So I was reading through a boardgames forum, and I stumbled on a link to this game called Crowns that recently came online. It's an interesting mix of strategic board games, in that each side is able to pick from different units and custom placing without the opponent's knowledge, as in a game like Stratego, but once all of the units for each side are picked and placed, the entire board is revealed for both players, and the gameplay is perfect knowledge as in chess.

I've just recently discovered it and played a few games this afternoon, but the AI client on the website is really good and has stomped me. :P I'm starting to get the hang of the strategy of the different pieces, and it looks to be quite deep and very fun.

The game can be played versus AI on their website, or PvP Through email or chat. Turns are passed by sending a URL through email or chat, so it would be fairly simple to send turns for multiplayer games.

Since I know a ton of you are strategy buffs, I'm hoping that this will prove interesting for you. :D Link to the rules is here, and link to the game is here.

I thoroughly enjoyed this adventure, and spent a lot of time on it up until almost the AD era. Then, real life intervened, and it was all I could do to race through to the end.

Executive summary:

Went with Cygnet Cyrus because I thought the early happiness from charismatic, the hut opportunities from a starting scout, and the barb-busting of an early UU would only enhance the 30-turn handicap bonus.

Had great scouting luck...lots of huts

Settled two cottage cities near the capital: one south, one east. Barbs put a city right where I wanted up north (triple gems), so I got that too. Found a great site to the east with seafood, pigs and wheat and built Globe+NatEpic there. Ended up generating 7 Artists + free one at Music.

Founded Confucianism, Oracled Philosophy, Researched Theology, Culture-captured a Buddhist city. These four religions got spread to my 9-city empire which cash-rushed lots of granaries and temples.

The AD years were just clicks. I feel like I might have been able to give a better performance, but in the end the victory screen splashed on:

Turn 226 (1580AD).

I really enjoyed this Swiss, and wish I had time even now to write a better report. This short summary doesn't do justice to my efforts in the first half, including the very-fun process of analyzing the handicaps!

I'm suffering from a serious case of Civ/FfH fatigue, so I'm looking for a replacement to take over the Elohim in Eib 21.

We're at the endgame (around T155), with a good position in the game.

I really hope someone steps up, because I'm ready to concede if no-one does.

The Inter-Site Democracy Game 2012 (usually just ISDG) is a large Civ 4 Pitboss game organised by CivFanatics. There are several large teams participating, of which Realms Beyond (RB) is one.

We have a private forum right here on realmsbeynd.net for discussing the game, and membership in the team is open for anyone who:

• is a member of (ie registered on) our forum
  
• is not a member of another team in the ISDG
  
• can show participation in other events or games here on RB

Kerberos has announced they are planning to do a crowdsourced roguelike called The Pit. It'll be set in the SotS-verse, so you'll be a marine, engineer, or pilot rather than a fighter or wizard. You can see their pitch page here, and the announcement (including their reasons for going with this approach) on their official forums here.

Since up to this point Kerberos has followed the traditional developer-for-hire-by-publisher model up to this point it's going to be interesting seeing what happens as a result of this switch!

There have been a fair number of people asking for a display theme that is a copy of or resembles the old site style, and I know both Yazi and KingofPain have been busy and have enough on their plate, so I've taken a few hours to whip up such a theme for us.

Test website is located here. There are a few items that aren't right (ads are forced on this forum hoster, some thumb-images need refinement, smilies included are horrid, a good amount of other small style tweaks could be done), but I think this is close to the alternate/retro feel that people would want.

Thoughts? Desires? Requests?

This is the first ever adventure write-up that I've attempted, so here we go ... The History of the Technologically Backward, yet Culturally Affluent Russians, as recalled by Cornflakes, both the documenter and the guiding hand behind all that transpired ………

First of all, results for scoring (not that I have the slightest chance of earliest Cultural Victory)
Cultural Victory T264 – 15 (Catherine) = T249
Number of cities flipped by culture: a pitiful 1 single city

Now, why Catherine of Russia?
1. The pick was to a large degree random
2. I wanted someone near the middle of the rankings
3. Since I would be unable to declare war on the AI to claim territory later on I figured that it was to my advantage to pace my cities in the best long-term position, and creative provides greater flexibility for settling early cities by popping borders right away (not sure how much this really benefitted me though, since I probably didn’t choose the best locations anyway)

General thoughts on strategy which guided my play (I’m interested to see how other more experienced players thought, and whether this was a good line of thinking for this situation):
1. No war = no need for military = no need for military tech
2. No need for military tech means the vast majority of the tech tree is unnecessary, meaning no need for research after a certain point
3. Since Taj Mahal provides a free golden age I set that as the final tech, and Printing Press provides +1 commerce (+1 culture with slider) so I decided to get that too, but looking back I’m thinking that printing press and paper might have been wasted beakers/culture-using-slider. In the end though, I’m pretty sure the commerce culture was affected by multipliers so this probably came out even or positive
4. PRIMARY STRATEGY: run slider as soon as possible, and get down multiplier buildings as soon as possible.

I finish playing about two weeks ago and didn’t start the write-up until today, but here is the history as far as I recall. From humble beginnings …

Empire


Moscow



St. Petersburg

This is about 10 turns after I sent them off on the exploration mission

General Overview


Moscow



St. Petersburg ***NOTE: I decided against building Sistine Chapel, which turned out to be a good decision because it was completed by an AI about 12 turns later.



Novgorod

Moscow


St. Petersburg



Novgorod

After a bit of a breather, I am looking forward to my next PBEM! Pitboss 5 is going along at it's slow and steady pace, and I've been thoroughly schooled in the last few pbems I've played solo, so I figure it's time for another lesson.

What I'm thinking of is 4 - 5, maybe 6 players. I know 6 can potentially bog a game down so only if there is interest & we can line up the schedules well enough should we go that high.

As for map, I'm looking for something along the lines of pbem17. Navies need to be important, but not the tiny islands we saw in pbem26. Am willing to go more towards the snaking land mass of pbem23 if people think ORG will be too over-balanced. Commodore has already chatted with me about this, and he sounds excited to do a map, something like pbem17, and I'm sure he will balance it well.

I'm considering leaving leader/civ/wonder bans up to the map-maker, and standard house rules of no WE/spy/nukes/tech trading as well. I'm completely open to diplo, although I think I would prefer AI-diplo. However, these things can definitely be hashed out when we find out who's playing and get an org thread going. First I want to see if there's even interest for another game at this point.

Looking for the game to start in 1-2 weeks, near the end of the month, so that will give plenty of time for discussion, sign-ups, and any pre-game strategy planning.

So who's up for a game?

Nice to win a game as Byzantium, especially since when I was playing this I knew my demise as Byzantium was rather...certain...in PB5.

But I still suck at reporting.


Played as Justinian, finished on T229.

So net of handicap, T211. Lack of Slavery was a PITA, took forever to expand properly. Cheap temples were awesome; I'm not sure if Spi was the right choice, but it worked out decently enough. Wish I had time to do a better report; this is the wrong week to do that, sorry.

Auto-subscribes

(October 15th, 2012, 20:03)T-hawk Wrote: Yeah rego, I got that too. Try User CP - Edit Options to change that behavior at the option named "Default Thread Subscription Mode". It can be either don't subscribe, or subscribe with email notification (very noisy), or subscribe without email notification (my favorite since you can browse subscribed threads from the User CP.)

(October 13th, 2012, 14:45)novice Wrote: I thought I'd share this trick with you as I couldn't find this function at first. It's the equivalent of the old "View first unread post" link at the top of a thread.



Click the green arrow.