Hey, all,

I know I haven't been around RBCiv much since the Civ4 came out. Kudos to you guys for keeping it going.

Personally, I've been getting my 4X from another game by the name of Sword of the Stars. I posted about this game a long while back when it first came out, and a couple people expressed opinions, positive and negative.

Since then a lot of changes have happened in Sword of the Stars. It's gone through two expansions and several patches. There is a third and final, smaller expansion due out this month. After this, I'm pretty sure SotS development will be done for this iteration of the game, though there are plans for a SotS2 down the road.

By this point in time nearly all the rough spots have been polished out of the game. The UI has a lot more little user-friendly features added to help improve information flow and usability. The AI has been tweaked a lot and is capable of putting up a reasonable challenge, and moreover extra handicapping capabilities have been added for those people who want to tune the difficulty knobs to specific and/or even higher settings. Many functions people expect of 4X games such as trade, piracy, diplomacy, accelerated victory options for end-game mop-up, and the like have been added to the game. And of course, the 6 unique races with their unique drive systems and the random tech tree contribute a lot to replayability, and the real-time tactical battles continue to provide a great combat experience.

In short, it's a pretty complete package, approaching the 4X genre from the MOO1 point of view that abstraction is a good way to eliminate micromanagement without sacrificing depth. There is a fairly sophisticaed economic model underlying a UI with very few 'fiddly bits' that require constant micromanagement to get optimal or near optimal performance.

Another change is that the game is now available not just on GamersGate, but also on Impulse and Steam.

Here's an example description of a game I posted on the Kerberos forums, to give you a feel for what it's like:
http://www.kerberos-productions.com/foru...12&t=10697

I've enjoyed the game quite a bit since it came out, so now that it's nearing its final form and is more available than ever, I thought I'd make mention of it again.

Hey, all,

I know I haven't been around RBMoO much since the Imperia got started again. Kudos to you guys for keeping it going.

Personally, I've been getting my 4X from another game by the name of Sword of the Stars. I posted about this game a long while back when it first came out, and a couple people expressed opinions, positive and negative.

Since then a lot of changes have happened in Sword of the Stars. It's gone through two expansions and several patches. There is a third and final, smaller expansion due out this month. After this, I'm pretty sure SotS development will be done for this iteration of the game, though there are plans for a SotS2 down the road.

By this point in time nearly all the rough spots have been polished out of the game. The UI has a lot more little user-friendly features added to help improve information flow and usability. The AI has been tweaked a lot and is capable of putting up a reasonable challenge, and moreover extra handicapping capabilities have been added for those people who want to tune the difficulty knobs to specific and/or even higher settings. Many functions people expect of 4X games such as trade, piracy, diplomacy, accelerated victory options for end-game mop-up, and the like have been added to the game. And of course, the 6 unique races with their unique drive systems and the random tech tree contribute a lot to replayability, and the real-time tactical battles continue to provide a great combat experience.

In short, it's a pretty complete package, approaching the 4X genre from the MOO1 point of view that abstraction is a good way to eliminate micromanagement without sacrificing depth. There is a fairly sophisticaed economic model underlying a UI with very few 'fiddly bits' that require constant micromanagement to get optimal or near optimal performance.

Another change is that the game is now available not just on GamersGate, but also on Impulse and Steam.

Here's an example description of a game I posted on the Kerberos forums, to give you a feel for what it's like:
http://www.kerberos-productions.com/foru...12&t=10697

I've enjoyed the game quite a bit since it came out, so now that it's nearing its final form and is more available than ever, I thought I'd make mention of it again.

Thread on NH forums

Quote:We all take screen captures of breathtaking and unique moments on Guild Wars... Well... Here is your chance to show then off. Following are some base guidelines...

1. Each person can enter up to 5 screen captures.
2. Images can be retouched (post-capture) to enhance their appearance... however, originals should also be provided and the originals would be the ones to be rated.
3. There will be a panel of 5 judges who will judge the entries.
4. Each judge will rate images on a scale of 1-5 points. Total points for the image will be used to pick the winner.
5. In the event of a tie... the tied images will be reviewed by the judges and rated again on a scale of 1-5.
6. Images should be posted to the designated forum... maximum width is 560 pixels... preferably along with a link to the full sized image.
7. You will have two weeks from the starting date of the contest to post your screen capture(s).
8. Judges cannot participate.

Prizes...

There will be gold and/or item prizes (number and amount is yet to be decided). The winning screen captures (1st, 2nd, 3rd & honorable mentions) will be added to the image header at the top of the page along with the name of the person who took the image(s).

Judges...

At this time I would like to have 5 volunteers to act as the judges. Please note that judges cannot participate and should be active and available to rate images as they are added. Please post your name to be considered by the Alliance Guild Leaders for the judges panel.

The starting date of the contest will be announced once the judges panel and the contest forum has been setup.

Does anyone know exactly what the "Balanced Resources" option does, and where that specific code can be found? My general understanding is that it places the strategic resources (Copper, Iron, Horse, Coal/Oil?) and maybe Stone/Marble as well? within 7-8 tiles of your starting spot, but I am interested in an exact answer. Anyone know?

Thanks in advance!

I was trying to figure out what to do for Courin's birthday when it hit me like a ton of bricks: duh, just redesign the cape to her liking for the day. Then I started thinking, I kinda like the idea of doing that for someone, so, from now on, when it's your birthday you tell me what you want the cape to look like (screenshots help) and I'll make it that for the day.

I realize some people can get pretty finicky about the cape, but remember, when it's your birthday you can finally have the RB cape that you want as well.

This is all it says in the email and all I know:

Quote:Hi we are starting a new game site and need writers, can you see if anyone
from RB wants to help out?

http://www.gamersyndrome.com


thanks
-Nathan

Well most of you know by now that I've met everybody in-game, so I thought that this thread could be started for public posting ... although I'm the only one who can post here at the moment, I guess.

So here we go with my first RB-event and therefore with my very first complete report. Unfortunately I don’t have that much time right now, so I‘ll concentrate on those details most of you maybe interested in and will hopefully find the time to add a more details version later on..

Let’s start with the initial thoughts: It’s emperor, ok... So from my experiences I know that emperor AIs are quite aggressive and will most likely tech better than I will. So conquest won’t be reachable for me neither space will.. And as there won’t be a possibility to vassal anyone (I’m sure I won’t get the forces for an aggressive war) or get any diplo plus through fair trades only culture remains. So it’s culture. As early religions won’t be reachable my initial game plan was to get at least four prophets to bulb theo and divine right as well as CoL through Oracle to find at least three religions. In addition I’m going to try for Stonehenge as well, to ensure the “free” borderpops and the early specialists in my cities. The culture comes in handy as well..
As I‘ll concentrate on military techs early on, for surviving long enough to hit cultural victory, I’ll miss most of the early wonders, but with two shrines, Spiral Minaret and Versailles I hopefully will fund around 90%-100% science to get the later once to cruise to a late but “safe” victory.

So I started..
My first action was to move the warrior and to decide to settle 1N of the starting position starting with a warrior. So I secured an additional grasshill and wonderful grassland titles for descent towns. The initial techpath was Myst --> Mining --> BW. With pottery I got a bit lucky as I poped it from a hut.. So the second build in Thebes was the worker to get followed by SH. One or two chops later I finished it successfully in 2320 BC.
While building SH I had to make the decision to tech towards priesthood to go for the Oracle, or for archery for some additional defence(That’s because there’s no copper nearby..). After my first barb warrior encounter already took place in 2560 I decided for the safe way.. So Archery came next and Thebes build some archers, and as fishing got researched some workboats got build to squeeze out some settlers with the additional food from the clams.
After fending off some barb archers my second city came quite late: 1240BC. As there’s plenty of food this will become my NE location! In 600BC my first GP was born and in 325 BC I could bulb him for theo and christianity was founded. Meanwhile in 575 BC my third to become legendary city was founded. With some descent production I’ll hopefully land some wonders here.. Elephantine, the last city before calendar change, was founded in 300 BC and completed my early empire so far:

But shortly before I got really, really lucky, as Christianity spread to Ragnar and he immediately converted .. The most powerful guy becomes my buddy! Great! Right now it’s a bit safer cruise..
As we went on with settling in 225AD Alexandria was founded, followed by PiRamses in 425 AD. In 1170AD I finished settling my spots due the foundation of Giza. Not the biggest empire ever, but hopefully big enough for a victory:

As you can see, there are not many wonders build. Main reason was, that I was really far behind in tech (so far behind I even lost the free artist from music and therefore Sistine.. ) But fortunately I had monopole on Theo, so after SH the second one was the apostolic palace in 660AD and in 1040AD Hagia Sofia was finished.
My second prophet was born in 800AD to build me Church of the Nativity. The third came in 1090 AD and with his help I was at least first to Divine Right in 1230AD. My second religion and once again two wonders nearly no one will get before me!! The Minaret finished in 1310AD, the islamic holy shrine in 1340AD and in 1535AD Versailles completed the “divine right wonders”.
But while trying to get some descent culture into my cities Charly once again revealed his true face and DoW’ed me in 1400AD. At this point I was quite happy, that I decided to research a bit more towards military techs, so after some emergency whips PiRamses got fortified to fend off the massive charge in 1480AD and after killing a second invading stack in 1550 he was once again willing to sign peace in 1555.
After a lot of quite boring rounds (nearly all of my cities were building wealth, research or culture) I got lucky once again: Huayna send a buddhistic missionary to Elephantine, so two more stupas to build! This came really in handy after I had to realize, that somebody else is on his way towards culture as well (and he was even in front..).
After England got killed in 1715AD I managed it, to sign a defence pact with Ragnar in 1780AD. Unfortunately he switch out of HR (which I stay in for nearly whole of the game to keep Huayna friendly), so I had to resign this later one in 1907.. (Just as some kind of note in the margin for those who didn’t know this too: after going back to friendly the defensive pact gets automatically cancelled!!)
As a result of two AP resolution I had to declare on Bull in 1836 as well as in 1898, but I kept both as a phony wars. Nonetheless Bull got killed in 1906..
Just to mention nearby: in 1906 Broadway was finished, and from this stage I knew, that Hanni won’t beat me by a few turns (he could have build it ~20 turns earlier but fortunately he didn’t..)
My original plan was, to go for 100% culture right after mass media, but the backstabber Qin (who I kept in friendly) DoW’ed me one turn before I finished it.. So in addition I had to go for steel as well!! :mad: Nonetheless thanks to the defence pact with ragnar this war stayed phony for me (I didn’t even see a single chinese ship..), and so I could change to 100% culture in 1923AD.
To end up this stuff nothing really interesting happened until Memphis became legendary in 1943AD, Heliopolis in 1945AD and through the last culture bomb Thebes became legendary in 1947AD. So in 1948AD I finally got this screen:


As a short conclusion I only want to add, that exactly that happened what I thought it would.. (except the Oracle) I founded Christianity and Islam and finished with a quite late victory! But it was my first emperor game and I won it even with restrictions!!

Thank you Sulla and I’m looking forward the next event!!

Going to have to report a loss here... 1st ever game on Emp difficulty and didn't do too badly - got a dodgy war declaration by Huayna late in the game whilst he was going for Culture - I have a feeling he was bought in...

I'll post some shots and a report soon but I don't have access to my home comp for a few days.

I retired although i think Hannibal was going to win culture before I would have made it to space.

Thanks for the game - it was a lot of fun!

I'm afraid I might not have time enough to write a full report with pics to this game, but here goes a little summary.

The goal was culture victory and i built many wonders in the capital and in the second city near the ivories, cow and wheat. The other legendary city would be the 4th city on the floodpains and wheat. The 3rd city was founded on the stone for pyramids essentially. The other 4 cities were founded to get luxuries and another strategic resources.

Research beelined for music and liberalism later, getting nationalism. After liberalism culture slider was set to 100% and i was just pressing enter waiting for the end. Suddenly Ragnar delcared on me with his monstruous stack of knights and war elephants, though i was near friendly with him :war2: . I started to research towards rifling and built musks in my unprotected cities trying to defend they, but surely he would devastate anything that was on his way.

Only a miracle would save me from the doom and it came from the buddhist Apostolic Palace, the wonder that generally annoys me with its demands. Stop the war with vikings was accepted even with ragnar's vote just when two stacks of doom were approaching my southern city.

After this there were no surprises and i won by culture in 1808, though i miscalculated the time for the 3rd city to reach legendary: i had to wait about 15 turns after the 2nd city reached legendary.

So this was a great game and i expect to play more epics and adventures in the future! Thanks for the sponsor.