wizards (Exorcism, Confusion and Sleep mainly). Water Elemental is buffed by Inner Fire but the latter is already a rare spell. Aura of Majesty helps negate the diplomacy effect of Corruption and Volcano to a small extent. Philosopher's Stone provides the much needed casting skill for Chaos to spam their direct damage spells.
Nothing else I can think of right now. Flight allows the chaos wizard to spam combat spells while out of reach, however Chaos Channels can already provide this buff which means no additional synergy is gained from it.


Right now the only semi-usable idea I have would be to replace Disrupt with a common combat global enchantment that grants wall crusher and an attack buff to fantastic creatures (indirect phantom warrior buff), however that might be way too powerful in general and alters the gameplay on a larger scale than intended. Maybe if it was specific to combat summons? That would be too weak and useless for Chaos though, they only have one common summon.

Hello.

It has been a long while.

I will start putting my thoughts together in a subsequent post, but to kick things off, my Civ picks:

1: Tokugawa of Japan
2: Shaka of Zulu
3: There is no three because no one would pick Shaka

Edit: Adding the game rules for easier reference:

Gives too much stuff:
-Venetian Arsenal
-Religious Settlements Pantheon
-Work Ethic
-Nan Madol
-Pillaging City-State tiles except for farms and fishing boats.
-Resource hiding ban. We would need more complex rules for a team game, but it is obviously intentional here.

Other:
-Tactical DoWs, especially regarding Australia.
-City-gifting must be approved by the wise council of lurkers.
-DoF blockades OKAY
-Scouts providing naval support OKAY
-Not accepting/rejecting DoF at once.

New stuff (maybe?):
-The player who proposed the DoF cannot declare war on the first turn after the DoF expires, unless the player who accepted the DoF is ahead of them in turn order. Not nearly OP as some other stuff but not having this rule gives "Player1" an edge for no reason.
-Ban mods because of what happened to Woden last game here. It didn't do anything because it was garbage time but it could be very bad if the game is competitive.
-Giant's Causeway

Saves:
https://www.playyourdamnturn.com/game/f3...e3537ed922

I was so looking forward to my other Civ PBEMs ending at last...forgot I committed to this thing. 

Well, okay, so we have New Frontiers leaders available? Lots there that have never been used.

Abraham Lincoln gets free amenities and units with Industrial Zones, pretty nice

Tokugawa is Japanese and gets boosted trade routes (how does it compare with Hojo?). I still get boosted yields from adjacencies, but Hojo gets the half-cost Encampments, Holy Sites, and Theater Squares. Still a really strong megalopolis potential if I emphasize trade. 

Nader Shah, boosted attacks against full health units, boosted trade routes FROM conquered cities. Goofy. 

Sulieman the Magnificent, boosted golden ages. Eh. 

Yongle, boosted high population cities and some fancy projects to grow them quickly. Looks fun. 

Wu Zetian, Chinese Catherine but better. Too niche.

Qin Shi Huang, can convert barbarians. Niche.

Ramses, culture from buildings and wonders. Maybe good. 

Sundiata, more options for using gold on great people, great works give production. Eh. Variant.

Ptolemaic Cleopatra, boosted floodplains. 

Theodora, gets Choral Music for free essentially. Doesn't seem as strong as Basil (Who is an option?).

Sejong, gets culture equal to science each era. 

Ludwig, wonder from cultures. 

Elizabeth, boosted trade routes and pillaging. 

Harald, can levy city states, boosted pillaging. 

Victoria, boosted production on strategics, +10% production per IZ building. 

There's also Basil and Menelik. So many good choices!

Right now I'm torn between Basil, Menelik, Tokugawa.

Yes I am.

Anyway, thinking about picks.

Blurb. Blurb. Blurb. Blah.

I hope I can be more creative than this title.

Depending on when this game kicks off, I'll either be searching for a lurker to play out my first turns while I'm away next week - or if we don't get it running until Thursday or Friday then I probably just sit on it.  Basically if I have time to plan out a start then I can get a plan for a lurker to follow.

Well people have wanted to be screwed over by Totestra for a while now and then wait to die because the map script is so big. I guess they get their chance???

This was google's first result when searching for "RNGesus".... and this is how I expect the game to go

Looking forward to a screenshot here.

Password:

Well fuck. What are we getting ourselves into this time?