You mean, there are people out there who don't experience terrible pains shooting up their arms every time they click the mouse? I use a wrist support and I still get them.
Less so when I type, which is fortunate.

It's not that hard to play GalCiv and to write copious quantities of prose. You just have to make room by ditching the less important things in life; TV, work, friends...



~SDC~

My wrists don't give me problems at my old fashioned computer keyboard and all the mouse-clicking that goes about, so I am fortunate there, but darn console games really mess up my fingers. Since full-sized video games do not cause me grief, I place the blame on those small control pads that come with the consoles. Big hands do not like small controls.

You should get one of the original X-Box controllers, Gerakken. They were massive.



Today's installment is a little shorter:

Eagle Eyed

It was a long and winding path, the path up the mountain-side, and narrow too. Wide enough only for a solitary man, or elf, or pony.
They advanced in single file. Even in their warm clothes, they shivered in the chill mountain air.
At last, they reached their goal. A few feet above them, set into a niche gouged into the living rock, lay a great nest woven from saplings, stout branches and animal hides.
“Oi!” shouted Downie, in Elvish. “Are you up there, Gwainhar?”
A huge head poked over the side, like that of a griffin. (A griffin has the head of an eagle, but this particular head of an eagle was the head of an actual eagle.)
“Caw?” said Gwainhar. “What brings you to my eyrie at this time of night?”
“There is a covenant between our peoples! I call upon you to meet your obligations, and convey me to the land of my choosing!”
The eagle eyed them warily. “You know full well, elf, that the pledge we made came at a price. Are you prepared to pay that price?”
“Full well I know this, and full well am I prepared!”
“What is the offering?”
“This fair maiden here! A tasty morsel to feed your brood, as soon as you have swallowed and regurgitated her, as is the way of your people.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Milady.
“The payment is ample, and it is accepted!” declared the eagle.
“Hey!” said Milady, arming herself hurriedly.
“Easy!” said Downie. “We’re just joking.”
“Haw! It was hard keeping a straight face... Seriously, though, Matt, what can I do for you?” said Gwainhar.
“I am on a quest, to deliver the One Ring of Power to the Crack of Doom.”
“Wasn’t that already done, years ago? Have you joined some kind of historical re-enactment society?”
“Alas, no. As I understand it, after the fall of the Evil One, all thought The Ring lost forever. Yet it was not so! The evil within The Ring was burnt away by the fires of Doom, but The Ring itself was spat out, and taken into the West. For many years, it was used by the Fellowship to protect the land with its power. But power itself is corrupting, and corruption breeds corruption, and to cut a long story short, we thought it best to have another go at destroying the damn thing for good.”
“I see. And you want me to come to the rescue at the end of the journey, as did my revered ancestor in the First Ring Quest?”
“No. That would be silly. I want you to take The Ring, fly all the way there, and drop it off in the Crack of Doom yourself.”
“What? Have you no sense of tradition? We’re not a package delivery service. We don’t involve ourselves in human affairs, save for when there is no other choice.”
“Yes, and the other races of Middle-Earth are starting to resent you for it. You circle like vultures, and watch as a group of valiant warriors make a final stand, and wait until there’s only a few of them left, and only then do you make your last-minute rescue. And then, for years after, whenever someone complains about you eating his sheep, you say, ‘If it wasn’t for us, you’d all be speaking Orkish!’”
“Yeah, that really annoys them. Haw!”
“Come on, you said you owed me a ride. Do you really expect me to carry a Ring of Power right into the most evil place in Middle Earth, where anyone could steal it, pursued by assassins, all the while sinking further into jealousy and anger because of The Ring’s malign influence?”
“Well, you did rescue me from that net I got caught in, by singing a Conservation Song to those angry shepherds... Look, we’ll make a compromise. I’ll carry the two of you to Mordor, and you can take it the rest of the way yourself. That still leaves room for some dramatic tension.”
“Fair enough,” said Downie. “I don’t object to having an adventure. I just don’t want to be all year about it.”
“What about Snowball?” said Milady, hugging her pony to shield it from the cold.
“We’ll take good care of him,” said the eagle, licking his beak. “So, how do you want to ride? On my back or in my talons?”
“What’s the difference?” she said.
“Well, in my talons, you’ll be clutched tightly in sharp claws the whole way, and possibly squashed when we land, whereas on my back, there’s a significant chance of you falling off and plummeting to a horrible death.”
“She’ll take the claws and I’ll take the back,” said Downie. “Can we leave right away?”
“What, in this wind?” said Milady, for huge gusts were buffeting them at every turn.

when you fly there is
no wind. the air is still. it
is the earth that moves.

, said Gwainhar.
“Still keeping up the haiku, then, like I taught you?” said Downie.
“Yeah. I even tried writing a song. How did it go? Upon a time, I met a maid. Her beak was sharp, her feathers gold, and when an egg for me she laid, we took turns shielding it from cold...”


~SDC~

I want my trade centers! (Whine, whine). The last couple of games I've been playing, my aligment was stuck on neutral the whole game even though I chose "good" for every single random event. There simply weren't enough of them to make a difference. What's a hobbit to do? Is there a setting to change the frequency of the events?

Yes, it's tough to get to get up Saintly on smaller and less abundant maps, Fatty.

If this hobbit doesn't mind cheese, he can repeatedly colonize (with 1 mil colony ships) and destroy colonies to get those events.

Nope, no way to increase event frequency.

Just throwing in my "onya" for the 200k

Good morning, folks!

Welcome to the start of another fun-filled, exciting work week! Boy, I just can't wait to start working!

Welcome to the Fellowship, Gordeleth! I hope you enjoy empiring with us!

Well, I had a wonderful weekend...I decided to try a Gigantic/Painful and played for two days...and lost. The Drengin became some sort of jugernaut I've never seen before. No matter what I did, I couldn't weaken them. The entire galaxy was at war with them and their military just kept getting bigger and bigger. My overlords were getting sliced and diced by their avatars and DREADNAUGHTS! Yes, dreads were defeating my overlords regularly! I tried hunting down their military resources so I could even them out a bit, and was marginally sucessful. But eventually, they wore down my fleets and exterminated me. Perhaps Painful may have been a tad bit hasty for me. :notsure:

So, with some newfound hate for Drengins, I'm going to drop back to Tough and go on a death march. I hope to leave the Drengin and Yor Empires smoking and polluted by the stench of their rotting carcases (or rusting appendages in the Yor's case). Looks like a little bit longer for a submission from me.


Hope everyone has a good week! I'm going on vacation next week, so I might be scarce for a while. It may take me a while to update Downie's newest stories to the website. Also, the Metaverse Review may be a little late...I'm a little behind here at work and really need to do what I'm paid to do!

Check out the impending merger between the Australian Republic and the ANZACs, Theoden. The signing ceremony is about to begin!

And don't to report the promotions to Admirals that occurred over the weekend.

~SDC~

Any thoughts on Vice Admiral criteria 30 games and ?

Rear Admiral, 30 games, 50000pts
Vice Admiral, 40 games, 100000pts

~SDC~

And hopefully, Admiral, 50 games, 200000pts.
~SDC~

Note that I'm referring to player profile scores, not metaverse listing scores.
[Message Edited]

In addition, one can make the game last longer. Play a larger map with tech, culture, and allied victory conditions off. Then research all the techs you can research and trade for evil techs from the evil AI. It always seems I turn pure good when I am going for those really long techs at the end like final frontier, beyond human, excalibur, and the half dozen before those.

It is hard to cheese 1.05 with destroying colony because of crash to desktop issues so be careful and save the game. Although, the trade centers come later than one might like when you prolong the game, you can usually generate quie a few pop-ups about the plague, or rampaging robots, or saving humans from meteors, or something that costs bc and makes the morality go up. Once I get 90, I just go neutral. Even if you get trade centers late they come in handy to boost morale, etc. and probably add something to the final score although I am not sure how much social score bump one gets. Hope this helps. Things may be different with 1.09x.

Rick
[Message Edited]

Theoden

How do you set the AI for tough? I bump the Yor to intelligent and keep the others bright. I always got tired of the Yor being the weaklings and now they are baaaaaaaaaaad. LOL.

For additional spice, I make all the AI pure evil and then I play pure good. I started this because someone reported a better score for this comination in 1.05. Well, the score is better because it is harder than stock AI settings if you play pure good. They ALL want to crush you the moment your military dips unless you are very diplomatic. LOL.

But, the other cool thing is that you will always have the option of terror stars because the UP event limiting terror stars just won't pass. Plus, I really hated that UP event to limit trade routes for evils. When I played evil, I hated it because it seemed unbalancing and now playing pure good, I still vote against it. Plus interacting with the evil Altarians is a nice change of pace. So, manipulating the AI morality is a way to impact UP events one might not like and makes the game more fun for some of us.

Rick

Sorry to hear it Theoden. Im playing a similar game to that right now. A Huge/painful. Torians have been on my back from the beginning but I have turned the tides on them recently. I know what you mean about the AI getting a BA military sometimes. I had several military ability picks and one mil resource but Torian ships still outclassed mine. Come to find out they had about 3 or 4 mil resources. They make a huge difference. All the resources do really. It can be vital to knock out their military resource starbases in the event of a war is what Im finding. I knocked out one of them and it finally put my ships ahead. The Drengin in your game probably had a rare start that had several mil resources close by. Bummer dude! Good luck getting revenge!

Allegedly stopped in the expansion pack though. One event at most per colony.

Alex


~SDC~

May be 45 games.

Alex


~SDC~

Depends - could be 60 or more games too....

Alex


~SDC~

I used to do this but I've recently found an alternative that aint too bad. When I colonize a lower PQ planet, say 14 or 15, I will save and load until I get the -X% production event. If you take a loss of say 30% or more it will effect your morality score by about 10 pts towards good. So if you take that event 4 times you are already at 90 and can get The Better Way. I used to not take these but Ive found that if you dont it on a lower PQ planet thats NOT on the front lines, it doesnt really hurt you. Those planets are only really good for research and tax income anyway.
[Message Edited]

Ricbayer,
Ive tried a game like this but it actually gave me a lower score and I think that its bugged in how it calculates it. I played Medium, all bright, 3 civs good and 3 civs bad campaign for a score of around 12k. Then I did a large, 3 bright and 2 intelligent, me and drengins bad, the rest pure good, and scored 8k. The second game was a lot harder and should have scored higher but was 4,000 less. It just didnt make sense. Im trying a similar one right now were me and the altarians are good while the rest are bad. Its a Huge/painful and so it better score higher. If it doesnt I'll be pissed and know for sure that the scoring is bugged when you alignment is in the minority. Please let me know how yours scores so we can determine this for sure.

By the way, thanks again for your advice recently. I played defensive against the Torians and clonized several of the 14's and now my economy and tech level is almost the tops. It seemed to really help my research capacity in particular. I did have some trouble keeping a couple of them from culturally flipping (they were in torian space) but it worked out. Now the Torians have been hit by the I-league and the Fundametalist randomw event. They went from a tiger to a kitten and Im swooping in for the kill. Once Im done with them, me and my buddies the altarians will take on the almighty Yor. They contol at least 25% of the galaxy at present. Someday I'll have to take out the Altarians though (for a mil victory) and it wont be pretty. They currently control the most space and have the strongest military and economy. Should be fun!

I'm at work, but I think I had it set up that way the last time. It's one reason why I have such a profound hatred of the Yor...

Yes, I can attribute the Drengin's dominance in the Painful game to military resources. I know I must have ran across about 5 while I was scouting deep in their territory!! They were virtually unstoppable, as I couldn't penetrate far enough into their territory to destroy their SBs. I was holding my own for a long time, but once you get swarmed with Drengin overlords with 200 hp and 75 or 80 attack, kiss your rear appendage goodbye! I could just hear my avatar crews saying prayers as those bad boys came.

BTW, I always play AIs Pure Evil except for the Neutral Altarians. This gives me a pretty fun game, and I believe it still counts as all AIs as a different alignment than me, which gives the score boost.

Oh, I am a watching that, alright. Looks like ANZAC is going to accelerate its Euro subjugation program a bit.

[Message Edited]

Gerakken, I saw your spy post...great stuff! They really had a brew-ha-ha going!

WileyCoyote

I set all five of the AI majors to pure evil in the setup. Then I set all the AI to bright except for the Yor, which is on intelligent, and this makes the game difficulty level = tough. Then I play pure good to take as opposite allignment as I can. In 1.05 this sort of AI v. player morality yields more points (and is more difficult) than default morality.

When one plays pure evil v. all the AI set at pure good, there is little if any point increase compared to default Ray reported many threads ago. I haven't played this way - my pure evil games are default AI morality. So, I think to get the max point bump on 1.05 the player must be pure good and all five AI must be set to pure evil. This is tougher than default IMO. Have fun.

Rick

PS This may all change on 1.092. Anyone tested it?

Alex, those criteria for Vice Admiral and Admiral still may work. Note that NewfyScotian and myself have not passed those scores under my player profiles even though our Metaverse listing scores have exceeded the criteria.

~SDC~

Yes, setting AIs to good does seem to penalise score. Not sure why though.

~SDC~