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| Dragon Warrior, Variant Style |
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Posted by: Iainuki - September 25th, 2012, 11:50 - Forum: The Gaming Table
- Replies (18)
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There's another long series of old JRPGs besides Final Fantasy, though they've never achieved the same level of success in the US, the Dragon Quest (translation of the Japanese title)/Dragon Warrior (US title) series. I played these games when I was a kid, and recently I did a variant run of Dragon Warrior 3. I didn't think dumping this report in the Final Fantasy thread made sense, so here it is. I haven't looked closely enough at some of the other Dragon Quest/Warrior games to determine how good they are for variant play, but I suspect for some of the later games in the series, there might be interesting variants available.
Wikipedia has an overview of the series' game play, but for the variant I played, the most salient characteristic of the early games in the series is how much grinding is required. The first game is more or less nothing but grinding, with all the tactics revolving around how to grind *more efficiently*. The second and third games have more tactics and strategy to them, but there's still an expectation of a fair amount of grinding. I think completing the first game without grinding is impossible, and I seriously doubt it would be possible to do the second game without grinding because there aren't enough important choices and there are some brutal step-ups in difficulty. The third game, though, has enough latitude that I thought it might be possible. Since you're reading this, you know I was right, but it took a certain amount of work to get there.
I thought I'd try to introduce Dragon Warrior 3 by analogy with the first Final Fantasy---if you already know the game, feel free to skip this section. DW3 and FF1 are both games where you have a party of four characters who each have four slots for equipment, can cast spells, and gain levels based on the experience you get from killing enemies. (The AD&D influences on both games are clear.) You take your party through a series of dungeons, accumulating better items and higher levels, until you eventually kill the final boss. There's a token plot taking place in the background, but you can ignore it---the core of the game is about killing enemies and looting dungeons.
Like in FF1, at the beginning of the game you can pick from among different classes for your party, with different allowed equipment, spell access, and stat growth. Unlike in FF1, there's a fixed member of the party with a special class: the hero, who gets a special spell list with direct damage, healing, status ailment, and utility spells on it, plus the best equipment access in the game and a lower experience requirement per level at high levels. There are useful spells the hero doesn't get, but the hero is just better than any other character, mkay? There are seven other classes.
- Soldiers vs. Fighters: The two physical combat classes are soldiers and fighters, analogous to fighters and black belts in FF1. Soldiers wear heavy armor and wield weapons, fighters have a very limited selection of low-Defense armor and can only equip one weapon, the iron claw. Unlike in FF1, fighters are better than soldiers under most circumstances. It all comes down to stat growth: soldiers get terrible Agility (Agi) growth, fighters get great Agi growth. Agi does two things, improve initiative and boost Defense. Initiative in DW3 is extremely important because it often means you can kill enemies before they can act. It also turns out that under most conditions, the Agi boost to Defense makes up for the armor that fighters can't wear, so soldiers don't have much actual advantage in Defense. Meanwhile, fighters also hit harder despite being unable to use most weapons because they have better Str growth and a special level/256 chance to critical hit. Soldiers do get more HP, but that doesn't make up for their lower damage and initiative, especially since a soldier takes a lot of money to keep in level-appropriate gear.
- Pilgrims are something of a hybrid between the white mage and red mage. Like a white mage, they get all the healing and most of the support and status ailment spells, plus some special offensive spells. Like a red mage, they can use decent but not the best armor and weapons, and they get enough HP and stat growth to go with their gear to allow them to serve as second-class physical combatants.
- Wizards are the black mage equivalent. They have terrible HP and can't equip any decent armor or weapons. Their spell list contains direct damage, indirect offense, support, and utility magic.
- Sages are a little like suped-up red mages, but are made weird by DW3's class-change mechanic. Rather than advancing to a better class mid-game like in FF1, a non-hero character in DW3 at level 20 or higher can change classes to any another class but the special hero class, retaining their spells and half their stats, but starting over at level 1 and gaining the stat growth and equipment restrictions of a new class. Staring over at level 1 sounds like a huge penalty except that because the experience chart is exponential at low levels, it takes more experience to go from 20 to 25 than it does to go from 1 to 20. However, in practice changing classes is useless for other reasons except that it's the only way to become a sage; under normal conditions, you can only change one character into a sage per game. Sages learn all the spells that both pilgrims and wizards can cast at the same levels, and have generally better stat growth than both pilgrims and wizards, in particular higher HP, and equipment access that's just a little better than a pilgrim's.
- Merchants are a terrible class that makes the FF1 thief look good.
- Goof-offs are a useless joke class.
For those keeping track at home, the best classes are obviously fighters, pilgrims, and sages, though wizards and soldiers are viable.
- Physical Damage: The basic formula for average damage from physical attacks is Attack/2 - Defense/4. Attack and defense values vary from the low teens on the low end to the low 200s on the high end. Criticals (called "tremendous blows" by the game or "terrible blows" when enemies do them) do slightly less than Attack damage and ignore Defense; except for some special cases, PCs have a flat 1/64 critical chance.
- Spell Damage: Each spell deals damage in a fixed range, on average from the low teens for the lowest-level spells to around 100 for the most damaging spells. PCs take half the damage from all spells that enemies do.
- HP: It varies from low teens at level 1 to 100-200 in the 20s and low 30s, depending on class.
- Spells: Are cast with MP, not spell levels. They're learned randomly on level up, not bought in towns according to plot progress. Important spells include healing (pilgrim and hero); ice, infernos, and lightning element damage spells as most dangerous things resist fire (wizard, pilgrim, and hero respectively); spells that cure status ailments (pilgrim); Decrease, which halves the defense of a group of enemies, and Sap, which zeroes out one enemy's defense (pilgrim); BiKill, DW3's version of FAST which straight-up doubles a physical attacker's damage after Defense but doesn't stack with tremendous blows; Outside, the instant-dungeon-escape EXIT-equivalent (wizard and hero); Return, a spell that warps you to any of most towns you've previously visited and gives you an instant escape in battle on the overworld map (wizard and hero); status ailment spells Stopspell (hero and pilgrim), Sleep (hero and pilgrim), Surround (pilgrim), and Chaos (wizard); Stepguard, a spell that prevents walking across certain tiles from causing damage (wizard); Barrier, a late-arriving fire-protection spell (pilgrim); and Bounce, a late-arriving spell that reflects enemy spells (wizard).
- Spell-Casting Items: Exist and are just as important as in FF1. However, the only healing item is in a position equivalent to FF1's Masmune, though it's far more broken. This makes the earlier parts of the game a lot harder.
- Party Order Affects Chances of an Attack Landing: Like in FF1, characters further back in the party have less chance of being hit by physical attacks from normal enemies. However, some enemies have "unweighted" targeting and an equal chance of hitting anyone in the party with their physical attacks, and single-target spells also choose with equal probability among all party members. In other words, back-rank characters aren't half as safe in DW3 as in FF1.
- Enemy Selection: You can't choose to aim single-target attacks at a particular enemy, only at a group of enemies, which means that it's entirely random whether single-target attacks will line up correctly to finish enemies off.
- Status Ailments: Slow reduces Agility for a battle while Defense and Sap decrease defense. (Positive versions of these spells exist but are almost never worth casting.) Surround gives physical attacks a 5/8 miss rate and works most of the time. Sleep hits all members of the party or an enemy group, has a reasonable success rate, characters or enemies will wake up randomly with a middling probability, attacks don't affect it. Stopspell prevents all spellcasting from an enemy group or the party and has a good success rate. All of those are cured after battle. Poison is a forgettable early game nuisance that does small damage every few steps. Numbness prevents any actions in or out of battle and has a small chance to end every round in battle and every step outside of it. Limbo removes one party member or enemy from combat permanently, sending them back to a particular location at the start of the game, forcing you to stop whatever you're doing and leave any dungeons in progress to retrieve them. Chaos only hits one target, has a decent success rate, and causes them to attack their allies. Instant death spells exist but don't have great success rates; one hits multiple targets.
- Status-Ailment Protection: There isn't any, except for some items that decrease the chance instant-death spells work. Characters resist ailments more often as they gain levels, but there's no complete protection against anything. Enemies always have either 0/255, 77/255, 179/255, or complete resistance to any given status ailment.
- Elemental Protection: Minimal, not very effective, mostly restricted to either breath attacks or spells, and only affects fire not the other elements.
- High-End Gear: Most of it's cursed with disadvantages that make it unusable. Everyone but the hero will be using mostly store-bought items in the endgame.
- Preemptive Attacks: Not as common as FF1.
- Instant-Lose Random Encounters: Both worse and better than FF1, as instant-death attacks don't work as often, stoning doesn't exist, and the success rate of party lock-downs isn't as high. Still quite possible, though.
- Random Encounters More Dangerous Than the Bosses: yes, with the exception of ThatOneBoss and arguably one other boss.
- Expected Grinding: a whole lot more than FF1.
- Running: Usually a bad idea, chances of successfully escaping are low. It's better to fight it out and almost always better to cast Return if you have the spell and you're on the overworld map.
If you look at this list and conclude the game is harder than FF1, you'd be right, though FF1 is horrible in its own special way and has more places where it's possible to just instantly lose no matter how careful or well-geared you are. The worst bottleneck in FF1, the midgame troika, is not as bad as the worst bottleneck in DW3, ThatOneBoss.
Because grinding is such a core element of the DW series, my first thought for a variant was, "I want to run this game without grinding." My second thought was that just eliminating grinding wasn't hard enough. Thus, I now present to you Dragon Warrior 3, ironcore style.
Before I begin, some acknowledgements. Darkwing Duck holds the SDA record for a DW3 speed run. I used his run as a reference while constructing my strategy for this variant. 1whoistornapart did an enormous amount of research disassembling DW3's code; his bestiary, stat gain analysis, information on when classes learned spells, and other discoveries were critical.
The first restriction for this variant is no reloading from past saves, only making exceptions for technical failures or accidental critically awful button-presses; obviously, there will be no reloading after dying. The second restriction is no grinding. FF1 has an uncomplicated encounter system that makes it a little easier to define grinding. For the purposes of this variant challenge, I avoided grinding by trying to always be going for some objective that wasn't just hitting random encounters for gold and experience, and avoiding unnecessary random encounters while pursuing those objectives. I took the most direct routes through dungeons. When traveling overland, wherever possible I stayed on the lowest-encounter-rate terrain that still took me where I was going (i.e., on grasslands and the ocean and off hills where possible) and didn't travel at night. I used Return and Outside when they were available to shorten the distance to a destination. I avoided unnecessary fixed encounters like mimics. I didn't bother to pick up low-value or useless items in dungeons where they would have led to more random encounters. There's a cursed item called the Golden Claw that pushes up your encounter rate to 100/255 per step, but I didn't use it to grind for experience and gold, I just fought the encounters necessary to remove it from the dungeon where you find it so I could sell it for cash. I also didn't do anything like abuse the Orochi with Outside. (Don't ask.) I made some route-lengthening mistakes and choices to minimize danger that sometimes increased the amount of experience I got, which I've tried to annotate in my report.
When I started my practice run for this variant, I went with the same party that Darkwing did in his speed run: the hero and three fighters, planning to turn one of the fighters into a sage at level 20. As Darkwing noted, he would have taken three fighters through the whole game if he could have, but he needed the healing and some other spells a sage would provide. There's a lot of overlap between the demands on a no-grinding game and on a speed run, in particular, not much money and not much experience. With gold so short, fighters are even better than soldiers because they cost so much less money to keep in equipment. Meanwhile, early game, the hero's magic is adequate, and later on changing one of the fighters to a sage gives you the additional spells and MP for healing you need for the rest of the game.
There was, however, a problem with this strategy. ThatOneBoss, Baramos, is the hardest boss and hardest part of DW3. On his speed run, Darkwing learned that you don't need DW3's version of FAST, BiKill, to kill Baramos, but his speed run is segmented and so he could manipulate luck to get that BiKill-less speed run. He also intended to manipulate luck to ensure that his sage hit 21 in Baramos' Castle and learned BiKill that level: a sage or wizard has a 50% chance of learning BiKill at level 21 and every level thereafter if they haven't already learned it. In ironcore, I couldn't rely on learning BiKill at level 21 or reaching level 21 with such precise timing, so I had to take a different approach.
My practice run told me that I would gain about 100k experience over the course of the run, with some amount of random variation. It takes a fighter 45805 experience to get to level 20, and a sage 64664 experience to get to level 21. Obviously, getting 110469 experience before Baramos was optimistic, and then I would only have a 50% chance of getting BiKill---that would lead to a lot of failed runs, and that's even before I accounted for my less-than-100% chances of killing Baramos even with BiKill. Turning a fighter into a sage wasn't going to work. I considered substituting the class with the lowest experience requirements to reach level 20, the merchant: they take only 27807 experience, which meant that it would take only 92471 experience total to hit level 21 as a sage. This is a lot better, but a level 21 sage still only has a 50% chance of learning BiKill. Reaching level 22 as a sage requires 77175 experience, for a total of 104982, which was still achievable but would require luck, and push the probability up to 75%. Getting any level higher than that would never happen without grinding. Worse, early on merchants are as expensive as soldiers to equip and have worse stats to boot, plus make terrible sages because of peculiarities of DW3's stat growth system. There was a better approach.
Since characters retain all their spells after class change, I could start with a wizard, all but guarantee that I got BiKill, and then class change to sage. The wizard's experience chart for the relevant levels is:
21: 45676
22: 54121
23: 63622
24: 74310
25: 86334
26: 99861
They level slower than merchants but faster than fighters. Because of the exponential progression of experience per level, if I had 100k total experience, if I learned BiKill at each of the following levels, my sage would be at the following corresponding levels after changing classes and reaching Baramos:
21: 20
22: 19
23: 18
24: 16
25: 14
26: 2
If I learned it at level 26, that wasn't going to work unless I got lucky with how much experience I earned, but as long as my sage hit the high teens, I'd probably have about the same chances of beating Baramos. A level 25 wizard has a 96.875% chance of having learned BiKill. While those odds look better than they are because of the lumpiness of the experience distribution in the end of the game and the possibility I'd end up having to take a level 1 sage into Baramos' Castle or the other dangerous late-game dungeon, they were still better than any other method I could see of getting BiKill. Taking a wizard also had other advantages: they cost almost nothing to equip, less than a fighter, and they do acceptable damage, sometimes as good as a fighter's, though they don't reliably act before enemies like fighters do. The downside is that they have pitiful HP and defense, which would make my party more vulnerable than if I had another fighter, but a wizard would definitely contribute more than a merchant.
One obvious question is why bother to class change to a sage at all, if a wizard has BiKill and the advantage of higher levels? There are several reasons. I've already mentioned the first, that the exponential experience-to-level chart means that changing only costs a few levels. The second is that sages have much higher HP than wizards: an average wizard at level 26 has 134 HP, while an average wizard-turned-sage at level 18 has 125 HP. If my wizard learns BiKill at 21 or 22, it was quite likely that changing classes would give me more HP when fighting Baramos, not less. Third, sages can equip much better gear than wizards, which significantly decreases the damage that they take against Baramos. Fourth, there's another spell that increases my chances of success against Baramos, Sap, which is a pilgrim spell learned in the same way as BiKill but starting at level 8; a sage will almost certainly learn it by level 14, but a wizard never will. Finally, I would need healing and other pilgrim spells in the last part of the game, after Baramos, while none of the wizard spells I would get would be that useful.
These considerations fixed my party: one hero (Iainuki), two fighters (Macha and Badb), one wizard (Anann). Now, before I begin, I have a very important bug to describe. DW3 has a special in-combat command (in addition to the obvious Fight, Spell, Run, and Item commands) called Parry that halves all damage taken during the round it's used. The bug is that if you select Parry, hit B to go back, and then select another command, you execute the other command, but still take half damage. The last character in the party can't use Parry-Fight (as the bug is usually called), because if they select Parry, the combat round begins. Parry-Fight makes this variant possible and in my opinion, generally makes the game more fun. One weird consequence of this is that when facing enemies with unweighted targeting, breathers (breath attacks always hit all party members), or spell-casters, the most protected position in the party is the third position because it takes half damage from all attacks and has the second-lowest chance of being hit by normally-targeted physical attacks. (Note that normally-targeted attacks hit, in order of the character hit, 44%, 39%, 15%, and 1% of the time.) Later on, that means that my wizard/sage will almost always be in the third position. One additional wrinkle is that only the first character has access to the run command, but because there are only four slots for commands in the battle screen, if a spell-caster takes the first position they will have a command list of Fight, Spell, Run, Item without access to Parry, so the leader has to be a non-spell-caster. For this variant challenge, because of that, even though the hero often has the highest Defense, they still have to occupy the second position; it's not too much of a penalty, though, as the second position gets hit almost as often as the first.
One last thing before I begin is to note that in addition to my practice run, I had one attempt die to sleep-lock by Deadly Toadstools in the Dream Ruby Cave before my successful run.
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| Turn 40 Thoughts/Analysis |
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Posted by: Sullla - September 24th, 2012, 21:28 - Forum: CFC Multi-Team Pitboss
- Replies (4)
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Our first micro plan lasted for 40 turns. We've reached that point now without any real problems, ravenous barb lions notwithstanding. Let's look at where the nine competing teams stand at this point in the game. Everyone should feel free to keep an eye on our Google Doc spreadsheet tracking all of this info: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...EQXc#gid=8
1) Realms Beyond
Pacal (Fin/Exp) of Egypt
2 cities
8 total pop
6 techs: Agriculture/Wheel (T0), Hunting (T9), Pottery (21), Mining (T28), BW (T40)
I won't go into any great detail about our team's performance. We did extensive planning and simulation of the start, resulting in a near-optimization of the opening moves. I don't think it's possible to play things out much better than we did in these first 40 turns. As such, we sit in first place in almost every category possible right now. Enough said, on to the other teams.
2) CivFanatics
Mansa Musa (Fin/Spi) of India
2 cities
6 total pop
5 techs: Mining/Mysticism (T0), Agriculture (T10), The Wheel (T20), Pottery (31)
Out of all the other teams, CivFanatics has had the next best start. They have a good leader and the best civ in the game. They correctly identified that Pottery tech was one of the keys to this start - they are still the only other team with Pottery besides us. They opened by settling in place, building a Fast Worker, then grew the capital to size 5, then built their settler. Presumably, their capital then built a second worker after the settler. It's a very conventional opening, but they didn't screw it up (more than many teams can say) and are in good position going forward. They probably should have done a little better, since they are India and everything. Still, fairly decent overall. We have pulled ahead of them because of our double worker build, giving us significantly more improved tiles (especially at second city).
I have no idea what this team will do diplomatically. Friendly for now seems like the best plan, then be on our guard for the backstab later. Threat level for CivFanatics is High, due to close distance and capable team play.
3) CivForum.De (German team)
Isabella (Spi/Exp) of Inca
2 cities
7 total pop
5 techs: Agriculture/Mysticism (T0), Hunting (T9), The Wheel (T19), Mining (T27), nearly done BW
The German team rushed out to a fast second city, and it has already grown all the way up to size 3. Their capital remains at size 4 however. They moved on the first turn, went worker first, then grew their capital to size 3 and built a settler. Like I said, this was the fast second city approach. The downside is that they had nowhere near enough worker labor to support two cities that early. They grew the capital to size 4, then presumably built a second worker, and are probably building their third settler now. (Their capital hasn't grown in some time.)
This is another fairly standard opening, doing a good job of pushing expansion. The downside is that the German team clearly has outgrown their supply of improved tiles, and if they truly are building another settler, it's only going to get worse. They do not have Pottery yet for their Terraces, although they do have Wheel tech. They'll get Bronze Working in another turn or two. Their lack of Financial is a real issue. I rate this team a Medium threat overall.
You might say "hey, that team didn't really play that well. Why are they third?" Well, I still think they did better than the other teams that follow. At least their second city has grown all the way to size 3, and they have 7 total pop!
4) Apolyton
Elizabeth (Fin/Phi) of Ottomans
2 cities
6 total pop
6 techs: Agriculture/Wheel (T0), Hunting (T9), Animal Husbandry (T22), Fishing (T28), Mining (T36)
This team has made some odd tech decisions. They were the only team other than us to start with Wheel, but have showed no interest in Pottery thus far. Instead, they teched Animal Husbandry, and then followed it up with Fishing. This has led kjn to suspect that they settled a mirror version of our fish resource, with hidden horses revealed by AH tech. We'll know in a few more turns! It's a decent guess.
Everything about Apolyton's team management displays a competent but mediocre playstyle. They built a worker first, then grew to size 4, then built settler, resulting in a fairly fast second city (T32). Of course, we built a second worker and only settled two turns after them, by way of comparison. Their capital has not grown past size 4, which they hit 17 turns ago. Looks like a settler -> second worker -> settler build (I think?) Their tech choices have been very strange - if everyone has a gold tile near the start, teching AH and Fishing so early makes little sense. They are nowhere close to BW, and still need to get Pottery tech too. Not really sure what their team is doing. I'd rate their threat level as Medium overall.
5) CivFr
Willem (Fin/Cre) of Maya
2 cities
4 total pop
6 techs: Mining/Mysticism (T0), Agriculture (T11), Huting (T18), Bronze Working (T34), Wheel (T40)
This pick is honestly as much about reputation as anything else. I think this team is pretty capable, since their civ picks and tech choices have been excellent thus far. However, they still have two cities with four total pop right now - their capital is still size 2! No idea what that's all about. I am assuming that they are rushing to three cities, and about to settle their next city any turn now. Anything else and their opening makes no sense. Without knowing more information about their plans, I had to dump them into the middle of the pack.
Threat level High if this team has some kind of plan behind their moves thus far, Medium-Low if they are randomly making it up. I honestly can't tell now.
6) CivPlayers
Darius (Fin/Org) of Aztecs
2 cities
6 total pop
5 techs: Hunting/Mysticism (T0), Agriculture (T12), Mining (T21), The Wheel (T32)
CivPlayers, or as Sommerswerd called them "THE LEAGUE", suffered from a poor civ choice in the first of the Aztecs, and this slowed their opening considerably. Stuck with horrible opening techs and a scout, their start was very slow. Worker first, grow to size 5, then build a settler, second city not settled until T37, capital then onto second worker (which probably finished about now). Not very impressive. They are probably researching BW right now, but at present have fewer researched beakers than any other team. Ugh. Threat level somewhere between Medium and Low.
These five teams all managed to execute decent, if slow, openings. The last three teams, however... 
7) UniversCiv
Mehmed (Exp/Org) of Holy Rome
3 cities
6 total pop
5 techs: Hunting/Mysticism (T0), Agriculture (T12), Animal Husbandry (T25), The Wheel (T35)
This team did a fancy job of microing an extremely dumb opening. They opened warrior first while growing to size 2, then built their worker, then immediately built a settler, still at size 2. This meant that they didn't get their first tile improved until T22 (we farmed our corn T14), and their second city arrived on T31. They beat our second city by three turns, but we built a second worker and grow our capital to size 4 in the same span. As if this wasn't enough, they followed up their settler in the capital by building ANOTHER settler in the capital thereafter. They went warrior -> worker -> settler -> settler. They also did not build a second worker at their second city, which has actually outgrown the capital to size 3. This ridiculous opening resulted in the farcial situation of 1 worker for 3 cities. I don't even know what to say to that, other than this:
![[Image: picard-facepalm.jpg]](http://sequart.org/images/picard-facepalm.jpg)
Their tech choices are also a bit weird. They have Wheel and emphasized Animal Husbandry, so I guess they can build chariots, but they still are nowhere even close to Bronze Working. They are the only team in the game without Mining tech. So... if our starts are roughly mirrored, they can't even improve the gold tile, despite having three cities. I honestly think this team doesn't know what they are doing. I read some of their past Pitboss games on their forums, and they were nice people - but not especially skilled. Looks like it's the same thing here. Threat level Low.
8) We Play Civ
Ragnar (Fin/Agg) of Native Americans
2 cities
6 total pop
5 techs: Agriculture/Fishing (T0), Hunting (T9), Animal Husbandry (T22), Mining (T29), probably researching BW
I grade this team lower than UniversCiv, because at least UniversCiv is building cities. It's a silly strategy, but they're still doing SOMETHING. We Play Civ also opened warrior first, then built a worker at size 2, then grew to size 4 and started settler. Somehow, it took them until this turn (T40) to plant their second city. I have no idea why it took that long - there were 11 full turns between hitting size 4 and the settler founding a new city. Their capital also only hit size 5 on this same turn, so last turn (T39) they had a mere 4 total pop and one city. That's... really bad, no way around it. What in the world were they doing?! I mean, their starting techs weren't even that awful. Apparently they were building a *LOT* of warriors. This is the team that has a number of players from the Apolyton Demogame on their roster, and it seems they are up to their old tricks again. Threat level here is Low, this is a role-playing team that doesn't know how to do a proper opening.
9) Spanish Apolyton
Boudica (Agg/Chr) of Zulus
2 cities
3 total pop
5 techs: Agriculture/Hunting (T0), Mining (T9), Bronze Working (T25), The Wheel (T34)
This team has simply failed on every conceivable level. Kjn thinks that they might have lost a settler to a barb unit, and that seems very possible. Or they are completely, horribly incompetent; take your pick. It started with their selection of Boudica for leader over Pacal, Willem, Sury, etc. They started with a standard worker first build, grew to size 2, and then... uh... sat on size 2. Their capital has been there since T19, and is still size 2. They finally got a second city on this turn, T40. They have been the "Rival Worst" sitting at 10 Food for the past dozen or so turns. Maybe they lost a settler, or maybe they are trying some kind of crazy rush, or... I dunno. They rush rush Bronze Working pretty hard. But I don't see that working, since this map is just too big. Throw in their horrendous civ traits, and this is a walking dud team. They are completely finished already, 40 turns into the game. Threat level Extremely Low.
* * * * * * *
OK, so overall most of these teams have done a decent job. It's only the last three that have separated themselves from the pack with their weak openings. Nevertheless, there's been a lack of optimization from all of these other teams. We're significantly far ahead of everyone else at this stage. If we keep working hard at the micro side of things, and can avoid a Pitboss #2 style dogpile on the diplo side of the game, we'll be putting ourselves in an extremely strong position to win. 
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| Write it up, send me the save |
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Posted by: Tiltowait - September 21st, 2012, 23:50 - Forum: Master of Magic
- Replies (7)
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OK, doing as requested. I was in this game, in the magic screen, and I'm pretty sure I accidentally clicked left-then-right on "OK". The clicks were really fast, I didn't intend to do it, it was just a mistake. Here's the save.
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| Confusion bug |
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Posted by: Tiltowait - September 21st, 2012, 23:15 - Forum: Master of Magic
- Replies (27)
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I was attacked by Jafar. He cast confusion on one of my trolls and got it for the round. The troll had endurance cast on it already. Jafar then cast dispel magic true on my troll, and got control of the troll for the whole match! It became his unit because the confusion had been dispelled, and it was still marked as one of his units.
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| Looking for Help to Run the next WW game |
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Posted by: Tasunke - September 19th, 2012, 13:46 - Forum: The Gaming Table
- Replies (13)
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Hey, I'm thinking of hosting the next WW game.
I have a lot of ideas that I'm writing down, recording. Thinking it through, trying to get it as balanced as I want it to be, I'm putting a lot of thought into this.
Anyways, I'd love it if there were one or two vet players that would be willing to consider my ideas, (constructive criticism etc), and ... hopefully, perhaps at least 1 vet to help me run the game? 
Just let me know, perhaps we can PM back n forth, or just use Skype and/or Tinychat.
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| HTPC Budget build |
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Posted by: regoarrarr - September 18th, 2012, 12:06 - Forum: Off Topic
- Replies (16)
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So I know we have a few folks around here that are into computer hardware and such. I'm trying to build a fairly low budget HTPC. We don't have a super high end (36") TV, nor do we watch a ton of TV. Mostly looking to be able to DVR, as well as store and play some of our media.
System Usage from Most to Least Important: DVR (MythTv or similar), Netflix Streaming, ripping, storing and viewing DVDs and/or pictures, storing Wii games. Possibly also watchESPN app (ESPN3) if I can ever figure out a way to get it through Time Warner, or maybe even playing arcade games (MAME)
Okay after a bit more research, here is a first draft for comments - list also available at http://pcpartpicker.com/p/hQ6E
CPU: Intel Celeron G530 2.4GHz Dual-Core Processor
$43.99 @ Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005LTU54Q/?tag=pcpapi-20
Motherboard: ASRock H77M Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard
$69.99 @ Newegg - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...38566&SID=
RAM: Kingston Valueram DDR3 1333 4 GB SDRAM Memory Module 4 (2-2GB)
$21.74 @ Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0074VVNLS/?tag=pcpapi-20
SSD: Crucial 64GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive
$68.95 @ B&H - http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/76..._2_5_.html
(I also see it for $68.99 @ Amazon where I'd probably buy it)
Storage: Western Digital 2 TB WD Green SATA III Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive
$99.98 @ Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004VFJ9MK/?tag=pcpapi-20
Case: Black Micro ATX12V Desktp 220W with DVD Rom Fdd Hidden Bay Covers
$38.99 @ Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FIQBNW/?tag=pcpapi-20
DVD Drive: LG DVD Burner 24X
$16.99 @ Newegg - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...38566&SID=
Tuner card: Hauppauge 1229 WinTV-HVR-2250
$95 including tax @ Walmart (!) - http://www.walmart.com/ip/Hauppauge-1229...0003142050
Total is $455.63 though this does not include any OS (talking with a buddy that works for Microsoft to see if he has any deals on Windows) nor any keyboard / mouse / remote (are there ports to temporarily use a regular USB keyboard / mouse?) as well as any cables (or do those usually come with the parts?)
Any suggestions on how to drop the price any? I know I could skimp a bit on the storage (especially if I choose not to get a SSD) but I'm not sure if that's worth it. Seems silly to pay $59 for a 500GB or $79 for a 1TB when you can buy a 2TB drive for $99....
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