I dislike Athene, but feel it's somewhat ridiculous this is even possible:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZkZ-bUj0...r_embedded

It seems that the 50% reduction granted by Channeler doesn't apply to summoned creatures.
Is it supposed to be like this?

I was experimenting with Channeler + Conjurer, which should bring a cumulative 50% + 25% discount on maintenance, but apparently it's not the case.

Cheers,

Breaking news:

The European Court of Justice just ruled that European consumers always have the right to resell software licenses even if these were bought in digital form (rendering invalid any EULA that says otherwise of course).

Press release:

http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/...0094en.pdf

Just a heads up, I saw several new users registering on "Who's Online" just now, all with similar account name patterns (mostly lowercase letters with a few numbers). Looking at the list of users by registration date, it does seem like there's been a huge spike today.

Of the 11 books strategies, which one do you think is the best? Why?
Which one do you prefer? Why?

One of my favorite is 11-books life, Torin, starting with Nomads (pathfinding rangers can help Torin go around better).
What about you?

Any 10-book strategy that is significantly better than an 11-book one?

I'm trying to learn how to do C&D, and have run into a few road blocks.

1) What methods do you use to determine which tech someone has researched? Tracking soldier counts is one way, but that only works on techs that give soldiers. Do you track GNP for each player and assume that players use all their cash?
2) Do you try to determine which player has built a unit whenever the soldier count goes up, or do you wait until you have graphs?
3) What determines which cities are on the top5 list?

Any other tips and tricks are most welcome. Thanks in advance!

Requires Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword patch 3.19

DOWNLOAD HERE - both the main file and the latest patch

Optional: the SMAC sound files and the SMAC movie files in four parts: #1, #2, #3 and #4
See the FAQ in the next post on where to place them. THANKS to WarKirby for providing the sound files, and to sylandro for providing the movies.

***

Earth, 2060. A small group of colonists leaves the ravages of Earth for a distant planet orbiting Alpha Centauri's primary star. Their ship, the United Nations Starship Unity, carries them on their journey to a new world and a new hope for humankind. Along the way a reactor malfunction damages the Unity, precipitating a crisis among the ship's seven most powerful leaders. As they enter the Alpha Centauri system, the crew splits into seven distinct factions, divided not by nationality, but by ideology, and their vision for the new world. After the ship breaks apart, the seven leaders guide their chosen crew down to the surface of Planet, seeking their destiny beneath an alien sky.

Planetfall is a mod for Sid Meier's Civilization 4 that uses the storyline and characters from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, combined with gameplay that takes the best from SMAC, Civilization, and the modding community.

Planetfall is not a clone of SMAC using the Civ4 engine, but rather incorporates the Factions, general storyline and Characters combined with new gameplay modifications to allow for more strategic gameplay.

***

Design & Programming: Maniac
Graphics Lead: Lord Tirian
And many other contributors. See Readme.

Besides in this thread, you can also discuss Planetfall in this forum.

So, I figured I should go ahead and create a long-term strategy thread, since it doesn't really fit into Metagaming. Please feel free to post your ideas!

My initial thoughts: As Pacal of the Vikings, we are going to be able to settle islands much quicker than other teams and will get a not-horrible 3c out of coastal tiles. In addition, we are likely to be relatively far away from our opponents to start the game and barbarians are off, so REXing might be a very good idea, even with toridal maintainence.

I think that we should, however, prioritize settling our main continent over settling islands, with the exception that a really good island site is better than a decent mainland site and taking into account islands will give better trade routes, because the mainland is likely to be much more contested. Prior to seeing the map, I don't think there is any reason to Pink Dot; for instance, we are not dependent on stone like (PBEM 38 spoiler)

BUT THAT WON'T HOLD ME BACK

I'd like to start discussing our long-term game plan. This might be fairly newbie, some of us are a little slow

1) Assuming horses and copper are easily available and neighbour capitals at a distance of 20 or so tiles, what does our military plan look like for the first 50-60t?
2) What wonders are we interested in, and which wonders are the other teams likely to go for?
3) What's the general layout of our tech plan?
4) What do we know about the playing style of the other teams?
5) How will we keep a team with Lewwyn, Krill and Gaspar on it from imploding violently?


Feel free to add anything important I missed!