After a longer pause, again I've been hit by a moo-streak - the game has a way of keeping one coming back. ;-) I wanted a try a more trade oriented game for once and osg-38 seemed line the perfect fit. As usual I played with embryonic18 (and missed the offical deadline to boot), so this will have to go to the shadow report.

I'm writing this mostly from memory and by using the automatic save files. One of these days, I will do a real timeline generator, which gives stats and infos about new tech ...

initial expansion (2300-2399):

2306 Vox, 45 Minimal artifacts founded.

chose artefact planet for location and tech boost. Started trickle-research on range5 before 2310 as it would be necessary for eastward expansion and to reach Beta Ceti, the terran 100 in the SW.

2331 Keeta, 50 Steppe founded.
2333 Rhilus, 100 Ocean fertile poor founded.
2340 Kronos, 70 Ocean founded.

Kronos was a very close call b/c 5 years later a Klakon stack with 3 mediums arrived but got "defeated" ...

   

... by a single scout2 of mine (the stack by the cross-cursor) which managed to dodge the 2 nuclear missle salvos.

2344 Beta Ceti, 100 Terran founded.
2344 Seidon, 70 Ocean founded.
2347 Herculis, 50 Steppe poor founded.
2352 Firma, 65 Arid founded.
2353 Rigel, 55 Steppe founded.
2355 Vega, 70 Arid ultra poor founded.
2362 Celtsi, 65 Arid founded.

Up to this point, Sol was busy churing out colships. For further expansion, controlled inferno was need, which popped around this time.

2368 Arietis, 40 Barren hostile ultra rich founded.
2369 Tyr, 30 Inferno hostile rich founded.
2370 Dunatis, 35 Tundra hostile founded.
2380 Jinga, 55 Arid poor founded.
2392 Draconis, 45 Dead hostile founded.
2392 Whynil, 50 Tundra hostile founded.
2399 Drakka, 20 Toxic hostile founded.

war and peace (2400-2499):

At the turn of the century, a had trade and NAPs with all of the AIs. 2417 the Bulrathi terminated our NAP but didn't attack immediatly, so I had enough time to secure the border planets.

2421 Neptunus, 20 Toxic hostile founded.

In 2425 the trade situation was

   

for a base score of 1575 and the political situation was still all love and peace.

   

The situation 10 years later however was an almost complete dogpile (the Darloks would declare soon afterwards).

   

It turned out to have been good luck that I drew the Comet event in 2428, which I prompted me to rush-build a reasonable fleet featuring a huge design with hv ion cannons, grav. beam and durally / autorepair all of which have been tech.-traded at some point.

The ships also came in handy to guard new colonies for my last expansion wave when inf-bases+reserve tanks finally fit on a large ...

2433 Bootis, 35 Dead hostile founded.
2434 Collassa, 10 Barren hostile founded.
2437 Omicron, 35 Dead hostile ultra rich founded.

... and later when some enemy-of-my-enemy diplomancy was called for:

2454 Helos, 65 Ocean artifacts conquered.
2459 Artemis, 60 Arid artifacts conquered.

I managed to rectify the diplo-situation afterwards (also using the "break alliance with another race" quite a lot, which I never have used before in any moo game iirc), but didn't quite get to 1575 rc trade income by 2475 and things went downhill again afterwards.

the new era (2500-):

Since most AIs already had PS-XV, I had to backtrack to OmegaV-bombs and since I would need some air-to-air firepower anyway and had some time to kill:

2524 Orion, 120 Terran Orion founded.

In the meantime, I had my combat-speed 7 bomber fleet ready but I only used them for surgical strikes on the battle screen on Zhardan, Nazin and Ursa which brought the AIs in line again. This time, I took no risks and graciously handed out gifts to anyone who wanted them. In 2549, I took a domination victory with 47 own + 11 AI votes vs. 11 votes form the coids (no screenshot due to appearant 5 attachment limit). Last trade was

   

for a total score of 1575 + 1575 = 3150.

cu

ignatius

Bug description
When an item has the Power Drain power, it is supposed to siphon off 2-20 mana from the target hero or creature.
However, neither a staff of Power Drain, nor a power-draining sword drains any mana.
Not from a hero, not from an efreet, nor from a shaman.

Versions
This bug is present both in vanilla 1.31 and in insecticide 1.40n.

Confirmation
RJAK confirmed the bug on the wikia.
See this page in the comments of the section "Colors of Ranged Magic and Special Attacks".

Save game & Reproduction
Here's a save game.
Zaldron has a staff of Power Drain and also magic immunity to prevent him from getting killed.
He can reach a hero and an efreet in his turn.
One complication: the enemies spend all of their mana in the first turn.
I used the Tweaker to give them some mana back.

Code analysis
While searching in the code, I can see that the Power Drain power is registered as an attack flag, but it does not appear to be handled anywhere.

I finally got overpowered by the tourism of the American Empire and decided to buy the BNW expansion for Civ 5.

So, I'm probing for interest in a new PBEM game using the expansion. I can't start it right now, but maybe after some of my other games end. Just want to see if people would consider playing it.

Anyone interested?

Below is a useful tool for Mafia players and mods.
First, here's another useful tool: Greasemonkey script to avoid spoiler threads

OK, I wrote a script for filtering posts based on poster, aimed at making forum mafia games easier to play.

The scripts installs a small menu in every post's header that lets you expand and collapse it, and lets you collapse all posts by that poster. By collapsing posts from posters you're not currently interested in reading, you can read through a thread focussing on just a select set of posters.

Here's what it looks like in action:


To install it, you need to install the Greasemonkey add-in for Firefox or the Tampermonkey add-in for chrome. Then click this link.

I also got it to work on Android using the Tampermonkey app, but I couldn't get it to work natively in Android's chrome browser.

In Safari (also on iPhone and iPad) you can get it to run as a bookmarklet:
1: Create a bookmark to any page, name it Mafia Helper.
2: Edit the bookmark, delete the bookmark url, and instead paste this code:

Gearbox software recently bought the licence to the Homeworld games, after THQ went belly-up. And they have anounced HD remakes of the two game (which IMO are extremely beautiful as they stand), as anounced on Digital Spy here. They also have a forum to discuss their plans about the games and hopefully another sequel here.

Now I'm unsure about GearBoxes bone fides re the Homeworld series, mainly as I'm not familiar with the company, but if even there is only the new HD versions of the existing games coming out I am pretty stoked about this.

Edit: the only reason I stumbled on this month old news was because of my semi-regular searching for Homeworld 3, since I heard rumours of the game being developed a few years back.

Any interest in a Civ 5 SG using the G&K expansion? I don't have BNW, so I can't participate in an eventual game using it, but I don't mind just lurking if people prefer that.

I'm completely open regarding difficulty and eventual variants. We can try whatever people want to. Maybe a only trading posts as improvements on non-resource tiles variant? I don't know, but I'm sure we can figure things out.

Roster:

1. Ichabod
2.
3.
4.
5.

Game server: caledorn.no-ip.org:2058 (or 87.252.66.245:2058)
Civstats: http://www.civstats.com/viewgame.php?gameid=2607 (registration pw for all civs: rbpb15)

Again I'm loaning sunrise's excellent tech thread intro:

Access the game via DirectIP connection after loading the mod to the address above. No password is needed (nor will one permit a successful connection) when connecting to the game. Make 100% sure there are no spaces in the field or you'll get an error. Spaces love to crop up unexpectedly, so please double-check this before posting that you can't connect.

The first time a player logs into the game they will be asked to set and confirm a password. This is non-trivial to change, so please make sure you know what it is, can remember it, etc.

In-game you can play as normal. This game is played via simultaneous turns, so you can queue unit actions and builds like normal, even after you end turn. I get asked sometimes, so I'll note you press TAB to chat in-game. When you're done playing please log out via Exit to Main Menu, not Exit to Desktop (which can create connectivity/lag issues).

I have set a 48 hour timer per team for the first turn. Starting next turn the timer will switch to 24 in-game hours. Of course in the future the timer can be tweaked according to the wishes of the players.

I will occasionally save and reload the game due to the ghost package issue. I do this with all Pitbosses I host, and the interval is about every 2-3 weeks. I always avoid doing this when someone is logged in, and it takes about 2-3 minutes.

This game uses Civstats to track the turns and other info, as indicated by the link above. Password is also noted above if you wish to register.

From now on, please let me know if you have any technical concerns in this thread. I can be reached infrequently via forum PM, and easily via email at caledorn at gmail dot com (Also Google Talk/Hangouts - although I seem to be having some problems with getting people who are not in my Google+ to contact me, and vice versa).

Enjoy the game!

This is a new kickstarter project from Kerberos, so for anyone who has fond memories of the SotS-verse, here's another installment of lore and battles set therein. This time it's a planet-based warfare game, along the lines of Panzer General in terms of scope. It's both for desktops as well as for mobile devices (exactly which mobile devices depends on how many of their funding stretch goals they can hit) and offers asynchronous turn-based multiplayer as well as single player campaigns.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kerb...d-pounders

Alpha Demo
http://www.gamershell.com/download_102535.shtml

So far the game looks promising. Kerberos appears to have done pretty well with their last game (SotS: The Pit and Mind Games expansion), which was popular with the twitch.tv community. And of course the original SotS1 was a classic. SotS2 was something of a flop due to over-ambition and consequently being rushed to release for contractual reasons, but that shouldn't be an issue here.

There you go:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi...=171260210

I know some people complained about the fact that the Greenlight process was a bit slow, but now I probably won't stay up to date on new Steam releases.

The first year is complete. ArenaNet has released an overview of the first year with an interesting little breakdown by the numbers.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild...irst-year/

It doesn't surprised that humans were the most popular race to play, but norn as number #2? And the asura and sylvari aren't as popular as I thought they'd be either.