Apparently this week is E3, the huge video game media convention thing. I originally found this out when a streamer I was watching was complaining about how Twitch was all unstable because of the extra load from people watching streams from E3. Anyway, Square had a stream announcing various things as would be expected for an event like this and part of it involved a Q&A session with Naoki Yoshida (the director and producer of Final Fantasy XIV). One of the questions had to do with the new marriage system they're implementing for an upcoming patch. I was linked to a Kotaku article about it, but the question was just asking for more details and here's what Yoshida had to say post translation:
"We discussed it and we realized: within Eorzea, why
should there be restrictions on who pledges their love or friendship to
each other?"
Back in 2012 when they were talking about features to be added later to the relaunched Final Fantasy XIV (the original game was so terrible they had to bring in a new team and redo it) and marriage was one of the things they had planned. But initially they said they would only do straight marriage to start. I guess a lot has changed in two years!
One can't help but wonder if the concern around Tomodachi Life woke someone up inside Square Enix and made them take notice. As my friend Humbabella pointed out it's not like it's actually easier to implement just straight marriage in an existing video game. You do have to go in and make an explicit point while implementing any sort of pair bonding system to restrict it to one male and one female. It wouldn't be easier to 'test out' only straight marriage and I'm glad to see they walked away from that particular stance.
The guy in the video asking the questions didn't even seem terribly concerned about the potential for gay marriage, or for a cat person marrying a rock person. He only really perked up when Yoshida mentioned potential rewards for getting married. Gotta get an exclusive 'married' mount!
I haven't played FFXIV in a while, but it was fun when it relaunched. Maybe I should patch it up and give it another spin at some point...
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Tales of Maj'Eyal
Lino mentioned yesterday that there was a roguelike on sale on Steam for under $5 that had 1306 achievements in it. That seemed like a really, really big number. He did a little digging and I believe it's the game with the most achievements on Steam by around 600 more than the second highest. That's a serious achievement lead! How could I not check it out?
It does cheat a bit by having the same achievement get repeated over and over again for different difficulties. That's pretty standard, actually, but they go above and beyond by having 9 different difficulties floating around. And Lino mentioned that it doesn't give you credit for easier ones which is pretty terrible. I hate feeling obligated to play a game through on easy for any reason if I can beat it on hard.
The game does have some good things going for it. It seems to have a really wide and varying class system a lot like Dungeon of Dredmore had, but it doesn't just throw it all at you at once. Instead you start off with a small number of premade classes and then get quests as you're playing the game to unlock more stuff. So I can now play as a summoner because I did a quest. I did a different quest to unlock poisons so now if I start a rogue he can use poisons.
They also added in a bit of a difficulty twist for a roguelike that I _really_ like. Normally a roguelike has permanent death. I view it as being a pretty fundamental part of the genre but it really ratchets up the learning curve for the game. ToME added in a twist such that you have a limited number of lives and earn more lives as you level up. When you run out of lives you're still permanently dead but this way you get to make some mistakes and immediately learn from them instead of making a mistake and then hoping you get into a similar situation later to see if you actually learned from it or not. And by handing out more lives as you level up they make it so you can't just zerg something down early game and you'll always feel like getting a little further in the game will give you ability to get a little further even if a crazy twist comes your way and blows you up.
I've got 8 achievements down. 1298 more to go! There's no way I'll come close to getting them all but I'm enjoying playing the game so far so it was definitely worth picking up regardless.
It does cheat a bit by having the same achievement get repeated over and over again for different difficulties. That's pretty standard, actually, but they go above and beyond by having 9 different difficulties floating around. And Lino mentioned that it doesn't give you credit for easier ones which is pretty terrible. I hate feeling obligated to play a game through on easy for any reason if I can beat it on hard.
The game does have some good things going for it. It seems to have a really wide and varying class system a lot like Dungeon of Dredmore had, but it doesn't just throw it all at you at once. Instead you start off with a small number of premade classes and then get quests as you're playing the game to unlock more stuff. So I can now play as a summoner because I did a quest. I did a different quest to unlock poisons so now if I start a rogue he can use poisons.
They also added in a bit of a difficulty twist for a roguelike that I _really_ like. Normally a roguelike has permanent death. I view it as being a pretty fundamental part of the genre but it really ratchets up the learning curve for the game. ToME added in a twist such that you have a limited number of lives and earn more lives as you level up. When you run out of lives you're still permanently dead but this way you get to make some mistakes and immediately learn from them instead of making a mistake and then hoping you get into a similar situation later to see if you actually learned from it or not. And by handing out more lives as you level up they make it so you can't just zerg something down early game and you'll always feel like getting a little further in the game will give you ability to get a little further even if a crazy twist comes your way and blows you up.
I've got 8 achievements down. 1298 more to go! There's no way I'll come close to getting them all but I'm enjoying playing the game so far so it was definitely worth picking up regardless.
Monday, June 09, 2014
Civ V: Diplomatic Victory
I was chatting yesterday a bit with Robb about the game state in one of our asynch Civ V games. The one where the evil Dave eliminated Robb early. I have a plan for trying to win in a tricky fashion in that game, but I'm pretty sure it's bad. I'm going to try it anyway because it seems fun and I want to see what happens but it just feels like suddenly making 28 tourism per turn isn't actually going to be a realistic threat. Robb was wondering how the other people would react when I grab the final piety policy and unlock that tourism ability and my gut feeling is Dave wouldn't care because he's in a dominating position to win diplomatically. We talked a bit about how that works because Robb wasn't aware of a couple of mechanics that ultimately snowball the council into an inevitable win. I don't really know how it all works either... So it's time to look into it and figure out just how inevitable the inevitable is. Do Matt and I have any response beyond trying to sneak a faster win or somehow trying to kill Dave off despite being on different continents?
The first thing to dig into is the inevitability factor. Eventually you reach the point in the game (when 1 civ hits the atomic era or half the civs hit the modern era) where the council starts letting you vote for someone to win. There's a flat threshold of how many votes are needed and if no one gets that many votes then the top two get given 2 more votes for all subsequent council actions. Including the next victory vote. We're playing a quick game so I believe that means a victory vote will happen every 13 turns once they start happening. I honestly have no idea how many votes are needed to win. I read 60% of base votes from living civs/city states which would put our game at needing 22 votes but I loaded up a saved game from a single player game on a huge world and it only needed 22 votes so I really don't know anymore. And I can't seem to find out! I even went and installed an SQL plug-in for Firefox and went digging around in the core database for the game to try to find the formula but couldn't find it. I did go load up the game and the victory conditions screen claims 34 votes to win. That's a lot more than 22. So something funky is going on... (I also checked a 6 player game on a larger map and it needs 40 to win... Maybe it's based on map size and gets lowered as civs/city states die?)
And I think this all means there are lots of ways to get extra votes that don't increase the number needed to win. Hosting the council is worth +2. Owning the Forbidden Palace wonder is worth +2. Getting a world religion is worth +2. Getting a world ideology is worth +2. There's a tech far down the tree that gives you +1 for each of your diplomats. Dave already has the Palace so right now he has 4 votes to my 1 and Matt's 1. He also has the most city state allies so when they start giving votes he will likely continue to have more than we do together. This means he gets to pass whatever he wants, in particular the world religion and world ideologies. So when we hit the atomic era I fully expect him to have 12 votes on his own, 2 per city state, and 2 per time he fails to win. So if he has 11 allies he's apt to win the very first time the council meets to vote a winner. He has 8 right now, so he's not really going to need to get the late game tech or many of the pity votes.
How can this be stopped? Well, we can take his city state allies as a start. But he declared war on us which means the city states also declared war on us. We can't just do quests and pay them money anymore. There are really only two ways left to remove his allies. We can kill them, or we can stop using our spies to catch up in tech and start using them to try to rig elections. Killing the city states doesn't even help much. We deny Dave 2 votes but we (maybe?) knock 1.2 votes off the number needed to win. It's a gain, but it's not much of one. The best bet there would actually be for me to conquer a city state and then let Matt conquer it back and liberate it. That would restore it as a city state but with Matt as the ally, not Dave. So it would deny Dave 2 votes and keep the number needed to win constant. But I think it forces Matt and I to fight, which kills trading, and that's really bad. So maybe that could be a desperation move, but I don't like it much. Besides, if I'm going to actually beat up a city state, I want to own it myself!
How about rigging elections? How does that work? I know you can park them in a city state and then every so often (15 turns in a normal game so probably 10 turns in a quick game) the city state will hold elections and the best spy present will get to get some influence for his civ and lower the influence of everyone else. If we lower Dave below the alliance level then presumably we can make peace and spend the cash to buy the city state as an ally ourselves. But when you're at war you're always listed at -60 influence... So does rigging elections in this case even help? Will we stay at -60 after peace is declared or will we go back to our real amount? I don't know. The other thing you can do is try a coup. It has very low odds of success but if it works it flips your influence with the other player's influence. So we'd become the ally straight up instead of Dave. Failure kills off your spy. You get a new one again after a few turns but they lose any levels they might have. It seems like a bit of a desperation play but I guess it'd be worth a shot if it came right down to it.
Another possibility is to attack the other sources of his votes. Conquer the city that built the Forbidden Palace. Use an army of great prophets to convert away all his cities so he's no longer following the world religion. Bring Robb back into the game to increase the number of votes needed to win. (If that is even actually part of the formula... Man I wish I could find it!)
Or we can try to win even faster. It seems inconceivable to win a science victory because of how deep you need to go beyond the atomic era to pull that one off. Even if Dave needs 3 or 4 failed votes to win he gets that to happen in ~50 turns. You need 15 techs in atomic or above era to get a science victory, and then you need to still build the last part. No, science seems right out unless we really cut down on his external sources of votes. Culture might be possible, and it's certainly where my hat is hung, but Dave makes so much culture per turn I actually can't imagine winning this way. Not without the internet, anyway, and it's also far in the information era.
That just leaves military. It doesn't much matter if it's a full military victory or just removing Dave and then having Matt and I duke it out for science/culture. But it feels like keeping the status quo means Dave wins a diplomatic victory.
I'm not sure if I like this. I hate board games with a front runner issue. Dave did well early so now he needs to die? Do we really need to play Civ V in a way that we never seem like enough of a threat to be ganged up on? Do we need to be in 2nd place so when the world gangs up on the leader we can swoop in for the win? Do we need to always be capable of winning a defensive war against all the other players?
Though for all I know there's something going on such that Dave won't just win a diplomatic victory. For all I know his massive tech lead actually means he _is_ capable of winning a defensive war against all the other players, especially since all the other players in this case is just two people on different islands. And if beating up a city state doesn't decrease the number of votes needed he may actually be barely containable, though he will still get to decide all the council votes on his own.
I am a little less worried about Dave instantly winning now than I was when I thought it was going to be 22 votes to win. But I am just as worried about the inevitable win because 2 extra votes every 13 turns will close the gap between 22 and 34 in only 78 turns, and I think he was going to overshoot 22 easily. We'll just have to wait and see what happens I guess!
The first thing to dig into is the inevitability factor. Eventually you reach the point in the game (when 1 civ hits the atomic era or half the civs hit the modern era) where the council starts letting you vote for someone to win. There's a flat threshold of how many votes are needed and if no one gets that many votes then the top two get given 2 more votes for all subsequent council actions. Including the next victory vote. We're playing a quick game so I believe that means a victory vote will happen every 13 turns once they start happening. I honestly have no idea how many votes are needed to win. I read 60% of base votes from living civs/city states which would put our game at needing 22 votes but I loaded up a saved game from a single player game on a huge world and it only needed 22 votes so I really don't know anymore. And I can't seem to find out! I even went and installed an SQL plug-in for Firefox and went digging around in the core database for the game to try to find the formula but couldn't find it. I did go load up the game and the victory conditions screen claims 34 votes to win. That's a lot more than 22. So something funky is going on... (I also checked a 6 player game on a larger map and it needs 40 to win... Maybe it's based on map size and gets lowered as civs/city states die?)
And I think this all means there are lots of ways to get extra votes that don't increase the number needed to win. Hosting the council is worth +2. Owning the Forbidden Palace wonder is worth +2. Getting a world religion is worth +2. Getting a world ideology is worth +2. There's a tech far down the tree that gives you +1 for each of your diplomats. Dave already has the Palace so right now he has 4 votes to my 1 and Matt's 1. He also has the most city state allies so when they start giving votes he will likely continue to have more than we do together. This means he gets to pass whatever he wants, in particular the world religion and world ideologies. So when we hit the atomic era I fully expect him to have 12 votes on his own, 2 per city state, and 2 per time he fails to win. So if he has 11 allies he's apt to win the very first time the council meets to vote a winner. He has 8 right now, so he's not really going to need to get the late game tech or many of the pity votes.
How can this be stopped? Well, we can take his city state allies as a start. But he declared war on us which means the city states also declared war on us. We can't just do quests and pay them money anymore. There are really only two ways left to remove his allies. We can kill them, or we can stop using our spies to catch up in tech and start using them to try to rig elections. Killing the city states doesn't even help much. We deny Dave 2 votes but we (maybe?) knock 1.2 votes off the number needed to win. It's a gain, but it's not much of one. The best bet there would actually be for me to conquer a city state and then let Matt conquer it back and liberate it. That would restore it as a city state but with Matt as the ally, not Dave. So it would deny Dave 2 votes and keep the number needed to win constant. But I think it forces Matt and I to fight, which kills trading, and that's really bad. So maybe that could be a desperation move, but I don't like it much. Besides, if I'm going to actually beat up a city state, I want to own it myself!
How about rigging elections? How does that work? I know you can park them in a city state and then every so often (15 turns in a normal game so probably 10 turns in a quick game) the city state will hold elections and the best spy present will get to get some influence for his civ and lower the influence of everyone else. If we lower Dave below the alliance level then presumably we can make peace and spend the cash to buy the city state as an ally ourselves. But when you're at war you're always listed at -60 influence... So does rigging elections in this case even help? Will we stay at -60 after peace is declared or will we go back to our real amount? I don't know. The other thing you can do is try a coup. It has very low odds of success but if it works it flips your influence with the other player's influence. So we'd become the ally straight up instead of Dave. Failure kills off your spy. You get a new one again after a few turns but they lose any levels they might have. It seems like a bit of a desperation play but I guess it'd be worth a shot if it came right down to it.
Another possibility is to attack the other sources of his votes. Conquer the city that built the Forbidden Palace. Use an army of great prophets to convert away all his cities so he's no longer following the world religion. Bring Robb back into the game to increase the number of votes needed to win. (If that is even actually part of the formula... Man I wish I could find it!)
Or we can try to win even faster. It seems inconceivable to win a science victory because of how deep you need to go beyond the atomic era to pull that one off. Even if Dave needs 3 or 4 failed votes to win he gets that to happen in ~50 turns. You need 15 techs in atomic or above era to get a science victory, and then you need to still build the last part. No, science seems right out unless we really cut down on his external sources of votes. Culture might be possible, and it's certainly where my hat is hung, but Dave makes so much culture per turn I actually can't imagine winning this way. Not without the internet, anyway, and it's also far in the information era.
That just leaves military. It doesn't much matter if it's a full military victory or just removing Dave and then having Matt and I duke it out for science/culture. But it feels like keeping the status quo means Dave wins a diplomatic victory.
I'm not sure if I like this. I hate board games with a front runner issue. Dave did well early so now he needs to die? Do we really need to play Civ V in a way that we never seem like enough of a threat to be ganged up on? Do we need to be in 2nd place so when the world gangs up on the leader we can swoop in for the win? Do we need to always be capable of winning a defensive war against all the other players?
Though for all I know there's something going on such that Dave won't just win a diplomatic victory. For all I know his massive tech lead actually means he _is_ capable of winning a defensive war against all the other players, especially since all the other players in this case is just two people on different islands. And if beating up a city state doesn't decrease the number of votes needed he may actually be barely containable, though he will still get to decide all the council votes on his own.
I am a little less worried about Dave instantly winning now than I was when I thought it was going to be 22 votes to win. But I am just as worried about the inevitable win because 2 extra votes every 13 turns will close the gap between 22 and 34 in only 78 turns, and I think he was going to overshoot 22 easily. We'll just have to wait and see what happens I guess!
Sunday, June 08, 2014
Bridge Match 2 - Board 58
Board 58 - Dealer East - All Vul
Opponents convention card: Dutch Acol
Opponents playing strength: Intermediate
My hand: ♠ J 9 4 3 ♥ K T 8 6 ♦ A Q 9 ♣ J 3
I open a weak NT in second seat. Partner responds 2 clubs, Stayman. I bid 2 hearts and partner jumps to 4. Easy as pie.
West leads the J of diamonds.
Well hello there double fit. And partner has a 17 count? Shouldn't we be considering slam? Anyway I have a club, 3 diamonds, and 5 spades. They didn't lead a club so I don't have to worry about that loser for a while, either. So all I need to do is deal with the trump suit and I'm up.
I feel like I should know how to properly handly this suit, but I don't. Am I supposed to float the J of hearts? If I had the 9 that's probably right, but as is there's a very good chance I lose a trick to the 9 if I do that and East covers with the Q. So probably I should win on board and just lead up to the T. Then lead up to the K? Sure. I win the diamond on board and lead a low heart. 3-9-T-2. Interesting. Now am I supposed to go back to board (risking a spade ruff in a 4-0 split) to repeat the finesse against the Q? Or just give up 2 heart tricks now and be done with it. The problem with giving up 2 heart tricks now is they can set up a club at the same time. Maybe the right play is going to be ruffing a diamond to get back to board? That's only a problem on a 7-1 diamond split which sure feels like it should be less likely than a 4-0 spade split. Ok, run it.
Blargh. East shows out of hearts after I do that so there's no finessing him anyway. But he doesn't fire back a club when he gets in so they only get the 2 heart tricks anyway. Making 5.
All 7 other tables played in 4 spades, not 4 hearts. 2 of them made 5, 4 made 4, and 1 went down 1. So we get 12 MPs.
Jack disagrees with my opening bid. I only have 11 points and we're playing 12-14. Sure, but I like bidding! Later on he disagrees with my play of ruffing a diamond. He'd rather I pitch a club. Ruffing high only makes sense when East has the remaining hearts and only 2 diamonds which isn't very likely but was what I was playing against. Pitching is better in all other situations. Because then I can safely use the A of clubs as a board entry without risk. Yeah, that sure would have been better. Even if East ruffs with a little heart I'm only in trouble if he then leads a spade to his partner's void. Which is possible, so my play wasn't strictly inferior, but it's really not very likely.
Ranking after board 58/60: 1/16 with 63.55%
Opponents convention card: Dutch Acol
Opponents playing strength: Intermediate
My hand: ♠ J 9 4 3 ♥ K T 8 6 ♦ A Q 9 ♣ J 3
I open a weak NT in second seat. Partner responds 2 clubs, Stayman. I bid 2 hearts and partner jumps to 4. Easy as pie.
West leads the J of diamonds.
| NORTH ♠ A K Q T 5 ♥ J 7 4 3 ♦ K 4 ♣ A 5 | ||
| WEST ♦ J | ||
| SOUTH ♠ J 9 4 3 ♥ K T 8 6 ♦ A Q 9 ♣ J 3 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | 1NT | ||
| Pass | 2♣1 | Pass | 2♥ |
| Pass | 4♥ | Pass | Pass |
| Pass | |||
| 1Stayman | |||
Well hello there double fit. And partner has a 17 count? Shouldn't we be considering slam? Anyway I have a club, 3 diamonds, and 5 spades. They didn't lead a club so I don't have to worry about that loser for a while, either. So all I need to do is deal with the trump suit and I'm up.
I feel like I should know how to properly handly this suit, but I don't. Am I supposed to float the J of hearts? If I had the 9 that's probably right, but as is there's a very good chance I lose a trick to the 9 if I do that and East covers with the Q. So probably I should win on board and just lead up to the T. Then lead up to the K? Sure. I win the diamond on board and lead a low heart. 3-9-T-2. Interesting. Now am I supposed to go back to board (risking a spade ruff in a 4-0 split) to repeat the finesse against the Q? Or just give up 2 heart tricks now and be done with it. The problem with giving up 2 heart tricks now is they can set up a club at the same time. Maybe the right play is going to be ruffing a diamond to get back to board? That's only a problem on a 7-1 diamond split which sure feels like it should be less likely than a 4-0 spade split. Ok, run it.
Blargh. East shows out of hearts after I do that so there's no finessing him anyway. But he doesn't fire back a club when he gets in so they only get the 2 heart tricks anyway. Making 5.
| NORTH ♠ A K Q T 5 ♥ J 7 4 3 ♦ K 4 ♣ A 5 | ||
| WEST ♠ 8 6 ♥ A Q 5 2 ♦ J T 8 2 ♣ 7 6 2 | EAST ♠ 7 2 ♥ 9 ♦ 7 6 5 3 ♣ K Q T 9 8 4 | |
| SOUTH ♠ J 9 4 3 ♥ K T 8 6 ♦ A Q 9 ♣ J 3 |
All 7 other tables played in 4 spades, not 4 hearts. 2 of them made 5, 4 made 4, and 1 went down 1. So we get 12 MPs.
Jack disagrees with my opening bid. I only have 11 points and we're playing 12-14. Sure, but I like bidding! Later on he disagrees with my play of ruffing a diamond. He'd rather I pitch a club. Ruffing high only makes sense when East has the remaining hearts and only 2 diamonds which isn't very likely but was what I was playing against. Pitching is better in all other situations. Because then I can safely use the A of clubs as a board entry without risk. Yeah, that sure would have been better. Even if East ruffs with a little heart I'm only in trouble if he then leads a spade to his partner's void. Which is possible, so my play wasn't strictly inferior, but it's really not very likely.
Ranking after board 58/60: 1/16 with 63.55%
Friday, June 06, 2014
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest: Infinite Seeds
I hooked my SNES up to my computer in order to see what the image would look like and in order to do some testing off of my old saved game. The image, unfortunately, looks like garbage. I remember reading someplace that the standard connectors are really bad and if you actually want to get an SNES image into a reasonable format for streaming you need to get s-video cables. My capture card has an s-video input so that's all good, but I don't think finding s-video cables is an easy thing to do. I remember asking around at some local vintage game stores and they all looked at me like I was crazy. So just now I did a search and found a seller on Amazon willing to sell one for $2. With a $10 shipping charge, of course. But if it works that's still a steal for me, so I bought one.
While I had the SNES connected I figured I'd try the infinite seeds bug I'd read about in only one place on the internet and which I haven't seen anyone using in a speedrun. I know the current route people use has to buy seeds twice and really pays attention to how many seeds they have left. (Seeds restore maximum spell points to one of your characters.) So I loaded up my game from my marathon and went to the first town that sells seeds. I used all of the seeds I had on me and then bought 0 seeds from the store. It turned my blank seed spot into a seed picture with a 0 on it. I used that icon and it overflowed and gave me 99 seeds in that slot and oddly enough a bunch more seeds in the next slot over. If I ever wanted to use that item I'd be in trouble but since all it does is dispel temporary debuffs I don't think anyone ever uses it.
So... I already have a way to make the current route more efficient. Huzzah!
While I had the SNES connected I figured I'd try the infinite seeds bug I'd read about in only one place on the internet and which I haven't seen anyone using in a speedrun. I know the current route people use has to buy seeds twice and really pays attention to how many seeds they have left. (Seeds restore maximum spell points to one of your characters.) So I loaded up my game from my marathon and went to the first town that sells seeds. I used all of the seeds I had on me and then bought 0 seeds from the store. It turned my blank seed spot into a seed picture with a 0 on it. I used that icon and it overflowed and gave me 99 seeds in that slot and oddly enough a bunch more seeds in the next slot over. If I ever wanted to use that item I'd be in trouble but since all it does is dispel temporary debuffs I don't think anyone ever uses it.
So... I already have a way to make the current route more efficient. Huzzah!
Thursday, June 05, 2014
Civ V: Spending Happy Faces
Something I've been trying to think through recently is how to make optimal use of my happy faces. Should I be forcing some cities to stop growing in order to grow other cities instead? Should I found more cities? I could leave the happy faces around and try to pick up a golden age or potentially sell some luxuries to other players.
By default you have 9 happy faces to work with, plus 1 for each natural wonder you find, plus 4 for each luxury good you have. Then you can also get some extra happy faces through policies or through local city happiness buildings. Every city you found knocks 3 happiness off of your bottom line. So in a sense every city you found kills off the potential for 3 people in your capital. People in your capital tend to be better than people in other cities and right now we're replacing them with just the base tile of a new city so this is a pretty terrible trade. If the new city gets you a luxury that's actually a net positive though since you get the city and the first population completely for free.
Another difference comes from the whole local happiness thing. If you're able to build a colisseum, a circus, a pagoda, and a mosque in the new city then you've got the local happiness to pay for 7 people in that city that you couldn't otherwise pick up. So you subtracted out 3 people from your capital and got 7 people in return. Each individual person may be worse but you've more than doubled how many of them you can have. You do tack on a 5% science penalty and a 10% culture penalty for each new city but with just a library, monument, and the two religious buildings you will be bringing in 7 culture and 10.5 science from the city. It feels like that has to more than cover the extra cost unless your capital is really insane.
Now, I can definitely envision ways to have your capital be really insane. If you go completely down the tradition policy tree your capital's people will only cost half an unhappiness each instead of the full unhappiness in a regular city. This means you'd need to trade 6 people in your capital for 7 in another city. Your capital is also likely to build a bunch of multipliers unavailable to the rest of your cities (like 50% more science from national college) which can really make the 6 people in your capital worth an awful lot. I can see settling more cities to pick up luxuries since those are happy face positive and the extra safety you get from being able to produce more military units is likely worth the policy and tech hikes. Especially since unless your capital is making 200 science or 70 culture you're eventually going to be outpacing those cost multipliers.
In my currentfour three player game I started making lots of cities early before I could stack in any local happiness for them. I'm pretty sure that was a mistake since I ended up unhappy and unable to grow for quite some time. A couple of the cities I built 'near' luxuries, but not right on top of them, and the cities took forever to border expand those resources in. It was definitely a mistake and a learning experience. I do now think I'll be getting the tradition opener in almost every game to get the faster border expansion even if I then switch to full liberty for lots of cities. I feel like I stunted my growth in lots of little ways through bad play and I may well be too far behind to make a comeback. But looking at things now, and seeing how much local happiness I can now get (and I don't even have zoos yet), I'm thinking the more cities I can build the better. Letting a city grow bigger than the local happiness is probably not wise without having a really good reason because I could spend those 3 people on a whole other size 5 or 7 city. Assuming I had more space to put them down, anyway, which is really not the case. I definitely think my land mass was designed for a full tradition build. Oh well!
For example, I think a policy with a single city would cost me 413 culture. I'm making 16 culture in my (terrible) capital so that's 26 turns for a policy. Each city I found adds an extra 41 onto the cost of the policy. So each city has to make at least 1.6 culture per turn to offset the 10% culture cost. Considering they're guaranteed to make 1 culture per turn because I have the liberty opener... I should have as many cities as I can get my hands on! Build a monument and go! Especially with a religion like I have with the ability to buy 2 buildings for 3 happy faces in each city.
I don't think I can get any wonders because I don't have any single city that's any good but I have lots of cities that are decent. I expect I should be able to hold off any invaders by just setting all of my cities to build units. But I am last in hammers, so maybe that's not even true. I really need to get some policies in the exploration tree. Unlocking 3 hammers per coastal city and 3 happy faces per coastal city (that has built a light house, harbour, and seaport anyway) looks to be really, really good. Then I can get most of my cities up to size 10 for no extra unhappiness! Snag a zoo and I can get up to 12! Of course most of these cities don't have anything resembling 12 tiles worth using. Maybe I'll eventually build buildings for specialists so I can do better than 'unemployed dude for 1 hammer' which I've had to use a few times already this game. (That population growth was a mistake!)
I'm not sure about saving up for a golden age. It would be pretty sweet but it takes so many happy faces and I'm really not that far above zero. I could stunt all my cities growth instead of just most of them to try to force it to happen. 20% more production and culture would be pretty sweet. Maybe that's how I get the policies together to work on exploration... Hmm...
By default you have 9 happy faces to work with, plus 1 for each natural wonder you find, plus 4 for each luxury good you have. Then you can also get some extra happy faces through policies or through local city happiness buildings. Every city you found knocks 3 happiness off of your bottom line. So in a sense every city you found kills off the potential for 3 people in your capital. People in your capital tend to be better than people in other cities and right now we're replacing them with just the base tile of a new city so this is a pretty terrible trade. If the new city gets you a luxury that's actually a net positive though since you get the city and the first population completely for free.
Another difference comes from the whole local happiness thing. If you're able to build a colisseum, a circus, a pagoda, and a mosque in the new city then you've got the local happiness to pay for 7 people in that city that you couldn't otherwise pick up. So you subtracted out 3 people from your capital and got 7 people in return. Each individual person may be worse but you've more than doubled how many of them you can have. You do tack on a 5% science penalty and a 10% culture penalty for each new city but with just a library, monument, and the two religious buildings you will be bringing in 7 culture and 10.5 science from the city. It feels like that has to more than cover the extra cost unless your capital is really insane.
Now, I can definitely envision ways to have your capital be really insane. If you go completely down the tradition policy tree your capital's people will only cost half an unhappiness each instead of the full unhappiness in a regular city. This means you'd need to trade 6 people in your capital for 7 in another city. Your capital is also likely to build a bunch of multipliers unavailable to the rest of your cities (like 50% more science from national college) which can really make the 6 people in your capital worth an awful lot. I can see settling more cities to pick up luxuries since those are happy face positive and the extra safety you get from being able to produce more military units is likely worth the policy and tech hikes. Especially since unless your capital is making 200 science or 70 culture you're eventually going to be outpacing those cost multipliers.
In my current
For example, I think a policy with a single city would cost me 413 culture. I'm making 16 culture in my (terrible) capital so that's 26 turns for a policy. Each city I found adds an extra 41 onto the cost of the policy. So each city has to make at least 1.6 culture per turn to offset the 10% culture cost. Considering they're guaranteed to make 1 culture per turn because I have the liberty opener... I should have as many cities as I can get my hands on! Build a monument and go! Especially with a religion like I have with the ability to buy 2 buildings for 3 happy faces in each city.
I don't think I can get any wonders because I don't have any single city that's any good but I have lots of cities that are decent. I expect I should be able to hold off any invaders by just setting all of my cities to build units. But I am last in hammers, so maybe that's not even true. I really need to get some policies in the exploration tree. Unlocking 3 hammers per coastal city and 3 happy faces per coastal city (that has built a light house, harbour, and seaport anyway) looks to be really, really good. Then I can get most of my cities up to size 10 for no extra unhappiness! Snag a zoo and I can get up to 12! Of course most of these cities don't have anything resembling 12 tiles worth using. Maybe I'll eventually build buildings for specialists so I can do better than 'unemployed dude for 1 hammer' which I've had to use a few times already this game. (That population growth was a mistake!)
I'm not sure about saving up for a golden age. It would be pretty sweet but it takes so many happy faces and I'm really not that far above zero. I could stunt all my cities growth instead of just most of them to try to force it to happen. 20% more production and culture would be pretty sweet. Maybe that's how I get the policies together to work on exploration... Hmm...
Wednesday, June 04, 2014
Final Fantasy X: Dark Shiva Down!
I've had a lack of motivation to play Final Fantasy X lately. I was at the point where Tidus had 99 levels to spend but I didn't think I had any other useful spheres to farm up for him. He had max strength, agility, magic, defense, and magic defense. Because I couldn't get his ultimate weapon thanks to Dark Bahamut I had to spend a bunch of hard to get crafting materials on his weapon. This meant I didn't have them available to make a good piece of armour so I was mostly grinding easy to kill arena bosses for cash and a chance at dark matter drops. But when he stopped earning experience because the game only lets you store 99 levels up I got a little depressed and moved on to other things I guess.
Today I finally turned the game back on. It had been over a month since I'd last played which is sad. Final Fantasy X is such a good game, why would I leave it for so long? Anyway, instead of farming arena bosses when I turned the game back on I decided to go catch some more monsters in order to unlock the boss that drops hp spheres. Eventually I'd break the limit on his max health and having useful spheres to plug into the grid would be useful. I did so, and it turned out that boss counterattacked with a big damage attack (even into my max defense) and I realized I'd ignored evasion. Farming up some evasion spheres would give me something to fill in the grid with too, so I went to get those. Turns out evasion sphere guy is hard to hit and I'd also ignored accuracy. So I killed accuracy guy a bunch and then evasion guy a bunch and filled in a good chunk of the grid with those two types of nodes. Along the way I finally hit 99 dark matters (every arena boss has a 1 in 8 chance of dropping 2 of them) and was able to put ribbon on a piece of armour. That was the motivation I needed to finally sell off all the weapons I'd found and bribe a few marlboros to break my max hp limit and finish off my good armour. Ribbon/break hp limit/auto-haste/auto-phoenix. Woo!
I plowed through all the arena bosses I had unlocked and that ended up filling Tidus back up to max level again. My other characters managed to spend their banked levels down because they either gain tons of experience or do tons of damage. Tidus does both at the same time, so on 'real' fights he still gains levels while everyone else doesn't. All I have left in the arena is the guy who unlocks for catching 10 of everything I think, so I headed off to do that. One of the monsters could only be caught right outside where Dark Shiva hangs out so I decided to pay her a visit. Tidus now has max strength, agility, magic, defense, magic defense, accuracy, evasion, over 20k max health, and ribbon. So I should be good to go, right?
Wrong! Dark Shiva blew me up over and over again. Each time I'd learn something new about the fight. Eventually I made an actual plan to win and took her out. I tried lots of ways to mitigate her limit break (which hit my whole team for 80k) and eventually decided that couldn't be done and just summoned an aeon of my own for her to kill when her limit break bar filled up.
After she died I took a look at the things she can drop... For me she dropped armour for Tidus that breaks the hp limit. A little late for that, Shiva! It also only had 3 ability slots instead of 4 so it's bad. But it looks like she can drop 4 slot items with ribbon and break hp limit for all characters, or a weapon with break damage limit. Either of those things could be really useful for building up other characters. I can't fight her again unless I reload the old save... Is that worth doing?
Considering how long it took to build the items for Tidus I absolutely believe it is worth scumming Dark Shiva for drops. If I want to play with other characters. At this point I've decided the reason I got burned out was my assertion to get all of the achievements. A couple of them look to be really, really hard (possibly not even possible for me with my tv) so my motivation fell off the charts. I think I'm just going to throw that aside. Beat the challenge bosses, maybe max out just Tidus' grid so I can finally say I've done that, and beat the game. Now that I've killed one dark aeon I'm probably strong enough that with good play I can beat the rest, right? Right?
Today I finally turned the game back on. It had been over a month since I'd last played which is sad. Final Fantasy X is such a good game, why would I leave it for so long? Anyway, instead of farming arena bosses when I turned the game back on I decided to go catch some more monsters in order to unlock the boss that drops hp spheres. Eventually I'd break the limit on his max health and having useful spheres to plug into the grid would be useful. I did so, and it turned out that boss counterattacked with a big damage attack (even into my max defense) and I realized I'd ignored evasion. Farming up some evasion spheres would give me something to fill in the grid with too, so I went to get those. Turns out evasion sphere guy is hard to hit and I'd also ignored accuracy. So I killed accuracy guy a bunch and then evasion guy a bunch and filled in a good chunk of the grid with those two types of nodes. Along the way I finally hit 99 dark matters (every arena boss has a 1 in 8 chance of dropping 2 of them) and was able to put ribbon on a piece of armour. That was the motivation I needed to finally sell off all the weapons I'd found and bribe a few marlboros to break my max hp limit and finish off my good armour. Ribbon/break hp limit/auto-haste/auto-phoenix. Woo!
I plowed through all the arena bosses I had unlocked and that ended up filling Tidus back up to max level again. My other characters managed to spend their banked levels down because they either gain tons of experience or do tons of damage. Tidus does both at the same time, so on 'real' fights he still gains levels while everyone else doesn't. All I have left in the arena is the guy who unlocks for catching 10 of everything I think, so I headed off to do that. One of the monsters could only be caught right outside where Dark Shiva hangs out so I decided to pay her a visit. Tidus now has max strength, agility, magic, defense, magic defense, accuracy, evasion, over 20k max health, and ribbon. So I should be good to go, right?
Wrong! Dark Shiva blew me up over and over again. Each time I'd learn something new about the fight. Eventually I made an actual plan to win and took her out. I tried lots of ways to mitigate her limit break (which hit my whole team for 80k) and eventually decided that couldn't be done and just summoned an aeon of my own for her to kill when her limit break bar filled up.
After she died I took a look at the things she can drop... For me she dropped armour for Tidus that breaks the hp limit. A little late for that, Shiva! It also only had 3 ability slots instead of 4 so it's bad. But it looks like she can drop 4 slot items with ribbon and break hp limit for all characters, or a weapon with break damage limit. Either of those things could be really useful for building up other characters. I can't fight her again unless I reload the old save... Is that worth doing?
Considering how long it took to build the items for Tidus I absolutely believe it is worth scumming Dark Shiva for drops. If I want to play with other characters. At this point I've decided the reason I got burned out was my assertion to get all of the achievements. A couple of them look to be really, really hard (possibly not even possible for me with my tv) so my motivation fell off the charts. I think I'm just going to throw that aside. Beat the challenge bosses, maybe max out just Tidus' grid so I can finally say I've done that, and beat the game. Now that I've killed one dark aeon I'm probably strong enough that with good play I can beat the rest, right? Right?
Tuesday, June 03, 2014
League of Legends: One for All: Mirror Mode
Riot has their latest 'temporary wacky map' option up and running. It's the One for All mode back for another spin (One for All being the mode where all 5 members of your team played the same champion) with two twists this time around. The first is that the enemy team also plays the same champion as your team so you have 10 copies of a given champion running around. The second twist is the game takes place on the ARAM map instead of the normal 5v5 map.
I like the first twist. One of the problems with the original One for All mode was when one team picked something fun and one team picked something good. Most teams simply couldn't compete against a team of healers and the games ended up being complete stompings. You did get to ban some champions out and Riot also disabled champions that were particularly problematic and you did often get fun matches. Changing it so both teams play the same champion fixes that issue. Which isn't to say all matches are fun (Nidalee is pretty stupid) but you never have one team not have the tools to have a chance since both teams have identical toolsets. (As long as all 10 people play the whole game... I've had too many games with a leaver.)
I strongly dislike the second twist. One of the things I really liked about the original One for All mode was how different teams would handle jungling. Do you jungle at all? Do you throw someone into a 1v2 lane? How about supporting? On the ARAM map all those decisions are thrown right out the window. There are still ways to play better, of course. Knowing how to time your deaths so your team doesn't lose turret pressure and knowing to wait for respawns before charging in 3v5 over and over and over again are real things. They just aren't things I find terribly interesting. Mostly I find them frustrating.
There are certainly some neat interactions going on. Vayne silver bolts stack up with each other so people take a lot of damage in a real hurry if they get focused. Playing with 10 Zacs meant there were a silly number of blobs in play. It's definitely silly and fun but I'm pretty glad this mode will be rotating out soon.
One thing that really annoys me is the mode is buggy with regards to skins. If you end up playing a champion you own but didn't nominate (each player has a 10% chance of getting to pick the played champion) it defaults you back to no skin even if you own a skin for that champion. I don't change my champion skins ever, but I do own a few. It normally defaults to using your last used skin which is just fine by me. I've played all my champions with the skin on them and never need to look at the skin selection window again. Except for now, where two of my favourite skins (Mega Man Ezreal and DDR Sona) have been turned off by this bug. So now when I play those champions I won't have a skin until I remember to manually change it before a game with them. And I probably won't notice until the game has started at which point it will again be too late. So annoying!
I like the first twist. One of the problems with the original One for All mode was when one team picked something fun and one team picked something good. Most teams simply couldn't compete against a team of healers and the games ended up being complete stompings. You did get to ban some champions out and Riot also disabled champions that were particularly problematic and you did often get fun matches. Changing it so both teams play the same champion fixes that issue. Which isn't to say all matches are fun (Nidalee is pretty stupid) but you never have one team not have the tools to have a chance since both teams have identical toolsets. (As long as all 10 people play the whole game... I've had too many games with a leaver.)
I strongly dislike the second twist. One of the things I really liked about the original One for All mode was how different teams would handle jungling. Do you jungle at all? Do you throw someone into a 1v2 lane? How about supporting? On the ARAM map all those decisions are thrown right out the window. There are still ways to play better, of course. Knowing how to time your deaths so your team doesn't lose turret pressure and knowing to wait for respawns before charging in 3v5 over and over and over again are real things. They just aren't things I find terribly interesting. Mostly I find them frustrating.
There are certainly some neat interactions going on. Vayne silver bolts stack up with each other so people take a lot of damage in a real hurry if they get focused. Playing with 10 Zacs meant there were a silly number of blobs in play. It's definitely silly and fun but I'm pretty glad this mode will be rotating out soon.
One thing that really annoys me is the mode is buggy with regards to skins. If you end up playing a champion you own but didn't nominate (each player has a 10% chance of getting to pick the played champion) it defaults you back to no skin even if you own a skin for that champion. I don't change my champion skins ever, but I do own a few. It normally defaults to using your last used skin which is just fine by me. I've played all my champions with the skin on them and never need to look at the skin selection window again. Except for now, where two of my favourite skins (Mega Man Ezreal and DDR Sona) have been turned off by this bug. So now when I play those champions I won't have a skin until I remember to manually change it before a game with them. And I probably won't notice until the game has started at which point it will again be too late. So annoying!
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