I was wondering whether apprentices could substitute the magic spirit node cracking strategy which was, I think:
Node Mastery, Alchemy, Archmage, Sorcery Mastery - Magic spirit, and then trying to conquer nodes with phantom warriors (at the time at cost 10 - cheaper with conjurer/sorcery mastery). I think with skill 24, you could have a serious chance at wearing down nodes. 

Apprentices could be a successor. Phantoms cost 14 now, but with 8 apprentices, you can cast them 8 times - plus the one the wizard can cast. 


I once suggested an apprentice-focus magic combo, but it could be more cost-efficient without it. Pick for instance phantoms, web and (depending on your focus) some of the following: Life Drain, Weakness, Warp Creature, Aether Sparks, Firebolt. Or pick focus magic for stronger nodes and psionic blast - illusionary hits higher tier targets hard. So, you can wear down weaker nodes with phantoms, stronger ones when you cast focus magic on your apprentices. If you are worried about dying the first turn, pick resist magic (large shield does ensure some survivalability, though) - and they only need one figure to be able to cast. No use obviously against spiders, but there you might use other options.

They are also versatile against many types of city garrisons. If need be, combine with ghouls (even without focus magic) - warp creature can be efficient. 

Not sure about the workabilty. But even 14 MP gives you some nice options at first glance.
Any thoughts?

Looks like Couerva has dropped out, and while OT4E is covering he is running low on time and has asked us to post for a sub. See PB40 tech thread or the civ spoiler thread for details.

Anyone interested in picking it up? The field is pretty green, but anyone with only a couple of PBs under their belt or coming back after a break would be fine. Only six players, so turn pace is pretty fast.

Anyone noticed that by aligning and linking transportation vehicles (ships, wind walkers), one can implement an unlimited transportation distance in one turn?

The ability to move all units in one turn, is to simulate the parallel moving for all units.  However, due to the UI limitation, we have to move units one by one serially.  This gives us a chance to align transportation vehicles. If those ships were moved simultaneously, the linking-ships unlimited distance transportation won't be possible.

An easy way (but not as accurate) to solve the bug, is to put a "Transportation" counter the same as the transporter's movement points, on each transporting unit.  The "Transportation" counter are granted only once per turn at each unit's first transportation.  Transportation counter reduces one per step as the transporters go.  When it reaches zero, the transporting units can no longer be transported in the same turn.  (Note: the transported units should be able to go by itself after or in the middle of the transportation)

In this way, you can still links vehicles.  However, when "Transportation" counters reach zero, those units have to wait for the next turn to be transported.

A more accurate way (but very hard to implement), is to count the remaining time.   For example, transporter A is capable of moving 4 distance,  and transporter B is capable of moving 5 distance.   Assuming transporting units are first transported by A for 2 moves, linked to transporter B, and let B do the rest transportation.    Since transporting 2 moves by A takes half the turn (half month), for the rest half month, B can do 2.5 transportation moves.

Transporter points should not affect the movement point for the transported units.  This means it's OK for a unit to be first transported by A, and then walk for some distance by itself, linking to B, and then be transported by B.    In the easy implementation, the transportation counter is reduced when it is transported, either by A or B.  It will eventually be reduced to zero, and thus unlimited distance movement is not possible.    Maximum movement = unit max movement + best transporter's movement.

I have asked that question some months ago. However, many settings have changed since, so I would like to ask again: 

What do you consider the strongest setup for each race (if possible, differentiating between rush strategies and long shot-strategies). Then, which races (comparing their setups) do you consider the strongest?
I still feel it is Barbarians (with the Berserker shenanigans) and Dwarfs (nature-based power rush with rich minerals), but only have an incomplete perspective. 
Thanks in advance!

During the weekend I got think about how I found RB. I've got a longer chain of things that needed to happen until I found it, but other may have longer chains and maybe would like to share them. So this is how I found RB:

1. Started a degree course at a local university
   
2. Deceided to quit my degree course at my university and started a program at a game design school
   
3. Befriended a teacher at my game design school
   
4. This teacher recommended the GIA to me.
   
5. Read this GIA article about FF5FJF.
   
6. Started playing Final Fantasy 5 Four Job Fiesta in 2014.
   
7. Someone in their reddit channel recommended Sulla's FF5 Solo reports. Read them
   
8. Noticed and read Sulla's other game reports like for Civ
   
9. Later read his MP reports
   
10. Found RB and created an account
    

I've been playing a game of civ 6 pbem with some friends of mine, but we don't have any supernumerary people to do maps for us.  Aside from the 4-person X map, does anyone here know of reliable ways to get map scrips to give stuff that doesn't completely hose anyone on strategic resources? (never mind giving someone excellent starting land)

We've got significant time left on our current game, but none of us really want to play on a map we know will be predictable enough for it to be a question of execution, but some of the things I've seen in the map-maker threads make it seem like finding a fair map for multiplayer is challenging, to put it mildly.  So, I figured I'd do some asking around to see if there's advice out there.

So, the following happened today...

A friend of mine who pretty much hates the game but ends up playing it every once in a while anyway for some reason, played on Normal.
He was playing Chaos/Nature (random generated) and his plan was to turn a Chaos/Life wizard into an ally.
Things were going fairly well, he had a wizard's pact, and the relation went up to calm.
He could have made the alliance at one point if he had money, but he did not so the AI refused with the new "i expected a better offer" message which indicates they wanted gold or spells. He had a spell to give to the AI, so it was clearly gold. (bug? I thought if the AI wants money but there is no money, they try for spells. I remember fixing that recently. Weird.Investigating. Yes, it's a bug. AI wants a spell that is at least priority>=current turn. Obviously impossible 99% of the time. Wither we should make this something like (turn/8)<=priority or eliminate it altogether. Max spell priority is 54 and those are spells no one would ever give to the AI even for an Alliance.)

Anyway, he missed the chance to get the alliance. So some time goes by, now the AI has more military (was playing barbarian warlord. Yes, that's serious bad luck, he has that sort of luck all the time. Resist 9 Gargoyles died at least 70% of the time to black sleep while he was playing.) and now refuses the alliance due to that.

However he attacks another AI which has an alliance with this AI due to having peaceful personality. Books are Chaos/Life vs Nature/Sorcery so relation is about zero, but peaceful is enough to overcome that. So then the alliance forces the AI to break the wizard's pact and declaring war. And of course this is all the game's fault and mine, definitely not his for attacking that person. (who built a city on their continent, but hey, 1408...was likely the last free tile on the map, not that the AI can comprehend this anyway. Why not attack them after making the alliance? It's not like he had the armies to fight that one player, even ignoring the other AI, especially during a war with a third person and losing his largest army to an air elemental node (I also don't get why he reloaded battles with 1 gargoyle a dozen times but not losing his entire javelineer stack in the node, whatever.))

So this rises a few questions, in particular :
-Maybe the AI should not make alliances on Normal and lower difficulty?
-Alternately, maybe reducing the difficulty modifier in the AI to AI diplomacy formula was a mistake? If the difficulty modifier is high, but is set up in a way the result is unchanged in Expert, then the AI will ally less on lower difficulties. (but they ally more on Master which I think would be a problem.)
-Maybe the AI should not use only their own personality in the formula? As is, the human does get the advantage of making alliances with the peaceful wizard, but if they wanted to attack that one and be on good terms with the ruthless one instead (which depending on book colors or overall game state can be the good choice) they do not have this sort of advantage while that Peaceful AI still enjoys the Peaceful benefit in making an alliance with a Ruthless wizard. So maybe the formula should be the average of the two personalities, instead of only one of them?

His other complaint was he expected the Chaos/Life wizard to declare war on the nearby Death wizard. This never happened - Militarist is scaled by game turns and the game was only played up to 1408 so it couldn't work (otherwise it should have eventually triggered as Barbarian Warlord was far ahead in military strength). Generic was was not an option due to the difference. Relation wasn't low enough (0 alignment vs -10) to force an automatic war. Hostility rolls had, if I remember the formula well, 52% chance of turning hostile every time, but either his bad luck, or the fact the AI has no curses and due to low difficulty, no relevant forces to actually attack with, so even if hostile, not war happens as nothing worsens relations resulted in nothing happening at all until 1408.
Ultimately, all the mechanism we added to make sure the AI doesn't declare too much war on the human, resulted in the human unhappy because the AI wasn't declaring war on itself.
I don't really think anything can be done about this one, nor do we need to, just saying, less war even if beneficial to humans, makes them unhappy. Anything short of directly helping them by making AI's fight each other is just not enough to satisfy...quite a lot of players I think. But doing that would make the game way too easy.

For a blue monster summoning spell, we can get research bonus from retorts:

specialist 12%,
Omniscient  + blue 8 books (16%+3.5%*7 = 39.5%)
Conjurer 25%

I expect to have 76.5% (12%+39.5%+25%) reduction. 
Or perhaps I can expect them to be multiplied, and the reduction should be:
    1 - (1-12%) * (1-39.5%) * (1-25%)  = 1-40.5% = 59.5%
Or even counting research pt boost of:
    100%+12%+25%+39.5%=176.5%  (addition formula)
    112%*125%*139.5% = 195.3%  (multiplication formula)

But for a Nagas spell research, I see:

Research cost = 320, the same as normal cost
Research merely 3pt boost when I throw in 10 pt, i.e. I got total 13pt for 10pt invest.

So, what is the real formula?

What specialist retort will do when two realms have the same highest number of spell books?

For something a little less frustrating after the solo FFTA challenge, I decided to do a quick run of Sacred Stones with (mostly) solo Seth on Difficult.  Seth is widely regarded as one of the most overpowered characters in the GBA Fire Emblem games.  He's an early game Paladin in the tradition of Jagen, Marcus, and Frederick, but he has better stat growths than most characters of that archetype.

People whose first Fire Emblem game was Awakening may have to have some mechanics explained.  There's no Pair Up, for starters.  The closest equivalent is Rescue, but that decreases Speed and Skill instead of giving stat buffs.  There's also a magic triangle similar to the lance/sword/axe one.  Light beats Dark, Dark beats Anima, and Anima beats Light.  Don't expect to breed super units like Lucina or Morgan either, because that doesn't exist in GBA Fire Emblems. 

Constitution is a fixed stat that determines how heavy your weapons can be without taking a Speed penalty.  Skills don't exist, with the exception of certain classes (i.e. the Assassin's instant-kill that has a 1/2 critical percentage chance to activate, the Bishop's bonus attack against monsters, etc.)  Reclassing isn't available, but branching promotion is.

However, Sacred Stones resembles Awakening more closely than the older FE games released outside of Japan.  You can move around on a map and buy weapons.  It's possible to fight "skirmishes" against monsters, and you can grind levels in the Tower of Valni after the story branching begins.

Seth's base stats:

HP:  30
Strength:  14
Skill:  13
Speed:  12
Defense:  11
Resistance:  8
Luck:  13
Move:  8
Constitution:  11


Growth Percentages

HP:  90
Strength:  50
Skill:  45
Speed:  45
Defense:  40
Resistance:  30
Luck:  25


Franz's growths for the sake of comparison:

HP:  80
Strength:  40
Skill:  40
Speed:  50
Defense:  25
Resistance:  20
Luck:  40

So the pre-promoted Seth not only has better starting stats, he also has growths at least on par with other mounted units for the most part.  You can probably see why Seth is banned from some challenge runs! 


Prologue

-All it took was sitting Seth in place and letting the Brigands try and fail to kill him.  His Steel Sword defeated them easily.


Chapter 1

-The Fighters and Soldiers were easy.  I couldn't stop Franz from getting in one attack with his Iron Lance during Enemy Phase.

Chapter 2

-With no Vanessa the Pegasus Knight to fly him to safety, Ross the trainee died quickly to a Brigand attack.  I hid the other units in the upper-left corner of the map while Seth slashed everything to death.

Chapter 3

-One exception I'm allowing for this "solo" playthrough is using a Thief to open doors and treasure chests.  Colm's still not allowed to fight.  The items available were common weapons, including an Iron Lance and a Javelin.  Seth loved to break down walls, because Lockpicks were for the weak.

Chapter 4

-This was the first map featuring monsters such as Bonewalkers (skeletons with weapons), Revenants, and Mogalls (eyeballs).  I had to restart the fight once because I left Eirika in the upper-left corner, unaware she'd be surrounded by Revenant reinforcements later.  Oops!  At least wasn't like Awakening where reinforcements appear out of nowhere and attack on the same turn.  On Take 2, I didn't want to take any chances.  I rescued Eirika for the whole chapter.  It may have left me unable to double attack, but it got the job done.  Artur was left to rot, and soon died after repeated monster attacks.  I got Lute out of the village for completion's sake.       

Chapter 5

The only treasure I managed to get was the Dragonshield.  No, I didn't know where the items were.  I just happened to pick the right one.  A permanent +2 Defense is always nice.  Most of the chapter was spent lugging Eirika around, which made it a little harder than usual.  Occasional damage from axe wielders forced me to use Vulneraries.  Joshua foolishly attacked Seth.  So much for the guy with the cool hat!

Chapter 5X

-Seth wasn't in this chapter, so I let Orson kill most things to finish it quickly.  Forde was disappointing as always and perished quickly in a treasure room.  To get to the throne quickly, I had Kyle rescue Ephraim and then handed him off to Orson like the Pony Express.


Non-Essential Character Casualty Count

Ross
Artur
Joshua
Forde


Seth's stats pre-Dragonshield at Level 7

HP:  36
Strength:  17
Skill:  16
Speed:  13
Defense:  14
Resistance:  10
Luck:  15