Looking through the forum I realized today that some PBEMs have finally finished and I wondered if there is enough interest for PBEM25. What is (imo) mandatory:

- BTS (obviously)
- normal diplomacy
- max. of 5 players (imo after the 5th player most games start to not get in a turn / day often)
- Ancient start
- Quick Speed
- War Elephants banned

Apart from that I think some settings are worth discussion:

- Espionage allowed but some missions (change civic, change religions) banned?
- Tech-Trading allowed but not Tech-Brokering? No Tech-Trading? Tech-Trading with a certain amount of trades allowed?
- Certain civs / leaders banned?
- Barbarians?
- Difficulty? Somewhere between Noble and Emperor? Maybe Emperor to make Organized more viable?

For the map I would like to use what others did before (PBEM23 or 24?), being that we will get shown screenshots of our starting land and the game settings before we actually start snake-picking our civs/leaders.

So, anyone interested in it?

As title?

You need at least conjurer or they are too expensive. A lot of buffs dont work on them and most of the monsters you can summon are inferior to elite ranged troops.

I mean, war bears need 2 mana upkeep, and they are inferior to regular cavalry. Normal units are just faster to train(especially if you have inspiration), can benefit from mithril/adamantinium, are really cheap to support once you get fame the list goes on and on...

And its always pretty sad to summon up a giant or something and then they kill like 1 figure per turn.

Hey everyone, I'm putting this up and hopefully we can have a bit of discussion once everyone's had a chance to read the threads. I'm going to have my postmortem in a bit, but I wanted to get this up first.

Congrats to Nicolae and Mackoti, both Kublai of France.

The journey through a wormhole has always carried a certain risk. Occasionally, a molecule will fail to unfold in the correct manner, or an electron will resurface with the wrong spin. Machines can be built to tolerate such inconsistencies; but for the organic vessels of the human mind, these effects are more precarious. Coupled with the traumatic disconnection from the rest of reality, and the peculiar effects on human perception that arise when the laws of space and time are openly mocked, most people exit from a spacetime portal as another person, quite literally.

Usually people can recover from these effects by going on a solid drinking binge, or by undergoing other more or less equivalent psychological treatments. But there is a minority who can never fully recover from the mental trauma, who have irrevocably entered unpredictable mind-states. Some are obsessively wondering if they remembered to turn off the gas back home, knowing full well that by the time they can ever return to find out, their apartment may well be inhabited by an altogether new species (evolved, perhaps, to enjoy the atmosphere). Some take up live action role-playing or cricket, claiming it's a world sport. Others acquire more severe personality disorders and become outright psychopaths. Collectively, these symptoms are known as the Spacetime Cognitive Unsettlement Malady. The term describing the symptoms is also used informally in reference to the people afflicted with them. You never know what to expect from SCUM, but if you want to leave the conventional space lanes and travel to the realms beyond, you must be prepared to encounter them.

As you may know, the western exit of wormhole #8 is famed for its Space Bar, where eccentric travelers from all corners of the galaxy meet to exchange stories and bodily fluids. Telling the SCUM from the ordinary nutcases can be particularly difficult in this environment. This was also the scene of a particularly nasty SCUM incident very recently. Like most of the early portals, WW8 is powered by a local neutron star, and on this fateful day, there was a starquake: a sudden release of pent-up stress in the rapidly spinning star's inflexible crust. The resulting and unexpected increase in angular momentum triggered a corresponding spike in power output, which overloaded the wormhole stabilizers. The failover energy sinks also failed to compensate, as they were out of order; apparently, some of the recently arrived maintenance crew were afflicted with SCUM. All spare parts (and some that strictly speaking couldn't be spared) had been appropriated to construct a giant space fair, featuring an asteroid-sized Ferris wheel. When the power surge hit, the Ferris wheel set a new speed record, but that was of little consolation to the thousands of spacefarers who disintegrated along with their ships as the wormhole lost stability and its radius dwindled to zero.

Only a few of the very smallest single-pilot ships escaped, propelled by a spacetime shock-wave like wind-surfers ejected from a tornado. Gathering along with the other survivors in the Space Bar for some much-needed post-traumatic stress treatment, they quickly realized that the situation was dire. They had to root out the SCUM before they stood any chance of repairing the spacetime portal and regaining contact with the rest of the uncivilized world. What's more, they were almost out of ice.

[If this is against forum policy, please delete it with my apologies]
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=56
I'd like to invite you all to check out the Master of Magic mod I'm tinkering with, greatly assisted by kyrub. It is aptly named Catnip, both because of my feline inclination and because it's Master of Magic on crack. It's still a work in progress (and has been so for a looooong time), and we expect to have an initial testing version out sometime next week. kyrub is doing all the techie stuff and he recently managed to find the time to take another stab at it, so we're trying to make the most of it. After that, there'll be a number of balance releases which I will be needing a lot of feedback on. The list of planned changes is too long to list, here's a small summary:

1) Extensive unit rebalancing, including speed increases of 50%-100% and fewer figures for high end units, weaker ranged units in general
2) Big changes to the unrest system: Troops give no unrest control and buildings give a % reduction rather than a flat reduction
3) Complete revision of heroes, both for flavour and balance
4) Changing several combat mechanics: Poison, resistance, XP, retreating and more
5) Bunch of cost tweaks to spells, and major changes to a few select spells
6) More number tweaking of buildings
7) Lots of miscellaneous changes, such as alchemy, lairs, terrain and wizard creation

Also make sure to check out all we have to offer in the main section, we just finished our first succession game on the RB forums and are looking at starting the second one. Hope you'll drop by!

They only seem to fight for your nodes early game. Past the early game, even if you have completely undefended nodes, they never try to send a magic spirit over to steal it....really weird.

The most funny part is that the AI will send huge stacks to sit on your nodes, but will never try to capture them...

Well, since I went ahead and joined this forum, I should probably try and contribute something useful since just about every idea I have on how to improve the game has already been mentioned by others in the various modification threads, so I'll go with a Game Report.

• Three food per Farmer from the get go, no Animist's Guild needed. You can, if you want, easily start the production of a Settler from Turn-1 with these guys. Turn that extra farmer into a worker and the build time isn't overly long. I plan on doing that this game, all things being equal.
  
• They grow fast and you don't have to do an excessive amount of developing with guys to get to their end stage unit: Slingers. Add in Halflings +1 bonus to hit (Lucky) and what's not to like.
  
• They are friendly in that, of all the races you can choose to play with, Halflings generate the least amount of rebellion as either a subjugated or a conquering race. Since I plan to start on Myrror, this could become important at the end of early game well into the middle game.
  
• Slingers. One of the best units in the game in my opinion. That is why I like the Warlord skill and Myrran start when playing with them. That extra experience level does wonders for them (just like it does for any other unit) and if you can get an Admantium deposit or two fairly quickly (or even not so quickly), Slingers are pretty much unstoppable against anything that isn't missile immune or masses of tough units that can teleport. Taking on more than say, 3-4 Great Wyrms (especially under a Nature Aura), with even a 9-stack of experienced Admantium Slingers, is a bit dicey unless you have a way to get the Slingers out of the way (Flight, Invisibility) or slow down/stop the Wyrms. But short of that, stacks of Magicians, or anything innately invisible, you're good.
  

• Even though Slingers are a good, solid and awesome end stage unit, at least in my opinion, the Halflings really have no heavy infantry and nothing that resembles cavalry. While the bonuses I have chosen, plus the Halflings innate +1 to hit, are good, the sad fact is that the best Halfling melee infantry is Swordsman. Even though the bonuses take them a fairly long way, swords just really don't cut it when everyone else is running around with halberds, pikes, and racial units like Paladins, Wolf Riders, Hammerhands, ect, ect. That makes summoning fast, hardy melee units or finding a race that can cover this weakness almost a requirement for a smooth game.
  
• Spell Research. No Universities or Wizard's Guilds. Best you get is Sage's Guild. This makes you lag a bit and also places a priority on either pumping up your overall mana income (so more gets into the Research Wand) or subjugating a race that can build some (or all) of these of buildings.
  
• Same goes for money and, to a lesser extent, production. Halflings can't build Banks, Merchant's or Machinician's Guilds. Marketplaces and Miner's Guild are the best you get. The down side to being able to get to an end-stage unit fairly quickly. Less building options.
  
• While I am on the subject, the aforementioned Animist's Guild, while not needed for the farming boost, does mean that any Halfling city WILL have to have a garrison of at least two units to get rid of the rebel that shows himself at a maxed, 25 pop city. Granted, any city needs to have a minimal garrison in any case but that means should a city be targeted with a spell that increases unrest, you have no buffer to absorb any rebels. Same goes for any global spell that increases unrest. Halflings also cannot build Oracles.
  
• Final building downside, no War College. So even with the Warlord trait, the best I can do experience wise is to make Veterans rather than Regulars. Altar of Battle or Crusade are the only other ways to boost initial experience levels for Halflings. Even with an Alchemical, Mithril or Admantium boost, Veteran Slingers just aren't that effective against fast moving and/or high HP enemies unless you buff them up with some enchantments first. The first closes the distance too fast, the second can absorb the damage until melee range. Both together in the same unit usually means a stack of dead Slingers fairly quickly.
  
• Halflings have no Engineers. That bears repeating, HALFINGS HAVE NO ENGINEERS. May not seem like much to you folks but that is a major downer in my book. It is not so bad on Arcanus, especially if you get Nature's Pathfinding or Sorcery's Wind Walking, but on Myrror, it qualifies as a major downside as you can cover huge amounts of land with a decent stack or two and pretty much regulate most of your garrisons to tripwires/early warning (Nodes, Towers) or rebel suppression (Cities). So with a Myrran start, conquering a race that can supply Engineers becomes a pretty high priority for me.
  

I am on the same continent as Oberic. I know he has at least 2 nature spells i can't research (change terrain and transmute). I have 1 nature spellbook.

I have spells that he wants(i can give them to him as tribute), but when i try to exchange spells, he keeps insiting that i don't have any spells for trade.

What's going on?

Ive noticed that sometimes when taking a fortress city, the AI doesn't cast the spell of return, they just get defeated and all their cities get brown flags...what causes this?

It seems that early game i keep running into the same problem...i need troops to take nodes/cities/garrison new cities, but i don't have the food/gold to spare.

I tried playing HE and i had a stack of 4 longbowmen, zaldron in the fort and a few longbowmen defenders, but at this point i ran out of food/gold to support a settler and additional longbow defenders. And yet my 4 longbowmen couldnt take any cities(they were losing to slingers in a 1 on 1 fight).

Summoned creatures seem way too mana intensive without conjurer...especially considering how powerful ranged units are compared to them. Why summon a bunch of slow melee units that cost 2 mana to upkeep when high fame makes normal units free?

With flame bladed longbows i was oneshotting most units across the map and that was without mithril.(Does the +1 to hit from alchemist guilds affect ranged attacks btw?)

Once i get past the early game it quickly becomes a mopping up exercise when i have a doom stack of a few heroes and all ranged troops, buffed up, running around and the AI can't do a thing to it...