The Guild Hall has been upgraded! It now boasts the option to have various merchant services that, up until now, have been available only in major cities (LA, Drok's, etc.). The options are (prices listed in platinum costs:
Xunlai Agent - 10
Dye Trader - 50
Crafting Material Trader - 100
Rare Crafting Material Trader - 100
Rune Trader - 25
Scroll Trader - 50
Skill Trainer - 100
Priest of Balthazar - 10
Merchant - 25
Weaponsmith - 10
Canthan Ambassador - 10
Guild Emblemer - 10
Festival Hat Keeper - 10

The ones listed in bold are the ones that have been purchased. All we're missing now are the Material Trader and the Scroll Trader.

[Edited to reflect the options we've opened up.]

Another option added is the scrimmage battle, where we can fight each other for practice. Doing this every now and then could really be fun.

I still can't connect to the server

I hadn't done one of my Tomb runs with Somewhat Zen in a while and somehow guild chatter from Fox Bat got my interest renewed again. Only this time I was determined to try and get through instead of merely farming the first area or two.

The Build



Basically going back to the same old archer/healer build I've been using since the early days, this one differs in that I'm using Distracting Shot where I would often place Storm Chaser in the past.

1.) Distracting Shot. This skill had a workout mostly against Wurm Seige and Meteor Shower. Primarily Meteor Shower needs to be stopped. Missing the interrupt can lead to significant DP attrition as the henchies stand and get wiped.
2.) Whirling Defence. Grasps occasionally come through and being able to hold them off for a few seconds helps imensely.
3.) Barrage. Damage dealer when not healing.
4.) Healing Seed. As an enchantment it seldom makes a combat appearance, but once the Scythe of Chaos and Dream Rider class monsters are taken care of Seed can prove useful. It's especially handy to plant on whoever's tanking when a 4-pack of Grasps without caster support start wailing away on the group.
5.) Healing Breeze. Another enchantment rarely used. The points might have been better elsewhere, but again, once the Mesmer type enemies are down it becomes a handy addition, particularly when henchies are spamming big heals and starting to tangle with player heals.
6.) Heal Other. Slow, but economical healing for the big hits the henchies take on the way to the Hall of Heroes.
7.) Rebirth. Bread and butter resurrection for this area.
8.) Heal Party. Frequently used, incredibly useful. Between Meteor showers, Cryof Frustration, Energy Surge, Wurm Seige, multiple Empathies, this is indispensible.

Attributes
Healing 12 + 2
Marksmanship 12
and the remainder in Divine.

I usually only run Healing to 11, but in this case the Heal Party spamming makes it important, while Divine Favour is simply not eficient enough with the skills I'm using to worry about.

Henchies
Healer
Healer
Fighter
Archer
Archer
Mage
Mage

Only one frontline unit. I chose that to reduce the problem of kamikaze runs that wind up dragging Zaishen Healers into suicidal rezzing tactics. Picking up one warrior with Rebirth is much easier than having to fluff around with two that are out of reach and the extra Mage is generally left in a better position if she dies than the warriors are.

The Game

Underworld is fairly conventional. Target the Scythes first before the Grasps. Target the Dryda's first before the Dream Riders. Trip the spell casters into dropping CoF or Energy Surge on you while standing just behind Acolyte Chigo to add a decoy and save the henchman DP for later.

Scarred Earth gets interesting with the addition of the Chaos Wurms. Early on after the Tombs update I found that it was easy to drag them under the bridges where they don't fit, pop out the top instead and you can pull them apart by just hacking at the tips of their tails poking down through the bridge. The two Mages screw that trick though. Their DoT attacks send the Wurms scurrying, but ultimately there's enough damage output to over come the Wurms on their brief appearances anyway.

The Drydas up on the ledges are tricky, but played carefully these aren't too big a problem with only the one Fighter trying to reach them. Stripping away the two on the right first clears half the problem, then there's a safe zone with which to strike at the Grasp patrol behind them, although sticking to the cliff edge is important to avoid waking the nearby Wurm.

Striking at the left side triggers the Fighter to run around and this can be used to lure the Dream Rider/Dryda patrol into a fight outside the entryway out of range of the Dryda pair up top. Once the two sides are clear it's plain sailing.

The Courtyard and Hall of Heroes are also fairly conventional although one has to be extra cautious of popups and patrols. Entering the long passage in HoH was easier than expected since the huge mob just split up into several small packs when lured out onto the bridge. The other end was a tricky problem since I had to bow pull with seven groupies, but once back back down the tunnel with Grasps in tow it became a whole lot easier.

Just after that I bagged my second Ecto.

But that's not all!



Anyway, the Darkness were easy. Well coordinited henchmen only slipped up in that the patrol woke up and chased us back to the bridge, but I had Victo's Bulwark scooped up well before then 30 seconds is plenty of time to sort out any further drops anyway.

This is a really bloody long post.

You have been warned.

So. All of my previous attempts to interest people in PvP have been met with less than enthusiastic responses, and it seems that people who are interested in PvP wind up dropping off the active list (Shand, Roland, Mentat, GG, etc.). When people are on and interested in PvP, usually there's only 3 of us (there have been quite a few times when Fox, Xyn and I have sat in TA with no one else joining). Whenever there is a large enough group of people who are willing to PvP, it usually gets killed by someone (most of the time someone not in the group) suggesting PvE and people going to do that instead. This leaves people who are more interested in PvP than PvE 2 options: 1. Leave the guild (Anaya and a couple others have gone that route); 2. Stop playing regularly (like the aforementioned folk).

Ok, so why am I bringing all this up? Well, I'm not really sure. I do know that with Factions coming up and it being a more PvP than PvE based expansion that that can change things, especially the way the guild is run (well, it's not really "run" so to speak, but whatever). What does that mean? I have no idea, it just sounded good in my head.

What did I make this topic for then? Well, I was bored.

Oh wait, I did want to bring something up.

Ok... Every time I've tried to arrange/co-ordinate a PvP meeting no one has shown up that wouldn't already have been there (aka the people who are always on) so I'm not going to bother with that anymore (and the world rejoices). Instead I'm just going to make a couple lists.

What works for PvP in this guild:
1. Creative, imaginative people that like to experiment.
2. We're finally using TS.
3. Enough people with enough experience to help out those who are less experienced.
4. We're comfortable with each other (mostly) and have casual playing environments.
5. Other stuff

What doesn't work for PvP in this guild:
1. We've never done a guild GvG or HA run (seriously, the game's been out for a year, what are we waiting for?)
2. Lack of interest (me: "Anyone interested in TA?"; everyone: dead silence; someone: "Anyone want to do a boring mission we've already done 10,000,000 times before?"; everyone: "YEAH!!!!!")
3. Lack of co-ordination and leadership (the big "L" word (no, not love))

What needs to happen:
1. We need to have a "sit-down" and figure out what we want to do for PvP in this guild.
2. Along those lines, when Factions comes out, we'll need to pick a "leader" (someone to occupy the top slot). More on that later in the thread.
3. We should probably add a PvP sub-forum to the Guild Wars forum. More on that later as well.
4. We need to recruit. Yes the "R" word. Yes, more on that later.
5. People need to get off their lazy bums and get into randoms on occasion.

Nifty lists, eh? Anyways, you're probably wondering what those "later in the thread" things were referring to, weren't you?

Yes, you were.

First off, the leader position (aka the dude (or dudette) in the top slot). This isn't anywhere near as dramatic as you might have been thinking I'm thinking. I'm not talking about instituting a hierarchy or anything dumb like that. However, our lack of an active leader has been causing some issues that, up until now, I've been silent about (but no more, I'm breaking my chains and... something...).

Every web site that has a guild registry or allows recruitment on the forums makes a very clear stipulation: it must be done by the guild leader. Even if we don't care about recruiting, it would still be nice to advertise the guild a little and let people know what we're doing (I think a lot of people would be interested in a guild that's running a nudist variant and would like to read about it). Also, the guild isn't growing, it's shrinking. While it's nice to invite your friends in and have casual gaming go on now and again, it's also not a good sign when someone signs on and is impressed that we've got 6 people on (especially since last summer we were averaging around 10). Because of this, it would be nice to get more people from outside the normal circle involved. If they don't like our way of playing, they'll leave.

That last paragraph was getting a bit too serious, so to sum up: Us good, no one knows about us.

Oh yeah, one other thing about the leader spot: with Factions coming up in a few days, that whole alliance thing looks like it's going to need a pretty active leader spot.

So, what do we do about the leader spot? Well, there are a lot of things we could do:
1. Tie KoP down to his computer so he can never leave or sign off.
2. Have the guild vote on someone to take the position and be actively recruiting and all that mumbo jumbo I was mentioning earlier.
3. Have a rotating guild leader. This means that the position would get passed around at a set interval (a month or so would be fine) and whoever is leader at the time gets to do... whatever...

Moving on...

What was next?

Oh yeah, PvP Sub-Forum. You know, the more I think about it, the more self-explanatory this one is. Basically just a separate place for people to post build ideas they have without cluttering up the regular discussion.

Wow, was that complex.

Now for the big one. Recruitment. Cue up Bach's "Tocatta and Fugue."

I guess this also ties in with some other stuff. But really, we've got about 5 people left who play on a daily basis (me, Fox, WB, KoP, Xyn, Seijin, Drasca). Ok, so that's 7, whatever. And guess what, it's that same list every day. No offense or anything, but it's getting pretty boring playing with the same crew all the time (if anyone says PuG I will hurt them). And we're not even all on at the same time, usually only 3 at once (except around midnight EST, then there're usually more of us on). I'm not trying to fault people who can't make it every day (here's looking at you, Hawk), but it's... well... too predictable. It's gotten to the point where you pretty much know exactly what everyone is doing even without asking. Getting something going as a group usually involves sitting around for an hour with nothing happening.

There's also this whole "new" thing (new put in quotations because it's something that's been going on for about half a year, so it's not really new anymore, but whatever) going on with guild mergers. Perhaps it's something to consider?

Other, non-leader, things we can do for recruiting.

Spend some time in pre-searing (or whatever the pre-area is in Factions). Use the PvP slot and then delete it if you don't want to leave someone in pre forever. Help out people new to the game and represent us there, spending a decent amount of time (an hour a week is more than plenty) answering questions in Ascalon City and taking newbies out into the world to help them get their feet wet and stuff. Not drag them along, but be nice and let them figure things out for themselves while providing a helping hand; and if so desired, bring them into the guild. Just don't stand around in Ascalon shouting "Realms Beyond recruiting! Join now, we have cape, hall, TS, egos the size of Ascalon and bigger!"

What else... oh yeah. Random arenas recruiting. Most people you play with are absolute moro... I mean complete... idio... well, you get the idea. But when you do come across someone you like playing with, talk to them, see if they want to join in for a TA session, or even join the guild. (There are too many commas in that last sentance but I'm too tired to work through it).

Yeesh, I'm still typing?

One last thing I wanted to mention, getting back to the PvP thing. As has been stated in the past by people, not everyone goes around to the various PvP sites to check on info and all that stuff. What I figured I'd do is post a few links to sites that have PvP builds on them for people to look over and get ideas from.

1. Guild Wars Knowledge Base character builds. - Lots of builds. Some good, some not so good. Anyone who wants to can post one.
2. Team-iQ Forums - Run by the Idiot Savants, one of the top PvP builds in the game. It was made when Guild Wars Guru got a bit out of hand with the flooding of people with random arena intellects. Has a "no crap" policy so there is very little clutter.
3. The Guild Hall Forums - Well established as one of the best places to go to for PvP strategy.

Ok, I've said well more than I planned to say, so I'm going to stop. There were a few other things I was going to say, but this is long enough already (and I have to wonder if anyone even read the whole thing).

Anyone fancy forming a team for the CFC SGOTM1 event? Could be interesting to see how well we fare in comparison with other groups of players.

Adventure Six is a Gentle™ Adventure.

More info here: http://realmsbeyond.net/civ/c4tourney/adv6.html


- Sirian

I've encountered a bug? (definitely NOT a feature) when trying to end/win my current domination victory as the Japanese. Unfortunately, my uploads here aren't working... until tomorrow, maybe? I don't know.

I'll let you know more when I am not so cranky. And annoyed.


I was going to be finished with THAT particular game...

EDIT: Sorry for the incoherency. I cannot demonstrate the problem, because I cannot upload the game save file, until I can fix my uploads account for these forums.

The problem is that once I have beaten the Malinese, I acquire the necessary territory with which to secure a domination victory. Unfortunately, there is no notification of this victory (no friendly dialog box confirming it).

I was going to link here from the CivFanatics uploads, but then I realized that you're not allowed *sigh*

Im going to try this in my next game, but im hoping I can get a quick reply from here. When you are building something which gets a +100% modifier from marble/stone/copper, it doesnt make the building half-cost, but instead hammers are multiplied by 2, so the question is, lets say I prechop a few forests while building oracle with marble, then once oracle is about to be done, I chop all those forests.

Example:
Oracle 140 hammers already completed, I chop 4 forests for 160 hammers (marble), this will give me oracle and 150 overflow, does this mean that the next thing I produce will get 150 hammers from the previous overflow or will it go back to 75?

The patch arrived too soon for me to finish on time, so this will have to be a shadow game. Regardless, I enjoyed the game (thanks to Sirian for putting it on) and wanted to try writing a report for it.

Seeing the variety of resources in the immediate vicinity, plus fresh water, I settled in place. Seeing three stones nearby, I wondered what I was missing in their place.


I researched agriculture and animal husbandry first, then researched towards bronze working, hoping to find any copper. Obviously, that didn't work out. After that, I picked up a couple techs like pottery and archery, and set course for literature. My initial game plan was to generate a bunch of great scientists for academies. I went for the Great Library because between two scientist specialists, the points from the library, and the philosophical trait, it seemed like a good way to get a whole bunch of scientists in short order. I settled my second city (Hamburg) to get marble.


I met Saladin pretty early, and settled cities 3 (Munich) and 4 (Cologne) to wall him off.


Saladin founded both Hinduism and Judaism and built the shrines for them, and I originally planned to invade him for the land and shrine income when I reached catapults and longbows, but that didn't survive the planning stage (more on that later).

Taoism is founded in 475 BC (I believe it was by Isabella). Someone reaching Philosophy that early had me worried about my Great Library plans for a while, but I eventually got it in 25 BC.


Way back around 1000 BC a barb city got founded way off to my east. Around 400 AD, I started to get a fair bit of barb harassment, but didn't quite have the economy to support that city yet. In 620, I noticed that it expanded its borders culturally. I didn't know they could do that. Around 1070, a barb archer went on a rampage and killed a few of mine. Things could have gotten dicey if my longbows hadn't appeared a few turns later. I finally captured the city in 1230.


I finally began meeting the other civs in 1160.


They were ahead of me in tech to varying degrees, and that led me to wimp out of my plans to invade Saladin. In retrospect, I should have gone ahead with it anyway. Louis was the least advanced of the other civs, and I managed to trade with him and reach parity with everyone but HC in relatively short order.

Catching up with HC was a little harder. In order to do that, I spent a fair bit of time emphasizing peaceful techs, so I missed out on my chance to invade Saladin with grenadiers. I did get the Statue of Liberty in 1802 with the help of a great engineer, and rushed to biology after democracy to try to get the most out of representation as soon as possible. This also led to the city governors running a lot of engineers once I got factories up.


Between 1719 and 1834 there was a "war" between Isabella and Saladin (and his ally, HC), but no cities changed hands. That was the only combat in my game. The overall tech pace was pretty slow for so much peace, and I'm not sure why.

As I started getting my engineers, I used one to rush Broadway (in 1852) for a little cultural relief against Saladin and a little more happiness.

Of the modern age techs, I went for laboratories first, which pushed my research rate well over HC's. It did, however, delay my getting Rocketry for 15 or 20 turns, so HC completed the Apollo program well before me. I wasn't overly concerned because he lacked the techs to actually build the parts, but I made a point of trading for communism and getting Scotland Yard built just in case. This turned out to be a blessing, as HC and Louis had both popped a source of aluminum.

I went for the free great engineer from fusion, and used him and another one that was stored up to rush the Three Gorges Dam all the way from scratch in 1935. That was just as I finished the Apollo program, so I finally had lots of production just in time for my spaceship parts.


I finished researching all the spaceship techs shortly thereafter, and shut off research to have lots of money for sabotaging HC and Louis (Mao, Izzy, and Saladin never got beyond a couple casings completed). I launched in 1974.

In summary, I didn't realize the power of trade, and calling off my invasion of Saladin's lands slowed down my teching because I didn't have enough land. I also feel like I should have taken better advantage of the available stone and marble to build more early game wonders, but that turned out to be unnecessary in the end. I am, however, happy that I was able to pull off the rushing of the Statue of Liberty and Three Gorges Dam, and that I recognized the need for spies early enough to do something about slowing down HC (and later Louis). Finally, here's a picture of my empire at the end of the game.

From the official site:

-------------------
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr><td>Character Slots Offered</td> <td align="right">20 April 2006</td> </tr><tr> <td colspan="2">We are happy to announce that you will be able purchase additional character slots for your Guild Wars account beginning this summer for $9.99 U.S. (or equivalent). Each new slot will enable you to add a new character to your account with full access to all of the content your current characters enjoy. We'll have more details to share soon!</td></tr></tbody> </table> -------------------
So, guess I won't have to purchase that extra copy of the game after all! Still annoying that extra characters are relatively expensive.