Wow, it's been probably a year or more since I actually logged into an MP game of Civ. 

Here's a picture of Rob Zombie. Rest below.

Hey All,

I haven't been able to find any information but: does any one have info on installing kyrub's patch on the Mac/GoG version of the game? Can you point me to:

1. The patch
2. The install path for GoG?
3. If there's any difference between Mac/windows installs?

I decided to make Summon Demon an exception to the generic "overland cost = 5x combat cost" rule because no matter how I look at it, it's not worth 205 when you can get a death knight for only twice as much (or demon lord for three times), especially not as a very rare.

So I wonder, which of these cost pairs are more appropriate?

(combat/overland)
41/82
41/123
45/90
45/135
50/100
50/150
other?

A demon is a pretty good in-combat summon because it can fly, has weapon and missile immunity, so it can counter quite a lot of different things, as well as having a 50-50 chance of giving you back 40 of its cost as casting skill, or being able to cause instant death and drain health.
However, aside form the abilities, it's a fairly weak creature - only marginally more powerful than a fire elemental (+2 melee, +1 hit, +2 HP, +3 resistance), so as an overland summon its main role is not those, but to extend the wizard's casting ability by 40 and number of spells the first turn by one for each demon. Which is certainly useful but not really worth the 5x cost, especially as combat skill is generally less valuable than overland skill - it effectively acts as a better, flying magician.
Until there are enough replies for a final decision, I'm going to use 41/123 as the placeholder in the new code.

PS : the overland cost should be 2, 3 or 4 times the combat cost, as there is no space for adding fractions.

In the mod, each unit eats 0.5 food, so each food maintains two units.

However, if you are low on food, you only lose one unit for each missing food - which is inconsistent with the actual cost.

Should I fix this to lose two units for each missing food? (losing units this way is quite annoying so I didn't bother so far.)

I have been playing some personal games to try to improve my skills and put in practice some of the concepts learned from the recent OSGs. (Thanks to everyone for all the helpful advice and information -- these games have been great learning opportunities! )

This afternoon I got stomped by a runaway AI. Large galaxy, 5 opponents, playing as the Meklar. Started in the southeast quadrant, OK but not great starting region with only 1 world in initial range (a decent Steppe 70) but three more habitable planets within range 5, plus three barren worlds nearby. Of course, the Meklar are poor in planetology, so no Controlled Barren. Slow start, needing range 5 or better planetology tech (which goes so slowly as the machines).

What I did not know until later was that three of the AIs were struggling even worse than I was with expansion. Only two AIs really managed to grow: the Darloks, who were busy expanding right into my face and grabbed those barren worlds...and the humans, who ended up with free run of half the galaxy. I got the early warning that the humans were growing fast, but it was GNN announcing they had hit 18 systems (right as I was colonizing my 6th world ) that really made it clear that this game was not going to end well.

I tried to stick things out for the learning opportunities, and being the Meklar meant I had enough production to not fall TOO horribly behind (although I was behind, and by quite a lot). Poor planteology continued to be brutal -- terraforming tech? What's that? Never heard of it...nothing until +60. So all my Meklar bonus and IRC4 did was keep me sort of even (on a per planet basis) with the much larger terraformed worlds of my rivals. But with the humans having 3 times as many worlds...well, there was not much hope. Their population soared, and despite my best efforts to grow my worlds (I did have Atmospheric and Advanced Soil) it ended with a council loss in 2475.

I thought about trying something military to gain tech and worlds, but my neighbors were the Darloks and Humans who were in alliance. I did not have the tech or fleet strength to crack their defenses. Spying against them was also pretty fruitless, with the Darlok racial bonus and the human's ever-increasing tech lead.

I eventually (about 2440) finally made contact with the Alkari, Bulrathi, and Psilons who were in the far northwest after I teched to range 10 and built a long range colony ship to grab a toxic planet in the southwest corner to extend my range. Was able to get Terraforming+20 from the Psilons in trade (poor brains only had 2 worlds), but the humans were so far ahead by that point that it was not nearly enough. Council defeat followed shortly afterwards.

What is the worst runaway AI you have ever faced? Were you able to make a comeback? Share your stories of overcoming tremendous odds...or at least share the misery of getting stomped by an out of control AI.

I'm looking at designing ships for OSG-29. Without any details, I've run into a couple things that confuse me:

Do missiles benefit from Battle Computers on the ships that launch them? I read descriptions that say things like 'guided by a +1 level computer' and I'm not sure what the +1 is comparing to.

What does ship maneuver speed actually do? Does it just allow tactical movement speed?

Download CasterEXP9.zip from the usual location.

Quote:-New AI disjunction targeting procedure - priority is now different for each treaty status with the target.
-New AI overland spellcasting procedure
-Massive rebalancing of summon spell costs
-Banished wizards can now cast spells in combat, but at a 4x range penalty
-Banished wizards now receive power income as normal, but Spell of Return costs 1000 to cast.
-AI wizards can now do diplomacy with each other even while the human player is banished.
-AI intercontinental stacks will consider ranged enemy units as though they had twice as much ranged attack power, to simulate the advantage of the defender being able to shoot first. This should cut down on attacks where 1-2 lone flying unit attacks a bunch of archers and never gets a turn somewhat.
-Implemented the same for ground stacks as well.
-Suppress Magic now has a 100% success rate at 500 MP instead of 1000 MP.
-Nature's wrath now triggers on spells costing 301 or more MP instead of 333 or more.
-The AI now has a mechanism to build an intercontinental doomstack, using their best 9 units. (excluding the capital)

The AI is bad at this, we all know that.
If rare+ creatures are more accessible and relevant, the AI has to improve their ability to use them.

I think there are several large problems here (aside from using the wrong kind of unit which I can't do much about):

-These creatures are helpless while the wizard is banished - without spell support they are no better than a random node garrison. This will be fixed by changing banishment rules.

-They aren't careful at their attacks and get killed too easily - like entering a city full of ranged units alone and getting killed before even getting a turn. If I can do that, changing stack strength calculation to count only the defender's ranged power at double weight can help this. If invisible units were worth double on the attacker's side, even better (as those counter it). This should at least prevent the AI from throwing away these valuable units without a real fight.

-They aren't used in large enough stacks to matter. At the new reduced cost, the AI will now have enough units to be able to build doomstacks from them in theory - but in practice, that means we need a new procedure that makes them do that. I'm considering to make the procedure pick the 9 best idle (including nonfortress garrisons) intercontinental units, and pull them all towards the same spot unless at least 6 of them are already together - but I don't know where to insert this step. Before attack targeting means units will prioritize this even if they could attack an adjacent unguarded city or other target. After attack targeting means, well, it means it just plain does not work because the units are already taken by the "send to main action continent" procedure which affects all idle units. There is no place in-between, as they are done per-continent, and we need this to be done regardless of continents. Unless...I suppose there is a workaround. If the new procedure considers units heading to the main action continent's focus point idle units then it'll work. In theory it's also possible to then select the next 9 best units and build another stack and keep going until there are no more units - but this is most likely excessive and drains the garrisons of cities completely. Building one stack at a time should be enough.

I propose these new costs for summoning spells (see discussion in the Chaos thread) :

War Bears 55
Nagas 80
Sprites 80
Ghouls 80
Skeletons 25
Guardian Spirit 60
Magic Spirit 30
Hell Hounds 40

Giant Spiders 90
Unicorns 200
Fire Giant 110
Great Lizard 200
Gargoyles 100
Chimera 180
Night Stalker 190
Shadow Demons 175
Cockatrices 150
Lycanthropy 105

Efreet 333
Angel 310
Wraiths 350
Doom Bat 320
Chaos Spawn 303
Stone Giant 275
Gorgons 325
Storm Giant 330

Djinn 375
Sky Drake 500
Archangel 600
Hydra 400
Great Drake 450
Death Knights 360
Demon Lord 666
Summon Demon 41/205 Can't reduce due to combat cost, unless we flag it “equal cost” which is too cheap?
Behemoth 400
Colossus 450
Great Wyrm 500

Resurrection 325
Summon Hero 250
Summon Champion 600
Item ???
Artifact ???
Floating Island 50

Nature's Wrath Trigger 301 or higher

Aside from what has already been discussed, one problem I see with this is, as it makes summons much more relevant, not getting a high rarity summoning spell (especially for the AI) might be too much to deal with.

I have had little time to play lately. I've been focusing on Gnolls with the following setup:
4x Life (Heavenly Light, Heroism, Endurance)
2x Death (Wraithform)
1x Chaos
1x Nature
Omniscient 
Cult Leader 
Spellweaver

The big 3 for power works extremely well. Each city I acquire runs at an obscene profit, I'm currently at 200 gold income and 200 mana in year 1404.

The strategy is all about picking up neutral cities before the AI does, with luck and skill you can reliably get 5-6 neutrals with just 2 buffed wolf riders very early on. That will give you the economy to push settlers everywhere.

Don't neglect defenses, but don't overdo them either. With Heavenly Light and high casting skill you'll be able to do well with mediocre troops against most imaging parties.

Once you've consolidated your territory and your economy, mass spam a mixture of strong units (stick with wolf riders, don't go for jackal riders yet) and go after the weakest AI. Pick off his weakest cities one at a time, unless an easy fortress strike is available. 

Your economy and power base will improve drastically as you expand, shuffle through common spells and see if you get something great to cast. If not,  buffing more units with common spells is an excellent use of your mana. I got Raise Volcano and Change Terrain in my current game, I'm tempted to see if I can effectively halt strong opponents with Volcanoes. Each will be +3 power, not a bad way to continue expanding my power base.

Gnolls are a hospitable race with fairly profitable cities, so you should have a lot of flexibility in the mid game. I currently have lizardmen, nomads, orcs and Halflings. I think I'll incorporate horsebowmen in my wolf rider stacks as I need something to counter sprites, I can put Resist Elements on them. Lizard shamans might be worth it, but they would reduce me to speed 3. If I go for slow stacks I may as well use slingers instead of horsebowmen.

This strategy is incredibly potent and reliable, and plays much like the now obsolete sprite strategy: Use early wins to boost your economy and power, then expand and dominate. It's much better than sprites for taking neutral cities, any targets without an alchemists guild rolls over and dies against Wraithform. Wraithform is less useful against the AI and you should get boats for transportation instead, but it works well as a situational combat spell. Building super stacks by 1506 is easy, and then you steamroll everybody.