So after finally installing the game and getting it working, in my thread where I initially had some difficulty a few people mentioned possibly being interested in doing a SG so that we could all sort of learn the game and system together. Hopefully there is still some interest in at least a few of us doing this.
Right now the plan is to do it using the G&K expansion, as that's the only one I have. If enough people need to do it with the base version (no expansions), then I'm ok with that too. But I think I'd prefer doing it with G&K since from a quick look it appears that expansion fixed a few things, made some thing better, and added a bit of stuff.
I've only just gotten myself started on my first SP game of it, not yet getting very far yet (other than about to conquer finish conquering my Mongolian neighbor).

So for those of you interested....any thoughts or suggestions of what leader/civ/settings for us to use? I tend to not be good at picking the leader/civ for games I play, so often lean towards just random. But if anyone has a certain combo they would like to try, I'm good with that.
I also haven't yet looked into settings much in detail yet, but I know I want Ancient Ruins and Barbs on. But that's the only thing I care about. Map type, size, etc....doesn't really matter to me. So unless someone has any opinions, I'll likely go with Continents and either Small or Standard. And I guess either Warlord or Prince difficulty to start with, unless people think those would be too easy.

I'm considering replacing this spell somehow with something else in my mod, although I don't know how and by what yet. I have changed a few others before, but I'm running out of easily doable new spell ideas.

I have three main reasons for wanting Drain Power out :

1. The AI can cast it but it has no effect then, it just wasted a turn and 50 mana. The player won't lose any mana from the spell. The presence of the spell is directly weakening the AI.
2. Spamming it on a wizard before attacking him is a very cheap way to win, preventing the wizard from using any spells due to empty mana reserves. You do need high skill for it though, but if you pick Archmage, this part is easy.
3. If the wizard was banished after you attacked the capital, and had no mana, he won't try casting the Spell of Return and gets eliminated immediately, even if he still has an entire continent worth of cities left.

What do you think about it? Do you like this spell? Hate it? Don't care?
I think it ruins the game for both sides, the AI can't use it, and the player using it means the AI can't use spells at all. Not fun.
At the same time it's awesome because it's so powerful.

We need a sub to take over for the Zulu civ in PB25. You're Zulu. You're purple, not yellow. What's not to like?

This civ has been...in transition...a few times now and is not likely to win the game, but who knows? You could be the one to pull off the miracle. Or, just do better than the lurkers currently expect. It's not a sweet, brand new ride, more like a sedan with lots of after market parts that just passes safety inspections each year, but it's street legal and with that purple paint job you'll be sure to attract all of the right kind of attention and affection from passersby.

Whaddya say? This is a job for manly men, or whoever. Post in this thread if interested and lurkers can answer any questions you may have.

$C0B17 8B C6 BA 72 00 F7 EA C4 1E BC 9C 03 D8 → 26 80 7F 46 00 74 06 B8 02 00 89 46 FA

Warning : While this makes Evil Presence work as intended, zeroing power, it does not check for the Death books. There is no coding space for that. However, the spell is MUCH more useful if it works on anyone anyway. The unrest effect does not affect Death mages like originally, so they still have an advantage against it.

I was talking with wetbandit on my Civ 5 PBEM 4 thread about Civ 5 MP mods/map scripts and how there's a community that plays Civ 5 MP in the real time MP format (what's that called again?), with short turn timers (like 30 seconds in the first turns, going up) with everyone around at the same time.

So, we decided to try such a game ourselves. Since PBEM 4 is taking a break in early september, we could arrange to play a game around that schedule, in some sessions of an hour or a bit more each day, depending on avaiability of the players. I don't think it'd take more than 3/4 sessions to finish a game.

The mod and mapscrit we are planning to use is the NQ Mod and the NQ mapscript. Unfortunately, using mods in MP in Civ 5 has some technical annoyances, but I think we can handle them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nqmod/

https://www.reddit.com/r/nqmod/comments/...ap_script/

The mod seems pretty interesting at first glance, being a MP one focused on balance changes rather than additional content. I haven't really checked the fine tuning of the balance, nor do I think i'm capable of it, but I'm more than willing to try it.

So, any takers? Since it'll be real time, we can play with quite a bit of players, though I don't think there'll be that much interest.

Players so far:

1. Ichabod
2. wetbandit
3. ?

How are they selected?

I found 2 chaos books (one at a time), and Disintegrate which is very rare and should require 3 books is available for research. (I had no chaos books at the start of the game)
I didn't swap that spell's position or rarity, so I wonder, is this a bug or an intended feature? Do found books give spells of random rarity, regardless of the number of books? I thought they follow the same pattern as books at the start of the game but maybe not? I also found Chaos Mastery, Sorcery Mastery and one additional Sorcery book but those are most likely not related.

1) can anyone tell me why the game has started deleting the MP login information (username and direct access address) each time I start up Civ? It used to remember them between logins, but now I have to retype each time; not a big deal, but getting repetitive.

2) Is there a way to turn off or disable the clouds in globe view?

Thanks!

I've edited my building tree significantly.

In short, I made the Builder's Hall the root building for the "advanced" building tree, so less developed races can be locked out of most such buildings with simply disabling Builder's Hall instead of the 5 separate buildings it is the requirement of (which are very different from the original game, and are mostly buildings you can do without, but that provide a nice boost if you do build them).

The concept seems to work well but towns starting with it already built even for races that cannot build them is bad.
I can't really change the function to another building either, Smithy unlocking University and such would not make much sense.

Is there a known way to make sure no towns (player or neutral) start with it already built?

There is a big problem with starting the game with the Wraith spell, and rares in general, but this one seems to be the most easy to abuse.

I have already changed (the latter two independent of the wraiths themselves)
-nerfed wraiths to have only -1 on the life steal
-and no +2 to hit bonus.
-reduced the casting cost reductions of spell books, so casting it takes like 10 turns longer than before. (no -40% bonus, only 14%)
-Accelerated city growth and early production, so enemies can defend better
-And added the fortress lightning bolt mod (btw any idea how to make the lighting stronger? It barely does 1-2 damage a turn, it never felt like something that matters in the battle)

Despite all of the above and playing Hard, a single wraith summon is still enough to take over ANY enemy city in the early game, even the capitals of enemy wizards. A stack of 7 war bears and 2 heroes simply can't compete with a Wraith.

Now, the problem is, the intended use of Wraiths is exactly this, a unit that's unstoppable with numbers alone, low tier units shouldn't be able to efficiently stop a Wraith. So further nerfing them isn't really a good option.

I think any of the below changes could solve this problem, but I haven't found any specific information if they are possible to mod, and how (simply putting magic.exe into a disassembler won't really tell me much without knowing where the related code is) :
-Limiting the books you can take from every realm to 10. The 11th book does not give you any new researchable spell anyway, you already have all 40 from book 10. The AI tends to keep their best summons guarding his own capital so them having early Wraith is a lesser problem. This is probably the easiest to do, and best solution.
-Removing the Rare (and Uncommon) picks. I tried, and know where they are located, but doing so causes the game to take unintended other spells like Armageddon instead, so changing the code also seems to be necessary. Skipping the part where uncommon and rare spells are given does not seem to hard if we knew where that is located in the code.
-Restoring the old Guaranteed spells feature instead. I've seen a screenshot with that, but I don't know if it actually worked safely. That feature was quite good anyway, considering some spells can be worthless to you (like Eternal Night if you play 3+3+3 books). This probably takes a lot of work.

Anyone can help me in achieving any of the above?

I edited units to have higher scouting and it does not seem to work well.
Is it capped at Scouting III? I think that's the highest I've seen in the unchanged game.
IV still displays fine (6 appeared as "scouting" with no number) but does not seem to have an effect of 4 at all, one hero with it only sees 1 range, the other 3....I think their original scout ranges are unchanged, it just displays "Scouting" without adding the effect?

If it indeed does not work, I'll lower it back to the original values.