First game is done. Won easily - not surprising on Hard with a strong early game.
The Myrran wizard had Pestilence - I suspect from a tower - if I this was a higher difficulty game I might have lost to that by itself, but they had no chance to stop my Efreets using their uncommon spells, and had far too few cities to matter. Game ended extra early, in 1413.

Here is the video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a4mrpXm...e=youtu.be

Something probably has to be done with the unreasonable efficiency of heroes in the early game - no idea what though, if they are weaker, they can't survive until they become relevant. Also, even if they had lower starting armor, tactician, holy armor, etc are still there to raise it. It's not just the melee heroes either - a ranged or caster hero can deal plenty of damage and then. I might be overestimating Hard difficulty though, I suppose it's easy to beat it with anything anyway - and I don't think this hero problem exists on extreme/impossible where the AI can afford casting multiple fire bolts per battle and/or research good antihero spells faster.

One thing that worries me though - with the free sawmill, the player doesn't need to spend their gold on it, allowing them to hire a hero a dozen turns earlier which might be a problem.

Maybe "no heroes for hire before turn X" could be a good addition? I think there is an earliest turn for mercenaries too, for a similar reason.

The new version is ready, but as it contains two major changes that we might or might not like in the end, I decided to release it as an experimental version first.

The download is the usual location, but the filename is "CasterEXP.zip" instead of a version number.

If we are satisfied with the results, this will be the next "official" release, if not, I can remove whichever features we didn't like. The features I consider "experimental" are the new spell system, spell treasure roll, and the new Sprites unit.

Quote:-Easy difficulty AI is no longer allowed to buy production for gold - this should reduce losing units to maintenance costs somewhat. (Easy AI has no maintenance discount and income bonus)
-All units regain their movement allowance before the AI turns start as well as before the human's turn. This should fix all issues with the AI not being able to move stacks the human player attacked - particularly, if the AI fled the battle, as the problem was fixed for other cases a long time ago.
-Added some additional conditions for AI priorities on economic buildings especially when the AI is low on gold. This should improve performance of low difficulty levels a little.
-Fixed bug : When AEther Sparks reduces ammo from 1 to 0, the ranged attack is not removed.
-When spells are awarded in treasure, the spell given will always be the exact same rarity as intended - if such a spell is not possible to find, no spell of other rarity is replacing it.
-When spells are awarded in treasure, spells that cannot be researched by the wizard are preferred. If everything can be researched, spells not in the current research candidates are preferred. The spell currently being researched is never chosen unless nothing else is available.
-Changed spell amounts per spellbook, starting spell amount per spellbook, and added Guaranteed Uncommon and Rare spells. This is an experimental feature subject to further change. Guaranteed Uncommon spells are automatically upgraded into guaranteed to appear on turn 1 if book counts exceed 7.
C/U/R/VR , C Starting/ U Guaranteed/ U Guaranteed turn 1 research/ R Guaranteed, other effects
Book 01 : 3/1/0/0, 0/0/0/0, Find/Trade common
Book 02 : 3/2/1/0, 1/0/0/0, Find/Trade Uncommon
Book 03 : 4/3/2/1, 2/0/0/0, Find/Trade Rare
Book 04 : 5/4/3/2, 3/0/0/0, Find/Trade Very Rare
Book 05 : 6/5/4/3, 4/1/0/0,
Book 06 : 7/6/5/4, 5/1/0/1,
Book 07 : 10/7/6/5, 5/2/0/1,
Book 08 : 10/10/7/6, 5/0/2/1,
Book 09 : 10/10/10/7, 5/0/2/0, +8% research, -5% casting cost
Book 10 : 10/10/10/10, 5/0/2/0, +16% research, -10% casting cost
Books  found in treasure follow this same pattern but have an exception : Book 2 contains 2 extra commons.
-The AI will prioritize the research of Aura of Majesty, Stream of Life, and Astral Gate before other spells.
-Sprites now has 2 ranged, 2 shields, 2 hit points, lucky, and a new ability : Fairy Dust Attack. This is an experimental feature subject to further change. Ranged attacks performed by the unit hit the target with a “Fairy Dust” spell that has strength equal to the attacking figures+2.
-Raised the amount of monsters in Towers by an additional +500 points, it is now 2000-4400 points.

As part of the new experimental spell system, the AI also needs to be able to use it.
As the spell choices are entirely remade, this allows the AI to be smarter than "always pick X spell first".

I'm planning to have this list of rules for AI choices, executed in this order. If a spell is picked after the AI has no more picks in the category, it'll be ignored - in other words the first spell(s) that match the rule will be picked up to the amount allowed.
If only a spell name is in the row it means the AI always picks that spell, otherwise the conditions under which it is chosen are listed after the spell name.


; Life starting spell #1 : Heroism
; Life starting spell #2 : Just Cause
; Life starting spell #3 : Healing
; Life starting spell #4 : Heavenly Light
; Life starting spell #5 : Endurance
; Death starting spell #1 : Ghouls if fewer than 4 Nature books
; Death starting spell #2 : Wraith Form
; Death starting spell #3 : Black Sleep
; Death starting spell #4 : Summon Zombie
; Death starting spell #5 : Darkness if fewer than 4 Nature books
; Death starting spell #6 : Mana Leak
; Nature starting spell #1 : Sprites
; Nature starting spell #2 : Water Walking IF not Wraith Form
; Nature starting spell #3 : War Bears
; Nature starting spell #4 : Web
; Nature starting spell #5 : Nature's Eye IF Sorcery>=5 or Chaos>=5
; Nature starting spell #6 : Call Centaurs
; Nature starting spell #7 : Earth to Mud
; Chaos starting spell #1 : Fire Bolt
; Death starting spell #7 : Life Drain if not Fire Bolt
; Death starting spell #8 : Weakness
; Chaos starting spell #2 : Wall of Fire
; Chaos starting spell #3 : Hell Hounds if not War Bears and not Ghouls
; Chaos starting spell #4 : Fire Elemental if not Summon Zombie
; Chaos starting spell #5 : Corruption
; Sorcery starting spell #1 : Confusion
; Chaos starting spell #6 : Shatter if not Black Sleep and not Confusion
; Chaos starting spell #7 : Warp Wood
; Chaos starting spell #8 : Eldritch Weapon
; Sorcery starting spell #2 : Floating Island IF not Water Walking and not Wraith Form
; Sorcery starting spell #3 : Nagas IF not Sprites
; Sorcery starting spell #4 : Focus Magic
; Sorcery starting spell #5 : Psionic Blast IF not Fire Bolt
; Sorcery starting spell #6 : Resist Magic
; Sorcery starting spell #7 : Guardian Wind IF not Warp Wood
; Sorcery starting spell #8 : Phantom Warriors
; Sorcery starting spell #9 : AEther Sparks
; Death guaranteed UNCOMMON #1 : Black Prayer
; Death guaranteed UNCOMMON #2 : Werewolves if 8+ Death books
; Death guaranteed UNCOMMON #3 : Shadow Demons
; Nature guaranteed UNCOMMON #1 : Cockatrices if Focus Magic
; Nature guaranteed UNCOMMON #2 : Transmute if Warlord, Gnoll, Lizardmen, Klackon, Myrran and not POOR minerals
; Nature guaranteed UNCOMMON #3 : Giant Spiders if (not Myrran or human Myrran) and not Cockatrices
; Nature guaranteed UNCOMMON #4 : Crack's Call if all books Nature, Sorcery and Life
; Nature guaranteed UNCOMMON #5 : Great Lizard if not Shadow Demons
; Nature guaranteed UNCOMMON #6 : Change Terrain
; Nature guaranteed UNCOMMON #7 : Land Linking
; Sorcery guaranteed UNCOMMON #1 : Aura of Majesty if 8+ Sorcery books and not Chaotic
; Sorcery guaranteed UNCOMMON #2 : AEther Binding if 8+ Sorcery books
; Sorcery guaranteed UNCOMMON #3 : Spell Blast if not Lawful/Peaceful
; Sorcery guaranteed UNCOMMON #4 : AEther Binding if Lawful/Peaceful
; Sorcery guaranteed UNCOMMON #5 : Spell Lock if at least 6 Nature+Life books
; Sorcery guaranteed UNCOMMON #6 : Dispelling Wave
; Chaos guaranteed UNCOMMON #1 : Fire Storm
; Chaos guaranteed UNCOMMON #2 : Gargoyles if not Giant Spiders and not Werewolves
; Chaos guaranteed UNCOMMON #3 : Lightning Bolt
; Life guaranteed UNCOMMON #1 : Stream of Life if 8+ Life books
; Life guaranteed UNCOMMON #2 : Astral Gate if 8+ Life books
; Life guaranteed UNCOMMON #3 : Prayer
; Life guaranteed UNCOMMON #4 : Divine Order if Death+Chaos books<=2
; Life guaranteed UNCOMMON #5 : Stream of Life if Peaceful
; Life guaranteed UNCOMMON #6 : Astral Gate if land size>=Large
; Life guaranteed UNCOMMON #7 : Unicorns if not Giant Spiders and not Gargoyles and not Cockatrices and not Great Lizard
; Life guaranteed UNCOMMON #8 : Resurrection
; Nature guaranteed RARE #1 : Survival Instinct if Chaos+Nature+Death books>=9
; Nature guaranteed RARE #2 : Gorgons (Sorcery/Life has poor chances of a rare creature)
; Chaos guaranteed RARE #1 : Doom Mastery if Survival Instinct
; Chaos guaranteed RARE #2 : Flame Strike
; Sorcery guaranteed RARE #1 : Mind Storm if Death>=4
; Sorcery guaranteed RARE #2 : Air Elemental if Conjurer
; Sorcery guaranteed RARE #3 : Magic Immunity
; Life guaranteed RARE #1 : Invulnerability
; Death guaranteed RARE #1 : Famine if Maniacal or Ruthless
; Death guaranteed RARE #2 : Wraiths if Focus Magic
; Death guaranteed RARE #3 : Dark Ritual if Cult Leader or Beastmen/Draconian/Dark Elf
; Death guaranteed RARE #4 : Wave of Despair

Guaranteed uncommons mean both the "guaranteed uncommon" and the "guaranteed 1st turn research" features, the latter replacing the former if 8 or more books are picked (which guarantees all 10 uncommons anyway).
If I overlooked anything important the AI should consider for their starting picks, let me know and I'll add it.

I'm trying this scenario out purely because I took one look at the start and realised I had no idea where I was going to put the capital, and therefore in the interest of getting better at civ I should probably attempt it. So, thinking out loud for a while, the settling options:

Settle 1W

pros:3 2-production hexes in range

cons:
Takes up a critical hill
Awkward placement with regards to resources

Settling where the warrior is just feels very suboptimal to me. It has 3 resources just outside the initial radius of the city by 1 hex, and also takes up one of those incredibly valuable hill tiles. On the other hand, in terms of getting a fast start, having a 2/2 tile to work is incredible, and being able to go on to either a 3/1 or a 1/2 afterwards is great. It's just so hard to put a city there when there are multiple good hexes that would be just missed out by 1 hex, alongside not having any culture bonuses to grab them fast enough (i.e. not rome). Furthermore, losing the one hill tile from placing the city there also weakens the optimal industrial zone location 1W of the warrior, although on the whole I'm not sure how much the 1 production/turn lost will matter.

Settle in place

Pros: No wasted turns from movement
Good district placements

Cons: Eats the best possible tile for the city to work early-game.
Takes out a decent second city location

Settling in place feels like the wrong decision. After the bananas and plains forest there aren't that many good tiles to work, and the resources again annoyingly one tile out of range, although are of slightly higher quality. In addition, the 1W plan leads into a great second city location 1E of the floodplains, and settling in place blocks that, with no clear location to move the city site to.

1SW

Pros: Keeps best tile
Allows for best industrial zone placement
Directly upgrades the resource (citrus > banana always)

Cons: Eats a forest
Blocks currently planned second city
Difficult to acquire future luxury resources
Uncertain positioning for campus

This might be the best option. It has 1 fewer 1/2 tile that the 1W option, but allows for more mines, a better industrial zone, and an earlier luxury. I can always reposition the eastern city. However, I'm less than thrilled at having to waste a forest, and I have to hope for more rivers if I am to use some of the luxuries far off from it any time soon. Every location is a compromise, and this one could well be weaker than I think, as I could be overvaluing having a luxury in the first ring.  

2W

Pros: Access to quick stone for a 2/2 tile and masonry boost
Allows for a stronger western city that will work more luxuries

Cons: Doesn't actually improve on resource access (still 3 in second ring)
Lots of turns of movement
Eats best industrial zone placement completely
Probably will lead to wasted hexes to the east

Not too happy with this location, but it's important to consider all possible starts. This one leaves the east wide open, and has a whole pile of early potential production. The cost comes in the additional turns to move there (which essentially decreases the production/food total as fewer turns are spent working the tiles), and the loss of the optimal industrial zone location. The transit time seems like it will be the biggest issue here, with the tiles surrounding it being passable.

Overall, I think that I will go with either 1SW or 1 W. Currently I have severe reservations about going 1W due to not getting the optimal industrial zone, but on the other hand my biggest weakness both as a player and in life is an inability to compromise and accept suboptimal results (which is why this start is hard for me), so my feelings are probably unfounded. If this was a PBEM or Pitboss or something, I would probably ask lurkers to help me decide, but alas, while they may watch, I don't think that they can give commentary for adventures, so my only course of action is to sleep on it. Maybe in the future, an adventure based around pairs of people competing together, either as a mini succession game or with one person only being allowed to give advice from the thread might be interesting. So ends my initial report of zero turns played and a whopping sum of zero GP generated :P

Adventure Four: Gotta Catch 'Em All!

Sponsor: Sullla
Opening Date: Saturday, March 18
Duration: Five Weeks



Map Script: Pangaea
Game Speed: Normal
Difficulty: King
Civilization & Leader: Mvemba of the Kongo
World Size: Small
Opponents: Five
City States: Twelve (standard number is nine)
Rules: Standard
Victory: Any
Version: Third Patch (including Aztecs)

For this game, players have one simple goal: recruit as many Great People as possible!

Custom Scoring:

1 point: EACH Great Person recruited of any type by Turn 250. There are no restrictions on how the Great People are earned. Good luck, and do your best to catch 'em all.



Closing Date: Monday, April 24. Game results must be posted within 48 hours of the game's closing date. For Adventure Four, we will be breaking from past tradition by community request. This is an Open Spoilers game; players are free to create spoiler threads in the Civ6 Event Reports forum and update their game while playing. Non-playing lurkers are welcome. If you are planning on taking part in this game, we ask that you not read anyone else's spoiler thread until after completing your own game. Another way of putting this: treat Adventure Four like one of our Pitboss or PBEM games, and avoid reading the other threads while playing.

You are also completely welcome to play and report Adventure Four in the traditional fashion and hold off on reporting anything until the Closing Date. We're running this on a trial basis at community request, and we'll see how this format ends up working. Good luck!

Starting Savegame File

As the starting sawmill likely has a significant effect on the Conjurer strategies, I'm going to test it again.

Game 1
Alchemy, Conjurer, Specialist, Spellweaver, Nature books

The first thing I notice is, my gold income is horrible - the sawmill eats 4 gold a turn. I have to start the game by building a marketplace to be able to fuel spells through Alchemy.
Earth Lore reveals a node with many Nagas. There is a neutral Barbarian city behind it, but the node cuts the continent in two. I have to use sprites even though I wanted to test bears.
An enemy wizard shows up with their sprites. They are conjurer specialist like me.
I feel further testing on this map is pointless - the enemy has the same advantage so I won't see how much difference it makes.


Game 2
Not going to bother with Earth Lore this time - starting on bears from turn 1. They move 3 so they can explore.
1401 January - I have 6 bears now. That's good but I think I had more in earlier tests. I'm on an island so I have to cast an Earth Lore and make a Trireme. The Earth Lore reveals the capital of a wizard who probably plays red/black.
1401 August - The first stack of 9 bears is ready.
I contact the enemy wizard, as expected, death+chaos, but also has life books. Inquisitor on top of that.
While heading towards their capital, I see a pretty large stack. Mostly weak units, but 8 of them, including a hero. This continent has a lot of hills and mountains. My bears are slow. I should have kept them in the ship but then I would be limited to a stack of 8. My mana income is down to 0 implying I have 13 bears total. I need to stop summoning them.
The hero I saw attacks my settlement. With Wraith Form it can easily reach my continent. Thanks to the 2 Life books, they has Heroism on it. I can't fight that with a swordsmen.
I reach their capital. 6 Ghouls, a hero, a halberdier, wall of fire, heavenly light, a hell hound. My bears will probably lose here and it's 1402 september. I'll try the attack anyway - as expected the bears lose. The hero has 10 shields - heroism+holy weapon. The few bears that even make it there have no hope of dealing damage. Even if I had my additional 4 bears here, I couldn't have won.
The map was pretty bad - maybe on another.


Game 3
Again, I have 6 bears by 1401 January. With Gnolls I could have had like 3 wolf riders.  6 Bears are better but not by a large margin. My continent has no wizards, again. There is a Sorcery node with a few nagas - I make that my first target for the bears. Sprites would be better but they have problems of their own so shouldn't be mixed into this test.
I build my first outpost, next to gold and silver at 18 pop. Lucky.
Thanks to the Sorcery node aura, the 4 Nagas hurt the bears a lot. All 7 of them are down to yellow health or worse, and the 8th one is lost, but I have the node. I found about 500 mana+gold so I can freely keep summoning for a while without having to worry about costs. The damage to the bears is so much it actually shows up on the graph as a V shape.
Two outposts show up on the south part of my continent. They belong to two different wizards.
My bears are finally healed but it's already 1402 March. One of the wizards is a conjurer with sorcery and nature. the other...is the same. Is the game trying to troll me? Every enemy always has conjurer! They both have more military than me but I'm not that far behind. I can probably fight these wizards except, sprites are hard for bears. I decide to attack the one with Lizardmen first. Meanwhile started casting some Earth Lores. I find the other wizard's capital is very close - change of plans, we fight that one. I already attacked the other's units so they can attack, but we aren't at war yet. the outpost of the other wizard...is now up to 2 bears, 2 nagas and 1 sprites. Eww.
I conquer it easily so I can start making ships for transport...but my bears are in no condition to fight now.
I'm contacted by the third wizard. 9 Chaos books and Guardian+Alchemy.
My trireme is ready but the sight of 2 nagas next to it makes me reconsider. I reposition the ship so I can cross without having the bears on water. I see the garrison now. 6 bears and 3 sprites. By the time I'm ready to strike it's 5 sprites. I'm able to win with two attacks, but lose many bears in the process. The wizard decides not to return.
The chaos wizard started corrupting my territory, and I don't seem to have Great Lizard, the only good counter to Chaos wizards in nature. And they have about 3 times my power.
Overall, I don't think this will be a win but I'm certainly fairly strong. I don't think I'm much stronger than if I started with a military strategy though.

Game 4
I start on a small island. I build a ship and conquer a neutral lizardmen city on the nearby other island. There is one more, halfling, one island further away. That one is snatched by another wizard, by a naga. I'm going to attack it anyway, it's a mono-sorcery wizard. Can't let those expand early. I clear out "many skeletons" for 250 mana. 5 Hell hounds on another island yields another 300 gold.
I find another wizard's capital. I can't fight them - only having 4 bears here. As my empire is on many islands, my forces are divided - with nagas roaming everywhere I have to have at least 2 bears in any city. Every land except the 3 islands I control is very far - about 10 tiles of ocean between us. This wizard has books in 4 realms, and their capital is full of ghouls and sprites. Bears would not be able to deal with that anyway.

I conclude that Conjurer+Specialist is still a strong start, but nowhere near gamebreaking without Mana Focusing. It's almost impossible to reach an enemy capital before they have 9 units inside as well, which results in massive losses.

I'm not sure if there is a need to nerf this combo - probably yes anyway, while it wasn't enough to win impossible with it, it performed better than military strategies.

Conjurer needs changes regardless - the upkeep reduction shouldn't be part of this ability - that's Chaneller's domain.
Setting the casting cost to 75% of the normal, but ignoring other modifiers might be an interesting solution. That way Conjurer could provide immunity to Divine Order and Evil Omens cost increasing effects.

all cities streamed
then taxes maxed.

well,i'm still noob but isn't this overpowered?

(autoproducing mana races as Elves and Alchemy retort work greatly)

There are a few problems with spells found in treasure, and it might be a good idea to rewrite the entire procedure handling this.

1. If a spell of X rarity is to be found, and no such spell can be given in one of the realms the wizard has due to low amount of books, a lower rarity spell is given. Example : A very rare spell should be found. The wizard has 4 Sorcery 1 Life and 2 Chaos books. Actual spell found is 33% Sorcery very rare, 33% Life common, 33% Chaos uncommon.
The correct result in this case should be 100% Sorcery very rare. However, fixing this will make rare and very rare spells more frequent, especially for the AI, and will result in early very rare AI spells more often which might hurt game balance.

2. If a spell of X rarity is to be found and all spells of that rarity is known in that realm, the spell granted is of a higher rarity. Example : Common spell should be found, wizard has 8 Chaos and 2 Sorcery books, and knows all Chaos commons, uncommons and rares already, and all Sorcery commons as well as all Arcane spells. Actual spell found will be 50% Chaos Very Rare, 50% Sorcery Uncommon.
The problem with this one, it influences gameplay too much. It's significantly more beneficial to research everything first, then crack the lairs and get very rares out of common treasure, than doing it immediately. (maybe I'm the only one playing for this tactic? idk but when playing 6-9 books of a realm I always try to push research early to make sure my treasure gets as many rank-ups as possible.) On the other hand, if this mechanic is removed, spell treasure will be discarded if no valid spell can be found in the intended rarity, resulting in the loss of a few hundred treasure points. But as long as it's present, it encourages slow play which is most likely undesired.

3. Spells the player can research later (or even those currently being researched) can be found. It's questionable whether this is bad or good.
Not sure about the preferred solution. As long as spells can rank up, finding potential research is necessary, otherwise it makes "rank up" happen a lot more frequently, allowing easy access of all very rares even with 6-7 books. However if that is removed, the effect will be less drastic - treasure will still guarantee getting every common and most uncommon spells, but all rares and very rares won't happen unless the book count allows close to the maximal. On the positive side, this removes the other motivation for pushing early research - ensuring you find new spells within the same rank (a smaller benefit than leveling up the spell but still present)

I've never played Civ4 with others, but I'd like to change that. Is anyone interested in a PBEM or succession game? A slow turn pace wouldn't bother me.

Easy difficulty. 4 opponents. All else Fair. Around mid 1401, ran into Ariel's capital city. No units guarding. I move my magic spirit onto city and banish her without battle. Bug that she left herself completely undefended? I had 3 magic spirits, 2 towns, 1 or so Javlineer at the time.