Hello guys (and girls), since I wanted to play Sealed Deck for once, I decided to organize this tournament, involving RB and the Amazon Basin. The main thread is over at their forums because I hope to use their Hall which is Imperial, a bit better than Solitude; this thread is for RB signups, so you don't have to register over there if you aren't.

When: my proposal is 9/13 (Sat), 8 pm EST.

Rules: the idea is matches between teams of two human players and two heroes, annihilation like Random Arenas. If Fox told me things right , every team gets 80 semi-random skills to play with for the entire tournament, with the option of adding some vital ones like charm/comfort animal or a lead attack for sins I think. Shrine resses are ok, but the fight area will be somewhat restricted around the GH flagstand.

As I said in the AB thread, date, time and rules are subject to changes depending on what people need/want/can do. If someone has problems, we can try to fix them, as there is plenty of time.

Who wants to play?

EDIT: thanks Wyrm, I'm stupid.

First Impression: Very clean and minimalistic. However, I reserve the right to change my opinion when I find and add on all the gadgets and features that I am used to with the Firefox and Igoogle combo. Also, it may only look it, in other words, you may or may not see as much information in comparison to Firefox. Here's a side by side comparison. Both browsers used the same forum settings.



Chrome vs Fox differences with this forum:
See more with Firefox
"Insert Img" icon uses different tags, and image does not show in the editing window.
"Insert Hyperlink" icon does not have http:// prefix (same with "Insert Img" icon). If canceled, it will bring up a "normal" request again.
Chrome surround the active field with a gold box
Extra features as indicated in the screenie which I still have to figure out.

Still more differences - Left=Firefox, Right=Chrome



I am not sure how the Chrome layout will work with Igoogle; I enjoy using Igoogle for its many addons, especially the handy notepad within the browser. Sure its nice to have your 9 most visited site in big thumbnails on the page (less (right) clicks is always a good thing), but I am sure those who surf the porns would not appreciate it

KoP

I should have had these done sooner, but it was a busy weekend.

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/imp11results.html

Congratulations to all our participants on another magnificent turnout! Special recognition goes to Maniac Marshall, who was the sole player to successfully unite the triad! I stated in my report that I believed it was possible, and Maniac made me look smart. Thanks for that.

We had all manner of games across the board, and a fabulous array of different playstyles and approaches. The Artifacts world alone ensured that no two games would play out exactly alike. I also have to say that the report-writing has been of extremely high quality so far, and highly entertaining. Just remember that you don't *HAVE* to create a report with 100+ pictures, ok?

Thanks to everyone for helping to create such a strong community.

So yeah it's my bday tomorrow (Sept 2). I'll be 39.

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exagerated.

I have been off the sonar for a good while, it seems. What have I been up to? Wellllllll... that's a long story. I'll pop in again tomorrow and reply to anybody who happened to catch this and say hello.

:soc:





- Bob

A somewhat more builder-style (for once) SGOTM is up and looking for signups. We would like to continue the Real Ms. Beyond tradition (of performing somewhat terribly... we like to blame the RNG), but we currently only have three returning players:

TheArchduke, Jabah and myself

We are looking for a minimum of 2-3 more players to join us, or else we may have to merge with the likes of... old people, toilet water, or whatever Ozbenno is.

More info here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=288968

OK, so for some reason my desktop PC, starting this morning, has been shutting off no matter what I'm doing, even just idling and doing nothing. I thought it was the cpu overheating, but it doesn't appear to be the case as I tried monitoring the temp and nothing seems out of whack. Its really annoying, especially when writing a paper or playing GW. I've had the majority of the system for the better part of 7 years now and only replacing a few parts as needed. I've wanted to upgrade for a while and seeing as buying an iMac with the specifications I want is out of my price range at this point in time (I have a Macbook Pro anyways) I figured it would be less expensive to just rebuild my computer.

So, I'm going to replace a few major components that I think need changing and I wouldn't mind hearing some feedback or suggestions on this because I haven't kept up with a lot of the new computer stuff over the years and just barely looked at some stuff today. Not sure how much I'm willing to spend, for sure I'd like to keep the total cost under $1000, hopefully I can keep it as far under that as possible.

Note: I'm not looking for the ultimate hardcore gamer setup. I basically only play GW and probably GW2 when it comes out. I'd like a setup that would last for a few years and provide me with decent gaming (to play GW or any other game that might catch my eye) and regular home/school stuff.

So the things I do have:

• Mouse & Keyboard
  
• BA790 speakers which still work great
  
• Old but decent sound card to suit my needs
  
• CD/DVD drive
  
• Floppy drive
  
• 2 HD's
  
• 2 x 22" widscreen monitors
  
• 420W Enermax PS
  
• Lots of case fans..
  

• 2.66GHz
  
• FSB 1333MHz
  
• L2 Cache 4MB
  
• Price ~ $175
  

• FSB 1600/1333
  
• Memory - 4 slots, DDR2 1200, up to 16GB
  
• PCI-E 2.0 x16 - 1 slot
  
• PCI-E x1 - 4 slots
  
• PCI - 2 slots
  
• Price ~ $100
  

• DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)
  
• Price ~ $140
  

• GPU - Radeon HD 4850
  
• Core clock - 625 MHz
  
• Stream processor - 800 units
  
• Memory clock - 1928 MHz
  
• Memory - 512 MB
  
• Memory interface - 256 bit
  
• Memory Type - GDDR3
  
• 2 DVI outputs
  
• HDTV/S-video out
  
• Price ~ $185
  

Late arrival.
Also I have to mark it as a shadow game for late playing & reporting.

Quick score check:
2375:
Colonist:
12 planets & 7 votes = 57 points

Research:
10 + 8 +10 + 7 + 6 + 7 = 48 points

Diplomat:
Ack only met two races.
Humans (amiable) & Silicoids (neutral) = 28 points

2450:
Colonist:
15 planets & 15 votes = 30 points

Research:
28 + 27 + 25 = 80 points

Diplomat:
Been in constant war with three civs! No chance for peace.
Psilons (peaceful) all others (feud or hate) = 20 points

So all together:
Colonist = 87
Research = 128
Diplomat = 48
---------------------------
263 points + 100 points (Council win in 2474) = 363 final score

mh

Early Exploration (2300-2316)

I send my colony ship to the yellow star in the southeast. It is the closest star and it is the best spectral type. I send my scouts to green star to northeast and the second scout to red star to southwest. The stars I am scouting are not the closest ones to Kholdan, I am hoping to beat my opponents to the free tech if they are artifact worlds. This is a neat tip I picked up reading the reports of previous Imperia.

I set Kholdan to build a single scout and the rest of production is allocated to industry. I build a total of three additional scouts. I send first one to the neutron star to the northwest, the second one to the red star to the northwest, and send the third scout to red planet southeast of the yellow star that I sent my colony ship to.

Between my five scouts and colony ship exploring the neighborhood, I now have a pretty good idea of my starting position. My first discovery may be the best planet that I have ever seen on an initial exploration. My colony ship discovers a Minimal 50, Ultrarich planet at Maalor. This planet is probably the reason for the interesting scoring scheme for this Imperium. Sending a scout to the green star to the northeast paid off because it turns out that it is an artifact world. My excitement is temper by the fact that my tech discovery is BC II. I keep the scout in orbit to chase off any opponents. I also discover various other planets, see map for details.



After founding a colony on Maalor I send a trickle of 2-4 colonists per year to speed its development. I continue this until 2316. Normally I would not send so many to one planet but because Maalor is ultarich I do not want factory production to out pace population growth and because I want to stand Maalor up as soon as possible.

After 6 years of exploring I reconfigure my production at Kholdan now that I have a pretty good idea of what my neighborhood looks like. I have two mediocre planets with in range and medium sized artifact planet just beyond my range. I focus on building colony ships and technological development (since I need better range to reach Artemis). I set production to produce a colony ship in ten turns, put 12rps into technology, and I split it three ways construction, planetology, and Propulsion. My choices are RIW 80%, IER 3/1, and Range 5. Because Klackons are poor researchers of propulsion technology and because I want to colonize Artemis, I am allocating 50% to propulsion. The other 50% is going to RIW 80%. Normally I would that IER 3/1 but the Klackons are excellent researchers of construction technology. I switch Maalor from producing factories to producing colony ships and fighter escorts.

Early Colonization (2317-2344)

In 2316 Kholdan produces its first and last colony ship of game. I will switch Kholdan to full tech rerearch because Maalor will be fully developed soon. My plan is to use Maalor’s mineral wealth to produce colony ships as fast as possible. Two year latter, Maalor is fully developed and I switch Maalor from producing extended range laser destroyers to bar my opponents’ from claiming worlds.



After building 3 Beam X DDs, I switch Maalor to producing a colony ship for Primodus, although it is poor, it could be a stepping stone for future development. I colonize Omicron, and send a stream of colonist from Kholdan.

In 2324 I discover RIW 80% and my only choice is IIT 8. At this point in the game I am more interested in grabbing planets than I am in industrializing the ones I currently own so I switch to 100% propulsion. I love techs that reduce waste clean up overhead. Kholdan jumped from 78rp to 94rp. I also realize I made a major mistake, when I opened up the planetology I selected IER 3/1 without thinking. I should have selected Barren Enviro because I had already discovered two barren planets.

During this period I discovered or colonized the following planets:

So, apparently sometime in early September (somewhere around the 5th, from what I hear), ANet will be releasing a package called The Complete Collection which will have all the campaigns + EotN. Along with that release, they're adding in a new hero: M.O.X. - read about him here.

Apparently, due to the size of the thing and because they don't want him to bodyblock or block the viewing range of other players, he won't be available for PvP usage. Not that anyone ever bothers with dervish heroes in PvP anyway, but it's still a little disappointing that PvP is yet again losing out (even moreso considering GW has the best PvP system out there) when it comes to the devs' time.

I have a strange feeling that this is the type of thing we can expect from ANet until GW2 gets close, if for no other reason than to keep GW from being completely forgotten about.

2300, hey ho, let´s go. And I turn off events.

Only a yellow and a purple star are in range, so I scout both, with the colony accompanying my scout shp to the yellow star.

2303

Maarlor, the yellow star host a 50 pop ultra rich. This will be fun! I begin the wild population dispatching game.

2309

I quickly check out techs and decide to go mostly for the more expensive ones to get more points in 2375. Except for Barren, which I prefer over a cleanup tech to get more colonising options. To avoid waste, maalor starts a colony ship already as ultra rich means pop grow can´t keep up with production. Especially with the Klackons.

I should have tried to make it my main planet instead of Klackon in retrospect.

2313

Artemis is uncovered and we find the Fusion Bomb... yay. Well at least I get my Weapon Tech level to 8 that way.

Why not something as awesome as scatter V, though.. (And just to prove the point, Sulla gets it.)

2318

Maalor builds its first colony ship, and a death system is uncovered to the south. I design LR Laser and Kholdan starts to build them. Screenie 1.

2319

Barren Enviroment comes in. I pour everything into Fuel Cell Research

2322

Way too fast my 2nd colony ship comes in, I can´t even send it out yet. 2 new barren colony ships are enroute to be built.

2326

Just in time for my 2nd barren colony ship, fuel cells range 5 come in, nuclear engines are next. I pour research into construction asap.
A new barren colony ship takes 3!! turns at Maalor.

2328

Herculis a fertile terran is uncovered to the west. I need this planet immeaditly.

2330

Berel is colonized, Kholdan maxes and goes on full tech mode.

2331

Primodius is colonized.

2334

Two more colony ships and a bunch of LR Laser long range patrols fan out.

2335

Waste is reduced by 20%. Computer is researched next. Artemis is colonized, Kholdan starts to send out small population support packages to outlying colonies.

2336

I encounter the Humans at Vox in the north.

2338

I colonize Herculis and chase away Bulrathis from a dead planet called Klystron to the east.

2341

Anraq is colonized.

2344

Paranar is uncovered, a bulrathi world.

2346

Nuclear engines are discovered and built into my colony ships.

2348

Vox is colonized, as well as Gion. The Klackon Menance expands like a cancer.

2349

Imra is colonized.

2354

Omicron maxes and thus adds 60 research points.

2356

Ukko is colonized. Not good. I have soon control over the whole galaxy, but this will hamper my diplomacy probably, as exactly this turn the Humans and the Silicoids call me and say hallo.

2357

I start trade with both, but they are already wary and at unease.

2358

I finally snatch the terran planet to the north, Crius. And elections begin. I got 5 votes, the Bulrathis 7 with one by the Psilons. So I can´t vote for them as they would win otherwise.

2362

The Silicoids ask for a NAP by themselves. I need more range to contact the other races.

2375

The last 13 years I spent trying to hyper tech myself to some levels and gain the level 7 fuel cells to establish contact. I should have rushed to death enviroment earlier then i did, though.

My points:

Diplomacy: Only the humans and the silicoids I have met. I am neutral (10 points) with the humans and amiable (14 points) with the rocks. At least I managed to get decent relations with both.

Expansion: My current planets number 13, though I should have managed to colonize those hostile planets more quickly. 3*13 equals 39. My population enables me to vote with 7 votes at the council. 21 points.

Technology: Looks better, though others may beat me here again. I managed from CPUs to Weapons: 10-8-10-10-11-11, which gives me a decent 60 points.

Altogether I have 144 points at 2375.

Not too shabby, but I think I could have made 150 with some more races met and another dead planet. At 2450 planets are not as important but tech and diplomacy is, so I will work on that now.