Let's start with the results, since that's faster.

First, last and only place :

[SIZE="5"]Mardoc[/SIZE] - reached the goal on t173

There were no other submissions within deadline.

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So why did I try to float this apparent lead baloon of an Adventure? Few reasons ( including the fact Bob was looking tired and could use a breather ), but mainly in hope of attracting some actual gameplay feedback for Sareln and resolving some of the question marks hanging around the changes. The one posed here was

'Is the Foreign Trade implementation in Build 4 sane?'

So is it too strong? Is it a new Aristocracy perhaps? Or maybe it's still not enough? Does it make a pure trade route economy possible? If yes, what's the potential and requirements?

500 commerce was picked on completely arbitrary as a figure that boosted by %age bonuses would give a strong base for late game. I rolled a continents map to make sure there would be some intercontinental trade possible. I made sure there's a direct competition for key wonders by placing Hannah. I placed Tebryn on the same landmass as the player to keep people mildly honest in regard to expansion speed and military presence. Apart for that I was fairly generous with providing an environment for a relaxed game and making the target easy to reach. I expected the key elements of the puzzle to be the Lighthouse, Foreign Trade civic, Overcouncil, Optics and Astronomy.

My own, rather unfocused, shadow game finished on turn 155. Which is close enough to figure of 150 I estimated before launching the map. Last dozen turns or so was just waiting for the cities on the middle island to grow enough and finish lighthouses. During the time I kept Tebryn from going aggressive with liberal use of gifts, but never really got an open borders with him as he picked me as his worst enemy. I stayed Expansive on first trait swap to keep up pushing cities. Production shortages were fixed by liberal application of whips all over the place. Generally I had a nice and quiet sandbox with an occasional spider eating my settlers.

To answer my own questions - it's not overpowered, requires a lot of infrastructure in hammers and beakers spent teching economy. It's distinctly average without intercontinental routes. Certainly you can't rely on it alone for commerce and on water light maps it'll be at best a part of a hybrid approach. Is it too weak? Also probably not. It finally makes for a valid choice on par with agrarianism, if more situational.

Which is all made redundant anyhow, because Sareln changed FT again for Build 5

So anyway, thank you for giving it a whirl and I hope everyone that tried this had fun. I'd also like to encourage everyone that didn't finish or abandoned the attempt to post even a partial report. Sareln will still be able to pull valuable info from it.

I didn't take detailed notes, but some impressions:

I had an excellent opening; Expansive is great fun, and this was a very strong start.

I swapped to Financial at T70, forgetting it had been nerfed - and boy does it feel nerfed. I'm not sure if it made any tangible difference in my finances at all.

Lost out on the Great Lighthouse at T93; I was up to Deity difficulty by then. Still, given the victory condition, I resolved to take it at some point. Going OO all the way should make that quite doable.

Made it to Trade at T102, I'm sure quite late. Foreign Trade seems the obvious civic to run to make it to 500 commerce/turn, though, with 2-3 extra routes/city and +100% on the routes. Undercouncil T103 put me in contact with Rhoanna, and I promptly trades for a bunch of tech, her world map, open borders, etc. I'll obviously have to get to Optics, and I'll plan to take Tebryn out of the game at some point. Maybe...maybe just this continent will be enough to win this. Maybe I won't have to try to orchestrate a trans-continental invasion.




T105 - aha, there's another Lanun in this game, and he/she built the Great Lighthouse in Innsmouth. Well, I've got my 2nd target, then, if I haven't won by then. Meanwhile, swapping to Foreign Trade actually felt worth doing, it bumped me up a LOT of commerce. I think this could be a viable alternative economy, finally.

T173 - I cross the threshold! 502 commerce/turn. I had conquered Tebryn with Stygians/Cultists, and sent to army to march toward Innsmouth to take Hannah's Great Lighthouse if needed, but it turned out not to be necessary.

I'll try to come up with more thoughts tomorrow...as I squeak in just before midnight local .

Ladies an gents, it's Monday the 22nd and it's time to boast about your mad trade route networks

Reports will be accepted until 23:59 today ( that's for another 22h from the timestamp of this post ). If someone from the other coast of Atlantic feels he needs more time I'm willing to push through a 12h extension.

Mod Request : Having this thread stickied would be wonderful.

Hi

One day I was wandering around Civfanatics forum and found this thread
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread...adid=84644

It is interesting, as far as I understand Charis is providing a formula for calculating the best population transfer in MOO, then I though “I won’t make all those calculations each time I want to send colonists”

This is Charis Formula: d = (m*P - M*p) / (M+m)

This is the same formula translated in a way I can understand

Quote:Result = (FirstPlanetCurrentPop * SecondPlanetMaxPop - SecondPlanetCurrentPop * FirstPlanetMaxPop) / (FirstPlanetMaxPop + SecondPlanetMaxPop)

:MORTAL FOOL. MAKE MY THREAD OR BURN FOREVER IN A SEA OF FLAME.
:Oh. Okay. If you put it like that...

Hyborem is big, bad, and dangerous to know. We're going to kill everyone and everything on this benighted earth and usher in an age of unending darkness and despair. And hopefully have fun doing it.

Starting in media res is the best way to create intrigue right? Let's ignore the last few turns for now and cut right to...

The Kuriotate Front-T94

After a few turns of vicious fighting, the now heavily experienced army of Hyborem stares down the last lowly defenders of the Kuriotate empire. What was once the most heavily populated and heavily defended city in the blightlands will soon be the first demonic conquest.

Some of the generals are saying that the Kuriotate leadership has already abandoned the city, doing a "Sareln" and running a settler away.
NONE CAN ESCAPE My WRATH!
Sure thing mate. I reckon we'll just ignore those dirty rats for now though. Plenty of easy prey left. This conflict has given us a great second city, and taken one of the most powerful rivals to irrelevance.

The demon longbows have finally arrived to fortify the city. No embarrassing early defeat for us!
WHAT?! WHEN WAS THAT A POSSIBILITY?
Uh. Never. Definitely no chance of a sprinting centaur or scout bursting out of the fog and destroying our city.
HMMM
Well, there is an iron longbow there now. Let's just focus on that.

To celebrate the arrival of the legion, the citizens completed their first building. A temple of the veil. This lets them more than double their research rate, as well as bumping the GNP to a somewhat respectable rate. And look at all those specialists! We'll be cranking out the GP's in no time.

Our old friend Rosier should be completed soon. I'm thinking he'll be quite important this game, adding to the current Doom Legion.

Look at that worker lounging around the capital. Literally nothing to do with him right now. I want to get mining completed ASAP so he has at least something going on.

By all accounts, it makes for fairly grim reading at the moment.
Luckily, it's not so bad. A lot of things on the list are fairly meaningless to the Infernals. Food, Happiness, Life Expectancy.. all meaningless.
And all the other statistics should take a very healthy boost when the Kuriotate capital is captured.

There is one area where the Infernals reign supreme.

Look at that power graph! Unfortunately the power graph is off by a million or so soldiers thanks to the Infernal capital, so our position isn't quite that good.
IT'S BETTER! WE HAVE THE INFINITE POWERS OF DARKNESS AT OUR COMMAND!
Sure, but in terms of boots on the ground, we're only leading 114000 to 78000 right now. That should be increasing fairly soon though, once Rosier is completed and we start cranking out 2t Diseased Corpses.

With all the talk of diablo 3 I decided that I would try and run another team varient.

Rules

No twinking. Use what you can find, buy, or make for yourself. This is a pure team concept.

You may not take your char to a server with other people if you need to catch up in levels or quests

We may NEVER equip a weapon or shield

We may only deal damage through auto attacks our own or our enemies.

We can have mercs but they follow the same restrictions as us and may only be recruited from the act in the previous difficulty.
[INDENT]So we can recruit act 1 normal when we get to act 1 nightmere and beyond[/INDENT]

[INDENT]PS they follow the same rules as us so NO act 3 mercs[/INDENT]

Any questions of volunteers just post.

Areas full cleared:
ATM none

Well, have a little more free time than I thought I would, so I figured I'd sound out interest in another PBEM. I'd think something with 4 or 5 teams would be ideal, settings that I'm absolutely set on:

Fin and Sury banned.
No India, Inca.
Quick speed.

Settings I'd like:

Some more bans of the more common leaders/civs:
Bismark, Hatty, Izzy, maybe Pericles, Mali, Egypt, maybe Byzantium, maybe France, maybe China, and definitely the Ottomans.
Barbs on.
Monarch difficulty.
Spies banned.

Open to a lot else, prefer talking and negotiating. Anyone else think this sounds like an interesting setup?

I couldn't think of a better title so here's a cool picture to anti-spoil!

Right guys,

I am a little disconcerted with how we have started this game and I think some changes need to be made ASAP to prevent us making the same mistakes again.

Here is what I suggest:

1) We organise a set time each turn where we all meet up in our chatroom and we discuss our plans BEFORE we play our turns so that we don't have any repeats of what happened this turn.

2) We use this thread, and this thread only for discussing stuff. To be honest, I don't like having discussions spread about over three different threads and I think it leads to confusion. The other threads can still be updated with pictures & summaries of plans if you want, but I think we need to streamline this.

3) When it comes to making a decision, only me, Kuro and Jkaen have a vote. Ded-lurkers can comment and make suggestions, but we are the team and I don't think that we should be making decisions where only one of us out of the three is actually in favour of it.

These suggestions may not be totally popular, but I'm worried that we are already starting to work out like 3 individuals who happen to be in a team - and that needs to change.

We need to discuss things properly rather than having people taking shots in the dark which put our early game strategy in potential jeopardy.

I'm going to be managing the China civ (with Victoria) in this game, so I'll post random thoughts and micro plans in this thread.

Here's how it starts:


I know Shanghai is a little weak, but I wanted to settle towards India, for defense and worker/settler trades. After this I'll expand outwards more evenly, to cover all those nice flood plains with financial cottages.

Annoyingly, I lost a turn of culture to the civic switch on the first turn, so the worker will need to wait a turn for the border to pop before finishing the chop.

The plan in Shanghai is to grow to size 2 (5 turns) then half build the worker (another 5 turns) before whipping. It could build the worker normally in 10 turns, but this way fills up the granary.