Please see discussion in this thread before voting.

Only team members should vote - i.e. no global lurkers please.

Obviously our civ pick is somewhat dependent on our leader choice, but this should hopefully give us a rough idea of the popularity of various options.

Game strategy.

Darrell

I held this one for a bit, to play it and see.

One, it gutted my Clvl 60 Inferno Act I DH.

No, it didn't gut DH's--there are a lot of other different builds and skills to work with.

But, I played that DH up from day 1, and, over time, gradually started deciding what skills i liked and how to play her, and gradually started making equip decisions based on that. By Clvl 60, I had a DH I was happy to play.

And then it was gone.

Poof.

I didn't push IAS. Just had a little over 2. NT is the top end of a good damage line on DH, and then that was gone, as well.

But the character played completely differently, after.

So, I learned that any style you choose, and equip you gravitate to, can be taken away at any moment because it isn't "fair" to other people I will never meet, in a single player game, that I only play online with with select friends.

Except for meaning I have to re-gear, and re-think, and either grind forever, or buy stuff on the RMAH, where Blizz gets a cut.

Hmmm.

So I played my Wiz.

She actually has a higher DPS than my (nerfed) DH, and a TON more survivability.

But here I am, again, in act I Inferno.

Do I adjust the equip and tactics to Inferno, or is Blizz going to just cut me off at the knees again?

They seem to have an odd relationship with the game, whereby actually killing monsters affronts them.

We bought the game to do that.

Let us do that.

I am getting beyond tired of being told how i should play the game--especially when it is backwards from D1 and D2.

Apparently, breaking barrels is an exploit.

Farming is an exploit.

Using a defensive build, so that it takes you a long time to kill a difficult boss, but you never die, is an exploit.

TRYING to kill a difficult elite, if you die a couple of times, is an exploit.

All I see right now is a complete lack of connection with the player base, a game where the priority is to protect the RMAH, and just some general dumb-assery

Sigh.

--Cy

So guys, how are we going to play the diplomatic game?
Honest?
Backstabbing?
Plain deceitfull?
How do Pirates diplomacy, if they ever do it...

I'd like to hear how you see us at work in this department.

I'll probably open a seperate gmail account for this game so everyone knows where to send their birds and every Pirate can read what's in....

Our team e-mail: dg1teampirates
password is the same

TEAM: team.excellentangermanagement@gmail.com

Commodore, you can post our start here when you are ready .

Darrell

Best Victory, listed alphabetically:
Compromise - Domination, 1320 AD
Qgqqqqq - Diplomacy, 1898 AD
regoarrarr - Space, 1894 AD
Ronald - Domination, 1824 AD
sunrise089 - Space, 1941 AD

Normal Victory:
Jaxian - Culture, 1816 AD

Congratulations to all the winners.

Normally I post sponsor comments as a prelude to my own report, but I didn't play this one, so here you go now.

The idea came to me when thinking through other BTS features that we turned into full games. Colonies in Colonization, corporations in Something Fishy and Friendly Takeover, forest preserves in Tree Huggers, and enhanced Golden Age in Mach Five. Then during a game of Alpha Centauri when looking at infiltration info, it came to me to do that in Civ 4 with passive espionage. I could have set up the EP directly with DLL hacking, but it seemed a lot more fun and sizzley to let the players do it themselves with Great Spies.

Inca fell into place as the player's civilization. We've never used it because of Huayna's obviously overpoweredness, and the swingy nature of a quechua rush, but it worked well here. Financial and Industrious should let you snag techs and wonders just ahead of rivals. And if there was any time to permit a quechua rush, this would work, with the variables of scouting and directional guessing taken out of play by the spies. Looks like nobody tried it, which is probably just as well. (I really don't know if it works on speeds other than Marathon, or if the AI hooks up metal or horses too fast.)

The variant rule against spending EP came into place naturally. The scenario wasn't meant to give dozens of cheaply stolen techs, just the passive info. It was unavoidable that the EP would still allow a deep discount on stealing techs, so I worked around that by categorizing the victory results as you saw. Stealing was available as a crutch if you wanted, but not necessary.

And culture victory is also an easy way out, so it was demoted although not banned. It was left enabled because I wanted the AIs to try culture and the player perhaps to see that via the espionage and have to stop it. Looks like the AIs didn't quite perform strongly enough to seriously threaten for culture, although Mansa in Sunrise's game turned in a hilarious result, getting his capital past double legendary but the third city at only 16k.

One problem was that the AIs would eventually accumulate enough EP that you'd lose the passive visibility. I chose the AIs mostly to alleviate that; all of them have a lower than normal propensity for espionage. The low-espionage group turned out as a decently good mix of builders and aggressors which was fine.

Donut was the map script because of its predictable shape, that you could scout it easily with the spies and get onto the business of espionage. I actually made pretty minimal editing - mostly just added several goody huts for the spies to play with, and a couple of the Calendar luxury resources. Mansa landed as the player's neighbor and I left him there, expecting that the player could either make religious buddies with him for trading, or else conquer him as a low-military soft target. I did notice the asymmetric distribution of the AI starting locations, giving Cyrus a lot of land on the far side, which I welcomed to let him pose some late game rivalry for the player.

Anyway, sounds like players enjoyed it. It was indeed timed right in a lull between major multiplayer events. Six full reports plus late Timmy does indicate enough interest to keep going.

I have another idea on the stack, which may have a bit of technical challenge to set up, but I'll see if I can open it by this Monday to give something to do before the CFC and RB demogames really start. It will be an easier "just for fun" type of scenario, with tech trading most definitely OFF.

So, now that our forum's private, it's time to get down to business.

Firstly, a reminder what our start looks like:

Quote:Elephants!
Khmer - Ballista Elephant

Camels!
Arabia - Camel Archer

Horsies!
Byzantine - Cataphract
Carthage - Numidian Cavalry
Egypt - War Chariot
Mongolia - Keshik
Persia - Immortal
Russia - Cossack
Spain - Conquistador

Quote:Monty - Agg/Spi
Huayna - Fin/Ind
Pacal - Fin/Exp
Sury - Exp/Cre
Catherine - Cre/Imp

Here it is. Should be final



Sullla EDIT: Latest plan:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...ring#gid=0

If you are on a different team, get lost

If you are team Gillette, get ready to choose our awesome combination.

If you are Commodore... SCREENSHOT NOW. I will not play the duel until we get it.





























/ok that's enough accidental click free space
Also, added spoiler tag just in case until the forums get closed down to players.

We've got the last spot in the pick. So what kind of synergies do we want to hit?

EDIT: Oh, NM then Comm.