I don't things will end well. Quick speed is just too much of a difference.

Well, there we go.

I don't have nearly as much time available these days to focus on playing civ, so I expect to do a lot of meandering. I'll put in the time to play the turns and report occasionally, but don't expect much long term planning. I hope that the activity of a new civ game running can help the forum out.

Okay, I've now got two different unwinnable-seeming variant games in my queue that I want to play out either to a loss or ... well, to see what I can do! But my gaming time has been limited, especially in combination with the careful attention I'd want to devote to those two, so I decided to play a more-straightforward "warm-up" game to shake some of the rust off in the meantime. This one would have no variant - just a regular Impossible-difficulty game with standard exploit rules, using the RBOrion patch we used for OSG 39. Trouble is, this is Orion on Impossible difficulty. It's not going to be (nor intended to be) a walk in the park under any conditions, as I rapidly rediscovered! So, how did it play out? Well, I'm still finding out; I'll try to gradually catch up with reporting and then keep it up to date as I go!

So:

Race: Alkari
Difficulty: Impossible
Galaxy Size: Medium
Opponents: Five
Color: Green
Map Generation: Random
Events: On
Game Version: RBOrion patch (kyrub's 1.4M with display bug fixes from SDragon and Kilgore Trout Mask Replicant)
Variant: None

Here goes!

What is the strongest build in your opinion in let's say 13 opponents normal map size, all normal all default?

Feels... dead here. Is everyone and their mother on vacation? Everyone super busy? Or is the forum slowly fading.. (i just dont see very many new posts)

I was considering doing some test modding, and I'm wondering ... well several things. But first, is there a function to get the string name of (W) in CAS script?
This would be one way to allow wizard-based modifications (as found in games like civilization). I didn't see anything in Scripts.TXT .

Hey folks,

This may be sacrilegious, but I got the 2022 version of MoM and am absolutely loving it. However, I seem to running into a brick wall of difficulty and was hoping to get some advice from the old hands. I've beat it on all the difficulties up to hard but am really struggling in the early game on master difficulty, specifically dealing with all of the rampaging monsters. For context, I have trying 11 book sprites > gorgons. I have been rushing a stack of sprites asap and start clearing as many encounters as possible (I have the # of encounter zones set to highest). However, I inevitable run into some which I think are probably unrealistic to beat early game (2 great drakes and friends), and then around turn 25 the uncleared zones start spawning rampaging monsters that raze my cities after I've moved my sprites further afield to clear more zones (with the spearmen and even swordsmen I trained to keep order crumpling like paper). I admittedly do space my two cities a bit far apart because typically there's no particularly optimal spot to settle as close as possible to my first settlement. What can change in my play to survive the early game? Less aggression (and keeping my army closer to home)? That "feels" wrong because it's stunting my growth curve. Same with getting more defenders out, I've barely gotten anything built by turn 25, how am I also supposed to get normal units out? And the fantastic units seem a bit too expensive to be using as guards early. Settle suboptimal but more densely packed cities? I suppose I could try a stronger strategy (hellhounds > warp reality chimeras or white + blue slingers), but I suspect its more to do with my playstyle then the build.

Has it crossed your mind that Caster of Magic (or the original for that matter) has the potential to be a tremendous replayable game if modified with some rogue-like genre elements, encourage 2-3hr games with more randomization and synergy potential?

Brainstorming if modding capabilities make this set of changes possible.

Concept : you start in plane with 2 opponents, no neutral cities. Settlers can’t be created by cities insummery this plane. Opponent in opposite plane can use settlers and is final boss once plane towers are beat, so player needs to conquer own plane fast. 
Modding wise, i think this can only be possible if you mod arcanus races disallowing settlers. Small map size would be used.

Game designed to have faster progression but a lower power ceiling given shorter length and lower number of cities. Lots of spell and other rebalancing needed, but seems moddable.

Spell randomization with fewer researchable spell choices and fewer neutral spells. Encourage powerful synergies, a core element of roguelike, that are harder to plan by fewer researchable spells.  I'd love it if building tree could also be partially randomized, but I doubt that's possible.

With 3 cities before meeting final wizard and fast progression, i would think a veteran player would get a successful run in 2-3hrs.

One core concept it wouldn’t have is permadeath, but the gameplay loop of quick games and adapting to randomization of your tools (e.g. spells) would be plenty for a different experience.

Any thoughts?

Lately, I've been playing BTS for the first time with two others in a Play-by-Email game via Discord, but we've been having an issue that hasn't come up in our OG Civ 4 games. I'm playing a 3v3v3 game where all the human players are on one team, and sometimes we get a file where the player is asked what to build in cities, but it's for the previous player's cities. After choosing what to build, the game gets stuck on a "waiting for [previous player] to take their turn" notification. We've been able to get past this a few times by having a previous player take another player's turn for them, but this time is hasn't gotten any better. I asked about this on the Steam forum for the game, and someone told me to ask here. Does anyone know how to fix/prevent this issue?