Suggestion:

1. add loot when winning battles -> like gold and mana?
2. better diplomacy -> pay tribute (gold per turn) for peace?

Over at rpgcodex.com we are setting up a SMAC PBEM. If you want to play make an account there and then tell me here so I can add you to our PM on that forum.
SMAC = Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire, it's a really underrated and old style entry in the civ series but it has lots of deep mechanics like elevation, sea level rise, the ability to raise and lower terrain thus incidentally rerouting rivers, psionic combat side by side with mundane, ability to outfit unit chassis with different types of weaponry, army, and gear, and much more.

I haven't bought a lot of new games in a while..... but every time I see either of these I kind of want to try one of them out. So the simple question is which one would ya'll recommend?

I've loved Pins CK3 write ups, but I 100% would try at a low difficulty probably for either game.

Streamers showed off/leaked incoming runewords. We don't know if these are average, high or low rolls, that is yet to be seen.



First off the Flickering Flame in a 3socket head armor (stating the obvious in the screenshot). It looks particularly useful for a fire golem and corpse explosion user since they count as fire skills, or a fireblast throwing assassin. It uses a vex though, so it's more for capping off a farmed up character's build than for something to plan for.



One interesting part is how the displayed level 8 aura would make all minions fire immune. It could easily solve the fire nova and firestorm of Diablo killing all minions


source: https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-2/news/fl...ted-325667



Second, Unbending Will in swords of 6 sockets.



This means that of the one handed swords only the crystal sword-dimensional blade-phaseblade comes to mind, while the two handed swords only have the great sword-executioner sword-colossus blade trio as the possible candidates. The taunt looks like it's designed for act 5 mercenaries.



source: https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-2/news/un...ted-325631



Next up, Wisdom.



The piercing, cannot be frozen and mana steal combined with mana per kill point to a thrower or a bowazon, and the runes are not exactly high. This is probably the easiest cannot be frozen choice for other two hander users and dual wielders too.


source: https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-2/news/wi...ted-325636



Another bowazon item, the Mist runeword for bows. It is a beefy high-end runeword using the second highest rune in the game, although it has less attack rating boost than faith, less damage, less attack speed from the aura, and no Ignore Target Defense. On the other hand it has piercing attack, more all skills, more all resists, and a bit of vitality to go with it.


source: https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-2/news/mi...ted-325643



Now for a lower-end runeword: Pattern.



Pattern is very low runeword. barely higher than Ancient's Pledge, and has all resists and a half-decent enhanced damage to top that off. It IS stronger than most rares you can shop at late normal at least, with the obvious drawback of not being able to upgrade it to exceptional. Faster Block is interesting too, although the lack of mana steal means that a nice rare may still be preferable over this in some cases. I imagine it's nice for an early game Tiger/Claw assassin that will be actually a viable way to play with the changes to charge-up skills.


source: https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-2/news/pa...-ii-325658



Finally, Plague.



Another Cham runeword, so the online item shops are probably projecting increased sales and preparing their bots for ladder start. Not much else to say. It's big, beefy, and endgame like the rest of it's kind.


source: https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-2/news/pl...ted-325668

Hello, I am asking if anyone here would like to take my slot in the Civforum game that is currently being planned. It looks like it will start in either late January, or early February. The game contains:
- fun new settings!  
- fun new opponents!  

That's not all, you also (optionally) get:
- faithful dedlurker Amicalola! Although I am also more than happy to sit out completely. 

If you're interested, here are the settings: 

So my currnet computer is very, very bad. It plays DirectX 9... reasonably well, and pushing, hard, DirectX 11 with some degree of stability if I am doing absolutely nothing else. However, it does OpenGL fairly fine, and in all the (admitedly, not much) more graphically demanding games than CoM2, in which it is an option, I often see great improvements in stability and speed when I play with it.

So, of course, in DosBox that was an option, but how about the new engine(d) CoM2? I looked files everywhere and while I can find some configurations and mess with things, I got nothing on render method.

Now, the game is playable, specially as I play it, windowed (the archaic pixel style is very pretty, but on such a huge UI, I prefer it to be a bit on the smaller side). I am not having significant problems playing, at all. But I do get some slowdown, specially on what seems to be particle effects (spell effects, wizards presenting themselves on the mirror, etc), so any improvement I can get will be welcome.

Hi,

I would like to express my opinion, that it's frustrating to play vs nature wizard at higher than average difficultly levels, it prevents you from using selected heroes and training them which is one of the main fun aspects of the game.

you hire and kill (in order that they not offer to join you again) about 10-15 heroes, until you find the heroes you want. then you train them, invest on training them. and then you face a nature wizard, which can cast crack call a number of times (also web if you have flight which in higher difficulties often you don't) and bans this hero from servicing you again (not resurrectable). all the effort you put to find the heroes you want down the drain, why would I use heroes in the first place if they just get "disappeared" and not able to join me again in after a fight vs a spearman?

This forces you to focus on not playing with heroes when playing nature wizard which in my opinion ruins the fun of the game.
This and the fact that AI don't suffer from rampaging monsters and can expand as much as he/she wants while you are forced to expand very slowly while using super defense against these super strong rampaging monsters also takes away from the fun part of the game IMO.

I would like to suggest a fix for the crack call - make the hero resurrectable, costs about 330 mana, not a cheap price.
and a fix for the monsters is that the AI also be attacked by super strong rampaging monsters going to his weakest city as well.

Thank you,
Barak.

Pindicator wants someone who can take over his empire in PB63:

(January 10th, 2022, 10:15)pindicator Wrote: This game is not what I signed up for and this map is the exact opposite of what I was led to believe it would be.  My ded-lurkers advised me to do this 30 turns ago and I should have listened to them.

Or do you play unmodded always? I'm curious of the active players who does what.

I have two versions installed always. A "clean" version for bug checking, and a "modded" version.

Things I mod:

buildings.ini -> walls and war college maint = 0. Doesn't really change the game. Walls are arguably detrimental to the defender with no back gate. Wouldn't it be cool if they had a back gate? At least this way they aren't a burden by just existing.

elevation.ini-> reduced frequency of mountains, so huge swaths of mountains are much more rare. Added more variety for more "speckled" maps overall.

herodata.ini / units.ini -> I have a lot of thoughts about heroes. They definitely took up the lion's share of testing and changing. For starters, I gave all heroes 10 more hp. Edited traits in an attempt to make no hero overpowered, but ALSO no hero a crushing disappointment to get. Even Gunnar and Brax are useful. Balancing them to be useful but not Doomstack is tricky. I found a bit more HP and support traits was a good way to go. There are exceptions to that. Gunnar has almost all of his attack in Thrown (instead of attack). Brax has an unusually high resistance and Armsman. I tore down the Champions to make the entire hero playing field much more even. The fame requirements for all heroes (79) / champion (80) are close. The spell costs are close. The slightly better heroes are still champions, but now there are 15 Champions and 20 "Heroes" for more variety. Random traits are gone; too much variance. Oh! And ALL heroes get a few sp per level, but no default spells. They cast what you can cast (even melee) but just not a whole lot without items / buffs to spell casting.

ore.ini -> volcanoes decay into hills

settler.CAS -> all settlers have 10 hp. I found it insane that troll settlers had 40 hp!

SpellCracksCall.CAS -> Cracks Call does 6 hp of damage and buries a unit, 100% of the time. Also raised cost to 50 mana. I still use this spell like this to pin webbed Djinns, for example, but it no longer one shots heroes in the AIs hands.

Units.ini -> all Spearmen got Stealth. They can give exact scouting reports for lairs & nodes. The AI of course doesn't care at all about the actual stealth part of stealth, but now spearmen have a useful job they can do!

Units.ini -> made Carracks on par with Galleys, but with Warship HP. A Warship will still take them in a fight, but at least they aren't just so so much worse than the generic Galley.

Units.ini-> Stag Beetle. Fire Breath 5 to 15. Welcome to the end game beetle friend. Note, I don't prefer this race even still.

Units.ini-> Dragon Turtle. Lightning Breath 5 to 12. Welcome to the end game turtle friend. I still don't play these races often, even after the improvement. They don't buff well. They really can't dance with other end game units.

Units.ini-> Fire Elemental. Attack 12 to 15, defense 5 to 3. I want them to  lean into that weapon immunity.

Units.inii-> Ghouls. Ranged 4 to 3. They were OP for the tier. They're still one of the best early game units even so.

Units.ini-> Angels get Healer=Yes

Units.ini-> Archangels get Caster=29 to 50. Before this change an archangel could cast one Healing spell, and none of the good life buffs on itself in a lair. Demonlords were noticeably harder to clear.

Units.ini-> Sprites. Ranged 4 to 3. They were OP for the tier. Sprites SPECIFICALLY allowed an all Nature wizard to "retreat, repeat" clear every low to mid tier Sorcery node they could find with zero losses from the first turn of the game. Phantom warriors, Nagas, and Phantom Beasts are helpless against them. At least this way it takes longer. IMO it wouldn't be a bad thing for every sorcery node to have 1 water elemental in the budget then backfill with leftover balance of warriors / naga. The same way that full nodes of Wyrms always have a flyer / webber.

Units.ini-> Earth Ele. Move 1 to Move 2. Useless at move 1.

Units.ini-> Naga. Attack 5 to 6, Defense 4 to 2. Lean into that first strike / poison a bit more.

That's a large part of what I have modded. There's a bit more, but I think you get the general idea. Feel free to share your own, or be outraged at my changes to my single player game as brings you joy.

Inspired by T-Hawk starting star teams, I finally embarked on my own, softcore version, with the first one having the theme of blue or gemmed items only. This means no runewords, rares, cube-craft of the blood-safety-hitpower-caster quartet, uniques or sets. It also means that playing melee is not desired (except maybe for the barb, who has ways to reduce his multiple attribute dependency through Battlecry and Natural resistance), so casters are the order of the day here.

One of the characters is a wind druid. I figured it's (alongside a boulder-volcano-based physical fire hybrid) the simplest choice. Since I already played a fire druid and playing one without leaf to blaze through normal would feel wrong for me. Another reason is that DP101 is starting a druid of her own, and has problems with lack of offensive skills until level 24, so I figured doing it myself and writing down the experiences might help her and anyone else who is deterred by the "common wisdom" of playing as fire through normal and taking an akara respec once enough levels have been accumulated. That's not how Diablo 2 was before 1.13 anyways.

My plan for leveling was 1 point in the necessary summons, 1 point in the pre-requisites and then all into Twister, Tornado, and Hurricane. When deciding between Cyclone Armor and Twister, the deciding factor was that Hurricane gets more cold damage from twister, while Cyclone Armor grants duration, and it can be maintained even with the bare minimum of 1 point in cyclone as a pre-requisite. Besides, it's not like anything else needs casting often while dealing with the immunes that Hurricane is for. The added benefit of having an offensive spell at level 18 also looked enticing.

I should have remembered that the D2R devs specifically talked about buffing twister's damage before placing my hopes on that part.

So without further ado, let's see how it went down. I played Act 1 on players 7, act 2 on players 5, after noticing that p7 didn't make a noticeable difference to my p5 characters.

Quote:So the characters proceeded through normal difficulty on their early skills. Anyone can whack their way through act 1 with any makeshift skills and equipment, not really worth talking about. Playing a single pass through on players-7, each character reliably reached level 18 by the end of act 1 and 24 by the end of act 2, to kick in the skills at those tiers. Level-18 is the major offensive skill for several of these builds: Bone Spear, Charged Strike, Blessed Hammer. The druid and assassin had to go through act 2 with melee also until getting up to Tornado and Lightning Sentry, and the barbarian was really slow through all of the first three acts until he could finally get Whirlwind at level 30. But nothing in those acts is ever really much of any threat, particularly against the high life total of a barb and druid.
T-hawk's first star team
http://dos486.com/diablo/starteam/