Civilization 6

One of the most criticized features of the Civ 5&6 is "one unit per tile" (1UPT) limitation - in the older versions of Civ, it was possible to stack an unlimited count of units on a single tile.

The benefit of the change is more opportunities for tactics. For example, it is possible to replay Battle of Marathon in Jadwiga's Legacy scenario - a single well placed pikeman can indefinitely block a mountain passage against a hoard of knights, till only a single knight can attack the pikeman per turn. Or you may place a city between two large lakes, like real-world Madison-Wisconsin, making it difficult to "flank" the city and put it in to the siege. And of course, 1UPT fixes the infamous Stack of Doom issue.

On the other end, it makes logistics difficult. It happened to me multiple times that I ordered a unit to move forward, only to watch it in horor how it moves backward because all the "resting places" in the forward direction are already occupied by my units. A simple mitigation of the described nuisance is to introduce a keyboard shortcut particularly popular in Microsoft Word: Ctrl+Z. The implementation can take an inspiration from The Battle for Wesnoth turn based strategy, which gives the user the opportunity to take back a miss-click. But to prevent the abuse of the feature by the players, it is not possible to take back a move that uncovers part of a map or a move that lifts fog-of-war. Westnoth also prevents you from taking back a move, which results into a combat. Since Civ 6 still uses randomness in the damage calculation, this limitation would have to be ported as well. The long loading times because of a silly miss-click would be mostly just part of the distant past...

Another irritating thing is that sometimes a victory (or loss) is inevitable. But you still have to get thru many turns to get there. Some people enjoy this part of the game. But I find it boring. It would be nice to have something like "auto combat" or "quick battle" from Heroes of Might & Magic III that would allow you to watch the march to the victory from the resting position of your seat or that would allow you to just skip to the victory screen because you really need some sleep time. Didn't you get the outcome you expected? No worry, just press the sweet Ctrl+Z combo and you can show the computer how it should have been done.

The biggest advantage of having the "fast end" option is that as a developer you do not have to stress yourself so much with fine-tuning the winning conditions. Does the game slip too frequently into the war-of-attrition? Just add "fast end" option. Problem mitigated. Release the game. And leave the re-balancing on the expansion pack.

And finally, the game logic for city states and civilizations should be the same thing. City states are great. But I want to be able to:

1. Befriend not only city states but also civilizations with amenities.
2. Get unique bonuses not only from being suzerain of city states, but also from being a friend to civilizations.  

And reversely, civilizations are great, but I want to be able to:

1. Select not only civilizations that appear in the game, but also city states.

All these issues can be nicely resolved by adding a switch into the "create new game" GUI next to each civilization, which would "cripple" the selected civilization to a city state. This switch would:

1. Remove the leader and her/his traits. But the civilization traits would stay there.
2. Limit the count of cities to one.
3. Adjust things like loyalty bonus,... to actually make the city states work.

Hegemon scenario for Civ 3

The best Civilization 3 contrib scenario that I have ever played is, without hesitation, Hegemon. This is a scenario that you will want to play multiple time. Just each time with a different nation. Notes for one of the weakest nations, Ithaka, follow.

While Ithaka has strong start, their power is limited:

1. While they have an awesome unique wonder, which is buildable from the beginning, they don't have any other unique building (not even a tribal camp!).
2. While they start with 4 unique units prebuild, they are not able to create additional unique units.
3. While the motherland is fertile, it does not contain an Island resource, which is necessary for trade network construction. Hence, forget about trading strategic and luxury resources with other nations.
4. Ithaka city does not lye on river, while many other capitols do. Hence, the growth of Ithaka is capped, until aqueduct is discovered and build.
5. Ithaka belongs to Island Greeks. And Island Greeks (together with Lesser Greeks) have inferior units to everyone else (with a few exceptions during the early and mid-game when their units are just as good as everyone).

Nevertheles, contrary to what is said in the guide, it is possible to win with Ithaka.

1. Ithaka starts with 2 prebuild boats. These boats allows you to quickly uncover the whole coastline and make highly profitable discovery trades.
2. Thanks to the unique wonder, Ithaka has a lead in production capacity. Use it to build unit generating units, because own units suck. And use the generated units for early attack on weaker nations. There are four goals:
1. Get their cities. Economically wise, it is cheaper to build attack units and conquer cities than to build settlers.
2. Get workers from their settlers. They are an easy target.
3. Get a leader in order to build an army. The army will then allow you to conquer well defended capitols of stronger nations (e.g.: Sparta).
4. If you are not able to eliminate some nation completely, deny them access to cooper as cooper is necessary for building many mid-game units.
3. Rush the conquest.  Ithaka is greatly positioned to take down nations in the order they get their unique units. Sparta has early unique units. So, take down Sparta before they start to spawn their unique units. Then there are Athens and Thebians with their mid-game unique units. And finally Macedonians with their late unique units.
4. Focus on nations that have freshly build a wonder and take it from them (it is frequently cheaper to conquer a city with a wonder than to build the wonder).

How to win on deity or sid in Civilization 3

Generally, you want to finish the game as fast as possible, otherwise enemies are going to overbuild/overreseach you. In order to be able to finish the map quickly, pick a small map. In order to be able to quickly get to the enemy, pick a single continent with a minimum of water mass. Set a wining condition to elimination - with this setting, it is enough to conquer a single opponent's city in order to completely eliminate the opponent. With this setting, the opponent’s biggest advantage - many settlers from the beginning, is turned into a weakness. All you need is 2 unit that are capable of overcoming 2 spearmen in a weakly defended city, and the opponent is gone. In order to maximize your advantage, pick a nation with an early unique unit. And set your opponents to nations with late unique unite. The selection of your nation depends on the game rules of your Civ mod/patch. For example, in RARR, Aztecs are awesome. Their unique unit costs the same as a warrior. But it has a bonus attack point. It has a bonus movement point. It is not penalized for movement in jungle and forest (set the map to wet climate in order to maximize this benefit). It has a bonus hit point and it can enslave. And of course it helps that you can build the unique unit from the beginning without any resource dependency and that it triggers early gold age (remember, you want to finish the game as fast as possible). If you can pick your starting position, it is good to start next to a bonus resource like game in order to maximize the population growth and unique unit production. If everything goes well, you should easily win in the first 30 turns by conquest.

Dream castle in Heroes III by unit levels

1) Skeletons
While an average level 1 unit, the necromancy skill makes the skeletons a great choice for large maps with a lot of wandering creatures, which can be harvested.

Disadvantage: On tiny maps occupied only by castles, where the majority of the battles happen during the first two weeks, updated gremlins or sprites would be a better choice since they are better suited for castle conquests during the first weeks than skeletons.

2) Harpy
Updated harpies are masters of guerrilla attacks as the enemy does not retaliate and the harpies return to their original position unharmed. If combined with mass slow, melee units can have a tough time to take down the harpies.  If you dislike loosing units while cleaning the map, this is the creature for you. It was voted to be the second most favourite level 2 unit.

Disadvantage: While harpies are awesome units for map cleaning and castle defense against weak opponents because of their low attrition, harpies are lousy units for final battles where big unit losses have to be expected. If you expect early battles between the main heroes in the open field, wolfs with their impressive damage ability would be a better choice.

3) Elves
Each castle should have at least one shooting unit. Upgraded elves shoot twice during the turn, making their upgraded version highly desirable. Elves were voted to be the favourite level 3 unit.

4) Vampires
Once the count of upgraded vampires reaches ~20 units, they are awesome beasts for map cleaning as you may expect minimal losses due to their ability to resurrect from the flesh of their enemies. Rated the most favourite level 4 unit.

Disadvantage: Just like harpies, vampires are not the best units for the final battles. Furthermore, it takes two weeks to grow the necessary number of units from a single castle.

5) Pits
Upgraded pits can (or could, if they worked also on undeads) raise ridiculously expensive vampires in vast quantities from the slaughtered skeletons. Finally, you do not have to worry about skeleton losses during map cleaning as the lost skeletons get converted into vampires!

Disadvantage: Just like harpies, elves and vampires, this unit has to be upgraded to benefit from them fully.

6) Wyvern
To compensate the need to upgrade almost all lower level units, wyverns do not have to be upgraded to be of some use. Furthermore, wyverns' dwelling has very low prerequisite requirements (just a level 2 dwelling building), making it possible to recruit the wyverns during on the first day. Since they are also fliers, they can be of great use for early castle sieging.

Disadvantage: Champions, black knights and nagas are all beautiful creatures. But no other level 6 dwelling can be build on day 1. If we went with any other unit, we would not be able to recruit level 7 units on day 2 of the first week.

7) Firebird
While firebird is not the best level 7 unit, the fact that the dwelling is one of the cheapest (the second behind titan's), the unit itself is inexpensive, the weekly growth is above average, it is one of the fastest units in the game giving you the opportunity to apply mass haste/slow and decimate the opponent before he gets to the turn, and fire immunity allowing you to embrace Armageddon strategy (with the help of a support hero to store raised skeletons) make it a pretty decent choice. It is the only level 7 unit whose parameters were down-tuned in Horn of the Abyss. Furthermore, firebird dwelling building has only one prerequisite - level 6 dwelling building. Hence, if you play on normal difficulty, you just need to get 5 wood (or better, set the starting bonus to resources - wood and stone, and you do not have to worry about getting any additional resource or gold) and on the second day you will have 2 firebirds, 2 wyverns and 3900 gold in the pocket to spend it on whatever you want to (based on the situation you may want to keep it for capitol erection, or spend it on another hero, 8 harpies and 6 skeletons).

Discussion:
Since all the units would be from the same castle, there would not be morale penalty from mixing several units together. The castle would be usable for blitzkrieg strategy during the early phase of the game if played on normal difficulty level thanks to wyverns and firebirds. But the castle would also scale to long games due to the ability to harvest skeletons, which would be continuously converted into vampires. And because upgraded harpies and vampires simply do not die during the map cleaning, you may go into the final battles with vast counts of skeletons, harpies, and vampires. Furthermore, firebirds and Phoenixes are, contrary to many dragons, immune to Armageddon spell. And because Phoenixes are the fastest units in the game, you are almost guaranteed, that you get the opportunity to cast Armageddon before the opponent gets the opportunity to do anything. Hence, Phoenixes can be in some situations used for dragon slaying without any loss.

Hail to Emperor, baby!

Recenze knihy Proč muži neposlouchají a ženy neumí číst v mapách

Z kraje uvedu, že pokud jste četli "Muži jsou z Marsu, ženy z Venuše" od Graye Johna, budete se cítit jak doma. Allan Pease totiž také píše o rozdílech mezi muži a ženami a používá velmi podobné argumenty jako Gray, ale doprovází to jinými historkami. Někdy lepšími, někdy horšími.

Co jsem si z knihy odnesl:

1. Historicky muži jsou lovci, ženy matkami. To se projevuje průměrně horší komunikační schopností mužů oproti ženám - zatímco muži neměli při lovu mnoho příležitostí k mluvení, ženy byli doma ve skupině dalších žen a dětí. Konverzace se jim zautomatizovala a tak zvládají najednou konverzovat a vykonávat jinou činnost. Muži to nezvládají a autor to dokládá  výpovědí ženy, která když se na svého muže opravdu naštve, počká, až bude zatloukat hřebíky, a promluví na něj.
   
   Rozdíl se projevuje i v zorném poli. Muži museli rozpoznat zvěř na dálku, a tak mají zúžené zorné pole. Naproti tomu ženy museli neustále dávat pozor na děti, a tak mají lepší periferní vidění. Autor to ilustruje způsobem vyhledávání másla v lednici. Žena se podívá a vidí. Muž skenuje poličku po poličce, dokud ho nenajde. Ženy řidičky také mají nižší procento bočních srážek, než muži.
   
   Muži také mají lepší prostorovou orientaci, protože za lovnou zvěří museli jít třeba i několik dní a nesměli se ztratit. Naproti tomu ženy se starali o děti, a tak ani nemohli chodit příliš daleko od domova a nebyl důvod, aby museli mít dobrou prostorou orientaci. Autor to ilustruje na parkování auta - muži nemají s podélném parkováním problém, ženy ho nesnášejí. Nebo viděli jste někdy řidiče taxíku, ženu? Řidiči taxiků totiž musí mít dobrou prostorovou orientaci, aby dovezli zákazníka co nejrychleji a mohli odvézt dalšího klienta.
   
   Ženy mají mnohem jemnější pokožku než muži, protože muži museli být schopni se brodit houštím za kořistí bez ohledu na drobné tržné rány. Proto se stává, že muž krvácí z nohy a ani o tom neví - když se soustředí na kořist, drobné oděrky necítí.
2. Muž neustále myslí na sex, žena nikoliv. Preference se ale s věkem mění, a zatímco u ženy chtíč s věkem roste (přibližně do 40 let), u mužů chtíč od 14 let klesá. A to vysvětluje, proč starší dámy vyhledávají mladé zajíčky a starší pánové mladé dívky - sexuálním apetitem si vyhovují. 
3. Muži v manželství mají častěji sex, protože ženy v manželství jsou jistější a mohou se tedy snadněji uvolnit a dosahují čtyřikrát snadněji orgasmu, než svobodné ženy. A pravidelně orgasmu dosahující ženy jsou svolnější mít sex

Když jsem začal psát tenhle článek, myslel jsem, že těch poznatků bude víc. Není. Stálo tedy za to, číst tuto knihu? Ano, tahle kniha vás může osvítit. Ale připravte se na typicky Americký roztahovačný výklad, kde je vše sto padesátkrát zopakováno.

The best castle in Heroes 2

It's magical that Heroes 2 doesn't age. The graphics is still nice as it doesn't attempt to be realistic, but indeed stylized. And it works. It works so well that time to time I return to play it. And as I switch castles all the time to increase the variety I try to imagine an ideal castle with ideal creatures.

My ideal castle would have following creatures:

1. Skeletons. They are expensive, but that's not a concern as your dead enemies are a free source of them. And they have extremely high damage (2-3) for a first class creature.
2. Gargoyles as they are fast and you get them with each recruited hero. Hence if you need a hero just for exploring, you recruit a hero and leave the relatively slow skeletons in the castle. As the hero's troop now contains only fast units the hero can now move further each round. Additionally flying troops are handy for blitzkrieg in the first week.
3. Elves. Each castle should have some shooters. And you really want to have some shooters for the blitzkrieg in the first week. Furthermore they have average or above average speed hence they don't slow down your heroes and that's quite a unique feature for a low-level shooter. The only problem is that in the first week you are going to have just a few of them.
4. Vampire (Lords) as they can resurrect them self. You just have to wait until you collect 15 of them and then they are invincible as with each attack they refill their rows to the full rank. The only problem is if the enemy concentrates all his power to vampires and kill them all in one round. Or if the opponent has only strong units as they die slowly and you can't fully benefit from vampire lord's special feature.
5. Hydras. They are ridiculously slow but as they have a lot of hit points and they are cheap they are perfect for defense. And they are usable for attack as well. Once I didn't have enough money to buy dragons but I had teleport spell and I could afford to buy 40 hydras. So I have been decimating the enemy with just these 40 hydras. It was satisfying to see all enemies troops to get bitten by 40 hydras at once.   
6. Paladins. They have ridiculously low number of hit points but they cause extremely high damage. Their secret of successful use lies in getting resurrect spell because for each spell point you can resurrect one paladin. And six resurrected paladins each turn is not bad at all. Additionally it's commonly easier to build the cathedral than a dragon tower. Of courmage by giving up of the dragons you also give up of dragon and Armageddon combo. But as you commonly have many skeletons in your group you don't want to cast Armageddon anyway.

Overall I think the castle is reasonably balanced. It has two fliers. A shooter. And a defender. The first level unit is useful during the whole game as skeletons are available from the beginning of the game and the number of skeletons grows so quickly that they are one of the most important units inlate game if not the most important. And the last level unit is affordable enough to enter the field in the middle epoch when others are still collecting resources to recruit the last level unit or even to build the dwelling structure (yes, black dragons, we are talking about you). The strategy in the first week is to build dwellings for the first four lowest units, the well and the statue. You are left with one free day which gives you some extra money to recruit units, build a ship dock or a market. In the first two weeks you recruit only skeletons, gargoyles and elves. On a small map you have good chances to successfully attempt for a blitzkrieg. In the case your castle is attacked you build swamp for hydras to have a defensive unit with many hit points. In the second week you commonly build swamp and the cathedral. At the beginning of the third week you should have plenty paladins and even enough money to recruit them. At the beginning of the fourth week you should have enough resources to update vampire's dwelling and recruit all 18 vampire lords. From now your forces will compose only from skeletons, elves, paladins and vampire lords as gargoyles are now rendered obsolete. In each epoch you are using three to four different units thus you can always accept some new units that wish to join you.

The castle is dark oriented - skeletons, gargoyles, vampires and hydras are already dark and in the dark fantasies there are always some dark elves and dark knights. Hence from a design point of view the castle makes sense and there shouldn't be any penalty for mixed troop just because you have elves and skeletons together. However, the castle is mixing undead and living creatures and that is causing some troubles. Even if we omit morale penalty for undead in the troop there are some spells for entirely live or undead troops like mass bless or dead ripple and their usefulness is now crippled. But it's possible to live with that till you don't get them in your own mage guilds (just like you don't get death ripple if you play as a knight).

What's your opinion about my castle?

Hail to the Emperor, baby!

Ve hře Civilization III Conquest jsem dostal následující easter egg: "Hail to the Emperor, baby!" od vojenského poradce. Škoda, že jsem neudělal screenshot.

Nepovažuji se za hráče her.

Aby můj seznam dohraných her neskončil v nějakém zaprášeném sektoru na disku, svěřuji ho internetu:

• Civilization III
• Civilization VI
• Civilization VII 
• Heroes I
• Heroes III
• Earth 2140
• Stronghold
• Stronghold Crusader Extreme
• Husita
• Berušky
• Worms Armageddon
• Diablo I
• Samorost 2
• World of Goo
• Final Fantasy IV
• Final Fantasy VI
• Isoball 2
• Defense of the Oasis
• Disciples II
• Mravenci
• Pandemic 2
• Pandemic 5
• Cursed Treasure
• Botanicula
• Plants vs. Zombies
• Diablo II
• The Lost Vikings
• Caesar III
• Monopoly Deluxe
• Urtuk The Desolation
• RimWorld
• Tyranny
• Baldurs Gate II
• Baldurs Gate III
  
• Into the Breach
• Dawn of Man
• Cardoard Town
• Desperados III
• Wingspan
• Stellaris
• Pillars of Eternity II
• Humankind
• Faster Than Light
• Frostpunk
• Don't Starve Together
• Timberborn
• Divinity Original Sin
• Ozymandias
• Hexarchy 
• Terraformers