My brief fling with Google has now turned into a minor obsession as I spend time reading what other people have written about Google. I consider Google to be one of the best innovations on the Web (alongside eBay). For those fellow geeks who are so inclined, here is an early paper which provides quite a bit of now-secret detail into how google works. The Anatomy of a Search Engine
posted by Tim at 9:26 AM

1. I now know what dxdiag.exe does


2. I found my old computer manuals


3. I finally figured out how to configure a wireless router so I can connect to Gamespy


4. Gave me a reason to buy a new video card cooling system


5. I finally upgraded my video card drivers


6. I flashed my first MOBO BIOS


7. I can now manually install and uninstall DirectX 9.0b


8. Gave me a reason to toss my old computer and buy that new "Compatible with RON" Dell computer


9. Spent so much time on the phone with the tech support girls at ATI that Wifey accused me of having an affair


10. Since I can't play multiplayer, I now have extra time to do something productive, like learn a new language or play an instrument

Just kidding... I can play multiplayer :-)

posted by Tim at 1:34 PM

Andrew Phelps writes this blog over at Corante called Got Game? In a post titled "A New Kind of Game" he discusses how "online" games are being perceived as a new genre.

Go check out any gaming magazine at the newsstand that covers more than one kind of game and you'll find 'RPG', 'FPS', 'Racing', 'Adventure', and 'Online' (or something very similar). Online? Online is a technology, not a gaming genre.

His site has some other interesting stuff on gaming in general.
posted by Tim at 1:49 PM

From Army Field Manual (FM) 3-0 OPERATIONS, here are the Principles of War

The nine principles of war provide general guidance for conducting war and military operations other than war at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. The principles are the enduring bedrock of Army doctrine. The US Army published its original principles of war after World War I. In the following years, the Army adjusted the original principles, but overall they have stood the tests of analysis, experimentation, and practice.

In the future, I'll be using this as a backdrop for discussing strategy as it applies to the game of RON, but interested (or just impatient) readers can go directly to the source.

As a book on how to wage war effectively, FM 3-0 Operations is probably one of the better and more readable tomes around. It's always been my favorite source material (back when it was named FM 100-5) for discussing military theory.
posted by Tim at 1:21 PM

So what makes a good player good? And how does one improve? My view is there are three basic categories of skill that determine a player's potential.

• Micromanagement skill (Military and Tactics)
• Macromanagement skill (Economy and Overall game view)
• Strategic sense (Making good decisions)

In the first of what will probably be a series of posts, let me discuss how to improve your micromanagement skills.

Improving your micromanagement skills
The conventional wisdom says that, unlike FPS games, RTS games do not usually revolve around reflexive action, but rather strategic decisions under time constraints and proper execution. But it's the execution we're talking about here. Good strategy is not likely to win out if you can't micro very well, but you can micro your way back from bad strategy. Head to head, all else being equal, the better micro player will win the small initial battles and begin to build a macro lead. Further micro play will just reinforce that. A great example of this is raiding. A good micro player will be able to raid, kill individual targets, avoid tower and city fire, and run away from dangerous defenders, all while managing and improving his economy. A bad micro player might get the raid started at the same time, but will likely lose his raiders to the defenses and not cause much damage. Also, a better micro player can win battles with smaller forces, leaving the option to manage two separate forces or to apply the extra resources toward economy. So what steps should you take to improve your micro?

1. Learn the hotkeys and shortcuts. This is the easiest way to improve your ability to multi-task. Hotkeys and shortcuts vastly reduces the amount of time required to perform actions like queuing villagers and building buildings. Leaving more time for other things. Hotkeys are good for:

• Queuing troops (e.g., 'KHQ' sets up an infinite queue of HI. You can also easily set up a queue of HI, LI, HI, LI, etc.)
• Building buildings (e.g., 'BF' creates a farm
• Researching technologies
• Employing special abilities (e.g., CI, snipe, or bribe)
• Setting waypoints for villagers (e.g., 'A' sets waypoint to all resource buildings)

2. Use control groups and hotkeyed locations. Scrolling is a slow way to move around the map. Control groups allow you to instantly move to the specific location. In the early game, for example, I set my scout to '1'. (Yes, he's got a hotkey, but I use this for other games as well, so it's easier to remember. And if you make multiple scouts, you might want to hotkey them both separately.) One tap selects the unit, but double tapping centers the screen on that unit instantly. You can also assign map locations to quickly get you to and from key places on the battlefield.

3. Use the minimap. In addition to control groups, the minimap is very handy for centering the screen on a specific location. The best players all have excellent "minimap awareness." They'll immediately react to any enemy color or movement on the minimap. You can also use the minimap to general your troops, setting waypoints for scouting or movement.

4. Learn the hotkeys for attack moves, unit stances, and formations.And know when to use them. Properly controlling your military is essential to successful play. You want to be able to quickly change stances to react to changing conditions on the battlefield. I usually keep my troops in defensive stance, but use 'SHIFT+A' to instantly set them to aggressive when I want to press an attack. Also, one note for experienced RTS players: do not focus fire. Success in other RTS games was all about focusing fire and killing off targets one by one. In RON, there is a sizable penalty for focusing all fire on one target. In normal battles, you're much better off using the attack move command and letting the units' AI choose the targets.

5. Practice rushing and raiding. I firmly believe that new players should focus on rushing and early conflict. This forces them to develop micromanagement skills that will be extremely valuable later on in their gaming career. When rushing, you are virtually forced to micromanage individual troops. When raiding, divide your raiders into separate groups. You'll kill more quickly because of the focus fore penalty, cause more headaches for the enemy (who might respond to only one of your attacks), and you'll be improving your micro skills. Rushing and raiding will also help you develop the skills to defend against these attacks yourself, as you'll quickly learn what works and what doesn't work.

6. Learn how to effectively micro the special abilities of generals, spies, and commandos. This will have a tremendous impact on your success in combat, as the commando can snipe at enemy generals killing them off with one shot, while the spy can do even more damage by converting enemy units to your side. Care must be taken to use them properly. First, make sure you have UNCHECKED the option box "use abilities as a group." This prevents all your spies from expending their craft bribing one unit. Now you can use the home key (or better yet a control group!) to select all spies or commandos and quickly target enemies in rapid succession. Grab a friend or the AI and conduct battles where you primarily focus on making use of your spies and commandos to kill off or bribe the enemy. One note: planned changes in patch 3 make the commando CI ability automatic, so you'll want to send the commandos forward first to snipe enemy explorers and then bring up the spies for bribing. If you want to see some expert play at this, watch some recorded games of Shadowz (here's one). He's very good at utilizing commandos and spies as a combat multiplier.

7. Practice, practice, practice.
posted by Tim at 10:55 AM

ShadowSun notes that he is surprised how few opponents surprised how few opponents build a second library

Building a second libary is really cheap, and good insurance in case your primary is destroyed or captured. You can also research 2 techs at once, which can be nice in some situations. For those of us who can't multi-task well, you can get behind in research when you're focusing on a large battle. Two libraries can help you recover from that mistake.

In the thread, I note out that I have never built a second library. IMO, it's not really necessary. There's not much research that can occur simultaneously. People get behind in technology due to poor economy, not because they only have one library. On the other hand, it is pretty cheap and if you've got an idle villager later in the game and a second library would make you feel better, go for it.
posted by Tim at 6:01 AM

From their official website

We wanted to let you all know that Patch 3 for Rise of Nations, which will make several updates to multiplayer connectivity in addition to balance tweaks, new features, and bug fixes, is currently in final testing at Microsoft. This is the last major hurdle in the production of the patch, and a green light from Microsoft's testers will mean that it is ready to be released. We still can't give a firm release date for the patch at this point, but right now we are several steps closer to that day.

With the release of Patch 3, we will also be going live with our multiplayer ratings website. It will contain a listing of the top rated players, as well as other multiplayer related information such as the most popular map types.

Personally, I'm looking forward to the quickmatch feature. Hopefully, there will be enough players using it to make it work smoothly. This was the best feature about Warcraft III.
posted by Tim at 11:31 AM

If you're having trouble watching some Patch 2 recordings (e.g., like mine), then you'll wanna be sure to get the Playback Repair Utility from the Official Big Huge Games website.

A utility to repair recorded games that crash when being replayed due to player(s) in the game having been dropped. Patch 3 will resolve this problem so that this utility is no longer needed.

I'll start using this so future recs will be uncorrupted.
posted by Tim at 7:14 PM

Inspired by our site here (I know cuz he told me), Endurence_uk_ has started a similar Rise of Nations strategy site here. His first big original contribution is a Beginner's Guide is for new players. Endurence may not be ultra-elite-super-mega expert, but he's doing a lot more than many folks are to develop new and interesting strategies for the game. Hats off, and Good Luck.

UPDATE: The Ingrate! He didn't even link to me :-( Okay, now he did :-)


posted by Tim at 2:50 PM

The lease on the O4B-mobile expires next week, so I've been car shopping for the past month. I really enjoyed my Jetta but am looking for a bit more style and oomph. My target car was something similar to the Audi S4, for example. However, I wanted to get something used, to avoid paying new car premium pricing. Anyway, I finally gave in to Wifey's urging advice and headed over to Carmax. They had several reasonable alternatives to choose from: '01 Audi A4, '01 BMW 325i, '01 Volvo S80; all of them around $20-22K. After much anguishing over the decision we decided on the BMW. Only to find (as we were walking into buy it) a shiny 2003 Mercedes-Benz C230 Kompressor Sport Sedan. This one only had 4K miles on it. It was $31K, but we decided to take the plunge since we felt it was a better over-all value than the BMW. It's decked out with features that make the new price of 5 months ago over $36K. Meanwhile, I get the full manufacturer's warranty on it and everything. Still even has that new car smell to it!
posted by Tim at 10:53 PM

Rebel Command says he worries about people playing optimal strategies, and asks, "what's the fun of playing it then?"

The fun is in BOTH players playing the most efficient, optimal strategies possible so that they are pushing each other to the max.

Take chess for example. I know a LOT of chess openings. Most non-tournament players don't. If they make a mistake in the opening, I pounce on it. Losing is the best way to learn. If however, I were to play poorly to compensate for his poor play, then neither one of us benefits. At elite levels of play, grandmasters often play opening lines that are well-known into the double digit moves. OCCASIONALLY there will be a theoretical novelty played but it's rare. The openings are usually pretty standard. But the excitement of grandmaster chess is NOT the opening, it's HOW they play the subsequent positions.

Same with RON.
posted by Tim at 10:12 PM

So it took forever to get everyone in the room and actually start the game, but we finally got this big 4on4 game going. 3 TWCs, 2 RUs, 1 BLUT, Sea Biscuit and me. Huge Himalayan map, we were all random nations and random civs, but ... HEY! The TWCs all decided last minute to team up together. Meanies. Anyway we commence to playing. The game is un note-worthy and the recording goes out-of-sync because of people dropping, but I post it here so you can see some examples of TWC_Shadowz awesome micro skills. Despite being behind economically and having a smaller army, he manages to slow, and eventually stop my assault using exceptional micro with spies and commandoes. I manage to capture his 4th town near the middle and start to drive him back as we progress through 2 more ages. Shadowz slow sme down enough to build up a sizable force and then counter-attacks, sending in commandoes to snipe and spies to convert. Using this technique, he completely wipes out a small infantry force from Raven. He also manages to win virtually every engagement with me (although he lost a town and a bunch of military buildings). The funny thing is, I had almost TEN commandoes in my force. Even with rapid clicking and CI, the spies manage to convert a lot of my units.

Anyway, if you want to learn to play REALLY well. Watch this game, and watch Shadowz technique with the commandoes and spies. The game goes OOS, so if anyone of the other guys has a complete version, post it up. I had to bail cuz the wife showed up, and we were well on our way toward winning. But who knows...

The key is obviously to wait until the main forces are engaged and then send in the commandoes and the spies after that. Against Raven, Shadowz uses the commandoes to snipe Raven's generals and then the infantry get converted and killed. Very nasty.
posted by Tim at 9:57 PM

I've been skirmishing a bit with the Greeks recently. I'm starting to think the Greeks can be a tough civ to play against. In my skirmish games against the Toughest AI, I have been much further along than the AI in the resouce graph and I've been able to keep up with and surpass the AI in terms of age development and military size. This is pretty impressive since, as you know, the Toughest AI gets a whopping 50% resource gathering bonus. The Achilles heel, as I am sure everyone is aware is the early start, where the Greeks can be vulnerable to a rush if they spend too much wealth on scholars and cannot counter with archers. But if played correctly, Greeks may not be any more vulnerable than other civs. Also, the non-knowledge research cost reduction means that Greeks can afford critical library techs earlier than many other civs. So you can get MIL1 slightly earlier and have more wood available to build a barracks.

But booming is where the Greeks really shine. As we have demonstrated, an early CLASSICAL is a better build because it gets you knowledge earlier allowing you to upgrade to COM2 quickly without spending a lot of food. Greeks can get COM2 before CLASSICAL without spending any food at all. So other than metal and Making a stable, there's little reason to rush to CLASSICAL age. So the Greeks can get a good economy going without sacrificing knowledge production at the start. This can end up turning into a long-lasting advantage. Faster techs means faster aging which means better univeristy techs which means more knowledge which means bigger economy!

So in team games, where the threat of rushing is somewhat diminished, Greeks can play a very strong role, even against soem of the "powerhouse" civs. While I think the key to playing Greeks successfully in 1on1 is dealing with the early rushes and raids.
posted by Tim at 9:10 AM

There's a poll over at RON Universe asking what is the Best RTS? Except the maker of the poll has never heard of Starcraft or Starcraft: Broodwar. I'm sorry, but if you've never heard of Starcraft - the single biggest selling RTS game ever - you've no business making a poll for best RTS ever. I think you need to play a few more games before you start comparing them.

I dunno; maybe I'm just in a bad mood tonight.
posted by Tim at 8:18 PM

There's a relatively worthless discussion at the RON Heaven Forum about whether SCI1 is a good start and whether CIV1 might be a better choice. I said:

As for researching SCI1... Other than the ol' ancient rush, I can't think of too many times you would NOT ever do it right off the bat. Because you want to fill the most efficient spots first, building a second town is usually limited by FOOD. The rare exception is perhaps getting a 3-wood spot. In playing with the CIV1 start, I've found that I end up waiting on food to build the town and research SCI1 anyway. So why not just research it at the start?

SCI1 is one of the automatic things I do. I have two hotkeyed starts MIL1 and SCI1. Personally, I'll wait for some better eveidence that anything else is worth doing.
posted by Tim at 7:58 PM

More Google weirdness: PageRank is Dead. I'm not the only one experiencing this. Google is still trying to figure out how to deal with blogs. If you search on "google blogs" you'll unearth a whole smattering of conspiracy theorists. Whoa. To me it's more humorous than anything. People are reading. Who cares what the ranking is? Besides, if you're searching for this site using Google, then you're probably not ready to read it. You should be reaching this site from links from other RON strategy sites because you're looking for more. Or so I'd like to think.

For more humor, try doing a google search on "search engine."
posted by Tim at 7:24 PM

Speaking of Carch, he hasn't updated his site since 9/14. But everyone should grab this little gem of a Java program he wrote:GRRR - Graphical RoN Recording Reader

This little Java utility allows you to view the details of your collection of Rise of Nations recordings. You can also use it to rename individual recordings.

It works great and is very handy for automatically renaming your favorite battles.

"I heartily endorse it!" --Out4Blood
posted by Tim at 6:38 PM

Carch posted some info (back in July!) by YaleHadderity on a good way to play Greeks

Ok, I was at the RONU game clinic on Thurs and asked the expert, TuF_Raider_, how to get more wealth in the early game as greeks. I tried out his advice and found it works extremely well.

This was recently unearthed by knight101_5 over at the RON Heaven Forum, and is probably a it dated. How does a Greek deal with the rush or with early raiders? (Answer: they don't.)I've been meaning to take up the Greek channlenge, but just haven't gotten around to it. Perhaps I'll give this a try.
posted by Tim at 6:33 PM

BHG has had this up for awhile, but I don't play Patch 3 so I haven't bothered with it. Patch 3 BETA Change List, version 02.03.09.2604
posted by Tim at 2:14 PM

Those crazy people at the Infidels site have done it again. They've created a style sheet that enables you to view the RON unit stats data right on your own computer! The files are XML, this style sheet makes viewing the info a lot easier.

All of the statistics for units and buildings etc. in Rise of Nations is held in open standard files in your game directory. The only problem with this is that they are not meant to be read easily by people. Fortunately, the nice techie people at Infidels have produced a formatting files that will turn the computer data file into a readable one.

Thanks to War (one of those crazy people).
posted by Tim at 2:09 PM

Rebel Command asks on the Heaven Forum for:

... a chart or something which lists out all the characteristics of units (barrack and stable) for reference. ... are there any such documents already available out there? if yes, any one knows the link?"

People are kind enough to provide several links of stuff.

UPDATE: And they just keep coming.
posted by Tim at 5:33 AM

HalfLotus posted on the MFO Forum

MFO serves as the designated troll/loser forum. RoNH is for the community. ^^

Unfortunately, I'm gonna have to agree with him.

As one of the original members of MFO, I helped build that place into what it is. Or rather what it was. It used to be a place where the hardest of the hardcore went to post and discuss, nay argue, strategy and tactics. Now, at least in the form of the RON forum, it is where bitter ex-players come to taunt new players and people who are actually taking strategy forward.

I've been monitoring the RON Forum board for months and there hasn't been a decent strategy post here in a long time. It's all going on elsewhere. And that's pretty sad, because MFO used to rock. And it rocked because of the people that were members of the community.

Now the MFO RON forum is a tired old hag. But it's a tired old hag because of the community. The community of losers who think it's more fun to deride people than it is to help them get better at a complex game. Someone mentioned different personalities. But some personalities are just a cancer. I'm not going to name names, but I think we all know who those cancers are. Back in the day, those cancers would have been banned, or at least put on probation, pretty quickly for their behaviors. But back then, MFO was a different place.

A better place...
posted by Tim at 8:20 PM

Now that I've finally got my new system, I've been enjoying some decent team action. In the rush discussion, I've always noticed in team games how vulnerable both sides are to a potential rush and wondered why more people don't rush. After a week of team games, I think I've found the answer:

GLORY

When you rush, even if you do it stupendously and completely wipe out the victim, you'll be miles behind the rest of the players. You could be the world's greatest player, but in this game, after rushing, you'll be relegated to a bit part in the larger battles to come. You'll also be vulnerable to raiding by the victim's allies. Your economy will be more fragile at this point and be more vulnerable than anyone else's. As a natural raiding target, you may end up falling even further behind economically. So even if you are successful and force the game into a 3on2 mop up, will anyone remember the early sacrifices you made on the altar of team cooperation? Not a chance. You'll have a smaller economy, your troop strength will be the lowest, and your total score will be smaller than everyone else's on your team. You'll be the n00b. Which is probably one reason why "only n00bs rush." Or at least why people say that. Rushers always turn out to have lower scores at the end of the game.

On the other hand, "look at how good so-and-so is! Man, their score was really huge. And did you see how quickly he got to the info age? He must be an expert!" Players want the glory of having the high score, of having the big econ, and using the nukes. Few are willing to step up and take one for the team, even if it gives the team an overall much better chance of winning.
posted by Tim at 7:56 PM

TuF_Richter (aka Thao) posted his Fast Maya Boom + Raid strategy over at RON Universe.

Fast maya raid while you boom ... if you do this strat properly, you should be able to get 2k rate easy.

He mentioned it as part of the "what do you do in the first 10 mintues" thread at the RON Heaven Forum.

posted by Tim at 5:54 PM

Shadowz posted a game at the MFO: Library where he raids as Egyptian. At Apolyton, HalfLotus was the first to articulate this unique civ-specific strategy.
posted by Tim at 8:28 AM

HalfLotus posted some recent games over at Apolyton calling them "2 close games."
posted by Tim at 8:25 AM

War has posted an even faster version of his 3-minute rush. Calling it the... 2-minute rush

A 2 minute rush is a faster than normal ancient HI rush. The two minutes refers to the time point at which the enemy sees your troops walking across his fields. A conventional HI rush sets off around the 2:45 mark and the enemy often doesn't realize that he is being rushed until well past the 3 minute mark. The aim of the two minute rush is to damage the enemy capital some time between 2:00 and 2:20.

Using techniques similar to the Expansion Rush, he's hitting the enemy capital just after the 2 minute mark. While I like the work, and I encourage rushing, I feel uncomfortable with this. Hitting with only 2 units to begin with gives the enemy more time to react to your rush. While it's true you are attacking earlier, the time from first hit to capital sack is actually longer, giving the enemy more time to react. This means there is a greater chance for the enemy to research MIL1, build a barracks, and pump 1-2 archers. In my opinion, it's better to mass your units outside his LOS until you have sufficient quantity to take his capital down very quickly. Surprise is a Principle of War, but so is Mass.
posted by Tim at 8:07 AM

Earlier we mentioned the variety of responses we got when searching for "rise of nations strategy" on Google. We cavalierly said, "Google is weird." In a fit of pique rivalling only Michael Eisner for vindictveness, Google has eliminated Out4Blood's Rise of Nations Strategy from their return. Are they evil vermin or is this just a comment on the dreaded Expansion Rush?

UPDATE: Google has responded! We're now #5... at least from this IP. I guess I won't have to join the boycott. Of course, Google really is weird. They've always done weird stuff over there.

posted by Tim at 5:23 AM

niDe is working on a new RON website: Rising Nation. Be sure to check it out. niDe is a frequent poster over at Heaven Forum.
posted by Tim at 5:11 AM

See the update to this post.
posted by Tim at 11:07 PM

Elftor hunts me down via private message and we commence a 1on1. It's on Atlantic Sea Power, normally a strength for me, and I'm Incan, not a strength for me. He catches me unawares and invades my island. Darn. Game is available here. I should warn everyone, this game was pre-BEAST.

Honk if you know what that means. :-)
posted by Tim at 7:57 PM

So with my new system, I can finally get to use the in-game multiplayer interface. I use to get into games with my old system, but back then I only had around 4 FPS. When I upgraded to Windows XP, got more RAM and a new video card, I couldn't use the in-game interface anymore. Now, I can do everything, and I get about 20 times the speed I had before.

Of course, the new system didn't do anything about Wifey...

Note: The only software difference I have now is Windows XP is upgraded with SP1. I probably would not have upgraded, but I had to get a completely new installation (not the upgrade version) and it already included SP1. So if you are running Windows XP and cannot play mukltiplayer through the in-game multiplayer interface, you can 1) try using Gamepsy Arcade, or 2) Install SP1.


UPDATE: I was having some unexplainable errors when running the game. Sometimes it would work and sometimes it would not. I would occasionally be able to play a game, but would have to reboot to play another. Deeper digging discovered that recorded games were not being saved. After even more digging, I figured out that this only occurred playing under a Limited Account. My Admin Account was able to play normally. Harrrumph. I upgraded my normal account to Power User, and now the Bad Things have gone away. If anyone is having the same trouble, they might check into this.

[rant]

After all this, I must say: THIS IS THE MOST DARNED SENSITIVE GAME I HAVE EVER PLAYED. I've played a LOT of games in my lifetime and I have NEVER seen a mainstream game that was THIS BUGGY. In fact, I don't think I've seen ANY game that was this buggy and this mercurial. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. BHG should be ashamed. Either them or Microsoft. And the old: "Upgrade Your Drivers" schtick is wearing thin. It's NOT my drivers! It's your frickin' program! Before this, I made the mistake of upgrading DirectX before installing RON. Damn thing wouldn't even install (RONSetup failed to initialize). WTF?

[/rant]
posted by Tim at 7:04 PM

A banner day for micro tips! Use Ambush to protect Supply Wagons

The ambush will hide them, and because the wagons never attack, they stay hidden for the entire time. 30 seconds I believe. Ambush is powerful in many other situations as well.

This time from half_lotus over at the RON Heaven Forum.
posted by Tim at 5:50 PM

Apollyon's starting to post some good stuff now (I must be gettin' to him!) Here's a great technique that I can start using now that I got a new rig. MicroManage Tip #1 -- The Draw: exploitation of unit AI

I might as well give you guys some few remaining secrets for winning games -- this one is called 'the draw.' Alot of credit goes to shadowz as well since after that spanish to mongol pounding back in july made me rethink once again about the myth of the auto-counter AI which led me back to my early days of micro management.

We use to do this all the time in AOE and AOK. It's pretty standard stuff in RTS games; but in RON, you can manage unit stances so the person that keeps their troops on the default aggressive stance will end up losing his forces to tricks like this. Great post, Polly!
posted by Tim at 5:45 PM

I only get 84 of these with this.

Hehe :-)
posted by Tim at 5:29 PM

Astute perusers of my new system wish list may have noticed I failed to include a case. I, however, did not. So my components are going to show up sin una caja.

Great. Just great.

UPDATE: I finally sucked up my pride and went to Best Buy and grabbed the Antec Sonata case. It's pretty sleek. My wife hates because it's black, though. Like the color matters...
posted by Tim at 10:23 AM

Played a game last night that makes me wonder if the Expansion Rush might be unsound [see note below]. Clearly, a portion of the success I've had with it has been due in part to poor response by opponents. But last night I played against cb and he did just about everything right. Although he did try to retake his city (and failed), he then switched gears and rebuilt a new city to expand his econ. But he also built and garrisoned a tower right on the edge of the border, killing off the temple I had captured, and making it difficult for me to use my larger army effectively to threaten his other expansions and to expand my economy at his city. There were some other factors in his favor:

• The expansion city was located in a low-lying area making it extremely difficult to defend once captured. He had the high ground over-looking the city
• I was late getting to his city due to poor play on my part, so he managed to have some extra econ to support the later battles
• His scout saw my troops on their way to his city, so he had ample time to prepare. He was unable to save his city, and I easily assimilated it, but he was more ready than I would have liked. This was clearly a case where a Capital Rush would have been a Miserable Failure
• I was force to play with no sound and frequent wifey interruptions. I deal with the consequences, but it does make it more difficult to play effectively without the sound cues. We also had to pause the game for several minutes since my wife actually came into the room! WHEW! Only quick pausing and minimizing managed to save the day

Anyway, the conclusion is that he played well enough to thwart the Expansion Rush. So whether this may or may not be a viable strategy, we should all know how to play effectively to stop it. This game provides a good example. (I'll post the game later tonight.)

NOTE: I consider a strategy to be unsound when it is executed under ideal conditions and the opponent is still able to thwart it through best play. "Ideal conditions" means that your opponent has chosen a strategy that should lose to this strategy, the map and civ are conducive to attack, and you achieve the necessary level of surprise. "Best play" means your opponent chooses the correct strategy in response and executes satisfactorily. You can still win with unsound strategies, but this relies on your opponent being inept or choosing the wrong strategy in response . A sound strategy is one that wins against certain strategies even against best play by your opponent. (e.g., an ancient rush will defeat a straight boom, a boom defeats anti-rush, etc.) However, even unsound strategies can easily defeat you if you are not up to speed on how to effectively counter them. This discussion is useful because it helps us identify the proper response "on-the-fly" in future games. Which is not always that easy without some prior thinking.

UPDATE: The game is available here.
posted by Tim at 9:56 AM

RON Oracle is once again touting the features of its Java tech tree. This is a handy place to see the tech relationships. Personally, I'd prefer a .pdf or something that printed easily. But thankfully the game comes with a nice foldout.
posted by Tim at 9:14 AM

BHG has seen fit to add our site to their Rise of Nations Community page. Thanks guys :-)
posted by Tim at 11:59 AM

Here's another game to demonstrate the effectiveness of the "Expansion Rush." This is the same rush we pulled on _RU_Raven 2 weeks ago. In this game against DaLocust, I hit his expansion city a few moments after it goes up. He has nothing there but for 1 villager farming, and a half built temple. I quickly capture his expansion and then send reinforcements to ensure I'm able to hold it. Meanwhile, I work on expanding my economy.

A little bit later, he makes the big mistake (in my opinion) of trying to retake the city immediately. My forces easily beat off his attack, and I assimilate the city. There I start building a market, temple and university, as well as a tower and stable. He finally builds a new city further back, but by now the game is virtually over. I do some raiding, border pushing, and aging. Unfortunately, my wife shows up and I have to resign. But I'm way ahead and the point was made.

Tactical questions:
Should he have finished the temple? I say no. He was going to lose the town anyway. Once he loses it, he's not likely to get it back and I'm going to need a temple there. Deleting it saves him the resources, and prevents me from getting a free temple. Keeping it would only have saved him 15 sec or so. Not enough time to save the town.

Should he try to retake the city? I say no. I think trying to retake is a mistake. After losing the town, he has little intel on the type of forces with which I reinforce, and he won't be able to force larger numbers of troops given my already big lead. Also, I don't need to send many more troops there to have a big enough force to ensure I can hold it against anything he can send prior to assimilation. Once I assimilate, he's not going to get it back until he can make a very sizable force.

It's really hard to be ready for this. And once you lose that city, it's tough to respond correctly. I'm not 100% sure of the right response. But I am sure I haven't seen it yet.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is NOT a rush I would recommend for team games. You're not taking them out, you're merely equalizing resources. So, just a small early force from your victim's ally will spoil all your plans as you lose your military and your shiny new city.
posted by Tim at 6:00 AM

Apollyon mentioned on Heaven's Forum that he just posted a few recorded games on MFO. He's since updated it to offer to take the games down if anyone is offended. Best hurry up and d/l!
posted by Tim at 8:32 PM

In this week's SPOTLIGHT GAME, I played a 1on1 with Montana. We played on a Secret Random Map with Random Civs, so I decided not to rush. I also, for some reason, decided to play with my head up my ass! I never scouted my opponent and I never made any military despite relatively quick classical aging by both of us. Instead, I opted to make use of Germany's neat ability to make early granaries, lumber mills, and smelters. Meanwhile, montana makes use of Britain's neat ability to make horse archers and cataphracts. With all the raiding, I get discombobulated [there's a good word], my econ goes to shit, and he border pushes me off of my resources. I manage to spoil his first attack and kill off a lot of troops, but make the fatal mistake of following him back to his forward town. Game over. (BTW, this marks my first real 1on1 loss.)

This game highlights the effectiveness of the combined Horse Archer and Heavy Cav raiding, particularly against stupid opponents. Montana performs textbook raiding to keep me off-kilter, gains an economic advantage, and then masses for an attack in the Medieval Age. Good game.

posted by Tim at 6:51 PM

I think people understimate the wonders that increase commerce cap. Think about how much people spend to increase their cap by +50, particularly as the game goes on.

• PYRAMIDS - Increases your Commerce Limit for Food and Wealth by +50, & Improves your Food gather rate by 20%
• COLOSSUS - Increases your Commerce Limit for Wealth and Timber by +50, & Increases your Wealth gather rate by 30%
• TEMPLE OF TIKAL - Raises your Commerce Cap for Timber by +100, & Increases your Timber gather rate by +50%
• ANGKOR WAT- metal commerce cap +100, & Metal gather rate +50%
• KREMLIN - timber, food, metal commerce caps are +200
• TAJ MAHAL - wealth commerce cap +300, & wealth income doubled
• EIFFEL TOWER - oil commerce cap +200, & oil gather rate +100%

This is in addition to all the other effects. I may make some of these more often. Imagine Egyptians building Pyramids and Colossus in Ancient and effectively gaining a +50-100 econ advantage for the rest of the game! That alone would pay for successive wonders, which would pay for the ones after that!

posted by Tim at 2:37 PM

I've watched trailer for The Matrix: Revolutions several times and there is a distrubing scene right at the end. It shows one of the Zion ships (presumably piloted by a blinded Neo and Trinity) trailing smoke and arcing through the twilight sky. The scene is disturbing because it's twilight. You can clearly see the moon and some light fluffy clouds and the reddish-orange sunlight reflecting off the bottom of the clouds. Also, it looks as if the ship crashes on the ground. In the background, while very blurry, are what appear to be greenery and some whitish buildings. So what happened to the "torched sky?" It makes me think the Matrix within a Matrix theory is correct. And that the Zion world is not the Real World. Or if it is, that it is somehow separated from the Real Reality (i.e., it might be underground). Hrrrmmmmm.
posted by Tim at 2:18 PM

LOL, we're #12 on Google's page rank for Rise of Nations Strategy: Google Search: rise of nations strategy. But this doesn't say much because we're way behind such illustrious sites as WORLD OF STRATEGY which hasn't been updated since before the game was released. Not that I'm whoring for pageviews or anything; I was just curious where we stood, since most of the visitors seem to come from Google.

UPDATE: Google is weird; now we're 24th. :-)
posted by Tim at 8:57 AM

blue_thunder started a Heaven Forum thread on the
real use of decoys. It raises some interesting questions. What do people use decoys for? Can you scout with decoys? Or are they only good for being meatshields in actual combat?
posted by Tim at 7:13 AM

Played my first (and last, for awhile) team game with Tann and some RUs. I have always stayed strictly in the 1on1 realm because of hardware limitations; I'm running below Minimum System Requirements so playing this game has always been kinda dicey. But I recently upgraded some of my specs and so I thought I'd give a team game a try. And Tann so nice to invite me in - how could I refuse?

• 450 MHz processor -> below spec!
• 16 MB video card -> recently upgraded to 128 MB
• 128 M of RAM -> recently upgraded to 256 M

The video card enabled me to go from a normal 4 FPS when playing 1on1 to 15-20 FPS. So, I've been wondering how my 5-year old machine would do in team games. NOT TOO WELL.

Tann was generous enough to say it was due to me getting the "bad draw" of Russians against his Mongols. But that's just him being nice again. Fact is, I lost. Looking over the game, there were several contributing factors:

• My FPS was reduced to about 4 FPS after about the 8th minute. Screen lag made any activity that required clicking on the map virtually impossible to do quickly and accurately
• There are a LOT more rares in team games. Instead of the normal 2-4, there were over a dozen accessible rares. Both Tann and his partner had a LOT of rares. Tann had 12 to my 2 (my RU partner also had 2). Rares alone accounted for way more than the actual econ disparity. 10 rares is at least a +200 econ advantage, and even if you can't get the cap that much higher, it makes for more efficient production (merchants generally being cheaper than the alternative) not to mention the nice bonuses all those rares provide. The takeaway is, I was doing fine economically with Russians on an intrinsic basis, but failed to take advantage of the rares. So it wasn't the Russian's fault, it was my fault.
• Tann has 1400 in ruin bonus. I'll have to watch his scouting technique more closely. He claims this was all on level 2 science. Harrumph!
• I failed to micromanage my army properly. Partly this was due to the lag, making any military movement painful to perform, but mostly it was due to poor planning on my part. I didn't manage to get any scouts into my army (despite clicking the production box several times and even upgrading them) and when I did attack it ended up being piecemeal and my forces got decimated. Even after losing my main army, I had difficulty forming another army, because the lag caused my way points to be scattered all over - mostly in the middle of his army.

Micro has never been my strong suit in any of the games I have played; I usually win by better strategy or macromanagement. Here, I just got runned over.I'll definitely need to improve my army tactics for the future. I'll post the game later today.

On the plus side, I'm going to be building a new system. My wish list is at NewEgg.com.

UPDATE: Here's the game.
posted by Tim at 6:35 AM

Another wife-truncated game. At least I've always been winning pretty soundly. But it does suck - and I'm sure it sucks for the other guy, too. In this game I played Mongols for the first time in a LOOOONG time. A very clumsy HA raid which fails to impress my opponent, although it does mark the point at which our econs sharply diverge. From then on it looks as though he has no chance, although he does manage to kick me off of the watering hole. At the end (just past the 16:00 mark) I had about a +300 econ advantage ~+750 to his ~+450.

Sorry emankcin. You played a fine game.

BTW, Doesn't "emankcin" sound sorta smurfy?
posted by Tim at 5:42 PM

So I saw Kill Bill at a matinee showing yesterday evening. That is, Kill Bill Voume I, Quentin Tarantino's forth film.

Uma Thurman is going to KILL BILL, in Quentin Tarantino's latest film, about a former assassin betrayed by her boss, Bill (David Carradine). Four years after surviving a bullet in the head, the bride (Thurman) emerges from a coma and swears revenge on her former master and his deadly squad of international assassins.

This is undoubtedly one of the most violent and goriest films ever made by a major studio. This makes Scarface look tame by comparison. Although violent and gory, this is some of Tarantino's best work, taking on the old chop-suey Samarai movies with a bit of his own brand of frenetic kilm-making. I recommend it if you like action movies and lots of blood. And I mean LOTS. We're talking geysers here...

posted by Tim at 3:17 PM

This game is not very good. Unfortunately, it was the most interesting game I had all week. My opponent said he was not an expert, so I suggested a skill handicap of +5. I don't see much talk about or use of skill handicaps, but they could go a long way to making the game more fun for the average players and more challenging for the experts. I hear some people leaving the community because they can't get "high rated" games. Damn, if you're so good, just give everyone else a +20 handicap! Another interesting thing is my opponent was Mayan - and I still rushed him! Here's this week's SPOTLIGHT GAME.
posted by Tim at 10:00 PM

Assuming the distribution of rare resources is completely random, what would you expect to get near your cities in a typical one on one game? This is a difficult question, partly because their appearance is so random and partly because there are maps that have special arrangements of rares (African Watering Hole and Colonial Powers come to mind). But I tried to do this anyway, just to see how things shake up. To start with I made some assumptions. If you want to use different assumptions based on your playstyle/experience, you can.

• Access to four rares
• There are 23 possible rares that appear in ancient age (I could be off in this). There are more rares, but they appear at later ages. Amber, Bison, Citrus, Copper, Cotton, Diamonds, Dye, Furs, Gems, Horses, Marble, Obsidian, Papyrus, Peacocks, Relics, Salt, Silk, Silver, Spice, Sugar, Tobacco, Wine, & Wool.
• Distribution is random (i.e., one rare does not appear any more frequently than another)

Based on this, you could calculate your expected take from rare resources. We take the average amount of each resource produced the potential early rares. This comes out to 13.9 food, 17.4 timber, 19.1 wealth, 13.9 metal, and 15.7 knowledge. Of course, you're never going to get 13.9 food from rares. You're probably going to get either 0, 10, 20, or maybe even 30 total food. Your probability of getting four non-food rares is probably ~20%, but you chance of getting four food rares is less than 1%. Understanding the expected amount can help you with planning. But at the end of the day doesn't mean that much. You will still have to scout effectively to find them, and you're probably still going to make a merchant to collect it.

posted by Tim at 12:06 PM

Rohag over at RON Universe (among others) has called me "another gaming luminary." I think that's a compliment. And he mentioned me with HalfLotus "one of the most prominent players in the community." Thanks Rohag!
posted by Tim at 8:43 AM

Promising news from Big Huge Games:

We are currently working toward a final version of patch 3 and so we are closing down sign-ups for the public patch test at this time. Those of you who already have the patch are welcome to continue using it, and our feedback form will remain active for you. We will keep you posted on the status of the patch as we move forward.

Let's hope this means they are closing in on completion of the patch. I still can't use the in-game Gamespy launcher with my Windows XP; although I can play fine through Gamespy Arcade, things like ratings don't show up in that interface. Not to mention I have load and unload the game every time. GRRRR.
posted by Tim at 8:36 AM

Over at Apolyton, HalfLotus has stumbled onto how RON is meant to be played.

I've gone through several phases: booming, rushing, classical stuff, medieval stuff, raiding, etc. With each new build or strategy I try, I find it to be generally effective, but nearly impossible to "maximize" due to the numerous changing factors from game to game (maps, rares, etc). Rather than try to maximize the efficiency of a certain strategy for each map type, rare resource combination, and nation match-up, I'm having more success (and fun) adapting on the fly to a strategy that is best suited to my current resource situation.

UPDATE: I differ from this opinion in that I feel its possible to "wargame" certain situations ahead of time and have some sort of objective and strategy. You may find that in-game activities force you to alter your plans somewhat, but at least you have a default.
posted by Tim at 9:43 AM

In accordance with strict o4b policy to post all losses, here is this game against LowGear. My wife showed up unexpectedly and I had to quickly bail in this game. My apologies to LowGear. GG

It's an interesting game for two reasons:
1. I rushed with Incan, sacked his capitol, and then boomed.
2. I forgot I was playing Incan and didn't start mining metal until WAAAAY late. That won't happen again! (I hope.)

At the end, I had almost 2x the economy and was almost 2 ages up. But a loss is a loss.
posted by Tim at 9:27 PM

Saw a link to the Alliance Francophone at RON Universe. This is a French RON strategy site. So it's in French. Duh (although they kindly place a BabelFish link for automatic translation for the non-Franophones). Some of their articles are translations of English strategies; other articles are original, including the "We Surrender" strategy.

Just kidding, of course :-)
posted by Tim at 9:04 PM

The bar has just been lowered another notch ... errrrr ... raised another ... oh never mind.
We have a new faster time! 12:17. Still using SCI2 -> CLASSICAL. Took RollYerOwn's advice and ditched the mines altogether. Stumbled through with +24 metal. Getting early Gunpowder (sub 11 minutes) really helped.
posted by Tim at 7:44 PM

Over at Heavens Forum, blue_thunder started a thread asserting that perhaps Colossus is the best wonder. So what is the best wonder? Originally, I had said:

I like Pyramids. You get the food bonus and the +1 town bonus. Those are good early on. The Colossus is better but it's not as good as the SOL, IMO. You talk about wonders being a waste of resources - try upgrading a huge army!

But after running the Challenge Game, we've seen that wealth is incredibly important to driving knowledge, and knowledge is the single biggest factor limiting age advancement. Colossus gives you a +30% bonus to wealth, which means if you have +100 wealth already, it's payback on wealth alone will be in a little over 3 minutes. Total payback would be just under 7 minutes. So, I'm probably going to have to give the nod to the Colossus in the early stages. Later on though, I'm definitely going for the SOL.

UPDATE: There's an interesting Apolyton thread on Wonders. And I'm sure there are other "best wonder" threads out there as well.
posted by Tim at 10:10 AM

It occurs to me that enlightenment age may be too early to use as a test. What we're really trying to compare is an early II versus COM2. But if we would never get to +150 anyway, then COM2 is useless in this test. But that defies reason since, you'd need those resources to make military. Of course, there IS some efficacy to this. The resources devoted to getting to those later ages could be used to make military and thus conduct early attacks with superior troops. This could be a proxy for it. However, it's clear that to achieve this goal you're forced to do things differently than you would if you knew the game were going to last a long time. Taking the learnings from this Challenge Game might help shape the next one.

Perhaps a refined test goal would be to include a certain level of military at a certain point in time. If we defined the goal as a healthy military force upgraded and ready to attack at a certain age, then that would have real-game implications.

We'll finish up Challenge Game 1 and see if anybody can break the current record of 12:23 held by Buckets (has to be a film!)

Meanwhile, I'm looking for suggestions for Challenge Game 2. Perhaps fastest to Medieval or Gunpowder army consisting of 1 General, 1 Supply cart, 2 siege, 5 fully upgraded knights, 5 fully upgraded archers and 5 fully light infantry, 1 explorer (and maybe a spy or two, if available). Thoughts? What would be useful?

The clear thing to realize is that researches and expansion which improve the economy (normally no-brainers) might actually SLOW your ability to get an army assembled. And thus in competition, you might have a bigger econ (temporarily) but you'll find yourself losing cities to an early attack.
posted by Tim at 9:55 AM

While doing some of the analysis for the resource equalization post, I noticed a common trend in most of the games I saw. In analyzing typical booming and anti-rush build order patterns, I found that most players research CIV1 pretty early and usually build their second expansion town around the 2:00 mark. I also found that a 3-4 hoplite rush could enter enemy territory as early as 2:00. Even the most wary boomer will usually drop a second town before researching MIL1, so it appeared that there was a window of opportunity to easily capture the enemy's first expansion town. On that topic, here's what we said two weeks ago:

Another interesting note is the possibility of a quick attack on the second town at the 2:00 mark. This is less devastating than going after the capital, but it also has a higher chance of victory. There's no chance of a temple. There's fewer villagers who can garrison or repair the city. And you will be attacking almost a full minute before the capital attack. While it seems absurd to pass up the sack bonus, the possibility of taking and holding this town is pretty high. The opponent will probably still be stuck at +60/60 econ and you can send villagers to repair the town and use it as a forward base. Not to mention that you've created a 240 resource differential. You've gotten a town for free while he's still got to build another and go MIL1 and build a barracks right away.

This may be true, but given that the capitol offers a juicy +500-to-all sack bonus, the expansion city seems less attractive as a target. In support of this, at Heavens Forum, Apollyon asserted that "If you can sack the second [city,] you sure as hell can sack the capitol." At first glance, I'd agree with this statement. But after further reflection, there are definitely scenarios where you might be able to sack the expansion while an attack on the capitol might fail. As everyone knows, if you rush and don't capture anything, you're pretty much screwed. So if you've committed to the rush, but your attack on the capitol looks too risky, you might go for the expansion. Examples of when this might be a good idea:

• The enemy has scouted you already (i.e. seen your troops and barracks) and is planning defenses at his capitol


• The capitol is further back, forcing you to travel through enemy territory. You're likely to be seen, losing the element of surprise


• The enemy has built a temple at his capitol adding +25% hit points


• The number of villagers near the capitol makes getting slingers in unmolested too risky

So why would this likely be more successful? By attacking the expansion:

• You are hitting up to a full minute before a normal ancient rush would occur. 4 HI can be attacking the town usually not later than 2:15-2:30. 4 HI will take down a small city in under 1 minute


• The enemy will likely have at most 1-2 villagers nearby to either garrison or attack slingers


• The enemy may not even have sufficient food this early to immediately upgrade to MIL1, buying you extra attacking time


• Defensive buildings (like temples) won't be built yet on the expansion city


• The enemy's barracks will likely be built by the capitol and far enough away from his expansion that he cannot easily get troops into the defense

"Okay, so I can get the town, but I don't get the sack bonus!" Yes, this is true. But all is not lost. Your opponent has just spent 108 food and 120 food and timber building that town. You got it for free. This partly makes up for the huge expense of MIL1, barracks, troops, and foregoing +50 ruins. But no, it's certainly not as good as the sack bonus. The other major difference from the capitol sack rush is here we plan to HOLD the city. You've already got a big lead on local military, all you need to do is maintain that lead and make the appropriate counters. You've now got a bigger production economy than the enemy, so that shouldn't be too hard, although you may have fewer stockpiled resources. Meanwhile, you're going to start using his city as an econ point. And knowing the enemy, you probably just captured his juiciest wood location. Send new villagers from your capitol to use any farms or lumber camps left behind. Don't forget to use a villager to begin repairing the city. Played properly, you WILL assimilate it, and you want to make it as difficult as possible to retake. Unlike a capitol sack, the expansion is closer to our home, so we can continue to reinforce with troops and villagers.

The key to all of this is keeping strict tabs on the enemy. In order to pull this off, you need to know what he's up to.
The enemy has three main strategic choices:

• Build lots of troops from his barracks and attempt to retake the city


• Ignore your attack and build another expansion somewhere else and continue booming


• Some combination: train defensive troops and build a second city when he can somewhere else

If the enemy tries lays down a barracks and trains up troops to retake the city, he's likely going to lose. You're already ahead on troops and time is ticking away on the assimilation meter. By the time he gets a barracks up, you should have 4-7 troops: 4 HI and 3 LI. Archers will be his first choice, but those require significant amounts of wealth. You should have enough slingers to deal with those. If you see him making other troop types, ensure you have the right counters. A good player will keep his troops garrisoned until he has enough to attack. You may not know how many or what type of troops he's got until he attacks. This may result in you over-producing or under-producing troops. This is why you have to see if he's building a second city and doing #2 or #3.

Another alternative for the enemy is to ignore your attack altogether and make a new city. This is probably not wise. A second expansion city will fall just as quickly as the first one, particularly if he makes it too far away from any defenses he might have. Also, because you have a large force RIGHT ON HIS DOORSTEP, he has to be wary of you continuing to build up and going after his capitol. At a minimum you should expect a competent player to research MIL1, build a barracks, and train at least a few troops. If he's read the forums, he'll probably build the barracks on the other side of his capitol. This is good for you. It enables you to conduct harassing attack on his capitol or farms with your troops while forcing him to ungarrison his troops to shoo you away. If you sense weakness and think you've got enough troops, a final push on the capitol could win the game, but this is risky.

Probably the best course of action for him is to make a significant quantity of defensive troops (archers & slingers) such that he can fend off any further pushes and build a replacement city. This new city would ideally be placed so that he's got access to wood - his second-best spot - and so it's within range of his barracks, so he can defend both expansion and capitol. His best approach is to milk the remaining econ advantage he has and advance faster to a later age where he can dislodge your troops. This middle ground approach is probably the best for him and the most dangerous for you. If you attack one of his cities and he counters you, then you're likely going to lose the captured town. On the other hand, if you do nothing, he may recover economically.

So it all comes down to maintaining the initiative. The best advantages you have are the already sizable army you've got and its placement right in the heart of his territory. Try to keep tabs on him and keeping your troop strength above his. Probe aggressively for any weaknesses and try to discern his troops strength. And good luck!

UPDATE: I think I'm gonna start calling this the EXPANSION RUSH.
posted by Tim at 6:53 AM

WOW.

If repeat business is the sincerest form of flattery, the sports cable giant ESPN has very good things to say about chess. In January they showed hours of live coverage of the final game between Kasparov and Junior. The ratings and reaction were so good that ESPN will cover all four of the X3D Kasparov-Fritz games in November. This time they will show a remarkable 17.5 hours of chess during the week of the match!

via Pejmanesque.
posted by Tim at 6:40 PM

RollYerOwn reports he's done a 12:23 time with what I think was a SC1 -> COM1 -> CIV1 -> SCI2 -> CLASSICAL. It's hard to tell because he didn't outline his build and he didn't post a game. Post your games people! The value is not in stating your time; it's in comparing the different approaches.
posted by Tim at 2:02 PM

Illustrative example why you shouldn't talk smack. Mr. "We all FRiggin know how to do the rush and how to the counter it [sic]" Raven gets it handed to him by ... *GASP* ... an ancient rush. It's not like this was a big surprise given the big argument over at Heavens Forum. I didn't even bother going after his capitol (which was undefended BTW). Instead, I used the technique I alluded to in this early post on resource equalization during rushes, whereby you constrain the enemy by hitting their expansions. To top it all off, he displays his true colors by "ungracefully" dropping from the game as I begin killing off his classical army. Game is here or at Carch's site. Should be available soon. Thanks Carch!

UPDATE: So Raven tracks me down in a game room and says to me, "So you're making a fool out of me now?" I reply, "No, you're making a fool out of yourself." Then he starts spamming "hahahaha," so I kicked him.

UPDATE II: Game is available at Carch's site now.

UPDATE III: Raven responds on Heavens Forum:

I knew 04b was gonna brag (what a bitttch), I knew this guy thought he was ubber leet when he started talking about beating seven toughest ai (sigh) kids today...

Whatever happened to gaming etiquette? Like saying "gg" before resigning. Or "You beat me fair and square, but I'll get you next time!" And is it now the standard to end a game you're losing by disconnecting? As for bragging, the game was going to get posted win or lose. If I lost, it was going in the "How to defend against the rush column," and if I won, it was going in the "Resource equalization during early rushes column."

UPDATE IV: Raven makes nice:

O4b I dont wanna get into a argument or a big deal (seeing as you already have) I lost, I acted stupid, I didnt do the right thing, you obviously have this thing down to a science, I hope you had fun, Gg if I forgot, I didnt disconnect on purpose Btw, I got a pop up that lagged me out (but your probably thinking I'm making excuses) end of story, take your article off the site and end this...geeeez

Well, "GG" to you as well, Raven. I hope we get to play more games as exciting as this in the future!
posted by Tim at 12:15 PM

Stripping out even more fat. Enlightenment Age clicked at 12:42 12:40 12:26. This time, I focused on getting the 3rd and 4th towns up more quickly so I could increase trade and get the universities up more quickly. I've gone from maxing out metal at +200 to doing only about +40. Metal is useful to sell early on, but then it's not worth it. Since I'm no longer getting the upgrades that require it, it's not that useful. I should be able to cut out even more stuff, since I am still waiting on knowledge, although it's getting closer.

UPDATE: Games are up now.
posted by Tim at 11:50 PM

Another lower time for the RON Challenge game has been posted. Enlightenment Age clicked at 13:19. The game is posted at Carch's Site o' Fun, although you might need to wait until he approves it. I used the SCI2 -> CLASSICAL build. This time, I researched the remaining science techs before getting the rest of the other stuff. Also, an early MEDIEVAL + SCI4 is helpful because the university techs really help out. I also did not build a smelter. Selling metal is not useful that late and the resources are better used elsewhere. While the end time of this game makes this artificial - I would normally build a smelter - that's not pertinent for this exercise. Here I'm trying to find the best early build order (i.e. level 2 techs) for long-term play. Smelters come at SCI3.

For those who want to try it, download the save game here. You have to put it in your save game folder, play it, then post your game and time and what build you used. RON Challenge Game

posted by Tim at 10:51 PM

I've been looking for the optimal time to place granaries. So, I decided to do a little analysis to determine when I should place them and when I should upgrade. In order to do this, I had to make some assumptions about villager cost, since you'll have some villagers go to timber and some to food. I used a typical approach: villagers alternate going to food and wood. I then added the cost of the villager and the farm together, subtracting the farm completion bonus. All costs were considered equal and added together (which may not be true depending on your playstyle). To compare cost effectiveness, I examined the ratio of incremental income and total cost.

• The first granary (70 resources) is cheaper than your 7th farm (~76 resources)


• The second granary is cheaper than the 13th farm


• It is cheaper (by about 30 resources) to get to +150 using 10 farms and 2 granaries (plus the three towns) than it is to build out 12 farms (plus the three towns)


• At 10 farms, it's better to upgrade (+30 food) than it is to build 3 more farms


• On the third city, you shouldn't put down a granary until you've built out all 5 farms, or you've got 3 farms and have researched Agriculture (+50% to production)

Implications:

• It makes sense to get SCI2 and CLASSICAL as early as possible so you can put down a granary to boost production. Going to COM2 before CLASSICAL means you either don't fully benefit from the extra commerce or you'll have to spend extra to get to +150 prior to granaries being available. This defies the current conventional wisdom, but is in line with the results I am some others have been getting. You can go early CLASSICAL and then begin the two granaries while you are upgrading COM2. The third town will max you out at +150.


• Assuming a sizable economy, priority should go to getting production upgrades as soon as possible. Boosting the production with upgrades is much more efficient than building extra farms, particularly in later ages. Only when the production bonuses are not enough to get you to the cap, then build extra farms and granaries to match them. Fully upgraded, it's better to build one farm, then a granary, before building any more farms on that town.

posted by Tim at 9:44 AM

Check out the Penny Arcade. Even the ads are funny.
posted by Tim at 7:59 PM

My first go at the RON Challenge game has been posted. I clicked Enlightenment Age at 14:09 13:28. The game is posted at Carch's Site o' Fun, although you might need to wait until he approves it. I used the SCI2 -> CLASSICAL build. There's certainly room for improvement as I did nothing to optimize my build purely for achieving early Enlightenment (e.g., I over-researched SCI and that cost a lot of knowledge, losing at least a couple of minutes) and I made early granaries and lumber mills (not sure when is the optimal time to make these).

For those who want to try it, download the save game here. You have to play it, then post your game and time and what build you used. RON Challenge Game

UPDATE: Posted a 13:28 version. The obvious thing is to get the universities up and full of scholars as quickly as possible. Also, the univeristy upgrades at medieval (200 timber) and gunpowder (400 timber) are very important. Getting additional commerce and production bonus upgrades aren't worth it because the payback period goes beyond the game length (in this case). The not-so-obvious thing is that the extra knowledge of cost of COM2 is offset by the knowledge gathered during the earlier classical. As Apollyon so eloquently put it, in a real game it will come down to the rares you get.

posted by Tim at 4:43 PM

OMG. What a pain in the ass. I upgraded to Windows XP and RON would no longer connect to gamespy through the in game connect feature. Everytime I tried to join gamespy the computer would completely hang. I've still got a dual boot config with Windows ME and it worked fine with that. But I also upgraded my video card and it wouldn't run under ME, so I had to keep the XP config. On a whim, I tried playing through the gamespy web interface. Worked fine. LOL. What a POS. I hope they get this stuff fixed in one of these patches. *SIGH*
posted by Tim at 11:32 PM

Okay. To appease the gods, I'm linking to the "Greatest RON clan Ever." They are the Tactical Warfare Collective or TWC for short.
posted by Tim at 12:54 PM