Hey, I signed up to be a dedlurker, but I can't promise the commitment to XXVI of a full turn player. Therefore, to help the game get off its feet, I would like to ask that someone steps in and takes the reigns as primary turn player. I'll still be your dedlurker of course.

You would play as Tebryn of the Sheaim, Arcane/Summoner.

Hi, I recently joined these forums (only 2 weeks ago) and was surprised at how many people decided to respond to my posts and threads. I asked for help in how to lurk RB in the ISDG and received multiple responses within 24 hours. Started a new thread because I was failing at CKII and if anything I got responses even faster. I thank the RB community for providing such a welcoming atmosphere to a newbie like me.

Maybe we should document the dos and don'ts of PBEMs that we've experienced over the years. Specifically, there are some bugs that you need to take measures to avoid. As an aside, there are some useful threads floating around with technical/organizational advice to new players. E.g. how to set up a pbem tracker. Maybe a stickied thread with links to such useful threads would be a good idea.

Anyway, look out for these bugs:

1. The overwritten save bug
When you end turn in a pbem, an outgoing email named <gamename>_<turn>_to_<next player>.CivBeyondSwordSave, e.g. PBEM47_AD-0080_to_Team_Gaspar.CivBeyondSwordSave, is created in your My Games\Beyond the Sword\Saves\pbem\<gamename>\ folder. This is the save that you email to the next player. However, if the file already exists when you end turn, for example due to replaying a turn or because FFH names both the first and the second turn of the game "Turn 1", the resulting overwritten save game will not work for the next player. (He will get prompted for your password instead of his own.)

The solution is to make sure to delete any preexisting save file instead of opting to overwrite it. The game will prompt you if the outgoing save file already exists so you will be aware of the potential problem.

2. The popup bug
If you play with the "minimize popups" option enabled, you get a bunch of icons in the top right corner of your map, representing pending notifications, instead of the normal blocking popups asking you to pick builds, research projects, etc. If you save a pbem turn mid-turn, all the pending notfications will be saved to all the players' notification lists. If you subsequently load this save to continue playing the turn, the result is that other players will see your notifications when they play their turns. This is probably harmless in most cases, but it does leak information to other players, and it can cause a lot of confusion.

The solution is to play without the "minimize popups" option, or to resolve all pending notifications before saving a game (that you plan to load and continue from later).
My personal advise, to stay on the safe side, is also to never overwrite any pbem saves. I have no evidence that overwriting saves causes problems in cases other than when ending turn, but we do have bugs like the loading bug mentioned below whose causes are still not pinned down.

3. The loading bug
The exact circumstances required to produce this bug are not known, but it appears to be related to loading a game directly from being in-game in another (or another save of the same) game. The symptoms of the bug is that when the save gets back to you, you discover that some of your actions from your last turn have not happened, e.g. units that you moved out are unmoved when you get the save back. Sounds odd but it is a real bug and has been confirmed on multiple occasions. We've also seen players spontaneously adopting new civics, which might have been caused by the same bug.

The solution (it is hoped) is to always exit to main menu before loading a saved game.

Any interest? Seeing as PBEM XXIII is ending and XXVI is a new players game, maybe some FFH vets are interested in another game? We could wait for EitB new version that Sareln said could be launched in March (and we add some "friendly incentive" for him to really finish it ).

Settings to be decided. I'd say quick speed, no diplo (I'm not opposed to diplo, I just end up not doing it much - I'm willing to play a diplo game, though, if people prefer), restricted leaders, but we can further discuss and tinker this depending on the interested players.

Turn Order:

Kyan - kyanrbpb3@gmail.com
Thoth - cjm670 (gmail.com)
gtAngel - Natiezhem (at) gmail (dot) com
DaveV - rbdavev9 using gmail
Ichabod - mozarthspier at gmail dot com

Anyone been taking a look at this game? ... its a freemium game that just entered open beta (the 28'th Febuary), its a sandbox game (with the PVP being permadeath, but in itself optional) and you're playing a pilgrim that have just taken a ship to Jamestown and is carving out a life there from learning how to do different stuff (from as basicly as how to Swim to how to tan leather or smelt ore)

http://Salemthegame.com

highly recommend to use the custum client Enders since that gives the infomation so much better to learn the game in

I've started a character on the Roanoke server (one of the three beta servers) if anyone is interesting in looking into the game

Rules/settings:

Quote:Civ/Leader Restrictions: Normal snake pick (without seeing our starts). India and Inca banned. All Fin leaders banned. All Exp leaders banned.
Everybody starts with a scout (and no warrior).
Wonder bans: Statue of Zeus.
Spy bans: No spies.
Other bans: Nukes. War Elephants.
Map: Manually mirrored/rotated for four players.
World size: Standard. Cylindrical map with a brick layout.
Difficulty: Monarch
Speed: quick.
Huts, events, tech trading, vassal states all off
Always War
No barbarians.
Enough water for circumnavigation: Mapmaker's discretion.

Quote:1. Catherine of Greece (Novice)
2. Louis XIV of Zulu (Boldly)
3. Zara Yaqob of Sumeria (Dazed)
4. Asoka of HRE (Zackoti)

Quote:http://mistbinder.org/tracker/tracker.php?game=bts49

Send the save to pbem49@gmail.com

I've been getting an error with the Religion screen the last few days (possibly because I did a bunch of Windows Updates? can't think of anything else that would make the difference):



I just did a complete reinstall of Civ and it is still happening! help!

http://forums.elementalgame.com/440775

A good get. Hoping that bringing Soren and Derek into close proximity creates awesome things.

apparently they don't just mislabel horse meat as beef around in europe this winter... in Iceland they've found vegetarian meat pies

Originally posted at CFC:

The past few games I've been playing a quite fun setup loosely based on [URL="http://realmsbeyond.net/civ/c4tourney/adv44.html"]Realms Beyond Adventure 44[/URL].
Basic setup is a duel map with A LOT of civs - enough for every civ to be represented, on a low sea map (lakes with 4% water - more on that later).

The high civ density and low water allows for a lot of interesting tactical situations - one can't expect more then one city unless he works for it.
However this raises a problem for the FFH setup - how can one expect to last long when packed like sardines with immortal (rising difficulty) AIs?
To solve this I decided to run using the [URL="http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=151629"]FoR (Full_of_Resources) mapscript[/URL] - a script that basically allows one to alter the normal settings of a map to ones own preferences.
Using this I add a bunch of units to the starting tile which I think make for intersting game:

It may be difficult to tell from the screen, but I added a War Tortoise (firstly it provides a slow defensive unit to prevent both the player and the ais from being too easily defeated, and secondly its a unique unit I've never played with before truth be told I could've just as easily added a Longbow, but wheres the fun in that?), a Priest of Winter (the purpose of this was twofold, firstly it gives a relatively early summon to counter the slow moving units and help add dimension to the game, and secondly the "slow" ability comes in very handy at handling ai SoD) and a Wizard (why not - also it allows another dimension in terms of what unique improvements are used for mana).
In the end the wizard has veryu little effect, but the WT and PoW completely alter the strategic field. (Which is big - though I was playing the relatively peaceful EitB AI war decs happened thick and fast.)
Now that I was using FoR anyway, I made a few adjustments for a more interesting game:

This image shows me multiplying the amount of health/strategic resources by 1.5.
Strategic was done because it is easy to miss out on valuable resources in this game, and while not guaranteeing their existance, it does increase their likelihood of appearing, and one can always settle for it if nessecary.
Health is because due to other settings food was going to be more sparse then usual, and health cap can be brutal in FFH.

There are three major edits here - firstly I have altered the distribution of land to be more palatable (specifically: I've removed snow entirely, and the majority of tundra due to some early games where I had very uninteresting starts. Desert is slightly reduced, a change I will alter next game as I didn't see enough. Plains are also increased to prevent too much greenery).
Secondly the percentage of hills has been increased which I feel is useful in (practical) OCC games as FFH happy caps are so hard to get over that you want the hammer supply.
The percentage of jungle is also reduced to prevent to many horrible starts.

Finally I took a base lakes map and altered it to greatly reduce the prevalence of water (Very Small, 5%) as well as cylindrical (actually I've since switched to toroidial for a more fun game).

There are a bunch of other stuff I've changed, but those are the important ones AFAIC.

If anyone's interested I've attached a pair of saves to the next post - firstly a starting save, but as its for EitB (my default game type) I've also attached the WBSave.
Bunch of caveats: firstly I wouldn't recommend jumping straight into Immortal/Rising, so I've done this one at Emperor, secondly these settings/script I've only used for EitB so I don't know how well they work beyond that.

Anyway enjoy!