Ok, I promised kop a semi-sensible explanation of what I was trying to say.

Here is the situation:

...........Z.................................
.............................................
.............................................
.............................................
.....2............................3..........
...................P.........................
.............................................
.............................................
.............................................
...................1.........................
.............................................
............X................................

The White Mantle crystal generator is at "Z", the Hero one at "X".

The three portals that have to be attuned are 1, 2, and 3 (what an imagination, eh?). The final portal is the "P". The White Mantle start with Portal 3 already attuned.

I burned this mission the first time just watching and messing with the AI. Here is what I learned (valid this build only, no coupons accepted):

(1) If they do not own it, the WM will ALWAYS go for portal 2 (makes sense, closest one).

(2) If NO ONE owns 2, and they own 3, they will go for Portal 1.

(3 ) Once they are closer to the Portal they set out for than the others, they will continue and finish their current choice even if this choice, due to changing conditions, is not the preferred one.

Given these 3 observations, you have a no-mess, no-fuss, no-fight way to finish the mission

Grab the crystal at X, and attune 1.

This invokes observation 2, and the WM will go for Port 1.

Grab the crystal at X, run to Port 2, and do nothing. Yawn.

Wait until the WM have gotten past "P", and they are closer to port 1 than port 2, and attune 2 and make a dash for X for another crystal. You are now on the clock, and seconds count...

You will hit the X just seconds after they hit the 1. Instead of hanging around and ganking you, they will go back to Z for a crystal to attune Port 2 and win. To go from 1 to Z to 2 will take them longer than for you to go from X to 1 to X to 3 becuase of the way the path curves around P. Trust me on that one.

Game over.

The real beauty of this procedure, though, is it is re-settable. If you trip over your shoe-laces on the way to 3 and the WM attunes 2 before you get there--no worries. Attune 3, go back to X, get a crystal, go back to 2, let them attune 3, and start over again.

Before anyone cries for the AI, though, remember that this is a cheesy fix for the main mission, but you cannot get the bonus this way. To get the bonus, you are going to have to fight and take every last one out, so that you can get to the boss at Z.

But if all you have are henchies, and you want to move on, and you're planning on geting the bonus later, it works...

--Cy

I like the fact that I have some measure of control over my interface screen, so I've been toying around with it a bit. I wish that I had even more exact pixel-by-pixel control over things, but maybe that's just my perfectionism nature peeking through after years of using CAD and image editting software.

To be quite honest, I really haven't changed much. That can either be attributed to GW's already-slick interface, my lack of imagination, or the fact that I got used to the default interface and I'd have a hard time drastically altering things now.

Anyhow, here's what I did. I run GW @ 1024x768, but I scaled this image down to 800x600 and compressed it.



As you can see, I left almost everything as-is. I moved the experience bar to the lower right because it looked kinda middle-of-nowhere. This leaves me with a great big chunk of upper-left screen to watch my battle. I like to see how my exp is progressing, but I don't need it covering up important action stuff.

I enlarged the health and energy bars and stacked them. They were too small for me. I'm considering making them even larger.

I've made other minor changes that aren't readily apparent in this screenshot, but they are mostly just very small positioning adjustments.

What kind of whacky interface modifications have you guys come up with? Like I said before, I lack imagination to make any grand changes, but I am a shameless plagarist and will greedily copy any interface alteration that strikes me as awesome.

Heh, considering that this is the RBD crowd I half-expect someone to say ":aar: I turned off everything except the health and energy bars! :aar:"

To start off, yes this idea was heavily influenced by many years of playing civ, civ type games and strategy games altogether.



To the point, So far I have come up with basic trivial platform ideas that revamp the idea of civ game modeling using means of representation to simulate a steady time experience.

The first thoughts occured to me when I was homeless and obseving the societies around me. I simply thought back to the years of elementary school when I was to ignorant to pay attention and reevaluated some thoughts based on 6th grade history text covering early man kind.

All together the ideas rushed to me, adopted from the civ call to power model, you have 4 types of mainstream workers, laborers, scientists, entertainers and merchants. Thinking back to the class pyrimids of egypt I reinterpreted these thoughts to paint a platform of:

Workers-the higher level acheivers of finer specialized skill and/or trade: Produce, sell, expand.

Labororers:Gather, ship, service/prepare.

At the higher end of the pyramid:Officials-Manage, represent, govern.



Levels of laborers:

Farmers-Gather food via stock-tending and crop-harvesting.

Fishermen-Gather food via sea faring.

Hunters-Gather food viahunting(duh)

Gatherers-Gather food via foraging(1 more duh)

Miners-Gather hard and vast minerals via minning.

Foresters-Gather organic earths via lumber mining.

Mersinarry-Highers for multiple jobs(shipping, packing, receiving storing ect...)The gap filler.



Levels of workers:

Merchants-sells/promotes/invests in material/products/services.

Entertainers-The most unique for entertainment, luxury, leisure, learning and advancing from a theatrical point of veiw.

Artisans-Crafters, workers, producers of seviced raw materials for demanded consumption.

Engineers-Builds and improves, the constructors and architechts.

Scientists-experimenting, advancing, teaching. The thinkers and improvers as well as teachers.



Levels of officials:

Dignitary-Officer for study and observation/inspection for the nation(internal affairs/watch dog). Also representative and part of the assembly for constitutions and parlimentary systems.

Office-The enforcer of the laws and regulations layed down by the general government.(Police/guards).

Diplomat-Head of official observationand investigation of other nations. Stays at homeland offices.

Emmisarry-Official diplomatic representative sent out to stay for long periods of time or indeffinately with other nations to establish and take up an embassy.

Ambassidor-Official diplomatic representative sent out to meet with other national representatives for a short term of discussion/negotiation.



Each class requires set skills of ability(say a qualified ambassidor in the middle ages requires {on a scale from 1-10 that upgrades with each passing age as it becomes inherant} a literary skill of 7, a conduct skill of 10, analyzation skill of 6, and a speach craft skill of 10).

These skills measure the quality and efficiency of the entire society and how it functions. All these skill mantenence needs can be met with automation of managing your civ from a growing basis of generality and mass affect. SO as your civ grows, so will your managing technique.

Right now I have the platform for skills as follows:

Worker:construction/crafting/creation-

Taking away:

Carving-The use of carving is to take away from an object for a befitting purpose.

Sculpting-Sculpting is taking away to leave a bare form.

Sheething-cutting through something, cutting off to define an end for befitting form.

Sheering-to cut away or strip from the outside-in to leave a bare form.



Bringing together:

Molding-condensifying to bring about a form.

Casting- bringing together for connection and definition.

Smelting-combining different elements to improve and/or diversify structural integrity.

Forging-Refining, purifying and servicing to bring about the utmost strength of a finished structure.

Weaving-widdling together a soft yet flexible bond for durability and quality.

Sewing-placing together for a befitting solution to finalize a straucture.



For managing skills it is:

Literary- Process of mapping out the situation in uniform understanding.

Speachcraft-Process of communicating sucessfully

Conduct-Process of utilizing combined skills to display charicter and influence favorand/or understanding.



Physical skills are:

Sustaintion- To stand ground to experience at the moment direction.

Evasion-To eveade for pure avoidance or distant negotiation.

Redirection-To augment greater responding directorial control for control of or rechanelling of at the moment direction.

Illusion-To deceive the at the moment direction into alure.



All the skills basical derive from the physical charicteristics of each citizen and all jobs or tasks are skill focused for efficiency simulating what bare traits people use to make their skills strengths.

And the cycle goes, most laborers look to their basic physical skills to make their work.

Workers use a mixed focus of all three namely structure skills tho.

ANd government officials look to the management skills to keep control and well....manage their empire.

There is one thing tho, A citizen can learn all of these things it's just all about what else is going on in the game, which is turn and tiled based by the way. And as far as meter breakers go, many monuses may occur, GREAT people, grea city, region nation. All kinds of stuff.

And now to the point, it is a symetrical model I have exprimenting implimenting to create a basis geared on idealogies from direct representaion by wording and and the open values they hold pertaining to all aspects of different faces(trade, government, war-fare, diplomacy) and hoping people can read into that idea and see where I'm going.


That's basically it for now as I am very tired. I hope you liked it so far and please feel free to shed feed back and questions. I'd be happy to communicate my ideas.

i'm trying to play epic 49, and downloaded the file to both my scenario folder and the saves folder in conquests. unfortunately, when i try loading up the save game, i get several error messages and cannot play it. can someone tell me what i'm doing wrong?

This would be somewhat useful, and when I get enough screen shots from everyone, I will make a permanent page on the site. Who cares what the stats are, Right? We got to look good.

Screens I have (I will post them later tonite) includes
Female starting Ele outfit, Elementalist, and Areomancer. I also have Pyromancer screen of CY's Oxide, but CY probably have better grabs.

Female Monk Starter outfit and Wanderer's

Female Mesmer Starter outfit with ...umm whats the name of that Domination mask.

So go ahead and post what you have
A short description and where you can get it from would be nice.


KoP

It is working now Griselda, good to see that.

I was trying to delete some test messages I'd posted and accidentally deleted the entire "forum clock" thread. Sorry! You guys are all so well-behaved that I have no experience deleting messages using vBulletin.

There is a problem with the server, and because of that times aren't shown correctly here. I am looking into finding a fix for that.

-Griselda

Hi,

we RBers share the same hobby: Playing games on the computer. What I found is that people that like to play computer games often like to play other games as well, like role-playing games, table-tops etc.

Personally, I love to play board games and card games with my family and friends, and I wonder how many of you do this as well?

I grew up with the typical, simple games of that time, mostly designed for children, like Trap the Cap and Parcheesi. Then there were abstract games for adults, like Chess or Backgammon which had more sophisticated rules and more depth, but were not so good for socializing with your friends. The only notable exception I knew at that time was Monopoly.

Then, everything changed when Klaus Teuber developed and published The Settlers of Catan. This one game revolutionized the market for family games: It had a nice theme, it was simple enough to play for the casual gamer and yet it offered a choice of different strategies to explore for gamers who like to think more when playing games, and last but not least, it simply was fun.

Since then, gaming has become a lot more common, at least over here. It's a great way to socialize with friends, a great alternative to watching movies, and a fantastic excuse to have some beers or to enjoy a nice glass of wine or three.


Here's a list of games I like best (not necessarily in that order):

• Carcassonne: A leight-weight game for all types of players, played best with the first two expansions IMHO. Plays not too long, offers a bit of strategy but also has luck involved - nice.
  
  
  
• St. Petersburg: One of my absolute favorites. Little luck, lots of tactics/strategy, well-balanced (with the exception of maybe one card), and yet fast to play and easy to understand. Only downside: 4 players maximum. There's also a fantastic and free version for the PC (both in English and German) which can be found here.
  
  
  
• Lord of the Rings: This one came out before the movies, and thus features fantastic art by John Howe instead of just pictures from the movie. The game mechanics are highly original: You play co-op against Sauron, which remains abstract in the original game, and can be played by a human if you have the expansion. It's not easy, but since all players win or lose, losing isn't so bad and the game is a lot of fun. The spirit of the books is captured very well, and I think the co-op aspect of the game should appeal to all of us RBers.
  
  
  
• Puerto Rico: IMHO the best family strategy game there is with some highly original rules, alas with a steep learning curve. The first one or two games will be a bit confusing, but then it will offer a lot of depth, different strategies, and well-balanced game elements.
  
  
  
• San Juan: The 'little brother' of Puerto Rico. A card game with similar game mechanics, but a lot easier to understand and to play. Also, once all players know the game, it can be played in under an hour. It still offers a lot of depth, though, even if it looks like a lot of luck is involved at first glance - it isn't. Also, if Ravensburger/Rio Grande give their okay (still waiting for it), there will be a free version in Java for the PC soon, with some very good AIs...
  
  
  
• Bohnanza: A fast-paced card game with a lot of player interaction and fun, perfect to end a gaming evening. Again, a game with highly original rules.
  

*warning* spoilers ahead *warning*













So what did people think of the final installment of Star Wars?

I found it quite entertaining, with the occasional cringe moment (like the whole scene with the ship falling through the atmosphere, and pretty much every romance scene in the movie). Hayden Christiansen has apparently learned how to act between movies, and Ewen McGregor is really very believable as Obi Wan. The best thing without a doubt about this final SW movie though is the lightsaber fighting. All of the fights had strong emotional significance, and were choreographed to perfection. I thought that the fight between Vader and Obi Wan was by far the best light saber battle in any star wars movie thus far. On the downside the blatant political references did get annoying after a while ("if you're not with me you're against me" - I wonder where I've heard that before ).

Overall though I had to say that I had a big childish smile right the way through the movie. This movie is finally one that lives up to the quality of the original trilogy. Sort of. Anyway, 4/5 from me.

Probably not after you see this:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=119167