Here's an example game on why you oughta just keep plugging away. In this game I'm getting completely owned by KBS_Phunky, who does the obligatory smack talk during the game: "I bet you're not this good with any other civ." Actually, I'm better, but I just can't beat Mayans. So fuck it. Anyway, he doesn't seem to have any problems taking most of my cities. His army just mows through my cities at will. However, despite taking city after city, I keep popping them back up. Also, my counter-raiding keeps his economy down and after enlightenment age he stops expanding. For some reason he never does go for my capital, nor does he ever attack my fishing, which was what kept me in the game. After I make it to industrial and start: 1) shooting up his siege with planes, and 2) taking down his captial with commandos, He gives up with a "fucking Mayans."

Yea, I hate 'em too.

Anyway, he easily took and held 4 of my cities. FOUR! This is a good game to watch to see just how bad I am with Mayans, and how you can stay in the game if you just keep at it.

UPDATE: KBS_Phunky has come away really offended because I posted this game. To Phunky, I say: Get over yourself. If you think I posted this game to brag about beating you, then you have too high an opinion of yourself. I don't post games to "brag" about beating players. And if I were to do so, I certainly wouldn't post games where I beat a lower-ranked player. Or brag about winning with Mayans.

I posted the game because it was interesting.Which is the reason I post all of my games. And a majority of the games I have posted of mine are losses. Most of the games I've played have been pretty boring. Either boring wins or boring losess. This was an interesting game. There's no denying that. It was interesting for the following reasons:

• Mayans aren't invincible. Phunky was able to easily capture my cities. Maybe it took him 20 extra seconds because they were Mayan, but he took them nonetheless. In fact, he took a LOT of them. Phunky complains about the city spamming, but this is not a Mayan-specific tactic, it is just common sense. If you lose a city, make another one. Even if you are going to recapture it, use that opportunity to get up an extra city.


• Never give up, even when the other guy is completely kicking your ass. Until he takes your capital, eliminates all of your cities, or wins on territory or wonders, you still have a chance. Comebacks in RON are very rare, but when they do occur, they are valuable lessons. As in, I resigned in a game vs. niDe where he was marching through my frontlines, but as it turned out we were pretty evenly matched. I just gave up. That won't happen again.


• Finish off your opponent when you've got him reeling and on the run. Phunky had the means and opportunity to take my capitol and end the game, but he got distracted by the extra cities I was laying down and by the raiding I was doing -- I was basically attacking him on ALL fronts. Stay focused on your objective. You can win the game by sacking the capital and holding it for a few minutes.


• Which is another point. If you are losing on one front, fight somewhere else. If what you are doing isn't working, do something else. He was moving on my capital and I couldn't stop him, so I countered with some raiding. Almost all of his troops were at the front so he had to turn. In another battle, I caused him to fall back because I was attacking one of his towns with a small force of siege. All of these were attempts to sieze the initiative and confuse the enemy, rather than patiently wait out my doom. Yea, as EC pointed out, he could have esaily taken my capital, but he didn't. Main reason he didn't was because of these tactics. He felt more vulnerable than he really was.


• Don't talk smack during the game. And don't complain about opponent's civ choice in rated. It's rated play for crying out loud. And, if you're going to bitch about Mayan, then you've no business picking Spanish. Spanish are even worse for ownage, particularly on Outback. Mayans are the only ones who can even be competitive.

posted by Tim at 1:31 AM

Someone posted this flamebait thread in MFO. However, El_Capitan crafted such an extremely well-thought out response that I just had to link to it. I think he hit the nail on the head though with this comment:

Out4Blood - If there was an Einstein for RoN, this would be the guy. I guest-write for this guy's blog because he's so scientific, it scares me. I, on the other hand, am quite the opposite, and prefer trial by fire. Besides, I think his actual talent is being held in check by his wife, so it grieves me to not to see how good he could've been as a player.

To be fair - I am usually more seat of the pants, but when you can't play as often as you like you have to think about the game more. However, even if I were to play more often, I probably wouldn't be much better. I'm not sure my micro is up to par like it used to be. Too old. Besides, I've always been more of a "win by strategy" guy than a "win by micro" guy, anyway.
posted by Tim at 10:43 PM

They've been updated. Updated O4B rankings. Montana wanted everyone to know he's moved up a few notches.
posted by Tim at 10:00 AM

petachoks asks this question about Changing stances

Is there a hotkey to changing stances. It's really annoying to click on the screen a few times to the desired stance, especially with lag.

There's some good answer in the thread. Like EC, I only use Agressive (SHIFT + A), Defensive (SHIFT + E), and Raid (SHIFT + R). But I use the faster keys, I didn't even know the SHIFT + T hotkey! I hate cycling through them, because I never knew what was what and I'd always pass up the one I really wanted. BTW, My stance on new units is always Defensive. I set it when they come out based on the situation.
posted by Tim at 2:57 PM

The Spiderman 2 trailer. This is one of the better "teaser" trailers I've seen. Makes me wanna watch the movie without revealing all the good scenes. I was particularly pleased by the

2 . . . July . . . 2004

at the end. Nice touch.

It's the simple pleasures, really.
posted by Tim at 8:07 PM

RON Revolution is hosting a 1vs1 tourney on 12/20. I think there is a prize for the winner. Via Rohag.
posted by Tim at 9:22 AM

So, I've been playing quite a few rated games lately. I was excited to play with a (close to) "perfect" rating system. But after playing about 60 games or so, I'm having second thoughts. The ratings pretty accurately describe skill level. That has both good and bad connotations.

• The good news is that it tells you how good someone is. This makes it great for balancing games and picking teammates and predicting how tough they are going to be.
• The bad news is that it tells you how good someone is. This means that you are likely to beat someone rated below you and likely to lose to someone rated above you. With a few rare exceptions, I usually beat the guys below me and lose to guys above me.

This is how it is supposed to be; with mathematical precision, you can directly calculate the odds of winning, just by looking at the difference in ratings. You can pretty much tell how the game is going to turn out ahead of time. Which can be pretty discouraging if you are looking to win. It also explains some weird rated room behavior. People tend to "camp" out in the rated room (as if they were playing Everquest) rather than clicking the Find a game button. They usually try to negotiate games with people around their skill level, presumably because the QM function doesn't do a very good job of matching skills -- or perhaps because there are so few people. If people are looking to win games, then they will be looking for people at or below their rating.

One improvement I would suggest for this is to eliminate the list of names and ratings from the lobby. People should be matching up with whoever is there, not waiting for the "right" person. Maybe something for the expansion pack?

Oh, and did I mention that Maya sucks to play against?
posted by Tim at 6:33 AM

Black Watch asks What's a good civilisation for a Beginner?

I'm a 'newbie' to this game, as I've been constantly hooked on AoK since it came out, and I really am not good at choosing civs to play, I can't stand random, just not reliable if I don't like a civ and it randomly selects it.

I'd just like to know 1 or 2 civs to try out in the beginning, so I can get better. ie: the Mongols in AoK:TC were considered an Expert civ (last time I checked) and I just want to ease into the game, no hard-to-manage civs, I mean.

Any help is appreciated.

Before we answer that question, it's good to think about what would make a good civilization for a beginner. When learning a game I like to use a nation that requires little micro and has minor bonuses, so it plays conventionally. To learn RON, it's a good idea to play initial games against an AI with nation bonuses turned off, this way, when you do have bonuses, you'll notice their impact.

I'd recommend several civs to learn with:

• British. They require little micro to be effective and their bonuses make it easier to play. Two of the difficulties beginners face is dealing with the commerce cap and maintaining good gold income. Also, there natural development is more in line with the commerce cap increases. 1 city = about 60, 2 cities = 120, 3 cities = 180. These increases step nicely with the +125 and +187 commerce caps.


• Mayan -- Mayan require very little micro, even at the expert level. They have good defensive bonuses and make a good starter civ for folks.


• Japanese -- my best advice for people who really want to improve their game is to play Japs and rush every game. Rushing is pretty straight forward and easy. Through rushing, players will see: 1) how deadly it can be, and 2) how to stop it. They can then move on to +100 attack and +150 attacks, improving their repetoire as they get better at managing their economy. They will also gradually learn important micro skills as they get better.

Nations I didn't mention are also playable, but for raw beginners, I'd stick with the top 3.

Nations I would avoid are:

• Spanish -- require intense micro and sophisticated manipulation of ruins. However, the revealed map is very good for beginners, but you can toggle that in the settings so that any nation plays with reveal map.


• Greeks -- they require a completely differetn approach from the "normal" civs. It's difficult to get adjusted to them. They can be very powerful if used in the right situation, but not for beginners.


• Nubians -- a fun civ to play, particularly in large map team games. Nubians great economy relies on rare resources, somethign that new players might have difficulty taken full advantage of.


• Aztecs -- these guys require aggressive play to make use of their bonus.


• Bantu, Chinese, and Koreans -- these guys all have "weird" bonuses that require substantially different play. I'd save them for later.

posted by Tim at 1:12 AM

Coming down to the final two, I would have expected Lill to beat Sandra in a head-to-head vote. However, it probably would have been smarter for her to instead pick Johnny Rotten. Her dislike of him took over, though, and she picked Sandra instead. But instead of winning the vote, it was a landslide the other way 6-1 and Sandra won the $1,000,000. At the reunion show, Probst asked the jury members how they would have voted if had been Lill-Johnny. 4-3 in Lill's favor. Oh well. She says she doesn't regret her decision -- but what else is she gonna say? "You're right, Jeff, I am soooo stupid." Probst pointed out an interesting statistic. In 7 Survivor seasons, the winner of of the final immunity challenge has lost the game 5 times. That's a pretty compelling statisitc given that the winner gets to choose who they'll go into the final with. So why does the immunity winner have such trouble?
posted by Tim at 12:42 AM

Errr ... on closer reading it appears that it's just Saddam. Sorry, but he's a close second, right? Yahoo! News - U.S. Forces Capture Saddam in Iraq Pit.
posted by Tim at 5:55 PM

They've been updated. Updated O4B rankings. I've made some changes. I'm using the top 200 from the BHG list. Active means a player has played rated int he last 30 days and established means they played at least 25 rated games.
posted by Tim at 5:54 PM