Just going to go ahead and start this. Whilst dedlurking Archduke, I developed a strong urge to see my mistakes played out on the map. Civ 6, for all its interface problems, and lies, and hidden mechanics continues to be a ton of fun for multiplayer. Who would want to play a PBEM in a similar set-up with PBEM2, but perhaps an easier turn-pace? I could start around 4th June.

This is Team B's playthrough of our latest Orion Succession Game, OSG-29! If you'd like to sign up but your name's not on the roster, let us know in the SG planning thread!

Settings:

Difficulty: Impossible
Opponents: 5
Galaxy size: Medium
Race: Humans
Patch: 1.40m
Variant Rule: We may never use the "Audience" button to conduct diplomacy! (It's okay to agree to deals proposed by the AIs themselves; we just can't initiate our own diplomacy.) Moreover, we may never vote for an AI race at the High Council. It's up to the aliens to draw our charming diplomats of their shells; we won't initiate any diplomatic action with them!

Roster: (Order to be determined by first to "got it" the first time through the order.)

thrawn - (Just Played)
RefSteel - (Waiting so we can split up our vets)
RFS-81 - (UP if you're first to post a "Got it!")
shallow_thought - (UP if you're first to post a "Got it!")
TheArchduke - (UP if you're first to post a "Got it!")

If you're on the roster, please sign in here to confirm!

The starting save, as posted in the planning thread.

This is Team A's playthrough of our latest Orion Succession Game, OSG-29! If you'd like to sign up but your name's not on the roster, let us know in the SG planning thread!

Settings:

Difficulty: Impossible
Opponents: 5
Galaxy size: Medium
Race: Humans
Patch: 1.40m
Variant Rule: We may never use the "Audience" button to conduct diplomacy! (It's okay to agree to deals proposed by the AIs themselves; we just can't initiate our own diplomacy.) Moreover, we may never vote for an AI race at the High Council. It's up to the aliens to draw our charming diplomats of their shells; we won't initiate any diplomatic action with them!

Roster: (Order to be determined by first to "got it" the first time through the order.)

DaveV
Haphazard
Ianus
Mardoc
Sullla

Please sign in here to confirm!

Haphazard has posted the starting save, but I believe he's also played the first 20 turns, and will post a report with the new save below!

I want to play an older game which requires win 98/2000 .I instaled some box(virtula box from oracle) , instaled 98 on it but it has avery abd rezolution and more then that some roros apeared is ther any solution for me?

Edit: current build:
4 life, warlord, alchemy, spellweaver, astrologer, tactician, specialist
Also note I find myself using cavalry against lairs/nodes more, and I don't worry about killing AI quite as fast. Getting amazing army strength virtually guarantees you control war declarations, so you can build until you have a stack capable of killing the next AI.

Original post: My current game is impossible.

4 opponents, huge land size, max power, fair minerals, fair climate. I'd probably do better with poor minerals.

4 life (endurance + very rares, but I'd consider switching to 2 life + channeler. However just cause and heroism are very strong off the bat so I'm not sure, and 7% gold is great later on. The main thing channeler would let me do is.. More skill and research, but less books means I wouldn't need as much of either.)
4 death (wraithform!!! Skeletons for unrest because food is a huge issue. And very rares because I love me some demon lords. And production production production. So good. I wish I could get 2 more death books.)

Warlord (because war college + warlord = +1 HP on all units.)
Alchemy (magic weapons for your first stack, super super super important, and alchemy later in the game is practically mandatory. I spent years with less than 200 mana and gold combined, so I would constantly switch to whichever I needed.)
Omniscient: production for that first stack is crucial. Helps later on, and extra gold from life is always good.

Barbarian.
Game plan: foresters guild for food, then stables, then 9 cavalry. Then marketplace -> granary -> farmers market -> ship wright -> ship yard -> maritime guild -> warship (endurance and wraithform) -> barracks -> war college -> fighters guild -> bezerkers forever more (with occasional extra warships).
The plan is to defeat the first AI you meet, before you even start building bezerkers. You should pick up some nodes and lairs on the way. You probably need to replace cavalry a few times, but as long as you defeat the first AI, cavalry did their job. You'll get extra cities too, but *shrug* they take forever to get online.

The second AI is far more helpful. Still can't stop 8 elite magic weapon bezerkers, but he has some nicely developed cities.

Third AI is causing problems by now (1404-1406) so you mess around with them until you get your second stack of bezerkers, which they can't beat. Probably can't defeat them for a long while though, they simply expand too fast. I defeated the third AI in 1408 or early 1409. 

The fourth AI... Will depend on how the game went. Do whatever you need. You should have most of arcanus under your control, although, you may have let the fourth AI get a foothold. Try to get cities on myrror, if you can, just one on his main continent. That way he's got something to focus on while you clean up arcanus. I used a planar travel hero super early to take some neutral cities, and get started on building adamantium beastman buffed halberdiers. That let me have a few nodes on myrror as the war broke out against the myrran AI. Myrran nodes are amazing.

I banished the fourth AI, for the first time, in 1410. At the time, he probably had a little over a thousand power production, efreets, other rares - fire storm was used against me at least once per turn starting in the middle of the war with the third AI (around 1407). By the time he was banished I already had life force cast, and during the first banish, I finished crusade. I'm researching demon lord and eternal night. With life force, and including city research, I'm up to about 2200 power production. I found crusade in treasure, and I think I found inspirations.

Guardian seems to be disliked as a purely defensive ability that costs 2 full picks, so I'm considering to reduce the cost to 1 pick.
There is no guarantee I will be able to do it (requires hacking magic.exe to allow 2 retort default wizards, otherwise there aren't enough 2 pick retorts in the game for example) but I'd like to know if there is demand for this change in the first place, so please vote.

Since Chaos needs testing, I'm playing an extreme chaos game. Please add your own games in here as well.

I choose lizardmen, warlord, tactician and specialist. I choose fire elemental and hell hounds on purpose and the other spells at random.

Started of in a good position. 21 population spot. two neutral barbarian towns nearby. I pushed for market and farmer's market first to get population growth. I started exploring with my sword and spearmen and created a magic spirit as well to scout. I dropped research to 0 and focused on getting skill to 18 (for casting fire elemental. I took both, but lost my initial spearman and swordsmen to the largest city. Barbarian cavalry is strong enough to harm fire elementals. The town's shamans put all their effort into healing the cavalry, but Tactician saved the day.

I meet my first opponent. Satori send a settler onto my island. I killed it risking early war. And it became early war... Turns out she's lizardmen as well and send three swordsmen and 1 sprites my way. Fire elemental and two barbarian swordsmen held up against both. Somehow she snuck in a settler and made an outpost next to a chaos node. I summoned a hell hound to patrol next to it untill it grew. The single swordsman died. I got a free city.
 
I created 2 lizard settlers and off to colonise. I meet vanilla. Two chaos and 8 nature. I get to trade shatter and warp creature in exchange for fire bolt and summoning circle. Not the best of trades but hopefully enough to maintain peace. And to quickly summon creatures in undefended cities

About 10 turns later. I met Flandre. Full chaos and 1 life. Ruthless perfectionist. First I thought I lost the game at that point. A full trireme came to my shore. I was able to create a wizard pact. This saved my game. A strong opponent turned into an ally.

The fire bolt I traded earlier came in handy against visiting water walking, war bears with resist magic. Enough to kill one figure and the two swordsmen finished it off. Working hard on reinforcing my cities with magic weapon javelineers. Research still at 2 from a single library. Skill and mana being pushed for expansion. Chaos is about taking risks early on. I could have lost a city already.

And one turn later. Vanilla has allied with satori and declares war on me... I decide to test chaos to the limits and hunt down new cities. I had a magic spirit I used for exploration and set it upon a lizardmen city. My spirit survived a psionic blast. The opponents 4 swordsman are weaker than my summoned fire elemental. I razed the town as I wouldn't have been able to keep it anyway. Next turn, I get attacked by two enemy spirits. I try fire elemental again. My spirit gets killed by psionic blast and the enemy spirits slaughter my fire elemental.

I notice a spot on my main island that is still available and hurry a settler unit before my ally settles it. I take the only ruins that I can handle and gain 244 gold. I have 4 nodes nearby. They will be for when I have a full stack. Great lizard, many hell hounds, doom bats or air elementals. The air elementals and doom bats will be hardest.

Vanilla attacks a lone veteran, magic javelineer with griffins and 3 magic spirits. I start of casting eldritch weapon. Second turn a fire elemental. Elemental gets slaughtered quickly. The enemy cast psionic blast and centaurs. Somehow, my javelineers survive in mellee against a 1 figure griffin and the lone figure picks of the spirits at range.

Conclusion so far. Fire elemental is quite good early on. I'm still at the bottom of magic power and power production at 1404. My army strenght is the second highest (likely due to warlord. My army feels like paper. 4 javelineers, 2 hell hounds and some swordsmen).

Hi everyone,

We're looking for someone to settle a problem in our PBEM. City trading is off, but one of my cities has revolted to Dreylin and he wants to know if he can keep it or if he has to raze it (he has already accepted to disband the free infantry he got with the city).

Does anyone use these? Because I don't (unless my army needs +1 resistance really badly - but not for the melding ability).

-I feel it's inadequate protection for my nodes - yes, there is a 80% chance it will prevent melding attempts but at the rate AI players send spirits that won't save the node. Being able to hold it a year more is of course nice but I don't plan for losing nodes - I rather put garrison on it so I have a 100% chance of keeping the node.
-It's also inadequate protection for the AI's nodes - to begin with, they garrison all nodes anyway (albeit some might have week garrisons), and once the garrison is defeated, taking the node away is just a matter of turns - summoning some additional spirits until one works.
-Despite being unless, it manages to be extremely annoying, when your 12th spirit fails to meld a node it's hard not to think "this is the most retarded game mechanic ever".
-Also, it's a random chance based spell in Life of all things, not Chaos.

There are plenty of things that could be done with this unit instead...

A. The node cannot be melded, period. However Disenchant Area can remove this effect just like Warp Node. (this would probably be bad for game balance and AI)
B. Other Guardian Spirits have a 100% chance to meld a node with a Guardian Spirit
C. Drop the melding ability altogether and come up with something more interesting, or just leave it as is for the resistance bonus.
D. Add "This creature can be summoned in combat when defending your cities only" as a new, more interesting ability.
E. At the end of every turn when there is a node with a Guardian Spirit with an enemy unit standing on the tile, materialize a Guardian Spirit unit and engage the army as the defender, allowing the wizard to cast spells to protect the node. (don't think I can do this one but might be worth a try)
F. something else?

So I wrote a module for Pathfinder/3.5. It's designed using the one-page-dungeon concept to build a complete beginning campaign module in a big sprawling sandbox of a peninsula. If you like D&D, tabletop RPGs, fantasy, or even if you've enjoyed my writing in my reports...download it and check it out. Whole thing's free.