I may just start drinking Pepsi.
posted by Tim at 9:53 PM

The best:
Election Year political ad: "Reagan: Bear"
Funniest Fedex Ad: "Drama"
posted by Tim at 6:47 PM

My favorite commerical of all time!!!!

But first, there's a little story here. Back in 1990, I was just graduating from US Army Ranger School. My dad flew down from Seattle to attend my graduation. He also fixed up my car -- which had been sitting in the Ranger School lot for 3 months -- so we could both drive it back to Seattle. Having just gone through nearly 3 months of HELL, I was barely able to drive for more than 2 hours at a stretch. So he basically drove the entire way. We stopped in 2 places. Yukon, OK and Malibu, CA (Yes, we took the long way). Anyway, we didn't arrive home until the Monday following graduation. So we missed the Super Bowl! Drat.

Fortunately, my mother was kind enough to tape it. Well, we didn't miss much because the Super Bowl SUCKED. It was a boring game and a blow out as I recall. However, tucked away amongst the ads, was this wonderful gem. Directed by Ridley Scott (of Blade Runner, Alien, and Gladiator fame), it was an ad for the new Nissan 300ZX. I was floored. I watched it probably 20 times. Forget the game, this was priceless stuff. This ad was only aired once: during the Super Bowl. Plans for subsequent airings of a 30 second versions were scrapped when various highway safey organziations protested the ad and claimed it promoted unsafe driving. As if.

Anyway, time passed. The tape got erased. I cried. But ... I never forgot!

Enter The Internet. Where everything is ON DEMAND. Get it now. AdCritic.com came around and opened up the possibility of watching your favorite commercials. Cool. Hey, do they have that cool Z commercial? No? Darn.

Ever since then, on Yahoo! and Google, I've been searching:

nissan commercial
300zx commercial
ridley scott nissan ad
1990 super bowl ads
ads nissan
So I'm having this dream
ridley scott commercials
super bowl ridley scott nissan

You name it. I searched it. I've even other people mention the ad and ask for digital versions. But to no avail. This cinematic dynamo was not to be found.

Then I had an epiphany: "So I'm having this dream"

Then I found it! It was a crappy version, sure, but it gave me hope that better versions were out there. Sure enough, I found them. "Wifey!! Come here! Watch this!" So here it is:

My favorite commerical of all time!!!!

P.S. You may wonder what all the fuss was about. When you get older you remember the good years and reminisce about the things that made you happy. Looking back, maybe they weren't as great as you remember them, and maybe they are kind of goofy. But they are your memories, and they still make you happy. This is one of mine.

So I'm having this dream ...
posted by Tim at 10:06 PM

HalfLotus suggest a conroversial option once you reach classical -- selling food instead of metal.

It's common to sell metal during Classical/Medieval ages, boosting wealth to fuel a boom (generally to GP). Metal isn’t needed in abundance early unless you plan an early attack, so this works quite well. Trouble is both players will do this, pushing the metal sell price very low. The solution? Sell your food.

That's a potential option, but I'd still prefer to sell metal, even at the reduced rate. Food is too valuable when booming, metal less so. when booming, I don't need metal until Classical and SCI3 (for the granary/lumber mill upgrade).

So, I sell metal to buy scholars to get faster SCI3. Food is needed to get workers on metal, get CIV2 and get that third city up.
posted by Tim at 10:58 AM

Latest results

1 - Birdparadise *70* (5250) Mongols.
2 - Dyers Eve *66* (5613) British.
3 - Out4Blood *66* (4976) British.
4 - Readyman *66* (4745) Greeks.
5 - AU_Floater *62* (4330) Japanese.
6 - AU_niDe *61* (4786) Germans.
7 - AU MeMeNTo *60* (5050) Germans.
8 - MKII1210 *59* (3910) Japanese.
9 - AU_Humble *58* (4495) Greeks.
10 - AU_DreadKnight *54* (4640) Germans.

I told you it would go past 70 units!

UPDATE: BLECH! I give up. I had salt AND sugar and STILL only managed to get 57 units. I suck. Maybe I need to watch MY OWN DAMN REPLAYS!
posted by Tim at 6:15 PM

A new MFO SMACKDOWN! has been announced.

Choose your nation, but neither Maya nor Spanish
Map style: Old World
Map size: Small
Start with: Nomad
Resources: Random
Start age: Ancient Age
End age: Medieval Age
Elimination: Conquest
Victory: Time limit 30 mins

posted by Tim at 6:13 PM

This one allows you to create a map of the US highlighting certain states. It's intended to be "states you've visited" such as this map below. I have visited all the states in red.

Or it can also be used to show "Here is where I live!" (the green state)

create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide (via the Volokh Conspiracy)

UPDATE: On that note, I've also been to these countries...

UPDATE II: I deleted the images because the website serving them is JUST TOO DARN SLOW!
posted by Tim at 3:38 PM

Phrederick asks the MFO forum to help him transition from AOK to RON.

I used to be a pretty active AOK player, getting as high as 1750 or so rated. I just picked up RON, and the differences are pretty big. I've played 6-10 games, and I've got a few questions about strategy.

1. How many villagers are standard per age in a game that starts ancient and goes through to the end? My villie highs tend to be 60-70, which seems low coming from AOK, but I don't really seem to be running low on resources.

2. How do upgrade costs work? Is it different whether or not the previous upgrades were researched? What about numbers of units?

Read the whole thread to see how the MOFOs answer.
posted by Tim at 3:02 PM

inspicus posted this:

While the nuclear explosion in RON has been realistically picturized with a mammoth fireball, it is very bright and seems to dazzle the eyes everytime.

Is this something harmful in the long run when we keep seeing it game after game?

I ran with it ...

Yes it does!

You should lower the brightness on your monitor when you hear the warning "nuclear launch detected." This is why they provide this warning so you have time to do it. If you don't have a monitor that allows you to quickly adjust settings, then you may need to pause the game each time. Or buy a new monitor.

There's more detail in the manual. Or maybe the official strategy guide. I think.

Feel free to pile on ...
posted by Tim at 7:42 AM

Yakov Smirnoff is an alleged smurf who whips up on poor players and who does it with Russians. You don't wanna lose to this guy ... like Mesh did.
posted by Tim at 7:37 AM

Kerry wins again.

Candidate	Vote %	NH Del	Total Delegates

Kerry	39%	13	94

Dean	26%	9	113

Clark	12%	0	30

Edwards	12%	0	36

Lieberman	9%	0	25

Kucinich	2%	0	2

Sharpton	0%	0	4

Note: Dean is ahead in total delegates because some of the delegates are pledged prior to that state's primary/caucus. However, he's not doing too well against Kerry.
posted by Tim at 11:03 PM

His name is Eric D. Snider. The key to a good movie reviewer is that he likes what you like. Simple really. Go through a reviewer's archives and see if his past reviews align with your thoughts on past movies. Then try him out for awhile.
posted by Tim at 12:25 PM

There's an argument going on at MFO over the validity of the BHA Competition. The negative comments got me pissed off enough that I felt compelled to retort:

All you n00bs forget that MFO was originally founded on the FAST CASTLE competition. The goal of this contest was to build a castle in the fastest time possible. Regardless that the economy was worthless, or the techniques unusable in real games (e.g., herding deer with the scout), the contest is what really started MFO and putit on the map. So you MOFOs have an OBLIGATION to support this kind of thing. If for no other reason than to show proper respect to MFO.

BTW, the winner, Cptn_Kidd, went on to work for ES in the QA department, partly due to his success at this contest.

posted by Tim at 9:02 AM

Un-Funny man Al Franken body slams a man protesting at a Dean rally. Headline reads: AL FRANKEN KNOCKS DOWN DEAN HECKLER.

January 27, 2004 -- EXETER, N.H. - Wise-cracking funnyman Al Franken yesterday body-slammed a demonstrator to the ground after the man tried to shout down Gov. Howard Dean.

[snip]

Franken said he's not backing Dean but merely wanted to protect the right of people to speak freely.

WTF? What about the demonstrator's right to speak freely? (From the cool site.)
posted by Tim at 8:22 AM

They've been updated. Updated O4B rankings. I'm using the top 200 from the BHG list. Active means a player has played rated in the last 30 days and established means they played at least 25 rated games.
posted by Tim at 5:47 PM

Initial results

1 - Dyers Eve *66* (5613) - British.
2 - Out4Blood *66* (4976) - British.
3 - Birdparadise *66* (4845) - Mongols.
4 - Readyman *65* - Japanese.
5 - MKII1210 *59* - Japanese.
6 - AU_Humble *58* (4495) - Greeks.
7 - AU_niDe *57* - Japanese.
8 - AU_DreadKnight *54* - Germans.
9 - Tren *51* - Mongols.
10 -

Mine isn't listed because I didn't submit films. Maybe they didn't really happen ...

UPDATE: Okay, so I finally got back to 60. GRRR.

UPDATE II: Make that 62. Also looks like Bird got the Mongols working. I'll have to watch that one.

UPDATE III: Ready actually has a new one with 65! Yikes!

UPDATE IV: Finally busted my original marks, musta been the rares... 66 :-) I'm totally convinced 70 is easily doable. I had at least 4-5 unit in resources at the end, and I made a ton of mistakes. I did have great rares, but with enough reps, you can get perfect rares. Perfect rares with a good run = 70+ units.
posted by Tim at 9:55 AM

So far I've gotten 63 units using the British, which is the most of the so far posted films. This is a far cry from what is possible though given the lazy way I played all my runs (e.g., I had 64 but forgot to hit GP even though I had well more than enough food and knowledge). I estimate a winning score will have over 70 units. But that's just me.

For those detractors who say this isn't worth it because it's not realistic are dreaming. This is completely possible in any normal team game. My strategy for this competition has not been any different than normal team play, except I make less scholars and stop booming when I reach my target econ. Other than that, it's business as usual. If I got hit with a GP army like this at the 15:00 mark, I'd probably crap my pants. I might be in Enlightenment Age, but I'd still probably crap my pants.

For players who want to attack in a certain age with a certain set of units, there's no reason to waste resources on extra scholars or research other than that which is critical to reach your targets. After that, you start attacking and more than likely will completely overwhelm an unready opponent. Or even an opponent who thought he was ready, but had configured his econ for a longer term game, and therefore wasn't expecting 70+ units.

UPDATE: Then again, I'm having trouble replicating my results. Maybe I got lucky and had some nice rares. I hope I saved that film ...
posted by Tim at 10:06 PM

In case you missed it, the boys at AU have officially commenced the competition. The Goal: To produce as many military units as possible in 15 minutes. And they got a sponsor now!

1st Prize: Copy of Rise of Nations signed by Brian Reynolds, a RoN T-shirt and bragging rights.
2nd Prize: Copy of Rise of Nations signed by Brian Reynolds.
3rd Prize: RoN T-shirt.

One unexpected drawback that I find troubling: NO TERRA COTTA ARMY. Well, why the heck not? Is Terra Cotta that unstoppable that an all out blitz for military dominance can't even beat it? Wouldn't this be a Great Opportunity to really test the value of the TCA?

Let's hope AU returns to their senses and allows use of the TCA. I mean really. It takes a LOT of resources to make it, and the earliest it can be done is Classical (probably finished at about 6:00+ or so with Egyptians), and what's the most units that could come out of it during the 15 minute period? Like 18? Strategy Development should be unrestricted. This was the the goal right?

It is our hope this competition will give rise to new and innovative military strategies as the race for the most formidable force develops.

UPDATE: ROFL. I just read the "anti-sniping" rule:

From Sunday 29th of February a week is then given to all current participants to challenge the winning entry. If at the end of that week there is a new winner a new challenge period begins each Sunday for a week until we have an undisputed winner.

This is a common auction technique to reduce the value a "last minute" bid would have. Fortunately, one week is way too long for snipers. The point is this: normally a wise strategy for this type of contest is to NOT post your result until the absolute last minute so that other players cannot copy you and leapfrog ahead. So what this means is that people have ALL WEEK to try out your posted technique and make it even more efficient. So don't bother keeping your "secrets" in the dark - they will all come out in the end. Post your results as you obtain them.
posted by Tim at 2:06 PM

HenWen asks about placement of forts.

When placing a Fortress there are two different uses that both can be effective under different circumstances -- putting it behind a major city to add extra defense if it might be needed in the future, and building it on your borders to further extend borders, control chokepoints, control rare resources.

I generally have been building forts on borders even when booming with a light military, just because I want to put my enemy in a defensive mindset. But I often find myself in situations where I WISH that I had build that fort behind a city to add defensive power. The problem is that when you build your first fort, it is difficult to have good intelligence about the composition and location of your opponent's army because you do not have any spies.

How do the expert players here decide where to place their first fort? If you are not sure what strategy your opponent is planning, and you are an average civ in terms of fort bonuses (i.e., not Roman, or Mayan).

Great question. I used to worry about this a lot. At first I did the border thing, but I often found my pretty castles were major targets. Then I switched to all defensive. Now, I do some of both, but the answer is pretty simple (for me). It depends. If you plan on being the aggressor, and have committed to building lots of military units, then go ahead and push. If you are booming or prefer to be less aggressive, then protect the city and build it behind.
posted by Tim at 1:54 PM

Building on EC's work, Menzo has posted his version of a Bantu Delayed Power Rush.

This strat makes use of the Bantu's cheap cities to produce resources. It varies from the standard thus - Sci1/Civ1, build 3 citizens and 1 farm. Take 2 citizens and build cities towards the enemy. Research Mil1 at some point and place a barracks at your third city, sending 1 citizen back to the capital to chop wood.

This variant isn't quite as good economically and will be slower to hit but there are a few advantages. The extra cities and territory, having your barracks/stables closer to the battle, not having to research Mil2 for HC, etc.

Good to see new people posting their strategy thoughts, whether they work or not. Real Strategy Development is all about thoughtful experimentation. And publishing. It helps if the better players do it, but we'll take what we can get at this point.
posted by Tim at 1:48 PM

Sicilian_Don posted his version of a Roman Classical Rush.

Sci1, fill up starting wood pit, scout for ruins (try to get wood ruins, you'll need it later)
Mil1, build 1 citizen
After you're done researching Mil1 have the citizen build a barracks. Now you have 1 HI. Start construction of a second barracks (you should have enough wood by now). Whille building that, start an HI at your first barracks. You now have 3 HI. Next build 1 HI at each barracks. After they're done, head for the enemy capital and attack. If you want, you can try to upgrade to Classical en route so you can upgrade your troops to Legions when they get to the capitol.

I think he's looking for some criticism. In fact he said: "If any of the experts here can test this out and improve it (or show me that it sucks), I would greatly appreciate it."
posted by Tim at 1:45 PM

Another cool diversion. This is my first Picassohead.
posted by Tim at 8:00 PM

Posted by biodegradeablefish, there is going to be a little competition to achieve the largest Gunpowder army in 15 minutes.

AU are running a competition shortly in which the goal is to create the largest possible army in 15 minutes. The results of this will put your army into perspective for these nimrods I'm sure.

Just awaiting niDe's arrival back from his holidays (he being our admin and all) and I'll let you all know the prize details etc. If you want to start playing with the idea now... at 15 minutes you need to be in Gunpowder and with supply, a general, and a minimum of 25 units in order to qualify. Spies count as units. Any nation - no terra cotta army (made 54 units with Egypt playing with this idea it got a bit silly). All entries to be played one player only on a random land map of their choice with a fifteen minute timer. Recs to be labelled with player name.

They haven't worked all the details out yet, but stayed tuned and in the future check the AU clan site.

UPDATE: AU has posted the announcement on their website. Go here. Oh! And they got a sponsor now!
posted by Tim at 2:23 PM

NASA Loses Communication With Mars Rover.
posted by Tim at 8:08 PM

Cool site: Powers Of 10: Interactive Java Tutorial.

View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.

posted by Tim at 1:28 PM

Did this interesting survey that matches some of your political preferences with the current candidates for President. Here are my results.

1. Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%)
2. Libertarian Candidate (61%)
3. Bush, President George W. - Republican (55%)
4. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat (46%)
5. Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (44%)
6. Kucinich, Rep. Dennis, OH - Democrat (44%)
7. Lieberman, Senator Joe, CT - Democrat (40%)
8. Edwards, Senator John, NC - Democrat (37%)
9. Sharpton, Reverend Al - Democrat (32%)
10. Clark, Retired General Wesley K., AR - Democrat (25%)
11. Phillips, Howard - Constitution (23%)

UPDATE: For all you Dean fans out there: Dean Scream Remix.
posted by Tim at 9:13 AM

What is it with me getting doubled (and tripled) these days. I can't catch a break, nor any help from allies. Hummph. I said allies when I meant n00bs!. So what exactly were you doing during the 10 minutues I was getting attacked?! Bathroom break? Even if you're an age ahead and with bigger econ, when 2 monster armies come at you, it's pretty much over.

SIGH.

Maybe I will start making a list of the dumbass allies I'm getting stuck with.
posted by Tim at 9:38 PM

I had posted in this Bantu thread that I thought Bantu might be viable for Diplo or FFA games: "One area where I have decided I might rethink Bantu is in those diplo or FFA games. Bantu has inherently more pop cap, which can be a factor. Colossus rarely survives more than a minute of combat, but with Bantu you can make bigger armies. And this is coming from a guy who usually ends up deleting ALL his scholars."

I hereby rethink that rethinking. I have too much trouble getting the Bantu economy off the ground. And the one thing the Bantu can do well (take lots of territory) is not something you want to do in FFA. Particularly since you are taking it with weak cities, you become a target for everyone else, since you end up pushing on them. (Russians take territory based on the inherent bonus so it's still dangerous to attack them.) But meanwhile, the rest of your economy lags the boomer civs and you end up slowly losing ground in the later ages. GRRR. I hate that.
posted by Tim at 10:09 AM

I care less about what the news is as opposed to what other people think about it. Here's a new site that does just that.
posted by Tim at 2:22 PM

Take The Integrity Test!

2. Your next-door neighbor offers to hook you up with free cable television. Do you take the offer?

When in Boston, our landlord did this cable splitting business and we got free cable. Now I pay (through the nose) for it, but I still am tempted to hack my old satellite cards.

4. You move to a state where auto insurance is sky high. Do you keep your car registered at your old address?

I've thought about this one, but your insurance company can easily deny coverage if you move and don't report. Also, they'll bill you retroactively, so it's not worth it.

So I got 1 bad one out of 10. To be truthful, I'm not that honest, despite my best intentions; they just didn't ask the right questions. (e.g., Have you ever downloaded copyrighted material from the internet? What do you do when the vending machine kicks out an extra soda? What do you do when the Wal-Mart clerk rings up the wrong -- and lower -- price?)
posted by Tim at 8:04 AM

Pretty shocking result from Iowa: Kerry wins.

Candidate     %   # Delegates

Kerry	     38%	17

Edwards	     32%	15

Dean	     18%	7

Gephardt	     11%	0

Kucinich	     1%	0

Uncommitted   0%	0

Clark	     0%	0

Lieberman     0%	0

Moseley Braun 0%	0

Sharpton	     0%	0

Kerry did better than most were expecting and Dean's result has to spell trouble for his campaign. He's been tagged as the front runner for a long time. However, the Caucuses are usually poor predictors.

UPDATE: There's a good report at the Daily Kos.
posted by Tim at 10:29 PM

This is the first game from the finals of the BHS Lite. Both players were Aztecs. This is truly an amazing display of pure generalship. Starting from as early as 3:48 in the game, Astator builds up and maintains a huge economic lead ... but ends up losing the game in the end. Why? Generalship. Randy fights with and preserves everyone of his individual units, maxmizing their combat potential, but never fighting a battle he can't win. And losing a lot fewer units than Tator. What end up being so amazing about this game is the HUGE disparity of economic and military results. Midway through the game, I'm watching and wondering "How can Tator possibly lose?" He had a lot bigger economy and a larger military. He even had superior positioning, having placed a town right near nydar's capital. During much of this stage of the game, nydar, had only +50 food income. +50!!! WTF?!

Here are some of the stats:

Total resources gathered

	Astator	nydar

Food	19654	14537

Timber	28768	20730

Wealth	14323	10640

Knowledge	16879	15279

Metal	20892	16815

Oil	17336	 7878



Total	117852	85879

That's a whopping differential of 31,973 total resources. Ahhh, but insightful readers might note that Aztecs plunder from corpses and wonder what kind of difference that might have made. Well...

Total resources from kills (estimated since we can't tell unit kills from building kills)

	Astator	nydar

Kills	 158	  288

Plunder	  60	   60



Total	9480	17280

Even accounting for the Aztec plunder, Tator was ahead by 24,173 resources. That's still a huge difference. As you know, I'm a huge proponent of the "Econ Wins" school of thought; how could Tator have lost?!

Well, many of those losses were expensive ships, since much of the battle occurred on the water. To replace each unit lost, Tator was probably having to spend over 200 resources each. When adding up the cost to replace lost units, you can see that nydar actually comes out slightly ahead in the resource department. Botton line: he did more with less. He had a worse economy, but he was more effective with his units. Eventually, that added up to him having a bigger army by the end of the game. In fact, nydar was almost capped out at 200 units, while Tator had trouble reaching 100 units the entire game -- despite having built an early Colossus and having a huge economy.

So by Generalship, we mean that he killed more units and lost fewer units than his opponent. Troops would want to fight under his leadership. (Note: this is exactly the kind of player you want to hook up with if there ever is a co-op tourney. Imagine my econ with Randy aka nydar doing the fighting. Scary! Yes, that's right -- my micro SUCKS.)

So why was nydar so much better? I mean, these are both elite players, how was this so lop-sided? Well, for one, he managed his army and navy almost to perfection. His world class micro skills are still in top form. He made sure the counter units were attacking the enemy units and he retreated units before they died sending them back to heal up. Secondly, he had some key rare resources that were particularly effective on this map: Copper (+20% dock hit points), Citrus (ships heal at sea) and Whales (sailing ships move 20% faster). Tator had equal access to whales but never got them. I'm sure he won't make that mistake again...

Anyway, this was an amazing game to watch. People will say nydar got lucky (as they did last tourney he won). I say watch and learn from a master gamer.

UPDATE: Game 2 is worth watching, but is less remarkable. Randy maintains his superior Generalship but never gets behind economically. He ends up with 111 kills to 77, and almost completely controls the sea. Good games guys.
posted by Tim at 8:50 PM

No, it's not the Olympiad, although doesn't that sound cool? No, these are some of the games from the most recent tourney, the BHS Lite.

• Finals Game 1 TuF_Astator (Aztecs) vs Nydar (Aztecs)


• Finals Game 2 TuF_Astator (Aztecs) vs Nydar (Aztecs)


• Semi-Finals Game 1 El_Capitan (Aztecs) vs. TuF_Astator (Aztecs)


• Semi-Finals Game 2 El_Capitan (Aztecs) vs. TuF_Astator (Aztecs)


• Semi-Finals Game 3 El_Capitan (Aztecs) vs. TuF_Astator (Aztecs)


• Round 4 El_Capitan (Aztecs) vs. KIWI_insertyours (Aztecs)


• Round 2 El_Capitan (Aztecs) vs KIWI_Rat_Race (Aztecs)

UPDATE: Not to be outdone, RON Universe has them all in one handy zip file.
posted by Tim at 5:51 PM

They've been updated. Updated O4B rankings. 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.

The #2 ranked player PCA_Frogman has actually played THREE rated games to add another 12 points! Guess Frogman must read our blog! Howdy Frog!
posted by Tim at 5:42 PM

Current BHS brackets. So far, so good. Both Randy and EC are through to the semis. EC has to play Astator, and Randy looks like he might face Gigi, although it's not decided yet. EC vs. Astator should be a tough match. That could go either way, depending on civ matchups. I hope all you farkers are posting yer films!

UPDATE: Looks like Tator defeated EC. Randy and Gigi are fighting the other semi.

UPDATE II: Gigi lost game 1, but took off, so it's now Randy vs. Tator. Okay, so I was half right. However, I still predict Randy will win it all.

UPDATE III: Who's yer daddy? Randy wins it all, beating Tator in the finals. For the people who didn't believe Randy was any good, I hate to say "I told you so," but I told you so. (Hee hee. Actually, I love saying "I told you so!")

Congrats to everyone, particularly the prize winners, and props to Morrigu and BHG!
posted by Tim at 3:42 PM

Brackets for tomorrow's tourney are up. Looks good (read: seedings and draw look good). (I thought EC wasn't going to be able to play?) Assuming he does play, I predict a Randy vs. El_Capitan final. We shall see.

posted by Tim at 6:19 PM

Despite his dislike of the British, or me, or maybe both! HalfLotus has become a sort of reluctant convert, saying finally:

... there are too many different situtions to account for, but it looks to me like Brits do have a comparable economy and some fair defensive bonuses. Not a bad nation, I'd have to put them in the large middle-tier. =)

You really have to admire his personal integrity. He disagreed, but took the time to do his own research and came to a different conclusion. But now don't get carried away... Personally, I find the British usually get mauled by the Mongols. They send packs of horse archers SO darn early. Same with Spanish. But that's just me. Anyway, I'll stop here, I don't wanna start bashing the British!
posted by Tim at 5:49 PM

BHG posted on their Big Huge News page the latest plan to deal with stagnant players on the Big Huge rating list.

Big Huge thanks to everyone who has provided us with their input on ratings decay. (aka Ratings attrition) We are presently at work on the system and we'll give you all heads up when we complete testing and plan to go live with it on the multiplayer ratings website. Here are the settings that we're currently implementing:

-25 points if you haven't played a rated game within 14 days
-100 points if you haven't played a rated game within 1 month
-100 points every month after that if you still haven't played a rated game

Decay will not effect players below 1700 and will not drop a player below 1700. Also, only players who have played 20 or more games will be listed on the ratings website.

If you disagree with any of the above decay rules, please feel free to suggest a change.

Sounds good to me. It's a only a slight deviation from the original plan and it looks like they incorporated some of our (meaning everyone's) feedback. Nod to Rohag for the link.
posted by Tim at 1:36 PM

I played a game with wacky settings last night. It was end age is Medieval. I was Chinese and ended up fighting my nearby Aztec opponent. While I had started my attack in Medieval and he was in Classical, he soon made Medieval and msot of the fighting occurred during that age. I must say, that I had a deuce of a time bringing him down. While I didn't realize it at the time, he kept spamming new barracks and making tons of troops. I was killing him faster than he was making them, but those new barracks kept giving him new life. The resources he was getting from killing MY guys also kept him in the game. I never did completely wipe him out as his booming Mayan ally came to save him at the end, although I was going to destroy his town eventually. I should point out that his Mayan ally was furiously building towers in the Aztec base, so that DID slow me down some, but I was still surprised at the level of resistance.
posted by Tim at 7:43 AM

"Ripped from the headlines!" We mentioned just yesterday about Brazil's response to the U.S. border policy for non-European tourists. Now the Americans have responded in kind. Okay, just American Airlines. Ummmm, okay, so it was just one pilot. Anyway, Calpundit has some more details on the American Airlines pilot who gave the bird to the Brazilians over the tit for tat fingerprinting business. Pretty funny. LOL. (I bet he gets fired.)


posted by Tim at 7:34 PM

Can you imagine spending over $65,000 for ... a ... Volkswagen?! I can't, but someone sure can. Introducing the new Volkswagen: Phaeton. And here I thought VW was just a cheap Audi.
posted by Tim at 11:44 AM

Huggybear asked a question about city placement strategy El_Capitan responded

On land maps, City placement depends on whether or not you're going to be aggressive. I've learned that just placing your 2nd City and 3rd City as far forward to your enemy will avail any needed Timber spots and Mountains. If you're going to be defensive, place your 2nd and 3rd Cities near the Timber and Mountain spots, but still in the direction of your enemy if possible. This ensures quick garrisoning of your Citizens, and you don't have to spend too much resources on Tower protection.

Read the whole thread.
posted by Tim at 11:24 AM

What was popular in the year 2003? Go visit Google's 2003 Year-End Zeitgeist for the answers. HINT: britney spears. Some of the info is really cool, such as the frequency distribution chart for searches on Matrix Reloaded. It would be cool to work at Google, simply to be able to mine their data. Not for commercial purposes or anything, but just for curiosity's sake. Thanks to The Volokh Conspiracy for the tip.
posted by Tim at 11:12 AM

I can see this turning into a GRUDGEMATCH.

I think HL is forgetting the important role the commerce cap plays in limiting your income, regardless of bonus. After the first 2 minutes of play, British will have +17 and then +25 extra of resources coming in. This never goes down and the bonus gets bigger as the game progresses. It's +37 when both players are at COM2. Sure you have to pay extra for the initial villagers, but a villager pays for itself in 2 minutes! And to reach British cap on the three major resources, I only need about 6 extra villagers, and a couple farms. Minor stuff. For the cost of 6 extra villagers, the British player is bringing in +150 more resources per minute.

On a purely economic basis, I can sell some of my extra resources for wealth and still have more stuff than a Roman player.

There's more. British economic power forces the opponent to be aggressive. Meanwhile, the British player can play for defense, knowing that the longer the game goes the better his position. And the defender has advantages. It takes more units to reduce and capture a town than it does to defend one. Are the couple extra units an early offensive civ might have be enough to completely take a well defended city? Remember that the extra resources can go toward towers, light cav, or archers, or any other defensive units.

And when you talk about matchups, particularly Maya, things get even more interesting. Brits are a good match against Maya. Maya is a primarily defensive civ and Mayan players play primarily a defensive boom game. So against a Britsh player, a Mayan is forced to attack. This pretty much eliminates all the Mayan defensive bonuses, which are what people complain about. And the Mayan wood bonus (which doesn't compare to British bonuses in the long term) does not accrue to military buildings, so they are out of their element at this point.

The civs that give British the most trouble are the early raiding civs such as Spanish and Mongols. Since villagers are key to British power, defending villagers against HA raiding is their Achilles Heel. But this is only against nations that are going to be Classical earlier AND come with raiding units.

BOTTOM LINE: The British ain't no "uber civ," but they also ain't the bottom of the barrel civ. Ain't neither!

UPDATE: Polly brings up an insightful point. Player is more important than civ. With that notion, I concur. Also player style is important. I prefer defending. British are a perfect civ for this. This is probably the crux of the issue. British fit my playstyle better while Romans probably fit HL's. I perfer to let my opponent dash his waves upon the sharp rocks of my defense while I power through the ages. HL likes to attack early. For my playstyle, British are far better. For his, maybe Romans are better.

posted by Tim at 9:00 AM

Sea Biscuit tells us something new

It is very nice that BHG has provided for us a way to select injured units [Ed.: CTRL+HOME]. I just learned tonight that you can select only the 'reds' to garrison and not just the red and yellow.

Basically, you just hit CTRL+HOME again, and it deselects the yellow ones. This is useful. Assuming it's true, it significantly reduces the micro required to send crippled units back for healing.

On that note, I've heard people say you can select injured units on screen and injured units in the current selection. If anyone has confirmation of that and knows which key combos those are (e.g., SHIFT+HOME or ALT+HOME ?), that would be great!

UPDATE: This doesn't seem to work for me. Hitting CTRL+HOME selects injured units. Hitting it again selects the SAME units. There must be something else required.
posted by Tim at 8:09 AM

PCA_Frogman has managed to keep his rating current depite not having increased the"number of games played." His current rating and games played are the same as they were back on the 11/21 version of the O4B rankings. Either there is some bug in the system, or he's just launching games and not actually playing them out.

UPDATE: El_Capitan informs us that the date is last game played, not last rated game. So we withdraw our concerns. However, it would be nice if people put their rating at risk though. I think this will be fixed with the next BHG alteration of the ratings system.
posted by Tim at 2:02 PM

MFO is hosting a Big Huge Smackdown "Lite" tournament. The Lite refers to "less money," but there is still money. Date is Sat, January 17, 2004, 04:00 pm EST. Settings are:

1vs1
Map style: East Indies
Map size: Small
Choose your nation, but neither Maya nor Spanish
Start with: Small town
Resources: x2
Start age: Gunpowder Age
End age: Modern Age
Elimination: Sudden Death Capital
Victory: Conquest

This looks pretty interesting. Sudden Death capital victory on East Indies map ensures quite a bit of naval power and some sneak attack attempts. Ending in Modern Age would seem to make Germans the dominant civ on this map, although I wouldn't rule out the British.

Go sign up!

UPDATE: Great point in the comments. What about Aztecs with their free LI per new barracks? You could quickly make a dock and some new barracks and send those troops over in about 2:00. Ouch! Or Mongols. Or Turks.

UPDATE II: BTW, as the founder of MFO SMACKDOWN! I feel compelled to say this: The original intent was to have wacky settings but to NOT advertise them, so people had to play them "cold." Settings were announced as the tournament started, not a week ahead of time. The idea was to have tournaments where pretty much anyone could compete as long as they were creative in adapting to the wackiness. IMO, I think MFO should go back to the original Old School concept. Harrrrrumph!

UPDATE III: Chinese seem to be a good civ for this as well. They can keep pace economically with the British and Germans because of their instant citizens, giving them a nice headstart on wood AND metal.
posted by Tim at 1:52 PM

El_Capitan posted this game against my1000 over at RON Universe.

My opponent, my1000 is unknown to me, but has an amazing amount of games played. He has an unusual style and it seems like it can be pretty effective. If he would have used more resources that he had, he should have won that game. The Spanish are the counter Nation to the Mongols. I decide to do the Mongol Rush/Raid, and it fails horribly due to his preparation defense. Plus any rush strat in Great Lakes is usually a bad idea. He had access to 2 Great Lakes while I had a pond with no fish. In doing my Mongol Rush/Raid strat, my borders could not reach any fishing areas since I would be really late in making my 2nd City. Even though I'm down economically, I still continue to press my attack. In all fairness, I should have lost this game... but it's a fun one to watch.

EC then asks:

Can anyone point out my1000's mistakes and what he should have done?

Well, can you?

UPDATE: Here's my input. Watch out for players rated more than 300 points above you.
posted by Tim at 1:40 PM

More Brit bashing going again. This happens every so often. The last time we had a major case of it was in November, wherein I responded with this:

What's strong about Brits is how the COM techs align with the CIV techs. With COM1, I can max out at +125 usually with just 2 towns. That, along with the (at this point small) taxation bonus, I can hit CLASSICAL and raid with a stronger economy.

I'll probably do CIV2 before COM2, so I'll likely be getting that third city up before most other civs. This enables me to do some early border pushing or to establish a stake in the center, around whatever key terrain might exist.

Something HalfLotus might like: the longer range of the forts and towers enables British to emulate the Roman aggression strategy as well, by dropping a fort and using the towers, the longer range towers, partly make up for weaker border effect.

Once I've built the third city, I'll fill it out with workers and then research COM2. At this point I have a +187 economy. Researching SCI techs, the production boosters, and COM3 push that pretty high very quickly.

The better economy allows you to do a number of things: build bigger armies, build wonders to press your econ advantage, continue booming, etc. I'm not saying they are the strongest civ, but they are better than a number of them. They are certainly better than Russians. Let's put it this way, I'm happy when I get Brits.

This time EC has weighed in on the issue

O4B pretty much gives them a good account on how to play them already. I've rarely needed to get a Commerce 2 upgrade with them in Ancient Age (giving them the best economy doing a fast 1/1/1/1 Classical Age), and they can have an exceptional start by just doing a SCI 1, MIL 1, HI and LI where the HI goes to harass while the LI is used as a 2nd Scout. This gives them the ability to find more Ruins to help cap their economy quicker, and a 25% commerce cap early in the game for 3 minutes vs. the other nations is a considerable amount of resource advantage.

Our buddy just HL likes to bash British just because he knows I like them.

Our original Guide ot Playing the British is here.
Regarding games of British, you can find some interesting ones here and here.
posted by Tim at 1:18 PM

In the Strategy corner thread, El_Capitan ranks his version of the Top 12 rushing nations.

I'd have to rate my rushing nations:

1. Japanese (Kamikaze Rushing or Delayed Power Rushing)
2. Romans (Kamikaze Rushing or Delayed Power Rushing)
3. Spanish (Kamikaze Rushing or Delayed Power Rushing)
4. Koreans (Delayed Power Rushing with Militia)
5. Mongols (Mongol Raid/Rush or Delayed Power Rushing)
6. French (100 Siege Rushing)
7. Bantu (Kamikaze Rushing)
8. Germans (Kamikaze or Delayed Power Rushing)
9. Aztecs (Kamikaze Rushing)
10. Turks (100 Siege Rushing)
11. Maya (Kamikaze Rushing)
12. Greeks (Kamikaze Rushing)

EC, forgive my ignorance, but why would Greeks be #12 with a kamikaze rush? What do Greeks have that enables them to do anything more than what any other sucky rushing nation can do, e.g., Russians.

Also, British can perform a nasty +125 ancient Expansion Rush. Where would you rank that?
posted by Tim at 12:55 PM

For those of you who don't travel and don't care about strategy games, this won't interest you. But there is a diplomatic flap between the U.S. and Brazil that has been brewing over traveler security. The story appears in Yahoo (might become unavailable). Brazil Fingerprints U.S. Visitors, Ignores Rio Ruling.

The United States on Jan. 5 started fingerprinting and photographing visitors, including Brazilians, who need visas to enter the country as part of anti-terrorism controls. The system exempts citizens of 27 mainly European nations who do not need visas for short trips. In retaliation, a Brazilian judge ordered the fingerprinting of U.S. visitors.

U.S. officials call this discriminatory, but Brazil is just using the basic and highly successful Tit for Tat strategy. You can read more about Tit for Tat here.

posted by Tim at 6:09 AM

They've been updated. Updated O4B rankings. 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 6:10 PM

ACLU Backs Rush Limbaugh's Privacy.

Rush Limbaugh and the American Civil Liberties Union don't agree about much, but they're in accord that the conservative radio commentator's medical records should be off-limits to prosecutors. The Florida ACLU filed court papers Monday supporting Limbaugh's argument that investigators violated his constitutional right to privacy when they seized his medical records in November to investigate whether he violated drug laws when he purchased prescription painkillers.

This must be a sign of the Apocalypse.
posted by Tim at 5:50 PM

We havene't had a spotlight game for quite awhile, but this game niDe linked me to is a worthy entry. In this game he plays Spanish against nydar's Maya on African Watering Hole. He does a typically SCI2 start, but also goes for an early CIV2 rather than raiding. He gets a huge territory lead and owns the middle lake for most of the game. His early ruin bonus gives him an economic lead that he never relinquishes and he wins a territory victory in pretty diominating fashion.

However, what makes the game SPOTLIGHT-worthy is the serious micro activity on the part of both players. Both of them used spies, commandos, and generals to great effect and you can see excellent use of scouting, sniping, and ambush. This is the stuff that separates the men from the boys.

niDe raids with a general and keeps his troops in ambush until the carvans approach, then he slughters them. nydar uses his general and ambush to get cavalry close to niDe's cannons before unloading on them. Later on niDe uses ambush to protect his cannons while they bombard a Mayan city. niDe also slips a spy in the rear to convert one of nydar's generals who was hanging around back. He also positions an early scout to spy on nydar's carvans, enabling him to raid them at will.

One note on strategy: even though going an early CIV2 might slow you down economically, it pays off in the end as your third city is very close to the enemy economy center of gravity. This enables you to keep the battle focused in his area of the map, rather than worrying about your area. GG guys.
posted by Tim at 2:01 PM

I had the opportunity to play through the latest PS2 game from Rockstar: Manhunt. This has to be the most gratuitously violent game I've ever seen. Or played. You play the role of James Earl Cash, a convicted felon who is sentenced to death. However, instead of being executed, you are shuffled off to star in a series of "snuff films" directed by a mysterious man named Starkweather. In each "scene" you are expected to follow his directorial advice as you survive attacks by gangs of "hunters." Face-to-face combat generally gets you whacked, so you are forced to skulk through the shadows and perform "executions" on unwary hunters. These are generally pretty grisly, and can range from normal, violent, or gruesome. To unlock the games bonus features, you are encouraged to perform as many gruesome executions as you can as quickly as you can.

This game falls in the genre of the stealth game. It's okay, but I preferred Thief and the the elegant Oni (also published by Rockstar, but developed by Bungie) over this.
posted by Tim at 8:23 AM

Mike Russert called the wave of politcal blogs "real-time democracy." This is no different than the olden days of writing letters and pamphlets. Remember the Federalist Papers? These were published to influence opinion on the Constitution.

The Federalist, commonly referred to as the Federalist Papers, is a series of 85 essays written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison between October 1787 and May 1788. The essays were published anonymously, under the pen name "Publius," in various New York state newspapers of the time.

The Federalist Papers were written and published to urge New Yorkers to ratify the proposed United States Constitution, which was drafted in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. In lobbying for adoption of the Constitution over the existing Articles of Confederation, the essays explain particular provisions of the Constitution in detail. For this reason, and because Hamilton and Madison were each members of the Constitutional Convention, the Federalist Papers are often used today to help interpret the intentions of those drafting the Constitution.

So political blogging is the modern-day equivalent of The Federalist. It's just that now pretty much anyone has the opportunity to express their opinion to anyone who is willing to listen.

Of course, it doesn't have to be political (or personal -- see below). In our case, it's on Computer Games. Specifically Rise of Nations.
posted by Tim at 8:09 AM

While not exactly what we do here, this article in the NY Times was interesting on the phenomenon of teen blogging. In any event, it highlights how technology alters the ways in which we interact.
posted by Tim at 7:48 AM

Maniac_King started an interesting thread showing what happens when X number of hoplites attack a Mayan city. It has spawned into some useful tips for both attacking and defending a rush, regardless of nation.
posted by Tim at 9:21 AM

Since I can't beat him at RON, I decided to post some old pics of Randy aka "Nydar." In the group photo, he's on the right (Sheikh Tahnoon and I are in the middle. BTW, that's ol' maimin' matty on the far left). In the porn shot, that's me having my way with him, while Sheikh Tahnoon (in black) looks on. In the other porn pic, some Jujitsu guy is giving it to Randy.



It was all in good fun. And oh yeah ... Randy walked away with the top prize of $5,000.
posted by Tim at 11:46 PM

Picture says it all.
posted by Tim at 10:37 PM

With the completion of both the Matrix and LOTR trilogies, I was expecting 2004 to be kind of a bummer year for movies. But there are several scheduled films that appear to hold promise. Here's my list of movies I plan to see (so far, and in no particular order. BTW, the links go to the official or Yahoo sites, most of which have those cool trailers.):

• Spiderman 2 - Of course.


• The Village - M. Knight's latest. Can't be worse than Unbreakable, can it?


• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - I've read all the books. Might as well see all the movies, too.


• The Ladykillers - Tom Hanks and the Coen brothers? Together? Hmmmm...


• King Arthur - I normally go by directors. And I don't like Antoine Fuqua, but it's got Clive Owen (star of the great BMW films) and Keira Knightley. Did I mention it's produced by Jerrry Bruckheimer?


• Resident Evil: Apocalypse - I was mildly surprised by the original movie. I'll probably see this one.


• I, Robot - Isaac Asimov's stories, directed by Alex "Dark City" Proyas, starring Will Smith.


• Alien vs. Predator - Come on. Everyone's gonna go see that one, right?


• Man on Fire - Nothing I like better than some righteous indignation. Particularly when it's got some righteous killin' to go with it. I am worried about Denzel being able to pull of the killin' part though. Directed by Tony Scott.


• The Stepford Wives - Nicole Kidman is the rare actress who I will see regardless of director. She's done nothing bad. (If you're thinking of Eyes Wide Shut ... remember she was NUDE.)


• The Chronicles of Riddick - Sequel to Pitch Black. Planned as a trilogy. Vin Diesel gettin' savage again.


• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - This movie comes out of nowhere, precisely because the director is a nobody:

  Very little is known about Kerry Cornan, except that he (or she?) is 29 years old, and wrote some sort of "incredible software" to go along with the script that impressed producer Aurelio De Laurentiis (Leviathan) enough that he got the wheels rolling to get this project a $60 million dollar budget. What sort of software could it have been... and who exactly is Kerry Conran? A few different people have written in to answer at least one of those questions, but I forgot to post it here. Kerry is definitely a "he". The bigger questions remain unanswered. Not anymore, they don't. The Los Angeles Times has revealed that Kerry Cornan is a CalArts graduate, and his software is a CGI program that allows him to shoot his entire movie against blue screens, and fill in the backgrounds later with images he's been working on for years, which are mostly already done. What this allows Conran to do, which is what is so revolutionary, is to have an already existing 3-D storyboard of every scene, with stick figures in place where the actors are supposed to be. Now, all he has to do is stick in his cast, and he's basically done, it sounds like.

  Hmmmm. Visit the site. Watch the trailer. Decide for yourself.


• Troy - Brad Pitt is one of the few actors I'll see in anything. Wolfgang ain't that bad of a director, either. I just hope it's better than the USA miniseries, Helen of Troy.


• Alexander - Oliver Stone's epic for the year.


• Hellboy - another non-Marvel comic adaptation. Trailer looked cool.


• The Brothers Grimm - Terry Gilliam's latest movie. Big cast this time.


• The Aviator - Scorsese, huge cast. Hmmmm.


• The Incredibles - The latest from Pixar. Have they made a bad movie yet? BTW, when you're at the site watch all their short films, too.


• Kill Bill Vol. 2 - Oh yeah, baby. Uma ROCKS!


• The Day After Tomorrow - It will probably suck, but who cares?


• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - The trailer was bad, but Jim Carrey would be funny reading the phone book.


• The Ring 2 - Gore Verbinski is not the director (I think) so this will likely suck. But I liked #1. (And yea, I know the Japanse original was better, so STFU.)


• Van Helsing - Hugh Jackman plays the Dracula slayer.


• Blade: Trinity - Yea it'll suck, but Blade II had some good action scenes.


• The Punisher - Even the trailer looks bad, and it has ... oh my ... John Revolta. But I am sucker for righteous indignation.

posted by Tim at 10:11 PM

There's this cool little website that enables you to test your friends to see how well they know you. I decided to check it out, and made my own little quiz. Here is my quiz. In order to score well, you don't have to be my best buddy, but you do have to be a regular reader of Out4Blood's Rise of Nations Strategy. Good luck!
posted by Tim at 8:39 PM

Thunder from BHG is soliciting player input on their proposal for ratings decay.

We are looking for player input on implementing a decay system for Rise of Nations' rating system. We are going to be implementing some other changes, in addition to decay, but we're looking to see what players think might be too heavy handed or perhaps not heavy handed enough.
The current plan is to penalize players who aren't playing much in this fashion:

-25 points if you haven't played a game in two weeks
-100 points (125 total) if you haven't played a game in a month
-100 points for every month afterwards that a player does not play a game

Decay would not take a player below the 1600 level.

Thoughts and feedback would be very much appreciated.

As we've stated earlier, we'd like to see something that more accurately reflects "who the current best players are." This is the primary reason we established the O4B rankings. So people could see who the "best" players were.

I like their idea. It seems reasonable. My first though was that the only change I might suggest is that decay not take you all the way back to 1600. 1600 = newbie. If I used to be at 2300, then I wouldn't want to decay all the way back to ground zero. I'd like to suggest that half of the earned points above 1600 be subject to decay. However, even that change still means that someone like I_aM_AnDy will always be #1, even though he's not the best player and might not ever play again. On the other hand, it would take I_aM_AnDy ELEVEN (11!) months to drop back down to 1600, if he never played another game again. So in that case, it's not really so bad.

BHG, I think you've made a wise decision and I say go for it as is!

Also, as EC pointed out, that doesn't stop the smurf with only 4 games from being #8. I'd say raise the min number of games for provisional status (USCF uses 20) and/or don't display provisionals on the main board.

UPDATE: For the experts, there's a similar thread over at MFO.
posted by Tim at 7:22 PM

This thead has been going around for quite awhile. Maya: Is anyone at BHG actually listening? There's been a lot of suggestions about what to do with Maya. Some of them good, some of them bad. Here's a couple thoughts I'll post here to avoid the "noise."

1. Yes, you should only listen to "experts" about game balance. average players are not able to fully exploit certain imbalances in civs. Some imbalances require tremendous micro or macro skills in order to exploit. An example in RON is Spain. In the hands of an average player, Spain gets a few more ruins and can get to a certain age slightly faster. However, in the hands of an expert, they are not only abe to get their faster, they are able to turn that small advantage into a larger and snowballing advantage through the threat of raiding and attacking in gunpowder age. Note: I'm not suggesting I'm an elite expert (but listen to me anyway).

2. Both Spain and Maya should be nerfed. Maya might beat everyone and Spain can beat everyone but Maya, but Spain beats everyone a lot worse. With no Maya, Spain becomes hugely dominant. Yes, it requires expert handling, but you'll switch from Mayan imbalance to Spain imbalance.

3. Mayan needs reduction in economic bonuses. Leave the defensive bonuses. It's good to have a defensive civ. And it's okay to be able to build wonders faster. But reduce their economic bonuses so that they don't ALSO boom faster.

4. I'm not sure what Spain needs. But they need something.
posted by Tim at 2:24 PM

HalfLotus and El_Capitan get into a great argument discussion over at Apolyton (a RON backwater if there ever was one). (Thanks to Rohag for the link.) The gist is that EC says it's okay to attack the third city and assimilate while HL argues for attacking a more high-value target such as the second city and pressing the attack rather than waiting around to assimilate.

No offense to EC, but I'm gonna have to go with HL on this one. Yes, even though there are "many ways to win," I think it's much more important to continue pressing the attack before the opponent can respond by building up a counter force. I've come back to win many games where my opponent didn't continue to press an attack, failed to capture an important target, or both. The most notable recent example was this game.

Against a competent opponent who is booming, losing an unimportant city will hardly slow them at all. You need to continue hitting them before they have an opportunity to bring their economic advantage to bear in military terms.

I'm sure EC has many examples where he won by taking an unimportant city and sitting on it, I'm sure he could have won even faster being more aggressive.
posted by Tim at 2:12 PM

Paralyticus posted a worthy topic at Heavens Forum.

Tips for the tactical use of combined arms (help to newbs up to good 'rookies', experts, please correct/add)

I think this is most players' weakest part of their game. Very few people have any inlking what to make at what time. Of course, as I have repeatedly mentioned elsewhere, I feel that the ramping costs force a natural combined arms force. Most people realize it's cheaper to make a mixed army than it is to make a single unit army. And the ease at which some units counter others makes it a no-brainer to mix up your forces.

The trick though is exactly WHAT to make and HOW to employ it. Do I attack with HI and LI? Or do I attack with HC and archers? This is where most people lose it, IMO.
posted by Tim at 12:19 PM

They've been updated. Updated O4B rankings. 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.

Our good buddy niDe has zoomed up the list!
posted by Tim at 1:25 PM

I've been wandering around playing lots of games with some weird settings lately and I have found that people aren't very careful about choosing the best nation for particular settings. So here are the nations I choose when playing some of the following settings:

• Diplomacy games: In these games, the fighting doesn't usually occur until much later in the game. People who attack early seem to just weaken themselves and get crushed in the end, particularly if an ally comes to help. In these games, I find that nations with a strong end game are very powerful. Russians are a good example. They are very strong in the info age and control vast amounts of territory. I usually pick them, their slow start doesn't hurt you that much in diplomacy. Greeks are also good. You can expect people not to attack for quite awhile and that gives Greeks enough time to become very huge. Egyptians can be strong because they have the freedom to build some key wonders, which can give them a good boost. Being first to get Colossus is helpful for fighting those end age battles. However, once the fighting starts, wonders are my first target with bombers and nukes. My normal favorite of Nubians are not so good because you cannot place merchants in territory of opponents with whom you are at peace. This negates their advantage. Mayans seem fairly weak, their strong cities don't stand up to well to stealth bombers and nukes. There is a whole psychology in diplomacy games, which is too lengthy to go into here, but you want to start off strong so people are a fraid to attack you and want to ally with you. But you need to be the stronger one at the end.


• Peace until XX games (team games): Generally the same rules apply as above. But it depends on when the peace ends. Bascially, you want to have a nation that is strong in the age where peace ends. I've seen peace until 30 minute games. These can be pretty boring; you can expect to be in info age before any fighting occurs. In this case I might go Russian, you can be Info Age with Global Prosperity in 30 mintues on most maps, and therefore Russians can be pretty strong. However, if it's peace for 10 minutes, you might want a Gunpowder Age civ like Chinese or Spanish.


• 2x (or more) starting resources: In these games I almost always choose Chinese. The instant villagers give you a quick boost enabling you to get an economy up really fast. Another popular choice is Egyptians because you can grab the good wonders early. However, I find that hurts you in the long run.


• End age is XX: In these games you just pick a civ that is strongest in that age. Modern Age = Germans, Gunpowder/Enlightenment Age = Spanish or Chinese


• East meets West: This map almost always seems to end up in Info Age. In this case Greeks seem very powerful because they can get to Info Age very fast, particularly if they do a SCI1, COM1 start and gater wealth from fishing.


• Big map, team games: I have not found any civ that can compare to Nubians in large team games (3vs3 or more). They just get a huge starting bonus from the merchants and that continues to snowball them into a monster powerhouse. Against the stronger end game civs, like Germans and Russians, you just want to attack them before they reach their power age. When playing against Nubians you have to raid viciously and attack them early or you are through. Boomed correctly, you can be info age in ~23 minutes or so.

Well, this is just my experience, which is slightly skewed because there are not a lot of experts in these games.
posted by Tim at 1:06 PM

HalfLotus wrote a nice article on non-library upgrades. Best thing is he discusses when the appropriate time to get them is.

Every upgrade has nice bonuses, but the question is, when is it worth the cost to get them? Smart use of resources is a central tenant of competitive RTS gaming. If you aren't in a position to reap reasonable benefits from an upgrade, don't get it! Herbal Lore is nice to have, but do you want to spend 70 wealth in Classical age for it? More often, you'd be better served investing directly in economy or military. This guide will focus on non-library, non-economic upgrades. Economic upgrades are more straightforward since they payoff the investment directly and immediately.

HINT: upgrading everything right away is not such a good idea.
posted by Tim at 3:37 AM