I have never got into scenarios in previous versions of the game, and think that's probably a shame. Has anybody played the scenarios in Civ 5, and have any comment on their quality, which are the better ones, which to avoid etc?

Erebus in the Balance: Version 10



Download here.

Note: Unlike recent versions of EitB, this is not a standalone installer, but a copy of the updated Assets file. As such, if you have any ongoing pbem games, you will need to make a backup copy of EitB for use in them. To install, just paste over your current assets file.

Edit: 10.1 is now released. This is functionally identical, simply rolling in a couple of bugfixes. I have updated the link above to link to 10.1.

Changelog:

Soren Johnson plays Civ4 for the first time in years, with designer notes.

http://www.twitch.tv/sorenjohnson/c/4144162

Just found this, and didn't notice anything about it on a quick check of the forum history.

This thread is going to be about getting to know our Realms Beyond friends better;

NOT strategies, tactics, or opinions about the game, but discussions about our personalities and interests other than gaming.

-----------

I'll start off.

I am a transgendered woman. That means that I am male (having male gametes), however, I identify on the inside as a woman. I am currently (as of June the Sixth, 2014), fifteen years of age (yes, a minority!). I am an artist, and I am incredibly nerdy about science and maths. I live in upstate New York, in the United States. And I like women.

Self-explanatory title.

Since Firaxis decided to be a bunch of schmucks and patch the game, remove direct IP connection options, and break mod support for PB, and I can't get it working, I'm going to need a sub in PB20.

It's a Tides of War Mod game and I am playing Elizabeth of Egypt. I think I am doing pretty decently, and we're still on about turn 40 or so.

If anyone can step up and take my Civ, please let me know.

Assuming people aren't too burnt out, I'd like to try my hand at hosting a WW game, with much-appreciated support from Brick.


Like pretty much every other thing I've made on RB, the set-up is heavily customized. 13 players, a fair number of power-roles (but not "role madness"), and the sincere promise that this game will be different



Anyone interested?


Signups

#1. novice
#2. Jkaen
#3. Azarius
#4. AdrienIer
#5. Goreripper (?)


Jowy (?) [reviewed the game proposal some months ago, I assume he meant to sign up for a different game]

Meiz (?) [this game would be fairly power-heavy]

Looks like Civ4 got updated on steam, a 600 MB patch. The only thing I can figure out so far is that they removed all existing multiplayer options to instead use Steamworks. Are existing multiplayer games now playable with that? Is anything else in this patch? Can it be reverted?

(as stated before, as a newbie I was not able to open a thread yesterday, so apologises for not reporting in time; score was posted before in the adventure annoncement thread)

EDIT: can't make the images work. Got them on dropbox links, like https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/df9p...ot0005.JPG ; but writing that URL into the image command doesn't work. What am I doing wrong ?

So this was my very first RB game.

Thoughts on turn 1:

- oh good I got enoguh airships to see virtually everything
-> large stacks so I'll need collateral. In previous games I never really got what the point of artillery is (I see them really popular among people here, so there probably is one) if I can have bombers instead, and same was my thought here. Imo Bombers >> Art for 1) range, which means assured first strike before even invading enemy territory and a lot of flexibility 2) far less losses (although later on Boudica did build a surprising amount of fighters which complicated things a little). Even briefly had the idea of nuking, but then I thought it would be too much research (without actually checking), well, reports have proven me wrong.
So I researched radio first. Then went for industrialism as I thought tanks would as well be good (though not strictly necessary, infantry+bombers seemed to me a solution for any problem that could be around)
-> attacking order: from the scenario description I had thought Gergovia's wonders would be the most useful; first attacking there was evidently not feasible, so plan was
1 barbs+Beijing with infantry + whatever else was available and would eat collateral while building bombers to attack actual opponents
2 Constantinople, which had lower teched units than the celts while
3 at the same time sending some transports over to Japan. With bombers the modern armor, gunships and mechs should be below infantry strength. I should be able to use the same bombers on Constantinople and Tokyo (talking flexibility)
4 then thwo everything on Gergovia (or parallel attacking if I had enough)

- on civics:
+representation , cause was intending to use units on offense, not for MP, possibliy a mistake
+nationhood, and yes, I drafted a lot
+serfdom! What a hilariously stupid idea, but I did not want to whip, and somehow I was unable to make the mental connection between caste system and the many many workshops in my land, so I thought that I could as well speed up the few workers I had
+Mercantilism, because trade routes were not giving anything
+theocracy, for obvious reasons
Couple of turns later I got aware somehow that caste system (which is another thing I have used very rarely and is really popular here) is good for workshops, and I was still in golden age, so I would be able to fix that. Than I thought that actually state property would also be terribly good in the same sense, so I switched research to Communism, however would not reach it within GA, so I sacrificed a bit of military production, built researches, and sped it up the necessary amount. Then I got to my last GA turn and here we come to probably the best screenshot of this report:




...literally one beaker short. Don't know how that happened, probably I drafted and then did not check research. So no State Property before capturing Constantinople. Possibly my biggest micro fail ever in a Civ game.

On second turn (after drafting and upgrading a bit) I attacked the bandits in their fort. Am I right to assume that forts in Civ IV are sort of pointless for defense as they just multiply the damage you take from siege units? Well that's what happened here so I lost like one cannon on all the barbs, however had to heal a little. Then I messed up rail building and was pushed back by China's expanding borders, so lost some turns there. What was really annoying was that a Celtic unit stole the hut from me while healing. I decided to make this my casus belli against everybody, as such a vile theft had to be the result of a greater complot of the other leaders.

When the first bombers were in my stack reached Beijing. I fell 2 units short of capturing it on T313, so the next turn I would return them their bolts:




With the returning forces and reinforcements I went straight for Constantinople, now supported by a sizeable air force, so te Byzantine stacks were always on half health. Captured the capital on T318, which had the great benefit of being able to revolt. I also had researched Fascism for Police State (admittedly pointless considering Pyramids), which had the side effect of switching Infantry builds to Paratroopers, which is something more I never really had been able to make good use of but became interesting in this game.

I somehow felt the need to have access to Constantinople, so I kept on the war and eventually captured half of the Byzantine territory (obviously wasting turns for the Celt attack):




Meanwhile a much too large highly promoted infantry stack landed in Japan, with some paratroopers joining, while bombers had the dangerous units on half health. Absolutely no resistance, so a complete waste of my best units who moreover were trapped in Tokyo after peace.

In the Byzantine and Japanese wars I was having fun with paras, so when I finally declared on the Celts I went greedy and landed about 10-15 of them next to Gergovia, while heaviliy bombing every Celtic position in sight. I needed six airbase forts to make room for all the planes:




However, Boudica had a surprisiingly large army (considering noble AI) and was even outteching me (when I declared war she was building the first tanks). My paratroopers were all killed, so it remained to a more traditional stack of doom to do what had to be done:




So score: Beijing T314, Constantinople T318, Tokyo T322, Gergovia T330 -> 116

Afterthoughts: It was a fun and, what I also appreciate, quick game, so thanks again for the effort Old Harry! Also learned a couple of new things, like not being to stupid on civics, the value paradrops can have (in previous games I always considered tanks to be just an easier way to push forward) and mass air battles when invading Celts. The general bomber/infantry strategy went well as I had anticipated. Besides some dumb/silly moves, I think I got delayed mainly by using way too large stacks for invasions, a common mistake of mine that probably cost me some points especially regarding the Tokyo conquest.

I decided to start this Sunday night on a whim, probably not my best idea

I took a ton of pictures, which you can find here, but here's a short summary:

• I knew I wanted to go Mao->Justin->Toku->Boud, but I started trying to attack Toku way too early since he and Mao signed a defensive pact while I was fighting the barbs
  
• Techs were Industrialism->Biology->Artillery
  
• Mao's conquest went well, especially when I figured out to just let the crossbows suicide on one unit at a time--Beijing captured on T315
  
• Sent a couple transports of tanks towards Toku, but they were useless by themselves
  
• Justin was way too annoying--Constantinople was impossible to wear down and I lost interest after suiciding a bunch of tanks around T325
  

I love fighting . Especially with the shiny toys you get in the modern age. Unfortunately it seems like RB doesn't and most people think of modern warfare as an unpleasant slog. We've got amazingly detailed descriptions of how and why to do almost everything in the early game, but by late-game it seems like turns take so long to play that there's just no time/energy to report. So what I'm hoping here is to see a bunch of different approaches and ideas to allow me to crib as much as possible for future games

I was also really hoping to put a shadow game together, but between Young Harry and PB13 just haven't had enough time .

Anyway the idea with this scenario is that it's a cramped map with other civilizations targets on every side. You have enough overflow beakers to get to some important techs, and each of our targets has some cool wonders to bag.

- Boudica had Three Gorges Dam and Pentagon. Powering the seven cities that don't already have a coal plant will add about 300 hammers per turn, while the extra Pentagonal XP might not be immediately helpful if you plan to switch to Theocracy. She has a lot of Guerrilla Infantry and a few Cannon around, and in my test runs she had Fighter planes very early on.
- Mao had Notre Dame, Broadway, Rock n Roll and Hollywood. All handy if you're going to start drafting hard. He's got a lot of ancient trash, and it looks like someone is guarding the pass...
- Tokugawa has The Kremlin, which is useful if you're in Slavery or Universal Suffrage, but not otherwise. Tokyo is practically unguarded but with five modern units that I can see we'll need a decent force to hold it. And there are mountains in the way.
- Justinian has Cristo, Shwedagon and Pyramids, to save anarchy and researching Democracy or Fascism. Again lots of infantry, with rivers in the way.

On the civic and tech front you've got a lot of units to build and a lot of fighting to do, so Police State would top my wish-list. Nationhood allows you to produce cannon fodder, Caste is good until you have the Kremlin, I can't decide between Mercantilism and Free Market - State Property would be nice for the food boost, but its a costly tech, Finally Theocracy is going to give us important extra XP. To effectively kill Justin and Boudica I think tanks will be necessary, Mao won't be too hard to beat with what we already have, while Toku is an unknown, but Paratroopers could be the key.

So if I'd played it out my plan was to grab Fascism on T305 (the first turn) while building Fighter planes, revolt to Police State/Nationhood/Theocracy on t306 and start drafting infantry (to help reduce the starvation problems) and building Paratroopers, then get industrialism for the tanks. The first target will be Mao, just because I think we can take him straight away and there isn't much of a happy cap for drafting with. After him it's either Justin or Toku, then finally Boudica, once the army is veteran.

Having read the other reports it sounds like Paratroopers and Bombers would have been a better combination, but obviously Nukes and four hours of planning is the best team! (So far...)

I'll wait until tomorrow to collate the scores since we've got a few hours left for report posting. Thanks everyone for playing.