Hi

I am completely unembarassed to admit it; I am just loving watching Battle of the Blades on television!

This is a series dreamed up by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. We have retired hockey players (Stanley Cup winners from the N.H.L.) partnered with retired figure skating stars in a pairs figure skating contest series. It has been incredible to watch the hockey players (some of whom earned their way as 'enforcers' rather than goal makers) stretch themselves to skate in an entirely different way.

Each week the entire group has been broadcast live as they skated on Sunday nights. The public gets to vote for their favourite for that round. Then the following night the two pairs with the lowest publicly generated scores have a skate-off, doing their routine again for the judges, who decide who leaves the competition. On this night there have been a number of guest performances as well.

Each week, the couple has had to learn a new routine to perform. The stretching of skills has been amazing to watch, as the men improve each week.

I am hooked. The three couples left are all utterly captivating. I have no idea whether you non-Canucks have any opportunity to see this, but if you can, well worth it.

Details here: http://www.cbc.ca/battle/

This came up in Dr. Nomadic's thread, but let's bring it out here.

Anyone interested in a Final Frontier mod succession game? Thanks to Cyneheard for the idea. RB has done a few other mods as SGs (Defense, Charlemagne, Rhye's) but not FF yet. I just started playing FF myself, so I'll take the reins here to captain it.

So, any interest? Cyneheard gets an automatic signup.

Hi

A friend sent this to me; this series of photographs shows off the beauty of the Bruce to perfection. It doesn't include any of Pike Bay itself, but the rest of the peninsula is glorious. Photo 47 shows one of my favourite hikes - the rock shelves at the left are perfect for swimming from, the natural arch, the grotto and the boulder beach are all visible. Well, the grotto isn't actually visible, being a cave and all that, but even so....

http://thebrucepeninsula.com/arialgallery/

I hope you enjoy these as much as I did. Virtually everything there is within a half hour drive of Pike Bay.

Hellgateus has released there new mod for singleplayer Hellgate link
http://hellgateaus.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=846

Patch notes here
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AU8kDS...OWdr&hl=en

Will post more later after i have had a chance to try it.


CB-13

wycca has asked for a working ship design spreadsheet here. Rather than continue that old post I decided to open a new one with my effort. I designed this some years ago but I have now added some missing items (double hull, 5-rack MB's) and changed miniaturisation formula to reject selecting items beyond your selected tech levels (gives #N/A). I use it occasionally to plan LR and other ship designs and have done some checks on the updates but let me know if you notice any errors.

Ship Design Spreadsheet 2009:
[EDIT ] V2 spreadsheet to correct miniaturisation limit to 50 levels for all items (not just weapons) as spotted by Cyneheard
[EDIT2] V3 spreadsheet to correct Special item miniaturisation to use correct field
[EDIT3] V4 spreadsheet fixing reserve fuel tanks & AMR on mediums getting #N/A at low tech levels
[EDIT4] V5 spreadsheet removing tech level check per Refsteel below but warns if using higher than tech level, plus minor fixes
[EDIT5 30Mar11] V6 spreadsheet fix missile cost & space plus melee weapon space to use correct miniaturisation table
[EDIT6 08Apr11] V7 add bio weapons, correct game manual stats for tech levels (Fusion bomb, Hyper-X) and for some missilex5 costs & size
[10Apr11] Minor update for Propulsion tech level 1 showing #N/A
[12Jul13] Re-add V7 as attachment since earlier link broken, redo 28Jul13 & 8Aug13 & 11Aug13. If attached file goes missing try following link.
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/attachment.php?aid=628

Attached Files

  moo ship design v7.xls.zip (Size: 37.93 KB / Downloads: 75)

I've enjoyed the reports so far - some varied ways to play the game.

That was what I was aiming for - the contrast between the methods of obtaining techs without the science slider. The difficulty was purposely set low to allow people to try whatever strategy they felt like.

So far we've got: T-Hawk building cottages and then using trading/espionage/lightbulbing to get the techs for a culture (slider) victory.

Olodune using the "build research" option to obtain the techs to launch a spaceship, similar to a Qwack game a long time ago.

Turfit winning a diplomatic victory, stealing all of his techs from the espionage slider and using some of the other spy options to manipulate the UN voting.

Ronald getting aggressive and winning a domination victory, gaining the techs firstly from specialists and then from building research.

Dantski running a specialist economy to launch a spaceship, after having applied the hammer.

Very good! The only one missing is running a Kylearan-style game where you buy all of the techs. If any one wants to have a go at that method then it would certainly be interesting to see if it's still possible in BTS.

The map was chosen because Custom Continents has long been one of my favourite map scripts. It is slightly larger than the other ones and always constructs some interestingly shaped landmasses. I went for 2 continents to rule out a quick conquest but to allow a good number of early contacts to trade/steal techs with/from. The map was about the 4th I rolled and I liked it for the shape of the continent and the starting position - those sugars would definitely help the specialist strategies.

When chosing a leader, the first choice was industrious. That's because some of the strategies rely on wonders, eg the great wall for espionage or the pyramids for specialists. Also for the research-builders there's the cheap forges.

Imperialistic wasn't necessarily a big help but I didn't see that as a problem. It's already only monarch - I don't think the player needs financial or philosophical on top of that. Plus we get to play as Rome which is nice for the flavour aspect of them being in charge at 0 AD and also for the chance to play with Praets which we haven't done so for a while.

Possibly I could have selected some AIs instead of letting them be random. The map could have used a Mansa with good land to steal techs from a little quicker than what we got.

I was amused when I saw the other continent was occupied by the two biggest religious psychos in the game - Justinian and Isabella. Hopefully they would get different religions and fight for the contient. If one could take over the whole continent themselves they could cause a serious problem to the player in the endgame.

Pregame planning:

Since we need to set the science slide to 0 after 1 AD, a specialist economy or a hammer economy is needed or a combination of both is needed. I was planning to run a specialist economy in the beginning and add hammers for science later in the game.
Crucial for specialist economy are the pyramids, so I decided to not gamble on getting both the oracle and the pyramids and concentrated on the pyramids and the Great Library.

What victory condition to choose:
The obvious choice for a non science game would be a cultural victory, but I thought that is too easy.
Since we are Romans, we have a wonderful unit to conquer our neighbours early on. So I decided to research iron working as soon as possible, settle my second city next to iron and use this city to produce preatorians.

Actual game:



Settled in place. This city with the very high food resources is great to run specialists.
Found the next city northwest of the iron. build one more settler and worker and one preatorian in the capital and started the pyramids.



After building 4 more preatorians I started the war against Stalin and 2 cities from him. Moscow was hard to take, I lost 3 praetorians, so I made peace to produce more.



As soon as I had 8 units, I took the remaiing cities from Stalin.




Now I was at 1AD and the rapid expansion seriously hurt my economy. Even If I would want to run science higher than 0%, I could not afford it.
My specialist kept the technology rate going and I rebuilt my cash position with some cottages and, courthouses and the forbidden palace in Moscow.

Shortly before 1000 AD I joined Genghis in the war against Gandhi and took all his city but 1. I made peace for all techs Gandhi had and destroyed him 10 turns later.



Right after that I declared war on Genghis and his Keshiks were no match against my pikes and macemen.



As research I won the race to liberalism, built the Taj Mahal for a GA and then used the next 3 great people for another 2 GAs. So I cruised along to rifling and with all the money I had left I could upgrade all my macemen to riflemen.

Genghis was history before 1500 AD and my final assault against Hammurabi began. He was no match for my troops. I started to build a number of settlers to have them ready to fill all gaps. I was not sure if this continent would be big ebough to get to the domination limit. It looked OK, but very close.



To be on the safe side I researched towards astronomy. After optics I made contact with Justinian and Isabella. They were far behind in techs. When I destroyed Hammurabi, I waited that his cities came out of resistance. At the same turn I discovered astronomy and was ready to upgrade my galleys and caravelles, but it was not necessary, I triggered the domination limit.

Good help is hard to find. So I was in the mall shopping at London Drugs and thought I might as well check their games section. Borderlands wasn't on display but I thought I would ask the sales. The sales told me the game is released today (wrong) and they have a shipment in the back. There were 3 salesmen in the department with no other customer other than myself. The sales bought out one game for me, then went on to chat with the other sales; while EB had more than 100 calls for the game over the weekend.

First of, be prepared with an alternative user name as you will need to create an account with Gamespy. I ended up with KingOfPain(RB), so at least that's one easy solution if you choose to go that route.

The game disc is required to play, unless you bought the game via Steam (I don't know if that mean you can only play the game on one computer). The installation is straight forward, but you might plan to do a load of laundry while you are at it - it took ~20 minutes to get the files in place after the standard click ok, next, next, next, sequence. It's also odd that the game didn't install a shortcut on my desktop so I had to find and make one. If you have problem finding the game, try Start button/Games.

The graphics is cartoonish and fitting for the game and atmosphere that the devs were aiming for. I like it, and think that probably have a better feel than going photo realistic. I have not seen any weather effects or any notable atmospheric lighting yet, but I am barely out of noob island. OTOH, the time of day effect is there. Monsters, especially those beyond mid range can be hard to discern from the environment.

Certain monster types will fight against others. Monsters can spawn right on top of you without warning, ouch, not so good when it's hard to target those nibbling at your feet.

The fun factor at the beginning stage, and I am talking about THE beginning stage, is not necessary fun. If you remember the first couple of times playing classic Diablo with a mage, that's what it felt like to me. You know, you got no killing power, and you have to find health and mana potions all the while just whacking things with a stick. In Borderlands, this early stage is made unfun by being constantly out of ammo, but you can't even whack things with a stick in Bordenlands. If you are out of ammo, you are left with nothing to do but wait to be killed. Forgot melee, you use the w key to walk and if you manage to chase down one monster you have to try and use the v key (at the same time) to throw out one punch, and try to chase that monster down again. Target lock would have been useful.

Ammo can become more plentiful later in game (and depends on skills) but this requirement is a big fun breaker atm. Finding and picking up loot is not as smooth as you see in game trailers. You have to be right up close to the loot and target them to pick them up. Since there is no target lock in the game, it can be a pain, especially when you are out of ammo and risk you life to run for it.

The number one feature on my wish list is a mini map. Having to stop the game in progress to bring up a map is like wtf, get in the 20th century. This might not bother others as much, since I still get lost in Guild Wars. To be fair, the quest(item) marker on the compass does help, it also gets bigger as you are closer to the objective.

This game can be compared to Hellgate London directly in most ways and I have to say HGL is much more slick in game play.

I suppose I would recommend this game if it wasn't for the ammo problem stopping the fun constantly, and YMMV, but right now, this post is no more than one noob's quick take. I hope once I make better sense of the interface and have a better understanding of the game mechanics, the fun will begin

PS: You may want to disable the windows key with this game, flipping screens means staring at a blank(black) screen (and probably non responsive) for long moments.

After a massive 2 year+ burnout break from all things civ, I finally return. Play a couple regular games, then head right back to Realms Beyond for something different. Arrive to find I've seemingly missed the entire BTS era with no open games, as somewhat expected. Finally a game shows up - Adventure 39. Deity? . Actually tired it but quit when my somewhat rushed first settler couldn't find any free land! But this isn't 39, it's

Adventure 40 - The Illuminati

Having missed most of the BTS era, I've never really played around with Spies. Hence, I foresee much tech stealing.
Starting game plan is to acquire the Great Wall for a Great Spy, acquire Pyramids for Representation powered spy specialists, and go forth and steal everything in sight. All the while looking for Praetorian opportunities.


4000BC - Rome founded in place. Work Boat set at max production while research to Bronze Working.
3800BC - Rome pops its borders for 35 gold from the starting hut. Exploring Warrior pops a map of the ocean.


3720BC - Exploring Warrior finds Marble, no great city sites. Perhaps 3 to use all resources.


3640BC - Buddhism FIDL. {Isabella of course}
3400BC - Research to Agriculture in 7 timed with Rome's clam powered Worker in 7.
3360BC - Exploring Warrior pops a map of a desert. Red borders visible to the N.


3280BC - Hinduism FIDL. {Hammurabi}
3200BC - Exploring Warrior pops a scout. Promptly moves N meeting Stalin.


3120BC - Agriculture and first Worker in - onto farm some corn. Research to The Wheel/Pottery.
3080BC - Gandhi met W of Stalin.
3040BC - Genghis Khan met E of Stalin. Would take another 2000 years to discover Genghis was actually W of Gandhi...


2960BC - Popped Scout destroyed by a Barbarian Lion. Well, he met two rival civs so good work...
2940BC - Rome onto the first Settler, to be chopped out while building some grassland hill mines.
2800BC - Exploring Warrior pops Mysticism.


2520BC - After Pottery comes Masonry - Great Wall and Pyramids.
2480BC - First settler finds Stalin trying to claim the flood plains.
2400BC - Not so fast Stalin :neenernee - Antium founded.


2240BC - Masonry in. Onto Meditation/Priesthood - Oracle.
2080BC - Judaism FIDL. {Hammurabi}
2040BC - Cumae founded. Red Dot.


1960BC - Hmmm. Other continent civs are pulling away???


1800BC - Rome completes the Great Wall.
1680BC - A Hindu Hammurabi met to the west.
1600BC - Third Settlers westward expansion plans on hold due to barbarian city.


1480BC - Exploring Warrior pops yet another map.


1480BC - Third Settler finally founds Neapolis. Strongly considered 1N in the desert but decided this was a slightly better mediocre city site.


1400BC - Stonehenge BIFAL. {Hammurabi}
1360BC - Floods wash out Antiums roads.
1320BC - Rome completes the Oracle - Metal Casting took.
775BC - Iron Working in. Iron at Neapolis already to go. How nice!


750BC - The Great Wall delivers a Great Spy for Scotland Yard in Rome.


625BC - The Temple of Artemis BIFAL. {Genghis}
525BC - Rome completes the Pyramids. Into Representation and Slavery.
350BC - The Great Lighthouse BIFAL. {Justinian}. Gandhi converts to Hinduism.
275BC - Rome completes The Colossus.
125BC - Judaism spreads into Antium - where'd that come from...
50BC - Alphabet in.
25BC - Rome builds the first Spy!
1AD - The end of science. Slider from 60 to 0. Espionage from 0 to 30!
----- Research into Code of Laws slips from 8 to 20 turns away.

25AD - The Kashi Vishwanath BIFAL. {Hammurabi}
50AD - Stalin converts to Hinduism. Praetorian army on the build...



------ Not really sure what to do with it. Stalin's lands would be nice, but....

75AD - Great Merchant born in Rome - Decides to stay (settles).
125AD - Confucianism FIDL {Isabella} - 4 turns left on my CoL research.
175AD - Hinduism spreads to Rome. Convert joining my continent mates.
225AD - The first spy action. Steal Mathematics from Stalin for 240 EPs. What a bargain at a mere 6 turns of 50% EP production.


250AD - Code of Laws in. Courthouse EPs here we come...
------- Christianity FIDL {Isabella}.
275AD - Barbarian hilltop city of Burgundian captured by my Praetorian army. 7 Praets vs 4 Archers. Lost 2.
------- Indian city of Agra screwing up my initial dotplan of the area so Burgundian kept.




300AD - Genghis declares on Gandhi and converts to Hinduism. Entire continent now Hindu.
325AD - Ravenana founded. Was planned 1NW but with Agra screwing up Burgundian screwing up...


400AD - Sailing stolen from Stalin - 89 EPs.
450AD - Gandhi comes looking for Iron Working and 15 Gold for his Polytheism. Ummm. NO.
------- Arretium Founded


475AD - Genghis comes looking for war help - Declare on Gandhi.
500AD - Floods wash out Cumaes roads.
540AD - Gandhi makes peace with Genghis. Figures...
------- Archery stolen from Stalin for 51 EPs.
560AD - Shwedagon Paya BIFAL. {Stalin}
------- Construction stolen from Stalin for 281 EPs.
------- Agra captured by the mighty Praetorian army. Kept.
------- Peace brokered with Gandhi for 50 Gold.


580AD - Great Engineer born in Rome.
640AD - Calendar in for all those Plantations I need.
------- Great Engineer heads up to Antium and hurries Chichen Itza. Culture...


680AD - Stalin completes The Hanging Gardens.
720AD - The Mahabodhi BIFAL. {Isabella}
780AD - The Statue of Zeus BIFAL. {Gandhi}
------- Genghis redeclares on Gandhi.
820AD - The Venerable Bede's Most Advanced Civilizations of the World - not so bad as last time...


840AD - Aesthetics stolen from Gandhi for 288 EPs.
860AD - Mediolanum founded. Yellow dot. Future Moai site.


920AD - You are tasked by our scholars to build enough (7) Libraries to hold the newly recorded texts of our ancient stories and oral traditions.
960AD - Monotheism stolen from Gandhi for 109 EPs.
------- Taoism FIDL {Hammurabi}.
------- Revolt into Organized Religion.
980AD - Stalin declares on Gandhi.
1000AD - Stalin comes looking for war help - Dogpile. Declare on Gandhi again.
1010AD - Rome completes the Mausoleum of Maussollos.
. - The Parthenon BIFAL. {Hammurabi}
1050AD - Great Merchant born in Rome. Decides to join his 975 year old cousin and settles.
1060AD - Feudalism stolen from Gandhi for 627 EPs.
1080AD - Great General born in Antium.
1100AD - Music stolen from Hammurabi for 564 EPs.
1110AD - General settles into Cumae as an Instructor.


1120AD - Rome completes The Great Library.
-------- Delhi captured by Genghis.
1130AD - Pataliputra captured by the glorious Praetorian army. Burned to the ground.


1140AD - Genghis makes peace with Gandhi.
1160AD - The library quest completes. +1 free scientist in Rome's Great Library.
1180AD - Bombay captured by the great Praetorians. Kept against my better judgment given its location.


1200AD - Rome completes The Sistine Chapel.
-------- Arpinum founded 1N of the ruins from Pataliputra.


1220AD - Taoism spreads into Mediolanum. ???
1230AD - Great Scientist born in Rome - Constructs Academy.
-------- The Hagia Sophia BIFAL. {Hammurabi}. 99 Gold from Rome's lost Hammers.
1240AD - The Apostolic Palace BIFAL {Isabella} uniting all Buddhist. 250 Gold from Antiums lost Hammers.
-------- Civil Service stolen from Hammurabi for 609 EPs.
-------- Revolt straight into Bureaucracy.
1250AD - The Temple of Solomon BIFAL. {Hammurabi}
1280AD - Drama stolen from Hammurabi for 295 EPs.
1310AD - Divine Right, 1 turn ahead of Hammurabi. Was going to miss by 5 turns but hiring scientists saved Islam.

-------- But into Cumae - my Heroic Epic site... Hmmph.

1330AD - Hammurabi's Great Artist spotted near Aretium, the Gems city. Will have to watch culture out this way...
-------- Guilds stolen from Hammurabi for 941 EPs.
1350AD - University of Sankore BIFAL. {Isabella}
1380AD - Great Scientist born in Rome - settled.
1400AD - Banking stolen from Hammurabi for 658 EPs.
1410AD - Rome completes The Spiral Minaret.
1420AD - Champion Praetorian gains Leadership. Event.
1440AD - Genghis completes Notre Dame in Delhi. Surely adding to Bombay's border problem.


1450AD - Silver discovered at Rome.
-------- Hammurabi is first to Liberalism.
-------- Philosophy stolen from Hammurabi for 771 EPs.


1460AD - Hammurabi's now onto Nationalism in 3. I'm still 10 turns out with 5 invested. Sure hard to find something to slowly self research that the AIs aren't interested in.
1500AD - Land, ho!
1505AD - Err. Barbarians, ho!


1510AD - Great Spy born in Rome - builds a second Scotland Yard in Antium.
-------- Discover Hammurabi's 8 turns out from The Taj Mahal. I'm still 3 turns out from Nationalism.
1515AD - Angkor Wat BIFAL. {Justinian}
-------- Hammurabi's golden age is over slowing his wonder.
-------- Justinian met. Borders opened, maps traded.

-------- Looks like a Buddhist continent vs a Hindu continent.

1520AD - Magellan's Expedition completed.
-------- Isabella met.
1525AD - Nationalism finally in. Onto Constitution - Jails!
-------- 9 turns for Rome to build The Taj Mahal.
-------- Circei founded. Green dot.


1535AD - Claim the rightful spot on top of the scoreboard.
1540AD - Isabella completes The Church of the Nativity.
-------- Steal Education from Hammurabi for 1735 EPs.
1550AD - Sabotage Hammurabi's Taj Mahal for 1684 EPs. . Ouch. But I'm ticked with the pathetic research rate and haven't even had a golden age with my Mausoleum yet. So....


1555AD - Great Scientist born in Rome. Settles right in.
1560AD - Hammurabi completes Versailles.
1570AD - The Taj Mahal

-------- and 12 turns of Golden goodness.
-------- Printing Press stolen from Hammurabi for 1542 EPs.
-------- Anarchy free Revolt in to Nationhood and Mercantilism. Expect a slight specialist powered research rate increase and a slight commerce EP rate decrease. But since I seem to have enough EPs to ?waste? 1700 on sabotaging Hammurabi's wonder efforts...
1590AD - Great Prophet born in Rome. Constructs The Masjid al-Haram in Cumae for 6 gold/turn.

Variant Rule: After 0 AD, you must reduce your science slider to 0%. It must stay at this setting for the rest of the game.

This is a very flexible variant that should allow for a variety of playstyles. With the difficulty set to Monarch neither an espionage nor a scientist specialist game will be much of a challenge -- those are solid economies that are fully viable up through Immortal play. Since many of my recent games have had a militaristic focus I'd also like to play a builder game for a change. So here are the full constraints that I wrote up before downloading the save.

1) After 0 AD, you must reduce your science slider to 0%. It must stay
at this setting for the rest of the game.

2) You must never hire a scientist specialist. The Representation civic
is forbidden

3) You may not steal any technologies. The espionage slider must remain
at 0%.

4) No invasions. You may not attack an enemy unit or city within their
cultural boundaries.

The goal was to add enough constraints to enable an economy that I have been wanting to try: the hammer focused economy. Basically the goal is to get technology from building "research" in production cities. As for most economic-builder games the "no invasion" rule is required to prevent a pseudo-domination victory. Space is the goal.

Luckily, the leader for this scenario is well suited for a hammer economy. Augustus Caesar is industrious (for cheap forges) and imperialistic (great for claiming as much land as possible, peacefully).

A few other random thoughts I had before starting the game:

- Science buildings are largely worthless (I actually build a few libs in border cities for their culture). The hammers saved from avoiding libraries/universities/observatories/oxford can get converted to beakers.

- Clearly I must have Alphabet by 0ad, to enable hammer->beaker conversion!

- Farms, mines, and workshops are the crucial tile improvements.


Several key early technologies are Alphabet, Metal Casting (for our cheap forges -- the only economic multiplier building until Assembly Line!), Code of Laws (for caste system -> +1 workshop hammers), Civil Service (chain irrigation and bureaucracy), and Guilds (+1 workshop hammer). With these in place each grass tile can be a 1/3/0 tile; trading one food for 3.75 beakers. Compare this to a representation scientist with a library and you get the same result! Of course those scientists also provide GPPs ...

In mid-game game Assembly Line (+75% production!), Chemistry (+1 workshop hammers), Steam Power (levees), Biology (+1 food farm -> more workshops), and Railroad (+1 mine hammers) will (hopefully) give enough production->beakers to get the Romans to Alpha Centauri.

The Cult of the Iron Hammer is Founded as I settle in place. Bronze Working is researched to allow efficient settler whipping.

Seeing Stalin's border close by meant I used my first settle to push towards him:



And the second to claim a nice resource rich location to the west:



Since I knew I wanted early forges and I have an industrious leader, the oracle seemed like a good move:



Having had luck stealing a city spot from under the Russian's nose, I was also pleased to get this gold location close to Gandhi:



By the 1ad shutoff I have metal casting and alphabet, as well as a good chunk of land. So far so good:



The successful expansion continued as I managed to seal Hammurabi from the north of his peninsula. Capturing a useful barbarian city in the locale:



Many turns of empire building followed. By 1200ad I finally broke the 300 beakers/turn threshold while researching Nationalism. Since I had built the Mausoleum of Mausollos the Taj would be great to have. Especially since most of my tiles are 1/3/0, so a golden age would be a full 33% increase in production->beakers!



Rome is still my best "science city"



Amazingly, I was the first to limp to Liberalism. Ok. I had thought I would really struggle with tech until Assembly Line.



Since I had not heard much from the other continent I wasn't too surprised to find Isabella a little backwards (Justinian was doing a bit better than this sad performance )



By 1500ad I've actually managed to put a significant tech lead over everyone except Hammurabi, who was my only occasional tech trading partner: