You know, I was always playing cards in the geek lounge (read: science building classrooms), but my GF was a cheerleader (for a while). Looking back, I have absolutely no idea how that happened…
Yay, this is my 100th post! Such a defining moment - my geekdom is immortalized from this moment on! 
GOD I LOVE THIS BOARD!
Sorry. I keep getting giddy reading this one thread. Tears coming to my eyes . . . happy times!
When I stuck to chieftan level I got my score up above 4000 and approval rating of around 150% or so. Given, those were special circumstances. I’ll try to play some tonight or tomorrow and let you know.
In high school I was . . . well, take struuter out of the picture and that’ll give you an idea. Vaguely. I don’t want to remember those days.
I assume from your score that you tend toward more of a perfectionist game than a straight conquest. When moving up to the prince level, I found that there were two big points that I needed work on. First, build lots more cities. I generally try expand to completely fill my starting continent before I hit Industrialization. Second, and this is sort of tied in to the first point, keep a military presence at all times and be pressuring your neighbors. I know that when I play on Chieftain or Warlord I have this tendency to sort of sit back behind my (Great?) walls and basically try to stay in peacetime democracy for as long as possible. On the higher levels, when the computer opponents start behaving smarter and also becoming stronger, this strategy is hard to make work.
sigh A dagger. A dagger through my heart, that is.
I am screwing up coding left and right today. What the heck is wrong with me. Sheesh.
Anyway, another good site if you’re a hardcore civ fan can be found here.
The whole point of the Euro map and saving before huts is that you can get lots of cities by finding advanced tribes and wandering nomads. Some consider this cheating; I consider it using the resources I’m given as best I can. True, it couldn’t happen IRL, but that’s the frekaing point!
Every city I make, ground rules are that unless there’s someone about to attack me I make a warrior (or whatever’s the cheapest/most effective war unit) and then a settler/engineer. Set warrior off to explore, fight barbarians, discover the land and huts, etc, maybe the occasional badly-guarded city. Set the settler/engineer to irrigate/mine/build roads.
Oh, and without some of the wonders it’ll be MUCH harder to win the game/ For instance, I nearly always get: King Richard’s Crusade, the Great Wall, The Great Libary, Sun Tzu’s . . . criminy, most all of them. All except the Manhattan Project, which I get for the points.
One more thing . . . pollution does add up. I’ve had it before I hit industrialization, and sometimes before 1000 AD. It’s a bitch to clean up, but it doesn’t go away unless you do clean up, and sometimes I’ve gotten it before my settlers knew how to do so. Had to lower productivity there in favor of entertainers/tax men/scientists, though, so I didn’t lose much.
You were both in band, that’s how! Talk about geek!
::flees shielding head::
And hey, happy 100th, KK!
[sub]Tall geeks… mmmmmm…
Ah, these are my people. Though I don’t really game anymore, I remain a raging comics geek.
If any of y’all have about an hour to spare (or a T1 line…mmmm…T1…) to download a 15 meg movie, you must go here and download the summonergeeks file. I nearly peed myself laughing.
Wow. (sniff, sniff)
I played Empire of the Petal Throne, back when Gary Gygax was just a kid. I played non-advanced D&D, and by the time the advances had come out I was doing other things, mostly with the same group of players for about 12 years, every Saturday, for six or more hours.
Triskadecamus was originally the name of the thirteenth lineal descendent of Primus, the first magician in a campaign I was a part of, late in my career. (hey, Primus was the daughter of the inventor of the canoe, so figure how primitive the DM had made the campaign.) I played the entire line of mages. We died a lot. We also built the city of Pearl Harbor (Tertius, I believe) and invented multiple universe calculus (a tenth level spell created by Octimus). I really miss the adventure.
The great Freeport campaigns. (You can buy anything in Freeport, except slaves.) Bloodstone, Bloodstone, comrade of Ur, Champion of Wythome, Slayer of Manibet, Hero of the elder years. I played his friend Pinebranch Oakheart, Lord Itsbane. (“You can call me Woody.”) Fu H’si, the dreaded shapechanger. (Killed that bastard four times myself!) And the Head of Dead Ged! I was traveling in a party once that had two of them!
And of course no reminiscence of Freeport would be complete without thinking about Norman. But then, no one thought about him. No one at all. He was insignificant. (That one was an eigth level illusionist spell.)
I loved it. Can’t even begin to find the like of it now days. Sorry to have ranted on about something only familiar to me. But in general, I am sure every poster in the topic understands about great fantasy stories no one has ever heard. Thanks for the chance to bubble over.
Triskadecamus, Thirteenth Wizard Elect of the Freefarers.
Ooo, ooo, Civ!
Ok, brag first.
Sung Lo, the Magnificent, of the Chinese, 1978,
111,500,000 population, score 2140 (Deity) Rating 278.
Secrets: Never support units. Earn money, bribe yourself an army that is far from home. The are supported by NONE. Saves you a bundle in shields. It also saves you a lot of hassle with attitude back home. NONE armies don’t piss anyone off. The NONE settler is great. No support food, no shield. Late in the game you build a NONE Settler farm by putting one city with a rail connection and building a settler to disband the city. He is a NONE. You can buy them for 320 each. Less if you are patient. Every turn you send out a new supported settler, and restart the city in the same location. One city of about 12 size can build a new settler each turn, and then send it out to be a new NONE.
Close pack your cities early on, less loss to corruption, easier to protect. Never trade technology with anyone. Later in the game, you can let the Barbarians take a minor city, and surround it with spies. It becomes a NONE farm, that will eventually put out TANKS! Or Riflemen.
Night of the Comet kicked ass! And as for the high school thing, I was the smart, quiet chick with the blonde hair and glasses that tried to fade away into the woodwork and daydreamed about meeting that cute, black-haired geek with wire-rimmed glasses and a genius IQ drool
I don’t know how many of you do this, but I do my roleplaying on IRC. I’ve been free forming there for about 6 years now. I started with the Vampire:the Masquerade system. Now I’m in an AD&D campaign playing a fire genasi summoner and in a Marvel/Capcom sort playing a rendition of Green Lantern who I lovingly call Green Lady. And soon I’ll be starting in another AD&D campaign playing a grey elf mage. What I can say? I love wizards
And darn it, where are all the Final Fantasy fantics? And Tales of Phantasia/Destiny and Lunar? Those games are fantastic. I’m counting the days till FFIX. Plus I can’t wait for Chrono Cross and I want to get Legend of Mana and Legend of Dragoon once I work my way through Legend of Legaia.
Anyone played those yet? What would you rate em?
Also…sniff I’m an EverQuest addict. There. I admitted it. I like to whomp on things. I’m so ashamed. goes and hides in the corner
Bah…F-a-n-a-t-i-c-s…see? I’m so upset over being an EQ Addict I lost the ability to spell.
What else can I say? I wish I could check more often.
What’s wrong with catering a game party? We only get to do it once a month (the Chancling has kinda cut into our free time) so I figure we should do it right.
Besides, if we keep bringing in the homemade (someone elses home) pies and ice cream I figure my pals will keep making the drive out here (it’s about 50 miles).
What’s the point in being a successful geek if you can’t enjoy it? I’ve even booked a Renaissance Faire act for our Halloween costume party! Who’s coming? October 28th. Blue Ridge mountains of VA. Come one come all!
Hmmm…what about hand cut crystal dice? Would they cut up my players hands too much?
Special note: Last game day (two weeks ago) the Chancling (she’s 4 months old) rolled her first die! Mrs Chance was holding her at the table and she grabbed an 8-sided and rolled an eight!
Does that bode well or what?!?!?!?!?
Now if I could just play CivII as well as you guys can.
Who belonged to a group in college? We actually got recognized as an official group in school and got student funding and everything. We were The Noble Order of the Unicorn.
Quick post to the OP, more post to follow later:
The most fun I had playing AD&D was with thief characters.
I started a bar fight once by using my back stab ability to lob a beer mug into the back of some guy’s head without him knowing who did it. The fight spilled out into the street, and became a full blown riot. Plenty of money to be had from pick pocketing during the confusion.
Another time, I played a halfling fighter/thief who set up an alliance with the party’s mage. In exchange for invisibility and other spells being cast on me, I slipped the mage some of the loot I was hiding from the rest of the party (“OK, the trpa’s been disarmed. Hmmm… Not much here, but a couple hundred gold and some silver…”)
I enjoyed the chalenge of the thief. He’s not expected to always fill a certain role (Fight monsters, cast healing spells, throw fireballs). He can add support with any of the various wands and other item he can use, and he gets to be sneaky. Oh, sure, other classes can sneak too, but not like the thief.
I’m interested in seeing what the third addition of AD&D does for the classes. From what i’ve heard, class distinqtions(sp) are being done away with in favor of skill trees.
I’m not a gamer,anime fan, or comic book fan. But I’m a geek. I’m a science fiction/fantasy/classic literature/computers kind of geek. And I was the geeky girl that wouldn’t show that it hurt her feelings that she didn’t get asked out, so you guys assumed she didn’t care to go out and didn’t ask, thereby forcing her to continue to pretend she didn’t care…no bitterness here, people…but now I’m married,and my hubby isn’t a geek, but thinks it’s kinda cool that I am…
Ura-Maru…
Was that YOU I was playing Catan with late friday night?
Okay, okay. I’ll bite.
Is it from Jonathan Chance, Robert Orin Charles Kilroy’s buddy from the 1983 Styx album Kilroy Was Here?
Well, if not, it’s the best guess I have.
K.
OK, I haven’t read most of the thread, but I just have to reply to oneof thepoints in the OP:
I would say the exact opposite: Fighters do one thing and one thing only; they’re boring. Mages and priests, meanwhile, can do some cool stuff, but only so many times per day. Thieves, on the other hand, can use their varied abilities as much as they like, and they get to use all the fun dirty tricks. If you think that thieves suck, you’re doing too much hack-and-slash. Oh, and I agree with dewt: They do multi/dual class very well.
Side note: My favorite character thus far is a gnomish thief/cleric (special mythos that allows bladed weapons). He can’t for the life of him figure out why most clerics have no problem at all with splattering someone’s brains with a mourningstar, but get all squeamish about a dagger cleanly through the ribs…
If you feel that thieves suck because you don’t care for the sneaky style of play, that’s an individual choice.
If you don’t care for thieves because they never get to do anything but disarm traps, and they get killed, then look at what type of game you’re playing.
If I’m in a group that’s going to be Hack and Slash, then a maxed out fighter is the only way to go.
A fighter with exceptional strength, specialized in the long sword, is a damadge machine. Add a dagger in the off hand, and you’ve got a chainsaw.
Using the First Addition rules, you can be absolutely silly by specializing in the dart, of all things. Assuming a damadge bonus of +4 to +6, you’ll do more damadge with the dart than with the long sword on average.
There’s a reason why I find Hack and Slash AD&D boring.
In any campaign where creativity and planning pay off, the thief is a perfectly viable character, especially if you don’t mind being a little dishonest.
My favorite thief character was in a Hero System game (It really is a superior system, IMHO). Imagine a juggling, pickpocket with telekenisis. He was only strong enough to move a couple of ounces, but with enough experience I intended to remedy that. Give him some telepathy eventually, and you’ve got one hell of a criminal…
P.S. I’ve played all types of characters, even some hybrids via GURPS and Hero System, and I think every class has its own values. It just depends on what mood I’m in.
I was not in band. She was. Even my geekiness knows its boundaries.
And thanks.