After describing the battle with the clone, Shadow asked me if I knew anything of item lottos from my frequent jaunts with AB folks. Funny thing, even after several clone fights with AB friends, I have yet to see a lottery--suffice to say I associate with some of the finest item pushers around (No, YOU TAKE IT ). That said, I did a little digging, and found what has been generally used as a fair method of item lotto.

Not a huge need for this process around here, but good reference material nonetheless.

Lotto Procedure

1) Have the lotto participants each choose a number between 1 and 9.

2) Go to Charsi in A1. Enter the trade screen. Go to the first weapons tab.

3) Starting from the top left, working down the column and then to top of the next column and down, look for a weapon with a numerical bonus to attack rating.

4) Winner is the one who picked a number that matches the last digit of the attack rating bonus of the first weapon shown to have +AR (in the order described above). If the first weapon does not produce a match, keep going. (process could be shortened by evenly distributing numbers from 1 to 9 between the participants).

Note: The numbers 1-9 have equiprobable chance to appear as the last digit on all mods that affect numberical bonus to attack rating. Throw out all zeros, since the bronze prefix has a range of +10-20 (more chance for zeros).

Taken from this post in an old AB thread. Half the comments in the thread talk about the best lotto being to just give the item away. I found one of the statements at the end of the thread particularly funny:

Quote:Funny thing is the times I've seen a lotto (I've not been in them, didn't need the items in question), it's been a case of the lottoees almost forcing the item off on each other.

"Nah, you take it"
"No, you take it!"
"Please, you can have it"
"No, I insist, you take it"
"You can use it better than me"
"I'd rather see you use it"

Then they lotto it off to find who gets the honor of giving it to the other person.

I got this game for christmas and am still figuring it out somewhat. Looks fun.

About spies, besides oppressometer, is there another way to keep spies away? Also, the spies I've been getting so far in a game I started tend to get killed quickly and seem to always have low cloak/dagger skills, did I miss some way to make them better?

About diplomacy, I have the basics down and can get some empires on easy to like me but are there any suggestions for negotiating more interesting treaties or exchanges? I don't tend to use diplomacy in other civilization/space expamsion games I've played, maybe this time I'll need a bit. Also, what exactly do trade and research agreements do besides share research and trade?

On ship designs, what do the different types of weapons do and what are the different advantages of them? I once again get the basics of ship design but need help with more advanced stuff.

I'll figure out planets, research, economy, and budgets on my own, since they are my favorite parts of other games of this type, so I'll spend more time understanding them.

By the way, yes I'm new. ShadowHM pointed this particular forum out to me from the lurker lounge.

So, who's going to be there? I am in.

Do we have anything to try out? Specific build? GvG?

If nothing, I will probably be playing a variation of elementalist (again). Read that there was a wipe, even the Guilds were wiped and the guild names were not preserved, Arena.net relies on players' manner to not grab the name of other guild.

EDIT: thread from AB forum http://www.theamazonbasin.com/gw/forums/...=554&st=26

If such is the case, I am more than willing to re-create the guild as soon as I log in and acquired sufficient fund. Realms Beyond (RB), right?

OK, so when I read about the new "CoasterCam™" feature, I'm thinking "That's probably lame, but as long as the gameplay is decent, I won't care."

Well, chalk one up for 3D. In a word: Wow.


OK, some background. I loved Railroad Tycoon, Transport Tycoon, and A-Train -- the early "Tycoon" type games. I've been busy with other games, though, so I never got around to trying RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 or 2. Sales seemed to be good, so I decided to, ah, "hop on the train" for the third ride.

I bought Roller3 in the same batch as Half Life 2, so it's been sitting around for about six weeks. I tried it on New Years Day. It's been a blast! Although the gameplay differs, the flavor is very much like the old Transport Tycoon gameplay. (That's a Very Good Thing™. I will have to dig deep to see whether Roller3 suffers the same kind of balance-problem issues as the old Transport Tycoon. No sign of any problems as yet, though.

Now me being a "graphics don't matter" kind of gamer, games like this might start to spoil me. This is a really bang-up piece of work here.


Let's have a peek. Here is the first game in the campaign, with me about halfway through. This is a very open-ended scenario. You pretty much just need to make decent money and you win. There are a lot of ways to get there and lot of little touches on how you can customize your park. Gameplay is simple but not redundant, which is always a winning formula.



The park is populated by "Peeps" -- no not the marshmallow chicks, but a host of AIs, "customers", folks who simulate merriment-seekers. The peeps got a lot of attention: many faces, hairstyles, clothing, and some careful attention to behavior, as well. This is probably the most "living" game of any type that I've played. It lacks the hard edge realism of Half Life 2, but that is a scripted game. This is open-ended, and thus in many ways more impressive.

The real treat was designing my first rollercoaster from scratch, though, and then soaking up the good vibes as it quickly became by far the most popular ride in my park. Hey, gotta love Peeps with good taste!



So there's most of my creation, and now a look from the CoasterCam™:



The best part of the game is riding your own coasters. You really get a feel for the impact of your design choices, including some fairly impressive game physics. Subtleties matter! I'm eating this up. 8)


Here are some more looks at my park, including right before obtaining the Gold victory level. (Three levels of victory per scenario, just like in Railroad Tycoon II.)





The gameplay seems as good as the graphics. I think this title has a legitimate shot at earning a coveted place among my "time tested" favorites list. Too soon to tell, for sure, but it definitely has me excited.


- Sirian

Cheers for all my friends here at RB. Wishing you a prosperous 2005.

I finally created that comparison game that I promised, and uploaded it to CivFanatics. Discussion and file is here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=98

Best wishes to you and yours!

Don't drink and drive.

KoP
Card sent = 0
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Card received = 3
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Someone is not playing by my rules ;p

Does anybody have a list of the guaranteed techs in MOO? I'd like to know all of them, but of particular interest to me is Trilithium (unlimited range). Are you always guaranteed to get it?

Thanks,
-dathon

Hello there,

I am running the AllSid website.

I am trying to build a knowledge base for everyone who is interested in Sid Meier games out there and civilization is the highest priority. I know I must have read a tonn of game reports on this site, on the old forum, although I never really had the time or skill to participate in any RBCiv game. A lot of them are works of art and show a lot of very good strategic thinking on high level of difficulty and so offer a lot of useful information for a whide range of fans. Having this in mind I was wondering if people here would mind if I would host some of their reports on my site. Linking back to the author's site and inviting people to play RBCiv games will not be a problem of course.

On the other hand if people do mind to me doing this I will not do it and stop bothering people about it.

So what do you all think?

Imperium Eight - The Ancient Race is now open. I know that we're trying not to open Epics and Imperia on the same day, but we've gone far too long without either game running (my fault, sorry), that I thought we should open both. If that's a problem for anybody, post here, and we'll see what we can do.

Happy gaming! (yup, better fix those smileys, too, I'm on it...)