ROTQM13: Rolling Over The Quintet's Magic

[PPQ_Purple]

Well done everyone, a great victory. Any ideas for a repeat performance?

I would advise the following:

• A map with more water as this map was frankly quite boring. I am not saying we need to lean heavily into water maps but like this map was just a flat dinner plate with the AI served up for our taking.
  
• No world wrap. It just fits the fantasy world better.
• A more challenging end goal. Maybe something like Kuoritates Tower of Mastery.
• A higher difficulty level. Noble is just too easy.
  
• We don't conquer a million cities and expand in a million directions at once. It's just not fun to have to sit down for a hour with an open save trying to figure out where all the units were supposed to be going.
  And yet that is exactly what I had to do multiple times near the end.
  
• We leave each other notes on the map for important things. Like if you are building an army to go invade west simply adding a note next to them saying "Send us west" can help a lot.

That's all I've got for now.

 

[Alekseyev_]

I suggest a Perpentach game. His insanity sounds quite suited to an ever-so-changing ruler in a SG.

If you want something really challenging, I think culture victories are quite hard in FfH. Though Balseraphs are probably among the best for such a thing. (After Kuriotates)

 

[pholkhero]

huzzah!

one sinus infection, and i awaken to eternal victory!

are we thinking more AW for the next game or a 'just win'?

also, in-game notes are good, but also i think some are reading along so posting pics summarizing the situations on the various fronts or general world/culture maps from time to time help out. Some of my reports got wordy at the end and imageless, or vice versa, but there's a fair balance btwn the two.

as long as we're talking housekeeping (or i am), next go round, can we minimize q'ing up builds and go-to's? again, guilty in the endgame, but then other people don't get to really decide what to do.

i am game for something like an AW game we have to win by culture or some such twisted nonsense.

 

[Ozbenno]

What about an AW game we have to win via Culture playing Perpentach (mimics are such fun) or Tower with Kurioriates (that does sound challenging)? When we agree the settings and all, PPQ, do want to roll us up a juicy map?

 

[PPQ_Purple]

What about an AW game we have to win via Culture playing Perpentach (mimics are such fun) or Tower with Kurioriates (that does sound challenging)? When we agree the settings and all, PPQ, do want to roll us up a juicy map?

I would but honestly I don't know what mapscript is good.

 

[Tinadafish]

Mountain Coast is good I think but doesn't really match the "more water" criteria, maybe world of erebus with high water level, or god forbid, archipelago.

Actually just had a cursed idea, Kurioriates Tower victory on archipelago map (flat) with like 6 lanun civs and raging barbarians.

 

[King Bulrush]

Recently I tried to play a game on Magister's ModMod and a fun fact I found out is that this particular ModMod has a great wonder called the Crucible which shuts down magic (eliminates mana nodes and magical promotions). And canonically, according to the game lore, it is built by the Bannor - who are thus canonically stated to be hostile to magic users. So I though that it would have been an interesting experience if we had actually tried to play our last game using that modmod, as it would have put an interesting (and lore-friendly) spin on our anti-magic crusade. Also, the Magister Modmod has a ton of other really fun stuff added to it. Unfortunately the modmod in question is extremely buggy (at least from my experience - until now I have never been able to finish a game with it).
I was thinking, since presumably not everyone gets the same bugs, that it would be a hilarious concept for a succession game to play until the game crashes for you and then pass the save around to someone who does not encounter the same bug and who plays until his game crashes, and so on until victory (hopefully).


On a serious note, and if you don't want to bother with modmods, here are some of my thoughts:
- I agree with more water, as I was allways a fan of naval action
- also agree with changing the mapscript - maybe the "erebus continent" script, if you have it installed
- I would also like to try something more "epic" in scale: large map with more (maybe all) civs. Maybe, since we are talking about increasing the challenge, maybe a conquest/domination victory on a huge map but with normal speed (to increase time pressure)

We definitely need to increase the difficulty level, noble is too low but I'm not sure what would be a good challenge. One ideea would be that instead of having a challenging goal (like some have suggested) on a manageable difficulty setting, instead we try to go for a relatively easy goal on a very high difficulty setting: for example we play on Immortal but we are the Lanun on an arhipelago map, or something like that.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Honestly I am tired of playing without magic. And I suggested the Kurioriates mostly because it would by virtue of their mechanics limit the amount of things we could conquer and prevent the late game megasprawl we had in this game. That sort of thing is fine when it's you taking all the cities and doing all the things but just jumping in after someone else took 20 cities before your turn and you have no idea what's going on and no plan for what to do with it.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Also my version of MNAI seems to be missing Erebus Continents. Where do I get the files for that?

 

[King Bulrush]

This is what I meant: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/mapscript-erebus-continent.308590/

 

[Alekseyev_]

Erebus continent is a really nice script, my most used one so far. Mountain coast looks nice, too, but it does not have any flavour starts and the unique features can be placed in strange locations, so I ceased using it.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Hm... so what do we use? Personally I like maps that have:

• Enough water to break up conquest and make things more difficult.
• Not enough water to have half the civs permanently separated from us and thus not a factor.
• Mountains with narrow passes we can build castles in and turtle because I like that.
• More or less lore friendly starts. At least lore friendly enough that civs with terrain related unique mechanics get their preferred terrain types.

 

[King Bulrush]

Hm... so what do we use? Personally I like maps that have:

• Enough water to break up conquest and make things more difficult.
• Not enough water to have half the civs permanently separated from us and thus not a factor.
• Mountains with narrow passes we can build castles in and turtle because I like that.
• More or less lore friendly starts. At least lore friendly enough that civs with terrain related unique mechanics get their preferred terrain types.

This sounds a lot like Erebus continent script with medium or low cohesion setting.

The "stock" Erebus map script that comes with vanilla MNAI tends to create maps with permanently isolated civs, requiring amphibious invasions to conquer them, which tends to make things too easy for the human player, even with MNAI.

 

[King Bulrush]

For your reference, here is a screenshot of one of my latest games played with this script. I have zoomed out as much as possible to show a larger area of the map. I hope the details are still visible:

Spoiler :

Notice all the narrow ishtmuses that make for good defensive positions.

By the way, this was one of the most epic games I ever played. I was, as usual, playing the Bannor. The Sheaim and Infernals were my main rivals. They were ahead in tech, and both had large empires. They drove the armageddon counter up starting very early in the game and Armageddon actually happened killing a lot of units, including all my heroes. I allmost contemplated giving up at this point as the evil civs were now mopping up the map, taking out all my allies, but then I decided to make one more attempt at victory. I switched to Crusade and fired my worldspell (probably the only time I had ever needed it in all my games) and also drafted a lot of units, and in one last desperate offensive I took the infernal capital which was poorly guarded as the Infermal army was away conquering on the other side of the continent. I then built the Glory everlasing project in the newly conquered Infernal city and I finished it at the last moment, wiping out the Infernals just as they were about to overrun my cities.
Then I started to slowly reconquer the map, sanctifying it as I advanced to remove hell terrain, and just when it looked like victory was assured, one of my vassals won an altar victory while I wasn't paying attention... But is was still a great game.

 

[Alekseyev_]

This sounds a lot like Erebus continent script with medium or low cohesion setting.

The "stock" Erebus map script that comes with vanilla MNAI tends to create maps with permanently isolated civs, requiring amphibious invasions to conquer them, which tends to make things too easy for the human player, even with MNAI.

It also breaks the AI in some ways, because it does not know to use ships when on the same landmass but separated by mountains.

I would suggest Erebus Continent with the settings medium cohesion, reduced jungle and minor climate adjustment based on civs. The latter two are what I use most, and medium cohesion for you to have more separated landmasses.

 

[pholkhero]

i definitely want in, but don't know that i can commit to the time. The heat here is really kicking me around during the day while i work, and some nights i eat, and just fall asleep. i may need a skip a time or two over the next game.

if that's ok, stick me at the end where i can't foul anything up too bad esp now that we've taken my suggestion and are doing the AW culture

 

[PPQ_Purple]

i definitely want in, but don't know that i can commit to the time. The heat here is really kicking me around during the day while i work, and some nights i eat, and just fall asleep. i may need a skip a time or two over the next game.

if that's ok, stick me at the end where i can't foul anything up too bad esp now that we've taken my suggestion and are doing the AW culture

I know your pain. Last week we had that over here and it's what caused my delays. And the worst part is that the nights weren't much colder. So it was like you wake up in the morning and you are already exhausted from the heat.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I am having some computer trouble so I won't be able to participate in anything for at least a week. Maybe more.

 

[Ozbenno]

I've been a bit ill, will post some final thoughts over the weekend....

 

[King Bulrush]

I will be completely unable to participate in any way for the next two weeks. After that however, I'm up for a new game.