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Friday, January 23, 2004 My Picassohead
Gunpowder army test
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.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! Thursday, January 22, 2004 Darn
Science, Optics and You - Powers Of 10
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. I guess I'm really a Libertarian
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%)UPDATE: For all you Dean fans out there: Dean Scream Remix. Wednesday, January 21, 2004 Big losing streak
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. Rethinking rethinking Bantu
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. Tuesday, January 20, 2004 Cool site
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. How Honest Are You?
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?) Monday, January 19, 2004 ELECTION UPDATE: Iowa Caucus results
Pretty shocking result from Iowa: Kerry wins. Candidate % # DelegatesKerry 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. Sunday, January 18, 2004 SPOTLIGHT GAME: TuF_Astator vs. nydar
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 gatheredThat'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)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. The Games of the 23rd Olympiad!
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.
Updated O4B rankings
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! |