Players begone!














This has the potential to be an interesting game: four very different civs, all with a lot of unique flavor. I think Aurorarcher is the strongest player by a good margin, but we'll see how it plays out.

Picks and civ analysis. 

superjm: Volanna of Svartalfar
Bobchillingworth: Garrim Gyr of Luchuirp
Mr. Cairo: Flauros of Calabim
Aurorarcher: Auric Ulvin of Illians


We'll start with me, my list was thus:
1) Auric Ulvin of the Illians
2) Flauros of the Calabim
3) Valledia the Even of the Amurites
4) Cassiel of the Grigori
5) Volanna of the Svartalfar

So I got my second pick. Auro got the Illians, which is annoying, I was looking forward to playing with them. But, the Calabim are good too, I think. At the very least they're the civ I ahve the most experience playing with in SP, and they just seem kinda generally strong.
I picked Flauros (CRE, FIN) mainly for the Creative trait. Their other leaders are Decius (ORG, RAI) and Alexis (PHI, AGG) and I don't have very much experience playing with Raiders or Philosophical, and I wanted mainly economic traits. So Flauros it is.

The Calabim are the Vampires, and their melee unit line has been replaced by Vampire uniques.

Warrior -> Bloodpet. Identical to warriors, but can be eaten by the Vampire unit (see below)
Axeman -> Moroi. The same as Axes, but 15 hammers more expensive (on normal, being FIN, and knowing about cheap markets I'm more likely to be upgrading Bloodpets than building these directly). They have the ability "Burning Blood" It gives them +1 movement, +20% Strength, immune to Fear, and can attack multiple times per turn. It has a 10% chance of wearing off each turn, but also comes with a 20% chance to turn into a barb each turn. They seem very good coupled with Decius' Raiders trait giving them Commando (imagine them with this, mobility, and haste for 4 move blitzing commandos), but they're still good even with Commando. Ideally used when charging into an enemies lands so if they swap to barbs they don't hurt me.
Champion -> Vampire. Cost 60 hammers more (on normal, so again, mostly likely going to be upgrading) and one less defense power. But they come with a bunch of spells and abilities. They start with Body 1 (haste), Death 1 (raise skeleton), Channeling 1 & 2 which lets you promote to Body and Death 2, and Vampirism, which gives three abilities: Feast, which sacrifices population in your city and grants xp to the Vampire. Feed, which sacrifices a Bloodpet in the stack to heal the Vampire and allow it to attack again. And Gift Vampirism, which lets it pass on the Vampirism promo to any living units of at least level 6 (like Mages, for example, who can then easily promote even further by feasting on your cities). They also require the Feudalism tech and the unique building Governor's Manor to build (which I think is an EitB nerf)
Immortal -> Vampire Lord. Can only be upgraded from a unit of level 12 or higher (twice as high a level requirement as the Immortal). Same strength as the Immortal, but as with the Vampire, comes with some spells, the same as the Vampire, but also with Channeling 3 and Mind 1. So they can cast level three spells for Mind, Death, and Body, which is quite good if the game gets that far (it's like another 4 Archmages, if somewhat limited). They also have Vampirism (of course), and like the Immortal, will resurrect in the capital if killed.
Berserker -> Brujah. Identical to the Berserker, but comes with the same spells and abilities as the Vampire.

The mana the Calabim palace gives is Body, Law, and Shadow.
Body  is good for haste, which Vampires have anyway, but Vampires are not easy to get to, so I may well be using Adepts with Haste and Moroi's at first.
The Shadow 1 spell gives Blur to the stack, which makes units in the stack immune to Defensive and First Strikes. Law gives -5% to maintenance costs.
The Law 1 spell gives Loyalty to the stack. It makes them immune to capture, resistant to Charm Person, and most relevant to me, removes Burning Blood. So I can use Burning Blood on a stack if Morois attacking/defending a city, then remove the promo after they've attacked to make sure none become barbs.

The Calabim also have some unique additional buildings:
Breeding Pit: Stores 20% of food like a Granary, and also available at Agri, but it also gives 2 Food and 1 Unhealthiness. I don't know how good they are really, considering the hammer cost (120 on Normal) but I'm going to try them, maybe, which means I might as well try using Granaries and Smokehouses. I don't know about the Slavery route however, it didn't seem to work out with Superjm last game, so I'll probably only build these things later in more established cities.
Governor's Manor: 120 hammers on normal, it has a few effects, the most relevant one being that it's required to build Vampires. It also gives 1 Unhappines, -25% WW, and gives 1 hammer per unhappy face. Which can be a lot of hammers in a big city. Tech requirement is Maths.

Their World Spell is called River of Blood. it requires Feudalism, and when cast reduces the pop in all non-Calabim cities and increases it in my own. Certainly a late game World Spell, and more incentive to go for Feudalism. Ideally used when times with a GA to make the best use of all that pop.

The Calabim work very well with the Ashen Veil and Sacrifice the weak, so I am going to go for that, also Ritualists are good units to tide me over while going to Feudalism and Vampires. I think I'm fairly likely to get Ashen Veil confiding the other civs, one being Agnostic, one being elves and so more likely to want FoL, and Bob with the dwarves, maybe will want AV, but hopefully not.

Here's your free throwaway post as a reward for misclicking on my thread!












Now git out (thanks!!!)

Those dang sneaky dark elves

So after two game where I sorta re-acclimated myself to EITB and experimented with strategies and a civ I never tried before, it's time to back up and go slightly more conventional. And by conventional, I mean OP super scouts of course.

Volanna used to be utterly busted, boasting a ridiculous combo of AGG/EXP traits, Sinister which grants +1 attack strength to all recon units, and Elven's natural abilities on forest (including forest improvements) which granted her a bevy of early bonuses that allowed her to expand very quickly and very safely without too much investment and then parlay that expansion into massive Elven economy nonsense. She was my pick for best all-around leader in the game at that time as she could do pretty much anything she wanted.

In this version of EITB she loses the extremely powerful EXP for the less-powerful-but-still-solid CRE. This is a substantial nerf as Volanna was by far the civ most suited to utilizing EXP's settler bonus to snowball the early game and so she is slowed down quite a bit. Nonetheless, the combination of AGG and Sinister is a potent one and she's still an elf, which means economy is still king as usual. CRE isn't at all bad either, as culture is pretty hard to come by without significant investment in new cities, so city placements can be a lot more liberal when grabbing resources and border wars will favor me the whole game against non-CRE civs, of which there are two.

As for my opponents:

Bobchillingworth as Garrim Gyr of the Luchiurp (FIN/ARC) - The Dwarves again. Great civ with a lot of nice bonuses and crazy worker replacement, but their lack of mobility hurts a lot. Trading out IND for ARC will alleviate this though as it incentivizes pursuing the magic path to gain Mobility mages and in the process get the nice bonus buildings for his golems. FIN is whatever, more gold means better economy and cheap markets are a plus, nothing else to say here really.

Mr. Cairo as Flauros of the Calabim - Ah, vampires. One of my favorite civs to play around with and their cities can get seriously out of control if left alone for too long. The nerf to governor's manors is pretty oof though. No longer replacing courthouses and needing the moderately expensive Mathematics is a major blow, but I understand the change. Having a 3 pop capital from T0 is a pretty big boost as well though there's always the inferior option of holding the WS to cripple us later on. I fully expect to see it popped when I get the save next turn though

Auroracher as Auric Ulvin of the Illians - Man I was hoping I wouldn't have to see these guys. Going against Auric is a royal pain in the neck. Priests of Winter are insanely busted, as is ice mana, and their ability to make any terrain lush enough (for them) to be useful is nice too. Oh right and Statis literally stops the game cold (heh) for (8? 12?) turns. Not looking forward to Ice II mages running around while being unable to build anything.

Since my reporting the last two games has been difficult and not really sustainable, I'm taking a suggestion from the recent thread in Civ General (thanks Krill/plako!) and going 1 image and 1 sentence per turn. Maybe a more in-depth summary at key points but I'll try to see if this lets me report on the game in a consistent fashion rather than trying to make these huge in-depth posts detailing every element of my strategy.

So, the start:




Note that this map is mirrored so what we see is what everyone else sees too.

Insane capital surrounded by a whole lot of nothing much. Good river system though. Fortunately, as the elves those vast swaths of forest are a welcome sight rather than a malice. 1st ring deer tile means everyone gets their worker in 8 turns, thanks Dave! Oh wait, right, Bob has to wait a little longer for his crazy worker unit. Not that that'll hurt him much

So instead of writing more, let's just get this started.

I just found some fun videos: British Museum curator Irving Finkel talks about deciphering the rules for the oldest known board game and plays it for International Tabletop Day 2017. It's similar to backgammon, apparently.

Wikipedia article: Royal Game of Ur

Current Signups-
1. superdeath
2. Mr. Cairo
3. Rusten
4. Gavagai
5. Commodore/pindicator
6. naufragar
7. Donovan Zoi
8. BGN/Xenu

Standard rules/settings

pb38 style civ/leader picking

As the title suggests, likely a start around new years ( im fine with before )

I am worried about the direction of the development....

IMHO, if the ONLY design goal is to encourage people to play a long game, to enjoy the high tier units...  The game will not quite successful.
Different people has different ways to enjoy a game.   Someone simply has no time to play too much and enjoy a rush game.

IMHO, the 1st rule of goal is: to make human happy.   Game is for human to enjoy.  And we need to know men (and women) are different.

I would say, leave some room for fast rush game, like barbarian or werewolves.  Fine.   That's their play style, their enjoy style. Good for them, and the game works for them.  They feel happy.

I play rush game too, IF the rush game does need brain to think.   I don't really want to play long game, simply because too time-consuming.  Thus I mostly want to play strange but working combos, like rainbow books, low-level spell combos, to develop fast in early game.   Rainbow style also allows lots of possibility, due to the unpredictable research/trade spells, to adapt different spells for different combos.  That really need some thinking.

If the rainbow combos are not working for high difficulty level, fine.  I play lower one.  I enjoy the thinking process in the game.

In the word, someone may try to pick a worse, or worst initial picks, but lower the difficulty setting...  If it takes some thinking to play the game, it should be enjoyable.

In summary:  Do not close all doors.  Leave some back-doors (but don't be so obvious).   When the players find the back-door, that's very joyful.


After all, this is a single-person game.

PS. If all doors are closed, i.e. No one can end the game early, you will lost many players. They simply don't want to play the game, ever.

Settings: Huge Land, 4 Opponents, All Fair -> (Difficulty, power minerals climate),
   castor of magic version 5.42

Game not ended yet, currently still playing, @ April 1411.

Starting pick:
Dark elf
Myrran, Astrologer
3 Greens: Web,  Earth to Mud
4 Blues: Focus magic, Psyonic blast, Confusion (surprise: no phantom warrior)
3 Blacks: Life drain, Wraith form

Strategy: Apprentice spam +  As many settlers as possible.

Important progress:
Got summon zombie, resist element from trade with Tlaloc
Obtain summon ghoul from Lair (or Node)
Conquered two nodes  (melt)
Screen shots @ April 1411:
    About 3x powerful than the other two wizards on the same plane (Myrran)


** Never conquered any wizard's city (i.e. All my cities either from my own settlers, or conquered neutral cities).

33 cities, vs. Tlaloc (estimate: 13 cities) vs. Lo pan (estimate 15 cities)
* estimate according to the undiscovered map sizes.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Relation with Tlaloc (has black book): Alliance
Relation with Lo pan: War, and request Tlaloc to fight against.


Lo pan started the fight with me, but I never lost a city (running around 4 battles in 3 cities: those cities got raid, lowering population and destroyed buildings), after that, about 3 or 4 won battle and got  undeads.  (Even in those running around battle, I got some undeads).


Basically Lo pan attacked my one weak defended city.  When I filled the city with enough guards, he turned his troupes to my other weak cities, one by one, on the same land of his major force.

It is reasonable to start attack on the same land.  If not for the same land, it had to use ships, risking to lost the ship and drown.  Even if his army successfully arrived, the supply won't last long (not really a doom stack yet in year 1411).  The conquered city could be easily retaken by me.


@ April 1411, I finally stabilized the situation by summing or create troupes in cities of the same land.  Note that those my cities originally came from a neutral city, were full of undead troupes (coming from original neutral defenders), thus not Lo Pan's target.  Only those created from start (settlers), and maximizing economy (thus less army) are Lo Pan's target.

No tower is open, as far as I know.

Please see the screen shots for detailed progress status:
MagicMenu: for the wizard skill + power base
Mirror: for starting picks and heros.
History, IntelligentAgentReport, MirranMap: You know it.

Attached Files

Thumbnail(s)
       

As you all may have noticed not every player in an MP game is posting regularly in their respective spoiler thread and not everybody is adding screenshots. So I've been wondering if it would be possible to have an oberserver/spectator mode/player in an MP, who would report on the current state of the game. Is this possible from a technical point of view and would you like to have someone do something like this?

Currently, in my test, say, undead hell hound in a chaos node, won't get node bonus (+2 Att, +2 Def, +2 Resist).
Wouldn't it be better if it can have the bonus?  It's now counted as black realm, and thus no bonus.