Guild wars has been a game on maintenance mode for the past five years. With the september 2012 update and the release of GW2, ArenaNet pulled the proverbial plug from the update team, and all upcoming balance updates were put on indefinite hold. This is sad since the game's balance is far from finished, with professions like the necromancer barely seeing the light of day aside from using ritualist healing skills fueled by their soul reaping primary attribute, or the paragon who is all-but-obsolete thanks to Soul Twisting ritualist abundance and the ease with which dagger spammers can spam save yourselves, or how mediocre the warrior is compared to the assassin and the dervish. Or any damage casters compared to mesmers.

In these five years, the most effective tactics (Mesmer damage, Dagger spam, ST rit, N/Rt healers) have been discovered, and nowadays not only there are very few builds in the "meta", but even the different ones look the same: Aside from 1-2 optional skills, there is exactly one Illusion magic bar, one domination magic bar, one dagger spam bar, one ST, SoS, or SoGM bar, etc. I think it goes without saying that this leads to a very same-y gameplay, and one that isn't much fun in a game that's got hundreds of skills for a reason. Furthermore, most tactics involve exploiting the AI in some fashion, or exploiting game balance loopholes that were left in with the unfinished state of the game. Be it through the way AI doesn't react to Mistrust and Panic, or how they attack themselves to death with Ineptitude, or how dagger spam carries enough +damage effects from other buffs AND generates so much adrenaline that makes it superior to every other martial weapon, or even every other dagger skill combo.

In light of this, I propose the variant known as the Honorable Code.

There is one rule: Don't exploit the game.

To clarify:
Don't exploit the skill imbalances.
Don't exploit the AI with your build.

There. Now that the game breaking stuff is off the platter, you'll find that you have a LOT more options in tackling the game's challenges.

List of exploits, or forbidden tactics:
-Dagger spam: Using Jagged Strike, Fox Fangs, Wild Strike, and Death Blossom in your build. You can have only ONE of these. Two or more (ex: Jagged-Fox, Jagged-DB, Fox-DB) are exploitative and are forbidden.
-Mesmer Power: The following mesmer skills are banned from the Honorable Code: Energy Surge, Mistrust, Panic, Visions of Regret, Empathy, Wandering Eye, and Ineptitude.
-PvE skills: Your bar may not include any PvE only skills. Exceptions may be made for certain classes (E.g. Warriors may be allowed to use Whirlwind attack OR I am Unstoppable, while Necromancers can make good use of Necrosis.) to allow ONE pve skill from a limited set for that class.
-SoS, SoGM, Soul Twisting: these skills are expressly forbidden from the Honorable Code.
-Hundred Blades and Vow of Strength are forbidden in any teams that use Mark of Pain or Barbs.
-Splinter Weapon is expressly forbidden above Channeling Magic of 9 or higher, after rune bonuses have been applied.
-Vow of Silence, Shadow Form and Spell Breaker are dishonorable, and as such forbidden.

Other restrictions:
-Elementalists with Ether Renewal may not include any other enchantments on their skill bar.

Build
Gnolls
2x Life (Holy Armor)
2x Death (Cloak of Fear)
1x Chaos
3x Nature (Resist Elements, Water Walking)
Warlord
Tactician
Omniscient

Reasoning
This build is exceptionally good at taking neutral cities early on. Wolf Riders with Water Walking can explore the entire map in no time, and they're capable of taking out many neutral cities unaided. To complement them, I've chosen cheap spells:
Cloak of Fear renders many enemy units completely useless. I've taken out a full complement of wolf riders and gnoll halberdiers with just 2 wolf riders enchanted with Holy Armor and Cloak of Fear. They had 5 resistance and did 80% less damage to me, that's crazy.
Holy Armor supplements Cloak of Fear nicely. It's a very cheap spell with no upkeep, taking my early wolf riders to an impressive 6 defense.
Resist Elements counters enemy shamans perfectly. Without this, 4-5 shamans are often able to take out a unit of wolf riders (especially those pesky Halfling shamans).
Water Walking is crucial for early exploration and conquest. I much prefer this over Earth Lore now, at least when I'm playing gnolls.
Gnolls are amazing out the gate. Wolf Riders are incredibly powerful for their cost and low building requirements, letting me field a strong force much earlier than all other races. Barbarian cavalry are also very decent, but are much more fragile and lack scouting and pathfinding. Other than wolf riders, gnolls are decent. I have access to all important mid-game buildings, and I can build Amp Towers for late game power. Basic gnoll units are also decent, gnoll spearmen are actually able to do damage. With Warlord and Tactician, they're 5/2 units out the gate.

Strategy
I'll be pushing heavily for neutral cities. With my retorts and spells, wolf riders can take out any neutral city with little trouble. I'm counting on this to give me a large economic edge early on, as well as access to additional races. Nomads and barbarians are a big scoop, giving me access to complementary 5 movers. One big downside of gnoll riders is that they can't take out sprites, horsebowmen and barbarian cavalry help with that.

Along with taking neutral cities I'll also be exploring massively. I plan on getting 4 wolf riders before moving on to other things, probably spearmen for unrest control. After taking out a handful of neutral cities I need to pick an AI early on to target for easy cities. This is where it gets tricky. Taking the cities is trivial, keeping them will tie up my forces. If I save one unit of wolf riders for each conquered city, I'll quickly run low and expose myself to sprite attacks. I will try to do so anyway, though. A handful of size 1 cities with sawmills will help tremendously. The main threat at this point is Confusion. All other common spells won't take me out, even Black Sleep can be survived if the enemy doesn't have ranged units.

I'll build a single gnoll settler to found a good production city: At least 50% production bonus, iron or coal, maybe mithril. I'll use my conquered neutral cities to settle resource sites, halflings are obviously best for this. I'll rush builder's halls in high pop sites, sawmills in high production sites.

I don't really have much of a mid-game strategy, other than what Nelphine mentioned. I'll be going for unit spam to overwhelm the AIs early on, hoping to finish off the first AI after stealing 4-5 cities and then quickly moving on to number 2. I've been doing a lot of early game practice lately, haven't really played that much to mid-game and beyond. This challenge should prove interesting! I fully expect to win all 3, but my confidence may turn out to be misplaced. I don't think I've even played with the latest build yet, these games will be played with it.

I really wanted to finish this one, but my schedule really didn't want me to, and it won. I'll try to post a report (and finish the game) as soon as I can, but in the meantime my partial game only (yet) qualified for two awards:

Ford Prefect: 2441
Slartibartfasst: 2364

More later....

My early game involved researching Range 4 and quickly settling the nearby habitable planets.  The Darloks got the "6 star systems" announcement in 2342.

I met the Meklars in 2351 when they settled Tao, the Ultra Poor world to my northeast.  They also had a strong 6 star system opening.  Because I expected poor relations and conflict with the rest of galaxy, I buddied up to the Meklars with a large trade agreement; 15 years later we signed a non-aggression pact.  I hoped to use them as a partner against my enemies, good for wartime distraction and a vote bloc in my favor.



In the period from 2357 to 2366 I met the Darloks and also the Sakkras, who pulled the old "let's declare war two turns after meeting you" maneuver.  I was getting concerned with the diplomatic situation and what I assumed was an imminent first Council meeting.

Sure enough, in 2370 the Meklars broke our non-agression pact, and the interturn continued to the Council with the Darloks and myself as the nominees.  The voting went like this:

Darloks voted for themselves - 5
Sakkra voted against me because of war - 2
Alkari were allied with the Darloks - 3
Meklar were allied with the Darloks - 4
Klackons abstained - 2



I had 5 votes, but it was 14/21 in favor of the Darloks.  What a bummer.  I hadn't met the Alkari or Klackons so I had no opportunity for diplomatic influence with them.  The Sakkra and Meklar votes were locked in with war and alliance, respectively.  And of course the Darloks voted for themselves.

In retrospect I could possibly have created a different Council result by persuading the Darloks or Meklars to break an alliance or declare war, and I should have at least tried that in the 2366-2370 period.  But I didn't, and frankly it was unlikely to happen anyway.  Too bad, I was excited for this game.

Here's my situation at the end, in 2370:











Thanks to thrawn and RefSteel for getting this going!

*Pant pant pant*
Did I make it?  I spent all month trying to find a chance to play, and even gave up hope, and then on closing day I carried out a marathon game, foregoing sleep and sanity to get a result to submit before the close.  Let me apologize up front and say that I don't have a report OR any screenshots to post right now, and I didn't even take notes while I was playing, so I will have to cudgel my brain to remember as much as I can.  I haven't even finished the game.  I conquered Orion and came straight here to post.  So here we go:

I defeated the Guardian TWICE, in 2530 and 2531.  How you ask? By exploiting the bug that if a space monster happens to attack Orion it triggers a battle with the Guardian instead.  This required some planning because although the Space Crystal took almost 30 turns to cross the galaxy and approach Orion I couldn't be sure where it was going until fairly late.  I initially planned to divert my anti-Guardian fleet to deal with the Space Crystal before tackling Orion but it kept bypassing all of my planets.  Then when I was sure that it was actually going toward Magrathea and I knew that I could exploit the bug I had to plan my fleet to be able to survive two encounters with the thing.  This made the battle even more exciting as I had to minimize attrition which meant dodging as many Scatter Pack X shots as possible.  I wound up with three roughly identical stacks of ~1500 speed 4 Megabolt fighters which I used to dance around as many missiles as possible while whittling down the monster's 10,000 health.  I doubt that I could have fought it a third time as two of my stacks took a volley (one in each battle) with the result that I lost more than half of each stack hit.  It got dicey at the end.  My overall tech was very low in this game, although I was developing some late game toys toward the end.  It didn't help that my stacks had BC2, 3 and 5 respectively as I was able to miniaturize while building up for the attack.

Lets see, my overall game:
I ran a complete Farmer's Gambit at the start and got a ridiculous number of worlds.  I hit every single Colonization notice and had 13 planets after researching Controlled Dead fairly early on.  Oh and I terraformed a Tundra world in 2387.  I had the entire string of Rich/Ultra Rich worlds around our start after being the first to Controlled Radiated, but in spite of this the game felt very slow to me.  Maybe its because I tend to play the Klackons for fun because I love how fast they play, but I was still fielding NPG fighters up to around 2500 or so.  Then I was finally able to fit Megabolt Cannons on a small hull and from there I built up to attack the Guardian.  I originally planned to build a stack of 32000 fighters for style (the most it is possible to build of a single ship design) but exhaustion and lack of focus killed that plan.  I struggled to tech early as I basically built nothing but Colony Ships from the time I maxed Fierras until roughly 2400.  I didn't bother to research Nuclear Engines so it took a long time to grab all of those worlds.  I was frankly amazed that I was able to grab as many as I did.
The early game was very quiet.  I didn't see a single enemy ship until roughly 2350, and by luck I voted for the Darloks when the Council met in 2374 and again in 2375 for MAJOR brownie points.  They were the leaders for the early game until the Meklar got their 8 or 10 planets up and running and blew past them into the lead.  I had a NAP with the 'Loks for roughly 100 years, and we left each other alone for the entire middle of the game which allowed me to focus on running my massive empire.  Because I played all night in one sitting I definitely didn't pay as much attention as I should have with the result that my empire ran very inefficiently at times.  Sullla would not have been happy with me.
Still I was able to make opportunistic attacks against various enemies, and I stole some key techs.  The Sakkra never got beyond four worlds and were easy pickings for some really strong terraforming and cleanup techs.  The Alkari were the same; I got two worlds, the Meklar poached a third while I was organizing an invasion, and I left them on their homeworld after I got all of their techs.  I cracked three or four Meklar worlds and cleaned up a lot of their advanced toys, and when the Darloks finally broke our NAP I took all but three of their worlds and cleaned them out.  They had RIDICULOUS Computer techs but not a whole lot else.  They had IRC6 which I really wanted as I couldn't get anything better than IRC4, but it took capturing ALL of their technologies to finally land it.
I had the Super Nova event hit a brand new size 2 colony, and apparently it rolled 0RP to fix as the event resolved itself the following turn with no research spending at all.  I wasn't worried about it as I had colonists en route and I wanted to see what the news droid would say about how many RPs I needed if I ignored it for a while only to see it resolve.  I never got the Assassination event and one of my Toxic planets became Poor soon after I colonized it which didn't hurt very much.  The Meklar got the Rich event which was the only Rich planet in the galaxy I didn't control by the time I took Orion.  The Plague event hit a mature Rich colony and took a while to resolve so that hurt, but could have been worse.
As of 2531 I control 25 planets (not including Orion) and lead in Total Power by a very large margin.  This game would have been MUCH harder if I had experienced more pressure early from the AI but everyone seemed to expand toward the NE and left me largely alone.  And when wars were declared lack of range seemed to limit their scope so that my missile bases could keep me safe.
Thats about all I can think of.  I'm really sorry I don't have pictures and a more detailed report, but I just can't manage to find the time right now.  Maybe I'll be able to come back and grab some from my saves at a later date (I'll definitely save the records from this one, it was quite a fun game to play) but I can't promise anything right now.
Cheers!

Edit: If you want to see if you too can defeat the guardian twice in a row using my motley collection of ships (or look around my empire) I'm attaching the 2529 save file.  Just move the stacks from Trax (heh) to Orion.  The Space Crystal will arrive in two turns, so don't dawdle!

Attached Files

  RBO-42 TWO GUARDIANS.GAM (Size: 57.65 KB / Downloads: 1)

So...I haven't won any impossible practice game with the Mrrshans yet, but I don't know if I'll get around to play much on the next weekend, so it's about time I got started with Imperium 42. I expect to get stomped pretty quickly. Let's see how it goes.

Attached Files

  IMP42_FINAL_SAVE.GAM (Size: 57.65 KB / Downloads: 0)

By way of introduction, I have a hard time documenting my games. Popping back and forth between the game and notepad really kills the immersion, and thereby the fun, of the game (not to mention my new computer has the function keys laid out differently and I kept hitting Ctrl-F9 and crashing the game instead of Ctrl-F10 to release the mouse) . Notes on paper are even worse. This time, I went with a slew of screenshots, but probably not as many as I needed.

I expanded without AI contact until I met the Darloks and Klackons in quick succession:



In 2371, the Newsdroid reported that I was #1 in population, which is rare enough that I deemed it worth a screenshot:



State of the known universe in 2400:













Tech steal in 2401:



I stole a *lot* of techs, using my usual algorithm of stealing computer tech if available and then trying to choose what I needed. This is the only one I where took a screenshot, though.

Peace in our time:



The first election came in 2428, allowing me to gain some brownie points with the Vogons:



I had to abstain in 2450 and 2475, but didn't have to worry much.





By 2475, I had researched Controlled Radiated and colonized the Rich and Ultra Rich planets I'd been coveting.



State of the universe in 2500:























You can see that I'm about to lose Ryoun (the Steppe world due north of the homeworld) to the Sakkra. They had no problem taking out my missile bases, my fleet couldn't contest them, and they had better ground attack tech.

In my usual style, I kind of twiddled my thumbs and stole techs for 50 turns.







The Alkaris and Darloks both had bad shields and missiles, so I invaded two of each of their worlds, greatly increasing my population and giving me a nice boost in tech.



With Subspace Teleporters in hand, I was ready to go after the Guardian in 2477:







Game over. Endgame state of the universe:

Challenge format
1) Three games are played with mostly the same build (small tweaks allowed between games at your own discretion), you pick your build freely and modify the save with the wizcopy tool and alter your race with whatever tool you prefer
2) For each game, create a new thread and state your overall strategy with as many words as you care for (you may tweak your overall strategy between games)
3) Each 12 turns, report the following:

• Overland map
  
• F4 and F5 screens
  
• Magic screen
  
• City screen
  
• Gold income
  
• List of military buildings you own
  
• List of spells researched
  
• Brief summary of units you own
  

• Land: Huge / Large / Fair land
  
• Magic: Good / High / Max
  
• Minerals: Rich / Fair / Poor
  
• Climate: Wet / Fair / Dry
  

Attached Files

  SAVE1.zip (Size: 23.07 KB / Downloads: 1)
  SAVE2.zip (Size: 23.92 KB / Downloads: 1)
  SAVE3.zip (Size: 23.9 KB / Downloads: 1)

My report is posted on my website at the following address: http://www.sullla.com/MOO/imperium42-1.html

Enjoy.