Alright, Civ 5, one last time.

It's a pity, for all the shortcomings of its SP, I felt like Civ 5 could potentially shine in MP. The tactical unit puzzles were always my favorite aspect of the game, and getting to match wits with another player with them was always a really appealing idea to me. Removing the AI, its inability to fight wars and its abusable nature, felt to me like it might leave a pretty decent game.

Although I never got used to large unsettled sections of the map, those always (and still do) drive me crazy.

But alas, it was not to be. RB never adopted Civ5, the MP support wasn't there until too late. When the time came that I might venture from RB to a Civ site that actually does play Civ 5, I discovered League of Legends.

But we're back now, for one last ride.

My life at the moment does not allow for me to do reporting justice to two games, and PB35 will be getting to majority of my attention. I will try to upload a screenshot and a short paragraph about what I'm doing each turn, as explaining myself helps me play better. I intend to approach this game pretty casually though.

I also expect there to be very little lurker interest in this game. However, if there is, and people are curious about what's going on, I will be more than happy to respond and provide as much information as I can. This isn't really a game brimming with frequent verbose reporters though, so I expect I will have little indication afterwards of what their plans were and this sub-forum will get little traffic.

Doom and gloom about views aside, I'm optimistic that I might win this one. I think in general civ skill I match up very favorably against the field. As always though, I expect it may come down to who I border more so than anything else.

My biggest fear at the moment is that this game will die due to:

A. Slow turn pace.
B. A player turning out to have a slow PYFT rating.

We'll cross that bridge when we ge to it however, and in the meantime I'm going to stay optimistic.

Working on thinking of a fun thread title and naming scheme. Feel free to post suggestions (or I might use my never fully realized Billy Joel one).

In the meantime, I don't feel like there is a whole lot to talk about until I get my civ choices.

Any questions?

*Insert parody song here*

At end of each turn, the relation between wizards moves towards the "starting" value slowly by a random amount.
As is, the closer the relation to 0, the faster this movement is, and if the change would be negative, the effect is cut to 1/3 of the usual amount.

This means relations change by this much each turn for each REL score depending on which direction it needs to move :
0 REL : +1 or -1/3 per turn
+ or -25 REL : +0.82 or - 0.27 per turn
+ or - 50 REL : +0.64 or - 0.21 per turn
+ or - 100 REL : +0.28 or - 0.09 per turn.

I'm not sure if we like this? Basically, the further away the relation is from neutral, the weaker the effect. This means, for strong negative relations (war) the relation starts growing very slowly, and accelerates over time, quickly reaching the highest possible -25 about afterwards. This might be fine I guess, it shouldn't be too easy to make quick peace on a new war.
But for positive relation, the better the relation, the faster it grows (yes grows, having a Wizard's Pact or Alliance adds a bonus far exceeding the natural reduction, +1 per turn for Wizard's Pact and +1.33 for Alliance) meaning once there is a wizard's pact, it'll naturally max out over time unless penalties are received from other sources, and the natural gravitation pretty much has no effect at all. If time permits - and it usually does since the Wizard's Pact prevents aggression in most cases - an Alliance requires no effort to achieve at all. I'm not sure this sort of a positive feedback system is a good? Might be part of the reason why Aura of Majesty is so powerful, too.
Or are we ok with it? Maintaining a Wizard's Pact does come with some responsibilities on movement afterall...

What leaped out to me first for the Bourbon clue was JACK. Jack Daniels is technically Tennessee whiskey, while bourbon is supposed to be made in Kentucky, but few enough people know that, and the clue puts people in mind of that kind of whiskey anyway. If that's right, then it's clever.

A list of the current predefined wizards, with my thoughts on how well they perform under AI control, as the AI always uses these wizards - although depending on difficulty they will customize by replacing some, or even a lot of the the picks at random.

Original Portrait version

Merlin - 6 Life, 5 Nature, Sage Master
Both Life and Nature offers a reasonably strong early game - Life offers strong normal units while Nature offers fantastic, while Sage Master accelerates research - further boosted by all the city buffs the realms have and in the endgame possibly by Tranquility and Life Force for a very fast Spell of Mastery.
While the removal spells aren't very good in either realm, Crack's Call, if available makes the wizard a major threat in combat anyway.
Threat level : Medium

Raven - 6 Nature, 6 Sorcery
Strong early game with Nature summons, while being a threat in combat due to Confusion. Dangerous endgame with very powerful Sorcery spells and access to some of the strongest and most unstoppable very rare creatures. Web plus flight is a nice combination that can turn around combat in unexpected ways. Magic Immunity, Flight and Invisibility all make it a lot harder to deal with endgame nature creatures.
Threat level : Medium

Sharee - 6 Death, 6 Chaos, Conjurer
The greatest threat in combat as both realms have nasty spells that kill enemy units effectively. In mid and late game, city curses and global spells can completely destroy the economy of other players.
Conjurer has no synergy at all with either of the above, but both realms have a good selection of pretty good summoned creatures, Ghouls being the strongest common one.
Threat level : High

Lo Pan - 6 Chaos, 5 Sorcery, Alchemy
Both Chaos and Sorcery are near unstoppable in the endgame, and force the player to suffer significant losses when fighting the wizard in the early game. While these realms have the slowest early game, Alchemy powers up normal troops enough to cancel out this disadvantage mostly. The player either has to suffer major losses in the early game to take him out, or has to risk absolutely devastating spells being cast later (such as Armageddon, Suppress Magic, Call the Void). If the wizard gets Time Stop, due to Alchemy it has a potential to last several turns longer than normal.
Threat level : Extreme

Jafar - 10 Sorcery, Warlord
Falls roughly under the same category as Lo Pan, pure sorcery, compensated for the slow start by the very powerful Warlord retort. Late game is powerful but slightly less threatening than Lo Pan due to lack of Chaos.
Threat level : High

Oberic - 6 Nature, 5 Chaos, Mana Focusing
Strong early game with powerful Nature and Chaos creatures, and good combat direct damage and summoning options. Potentially dangerous late game with powerful nature summons, or spells of mass destruction in chaos.
Threat level : High

Rjak - 10 Death, Astrologer
Good early game with created undead gained in combat for free thanks to Ghouls and death books, potentially dangerous late game with access to the entire set of power base denial spells and a high chance of landing on Maniacal personality. Enhanced overland casting power to support casting more death creatures or curses.
Threat level : Medium

SSs're - 5 Life, 5 Chaos, Chaneller
Since the AI now always replaces Myrran with Chaneller, this wizard has a good mana crystal support for casting Chaos combat spells in every combat. Life makes it hard to defeat in the early game due to healing and protective enchantments, while Chaos ensures he develops into a threat later.
Threat level : High

Tauron - 10 Chaos, Chaneller
Very similar to the above but probably weaker in the early and more dangerous in the late game. Max amount of chaos books guarantees this wizard will be winning the game is left unchecked for too long.
Threat level : High, but Extreme if not discovered early enough

Freya - 10 Nature, Guardian
Nature offers consistently powerful fantastic creatures both in the early and late game, although is generally weak against Death wizards. Guardian makes it very hard to conquer her cities filled with already powerful fantastic units, but she is not as threatening on the offense and has limited ways to cause harm with overland spells.
Threat level : Medium

Horus - 6 Life, 5 Sorcery, Archmage
Extremely vulnerable to other Sorcery wizards (both Spell Binding and Dispelling Wave), and Archmage doesn't have a very good synergy with these realms. Unless receiving the nasty Sorcery spells, he is mostly harmless.
Threat level : Low

Ariel - 10 Life, Runemaster
Life offers a reasonably good level of power through the entire game, but lacks ways to force the human player to suffer losses, and it has a high chance to pick a peaceful or lawful personality. Late game is entirely nonthreathening unless the wizard has access to some of the stronger races. Runemaster makes enchantments harder to dispel which is great with the wizard's theme, but isn't particularly relevant unless the player is unable to defeat the wizard without dispelling those spells. Due to high Good alignment, she is likely to be at war with the most threatening Chaos and Death wizards, and thanks to Runemaster she has a high chance of dispelling the nasty enchantments that would otherwise make the player lose, such as Armageddon.
Threat level : Lowest

Tlaloc - 6 Death, 5 Nature, Cult Leader
Nature and Death has a great synergy, not only are they the two realms with the strongest early game, but they have some nice spell combinations : Survival Instinct supports undead creatures very well, and access to multiple types of regenerating creatures is great, not to mention the availability of Berserk to cast on them. While not as dangerous in the late damge as Chaos wizards, both Nature and Death has ways to destroy enemy economy and they work well together, Death can destroy anything in a city except buildings, and Earthquake takes care of those.
Threat level : High.

Kali - 6 Sorcery, 5 Death, Artificier
Both Death and Sorcery can make life hard in the endgame, and generally force suffering losses if fought in the early game, making this wizard perform pretty well, however artificier has zero synergy with these realms (neither can heal or revive heroes) and usually helps the player by summoning powerful artifacts to the game which will them be transferred to the player when this wizard is eliminated.
Threat level : High.

Optional Portrait version

Seravy - 4 Life, 3 Sorcery, 4 Nature, Archmage
Having access to all realms that buff cities and units, this wizard can be unpredictable and depending on spells, can perform very well or rather poorly. Low amount of books in each realm result in few very rare spells and aside from Sorcery, the other two realms are not that threatening. Archmage is a good retort to take advantage of the boosted economy and increase pressure through more combat spells - mainly summons, healing and buffing. Direct damage options are poor, but potential summoning of Sorcery and Nature creautres, access to Crack's Call and Confusion can cause the player to suffer unexpected losses.
Threat level : Medium

Reimu - 10 Life, Guardian
See Ariel, except without Runemaster she is less likely to help the player with Disjuncions, and with Guardian, she is likely to stay in play very long, possibly long enough to accelerate into Spell of Mastery through casting Tranquility and Life Force.
Threat level : Low

Flandre - 6 Death, 5 Chaos, Inquisitor
See Sharee, Death and Chaos are high threats, but what makes this wizard even more terrifying is the Inquisitor retort, which ensures any lost city is never going to be reclaimed by the player, and if Flande ever builds an army the player cannot stop, that army will to through each and every city and obliterate them instead of staying in the first one conquered like in case of other wizards. Add to this that she has twice the normal gold income which can and will accelerate building and unit production, and ensures the availability of mana through alchemy for combat spellcasting even at high range penalties.
Threat level : Extreme

Yuyuko - See Rjak, the two are identical

Patchouli - 5 Chaos, 5 Nature, 1 Sorcery, Sage Master
See Oberic. This wizard also has Sage Master which ensures she'll get those destruction Chaos spells much earlier, plus she has 1 Sorcery spellbook making her a lot more unpredictable and dangerous in combat (Guardian wind, Phantom Warriors, Confusion all might be available)
Threat level : High. (Slightly higher than Oberic)

Suika - 10 Chaos, 1 Nature, Specialist
See Tauron. Suika is more threatening because she can reach the endgame Chaos spells faster, and they're harder to dispel that's to Specialist. On top of these, the 15% lower casting cost improves her early game slightly as well.
Threat level : Extreme

Byakuren - 6 Life, 5 Death, Charismatic
She has the highest chance to make alliances with every other wizard, due to her neutral alignment, charismatic trait, and reasonably good chance of rolling a peaceful or lawful personality. As such she is the main contributor to alliance chains, resulting in games where the player has to fight 3-4 opponents at once.
Aside from this, her spell realms are not particularly threatening, although not weak either. Death plus Life offers quite a lot of versatility.
Threat level : Medium but watch out for diplomacy

Aura - 10 Sorcery, Chaneller
Slightly less threatening than Jafar, although Chaneller ensures a massive amount of combat spells can be cast, resulting in losses for the player which are hard to defend against.
Threat level : High

Clow Reed - 5 Chaos, 5 Sorcery, Runemaster
See Lo Pan. Although not as dangerous early on due to lack of Alchemy, much more dangerous for mid to late game because Runemaster not just ensures his global spells will stay in play longer, but also allows him to cause massive damage through dispelling the player's spells by using his own spells, especially Dispelling Wave if he gets it. This is much less of a concern in case of Ariel who is more likely to not turn hostile and has no Sorcery books to have access to Dispelling Wave.
Threat level : Extreme

Silver - 6 Life, 5 Sorcery
See Horus. Recently changed to have Alchemy instead of Artificier. This counterbalances the slow early game and lack of good summoning spells in the first half of the game, and allows fueling longer Time Stops if the wizard happens to get that spell later. Ideal would be both retorts but that's unfortunately not possible.
Threat level : Medium

Vanilla H - 10 Nature, 1 Life, Tactician
See Freya. An entire level more dangerous, as instead of Guardian, she has Tactician, which makes her already powerful fantastic creatures even better on the offense. While Nature is not a hero related realm, with Tactician, her early heroes can be dangerous, especially paired with massive stacks of summoned units, and in the late game they can be nearly indestructible due to regeneration, iron skin and elemental armor, though at that point the very rare creatures will be even more dangerous.
A single Life book can make a large difference by granting a chance to learn Healing or various buffs that make the already buffed units even harder to kill.
Threat level : High

Tenshi - 5 Life, 5 Chaos, Warlord
Warlord is amazingly powerful on a wizard that can buff units early on with heroism, and while Chaos isn't very strong in the early game, it does make sure the enemy won't be able to stop her with stalling tactics, as surviving units can be killed by bolts. In the late game, the chance for the Crusade+Warlord combo, and access to all the powerful chaos spells on top of having invulerable units makes this probably the most dangerous wizard in the mod. (imagine a single invulnerable unit with a wizard spamming 3 flame strike per battle to support it, all the while she is accelerating into spell of mastery with Tranquility AND Armageddon at the same time...)
She also tends to get the Militarist or Expansionist objective frequently, making her a lot more aggressive in the early game than a neutral alignment wizard with life books normally is.
Threat level : Extreme+

Satori - 6 Nature, 5 Sorcery, Conjurer
See Raven. However Conjurer ensures the wizard will take advantage of the strongest point of both realms : Nature's overland summons and Sorcery's combat summons.
Threat level : High

Yukari - 5 Sorcery, 5 Death, Chaneller
See Kali. Slightly better because she has no Artificier, instead has Chaneller, ensuring that her good selection of combat spells will not exhaust her mana crystals too easily.
Threat level : High.


And one more I would love to add but can't because there is no room...I'm even considering to remove someone just to be able to..but couldn't bring myself to do that yet..
Kaguya - 5 Nature, 6 Death, Alchemy
Alchemy is one of the best retorts and none of the new portrait wizards use it. As this character is known for drinking an elixir for immortality, I think Alchemy is a suitable retort for her (although it wasn't her who made it but Eirin). Nature and Death goes well with the theme of immortality, and Alchemy, the strongest early game retort is amazing with the two strongest early game realms. I believe this wizard would be a great addition to the game...if only I had one more slot...
This wizard would be especially important to include because nature and death are the most underused realms, only 4 wizards have more than 1 book of each.
Threat level : Extreme, high if encountered in the late game only

I'm going to collect the links to all CoM videos I've found on the net so far here. If you find more, let me know, watching them helps me a lot in finding AI flaws and balance issues. Only the first video will be linked from each playlist/game, go to Youtube for the rest.

2.92
Lizardmen Impossible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ULcqUG4JjQ

2.7
Draconian Impossible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ixIgDKvyM

2.68
Gnoll Impossible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZcUkr10W08

2.66-2.67
Life Nature - Alchemy Myrran Inquisitor Sage Master - Dwarf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xskK_yHGcJw

2.64
Chaos Sorcery - Chaneller Alchemy - Nomad
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...4pegZXoRRK

2.62
Life Death - Alchemy Specialist Inquisitor Charismatic
2 enemy wizards, tiny land, impossible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O0LtirmoFE

2.61
Halfling - Life - Alchemy Warlord  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8nlvaX73M8

2.6
Dark Elf - Sorcery - Myrran Alchemy Specialist Conjurer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWwbQQRpQkE

2.54
Beastmen - Chaos - Alchemy Specialist Conjurer Myrran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ4cMd_sCRw

2.53
Summoning spells only
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eLVX_4ssGw

2.52

Halfling - Sorcery Life - Warlord Specialist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPN1WQzEWgo

2.51
Nomad - Nature - Alchemy Mana Focusing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz1RzPCnuUw

2.4
Halfling - Sorcery Life - Warlord Specialist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUtAGjqL8sc

2.4x?
Orcs - Life Death - Inquisitor Cult Leader
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FDkekHAICI

Orcs - Life Death - Inquisitor Cult Leader
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FDkekHAICI

Barbarian - Death - Alchemy Conjurer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l394puHCHJg

2.31
High Men - Life Nature - Specialist Cult Leader
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD_uhvqyR6k

Early loss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwJ99Gwui-A

2.3
Klackons - Sorcery Life - Famous Tactician Artificier
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8jXB4MwY8M

Klackons - Sorcery Life - Famous Tactician Artificier
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2eBB_GFZqE

Orc - Chaos - Inquisitor Channeler Astrologer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD4VaYeEQnE

2.2
Halfling - Chaos - Conjurer Channeler Chaos Mastery
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PakimAGm1Hg

Early loss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FmyxRfVlbI

2.1
Dark Elf - Death - Myrran Archmage Alchemy Artificier
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGKiVOPH1sQ

1.42
Dark Elf - Life Nature Death - Myrran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLdd5EEX_J4

1.40
Worst Wizard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmmjXx9atUQ

High Elf - Nature Life - Guardian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za2_5_DQE44

1.35
Worst Wizard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwIzw0r5Lc8

1.33
Worst Wizard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwqfZsnnfuI

1.21
Halfling - Life Nature Sorcery - Alchemy Warlord
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4R62zi7KfA

0.9
Barbarians - Nature + 1 of each - Charismatic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBwCwBjBmLc

Unknown version
Early loss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWtbJdXCKm4

Note : I won't list videos showing a version older than this as they are way too outdated.

Is there any room to add new cheats or debugging shortcuts to MoM v1.5? The old ALT-PWR cheat I never liked. All that happens is the CPs start casting their world-shattering rare and very rare enchantments and the game goes off the rails. I'd like just ME to get the benefits. Some other cheats would be useful. A fully leveled Torin the Chosen with a group of elite Paladins on your capital, or something like that. What other useful cheats or debugging shortcuts could exist? What do other games do?

We can use the real-time tweaker, but unfortunately even opening this tool reveals information about the game I'd rather not see. The other wizards, the units in the game, the number and location of cities, etc.

With the unofficial 1.4m patch we get the little red light indicator that tells us, if we are currently putting in more RP in a science field than what we get bonus on. But since you cant control it down to an exact amount you will usually end up with a bit below ( unlit. but next up makes it lit) or a bit above (first tick that makes it lit)

Which of the states do you tend to prefer. why ? and if you change between them for some reason, what is that reason?
Assuming everyone use the seed and trickle method for maximizing Science bonus


Me:
I usually take it to first tick of lit when it doing basic researcher. and once i see percentages i put it on the last unlit tic

So we all know Civ 6 will be out in a couple of months. I'm interested to know if there is any interest in organizing some sort of SP or MP event on release.

For SP, we could carry on tradition and do another iteration of the Civ 3 and Civ 4 games Epic 1: The Honorable French. We'd need an overhaul of the 'Honborable' ruleset to match up with the gameplay of 6, but that shouldn't be too hard to analyze after release.

For MP, do we have any confirmation of what MP options are offered yet? Or is that all still speculations and probablies?

With Civ6 just 2 months away, I wanted to see if there's any interest in giving Civ5 a little bit of a send-off, so that it doesn't just quietly fade into obscurity. Thinking just a regular BNW PBEM, although if there's a twist you guys would be interested in trying, I would certainly be up for it

Player list and play windows:
yuris125 (2300-0100 GMT) - Songhai
oledavy (2100-0300 GMT) - Russia
HAK (23:00-03:00 GMT) - Inca
Ichabod (01:00-03:00 GMT) - Persia
pindicator (0300-0600 GMT) - Rome
Nicolae Carpathia (0900-1400 GMT) - Ethiopia

GMR link: http://multiplayerrobot.com/Game#23941

Speed: Quick
Difficulty: Prince
Ancient Ruins: On
Barbs: On
Religion: No bans
City States Number: 12
Worker Steals: Allowed
DLC: DLC civ are allowed. Other DLC are not used
Civ selection: The following civs are banned