Here's Epic Sixteen. If you weren't aware that there was an issue with Epic Fifteen, you should probably see this thread also.

November 22nd marked 1 year since the founding of Archons Ascendant! We're going to celebrate on Dec 2nd in our guildhall and EVERYONE's invited! The party will be sometime late in the evening (EST).

At the main RBCiv forum, there's no way to visit threads that haven't been posted in recently. Why?

I won't have time to play it, but what do you think of these settings?

Type: Potluck
Title: ?????
Civilizations: All Civ1 Civs
Leaders: All Civ1 Leaders

Here are the preliminary results for Epic Fourteen:

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/epic14results.html

We had quite a few impressive games, and several different paths taken to victory. I've read through every report except timmy827's epic, which I hope to get through sometime this weekend. Special thanks also to all those who were defeated, yet reported their games anyway. Scavenger in particular had a very entertaining story to tell!

If anyone has a correction to make with regards to the Honorable Mentions, please let me know. I believe that Compromise actually had more cities in 1500AD than I did, but there was no picture to verify or get an exact number.

I've played my Elite marksman up to clvl 10, she's at Oxford Circus at the moment. I've been skipping side quests in an effort to speed through the game a bit faster, and possibly have some quest XP to fall back on once she's done grinding to the point where it's odious to continue doing so. Right now she's fighting monsters 2-3 levels above her, and doing ok. Act bosses might be anohter matter.

I haven't noticed that there are all that many more monsters than normal mode, with a couple of exceptions: namely, fellbore packs. These popups normally come in groups of 3-6 in normal, whereas in Elite they tend to show up in packs of 5-10, maybe more later. Definitely bring some AoE! The monsters in Elite do move faster than the monsters in normal; this coupled with the lack of inhibitor bots and drone for tanking makes my marksman feel squishy at times. However, sniper stance is a plus when she can use it, and I anticipate the power of ricochet/reflect/rapid fire making itself felt later on.

Item-wise, I have been finding a lot more legendary items than I did in normal, despite not having a lot of +luck gear yet (though I plan to collect +luck on my gear for this char.) Partly this is due to there being more rare/epic bosses, but also there seem to be more legendary drops from regular monsters. If you play an Epic character, plan to equip your character pretty much entirely on what you find; everything sells for half what it did in normal, which also affects how much materials you get out of things you scrap. A lot of white items scrap for 1 gold even well into act 2, and paying for heal injectors actually puts a significant dent in your character's budget. (I seem to be finding fewer of them too, but that could just be a perception bias.)

Anyway, things seem about as fun overall as normal, though obviously the above differences make for a different experience in some respects.

GearSlack1 is finished normal difficulty. (Yay!) Full details available in the variant sub-forum. Comments welcome!

I don't anticipate playing her a lot until I have a chance to see what tuning FSS is planning on doing to Nightmare difficulty in the December content patch. I also need to plan what I'm going to do regarding nightmare-level equipment. So far she's made it to Covent Garden with no problems, but
better weapons and armour will be a requirement at some point I'm sure.

However, that does mean she's available to help out in normal with anything folks would like to do. Since she's already solo'ed all the content there, I'm not worried about partying with non-variant characters in normal. Plus she can always use a few more xp to help with the Nightmare XP grind.

I've also started a couple other characters: A summoner on Normal (Zed1someslack1) and a marksman on Elite (Zed1luckybug1.) Both of these should be available for adventuring as well; with the summoner I'm partly trying a different spin on the slacker to make sure more than one path is viable, but I'm also taking a looser approach and may not stick to slacking full-time. KoP, please issue guild invites for them, if you wouldn't mind?

My two Marksmen, Deerslayer and Natty, are attempting to live off the land, by crafting, and by trade with other pilgrims. At Fort William Henry I will put on offer any found items they can't use before breaking them down for rifle crafting.

In exchange I will accept health injectors, PRD's, analyzers, and ammunition of all kinds except projectiles as these seem to be among the hardest to find but easiest to buy. Health injectors are especially rare.

Check back often for current inventory. Something new every day.

I gave this one a shot. I thought for a long time about how to approach it. The most clever approach I could think of was to shoot for super-early longbows and let the AI incur ridiculous war weariness crashing against my well-defended cities.

So, I beelined the Oracle:



And here's an overview shot I took when the AI hordes were starting to descend:


However, things didn't pan out the way I'd expected. Strangely, the AI largely bypassed my other cities and aimed for my capital. And instead of suiciding against my cities, the AI stacks usually bounced back and forth between nearby forests or hills and only occasionally attacked my defenders. No war weariness for the AI if it doesn't attack me!

So, I stagnated. I played for a couple hundred years into the AD era, before deciding that the strategy, at least as I implemented it, was a bust. I report it here with the thinking that a negative result is potentially useful/interesting too.

I actually returned to the epic later and tried more of a delayed rush strategy. I built a 15 troop stack that was ready to crush Montezuma in 1000BC. It did. I'd also pre-chopped three rings of forests around the capital for quick conversion to more troops. These largely rolled over Suryavarman.

I figured I could plod through at 3 vs. 1 on Prince, but I didn't really have the time. (Plus, it would've been just a shadow game.) I guess I'm usually more focussed on strategy than tactics. Both were necessary here. I'm learning a bit more about tactics from others' reports. (Thank you for those!)

I must say that this played *very* differently than the first Always War epic. I'm quite impressed with the improvements in the AI's battle tactics. It's rather refreshing that cheesey tactics (e.g.: let the AI stifle itself in war weariness by suiciding with no real chance against my cities) don't work. Nice work, Blake et alia!

And thanks for the scenario, Sullla. I hope I can come up with something clever and successful for the next AW event.

Nice simple rules but quite a hefty change to gameplay? Should work I've not tried this out yet - will probably do so next time I start a new character post-patch as I want to complete a normal run-through first. Given my death rate, hardcore's a scary prospect

More info on the mini-game is linked in this thread.

The Gambler is a person who likes to let Lady Luck decide his (or her) fate. The demonic invasion having thrown everything into chaos, The Gambler has embraced uncertainty and chance and taken to letting the winds of destiny control his life.

Class: Any.
Difficulty: Any.

Variant Rules:
1. Most importantly, the only items you are allowed to equip, and the only mods you are allowed to use are those won by completing the mini-game. No regular or boss drops, purchased or crafted items or items traded from other players. The exceptions to this rule are:
a) Items you need to equip to complete a quest. Can only be used when necessary and must be removed ASAP. For example, the field gun needed to clear the boils in Act 3 and the illuminating goggles in Act 2. Doing the latter without using the item (technically possible I suppose) is, however, a particularly Gambler-ish thing to do and earns you extra kudos in the gambling fraternity
b) Basic unenchanted/unenhanced - white- items. Preferably not for long and as basic as possible. Items with no armour value, just sartorial effect, are favourite. Higher quality white items dropped by the mini-game are fine, though I don't know that that's even possible.
c) Dye kits.
d) For consideration - items and mods which enhance luck but have no other enhancements.

2. Anything which boosts Luck is, of course, highly desirable. (This should improve mini-game drops too, but that's not confirmed). Unless you think you can't live without your existing item's bonuses, the one the mini-game dropped with a Luck modifier should be the one you use.

3. You can, of course, complete as many quests as you like - it can be a requirement to complete the mini-game, after all. However, remember that you can't use item rewards, just the experience and palladium.

4. You may upgrade your equipment as long as it was a mini-game drop.

5. Risky behaviour, particularly that which carries a big potential reward, is the Gambler's second favourite activity. Chuck yourself at tough quests, go into areas you think are dangerous, party with people taking on tough challenges (difficult with HG:L's current party system, though that's probably a good thing in many ways), hold off on pressing the health injector button and see if you can kill off that last monster, and so on.

6. Naturally, any time you can complete the min-game, you should - PRD back to town to complete that quest it requires, loot things ASAP, etc.

7. Some care may be needed to try to ensure you're only using mini-game items. Destroy other things straight away and keep usable stuff in another part of your inventory/stash. If you can't be sure an item came from the mini-game, don't use it!

Seems workable, and should be a significantly different experience. If anyone can think of ways that might make the variant impossible or if it turns out to be dull (perfectly possible), shout up!