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