...and accept the consequences

Oooooh, shiny lights:





Shiny Balls:





Shiny Liam:

I've got another writeup for Civ 5 to share. It doesn't belong in Tournament Reports, but I also don't want to be like Sullla whose reports don't get seen unless you obsessively check his website all the time. So since I'll have more in the future too, a thread here seems appropriate. Feel free to share any other solo reports as well, just in case we might ever get any.

http://www.dos486.com/civ4/civ5culture1/

It's the PBEM32 sequel time! I'm excited. Anyways, I seem to have a tradition of posting webcomics in the first post, so here's the one for this thread. Perfect too as it fills up a lot of vertical space. Then it'll be "get serious" time after that or something. OR SOMETHING.



Long-winded thoughts coming up sometime soon.

Thanks for the game all.

It seems a lot of the game came down to the early conflicts. Mist fought with (and settled far towards) oledavy, even though I was equidistant. Fire&ice skirmished with Yuri and neither of them settled significantly towards me. Meanwhile my own units got busy clearing barb encampments and rescuing workers for city states that should never have been mine - Vienna which was closest to Yuri, Almaty which was closest to Fire&Ice, and Helsinki which was closest to Mist. Not to mention Monaco on the far side of Fire&ice, and also close to Mist.

Being Aztec helped me a lot. Jaguars were great, saving me quite a few turns of healing and probably preserving a couple units that would have otherwise died, too. (And the double move through forests helped a lot.) The free culture was amazing. Everyone knows how powerful culture is - I got to delay my initial monument in favor of more explorers, and STILL got ahead in policies. And the floating gardens are really really good.

I spent less energy on upping my science and gold than the rest of you and instead focused almost solely on population growth (floating gardens, riverside farms, happiness, and a maritime bribe) and mines. This eventually led to better tech and gold anyway. It was made easier by my UB and the fact that I opened scout-jaguar to get lots of huts/barb camps/city state contacts which allowed the CS bribe.

I think my tech path was good. I pretty much went happy -> iron -> education -> chemistry -> markets, and tried very hard to land hagia sophia and notre dame. Chemistry's mine bonus was very strong.

Liberty is obviously a must. Not taking it really hurt Fire&ice even before he lost his settler. I'm not sure Patronage was a good play. Oledavy talked up Scholasticism a lot but it gives a really tiny amount of science, like 2-5 beakers per CS; 20b for me at the end of the game out of 220. However the happiness policy following it was very nice. Question is whether I could have gotten similar benefits more effectively in some other tree. Probably so, but it was fun to try this out.

I did not know that me going to war with people caused their influence with my CS allies to drop to -60. That's pretty crazy.

Hi everyone! The last week I have been playing Diablo 3 quite intensively. At the moment I am level 60 and progressing through Act I Inferno with relative ease. My character is a Witch Doctor. As I was approaching level 60 and the later Acts of Hell I asked myself how I could ensure that I got the best gear possible so as to ensure speedy progress. I would like to share my conclusions with you all.

My initial plan for Diablo 3 was to do the same thing that I did in Diablo 2: namely get gear with high stats and Magic Find. But two things have, in my opinion, altered the game in a significant way: The AH and the Nephalem Valor buff.

To take the AH first: The amount of items on the AH is staggering, and the prices are really not that high. With some cash in your pocket, you can get really good items that would otherwise take you days, or even weeks, of farming to find. This means that it is your bank account that determines how good gear you get (until you reach the later Acts of Inferno yourself.) But what is the best way to make enough money to buy late game items on the AH? One option would be to stack MF to find good items and selling them on the AH, but I'm not so sure that is the most efficient way to play. Instead I have been doing something different: I've started stacking Gold Find.

Now, with the Nephalem Valor buff and +Gold Find equipment I can easily reach +150% Gold Find. If I sacrifice some stats, 200+ should also be possible. The result is that a Hell Asmodeus run (all the way from Arreat Crater level 1), which takes a bit more than 1 hour for me, gives me 100,000 gold. This includes the 50 blue and 15 yellow items that I get on average, and sell to the vendor. In Act 1 Inferno it is not uncommon for regular mobs to drop over 1,000 gold, so I expect that I will make even more gold per hour there.

After seeing these numbers I am starting to be convinced that stacking Gold Find is the superior way to play from level 60 and to the very final Acts of Inferno (if your goal is to get the best gear and progress at a quick pace.) I do keep some Magic Find gear in my backpack as well, and switch to it just before finishing off a boss, but 99% of the time I am wearing Gold Find. Has anyone experimented with similar builds?

Hi, since I am not a Diablo pro, I had some basic questions coming up:

1. Is there a decent resource out there which tells me in detail how the skills work? For example: I had to activate advanced tooltips to even see how much damage my Zombie Dogs do. Now I am still having trouble to find out how much life they have or if their life, armor and resistances scale with level or is a percentage of mine. I am also looking for a list of all gems and their values.

2. Are there any soulbond items in Diablo 3? I was shocked when I discovered that it seemed like I could sell a rare item I had already worn on the AH (yes, former WoW player )

3. Do I get any bonuses myself if I give my templar an item that "increases gold/orb pickup range by 4 yards" or is that a wasted stat ?

In case there are any others out there that are suckers for collector's editions like me.

They are still possible to find even if you never pre-ordered. I was fortunate enough that the very first Gamestop I called knew of an extra copy in a nearby store, and when I talked to them they said later this week they'll start releasing more pre-orders that never got picked up. So just a heads up, in case someone is itching for some extra goodies. As long as you don't live in the middle of nowhere with only a store or two, you should be able to track one down, with some luck and persistence.

So around this time last year we played a few games of Diplomacy here - a normal game, a greens game, and a gunboat game. I really enjoyed them, but interest died out towards the end and we set it aside. I don't really think it's something that has enough interest to be played as frequently as the Werewolf games are, but is there any interest out there in running a new game? It's pretty easy to do it in a forum setting here - all we need is 7 signups and a GM. So, anyone interested?

Er, yeah, so ... Diablo 3 ate my homework? *shuffles feet awkwardly*

Or more honestly, I failed to start playing in time and so ended up with loads still to play when Diablo 3 came out and I parked this game. Which is a shame, as I was enjoying it and if I'd got myself properly organised I'd've finished it out. I hope there are more Civ V adventures, thanks to SevenSpirits for sponsoring this one

Fortunately I was writing the report as I went along, you can find it here.

I got to turn 70, and hadn't got to any scoring opportunities. I may come back to it someday & finish the game, but it'll very much be a shadow coz I'm going to read the other reports now