Can anyone point me to a description of the effects of the various difficulty levels for MoO? What is different on Impossible vs. Hard vs. Average? (Or even Easy, for completeness, not that I intend to play on Easy. ) I know that you have more starting pop below impossible, but what other changes are there?

I am looking at going back and playing some of the old Imperia, and (hopefully) posting some shadow reports. Some of them are not at impossible, and I am curious as to what differences I should expect.

Thanks!

I found a way to implement any value of caster for units. Basically, instead of storing the value in the unit data, we'll use the possibility to flag a unit "caster 20" and "caster 40" at the same time to indicate the unit is nonstandard, and in this case, look up the correct amount from a hardcoded small table. This shouldn't use more than 2 bytes of space in code per unit (the unit type and mana amount), plus the procedure itself which probably fits into 20-25, and as units having 20 or 40 caster don't need to be listed, the list of units will be small as well.

This gives us the opportunity to review existing Caster units and rethink how much they need, and also possibly adjust spell costs that were influenced by it. Do note that we might also want to adjust the unit stats if the caster ability is significantly raised or lowered. Also note adding new units won't be considered until I am playing the race we are adding the unit to in test games, but this definitely opens up the possibility to have such units.

(Note that I haven't thought about actually changing anything yet, I'm merely stating what is possible.)

The units :

Efreet - currently caster 40. If reduced, Doom Bolt can cost 40 against instead of the silly looking 41, but doing so means the Efreet gets to cast fewer spells. While nothing casts exactly 40 on its own, a Warp Lighting+Fire Bolt, or 2 Fireballs and a Firebolt, etc do. Most chaos spells have a cost that is divisible by 5.
Angel - currently caster 20. We can freely raise this if desired, without risking to run into Prayer and Raise Dead (both 40), but 30 does hit invulnerability. I'm not a fan of 20 on this unit as Healing costs 15 and the last 5 cannot be spent in any meaningful way most of the time.
Archangel - Don't think we have a need to keep it exactly 40 - no Life spells are unlocked by having a higher amount as long as it stays below 60, which allows Holy Word. We definitely don't want it at 70 though which enables High Prayer and Supreme Light and Call To Arms. Archangels are quite powerful already, though.
Magicians - We can now let specific races have more, or less MP, albeit this will allow that magician to cast certain spells it currently can't so it's a potentially very influential change that might be better avoided (Flight, Crack's Call comes to mind first)
Djinn - 50 unlocks Haste, Creature Binding and Air Elemental which we probably don't want? All of those are exactly the same cost, so raising/lowering by 1 can regulate which the Djinn can cast without having a big impact on the spells themselves. If we don't want to unlock any, we can still consider amounts between 35 and 49 freely as no Sorcery spell has a cost in that range.
Behemoth - Regeneration costs 32, Entangle is 50. If we don't care about losing Regeneration (which it wasn't able to cast back when it was more expensive anyway), then anywhere from 25-49 is safe.
Demon - We don't have any room for change here - we want it to be able to cast Wrack for 40 but not itself for 41.

Someone posted this on FB and it directs you to a site that says ...

"Only 1% Of The Population Can Figure This Out"

It provides four answers ... 9, 6, 3 and 1.

I then proceeded to get into a FB yelling match about the site's CORRECT answer (3) and what I thought the answer was (9).

Please tell me I am right ... or wrong ... and provide reasoning.

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I've been focusing on actually playing rather than posting this time around, and I'm having fun again. I'm back to one of my favourite strategies: Horsebowmen with Omniscient and Heavenly Light. It's still an absolute powerhouse, and it's highly reliable for both short-term and long-term advantages.

Setup:
3x Life (Heavenly Light, Holy Weapon)
2x Chaos (Flame Blade)
1x Nature (hoping for Resist Elements, Web, Water Walking, Nature's Eye - got Resist Elements, Nature's Eye and Call Centaurs)
Omniscient
Cult Leader
Spellweaver
Warlord

It's February 1409 now, and these are my stats:
12 cities
114 population
346 net gold per turn (103 army upkeep)
607 power (3 medium Arcanus nodes)
Casting skill 120 (+8 from the Druid)
Heroes: Chosen, Beastmaster and Druid

Spells
Life: Incarnation, Raise Dead, Heavenly Light, Astral Gate, Just Cause, Divine Order, Endurance, Holy Weapon, Holy Armour, Heroism, Planar Travel, Invulnerability
Chaos: Hell Hounds, Wall of Fire, Warp Wood, Flame Blade, Shatter, Warp Creature, Mystic Surge, Fire Bolt, Raise Volcano
Nature: Resist Elements, Nature's Eye, Earth to Mud, Earth Lore, Call Centaurs, Sprites

Basically Nature gives me Resist Elements and +2 pop for my cities. Resist Elements is huge, though. I'm facing many sprites, and it's a life saver there. My armies get so much stamina from this one spell, and it's cheap with no upkeep.

Chaos was both for extra power and for Flame Blade. I get a lot of added utility, Warp Creature in particular has been used on numerous occasions. I just recently got Mystic Surge and it's extremely potent. Flame Blade has been used a lot, letting me field deadly Horsebowmen very early on.

Life is as awesome as always, giving me a large complement of unit buffs for my units. Picking Holy Weapon as a starting spell may seem questionable, but I feel it was the right choice. Endurance and Heroism are also great, but Holy Weapon does far more for Horsebowmen. Heroism gives me +2 attack, on a unit with 7 attack that's far less than Holy Weapon gives me. I also get armour, health and crosses but those matter a lot less to me. I just want heavy ranged damage early on, giving me critical mass to punch through things and take out enemies at a distance of 3 before they can hit me.


Big Picture
I started next to Horus, and picked a fight with him early on. He took the nearby High Elf and Orc neutrals, leaving me with just 4 cities. That was way too little, and I had the forces to take the fight to him. My cities all had minerals, letting me buff my horsebowmen quickly. I also took 2 Sorcery nodes defended only by Nagas, only needed around 5 horsebowmen to take out 9 nagas in two battles. Horus was fielding mostly War Bears and Sprites against me, neither posed much of a threat. He did, however, use Guardian Wind to great effect against me so I started investing in Priests as complementary units. I was getting ready to take out his capital guarded by 9 Sprites (all with blue buffs, probably Focus Magic and possibly Guardian Wind as well), and that sounded like an expensive proposition even for buffed horsebowmen. I traded for Astral Gate in the meantime and was able to plop next to Sharee. I had just acquired Catwalk the Chosen One, and with him I mowed through her on Myrror. She has 4 visible cities left + various riff raff elsewhere, and I can take it at will. I'm hoping she will respawn so I can take more spells from her.

I've made peace with Horus, but will take him out shortly with a stack of buffed priests. Tlaloc is roaming my lands with a bunch of werewolves, they pose absolutely no threat if he decides to attack. My cities are all reasonably well stacked with horsebowmen and priests, not going lightly on defense this time. It also seems to deter attacks heavily, maybe a bit too heavily.

Prediction
I'm snowballing big time now, and I have the units and spells needed to win. If I don't research anymore spells (which I am, of course) I think I'll be able to cruise to victory. The biggest threat is probably Dispelling Wave, since I rely so heavily on buffs. Guardian Wind won't be a big problem anymore, my armies are starting to be more mixed. And with the Chosen One, I should be able to chop through anything. Crossing fingers that this prediction isn't too confident, I don't really have much late game experience and I do have two powerful enemies left still. I'm going to keep playing aggressively while I have momentum, I don't want to see them tossing rare and very rare spells all over the place.

PBEM 5 filled up in about 12 hours, and i was unable to join up before the start.

I am seeing if there is any interest in starting another game, maybe with DLC enabled to change it up a bit, or try the inland sea map or even just a standard pangaea.

I have enjoyed reading the reports from the previous PBEM's and think i am able to commit the time to actually playing one.

To quote myself from the recent dwarf testing post :

For an Arcanus wizard, you get to pick from 14 races, and have 294 different ways to spend those 2 picks, totaling 4416 different possibilities.

For Myrran, you get 5 races, and have 1 different way to spend the 2 picks : You pick Myrran from it. So 5 possibilities total. The difference? 4416/5 = 883. There is exactly 883 times less diversity in wizard generation if playing Myrran. Not including additional sub-choices opened by picks such as guaranteed spells, that is, which probably further increase this gap by a factor of 10. Even if good Myrran strategies exist, that sort of loss on diversity is a problem because it's too unfun. To quote a friend " I don't play Myrran, I don't have enough picks that way." and that was before the overhaul of the book system.

While what the retort offers is certainly worth the 2 picks, it making it impossible to play 95% of the strategies in the game is definitely not the right design. The current spellbooks system is very tight on the picks - the "last two" picks are the most valuable in most cases - either by giving you the guaranteed spell, or simply by higher books giving you more spells or letting you play books+retorts instead of just books.

For example, if Myrran, you can't play most Artificer strategies - you don't have enough books picks to make the items! You also can't play any dual realm strategy that is based on 1 guaranteed rare of each realm, or even uncommon if you want to have any retorts and I could continue the list.

I have a little bit of time for playing again, and I like what I see. AI improvements at first glance seem significant. They expand far more actively, forcing the player to be aggressive earlier or lose all the terrain. They also seem to threaten my cities more actively, forcing me to prioritize defense higher than previously. Well done on those points, it makes a big difference and has cost me a game already that I thought was going well.

Cheaper high end summons seems like a good idea, you need a significant reward for committing a lot of resources into researching those spells. On the other hand, getting a lucky high end summon early on is now potentially game breaking. I still feel that the game suffers from the classic MoM problem of common spells lasting too long. In my current game I'm spamming horsebowmen with Holy Weapon + Flame Blade, that'll last me pretty much the entire game (if not for the pesky Guardian Wind which Horus is using quite competently). Maybe boost high end non-summons a bit as well? Or maybe I just suffer from early game bias, I do need more late game experience.

I'll go through the compendium threads and update any changes that I notice.

My first duel, and first Civ6 MP game! (One Civ4 PBEM & Pitboss under my belt several years ago) So a little bit on my thoughts for the civ selection this game:

1. I was strongly considering Russia as the civ pick. I think that they are incredibly strong even not considering the cossacks later on. However I expect this game to be decided one way or another before cossacks come into play. ... Since TheArchduke ended up picking Russia it is definitely my goal to end this game before they enter the world stage!
2. I knew that TheArchduke knew that Russia is a strong civ after the showing in PBEM 2, and thus I strongly suspected that he might go for Russia. Thus if I picked Russia we would end up crossing that off and going for 2nd choices. 
3. I didn't really want to play Russia this game, and as I was looking through the options for other civs to counter Russia as TheArchduke's pick I realized that a duel against Russia would be the perfect place to showcase Arabia. I verified that there are indeed 2 religions allowed on a Duel sized map. With TheArchduke picking Russia with the half priced 2X GProphet production Lavra's it's almost certain that he will go for a religion. With Arabia's ability to automatically get the last prophet, I could rely on TheArchduke to build the early Holy Site and thus get a discount on mine, and then once I see the GProphet counter start I know I have X number of turns to build my own HS in time for the free prophet to land. Thus I can go for an earlier district of some other type (probably Campus since Arabia gets science bonuses)

Tech path generally will be targeting Education for the unique building. Civics path will be generally targetting Monarchy for the production card for the UU. Rough victory conditions in mind from T1 are either a Mamluk invasion with goal to storm the capital and ignore most of the rest of the empire, or religious victory. To the end of Religious victory, I probably won't take Jesuit education saving the faith for religious units.

My thoughts on the first 25 or so turns have evolved since my previous posts in the start of Japper007's PBEM4 thread. I still don't think that early builder is the way to go, but now I'm thinking that early Monumant has great value. Here are some of the options:

•  For builder vs. monument comparison, the production cost is the same 60 cogs. The 3 improvements from the builder save a lump sum of 20 culture from the civics boost. So monument first pays back the 20 culture in 10 turns. Half the time, there aren't 3 tiles at the capital where improvements are readily beneficial anyway so a third of the builder is wasted on an unused mine, or the boost is delayed until the 2nd city is planted. Building a monument first speeds along Craftsmanship as much or more than a builder first, which in turn saves cogs on the first builder as well as military through the policy cards which it unlocks. Also with only 1 contienent the Foreign Trade boost will be impossible. Therefore early culture will be even more valuable in jumping out ahead of the competition. Add too this the fact that an early builder REQUIRES earlier military presence to protect improvements from the barbs and possible opponent pillaging.

•  Early settler ... Settler as a 1st build is a no-go (not even possible until the capital reaches size 2). As a 2nd build I think it only makes sense with Warrior as first build to ensure it can be safely escorted. Warrior > Settler used to be my preferred start, however the 2nd city has been rather underwhelming in it's benefits. What does an early 2nd city provide, as compared to growing the capital early? Essentially it provides free yields from the city center, and cheaper food cost to growth (i.e. the cost to grow pop #2 at the 2nd city is much less than the cost to grow pop #4 at the capital). Food however is the red-headed step child of Civ6 yields. It is necessary for grown, but has rapidly diminishing returns as the city growth costs scale exponentially and the housing penalties cut the yields dramatically. I think the food inefficiency is more than made up in cogs saved by waiting until the capital grows to size 6, triggering the boost for the +50% settler production policy card.
 
•  Early military ... without an early builder or settler to protect, the only value in early military is for exploration. Barbs aren't an issue for the capital, wandering barbs won't be  able to capture an un-defended capital, and by the time the barbs build a full attack force of 2 warriors + 1 slinger I have time to slot in military as 2nd or 3rd builds with the Agoge policy.

•  Early district ... I think that an early Campus has enough value to consider going campus before settler. For one thing there is the lump sum culture from the boost. Considering science, a +2 adjacency campus provides nearly the same yield as a size 3 city at 0.7S/pop.

If there are 3 tiles that can be mined/quaried that will all actually be worked, then moving the builder up probably makes sense as the cog payback time would then be relatively quick. Anyway, this is about all that can be done before seeing the map.

Important first post.

Anybody up for a duel PBEM with relaxed turn pace? I definitely cannot play turns every day of the week. In general I could do 3-5 days depending on the week. I make no promises and some weeks it might be only a couple turns on Saturday. Ideally I'm thinking someone who has approximately the same time window (approximately 6-9pm eastern time US) so that if we are available at the same time we could get in a few turns in that day. Proposed settings:

Using PYDT
Duel-sized Pangea
Standard speed
All map settings standard (climate/sea level/starts/etc)
4 city states
Huts off / Barbs on
NOT always war (i.e. the normal way, war can be declared by the players at will, and peace/friendship/alliance agreed upon). Whether peace/friendship/alliance are agreeable would be up to the strategic decision of the players based on the then-current situation.

Random map roll, play the hand dealt unless it would be un-fun (tundra wasteland, or for some reason a tiny island spawn on a Pangea map roll). 
Civ picks: we both pick from the complete list of base-game civs (including Aztecs and the usual bans) and post in spoiler tags. Once we both make our pick, if it turns out we picked the same civ we cross that one off and make another selection from the remaining.

EDIT: AI diplo, in-game trade screen only. City gifting/ceding allowed and up to player discretion based on strategic considerations at the time.