I recall planning a 4-way 'Battleship' scenario where Battleships would be your King unit (I imagine due to how it works programming-wise, this would probably not work for the AI, OH WELL, but hey I did put extensive thought into how to make it theoretically work), and I also recall planning a 4-way game based around a single pseudo-King unit that isn't actually a King but which you can't win the game without using.
(Basically, that scenario involves you being unable to create units--your pseudo-King unit can enslave defeated enemies to create new units, and those units can enslave defeated enemies themselves to create your infrastructure, and each pseudo-King civ would have a different specialty. One with worker actions on military units, one with treating all terrain as roads, one with increased movements, one with better stats, if I recall the division correctly; they were meant to have the aesthetic of the four civs in the Age of Discovery scenario, with the Iroquois-based one being movement, the Inca-based one being terrain as roads, and then between the remaining either the Aztec one as more stats and Mayan one as worker actions, or vice versa.)
What I went to ask yesterday is something applicable to all of them, including my current project.
Basically.
When I play a game, I am always looking to try and top my top score for that game. It can be a vanilla game of Civilization, or it can be a scenario. (Btw I imagine the easiest way to get an unbeatable high score in vanilla conquests scenarios is to save scum as Persia in Rise of Rome on the highest difficulty--avoid war with Rome at all costs, conquer Macedon, conquer Egypt, and you can achieve victory. If Rome captured cities rather than razing them to the ground, Rome would with its Legionary IIIs being produced every turn basically overrun the whole world, but because they do raze cities to the ground they don't have the same landmass that you do. I did most of this once until I got bored with the endeavor because higher difficulties to me aren't harder, they're just more annoying. Since I play for fun, being annoyed = less fun = not worth it which is why if you look at my history of playing on the easiest difficulty you'd think I was a basic bitch baby who can't beat the higher difficulties. It's not that I can't, it's that they're just not fun to try to.)
So every time I play a game, I want to know what my score is--if it's higher or lower than my high score. Which in a normal game, or in any of the basic conquest scenarios that came with the game (unmodified Mesopotamia, unmodified Rise of Rome, unmodified Fall of Rome, unmodified Middle Ages, unmodified Age of Discovery, unmodified Mesoamerica, unmodified Sengoku, unmodified Napoleon, unmodified WWII, I think that's all of them?), you can see in the postgame Hall of Fame.
If you set a new record, it will replace your old record, more or less.
And I love striving for that. It's a little disappointing to know that in a run you felt you did really well in, that you didn't set a high score, and you don't know by how much you missed doing so, but that's not what I wanted to find a workaround for. You might be able to guess what I was wanting.
In custom scenarios, or in the existing scenarios if they are modified in any way, shape, or form...once you reach postgame, that's it. No recording. Outside of the save file. It's as if the game didn't exist at all. It isn't captured in the hall of fame. It isn't something you set a score for. And I searched for any way to find a workaround for this problem, yet I couldn't find any.
So I bit the bullet and created an account on the Civ fanatic forum to actually ask (since that is one of the best sources of information for modding Civ 3 on the internet), as well as asking on Steam. It's only been 24 hours since I asked, but initial results: looks like the reason why I couldn't in my searching find anyone with a way to do it, is because it is impossible for most people to do it.
Not impossible altogether, but nigh-impossible overall, requiring rather than just a small every-day tweak of things, a fundamental alteration to the game's code, more or less. To put this into perspective--you can add sound to the game easily; you can add unique art to the game easily; you can add unique animations to the game easily; you can add units to the game easily; you can adjust a bunch of settings in the game easily, things that vary from scenario to scenario, things that you see change, can be changed.
But some things never change about the game because in order to change them, you would need to fundamentally edit the very core nature of the game. (I'm pretty sure, for instance, that the game having four eras is hard-coded into it. You can make a scenario that makes use of less than four, but there's still going to be four ages. I am pretty sure that you can't make a scenario with more than four ages, without this fundamental change to the game code. The editor only supports four ages.)
And apparently, recording your score in custom/modified scenarios to the Hall of Fame is a change of this nature--thus, why I couldn't find information for it. It's a change that nobody has made because nobody, without incredible difficulty, can change it.
(I got the impression more or less that the order of change was, to put this in perspective, similar to the Majesty mod that involved basically turning Majesty into a separate game--nobody else in the Majesty modding community has been able to figure out how that mod was able to do things nobody else has figured out how to do. The answer I got so far said more or less, 'you can contact this one person who apparently made their mod work with altering the original game coding' basically, which sounds a lot like a similar parallel in concept. That it can be done because someone did do it, but nobody outside of that person knows how it can be done.)
You never know, though, so hopefully, with time, some answers can come in and help me there. I did ask on two sites, so I maintain my hope that with more than 24 hours, that with a week or two, that I'll get better answers that will result it me maybe pulling off something that I have wanted to do for ages upon ages: have custom scenarios be recorded.
On that note, I did notice that for the first time in like two years or so, there's an active modder or two for Majesty, designing scenarios and mods that may be interesting to check out. I'm not quite convinced of them, but it may be worth trying out at some point.
Majesty never stopped being fun for me, it's just that the things I like to do in that game take an absurd amount of time to successfully pull off (for instance, making mages out of Warriors of Discord or similarly ambitious undertakings: get someone to have all their weapons and armor to the maximum level coded into the game, poison their weapon, have every Bazaar item, every marketplace item, and every spell learned that they can learn).
And because they take absurd amounts of time, and I am prone to not coming back to things I start in there, and it's not something I really find fun to spend "an hour on this scenario each day", I've just got better things to spend my time on overall.
But bringing it back to what I promised I would be talking about from the beginning--Riot Games stuff. I'll start with the intro: I finally finished the accursed quests requiring me to play three Ranked games. RANKED games. I said this before and I'll say it again; Riot was out of their bloody minds by making it a 100% requirement with NO other way to fulfill it, by requiring players to play RANKED games to fulfill a quest.
I, justifiably, got flamed in all three games. I am not a Ranked player. My placements list me as Iron III but that's probably because my team hard-carried me to a win in the first game because I have every reason to believe that I am an Iron IV skill level player--and I know that I am that skill level.
Most of the players who are going to try and fulfill the quests are probably filthy casuals like me. Most of the players who care about quests are people who play the game for fun and see the quests as fun things to try for, achievements for rewards. They are not tryhards who play the game to be competitive.
Basically, when it comes to games, there is a fundamental divide between "I play for fun" and "I play to win". These are not mutually exclusive, because someone playing for fun isn't trying to win--they will still try to win, but they aren't really upset if they don't win because their goal was to have fun, not to win. Winning is usually more fun than losing, but it is not a requirement to win to have fun.
And vice-versa is applicable as well. Someone playing to win is trying to have fun. They wouldn't be playing the game if it wasn't fun. But to them, the fun is in the striving to win. For them, the goal of being competitive, of playing seriously, is the goal. Is what they are after. Their fun comes from doing well in the game, not from doing fun in the game. They can get upset if a game doesn't feel fun, but if they are still going to win, not a loss in their book, more or less.
I probably am not adequately enough explaining the "play to win" mindset when it comes to League because when it comes to League I am firmly in the "play for fun" camp. Yes, that's partially because I'm not good enough to play to win, but it also revolves around other factors, like how I got into the game (from a good friend), wanting to hang out, finding it enjoyable, but not something I wanted to take too seriously.
But, my point being: most of the people who I imagine play to try and complete the quests given to them, such as myself, I imagine are in the "play for fun" camp.
Ranked games are, inherent in their nature, the "play to win" camp.
You can't play ranked games for fun without risking eating a ban for your troubles, because ranked games have actual consequences to them. Four other players will be negatively impacted, taking losses they shouldn't have, and even the five players on the enemy team are probably not going to exactly be happy about it. (Eh, depends, but "I want to play the game and win, not be handed a win" isn't that uncommon.)
You can't exactly play Normal games for fun with total impunity, but there is a much greater slack involved. Trolling that is obviously trolling still isn't really appropriate, but playing bad because you are bad, with a build that isn't optimal because you're not an optimal player, isn't something that will get you in trouble the same way it would in ranked games.
I hated that quest with a passion and while I didn't know where to voice this opinion to Riot with it actually being listened to, you can bet I tried. Because it is a terrible idea to force casual players, who deliberately avoid playing Ranked and who don't want to be playing Ranked, to play Ranked.
Yet casual players are, presumably, the majority of the players who try to play the quests to completion, so the quest requiring Ranked games is incredibly alienating. Either they bite the bullet and play Ranked games they really didn't want to, or they bite the bullet and deliberately fail to complete not one, but TWO quests as a consequence. (Because one quest required completing the Ranked Game quest.)
It's just not fun at all. If those players wanted to be playing Ranked, they would already be playing Ranked. Does Riot think that forcing players who normally don't play Ranked, to play Ranked, will get more people to play Ranked? No, it'll just encourage people to quit trying the quests, maybe even quit the game. It's not like people don't know about the existence of Ranked. A quest requiring playing Ranked doesn't raise awareness of Ranked games and it doesn't encourage people to keep playing Ranked games because the people who play Ranked games as a result of the quest, are going to be miserable because of it.
And sure enough that was exactly what I was. I did give my team fair warning each game. The first game we won in spite of me, not because of me. The second game, I'm pretty sure wasn't exclusively my fault, but my jungler flamed me and certainly blamed me for it. (To be fair, was playing Ashe support, and while I have some practice on playing her as support, I haven't mastered her. I figured playing the champion I am comfortable > playing a different champion though.)
Granted, said jungler was tied for me with the highest deaths in the game and had stats not in any way really much better than mine, but the flame wasn't entirely unjustified. Of course, not much I could do in some cases. When I was level 5 I had no ult and when they engage on someone while I am traveling to lane, I can't get to the fight in time so that wasn't on me; when I am out of the enemy team's vision and am flanking from behind, throw my ult at a Yasuo who has no way of seeing the arrow coming and no reason to windwall behind him since my entire team other than me was in front, and yet he somehow windwalled behind him to block the ult, not much I can do about it; I had every reason to believe that ult would connect and via the stun, let my team kill him, and I don't know how he knew to put the windwall there.
Butstill, the fact that I was underperforming for my team that game is undebatable; I was a hindrance to our team's chances of winning.
The third and final game, the one flaming me was my support though similarly to my previous game with the jungler, they had an identical K/D to me (which is to say, incredibly negative) albeit having a couple extra assists. Each game started the same, too. They started friendly, we do well early, can even get first blood, then when we start to lose...flame begins.
And while the fault for the loss cannot be exclusively on me.
It can be mostly on me. So when the flame is justified...not a good experience.
And I hated every moment of it.
This is NOT what Riot should do to people.
But it's done now.
At last.
So let me talk about something else Riot-related now!
What I originally came to talk about today.
And yesterday, for that matter.
My TFT girl Vayne.
Vayne was my favorite set one unit, and she was basically unchanged in set two. She was always my carry unit aside from rare instances where it'd be Braum or Ashe or Sejuani or Kayle or Pantheon (because every unit in the Glacial/Noble/Guardian comp could be a carry unit).
But in the second set.
In spite of her herself being mostly unchanged.
Still having the same ability, still having the Ranger synergy, having a new synergy working similarly to Nobles.
I just...stopped using her.
She is hard to be a lategame carry and for the life of me, I can't make a Ranger comp work, or a Light comp work. They just...I know they can work, I just can't figure out how to make them work.
So I stopped using her.
But on Saturday, almost using her in URF.
Inspired me to run some games with her yesterday.
Vayne has seven-eight items on her which are good--one of them I prefer not to and a second I didn't know worked on her until I looked it up yesterday and with that item specifically working, another item also becomes good on her that in isolation isn't.
The obvious item is the rageblade. Stacks attack speed so that she can proc her passive, and gives AP which boosts it.
Since her synergy doesn't innately give her reliable healing (my main issue with figuring out how to get the light synergy working), gunblade is an obviously good item on her. It heals her and boosts her passive.
A third item which is excellent on her is Rabbadon's Deathcap for the raw boost to her passive's max health shred. (It dealing true damage means nothing reduces it.)
Runaan's Hurricane is also fairly excellent on her, allowing her to hit two targets with her bolts instead of one, giving her some MR, and attack speed, too--I'd shy away from this unless I have no other choice, but it's not a bad item on her, I just think that if you can get the others, they'd be better.
Quicksilver Sash is godly good on her if she has a rageblade. It prevents cc effects on her, meaning nothing except dodging (which frankly I think they should add back into rfc as 'attacks cannot be dodged' since with the removal of the Wild synergy...nothing counters dodge chance) can stop her from stacking bolts, while also giving some MR and also dodge chance. It keeps her alive and in a gain ridiculously heavy in CC (there's no comp in the world that's lategame which doesn't have some form of chain-CC), it is a godsend to have.
The sixth item on her, the last of the original ones I recognized as being decent, was red buff--some armor, some health (which helps for her Light synergy), and prevents her targets from healing. One of the only units in the game who has use for a red buff over a Morello (since I looked it up and apparently Morello doesn't proc on her passive). Now I personally prefer not to use it. Vayne's max health shred should outdo the healing from any heals, and the damage over time shouldn't be relevant because Vayne's meant to shred through health bars on the third attack. Still, I recognize why it is built on her.
The seventh item on her which is good is an item that I didn't think worked on her--but looking it up and testing it out myself, I think it actually does work. That item is the Jeweled Gauntlet. Vayne's max health shred on her third bolt, with it, can crit. Jeweled Gauntlet giving 30% crit was apparently a bug and it was meant to give +20 like other offenssive sparring glove items, so that was fixed, butstill:
25% base chance + 20% = 45% base crit chance.
You might be able to see where this is going.
I don't know how crits work, especially in regards to spells. Say a spell does 100 damage. Base crit damage is listed as 125%. Is that +125% damage, e.g. a spell doing 100 damage deals 225 damage, or does it mean +25%, e.g. a spell doing 100 damage deals +25%? I think that it's the latter, but regardless, you can see where this is going.
With a jeweled gauntlet, building an infinity edge on Vayne turns her damage from strong to absurdly strong. 45 + 25 = 65% base crit (with an easy way to get more), and with Infinity Edge buffing crits...her spells should deal extra damage.
Say her third bolt proc has the base damage of 10% max HP. Critting that would be 22.5% max HP, I think, if my understanding is correct. (Like I said: math on how it works is hard to find and even if it wasn't, I don't have very good understanding of how it works.)
But say your AP items and another AP source (again, you can probably see where this is leading) boosts that to be 20% of max HP.
That would be 50% of max HP on a crit.
Meta-build-wise, Vayne is Light/Ranger as a unit.
...But I had the thought.
"What if Karma boosted Vayne's attack speed and shielded her, and then we used the Lunar synergy on her?"
Vayne, Karma, Thresh, Ivern, Leona as core units, building into one of three synergies.
The first, Light. Aim for Light 6, Vayne + Lucian (without Senna) + ?Yorick? + ?Aatrox? + Soraka (Soraka for sure) + Nasus or Jax, which if you do the math is more than nine units, so replace the Ivern when you can obtain Light 6.
The second, Ranger. Aim for Ranger 6, Vayne + Twitch + Ashe + Kindred + Ezreal + Varus, which has identical math; more than nine units, so replace the Ivern when you can obtain Ranger 6.
The third, originally the build I thought would be least effective of the three, is upon reflection, I think my favorite:
From the core units, build into Mystic 4. Any Mystic 4 combo works, but some are better than others.
Nami has the across-board CC to enemies and ally buffs, not to mention, gives you Ocean. So that is an obvious good one.
Soraka shares Vayne's Light synergy giving you a potential in to Light 3 and her suppression is an excellent way to prevent the entire enemy team from casting spells.
Janna gives a bunch of heals and pushes units away from Vayne--of the three mystics added to Karma, this is probably the least-valuable overall especially if Vayne has a Gunblade, but if Vayne has no internal source of healing, having Janna give it can help save her life.
Master Yi would be an excellent unit to have as a secondary carry, due to his untargetable, self-healing, nature as a frontliner dealing damage, but obviously, he's not someone who buffs Vayne even if he's a smarter unit to have overall. He's probably better than not having Mystic 4 (so if you have him but not one of Janna/Nami/Soraka yet have 2/3 of them, fielding him > fielding Thresh or Ivern, particularly Ivern), but otherwise not the best for this specific comp (I fully recognize Master Yi is a 5g unit for good reason; I admittedly don't know the units to make him a carry but I know he is a carry for good reason).
The 120 MR is very very clutch for keeping your team alive.
You can see how this comp works, particularly with the crit Vayne.
The Lunar synergy is basically a better version of the Sorcerer 3 synergy--giving +40% AP to the team, including Vayn'e passive. (Which at least at one point was precisely the amount Sorcerer 3 gave. Riot changed the Sorc 3 value a lot, but at one point it was +40%.) What makes it better is that whereas Sorcerer 3 aside from a squishy-shield-reliant Kassadin had no frontline and were squishy and highly spell-reliant...Lunar has no such problem.
With Leona as an exceptionally-tanky frontliner and with no spell-reliance from the synergy, it is much much better. It does have the drawback of taking time to activate, but again: with a bit of a tanky frontline and with the Thresh/Ivern shields, that extra time isn't hard to achieve.
Lunar also boosts crit chance and crit damage--which works with Jeweled Gauntlet. +15% crit chance, times four: +60% crit chance at maximum. You may note that Jeweled Gauntlet, in of itself, provides 45% so this gets you to above 100% for guaranteed crits.
It gives +15% crit damage, times four: +60%. Not as strong as Infinity Edge's 125%, about half as strong in fact, but still strong and by the way...can stack with Infinity Edge.
So say Vayne has Rageblade Jeweled Gauntlet Infinity Edge.
+80% spell power means her bolts do a lot. 13% (T2 Vayne because T3 Vayne's too hard) * 1.8 = 23.4% max HP, base.
Crits dealing + 25 + 125 + 60% extra = +210% of that. That's ~50% of max HP by my estimation, if it works the way that I think it does.
Is that a three-shot in of itself, no, but it is really really strong.
Of course the max AP would be 75 + 75 + 75 + 40% from triple-deathcap + Lunar = 13% * 265% = 34.45% AP if my understanding is correct. (I could be mistaken, but the wiki itself lists a Deathcap as giving 75 AP, so I'm pretty sure I'm not being too liberal with my estimates though it is possible I'm being too conservative and the amount is higher, whereas in the above it was possible I was too liberal and not conservative enough.)
So that's more or less what I aimed for.
It's not easy to pull off partially.
Getting one of the item combos isn't too hard overall.
But I never quite got it to work the way I wanted it to--I did get really really close, tho, multiple times, and was satisfied with that.
Still!
Is immensely fun, not hard to do, and preforms pretty well overall.
So my girl Vayne is back!
It just took forgoing her synergies in favor of supporting her through other whole-team synergies and boosting her and shielding her.
Incredibly off-meta, but hey, it allows my girl Vayne in TFT to destroy and I am happy with that.