Report on 7/27/2000
Officials Are Cautiously Optimistic About U.S. Blaze. Senior B.C. forestry officials finished their risk assessment today of the 3,800 hectare Rocky Hull wildfire burning southeast of Oroville, Washington. (about 100km from Penticton)

The wildfire, burning since Saturday, is estimated to be within 10 kilometres of the border. There are over 1,000 U.S.
firefighters battling the blaze, and agreements are in place to allow further assistance from the B.C. Forest Service, which provided air tanker support earlier this week.

NOT A UFO - just a normal aircraft in the second frame.
These are un-retouched photos.

Too bad I was at work and couldn't get a better view. I have been watching for photo ops like this one, alas, its always clear sky on my day off.


KoP

I came across a recently-released 4X game by virtue of a discussion in the CivFanatics MOO forums. It's entitled Sword of the Stars and it's by a group of people who were involved with the creation of Homeworld: Cataclysm. So, despite the fact that they are a very new, small firm, they have something of a proven track record.

Here's some links, FYI.
Official site:
http://www.swordofthestars.com/
Official forums:
http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forum/index.php
Wiki:
http://sots.rorschach.net/Main_Page
http://sots.rorschach.net/Starter_Pages
Demo:
http://solforce.swordofthestars.com/2006/sots-demo/

My take:
If you enjoyed MOO1 and/or the Homeworld series, you should check out the demo. The strategic level of the game is quite abstracted in a similar fashion to MOO, upon which it draws heavily for inspiration. Only 30% of the techs are guaranteed to be there (the remainder being randomly available,) each system as at most one habitable planet, which is managed with a series of simple sliders, and the feel is in many respects reminiscent of MOO. At the tactical level, you're playing a simplified version of Homeworld, where tactical combat mostly takes place on a flat plane with ships of your own design. Your ship design options are more limited than in MOO, but in many respects your design choices matter more. The tactical combat is much deeper than MOO's tactical combat; not only is weapon selection important, but also formation layout and maneuver play important roles as well. One of the most promising aspects of the game is the fact that each race has a completely different drive technology that very much influences how that race goes about expansion and conquest. In some respects this makes the game like 4 games in one, and seems very nice from a replayability point of view.

There are some differences as well, of course. Colonies are much more vulnerable in some respects than they were in MOO. However, oftentimes if you lose a colony but can regain space superiority in the system, it can be easy to re-found the colony. (In MOO terms, factories are left behind after the population has been killed a lot more often than they were in MOO.) There are no ground invasions or large-scale population transfers, there is no espionage other than military surveillance, and diplomacy is even more simplistic than in MOO. There currently are no victory conditions other than conquest or alliance conquest. The AI seems about as competent as the MOO AI -- a cakewalk for me on normal, whereas on Hard it's capable of giving a bit more challenge. If you want a stiffer challenge than the AI will provide, the game supports multiplayer with up to 8 players. Additionally, the designers are still in patching mode, so there is hope for improvements to address AI flaws. Plus they are talking about plans for expansion packs and sequels; they intend this to be the first game in a series.

The game is out in the United States and also available for download via GamersGate (mainly for outside NA) and Direct2Drive (mainly for North America.) However the game has not yet reached store shelves in Canada and there have been reports of certain problems with the Direct2Drive version due to their encryption copy protection, so I don't have a copy of the full game yet. I have been playing the demo for a couple weeks now; at first I had some hangups with the interface, the relatively unchallenging AI (on normal) and a couple other design decisions, but it's grown on me over time. The tipping point for me was when I'd been playing as humans for a while and played my first serious game as Tarka, and realized just how different their expansion model was. Also, many of the interface problems I had with the demo have been fixed in the most recent patch of the full game.

I plan to pick up the full version of the game as soon as it becomes available in stores in Canada. In the meantime, I encourage anyone who is interested in the 4X genre to take a look at the demo.

Now that I'm participating in epics, (I'll be posting Monday for epic 7 I'm curious about how to decide what to improve in a tile with my workers. I read a lot on this site about cities being specialized, but my cities haven't become so powerful by the end of my games as the other superstars' here. How do you decide what to build on each square? When are watermills/windmills/lumberyards good? Where should I put cottages? Farms? I have seen that apparently flood plains are the best for cottages? Why is that? How do I decide whether to put a windmill or a mine? Etc. etc....

Also, along the same lines, how does an automated worker decide what to build? If I tell a city to focus on something (i.e. production/commerce/growth) does that affect what the automated worker will build?

No better time to thank somebody for their hard work and dedication than on their birthday! Happy Birthday Sirian!
:2dance:

(I considered putting this in General Forums, but then I thought that nobody would read this there )

Perhaps this is better suited for CivFanatics, but I rather think we have the better deep analytical minds here.

I'm trying to wrap my mind around an apparent paradox involving the health cap and food. When a city is over the health cap, each extra population point costs 1 extra food to support. So if you raise the health cap by 1, you essentially add (recover) 1 extra food. This seems to mean that, to add one citizen to an unhealthy city, you need 3 health factors to provide the 3 food needed to support him.

But logically, there should be a 1-to-1 correlation between health factors and city size. If you add 1 health factor, the entire city can be 1 size larger before you run into any health problems.

So what am I missing here? Is the true correlation between health and city size 3-to-1, or 1-to-1?

I apologize for the delay in posting my report. I completed my game on time so it's not a shadow game. It's just I slowly prepared by report because my time is becoming very restrictive and these reports are very time-consuming. I told myself to complete my report and post it tonight regardless. Here it is.

http://gustogalley.awardspace.com/

Like the title says, you can fish out your credit card and and use it for PvP unlocking now.

Each character skill set unlocked is the same $ value as a new character slot. Or you spend about four times as much and buy the whole lot in one big hit.

Good news for all the bleating PvP'ers who want their precious unlocks without the "grind" of PvE. Better news for the PvE crowd who have to play 7/8 every time one of those leeching idiots parks in a mission and goes and has lunch.

The Seattle Times selected one of my photographs to run in today's Northwest Weekend section!!!

Taking pictures seems to have become my distraction of choice these days, which keeps me away from gaming and spending time with y'all. Honestly, taking my D2 no-twink solo HC bow barb to Hell A5 was a lot more work and a bigger accomplishment than taking that picture. Just not something the newspaper's going to get very excited about.

D2 just seems to have lost its shine, GW is an impossibility. But Civ now - that's finally out for Macs, isn't it? Hmmm......

Since Sullla isn't the happiest person in the world with us spamming up his Epic VI report to discuss the various incarnations of the Civil Service slingshot, I thought I should start a new thread for it.

I feel that it is an overpowered move, especially when coupled with the AI's incompetence at dealing with it. In multiplayer, giving up Masonry means not having the critical catapults for defense, and it's virtually impossible to get the Oracle late enough to grab the tech with is. That makes going for it a huge gambit, but one that can pay off. It's not much of an issue here, except perhaps in Classical era starting games where you can research Code of Laws right off the bat and quickly build the Oracle. In single player, however, it's a bigger issue. The AI doesn't understand to immediately attack someone who adopts Bureacracy early on, or to build the Oracle early to close that door.

Uberfish argued that getting Representation from the Pyramids is equally powerful, but I would dispute that. I'm a firm believer that the Pyramids is vastly overrated, and 90% of the time I'd rather have Hereditary Rule than Representation, at least early on. Before Mercantilism it's rare that you'll be running a lot of specialists (barring an attempt at a so-called "specialist economy," in which case this entire discussion is irrelevant because Bureacracy won't have any effect), and the happiness bonus is comparitively tiny. Six extra beakers from the Great Library is a pretty mediocre effect for an extremely expensive wonder that requires a significant investment to get.

Someone mentioned Kylearan's "Nepotism Slingshot," which consisted of getting Hereditary Rule in order to have a high population count at 0 AD in Epic III. As someone who plays multiplayer, this seems blatantly obvious to me: the way to get your population count up without wrecking your economy is to remove the happiness cap. It might be that single player is generally played differently, but I rarely see good players revolt to anything but Hereditary Rule after our teams gets the Pyramids.

Bureacracy is a hugely powerful civic; so much so that people often forgo a third promotion on their knights and cavalry from Vassalage in renaissance era ladder games just to stay in it. That may not sound like a strong argument, but in an era where combat is dominated by knights and cavs, access of formation can be huge. I've seen situations where people revolt to Free Speech in an attempt to boost their town-fueled GNP and end up switching back five turns later because they actually lost GNP. Bureacracy's effect is massive and it's game lasting. In any era where commerce is important, Bureacracy is usually a no-brainer. How is getting it far earlier than it was intended to be through a series of gambits which often wouldn't work against a conscious human opponent not an exploit?

Anyway, that's my opinion. Feel free to respond and move this discussion to a new place .

Unfortunately I didn’t have time to write a complete report, so here is a brief summary:

I was expecting the game to play similarly to early parts of Epic 4, so I worked out a strategy for early Archers, followed by an axe-rush against a nearby opponent. However, the isolated start with Gandhi as nearest opponent caused drastic change in plans.

I settled in place and started Warrior and Archery research, while scout went in circles around the capital to avoid meeting AIs too early.

When I saw how isolated the start was, I decided to train a Worker right after first Warrior and research Agriculture->Animal Husbandry after Archery.

Meeting an Indian Warrior in 3580 caused me to interrupt the Worker for an Archer, but that warrior was just scouting and refused to attack my units until I hit him with an Archer myself much later.

After scouting as far west as India, my scout turned south and then went home, to avoid early contact. Tech trading is disabled in this game, but I still wanted to delay inevitable friendship among AIs (and waves of warriors and Axemen) as long as possible. So contact with some AIs didn't happen until 7th century BC. Despite the variant rules, my scout found a hut near Gandhi and got 43$ from it.

Meanwhile, after discovering Animal Husbandry and finding no horses nearby, research went into Bronze Working. This revealed copper in perfect location, so I then researched The Wheel -> Pottery (cottages). Then I researched Mysticism (Obelisks), Writing (Libraries), and Iron Working (to reveal final military resource).

Meanwhile I trained second Archer and a Settler, founding Hamburg in 2140BC to claim Copper. During this time I built a couple more Workers and built Barracks, starting to train axemen. However, I built Stonehenge right after discovering Mysticism and never obsoleted it, getting free culture for the rest of the game. The Calendar resources were tempting, but I found other sources of happiness and kept WW under control by eliminating 1 opponent at a time.

After Iron Working, I executed Oracle CS slingshot, researching Meditation -> Priesthood -> CoL. After this I researched Metal Casting -> Machinery, so in addition to early Beurocracy I was able to start training Macemen in 80AD.

Meanwhile, I used my axemen to start an offensive and capture Bombay (west of floodplains west of Berlin) in 670BC.

I then found Munich in 370BC in the same place as Kylearan, between the small lake and sea to the south-west of my capital, securing a large area and getting several resources. I was going to eventually backfill suboptimal lands on my peninsula with a couple more cities, but never got around to it, so most of my peninsula remained unsettled for the rest of the game.

After capturing Satsuma (west of Munich, near the gold and iron in the desert) in 80AD with the help of my first Maceman, our civilization entered a thousand years of stagnation. Macemen were so expensive that only Berlin could train them in reasonable time, so I didn’t have enough units in the field to prevent countless chariots from pillaging the land bare around Bombay, Satsuma, and even Munich. I also lost a lot of Workers during that period. However, I held on to all of my cities, despite attacks from 10+ unit combined stacks. And I was able to stop any pillagers from reaching cottages around Hamburg and Berlin, which provided the main engine for my economy, allowing me to continue to out-research the AIs.


This picture illustrates the situation near the end of the Dark Ages, when I was able to start rebuilding improvements around Munich (the city in the south). The highlighted stack is besieging Madras in the north and will be joined by a mace/cat pair.

Eventually I was able to build up enough Maces and spears to leave the cities, slowly reclaim my lands from pillagers, and send an attack stack into Gandhi’s territory, capturing Madras in 725 and losing it to Alex’s landing shortly afterwards, because the stack moved on to Delhi, which I captured in 905AD, destroying Indian civilization.

There were several landings near Berlin, first of which forced me to whip a mace in the city, but after my capture of Delhi all enemy Galleys headed there, relieving the pressure from my back lines. These landings were mostly uncoordinated, so a few units were enough to deal with them, preventing pillaging of Gandhi’s villages.

I had constructed a Jewish Shrine in Bombay and a Hindu one in Delhi, which provided additional help to my economy. Judaism became my state religion early on and combined with Theocracy to give me 6xp units, while Berlin retained Beurocracy bonus until the end of the game. That bonus, along with Heroic Epic, allowed Berlin to train my best units every 2 or 3 turns.

After Gandhi, I eliminated Toku in 1298 with Maces and Cats and went after Alex, because Saladin already had longbows.

My technological plan was to beeline to Cavalry, first because it was the easiest Renaissance unit to get, and second because Berlin was the only city capable of quickly producing units. Munich and Satsuma were also able to contribute a couple Cats and Maces, but Hamburg was building missionaries all the time, with help from Bombay, and all newer cities never managed to build anything but infrastructure.

Alex’s last mainland city was razed in 1418 using first Knights who reached the front line with support of commando mace. I got several very experienced Maces during the centuries they sat huddled in my cities under constant attacks, so 2 commando maces were able to accompany my Knights and later Cavalry. Alex wasn’t eliminated due to a city on a northern island, but that didn’t matter because the game was practically over. My research into Gunpowder finished in 1466 with Berlin completing Taj Mahal next turn. During the golden age, Berlin was able to train a Cav every 1.5 turns, which, along with upgraded knights, turned an already easy war into complete slaughter. I had captured most of America by then and turned my armies north towards Spain and Russia, the only 2 empires still defending with ancient era units.

I controlled 20 cities in 1502, and won domination victory in 1556, next turn after eliminating Russia and turning culture slider up to 50% to get some border pops.

Domination in 1556 is far from fastest, but I think it’s still a respectable date. So even playing like a builder, with most cities building infrastructure for most of the game could give a good result in this variant.

PS And here is what happens when a unit is defending a front line city for many centuries and then goes on to protect main offensive stacks:
[img] http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/8131/...aceqc4.jpg[/img]