Well, if you've read the new Intro for RBCiv that Griselda put up this morning, you'll know that several of us having been working on Civ4 for quite some time. To celebrate this release week, I've put together a presentation called the Civ4 Walkthrough. This simply consists of demonstrating what a typical game of Civ4 looks like, amply illustrated with screenshots and commentary (the model was Sirian's Tutorial for Master of Orion, which some will have read).

The first part of this Walkthrough has been posted on my website, which has been updated for Civ4 (you can see the new section at http://www.kalikokottage.com/civ3/sullla/civ4.html ). An additional part will be added each day for the next seven days, until it is finally completed next week. This was done to space out the excitement of the new game throughout the entire first week of release (and to avoid giving everything away on the first day).

I hope you enjoy it! Let me know what you think.

Wow, we are getting slammed here by the low pressure spawned off the back side of Wilma. (Nothing like the folks in Florida -- this is a SNOW event!) I've got a (relatively small) tree down, with the leaves still on it and all the snow sticking to it. HUGE flakes. I thought the forecasters were kidding when they showed me in the middle of the "heavy snow" band, but they weren't!

Probably won't be a ton of accumulation, though. (All of it from last night was melting on contact, but it's heavy enough to stick now, even though the ground is still way warm).

Anyway... That's the latest weather news from here. Now back to you!


- Sirian

To those of you who are new, and to all of the returning players, welcome! We're glad to have you here.

We're happy to announce the opening of our Civilization IV section, but please do watch out for wet paint (or at least let me know if you find something not working correctly).

With our grand-reopening comes an announcement, which should do quite a bit to explain why it's been so quiet around here lately. Please read our updated Welcome page for more information.

(what you might look like as you read!)

We've been working on this for a long, long time. Thanks for stopping by!

-Griselda

The new forum is up at CFC. I launched a discussion thread there. Sulla and I are laying claim to RB1 SG. Game will start later this week.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=132415

Discussion (and hellos, "got my copy", etc) can be held there or here. I imagine many people will want to play the game solo first, but if any want to wet their feet in full view of the public, that's OK too.


Later this week, Gris and I will have a few more announcements to make.


- Sirian

Twins!

Let's take this from the top - I started a new Mo character, got the Poor Tenant quest, then the rescue Gwen test when I stepped into Lakeside. I also triggered the Gift for Althea quest (Getting Osric and Rurik to talk) with plans of getting it later.

So, I run to Gwen and pick her up. I decide that I was close enough to Ashford to run and complete the Poor Tenant quest, I also get the Feather and Pearl for the Gift quest. I pick up the Little Thom quest, then decide to risk it to get the Pendant from the bandits. Done. I plan on farming Bandits to get belts for the belt pouch, decide this isn't a good idea without some self-healing, and instead drop Gwen off at the gates for my skill rewards.

I get back to the gates, getting and finishing the Gift for Althea quest, drop Gwen off for that quest, then head off to Lina (Who, incidentally changes ethnicity by the time you see her in the Crystal Desert - The sun makes her skin paler) just to start the Ally quest.

Wait, who's that prancing around behind the res shrine? 'tis Gwen, who is also standing behind me.

They're multiplying. My god, Gwen is a virus.

I have to admit, I pedantically check the GW update page despite the fact that the last update was nearly three weeks ago ("September 30: Updated bug with the Dust Trap skill." Quoted from memory, peeps.) I keep my GW version up to date even if I don't plan on playing in the near future. My version included the 30/9 update, since I've played since then...

... Well... Not played. Wandered around Deldrimor and checked my stash.

So, two or so days ago I kickstart GW to check on some stuff and got an update, a pretty hefty update that lasted a good few moments (I barely noticed the 30/9 update it was so insignificant). While my firewall holds the game from started because it's changed, I check the update page.

No news.

So I wait, just in case they're slow to update the page I wait a few days. Still nothing.

The update was too large just to be a single skill update, I did not miss the Dust Trap update, but... Well, I haven't got a clue what was changed. Did anyone else get that update a few days ago?

Heyas

Wow, 50 Epics! Looks to me you guys got your money's worth, and more, out of Civ3. Congrats to all of you and hope that Civ 4 will bring you even more.

I have just uploaded an updated version of RBCiv so now the site is Civ4 ready. Don't bother checking it out yet as there is no new game content until Gris fills in the blanks with what she and Sirian worked so hard for. Hats off to both of them!

I was looking forward to give RBCiv a new face-lift but Civ4 does not impress me in the gfx department (to put it mildly), so I decided to keep the, as Charis put it, "a cozy bachelor pad decorated with pizza boxes" look. There is no significant change to the site except that I built a basement to house the "old" Civ3 specific contents, moved some graphics around and fixed a few minor issues.

I will add more sections as we need. If you have any cool ideas that might work out, I would be happy to build it.

The biggest change to RBciv is that I have signed ("signed" is misleading since we are getting all this for free) a RoP with our gracious web host, Digix. We now have the right of passage to a whole lot of bandwidth. Which means:

RBers will have upload privileges for their images for game reports, and game files.
We can host our own [size=2]Succession games... and more.

Since we are getting this bandwidth for free, and we have no intention whatsoever to supplement hosting cost by any commercial means, and not likely to ever ask for donations, we would like to impose some self-moderation on bandwidth usage - so that we don't over stay our welcome. We will post some guidelines when they are ready. I am sure there will be no restriction to detract from the enjoyment of the game.

Hmm, does that mean we new a sub forum for [/size][size=2]Succession games?

Cheers, and enjoy!


KoP





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Someone mentioned having tried out a nuker that relies on Glyph of Sacrifice, Meteor Shower (or Meteor?), Glyph of Lesser Energy, and Oath Shot for damage dealing potential. I tried out a similar build and while I don't think I came up with the identical build I thought I'd post my results and compare. I don't recall who it was that described the build (my guess is Lurker Wyrm but I'm not certain) and I don't recall all the skills they said they were using, though I did remember them saying they had no room on the bar for Winter so I figure they must have all been in use for the build. If whoever it was could post their full build for comparison, I'd appreciate it.

Anyway, I originally thought the build was using Meteor, not Meteor Shower. (Upon reflection, this doesn't make sense, but I'll get to that in a minute.) So I took my newly ascended R/Mo and converted her to an R/E to try it out. I did the elementalist skill quests in Ascalon and Yak's bend, and got a bunch of Earth skills for my trouble, as well as Fire Storm and Glyph of Lesser Energy. Then I went and purchased Meteor. I thought about taking Glyph of Sacrifice... but it didn't seem to make much sense to use that with Meteor, even with Oath Shot to recharge it afterwards. Meteor is a 3 second cast, sure, but it follows the target pretty well so there's not that much chance of missing with it even if the target is moving -- thus, not as much need to rush the spell. So, I skipped Sacrifice, and instead plopped in another skill to make the build cast spells even faster: Serpent's Quickness. After some experimentation, I found that while the build was effective, repeated Meteors were taking too heavy an exhaustion toll on my energy pool, so I swapped to Fireball. Ultimately my current build wound up looking like this:

Fire 12, Expertise 8+1*, Wilderness Survival 9+3*
Serpent's Quickness, Glyph of Lesser Energy, Firestorm, Fireball, Oath Shot, Troll Unguent, Comfort Animal**, Charm Animal**

* - These could be improved but it's not really essential
** - These skills can be swapped for other skills as needed, such as Capture sig, Res sig, Winter, Fire Attunement, etc.

This build gives consistently good AoE damage and the ability to keep on pumping out damage spells on a continuous basis for a long time. Serpent's Quickness and Oath Shot work synergistically very well. Not only do you get the benefit of having Oath Shot recharge in 13s rather than 20s, enabling spells to be being cast almost constantly, you also get the benefit that if one of them fails, the other backs it up. If you miss an Oath Shot, it's not really a huge problem since with Serpent's Quickness it will recharge relatively quickly, and if Serpent's Quickness drops due to momentarily falling below 50% health, you can always recharge it with Oath Shot. Even on the rare occasions that both skills fail, Fireball's 7s recharge time means it will just about always be available in a pinch for quick damage. Furthermore, since you are casting Firestorm and Fireball so frequently, 'blowing' an AoE on non-prime targets is not that big a deal. This build can run a little energy heavy for a ranger's limited regen due to Fireball, but if that becomes a problem it's easy enough to skip Fireball for a cycle or replace it with Troll Unguent to patch up any incidental damage, and you're good to go for the next cycle.

This build doesn't have the heavy AoE spike damage that Meteor Shower gives, but what it does have going for it is flexibility and the ability to adapt easily to fluid combat situations. Many things that bug other casters to no end, such as interrupts, are not really a big problem for this build. Oath Shot will recharge them for you, or if you have to wait you won't have to wait long due to Serpent's Quickness, at which point you can try again. You're also not so totally reliant on the 'usually works but not always' Oath Shot to make the build viable as you might otherwise be.

An interesting side effect I found is that my pet dies a lot less with this build, largely because it's not really doing anything. It needs the XP anyway, so I kept it in there, but I found that if I'm casting spells, my pet won't take that as a cue to attack. It only attacks once I attack with my bow, which means I'm using Oath Shot... which usually means I just dumped a bunch of AoE DoT on the target I am shooting and it's going to die soon. So by the time my pet gets there, it doesn't have time to take much punishment. Really, the pet shouldn't even be in this build 'cause having it die at the wrong time could mess up the cycle and it's not really doing much for me, but like I said the pet needs the XP, and there's not much more I can add to this build without taxing energy regen too much anyway, though Fire Attunement could be a possibility.

Next up I'm going to give the build a shot replacing Fireball and Serpent's Quickness for Meteor Shower and Glyph of Sacrifice. This will make for a very different build where you deal a heavy load of damage in one shot but do it relatively less frequently. I don't think Serpent's Quickness will be needed here because the heavy energy requirements for Meteor Shower will necessitate more regen time and because casting too fast would make for too much exhaustion. Of course this will mean picking good targets for Oath Shot and Meteor Shower will be relatively more important, but there should be a lot of down time between spellcasting bursts that can be used to line up appropriate targets for those skills. I think this will be closer to the build that was originally described to me, though I'm still not clear on exactly what the remaining skills the other player was using were, that he didn't have room for Winter in his skill bar. I guess I will look for ideas once I get to the fine tuning stage on this alternate build. I might find Fire Attunement to be a necessity, for instance.

It's official.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=131766

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.ph...did=140074

http://www.civilized.de/

RBCiv expects to have announcements regarding our activities some time next week (around the time the game hits stores in the USA).


- Sirian

Dear Friends,
I have had the fortune of being an alpha tester for Guild Wars for a few months... I've earned myself a few invites into the alpha. I realized that you folks would be great testers... in that you are not very numerous (IE it wouldn't take that long for everyone to be in the test) and also highly literate and analytical.

To be in the test, you need to be over 18, have a computer that can run the game, agree to an Nondisclosure Agreement (pretty much can't say anything about what you see), and be able to make a good number of All Calls on Weds/Friday at 7PM PST (10PM EST). Currently, we get one friend-invite for every four All Calls we attend!

Send me a PM if you are interested...