I have read the rules section of the Imperium homepage, and I have a few questions/suggestions:

1) Would it be considered cheating to access the tech point count function of EDMOO? This does nothing that I would not be able to do manually, as it's easy to calculate the interest (and 1 click on the tech screen = 2% of the total budget). I run no risk of accessing any other information in EDMOO while doing this, as there is no information on the main screen or the tech screen.

2) Is missile abuse 100% legal? Hit'n'run raids on bases or fleets, and wimpy missile boat defense of bases makes the game way too easy. I like playing with missiles, but the poor AI and the way base attacks are set up make missiles overpowered. Beams and bombs also require more skill, IMO. Right now I play without missiles on ships at all. This does not them make them too underpowered, missile bases are still strong enough to warrant missile research.

3) Diplomatic victory. I know I'll probably run into massive disagreement on this one, but is it really rewarding to be able to win through diplomacy? Diplomacy is a fundamental aspect to winning the game by conquest, so it's important even if diplomatic victories are not used. I think diplomatic defeat is a great feature, though. Ideally, being elected leader should have been more like what it is in SMAC.

Thank you for your time.

So I was playing Mahjong solitaire... and I lost again. I've lost over 500 times in a row on a particular arrangement. In fact, I have never solved it completely. However, my previous best was 40 tiles left. Tonight I got it down to 20!



Rarely has a gamer ever been so pleased to lose.


I call that arrangement the Box. Here's a look at it.



I've played half a dozen Mahjong solitair games over the years. (There was even one that played actual Mahjong). This one is the best one so far. Purely random boards (so for some arrangements, you will often draw unwinnable puzzles), twenty arrangements, full screen, easy to see.

Of the twenty arrangements, only two are left that I've not beaten. The other one I call the Sheet.




Of the rest, the one I lose the most I call the Palace:



The Palace is one of my faves. I play it a lot when I want to lose but have an actual chance to win. I've beaten it maybe six or seven times out of hundreds played.

The easiest board is one I call Mounds. I've only lost there a couple of times.


Here's another hard one, Castle:



Castle is right up before Box in the rotation, so any streak of wins always ends at the Box. (If you beat one arrangement, the game moves you to the next one in its rotation).

Right before Castle is Target, a medium difficulty puzzle:



The fourth-hardest one, another one where I almost always lose, I call the House. It's the only one of the twenty arrangements that is not at least mostly symmetrical.


The fifth-hardest I call the Slant. This is another of my faves:



The Slant is so hard, it almost invariably puts an end to any streak that reaches it. So the longest streak (highest score) possible for a single run would go from the Slant to the Box. I've never made it all the way. The most puzzles I've solved in one streak is six. A full run from Slant to Box would be eight in a row. There is another hard one shortly after Slant, though. It's the standard pyramid puzzle that you are all probably familiar with:




There's Slant, then an easy one I call Lines, then the Standard pyramid, then the second-easiest in the game in a big X shape, then there's the Turtle:



Turtle's not as hard as she looks. Lots of free tiles to make matches. I win over half the time. After Turtle is Mounds, the easiest available, then Target and Castle, then the dreaded Box.

I've had two six-win runs. One went from Standard through Castle, dying at Box. The other went from Slant through Mounds, dying on Target. (Arrgh, so close to seven!


My best on Sheet is 20 tiles left. Now that's also my best on the Box. Some day... some day I be both lucky and good on the same night, and beat these monsters. Some day.


- Sirian

Then how about some good things about C3C?

1. Delayed map and contact trading.

I like this a lot. It makes exploration more important. It acknowledges advantage to who do exploration early and get more contacts. I don't like the original game that AI could just come and demand contacts from you. I like this change a lot.

2. The Seafaring trait.

I simply love this trait. Together with 1, this trait is the best with archipelago maps. On the other hand agricultural is too unbalanced and I'm a bit tired of that.

3. MGL

I like the change that MGL cannot rush great wonders anymore. Yup, it makes the game more difficult (especially things like Always War). When you see this, you should understand why they introduce SGL - it is simply the only way to rush great wonders and they don't want to lose that possibility. Arguably, this might not be a good idea, but it does have its reasons. With a knob to turn it off, I see not much reason to complain about it.

4. Armies

I love the new army. Yes it's powerful, but that's what it should be. Once you play C3C you will not tolerate the armies in vanilla or PTW anymore - they are just not good enough.

Note I don't like the fact that AI doesn't know how to use it - which looks like a regression as it used to do. But don't confuse this with the enhancement of the new armies.

5. Specialists

Not mentioning the new ones, I like the change of taxmen and scientists. They now actually make sense.

6. Bonus with amphibious attacks

More reason to build marines. Vikings become a great civ. Maybe still not good enough, but at least it's a good thing. I'm actually considering sponsering an SG to feature amphibious attacks, which must run better with C3C than PTW.

C3C has many bugs, and I'm disappointed in the patch situation, but I still prefer it to its predecessors.

While in the bank the other day, speaking with a bank rep, and the subject came up. Credit cards. Now most folks now how I feel about credit cards. I LOATHE credit cards. I see what they do to people's lives. I have never owned one. And I swore I never would.

I'll be damned.

I am starting to feel left out as many sites online for shopping are credit card only. I LOVE a good deal. I am a tightwad. I squeeze pennies into copper wire before I willingly let go of them. One might even call me stingy... But never to my face.

So I am talking to this bank rep who has known me for many years and she has tried time and time again to get me a bank card.

Her jaw hit the floor when I finally said ok the other day. Try it out, see what I am approved for. I am curious.

So she types into her computer for a bit, and we wait, and they bring me a truly lovely iced mocha latte (My bank has GREAT kiss ass service) and after a while, she gets a reply.

"Sir, we can enroll you in the Double Diamond Members Club with a Double Diamond Visa. Your starting approved credit limit is one hundred thousand dollars."

After bringing me some napkins to clean up the latte I just shot out my nose, and taking some time to recover, I find out that I can get no interest for one year and a fixed 13.9% interest rate for the entire life of the card.

I declined the offer.

After some wrangling and trying to explain to some very confused and put out bank reps, I finally took control and got a credit limit I was a lot more comfortable with. A Visa card, 500 dollars top end. Rate plus prime for interest. 10% cash return reward through the bank.

I was offered a diamond and settled for a cubic zirconia.

Now... What on earth to I bankrupt my self by getting into debt with first? 500 dollars of crazy money... Where do I start?

It sounds like my husband and daughter will be headed out on a "it's still summer until we get home" car trip this coming week. Usually, when I'm going with them, I have enough to do with packing that I don't worry about making stuff for the trip- we just grab some things from the grocery store and go. But, this year I will need to work, so I won't be coming along for the trip.

So, I'd like to make something for them to have on the ride (about 14 hours each way). I'd make cookies, but it seems like they might be kind of crumbly and messy. So, I was just wondering, do any of you have any "long car ride" favorites that you'd like to share? Any other car ride tips? We've been hooked on books on tape since Shadow let us borrow some of hers a couple of years ago (thanks again!, so I will be checking in at the library to see what I can come up with in that department.

-Griselda

Well, I tried. I gave the new patch and new ladder a go. My verdict is that the problems that drove me away have not been resolved. Melee remains a farce. The gameplay is still all about speed and mobility.

I took a melee char into Hell. A Paladin with defensive build -- Holy Freeze (maxed) and Holy Shield are the main skills, Zeal (all but maxed) for attack, decent damage, high strength, upgraded Iceblink, Defiance merc, Charge for "occasional" use on nasty bosses, high slvl Holy Shock for cold immunes, low slvl Might and Sanct for anything immune to both cold and light, max block, near max resists, clvl 70.

The first bosses in the Blood Moor are tough. Cool, right? No, not really. Can I stand toe to toe with any bosses? No. Can't even toe it with Hungry Dead. I had about sixty of them running around the Burial Grounds in huge packs while I chased Raven all over kingdom come, because I could not kill them faster than she could raise new ones, and I could not stand up to more than two at a time with true safety. Three with an itchy potion finger. Challenging? Yes. Fun? No.

Why isn't this fun for me? It's enormously redundant. There is only one strategy: divide and conquer. I'm safe against low numbers, dead against high numbers. So I spend all my time running around splitting them up or taking hit-and-run potshots. Every other boss is cursed or extra strong or both, so the merc drops like a stone upon even sighting one. The merc is useless, a liability, an expense that gains me nothing. His purpose is to die and nothing more. I can't help him, I can't control him, and his AI is way the heck too bloody stupid not to irritate the daylights out of me. So I run around and around and around in circles. Holy Freeze is not the problem, as I can turn it off and nothing changes. I'm faster than nearly all of the monsters, and if I wasn't it would not be any better.

The Diablo II model of "potions take time to work" is simply inferior to the Diablo model of instant potion effect, in my view. Some here may disagree, but the way I see it, the potion healing is on a timer. If you take damage at a slower rate than the timer, you're fine, but if damage rate exceeds the timer, YOU MUST REDUCE THE RATE AT WHICH YOU ARE TAKING DAMAGE OR YOU WILL DIE. This means you can't stay engaged with the truly tough fights. And since that is where I always got my fun in Diablo, in Diablo II I just come to hate the game more and more every time I reach for that and the game balance slaps my hand and chides me that I should be following the one true path of how IT wants me to play, instead of how I would like to play.

There are purples in D2 but not enough to sustain continual use, and you have to jump through hoops to get more.

I ask myself, what am I doing in Diablo II? What are the actions I take to be successful? There is only one answer: stay ahead of the monsters. If there is enough room, I can stay ahead of anything. If they make the monsters too fast for me to stay ahead, then I'll just die, because I can't toe it with any of them in a sustained way. There is no true melee, there is only hit and run. D1 melee is sort of the same, but not quite. You can't take on too many, and if there are more than you can handle you have to engage a running fight, engage-retreat, engage-retreat. D2 doesn't allow for that to be done precisely. Even on broadband, the graphics get out of synch with the server. You can't trust the lying visuals, so you end up trying to sort out fact from fiction on your screen, and that takes you out of the GAMEPLAY and into metagaming the networking reality.

I had a 30 minute fight with a spearwoman boss in the cold plains. She was LEB, immune to cold and light, so I had to use low slvl charge and might to take her out. The new regen rates are insane, so it was really tedious. Moving bosses to where they regenerate... bad move, in my view. It doesn't add challenge, it only adds time. Instead of getting this kill in five minutes it took half an hour. What's the point??? I don't get it.

Since I cannot, in fact, play a melee character, this means there are only ranged playstyles available. Pick your flavor and fight from a distance. Erg. Back to sorcie play for me. If I have to stay ahead of the monsters, I'd rather do it for real, not this half-assed "in and out, in and out" gameplay.

The same gap is still there. Too easy or too deadly. Impossible to find middle ground because it is impossible to work around the potion timer. So I have made a decision. If Diablo 3 has D1 style potions, I will buy it. If it has D2 style potions, I will not buy it nor waste my time on it at all. Having the maximum amount of damage over time my character can sustain be hardcoded is a gameplay mechanic of which I have forever had my fill.

I've also decided that maxing one skill at a time is a losing strategy. I'm going to try a new char, pick three primary skills and advance them all together, and see how that goes. Perhaps it will recapture a kind of fun that has been missing (for me) since 1.06f. There -are- many worthy improvements in the ladder patch, but I have come to accept that certain flaws in the game are there to stay and I should forever surrender hope of them being overcome before D3. I may still have some fun with the game, but I will have to take care in how I approach it.


- Sirian

Hi,

we have just returned from our holidays in Wales/GB yesterday. We have met a lot of friendly people and enjoyed a tremendous countryside, but one thing struck me as really odd and completely different from what I'm used to at home: The high number and inflationary use of warning signs.

On our first evening we drove into a small town to eat something in a restaurant and drink our first Guinness or two. On the car park, there was a huge, red warning sign: "Have you properly locked you car? Have you left any valuable items in it? Thieves might break into your car and steal them! Don't let that happen to you!", complemented with a funny drawing of a thief breaking open a car. Now if I encounter a warning sign at home, most of the time there's a reason for it being there and I tend to give attention to the warning, so I thought maybe car breaks are increasing in the area and double-checked if I had really locked the car.

We entered the pub and ordered two beers. While waiting, I noticed another warning, yellow this time: "Don't leave your drink unattended! You don't know what others might put in while you're not looking!" (or something like this), with another funny drawing of a hand dropping a dangerous-looking substance into a glass. Hmmm...makes sense, now that everyone locks their cars properly, drug addicts probably are forced to create more addicts to make money...and I closely watched my drink the whole evening, which slightly interfered with my social life, but so be it.

Next up was the inevitable walk to the toilet. On the way, I saw a note pinned to a wall, telling me what to do in case of a barroom brawl (leave the bar, call the police), and that in case I should start one, I would no longer be allowed to enter this restaurant, in addition to several others of the town as well (list of about 11 restaurants, including signatures from their owners, followed). Fair enough, no brawl for me tonight if we wanted to enjoy some more drinks in this town...

In the toilet, another sign (silver and blue this time) reminded me to wash my hands after using the toilet, to prevent dangerous germs from spreading around. At home we don't need to be reminded to do this, thank you very much! And it's not that our population is dying out because we don't have these signs.

Approaching the water taps. Above one, big fat black letters besides a red triangle with a big exclamation mark could be seen. Must be something important - better read it! "Warning! Hot Water!". Oh.

Next day, we walked some miles of a well-known long distance trail along the beautiful Welsh coastline. On the start of the track, another sign: "Cliffs Kill! Don't leave the path!", with another priceless drawing of a human falling off a high cliff. Fair enough, I'll be cautious not to walk too near the cliffs. But when that warning sign was repeated every 200 meters, I really got annoyed!

We encountered a lot more of this ("Tiredness kills! Take a break!" on motorways, "Report suspicious luggage or left-alone bags! It might contain a bomb!" on railway stations, ...), and I got the impression that Great Britain is a Really Dangerous Country to live in (which, of course, is nonsense). But the best of all was when some day I heard an ad from the government on the radio about the Preparing for Emergencies booklet they would send to all households in the UK, describing how to act in case of an emergency. It has some really great advice like, "If a bomb goes off in your building, look for the safest way out", or (the best of all), "Think before you act". I have to admit I like this booklet a lot better. ;-)


What I ask myself is, what effect has the inflationary use of warnings or such a booklet on society? If I have to see warnings of thieves and bombs every day, or if I get such a booklet like the above sent to me by the government, what happens? Will I become indifferent and numb out on these warnings, no longer taking them serious, as happened with me and the thousands of "speed camera" warnings we encountered in Wales? Or will they create an atmosphere of fear and paranoia, and my senses of what could be dangerous to me and what not might get warped? Some months ago, our newspaper quoted a study where a poll was made among the population about what was considered harmful for one's health or life. Then this was compared to a list "experts" (whatever that means) had made on the same subject, and the difference was striking. Most poeple rated terrorist attacks, getting fatally ill from BSE, getting subjected to murder/rape and similar fears much more dangerous than the banal threats like household accidents, smoking, eating too fat etc. which are a lot more harmful to us in reality. Surely most people do have a warped sense of what might be dangerous to them, and I ask myself if campaigns like the PEB booklet, whatever the real reason for this campaign might be, do more harm than they are useful. What do you think?

-Kylearan

Absolutely Beautiful!

Go see it.

KoP

Anyone stopped by any of the various MOO3 sites and seen the mod's being worked on by the fans? I know this game soured a lot of people when it first came out due to the flawed implementations of nearly every aspect and the incredibly poor support from QSI.

For the record, I haven't installed it on my PC since I formatted my HD and instaleld the OS again months ago, but some of the new mod's do look promising:

- You can set the max number of task forces in use by each civ/player, i.e. everyone can build 15, 20, whatever.
- AI Diplomacy has been 'translated' so you can tell what the heck the AI really means.
- AI launches (supposedly) numerous ground invasions. One report had at least 2 ground invasions launched in the first 20-30 turns of the game I believe.

There are more things going on, but I thought those three might be of interest to some here, if they haven't snapped the game CD's in half already. :D Just being able to raise the max numbers of task forces (even if the player still uses a self-imposed limit) and having the AI invade on the ground would go a long way to making this product at least worth the initial investment, if anyone is interested you might want to check out some of the work done by Bhuric.

Sorry to stick this here, but thought someone might want to know.

After having played GoGoGadgets to Hell 2-3 last season I have no doubt GGG can do "well" all the way to the end of Act5. I rebuilt GGG this season, hoping to complete Hell before this season ends. I need to refresh my memory and include his journey as part of a larger write up.

GGG at 76 had over 200 stat points unused, so he was basically stat to equip only. As the name implied, for those who doesn't already know, GGG used no skill points and got his skills from Charged items... and Oskill items. Oskills are skills such as Fireball from two item Trang set bonus. Any character can use the skill with 2 Trang pieces just like a sorcy, without having to recharge. Unlike Charged skills, Oskills output are boosted by +skill items. There is one more restriction I placed on these nonskilled characters - They cannot use any skills (passive or otherwise) that are native to their class. It would be too easy :P

The next step in the evolution is ACoolMeleeExp, ACME for short. We all know ACME has some way cool gadgets ^_^ Another baba GGG wannabe, but he is going to be melee only. He is still young but got a good start with a lvl 10 scepter (10-17 Dmg) of Sacrifice which IMO can take any character to the end of normal diff. But he isn't going to miss out playing with all the cool toys on his journey to Baal. He has used, Sacrifice, Poison Daggers, and Power Strike already, and in a couple more lvls, he will get the first kick of synergies goodness via a set of Charged Strike Javs

But the future looks grim!

Maybe not. I haven't really sat down to make a table of all that available and how I can boost the damage output yet. All I have in my single minded vision as end game item is a "Passion" weapon for its +1 Zeal bonus. Not Berzerk, since that would be a native skill to a baba. Zerk would be nice for dealing with PIs but I guess I would have to make another class to use that later (hmm, a Zerking Whirlwinding Sorcy?) . So ACME can look forward to lvl 4-5 Zeal with resonable equipment. Sacrifice is the only synergy for Zeal at 12% more dmg per lvl. I have seen up to lvl 10 Sacrifice charged so far but it is probably the highest it comes. The problem is I have a lvl 10 Sacrifice scepter that has a base damage of 10-17, and even assuming I would get a slightly higher damage Sac charged weapon, I would end up using a one handed Passion with that. Further more, Zeal dmg would be split between the 2 weapons that I might just be better off without the synergy.

I have been shopping for high end charged weapons too but nothing fancy so far, nothing that has enough damage to be considered good for late NM by normal standards. The other problem is Melee Skills come with low charges

I am just thinking out loud and let everyone in what's going on.

There are other desirable rune words that would make things easier on ACME, such as "Beast" for its level 9 Fanaticism Aura When Equipped. ACME can dual weild that But a Ber rune doesn't drop everyday, although I have 2 of them last season. Anyway, I am soliciting ideas anyone might have. Thinking in uber rune words is okay too but I would not depend my build on anything higher than an IST (which I have, and consider reasonable to have, since I have gotten a few from Hell Hell-Forge)...

KoP