it has come to my attention that since im not a mindless drone with no own thoughts im clearly not respected and welcome here. its too bad that the people who doesnt agree with some on one thing are being pushed out... hows that for equality...definatly some room for improvement there.

well i made some friends...apparently i made a fuckload of enemies too...
i feel sorry for the cowards that didnt have the guts to come to me personally..thats all.

i wish the best for those who wish me the best

bye

The beta test for Mythos (a Diabloish game made by a group affiliated with Flagship Studios) is coming up soon:

http://www.mythos.com/index.jsp

As I posted once before, I have a beta-invitation to hand out, and I think some RBD-style input on the game would be a good thing. :-) So if you're interested let me know---but only if you really are interested.

While we are hashing out a name for an alliance, the meaty matter we need to begin discussing is how we admit (and if needed remove) guilds from this new alliance. An [Arch] member already asked about bringing in a friend's guild, so this is something we need to begin working on before more requests start piling up.

The way ZoS did this seemed to reflect their application to guild process. Guild makes a post with some basic info, some alliance members "run" with the guild to get a feel for them, then there is a vote. Assuming it's respected by the admins this is an OK system, but not necessarily the best. Here's my thoughts on the matter:

- I think an "invite only" method is ideal, though this is how 90% of ZoS applications seemed to go anyway. Basically someone in the alliance who knows the incoming guild has to champion them and start a discussion. Any old guild can't simply walk up to our website and apply. This is because I'd prefer an alliance of potential friendships to one that is merely functional and tolerable.

- I would favor at least a week for people to get to know the incoming guild. This isn't merely time to make a thorough evaluation, but also to forge some friendships before bringing them onto ally chat. Also, those who weigh in support on the final decision (whether its a formal poll or not) should be required to spend some time with the new guild. This isn't so much an attempt to disenfranchise people that know little, but rather to encourage more people to actually play with said guild.

- Let's completely avoid anything like an alliance committe or representatives. We need as many people involved in the decisions and getting to know other guilds as possible. It shouldn't be the job of a select few making choices for an apathetic or ignorant majority. Nor does giving each guild a single vote promote a well-integrated alliance IMO.

- If we go with a formal poll (if), then it should not be simple majority rule. If 51% of the alliance wants to admit someone and 49% doesn't, the proper answer is to not admit. The amount of trouble created for the alliance by a significant unhappy minority is not worth adding more to the fold IMO. I would suggest at least a 2/3rds majority in favor to permit an addition.

- We may need some kind of "mission statement" about our values so interested guilds come in with the right idea of what we are about, and know what they are "getting themselves in to". I think this is the preferable route to making a rigid rule or code but still helpful.

- Investigate the possibility of making decisions without a poll. The RB process of decision making usually involves a discussion being started, time given for people to weigh in, and then the leader makes a motion based on that. This isn't a fairly counted voting process that captures the opinions of fence-sitters, but strong objections of a few can halt a direction being taken if there aren't adequate counter-arguments. Though folks like WB would be in favor of it, I'm leery that there would be more problems down the road as the alliance grows bigger than RB-Fail-Arch, and whoever's sitting in the phantom guild leader spot becomes the new reviled Frosty despite their best intentions to represent everyone.

- Does discussion of a guild for consideration need to be private? We don't have any private forums here nor do we necessarily want them, but it's harder to criticize an incoming guild in public space. This isn't to rule out that alliance forums might be hosted elsewhere, but a lack of private space could mean real concerns would then start to be registered in PMs and this will deprive many from getting in on the conversation.

These are just some ideas to get the conversation rolling. You can post your own without critiquing mine. Or you can rip mine to shreds. Or both.

I have posted the placeholder for the Epic Eleven results up on my website (we'll add a results page on the RBCiv website shortly):

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/epic11results.html

Two words of explanation: as far as fastest finishes go, my own shadow game is counted as though it simply doesn't exist. Therefore, even though I had the earliest victory (and by a pretty good margin ) mostly_harmless gets the top points for that category. That's why there are two different games getting top scoring there.

Second: T-Hawk's game. I decided to take T-Hawk's suggestion of disallowing survival points for his Egypt, as that was the only part of his game affected by the gifting of units. Thus, T-Hawk's game only has 32 points for surviving civs instead of the 36 listed on his homepage. However, I ALSO noticed that T-Hawk had an addition error on his website: he tallied up the score to 121, when in fact it was only 120. This meant that his overall score became 116 instead of 117 after the penalty was applied. Then T-Hawk got those same 4 points back again for having the second-fastest finish, taking him back to 120 points. A whole lot of running around in circles there, which largely doesn't matter because T-Hawk had the top score regardless.

Very good turnout for this event, and a lot of nice games played. We ended up with two different tie scores (myself/Kylearan and Michelangelo/sunrise) despite some entirely different paths in those games! Always interesting to see that. I picked up a lot of good feedback for use in crafting future events from this (hint: be careful with the red herrings!) and working on scoring systems (give more points for fastest finishes!)

Thanks for your participation!

http://kotaku.com/gaming/i-miss-micropro...273098.php

This seemed inevitable. I'm curious how stripped down the game will be. Probably too much to capture my heart, but perhaps retaining enough to make it worth playing! Just to get some too early worthless speculation in.

Hi

My youngest son's 'end of school year' party was a picnic in the park yesterday. And, in the river beside the picnic area, these sculptures were being worked on. There is no mortar or glue. The fellow is *merely* :rolleyes: balancing the rocks on top of each other.

Great fun to watch...

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/...-headlines

Darrell

Our guild has taken on many (welcome! ) new members of late, and the roster now totals 95 members, so we are getting close to the 100 member cap. Last night when I tried to invite someone I had to revoke all the guest privledges we had put out to do so. It seems that invites count against the cap, so it's 96 including our one long-standing invite. While we can manage now, it does mean that our guild size will be an issue in the near future.

There are a lot of long-standing inactives on our roster, including 9 or 10 that have been gone for more than a year. We've tried to retain them anyway because we want folks to feel welcome to return for a special event or new expansion, but when push comes to shove I think it's more important we let good players actualy playing the game into our fold.

But before getting into that debate, we do have a number of spots occupied by secondary accounts, of people both active and inactive. If we become full, then probably the best course of action is to start kicking the longest inactive secondary accounts. (Help me by pointing out who is who. ) At some point (might be far away) we will have to consider removing primary accounts too however. Note that any such kicked inactives could just post on the forum for an invite, but people that are just trying out a special event or trial would be unlikely to do so. We could also have [oink] or whatever the new phantom guild is issue invites for kicked members to pick up later, but they might not know who that guild is or what is going on and ignore the invite.

KoP has made a unique opportunity for secondary accounts to join the alliance phantom guild. (currently [oink]) I know some of our active members with secondary accounts already expressed concerns about muling convenience with their accounts showing up in different halls. But unless there are some members willing to move their accounts over to create space in our guild, then something like the above procedure of removing inactives will eventually happen to make some space. I don't think we need a community consensus on a policy just yet, but can leave it to secondary account holders individually to decide whether convenience for them as active players is more important than keeping places for those few from our large inactive list that might return.

I finally clued in why my Rit is getting targeted more when I first noticed it in FoW. The last armor update changed Ghost Forge Insignia from (while affected by weapon spell) to (while affected by a Chant).

I checked my armor, then the Rune Trader and Wiki last night and they all say the same thing as wiki

Quote:This update changed the text of applied Ghost Forge Insignia to "+15 armor (while affected by a Chant)

This is my first ever game report -- hopefully I've got this image linking thing working properly and can keep it interesting. I'll post the report in several chunks on this thread.

I've been playing Civ since the original game, but due to life commitments never got into CivIII and only picked up Civ IV a few months back. So much new material to learn, but I rapidly became completely hooked once again. I found Sulla's walkthrough, then his game reports, and that led me to Realms Beyond. This is my second attempt at an event, and my first finish, but I've been reading past reports and learning a lot.

I've only played a half-dozen games or so, and had never gone for a culture victory, so this event looked great. I decided not to worry too much about the scenario scoring -- I would grab points where I could, but I just wanted the victory. And Sulla overloading the mega-continent with aggressive AI civs had me worried -- I haven't done all that well with early pressure.

Looking through the list of what would score points, the Great Lighthouse jumped out -- surely that was a red herring! Probably means we're dead center on the continent.... Various wonders, the different buildings at checkpoint dates make sense, the Navy SEAL might be fun, and a speedy finish bonus. Cool.

Now on to the game!



Editing here, as issues at work (one of the apps decided to go Klingon philosophical) prevented me from finishing my full write up. Here's the final summary, and the first part of the game report (through about 1280 AD) will be posted below. The rest should go up tomorrow -- apologies.

Final result -- Cultural Victory in 1868 AD, with all three cities (Washington, New York, and Boston) hitting Legnedary status on the turn. Great works created on final turn: 8

Scenario points:

+25 cultural victory
+24 each rival still alive worth 4 points (Toku, Alex, Monty, Temujin, Huayna Capac, Peter)
+3 Hagia Sophia built without GE
+2 Versailles built without GE
+1 Eiffel Tower built without GE
+1 Hollywood built without GE
+4 Libraries built by 260 AD
+3 Temples built by 260 AD (2 Confucian, 1 Jewish)
+0 Universities built by 1502 AD
+0 Cathedrals built by 1502 AD

Total: 63 points (plus any highly unlikely fastest finish bonus points)

This game was a blast -- thanks to Sulla for sponsoring and his shadow game report, and to all who are reporting this game. I have learned a ton from the Realms Beyond community, and as this is only my first real event completion I'm sure I will learn more in the future.


Editing again: Sorry for the delay in getting the rest of the report up. From 1270 AD to the end is now posted. (Jump down to post #6 to pick up the new material).