So who is up for another SG round.

This time I would recommend the Humans, seeing as no OSG stared them so far. So who is still around?

This was a great concept!

For the free technology, I decided on Steel, for both the cannons and the ironclads.
I mainly chose this for the fun factor. I’m not very good at warmongering. I can barely win a conquest game
at Prince level, and only if I have a smallish map, so I figured this would force me into warring with my neighbors.
It really helped me learn quite a bit about this aspect of the game.

But my first mistake came during my pregame thinking. (This is a record for me, I usually don’t make mistakes
until the game starts.) Ironclads, first off, require steam power to run them, and secondly need coal
as a resource. But Mau was not so lucky to have been granted those items at the beginning of the game.
So, what a noob move. I wouldn’t be able to build ironclads until the usual point in my game!

Oh well. I do have to discover iron before I can use the cannons, so I initially beelined to iron working.
Since I already have agriculture and mining, my worker will have plenty to do in the meantime.
I moved one square north (which may have been my second mistake) in order to get both the cows and
the corn in my FC. I get a measly 35 gold from the villagers on that square. But this cost me a turn to do it.
On Monarch, I can’t be giving up turns like this.

I decide to go worker first, since he can build both farms and mines. Might as well get those started.

But then I noticed that my lake tiles are not producing any gold. Oh yea, I haven’t researched fishing yet!
I decide to switch to that, in order to work the gold tiles and perhaps speed up my research to iron working.

In 3520 BC my one and only warrior is killed by the hostile villagers. Hmm. Rethinking that worker first idea
about now.

Copper discovered in Bejing. Nice. I tried building cannons out of copper, but the metal was too soft
and couldn’t withstand the heat. I’ll have to find some iron somewhere.
Of course, as luck would have it,
iron is nowhere to be seen, at least not within the territory that I’ve uncovered so far.
Losing that first warrior cripples one’s scouting efforts, ya know what I mean?

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men. Steel not looking like such a hot idea about now …

I stayed with the worker, then built another warrior, a settler, and another worker.

Discovered all the floodplains to the southwest. Since my capital wasn’t necessarily set up for cottage
spamming, I decided to make my second city my financial center, and cottage all the floodplains,
while using my capital for producing units and buildings. The functions of my first two cities are usually
reversed, so this should prove interesting.

Here are my two cities in 2160 BC:



Aha! Iron!



Looks like my first war will be against the Incans. They have my iron (to the south of my capital).
At this point I decide to build Axemen, at the expense of anything else, until that city falls, and iron is mine.

Wow. In 750 BC, just before declaring war on Hyuana I discover this in Bejing!



Iron!! This is huge! Bejing now has both iron and copper.



No war with the Incas, just to get access to iron. My finger was literally hovering over the “war” button
when this iron source was popped. I can now build a few more cities, and start a few cannons for later fun.

My first cannon, in 350 BC!



Cool.

I’ve now added two additional cities up north, so in 25 BC, here is what I have.



My neighbors have settled in close to me on all sides now, so I was forced to expand up north,
rather than east or west. Its getting crowded around here. I better make sure I have a few cannons
for the inevitable declaration of war.

On the religious front, pretty interesting: Confusionism and Budhism spread to me on the same turn.
I chose to go Budhist, because once I did, 5 of the 7 civilizations were now budhists! That’s huge,
hopefully my friends of the faith won’t try to conquer me any time soon.

Toku became my first target. Since most of us were budhists, Toku was the only hindu worshipper in my game.
Took 4 or 5 cities from him, mainly with cannons. This is fun.

Then a similar war against the Incans. I took the Incan city with the original iron:




After taking a few cities I made peace in 1440 AD. Here's what I looked like then:



Now that my second war was over, I needed this time to build up my economy and incorporate the new cities into my civ.

I built up until the 16th century, when I went after Montezuma, who had been leading the entire game.
Time to knock down the king a bit, pull him back towards the rest of us.

I didn’t do any exploring on my own, so I was surprised when I traded maps with someone and noticed
there was an entire hemisphere which had not been developed by anyone except the barbarians.

Two cities taken from Monty. First, Texcoco:



And Teotihuacan:



I’ve surprised even myself, because by the 1700’s I had moved from last to first. And since I picked
on the score leader, Montezuma had fallen to 5th out of 7. So I made peace, getting a technology
from him to boot.

I think that some of the RB players could easily have won this thing via conquest or domination
with the cannons. But for me, I’m too far from either goal, but I’m happy because I used the extra
technology to help me progress and become the leader in score.

I built the Taj Mahal in 1765, which may have been my first wonder. That’s good for me, because I
usually get wonder-struck and build too many of them (or at least try).

The end game was typical for me though: If I concentrate on building units, I fall behind in tech. So pretty soon
my cannons are trying to soften up Rifles, then Infantry. It happened here too. I knew that pretty soon the
others would discover Steel, and then its “bye bye cannon advantage” for me. Sure enough, remember how I
captured Teotihuacan from Monty? Well, here’s Teotihuacan being retaken by Monty with his brand
new shiny Infantry.



Notice Monty has Sam Infantry too.

And Macao, on the same turn, with his Calvary:



I didn’t have an answer for my neighbors’ military technology, so I slowly lost city after city.

I survived until the year 2050, but lost, being third in score behind Monty and Saladin.

This was a great game, and a fun concept. And although I learned a lot about the military aspect of the game,
I still have to find that sweet spot where I balance my production between producing a war machine and
keeping up tech wise with my neighbors.

Time loss.

Finally broke 700,000 in Tetris, my goal for about the last three years now. To give you a little back history, I've been playing this game since I first got it for the NES when I was about 9 years old; that would put it in 1991. I can still remember when I first hit 400,000, how happy that made me. I was in high school at the time, so that would have been about 1996 or 1997. I first broke the 500,000 mark when I was in my first or second year of college, probably in 2001 or 2002. And it was a big deal for me when I first hit 600,000, which was two years ago in 2005. So you can imagine how this has been a LONG time coming, 15 years now and counting.

I don't know if anyone else is familiar with this particular version of Tetris (there's a million of them out there, of course). The game essentially ends at 290 lines, because the pieces at level 29 move too fast to reach the sides of the playing area. I've known for some time now that 700,000 was possible, but would require flawless execution from start to finish to pull off. I've probably made at least a thousand different attempts in the last year to try and hit this mark, before all the stars aligned and I got my perfect game. I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am today.

This would be second highest score of all time, according to the official record holders at Twin Galaxies:



That score by Harry Hong is unbelievable, and I'm never touching that. This is also of course an illegimate score for Twin Galaxies purposes, since it was done on an emulated PC. But it's nice to know that I have a score that stacks up with the best that has ever been done.

I mostly wanted to share this with the rest of you, but also throw open the question of whether or not some of you have similar stories to tell. Thoughts, comments?

What are sisters for? To send you junk mail and help spread internet urban legends as truth. I don't "sruf" the web much anymore so I do thank her for sending some gems my way, occassionally

Quote:

This has got to be one of the most clever
e-mails I've received in awhile.
Someone out there either has too much
spare time or is deadly at Scrabble.
(Wait till you see the last one)!

DORMITORY:
When you rearrange the letters:
DIRTY ROOM

PRESBYTERIAN:
When you rearrange the letters:
BEST IN PRAYER

ASTRONOMER:
When you rearrange the letters:
MOON STARER

DESPERATION:
When you rearrange the letters:
A ROPE ENDS IT

THE EYES:
When you rearrange the letters:
THEY SEE

GEORGE BUSH:
When you rearrange the letters:
HE BUGS GORE

THE MORSE CODE:
When you rearrange the letters:
HERE COME DOTS

SLOT MACHINES:
When you rearrange the letters:
CASH LOST IN ME

ANIMOSITY:
When you rearrange the letters:
IS NO AMITY

ELECTION RESULTS:
When you rearrange the letters:
LIES - LET'S RECOUNT

SNOOZE ALARMS:
When you rearrange the letters:
ALAS! NO MORE Z 'S

A DECIMAL POINT:
When you rearrange the letters:
IM A DOT IN PLACE

THE EARTHQUAKES:
When you rearrange the letters:
THAT QUEER SHAKE

ELEVEN PLUS TWO:
When you rearrange the letters:
TWELVE PLUS ONE

AND FOR THE GRAND FINALE:

MOTHER-IN-LAW:
When you rearrange the letters:
WOMAN HITLER

Yep! Someone with waaaaaay
too much time on their hands!

(Probably a son-in-law).

Just a little teaser until I have time to do more tests and gather data in a controlled environment (if I still play GW). I was doing that when my Survivor Rit died in the Isle of Nameless. I am pretty PO, still.

The following pix shows the damage and healing on 4 targets (although I swear it was 5, hence more controlled tests needed)



This is a shit load of damage and heal from a substainable source every ~1 second. Channeling was only at 12, if Channeling is pumped to 14, or 16 the numbers that show 41 would be 47 and 53 respectively. you do the math
This is just from Splinter Weapon and Barrage with a Vamp bow; there is still room for more buffs

Why Rit/R? Because thats the toon I was playing ;p TBH, because Channeling > Marksmanship, tho it would work more or less the same with a R/Rit

KoP

I have been playing Realms Beyond Epics and Adventures since last spring, when my sons introduced me to CivIV and I sought to learn a bit more about playing it. I finally joined on my birthday so that I could get a save from Sulla and actually try playing a RB game to its completion and actually post a report...I haven't quite made it yet. I never seem to have quite enough time with these games--the real world intrudes.

In brief, I selected Chemistry (as well as the name Chu Ti) because I thought that it would be a reasonable technology for China to have at an early date (though not quite 4000 BC) and because I wanted to try playing as something of a conqueror--Chinese style. That means I wanted to slowly conquer the world surrounding me as I eventually turned everyone I met into Chinese. I was not interested in chasing wonders, founding religions, or seeking out slingshots--China would prevail because it is the Middle Kingdom and its rulers always have the Mandate of Heaven. Those wonders and religions would come to us in due time.

So, with great ideas for role-playing as a Chinese emperor (Mao doesn't quite cut it in my book), I began my game settling in place with a quick worker/settler build to stake out my initial position. From there I started working towards building my Chinese warriors with their special "firecrackers".

Having never posted anything on the web in this fashion, I will probably make a few mistakes. For now I will merely limit my account to stating that I have run everyone else off my starting continent while completely ignoring the other continent other than a brief visit to pop some huts (it didn't go so well). I am up to 1947 (nearly to the advent of Mao in power) and will certainly win the conquest victory I am aiming for; or, as I see it, turning everyone but the barbarians into Chinese so they can enjoy the enlightened government only a true Son of Heaven can provide. I will also attempt to post a picture of the power graph from 1945, showing that the game is truly well in hand.

Sorry, can't figure out at this point how to get the picture in.

I will be unable to post anything else before tomorrow at the soonest.

I had the theme : "the alchemists ruled the world since the dawn of times". I had my heroes : the Elric brothers, Edward and Elric. For those who don't know them, they are the main characters of Full Metal Alechemists, one my favourite Animes
I also had my variant, only the Elrics can capture cities and I am not allowed to build more than 1 grenadier by city I own, plus my heroes. If one of them die, only the capital can resuscitate them. What I lacked was the time and commitment to actually finish this game.

I settled the capital in place, though I hated missing the cows. There was too much tundra in the north to make the move north worth it.

I started by researching mysticim->polytheism and building a worker but Huayna founded hinduism in 3400 BC when I was still 5 turns away. Buddhism was not even founded at the time, but fell 2 turns later. HC just signed his death penalty. I switched immediately to bronzeworing. After the worker, I ordered my first grenadier. It takes 100 turns for my size 1 city




I quickly met HC, Saladin, Monty and Toku. I was glad I took the rampage option, those guys should put a decent fight. Sally was the buddhist founder

Vicky showed up a little later, the financial backstabber to spice it all up. My plan was to kill everybody before they had time to settle America. I was also planning to cheat a bit on my variant, and seeing that marble close by, I had decent chance to achieve the oracle slingshot to grab ...steel. The only pre-requisite for it was iron working

After bronzeworking (the copper was already mined), I picked the wheel->polytheism (remaining part)->masonry->Priesthood->Iron working

Shangai provided the marble and the capital could finish the oracle in 6-7 turns. I had to delay it and accelerate research using the lake tiles.




Huayna settled a nice cottage city for us, early on. No doubt, he would be the first victim. I want his holy city




And the steel slingshot worked out in 1080 BC




Once both the Elrics were born, I declared on Huayna in 800 BC and took Macchu Picchu which had time to grow to size 2.

Research went on pottery, writing to hire some scientists in the capital. There was not much happiness resources around. I chose AH next, to check for horsies but there were none to be seen. Next target was the great library.

The second Incan city was the jewish holy city. I sent the oracle first prophet there. It was after settling that I realized I should have kept him for the hindu shrine.




This city also had iron, which was necessary to build cannons. It also had an ivory camp to solve some of the happiness problems. A nice possession indeed

Barbs were quite active, since I didn't do much of fogbusting. Cannot build cheap warriors here. My defensive grenadiers had to leave the cities to protect improvements, leading to some turns of angry citizens, demanding protection.

I founded a third city, to claim the beavers




Though this city was capped at 5-6 pop, it had a decent production for the initial game.

Monty canceled open borders and had enough on his hands in 250 BC, 1 turn before I got alphabet. He was holding to his reputation of a naughty jerk. Same turn, Sally founded christianity. Vicky discovered literature the same turn I did and Sally was about to get it too, offering me a mere 20 gold for it. Seems like everyone is chasing the GL here. Nice teching guys. I was glad I had marble.


I took Cuzco in 25 AD and met with Roosevelt. Poor guy had only his capital. Huayna was down to one city too, and he gave me monotheism, Archery and Monarchy for peace. I switched to HR immediately.

After that, Vicky got music 8 turns before I could finish it. Did I say those guys are teching like mad.
Monty, having a power burst who put him slightly over me, declared in 200 AD. He didn't send a huge stack though. A three archers company was already near Cuzco, so they pillaged some before my lonely gren there could kill them all. Monty sent some horse archers that were dealt with easily on the main front.

I whipped the great library for 3 pops and built it in 325 AD. Didn't want to jeopardize that too. Time to deal with the aztec nuts.

I made a mistake first. Underestimating Monty forces, I sent a weak initial force to Azteca, which met with Monty stack of horse archers. I had some bad RNG rolls loosing fights at >95%, then Monty discovered feudalism and I had to face his longbows in the 500 ADs. I also lost Edward, who died after killing 5 horse archers.

It took me some time to build another army and resucitate Edward. My second wave consisted of 4 cannons and 4 grens. The aztec campaign went on until 1170 AD, where I signed peace for a city, feudalism and HBR. Monty was down to two cities, one of them an island. And that was where I stopped my game.

The national epic in the capital gave me two unlucky artists, one of them was used in Tenochtitlan, aztec capital. It also gave another prophet used on the hindu shrine and a scientist who popped education.

The plan was to launch the attack on Vicky immediately and get free military tradition with liberalism to raze japan with cavalry. Toku was far behind in techs. Vicky didn't even have paper at the time, so I was safe. She and Sally were on the banking line.

Here's the world map at the time




And the kill statistics.




Man, I didn't even realize I killed so many horse archers, they were all aztec. No wonder, my progress was slow
Thanks darrelljs for sponsoring this game and Sulla for organizing it. I really wish I had time to finish it. It surely helped me weighing quantity/quality ratios. My self imposed variant did slow me down, but the high production needed to build grens/cannons had an influence too. The dates I finished dealing with the first and second AIs seemed more of an ordinary game then a power military tech boosted one.

Hi! I'm locutus... first time poster. Loved Civ2, never played Civ3, bought Civ4 a couple of months ago and have been having fun just fooling around at Noble level. I beat my first Noble game about a week ago (an American space victory where Saladin, my only "competitor" had just built the Apollo Program). So I decided what the heck? Why not try one of those RB Civ games? Seeing as how new I am to Civ4, I decided not to play Epic 10, but thought Adventure 19 might be fun. And so goes...

--Pre game thoughts--
First question.. which technology to choose. I debated Democracy (Emancipation), thought about rifling (easy high quality defense), but I settled on... Satellites. The theory here was that knowing where everything was to begin with I would be able to make wiser decisions about my city placement, troop movement, etc. I also forgot that as nice as having a world map is, it does not show where everyone else is, it only shows the lay of the land. The tech choice, I believe, was the first of many "rookie" mistakes.

I decided quickly that because of my inexperience I should choose a few criteria to judge myself. Most important item on my list: Survive barbarians. I have difficulty against them on Noble, so I figured Monarch would be awful. I overlooked the fact that this map was much smaller than I'm used to (I almost always play on huge) and with it being a terra script, all of the civs would start on the same continent. So the barb threat wouldn't be as significant as I'm used to. In fact, I'd only ever see a few barbs on the main continent and would lose a total of one unit to barbarians on the main continent.

The second piece in my puzzle: found a religion. My theory was that if I could found a religion I would be able to generate enough culture to not be gobbled up alive. Not to mention the shrine income. In my personal games, I've become very much in love with the spread of religion. I could have gotten Buddhism if I would have tried, but instead went for Hinduism and never was close to any of the rest.

My final criteria for judgement: have at least 4 cities by 1 AD. In order for me to develop as a Civ player, I must learn to accept the no-growth thing, and expand while there's still room to do so. I was successful at expanding my Noble victory, so I thought I should continue trying the expansion thing. After all, with Mao being organized, the cost of expansion won't kill me.

---

I decided to found Beijing on the spot and got right to work on a warrior. I set research to mysticism, and sent my first warrior out into the dark to see if I couldn't find a hut. He did find one after a few turns, and got some gold. At that point, I rushed him back to the capital. With the impending barb rush, I didn't want to leave Beijing unguarded. (no barb rush came). Mysiticism was discovered soon, and I moved to Polytheism - since as we all know, the AI hates the possibility that there are many gods. Much to my surprise, Hinduism was FIDL in 3440 BC... before any other religion. Since Buddhism had to be close behind, I switched gears immediately and started researching Hunting so that I could get Archery quickly.

Once my warrior was built, I changed over to a settler. The settler would become Shanghai, the city on the hill 5 tiles west, one tile south of Beijing. With so many floodplains tiles, this new city would certainly become my research super center. If only Monarch's health cap was a little more like Noble's...

After the settler, Beijing went archer, archer, stonehenge (aborted when it was completed IDL) barracks. During the same time, Shanghai went worker, archer (until the second population), settler, resume archer.

My research felt like it was moving along well enough. I decided that CKNs would be critical, so I decided to make my move toward construction and machinery. First up was AH (for use of cows and locations of horses). Masonry came in 2200, then Writing, the Wheel, and Mathematics. But oops! CKNs require iron, and by this point land was already getting sparse in my little corner, so I decided to bee-line iron working. With only one iron to be found near my borders (in the icy north) I decided it may be time to move toward astronomy. I'd already settled my third and fourth cities (Guanghzou went on the coast just north of the marble tile & nanjing went 3 tiles NW of my capital. Nanjing was founded in 600 BC... so yes I met my 4 cities by 1 AD goal).

I discovered Alphabet in 300 AD... 100 years after Taoism was FIDL. That marked the beginning of the downward spiral. By this point, Toku was at least three techs ahead of me (mono/polytheism and construction) and Monty had seven techs more than me. Yikes!

The game got progressively less and less interesting for me at that point. I settled Chengdu on the Eastern continent in the mid-1400s (with 2 CKN guards). Those guards withstood about a dozen barb archers within their first couple of turns, and I sent a second city to the second continent a short time later. My theory was that if I could eliminate the barbarian presence, I would be able to hold on until 2050. But the barbs soon upgraded their archers to longbows, and I didn't have the interest to pursue what was clearly going to become a tremendous uphill battle. So.. the end result: retired in 1600.

I had a blast, but didn't put enough thought into the starting tech. Sure satellites are important for a space victory (remember, my only victory so far) but they don't help you at 1 AD, when I really started to foul up. I should have jumped on board two weeks ago, but I played my game over these last 48 hours. Kinda crazy!

Thanks for bringing an exciting game to me... it was definitely over my head but it's these over-my-head games that teach me the most! Now, to practice on Prince... I would love to try Epic 11, and at least not retire!

Darrell's unfortunately traveling at the moment and couldn't be here to post his report, so he asked me to post this for him. It's a very short read, but worth your time!

http://www.erudita.com/darrell/Adventure...ments.html

I'm very disappointed to have to report this Adventure as an incomplete; I just haven't had enough time to play this one to a conclusion - taking a 10day vacation during the middle of the period, as well as starting a new job which gave me less evening time available to play, left me wishing for an extra week for this one.

I don't really have time to post even a summary now, so who feels like an audience-participation exercise??

No prizes, other than that smug feeling you get when you spot something no-one else does....


So the two key questions are:

1) What was my goal in choosing Rocketry?
2) Why did this choice stunt the early growth of my civ?


I hope to post a summary of the game this evening, but an ultra-summary would be that I've played to 1800AD and am currently estimating reaching my ultimate goal in the early 1900's.