For the time being this is just an idea but I'd like to hear opinions.

What if item costs were not linear?

Yes, a hero with Haste is really good.
A hero with 25 defense is amazing.
A hero with Regeneration is awesome.
A hero with Wraith Form and 20 resistance is really hard to kill (except for Chaos mages).

But a hero with several or all of the above is where things start to get out of control.
So what if item costs were going up faster the more it already is?
For example an item with no abilities could gain Regeneration for 500. An item already having 1500 points worth of abilities would need 1000 to add Regeneration. An item with 2500 points would need 1500. Something like that, basically, the first 1 mana cost of the original price would only be 0.5 in the new system while the 2000th mana crystal would cost, maybe 2? We can worry about formulas later, the concept is the question first.


I feel the value of creating items with fewer abilities is nonexistent unless it's an earlygame item. How often do you make a Regeneration item without the other 3 slots filled with the best 3 abilities you can reasonably afford? I don't think I do that ever because my hero needs 3 items anyway so putting 4 slots worth of abilities on the first item is strictly superior to making 3 items that each have a third of those abilities. It costs the same but the former leaves me with a perfect item instead of 3 that will be obsolete once I make more. But if the cost difference was larger then investing into weaker items to be able to use them earlier AND not lose the ability to cast other spells for a consecutive 15-20 turns might make casting those items worth it.

This feature could be limited to enchant item and create artifact only, while treasure can stay linear - I think lair difficulty already increases faster than the budget involved (as it often means a higher tier creature or twice as many things shooting your guys the first turn) making the linear cost there completely fair.

One more time, this is just an idea, not something already decided.

For the past few days, I've been playing Streets of Rogue on my Switch.  No, it's nothing like the Sega beat-em-up series Streets of Rage.  Instead, it's a top-down "twinstick" action game with permadeath, many character classes, and many ways to clear (or fail) the missions for each level.


The one successful character I've had so far was a Gorilla.  These apes have maxed out Endurance, Melee, and Speed stats, but have a 1 in Firearms.  Then again, guns are pointless when they have the Stubby Fingers trait that prevents Gorillas from wielding them in the first place.  Another Gorilla drawback is the inability to speak to NPCs unless they find a Translator.  And even if you get that item, shopkeepers are Annoyed with Gorillas because of their Malodorous smell and want to chase them out of their buildings.  Scientists are always Hostile to Gorillas since the apes have a grudge against their experiments.


The Gorilla's special ability is a lunging melee attack, useful considering they have to fight all the time.  Their optional Big Quest is to free trapped Gorillas throughout the levels, which you'll want to do most of the time anyway because they fight alongside you.


Only one "mutator" option was used in my Gorilla run:  No Disasters.  I mostly wanted to get rid of the "different status effects every few seconds" event because it was annoying.  And the game was already challenging enough.  The key to winning was to buy as many Bananas as possible from vending machines, and then take the Gorilla perk that increased Banana healing.  A timely Translator let my character bribe Cops to ignore crimes and pay a Doctor to heal.


Uptown was the hardest area because of the densely packed buildings and many Supercops who were too honorable to bribe.  Mayor's Village was surprisingly simple for a final level, as all my Gorilla had to do was to beat up the Mayor, swipe his hat, get away from the few Supercops, then go to a nearby podium to make a speech.

Hello, Civ General.

I'll be away from civ-capable devices until February 24th, which means I'll miss (probably) 3 turns of PB46 and 1 turn of PB88. I'm managing two very dead civs in PB46 and PB88 is still in its infancy, so these turns are about as easy as they can be. Could anyone sub in very briefly, so I don't anger some 60+ people on the internet?

PB46

Please make one worker move. Just one but if it doesn't happen, I won't win the 52 player pitboss like I promised.    

I've been a longtime solver of crosswords, but a friend recently shared a puzzle that he had created and I was encouraged to try my hand as well. I referred to the guide and resources here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/cross...eries.html and it was a lot of fun, and nowhere near as daunting as I had previously thought.

I figured I'd post my first puzzle here for anyone interested in playing, and I'm open to feedback or questions. As a starting point, I've tried to follow the NYT crossword conventions in terms of theme words, puzzle setup, and clue conventions, and I've aimed at a Tuesday-Wednesday-ish level of difficulty, with a US and millennial perspective. I'm reasonably happy with how this one turned out as a first attempt with a less-than-ideal word bank and about 3 hours of work put into it, but I'd love to get better at constructing these, especially if there's interest here or among my RL friends.

EDIT:

I've revised my first attempt to swap out some words and clues that I wasn't too happy about.




Solution to Hobby Lobbies v2 in spoiler:

I have 2 opponents left, Raven and Oberic. I am at war with Raven, both are allied with Oberic.

I fought a stack of Raven's lizardmen halberdiers with a stack of mostly undead lizardmen halberdiers. Used a confusion and a possession along the way, last halberdier was in confused state. Then Raven fled, the message said enemy fled, you lost fame (?!). THEN it said 5 enemies are raised as zombies. Also, Raven is too low on mana to do combat casting and is banished.

So my stack reverted to where it attacked from on the map. And Raven's stack was replaced by 5 zombies ... of Oberic's!

No-one has Zombie Mastery cast or casting. Raven and myself have death books, Oberic does not. Oberic is casting aura of majesty, only globals are my Just Cause and Detect magic. Both Oberic and Raven have invisbility, so invis hero stacks could theoretically be anywhere (necromancy item). But no hero was involved in combat (I had undead so I would have seen). I  do not have necromancy items.

I saw it in many AAR that peoples tend to place their cities two tiles. What is the reason behind this strategy?
Another question is I have yet to see a tall play style. People tend to expand a lot and without building any buildings in their cities. Players focus on warriors, workers and settlers. Is tall play not a good style in ffh?

Does anyone here have experience with extracting graphics from the original Colonization? I've been discussing this over at CivFinatics here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/c...t-15649815

I'd love to get my hands on both the ColDOS graphics and also the enhanced (often higher resolution) ColWin graphics assets as I and some others have been thinking about trying to make a classic Col style Graphics mod for the excellent FreeCol project (since it's graphics aren't always everyone's cup of tea lol).

Over at CivFinatics it's looking like the Dos version situation is under control and we can extract everything, however no one has had any luck getting into the 16bit dll files that ColWin uses to store its assets in.

If anyone thinks they can help with this please let me know!

Hey guys.. if any of you are or used to be members of the various old Civ forum communities (eg CivFinatics) and you tried Drift's Master of Magic inspired Master of Myrror II & Master of Arcanus final beta mods for Civilization 3 and you think you may still have the files somewhere on some old hard drive PLEASE LET ME KNOW as these great old MoM related mods may be lost forever!

(Note: Drift's original Master of Myrror I mod has been safely backed up, it's just the sequels missing)

My attempts to rescue the mods in Drift's original Master of Myrror II & Master of Arcanus final betas thread is here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/m...t-15458640


Old screenshot of Drift's Master of Myrror:
   

Well, im down to only playing 2pb's + civforum.. Who is up for a balanced but natural map? Rest of the settings i dont care much about other than no spys, and being able to see cities without having to keep track via pbspy.

Signups:

Superdeath - GKC dedlurk
Ruff_Hi
Mr.Cairo
Miguelito
Raskolnikov- Rusten dedlurk
Cornflakes
Elkad
Commodore

PBSpy: http://civ.zulan.net/pbspy/game/91/
Server Url: pb.zulan.net:2049

Please note that the Mod name in this PB will be RtR_BugBeta_0.10.
Moreover, I've changed one file after Charriu's latest post.
Download the mod here.

Looking for signups. Im terribly addicted to this now


Signups:
Superdeath
Azoth
DaveV
JR4
El Grillo
WarriorKnight
Shallow Thought
Aurorarcher
Bobchillingworth
Mardoc

Random.org teams: