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.


Scenario Concept: Science is outlawed! Official funding for scientific research will be banned at 0 AD. Your task, as the head of a covert pro-science cult society, is to ensure that the Roman civilization can survive (and thrive) despite this archaic ruling. Through any means necessary you must ensure that your civilisation can gain access to the technology it needs. Though the official science rate must remain at 0% to satisfy the authorities, anything else is fair game. Secretive scientists in cities, research siphoned off from production or obtaining it from other civilisations (by fair or foul means!) are all possibilities. All victory types are enabled



Alright lots of food, some ok production but not a whole lotta commerce to start with. My initial plan here was to get pyramids + great library before 1AD then hope that representation scientists + settled great people could keep me competitive in technology.

So I settle in place and start off with mysticism... *cough* This is why you should take more notes when playing because I have no real idea why I did this looking back at it. I also build a warrior first.

My brain kicks into gear shortly after and I switch to Bronze working so I can chop all those forests for Pyramids.

My initial scouting warrior gets eaten by a Panther at some horrible odds but not before I meet Hammurabi to the west.

Once masonry is finished, I IMMEDIATELY begin the Pyramids and start chopping. With industrious, those chops are worth the typical 30 hammers before maths!

I then run into Stalin, he settles St Petes north of me in amongst all the floodplains. I don't remember agreeing to him settling there, poor diplomacy I say. Genghis says hi too.

Anyhoo in 1320 BC I land Pyramids.

I switch to representation and slavery and finally start my first settler. Antium is founded to the east in 900 BC.




Very soon after, Cumae is founded ON the marble next to Antium, one of only 2 tiles that would allow me to work the fish nearby. That cities sole purpose for now is to provide marble for the great library.

Barb archers become a real pest around this time of expansion, fortunately they're all focused on the west side so I only suffer a little pillaging.

Great Engineer born in 375 BC, will be saved for TGL. He completes TGL in 300 BC. In hindsight this was possibly a mistake, I could have built it normally would too much difficulty.

In 25 BC, my science specialists produce me a GS who creates an academy in Rome.

1 AD comes along and research is set to 0%, this loses me 18 beakers per turn.

Stalin is becoming a real pain as he settles another 2 cities in my direction. His score + power may be a lot higher, but lets see if he can handle Praets.



I capture Khoisan so the west of Rome which provides some nice XP for my Praets and now they can be promoted to CR II. I am also getting construction before I attack.

Another GS starts a golden age in 425 AD to help my preparation for the Russian offensive. I declare war in the same turn (or the turn after).

St Petes is captured with minimal losses. I then bribe Genghis into the war for Mono + Aesthetics. He ends up taking Rostov a junk Russian city in the north but does little else.

I push on and Stalin lets me stay in forests right up to Moscow which I capture.




Moscow has Stonehenge + the Great Wall, how the heck did he spam cities so fast?

I take Yekaterinburg one of the offending southern settlements and Yaroslavl (confucian holy city) which was just SW of Moscow.

Then I ask what he'll pay for peace...




CoL + 60 gold is pretty good right now since despite all my commerce being converted into gold I am LOSING money at 0%! Popping over 200 gold from early huts really saved me here!

Hammurabi then sold me Calendar for 450 gold and finally I could begin to grow my cities which had been seriously stunted.

Then a possibly pivotal point in the game.





Chinook is just west of Khoisan and is a superb chokepoint between Hammu + Gandhi and myself, the previous turn Hammu killed one of the defending archers and wounded the other. Next turn he will 99% certainly take the city and have a settlement right on my border.

My one unpromoted axe has 67% odds of winning...

AND HE WINS! Phew now my western border with the new tech / land leader Hammu is secure!.

Somehow I end up building the Parthenon in 1020 AD, I really should've just built some more catapults...

Some demographics at 1020 AD

Score




A slippery slope for Stalin isn't it?

GNP




Spot the turn I took Moscow :neenernee




Went from being last in soldiers to 1st, I'm not sure how Genghis' power is so high, I only saw the odd Keshik pillaging.




Competitive here, 1st in land but low in population, not too concerned at the time though since everything is growing.

Grab CS in 1110 AD and forget to adopt bureaucracy for a hundred or so years . At this point I am STILL losing money at 0% and I keep selling cheap techs to the incredibly backward Genghis.

Khoisan builds the Colossus in 1200 AD because it could.

The 2nd Russian war begins, Yakutsk goes down first, Novgorod the new capital is razed since its 1 tile off the coast and gets replaced.



A Barbarian uprising of HA's occurs, I'm going to take the brunt of it eh? Good thing Stalin built the Great Wall in Moscow for me! The HA's attack Genghis instead but he fends them off.

Genghis doesn't like Gandhi much and declares shortly after I eliminate Stalin. He's attacking Longbows with Keshiks... There's a long stalemate then Gandhi takes or flips Vladisvostok from him and secures peace.

Build Sistine in 1350 in case I fall behind in tech and need to go for culture. 30 years later and Sankore is built as well.

If you were wondering about my earlier comment about wasting my Engineer, here's why, I lose out on Notre Dame in 1480 AD which is a late build. The Engineer might've been more use saved up.

I prioritize exploration more than our continents AI and find Justinian and Isabella who have Buddhism and Hinduism locked out on their islands. Izzy got badly outexpanded and is quite backwards in tech, Justinian is pretty equal with Hammu and myself. Somehow Gandhi with his 6 cities is the tech leader.

Now since I'm running Confucianism, both Justin and Izzy hate me, thats fine. However they are pleased towards each other.... what the heck? Two of the biggest religion fanatics in the game are in different religions and LIKE each other? Oh it appears their favourite civic is the same and they got +3 relations from past events! Not sure if that relationship turned out how the sponsor intended.

I trade for Justinians map and get Circumnav in 1540 AD.

Demographics from 1540 AD




1st in the important stats and not too far behind in soldiers.

Gandhi is first to Liberalism in 1545 AD. He must have built the Shedwagon though since he's been in free religion as long as I remember.

Once I grab Banking I pull a triple Civics switch, Pacifism, Mecantilism and Caste System are in!

I finally get my first Prophet in 1620 AD and built the Confusing shrine. My money troubles are at last at an end.

Then completely out of the blue this happens...




What the heck, Gandhi is having no problem dealing with Genghis (who declared again a few turns earlier) but wants to vassalize? Uhh sure I'll take it. This means that now I'm also at war with Genghis. He quickly retook Vladivostok from Gandhi and then I took it from him with my elite Russian veterans. Rostov fell after multiple turns of bombardment and peace was made. I

View of Rome at this point




Not too shabby!

Pop silver in Antium, 100 years later Antium also pops Gems! As Sirian said, "Sometimes its better to be lucky than good!"

SoLiberty is built in 1735 AD. Rome is now producing 180 GPP a turn! I'm first to Physics in 1802 so that another settled scientist.

Now during the middle ages I'd given quite a lot of thought as to how to win the game. Conquest was out since I didn't much fancy an intercontinental war, domination was out for the same reason although I was sure I could mop my continent up without too much hassle. Culture didn't look great and I dislike it. So that leaves Space (doable but might be close) and diplomacy. Now diplomatically looked good since Hammu liked me and was 3rd in population and Gandhi would obviously vote for me, but I needed Izzy somehow.

I built the UN in 1862 AD and my butterin' up of Izzy over the past 200 years had produced....+/-0 in relations. Argh she would never like me for previous trading with Hammu and predictably enough would never vote for me. The vote ended with me 50 short of diplo victory and with no real hope of securing enough votes.

So space it would have to be!

Shorly after this Justinian + Isabella declare on Genghis and Justin secures Beshbalik and vassalizes Genghis.

The world is peaceful for 40 more years as I move down the tech tree, I now have a 2-3 tech lead and Gandhi is really starting to fall behind. In fact it'll take him dozens of turns to research anything....Oh ok it seems he's turned off research and is running the culture slider. Pity he'll never make it.

I'd been monitoring WHEOOH for a while so this wasn't much of a surprise.




He landed a dozen units near Antium and they were squashed, he snuck a galleon past to take my junkiest ice city in the north but I retook it within a half dozen turns. I guess he was always doomed when he attacked one of my destroyers with 5 galleons and barely scratched it. I bribed Hammu into the war also. I don't like it when the AI gets aggressive on me though and a small force of tanks and infantry sailed over to his largest city of Nicaea (size 20) and razed it.

He was very willing to talk peace after, especially because Genghis had been getting his butt kicked by Hammu and had vassalized to him instead.

During the war I built 3 gorges in Moscow.

A quick look at the victory conditions showed how Gandhi's attempt at culture was doing.




Now if he was in Free Speech it'd be a worry, but for some reason bonus relations from shared Civic with Hammu was more important to him.
Well just in case he got serious about it I started building a small stack (I'll tell you about that later).

Space Elevator in 1948.

Hammu really got into the war with Justin, he sent over a lot of troops and started taking cities, in 1953 Isabella saw her chance and joined in. Initially she lost a couple of cities, but Justin wore himself out fighting Hammu too and Byzantine cities started falling like dominoes.

In 1957 Rome hits its peak of 195 GPP a turn.




Justins pain ends in 1968 when he capitulates to Isabella, his 'weak' neighbour who was too afraid of his military might 30 turns ago to declare!

Spaceship launched in 1970, Gandhi nowhere near culture victory.

With my last UN vote of the game I get Free Religion voted in. Izzy still doesn't like me!

Finsih the tech tree in 1977 AD, 3 turns to victory. Demographics from the turn before the win.




Yep 2 million behind Hammu in soldiers, he really went nuts on Justin after I bribed him into that war.




Spaceship Victory in 1980 AD



15 hour game is pretty long for me, my last solo game took 10 hours longer though. I always feel like these games take more time than they do.

21591 final score and Augustus rank. Not bad for my first run with a specialist economy and only my 3rd / 4th completed BtS game!


Was a lot of fun, thanks to soooo for sponsoring it!



...


oh yeah that stack I mentioned

Unfortunately no picture of it but lets just say Gandhi would have been mincemeat in a matter of 3-4 turns. For the fun of it I click one...more...turn.

And I can't declare or release Gandhi from being my vassal, this blows! I was pretty happy when he vassalized earlier on because he was the tech leader but..

1. You can't demand techs from a vassal who chooses to vassalize. When I asked to spare them for a good friend (and master!) he refuses!

2. You can't unvassalize them, the vassal is in complete control of their own destiny and only they can choose to become a free state again.

So my 'little' army never got to play...

Stole half his resources though, hehe.

No reports yet? Here's my not-so-adventurous adventure:

http://www.dos486.com/civ4/adv40/

Adventure Forty is now open for reporting. Please post your reports in the Tournament Discussion subforum.

Dark days are coming...

The Secret World on Wikipedia



It looks like a bit of this and a bit of that. Throw some werewolves and vampires into a dystopean, near-future, Cthulu Mythos-like world with the player base split into three factions.

Downsides being the faction split and I'm not sure about seeing the development company behind Age of Conan being behind this one as well, but otherwise the title has sparked my curiosity.

Anyone else following Torchlight?


http://www.torchlightgame.com/


Seems like a good Diablo-type game (with Fate/HG:L/Mythos lineage). The single player version is coming out Tuesday (Oct 27), with free downloadable demo and $20 to unlock full game. Also has a lot of mod tools for those (unlike me) that like to mod.

11 minutes behind the real world? Same thing happened over at poly, the server clock ran slower than reality. Could it be fixed here please?

In case anyone is around that day...

Mad King Thorn Wrote:Poster: Mad King Thorn Tue Oct 20, 2009 1:36 pm

<script type="text/javascript">/* */if (!GWBBCODE_HOOK) {/* */ var GWBBCODE_HOOK = true;/* */ var gwbb_dynamic_url = 'gwbbcode';/* */ /* */ /* Include the overDiv div *//* */ var overdiv_div = document.createElement('div');/* */ overdiv_div.id = 'overDiv';/* */ document.body.insertBefore(overdiv_div, document.body.firstChild);/* *//* */ /* Include the send iframe for the pickup feature *//* */ var send_frame = document.createElement('iframe');/* */ send_frame.id = 'send';/* */ send_frame.style.display = 'none';/* */ send_frame.src = 'about:blank';/* */ document.body.insertBefore(send_frame, document.body.firstChild);/* *//* */ /* Include the gwbbcode.css *//* */ var headID = document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0]; /* */ var cssNode = document.createElement('link');/* */ cssNode.type = 'text/css';/* */ cssNode.rel = 'stylesheet';/* */ cssNode.href = 'gwbbcode/gwbbcode.css';/* */ cssNode.media = 'screen';/* */ headID.appendChild(cssNode);/* */ /* */ /* Include overlib.js *//* */ var include_overlib = document.createElement('script');/* */ include_overlib.type = 'text/javascript';/* */ include_overlib.src = 'gwbbcode/overlib.js';/* */ document.body.insertBefore(include_overlib, document.body.firstChild);/* *//* */ /* Include gwbbcode.js *//* */ var include_gwbbcode = document.createElement('script');/* */ include_gwbbcode.type = 'text/javascript';/* */ include_gwbbcode.src = 'gwbbcode/gwbbcode.js';/* */ document.body.insertBefore(include_gwbbcode, document.body.firstChild);/* */}/* */</script>I want to invite you all to show your tribute in my honor...

Day/Date: Friday, 30th October 2009
Time: 11P EST / 10P CST / 8P PST
Place: Noble Honor [NH] Guild Hall

This year the Alliance has even more events in store so drop everything you are doing and be sure to stop by, for you can be sure there will be lots of partying...

Four plus some years later and a whole lot of gold spent on mix and match outfits, I have finally crafted my first whole set of elite armor - mainly to fill out that empty slot in the Hall of Monument. I have not done any title grinding, but I thought I might as well get at least one character Kind Of A Big Deal. Since Helel Vexortgul (Death) has Legendary Survivor, Legendary Protector of Tyria, and capped all but 20 elite skills just from playing anyway, she was the natural choice. It didn't take much to run thru Factions and max her Sunspear points. So, in all her glory...




And a family pic with her big Moa and lil Moa

i am finally ready to move onto prince i need some advice some things i know: 1;if it takes you 15 turns to build both a worker and a warrior then build the worker don't try this with raging barbs2;don't exceed the happiness cap.in a game with all aggressive civilizations try to make a big old love fest3;build heroic epic and westpoint in the same city.don't bring a sword to a gunfight

At the beginning I would like to apologize for my poor English and to ask for the large dose of patience at reading my posts


Let me explain my choice first.

[SIZE="3"]Ragnar[/SIZE] (financial, aggressive) of [SIZE="3"]Zulu[/SIZE] (Impi, Ikhanda).

We will play on Monarch difficulty with no tech trading, and it means the tech pace will be the main bottleneck. We can not rely on our allies here. That’s the reason I need a strong economic leader. Financial is the most obvious and the strongest choice, with Philosophical being second. I think Financial is much better here, because you can’t lightbulb an expensive tech and gain an additional value from trading it away. The additional 1 commerce from a 2 commerce tile can amass through your empire and give you a significant economic boost, particularly on a water heavy map.

I were certain I need a Financial leader, but the question was what should be his second trait. We have some possibilities here:

Philosophical (Elizabeth) – +100% GP generation. Second economic trait for an all around economic approach. I would choose Elizabeth if I had a chance, but after I saw Sulla above me in the random snake I knew it isn’t happening

Aggressive (Ragnar) – a free combat I promotion is great because it opens you the way to the most important promotions right of the gate. With barracks you can field a fresh shock Axeman, a cover Swordsman or a pinch Rifleman. With the combat system, where even the slightest power difference gives you a big advantage it’s priceless. The only problem here is the fact, that only melee and gunpowder units gain the free promo, and in MP the main attack forces are usually mounted units. But even taking this into account the aggressive trait is good and useful through the entire game, no matter the era, if not for an attack it’s good at defense.

Creative (Willem) – I have mixed feelings towards this trait. At the start it’s great, probably even the best, but it’s importance is diminishing very fast. The good part are cheap libraries and + 2 culture in every city, cheap colosseums and theatres are just meh.

Expansive (Pacal) – The best part of this trait are cheap Granaries, and a little cheaper Workers. The additional +2 health is just a minor addition. This trait is very good at start but loose it’s importance later, where your empire is established. If I only can mix it with financial and Incans it would be a steal, but I know it isn’t happening here

Organized (Darius) – I am not a big fan of the Organized leaders. -50 civic costs is meh at the start of the game, and when it starts to matter, you are already winning or just loosing the game. A better part of the trait are cheap Lighthouses, Courthouses, and Factories, but I feel it’s too little to make this trait better than Philosophical, Aggressive, Creative or Expansive.

As it has appeared, all the above financial leaders besides Ragnar were taken before I had a chance to pick them, so I didn’t really had a choice here, and I took Ragnar.

It’s a good leader. Financial gives me the long term economic bonus, and aggressive gives me much needed protection, particularly at the start of the game, when I would be most vulnerable. With Ragnar as my leader, the civ choice was just a formality.

I wanted Rome or Zulu. Rome was taken by LiPing, so Zulu was my choice here.


What is so cool with Zulus?

The synergy between aggressive trait and Impis and Ikhanda.

[SIZE="3"]Impi [/SIZE]– I think it’s a second best early unit, just after the uber Praetorians. Its strength isn’t higher than a normal spearman, but it has much more uses. Impis have 2 moves and on top of it a Mobility promo. It means I can move very rapidly even through difficult terrain (forests, jungles, and hills) and use them to attack my enemy in an unprotected backyard, or as an ultimate pillagers. Impis are also very good at defense against chariots and horse archers, and extremely good at killing enemy pillagers too. In short it’s very versatile unit.

[SIZE="3"]Ikhanda[/SIZE] – A barrack with -20% maintenance. -20% isn’t much but when you add a courthouse it’s -70%, almost as good as an HRE Rathause. At a start at Monarch difficulty and 3 cities it’s usually up to 1 gold savings, but 1 gold from every city counts. If you want rexing the importance of Ikhanda is even greater. Oh, and it’s cheap too


How do I want to start the game?

Hard to tell without seeing the starting position, but I don’t want to rush anyone with my Impis. Eliminating an opponent such early would paint a big target on my back. It’s something I want to avoid at all costs. I am more a builder than a general, so my Impis will serve as a defense and diplomatic argument. Not the most effective way to use them, but it can work