http://sylvanllewelyn.fortunecity.com/pc...bciv31.htm

So I'm definitely not the fastest. I was hoping to win this actually. At least it was fun.

My report for this adventure can be found here.

Summary - straightforward peaceful cultural win in 2:34.

Pregame thoughts: After playing around with quick speed settings, I noticed that while food to grow, tech costs, hammer costs are all 2/3 of normal, cultural levels are only 1/2 of normal - I guess the devs really liked having round numbers there! That more or less made my victory condition right there. I'm not sure how competitive it would be with early conquest but I hoped to do something different than most of the crowd. (Also, the inland sea is really good for culture as you virtually guaranteed to have only 2 direct neighbors; if you can suck up to them then you are quite safe from attack and don't have to worry about military. This became obvious as the game went on but I didn't think of it initially).

My thinking in winning as quick as possible was to go all culture slider after Liberalism and not worry about the late cultural wonders or corporations. Also since we start with Mysticism early religions sound good. I did see the Isabella spoiler posted in the forum; but decided to go ahead anyways with a religion chase (trying to pretend that I didn't hear the spoiler, if that makes any sense).

The following is mostly reconstructed from a bunch of screenshots, don't expect a lot of detailed analysis. The pictures themselves are not that illustrative so few are in the report, it was mostly the best way to keep track of key events like techs/city foundings/wonders.

I founded on the northern ivory which worked out well. Got one settler out (placing 1NW of the gold N of captial, not the greatest) before finishing Stonehenge on turn 35/1900BC.


Here's the 3rd city, I had wanted something near the visible Spain borders but was a few turns slow. Trying to block off my corner of the map frantically. Techwise I had gone for early religions, just missed Hindu, popped mining and fishing from huts, did get Judaism. However, once Izzy turned up on border (Buddhist founder), adopting that went up in flames - I think I was Jewish for the minimum 5 turns between switches.


Wow, it's better to be lucky than good. I was intending this only to block off France from my corner, and after some hemming and hawing decided to plop it down here. I did NOT know about the rice on the western edge of the map until settling! That upgraded Nicaea from a blocker and resource grabber to a Legendary city. Soon after I settled the cow/corn/stone city due west of the start for the 3rd. Around this time I started having problems with barbs coming towards Constantinople from the SW, one nice thing about quick speed is that I could pump out a few archers (copper not hooked up yet) relatively faster than normal/epic, and think I got through with only 1 tile pillaged. You can also see I'm beelining Aesthetics for wonders.

After cleaning up that barb mess, placing a couple archers on hills lit up most of my backlines and ended the barb troubles.

I finished the landgrab right before AD times:

Territory is great for a cultural win, could get 9 cities peacefully and only Nicomedia is marginal (gems and rivers but no food bonus), rest are all OK. As mentioned earlier, Nicaea and Antioch became my other two legendaries. Angora was a good Moai city and built some deterrent military, was also good for missionary pumping. Antioch had stone and the partially-visible city in the SW corner had marble so I was able to build tons of cultural wonders cheaply as well as Pyramids for early Rep. That was quite useful at keeping science moving, in my haste to seal off my corner I predictably crashed my economy. Turned out alright as I was still first to Music. Of course, the map situation also meant I had all the resources for quick cathedrals to go with my quick temples (I adore Spiritual for this, you get so much mileage out of that one building!)

Not surprisingly, in trying to play quickly I made some silly errors as well. I converted to Buddhism as soon as I got that spread to please Izzy but ran without OR for a pretty long time afterwards. I settled my first prophet when I should have bulbed Theology for another religion. However, I wound up founding both Taoism and Islam eventually for 4 total religions so I had plenty. Finally, many of my cities had health problems but I was slow to realize that I had not built roads to the rice at Nicaea or the cows I had at Antioch and Adrianople.

Judaism had leaked out to DeGaulle and he was Annoyed with me for a while, even though I went back to no religion (that also allowed several tech trades with Confucian Gilgamesh and Hindu Saladin) . Fortunately Lincoln was still his worst enemy and he never planned war with me or cancelled OB. A determined stream of Buddhist missionaries got him to convert in 620AD and I was more or less safe. Lincoln also converted soon after, must have been from random spreads.

The city of Adrianople (south, corn/cows/silver) birthed a GS on turn 99. Another awesome unplanned move, had run scientists mostly due to lack of happy cap and workers to grow and work more tiles. Very useful philo bulb getting me Taoism.


By 940 AD I'm feeling quite good. I've gotten every wonder I've went for except ToA. Full list is henge/pyramids/parthenon/SoZ/great lib/Maus/Sistine, and have been able to spread them around among my legendaries. A GL GS bulbed me to Education (although it was only 4 turns off the tech, not that much!) I finished the Sankore in 1100AD, kind of ironic as at that point I was almost to Liberalism. Took nationalism for free, DR was still open and only a few turns so I got that before "shutting down" research - with representation artists + UoS I was still moving forward at an ok rate for while. Only mistake was not going after AP - I really thought Izzy would build it which would be just as good, but eventually it went to Hindu Sal. The hammers from religious buildings would have been helpful.

Not much thinking left in this one; DeGaulle and Izzy stayed Pleased and I don't think there were any wars of consequence that would bring another AI into striking distance of me. I set the legendaries to run max artists. I didn't get many of the great variety; three early ones (including Music freebie) were settled in Nicaea. This pushed it ahead of Antioch so Hermitage went there. I popped a couple of scientists from TGL after I was done teching but that was fine and dandy, two long GA's (using a prophet from the capital too) helped greatly in getting all the temples/cathedrals up as well as more gold for the slider. I also got the Taj GA, as well as Spiral Minaret (ok base culture + more slider) and Notre Dame.

Here's shots of the 3 legendaries at 1600AD, in their more or less final configs:






A final prophet was used for the jewish shrine, allowing me to keep the slider a bit higher. In 1680AD luck comes through with a great artist that can bomb Antioch:

Nice how the great work contributes 2/3 of Normal speed while the culture goals are only 1/2. This synchs up everything and my cities cross the line on turns 163, 165, 166 - wow, I've definitely had normal, well-planned culture victories that didn't come anywhere close to that evenness!


How long?

I didn't play a test game for this (did a little exploration to see how quick speed scaled things, but no "practice" of playing frantically). Think I did OK, wonder if automating workers would have helped - didn't until the improvements at my key cities were basically all done. I definitely felt at many times that I was making poor compromises - not playing as fast as possible, while not taking enough time either to really do things efficiently. This bothered the perfectionist in me, although I expect many other players had the same experience. Also, in the endgame I definitely did some silly micromanagement of my legendary cities - it probably shaved a few turns off the victory, but just hitting enter would have ended it quicker in terms of time. I didn't experiment with auto-production city management either - wonder how well that works? Seems like for culture it would be simple to write an AI script that builds missionaries as needed/temples/cathedrals but I didn't trust it to do so here.

Nice to get kicked out of my overanalyzing habits. That whole game probably took less time than writing up tips for one of T-Hawk's turnsets in RBTS7
Was fun, and I can't wait to see if anyone else decided to try culture.

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

Also, if you're reading this message, we are opening a new Epic next week.

Hello.

I'm not necessarily the greatest player of this game. Surely, it is fun and such, but my Diablo I days, where I was quite a player are gone and my skills (if there were any) withered. In fact, I couldn't really beat Hell/Hell other than teleporting quickly to Diablo and vanquishing him.

Could someone point out how to do some basic moves that help to survive? What does "portal parking" mean and how to separate enemies properly?

And a word on Hell. I am torn apart between "You can't beat it without a good equipment and wonders on a stick" and "Wow, that Rogue Revival thingy was unbelievable". How is it really?

When Blizzard started the 5th ladder season for D2/LoD they forced us again into the very same decision as everytime they do it: "Which (now non-ladder) hero do i send to Kingdom Come to make room in my account?"

Naturally you don't make this decision right at the start of a ladder but over time you note that your heroes of days past see less and less action each time you log onto your accounts. After that your heroes start to catch dust and fade away (time out) or get plain deleted to make room.

It seemed to be a natural process to me .. well .. until 4th ladder ended which was my first all HC season.

With now several weeks into the 5th ladder i still can't get myself to simply delete a single one of my HC heroes who over weeks and months made their way to Guardianship. The alternate of a slow and painfully long death by fading away to expiration also does not seem appropriate so when Shishak returned from China i sparked the idea of a Blaze of Glory.

Right when the 4th ladder ended i had collected enough Keys of Terror, Hate and Destruction to head out and gather the Organ's of the prim Evils.

Über-Duriel, although very very fast, was not too hard to handle. My Plaguezon downed him pretty quick and collected Baal's Eye. Now Lilith the Queen of the Succubi gave my heroes a really hard time. The only hero who turned out to have some real means to keep her at bay or even down her was my Goly-Confusomancer: his clay golem was able to tackle her long enough to think up a real plan to fight her instead of some wild running for survival. While looking into all of act 4 and 5 to find both powerful and poison immune revivable minions that could take on Lilith poor Über-Izual fell by accident along the way, leaving my necro Mephisto's Brain. Lilith finally fell after several onslaughtes with poison immune revived urdars leaving me Diablo's Horn.



I now contribute this Organ set to one final battle of all our NL HC Heroes: for venturing to Über-Tristram to vanish the three prim Evils and all their minions to save Sanctuary. When our heroes have to go down one way or another it should be in a Blaze of Glory.


For sure most/none of our chars were ever build to attempt this but just running into the Red Portal and getting killed is not my intend. We should really think up a plan how we can win this battle and be it only for some great screenshots and a memorial stone here on RB.


Hailing in for the Cause here are my NL HC Heroes in ascending order of age:

Troubadix

being a lvl 88 Singer Barbarian he is always ready to jump into the fray and wrecking havoc on his enemies with lvl 38 Warcry, strengthening himself and companions with lvl 35 BattleOrders, weaken foes with lvl 36 BattleCrys or make them run with terror by his lvl 35 Howl. He's accompanied by Prayerman Asreal who's dressed up all Naj's wielding an Insight BattleScythe.



Petzi

being a lvl 84 shockwaving Werebear leading a pack of lvl 29 Dire Wolves or a lone lvl 29 Grizzly into battle, aided by his lvl 29 Heart of Wolverine, a flock of Ravens and Scorch the Icewolf.



Lederstrumpf

being a lvl 86 BladeFury flinging DeathSentry spreading Trapsin supported by her lvl 33 ShadowWarrior and Ulf the Barbarian bringing and execution Law against all monsters.


These 3 heroes will be supporters for the Boss killers and distracters for the Army of Minions summoned by the Prim Evils.




AtomicBomberman

being a lvl 86 Necro he was my 1st 4th ladder char who developed into a confusion spreading blow-everything-up ClayGolemancer. He mastered the Art of ClayGolem summoning at lvl 32 and learned to summon Revives 4 times as strong and a lot healthier then usual. He also knows how to Dim Vision, Attract, Amplify Damage, Life-Tap and Decrepify. His sidekick Kundri spreads Edge and Guillaume enhanced wood to fuel his Trigger-Happyness.

He too will be a supporter by keeping the Prim Evils minion busy plus he can lead a Revive assault on poison and lightning immune Über-Mephisto.




Dancing_Cloud

being a lvl 93 Plaguezon and my whole pride. Started as a try'n'error fun char she turned out to be the most powerfull hero i ever managed to make. Her TrangOul glove and PoisonFacet enhanced lvl 43 PlagueJavelin simply cuts down everything which does not remain poison immune after she waved her wand of LowerResist over it. Those lucky enough to remain immune to poison fall pray to either lvl 24 LightningFury, her lvl 33 Valkyrie or Mightman Neeraj's Obedience thresher while they get distracted by a lvl 33 Decoy.

Against Über-Mephisto she can only aid by keeping him busy or distracting some minions while vs. Über-Baal and Über-Diablo she's very likely the one leading the main assault while others keep the Evil Army of Minions busy.


Dr. Disaster

EDIT: minor stat update

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

All I can offer is an 82 level trapper assassin, Rustinaille. None too soon, need to sell off and destroy most of the chars in that account to give her some gambling cash for one last blow out of gambling before she goes, hoping for a good circlet or two. Also gonna socket what I can with any char that has sockets, to up the resists on her.

I will have wands of lower resist and life tap available on the weapon switch.

I have mind blast. Can boost via gear selection if needed.
Occhi

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

RB_Circlets on rbd6 holds 3 circlets she can go for:
- plain blue +2 sin
- rare +1 sin +13 res all +26 str +56 life +20 frw 1-101 lightning dmg
- rare +1 sin +17 res all dmg red 17 mag dmg red 1 psn red 75%
All without sockets, so get cube or larzuk-happy on them

If others like to gear up beforehand be sure to look thru rb mules and i also have one or two things muled too.

Dr. Disaster

I was wondering where the thread went, and couldn't imagine one of the mods deleting it as off-topic or something. Fortunately I found both my post and Sullla's reply in browser cache.

Remember that weekend where Ruff and I were complaining about no Civ to play? Well, I started another project on a favorite game that weekend, and finished it this past weekend. Here's the report, in full Realms Beyond style...

http://www.dos486.com/ff/

Enjoy


Sullla's reply:

Quote:Wonderful!!! That read just made my morning.

To answer some of your comments, I did in fact play out a significant part of the zerks variant, just never got around to finishing it or typing it up. I was right about to enter the Sea Shrine, and have about 20 screenshots still waiting to be used. We were thinking on the same wavelength in most every other way: I also fully planned (and did) use the class change feature, on the principle that anything that increased offensive output should be employed. I completely agree with your assessment of the Red Mage/Black Mage split too - Red Mage is superior in something like 95% of all situations. Black Mage class is seriously overrated in this game. However, I went with the Black Mage to make the variant more challenging and/or interesting. White magic of any kind had no place on the berserker team!

I am seriously impressed with the low level run using this variant. Not that it can be done, but that you pulled it off with so few party wipes. The run through the Ice Cave was edge-of-the-seat stuff for sure. (Those designers were just evil when they programmed that place!) I encountered the same sort of gameplay you did during my run - characters frequently dying even in normal random battles from either an unlucky critical hit or a gangup by several monsters at one time. My characters were higher levels though, since I was not doing a low-level challenge, which definitely helped a bit. The higher hit points were fairly negligible, but I hit the Black Belt "killzone" level ups sooner (8, 21, and eventually 32) and had more offense on hand earlier. Against bosses, it was the same thing: the path to success was to hurl everything at the opponent and completely ignore defense. I'm extremely pleased to see that my variant goal played out to perfection in your own run.

So congratulations again on your run! I think it's a testament to this game's beautiful design that so many unorthodox challenges can be designed and played successfully. (Although Final Fantasy is actually from 1987 - the American port is dated 1990, but the game itself is even older!) Although I might be the only one, I would love to see more FF content on your website.

I think I deleted the other fantasy thread instead of just the spam post. My Apologies. Please re post.

KoP

Reading through on Guildwiki after the update, I had a thought for the next time we decide to tackle the deep. If one of the monks brings Unyielding Aura, then the other three teams can each charge their mobs and die, get resurrected to the 4th team's location, and the entire group can work together from the start. Anyway, if it sounds interesting we should give it a try sometime, especially since UA is now useful outside of its ressing properties.

Vort

Flagship Studios Seattle team is proud to announce their reformation as Runic Games.

These are the Mythos guys not the Hellgate crew but a step in the right direction hopefully.

Link http://www.runicgames.com/




CB-13