First off, I realize that Magic Immunity on a common unit, even a high tier one, isn't desirable. Magic Immunity counters too many tools, so it had to be limited to one school of magic. That being said, I feel they come way too late for what they offer.

Let's first look at their requirements. They need not just an Armorer's Guild, but also a Cathedral. This constricts their availability greatly and makes it so that they can only be feasibly produced by mid game. It also puts serious pressure on your military logistics, since they can effectively only be produced in your core cities unless you conquer most of the map on Arcanus. For all this trouble, you get a unit that's not much better than a Knight in offensive capability. The inherent Death and Illusion Immunities are nice, but by the point you can field Paladins, Death and Sorcery wizards already have answers to them in the form of Shadow Demons and Water Elementals. Holy Bonus 1 is a decent buff but rarely changes the outcome of most battles. Perhaps it's just my playstyle, but I think they are incredibly underwhelming as is and need to be looked at.

for some reasone i am unable to build colony ships

i tried building my first one andit was set for 7 turns ot build.
every turn it tweak  the CB going into building it to the minimum to keep it going down 1 round per round. and thereby squeezing out a bit more factories
however going next turn on the turn where it says 1 turn remains give me no colonyship and it just counts down again from 8
- I've tried delaying it a round same results
- ive tried making an additional colonyship and then changing the production over to this one  but it did not help

anyone running into this issues befre

running with the unofficial 1.4 patch
dosbox 72
windows 10

--- edit ---
it was me all along I was applying productivity to def and not ship
muscle memory with Alzheimer
Im so embarrassed and still laughing at myself

Attached Files

  SAVE6.zip (Size: 10.61 KB / Downloads: 0)

Anyone else excited about Cyberpunk 2077s release? Being a retro gamer I don't even have a PC good enough to run the thing haha but nevertheless I've been drooling over all the videos CD Projekt Red have been releasing on youtube lately. Eg just look at the amazing views of the huge city in this one!




Over the last few months they’ve been doing a really good behind the scenes series called ‘Night City Wire’ with heaps of amazing new gameplay footage.

Episode 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToWfeUEAeeQ

Episode 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do51eJowSyg

Episode 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_urbl-2gV4

When automatic combat starts, each side is evaluated for their spellcasting ability in 6 categories, based on known spells.

Oneshotbuff
This is a special category that has the sum of the defined values of known combat global enchantments. This category influences the combat only once during turn 1 and can be of any amount. In general, assume each known combat global adds 2-9 to this value.

All remaining categories take the value of the best known spell in the category, ignoring all weaker spells, and range from 0 (no spells known) to 10 (best very rare).

Buff
Spells that help the unit survive.
Examples : Resist Magic, Mystic Surge, Invisibility.

Ranged Buff
Spells that help the army deal more ranged damage, usually by slowing down enemy units or increasing ranged attack power.
Example : Web, Entangle, Flame Blade, Mystic Surge, Construct Catapult

Direct Damage
Spells that damage enemy units or render them unable to defend against damage or fight back.
Examples : Lightning Bolt, Mystic Surge.
This is the only category where the best spell is rated 15, not 10. This is neccesary to preserve the balance between realms as Chaos doesn't really do anything else.

Curse
Spells that deal damage or weaken units by targeting their resistance.
Examples : Weakness, Possession, Massacre

Summon
Spells that give you new units or otherwise contribute to the hit points of your army directly.
Examples : Wild Boars, Healing, Construct Catapult

If you know every spell in one realm, you have this many total "levels" :
Life, Nature has 44
Sorcery has 51
Chaos has 49
Death has 52

I believe this does match the actual combat casting value of each realm well enough - Chaos, Death and Sorcery are powerful, while Life and Nature are good but somewhat less focused on combat spells than the other three.

Once these (and army stats) are calculated, combat starts.

The order of phases are
1. Defender spellcasting
2. Defender ranged (if applicable)
3. Defender melee (if applicable)
then the same order for the attacker, then repeat until one side dies.

We'll only focus on spellcasting at the moment.

First, the amount of MP used for the turn is determined. This is usually 40 for turn 1, 20 for each turn afterwards, or less if the wizard doesn't have more skill or mana remaining, but high casting skill wizards use 50 and 30 instead.

On turn 1, "oneshotbuff" takes effect. (remember, this will always use 40 or 50 MP unless the wizard has less)
This grants the army ("oneshotbuff level" * MP * 33 /400) percentage extra hit points.

Example 1 : the wizard knows only Prayer. Prayer is worth 7 levels.
(7*40*33) / 400 = 23% additional hp to the army.
Example 2 : the wizard knows Prayer, Mass Invisibility and Call Lighting for a sum of 7+8+8 = 23 levels.
(23*40*33) / 400 = 75% additional hp to the army.

Basically, each "oneshotbuff" level is worth 3.3% additional HP for the army unless the wizard cannot afford the initial 40 MP. (or it's worth 4.1% if their casting skill is 200 or more which allowed them to use 50 MP on this phase)

After this, on turn 1 as well as all other turns, all 5 remaining categories are applied - individually weak but we are basically pretending the AI casts 5 spells at the same time but each at 1/5 the "normal" power :

Buff adds ("buff level"*MP*/100) % HP.

For example level 5 at 20 MP would add 1% HP. (However, as long as the wizard has mana, they can use this every turn.)
At max level and max (30) MP spending this basically adds 3% HP per combat turn to the army. (which is as good as 15% if they had the ability to pick this category instead of requiring to use all 5 at equal weight.)

RangedBuff adds the exact same percentage (calculated from the rangedbuff level of course) but to all ranged attack powers in the stack instead.

Direct Damage deals ("direct damage level"*MP*12 /2000) magical ranged damage to the opposing army.

For example at level 7 (doom bolt) this deals 0.84 damage per 20 Mp spent.
(again, if this wasn't only the 1/5th of the casting available, we could be doing 4.2 damage per 20 MP but that feature does not exist yet.)

...this feels underpowered for a Doom Bolt as it's only 8 damage per 40 MP instead of 12. So let's try to look at another spell.

Fire Bolt is level 4, so it's 0.48 damage, or would be 2.25 at full power for 20 MP, 4.5 damage at 40 MP.
This feels even more underrated than Doom Bolt even if I pretend the enemy might have high armor (which is not part of the formula at all here.)

My mistake here is that I have in the code as comment "40 MP at max level is worth 12 damage" but that's just not right. Doom Bolt is worth 12 damage but Doom Bolt is level 7 not 10. (also this category doesn't even max at 10 anyway but we have to pretend it does otherwise the extra levels we game chaos have no meaning.)

...so to improve accuracy, this formula should change to "/1400" instead of "/2000" for accurate Doom Bolt but there is a catch. Doom Bolt has the worth damage per mana ratio in the game in exchange for consistency and ignoring armor.

So we should decide how much damage we want from direct damage spells, because this amount is too low.

For reference, Fire Bolt and Fire Ball are level 4 direct damage spells, Lightning Bolt is 6, Warp Lightning is level 8, Flame Strike is 12, Apocalypse is 15.

In real combat, Warp Lightning deals roughly 12 damage for 30 MP. That would put Lightning Bolt at 7.5 damage which isn't so far off, and Flame Strike at 36 which is a reasonable average. (9 units take much more but 1 unit takes much less)

So if we go with that then the improved formula should be
("direct damage level"*MP*12 /1200)

Curse category next which deals "Curse Level"*MP*(13-Enemy average resistance)/750.

Example : Petrify, enemy resistance of 7. Petrify counts as level 5.

Damage is (5*20*6)/750 = 0.8.

They would be 4 damage if it wasn't dividing up casting to 5 categories.
Well...not very good. I mean, for a 60% chance to kill an enemy unit, we assume that's worth 4 damage.

So let's try to look at this from a different angle. An average unit has about 15 HP.
Each 1 missing save modifier is 10% chance the unit dies, so 1.5 damage.
Out baseline is petrify which does this for 20 MP and is rated level 5.
So we want (5*20)/X = 1.5 which means X= 66.
Except, again, that's for the full casting power but we use only 1/5 of it, so 330, making the formula
"Curse Level"*MP*(13-Enemy average resistance)/330.

Finally, we have
Summonig
Which gives the army HP and Melee attack power equal to
"Summoning Level"*MP/1000 times the stats of a Wild Boar unit which is 15 HP and 720 Melee.

This has one problem - the melee formula was updated meanwhile.
Currently a Wild Boar would be 600*40*4 / 200 = 480 melee.

A bigger problem is, Wild Boars are not the pinnacle of summoning. They are what you get for level 10 but the Boar itself is categorized as a level 3 spell.

So this should correctly be "SummoningLevel"*MP/300 instead.

This should fix the inaccuracies in the formula and might show why stronger wizards had problems, as all three categories that contribute in a relevant way against ranged garrisons were underrated.

However, we probably still should design some sort of a ruleset that determines a percentage of casting power spent on each category instead of defaulting to using 205 on each.

For example, if my only combat spell is Fire Bolt and have 100 mana, then I won't do "I spend 20 MP on Fire Bolt, then I cannot use the rest because I need to save the other 80 MP for summoning and buffing spells but I don't have any", no, I would do "I cast Fire Bolt from all 100 MP".
While that's the most obvious mistake (spending on categories the wizard doesn't even have), I think we need more detail than that and spend higher on the categories that actually are more relevant for the current battle.
For example if we greatly outnumber the enemy army then using the buff category (to boost our advantage) or using one of the damage categories (to kill the enemy and end the combat faster, denying enemy casting to be relevant) are good tactics, while summoning is wasted MP (it gives much less than buffing by percentage). Another example, if the enemy has very high attack power but low hit points, then direct damage is great but buffing our own durability is bad. If they have high resistance then preferring direct damage spells over curse spells is a correct choice.

etc.... the part I'm not sure about is how to handle this. Unlike casting a spell in normal combat, here we aren't picking one best option but distribute a total of 100% between the 5 possible choices. It is valid to pick 0% but should be avoided as much as possible because dong so reduces the relevance of the AI obtaining new spells of those categories. At the same time, if we don't do enough weighting and stay close to the :use everything" then we get stuck with the current system where mana is spent on categories that don't help winning at all.

wow - this came together fast.

I might have a partner that I can blame for all of my bad play.  That will be nice.

Any thoughts on picks?  Don't worry about any civ that has late UU or UB ... games never get that far.

Naming convention is based on the word-of-the-day ... for some reason that escapes me, I get a word of the day email ... each and every bloody day.  Cities will be named based on the latest word of the day email.

Today's is arborist.

https://civ.zulan.net/pbspy/game/104/

Password is 'qw'

Massive thanks to Mjmd and Miguelito for helping me out in this one!

Useful Info:

Playing As

Mjmd's Guide to Picks   

Mjmd's Guide to Forests

hammers: provided by a chop outside your borders pre-Math / outside your borders with Math | within your borders pre-Math / within your borders with Math. All numbers are for Normal speed.

1st ring: 13s: / 20s: | 20s: / 30s:
2nd ring: 13s: / 20s: | 20s: / 30s:
3rd ring: 10s: / 16s: | 16s: / 24s:
4th ring: 08s: / 13s: | 13s: / 20s:
5th ring: 06s: / 09s: | 10s: / 14s:
6th ring: 04s: / 06s: | 06s: / 10s:
7th ring: 02s: / 02s: | 03s: / 04s:
8th ring and beyond is worth nothing with or without Math.

Password

Demographics Guide

You can download the mod here: Close to Home 1.5.3

CtH on Github

Note that all the changes here are additions to what you already find in BtS unless otherwise stated as NEW


Changelog version 1.5

Tile Yields and Improvements

• Lumbermills: Available at Metal Casting, +1 commerce with Machinery, +1 commerce with Electricity, Lumber mills now +1 commerce on the corner of rivers
  
• Forest preserves: +1 commerce, now +1 commerce on the corner of rivers like above
  

• Drafting: Rifles now cost 2 pop to draft.
  
• AP Resolutions: Declare War (on a non-member), Force Peace (between two members), Religious victory, and Assign City are no longer eligible resolution actions.
  
• Fail-gold: You never get fail-gold if you also completed the wonder somewhere else (so no National Wonder fail-gold, or doubling up on a wonder to guarantee yourself a paycheck. The game still informs you that you received "0 gold" from your hammers).
  
• Toroidal Maintenance: Now return city maintenance as if the map were Cylindrical.
  
• War Weariness: War weariness declines faster after the war ended
  
• Religion spread: Spreading religions via missionaries to your own cities never fails
  
• Global warming: Removed
  
• Espionage: Active missions removed
  
• Espionage: 'No espionage' option fixed, see bugfix section for more details
  

• Agriculture: Cost 40 instead of 60
  
• Mysticism: Cost 60 instead of 50
  
• Fishing: Cost 50 instead of 40
  
• Metal Casting: Cost 300 instead of  450
  
• Alphabet: Cost 250 instead of 300
  
• Refrigeration: lose +1 sea movement
  

• Castle: Obsoletes at Corporation instead of Economics
  
• Customs House: Cost 120 instead of 180, also applies to all UBs based on Customs House (Feitoria)
  
• Colosseum: -25% war weariness
  

• Red Cross: Cost 200 instead of 600
  
• West Point: Cost 550 instead of 800, +5 XP instead of 4, Requires a level 5 unit instead of 6
  

• Resource modifiers: All wonders that had +100% production with a specific resource now only have +50% production with that resource.
  
• Great Lighthouse: +1 trade route in coastal cities instead of +2
  
• Statue of Zeus: Obsolete at Gunpowder
  

• Flanking: Flanking strength (used to calculate damage from flanking strikes) of all units reduced by 50%.
  
• Circumnavigation: +1 trade route in all coastal cities instead of +1 movement and can be achieved by everybody
  
• Coastal blockade: only blocks trade routes, blockaded cities can still work blocked tiles.
  
• Free Wins against Barbs: All units that can act as MP get Free Wins against barbs as long as a settler is present in the same tile. Does still reduce your Free Wins towards Barbs
  

• Scout: +100% vs Animals gained with Hunting, no tech required, that way everybody starts with a scout
  
• Swordsman: +25% city attack instead of +10%, also applies to UUs Jaguar Warrior and Gallic Swordsman
  
• War elephant: Strength 7 instead of 8, does not apply to Khmer UUs, requires Ivory or Iron, does apply to Khmer UUs
  
• Explorer: Gains Flanking
  
• Airship: Cannot see submarines
  
• ICBM: Cost 1500 instead of 500
  
• Tactical Nuke: Cost 750 instead of 250
  
• Nukes: Nukes never create fallout on tiles containing strategic resources.
  

• Work Boat: no longer require any tech (still require Fishing to work water tiles).
  
• Galleon: Requires Paper and Astronomy, Dutch UU still only requires Astronomy
  
• Privateer: Required techs are Gunpowder and Astronomy instead of Chemistry and Astronomy, removed hidden nationality
  

• Tech: Discovering the corresponding tech for a corporation earns you an executive of that corporation. To settle the HQ you still need a great person.
  
• Sid's Sushi Co.: Food bonus per resource 0.25 instead of 0.5 and culture bonus per resource 1 instead of 2, maintenance costs halfed
  
• Mining Inc.: Hammer bonus per resource 0.75 instead of 1, maintenance costs 3/4 of original
  

• Serfdom: +1 commerce on Farms, +1 hammer on Watermills and Windmills, available on Monarchy instead of Feudalism
  
• Emancipation: lose unhappiness bonus, gain +10% Hammer in all cities
  
• State Property: Lose +10% Hammer in all cities
  
• Environmentalism: Available at Biology instead of Medicine, remove Corporation costs
  

• Financial: +1 commerce on land tiles that have 3+ commerce, +1 commerce on water tiles that have 2+ commerce, +100% production of bank
  
• Expansive: Remove Worker bonus, add +100% production of Aqueduct
  
• Creative: Reduce Library bonus from 100% to 50%, Remove production bonus for Colosseum
  
• Charismatic: +100% production of Monument, +100% production of Colosseum
  
• Imperialistic: +100% production of Stable
  
• Aggressive: -25% unit maintenance cost and +100% production of Jails,
  
• Philosophical: +150% GPP instead of +100%
  
• Protective: +75% domestic trade route yield (works like a harbor mechanically, just only for domestic trade)
  

• UBs no longer obsolete at any time. Affected civs are Celts, Egypt, Ethiopia, Native America, Spain
  
• America UB: NEW Immigration Station - Harbor replacement, +3 Great People Points, +1 happy from Hit Musical, Singles and Movies
  
• America UU: NEW Minuteman - Musket replacement, Starts with Guerrilla 1 and Woodsman 1.
  
• Arabia UU: Camel Archer starts with March
  
• Byzantium UB: add +2 artist slots
  
• Celts UB: +1 culture
  
• China UU: max 40% collateral damage instead of max 60%
  
• Germany UB: Assembly Plant available at Steam Power instead of Assembly line, +2 hammer
  
• Germany UU: NEW Riesengarde - replace Grenadier, available at Chemistry, starts with Pinch
  
• Inca UB: Makes city act as a source of fresh water instead of +2 culture, Cost 45
  
• India UU: movement 2 instead of 3, start with Mobility promotion
  
• Japan UB: NEW Tatara, Forge replacement - +2 XP to Melee, +10% hammer bonus with coals
  
• Maya UU: Starts with Woodsman 1
  
• Native America Tech: Hunting/Agriculture instead of Fishing/Agriculture
  
• Native America UB: Available at Archery instead of Mysticism, additional +1 XP for gunpowder units, never obsoletes
  
• Russia UB: Replace University instead of Laboratory, only +1 free scientist
  
• Spain UB: Never obsoletes, +2 XP for naval units, does not require Walls
  
• Zulu UU: Remove Mobility promotion
  

• LieuYe (ORG/PRO)
  
• San Martin (CHM/CRE) and
  
• Nebuchadnezzar (IND/PHI)
  

I did not see a thread on here about this game, but it just came out of Early Access on Steam and finally has its true ending.  It is on sale for $20 (USD) for another 24 hours or so.

If you have not played it and enjoy rogue-like and action games, I highly recommend it.

You are Hades son, and are battling your way out of hell, with the assistance of "boons" from the gods of Olympus, using six different weapon types--each of which has four modified versions.  There are also other relics, buffs and items which you can level up to modify your runs over time, and a Pact of Punishment to add difficulty-modifiers to the end game.

I have put over 50 hours into this game.  Runs take around an hour to fully complete.  I find the gameplay loop super compelling. The mechanics are very tight, and even when you are in bullet-hell type environments, it still feels pretty fair and skill-based.

Also, unlike most games in this genre, it has very enjoyable side stories with dozens of mythological characters, and over 10,000 lines of dialogue recorded to flesh out the experience.

I think this is probably the most ambitious and polished game I have played in this genre.

I've been playing FGO. Don't play FGO.

Waiting for my start...