I know most everyone here is in the beta, I'm just sayin'...


Of course, at the rate it is downloading, I'll be able to see if it will run on my dino PC with the wind-up key in back...after work tomorrow

--Cy

...apparently.

Skull Ugoth came online long enough to impart the message that the new addition to the family, Abagail, was born on Monday at 7:53.

He's going to be busy over the next while, but hopes to have progress updates soon.

Guys, I'm trying to put together the Adventure 23 results, but before I can finish, I need substantially more information from many of you. This is quite important, as it is not at all clear who is the winner right now! Here's what we have so far:

Date
sooooo 375BC
uberfish 75BC
wojc 425AD
Stagnate 720AD
Kylearan 740AD
Muaziz 1150AD
DaveV 1170AD
darrelljs 1585AD
TriviAl (retired)

Units Killed
Muaziz 226
DaveV 182
Stagnate ~125
Kylearan 52

Religions
Kylearan 6
TriviAl 3
DaveV 0

Great People
DaveV 7
Kylearan 3

Promotions
Kylearan 7
Muaziz 6
DaveV 4

Everyone has nicely provided dates of finish, but much more information is needed elsewhere, especially with regards to 1) the number of units killed 2) Great People and 3) Promotions. For example, I can infer that sooooo and uberfish didn't found any religions, but it's impossible to guess how many units each of them killed. All of this information should be easily available from the final save game (check the Demographics screen for units killed/Great People produced), so please help us out with whatever information is missing!

I figured I'd share this, as this has been fun enough of a game to pull me away from Civ a little bit . The game is called Tribal Wars, and it's a browser-based online game based on an identical German game (Die Stamme is what I believe it's called). The idea is, you create your little village, grow it based on collecting resources, you can build your army, as well as create or join a tribe, which is a group of players, often in the same region, who help each other. The original version is German, and the english version run by the same people has been out for around a year. It's free, but you can pay for additional benefits (that you don't really need IMO). I enjoy it, so I figured I might as well post it. The biggest disadvantage of it, is the community (at least in the .net version) kinda sucks... There's a few people trying to engage in normal conversation, and a bunch of kids flaming and trolling...

If you do give it a shot, either pick World 10 (a faster world) or World 11 (a slower world), because those are the newest ones, so you'd be the least far behind. Pick a fast world if you've got a lot of free time, or a slow world if you don't, and there's no limit on how many worlds you play on. There are versions in other languages too (about 5-6 others), but unfortunately I'm not sure where they are (google them).

Anyways, that's about it, it's nice because it's light and all you need is an internet browser and to check it once or twice a day. Here's the links:
http://www.tribalwars.net
http://www.diestaemme.de

Who here has a significant other? A wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend well if you do yo have to watch this. Be patient, it starts getting good after a minute

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...&plindex=0

Atlas

I'm late posting... but better late than never says I? (If that's wrong, then apologies!).

Thanks to Atlas for organising this!

I was a man with a plan. A plan so cunning that you could put a tail on it and call it a fox. A plan very similar to someone else playing this game, it seems...


After a lot of thinking, decided to move 1 east. Part of my masterplan is a high prod city. 2 more grassland and 1 more plains+stone hill is too good to pass up. Not sure if this is right.

Found 1 turn late and set for worker/bronze working. There's some science. The usual worker actions and a collection of religious techs.

Chop out some workboats, workers, settlers and Stonehenge.

Meet the neighbours and start spreading out, plopping down a few cities.

In 1440 BC tokugawa goes for Hatty. Excellent first war of the game!

My masterplan comes to fruition here:



Which leads to:



50 AD the Christian Apostolic Palace is built. I vote for myself as leader. Build the Shrine (riskily!). Spam some settlers to cover more ground!

Push out enough missionaries to convert Hatty and Wang Kon - Tokugawa and Ragnar get converted by shrine. Unfortunately, the one to Wang fails to take. Oh no! A long time later, in 375AD I get a missionary into Akkad. Yay, all 4 leaders are now christian.

In the meantime I have been training Praetorians, test drive them against Angle. Those guys are fun.

Second Great Prophet born in 425AD. Pop a GA with him for want of anything better to do. Just twiddling my thumbs waiting for victory!

Finally in 540 the elections come around. YAY! I Win! Party Time!



Or not. I lose. By 6 votes. DOH!

I decide to make some more votes with those praets I'd been making:



In 740AD, I get a chance for another vote. Yay WIN! #1 #1 #1!



Or not. Oh dear.

In 800AD I notice this:



Gods - the prospect of having to win a legitimate diplomatic victory rears it's head. In 860AD my economy looks like this:



Not even at CoL yet. Others teching up over me. I can see a long hard slog ahead of me... Sadly, I'll admit that I wussed out at this point, leaving my game unfinished.

It was a valuable learning experience in trying to be too clever. Which is always humbling.

Was thinking recently about a build that could make AB even easier than it already is. Figured the fastest way through anything would be with SF eles but you still need healing, no matter how much offense you've got. So I figured why not put some healing on the eles and try it out. I haven't actually tested this yet so if anyone's interested in being a guinnea pig, it'd be appreciated.

4x eles with: SF, Glowing, Flame Djinn's, GoLE, Attunement
2x specced into healing: Healing Ribbon, Cure Hex, Infuse Health
1x specced into prot (part 1): Guardian, Mend Condition, RoF
1x specced into prot (part 2): Mend Condition, SoA, Prot Spirit/Spirit Bond

Well this will be brief and to the point. I accidentally lost the saves (autosave) so I only have screenshots to go by. I seriously underestimated the power of Praets (not to mention aggro praets) so I probably didn't get many awards since I was fairly cautious.

I founded three cities right in the immediate vicinity which had a good number of hills and could reach size 5-6 with no problems, built three workers, barracks, a few archers and everything else was praets (couple of missionaries also).



My research path was Hunting, AH, BW, Iron Working. Then I got archery and casually headed for catapults, but I never needed them.

I got a spread of Judaism early from the Egyptians, so I switched to match their religion and left them until last. I thought about bribing them into war, but wasn't able to early on, and then figured I might as well get the points for kills.

The only close call was when I made my initial assault against Ragnar. I came in with 5(?) praets, easily took a city that he had placed by the spices just to the west of my Antium. I took my Praets over to the capital and added a few, but was not able to take the city (I killed most units, but a couple were left over and the axes were too much for my praets). On the home front Ragnar sent over 7-8 units, mostly promoted axes, which came very close (last unit had to be killed by a nearby archer). At the same time I had a few barbs threaten my cities. After that it was smooth sailing.

I started against Ragnar around 750BC and finished him off around 200BC (I was starting to hurt from WW at that point). Then I started on Tokugawa and went right through him (200BC - 300AD), Wang Kong (300AD - 660AD), and then finished the egyptians off, winning conquest in 720AD.

I could have sped the process up by going against the egyptians while still attacking Wang Kong, but stayed with one enemy at a time. My highest unit only reached 13 exp, mostly because they never reached the battle again after healing.

I killed somewhere between 100 - 150, but unfortunately I didn't save the full results (so it could be lower, no points for me either way). I founded no religions and met none of the other goals; I could have stopped Praet production and gone for some of the other prizes but was in the click-win mindset. I saved some of the cities (mostly the capitals) that I took, but didn't have too much problem with money. My units did go on strike right when I was ready to take Wang Kon's capital, but I was able to recover that by switching to some $$$ tiles.

It was a fun game, but the points system was definitely open to exploitation. I read the messages here and decided to stay on the high road as well.
________
FoxyLolla live

Adventure 23 - Speedy Gonzales

This game was played at Monetzuma of the Romans on a small pangaea. The instructions according to the game page were "Win this game as quickly as possible.", so that is what I tried to do. I did not consider scoring in this game, since it did not favour the quickest game possible.

I had some experience of fast rushes on pangaea maps, on epics 5 and 6. A quote from Sullla regarding my last report might be appropriate:

Sullla Wrote:I remember when you first came here to RBCiv, most of your games were violent kill-fests.

Shadow HM, Doctor Disaster, and a few others were on last night, and the following idea was floated.

A team, HC (or not, if people will be scared away) of low rent heroes, heroes who cannot afford to go to school and learn anything beyond the first grade. The point is to finish all three diffs using only level one skills, though as much synergy as you can manage is OK, given that the synergy deal has effectively become a requirement at Hell Diff, at the least.

Ideally, this is a once through, full clear, no twink, whatever we find, imbue, gamble, and craft is what we use. We can debate Nilithak's cheese factory and HC if anyone so chooses, given that our FoS experience with Nilithak was rather scarring.

How it plays out.

A Necro can have all the skellies he wants, but can't use Summon resist or any Golems. He can shoot teeth till Dracula sues, but no bone spear, except as synergy.

And so on.

We had a talk about mercs, and I suggest here that the merc plan be as follows.

Any merc may be used who employs first level skills.

Rogues? Yes. Inner sight, fire arrow, cold arrow.

Greizmen? Only those who use Prayer and Might

Iron Wolves? Only Lightning users, due to the Charged bolt, but really, since they also use Lightning, I suggest they not be eligible.

Barbarians? Yes. They use Bash. I almost never see them use Stun.

The obvious choices aren't all that obvious, but here are a few things in the art of the possible.

A Barbarian limited to Bash, Howl, and mace, axe, and sword mastery. Oh, and Find Potion!

A Necro with skellies a plenty, Amp Damage, and Bone Armor. Oh, and long pointy teeth! (Maybe we'll call him Tim.)

A Charged Bolt Sorceress, a Fire Bolt sorceress (who needs to be named Ember's Niece ) or a Frost bolt sorcie.

A Paladin who is either a Smiter, or a Martyr. Or both.

A Druid who is either a werewolf with a flock of ravens, and maxed Poison Creeper, or a fully synergized Fire Storm pyromaniac, named of course Smokey The UnBear or some such.

An assassin. Either Maxed synergy on Fire Blast, which can do some damage, or a Claw Mastery, Tiger Strike, Psychic Hammer MA loony.

Amazon provides some nice flexibility.

Magic Arrow, Fire Arrow, Critical Strike, Inner Sight, and Cold Arrow. The Javelin option looks abysmal.

It appears that using only Level One, Entry Level Skills, that team play would be paramount in order to Succeed versus Hell Stooges and Hell Baal and his cronies.

Is anyone interested?

I have created in rbd4 a holding necro. We can all use one account, all chars created in the same account, and this might allow us all to switch chars now and again to alleviate tedium while play ensures.

Other rules need to be considered to give this the right variant flavor, but I have a hankering for a one or two night per week team event.

Norm Diff would probably be a go go snooze fest, but without a bit of good team work, later diffs might be a real test, particularly in HC, if that is where we choose to go.

Any takers?

Occhi