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