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