Have at it!

Would three other people be interested in a tiny AW game very much in the vein of Pitboss 50: https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/foru...hp?fid=327

Something like this in CtH would be a blast.

Mapmaker: Tarkeel

Players:
Commodore
Yuri (if dedlurker/teammate)
Thoth and Krill
Miguelito

Game info:
Url is pb.zulan.net:3068 and the PBSpy page is up.

You has to use the same mod as RB67 named 'RB67', too. It is linked on the PBSpy page and the mod content is equal to CloseToHome_3.0.2

Whispers have kept the legend alive, but today I reveal the truth - I am in its possession.

The prophecy is realized. Tauron's Guide to Spells, Maps, and Information has been unearthed, still excellently preserved.

Created in 1995, in the last millennium, TGSMI received rave reviews at the time. It earned the prestigious "A+" for extra credit, and a raving review of "Very Cool" by Russ T. Hinge of the Arcanus Times.

   
   

Wizards across all realms have turned to TGSMI for inspiration, lore and guidance, for generations. Do not let the legend die.

For high-res scans please cast spell of hyperlink -->-->--> here <--<--<--

For the past 10 years I've been tweaking a personal mod of Civ4 based off RevolutionDCM.  There are too many changes to count and I never kept a formal changelog.  I explain more about the mod here in this thread where I started a first playthrough of the mod on Emperor here:
https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...#pid815313

Well, that first playthrough was quickly becoming a snowballing blowout of the AI, partly because I guess my Civ4 skills weren't as rusty as I assumed, and partly because the AI gets knocked down about a level in difficulty from dealing with the Revolutions mechanics.  So, I'm starting a 2nd playthrough in this thread, this time on Immortal difficulty. 

(By the way, I put that thread in the "Adventures & Epics" subforum, but then I realized that that is more for multiplayer succession games, so I'm putting this 2nd playthrough here instead).  



I chose Jan Sobieski III of Poland to show off a new civ and leader from the RevolutionDCM mod:



From playing ahead a little bit, I can already tell you that this is going to be a CRAZY roller-coaster of a game.  So HERE WE GO!

The starting location:



I'm thinking settle-in-place unless the scout reveals something amazing.  SIP gives the capital irrigated corn and lots of riverside forests and jungles.  Why are riverside jungles and forests important?  Because in this mod, you can build camps in any forest or jungle tile, and we are going to get most of our early commerce from camps on those tiles.  

Tech-wise, I already start with all of the worker techs I'm gonna need, so I'm gonna go straight for Priesthood for the nerfed Bureaucracy civic (+50%h, +50% GOLD, +50% city maintenance) even though I don't expect I'll snag Hinduism on the way there.  



I find some horses and some coast exploring to the NE.  We appear to be on a sort of peninsula, which is great because it will make fogbusting versus barbs a lot easier!  Also, STONE!  



As Warsaw's borders expand, I find two goody huts just to the south of the capital.  



The first goody hut gives 43 gold.  Also, as I expected, we don't even come close to snagging Hinduism.  There must be another starting civ that started with mysticism and beelined straight to Hinduism.  The second goody hut also gives gold.  80 gold total between the two of them.  

Also, there's THIS:  a starting barb city (from having "Barbarian world" checked on the starting options).  



And this city doesn't even have a garrison for some reason (which is weird.  Usually they start with a couple of warriors...).  Alas! I don't think I can take this city anytime soon.  My capital's production is pathetic, and by the time I get 1 or 2 warriors over here, the city will surely have 1 or 2 warriors defending, and I'd have to have delayed my getting a worker out in the meantime.  Plus, this city is too far away to keep in the very early game (due to revolutionary unrest scaling with distance and lack of trade connection with the capital, especially in the early game).  So, snagging it is out of the question.  The only question is, what will happen when this city gives birth to a new civ (which is something that can happen in this mod).  Usually when that happens, the new civ gets a fairly big army and a golden age to start off with.  It can be frightening if you are unlucky enough to be right next to such a civ when that happens.  (Hint: foreshadowing...)

Another goody hut spotted!



This goody hut gives mining!  Not essential at the moment, but it will speed us onto bronze-working whenever that becomes relevant....



My scout ends up right next to a bear, which kills it on the interturn.  I should have known that animals would start to come out and that I ought to start being more careful with my scout.  That'll be 1 more scout I'll need to build for fogbusting eventually.  Oh well...



Someone builds Stonehenge VERY early.  Also, here you can see the power of early riverside camps.  The 2 commerce is nice, and you might ask, why is the tile giving 3 food?  Because the starting labor civic in this mod, communalism, gives extra food from camps and pastures, and also makes units built with food.  Sounds great, right?  But it also comes with +50% city maintenance and -10% commerce and hammers.  It's not a civic that any decent-size civ can stay in forever, and is outclassed by slavery and serfdom at a certain point.  But in the beginning, it really speeds up the early game and gives the player a reason to consider staying in the starting civic for a while.  

Also, I'm building the monument mainly for the +1 happy from charismatic. 



We meet Shaka.  He shows up with a scout, which is fortunate because our capital still doesn't have a defender...



Many uneventful turns.  Priesthood comes in and we immediately revolt to (nerfed) bureaucracy.  



Now with our +50% hammers and having grown to size 7, we can plow those hammers and food surplus into 1-turning some warriors and scouts as fogbusters, which we need to do because the barbs will start showing up soon.  



Pottery comes in.  We might want to build a granary at some point in preparation for going into slavery (although granaries only store 20% food, kind of like in FFH2), but the main point of pottery is just to get to masonry so that we can start building the Oracle.  



I get some javelin peltasts out as fogbusters.  They are resourceless and available with hunting, and in most cases slightly better than 3-str warriors (although warriors get +20% melee combat, so javelin peltasts can be situationally worse, but are usually a slight upgrade).  



I detour from my masonry beeline for The Wheel so that I can expand to a 2nd city and get trade routes connected.  



And here's the 2nd city.  For food, it will have irrigated corn at first, and then ocean fish eventually. 



My fogbusters are getting into position.  There is a convenient mountain chain that serves as a great chokepoint, so as long as I can clear the fog within that boundary, I think we will be in a good position vs. barbs even without copper or iron units.  

We also receive a negative event worsening our relations with Shaka, but I doubt it will be relevant anytime soon because Shaka's borders must be some way off. 



We get enough fogbusters out and, with masonry in, start on The Oracle.  The plan is to oracle Code of Laws for Confucianism and courthouses (actually, Semjiks, the Polish UB that is cheaper to build and gives culture and +1 xp to mounted units).  



OH NO....the moment I've feared...the barb city has spawned a civ.  I don't think the Aztecs will come after us quite yet.  But once they graduate from minor civ to full-fledged civ, we could have problems....



I forget what I was trying to show with this screenshot...maybe just how neat and tidy I had all of my fogbusters set up?



Writing comes in.  I've been skating by without any military techs so far.  I wonder if I will come to regret that...



We get the Oracle and slingshot Code of Laws!  (Also, you'll notice 1 barb warrior did manage to slip past my fogbusting net from the hills to the east.  I've gotta clean him up somehow...)



Bronze-working comes in.  And look!  We have copper in the 2nd ring of our 2nd city!  Just in time to build some spears and axes to guard against our new Aztec neighbors, right?  Right???...



I start frantically building military even before getting the copper hooked up, and put a few units in what I think will be a strong position on the hills across the river.  And it WOULD be a strong position for defense...if I had enough units.  But I don't.  And here come the Aztecs, SWOL from their emergence from being a minor civ.  



I briefly swap to slavery to do some frantic whipping.  (Being spiritual is nice. No anarchy!)



I get archery, just in time for the Aztecs to declare war on me and overrun my pathetic border guards.  To be fair, if those units had been archers, it wouldn't have made a lot of difference. 



They easily take my Confucian holy city.  And LOOK!  It appears they have even more chariots than I first assumed. 



At this point, I was tempted to ragequit and question whether the boost that minor civs get was OP.  But notice that chariots don't do great when attacking cities.  And my capital can 1-turn archers.  Maybe I can hold this.  

I'll be honest, at this point in the game, I did not think that it would be remotely possible to ever win this game.  I thought, best-case scenario, I would be able to punish the Aztecs at some point and retake the Confucian holy city.  That was my goal.  That was my mission.  That was my solemn oath.  So I played on...

But the rest will have to wait until the next installment....

Hello! I would like to request a short-term sub for PB66 and PB64. It would be for between 30/09 and ~03/10 (maybe 02/10). Big thanks if anyone volunteers!

I want my swordsmen to stand there inside the city walls/wall of fire, and if the other swordsman wants to engage, they can. Basically how auto turns worked before.

In CoM2, I have to manually click done again and again because pressing auto my units will just run out of the castle. This is completely unrealistic in every way, but more importantly, it's almost never what the player wants.

When there are flying units attacking my ground units, and then deciding against attacking but not fleeing, which happens quite often, I have to click done 25 times, and wait each time for units to fly around randomly. This makes a battle that used to take around 5 to 10 seconds, now take upwards of a few minutes, depending on how many movement points the flying units have. And then guess what the computer does? Attacks again. Another 5 minutes straight of clicking done.

Can someone explain clearly why this is more fun or better? I really don't understand this. I have temporarily changed to auto battles (which has a few weird issues as well), but I prefer actual battles.


I just cannot fathom why forcing the player to press done literally hundreds of times in a game, and forcing them to wait in between presses is supposed to be fun. I understand that the old way had the side effect of having flying units just dive bomb suicide themselves on melee units behind walls. I get that. But honestly, while that was kind of stupid, this change is extremely frustrating, tedious, and just as stupid in another way. If a flying army wants to attack and then decides it no longer wants to attack, there should be some way of prompting a troop exhaustion. In other words if the AI isn't going to cast or attack, just fly around wasting my time, allow me to force it to exhaust. Why make me suffer? This is infuriating, especially since the only answer I'm seeming to get over the last year or so is that it's intended.

Suggested fix(es) some or all or any of:
- Stop punishing the player for using auto - make auto exactly the same as the computers' autos.
- "Stand firm" or similar auto mode - just does nothing but defend. Does not wander around aimlessly or do anything else.
- Some way to force exhaust if enemy isn't going to attack.

Come to think of it - I could copy machine translated Chinese bureaucratese for diplo posts, would be funny

So this is going to be crazy, ain't it? 

They want a big map, sound like all on a big landmass, with lots of clear "contested" territory. Anyone able to novice-tool this one?

Attached Files

  67map2.zip (Size: 21.88 KB / Downloads: 10)

First off I love this song.



Second it was an insanely bad idea to join either this or PB66. I've never done 3 full pit bosses at the same time (I've done 3, but usually 1 was wrapping up / I was mostly dead). Its hard for to pass up bigger games and I couldn't pass up a diplo game, so here I am. I've never done a full diplo game sooooooo ya I probably am just super noob on.

Anyways, I'm the perfect ally. I'm usually "in it" in some sense, but I always end up 2nd or 3rd through a combination of mistakes and 'other'. Point being that is exactly who players should want as an ally. Someone who is a pain to kill.

Traits for diplo game on emperor on a larger map:

Imp: I'm kind of low on imp for emperor and with a more roomy map its a hard no.
Fin: Better on a larger map with more chance of making it to the late game. In a diplo game people can go "look at x he is looking good and fin hasn't even kicked in yet". So probably not.
Pro: With 6 players it gets slightly more attractive for trade routes, but hopefully have at least 1 ally this game....... With a more land based map GLH is merely good instead of game defining.
Cre: So I love creative. Also, in a diplo game you can set "don't settle past x line" and then take an extra row of tiles. Good expansion trait with little bit of early game.
Org: Its just so free...... you just get the benefit. I'm leaning org as my econ trait.
Cha: If I don't choose creative I'll probably choose charismatic. I like this trait more than most. Its just the swiss army knife of traits and does enough at all stages to make it good.
Exp: MAYBE* but only if the start is especially conductive to early granaries (ie low tech requirements one of which is fishing). I've wanted to try for a while, but usually go with cre or cha instead.
Agg: Its not a bad econ trait, but it takes a while to kick in and i don't think its going to be tight enough for combat I part to matter much.
Phi: maybe with America..... Just to do the thing. But honestly in a diplo game its probably more dangerous to look like you are doing fancy things.
Spi: People make this look good, but not for me.
Ind: Some low number of player game I'm going to pick Ind again. I was already on the fence in a diplo game though. On one hand you can explain "this is my econ trait". On the other hand people can go "look at all the wonders he is building". With score on, I'm probably going to go for a wonders still, but more of a focused nature.

Not sure if we will be snake or block but random civ thoughts:

Civs. America - honestly only one I may pair fin with for early academy . Org Sumeria again - really wanted a larger map for last time, maybe get it this time? Mali?

I've thought about Darius org/fin of India or Inca in the past, but not for a diplo game. Or maybe. I think you are supposed to pick something subtly powerful. I don't think America fits that bill, but I think that UB is broken, so may just pick what I want.

Named the thread in anticipation of all the joyous haggling over clay 

The idea behind this team is that I'll be the main turnplayer at the beginning, handle the draft/sims/civ build, and GKC will take over the turns later and lead our civ's diplomacy/strategic objectives

I have a couple fun combos rattling around in my head that I'd like to try out, but that must all await the starting screenshot and coming tech requirements.