Victory T291 when Carl Sagan insta-launched a rocket in the middle of the turn.

I killed Norway, and could have played a tighter game.  I'll have a report out with a few pictures sometime, but I have on the order of a thousand lines of notes, and I'm pretty sure that should be broken up into multiple posts.

My report is linked here on my website. As I was the sponsor for this game and put the map together, my result is a shadow game. I'm looking forward to seeing how everyone else fared with this one - we'll be planning the upcoming Civ6 events based at least in part on how thing game turned out for the community. I hope everyone else had as much fun as I did with this one.

This is the Closing Day for Civ6 Adventure 2. Players have until the end of Tuesday, December 19th to post a game result. Please post your results in the Event Reports and Discussion Forum. Thanks to everyone who took part in this game!

Will RB get credit to fill up Civ7's credits now?

It makes sense why they would go downhill from the changing of the Internet but what killed them off is different: The "Pandapocalypse" split the WePlayCiv and Apolyton communities. CivPlayers died from Firaxis ditching duels/teamers and only caring about FFA if they even care about MP at all; making No Quitters the rightful successor. (I need to point out prophylactically that Civ4 is actually very unimpressive here because the designer only liked teamers and duels because they hide the fact that their could only be one winner.)

I decided to share how my games went here to have some written record. This week my goal was to test Armageddon especially, and the Chaos Global Enchantments in general.
Plan was to get to Armageddon early powered by Halfling research bonus.

1.st game
9 Chaos, Specialist, Chaneller,
Halflings, Extreme , Large land.
Built some settlers. Got attacked by two maniacal Sorcery wizards before I could build any proper defenses or research any good summons. Tried to build some magicians (as slingers are blocked by Guardian wind) but it was too few, too late. Game over.

2.nd game
10 Chaos, Specialist, Sage Master
Halflings, Extreme , Large land.
Rush researched Gargoyles. The three arcanus wizards were Suika (RB Inquisitor), Patchouli (don't remember) and Clow Reed (UR Runemaster). Went to war with Suika (don't remember who started it). Thanks to the Gargoyles I was able to hold my own continent and amass enough units to launch an attack on Suika's capital, this was accelerated significantly by finding 5 neutral cities, out of which I was able to get and hold 4. This included Lizardmen, Nomad and barbarians on my continent, and Elves somewhere far away. By the time I finished taking Suika's capital, she defeated Patchouli, leaving nothing of her cities : most of the continent was covered by her starting race, High Men. I had no trouble claiming all of those cities but some place was empty on the continent where Patchouli started. Since my goal was winning by Armageddon, I went to attack Clow Reed next - Runemasters are guaranteed to dispel global enchantments more often than what I can handle. This war went poorly. His continent was very close to mine but he didn't have much ways to attack it, however the Myrran wizard - Silver (UW Alchemy) - opened a tower on it, closer to my side and declared war, as I had too much forces, equal to hers. I managed to gather enough troops to attack Clow's capital but failed twice, losing two armies. As far as I remember both attacks were close, he had like one hero left only - but I couldn't kill that hero before losing my entire army. Meanwhile Silver managed to take a few cities I held on this continent. After I finally managed to banish Clow, I found myself having no troops left to properly attack. He had about 4 cities left and I did take some but he still had one left when he returned. What's worse, he colonized an entire other continent already and it was behind the one where Silver's armies kept coming from the tower. It took me a long time to get enough flying summons to attack that continent, and even more to take all the cities. During this time I had a hard time defending against Silver but still mostly held - I lost my lizardmen city unfortunately. She played trolls, pretty hard to deal with that using Sorcery as they all regenerate. I had to rely on Disintegrate to kill everything, after I researched it. Eventually, around 1413 I finally finished off Clow and had my Armageddon ready. Unfortunately Silver had Spell Blast and AEther Binding by this time. I dispelled those and started the Armageddon. I had to restart about 3 time to random spell blasts : her Divine Order increased the AI chance to use curse type spells (as most of those are enchantments) and being UW she only had Spell Blast in that category, so she used it quite a bit despite having a personality that doesn't use it much normally. Eventually I managed to finish Armageddon and then followed it up by Great Wasting and eventually Meteor Storm. Since she was recasting AEther Binding very quickly, I gave up on trying to dispel that, she still only had a 1/3 chance to dispel my spells, but she tried often so I had to recast them a lot, barely having time to cast other spells. Fortunately Meteor Storm has the highest priority for dispel so it acted as a protective layer, keeping the other two in play. I decided not to use Doom Mastery because both Sorcery and Life is strong against fantastic units. I also didn't cast Chaos Surge, I did not have much summoned units or chance to cast them. I lost some unimportant cities but was able to hold the one closest to the tower, mostly due to the AI's stupidity : she did not cast flight vs my flying hero in the gate, instead she used magic immunity and invulnerability and mass invisibilty to stop my 8 magicians from doing damage. Despite this, it was hard to actually kill her units, Chaos has no counters to invisibility directly. Flame Strike is ineffective against trolls, they have too much health to kill that way. I had to disintegrate but it's hard to target unseen units, I also needed to summon something to reveal them etc. Anyway, I was able to hold mostly, losing only unimportant cities taken from Clow, until about 1420. The global spells didn't work out well. The economic effects very mitigated by a bug - cities still managed to produce food with no farmers at all and didn't shrink in size - and the power from volcanoes were far less relevant than expected, only made up like 1/4 of my power base even after 100 turns of Armageddon. Eventually Silver researched Call to Arms, which made it much harder to stop her forces - my disintegrates had to be used to get rid of summoned paladins. Since halfling units have no way of damaging anything invisible effectively, the game quickly turned to a loss at this point. She also had Time Stop, so she had like twice as much turns as I did, and it was only that much because she had major economic problems. My victory plan was to use Call the Void to push her cities below the threshold where everyone is a rebel, but I couldn't cast it often enough to pull it off. I had to keep recasting enchantments, and every once in a while, start over a spell due to spell blast. My backup plan was using paladins, as I was able to fully claim and settle that continent with high men, but building the necessary buildings took a lot and...paladins don't do all that well against trolls as I found out...plus when the enemy can summon 4 of them in battle and put invulnerability and other buffs on those while I can't on mine...either way, the game rapidly turned from a standstill into a loss. Aside from these problems, she also had about 3 heroes attacking and taking cities one at a time, and I wasn't able to kill or stop any of those - not even my city with 2 doom bats held. The heroes either had magic immunity or due to the mass invisibily I couldn't target them. The worst was the teleporting hero with mass invisibility and magic immunity. Since it always teleported to the further corner, I had no way to reveal it and target it with dispel magic, and even the doom bats couldn't reach it. Eventually she also started summoning Djinn that did the same thing but at least had no magic immunity buff. Oh and unsurprisingly, Meteor Storm was ineffective against all the troll units. Game Over - but this one was close. If the Myrran wizard had any other race, or no sorcery books (or at least no spell blast PLUS aether binding at the same time) I could have won.

3rd game.
10 Chaos, Specialist, Sage Master
Halflings, Hard , Huge land.

First I researched Gargoyles like last time. I was able to wipe out a nearby wizard's capital very early, using an army of, 5 gargoyles, and it proven to be an overkill - 3 could have done the job. The other 2 arcanus wizards didn't do much better and were all wiped out in 1408. Then I filled the entire world with halfing cities, researched all  enchantments, and cast them. The Meteor Storm stalled the myrran wizard so much she couldn't break any towers. The first one broke the turn after I finished researching the Spell of Mastery. Obviously I had 9 great drakes ready and won the game really easily. The difficulty was disappointingly easy compared to the how extreme went., I was wondering if I picked normal by accident, but I did not.

4th game.
10 Chaos, Specialist, Sage Master
Halflings, Extreme , Large land.
Didn't have Gargoyles for research this game so I went for Chimeras. The wizard who started to settle my terriotory was playing all Life books - yay, an easy opponent I thought. Well, my Chimeras proved inferior to her swordsmen (she used star fires on them 3 times prior though) and as I invested pretty much everything into summoning 2 of those I lost. She didn't even have Guardian, only Tactician.


5th game.
10 Chaos, Specialist, Sage Master
Halflings, Extreme , Large land.

The first two wizards I met were lawful and had plenty of powerful units so I did not dare to attack them with my crappy gargoyles. They had berserkers and such. I started on a small island, and lost the spot next to my capital to a water walking barbarian settler. I tried producing slingers and scored a nomad city on the main continent from neutrals so I had some horsebowmen too. Eventually the third wizard came along, and declared war due to Militarist. The other two followed due to their alliances, which I didn't want to wait for so I attacked first. I was able to get a few cities on the main continent and almost got the city next to my capital. Unfortunately I mistimed the movement of my troops, only the hero could enter the city after my fire storm. I was able to clear out the city but due to a summoned unit I had no way to defeat I had to retreat. Next turn I attacked with the 3 slingers...to find there was a nigh stalker inside, which got summoned this turn! After this the game got turned around - Halflings have no way of dealing with invisible enemies and I can't firebolt a night stalker if I don't see it - but to see it something has to go near and then it dies. I didn't have much hopes for a 3v1 battle anyway. Game Over.


6th game.
10 Chaos, Specialist, Sage Master
Halflings, Extreme , Huge land.
No gargoyles so I rushed Fire Giant this time. It proved to be even better, as it hits hard and can deal with ranged or fast enemies. Unfortunately, the 3 maintenance is a killer this early, and it's vulnerable to confusion. I found lizardmen settlers next to my capital by the time I finished producing my own. Oh joy! You know what this means...yep, another 6-8 of them coming. Since the strategy was supposed to be having halfling cities, I had to start a war. I kept a few lizardmen to build javeliners, but planted halflings in most places. I was able to put at least one good unit - gargoyle or fire giant in all of the cities. I was able to also pick off incoming units one at a time. My opponent was at war with another wizard, lucky for me, and that other wizard was not hostile, even offered some trades. By the time I finally claimed the entire continent, and started building up my first army of javelineers, a stack of 6 war bears landed on the continent. They reached my capital in 2 turns, which I wasn't prepared for, Game Over.


Either the game is getting too hard on extreme nowadays, or halflings with chaos suck - most likely the latter.

Quote:Hi _____,

We’re always looking to improve the Dropbox sharing experience. The Public folder was the first sharing method we introduced, and since then, we’ve built even better ways for you to share securely and work together with your team.

As a result, we’ll soon be ending support for the Public folder. Dropbox Basic users will be able to use the Public folder until March 15, 2017. After that date the files in your Public folder will become private, and links to these files will be deactivated. Your files will remain safe in Dropbox.

If you’d like to keep sharing files in your Public folder, you can create new shared links. Just make sure to send the new URLs to your collaborators.

In addition to shared links, we have a number of sharing options designed to make collaboration easier and give you more control. To learn more, visit our Help Center.

The Dropbox team

Hi, recently me and Novice has been exploring a different mafia community over at .tworg, and currently there is a very intriguing game over there in signups currently. The concept is to divide town into multiple districts, who will each elect someone to represent them. The elected representative will then be the only one of that group allowed to vote on the lynch, in an approximation of representative democracy. It sounds like a very unique concept that could be a lot of fun, but it needs at least 20 people to really be interesting, and currently the game is at 16. If anyone wants to experience a new community and a new metagame, here is the link. It has been a while since there was a mafia game here, so I'm sure at least a couple of you want to play this, right?

I've been wondering, what if Volcanoes produced 2 power each?

With the increased availability of power sources, and the faster pace of the game, I think the 1/turn is way too inflated and worthless nowadays.
Strictly speaking a volcano for 50 mana and an expected life span of 100 turn is still profitable, but the profit is
-not worth the investment of overland skill to create it, you merely get back 2x the mana in power
-takes 50 turn to even earn back the investment.

Of course, Raise Volcano is not just a power source, it has other - probably more important - uses, but it used to be a relevant source of power in the original game and I liked that. (that was before 1.31's volcano nerf, old volcanoes didn't revert and the game was really slow so it was a decent investment - not sure if the spell cost was the same but I guess it was also cheaper, can't imagine casting it for 200.)

This would also double the effectiveness of Armageddon, which used to be the strongest global enchantment in the game and...it probably still is but considering the combination of very rare and the large number of turns needed for the power base to become relevant plus the AI's pretty high chance to dispel it, I think it might be fine to make it even better. (Yes, I know we already had an Armageddon buff before.)

I have thought of the following: 

Barbarians: Blitz setup (Alchemy, Archmage, Conjurer, Mana Focusing, Specialist, death books or death/Sorcery): Ghouls with darkness and path finding low tier unit to guide conquest. Bootstrapping rather easy. Could also work with sprites, but then, no bootstrapping (and counterveils the purpose of barbarians). 

The same as above with High Elves, but then with Sprites, since they don't need or can't make use of path finding. Should also work with klackons/inquisitor.

Dwarven: Life and hero strat. Alchemy, possibly mana focusing, hope for a good starting location. Then sage master, artificer and possibly famous (though famous not necessarily needed if just cause is cast). Strategy: Rush buy your town with resources, cast heroism on heros that come and give them plus 20 casting skill artifacts. If you get Zaldron e.g. you will soon obtain huge levels of research. Militarywise, mass produce golems (or, if you can, send out a hero stack with good artifacts and perhaps invulnerability). 

On the whole, warlord seems slightly underwhelming if you have alchemy. 

Any more thoughts on the other races?

First things first, I always considered neutral cities a huge random influence on the game outcome. However, I'm starting to believe they are way past what I can call "healthy" for the game. Yes, the game is random by nature - opponents, terrain, treasure etc all play a huge part, especially due to the snowballing nature of the game - easy to realize it has exponential growth which lasts until all terrain is used up by fully grown cities, just by looking at historian graphs.
However the influence of neutrals way exceeds everything in my opinion.
Let's see what various starting conditions have to offer to the wizard.

1. Ores or Noble hero. These produce a set amount of gold or power per turn. Very powerful as the amount is pretty significant in the early game, but the effect it has is linear. If you have +20 gold per turn from ores, 50 turns gets you 1000. Overall, these stop being a major influence past midgame. Overall, it's reasonable to say these are generally worth as much as an extra retort pick like Sage Master or Archmage - but in the early game only with no long term effect. A major advantage but not overly powerful and nothing the AI does not get on a high difficulty.
2. Mithril or Adamant. These are harder to measure but I think it's reasonable to say they are worth about as much as having a Warlord or Alchemy retort for free...however the effect is limited to early game and localized to one city only. Not a threat to game balance either.
3. Treasure. This can be a major game changer, but the monsters guarding it prevent it from affecting the early game, and the effect is constant. Aside from very rare spell drops and a very few top tier items, nothing here can threaten game balance. Since those are infrequent, it's not a problem. Losing (or winning) one in 10 games to luck is acceptable.
4. Nodes. Similar to the above, units guarding these prevent excessively early access most of the time. Even if a strong node is beaten too early (like sprites vs ground melee units), the effects are limited to a power income not exceeding a typical developed city...and it does not grow over time. It also has to be defended, putting additional burden on the owner. Not a threat to game balance.
5.Terrain/Max population. This has a major influence on game by affecting the growth rate of the capital. Thanks to the Sawmill, the effect is somewhat mitigated, early game production is not affected significantly by population. A poor starting position can be countered by founding new cities in better positions, so the overall long term impact is not too high, unless the starting place is extremely bad and offers no decent spots for settlers at all - or is on a small island. If such bad RNG happens, it's obvious from the start and the player can start a new game instead, avoiding the problem if desired.
6. Other wizards. This is the core game mechanic meant to keep the games varied and interesting. It clearly has a huge impact and is meant to have such. War between any two players, human or not, will have and is meant to have a large influence of the game.


And this leaves us Neutral cities.
How much do they influence the game?
Scenario 1 : The neutral city is too large and powerful to conquer immediately. In this case it will send really strong raider units. Lightning might be enough to defend the capital but other cities will get crippled : neutral attacks from such cities can be much more devastating then wizards attacking, as the neutrals can have access to the highest tier normal unit right from the start. While the raider amount is limited based on turn count, if the units spawned are Doom Drakes or Paladins, that's almost impossible to stop. Even the capital is likely to fall to such attackers, so the presence of the city is an almost guaranteed loss for the closest wizard. I don't think this is balanced at all, and not very acceptable.
Scenario 2 : the neutral city (or cities) are small and whoever finds them can conquer them either immediately or reasonably quickly, still in the early game. (most realms can do that using random scouts+combat spells)
In this case, how much is the impact? Since we already accepted there is exponential growth in this phase of the game, totalpower=C*(G^t) where t is the time elapsed, g is the growth rate and C is the current power, it's easy to see that any increase in C causes an equal percentage increase in the power the wizard has later. For example a wizard that has 3 cities will likely have a 3 times more powerful empire overall by the time the map is filled compared to a wizard that has only one at this time. What this means for neutral cities : every neutral city you conquer in the early game increases your expected overall power by ~100% more or less depending on ow the city compares to the size of your capital. Each single one. It basically is no different from starting the game with extra cities while everyone else has only one. That's too much. Even the impossible AI only has about 2.5 times the normal resources. If a player starts with "free" 2 neutral cities, they are effectively having a larger bonus than the AI - until the exponential growth cannot continue due to war or lack of terrain/ stuff to build remaining. Ignoring the numbers, which already show a horrible effect on the balance, the additional benefit of having multiple races available is major, especially if those races have different roles. Finding a halfling neutral city as a barbarian ruler, or the opposite is a huge benefit, even larger than what it means to have twice the normal amount of cities.

In short, both scenarios have a major, bad impact on game balance, and neutral cities are frequent enough for this to come up in most games (either through being the lucky person to find 3-4 easy neutral cities, or by losing because they AI found them all instead.)

Long story short, I think neutral cities unbalance the game way too much as is. However I have absolutely no idea what can be done to fix this, as they are an essential (and fun) part of the game that offers a lot of variety to the games, so removing or even reducing them seems like a bad idea.
I don't think nerfing spells that offer easy conquest vs neutrals helps either : Neutrals can't cast, so pretty much anything can take them out easily. Even Fire Bolt works if you cast it 2 times per neutral swordsmen. and you can easily do that by initiating combat multiple times.

I believe in the original game the effect of neutrals was mitigated by two facts :
-AI had 400% resources : even two or three extra cities only leveled the playing field instead of being an advantage
-There were an excessive number of neutral cities on the map - everyone had the chance to grab several and not finding any was unlikely, especially for the human player, as the original AI was inefficient in building large enough stacks to actually attack and conquer them (even though it cheated in the actual combat, it does not help any if they lack the forces to initiate the attack)