Quickly posting since I have no time at the moment but would love to get feedback in case anyone has a chance to offer any:

[EDIT: Superseded; see below![

I have poll question to ask about what should I do about feature in Warlord mod. 

In Warlord mod, each wizard will get 1 common spell of each realm even if they don't have any book in that realm itself (0 book). Reasons behind such feature are due to I want to uniforminity in pattern as 1 book wizard would get 1 uncommon, 2 book get 1 rare, 3 book get 1 very rare spell, so by this logic 0 book should give 1 common spell of that realm too. I also want to bring more unpredictability to the game so I decide to have 1 random common spell of each realm that wizard don't have any book on as curved ball that different from forced picking feature of spell for ai in order to form workable combo so those unknown random spells would be part that player could not predict by just looking into wizard profile of others.

But I received so many questions about this feature that many people seem to assume it might be a bug or some who known this feature considered this as break of character or theme of those wizard opponents. So I decide to establish poll to know if this feature is good to keep in this mod or terrible idea that need to be revert back to how Caster of Magic was.

Hi guys!

Can't believe I forgot to post about this here but a few years ago I started a preservation project over at CivFanatics searching, restoring and cataloging old Civilization 2 scenarios and mods across multiple sites. I then expanded the project to include posting 'super collections' that contained hundreds of Civ2 mods and scenarios starting with the big backups of Apolyton (thanks to Solver) and CivFanatics (thanks to Thunderfall) old Civ2 download areas that were lost over time. This then thankfully inspired other Civ2 collectors to come forward and donate their huge collections to the project. I've since expanded the preservation projects to other Civ games too. So if you love Civ1,2,3&4 scenarios and mods then I encourage you to visit the threads and download the collections as the more copies out there the better. And if you already have your own existing collection that you think may contain long lost scenarios then please contact me! I have publicly accessible cloud storage you can easily drag & drop a collection into and I can either name the collection after you or if you wish to stay anonymous your donation can be given a generic name.

The big Civ2 preservation project can be found on CivFanatics here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/c...ct.671035/

I also have a smaller preservation project for Civ1 scenarios here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/c...ct.672488/

I've just kicked off a Civ3 preservation project with Gigabytes of lost mods here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/c...ct.699161/

And very soon I'll also kick off a Civ4 preservation project with Gigabytes of lost mods here (EDIT: It's here!) :
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/c...og.700754/

.

Following a few fruitful discussions after a sighting of a wild Sirian in his natural habitat, Gario came up with a new variant, that hopefully will shake things up a little

The Rules:

Gario Wrote:Classic Diablo 2, No Synergies
Alright, y’all, there is a variant Diablo 2 run being set up: a Classic Diablo 2 experience from before the days of 1.10 Synergies, from before the days of Runes, Crafting, and Elite items. Working around all this should be interesting in a 2.06 D2R world is gonna be… interesting.
The rules of the variant are as follows:

• Softcore. Could be much harder on hardcore, but it’s not fun to rush people up to our level whenever someone dies so relax.
  
• Classic. Not Expansion. We don’t want runes, crafting, or elite items defiling our experience. We’re goin’ back to 2000 with this one, lads & lasses.
  
• Any skill can be maxed. You want to play lv 20 Charged Bolt and lv 20 Fireball Sorc? Go for it. However…
  
• No synergy skills can be any higher than level 1. If you put more than one hard point into any skill, any skill that is listed as “Receiving bonuses” cannot be any higher than level 1 (to avoid issues with prerequisites). If you leveled Charge Bolt passed level 1 Lightning cannot be leveled anymore. Want Skeletons? Cool, can’t get Skeleton Mastery or Summon Resist any higher than level 1.
  
• No twinking, obviously, though who even has a classic character to twink with?
  
• Everything is run. Caves, Crypts, etc, will be full cleared.
  
• We will be running Normal, Nightmare, and Hell, though since there is no Act 5 a difficulty is cleared when Diablo is killed.
  

Me and coldrain had a little chat and a new game would be welcome. 

We should probably wait for possible changes to the mod after the last game. Q will probably collect some thoughts to be discussed later.  So no real hurry to start the game. 

But for now checking for potential intrest to play so who wants to play?

If there’s intrest we need mapmaker also. Ref, are you willing to help again? Also settings etc. to be discussed later.

PLAYERS:

Aurorarcher
coldrain
DaveV
xist10
BING_XI_LAO

Apropos of nothing, an advanced start idea: what if we gave the game to each person as a single player game, and let them play out the first X turns? Then, based on instructions, a lurker could play out those turns in hotseat, before setting up the game?

Obviously you couldn't have conflict between players, and you'd need to be careful about barbs, but that could eliminate some of the early turns. Realise those sometimes play out quite quickly, but not always.

I fondly remember the EU3 showcase that BRickAstley posted way back in 2012, and how it introduced me to a grand strategy franchise that I've played for over a decade.  Europa Universalis 4 was one of the rare release day buys for me and I still keep coming back to it over the years.  I've played countries in all regions of the world, mostly in ironman mode, and have just over half the game's 373 achievements unlocked.  One thing I have never done (or even attempted) is a world conquest, mostly because it is just so tedious to conquer all of the game's 3272 provinces before the end date of 1821.

With EU5 officially announced and likely coming out sometimes in the next year, I've decided it's time.  I'm going for a world conquest, and I'm going to try to share it here with you all.  But I don't want to just go for any world conquest: I'm very confident I could take a powerful country like France or Ming or the Ottomans.  I still want to challenge myself and perhaps give anyone following a bit of suspense, as well as show off some of the creative tech choices that other players have come up with over the years.  (Also, I want to force myself to slow down, because rushing through midgame decisions has caused me to lose some earlier attempts!)

So with all that in mind, I will be going for the infamous The Three Mountains achievement, where you have to conquer the world as Ryukyu.




It's very likely this will end in a fail, but it will still be fun to show off some of the tricks and tech that I've learned along the way.


THE PLAN

The only rule for a Three Mountains Run is that you start as Ryukyu: you can change your country to any other along the way, and I will be taking advantage of that several times this run.  My plan is to stack modifiers for Coring Cost Reduction and Province Warscore Cost, combining idea groups, religious mechanics, national ideas, unique mission tree rewards, monuments, and other game mechanics to stack both modifiers as high as possible.  The first ability will let us core provinces for much less Administration points than they normally would cost, and the second will let us take more provinces in a war at one time.  My goal is to get all the modifiers set up in the first half of the game (roughly by 1620), and then the second half will be a race against time to conquer the world.  I don't want to give away the full plan right now, but I'm not innovating much on what others have done before.

This is probably the easiest time in the history of the game to complete The Three Mountains, as newer formable nations, religions, and mission trees have power crept the game and given the player a lot more tools to conquer the world with.  Over the years there have been various strategies with Ryukyu which involve invading Vietnam, becoming the Shogun of Japan, becoming a pirate nation in the Philippines, and I've even seen streamers race into India at the start of the game.  As I'm writing this I'm watching one streamer (ThePlaymaker) try a new strategy where he invades Manchuria directly, using an early alliance with Korea, forms Manchuria, and then rushes to become emperor of China.  (Spoiler: he failed on the run I watched.)  I won't be following any of these strategies, but I will be adapting from one of ThePlaymaker's earlier Three Mountain strategies, and hope it will still be entertaining to follow for even those who aren't familiar with the game.

Here we go again, this time trying some balance mods and playing as Kongo.  (Now what will I blame my loss on except bad play?)





There are a couple things to focus on with Kongo.  Early on we are going to want to get our government plaza down and tier 1 building for the free relic.  That means a lot of early culture.  We can also get lucky from huts ... Wait, there are actually huts this time, right? 

District choice will be biased towards theaters and commercial hubs, as the Mbanza gives adjacency bonus to both.  So that pulls me away from a religion opening, I think - we'll be getting our trade routes with Commercial Hubs rather than Harbors.   Yet the only way to reliably generate relics is through Apostles and the Martyr promotion ... which relies on them dying in religious combat, and doesn't feel great either.  Let's just hope we find Kandy on the map closeby.

Militarily we have our unique unit fairly close with the Ngao Mbeba, a swordsman replacement that does better against ranged attacks.  Considering Kongo's jungle bias, we will be wanting to go to Iron Working for this as well as the inevitable jungle chopping that will have to happen.

So let's look at the start:




Settler spawned a tile to the northeast, but after I confirmed that there wasn't a 3f spawn enabled for capitals I settled where you see here, on top of a cow.  This was lucky to also uncover the Chocolate to my southwest.  There's Salt by where we originally spawned, and a rice hidden by the city name to the NW of the capital.  I will probably open double scout because I want to find huts, and then we'll see who and where our neighbors are before deciding.

Hello everyone, 

Been a while since I played one of these... let's see how rusty I am.

Posting T1 in a minute, loading up the game now.