War was beginning.

This might as well be the year after 2100 AD since x-platform play got implemented. .

(August 22nd, 2018, 07:41)TheArchduke Wrote:

Quote:Alhambram: Kongo, Rome, China
The Black Sword: Norway, Greece (Pericles), Russia
marcopolothefraud: America, Germany, Arabia
Grotsnot: Japan, Spain, Aztec
BUFFBUNNY: France, England, India
Alhazard: Egypt, Greece (Gorgo), Brazil 

Your rolled civ choices. Courtesy of civdrafter.

Players turn around!

Hi guys (and gals?). I do not know if it is allowed to advertise games on another site, but since there are not many games here recently and some players might be looking to play some civ4 pitbosses, I will do so. Couple of years ago I started playing at the Spanish speaking APT tournament located at Apolyton. It is organized championship with pointg distributed for wins and ranking, rules and regular games.

Of course the obvious drawback is the need to use Spanish at least to some extent, but this is not that great inconvenience. Google translate does decent job and also many of them, including the administrator speak English too. The other thing is you will have to learn the few rules there are in the tournament and to agree to follow them. Which are not that hard - like no razing of cities bigger than size 8, no double moving when declaring war, no speaking with other players before you get Alphabet and so on. There is a small test before you are allowed to play in order to be sure you know and agree with the rules of the community and the tournament, but I can help you with it if someone needs it. So far for the cons.
 
And now for the good part:
 
- There are at least 5 pitboss games starting each year. 4 normal pitbosses and one in modern era with advanced start, so your thurst for Civ4 is always satisfied.
- 20+ active players in the community.
- There is a mod which makes virtually impossible to double- move. Some of you might know it from the Intersite demo game. It allows connections to the game only for players who can play and the other parties in turn split will have to wait to play their part. Each party is given separate 24 hours window to play.
- There is score and points given for each game and then each player is put in rankings, so for the competitive ones there are medals and cups and Hall of Fame. There is written history of all the games and players back to the beginning of the tournament 10 years ago so you can compare yourself to the heroes of the past and make new feasts and glory.
- There is a money pool which is divided between the players who end up in the top 3 place of the tournament for each year.
- Games are played with diplomacy ON and tech trading ON, but brokering OFF. Of course it is your choice to use and to what extent diplomacy. You can only use short agreements with specific clauses as NAPs, military alliances, trade deals, etc, or you can try to create relationships with other players.
- Anonimous play - no one knows who is who at the start of the game. This gives the comfort for both novices and perceived strong veteran players. Novices will not be automatically targeted as easy victims and veterans will not get dogpiled just because they pose stronger threat in the future.
- Each player who is alive gets points which contribute to the year ranking, so there is stimulus to play as leader of a real nation and not only to play to win the game at all costs. Plus there is a reward for improving your position no matter if you have chances to win the game or not.
- Hosting is top notch with dedicated site for games tracking and fully responsive administrator.
 
Anything else you can be interested in before joining, you can ask me here and I will answer to the best of my knowledge. Or if all this sounds already good to you and you want to join this alive Civ4 pitboss community, you can do so at:
https://apolyton.net/forum/civilization-...-ntilde-ol

I guess many of you already do have Apolyton account, so that will be even easier.

The next game starts in just 7 days from now and have 4 free slots. It will be natural Archipelago map with random restricted leaders.

Well, that is for now, hopefully see some of you there.

Mine is Artificer, 2 Death, 3 Nature, and 6 Sorcery...  With 2 Death I pick Wraith Form, with 3 Nature I pick Web and Earth lore, and with 6 Sorcery I pick Aether Sparks, Floating Island, Focus Magic, Blur, Psionic Blast, Aether Binding, and Uranus' Blessing, and a race that can build both magic market and wizard's guild...

Wraith Form is just a spell that makes your beginning of the game that much more pleasant, Web to make those annoying flyers aground, Earth lore so you can reveal the map and the garrisons of features, Floating Island for expansion, Focus Magic for the wizards, Aether Binding for extra SP, and Uranus' Blessing for ultimate magic power boost/city defense...

And Artificer for creating artifacts at half the cost so I can deck out an army of heroes and sweep...

Anyways, this was my all time favoritest picks...  Enjoy~!

Since I have some time at home today, I played Super Mario RPG instead of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.  It's the first RPG I played, and I'd highly recommend it as an introduction to Japanese RPGs.  The game itself is pretty easy, so it was about time to try a solo run.  Not Mario, however.  I had a different character in mind.


Bowser's Castle

-This is the tutorial dungeon, where I fought a few Koopas and then Bowser himself.  Princess Peach told me to attack the chain, not Bowser himself.  The reason for this is that we were battling on chandeliers.  A Jump and a punch later, Bowser was crashing to the ground.  This was a pointless victory when a giant sword crashed into Bowser's Castle and sent everyone flying in different directions.

Mario's Pad

-Toad tried to teach me the basics about saving, sleeping to restore health, and combat, but I told him I already knew about timed hits. 


Mushroom Way

-I ran through this area as fast as possible, trying not to level up.  The bosses here were the Hammer Brothers.  Their Hammer Time move hit hard for this point in the game.  I managed to take out the first with a couple of Jumps, but then ran out of FP. 

Flower Points are basically MP, but they have slightly different mechanics from what you might be used to in other games.  All party members share FP instead of having individual reserves, and they cannot be gained through level up.  The only way to get a higher maximum FP is to find flowers and items like "Flower Tab" and "Flower Jar" throughout the world.  Anyway, I had to beat the other Hammer Brother with my crummy punches.  The surviving Hammer Brother buffs his defense significantly when his partner dies.


Mushroom Kingdom 1

-Princess Peach's hometown was the first opportunity to shop.  Mario pantomimed the incident at Bowser's Castle in greater detail than any human could.  He transformed into Bowser and Peach and everything!  A boy who looked like a wad of cotton candy was chasing a blue crocodile through the town, but the reptile stole his coin anyway.  Cotton Candy Kid said his name was Mallow, and started to cry.  This made it rain until Mario agreed to help.  A nearby Toad said he left his bazooka at home, and couldn't fight Croco himself.  It was time to go to Bandit Way and start the first real challenge.

Bandit Way

-First things first in any solo run:  Kill off the other characters!  Unfortunately, a game mechanic previously unknown to me ruined that plan.  After Mario died in a random battle, he revived after the fight with 1 HP.  To mimic the ideal of a solo run, I decided to have Mario defend or launch useless attacks in random battles to reduce his HP to an amount low enough to die in one hit from a boss.  Mallow would do all the actual fighting.  (There's one later fight that's impossible to do as a solo anyway, so might as well have him level up slightly before that part.)

Mallow is sort of the Red Mage of Super Mario RPG.  He's useful early on, but most players dump him for either a superior healer (Peach) or a better fighter (Geno, Bowser).  I'm planning on soloing the game with Mallow to prove the naysayers wrong.  He starts with Thunderbolt, an electric attack that hits all enemies, and he gets the single target healing spell HP Rain at level 3.  He doesn't get any new moves until level 10.  Keep in mind that the maximum level in this game is 30, and the average player may get into the low 20s by the end.

Mallow wasn't meant to be a melee fighter, so I was relying mostly on Thunderbolt to deal damage.  The problem of course was low FP.  I often had to run back to Mario's Pad to restore my magic.  Fortunately, an invicibility powerup auto-killed enough K-9s to level up to 3 to get HP Rain.  Just in case, I fought enough enemies on the map to level up to 4.  By this time I had Pants armor and an Antidote Pin.

Croco was Mallow's first boss, and the fight was much more interesting without Mario.  Normally, you're supposed to have Mario exploit Croco's weakness to fire, but he couldn't save me this time.  Croco had two main attacks.  A dash hit Mallow for about 4 damage or so, and a bomb hit for about 10 damage if it didn't miss.  Mallow needed FP much more than HP.  He was reliant on Thunderbolt for damage, and the attack cost 2 FP per use. 

Quite a few Honey Syrups were needed here, and getting a couple of "freebies" helped.  Consumable items sometimes give you a replacement when you use them, and it's a nice way to prevent hoarding.  Once I ran out of Mushrooms, HP Rain provided healing (30 without a timed hit, and 37 with one). Late in the fight, Croco used a "Weird Mushroom" to restore 60 HP.  More Thunderbolts eventually defeated him.



Mallow's current stats and equipment.  Parentheses indicate the value with equipment bonuses added, as depicted in the status screen:

Level 4

Speed:  18
Attack:  27
Defense:  10 (18)
Mg. Attack:  20
Mg. Defense:  15 (20)

Weapon:  None
Armor:  Pants
Accessory:  Antidote Pin (Status ailments kill in any RPG solo run.  No enemies have poison to my knowledge yet.  K-9s love using Fear, which is an attack and defense debuff.)

Really...  You need one of the two...  Glad Dark Ritual now triples shrine/parthenon/cathedral and Uranus' Blessing is a 'REAL' blessing...  Well, anyways just my opinion...

Hey!  Just wondering if anyone is playing this or other DOS games effectively on an iPhone.  It would make my life a lot better if I could play this on my phone but I’m afraid to spend money on the current apps as they look outdated.  If anyone could point me in the right direction I would super appreciate it!

I miss the good old MOM where the heroes do not have limited ranged shots instead get a shot at 3 mp per shot...  Could an option be created to relive this nostalgic variation?  Thanks in advance even if this post gets ignored~! 

See Death thread, I believe Possession currently might not be fairly balanced (though I can't say it's bad this way, but it's certainly on the powerful side.)