I've updated the Roster on the website to reflect our newest member, xenophobe!
 Link
Just as a reminder, any Fellowship member who would like to submit a backstory for your character, post it here and I will add it to your name on the Roster page. The backstory is just a fun way to describe yourself (and it also helps us to know if you are male or female)!
Also, everyone is encouraged to write stories or submit poetry! If you feel the creative urge, this is the place to release your inner Tolkien!
Membership in the Fellowship doesn't require you to do any of this, by the way...so don't feel pressured to do anything but play the game and enjoy yourself! There's just some of us that enjoy the extra stuff! 
          
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| Congrats Ray for staying on the top of the evil, neutral and good boards for so long.Cotal has just bullied her way to the top of the good board. |
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I don't understand the morality rankings. They seem to update irregularly.
I'm top again for Good but I've not submitted any good scores.
   
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Just submitted a Maso Huge Neutral game. What's unique about that game for me is that I took neutral for every event. The Tors had a good start and I spent most of my game as the Surrender Monkey (not Cheese-Eating). It certainly felt easier to maintain good relations with the all evils AIs as opposed to when I played good.
What I couldn't figure out was why my score is the same as the other Maso Huge which I took all the good choices and got more TGs/wonders and researched about 20 more techs. The only major difference is that my latest game had quite a bit of fighting.
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I think the morality scores get recalced every day.
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I've calculated that 3 more 50k games should tip me over 300k player score.
Killa, I liked the rally point for ships, stable planet disbanding, obsolete ship governor, cheat codes (for easy testing of stuff), locked sliders, retire option and the random Arcean tech research path.
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| 3 more 50k games should tip me over 300k player |
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Fleet Admiral maybe....
Alex
   
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The Galtrix down for almost 12 hrs.
Wanted to reply to Rick but found that I couldn't post.
Seems like this is almost a monthly event.
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I couldn't even access the site. It said the servers were busy. I thought maybe the site was under attack. Glad to see everything's back to normal!
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Congrats on beating Crippling, Rick!
Seems like you need to do a retire now and again as you play so you don't waste another game to the anomalous black hole.
| Emperor Ray, I respect whatever you decide to do here but am concerned about the health of FOTR empire if you are away too long. You don't have to make any long term plans right now. Get your fleet admiral stripes and take a break. |
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I wouldn't be away for any long period of time. I'll just be trying out other fun ways to play that probably would not score well. Maybe also play another game or two. The Fellowship would have to depend on all of you to deal with the grotesque pirate scourge.
I've already thought of one scenario which I always wanted to try. That's playing against just 1 Incredible AI.
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It's happened about 3 times or so already in my memory, Theoden. Yeah, the first thing I thought of was a denial of service attack too. 
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I'm going to be out of the office for a few hours today visiting a customer. 
Probably won't be a Metaverse Review again today. 
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#1965
by Citizen musicfan55 - 9/24/2003 12:26:29 PM
Ray. Thanks. I think I will save hourly or so on a large game and do a retire to make sure I have points. In retrospect, the interface in the lower right corner (near the I key to inspect ships) got a little funny like two interfaces together at once so I saved the game ASAP. When I clicked the quit game the machine locked up and I had to reset button the machine, go through scandisk, etc. So there was something funny going on somewhere. In addition to routine saving and checking I guess my advice is to save ASAP if anything seems strange and then immediately retire the save games until one finds points.
I may play it again to see if it can be resuscitated at the point where the saved game shows points. Has anyone done that? It was a rare, large and after colonization, I had 4 planets, two other majors had 4 planets, one had 3 and two had 2. So it was a pretty even start (especially since I had the four  )and fun to play.
If it replays OK, I will post so others know a work-around for similar problems. I remember in one thread, several of us were moaning that "Gee, it would be nice to know if it is anomalous before we submit". It looks like we got our wish so that part of 1.1 is good.
Saw "Ferris Beuhler's Day Off" (1986) on DVD last night and thought it was very funny. For fantasy-fiction fans, I finally watched "Legend: The Director's Cut" (1986) on DVD. My wife and I thought it was really fun. I know they aren't brand new but back when they were made, I was working 16 hours per day and didn't get to watch them. Another fun fantasy-fiction flick I saw recently was "Willow". OK, time for this hobbit to try and govern the Terrans again.
And, vincible, what is the "first turn influence bug". Sounds like an infectious disease. .
Rick
  
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Let's welcome the newest member of the Fellowship, gamer3999! 
Do drop by and say hi, gamer3999.
Oh, and there is no need to read through the earlier 2000 posts.
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#1969
by Citizen musicfan55 - 9/24/2003 10:07:53 PM
Welcome to the FOTR gamer3999.
Won my first maso today and it is a totally different game because there is no money and the human is always behind until the end. In spite of reading this before I played, it was hard to comprehend until one has played it. I broke out laughing a few times when a minor is only going to give me 2 bc per turn for 20 turns for six or more techs. Of course that is better because the major will only give you 1 bc . . . for 6 or 7 turns. .
I would hate to write a walk-through based on my game because I tried to culture bomb but the Dregs were awesome. So, I allied with them to stay alive and got in some wars I would have preferred to avoid. Forunately on tiny, rare setting, the alpha strike is a one planet affair but it is still hard to come up with the ships. I certainly did not dominate any part of the game.
The scoring is amazing. I played against all evil AI but otherwise was just trying to survive. While staying alive I researched enough to beat the computers to cultural max. I never did get cultural conquest and only researched 23 techs. I culture bombed with 153% starbases (6 constructors I think). About 4 to 6 do a nice job in one sector. I ended the contest ASAP before something bad happened without any score milking. I was able to put about 500 bc each turn into research at most so running the tech tree would have taken all night. .
At the end, I was fourth in tech score, second in military, second in econ, and first in society. I had a around 5k bc at end so could have managed one or two terror stars max but I figured the culture-bomb constructors were cheaper. Plus I never made it to terror-star tech.
There are a couple of good things about maso so far. One is you are a weenie in the military department and the computer is awesome so you don't have to worry about sharks and pirates. . Two is the metaverse scoring is so generous that you don't have to milk the score for a 23k game. My total score went up almost 12k and for the next 5 minutes (or less) I have a number 3 spot and a new medal. .
OK. That was fun but it's now time for a movie. Thanks to Ray, vinicible, PontiousBruinPilate, Killa Koalla, Jeff DeSilva, Cotal and all who posted tips and walkthroughs especially on maso. I couldn't have done it without you.
Rick
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Well done with the win and congrats on 3rd!
Glad you are enjoying the game.
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Rick, vincible,
Cheese aside, how hard do you think Maso is over Crippling? Forget about scoring, I'm asking about difficulty.
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Yeah, I know there is no good answer to that question but I wasn't looking for a "it's 37% harder" answer.
Personally I think it's at least twice as hard.
Once you get the hang of playing Maso, I feel Crippling simply does not become a challenge anymore.
Seems like there is certainly room for an intermediate level in between.
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