Hi all. I'm looking to start another PBEM game with 4–5 players on Normal speed. I'm used to playing on BtS, so we could do this with a points-type pick, which I thought worked well in terms of balance in PBEM 67 and PBEM 70. But I'm quite happy to play with RtR too, if the majority goes that way (i.e. I've a slight preference for BtS, but it's by no means a deal-breaker).
High(ish) skill-cap, high PYFT rate, low (ish?!?!) drama.
Since joining RB, I've played three games and won three games. Technically, I didn't "start" or "win" PBEM67... but someone (not me) edited the PBEMlist to say that I came out on top. So, in the interests of braggadocio, let's call it a win.
The other two (PBEM 66 and 70) weren't really that close.
Three out of three wins makes me the best player on Realmsbeyond. Not to mention the most handsome.
Does anyone want to play?
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Player 1: DTG (in the red corner)
Player 2: Ruff_Hi + dedlurkers (in the blue corner)
Player 3: mackoti (in the black corner)
Player 4: ??? (green corner?)
Player 5: ??? (pink/yellow/maroon etc. ?)
As most players are probably aware, there is a table of multipliers for the advantages the AI receives.
This includes :
Population Growth
Outpost Growth
Gold income
Power income
Research from cities
Production in cities
Upkeep costs
Food produced
I noticed the Outpost growth multiplier seems to not work as intended. It's a % chance to receive a fixed additional growth each turn, meaning 100% is the highest meaningful value and 0 is the lowest. Yet the game uses 100-400% for this.
I've decided to eliminate this multiplier and use a hardcoded effect of 25% chance per difficulty level to gain the additional growth.
On the other hand, I used this table slot to implement a new AI advantage multiplier : the overland casting cost multiplier. This scales down the overland cost of spellcasting based on difficulty for the AI, reducing the amount of skill and mana spent, effectively multiplying the amount of spells they can cast. I believe the AI had a disadvantage in this department because they do not use any strategy to cast spells, they just select at random, based on priorities of each spell, yet the amount of skill available for them is limited. Their skill is obviously higher than what the human player has, due to the additional power income, but power does not translate into skill in a linear way. They also build faster, so from the new Amplifying Tower building they can get extra skill, but this is again a quite limited resource because you cannot have more than one per city, while they do build them faster, they won't get more on the long term. On the other hand, a direct discount to casting costs does help this issue, and does so without providing excessive combat casting skill to the AI. Additional overland casting capacity will both help the AI fill more offensive armies with higher rarity fantastic creatures, most of which are rarely seen outside their fortress garrison, and will make them more of a threat when casting curses against the player.
On the other hand, this does make disenchanting stuff quite a lot less effective, simply because they will be recast much sooner, and the costs of dispelling will not be any cheaper, unless another AI is trying to dispel.
I'm considering to the the multiplier 100% for easy and normal (no change), 80% for hard (25% more overland casting power), 66% for hard (50% more), and 50 for impossible (twice as much spells).
I would like to hear some opinions about this because it's quite a major change.
I might have found a way to fix this bug.
Since the changes involve code I don't fully understand, and my solution is based on mostly guessing (The game does a certain thing when loading sound data only when it is enabled, but later does the reverse regardless of the setting), I'm posting the patch here and would like people to test it and let me know how it worked (it seems to fix the problem for me).
1. Apply the patch to whichever MoM version you prefer (1.31, 1.40, CoM)
2. Go to settings and uncheck "Sound Effects"
3. Trigger any battle in which Call Lightning is being cast, or the Fortress lightning mod is in effect.
4. Play and see if there are any crashes. Without the patch it usually crashes as soon as you move units after a lightning. I suspect the relation is movement has a sound effect of its own, and the bug does something bad to the memory where the current sound is loaded.
Furthermore, if you are aware of any other source of game crashes when the sound option is off, let me know, I'm not sure if there was another or this spell is the only one.
I don't know if this is something people are interested in, but I got round to listening to this strategy game podcast with both the civ4 and civ5 lead designers on. They talk about the making of the games and go into some of the design decisions. I enjoyed it. Link
This is a list of changes to the game mechanics. Any mechanic not mentioned, is unchanged.
Ranged attacks :
Penalty is -1 to hit for each 4 squares of distance, not 3.
Large Shield adds +3 defense against ranged attacks.
Magical ranged attacks do not use MP, instead they use ammo even on units that do have MP.
Diplomacy
See : http://masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Diplomacy
CoM's diplomacy system is identical to 1.50's, except for
-When the players casts Spell Blast, Disenchant, or Spell Binding against an AI wizard, it causes a Negative Diplomatic Reaction, with a power equal to the cost of the spell/10+3.
AI Aggression :
Earliest turn for Declaring War on the human player : 40 (starting from 2.0)
Earliest turn for Hostility : 37 (starting from 2.0)
Fleeing
If unit speed < Fastest Enemy speed -1 : Unit has a 100% chance to die.
If unit speed = Fastest Enemy speed -1 : Unit has a 50% chance to die.
If unit speed = Fastest Enemy speed : Unit has a 50% chance to die.
If unit speed > Fastest Enemy speed : Unit has a 1/(2+X) chance to die where X is the difference between the speed values.
Maximum number of combat turns : 25
Terrain :
-Mountains give +10% production.
-Arcanus nodes have 4-14 tiles
-Myrran nodes have 7-20 tiles
Ore Bonus :
Silver : +4 gold
Gold : +8 gold
Gems : +12 gold
Quork : +5 power
Crysx : +10 power
Iron : 10% cheaper units
Coal : 20% cheaper units.
Range penalties for casting :
Fortress – 1x
1-8 distance : 1x
9-13 distance : 1.2x
14-18 distance : 1.5x
19-24 distance : 2x
25+ distance or other plane : 3x
Removed Random Events :
-Mana Short
-Disjunction
Added Random Events :
AEther Flux : All spells cost 50% less to cast.
Stroke of Genius : The current spell being researched is done the next turn for everyone. If Spell of Mastery is being researched, instead it progresses by 10000 RP.
Modified Random Events :
Depletion, New Minerals : Fixed to now appear
Nature Conjunction : Fantastic units gain +2 DEF and RES.
Chaos Conjunction : Direct damage spells do 33% more damage.
Sorcery Conjunction : Casting Skill increases 4 times as fast from mana spent on it (not including spell effects)
Bad Moon : All units lose 2 resistance in combat.
Good Moon : Unit enchantments are 50% cheaper.
All of these are in addition to the original effect.
Treasure : see the patch files in 1.5 in the "M" category
Spellbooks
Maximum amount per realm : 10
Each book contains/allows :
C/U/R/VR , C Starting/ U Guaranteed/ U Guaranteed turn 1 research/ R Guaranteed, other effects
Book 01 : 3/1/0/0, 0/0/0/0, Find/Trade common
Book 02 : 3/2/1/0, 1/0/0/0, Find/Trade Uncommon
Book 03 : 4/3/2/1, 2/0/0/0, Find/Trade Rare
Book 04 : 5/4/3/3, 3/0/0/0, Find/Trade Very Rare
Book 05 : 6/5/4/4, 4/1/0/0,
Book 06 : 7/6/5/5, 5/1/0/1,
Book 07 : 10/7/6/6, 5/2/0/1,
Book 08 : 10/10/7/6, 5/0/2/1,
Book 09 : 10/10/10/7, 5/0/2/0, +8% research, -5% casting cost
Book 10 : 10/10/10/10, 5/0/2/0, +16% research, -10% casting cost
Books found in treasure contain the same type and amount of spells as if you picked the book at the beginning (not true for original game!)
Life and Death allowed together.
Fortress
The fortress produces 1.5 power for each book owned.
The fortress casts a lightning bolt on the enemy army every turn. The lightning bolt strength is 10+(Casting Skill)/8, but no more than 32.
Heroes in the fortress only contribute 1/6 of their casting skill instead of 1/2.
Military
-Each unit consumes 0.5 food instead of 1. However, if units would starve, only 1 unit is disbanded for each missing unit of food per turn.
-Ships have no gold and food upkeep. Catapults have no food upkeep.
-All units (including heroes and fantastic) reduce unrest by 1 per 2 units.
-Death units can heal naturally except raised undead, zombies and skeletons.
-Armorer's Guild and Fantastic Stables is available starting from 1406.
Economy
-Excess food now converts into gold at 1 for 1.
-New tax tables : Maximal tax is now 2.5 gold per turn for an unrest of 55%, minimal tax is 1 gold for 1% unrest.
-Buying costs 2x the required production.
-Excess production carries over to next project and also if you change the build order.
Combat
-Building destruction chance after combat is capped at 60%. Base chance is 20% on a successful attack regardless of the owner being neutral or not.
-Gold transferred after combat is total gold production of the city*2.
-Banishing a wizard no longer gives you half of their mana reserves.
-You can gain new units (zombies, undead, prisoners) after combat even if that would exceed 9 units. Excess units are going to be pushed to the nearest adjacent square (or desert if none are available). Levels
For normal units :
Regular : + 1 melee, +1 ranged, +1 resist total.
Veteran : + 2 melee, +2 ranged, +1 defense, +1 resist total.
Elite : + 2 melee, +2 ranged, +2 defense, +2 resist, +1 health total.
U. Elite : + 3 melee, +3 ranged, +3 defense, +2 resist, +1 health total.
Champion : + 3 melee, +3 ranged, +3 defense, +2 resist, +2 health, +1 hit total.
For heroes :
+1 melee for each level.
+1 health for each level.
+1 resistance for each 2 levels.
+1 defense at level 4 and 8.
+1 to hit at level 5 and 9.
Exp gained in combat : 1+floor(cost/32) for each dead enemy unit that stays dead. +7 for each unit raised as undead or zombie.
Razing :There is no fame loss, and the amount of gold gained is 33% of total buildings, not 10%.
Abilities :
Weapon Immunity now adds +8 DEF instead of raising to 10.
New ability : Quick Casting (only the Illusionist hero has this)
New hero abilities : see hero topic.
Immunites raise defense to 100 instead of 50.
Scouting : Displayed level now matches description meaning I gives +1 radius, raising it to 2. (Original game showed II for this effect)
Range Penalty
Fortress – 1x
1-8 distance : 1x
9-13 distance : 1.2x
14-18 distance : 1.5x
19-24 distance : 2x
25+ distance or other plane : 3x
Node dispelling power : 60 (uses a new formula, see Counter Magic in Sorcery)
Grand Vizier :
Can only build buildings.
Will not change orders if you are producing units.
Will use the priorities of a pragmatist AI wizard.
Picks, Retorts
You start the game with 12 picks. Default wizards use 12 picks.
AI wizards have 12 picks on Easy, Normal, Advanced, Expert, 13 for Master and 14 on Lunatic.
For retort changes, read the ingame help.
Scoring
Each defeated wizard : +100
Each wizard in the game : +40
Time : +800 if winning in 1420 or earlier. 0 if winning in 1440 or later, score decreases linearly between these two. Now rewarded if losing.
Combat Rating : +16 for each % of percentage.
Difficulty multiplier : 0.5* for Easy, 1 for Normal, 1.5* for Hard, 2 for Extreme and 2.5* for Impossible. Not used if losing.
Combat rating is a weighted average of the units lost relative to the enemy for each combat. At least twice as much enemy losses as own is worth 100%, losing units when the enemy has no losses is 0%, value increases linearly between these two.
Bugs fixed : over 200 of them, some influencing game mechanics significantly. I'm not going to list these, there are too many.
AI advantage multipliers (subject to change) :
(Easy/Normal/Hard/Extreme/Impossible)
removed outdated information...
Overland casting cost (new) : 100%/80%/66%/50%/40%
Maintenance : 100%/65%/40%/30%/20%
Outpost growth : hardcoded, 0/25%/50%/75%/100% chance to get an extra 1-3 houses at random per turn.
Roads : now cost 1 to move on them, 0.5 if enchanted.
Ok I want to make a more interesting than natural map and given it is flat I think they might be game for this. Limited amounts of ways to set up a flat 4 player map with the condition boats be useful but not needed 100%. I would probably go for a mix of donut/wheel theme. Outer sea all around, crossing points spiking in at the middle. I would add edited in 1 tile choke points with premade forts for moving between the water masses in the middle. Try and keep the distance between all 3 opponents the same roughly with a straight line to the opposite player and the land shape to the other player.
Actually really hard to make anything other than a doughnut or inland sea based on what they have asked for being flat...
This is half vent and half "does anyone have any idea what I can do now?"
So, the desktop I use at home is a Dell Optiplex 980, an older former work machine that gets basic stuff done. I've put a borrowed GPU in it, some older AMD one, I forget what but it runs civ4 at minimum settings. Well I get some birthday money and decide I wanna be able to play REAL games at REAL graphics settings, so I bounce over to Newegg and order a GTX 950. It got here today, and I excitedly put it in..... And then realized I have no way to power it. The power supply that comes stock in there doesn't have a 6 pin PCIe or a pair of 4 pin Molex connectors, so it's a no go. Well, I then decide to just get a different power supply... But then I find out that the 24 pin Motherboard power connector is wired differently for this specific Dell computer and I'd need an adapter and to rewire pins and I'm just not confident doing that when messing with power supplies and motherboards.
So.....
If anyone has good pc build knowledge and has any ideas to throw out there please feel free, but venting about it helps either way. I've got the feeling that the best solution is to buy the rest of the parts to build a computer from scratch, which would be best I know but also means lot of $ I don't have at the moment.
Moral of the story: Don't go installing parts all willy nilly in prebuilt commercial computers without proper research first!
Welcome to my spoiler thread for PBEM74a! Since I've been lurking and reading reports here since my undergraduate days in 2010, I decided it would be fitting for my first game to use a naming theme reflecting my time at UC Berkeley, especially with the Cal Band.
I have no idea where I stand among my fellow players, but I'll do my best to plan, play, and report. I'm sure that it will be a learning experience for me, and hopefully this will be a source of occasional entertainment for you. So pick up your heels, turn your corners square, and drive, drive, drive!
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