SCRooster stated an interest in another tournament, I'd be up for that. I suggest using Insecticide for now while zitro and letsdance develop their mods further. Format can be just about anything, although I'd like to keep it fairly simple. Something along the lines of fastest finish, possibly with side objectives for bonus points. Same setup for all would be easiest, different setups would be possible if there's a preference for that. Any takers?

Hi all, welcome! Enjoy the super-not-so-secret private forum.

If you're interested, here's the current roster:

Realms Beyond is fielding a team for the Multi-Team Civilization Democracy Game 3 being organized over at CivFanatics. The link to the organization thread is here. Please note the game is still in the planning stages, but eventually will have its own CFC subforum.

Because this is a competitive game played by civvers across a variety of sites, we have created our own private subforum for our planning and discussion. It appears in the Pitboss section, but is only visible once you have been granted access. Here are the steps for that:

*Click on your User CP
*Click on 'Group Memberships' under the 'Networking' heading
*You should see 'CFC Team Pitboss Players' as the only available choice
*Tick the 'Join Group' circle on the right side and then the 'Join Group' button

That will send a request out. Once approved you will be able to see the subforum. Please note that if you have no visible history at all (for instance zero posts and/or an extremely recent join date) your request may be delayed, and it will behoove you to proactively explain your request for access in this thread.

Like T-Hawk says below, this thread is now for recruiting and cheerleading, but not for settings or strategic discussion.

[SIZE="4"]FINAL SETUP[/SIZE]

Bans
- Tech trading
- Espionage
- Great spy infiltration (scouting allowed)
- Nukes
- Corporations
- Blockades
- Elephants
- SoZ
- Diplo victory (AP allowed)

Expectations
- 1 turn per 1.5 days, hoping for 1 turn per day
- Nice reports from all
- Keep fighting even if you aren't going to win, fight for #2 or #3 or even #5

Settings
- Ancient
- Quick
- No barbs, huts, events or vassal states
- Map size? Toroidal wrap, (mostly?) mirrored map with enough water to matter
- Regular snake pick with max one of FIN, EXP, India, Inca

Diplo
- All AI diplo allowed
- The following extra proposals may be made in e-mail: NAP, declare war, border agreement, close borders with another player
- Proposals can involve more than 2 players. All involved players must accept or the proposal is void. State clearly in the e-mail who the recipients are.
- Proposals are void if not accepted by the sender's next turn. Accepting a proposal too late is the same as sending a new proposal.
- You are not allowed to elaborate on proposals, consider it an extension of the in-game interface.

Proposals explained further

I found out that Blizzard did add the D3 Starter Edition to my Battle.Net Account game list. Prolly it's in yours too. Time to check and load

edit: replacing this by the information that we know so far. i also copied everything from this post to the general "how to mod" thread.

values for default item cost are in itemmake.exe beginning with byte 29B46 and in wizards.exe beginning with byte 2F078, 2 bytes each, low order byte first. same order as in the create item interface.

due to the way the items are saved, specials cannot be added or replaced in itempow.lbx (removal is possible by not setting any item flags). for example, it is not possible to add a +7 attack special, or edit another special to have this effect. changing cost for the "spell charges" special doesn't seem to have any effect. hardcoded cost for each spell charge = casting cost of spell*20. The number 20 is at wizards.exe: 8c0e4 and at 72A0 in itemmake.exe

Wizards.exe:98290 contains 50, which is the artificer reduction percentage.
wizards.exe:982de contains 25, which is the runemaster reduction percentage.

return from destroying items: Currently wizards.exe:5863d contains 2B C2. If you replace it by D1 F8, you'd divide the cost by 4 instead of by 2.

wizards.exe:8c488 is the enchant item cap of 200.
8c481 is the create artifact cap of 10000.

At wizards.exe:62d82 and 62e32 you've got a value of 1200 of the substitute item value for 1 book/skill respectively 2 books/skills.

It's pretty long, but there's some interesting information. No story spoilers, for those concerned.

Transcription: http://www.d3rmt.com/news/123/diablo-iii...r-chat-qa/

Some interesting ones:

Quote:Q: With Diablo 2, enemies in hardcore difficulty almost all recieved an immunity to one type of damage. Does this trend continue into Diablo 3, or are the enemies / affixes made threatening in different ways?

A: Jay Wilson - We do not use immunities as a monster affix. We focused more on powers that change up the monster's threat and challenge different classes in different ways.

Quote:Q: How is Inferno difficulty being balanced as a sort of longterm endgame opportunity? Will characters struggle in inferno until they acquire really epic gear or is the aim for Inferno to always be very challenging even when characters are decked out?

A: Kevin Martens - Inferno is balanced to never be trivial, even with the best gear. If some of you end up finding it trivial, we'll certainly be paying attention

Quote:Q: Is stun duration reduced in hell/inferno or is the same as in normal?

A: Kevin Martens - It has been reduced.

On the eve of winter, when the leaves had already fallen and begun to shrivel, the village of Erstwhile had begun to settle in for hibernation. Villagers set food aside in cold cellars, stockpiled wood. When the snow came, few would venture outside so the preparations took on a fevered pitch as their breath came solid.

When the sky took on the shade of an impending snowstorm, a man came to town from realms beyond the villager’s knowledge. He spoke in a soft voice while leaning on walking stick taller than himself. He looked young but his blue eyes held unnerving experience. He stumbled to the center of town before collapsing. The villagers surrounded the fallen man and watched, unsure. He continued to breathe, though seemed asleep. They hesitated only a moment before going to him. They turned him over and his eyes flickered, once. He eked out, “food”, and appeared to faint.

Maribeth, an elder woman with children grown and gone was struck and reminded of her own children. She ordered the men to carry him to her house. There were grumbles of disagreement, in particular the old man Thomas who warned he’d dreamt of evil before the storm. Maribeth laughed at him, his ravings and put her foot down. The men obeyed, cowed by the matron. Slowly and carefully he was carried to the elder lady’s home and laid in a cot. Then the snow began.

Maribeth ladled soup and nursed him back to health. The first few days he languished in bed, feverish. It was not clear to her what ailed him and decided more nourishment was required. She substituted the soup for stew with braised meat. His reaction was surprising as he was soon up and alert. He told her his name Loupe, and offered to work for his salvation.

The snow continued to fall outside but even so Loupe went out hunting for Maribeth. For the next week he brought home some game each day be it rabbit or pheasant or some other small game. Maribeth was astounded by his hunting skills. The other men in the village grudgingly assented respect, and asked about his secret to catching animals even in the storm. But Thomas the elder seer snarled whenever Loupe walked by.

After the week passed, the storm ended in the night. The moon was high and there was stillness in the air. The snow had stopped and sounds were swallowed up by fresh snow. Deadened. Maribeth awoke to a howl, a hiss and a whine. She looked to Loupe’s cot but he was not there. She could hear dull thuds outside but was unsure what to make of the noise. As she approached the front door it suddenly swung open, and Loupe fell forward. His left arm was bleeding and he had thin stream of blood running down the side of his face and neck. His ear was notched. He bounded up and slammed the door shut behind him leaning his back against it heavily.

It was then she noticed his face was not quite right. His nose stubbier, his eyes sharper, his teeth longer. He looked at her in sadness. The softness in his voice was gone when he spoke. Instead it grate as though it were iron being shoved among the coals. “I was wrong to turn them, when they asked. They were too young. They cannot control themselves.” He shook his head. Maribeth stepped back in shock, breathless. Fur sprouted from his face and his nose grew longer. “Worse,” he growled, “They don’t want to!”

The banging on the door began even as Loupe’s muscles bulged holding it in place. He looked back to his benefactor again. “I’m sorry.” He fell forward as the force grew too great and the door’s hinges broke. They came. Maribeth screamed, but the snow swallowed her voice.

In the morning the village wandered into the snow, thankful that it had at least stopped falling. Then a scream from the center of town drew a crowd. Old Thomas, the man who raved, who warned of evil, was dead. His head was torn from his neck and attached to the top of a tall walking stick several of the men recognized as Loupe’s. Scattered in the snow around were pieces of the old man. His torso had been clawed opened and his organs eaten. His limbs had been raggedly pulled from his body and chewed as though a dog with a bone. The snow was red. Bloody paw prints larger than any dog or wolf’s circled the site. To one side the snow was obviously disturbed as though a great scuffle had taken place. A trail led away towards Maribeth’s house. A group of men gathered and followed.

When they reached the cottage, it had obviously been attacked. The door had been broken down and a small trail of blood at the entrance. The men grabbed courage by the balls and stepped inside. One man immediately stepped back out. The others cringed.

Maribeth lay on the bed, white-faced, cold. Her throat had been torn out, but her eyes were dried open. The men couldn’t tell where the blood from her throat ended and where the blood from the gaping whole in her chest started. A man with the head of a wolf lay at her feet, eyes closed. His stomach had been ripped open, intestines dragged out nearly to the villager’s feet by the door. They sat in slippery coils of red ooze. But then his eyes opened.

“You are far too late.” he growled, blue eyes dancing beneath the fur. “My brood thought me weak. Now their struggle has begun. And you… you will be their game.” He half barked, half growled in a menacing burst that cause the villagers to back up even as the blood sprayed from his mouth. His tongue lolled from his mouth as though he were laughing. “Good luck.” And then he stopped and the blood red tongue went still.

When I'm not spending my RB time coming up with ideas for terrible Civ 3 PBEMs which will never run, I occasionally dream up awful SG ideas which will never work!



My idea for a Competitive SG is titled:



[SIZE="6"]The Seven Samurai[/SIZE]




[SIZE="5"]Venerable Game Rules:[/SIZE]

Basic idea is this:


It's a point-based game, where the player with the most points at the game's end wins.

We play as Tokugawa of Japan, OCC. Deity difficulty. Pangaea or a single, snaky landmass. We are allied with the Peaceful Villagers, played by a second Japan civ, who border us. The game starts in the Ancient Age, but we begin with seven Samurai units. There will be seven players. Always War. Standard or Large Map.


Each player gets one of the Samurai named after them, but players are permitted to control all seven during their turnsets (upgrading them is also allowed). All player Samurai start with the Great General promotion, if possible. If a player has two or more player-avatar Samurai in a stack which is about engage in battle, and one of the Samurai is that player's own representative unit, they must always make the first, lowest-odds attack with their personal Samurai (sending in non-named fodder units before any of the seven fight is fine).


Which is important, because any player whose Samurai dies is booted from the game.



I have not put a massive amount of thought into this, but I envision the points system working something like this:


+1 point for every exp on a player's own Samurai unit

+10 points to any Samurai who gets killed by another player ("Honorable Death Consolation Prize")

+20 points to every Samurai who eliminates a civilization

+50 points for any Samurai still alive at victory

-15% of points for every Samurai a player kills off which is not their own. Fractional scores at the end of the game round down.



The game ends when either a win condition is achieved or, far more likely, either the player civ OR the Peaceful Villagers are destroyed.


So, if my Samurai dies at turn 150 by another player's hands with 67 exp and I killed off one other player's Samurai during a turnset, my final score would be 65 points (67 + 10 * .85).


Despite the competitive aspect, I neither expect nor want the game to be taken particularly seriously, at least in terms of beating all the AI. Honorable death should be eagerly anticipated by all! Especially since I want to play, and I'm mediocre at BTS in general & nowhere near good enough to beat Deity Not looking exclusively for pros here.


Providing microplans or detailed instructions or guidance for the other turnplayers is also strongly discouraged. The point of the game should be having fun and trying to kill as many dudes as you can before inevitably getting swarmed to death =)



RULES ADDITION:

Each player may employ spoilers to conceal their secret plans from their competitors in a ninja-like fashion. Players must not read these spoilers while they are still present in the game!


So. Anyone up for this?

i made a rebalance mod =) inspiration came from the KMDale mod, but i wanted a mod that is fully compatible with the insecticide patch. thx to the tweaker, modding is quite easy and fast, so i made my own =)

my goal was a better balancing and harder choices. i did many, but no significant changes to the game. 3 spells, that i consider too problematic have been replaced by copies of other spells. full features list posted as first reply to this post.

feedback appreciated!
download LRM (current version 1.4)

[edit: i got a sticky =) thx. a note: this mod includes the insecticide patch 1.40m - update to the current v1.40n is not planned atm]
[edit: several updates to current version]

dance!