Recommended turn order based on play times:

== Balance ==
A new discussion has been launched to balance Racial Governance: http://aow.triumph.net/forums... />It would be good to have several players joining it to agree on what boosts we want RG to achieve, and what guidelines should we set to design new, more balanced RG choices.

An article has been published to announced v1.23, check it out on the Battlefield: PBEM and Single Player Balance Mod v1.23 released: a small but impactful update

== Misc ==
Check out the two latest videos from the 2017 PBEM Duel Tournament:

• Round 4: Hiliadan (Tigran Warlord) vs El Lobo (Human Necromancer)

Highlights:
– turn 15: 1st meeting between Hiliadan and El Lobo
– turn 20: epic manual combats to clear a Sphynx Temple and complete a Quest from the Dragon Dwelling with the Warlord Leader and AD hero of Hiliadan
– turn 25: Hiliadan obtains Great Healing Shower from a Wizard Tower Ruins cleared 5 vs 6 (but with Regrowth)
– turn 28: Hiliadan reaches Monoculture
– turn 29: Hiliadan reaches Master Smith
– turn 31: the Leader, AD and King Reed Serpent of Hiliadan starts moving toward El Lobo’s Throne, while the movements of El Lobo’s army are being spied upon.
– turn 33: Hiliadan takes El Lobo’s Throne after mounting a freshly hatched Gryphon, he uses Death March to send flying reinforcements above rapids, while his Swimming units circle the rapids through water. El Lobo sends back his nearby troops to fight back.
– turn 35: El Lobo’s troops fail to beat his opponent’s army and Hiliadan keeps the Throne. Heptatopia is reached.
– turn 36: final battle and end of the game.

• Round 5: Marcuspers (Human AD) vs Hellbrick (Sorcerer Tigran)

Summary of key events by Marcus:
First Metropolis - Me Turn 25
Summon the first T4 - Me turn 27
Hellbrick takes my first city and start his invasion - Turn 27
Monoculture - Hellbrick Turn 32
Hellbrick destroys my Throne - Turn 35
Research a T6 spell - Hellbrick Turn 35
I finish Hasty Plunder on the first city I took from Hellbrick and manages to stay alive and keep my summons - Turn 35.
I have control over 3 of Hellbricks old cities and clear a Forbidden Sanctum and are able to cast summons again - Turn 38
Hellbrick attacks me, loses the battle and surrender - Turn 43

RedChameleon joined !!

== 2017 PBEM Duel Tournament ==
All matches were completed in round 5! Round 6 starts today!
@xlnt, Marcuspers and AlX, please send your class/race to the appropriate judges. I already sent him my class/race.
xlnt and AlX are hosts.

If we use all the days of this round, we would be synced more or less with the 2vs2, that's great!
If we finish before, we'll probably have to use v1.22 again for round 7 as I don't think it's reasonable to use v1.23 before round 6 of the 2vs2 ends, especially since it looks like very few people are testing it.

== 2017 PBEM Duel Tournament ==
Only 2 matches left ongoing and it's likely they will end before the deadline (which ends in about 24 days), so please prepare your class/race for next round! Round 6 uses v1.22, round 7 will use v1.23.
For those anticipating round 8, as explained in rule 5: "As there are only 7 classes, after your 7th match, the "counter is reset", i.e. you can play all the class/race again. However, in your 8th match, you cannot play the class or the race that you played in your 7th match.".

== 2016 PBEM 2vs2 Team Tournament ==
Only about 69.5 days left before the end of round, the teams involved in the 2 matches are encouraged to prioritize the games of this tournament above all other games.

== Next Tournament ==
I'm personally not going to organize a new PBEM Tournament before several months (though someone else might?) but if you have ideas for the rules and settings, you can already share them here: http://aow.triumph.net/forums... />
== Balance ==
v1.23 has been released on the beta branch of the balance mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sha... The changelog is up to date at the usual place: https://docs.google.com/docum... />I encourage everyone to use the beta branch for all new games, to benefit earlier from improvements to balance and help us get feedback before official release on the main branch. Thanks to all who will play on the beta branch!
Also, a new big topic has been opened for discussion: Brainstorming: sub-classes and races for heroes/Leaders and balance That follows a poll How best to balance all heroes and their abilities and also make them more interesting? As usual, opinions welcome and needed!

This is confirmed for v1.24:
GC46
Domains of XXX spells can be researched by Necromancer (were not displayed in the research book of Necromancer) and their non-morale bonus apply to Undead, Elementals and units of Magical Origin (these three types of units still do not start to “Like” the climate due to the spell) (was Undead, Elementals and units of Magical Origin do not benefit from the stat boost

== Misc ==
54 people shared their opinion on the best mods for AoW3, but I'm pretty sure several of you haven't voted yet. Please take a couple of minutes to rank the best mods in the ongoing poll.

darkapothem joined !!

Akinos joined !!

It doesn't matter how many elite t3/t4 (and how early) you have when the enemy take all your cities

It wasn't elite Shadow Stalkers by the way, that would be another 5-10 turns.

== Balance ==
The following 2 changes are added to the changelog of v1.23 (please check the link and note the 2 changes that may not be implemented due to technical issues):
Ne21
Ghouled cities can be Plundered and Hasty Plundered (was only possible to Purify, Raze or – if playing Necro – Migrate them)

Ro17
Succubi cost 150 gold and 30 mana (was 170 gold and 30 mana)

The rest did not make it due to insufficient feedback in support of them.

If all goes well, v1.23 should be released on the beta branch by the end of next week.
The target is to get the changelog of v1.24 confirmed for the end of round 6 of the 2vs2 Tournament, i.e. in about 3 months.

== 2017 PBEM Duel Tournament ==
It was previously said: "v1.22 used for round 5, probably v1.23 for round 6". It now seems short to use v1.23 for round 6 given that only 38 days are left before the end of the round. As a consequence, v1.22 will be used for round 6. v1.23 will be used for round 7.

== 2016 PBEM 2vs2 Team Tournament ==
Reminder: round 7 will use v1.23.

== Misc ==
A new poll has been launched: What are the best mods according to you? Time to vote!

Marcus released several advanced strategy tutorials on his channels, check them out:
- how to get a stack of Shadow Stalkers by turn 20: https://www.youtube.com/playl... />- challenge: possible to get the following 3 units at Elite by turn 17? King Serpent, Queen Spider, Shaman: https://www.youtube.com/watch... />- how to get Eldritch Horror by turn 25: https://www.youtube.com/watch...

Henrysix joined !!

== Tournaments ==
We cannot give specific rules for the number of warnings before disqualification because that would encourage people to suddenly have X-1 reloads in a game, where X is the number we announced as the level where you get disqualified.
Basically, the principles are: a small number of warning without proof in one game = disqualification or game loss; if you get many such warnings in separate games, you still get disqualified; if you have an abnormal number of warnings, even with adequate proofs, you also get a game loss or disqualification.
So there is a difference between both types of warning: with proofs judged adequate or without such proofs, and the count is both by game and on the whole tournament. But judges have some flexibility to avoid people trying to get through loopholes.

== Balance ==
The preliminary changelog of v1.23 has been released: http://aow.triumph.net/forums... />
These changes require additional feedback and are considered for v1.23 (if enough positive feedback by next week) or for v1.24:

3 changes whose main idea is to prevent early clearing of sites that give Secret Spells that can break games:

GC26
Forbidden Sanctum's batte enchantment is Mass Bless / Mass Curse and Shock Missile cast every turn on a random enemy unit

GC26a
Forbidden Sanctum no long have a defender set containing Nymphs and Shamans

GC27
Sunken City's battle enchantment is Frost Missile (cast every turn on an enemy unit)

And a few more, including a variant of Gas Masks where Choking can't be dispelled to avoid the AI getting crazy trying to dispel, wasting CP in auto:

Ne21
Ghouled cities can be Plundered and Hasty Plundered (was only possible to Purify, Raze or – if playing Necro – Migrate them)

Dr18b (same as Dr18a except that Choking can't be dispelled to avoid the AI getting crazy trying to dispel, wasting CP in auto)
Dreadnought heroes can choose Gas Masks at level 7 for 5 points: units in the stack led by this unit get 40% Blight Protection and are immune to Choking Fumes and Suffocate. Undead, Elemental, Machines and Incorporeal are not affected.
Choking Fumes target all units on the battlefield when it is cast and gives them Choking until end of battle (was a battlefield enchantment and could be disjuncted to remove Choking). The Choking ability is a blight passive debuff: it can be removed by Cure Disease (but not by Dispel Magic).
Magma Forge casts Choking Fumes every turn (the battle enchantment can be disjuncted to prevent Choking Fumes to be cast every turn but units will keep Choking, except if cured or dispelled).

Ro17
Succubi cost 150 gold and 30 mana (was 170 gold and 30 mana)

Or03
Orc Impalers get “Impaling” (Impalers get a chance with each attack to immobilize the attacked unit) and cost +5 Gold

GC53
Draconian Charger, Dwarf Deepguard, High Elf Union Guard, Halfling Farmer, Human Halebardier, Orc Impaler are available at Barracks (was War Hall).

I would like to raise a question on the topic of warnings given to players for reloads.
From what I understand, there should be some sort of difference between warnings for reloads with proof and without those.
Can anyone explain what is the difference? also how many warnings are leading to serious disciplinary action? are warnings counting towards a single game or the tournament?

== PBEM 2vs2 Team Tournament ==
Round 6 of the PBEM 2vs2 Team Tournament is about to start, we are waiting for Fistandantilus and Warlord Keldon to report their victory.
Unfortunately both games on round 5 ended up by score. Fortunately, the two eliminated teams will get another shot at staying in the course for the Final through a qualification game to replace team West Coasters: Bastards of the North will face rrrrookie & Jonny Thunder in parallel to the normal matches of round 6.
Reminder: round 7 should use v1.23 of the balance mod.

== Balance ==
One topic has been slow to move forward and is slowing down the whole balancing process so more feedback would be welcome. The topic is how to make rarely used units more useful/interesting. The list of proposed changes for non-Dwelling units is split into three different posts in the same thread on the forum. It would be very very useful if 1 or 2 players could provide feedback on the forum on that thread. Here are the three posts:
http://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/making-currently-rarely-used-units-more-useful/page/3/#post-253326
http://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/making-currently-rarely-used-units-more-useful/page/4/#post-253654 at the bottom
http://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/making-currently-rarely-used-units-more-useful/page/6/#post-257408

v1.23's preliminary changelog will be announced in about 1 week.

These changes are confirmed for v1.23:
GC33a
Combat Healing starts with an initial 3 turns cooldown (was 4 turns).

GC49
Public Bath costs 120 gold (was 150)

GC40a
Spell upgrades for heroes cost 4 (was 5), except:
– Chaos Rift (stay at 5)
– Chain Lightning (stay at 5)
– Last Stand (stay at 5)
– Slayer’s Doubt (stay at 5)
– Stiffen Limbs (stay at 5)
– Repair Fortification: costs 3

GC51
Heroes appearing in Cosmic Events have Mind Control Immunity


These changes require additional feedback and are considered for v1.23:
GC52
A new setting is available for “Defenders Strength”: “Strong with Normal rewards”: Treasure sites do not give +50% reward value any more

This one is the potential replacement for Gas Masks. It has some significant difference, so we need more feedback on it:
Dr18a
Dreadnought heroes can choose Gas Masks at level 7 for 5 points: units in the stack led by this unit get 40% Blight Protection and are immune to Choking Fumes and Suffocate. Undead, Elemental, Machines and Incorporeal are not affected.
Choking Fumes target all units on the battlefield when it is cast and gives them Choking until end of battle (was a battlefield enchantment and could be disjuncted to remove Choking). The Choking ability is a blight passive debuff: it can be removed by Cure Disease or Dispel Magic.
Magma Forge casts Choking Fumes every turn (the battle enchantment can be disjuncted to prevent Choking Fumes to be cast every turn but units will keep Choking, except if cured or dispelled).


== Misc ==
A vote on the best mods for AoW3 as of 2017 is being prepared. A shortlist of 20 mods need to be selected, please express your support for your favourite mods which are in the list in this post (follow the exact link, it's just 1 post on p.2, no need to read the whole discussion): https://steamcommunity.com/ap... />
I started uploading the videos of my game vs El Lobo on Round 4 of the 2017 PBEM Duel Tournament. Here is the link to the playlist, starting with turn 1:

Hiliadan (Tigran Warlord) vs El Lobo (Human Necromancer)

== Balance ==
About 10 days left to produce a first draft of the changelog of v1.23. I followed up with the two extended groups of discussion for balance to get more opinions on the proposed changes. If you didn't receive any PM but would like to participate in the discussions, please contact me.

These changes will be confirmed for v1.23 if no further feedback:
GC33a
Combat Healing starts with an initial 3 turns cooldown (was 4 turns).

GC49
Public Bath costs 120 gold (was 150)

GC40a
Spell upgrades for heroes cost 4 (was 5), except:
– Chaos Rift (stay at 5)
– Chain Lightning (stay at 5)
– Last Stand (stay at 5)
– Slayer’s Doubt (stay at 5)
– Stiffen Limbs (stay at 5)
– Repair Fortification: costs 3

GC51
Heroes appearing in Cosmic Events have Mind Control Immunity


These changes require additional feedback and are considered for v1.23:
GC52
A new setting is available for “Defenders Strength”: “Strong with Normal rewards”: Treasure sites do not give +50% reward value any more

GC40b
CP upgrade costs for heroes are reduced to 5+5+5+5+6+7+7 = 40 in total to get to 85 CP (was 5+5+7+7+7+9+9 = 49)
Destabilized Mana Core costs 60 CP (was 50 CP)

== 2017 PBEM Duel Tournament ==
Almost all the matches started or about to start.
Only missing the class/race of Mr. Hawk.

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU STARTED WITH THE MAIN BRANCH of the balance mod. If you started with the beta branch, please contact judges immediately and pause your game.

== PBEM 2vs2 Team Tournament ==
Some issues happened on the match Bastards of the North vs Sinners. As Fistandantilus is involved in the match, Markymakr and I decided to nominate a 3rd judge to help us: Marcuspers will help on this case.

Some final checks need to be made on the other match but the winning team should be announced soon.
So round 6 is delayed a bit but hopefully should be able to proceed soon!

The pbem++ mode is great - the changes are very few - but their impact is big. Fast currents are giving players with fly-ing scouts too much of an advantage ): we have to move that in the main branch

As a follow-up to the release of v1.22 of the balance mod, Jean and I have released a new version of our http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=952663062, in which we've added the Gas masks upgrade to Dreadnought heroes. This change had been planned to be added to v1.22 of the balance mod, but didn't make the cut due to time constraints. So we added it to PBEM++ in order to allow people to use it instead of waiting for the next release of the balance mod.

For those of you who haven't tried the PBEM++, it's sort of a 3rd party extension to the main balance mod. We use it to tackle the issues that the balance mod team either doesn't have the time to work on or can't integrate because of the goal of targeting single-player mode as well as PBEM. Probably the most impactful example of that is we got rid of the starting spell unfairness, which can have a huge impact on the fast-paced duels played on tournament maps. But there's obviously more good stuff implemented, you can check this document to see the full list of changes as well as the reasoning behind them.

As the new round of the tournament starts today, I'd recommend to take a closer look at our nice little mod and consider using it for your tournament games if you like it. Obviously, every little change will have the people who are for it and the people who are against it, but the objective bottom line is it does make the competitive games more fair, which is good for the tournament games, right? =)

== Balance mod ==
Thanks a lot Mr. Hawk (and Tass by PM) for reporting the issue... We did test everything since mid-July and did several corrections in the last few days with Zaskow but it looks like some bugs were introduced and unspotted in the last update. Very sorry about that! At least now we know we need to pay extra attention when abilities' descriptions are updated (that's what caused the bug, for instance for Flying, we added "Gives +2 Vision Range" in the description, that's a quality of life improvement).
A fix has been released. For players who had already opened their games with the faulty version, it seems the only possible fix is to delete the PBEM saves from that game and then try to open the game again, which will redownload the turn from scratch. Sorry about the trouble and lost time...
Please come to the chat if you face issues, so that I can help there: https://www.the-battlefield.c... />
== 2017 PBEM Duel Tournament ==
Please note that Round 5 will be played with the main branch of the balance mod, I repeat the main branch. Please make sure NOT to use the beta branch (which was used for Round 4, but NOT for Round 5) as it will be used for tests on v1.23 of the balance mod. As a general rule, tournament games use the main branch. Only in specific cases will the beta branch will be used and in these cases, it will be required by judges and announced here.

v1.22 has been released on the main branch a few minutes ago so Round 5 can now officially start!
As announced in my previous post, Mr. Hawk replaced DarkRider (randomly picked among players who lost in round 4 and were interested to play round 5).

@players hosting: please post screenshots of the settings as usual, ideally in windowed mode. Wait for the greenlight of judges regarding settings and class/race.

== PBEM 2vs2 Team Tournament ==
Deadline of end of round expired, both ongoing matches are going to be decided by score unfortunately.
The decision tree described on this Player Pool on 2017-07-16 18:49:06 will be used: for this round and for this tournament, if the game is not finished by the deadline, then the winner would be decided by comparing in this order: 1/ the combined total (general) score of living players of each team, 2/ the combined military scores of living players of each team, 3/ the combined domain scores of living players of each team. If no team has a clear superiority (not just 1 point more; clear superiority is assessed by the judges) in any of these, then the team with the highest combined total (general) score of living players win (same as 1/ but without need for "clear superiority").

Match The green elephant vs rrrrookie & Jonny Thunder: waiting for Melciar to come back from business trip to play his turn, do a back up, then surrender, send the scores to judges, then sends the turn to the next player.
Match Bastards of the North vs The Sinners: Warlord Keldon will play his turn, then AlX will do the same thing as Melciar: play his turn, do a back up then surrender, send the scores to Markymark and me and then sends the turn to the next player.

== Anti-cheating ==
AlX proposed to make video recording mandatory for tournament games. We have 2 other opinions so far, if more express themselves, we can maybe launch a poll.

== Balance ==
The idea is to get v1.23 for next rounds of the 2 tournaments so a first version of the changelog should be proposed in about 2 weeks. That means many of the changes that have not received enough support will be pushed to v1.24.

Something strange is happening in the game, after the latest updates it seems gone mad ...maybe "Stranger Things"
Jokes apart, the mod must have a bug especially with flying creatures but there are probably other things. Try to create a test game and you'll find out (summon like as drone or crow are created but are "invisible" and mana upkeep, other flying creatures do not fly and do not walk but they can only navigate)

I think mandatory recording is not a bad idea for tournament games. Even a low-quality recording is a pretty good anti-cheat measure. For all ranked games such a requirement might be too much of a deterrent for new players, who might sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed even with all the current stuff (creating games, reporting, game settings etc.).

Then again, it's easy for me to say, since there probably isn't going to be another PBEM duel tournament in my natural lifetime

As for the cheating case, I share Gilafron's ideas regarding the pursuit of full transparency, since even though it might cause harm short term (which is debatable), I believe it's almost always for the best in the long term (generally, the more knowledge there is of cheats, the harder it is to cheat and get away with it). I do of course respect the fact that not everyone shares this ideology.

@Hellbrick, as I said - the right software, which would not ask a lot from system. Also, AoW is well-optimised and with the settings set on min it should be do-able. 

either way this is a proposal, and before there will be tons of "why this can't happen", it'd be good if we think whether or no it'd improve the competitive play.

I'm afraid mandatory turn recording is going to make things too hard for the people who either use old laptops that can't handle both the game and the video recording or simply are not tech-savvy enough to set it up easily. I know for a fact that we have players that fall into both these categories, and such rule would effectively exclude them from competing.