I just want to know why the RB community has "tournament" (I don't know how to describe them) events only for the games below and not for stuff like Rise of Nations, Age of Empires, Starcraft, Empire Earth, Alpha Centauri, SimCity, etc.

http://www.bash.org/?237483

I don't know if it's our beloved Zed or not, but either way it had me smiling, and reminiscing.

I played this one through. I went on a bit of a rampage fairly early on (starting with Buddhabrennusmark) and ended up controlling the southern half of the continent. I used Mansamark as a trading buddy for most of the game. I think I got to Alpha Centauri in 1952.

I got severely distracted--after getting Optics and uncovering the sea squares--in trying to crack the codes of the various islands. I finally decided that I could only see a couple Morse code items: A pair of islands of the form ..--- which is "2" in Morse code and two sets each of the letters T (-), W (.--) and O (...). While researching "visual ciphers," I learned a fair bit about puzzles and cryptography and spent an inordinate amount of time reading about the Allies efforts to crack the Nazi Enigma code machine. (This probably doubled 8) the amount of time I put into the game.)

(I'm writing this before reading other reports or the sponsor's comments, so I'm curious to see if there were other map subtleties that I missed).

Since I did decode two Morse messages, and since I spent about as much time being distracted by them as I did playing the game, I'm going to give myself a self-reported score of: 2. I figure this will put me at the bottom of the barrel (unless the sponsor decides to list the results from lowest to highest ).

Incomplete - retired not long after 1550. I managed to combine a critical error in judgment with a clicko, and got so frustrated by the idiocy of it all that I abandoned the game rather than following through.

Opening plan was to break out the chain saws. I recall finishing the first scout build, and following it with worker worker. I spotted the gorgeous city site along the river (directly east of the grassland copper mine), and tried to put together a bit of hurry up to beat Musa to the spot. Hamburg was founded in 2480, and I got Stone Henge built there right quick - a palace to counteract the effect of Malinese culture. By 1550, Hamburg was harvesting 29 hammers per turn from the tiles around it, thanks to a second copper pop. The Hanging Gardens, the University of Sangkore, and the Padawon Slaya all were constructed here.

Munich was founded in 2080 to the north east, where it picked off the marble, pigs, gems, silver, and the grassland iron as well. The Parthenon and the Sistine Chapel ended up here - I wasn't planning on running many specialists in this city, so that seemed to be a safe place to tuck things in.

The specialists were all heading for Cologne, founded to the south where it picked off three deer and a lot of forest. I managed to get the Great Library built here, as well as the National Epic, without disturbing the Lorax in the slightest.

On the religious front, Brennus founded Buddhism, Justinian Hinduism, and Churchhill scored Judaism. Consequently, all of the eastern civs were buddy buiddy, leaving me carte blanche everywhere else.

Mansa crowded Munich with a city, so I declared war on him in 775BC, when he left it a touch more vulnerable than was safe. Apart from razing that and another city, though, I wasn't able to accomplish much - Timbuktu was generating defenders too quickly, or I was too timid.

The first English War began in 225, I captured Nottingham, only to lose it again because I didn't have enough viable defenders (didn't want Justinian poaching, so the city had to stay), but the main prize was London, which held the Pyramids. I grabbed that in 150AD and settled for peace - London isn't much on this map, not in the early eras, anyway, so I dropped the Forbidden palace into it.

The second English War began in 720AD, and England retired from the field in 1070AD. culture in that part of the world is a problem, though, as the Indian cities are beating on everything.

During all this, the Buddy-Buddy's are constantly tearing into Mehmed. I have absolutely no idea why, but in the pecking order he is clearly bottom chicken, and completely boxed in. Brennus isn't doing all that well either - people like him, but he's got nowhere to go. His natural direction for expansion is west or south west - which would be choosing unwisely.

Having finished off England, I turned my attention toward Justinian, and declared war in 1130. This really doesn't figure to be a contest, except that Mansa decides that he sees an opportunity, and declares war in 1250. I have to start hustling my troops south, and am forced to throw everything I've got at Justinian's final city. To make things even more exciting, he spawns a great general during this push, but I'm able to close the book on him in 1260.

Mansa, trapped in the deadlands of the north, snuck some cities off to the east, and it takes me a bit of time to crack down on all of them. I finish him off in 1540, which perfectly coincides with winning the liberalism race (everybody else in the world was tracking the bottom of the tree towards economics).

This is the point of my last save. I've about 2700 points, and a lead of 1000 give or take over my next rival (Bottom Chicken is at about 1100 or so). The entire left hand side of the map is mine, I've finally got some sea ports worthy of the name. There are a number of different approaches to take - the most straight foward is to tech to panzers, and try to take on the world before the domination limit kicks in. Use the land and sail into space? That shouldn't be a problem, since nobody is going to be able to touch Hamburg for production. The buddhist block is going to be a mess, it may be possible to diplo the way out. And I've got the top three culture cities, and no worries about the race to legendary status.

What happens instead? Sometime not long after this save, I get bored and decide to annex Brennus. He surprises me by counter attacking at Cologne. Now, because of the positions of the cities and the stacks, I actually have some pieces available to address this - but the terrain around cologne is all trees, and my roads aren't direct enough to get troops in through the back door.

So I need to use some of my combat troops to deal with the threat. I got the interface wrong, or it rooked me, but instead of my prime counter strike unit, I ended up selecting my can opener, who fell. Then the garrison at cologne was unable to stand in the face of trebs, taking out my beautiful GP Farm. The game was still in the bag, of course, but it wasn't going to be fun (I've gone from bored to bored-and-pissed), so I just threw in the towel.

I didn't do too well train spotting, but did want to lodge a complaint against the leader faces. Giving all of the leaders the same face is clever until they are all introduced, but after that its naught but a pain in the butt. It's not the worst possible choice (I think the worst would be having the right faces in the game, but assigned to the wrong people).

If so, check out this thread @ CFC: DMI VII - Celebrity Deathmatch

Thanks,

Imhotep

Hey all,

This is my first effort at a Realms Beyond game. It was also my first game of BTS, as I waited a long time before upgrading:

Rodge does Doppelganger

I'm also the first person to report a game, so that's three firsts so no extra bonus "2"s!

My declared total of 2s is 40. I could have had more, but I started playing epic 15 then epic 16 and never got time to go back over the game.
It's also my first ever report of a game, and I admit to not being an expert with Civ 4. So apologies for whatever silly things I do in the game I also started recording the game by taking notes on small pieces of paper. As time went on, the bundle of paper grew and grew so I apologise if there's any mistakes in there. My recording of my current game in Epic 16 is much neater!

Anyway, enjoy!

Opps - totally forgot to post a 'closing day' for this game. Can someone make this thread a sticky?

Here is a link to my notes on putting the game together. I did play most of a game but didn't get it finished. I've pulled back from Civ4 to concentrate on boring RL stuff that actually pays the bills.

For a new player? Some of the one's I've been perusing are less than helpful.

As an nveterate tinkerer with all things I'd like to share some discoveries.

If you open the options screen and choose the game controls menu it gives a display of the current leyboard map and let's you change the key mappings.

I had used it previously to widen the WASD stance to AERG and used it again last night to set secondary skill/item bar controls one row down and to the right while keeping the primary 1234....

So I can switch from running and gunning to stand and fight without losing my left hand keyboard orientation. Run and gun skills are always slotted to 34 on the number row.

You have to change some of the default function key assignments to make this work, most importantly F for Pickup, but that is a small price to pay.
i moved it to H for Haul.

The only other game I play is Rise of Nations.