The current "nerf" on First Strike is not elegant.
I think it might be better to remove the 24 hp limit from the ability and instead give Negate First Strike to most high end units that are meant to be immune to heroes oneshotting them.

Which brings a few questions we need to answer, in particular :
-Did we have any reason for not using the solution in the first place? I don't remember any but it was a long time ago.
-Which units do we want to negate first strike?
-What about heroes?

For the units, I think normal units, common and uncommon creatures are fine to be killed by a first striking unit in one hit. Most of these don't have 25 hp per figure to be relevant anyway.
Rares and Very Rares we should look at individually.

We have Angel, Phoenix, Arch Angel, Gorgons, Stone Giant, Behemoth, Great Wyrm, Colossus, Great Drake, Hydra, Doom Bat, Efreet, Chaos Spawn, Storm Giant, Sky Drake, Djinn, Vampire, Wraiths, Death Knights and Demon Lords.

Arch Angel already has Negate First strike so it's not relevant.
Angel isn't really meant to be a powerful combat unit so I think it doesn't need protection.
Phoenix I'm unsure of but probably doesn't need protection either, as Life is weak against hero strategies either way and counters them by an unstoppable quantity of unit, not by a strong doomstack (unless it's a doomstack of archangels or its own heroes).
Gorgons and Stone Giants are strong enough for a rare creature to not need this special treatment either, I think if a hero can first strike these, that's fine, and just means the owner should upgrade to very rares faster. Storm Giants, same deal, with their ranged armor piercing shots they are difficult enough as is, at least for a rare.
Behemoth definitely needs the protection as it's slow and meant to be a "tank" unit.
Wyrms probably don't need it since they can move first and kill the heroes if they are the defender, although flying heroes might be able to counter them. However a unit that digs itself into the ground definitely is something I'd expect to be immune to first strike attacks based on common sense, so probably better to add the ability to them.
Colossus have powerful ranged attacks and can hit invisible heroes, I don't see the need for an extra layer of protection.
Great Drakes and Sky Drakes need it most, being just too slow to avoid being taken out by the heroes on turn two and having no ranged attacks whatsoever.
Hydras are a joke for any decent engame hero anyway so it's fine to leave them as is.
Chaos Spawn's gaze comes before first strike either way.
Djinn are a pain to deal with, let's not make it even worse.
Doom Bats on the other hand, if the retaliation damage was unavoidable would be a lot more dangerous, hitting at least twice for 8 damage each, instead of only once on their first turn before they die. I think adding it makes sense for such a fast creature anyway.
Efreet, not sure, and honestly their melee damage isn't good enough to be relevant against stronger heroes so probably no need.
Vampires and Wraiths also do little to be able to pierce through an endgame hero's armor so they are fine as is, although I would expect a Vampire to be able to negate first strike attacks due to having abnormally fast reflexes.
Death Knights and Demon Lords probably need it.

So as a summary :
I think we should add NFS to Behemoth,  Great Drake, Sky Drake, Death Knight, Demon Lord and maybe to Great Wyrm, Vampire, Doom Bat.

As for heroes, the AI is bad at positioning these strategically and will likely get hit by a first strike attack so at least the better melee heroes and those with high fortress garrison priority should probably gain the ability. Although they often have enough armor that they can survive hits from enemy heroes anyway so I'm not entirely sure.

In my past 3-4 games I've been paying attention to when and how Very Rare spells drop in Master level games.

According to the formula they unlock as treasure in 1408 for Expert and 1407 for Master. "Unlocked" is equal to "in the game, actively being used by wizards" since that's also around the time that both the player and (in higher level games) the AI can reliably take ruins / nodes that are strong enough to drop Very Rares.

Here are a few of the things I've seen:

• Game 1: I got Life Force in early 1407 and immediately ballooned in power. I noticed that another wizard had a capital packed full of Great Drakes by 1408. After Life Force I also got Supreme Light and Ruler of Heaven from treasure, around 1408.
  
• Game 2: Four (!) separate AIs cast Planetary Mastery between 1408 and 1410. I doubt this happened through trading as two were on Arcanus and two on Myrror, and there wasn't traffic between planes yet. This is the only time I've ever seen multiple AIs all get the same Very Rare global, even in longer games, so I doubt I'll see it again anytime soon, but it can happen. (Side note, I'm not sure all the duplicate copies were even working together since the world didn't suddenly become all forest.)
  
• Game 3: In 1509 I've got Great Drake, Blazing Eyes, and Call the Void, all from treasure. The first one dropped in 1407 from a not-particularly-hard ruin. Also, I got two of those spells before my first Rare was even available to research. Even now I still only have / have completed research on 1 Rare spell.
  

• Rare spells, in my experience, rarely (heh) drop in treasure. In my most recent game for instance, game 3 mentioned above, I've gotten 0 rare spells in treasure. Meanwhile, 3 Very Rare. I am destroying all but the very hardest ruins, towers etc, so the problem isn't that I'm somehow skipping the less difficult ruins that would drop Rares. Maybe there's actually a bug here.
  
• Research is slooooooow. Even if you were an Omniscient Sage Sorcery wizard playing halflings, you wouldn't be researching Very Rare spells by the same point you could pull multiple from treasure. It feels wrong that there's not a strategy that could compete with treasure hunting.
  

• Add 1 or 2 to the formula, moving the first drop date for VR to 1409 or 1410 for Expert. I actually think this is less than optimal as a solution because treasure-oriented players (and sometimes AI, depending on whether a given wizard becomes very powerful) will take out a lot of ruins already by then.
  
• Increase the power of ruins in Expert+ and similarly increase the budget required to drop the best treasure.
  
• Increase the likelihood and priority of getting Rare spells. I didn't try to calculate how likely it is to get a Rare vs a VR in treasure, but it's my experience in more than the 3 games mentioned above that I just don't get many Rares as treasure.
  
• Maybe increase research speed -- just a bit, maybe 10% -- for all players in Expert+, to allow for research oriented strategies? Again, this isn't just a "crazy human gets all the treasure" problem, I'm seeing AIs also get Very Rares that they probably shouldn't have yet.
  

See https://steamcommunity.com/app/1146370/d...647522479/

I've also noticed I'm playing a lower difficulty than I used to in the DOS version although that might just be laziness on my part.

This was born out of the discussions for a new PBEM. It appears that there are a few people who are interested in the mod but don't want to throw themselves into an MP FFA right away.
It's meant to be a vanilla SG as much as that's possible with Fall from Heaven, to get people introduced to the basics.

From the PBEM thread I gathered as interested:

1. Ginger()
   
2. Mr. Cairo
   
3. Amicalola
   
4. DaveV
   
5. Brian Shanahan
   
6. shallow_thought
   
7. BING_XI_LAO
   

Sometimes a wizard who's far away and loves curses / long range destruction will declare war. These wars can last for dozens of turns -- in a large world the wizard can be effectively unreachable for any retaliation. Meanwhile, they're casting earthquake / corruption / volcano / dispels / whatever else once or more per turn.

That's fine, but I think it would be a significant improvement if I could actually offer said wizards something for peace.

Spells don't work -- usually the wizards who really despise you don't share any spellbooks. Money is almost useless as a diplomacy option. I've given thousands to wizards (as a test) without budging the diplomacy meter at all. And spells and money are the only options.

A few ideas of things that could be possible as diplomacy offers:

• Break an alliance with the wizard's enemy
  
• Declare war on the wizard's enemy
  
• Maybe give away a city or an artifact? (may not be feasible)
  

Are we happy with the effect of this?

It was decided as part of the "uncap max population" update and honestly, now that I'm using the spell it feels...confusing and pointlessly complex.
Not only do I have to check if there is a Granary and subtract it to know base maximal population but then I also need to compare to 18 and limit to the range of 4-9 when in reality it just gives +4 for the majority of time.

The effect itself isn't necessarily bad but the wording is horrible.

Also, did we actually do the math, is a +4 bonus really enough? Wouldn't 5 or 6 be better? 4 population is a mere 8-12 extra gold and production and you have to wait for it and deal with unrest, while other rare spells provide more and instantly. (Inspirations is easily 30-40 extra production and Prosperity a similar amount of gold)

Considering this used to be one of the signature spells in the realm (Gaia's Blessing, albeit the name now belongs to the other half of the effects but the population boost really is supposed to be the more powerful half), +4 seems kinda underwhelming and for most areas where you'd get more, you already used Change Terrain and raised it anyway so you're facing a +4 bonus regardless.

How about "Raises maximal population by <number> but to a minimum of 18" sounds?

This eliminates the "base max population" and "at most 9" parts. That makes the spell significantly better for Nomads who don't get a Granary but for everyone else, this wording change means almost nothing.

And then the other question is, how much the "number" should be? Keep as 4? Raise to 6? 7? 8?

So the folks on the civ 3 part of civfanatics have consolidated around making a single open-source remake of civ 3 that uses original assets but has an entirely new engine (and I imagine the assets could then easily be replaced). It looks like they're taking a very professional approach to the project compared to others that have cropped up in the past ~10 years.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/w...re.674451/
https://c7-game.github.io/
https://github.com/C7-Game/Prototype

Thought some people might be vaguely interested to see where this goes.

For many of us, the most important part of picking the correct civ for a given start is the starting technologies, which can severely limit which civs are considered viable for a given start. For the maps I've designed I tried to vary up the foods available to encourage different civ pics, with varying degrees of success. But what if we did it the other way around?

I propose a game in which civs are picked first, and then the starts are tailored to make them playable for that civ. In practice this would mean that I set design guidelines for each start (which is what I've done for the maps so far), and then tailor them to fit. The exact guidelines are up for discussion, but I was thinking something like plainshill start, two foods (*) and a bananaforest, with similar amounts of rivers, hills and forests.

Foods would be allocated according to the starting techs, and agricultural for those without a food tech. Proably both food of the same tech, except for those who start with fishing.

Another option (which would also severly impact the early game speed) would be a semi-advanced start where everyone starts with all first row techs and a worker (and possibly workboat?).

Does this sound reasonable or crazy?

Opening post. It's been a while since I touched any civ, so likely to lose this horribly. But we'll see.

Lincoln of the Celts? Definitely could have had a worse roll.