Anyone interested in one more? PBEM or Pitboss. PYFT is king, don't otherwise have strong opinions. Maybe classical era start?

Greenline to roll/check map. Random/Random leader/civ

PLAYER ORDER
Noggerfrogger/Tarkeel -Prefers CtH
BaII -Mod neutral
Bing / Cornflakes -Mod neutral
Yuris -Prefers RtR
Commodore/Thoth -Slight preference CtH

To those that dont remember/werent part of it its a better version of the Earth 18 map from base bts/civ 4. The only changes ill be making to the map is connecting Japan to the mainland (otherwise Japan does NOTHING of note) along with connecting the America's/basically making sure that all the main areas are connected because AI sucks at Naval invading. 


Simplified: Chose a civ, and a leader for that civ. 

They start in/close to their historical starting spot.

No barbs/events/other normal stuff. AGGRESSIVE AI turned on. 
Deity. 
If less than 15 sign ups by 3-18, ill add in some civs. 

Apologies for before..  I have free time atm, and have had a urge to do this now that i have a better computer as well. First come, first serve for leader/civ choices. Good luck!






1. Cornflakes- Wang Kon, Korea.
2. Williams482- Hannibal, Carthage.
3. Tarkeel- Sury, Khmer.
4. Civac2- Mehmed, Ottomans.
5. Commodore- Pacal, Maya.
6. Qgqqqqq- Catherine, Russia.
7. Cyneheard- Julius Caesar, Rome.
8. RefSteel- Elizabeth, England.
9. Thoth- Montezuma, Aztec.
10. Amicalola- Ragnar, Vikings.
11. Mjmd- Mansa Musa, Mali.
12. Haphazard1- Shaka, Zulu.
13. Xist10- Kublai Khan, Mongolia.
14. Shallow Thought- Gandhi, India.
15. GT- Washington, USA.
16. Dreylin- HC, Inca.
17. AdrienIer- Darius, Persia
18. GeneralKilCavalry- Ram, Egypt.
19.
20.

Civ4 AI Survivor Season Nine: Guatem-AI-la



Introduction

There's been a two year hiatus since the last incarnation of this website's most popular event, a delay prompted by the birth of our second son, but now it's time to launch another season of Civ4 AI Survivor! This will be the ninth time in all that we're embarked on this venture. Back in Season One, I was still figuring out the format and running everything via forums posts at Realms Beyond. It was a bit of a rough process even if it was still fun. For Season Two, I switched over to Livestreaming the matches in real time, and that made things infinintely more fun for everyone with the viewers getting to comment on the action in real time. It's not an exaggeration to say that the running commentary on the Livestream was often much more entertaining than whatever the AI leaders happened to be doing at the moment. Season Three saw more refinements to the process, with maps selected ahead of time and blindly assigned to the leaders for purposes of fairness, and online straw polls/predictions recorded before the matches and included in a series of written previews. Season Four initiated the adoption of the correct starting techs for each civilization along with the implementation of a second AI-controlled observer civ so that we could watch the voting in the Apostolic Palace without fear of a religious victory taking place.

Season Five ditched the Apostolic Palace and saw the largest turnout yet in terms of the community. Aided no doubt by the COVID-19 pandemic that left many people working from home, Season Five of AI Survivor exploded in popularity to reach an average of 250 contest submissions and hundreds of viewers tuning into the Livestream. At its height, I was averaging 150+ viewers across the length of a seven hour stream and topping 250 viewers at its peak. Season Six added a fantasy sports contest with auction bidding of the AI leaders running in parallel with the normal scoring competition for each individual game. By the time that Season Seven rolled around, the format for AI Survivor was pretty well established and I didn't see the need to do much more in terms of changes. We had another awesome Season Eight in what turned out to be the year of high peaceweight leaders and hopefully this will be another incredible competition as we look to crown another champion. Will this be the first time we see a repeat AI Survivor overall winner?



The basic tournament structure will remain the same from past seasons. The 52 AI leaders in Civilization 4 get randomly sorted into eight opening round games, half of them with 6 leaders and half of them with 7 leaders. Two leaders will advance to the playoff round from each match, the winning leader and the non-winner with the highest in-game score. AIs who survive the match but do not advance will get one final opportunity to make the playoffs in a Wildcard game played after the opening round matches. The Wildcard game has had as many as a dozen leaders and as few as six leaders in past years and it can get a little bit weird as a result. We had to run two separate Wildcard games in Season Eight because so many leaders had survived the opening round, something that I would prefer to avoid but occasionally will be necessary to avoid a truly gargantuan field. (The Wildcard game is also the only one that we run with Raging Barbarians turned on, and yes, we have seen an AI leader lose their capital city to the barbs!) This creates our field of 18 leaders sorted into three playoff games of 6 AIs apiece. Finally, we feed the top two leaders from each playoff game, the winner and the highest scoring non-winner, into a championship game and crown an overall winner of the competition.

For Season Four, we tried out a seeding system akin to what the World Cup uses when drawing teams into its groups. This proved to be a big success and we'll be continuing it for Season Nine. The top eight AI leaders based on past performance will be placed in Pool 1, and the next eight AI leaders based on past performance will be placed in Pool 2. Each of the opening round games will have one leader drawn from Pool 1 and one leader drawn from Pool 2. The remaining 36 AI leaders in Civ4 will be unseeded and can be randomly drawn into any opening round game. However, new for Season Nine, I'm adopting a suggestion from the community and basing the seeding ONLY on the most recent five seasons of AI Survivor. This has a number of benefits: it removes the influence of those wonky early seasons while we were still hammering out the AI Survivor format, it creates more variability in terms of who gets seeded so we're not seeing the same faces endlessly, and using the most recent five seasons of data also matches the adoption of the correct starting techs for each leader beginning in Season Four. I'm tentatively planning on using the most recent five seasons on a rolling basis for seeding purposes in all future seasons, though we can always adjust based on how things work out this year. It only makes sense - it's not like Uruguay is still getting a top seed in every World Cup just because they won two of the first four competitions!

Here's a list of which leaders fall into which category:



Trimming the scoring to the last five seasons creates a major shakeup in comparison to the seeding from the past few years. Darius, Alexander, and Churchill now listed as Pool 1 leaders? Justinian and Stalin both in the unseeded category?! This should make for some very fun opening round games. AI leader rankings are based on our customized scoring system of past performances; click here for a link to the full ranking as of the end of Season Eight. AI leaders score 5 points for a first place finish, 2 points for a second place finish, and 1 point for each elimination of another leader. While this is a purely arbitrary system, it seems to provide an effective metric for evaluating prior seasons of the competition. The idea behind the seeding system is to stop the top AI leaders from hitting one another in an opening round "group of death" match while still preserving the random draw element that makes this event so much fun. Choosing to pick pools of leaders ranked 1-8 and 9-16 is of course another arbitrary decision but there's some logic to having one top leader and another secondary leader in each of the eight opening round games. Ties for seeding purposes are broken by whichever leader had the best previous season, though somewhat amazingly there were no such ties going into Season Nine.

The game settings will continue over from the last Civ4 AI Survivor competition. We use Deity AIs to speed up the overall pace of the game and reach victory results sooner. The map script is the default Pangaea, designed to keep all of the AI leaders in close contact with one another. Prior to the Season Three competition, I went ahead and tested out some games with Continents or Archipelago setups, and they just didn't work that well. The Civ4 AI doesn't really know how to run naval invasions, and there were lots of wars that just did nothing because the AIs couldn't reach one another. They need to be on the same continent from what I've found, and Pangaea works well enough for that. We use Normal game speed and Standard sized maps, with the one exception of dropping the sea level to "Low" setting for the games with 7 AIs to create a little more room for the extra competitior.

For the game options, the biggest effect on the gameplay is turning off Tech Trading. I'll repeat here what I wrote in the setup phase from past years: "When tech trading is left on, the AIs tend to stay bunched together with no one ever getting too far ahead or falling too far behind. With everyone fielding the same units, it becomes difficult for the AIs to attack one another successfully, and generally makes for less interesting games. But when tech trading gets switched off, all of the AIs have to sink or swim based on their own research efforts. This spreads them out much more widely on the tech tree, and once the laggards fall a full generation behind in military tech, they tend to get swallowed up by their more advanced rivals." With tech trading removed, we frequently see some AIs fall an entire era or more behind in technology, which prevents would-be conquerers from ignoring their economies and trading their way to tech parity. A balanced approach tends to work the best in these games, with alternating periods of warring to expand followed by peaceful consolidation. Woe to those who fall behind in military tech in this competition - it nearly always ends badly. We've also increasingly noticed the different research preferences of the various AI leaders in recent years, with the warmongers overly obsessing on military techs and some of the peacenik AIs refusing to pick up Rifling even as they're dying to foreign invaders. Turning on tech trading would remove this important aspect of the competition and make the overall setup a lot less interesting.

Otherwise, we turn off Vassal States to prevent the AIs from surrendering to one another. If they can vassal when losing wars, hardly any of the AIs ever get eliminated, and that's boring. We want to see bloodthirsty games! No escape, no mercy. We also turn off Events because they're kind of a Single Player thing, and the AI doesn't understand what they do. Similarly, we turn off the goody huts to prevent unwanted prizes from getting handed out to the AIs. We've been moving towards a less random and more standardized setup for the past few years and this seemed like an obvious next step. No more cases of someone getting lucky and popping a critical tech out of a hut on the first turn of the game - now they need to research their own stuff like everyone else. We also use Aggressive AI to spice things up and increase the number of wars. The big thing that Aggressive AI does is remove a flag that will stop the AIs from declaring certain wars. Normally they will not attack someone who has more than double their military power. Turning on Aggressive AI removes that check in their coding logic. This leads to occasionally suicidal war declarations based on diplomatic relations, and that's exactly the kind of thing we want to see! There was an attempt to run an AI Survivor competition over at CivFanatics with Aggressive AI turned off, which resulted in nearly every game having a peaceful ending; the competition is simply more fun with this setting turned on.

The biggest change for Season Five was the removal of the Apostolic Palace (quite literally; I deleted the wonder from the XML files on my local computer). The Apostolic Palace had been the most controversial aspect of prior seasons from a gameplay perspective, with the AI civ that controls the Apostolic Palace often using it to shut down literally every invasion launched against them, or forcing everyone in the game to declare war on some hapless target. The argument in favor of the AP was that it introduces a wild and unpredictable element of chaos into each game which could be a lot of fun to watch. The argument against the AP was that a single wonder shouldn't have such a massively disproportionate effect on the rest of the gameplay, and in particular, it shouldn't become a magical shield that could shut down all aggression for hundreds of turns on end. I decided to run a poll question asking the community whether they wanted to see the inclusion of the Apostolic Palace for Season Five and the community voted decisively to remove it by a greater than 2:1 margin. The general consensus following the end of the season was that the gameplay had improved noticeably by leaving it out of the competition. We will not be bringing it back anytime soon.

New Changes for Civ4 AI Survivor Season Nine

Our big change for Season Nine is the shakeup in the AI leader seeding discussed above, which will be a real wildcard factor in the opening round games. Outside of that change, we've run eight full seasons in the past and therefore already have a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn't work for this format, so further changes to the AI Survivor setup should be minimal moving forward. We're maintaining the climate setting back at the default "Temperate" option after experimenting with some of the other climates in past years. This should create more balanced maps with fewer huge patches of desert or ice or jungle. We'll also continue to use the "Choose Religions" options so that we can avoid getting Buddhism and Hinduism as the dominant religions in every game.

I've also learned over the years about the best ways to run the AI Survivor event from an organizational standpoint. Following the pattern that began in Season Six, I'm planning to hold the draw for all of the opening round games at the same time, on Livestream several weeks before the first match begins (currently planned for 13 March 2026 at the usual noon Livestream time). I'll pick out all of the maps for the games ahead of time and then we'll fill in the leaders from the initial draw. This is largely being done to help save time during the season; by drawing the leaders and prepping the maps before the season starts, I won't have quite as much work to do on a week-by-week basis. I'll also be able to post the previews for all eight opening round games immediately following the draw to again save time and let the community get an early look at the upcoming matchups. Aside from helping to cut down on some of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into AI Survivor, doing the early draw also allows us to implement one of the more popular community features:



Fantasy Civ4 AI Survivor

A number of people previously asked about instituting some kind of fantasy feature in past seasons and we were finally able to test it out for the first time in Season Six before becoming a recurring feature in Seasons Seven and Eight. We'll follow the same setup as before: the leader draw will take place several weeks before the first match of the season. I will then post all of the opening round previews so that everyone has time to study the upcoming games. One week before the start of the season, I plan to hold an auction draft on Livestream with a group of other community members as we bid on which leaders we want to fill out our fantasy AI Survivor teams. I think that this would work with as few as four or five other individuals but my preference would be to get eight volunteers for a league of eight fantasy teams. I entered the fantasy contest (and won it!) in Season Six but my preference remains to have eight participants, as we did for Seasons Seven and Eight, so that I can remain in an impartial moderator role when conducting the auction draft. Kjotleik was the narrow winner of Season Eight and will have a chance to return to defend his title! As I've mentioned in past seasons, there's also a spot reserved for AI Survivor superfan LinkMarioSamus (if he wants it) because everyone wants to see how his internal AI ranking system will play out in the fantasy auction. We'll run through the AI leaders and see who can put the best team together for the rest of the season.

If you're interested in taking part in the auction draft, here's a bit more information:

* Scoring will be based on our standard AI Survivor points system: 5 points for a first place finish, 2 points for a second place finish, and 1 point for each elimination of another leader. The further that the leaders on your team make it, the more chances they'll have to score points.
* Unlike the normal AI Survivor points system, players will also score 2 points for having a "First to Die" leader on their team. This should make the bidding much more interesting!
* There are no "positions" to worry about or a limit to the number of AI leaders that can fit on a team. Whether to have a small handful of favorites or a large group of underdogs is a choice that fantasy participants will have to make.
* To take part in the auction draft, participants will need to be available for 2-3 hours starting around noon (EST) on Friday, 27 March 2026. (It would be a good idea to check one of those world clocks to identify the correct local time.) You will also need to join the Sullla Discord channel and a microphone is strongly preferred for voice communication.
* This is open to anyone interested who can be there for the live draft though I will give first priority to those who haven't had a chance to participate in past years.
* Current signups: TBD

To get a better feel for what this looks like, here's the video recording for the auction draft that took place before the beginning of Season Eight. I also put together a lengthy written analysis looking back at the fantasy results for Season Eight after the full competition was over. I'll keep track of the fantasy teams and we'll see who winds up having the best season once the games start! We will also still be running our normal picking contest each week; see the details below for those who are unfamiliar with the process. The fantasy draft is more intended for the serious fans of AI Survivor (which we absolutely do have!) as opposed to the picking contest which requires minimal time investment.

Watching and Following Season Nine

Games will be Livestreamed on my Twitch channel linked below, with most games starting at noon local time (east coast of North America) on Fridays. I will archive the recordings on Twitch and post them on YouTube for those who have trouble accessing the Twitch videos. I'm also soliciting help once again in putting together the written reports on the games that took place, in the same fashion that we've done for the games from past seasons. Several folks submitted written reports for Season Eight (special shoutout to Euxaps I. Forgott and TheOneAndOnlyAtesh who did most of those writeups) and it was a blast getting to see different spins on how the games played out. It will be a huge help if the community can continue to help shoulder the burden of doing the written reports and allow me to concentrate on streaming and administering the games. Thanks so much for your help!

For those who are new to our event, we run a picking contest for each game that serves as the biggest driver of interest in AI Survivor. We ask contest entrants to pick:

* The winning AI leader
* The second place AI leader
* The "First to Die" AI leader
* The victory type of the winner
* The victory date of the winner
* The total number of wars in the game

The closer that the pick gets to the correct answers, the more points that it scores. We track scores for both individual games and the overall competition so there's always a chance to win an individual round even for those who missed earlier matches. The picking contest system will continue to use a Google Forms submission, which was a massive timesaver in recent seasons as compared to originally compiling forum posts. The current bracket will always be visible online, and I'll do my best to update it here on my website, on my Twitch page, on the Sullla Discord channel, and at Realms Beyond. We'll have a forum discussion thread there, of course, which I'll link on this page once the competition has started. Most of the discussion has migrated over time to the Discord though which has its own dedicated channel for AI Survivor (and which remained highly active even during the long drought between seasons). Scoring remains the same from past years, with points for first place, second place, first to die, victory date/type, and total number of wars. With points for the top two AI spots along with victory date and number of wars, we had scoring drama right up to the end of most every game, even when the winner had long since been determined. Check out the links below for more information on the scoring contest and how to submit your entries.

With all that said, here's a big list of the relevant links that follows below. Enjoy the new season of AI Survivor!

Main Season Nine Webpage

Sullla Twitch Page

Sullla Discord Channel

Civ4 AI Survivor Season Nine: Leader Previews

AI Reference Guide from CivFanatics

Complete AI Survivor Archives

Next Game: Opening Round Game One

Schedule: Season Nine Leader Draw, 13 March 2026 at Noon EST
Schedule: Season Nine Fantasy Auction Draft, 27 March 2026 at Noon EST
Schedule: Season Nine Game One, Starts 03 April 2026 at Noon EST

It's back again - get the popcorn ready. 

Just went Live today! Well, that was a surprise for me who is not up to date with gaming news. Who would have thought.

Bliz is celebrating Diablo 30th anniversary  - Come to think of it, that mean we should be celebrating our 30th too, maybe 29th...
 
D2R - Reign of the Warlock DLC






.

Hello, fellow players. I am modding unit strengths a little and like to get myself a good formula to compare strength of different units.
I have already accounted for all numeric combat values (melee, ranged, defense, etc.). Other abilities are quite difficult to quantify. That is why I am using an arbitrary coefficient to factor them in.

Please help me with below or anything else I missed.

25%  Flying: Unreachable to many ground units. Also beneficial as can move quickly between continents.
25%  Engage flyers: Either flying unit itself or has thrown/breath attack.
15%  Shooting 8 missile: Adjusted for less/more. Attacking flyers and others without retaliation.
25%  Shooting 8 boulder: Adjusted for less/more. Better than missile because not affected by Missile Immunity.
25%  Shooting 8 magical: Adjusted for less/more. Better than missile because not reduced with distance.
10%  Missile Immunity:
25%  Magic Immunity: Better than  Missile Immunity because also protects against spells.
50%  Invisibility: undetectable, untargetable, -10% toHit to conventional weapon attack
50%  Illusionary attack: Disregards target shields completely.
_?_  Illusion Immunity: Cancels Invisibility and Illusionary attack
25%  Armor Piercing: Half of Illusionary attack effect.
05%  First Strike: Useful only against weak multifigure units when there is a chance to reduce their number with attack.
00%  Negate First Strike: Even worse than above as there are not that many First Strike units.
00%  Armsmaster: Nearly useless.
_?_ Caster: Ability to cast spells besides using mana for magical ranged attack. Should be worth something.
5%  specific immunity: Not too useful as there are other ways to damage the unit.
05%  Healer: Healing stack faster plus maybe additional healing spell.
00%  Immolation: Eh.
05%  Large Shield: Extra defense against ranged attacks.
05%  Leadership: Theoretically should be useful, but bonus is too low.
10%  Life Steal: Useful only against low resistance units.
05%  Long Range: Slight ranged toHit improvement.
10%  Non-Corporeal: Defense improvement against unwitted individuals. Can swim.
05%  Pathfinding: Faster movement, less upkeep spent.
10%  Poison/Gaze, etc.: Adjusted based on strength/figures. Good extra damage but affects only low resistance units.
15%  Regeneration: Good against weak units. Not so much against quick kill.

The Ska Bowman (Ska) V0.11

“Ska's were among the few warrior tribes who developed a codex to both live by and to fight by. At the campfires, tales were told in generations of the Ska homeland. Traditionally, the Ska would carry the bow and arrows at all times. But they also trained in brand and skiöld (sword and shield). On their backs, warriors kept the ceremonial weapon set, to bring forth only at the darkest moments, when up close with demon lords or wizards“

--

OVERVIEW

The Ska is either female or male. The rules are assuming you are playing a Warrior, but they can be adapted to playing a Rogue - just flip whatever applies to the bow and the sword and shield respectively (including ranged and short-range spells).

The Ska is a Warrior using a bow and sling spells occasionally. He carries a ceremonial set of swords for when encountering unique enemies only. Two-handed swords come into play once you start to cut down the legion of Knights in the Labyrinth.

Magic is restricted, also on gear. Spells are learned from libraries of unique enemies. Magic and +mana on gear is only for the initiated. Other favoured affixes/suffixes have names associated with the Ska homeland - cold, darkness, beasts of the north (fox, bear, owl, raven, wolf). Some of the strongest affixes/suffixes are unlocked by quests

Unique items and jewels are considered tainted and must be cleansed through blood rituals before they can be identified. Those items become Relics.

The Shrines the Ska warrior comes across in the Labyrinth provide guidance from the gods for different possible paths, mainly allowing magic use, but may also trigger quests. Quest rewards unlock prestige titles, spells or restricted items.

---

CONTENTS
Rules
  The Brand and Skiöld
  Attributes
  Gear
  Magic
  - Spells
  - Books
  - Nemesis Spells
  - Scrolls and Staves
  Shrines
  - Special
  - Paths
  Quests
  - Common
  - Limited
  Titles
  - Master
  - Champion
  - Guard of Hell / Hunter of Demons
  PvP

---

RULES

The Brand and Skiöld
Upon spotting a unique (or super-unique) enemy, the Ska switches to a one-handed sword (and optional shield). Wielding the blade, the Ska will swing the sword against them until the unique and their pack are killed (in any order). The honor code forbids the Ska to raise the ceremonial sword against other, lesser enemies. The sword is typically equipped until 'the room' is cleared and the unique monster is dead (the room being the vicinity where monsters are being pulled into combat).
   Tactical retreat may become necessary. It is possible to pull the unique and the pack away from the initial 'room' and keep fighting with a blade. If the dungeon level is left for another while the unique is alive, the Ska may no longer use the sword until in the vicinity of the same or another unique. If the Ska falls in battle against a unique and/or its pack the Ska may use a spare sword and shield to retrieve the gear.
   Offensive spells can be used in this event, but the unique itself should be killed with the sword, and take a majority of the damage dealt from the sword.
   A cornered Ska may swap to blade and shield to escape certain death. It requires him to be completely surrounded by walls/obstacles and enemies on all sides. This is not a situation to be sought, however, since using a blade against unworthy foes taints the weapon beyond cleansing. It must be discarded afterwards, given away or sold, and never used again by the Ska. Shields are not affected. Magic Swords may be equipped out of combat for the sake of +magic for reading books, once the Ska is allowed (see Magic).

Attributes
When a Ska warrior levels up, points are spent before the next level up. Points into Magic are not allowed until defeating Lazarus for the first time. Exception: The old gods might show signs that the warrior is ready to learn magic (see Shrines, below)

Gear

Starting Gear
Ska will use a club and buckler until finding a bow when facing normal enemies, and a sword against uniques. The club is replaced with a bow as soon as one can be acquired (found, bought or gifted). 

Weapons
With the exception of the starting club and Relics the Ska is restricted to one-handed swords, bows and staves. Once equipped with a bow, only projectile weapons are allowed against common enemies and one-handed swords and optional shields against unique enemies and their pack.
   No other two-handed or one-handed weapon types are allowed, except Relics (see below).
   EXCEPTION: When knight enemies drop magic two-handed swords they may be used, but restrictively (see Quests).
   All white or blue staves may be equipped but usage is restricted. Staves with ranged spells may be used instead of a bow. Melee attacks with staves, however, must be aimed at unique enemies and their pack. Staves are substitutes for bow and blade. The main use is utility spellcasting and ranged spells.
   Short-ranged offensive spells (inferno) are considered melee and allowed only against uniques and their packs. A staff without any ranged spell charges, or out of charges, may only be used instead of a sword. 
  Using staff is a fine grey area within the codex where the swap to sword and shield is neglected for the versatility of one weapon for all situations.

UNIQUES:
  Grandfather is restricted (see Quests).

Armor and Shields
No heavy armor (breast/full plate) is allowed except Relics. Crowns are only for kings and require the title 'Guard of Hell' or 'af Ska' (see Quests).
   Shields are optional, but often preferred, since two-handed swords are restricted (see Unique Items, and Quests).

Unique Items / Relics 
Unique item drops are tainted and must be cleansed (See Blood Ritual). Unique items and jewelry that have been cleansed are called Relics. ...

---

... keep reading in the PDF attached ....

(way too long to post here in full becuase of all the custom edits I have to make to the text, already done in google docs)

Attached Files

  Diablo 1 Variants - The Ska Bowman (Ska) V0.11.pdf (Size: 865.34 KB / Downloads: 4)

https://github.com/tnevolin/mom_unit_mod

Few balanced changes.
The purpose of these changes are mostly to correct imbalanced strategical choices when only one course of action is viable because others just plain suck.

Also inspired in part by these (and similar) discussions.
https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...p?tid=4966
https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...pid=840767

I just tried to play a game of Alpha Centauri but when starting a Map of Planet game, I see the Unity escape pod graphic and I make planetfall, but without any colony pods or scout patrol... On turn end, my game crashes to desktop.

I'm sure I can solve this with a reinstall or something, but I was curious if anybody had seen this before.

I'm playing the GoG version of Alien Crossfire. No fan patches. Flexible starting locations on.

Btw, play more SMAC!

With Enough Patience, A Merc Can Solo The Game

It has been mentioned here that a Frenzy merc has solo’d the game. That Act V bruiser is swinging a pair of Griefs, wearing Fortitude, and even sporting a Cham for the rare moment when Cannot Be Frozen comes in handy.  I don’t doubt it for a second, my Rogue merc manages it even faster with less exotic gear. 

The line “with enough patience, a merc can solo the game” shows up from time to time, usually from someone picturing a fairly equipped or twinked merc, and assuming that experience applies universally. But once we step into variant territory, the relationship between patience, power, and difficulty stops being that simple.

Variant difficulty isn’t defined by how long the merc takes to kill something. It’s defined by the stack of restrictions the player is juggling at the same time. Depending on the ruleset, that might include:
-Paper thin survivability - No Stat points, low life, minus 80 resists all, or outright one‑hit‑death fragility
-Skill restrictions - passive only, no skills, Oskill only, or whatever the variant calls for
-Hard caps on skills and Oskill levels - no synergies, no scaling, no class multipliers
-Item driven combat - fighting through Oskills, charges, and procs instead of class tools
-Merc centric progression - where your job is to stay alive and keep the merc alive. Actively participating.
-Budget merc gear - Reaper’s Toll or some low lvl Unique such as Woestave, Kelpie Snare, Treachery, and little else. Or Fire Engine Red's classic Rogue merc armed with nothing much than a Kuko 
-Constant tactical work - pulling, kiting, recasting, terrain abuse, and AI manipulation

None of this is exotic to RB. It’s simply the normal operating environment for variants.

Why “Patience” Doesn’t Explain Anything. The idea that “a merc can finish the game with enough patience” only makes sense when the merc is strong enough that the player barely matters. That’s fine for standard play, but it has nothing to do with variant difficulty.

To illustrate the point:
If I create a naked sorceress with no stat points but full access to her skills, she can clear the game dramatically faster than many of the variants listed above. Teleport, Static Field, and high level elemental spells trivialize pacing. And, even without a merc. She requires less patience than any of the variants above.

But would we call her a harder challenge simply because she’s faster? Of course not. And that's why I have never made such a nood.

Speed has never been the metric. Her run is easier because she has power, not because she is more skillful or has less patience.

The other variants are harder because they have restrictions, not because they are slow. Patience is a side effect of the rule set, not a measure of mastery.

It is about Execution Over Endurance. A merc taking longer to kill Baal doesn’t say anything about the player’s skill. What it does say is the player is:
- Staying alive under harsh restrictions
- Keeping the merc alive with limited tools
- Navigating fights with no margin for error
- Compensating for every weakness the rule set imposes

The slower kill is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of higher difficulty.


How’s that for scratching the itch to return to some D2 gaming I had to think this through, because I’m going to start by twinking up my most "useless" toon, Jeremiah the Leaping Warder, to address the whole "with enough patience, a merc can finish the game" idea by seeing if I can make it require a little less patience. 

Jeremiah is the nekkid Baba who use Leap (not LA) and Grim Ward together with a Holy Freeze merc using a Reaper's Toll, the guy who can disable an entire level of monsters to a frozen fleeing state. Grim Ward alone is already slow by ~70%
 
With a stash of useless high runes staring at me, begging to be wasted, I’m going to make a rather useless freeze-stick so he can replace the HF merc and exploit other options. That means I’ll be dressing up Jeremiah as well, though he’ll stay passive with the same skill set


The first test will be Jeremiah running Beast (Fanaticism) in one hand and Doom (Holy Freeze) in the other…




PS: If you’re curious which merc to use or how best to twink one up, I’d appreciate any suggestions  

PS2: Oh yeah he might as well go for max BO (I think I can get to lvl 48 so far) just because I hate to lose a BO showdown, my BO scream is going to quiet all Barbs  

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Although the game was neglected in favor of it's korean-style cash shop mmo / wowclone sequel for most of the past thirteen years, we got new things every fifth anniversary. 
In 2015 the fancy but irrelevant decade weapons that replaced the inscription slot with 20% damage during festival events.

Then in 2020 we got the anniversary weapons, atypical weapons for each profession (paragon daggers, warrior spear, ranger sword, necromancer scythe, monk hammer), as well as new pve-only anniversary elite skills that either opened up new builds (Seven Weapons Stance, Together as One), were largely irrelevant (Time Ward, Vow of Revolution), complete garbage (Over the Limit), or just straight up broke the game (Heroic Refrain, Soul Taker).

Now in the 2025 anniversary the two developers (one who usually maintains GW1, and another who formerly worked on it but had to be pulled off another project) cooked up some new technology, allowing certain new weapon suffixes in PvE to give an unmodifiable primary attribute of 4-5, even if for a completely different primary profession. For example, a weapon of the monk gives 4-5 (depending on the affix roll) divine favor even to a necromancer. Or, a weapon of the necromancer gives the best passive energy management to any other primary profession.

All this is fairly straightforward maintenance mode "afterlife" for an online game, but last year's anniversary hit a lot harder than arenanet anticipated, prompting them to strike a deal with a team of former GW1 developers to start working on reforged mode, which came out last december, bringing UI improvements, Steam integration, and controller support at first (I also got an account for free  ), then the team dropped reforged mode which is an alternative containing some experiments (scaling henchmen, different mobs in pre-searing), and hardcore mode, that gives all titles achieved before your first death a badge.

I did not end up playing either mode so far, but I wonder what they'll come up with next.