How would you do so without counting on a win/loss ratio? What statistics do you think would be important or useful? Basically, how do you determine how "good" of a player someone is without looking at their Win/Loss? Or is that the only thing that matters?

Civ5 has been nominated for the Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year by AIAS, and there will be a live webcast of the event on G4TV at 1030pm EST, 10 Feb 2010.

http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/70...-Show.html

http://www.g4tv.com/dice2011

http://www.interactive.org/awards/award_...rdType=129

Good Luck to Firaxis and Civ5

CS

So I was thinking about playing some of the older epics, updated to BTS. Is there a methodology to do this, I was unable to load the save directly.

Okay! First up are the results. Here at RB everyone is a star, but only a select few truly are STARS:


* = Won the scenario
[COLOR="Blue"]
*[/COLOR] = Never used the Letnum Frigus free Aggressive trait

* = Eliminated the Infernals

* = Won the scenario while playing the Mercurians

Mist: * * *

Dantski: * * *

uberfish: * * *

Sunrise: * * *

DerWille: * *

Sciz * *

Profane: Incomplete

Jet: Incomplete



Reports for this game are of course welcome at any time!



==========================


As for my shadow, I just took a few screencaps. Note that my game differed a bit from that of everyone else- I modified the map slightly and gave the AI a few goodies after my test run. I also reloaded the game at a couple different points to test the effectiveness of certain strategies and examine AI behavior, and to check out their progress via worldbuilder.





Jonas regularly harassed me with stacks of 10-20 lizardmen throughout the game. This was the first one that he sent me. At one point fairly late in the game he actually managed to take my second city after he suddenly decided to bypass a front-lines town which he previously had obsessed over, out-maneuvering my garrison. He stupidly kept the town instead of razing it, though, so I just captured it back from him a turn later. I was actually thrilled that the AI was capable of wielding at least some sort of military, although clearly it left much to be desired.





Here is Hyborem's main stack. I think he had something similar in most of the games. Between the Veil-worshiping units of the other AI and razed Veil cities he had a generous supply of manes. As you can see from the snow, I made heavy use of Snowfall. My military was three High Priests of Winter, plus a large number of HA- I knew that the Hell Terrain would create several sources of Nightmares, giving them a respectable 7 strength. Also, I just now realized that the resource name is a pun





My empire from the last turn of the game. I didn't expand particularly far, preferring to set up a secure territory and then razing everything AI once I had built up enough. The barbarians founded at least a dozen replacement cities all over the map, and Hyborem would hilariously keep sending then savants to spread the Veil, even when I was in the process of invading his empire.





And finally, my kill totals. Pretty typical for an Immortal game with a lot of late-game warfare.




--------------------------------



So, my comments. As has been noted in several of the reports, the AI totally sucked here. Sadly, what everyone faced was actually boosted from what I saw in my initial game. The final boosts the AI had were as follows:


* All of the AI had the same starting techs as the player, minus Code of Laws which only the Calabim shared.

* All of the AI started with Corruption of the Spirit.

* The Sheaim started with free Knowledge of the Ether.

* The Sheaim and Hyborem had free entropy nodes.

* Every AI started with two settled cities, except Hyborem who had three.

* AI without the Barbarian trait had far fewer lairs near them than the human player.

* The Sheaim AI were boosted with several "obsidian plains" tiles, which acted like floodplains (except even better, since theirs weren't on desert tiles).

* The AI started with held Tier II / III units in their cities, to prevent an early rush.

* The AI had superior commerce and food resources at their starts.

* The AI had free workers and units equal to the regular Immortal starting units. I believe I also gave them supplies.


None of this seems to have mattered much. For some reason the AI all but refused to tech. In one of the reported games, Hyborem had rangers, and in another several axes. The Calabim were also reported as having built the Lyre. It's possible that they never actually researched these techs however, but instead got them from huts.

I can understand how Hyborem had trouble researching- he must have been dying under unit fees- but even he should have gotten a least a coupe techs first just from running scientists and his elder councils. Other AI like Jonas had no excuse, with developed cottages and reasonably-sized militaries. The lack of rivers on the Western part of the map may also have played some role, but the large numbers of grown towns means that the AI was able to develop an economy. Tech trading was off, but that doesn't explain how nobody researched anything.

My best guess is that the Always War was to blame, perhaps coupled with the aggressive AI. The computer likely ran 0% science as soon as it met the player, and spent whatever few beakers it had from elder councils and specialists on stupidly expensive techs that it would never finish. In his thread, DerWille suggested the "Beter Naval AI" mod for future games, in order to buff the AI. I've read about the mod and it does sound very promising, but I'd like to run at least one more game without it before I make a case to Square Leg to run future events with it. Plus I'm not sure how we'd integrate it with the four current FFH PBEM games running without screwing up their saves. There's clearly something terribly wrong with the AI though, and it extends well beyond just this scenario. I've already had to delay Adventure 3 because while the AI are actually teching quite well on that map, they're hardly building any military For future "extreme" adventures, I think I'm just going to cut loose and give the AI some truly obscene bonuses.


Looking beyond the AI, my objective for this scenario was to showcase the ability to transform Hell terrain and put out fires using snowfall / temples of the hand. Also to make some snow + hell related puns. To railroad the player a bit, I purposely left out all raw mana nodes, meaning that if you wanted to reach the main Infernal towns or Prespur you'd need either Ice III or a fleet (or water mana from an invisible holy city ). I tried to mimic the feel of the official FFH scenarios, with flavor features like the ancient and new forests, tormented souls, hell fire, and some other goodies. Stuff like the Lonely Werewolf had no real purpose except to be fun, while the Necrototems in the ocean had the neat side benefit of adding points to the AC (they don't scare ships).

I absolutely loved hand-crafting this map, and I intend to personally build every map that I make for an adventure. This one started off as a small Great Plains map, which I then flooded by turning every tile to ocean, then transformed all the ocean to grassland, and then carved out the features from there. The one thing which I did NOT enjoy was drawing those rivers. I think I spent more time trying to make the goddamn rivers look at least mildly realistic than every other feature combined. If anyone has any tips on how to draw them, please post them here or send me a PM!


Anyway, I think that's everything. Thank you everyone who played! I very much enjoyed reading everyone's reports!

So there is some interest in launching a second werewolf/mafia game once the first game is over, so I'm creating this thread in the interest of migrating the discussion from the WW1 lurker thread over to here. We'll take sign-ups until when the first game is almost concluded, and we can have some sort of discussion until then as well.

Note: I am not volunteering to be a host/narrator, as I'd like to defer to someone with some experience in this area. I am signing up to play however.

First thing we need is someone who is willing to run the game. A couple people already said they'd like to do so in the WW1 lurker thread, but I'd like to open up the option to those who can't read the lurker thread yet. Selrahc has done a very nice job of running the show for the first game, and I think it's preferable that whoever runs the second game has some experience in doing so - either that or has enough experience to know how things should be run. If several volunteer, it could be put to an informal vote of some sort.

There was one or two people who wanted to switch the name to Mafia (sunrise mostly), but frankly I don't think the name makes much of a difference, so whatever the majority prefers is fine.

Here is the current player sign up list, which I will edit as more people sign up.

Confirmed players:

1. scooter
2. Ug the Barbarian
3. Serdoa
4. Gaspar
5. Dantski
6. Selrahc
7. Irgy
8. Cyneheard
9. Roland
10. uberfish
11. Sareln
12. Mr. Nice Guy
13. sunrise
14. Meiz
15. Sandover
16. Rowain
17. Lewwyn
18. haphazard1
19. MJW
20. luddite
21. Kyan

Host: fire&ice

MoM is not just Master of Magic. It's also Mouse on Mars. An awesome music band. This awesome:

Diskdusk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1M-9A0wp8U

Subsequence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ-YLaE6q...re=related

Doit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17McT6yUo...re=related

Mycologics (or Dispothek ?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2A-WQiGw4o

Unknown track (name probably wrong)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g0uBsmaW5A

Fantastic Analysis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_dRYMV1EN0

Stammtick
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx3Vw6g_2...re=related

Snap Bar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZokdN9rbbNo
-------------

It's as awesome as it's kitschy.

I didn't see any topic about this, so I made one.

This is a pretty neat program (located in the download section). But here's the link anyways
http://www.roughseas.ca/momime/
Mostly I like it because it's a great attempt at modernizing the game (up to 14 wizards, music sounds better, runs without Dosbox).
I realize that the progress is incomplete and that there are still features that need to be added (like game saves), but I like it so far as-is... for the most part.

However, I cannot figure out how to research a spell in this version (I'm using v0.9.3.1). I don't know if this is a feature that still needs to be implemented or not. From what I understand, Implode has halted his work on the game (so I really hope I'm just missing something).

So, does anyone know how to research a spell in this version? If I try to end a turn, is says to select a spell to research or set it to zero. I tried going to "Apprentice", but it only shows the spells qued to cast. Right now, I can only play a game if I set my research to zero; but really, it's just not Master of Magic without the spells.

Right guys and gals,

Following on from Krill's suggestion in the other thread, I was wondering if there is enough interest in starting a new PitBoss/PBEM using the PitBoss 2 map with a few small modifications.

Basic principle is that the map would be very similar, but there would likely be some changes in resource positioning so we can't all use the dotmaps of the predecessors, along with some new combos to change the flavour of it, along with addressing the small issues of imbalance from before.

It will be a map we know a lot about, but with the critical changes - not so much that we end up just following in the footsteps of the last game and can put our own marks on the game we play.

I know a lot of people thought that the PB2 map was a great concept, and so I wish to gauge interest in this.

Possible Interest

1) TT
2) Cull (requests team-mate)
3) Lewwyn
4) Amelia (+Serdoa?)
5) Krill

There's something I've been wondering about for a while. All of the SP events have starting saves that are still hosted and played to this day, as well as replayed, but we don't have anything like that for the MP events.

Is there anything against a new group of players replaying one of the games that has already finished, such as PBEM1 and 7, PB1 and 2? I know the maps are no longer spoiled, and it would require a bunch of people to replay instead of just one player against the AI so would be harder to get started, but it could be fun to watch.

I apologise if this is not the correct thread but i was wondering if any kind soul with some spare time would be willing to construct a map for me?

The random map generator is no good because i have very specific requirements:

3 human players
?? AI (your discretion)

The three human players need to be handicapped compared to one another in some way. For scale, use something like:

Player 1 = 1.0
Player 2 = 0.75
Player 3 = 0.5

Basically, i have two friends i would like to play a PBEM with but we are all radically different in skill. I know that no map will ever be able to overcome this completely but it could definitely help. I don't really mind how you want to enact this advantage:

Perhaps player 3 has significantly more land?
Perhaps they have much nicer neighbours?
Perhaps player 1 is stuck on an island by themselves?

Or maybe you would like to ban some traits or civs? If you go with this option, let me know and i'll contact the others so we can pick. A combination of this option and one or more (all?) of the above is probably best. Please bear in mind that player 1 (i'm #2 if you were wondering) is looking to do this for fun also so i'd rather yiou buffed us other two up rather than gave them too atrocious a situation.

Settings we would like:

-Difficulty- noble at highest considering the newer player.
-Tech Trading- Off
-Barbs- Regular
-Map Size- Huge
-Script- Up to you but custom continents is nice and could fit well.

AI will obviously suck due to the difficulty but maybe you can leverage this in some way.

Any questions, please ask. I have four broken fingers at moment so gonna stop typing here as it's extremely cumbersome

Thank you in advance to any kind soul that may offer