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Alrighty then...I have no multiplayer experience and joined a PBEM. I’ve also never played as any of the civs I’ve been rolled. This should be interesting, to say the least.

Once upon a time (Civ 3 days) I lurked around here under the handle notoptimal and even played in a couple of the adventures. I picked up Civ 4 and played regularly for quite a while, though never did play in any of the events here. Dabbled with 5 and then got back into things with 6. Generally I’ve played on Prince difficulty across all of the versions, usually as a builder and working towards a non-domination victory. I don’t see that happening here.

I’ve been rolled Egypt/Cleopatra, Arabia/Saladin and Greece/Gorgo. Hmmm...

Greece/Gorgo

The wildcard slot and hoplite provide early benefits with military and flexibility (though the hoplite appears to be bugged), with the Acropolis and Theromopylae providing sources of culture. We’ve also seen this in action in PBEM 2, and for that reason I’m inclined to leave Gorgo to Oledavy. I'd also be concerned that in putting up a turn report I'd say something spoilerish in reference to that game....  

Egypt/Cleopatra

The Maryannu Chariot Archer looks like a powerful unit at first glance. The extra movement, ranged attack, lack of a resource requirement and better melee strength seem to be quite potent. It is also a cheap upgrade into crossbows. However, I don’t see how in an MP situation it would make sense to spend 140 ancient-era hammers cogs into one unit when that’s almost three archers. Perhaps later in the classical era while waiting for crossbows to come in.

The sphinx is an interesting improvement in that it can act as a source of culture and faith. With an early builder putting out a few it’s more cog-efficient than building monuments (2/3 of a builder gets you a virtual monument + 2 faith per turn). However, would those charges be better put elsewhere in the early game?

The district bonus is very intriguing - “built 15% faster if placed next to a river”. What I don’t yet know is if this is done as a production discount or as a bonus to production while building the district (and thus subject to overflow). 

Cleopatra’s bonus to trade routes (+4 gold to Egypt on international routes, +2 gold to Egypt on routes from other civs) could make for a strong economic engine, provided that any surrounding city-states can be kept alive and independent and commercial districts can be built in good time. I don’t see other players allowing traders into their territory for very long.


Arabia/Saladin

Woden provided a good analysis of this combination in his pre-game discussion for PBEM 2. There are good religion/science synergies along with a reasonably powerful medieval unit in the Mamluk. It’d be a defensive game to start with some cogs going into a holy district to grab a religion, then trying to build up the science and culture lead from there.
Religion could play an important part once the medieval era is reached, though I'm skeptical a religious victory is a feasible option in MP.

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I’m leaning towards Arabia/Saladin as it appeals to my inner builder and (thanks to Woden) have formative ideas about a strategy, but want to give both Arabia and Egypt a go in single player just to test drive them.

No fluff, just straight into action.

I think Greece is my best option.

France bonuses seems to be AI based or too late to matter. For the most important part of the game, you are just playing a bland civ. The bonus to wonders implies I'll go for a wonder, but they are all so expensive that I don't think they are worth it.

Greece has some early bonuses and Unique Districts are always nice (for the cost reduction, mostly), but the main advantages I see for it is the hill bias for the start. Hills are key to a good start and, even though we are getting a checked map, this bias gives me a higher chance for a nice Capital. Pericles seems to be straight up worse than Gorgo, but what can you do? The extra civic slot is cool, nothing game changing, but always powerful.

I'm leaning towards England for the novelty factor, since we had two Greeces already in PBEM 2. The Unique Harbour is nice, but it takes a while to get going. The main advantage is the half cost (the extra TR may seem nice at first, but you'll only benefit from that, compared to someone who went for a Commercial Hub, after you finish your own commercial hub, for the extra TR that they won't get -> that makes it basically irrelevant). Coastal bias is not good, I think... Perhaps I should play a game after the new patch, but I doubt it made things that much better. Museum bonus and Sea Dog are likely worthless.

What would make/break England is the Continental bonuses. If I lucked out into a very close different continent, I could get some free hammers and a combat bonus later, but even the best case scenario isn't very inspiring. I can't really settle against human players as you would in a roleplaying SP game, so it's likely I won't be getting much from those abilities.

Important note: England free unit bonus works on captured cities, apparently. This could make a sword attack pretty good, if every captured city meant a new unit. Again, highly situational due to how the bonus works.

Reading a bit more, it seems the rifleman could be a decent unit (it's not a replacement unit, it occupies a void in the tech tree between one unit and its upgrade, meaning it's dominant for an amount of time, considering equal tech). The problem is getting there while everybody else already cashed in on earlier bonuses.

All that said, my brain says Greece, but my heart says Victoria. Also, she's cuter.

What do you think, Pindicator?

Link to my Steam screenshots: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561...reenshots/

Just wanted to start a thread for us lurkers. Be careful when you post here that you don't accidentally post spoilers with regard to PBEM2 as we will all be busy lurking here, too.

I do hope that PBEM3 will have active reporting just like PBEM2.

Wow, it's been probably a year or more since I actually logged into an MP game of Civ. 

Here's a picture of Rob Zombie. Rest below.

Hey All,

I haven't been able to find any information but: does any one have info on installing kyrub's patch on the Mac/GoG version of the game? Can you point me to:

1. The patch
2. The install path for GoG?
3. If there's any difference between Mac/windows installs?

I decided to make Summon Demon an exception to the generic "overland cost = 5x combat cost" rule because no matter how I look at it, it's not worth 205 when you can get a death knight for only twice as much (or demon lord for three times), especially not as a very rare.

So I wonder, which of these cost pairs are more appropriate?

(combat/overland)
41/82
41/123
45/90
45/135
50/100
50/150
other?

A demon is a pretty good in-combat summon because it can fly, has weapon and missile immunity, so it can counter quite a lot of different things, as well as having a 50-50 chance of giving you back 40 of its cost as casting skill, or being able to cause instant death and drain health.
However, aside form the abilities, it's a fairly weak creature - only marginally more powerful than a fire elemental (+2 melee, +1 hit, +2 HP, +3 resistance), so as an overland summon its main role is not those, but to extend the wizard's casting ability by 40 and number of spells the first turn by one for each demon. Which is certainly useful but not really worth the 5x cost, especially as combat skill is generally less valuable than overland skill - it effectively acts as a better, flying magician.
Until there are enough replies for a final decision, I'm going to use 41/123 as the placeholder in the new code.

PS : the overland cost should be 2, 3 or 4 times the combat cost, as there is no space for adding fractions.

In the mod, each unit eats 0.5 food, so each food maintains two units.

However, if you are low on food, you only lose one unit for each missing food - which is inconsistent with the actual cost.

Should I fix this to lose two units for each missing food? (losing units this way is quite annoying so I didn't bother so far.)

I have been playing some personal games to try to improve my skills and put in practice some of the concepts learned from the recent OSGs. (Thanks to everyone for all the helpful advice and information -- these games have been great learning opportunities! )

This afternoon I got stomped by a runaway AI. Large galaxy, 5 opponents, playing as the Meklar. Started in the southeast quadrant, OK but not great starting region with only 1 world in initial range (a decent Steppe 70) but three more habitable planets within range 5, plus three barren worlds nearby. Of course, the Meklar are poor in planetology, so no Controlled Barren. Slow start, needing range 5 or better planetology tech (which goes so slowly as the machines).

What I did not know until later was that three of the AIs were struggling even worse than I was with expansion. Only two AIs really managed to grow: the Darloks, who were busy expanding right into my face and grabbed those barren worlds...and the humans, who ended up with free run of half the galaxy. I got the early warning that the humans were growing fast, but it was GNN announcing they had hit 18 systems (right as I was colonizing my 6th world ) that really made it clear that this game was not going to end well.

I tried to stick things out for the learning opportunities, and being the Meklar meant I had enough production to not fall TOO horribly behind (although I was behind, and by quite a lot). Poor planteology continued to be brutal -- terraforming tech? What's that? Never heard of it...nothing until +60. So all my Meklar bonus and IRC4 did was keep me sort of even (on a per planet basis) with the much larger terraformed worlds of my rivals. But with the humans having 3 times as many worlds...well, there was not much hope. Their population soared, and despite my best efforts to grow my worlds (I did have Atmospheric and Advanced Soil) it ended with a council loss in 2475.

I thought about trying something military to gain tech and worlds, but my neighbors were the Darloks and Humans who were in alliance. I did not have the tech or fleet strength to crack their defenses. Spying against them was also pretty fruitless, with the Darlok racial bonus and the human's ever-increasing tech lead.

I eventually (about 2440) finally made contact with the Alkari, Bulrathi, and Psilons who were in the far northwest after I teched to range 10 and built a long range colony ship to grab a toxic planet in the southwest corner to extend my range. Was able to get Terraforming+20 from the Psilons in trade (poor brains only had 2 worlds), but the humans were so far ahead by that point that it was not nearly enough. Council defeat followed shortly afterwards.

What is the worst runaway AI you have ever faced? Were you able to make a comeback? Share your stories of overcoming tremendous odds...or at least share the misery of getting stomped by an out of control AI.

I'm looking at designing ships for OSG-29. Without any details, I've run into a couple things that confuse me:

Do missiles benefit from Battle Computers on the ships that launch them? I read descriptions that say things like 'guided by a +1 level computer' and I'm not sure what the +1 is comparing to.

What does ship maneuver speed actually do? Does it just allow tactical movement speed?