In case you haven't noticed you now select Last Page (or the first three pages) directly from the Forum Directories. Should make things a lot easier for a lot of people.

I in fact did that to read your post!

Also once you post you now go back to the end of the thread.

Or perhaps you go back to where you were since I haven't tried this from anywhere but the end of the thread. However, regardless this feature is highly appreciated.

Actually you do go to the end of the thread to view your post regardless of where you were when you made the post. Seems a reasonable way to do it. I just tested by posting this reply from the 2nd page of this thread and it took me to the end. Just in case anyone was wondering.

Also how do you like the ROFL smiley I just found?

www.smileyhut.com

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I spoke prematurely. Yes now you at least go to the end of the thread when you reply. However when you now edit that reply you go back to the beginning of the thread. I *thought* that had already been fixed. I guess it's two steps forward and one step back. Still better than no steps forward though.

My crappy submission. I can't bear to try these settings again. Tech victory is about as rewarding as the condescending looks you get when you're the only one who is bitter about something.

That was a tough one, but fun. After several failures, I managed to pull one out so I'm going with the first success;

Actually I want to make an announcement that some people are aware of but I want to make sure that everyone is aware of.

The MVL Admins have had a private forum on the Tyranny of Evil web site for quite awhile. The purpose of this forum is mostly to be able to discuss scores prior to announment so that there was agreement among multiple independent score calculations to avoid errors in the announced results.

At one point it was mentioned that this could be considered to be the beginning of some kind of smoke filled back room where secret decisions get made, which really wasn't accurate but obviously when things are secret then the question comes up why it needs to be.

The answer is that it really doesn't need to be secret and so Neilo changed the permissions so that this forum is viewable by all. It still can only be posted to by the Commissioner, Vice Commissioner, Score Keeper, Rule Keeper and Commissioner Emeritus (with all these titles I can see the potential worry about a back room committee making secret decisions), but now at least everyone can read it and see what's going on. This forum is the MVL Parliament.

As a minor aside I have been keeping a list of the current round's submissions and this list is all set up with links to each MVL member's MV character and I generally keep this relatively up to date with the current state of the rounds submissions.

Anyway this is something that I've found to be a great convenience, particularly the links to everyone's MV character, and I've decided to share this information with everyone. Please do not presume that this is in any way official or that I'm trying to usurp the function of the Official Scorekeeper. Kzinti is the official scorekeeper and keeps his own tally. I assume he uses my input along with the input of others to verify his results but it is his results that are official, not mine.

With that stated this still can be useful information that can help each team strategize and since I'm doing it for myself regardless of what anyone else does I figured that I may as well let other teams see the same information.

In any case this is viewable at the Current Round Submissions thread. Feel free to check in as often as you like but generally the usefullness of this thread becomes greater later in the round once a good portion of the league has submitted their games.

Thanks for sharing this with the League, Mumble. I encourage everyone to feel free to stop by there at any time and see what's going on.

Next, my official submission for Round 7

The Eternal Villainy
Boilermaker
DA 1.80g 3/6/08 1:12:58PM
Krynn
Crippling
4 Years
9250 pts

In other news, I am leaving tomorrow for Las Vegas for spring break and will not be back until Sunday, March 16th. I will not be able to check email either.

During this time FireBender, as Vice Commissioner, will make any necessary team placements that may occur.

Any other issues should be able to handled by our current new Rule Approval system.

Any other questions/concerns please just contact your Team Captain, or one of the Admins.

For fellow Team E Eternal Villainy members, please remember that Neilo is now captain and yuo can reach him through PM or at the Core for this Round's chat.

Thanks everyone and see you in a little over a week!

-Silver-

Here is my submission for this round. Not the best and I can definitely agree with others that this was a hard-fought round.
Now, as I have already told my teammates, I can stop to enjoy the finer things in life such as my brand new (and my first) granddaughter, Hayden. Born 13 weeks early. I can't hold her but she already has grandpa wrapped around her tiny, little finger.

Congrats Amalric!

Sentient species taste better...

awww, congrats on the granddaughter Amalric. I'm off for my (only) niece's 1st birthday this afternoon before I fly out.

As a side note, noticed you're using 1.80e; are you having fleet issues and the such? 1.80e had a few pretty significant bugs in it that were mostly addressed in 1.80g

congradulations Amalric :CONGRAT: 
I would put in a jab about your game right about now, but your new and I got crap about it before :LOL:  So we'll wait till next round.

Congrats Amalric!! 13 weeks early!! One assumes then that all is well which is great!!

Enjoy mate!

Congratulations, man! My youngest (child, not grandchild) turned 1 this past week. Where does the time go? Oh, yeah - into this game...

Well, I played this game over a dozen times, couldn't beat 3 years, and with my schedule stacking up, I doubt I'd be able to get a better game in sometime this round, so here's my submission for Team B (let's see if I get this screenshot thing right first try this round):

My submission. I really thought at first that this was going to be alot easier than it was. These settings don't leave alot of room for error thats for sure.

Beyond Mortality
Altarian
3 years
10150K
Masochistic
Poseidon_Steward of Delphi
3/10/08 - 6:11:29AM

Aaaaand here's my submission for Team E.

Not as good as I hoped, but the settings really were against me this round.


Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz
Alignment: Very Good
Years: 4
Race: [Altarian]
Victory: Beyond Mortality
Score: 4205
Difficulty: Normal
Size: Medium
Game Version: v1.80g Dark Avatar (Dark Avatar)
Timestamp: 3/2/2008 7:39:09 AM

Team C
Idazen
DA 1.80g 3/7/2008 4:15:50 AM
Custom
Tough
3 Years
8410 pts
Beyond Mortality

It seems that the discussion about ARC and straw dog opponents has settled down a bit.

It also seems that most response has been in favor of my proposed rule addition to deal with such things. To date the closest I've heard to an objection is that the rule is a bit subjective and I don't really think that was meant an objection it was more an observation of fact that it leaves the interpretation up to the player.

Anyway I do believe that this is a simple statement consistent with the spirit of the MVL and I do believe it addresses the essence of the concerns expressed by most MVL members.

Therefore I would like to propose that this rule be accepted by the MVL by the "default approval" process and therefore I'm posting this here as well as the MVL Rulebook thread.

If anyone objects to this rule or feels that we need something stronger then please make your objections known before one week from the time of this post.

Anyway here is the statement of the rule for you to consider.

Team D:
Noctilucus
DA 1.80e
Race: Korath
Difficulty: challenging
6 Years
5220 pts
Beyond Mortality (Technology victory)

Time of submission: see time of my post



Quite disappointing but I only had the time for 1 game so far. Glad to see some other people have been struggling as well. Especially the lack of tech trading is murderous...

A perfect description....

No question, this would have been worlds easier with tech trading on. It especially hurts the all-labs strategy. There are ways to deal with it, but you need some good breaks (+700% research tile homeworld, at least a few close colonizable worlds other) to pull it off in reasonable time I think. On the other hand, I think hard can be good some times.

I guess I am the oddball out this time. I usually play without tech trading. I can't figure it out, it seems to be one area of the game just beyond me. I have tons of trouble getting decent trades with the AI, and feel that they use it amongst themselves for overwhelming advantage. No tech trading is fine with me. I won't be posting a 1 year win to be certain, but meh, I don't miss it.

I stayed up till 2 am this morning to work on a good DA game I have going, by far my personal best game...and then got hit with Jagged Knife. The Knife took 4 of my 12 colonies and 40% of my population, and a huge bite into my economy. There's no way I can maintain my fleet. I had built up every possible bonus for soldiering, which under the rules of the Jagged Knife Mega Event means that the Knife's soldiers will have all those bonuses if I try to take back my colonies. I might be able to recover, but it will mean years of turns wasted as far as game points are concerned. This kind of thing has no place in a competition. I can reset with a save from before the Knife struck...but why would I want to spend my time on a game knowing that at any turn it might and probably will happen again. I'll discuss this with my teammates in our forum, but my attitude now is that I'll sit out this round.

I notice that in the game specs, it says Mega Events enabled in DA...does that mean that the DL players don't have to worry about Jagged Knife? Does anyone see anything unfair in this?

There is no Jagged knife in DL that i am aware of mate. Play whichever version suits you best, i myself played 7 games this round looking to get a good game, 2 of them DL. I submitted only 2 games in total, thats how good i did in some of them.

Don't despair mate, you are not alone.