So I introduced my friend to this game a fair while back. He bought it recently and played it today.
Within the span of two games, he quit in disgust.
He played on Normal difficulty, where he spent three armies to take an Earth Elemental node. He found himself constantly getting confused by the interface and controls, and was put off greatly by how weak his starting units were. And, were I not there helping him, I'm sure he'd have had a much worse time.
So I have to ask - is this game unapproachable to beginners? It's not like he didn't have any experience with the 4x genre or something like that, in fact he's an avowed fan of Age of Wonder 2, one of MoM's most popular clones, and yet he bounced off this. That seems indicative of deeper problems in the product to me, though perhaps he might have appreciated it more if he had familiarity with the original.
As many of you know I try to do a greens game about once a year. This year I thought I would specifically also invite players who haven't played a pitboss game in a while, but haven't won one / done well in the past but want to give it another shot.
I've had success making sure everyone gets a dedicated lurker in the past so you will have someone to help you out.
Mod will be CtH, which is designed to be "Close to Home". IE fixes a lot of major issues, but is pretty easy to transition from base as mostly sticks "Close to Home". https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...?tid=11060
Please note this is a long term commitment of multiple months requiring you to play a turn every day. We all realize life happens and when it does we just ask you post and ask for an extension.
Signups:
xist10 - with Fenn
ricketyclik
Giraflorens
Coldrain - ded lurker Dreylin
Miro
Hang on to your crestfeathers, everybody: We're taking the Alk...Altairi for a spin!
Settings:
Faction: Altairi Sovereignty
Galaxy size: "Small" 70
Difficulty: Hardest
Opponents: 7
AI: Modnar
Shape: Eliptical-1, Void 0
Nebulae: "Uncommon," but the first galaxy I rolled wound up with none.
Random Events: Monsters Off
Council Win: Immediate
Variant: Only Small ships may carry armament of any kind!
Scenario: (In spoilers just due to length)
Fiercely independence descendents of solitary avian hunters, the Altairi people value nothing so highly as their agency over their own lives: Their individual sovereignty. For centuries, such civilization as they had was built on trade, war, and fluid alliances between loosely-structured familial clans held together not by law or decree, but by personal bonds of affection and loyalty. Clan leaders never exist as such, or never for long, as those who dared try were swiftly and inevitably overthrown by Altairi who would rather die alone in rebellion than live as subordinates to anyone. Technology developed through cooperative ventures or through individual innovation and its observation and duplication, but the hierarchal structures that enabled concentrations of force for other peoples around the galaxy never formed among Altair's birds until they began to develop large-scale infrastructures and economies with so many vital and expanding interdependencies that the a single act of violence could doom ever-greater numbers of Altairi who seemed to bear no relationship to the incident or its causes. As their people began to realize that they must not only cooperate but rapidly coordinate for the protection and preservation of their ever-more-complex society, Altairi clan allegiances and interclan connections grew enormously in importance, and the most-successful alliances developed means and cultural stigmas strong enough to hold even in the face of the Altairi drive to personal independence. The concept of "honor" - of the duty, when in power, to preserve the lives and sovereignty of the other Altairi in one's charge - became paramount among the world's most-successful clans, enabling necessary coordinating, administrative, and even command authorities to win trust enough from the population their needful work affected to accomplish it for a time.
Even so, that time was never long: A military general who directed a full army might lead it to success in battle so long as subordinate officers and ultimately individual wing soldiers were left the freedom to carry out their strategic orders in their own ways, but losing the life of a subordinate under one's direct orders was considered tantamount to murder, and high-profile leaders could never hold onto their power for long: Those who did not honorably step down after a time were inevitably brought down instead by all-but-universal revolt. When the Altairi people developed space travel however, even the then-old systems of honor were not sufficient to curtail the life-and-death power of pilots over passengers and crew. For Altairi, no thrill was greater than flight, and the total freedom of spaceflight was the most glorious of all. Individual spacecraft designed and built for single pilots were joy embodied in titanium alloy for their solitary pilots - but to be trapped inside such a ship, at another pilot's mercy, was almost unthinkable. Colony ships capable of carrying millions across the stars would have no alternative to placing those very millions in a single pilot's charge at any time, and before any Altairi citizen would consent to do it, the cultural sense of honor, and of responsibility to one's passenger had to become immeasurably strong: To lose a single crew member or passenger as the captain or pilot of the ship would be to suffer eternal and ineradicable dishonor to oneself and all one's family - ancestors and descendents alike. No Alkari would ever willingly fly into battle with passengers aboard or with any other crew - and as such, no Alkari starship large enough to need more crew than a single pilot-gunner would ever be armed. The pilots of Altair would just have to make up the difference with their unequaled daring, instinct, and skill at the controls of their tiny, nimble fightercraft.
These Altairi pilots, more at home in space than any other people's, like to brag that they have no home planet: Their homeworld, Altair A III-02, known to locals as "The Below," is the second and largest moon of the gas giant Gudavi. It was in the perpetually-clouded skies above the surface of this moon that their ancestors developed their instinct for flight and three-dimensional maneuvering and combat, and it is there that the temporary leaders-by-necessity of the Altairi people now reside, reluctantly extending their sovereignty as they must to include all the Altairi people, with such honor as they can. So it is that each in turn, before their inevitable resignation, takes on the mantle of RSG-02: The Requisite Sovereign of Gudavi-02.
Roster: - RefSteel (UP and finishing the first report!)
- Brian Shanahan (can be on deck if you're the first to claim it once I post the save!)
- Dp101 (can be on deck if you're the first to claim it!)
- Fenn (ditto above!)
- haphazard1 (ditto above again!)
- Another player? (welcome if you want, and you too could be on deck!)
I think I rolled an interesting start! Not what I would have expected, but ... well, you'll see!
I'm just posting this thread to share something that was new to me in Master of Orion. I've played a lot of games and just have not had this situation come up before.
While playing a game, I was allied with the Bulrathi and we were in a joint war against the Psilons. One turn, I got a message where the Bulrathi requested that I attack the Psilons. I didn't think too much of it, I thought it just had something to do with the request to honor our treaty. But after bombing a Psilon planet....
I've never seen this happen before! Is this more common for other players? Maybe I don't see stuff like this often because I almost exclusively play as the Mrrshan and it's hard to make friends as them. XD
Ever wanted a low impact way to influence how a game turns out? Have a copy of Civ 6 sitting around, unused? Now is your time to shine!
We are aiming to start a game of Civ6 around July 10. It will have 5 players. Since Civ 6 now has a worldbuilder feature, there's no need to make any tedious hexadecimal code edits, you can make the map right in the game. It can be entirely handcrafted or randomly rolled and edited for balance - that's up to you. The main things us players are looking for:
A significant land component to the map, rather than it being wholly naval based
No abundance of city states that would be easy for one player to conquer and snowball off of. If you are randomly rolling maps, just make sure the number of city states is set on the lower end
Balanced strategic resources and starting locations. The surrounding lands can be less balanced owing to how much time you are willing to put in, but ideally we don't want to see one player have a marsh sugar + plains hill deer in their capital (6f + 5hammers without improvements!) and another player have only grass cows (3f1h when improved)
You have a lot of time to craft a map, so please don't feel like there will be a rush.
we at civforum.de are planning the PB95 right know.
We are planning to start in about 3 months (and after the PB93 ends) in September.
Nothing is really fina right now, so you could try to influence things.
Right now, I expect a classical CF game.
This means:
- Deity
- Only the PB Mod vom Ramk (weaker Corps, Elefants)
- 48h timer (not discussable)
- usual doublemove rules; coin flip during peace time
- events, but no huts (I think no to both is possible)
- no techtrade
- espionage active, but tech theft and civic change forbidden
- unit gifting allowed, if the receiver has the tech to built them
- city trades are subjected to arbitrator approval, Guideline: Relative free as border correction AFTER a common war. Otherwise the city needs to be a trade object. - No "strategic" trades.
If this song doesn't make you feel things you may be a robot.
I reserve the right to reuse this song in the future.
So ya I stepped in to save the turn pace / this game. Not thrilled about it. My lurker thread comment was something like "oh yeah a game emphasizing the worst part of civ4". I'm not a big fan of philosophic here. Gingers plan was to oracle MC, but to me that puts you at odds with the excellent charismatic part of this. One of these plans wants to go pottery first, get some grans whipped out, and that opens up overwhipping and fast expanding. The other wants to go priesthood, produce extra workers, and chop out Oracle. I think I mentioned I would have chosen cre/pro, but I don't hate the cha pick but especially with spain I would have gone protective. Would it be weird to ask if this is possible to change? Feels weird after the fact and having some insight into map, but there isn't any way I would have chosen this combo.
Anyways, here is the home island.
Don't hate the BW before AH Ginger went with. Not sure when I'll find time to rework the sheep (will farm after corn) but ah well. It does mean worker isn't idle and it will help chop out workboat / 1st settler. Probably do settler size 4.
I'm actually leaning towards the alt spots. Especially with farming the grassland river I may not need to spend a chop on an instant monument. Save the forest and more importantly save the worker turns. Go 1 worker into 2 settlers.
Anyways not sure how much I'll be reporting. PB75 takes precedence over this game.
So I came back to the game after a couple years break, decided to try a phantasm game with 13 wizards, fair everything, normal size land, mixed continents, turned on monsters gone wild and final war to add some extra difficulty.
The game progressed smoothly for the first 60 or so turns, and then it just got really annoying. I don't know what the cause is, whether it's difficulty at phantasm vs. lunatic, or one of the toggles, but some of the AI behaviors just don't make any sense given the settings I chose. Difficulty has never used to mean the AI starts ganging up on you, especially when it's not strategically sensible for them to do so because they can't possibly defeat me, effectively making it easier for the player.
I didn't banish anyone until turn 72 so it's not because of the banish penalty either, this stuff started at least 10 turns ago:
-3-4 AIs rushed to try settling my home continent, for 3 of them it's on land that's at least 20 squares away from their nearest settlement, building just ONE isolated town with low <15 pop cap right next to my center of power, there is no possible way they can defend that. So obviously I let them settle because I could take it anytime I want, effectively helping me build more cities for free and letting me stay under the overexpansion threshold, while wasting their settler production.
-Nature node spawns a fat stack literally right next to the dumb AI. It had 1 swordsmen defender with no buffs or city enchantments. That should've been an obvious target right? No matter how much the multiplier is for the player for same continent, all of MY cities were at least 4 squares away, with almost maxed garrisons and strong units defending. Instead of attacking the AI's city, this stack tries to go for MY city that's 5 squares away with 7 defenders. This seriously shouldn't be allowed. If it destroyed the AI city then at least I wouldn't be able to conquer it later, but instead it's coming to suicide against my powerful stacks? Wtf.
-Another dumb AI decides to randomly attack two of my active nodes with spearmen defenders. Well my defenders were weak so tempting target right? But they are so damn far away there is no chance of them keeping it. And it's not like they brought over some epic doom stack to occupy/invade. One even attacked with a single naga! There's not any magic spirits of theirs within 15 squares either. It's basically pointlessly annoying me and goading me into attacking their one pathetic settlement that I allowed them to settle
-Yet ANOTHER AI attacked my third lightly defended sorcery node and decided to suicide their weak Druid ritual master hero into my territory?? It brought over a stack of mere hell hounds and berserkers as support and got rekt against 3 of my fodder units, leaving just the half dead hero and 2 hell hounds after the first fight. Now I can kill the hero anytime I want (literally 1 tile from my heavily defended city, where I could and did summon a water elemental the next turn to deal with them) and they're not even trying to retreat after, just sitting there on the node with 3 trash units? If the AI was trying to get rid of a hero after a full 6 that would be something else (they only had 4), but they're basically just suiciding their economy unit here
Keeping in mind, these AI's fortresses are like 30+ squares away from me, on other continents, separated by a huge amount of ocean. I have nature's eye on all my cities and can clearly see they have NO reinforcements anywhere near me.
They have all of 1 highly underdeveloped, barely garrisoned city within 20 squares of me. In fact, their names are ALL in (brackets) on the F5 relations menu so is this just bugged or what? Why are they trying to attack me in MY territory if they're not prepared for a war and have no ability to reinforce their front? I could fight all of them at the same time and still win, but they're not in some grand alliance, and not allied with the one wizard I was actually at war with either--I was also winning that war easily so it's not like there was an opportunity to prey on my weakness.
Once I finally banished somebody the latest turn, only 2 wizards gave me the diplo warning, so that seems to be working correctly, and they weren't any of these guys. The F5 relations hit only came after the banishment, so all that stuff before had to be caused by something else.
This feels way too artificial and counterproductive. How is this Phantasm difficulty? I was under the impression that the AI only received more numerical bonuses going from lunatic to phantasm...this seems like something went wrong with the AI's strategic judgment.
Maybe the problem was my "Army" rating being weak, but that's just a terrible metric. My population was way in the lead (double or triple theirs), my overall power was even or higher than theirs too. My power income was on par with them as well, despite their bonuses, implying that they had barely started attacking nodes near themselves. Why aren't they focused on grabbing neutral nodes instead of provoking an at least equally powerful or superior foe so far away?
I didn't turn on Final War to fight against everybody on turn 60. That was for the endgame...the Domination rate is only 23% by turn 73 and I wasn't even in the lead yet.
The AI shouldn't be getting involved in pointless fights in faraway land where they have 0 chance of victory or keeping their gains, especially not when the diplo (name) indicate that they're out of range. Nor should the wild stacks be attacking my cities when there is a way better target immediately next to them. No amount of difficulty/player penalty should overcome a 5 square and 6 garrison (plus the garrison's actual strength) difference.
I don't recall this stuff happening on lunatic before. It doesn't make sense, and it isn't fun or improving the difficulty.
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