Realms Beyond Civilization 6 Adventure 1: Potluck

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Sponsor: BRickAstley
Opening Date: Saturday, October 22nd
Duration: Four Weeks

Map Script: Pangaea
Map Edits: None
Game Speed: Normal
Difficulty: Prince
Civilization & Leader: Potluck! (See Below)
World Size: Standard
Opponents: Seven
Rules: Standard
Victory: Any
Version: Initial Release

This will be a XCOM 2 campaign playthrough on Commander Ironman. First time playing the game.
There will be chaos. There will be mistakes. There will be losses. Earth will fall. Let's find out how far we can push it.
I will play the turns and write reports (we didn't have enough for a SG yet). Lurkers can follow along or post comments to help me out.
One more thing! Let me know if you want to be a soldier in the game. You'll probably die but maybe it'll be a heroic death.

With the necromancer succeeding to patriarchdom, I gained a HUGE confidence boost in my abilities, and decided to do something I've been meaning to in a long time.

Background: Before I read Ember's story, I was pretty much oblivious to what dio2 was pre-1.07, namely that the 75% resistance cap applied to monsters as well, as certain tiny things like being able to buy poison gas potions, or that teleporting bosses can heal for pretty much indefinitely. I never saw this when my father played the game, because he instinctively picked the choices that just worked well (Frozen Orb, Fireball, Hydra), and he could just obliterate everything before they caused an issue. Same with 1.07 lod, he just broke immunities with cold mastery, or destroyed everything with fireball, whichever he liked more.

After the finish of the tale I was soundly convinced (also upon reading Sirian's words on the expansion, especially Wussy's epilogue, Ribinak's expansion exploits, Subpoena, the not-even-started Felgarr), that Lord of Destruction did destroy a lot of variants, and anything it left alone, well, 1.10 neutered, thanks to the increased monster hellth pools and synergies funneling character builds into an even smaller set of possibilities.

I also said to myself, around early summer, that a firebolt sorceress would never work in this patch. An hour later I had to try it out on a sorceress named Cinder. I eventually deleted that character, having forgotten to record her adventures, and having put points into stats like strength and dexterity, which are very un-ember-like. So she waited until now, and this night, Cinderella was born.

So, why try this? Well, for starters there are ways beyond fire mastery to increase Fire Bolt damage thanks to synergies. There are also more +skill items for sorceresses to increase firebolt damage, and one is the super cheap leaf runeword, which adds +3 to fire skills, and +3 to firebolt. Made with a +3firebolt gray staff it can be +9 from the weapon alone. Add +1 from a lore helm and we are looking at a level 30 Firebolt and a +4 to mastery. The runes themselves are easily acquired from countess and cubed up using chipped gems, even on non-ladder realms. What's even better, is the damage increases exponentially with skill levels above 20. Finding a +1/+2 fire amulet is very much possible during normal play, so make that 32. 

What does all this mean? Well, Slvl 20 firebolt is 45-60 fire damage without synergies, Slvl 23 is 62-80, and Slvl 29 is 134-158, Slvl 30 is 161-186, Slvl 31 is 188-214, and finaly Slvl 32 is 215-242. The last two skill levels are a 31% damage improvement, and even the Slvl 30 firebolt deals almost 4x as much damage as the slvl 20, and slightly less than 3x, than the Slvl 23 one. I won't do the exact calculations on percentage improvements, but the bottom line is, firebolt can deal a LOT of damage when boosted with a leaf staff and a few +skill items.

But even a Slvl 31 firebolt's average 200 (actually 201 but let's round it) damage pales before the thousands of hitpoints of hell monsters, especially the ten-twenty thousand frenzytaur champs and fifty thousand health point uniques. A Slvl 25 mastery only brings it to ~600 damage, slightly better but nowhere near really good levels. What helps us here are the synergies, which are added before multiplying with the mastery: 16% per point in fireball, and 16% per point in Meteor.

As usual with quadratic synergy effects, the right amount of mastery vs the right amount of synergies is often debated, but between picking 40p synergy 1p mastery and 21p synergy 20p mastery, the middle ground, 31p synergy with 10p mastery worked out for the highest firebolt damage. (calculator says 2664 average damage). Any extra +skill item beyond this adds an average +500 damage to firebolt with this distribution.

Of course, Fire immunities are a thing, so a pure Firebolt sorceress can't win alone (And I won't even consider Infinity, but that should go without saying )   . What to pick for a secondary damage spell? Nova looks like a good candidate, since it has no synergies, and even with a modest lightning mastery + some modest lightning skill items (Memory is a rather acquirable runeword for hell, and a +3 nova staff can be shopped from Drognan/Akara. unfortunately 4socket staves can't be shopped for runeword creation, but Angel's / +1-2 lightning is possible), it can deal a respectable 700-800-ish damage per casting. Even better, it benefits a lot from faster cast rate, since it has no delay, but on the other hand it is very mana intensive, which is a large drawback for a low energy sorcie like Cinderella. For comparison, burning 420 mana in 10 castings would net ~7550 damage. dealing this much with firebolt takes 7.5 mana, so I think I'll skip this one. (with maxed mastery and 10 less points in fire tree the result would be 10k damage, vs 12.5 mana and a 2000 damage slvl 31 firebolt)

On the other side, Frozen orb requires less cold mastery, but more pre-requisites, has a cast delay, and deals more damage per cast when it explodes inside the enemy. Furthermore it's impossible to drognan/akara shop for a +3 FO socketed staff, although an archangel's or +3 cold +3 FO is certainly something possible. Archangel/+3 cold staff of the magus could be an uberstaff to be shopped for, but an unlikely find

The third thing to consider, is that having a permament mercenary is possible, and even better, it can be an iron wolf, so Thadar can be both equipped with good stuff (Lore helm, stealth armor, + whatever I find) and brought back from the dead.

So all things considered, Cinderella certainly has a chance against the legions of hell.

"Then why bother bringing Ember into this?" I hear you ask.

Well, because Cinderella will play by the following restrictions.

• Staff only, no shields, no sorceress orbs, no wands, nothing else BUT staves.
  
• Base strength used for normal acts I-IV. Strength adders can be used, but no equipment requiring more than 10 strength. On the first level up in act V I'll raise Cinderella's strength to 15, and that's it. Upon reaching act V Nightmare she will get free reign on using strength adding equipment to use gear otherwise unavailable for her.
  
• Rogue girl has one life only. Once she dies, the only time she can be resurrected is to unequip her gear for selling/equipping thadar. (Or before getting an act II merc, who has one life only too, but I'll probably skip on that)
  
• Arriving upon act III, She must hire an iron wolf named Thadar, who has to be a mercenary dealing a type she is unable to. Since Cinder will be firebolt/Frozen Orb, Thadar has to be a lightning merc.
  
• She has to use Firebolt for the entirety of normal difficulty. She may not raise Frozen Orb above skill level five in nightmare difficulty (But she may save up points to beef it up right at the entry into hell) and may only use it when she is facing fire immune monsters.
  
• She may not use teleport for Normal or nightmare difficulties.
  
• No other skills are to be used, especially not static. Telekinesis may get a pass on hell difficulty.
  

It has been mentioned that AI players might perform poorly, or even get doomed to lose with the Inquisitor retort, as not every race works with it. Rather than disabling the retort for AI, I think the best solution is to limit the AI to pick specific races, if they have the retort.


Myrror
Every Myrran race is reasonably powerful and at least good enough to fight against Arcanus wizards, so no restriction needed here. A Myrran Inquistor wizard has the entire plane so they will be able to spread and have many cities, on top of that, they will most likely wipe out any neutrals, making sure the other players don't get a chance to have a city of the other myrran races either.

Arcanus
This is where we want to apply the restriction.

Barbarians : Obviously horrible choice as the realm has no late game and berserkers are easy to stop. Early expansion is worthless if you can't use it to take over cities from other races. Verdict : Disable.
Gnoll : Pretty much works the same as Barbarians, while they get a bit more building options, their units are all in the "high power many figures low resistance melee" scheme, and lack versatility. This race is also awful if it cannot get units of other races. Verdict : Disable
Halfling : These guys have close to no capacity of offense whatsoever except in very specific strategies that are easy to counter for a human player. Verdict : Disable.
High Elf : They produce power, have every building and have good units. Verdict : Allow
High Men : A race with a weak start, but strong late game. Risky choice but can pay off very well if Paladins are reached early thanks to the extra gold. The harsh unrest tables mean not having other races is less of a problem. Verdict : Not sure but probably allow.
Klackon : Offers the best synergy with the retort and is a race the AI can use well. Verdict : Allow.
Lizardmen : Massively powerful economy that benefits well from double taxes, acceptable power output, and strong early units. Late game is not that good but turtles can be tough and they're definitely not a bad unit. Lack of research is a concern but this wizard can win the game through sheer early advantage. Verdict : Allow.
Nomad : Has reasonably good units that are highly resistant, but the race has two major weak points, it is completely annihilated by Famine due to no food buildings, and it relies heavily on bow units which are easy to counter. Verdict : not sure, probably allow.
Orc : A generic race that has all buildings so economy has no problems, but all their units have bad resistance and they don't have anything really outstanding. I tried this with Inquisitor once and lost on Normal because I had no outs against Death wizards with my low resistance units. Verdict : Disable?

Due to existing code structure, the best case scenario is if we allow 5 races and disable 4, but disabling is not any harder (allowing more is). If there are no objections, I think the 4 to disable should be Orcs, Halflings, Gnolls and Barbarians.

Hello, brave and brilliant practitioners of that dark art known as "mapmaking"!

PBEM74's first round recently wrapped up, and we're looking for a mapmaker for the second round of games. This would be a 4-player map for base BTS played concurrently by two separate games, with most of the other variables up in the air; the first round was played on a Flat, extremely lush, highly symmetrical map by ReallyEvilMuffin, but you should feel no compunction to follow in those footsteps (well, except for the part where it was a really fun map, but you know, no pressure).

There's currently some discussion happening in the later posts of the organizing thread, so if you think this is up your alley, by all means come and be adored by the worshipful throng.

I've been working on converting a public 1.8 theme to be a new default, and it's changed enough for people to take a look at and offer comments now. 

Go into your user profile and 'Edit Options', or the dropdown selection box on the bottom of any forum page, and select "RB 1.8 Classic" to take a look. 

I've tried to use the traditional colors from our last theme, and a little from an old old old theme, to make something up-to-date, functional, and nice. I'm definitely open to input to make it better, so fire away, but the intention is to soon make this theme or a similar rendition the default theme for the site. Mainly to allow for full site functionality, since the ported old theme does not. 

I am also working on a white-based version of this theme I will announce shortly, and can do other color variations in time upon request.


EDIT: This theme is pretty well built out and now feels complete enough to set as the default. I will be setting this theme as the default for new visitors. If you still see the old theme, use the following directions to change: Go into your user profile and 'Edit Options', or the dropdown selection box on the bottom of any forum page, and select "RB 1.8 Classic".

ANOTHER EDIT: A White and Black theme are also available. I am changing everyone onto the new theme now that we have multiple options built and working. Please leave any feedback or bugs here.

As mentioned before, I have started recording some statistics on how the AI performs. I'll post data here as soon as I feel there is enough to draw conclusions.

Meanwhile, we can talk about our goals.

I believe it's best for the game if the AI has roughly equal performance with each arcanus race. (it's fine to have maybe one or two underperformers, but preferably no races that vastly outperform others, and myrran is less important because there is only one of those in most games so they won't knock each other out)
I also believe the AI should have roughly equal performance with each realm.
These two are important if we want the late game to offer more variety instead of the same race/realm always developing into the main threat.
I don't think the AI needs to have equal performance with each personality and objective, nor that such is possible, as some of those are inherently disadvantageous in diplomacy (Chaotic, Expansionist, Militarist) while others are usually beneficial (Peaceful).
I believe each race should appear roughly equally often. (after fixing the elf problem this should happen now)
I believe each realm should appear equally often. I believe each pairing of two realms should also appear equally often. This one most likely does not happen because predefined wizards are used as a base for generating wizards, and those do not have all possible combinations. Wizards playing 3 or more realms should probably be less frequent than they are now, as they are inefficient  due to low access to very rares and they are not very good for the game either, as they are way less predictable, and harder to strategize against.
I believe each personality and objective should appear roughly equally often but it's fine if if some appear slightly more or less frequently as long as the difference is no more than twice/half the average. Militarist, Chaotic, and Expansionist are directly responsible for starting wars, so we can also control game difficulty (and the gang up on the player all at once effect) by adjusting these. Peaceful is the main culprit for widespread AI Alliances, so changing that one can affect this.
I believe the personality per realm and objective per realm tables need to be readjusted. It has way too much impact on how each realm performs, for example Life realm seems to perform way above average and the most likely reason for that is the high chance to pick Peaceful. I think the choices should at least somewhat reflect how the realm needs to be played to work well, for example Chaos and Sorcery are late game realms, so they should pick personalities and objectives that support that more often than they do now.
Data collected so far seems to show Peaceful wizards performing much better than others. The rest of the traits are roughly even.

Note that by "performance" I mean the AI's performance to stay in the game against other AI without human interaction.

Yep, it's them again, this is the second time these guys earned their own thread.

Watching the AI's performance and collecting statistics, as well as my own game experiences against them and what some forum posts imply, I think the race is currently overpowered, at the very least under AI control, but probably on the whole. I'll post more about that after collecting more data, but this one race is so far ahead I dare to say it's conclusive even from only this much.

This is not a surprise if you consider that
-They have 2.5 times the population growth bonus of an average race
-They pay a discounted price for settlers
-Their settlers can move twice as fast, and through water, so you can settle way more territory way faster than otherwise possible....and then those new cities grow really fast too!
-And their early standard units are probably the strongest in the game due to having an extra hit point which doubles to power of a swordmen unit and increases a halberdier by 50%.
-Complete domination of intercontinental travel as every unit is swimming, so enemy transports can be sunk easily before reaching shores.
-If that wasn't enough they also get a -1 unrest bonus on their own race.


That's a bit too much of good stuff in exchange for...what? A weaker late game? No Bank and Merchant's Guild, no Miner's and Mechanicians, no Parthenon and no University/Sage's Guild? Oh man I don't get an extra 60% gold and production but I have 3 times the usual amount of cities, that's horrible! (and this assumes you didn't conquer other races with your early strong units) My late game unit has the highest armor and resistance a normal unit can have but has weak attack power? omg what am I going to do with that...wait I can buy Paladins every turn in that one High Men city I found I have the largest empire to pay for the costs of anything if the armor on turtles is not enough to win...

So yeah, any idea how to fix this? Aside from reducing the +150 population to +120 and the +40 outpost growth to +30 which I most likely will do, but doubt is enough to fix it.

One last thing to mention, aside from one race dominating most games under AI control being boring, the other problem with it is, lizardmen have much slower turns than others because they have more stacks and those stacks are all intercontinental.

As it seems quite a few people don't like that neutrals are "smart" in battle, and I decided I don't want to disable this feature in a mandatory way (I really hate dumb enemies that can't think for themselves, it's one thing for zombies but everything else that doesn't have a rotten brain should be at least somewhat intelligent), the only possibility left is making it an option. Not sure if it's worth sacrificing one of the two unused slots in the game menu for this instead of more important options we might want in the future, but anyway...the question is, if such an option happens, what exactly should be disabled by it?

1. The AI moves randomly if it cannot find a target, to look for invisible units or avoid flyers ganging up on it all at once. (I think disabling this would severely break balance in favor of Sorcery, or anyone lucky enough to find Invisibility items. At the same time this tends to be the most time consuming and annoying feature in my opinion.)
2. The AI moves away from units if "avoid contact" tactic is selected instead of standing still and doing nothing.
3. The AI selects "avoid contact" tactic if the unit is flying and the enemy army is much stronger.
4. The AI selects "avoid contact" tactic if the unit is faster than the entire enemy army, and the enemy army does not have a significant amount of ammo left.
5. The unit moves backwards or forward before shooting or casting.

Or any combination of these. At the moment I see a very low chance this will be implemented, but it would be nice to know if it's one specific feature that's the problem or it's just the generic annoyance of not winning the battle/spending more time. Also include in your vote if you tried to play with movement animations off to make the game faster or not, and if it helped.

Also, if you feel something would be very nice to have in the game settings menu as a new option, do tell. I rather use those slots on something more useful that dumber AI, if there are better ideas. We have two unused slots afterall. (examining revealed that "Overland Spell Events" and "Summoning Events" literally does nothing at all. "Enemy Spells" and "Spell Animations" handle that stuff, they're probably obsolete options from earlier versions. So both can be replaced easily.) The existing new options are "Backup Saves" and "More Random Items" from me and "Revolting Raiders" plus "Monsters Gone Wild" from kyrub., as examples of what I think is worth a slot.

(October 5th, 2016, 14:57)Krill Wrote: We have a discord server now?