Hello all,

Epic Forty-one: Balance of Power will open shortly, but we thought it would be helpful to post the rules ahead of time, so that we can make any necessary clarifications *before* the game is open. So, if you have any questions, please ask now, and try to use your best judgement after the game is open.

I'm way behind on the site (sorry!, and we don't have a completed map just yet for this one, so I won't put it up on the page until the map is ready. But, expect this Epic to open within the week.
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EDIT- THE RULES THAT FOLLOW ARE NOT THE CURRENT RULES! The current rules are available on the official Epic 41 Page. The original rules are kept here for reference.

Epic Forty-one: Balance of Power

Sponsor: Bihary
Duration: Four weeks (maybe 3.5 to 4.5, any preference?)

Civilization: English
Difficulty: Emperor
Map size: Standard
Opponents: Spain, Turkey (Ottomans), Italy (Rome), Prussia (Germany), Netherlands, Russia, France
Land: Pangaea, 30% land, temperate, average age, average humidity
Barbarians: Roaming
Victory: All enabled, diplomatic preferred
Version: Conquests 1.15
Cultural link and respawn off

Scenario concept: How much of the balance of power in Conquests is under player control? Let's find out! In this scenario, the player will try to maintain equilibrium between the competing civilizations, their own included, throughout the game. Success will come from helping the weak, and containing the strong; by continuous, careful use, and redistribution, rather than accumulation, of power and potential resources.

England's history is the prototype for seeking the balance of power in the old continent, securing a safe, and sometimes dominating, position in Europe.

1588 - Queen Elizabeth does not hesitate to ally with pirates to fend off her rival of the seas, the invincible Spanish Armada.

1805 - In the Battle of Trafalgar, the English admiral Horatio Nelson defeats the French-Spanish fleet. This victory shatters Napoleon's dreams of invading England and speeds up unified resistance against French domination in the continent.

1854 - To protect the warm seas from the Russian bear, England supports Turkey in the Crimean War.

1904 - The pact Entente Cordiale paves the way for Anglo-French diplomatic and military cooperation against the emerging power of Germany before and during World War I.

1915 - Italy, a former ally of Germany and Austria, is persuaded to join World War I on the side of England and France.

1941 - "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons," says Winston Churchill. He then comes pretty close to his word, making an alliance with the Soviet Union to contain and eventually defeat Germany in World War II.

1946 - "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent," says the same Churchill, soliciting Pan-Atlantic cooperation against Soviet dominance in Europe.

Scoring: The base score is based upon the distance in game score between the leading and the trailing civilizations.

Each time you enter a new age (middle, industrial, and modern), and at the end of the game, you may earn scenario points. On the first turn of a new age, record the game score of the eight competing civilizations (your own included). Civilizations not yet contacted, and those that have been eliminated, are considered to have a score of zero. Take the average of the four highest scoring civilizations (yourself included if among the highest four), and the average of the four lowest scoring civilizations (yourself included if among the lowest four). Divide the low average by the high average, this is the balance ratio you achieved for the previous age. Multiply the balance ratio with 20 for the Ancient/ Middle Ages, and with 30 for the Industrial/ Modern Ages (rounding to the closest integer). The result is the number of scenario points you earned for the previous age.

Example: You just started the middle ages. The top four civs are Italy with 850, Turkey with 820, France with 780, and Netherlands with 750, for an average high score of 800. The four trailing civs are England with 500, Prussia with 600, Spain with 600, and Russia with 700, for an average low score of 600. 600/800=0.75. Multiply 0.75 by 20 for a total of 15 scenario points for the Ancient Age.

Repeat this process to determine scenario points at the beginning of the Industrial and Modern Ages, and at the end of the game. If your game ends before the Modern Age, use your final game score for the remaining age(s).
For verification purposes, keep a copy of your game's save file at the start of each new age and at the end of the game. Do not use the "interturn" score except for your game-end calculation, so that you will be able to save at the time you are calculating points.
At the end of the game, it is the unmodified raw score that should be taken into account, not the final score with the bonuses.

You can also earn bonus points, which are added to your total score.

Diplomatic victory: +20 points
Cultural victory: +15 points
Space victory: +5 points
Any defeat or retirement: -20 points (You do not earn scenario points for Ages you have not started, if losing. Losing control of the game gives the other powers, not England, the ability to control the balance of power!

Honorable game (no "dastardly" tactics): +10 points

Ties, if any, will be broken by fastest finish date.

Rules clarification: As long as you have RoP with another civ, you are welcome to build roads, protect resources, or conduct a "friendly blockade" in their territory (surrounding friendly cities or territory with military units to prevent an unfriendly power from capturing territory). However, keep the "Resource Piracy" exploit in mind! You may not keep a unit on a resource to prevent another civilization from connecting that resource, unless you're in neutral territory or at war with that civ! Feel free to connect any and all resources, though.

Good luck!

All day, I have been bored. I do not deal with boredom well, and, I am seldom bored. I can always find something to do. Today has been an exception, as it seemed that nothing I have done has held my interest very long.

Please forgive all spelling and grammatical errors. And broken out of place sentences like this one.

I am starting to believe that boredom is actually something more then a state of mind when one has nothing to do. After sitting here all day in horrible pain with nothing to do, I have started to evaluate my own processes of thought as I sit here, and tried to see where they lead.

I think that boredom, for some, like my self, is actually the manifestation of the apprehension of looking inward to bits of the yet unexamined self. Those dark corners where nobody likes to look, but, when nothing else is on the agenda, some part of the mind begs to have those cobwebs cleaned out. A manifestation of anxiety, self doubt, and possibly some short comings somewhere in the complicated armor of self esteem. No matter how confident, brash, or full of one's self, we all have weak spots in our esteem that we are loathe to confess to. During moments of extreme boredom, we have nowhere to look but within and some of us don't always like what we see or see stuff that we keep putting off for another day and dread the responsibility of dealing with it. That "Ants in the Pants" feeling is actually a type of coping mechanism I think that our mind creates to motivate us to hurry up and find something to do before we have to staring into the Abyss within and dealing with our inner demons.

I am probably sounding a lot more smartsy fartsy then I really am because I am high. This is probably the deluded ravings of a lunatic. I will most likely look back on this when the fog in my mind clears and laugh my fool head off for sounding like a tard. Go me.

Should this be the case, and for some people it is, perhaps that is why so many various types of sensory depravation experiences in so many cultures and religions exist. Monks and various types of mystics perhaps achieve what some consider to be spiritual enlightenment by reaching frightning levels of boredom that drive them half mad and they have no choice but to look into the Inner Abyss for entertainment. And they drag out every last of those Inner Demons and kick their asses for shits and giggles. If this be the case, well, in a few more days, I shall become the Eternally Enlightened Wally Llama. When I reach this plane of existence, my wordy pontifications shall become even more profound then Sirian's. (No offense my friend, I hope. Lemme know and I can edit this out)

How deep is the rabbit hole? I have asked this question all my life, since I was but a small boy and reading that story for the first of many times. I believe, upon reaching critical and possibly life threatening levels of boredom, that I will finally have my answer. Today, I have seen the edge of the Abyss, and it ain't pretty. There are many eyes looking back, and none of them friendly. In the terms of voting, "The Eyes have it." I shall have to uproot that democracy and become the despot of my own inner regions. Make all inner voices my own.

Or I need to quit taking pain killers and making bad puns. And find something to do.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,119673,00.html

What especially grates on my nerves are the lines where the Representative said the guy did not write the letter and probably could not spell all the words in said letter.

I guess he thinks we're all stupid sheep, eh? The nerve of this dumbass! If I were this national guard member I think I would have had to go down and 'educate' this rude idiot in person.

Somebody, not sure who, brought me a laptop to use in bed. Wonderful.

I am hooked up on oxygen and all sorts of tubes and wires. Any sort of movement involving my torso makes me see big blue-white spots in my vision.

Surgery went well, only died for about a minute or two. Nothing a big needle full of juice rammed into my heart can't fix, as well as a little voltage. Doctors say everything went much better then expected.

I might be able to breathe better after I heal. Doctors blasted some of the big hunks of scar tissue in my lungs with the laser to break them up and give my lungs more surface area to work with. If it heals right, I should be able to do well with what I have. If not, I will need something to help me breathe. Right now I am breathing from one lung. I have about 1/4 of the other lung left. It is filled with a little balloon like thing to make it stretch. If all goes as planned, I will have enough lung power to keep me running for a long time.

Got home last night. Was to doped up to try and do anything. Somebody needs to do something about pot holes on public roads. Ouch.

Feels good to communicate in some fashion. Can't really talk to well right now. No voice for the time being.

All of this is making me tired.

http://www.new-tradition.org

Check out that crazy site. I guess it takes all kinds of people to populate the world, but wow are some off base or what?

Been playing the occasional game with AnorXorcist-AMZ, did a 15-16 clear today. Jade and Laz both dropped Eaglehorn, Bloodlust dropped a Protector, and Gorash dropped a Messy. Jade only dropped some book (Stone Curse I think, she can't read much of anything anymore anyway). A while more of preparing then a huge quest-a-thon at 40. ~20-mil. to go.

- AnorXorcist
Amazon Queen
Stealth Huntress
Guardian
Destroyer of Nightshadows
(Hmm, was there anything else?)

I was wondering if there are any RBers out there who play Trade Wars 2002 and/or Black Nova Traders.

I've recently returned to TW, a game I haven't played since the good ol'days of Local BBSing in the mid-90s. This week I was overjoyed to find out that there are many Trade Wars servers that one can Telnet into, and that there are still many players playing this addictive game. I was also happy to find a few helper programs (SWATH in particular) that automate some of the more carpal-tunnel inducing tasks in the game, like port to port trading. However, I'm a little dismayed by the use of some of the more advanced scripts: a few days ago I wondered into a sector with another player's toll fighter - and 2 milliseconds later that player's planet T-warped into the sector and annihilated me. After some more reading I discovered that there's a script that enables this - a player only has to be logged in and have some turns, and can kill anyone who happens across his fighter! He can even be AFK and still kill people!

Black Nova Traders is a TW clone, but it's entirely a .PHP game and has far less detail and options. That game basically seems to equate to 'colonize scores of planets, collect all the credits off of the planets, move sector-2-sector and kill everyone' type game.

I'm wondering if there are any RB players who are members of/run servers that run different, 'old-school', variants of these games.

We've never done a thread like this at RB. There's a lot happening now, though. C3C patching is nearing its end. The MOO Imperia have been launched and are taking up some of the attention that would have gone to Civ3. Epics rules are getting an overdue tuneup. Civ4 is in development. And I have not been following all of the succession game chatter the way I used to. So I'm wondering what's on the minds of RB players.

If you could change one (and only one) thing about Civ3, with everything on the table -- removing something you don't like, fixing something you wish were different, or adding something that isn't there, without regard to whether you think it's reasonable, likely, or even possible -- what would you change? And why would you change that thing as opposed to something else? Why is that item the most important to you?

- Sirian

After posting a query at the Lurker Lounge, I was pointed to these two websites.

This Affix List is, apparently, accurate about what sorts of charged skills can occur on different items, but is incomplete about what levels and numbers of charges the items can get.


This Affix Calculator will list for any input item what sorts of affixes can occur on it, including spell charges, but is inaccurate about what spell level the charges can get.

So, it looks like Ice Bolt is possible. Now to find it.......

I've never played this game. I know nothing about it. I've only read some of the posts here, and a few pages of Bam-Bam's training day game.

The feeling here is that the game is 'broken.' Yet to my n00b eyes the game seems like a mix of MOO and CIV3, and I'd like to try it out. BUt before I shell out the $$$, I'd like to know if you guys think this game is worth it. I've avoided reading any in-depth strategy threads on this game, since I don't want to 'ruin' it. Can a n00b have fun with Gal Civ?

A few random questions:

-The good vs evil thing sounds intriguing. What are the pros/cons of each path?

-How well balanced is the ship design aspect? In MOO I like how there are almost no 'uber' ship builds - even the Death Ray is only useful in certain situations? Is this the same for Galciv?

-Are there races in MOO? What are their bonuses like?

Thanks in advance