Sirian Sirian

Travel to Realms Beyond Your Ordinary Gaming Experience

Travel to Realms Beyond Your Ordinary Gaming Experience

This thread is intended to recruit new players to the Realms Beyond community through our Metaverse Empire. We don't exactly need a thread for discussion, as we have our own GalCiv forum attached to the RB website. (Realms Beyond is a veteran community of gamers with an established presence in several strategy and role playing games). However, some have suggested that our "meteoric rise" in the galactic standings represents a "mystery" and a possible threat to other empires. Surely not, says we. :)

Why not wait for interested parties to find their way to the RBGC forum, if they wish to communicate with us? That seemed wise at first, but the suggestion has been floated amongst our own that we should research "communication theory" and create a device called a "univeral translator" and seek to open communications with other empires on terms they are used to operating, through channels they are used to using. The ultimate wisdom of this idea, and this so-called translation device, remains in doubt among RB leadership, as the first attempt to use the wicked thing resulted in misunderstanding leading to combat and nearly kicked off a minor war, but we are an adventurous people and will give almost any idea a try, so here we go. :D

Our Empire Motto: WE SEEK CHALLENGE THROUGH VARIETY!

http://www.galciv.com/metaverse/empires.asp?id=555


We seek mastery over the game. The ideal at RB is to be able to beat the game on any map size, without choosing to abuse the AI's various inanities, without having to have perfect terrain conditions. Any alignment, any victory condition, any habitability range, any political party, any combination of bonus picks. If a challenge lies before us, we will embrace it. Mistakes, setbacks and losses do not represent failure, merely a chance to learn, from which greater success can sprout and flourish.

No skill level is too high or too low for RB. All we ask is that you play your best and have a good time.

RB players venture beyond the ordinary. If you are like unto our brother in the spirit in which you play, you would be welcome to join our empire. All you need is interest, an RB-style gaming attitude, and the desire to participate. Our mission is to have fun, to pursue excellence, to play fairly, to uphold the integrity of the game, to embrace variety and challenge, push the boundaries of the game and gameplay, experiment, learn, grow, and do it together.

Our passion is the AAR. We live to read a good AAR and to write our own. Fun shared is fun doubled. The RB Epics tournament for Civ3 sees every participant post their own AAR after each tournament game, with the chief entertainment value being sharing insights, experiences, and laughs. Whether we will hold a GalCiv tournament remains to be seen, but the possibility is out there.

We keep a list of rules for our GalCiv gaming. This list will grow and evolve as the game evolves and our understanding of it matures. We voluntarily refrain from (in our opinions) game-breaking tactics that unbalance a game or pigeonhole it into one "best" path to victory. Some game elements may be broken or have loopholes. Some moves may just be "too strong" and kill variety. We do not use these moves. We do not have to use them. Mastery over a game is established by taking the high road, by trudging uphill and building our strength and endurance. Our interests lie in seeing the game refined to where the game balance provides extended replay value and neverending strategic challenge. However, unless and until that state of polish is reached, we will set our own boundaries to create this effect for ourselves, whether or not it can be found in the game as currently programmed.

If this sounds like your kind of gaming community, we invite you to travel to Realms Beyond.

Our forum for Galactic Civilizations:

http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/237344

Players interested in joining Realms Beyond should venture to our forum, read the lastest version of our rules, and confirm their assent to abide by the rules we have set. We place the quality of our gaming experience ahead of our standing in the competition. Excellence brings its own rewards, its own forms of recognition and respect from peers. That is something no measurement or score could ever fully depict.

Anyone who agrees to our playing philisophy and signs their John Hancock pledging their allegiance to our posted rule set will be confirmed onto our roster. Come one, come all, for the time of your life. LOL Our star is rising. Our destiny is written in the heavens. :HOT:

We are also hoping to generate enough excitement to lure out some of the other RB players who have yet to pick up GalCiv. Surely when they see the grand party we are staging at our best starbase, some will be compelled to join in. And as far as "threat to other empires", that's purely propaganda. We have no hostile intentions. Now if some players are impressed with our culture and decide to emigrate to our worlds, that would not constitute hostile action against other cultures on our behalf. ;) We cannot help but to be ourselves. :D


- Sirian

[Message Edited]
16,284 views 354 replies
Reply #26 Top
Wow. The message boards have really been flaming lately. I'm just glad we have missed most of it here. Of course we are pretty young and small and low on the totem pole - give us 6 more months and we might be upset about people leaving too. Just please remember people, the game is Galactic Civilizations, not Metaverse. I know that the metaverse brings people together in ways that GalCiv can't directly, but shouldn't our ties to the game be firmer than our ties to some score? This is one of the best space games that I have ever played, and the community as a whole is one of the best that I have met online, but people have been really tightly wound about this. Can't we all just get along? :) And to officially cover my bases, I'm sorry if I offended anyone with this post - that most certainly was not the point. Now lets get back to kicking some alien butts (or whatever they have back there!) :)
Reply #27 Top
Ack. The scoring nerf on tech victory is SEVERE. I had thought that tech was scoring so low because the games really drag out the extra turns on those last couple bits of research, and the game length was the reason for the low score, BUT NO. Nope.

I just managed the most massive trading economy I've ever had, on a gigantic Maso map. I had 2k in local economy and over 5500bc income per turn from trade. With TECH SPENDING at 100%, backed by full research facilities and two fully mined research resource starbases, and the research trade goods, I WAS STILL RUNNING A SURPLUS. Surplus was over 2k per turn when spending 100% on social, and even more when spending on military (I played pacifists). Sped right along to tech victory some fifteen YEARS before my next best tech performance.

Score? A mere 22000? Come on. That's not appropriate. No wonder tech victories are the least reported, the least pursued. The tech win is the redheaded stepchild of the Metaverse. LOL

I reloaded from before I researched the last six or eight techs and spammed constructors to form terror stars, blew up the enemy systems in "alpha strike" fashion, after about three hours of managing all the logistics... finished only a few years earlier than the tech win, and blew past the scoring cap of 60k.

Maybe conquest SHOULD be worth more than research, but not that much more. I mean, heck, it was a stronger feat for me to manage such a trading empire and race to an extremely fast tech win than it was to spam constructors all over the place against enemies who do not respond to them as threats. Oh well. :)

OK, your GalCiv Rant of the Day is now complete. We now return you to your regularly scheduled recruitment thread. :D


- Sirian
Reply #28 Top
I checked out your Realms site and liked it.Maybe sometime in the future with another game I might like to join.I do believe the rules you stated are fair and ethical for any modern pc gamer.So don't dry up anytime soon.
Reply #29 Top
Hi! Message mainly for Sirian:
I read here and there in your thread (not everything, I'm not mother tongue english!), your empire seems really fair and players love honest gameplay, and I like it.
Maybe it could be nice to summarize the main things that your request to new members, and the nice things of being part of your empire! LOL
Ah, I checked the web site, it is really nice!!
On "portals" I found "Empire statistics", how are you able to produce that?? It's really really nice and useful.
Thanks a lot guys... BTW, I only played the demo, I'm waiting my copy (yes, I'm NOT a sw pirate) from amazon, but days never pass!! :sniff!: :sniff!: :sniff!:

Byez

S1mone
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Reply #30 Top
On "portals" I found "Empire statistics", how are you able to produce that?? It's really really nice and useful.
End of quote


That link is to our (MWC) statbot. It was hand built by kasualkid and idleprocess to mine the metaverse for information and process it so you can see the various statistics and breakdowns without having to figure it all by hand ;)
Reply #31 Top
The scoring nerf on tech victory is SEVERE.
End of quote


Been like that for quite a while. Back in the old days, the tactic was to play on gigantic, grab an empire in the corner with enough planets for a decent economy, and then punch turn a lot. The goal was to sit quietly in the corner using distance to keep the aliens at bay so the player could pour a lot of resources into research after a short while. This led to a nice tech advantage. Even if the aliens want to fight you, they would take a long time to get to you, and then a small defense fleet of highly advanced ships would just swat them out of the sky before the attack could hit home. The only thing left to do then was to pass the time marking off the techs. To combat this turtling in the corner and researching the time away, tech victory got cut down in value. Of course, I disagree with the end result modifying the score. I am more for putting any scoring emphasis on the sub-categories already supported in the game. If military is to be emphasized, make the military category score more during the game. This way we would get rewarded more for how we play the game and not for how we end it.
Reply #32 Top
The scoring nerf on tech victory is SEVERE.

It used to be the highest. But the hide in the corner technique Gerraken talked about lead to abuses. Back then, you could actually reach the final frontier last of all the civs and as long as you were still alive when you got it. You won and got boku points. Most everyone won in that fashion.
Reply #33 Top
Thanks for the replies, guys. The whole topic of scoring mechanisms for this game looks like a sinkhole for energy and emotion. Too bad the scoring can't measure the game more accurately. To close one abuse, the whole tech victory option gets the axe? Grand. So we go from one loophole to the next. Now it's turn off cultural victory and win by culture, but get credited with conquest. If they close that one, what will they have to break to do it, and then what's next after that?

Sometimes writing a rule to close out a cheat is NOT the best solution. You lose more than it is worth.

Finding out that the tech victory is not worth my time to pursue, scorewise, has taken more wind out of my sails than I expected. GalCiv is a fine little game, but it's no holy grail of game balance. After playing it almost every day for a month, I think it's time for a short break. My empire mates can catch up on their familiarity with the game, and I'll just sneak away to play some UFO:Aftermath for a little while. :)


- Sirian
Reply #34 Top
Hi!
It's a pity, Sirian... well, I hope you'll have a good time. I played the first UFO:enemy unknown and it was great... I don't know if Aftermath is still so great or not... Let us know!!
Byez! ;p

S1mone
Reply #35 Top
Thanks for the replies, guys. The whole topic of scoring mechanisms for this game looks like a sinkhole for energy and emotion. Too bad the scoring can't measure the game more accurately. To close one abuse, the whole tech victory option gets the axe? Grand. So we go from one loophole to the next. Now it's turn off cultural victory and win by culture, but get credited with conquest. If they close that one, what will they have to break to do it, and then what's next after that?
End of quote


You got it. Also, they nerfed popscore because peeps were hitting turn turn turn at the end of a game (deliberately delaying victory to run up your pop)
All that did was make wonders more important. So peeps learned to bankrupt the ai's so they couldn't buy or build any.
People learned they could sell wonders for boku bux. they closed that up and then you could give em 1 ip to boost relations and abuse em with diplomacy....

I have been against many of the changes that occured simply because I think torpedoing people to one method of winning costs you meta players.
I have always asserted that the bonus for type of victory should be the same. Think about it. A victory where you owned all but one planet and won by tech win, should score you about the same as a win where you had all but one tech, but took all the planets everything else being the same. The scoring system should know the difference between a hide in the corner win and a domination. We've never been able to achieve that other than by nerfing type of win.


Finding out that the tech victory is not worth my time to pursue, scorewise, has taken more wind out of my sails than I expected. GalCiv is a fine little game, but it's no holy grail of game balance. After playing it almost every day for a month, I think it's time for a short break. My empire mates can catch up on their familiarity with the game, and I'll just sneak away to play some UFO:Aftermath for a little while
End of quote



So many come in with the ideal of play the game not the meta. But you can't get anywhere in the meta without playing the meta and it's the meta that's not balanced.

I think the game itself is fairly balanced. Culture flipping is a little too easy and alpha striking is too easy. An easy fix for the alpha striking is to do the same as civ. If you do it, your rep suffers. And if it suffers enough people hate you and won't think twice about doing it to you. Also the ai's don't really handle their fleets well. Other than that...


Good luck with UFO. Take care.
Reply #36 Top
Let me know what you think about UFO Sirian - I have really been considering getting the game. Also, since you seem to like TBS a lot - Warlords 4 is out. I haven't tried it either, but I thought you might want to know.
Reply #37 Top
Just wanted to let people know that just because Sirian is taking a break from the game that doesn't mean that we aren't still active. We had a game posted last night, and I'm going to finish another up tonight or tomorrow morning. If you are interested in joining us let us know and we'll get you in.
Reply #38 Top
Hi,

for all those who like to read AARs: I just posted one at the forum of our website about a crippling game in a large galaxy where I tried to win with having only one planet during the whole game. You can find it at

http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/thread?forumid=237344&messageid=1067698050

I have tried something similar before with easier settings, but lost to an unfortunate random event. The AAR about that can be found at

http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/thread?forumid=237344&messageid=1066832089

Comments welcome!

-Kylearan

edit: Typos
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Reply #39 Top
For those who requested info about UFO:Aftermath, my extensive review is posted on the RB general forum. Here:

http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/message?forumid=60822&messageid=1067471295

Kylearan writes a good AAR, so be sure to check that out, too. :) RB continues to climb, pulling away from the pack and advancing on our goal of entering the top ten Empires. Jaxom is making bold strides, and when KoP starts posting scores, who knows what all might break loose. :D


- Sirian
Reply #40 Top
Well, I borrowed a copy of Warlords IV from a friend to see if I want to buy it or not, so I'm not going to finish my game this weekend after all. I'm still up in the air about buying it or not - I'll let people know what I think about it soon. Don't worry - I'll be playing more GalCiv soon, I just want to try this game out and get it back to my friend Monday. See you tomorrow! :)
Reply #41 Top
Has anyone here ever played Space Empires IV by Shrapnel Games?I have just downloaded the demo version and it has alot more stuff to it than galciv.Based on the trial version game I played both galcive and space empiresw are very similar but space empires is alittle more fleshed out and has a few more abilities like ship design and tactical combat.Just looking for feedback whether game is worth buying.
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Reply #42 Top
Hi all!
Finally I'm in the Realms Beyond!

For eradicus: tell us more about space empires IV.

Maybe, to get a really good game on space conquest, we'll need to merge civ3 + imperium galactica II + a good good good AI (still haven't found a REALLY good one).
I love multiplayer, but it contrasts with turn-based, and I don't like too much realtime strategy games (like Command and Conquer)... they are too stressy, and too tactical!

Byez

S1mone
Reply #43 Top
So far I've only played 2 trial games.The galaxy is a bit different in that you have to use warp points to go from system to system.Each system is made up of asteroid belts,suns,planets and anomalies that can help or hurt your ships.There are three main types of planets,rock,gas,and ice.Depending on your racial picks determines which type you can colonize.This also goes further by what type of atmosphere each planet has which also limits your expansion on each type of planet.
The research is a little more in depth with alot more types which further breaks down into more areas.
The ship developement has a build to order menu where you pick what you want each ship type to carry and be armed with.
On the planets, depending on size, determines how many facilities you can build.
It also has a diplomatic screen that you are allowed to trade just about anything.I haven't tried much of this yet.
All in all the game looks interesting enough.It basically is galciv but there is alot more to do.
The combat has two types,either tactical where you control your forces or strategic that the computer does the combat for you.
There is no movies so far and all races are just an image,no animations to speak of.
I think I will try it alittle more and decide whether to buy it or not.
Its also tbs.
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Reply #44 Top
Hi Sirian!
I saw that the game (space empires IV) is pretty old, it's a pity that they didn't a new version with better graphic and other stuff.
BTW, I'll think I'll give a look at it after my next galciv game (now I'm playing masochistic, let's see if this AI is really good or not!!)

Bye! ;p
Reply #45 Top
Welcome s1mone! :)

I am glad to see new players joining our empire, as I am quite busy with RL issues at the moment and have not touched any game during the last two weeks, and probably will not be able to do so during the next one or two weeks :( . But expect me to return to our quest for the Top Ten afterwards! :)

- Physicist
Reply #46 Top
Hi Physicist!!
Thamks 4 the welcome!
what is RL ??
anyway, no worries for the top 10... we are "beyond" that... ;p

S1mone
Reply #48 Top
Sirian,

Thanks for the UFO:Aftermath review. I think that will be my next game.

-Cypher
Reply #49 Top
Welcome to the group S1mone! Glad to have you with us.

I don't really have time to post a big review of Warlords IV like I originally said I would (work is keeping me very busy right now.) I would give it a 3 out of 5, with a potential for a 4 out of 5 if they fix some of the balancing in patch number 2, which they said they would. Sorry I can't write more. Maybe I'll have time later.
Reply #50 Top
Congratulations to JaxomCA. He has posted three wins on Maso now, and he's already cracked the first page on "Average Scores" for individual players, giving RB two players in the top 20 on average score. (Hey, there is SOME advantage coming late to the party, since Maso scoring was boosted along the way in some of the patches, and players who have been around since the start have some lower scores of old to drag along).

Jaxom and I would seem to have vastly different philosophies about strategy, too, as we seem to be winning in different ways. Look for more on this topic over at the RB Forum for GC.

http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/237344


- Sirian