well we ran into a wall with kittens in osg11

Try 11.1 with a real race or try 12 with stup's Borg variant idea?

Cheers!
-Liq

I enjoyed the last one, and others did to, so here's number 2 in the weekend OCC series. I'm guessing Uberfish is waiting for the Warlords patch to put his warlords diplomacy OCC game up. So here is a game for this weekend on Vanilla.

Last time we played a philosophical civ. Some people went for a great person strategy, while a couple of players went for cottages. Both did as well as each other. This time we're playing with a financial civ to mix it up a bit. Will the players stick to their strategy? We can build wonders this time - will that make a difference? I've kept the same climate and sea level settings, but the map has changed to inland sea.



Version: Vanilla 1.61
Civ: England, Victoria
Map: Standard size, inland sea, rocky climate, high sea level.
Difficulty: Monarch
Speed: Normal
Extras: One City Challenge, Raging Barbarians

Any victory is acceptable this weekend. I figured we'll play a few more "normal" games before the wacky (or even whacky) variants are pulled out. So give it a try all you OCC virgins out there. It will only take a few hours. Read the last thread for some strategy ideas. Have fun!

CIV4 Patch 1.61 is becoming rapidly obsolete, I'll cut to the chase. it would be nice to have a minimal bugfix mod approved for optional use.

From the last mod approval discussion thread:
"Does the Mod diminish the educational or comparison value of the report?"

I feel that is a fine start for deciding the legality of the mod.

The short list of changes would be:
1) Whipping bugfix.
2) Tech overflow bugfix.
3) "Ctrl-H" to select all damaged units (if possible).

Or aiming a bit higher:
4) "CS Slingshot nerf" aka Masonry is a prophet tech, Civil Service requires Mathematics.
5) Chariot Axeman Bonus.
(that's higher than I'm willing to aim, but i think very worthy of discussion)


Now the great thing about the educational value - if the bugfix upgrades CIV to Warlords patch-state, then while the educational value might be slightly reduced for CIV 1.61, it would be completely up to date for the current state of CIV balance.

Now in terms of those bugfixes I don't believe the education value will be changed any, other than the minor (and desirable) aspect that one wont learn anything about exploiting bugged whipping.
I also believe that the whipping bugfix is a negative thing for expert players in terms of performance, mainly because "zero hammer whipping" is shut down. That means they will not get better results than expert whipping abusers, in that regard it's a lot like a self imposed variant (somethng to make the game harder yet more enjoyable). The tech overflow bugfix can only benefit the player but the expert player will micro away 95% of the harm anyway and in any case the loss from the bug probably only amounts to 3% of total beakers on standard speed, 2% on epic speed.
The bugfixes WILL benefit a casual/naive/willfully ignornat/paranoid anti-abuser player.

Now that "Select all hurt units"? It's because of me it's in the game at all :D. I want that feature sooo badly for the end game wars! RBEpics are the only games which ever feature mid game wars for me. But Argh! I don't want to spend a whole minute sorting the bomber stack into healthy and hurt!

The technical challenges of implementing and verifying this mod are absolutely minimal and are not really a point of discussion here.

I discovered the whipping bug.
I learnt about it.
I killed it.
I don't want to play with it ever again.

Discuss.

For those who can't get to Kamadan yet, here's what you're missing.



Not as many changes to Tyria this year (only LA is decorated), but a lot of it looks the same, which is pretty neat.

Link

Again, an absolute gargantuan pre-new-chapter update. What's interesting about it?

• PvP characters can roll new equipment without having to roll a new character.
  
• PvP characters can make multiple items: Armor sets, weapons, whatever, and stash them all in inventory - for free.
  
• PvP and PvE characters can now switch their secondaries at will - for PvP characters, this allows them to switch to any profession, while PvE characters only get access to the professions that they "learned" in Pre-Searing/Shing Jea/Forgotthenameiskstan.
  
• Character and equipment templates, biatch.
  
• Salvaging your old equipment now allows you to select which modifier you want to salvage and gives you a 50% chance (increasing with certain titles) of not destroying the item.
  
• Offhands get upgrade items.
  
• The materials storage, originally a Factions-only perk, is now available to all.
  
• Some titles now do something: The Treasure Hunter and Seeker of Wisdom titles increase the chance of not desting a salvaged item by 3% per rank (from the 50% base), and the Hero, Gladiator, and Champion titles increase the Balthazar faction cap.
  
• There is no cow level.
  
• "While forming a party, you can now control+click on your Skill Bar to announce your skill setup to your party members." Ooh, yeah.
  
• AoE is no longer as useless as it was, but not as uber as it used to be: Monsters won't scatter from AoE if they're relatively healthy or believe they're capable of killing their target, yay. Melee monsters now spread out a tad to make them less suspectable to AoE gankage, boo.
  
• Double Balthazar faction for all!
  
• New dye system, and white and brown dyes are now item drops, grey dye replaces dye remover, and you get to preview dye effects before dunking your clothes in them.
  
• Overall whining from the fanbase reduced.
  
• Various skill changes.
  
• ...and a certain pumpkin-headed insane monarch is set for a return.
  

I wasn't going to write any sort of report for my adv14 miserable failure, but maybe it will be amusing or something .

Anyway Caesar is always fun and I'll only be reporting the entertaining part of this game.


The declaration of war came in 125AD, I didn't have Construction at the time but quickly traded for Mathematics and started researching Construction.

Fortunately I had befriended two out of three of my neighbours so was practically ensured some military... aid....



... whatever ...
:mad: can you guys at least try to play seriously here :mad:

Fortunately the RNG was on my side...

No! MY SIDE! Bad RNG! No cookie! He has praetorians so doesn't need your help!


Fortunately Caesar didn't really have all that many units, only 4 Praetorians visible there and a few support units.

you can't reach him. he's in his happy delusional place


I complete construction and trade for ivory from Cyrus, quite easy with the spare horses. I muster a respectable defense for Madras.


The Roman forces weren't respectful.


In fairness I did kill two Praets, although the RNG had continued to bless me with results like an Axeman win vs full hp Com1 elephant.



I'm not going to claim my play was particularly good. I wasn't daring and may have been overly cautious in city placement and I was pretty much playing speed turns. I didn't try for the Oracle and got the Great Lighthouse instead.
However I don't think my strategy was bad per-se, if one thing was really plain bad weed it was my religious allies fighting each other right as the war opened, excluding them from being bribed onto Caesar.

In case it wasn't clear, the title was playful sarcasm, I'm not at all bitter and I actually quite enjoy losing. But don't expect a trend of reporting losses! ( ).

One of the things going on at higher difficulty levels is the war declaration dice rolls. One of the reasons why I've been attentive to trying to account for game imbalances (such as some of the wonder gambits) is because the game AI on the whole is better balanced at lower dfificulty levels. At the higher levels, a lot turns on who lines up against whom, and on where when and how the war declarations pan out.

Might still get some last minute reports, but at this point we have seven games reported and a few more played but not reported. That's fine for an Extreme Adventure but shows how relatively small the extreme segment of our community really is.

I'm afraid that we may be looking at a rather awkward reality, in that pushing the limits of what is playable gets in to territory where you're toast if attacked by the wrong party at the wrong time, but can sail through to a win if the attackers hesitate until you are ready or never come at all. I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to remove or reduce the impact of these dice rolls for the most extreme challenges.


- Sirian

Here's a short report of my game.

http://skc.zapto.org/civ4/epic.php?epicId=4&pageNo=1

I retired in 1886, as I would have either been conquered by Saladin or beaten by him into space. One thing's for sure, having never played above monarch before (except Epic 7), I probably didn't need a bunch of variant rules to make this scenario more challenging for me.

I had a good opening and a fine core, and managed to stay ahead of most everyone in the tech race and at least on a par with the leader (Saladin) due to good relations and smart tech trading with fellow Hindus Caesar and Cyrus. I went for Polytheism first and converted to Hinduism, then focused on worker techs. I also went with a wonderless opening, concentrating instead on heavy settling. I managed to claim two nice cities to the north - gems to the west and ivory and dyes to the east. I also managed to build the Great Library and the Colossus in the middle ages and even snagged a source of iron across the eastern waters to the south of Mongolia.

I was first to Liberalism and chose military tradition as my free tech. As the first civ with cavalry, my plan was to go after Napoleon and relieve him of his empire, as I needed some more cities to devote to production. Then I would hold tight and go for a space race victory. But Napoleon attacked me first before my invasion was ready. I had to draft lots of muskets to fend off his huge stacks before going on the offensive and taking a city. This brought me right to the French end of that southern ice corrider. I then made peace for a spell so I could build up more cavalry for a more decisive invasion of his core. Plaguing me throughout my military buildup was the dearth of heavy production cities in my core. Basically, it took a while getting the cavalry together. But at least I was secure on my northern front, where my fellow Hindus resided. Yeah, right.

In the midst of my renewed cavalry buildup, I was attacked by Caesar. He had been Pleased with me all game thanks to shared Hinduism, but relations turned cautious after he revolted to free religion (a few of his lesser cities were non-Hindu). So I had to draft again (rifles this time) to protect my northern front and had to divert my France-intended cavalry force that way. Before I went on the offensive, he managed to do some nasty cottage pillaging at my commerce heavy border towns. Events now dictated a change of strategy, and I decided to relieve Caesar (rather than Napoleon) of his territory and use those cities for production. Things were going very well. I took two Roman cities in short order and was all set to take the rest. At that point, Napoleon attacked again, preventing me from concentrating all my force on one front. Draft unhappiness, mounting war weariness, numerous turns spent maximizing gold for troop upgrades, not to mention the cottage pillaging, and the loss of my meager navy to Napoleonic ships and the resultant inability to work coastal tiles - these all conspired to keep my economy stagnant for centuries, and Saladin was running away with the tech race. So rather than conquer all the Roman lands, I made peace with Caesar after taking just two cities and held off Napoleon until he was ready to cry uncle.

After these wars, Saladin (who had a huge empire and had never once been at war) had pulled ahead considerably in tech, so I judged my earlier hopes of conquering more territory imprudent for the moment. My only hope for winning the space race was to hope Saladin didn’t attack me (he had tanks and artillery by now and I had only infantry, cannons and cavalry), and focus on increasing my cities population and my GNP, regrowing my pillaged cottages, getting factories in all my cities, and getting some more modern military techs to compete with a potential Arab invasion. I felt sure I could conquer Rome or France once I had factories, and then beat Saladin into space through smarter teching/building, despite being behind in the tech race. Unfortunately Saladin attacked me just as I was halfway through finishing my factories. I had given in to his every demand and had a defensive pact with Cyrus, but he didn't care. He attacked on the Napoleonic front, wiping out all my infantry there with a couple large stacks of artillery/tanks/cavalry and a sprinkling of SAM infantry and marines. I opted to quit the game at that point. Even if I had been able to defend my core through a third round of drafting, I would have been too weakened to compete with him in the space race.

Despite the loss, it was a fun game until the Arab invasion and I'm actually pretty happy with the way I played. In retrospect, I probably should have mounted an invasion of a neighbor earlier on in order to get a larger empire and more cities to devote to military production. (I just didn't have enough cities to keep pace in tech AND produce enough military to go on the offensive on two fronts, which was what I found myself needing to do in the industrial age.) I did manage to fight and win a two front war against aggressive Emperor AI. But this left me weakened technologically and I could not win the ensuing war against a fresh AI opponent whose tanks, artillery and marines were twice the number of my available infantry, cannons and cavalry.

Sigh.

Postscript: I replayed the map after a couple weeks to see if a more aggressive early strategy against Napoleon would have paid off by giving me a larger empire with more cities to devote to production. Instead, I did worse in the land grab phase and then Caesar attacked me with numerous praetorians when all I had were archers and chariots. Just to rub it in, in the middle of that war (which I was losing), Napoleon went and pulled off a CS slingshot. I realized at that point, that I had actually been pretty lucky in my original game.

Report is here: http://idoki.awardspace.com/adventure14.html

Connection might be slow, report might suck, I wrote it in record breaking time

Just asking, is it just me or can people not capture Great people? And if so, why not?