Anyone up for a game of codenames?

Sounds like a yes.

1. Lewwyn
2. El Grillo
3. sunrise
4. DaveV
5. Rho21
6. Azoth
7. David Corperial
8. Bob
9. pjabrony
10. DP101

Welcome friends!

So I have been playing Diablo 2 since I saw the promote for Baal runs celebrating the release on June 29 Y2K. I must say I am hooked again, after a month of constant play, and yes, an empire of mules (somethings never changes)

To be honest, I couldn't find any of my 3 copies, so I ordered one from amazon (D2+LoD for $15CAD, better deal than Bliz). In the attempt to find them again, I dug up a treasure, OMG, a copy of Classic Diablo!!! IIRC, I must have owned 5 copies of those. So I must, naturally.


It's not a video. Sadly with all the websites I own I have to use the quick and dirty YouTube slideshow trick to show a picture when file attachment fails.

88 lonely souls..........

When the AI wants to build a settler, it will not do so in a city that is of a race which has a lower priority than any other city they own. In case of equal priorities, any of the races might build a settler.

Since I'm revising everything related to AI settler use, I'm planning to update this table as well to contain races in the following order of priority - other suggestions are welcome if I misjudged a race.

Priority 0 - Barbarians
They generate no resources and their units, although powerful, are vulnerable due to low resistance. Amazing race to have as your start, but building more of them if you can build anything else is a bad idea.

Priority 1 - Gnolls
They cannot build quite a lot of resource producing buildings, and their units are also low resistance. Another early game race which has better late game than barbarians but probably not worth mass-producing.

Priority 2 - Lizardmen, Klackons, Halfling
Halflings are a weak choice for the AI because they lack versatile military - they only have easy to kill ranged units, if the player can counter these, Halfling cities fall in no time. However, the race accelerates research on top of having every resource production building, which balances out the poor military somewhat.
Klackons work much better but they also lack versatility : Stag Beetle is an amazing unit but once the enemy manages to deal with them, not much else the race can offer. Resource production is weaker than halfling but better than barbarian and gnoll.
Lizardmen are actually a scary weapon in the hands of the AI now due to their extreme growth - they can colonize at a crazy rate and their units are pretty good for the early game. Even in midgame Dragon Turtle can be a scary force due to the armor, but they aren't all that good for late game, and their building selection is decent but doesn't allow everything. Moving across water is effective against the human player however, so maybe they should be ranked even higher?

Priority 3 - Orc
Orcs can build anything, they grow fast, and they have some not outstanding but at least decent late game units, hordes and wyvern riders can be effective, especially the latter with the high mobility can punish the player for leaving places undefended very well.

Priority 4 - Nomads
Nomads can also build everything that matters for the AI, and although they have 5 pop smaller cities due to no food buildings, their units are way better than orcs : Griffons are not only fast but have first strike and armor pierce, pikemen are way better than halberdiers, and the race has high resistance, so it's harder to defeat by resistance based units as well. Not sure if they should be priority 3 or 5 or just stay in the middle. Fewer categories can let the AI have more variety between their units as they are not limited to producing settlers of one race only.

Priority 5 - High Men, High Elf, Troll, Dwarf, Beastmen
High Men are an amazing race for the AI which is less concerned with having to maintain a lower tax rate due to extra rebels, while Paladins, Magicians and Pikemen are all amazing units and the race can build every resource building as well.
High Elves are equally good, Elven Lords are almost as powerful as Paladins, Pegasai have high mobility and are flying ranged units, other units are also above average thanks to the +1 hit bonus, and everything can be built.
Trolls are a pretty strong race, regenerating powerful units are hard to stop, and Mammoths are amazingly powerful, especially if buffed. They can build quite a lot of stuff although less than the other races in this group, the regenerating units make up for that.
Beastmen are very much like High Elves as their units are also above average and they also produce power and can build everything.
Dwarves are hard to place but I believe they belong here, as they cannot build the magic boosting buildings, but they have even more amazing military units than the others in this group and their mineral, tax and production bonus is crazy.

Priority 6 - Dark Elves, Draconian
Draconians are an obvious choice for top priority : they produce power, they fly which is important for the AI both in combat and overland, and their Doom Drakes are unstoppable, fast units that can easily wipe out opposition.
High Elves I'm not 100% sure about but their double power production paired with all buildings is scary in the hands of the AI, and their units are excellent at defense since everything can use magical ranged, and warlocks are pretty hard to get around without massive losses, so I believe it should be the best possible race for the AI, the only concern is their slow growth, so slow that it might even hold the AI back a bit too much?

Because let's be real here, we all know how this one ends

So I wanted to lurk this super-badly, and therefore volunteered to make their map. I'm a bit nervous, though, given the field. If I leave in a major imbalance, they're all talented enough to take advantage.

Plus, honestly, cylindrical natural-looking but balanced is a high bar to clear even in an ancient game, let alone advanced start that hasn't been played here before.

So...anyone have any advice for me?

Here's my current thinking:

Size and script
Map needs to be a bit bigger than usual, because of the turbo-boosted start. Maybe 200 land tiles/person. I also want to aim for the smaller end of relevant water, so that there's a chance land units stay relevant. Maybe 20% water. I can't decide how dense hills should be in general. More hills shifts the balance away from knights and toward 1-movers.

I'm not sure what script will produce that result. Probably something like Lakes or Fractal?

Initial Starting Area
Starts absolutely must have hills available to found on, to keep rushes from being realistic. Need those longbow bonuses. Also must provide Iron and possibly horses? Do I want to make Knights easy to get? Is it more of an imbalance for knights to be easy, or for them to be hard and therefore non-universal?

Should I go for mirrored 7x7 starts? I tend to think yes, because I don't want the game to be determined on T0. The main downside is that is about a quarter of the total available tiles. Tricky to manage both that much mirroring and leave the overall map natural-looking.

Overall Land Shape
I think it's got to be a 3x2 offset grid. Lakes style is requested, so I don't have to do anything in particular except make sure the lakes connect/isolate everyone equally.

Resources
Most resources are already unlocked in this era. Free Forges make metals particularly valuable. I lean toward giving them mostly Calendar resources at the starts and making gold/silver/gems require more work. Maybe those will even be on islands?

I do need to make sure that all the strategics are common. Losing due to 'I didn't know I needed to settle there until it was too late' is infuriating, while the advantage of sparse strategics is mostly that they can be a target at the start of a war.

I
Lushness
Probably going to end up on the lusher side of things. I feel like people have more fun racing for the prizes than trying to eke out a civ from a weak map, even if it does shift the relative value of traits and civs.

Other
Given that everyone starts with Iron Working, I'm tempted to include a lot of jungle, especially on borders, maybe also on a bunch of the happy resources. Delay interaction and growth curves a bit.

I searched for an Olympic thread and couldn't find one ... have I just created another?

Here is a link to a site that contains predicted medal hauls. They are predicting Australian men to win the gold in hockey ... I know they will be competitive .. but they won't win gold ... they always seem to find a way to blow it.

On a personal note, this last Olympics I saw in Australia was Barcelona. It is difficult watching the Olympics in another country as you only see coverage of that countries team. At least this time around, with the aid of the NBC Sports App, I can watch what ever the flipp'n heck I want to watch.

I'll post the discussion on the game with my dedlurkers of this game from my PB30 thread when I get home tonight.

As you are probably aware, the amount of gold gained when razing cities is improved, and there is no fame penalty.
This change was necessary as razing would be a really bad option otherwise, not only are you not gaining a city, but you aren't gaining much else either, why would anyone do that?

However, I'm not entirely sure the above reasoning was correct.
There is a a very huge "hidden" gain in razing cities, and that is momentum. If you raze a city, it's no longer there. You don't need to defend it. Your army that destroyed it can move on and destroy another. Assuming the army contains some sort of a transport, wind walking or otherwise, you can get rid of a city every turn using the same army. Meanwhile, the gold from razing can fund your defense : you can buy troops or convert it to mana and cast spells.
In other words, building one hard to stop army is enough to win a war or entire game, and in a pretty low amount of turns, too. Considering the AI being sluggish at their overland strategy (and by that I mean stackbuilding and moving those stacks to attack targets, since they will rarely end up containing only fast units), even if the AI is way stronger, they'll lose anyway as they can't keep up with one doomstack razing a city each and every turn. Ofc this requires said doom stack to either regenerate or be powerful enough to not take damage, but as my experience shows, that's quite possible to achieve, not to mention the two Nature spells that can heal a stack back to full health.

Since one of the ways the mod intends to balance heroes and strong units in general is the concept "they can't be everywhere at the same time", so while you do advance using those stacks, you have to worry about losing at other locations, razing (paired with transport and self-healing stacks) breaks this concept, as it allows advancing at a speed where long term self-defense becomes unnecessary, on top of razing funding the defense on short term by itself : you can re-buy lost units from the gold gained or refill your mana reserve you spent in combat.

Hopefully, AI wizards using Dispelling Wave on said doomstack can slow things down (which is an addition to 2.6 AI), but non-Sorcery wizards still have no outs against a razing strategy.

And then, there is Time Stop which can be paid and maintained by razing cities as well...on the other hand if there wasn't enough gold coming from razing, then the Inquisitor retort which I already think might be underpowered becomes even worse.

Unfortunately if razing wasn't possible, then games would take even longer to complete which is not an option.

I have no good idea how to deal with this problem - or if this is even a problem? -, if you have any, please let me know.
Wait, I might have one. Would making the AI always raze if they have a certain amount of global advantage (like at least twice the overall power on the historian graph) work? This could let the AI use the raze-rush tactic back against the player? This behavior would ofc be limited against the human player only (we don't want AI to excessively KO each other).

I seem to be annoying everybody in PB33 with my struggles to play turns. Anyone that could take over would be appreciated. I guess unspoiled people will be at a minimum. I can spare some time to get people up to speed as the thread has been a bit bare lately.


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