I may put other things here eventually, but for now the capital song. 

It's Master of Magic's 30th anniversary and CivFanatics have put together a big tribute covering some of the best fan projects going on at the moment including MoM mods & remakes, MoM fan communities (yes here is mentioned multiple times), MoM scenarios for Civ games, similar games to MoM, and lots of other MoM related stuff. Be warned it's a big read, but a good one for MoM & Civ fans.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/a...re.691884/

Fillerpost

As promised, here's the signup-thread for the Variant Game I mentioned earlier.

(August 20th, 2024, 06:15)Tarkeel Wrote: A Tale of Two Continents
The core concept is to have two more-or-less natural continents with about 4 players on each. The lurkers will try to split the players in two groups based on perceived skill, and have the best players on the same continent. Will one player manage to consolidate the resources of their continent under one rule?
Proposed start acceleration: Start with a worker and one additional first-tier tech.

My initial thoughts had them as mirrors of each others, but the more I think about it the less I like that idea. Current plan is to roll two different pangea maps and merge them into the same map as different continents, and add islands as necessary. Starts and resources will be balanced within their continent.

I doubt this forum gets many posts, but it's probably worth having for continuity purposes and highlight reels.

post

I'm feeling in the mood to make another map, and have two ideas I'd like to gauge interest in.

A Tale of Two Continents
The core concept is to have two more-or-less natural continents with about 4 players on each. The lurkers will try to split the players in two groups based on perceived skill, and have the best players on the same continent. Will one player manage to consolidate the resources of their continent under one rule?
Proposed start acceleration: Start with a worker and one additional first-tier tech.

My initial thoughts had them as mirrors of each others, but the more I think about it the less I like that idea. Current plan is to roll two different pangea maps and merge them into the same map as different continents, and add islands as necessary. Starts and resources will be balanced within their continent.

Love Island: Always Peace Archipelago
As Krill is fond of saying, Always Peace is the most aggressive game mode in Civ4. I'm not sure how many madmen are interested in trying this, but I have a mindmap layout of an archipelago style map for five players that I think can be interesting. As this type of game is mostly decided in the landgrab phase, I believe an archipelago will make for an interesting challenge of how much land you can possibly grab.


This variant probably needs some trait banning, but I'd like to hear the player's input before proposing any.

If you have or find a gaming meme you like a lot throw it in here to share it around.

Note does not have to be civ based, but found example below.



I may have shown a picture of airlifting an elephant in PB66 after I did such a thing, so I feel this one.

I'm considering adjusting the following.

1. Building destruction rate when conquering.
This was originally added to balance out the resource advantage the AI gains though difficulty modifiers, so the player can't take advantage of the AI building significantly faster, and as a secondary effect also to make conquest slightly less rewarding compared to other ways to invest your resources (lair hunting and building up city economy).
While the latter is still valid, the AI resource advantage is much lower nowadays so I wonder if maybe these percentages could use some adjustment. (In particular the rate on Normal, Fair, Advanced and Expert seems somewhat questionable and exceeds the AI's production and population growth bonus by a significant quantity)
As a potential side effect, AI players conquering each other also comes with less destruction, which might in theory lead to stronger endgame AI if they had wars and conquered many cities. So this might not actually improve the player's chance at winning as much as it sounds like but might make the game more enjoyable by conquering more relevant high value buildings in wars.

Should I lower the destruction rates or not?
Additionally, the Smithy has double the normal chance of getting destroyed, maybe this should not be a multiplier but a flat addition instead (30% higher chance seems right, if we lowered the base values)

2. Chance of hiring heroes.
I think this is fine for hero 1, 2, 5 and 6 but maybe the third and fourth hero could have a slightly higher chance than 1 in 3 and 4 years respectively?

3. Power Link
Is the AI's reaction good as is, or would it be better if I added a percentage chance for the AI to skip casting spells for a turn if it rolled a low cost spell and has no rare or better summons available?
Or is the wizard elimination mechanic and the power cap on the spell already good enough to balance it? (assuming the player didn't disable the "no early very rare spell treasure" feature)

4. Spells found too early in treasure
I do believe the 1 book or retort pick given when a Very Rare spell is replaced is fair but I'm somewhat uncertain whether the 1600 value item is really good enough compensation for the player for missing out on a rare spell?
I thought it was the item plus an uncommon spell but apparently not.

Does anyone want to play a relatively low pressure, bit more buildery than stabby Civ 6 PBEM? Using all the DLC (excluding Julius Caesar, screw 2K).

Looking for a turn per day pace after the opening (PBEM23 managed to average 42 turns over 2 weeks, for three truns per day average).

I'm open to discuss settings but thinking keeping disaster settings around normal (if we want to go totally random and max everything for a more PvE style game then that could be fun with the game having a bit more space).

Tentative Sign ups:

• Krill
  
• greenline
  
• TheArchduke