Civ V is coming

Civilization V is being developed and is expected fall of this year. Woohoo! It would seem they have been working on the game for awhile, and I’m not sure why they waited until now to announce it, but beggars can’t be choosers.

It is not that Civ IV has lost its glamor to me or anything, but I would like to see some much improved AI. Better combat would also be great, but to be honest I suck at war anyway. I will be spending time trying to actually improve on my own game skills–as if I had any–so at least I can have a good foundation when the new installment comes out. Although it would be nice if it made it easier to enjoy my turtle tendencies. Or maybe I should learn to not expand too far without a standing army. WHATEVER.

Civilization V takes this definitive strategy game series in new directions with the introduction of hexagon tiles allowing for deeper strategy, more realistic gameplay and stunning organic landscapes for players to explore as they expand their empire. The brand new engine orchestrates a spectacular visual experience that brings players closer to the Civ experience than ever, featuring fully animated leaders interacting with players from a screen-filling diplomatic scene and speaking in their native language for the first time. Wars between empires feel massive as armies dominate the landscape, and combat is more exciting and intense than ever before. The addition of ranged bombardment allows players to fire weapons from behind the front lines, challenging players to develop clever new strategies to guarantee victory on the battlefield. In addition to the new gameplay features debuting in Civilization V, an extensive suite of community, modding and multiplayer elements will also make an appearance. (source)

We never did do any multiplayer stuff on Civ IV, but maybe we will in V?

Awesome fountain

That is Taylor Jane in Sunset Valley. I love her but am not really showing her off because she has the same piercings as Zyke because there aren’t any others I like for her right now. Also, I don’t know if I’m keeping that Sunset Valley game, but I might just leave it as a dumping ground for sims I don’t want to age and die.

And here is where she lives–I didn’t make this, I just wanted to play it. And it is only able to be played in Sunset Valley. Thus me starting a game there!

Living large in glorified studio

Jan twisted my arm and I think I will try my hand at a legacy.

I suck at the Warlord difficulty setting, by the way. I really need to learn to build up military units. The higher in difficulty you go up, the more war hungry other nations become…. I suppose I could always play with the always at war/peace options, but that feels a bit like cheating. (And I am trying to cut back on my temptation to cheat)

One thing I am interested in is making my own map. A WOT based map, obviously. But I think it might better to wait until I have some more nations done (and I’m not editing/adding anything until I win some games on Warlord level!). Also making custom scenarios.

I’d also like Civ Rev to come out on Wii, but I don’t think I should hold my breath.

I haven’t been working on my Civilization mod for awhile, mostly because I’m trying to become better at the Warlords difficulty setting. Not that I have been playing all too much either recently.

I have begun my WOT reread. It’s not going too fast, or as fast as usual, but that might be because a) I’m not reading every day and b) when I do read I’m doing a more close-reading a là college cramming. The other problem might be out of the whole series New Spring and Eye of the World are books I’ve read more than the others.

Changed hosts. My new host uses DirectAdmin instead of cPanel, which might take some getting used to, but so far it is fine. One thing I really like is that each domain gets its own folder. With cPanel you needed WHM to do that, which usually cost more than regular cPanel. Even so, I still need to have a moiraine.meandraine.net subdomain for now, otherwise my redirect rule via .htaccess won’t work: it’ll just show an error page.

For some reason my vBulletin database is larger on this host than the last one. Don’t know why. Also, my disk usage meter has close to 40mb of data I can’t account for. I’ve waited a couple of days before sending in a ticket to ask about that. My other tickets (one for sales, others for transfer) have gotten answered nice and fast, so hopefully the same will be true here. So far, I am very happy with new host.

Also, MW forums aren’t down every 30 minutes. This is a nice change.

I’m kind of rambling here….

I need to find boxers for Elnore for two reasons: 1) It’s a part of her character, and 2) They’ll help keep her pants up. Caraline needs a new wig, and there is one girl who makes fur wigs that I like, but of course she is closed!

I want to go to Europe.

I am so behind the times. vBulletin has raised its prices across the board. Renewals for owned licenses (the renewals are for support/downloads of latest releases) is now $60. Unless you do it two months before it expires then it is $40. It used to be $30 no matter when you renewed. I liked the old way better, because vBulletin seems to have taken a page out of phpBB’s book on updates. That is, 4.0 is really no where in sight. Hopefully there is some information soon.

I have no desire to update to 3.7, since that release seems geared more towards those who want their communities to be more like MySpace. I don’t want more bloat, I want a more streamlined vBulletin forum. I don’t regret moving away from phpBB to vBulletin, especially considering how long it took them to come out with 3.0. But my reasons for moving to the other guys was for forum features (merging,splitting,better spam protection) not SEO.

I’m still enjoying Civilization IV. I’m not sure whether I have found a little bug with my Westlands mod or not: in the Civilopedia it shows that one of Tar Valon’s unique units upgrades to one of Andor’s unique units. Obviously that is not how it is suppose to go. I will look into further once my current game is over. The goal is to clean up what I have now, refine the leaders, and then add new leaders to the current custom civs. After that, I will add new civs/leaders.

And because I feel like adding pictures (as always click for bigger):

At any rate, it didn’t take long for me to want to create a custom civilization; and thus was Moiraine and the nation of Cairhien born.

Learning how to make Cairhien wasn’t easy: a lot of the tutiorals about custom civs were based on the vanilla install, not any of the expansion packs. And then some of the more clear ones were never finished. Basically the best way was to simply find a custom civ that worked, and see what they did.

I eventually got confident enough to go ahead and make another civ to counterbalance Moiraine and her empire.

Upon completing my second civ I realized I needed to breakdown and learn how to add civs the modular way, because the XML files were becoming a bit long and ridiculous. The modular method would allow me to keep adding more civs as I saw fit, with less hassle.

So far I have Cairhien, Amadicia, and Andor. I’m thinking of adding a Borderlands civ and maybe Seanchan. (why yes Niklas, I am a WOT nerd!) I haven’t delved to the level of creating custom meshes for units and all that jazz, but maybe one day. Maybe.

BB: When you play The Sims 3, you play as one household. However, you can choose to change the household that you are playing. What’s different about The Sims 3 is that when you are playing one household, the other households in your town will develop intelligently: other Sims will age, get married, have children, go to work, et cetera. This means that the world is changing around you and no game will ever feel the same. If one of the Sims in your household moves out, you can choose to follow them and control a different household, or you can continue to play the same household.

Um, hell no! I do not want to be stuck with an either/or situation. I especially don’t want Sims reproducing on their own (and with ugly townies to boot!).

BB: There will still be plenty of ways for devious fans to play in The Sims 3 — including removing the pool ladder! Anything can happen in this new open neighborhood environment; we can’t wait to see what players come up with. [Editor's Note: During GFW's visit to see the game earlier this year, design director Matt Brown dropped this detail: "Though if you do try to drown your Sim in a pool, he can realize what you're trying to do, because it's pretty clear that you've put him in a pool and then taken away the ladder... And now he can just crawl out of the pool, which he couldn't do before."]

So now I can’t drown my Sims. That was the fastest way of killing, and yes Sims were rather stupid to fall for it, but still! It’s a classic Sim-killing technique and you’ve done away with it?! This is why I like my Sims to be semi-stupid!

Don’t get me started on the aging neighborhood thing.

Honestly, I’m afraid Sims 3 will end up another SimCity Societies. I’d probably enjoy it just until the kids move out, at which point my fun factor will drop. Unless I keep everyone in the same house, which, uh, yeah no. Yeah, there are good improvements to the system and the A.I. but that doesn’t change the fact that they seem to be determined to take away a lot of the micromanagement features. On the flip side, Sims 2 EPs and Stuff Packs will be going for cheap!

Speaking of which, they have decided to release an eighth expansion pack, instead of sticking to their guns about only seven. It’s pretty obvious this is for money purposes, because an EP about apartments? Are you kidding me?! They better have something major planned, otherwise it will feel just like it is: a quick chance to make money this fall.

Bon Voyage caused huge amount of issues with players’ computers and CD drives thanks to SecuROM, the Free Time patch was pulled off the site after it made issues worse, not better, and now they are adding another pack onto what is clearly a too buggy game?

On the official BBS there are thread after thread of people debating the future of the Sims. When someone referred to The Sims as an RPG I had to step in, but that right there tells you how far Maxis/EA have changed the gameplay and marketing.

I inadvertently picked up more hours at work. I thought Pete just wanted me to work this Saturday, but no he means all Saturdays. And as it turns out I didn’t have to work this Saturday anyway. But hey, more monies for me!

Man, this semester is just flying on by! November is my last full month of school. I only have a week of school in December and then a week of finals and then: graduation. Oh shit.

The first Phoenix Wright game is on its way to me. Yes! Finally! It only took three (or four) failed attempts on ebay!

Oh and HAHAHAHAHAHAHA at Jan! WordPress 2.3.1 being out all ready!

Last night I figured out how to use Windows Movie Maker, and I’m going to make a video of a couple of my Sims and share it with all of you. See? Marie loves you.

Hmm, what else? Oh! On Tuesday I got an email from the supervisor of IQ Fresh, about sitting down and talking about working there. I replied I would like to do that, but didn’t hear anything else. Then I thought “why not check my voicemail?” and lo and behold I had a message about my application. So I set up an interview for 3:30 Friday which gave me enough time to do laundry and take a shower, etc. Well, actually I didn’t pick the time, just said “Friday afternoon” and the time was picked for me. Either way! I start working on Monday.

My roommate is going home for the weekend. I don’t dislike her or anything, but now I can play Sims all day and not feel bad about it. Of course, I can’t really be on a computer all day. I still end up going out and doing something, or roaming around the room cleaning various corners. I always thought I was able to just sit and veg at the comp, but I’ve learned otherwise. Whenever I go to the library to work on their computers, I find myself tired and bored within an hour usually. I realized this is because I’m just at the computer and doing nothing else, which isn’t something I’m used to.