I'm currently winning my first Darlok game on impossible after several starts with disastrous diplo right off the bat. The key in this current game of mine was that the runaway AI, the Alkari, were already engaged in 3 wars with mostly erratic neighbors by the time the council vote came up, and I hadn't even met most of the other races, which allowed me to not only survive the first couple of council votes, but even vote for the Alkari safely and thus get on their good side, making sure that their unstoppable fleets were redirected elsewhere while I played catch-up.

I've found that, if you can get a reprieve from early AI dogpiling or lost council votes as the Darloks until, say, after 2425, then you can really have the game in the bag. The Darloks are a very "swingy" race--either you will do terribly with them due to bad diplo, or you will easily dominate once you steal some good techs and get your industrial base set up. When stealing techs, you can also use the opportunity quite often to frame others, thus setting intra-AI wars in motion and distracting them with fighting each other.

I have a feeling that the Darloks would dominate on the special asteroid mapscript that makes a lot of stars asteroid belts and postpones the council vote until someone captures Orion. The Darloks start the weakest and end the strongest, and the longer you can put off that council vote, the better. Even if you have to face one AI opponent in an early war, it is tough, but nearly always doable (unless they are a runaway Alkari or Psilon with a huge tech lead). Facing more than one, much less a final war, is where things start to become hopeless...

Other "swingy" races: the Bulrathi (very powerful situationally, while sometimes their advantages will go unused). And the Silicoids (great if there are hostile mineral rich planets nearby, not so great if the nearby planets are small, habitable, poor ones, in which case the Silicoids are just flat-out worse).

I wonder, which races are the least "swingy"? With which races does one tend to have the most even of chances with from game to game (whether those chances are good or bad). I'd say the humans have pretty evenly good chances in any game due to good diplo, which lets the strategic situation evolve more on your own terms according to whatever timetable happens to work best for you in that particular game (you might need more or less time to catch up in any given game). The Meklar are more consistent too, by virtue of the fact that their relative economic success is not as contingent upon having just the right sorts of planets nearby and planetology / propulsion tech in one's tree to snag a lot of planets early on. (Ref's Meklon gambit of deleting the starting colony ship is the perfect example of this. You know that you can at least be guaranteed in any game of having at least 1 superworld at Meklon). The Klackons, Psilons, and Sakkra I would consider to be a lower tier of "dependable and good." On the other hand, the Mrrshans have pretty evenly bad chances in any game, I'd say.

For example, if you hve a hero with a much stronger melee attack, how do you make it attack using that instead of firing a weak ranged attack instead?

Unless the target is immune to missiles/magic, they never seem to do it.

Theres a fighter wizard class in the game but its pointless because they ALWAYS use their ranged attack and its dumb when they can end up with skills like might that do nothing.

As titled? I can see with the tweaker that Merlin has 78 mana left, and according to the wiki they only get defeated if they have exactly 0 mana or no other towns left. Neither is true, but after i take over his fortress, he gets defeated, not banished?

Edit : The only global enchantments active are just cause as well and its still my turn so none of the other wizards can cast spell blast. I even tried giving him 1000+ mana and making sure he had enough gold to transmute to 1000 mana, but he still gets defeated.

Copied from Question's post: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...#pid566819

I'm still unable to get the manage cities function to work correctly...it looks like its supposed to apply a queue to your cities, and then the cities build them automatically without the "xxx has finished building yyy" popup. I'm still sporadically getting the popup though. Some of the info in the window also appears to be wrong (gold/hammers/food, see screenshot).

And for the second last city in the list, i tried changing it to trade goods, and then wanted to set it back to growth, but everytime i do so, the tweaker forces it back to Player for some reason. I'm also confused as to how the "city completion queue" under "game data" relates to the manage cities window...does anyone have any idea how to use this, and whether it will let you auto-buy buildings without the annoying popup each turn?

Moving can be pretty difficult. I once took advantage of disadvantageously overlapping leases to spend a full two months moving apartments one box or loaded-shopping-cart at a time.
Moving is especially rough two months after showing up in a new city, in a new country too boot. Luckily, before doing just that a few months ago, I put out my best comical plea to my new colleagues and classmates. Four guys offered their arms, and we made incredibly quick work of my large storage locker. I'm not clear on how I've accumulated so much stuff by this point in my life, but we had it on and off a truck in what felt like no-time. Sometimes all it takes is a little help.
Hopefully this game will go as well as my current living situation. I took advantage of the extra help to get everything in place quickly and early, and life is easier for it.

I almost regret that I haven't been wiped off the PB27 map yet, if only to be able to read about my mistakes in the other threads, rather than repeat them here. Still, I'm optimistic and excited for this game. Here's hoping I don't bungle it too bad.


Team Wannabe is still accepting applications for experienced dedlurkers/nooby teammates! See form in post #2

What are the spells the computer players never use? Change Terrain? Transmute? Nature's Cures? Earth Lore for sure. I've never seen Move Fortress. I think I've seen Nature's Eye. Anything else?

Tracker link:

http://realmsbeyond.net/pbem/tracker.php?game=PBEMXLVI


Email saves to:

rbpbemxlvi [at] gmail [dot] com

Exams finish in a couple of weeks, and I've a hankering for another game. Does anyone want to play a Mastery Era PBEM?

Couple of stipulations:
- EitB v12
- Mastery Era
- Land/Sea map. Neither should be dominant, and can win with the loss of the other, but there should be advantages to winning the sea
- Large-ish map. This is necessary for the insane late-game mobility - remember, your starting scout can be 4-move on t5 with a lucky win.
- Hyborem deleted unless a player sends him in as a pick, in which case he's placed where their civ would go, starting with the usual (?). (Basium can also be picked?)
- Something something religions. Probably bidded on as part of leader selection.

Other than that, I'm open to pretty much anything. We can ban if necessary, but I think plenty of civs are OP enough for at least one game to be interesting without them.

Does anyone know why? It's this particular save game.

Attached Files

  SAVE2.GAM (Size: 120.41 KB / Downloads: 0)

I'm considering to replace Planar Seal with another enchantment and would like to hear opinions.

Mainly, the problem is, this type of highly tactical spell does not work well in a player vs AI game.

The player is able to decide if the spell is beneficial for them or not, and cancel (or dispel) it accordingly. The AI cannot.
This raises the following problems

-AI will seal itself on a plane while the player is casting Spell of Mastery in the other and auto-lose.
-Even if the AI uses it well, the player WILL dispel it without much of a problem, at best it'll delay them like 5-10 turns. In either case the spell is worthless for the AI.
-AI will not dispel Planar Seal when needed and lacks the ability to judge the situation.
-If the AI is taught to always dispel the spell, the player can spam it to force the AI to always cast disjunction instead of more useful spells, effectively stopping all 4 AI from spellcasting for long amounts of time (Disjunction is expensive)
-If not, then it's auto-win against the AI because they cannot break it and attack you at all.
In either case it's easy to abuse for the player.

These are my reasons for considering the removal of the spell (it would be fun in a PvP game but PvAI not really).

A few of my current ideas

1. Heavenly Inspiration. The caster, and everyone who has a Wizard's Pact or Alliance with them receives a "bonus". Everyone at war with the caster receives a "penalty". I think the best would be a research bonus and penalty, but other things are also options.
2. Law of Gods. The caster (or everyone but that would not be very good) receives benefits based on the type of books they own. Each type would grant a bonus related to that type (Sorcery +20 research, Nature more mana, Death more skill, Life maybe more gold (but would require more books as the spell is Life), Chaos, not sure what). The idea behind it is to have a spell that rewards going multicolor. Would be quite hard to code if at all possible, considering the diversity of effects, unfortunately.

Did you just spend 5 turns buffing a unit or 30+ turns leveling it up to max level? Well, it instantly dies to a max strength psionic blast/lightning bolt/magical focused fire in the first turn of combat before you can even do anything. It has elemental armor + iron skin + holy armor + true sight + bless? Doombolt instantly kills most ultra-elite priests/magicians.

And the AI doesn't even do the -4 spell save items + death spell combo.

Is there some trick i'm missing? i'm getting really annoyed trying to keep support units and low level heroes alive because the AI just one shots them with a high power spell before i can do anything, and getting the magic immunity spell forces me to go sorcery heavy (and its not alive till late game).

I cant even resurrect heroes unless i have a substantial amount of life spell books.