As exhibit F (or however far I've gotten to), I submit this save game using version 3.3:

http://www.filedropper.com/save1

I've just banished Kali in August 1402 using a stack of 9 sprites, lost 3. I financed them by taking out two lairs with unicorns and guardian spirits. I'm about to breed halflings like rabbits across a lush continent, and each city will be producing double power from all religious buildings. That's (2+4+6)*2 = 24 power per city. They also produce double taxes, courtesy of Inquisitor. I've taken a single sorcery node, a nature node with 1-2 giant spiders and 1 great wyrm will go down in less than 10 turns.

This is the third game in a row where I've gotten off to an amazing start using this setup (I've played until 1403 or so).

Setup:
6 Nature
2 Spellweaver
1 Cult Leader
1 Inquisitor
1 Conjurer
1 Specialist

Inquisitor and Cult Leader are mostly for fun, they don't help me get off to a faster start but they help ensure a dominant mid-game. There's no way this game can be lost.

One thing always upset me in 4X games, is that knowledge of key advances is binary: once you know sailing, you know sailing, there are no better or worse sailors in the world, unless something sailing-themed is put higher up in the tech tree. To be distinctly better at application of a technology you must either have a trait, which is fine, or, in Civ, build a wonder -- which is pretty bizarre*

Have any games experimented with building in "levels" for major technologies in the tree, effectively leaf technologies which somehow augment or develop the original bonus granted by the tech? I assume there must be some, and there is always Beyond Earth with its "web" I'm interested in the pros and cons. To me it seems that having a bunch of viable leaves can introduce an interesting choice by offering the players a chance to switch between loosely exponential growth on the "trunk" of the tree and something more linear and capped on the leaves.

Also introduces narratively appealing situations where, say, top-tier swordsmen rip apart bottom-tier musketmen, but if the master swordsman fails to use that temporary advantage, he'll fall behind for the entirety of the next era at least. And then he can start gaining tourism from a commercial application of an exquisite yet practically useless martial tradition 


*it seems they have been purposefully moving away from this in latest installments, with fewer and fewer wonders having persistent global effects.

I've noticed the AI loves to build loads of ships which means that late game each turn you wait for about 30 AI ships to shuffle about from each wizard. 

It also makes moving your armies around difficult since you need to stack them with lots of warships meaning you can only fit a few actual troops in there. Is there any scope for making warships and galleys more expensive but more powerful so you need less of them? 

I realise this might completely unbalance ships vs flying/floating units so might not be possible, perhaps make triremes less powerful? It is just quite time consuming dealing with the navy late game, especially on smaller land masses.

Also galleys don't seem much better than triremes to me.

I believe these retorts have problems.

Astrologer
-Double power from nodes is scaled by game settings. The retort is more beneficial on higher and worse on lower node power settings. No other retort scales by map settings and I don't think any should.
-Power from nodes is highly luck dependent on the early game. This retort doubles this luck factor. Node Mastery has been the most broken retort in the original game and this is the same thing. Effect is fine in the late game where everyone has nodes but broken in the early game.
-Combining this with Archmage amplifies the benefits of both way too much, and causes a chain reaction : Higher starting casting skill -> obtain node earlier by summons or spell+spearmen tactic and no countering effect -> node produces double power -> power spent on skill is boosted by 50%, resulting in about ~30% more skill -> casting skill is boosted by 50% again. Overall result  = 2*1.3*1.5 = ~4 times higher overland casting skill than normal from power obtained from nodes, and these nodes are will be obtained twice as fast. (and yes, these numbers are on par with or even beat Impossible AI advantage - they get 2.5 times the overland casting skill and power income but no combat skill bonus)

Mana Focusing

-Accelerates early game too much - mana available is more than 100% higher. This results in getting earlier nodes, neutral cities or other resources, snowballing into a massive advantage. I'm under the impression we don't want this kind of advantage type in the game.
-Effect is redundant. Increasing power base (Cult Leader, Astrologer), or reducing costs (Conjurer, Chaneller, Specialist) or obtaining mana from other sources (Alchemy) all achieve the same goal as increasing mana/power ratio.
-Effect is multiplicative with all the effects it is redundant with. You can obtain more power, convert it into more mana and then spend less on spells for a massively amplified effect - not only is this a potential threat to balance, but encourages retort stacking.
-Early game effect cancels out the main drawback of playing few books with many retorts - having a low power and mana income.
-Retort is highly self-contradicting. To spend lots of mana, you need to have a high casting skill and high rarity spells worth spending on - and obtaining those means you are keeping your mana slider low as you need research and skill up.
-Retort is way too boring.

Possible solutions :
Astrologer - turn "double power" into "+20 power". Fixes the map setting dependency.
Astrologer - make it mutually exclusive with Archmage. You can pick one or the other to avoid the"chain reaction".
Astrologer - Remove "double power from nodes" entirely, and either reduce the cost of the retort, or add "Each population in the wizard's cities produces an additional X power" effect or "All power obtained by the wizard is increased by X%" or something entirely different.
Mana Focusing - Remove the retort and add a new retort with the effect "Each population in the wizard's cities produces X power", or " All power obtained by the wizard is increased by X%" or something entirely different - preferably something that can replace Mana Focusing's role to have a late game retort that boosts mana/power.


A few possible examples that could be done :

Retort 1 - The wizard has +50% overland casting skill. Each population in the wizard's cities produces 1/2 power. Costs 2 picks.
Retort 2 - All power obtained from all sources is increased by 20%.

or

Retort 1 - The wizard has +50% overland casting skill and is immune to the countering effect of nodes. Costs 1 pick.
Retort 2 - All power obtained from all sources is increased by 40%. Costs 2 picks.

or

Retort 1 - The wizard has +50% overland casting skill and is immune to the countering effect of nodes. Costs 1 pick.
Retort 2 - All population in the wizard's cities produces 1 power. Costs 2 picks.

or

Retort 1 - The wizard has +50% overland casting skill, obtains +20 power from nodes and is immune to the countering effect of nodes. This retort is mutually exclusive with Archmage (a wizard cannot have both). Costs 2 picks.
Retort 2 - All population in the wizard's cities produces 0.4 power. Costs 1 pick.

There was the discussion about the starting locations in the Myrran thread.

I had some time to think about it, if we want something to be done the cleanest solution would be this :

Create a sum of "value", adding together all tiles adjacent to the location. Then check if the location is in a predefined range, instead of checking for "max pop>8", if not, reroll. This filters out both too poor and too good starts, and still keeps enough random elements to be fun - you might get good ores OR a high pop spot, OR a high production spot, but not all 3 in one.


Continent size should be ignored for now, and probably permanently - access to naval travel is easy enough and this is way too subjective to ever come up with a solution for it - only the tiles belonging to the city itself should be counted.

Defining the "value" of each tile, and the range will be the hard, and subjective part, especially on the ores.

Non-ore tile values are fairly easy to rate I believe :
Ocean, Tundra, Desert : 0 (produces nothing or 3% production only)
Swamp, Hills, Forest, Shore, Mountain, Chaos Node : 1 (Low food, or high production without food - no need to go into much detail, I believe a 3% production bonus is as good as none.)
Grasslands, Sorcery or Nature Node : 2 (high food)

The hard part is ores. Honestly, I think a single Gold Ore weights more on your early game than going from 10 to 20 max pop. I have no idea how to factor these in at all. Coal/Iron, even mithril and adamant are not so bad, they are a great advantage but only after you start producing troops and built some infrastructure. But Silver/Gold/Gems generate money, allowing earlier fighter's guild, or summoning more creatures (through alchemy), etc. right away - they are the same deal as Mana Focusing, you can start pushing out units a good dozen turns earlier than normal.

For the allowed range itself, I have no idea. It needs to be something that can be reliably found on all land size and mineral settings, it might need to be a function itself instead of a constant.

Because RB shouldn't be without a bog standard PB game, and PB34 is the only remaining one going, so here at the signups for PB37. We can't let a tradition going back 8 years come to an end, can we? Still need offers of a map maker.


Host: Caledorn/Normal PB hosting
Map maker: Mardoc
Mod: RtR mod 2.0.8.3
Mod Changelog: Available here


Starting date: ASAP (aim for within 1 week of snake pick completion)
Number of signups: 8-12
Leaders/civs: Snakepick, pick order randomised after sign ups closed
Snakepick start: once we reach 12 players, or by 24/3/17 (when Mardoc starts making the map) signups will be locked, whichever is soonest.


Difficulty: Monarch
Speed: Normal
Era: Ancient
Turn speed: 24 hours/turn (ingame clock adjusted to keep turns to 24 hours)
Vassals: off
TT: off
Huts: off
Events: off (broken)
Barbs: on, normal (Not raging)
Espionage: on
Diplo: AI-diplo
Double moves: Don't be a jerk aka normal RB double move rules. If in doubt or a newb, ask the lurkers.
Other:
* No city gifting or trading
* No using trade window to communicate (e.g. using letters or numbers in a way that could be interpreted something else than a real trade offer)
* All units start stacked on same tile
* Reveal all terrain in a 5*5 square centred on starting tile [amended 9/3/17@1724GMT]
* Reveal starts (the above revealed terrain) before snakepick


Map settings:

Everyone starts on the same landmass,
Islands available to settle for via coast,
150-175 land tiles on average per player,
Minimum 11 tiles via land between starting locations (basic guideline, can be more),
Everyone has plains hill start,
Toroidal map.


Signups:

1. dtay
   
2. Ventessel (AdrienIer as DL)
   
3. Krill
   
4. Gavagai
   
5. Dark Savant (ipecac as DL)
   
6. Germanjoey
   
7. Couerva (Bacchus as DL)
   
8. CML
   
9. JR4 (DL requested)
   

Following up on the good results (and recommended by GermanJoey), I'm going to go all nature in this one.

Wizard:
6 Nature
1 Conjurer
1 Archmage
1 Specialist
1 Mana Focusing
2 Astrologer
Lizardmen

Impossible, Huge, etc (I rarely change settings).


Starting city is decent, if I get Transmute I'll be in Adamantium heaven. But for a long time now, it's all about sprites and settlers. And more sprites and settlers.

I'm inviting everybody to try their hand at this game for themselves, then we can compare results and playing styles at the end. You can find the save file here: http://www.filedropper.com/save7_1

Note that heroes are allowed in this game (I've been playing without them recently).

Setup: Impossible, Huge, Max Power, Fair Minerals (rest as usual)

Wizard:
4x Nature
2x Sorcery
Specialist
Archmage
Mana Focusing
Astrologer
Conjurer

Race: Halflings



The time of these screenshots is November 1404 and I have just banished Lo Pan (Blue). I'm poised to take his remaining two cities as well, thinking of saving them for extra spells (I know that went wrong in my last game). Merlin and Ariel are also fairly easy, I should be able to do a fortress rush on them with a combination of great lizards and giant spiders.

Up until now, the game has mostly been one big party of sprites beating lairs. This gave me massive mana and gold, allowing me to send settlers everywhere and summon even more sprites. I've taken 3 fairly easy lairs, and will be able to take many more once I'm able to focus on it. For now, my focus is on taking out the Arcanus wizards before they grow powerful. Right now they're manageable.

My cities are underdeveloped and small, but very numerous and growing rapidly. I've captured two neutral cities, and I really want to take the barbarian city over by the red player. I couldn't take it with sprites (he has 6 shamans there), and my giant spiders are busy fighting wizards. They'll be easy to wipe with spiders. Giant spiders have performed admirably, and with an upkeep of 1 mana using Conjurer they're an absolute marvel against other wizards. I took out a fortress of 9 sprites using 7 giant spider and 1 war bear, losing only 1 spider and 1 war bear in the process.

I'm going to abandon this game now in order to test some more. I'm not going to declare it won, but I am going to declare it winnable. With a position this strong this early, strong play should secure Arcanus in 3 years or so and let me clean out all the nodes rapidly. It would require an insane Myrran wizard to stop me. And since I'm curious, this is a sneak peek on Myrror using ALT+RVL:



Decent, but no more than that. He has dwarves and beastmen in his cities it seems.

With this game, I hope I have demonstrated that sprites can reliably propel you to a massive starting advantage. I'm going to try it again, this time without Sorcery (I never used it), and allowing myself to use heroes.

I've uploaded 6 save files in case anyone is curious or want a go at this start themselves.
http://www.filedropper.com/save6
http://www.filedropper.com/save5
http://www.filedropper.com/save4_1
http://www.filedropper.com/save3
http://www.filedropper.com/save2_1
http://www.filedropper.com/save1_9

We're often celebrating the power of spells and sharing exciting spell combos. Whenever debating the power of spells, we tend to concentrate on whether they are 'too powerful' and we're all guilty of this despite this recent post from Seravy:

Quote:-Every spell should be more than just useful, and feel "impressive". They shouldn't be overpowered on the whole, but they should be great at their intended function. 

Game Rules and Settings:

Server: pitboss.watto.no:2057

Game tracker: http://www.civstats.com/viewgame.php?gameid=2968

Claim your civ: (the password is sirian)

Game Host unified tech thread (for all Caledorn hosted games):
http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=7117

Host: Caledorn
Admin: ???
Map maker: Tasunke
Starting date: March 4, 2017
Mod: PB36 Mod (religion edit only)
Leaders/civs: Combos
Turn Timer: 24 hours

Map Settings:
Monarch, ???

Rules:
Map type: Cylindrical
Speed: Normal
Difficulty: Monarch
Random Events: off
Barbs: on
City and unit trading: banned
Espionage: Passive only

Roster:
1. GermanJoey
2. Chumchu / CheaterHater
3. OT4E
4. The Black Sword
5. Mr. Cairo
6. Gavagai