Qt3 Multiplayer Gaming Tournament #1 - Rise of Nations

Thanks for the game Kelan.

I definitely felt like I was playing against a different strategy than with McMaster. I started to get a bit worried when you started a wonder (I forget which) but I felt I had enough troops to push your middle city. I was a little taken aback when I hit that cluster of four cities. I had no idea you had so many!

Sounds like a game I’ll need to watch once the rounds is over. Wonder victories require 8 wonder points more than your opponent and are really difficult to pull off most of the time, so even attempting that is an interesting idea.

Make sure to send over the replay when you get the chance. I’ll update the bracket once that’s done.

Oh sorry, I did send it, but apparently my Gmail webapp has been crashed all day. I’ll resend it.

It’s cool. Got it now.

Well, it was pretty much a last ditch effort. It was already apparent that I was going to get conquered at that point, but before my cities and wonders started falling, I was trying to found a few more cities and construct some wonders before they fell. It didn’t quite work, lol.

I just won a superfun game with @Otthegreat. I’ll upload the saved game now. He had a really solid early position, but I managed to fend off a raid and I think the timing of my counterattack was just too fortuitous for him to recover. Lots of really fierce fighting.

Should be an exciting recorded game to watch.

-Tom

That was a great game. I was feeling pretty good about it right up until @tomchick’s main army emerged from the fog of war. From there things got steadily worse. At the end I think he had every possible victory timer counting down.

Lesson learned: Tom takes aggressive castle placement very personally.

Looking over the replay, it occurs to me that one of the things I love about Rise of Nations is just how seriously it models subtle stuff. Like terrain. I’m convinced, @Otthegreat, that I won largely due to a river!

I’m not sure if it’s something you noticed, but I think the placement of Novgorod inadvertently sealed your fate. Check this out:

Novgorod is in a great place for a city. Lots of trees and iron. But it’s in a pocket that defends the wrong side! When I grabbed the city, you naturally tried to retake it. But your only avenue of approach was along this river:

Units in rivers not only move slower, but they take more damage. So by just parking my army at the head of the river, I was forcing you to march your counterattack down a long convenient killing zone. Not that you had much choice short of circling the long way round. It was a perfect storm of defensive terrain from my side of the map!

Now I had to take Novgorod first, and you did a great job setting up defenses. But I got super lucky taking out your castle while you were rebuilding your army. I notice you have some reinforcements riding up just as the castle fell! I think if I hadn’t completely lucked into that timing, the game would have unfolded very differently.

Anyway, that was a lot of fun! It felt like a very even match where I lucked into a terrain situation that favored me.

-Tom

EDIT: Although, watching the replay, looks like Mr. Tactical Supergenius Tomchick does a fair amount of standing around in that river, too. :)

But, really, this is the graph that tells the story of that game:

You had a solid economy, but I think I just managed to keep my army alive longer and forced you to pour resources into reinforcements.

Such a pretty game! German biplanes strafing Russian redcoats outside Moscow!

I didn’t know that about rivers, that’s pretty cool! I did notice too late that I’d put Novgorod in a horribly indefensible position where it was largely cut off from the rest of my cities but wide open to attack from you. Once you’d defeated my first army, I wasn’t able to bring reinforcements up nearly fast enough. Building the Red Fort was a great play too since it pushed your borders right up against Novgorod and left me no room to maneuver without taking attrition.

Having all that iron and wood production concentrated in one city was a mixed blessing too. It was great until you took the city and I had to scramble to get my economy back up and running. I never did fully recover.

I felt so bad for my poor, plucky little redcoats! They got slaughtered by a constant stream of biplanes, while occasionally a lone cuirrassair would charge past directly into tank and machine gun fire.

Well this sounds like a great game, I’ll have to check out the replay. Maybe it’ll help me figure out what I’m even suppose to be doing in this silly game.

I’m looking forward to seeing that one, myself. As soon as the last game gets played later today, I’ll get the set uploaded for everyone.

Final result is in with SadleyBradley over Belouski. The replay pack for round 2 is here:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/394299971895296031/401782365275291668/R2.zip

I’ve got to run for a couple of hours or so, but I’ll double-check everything and advance the bracket once I get back, just to add a few extra hours to the third round.

Fair warning that the multiplayer servers seem to have been down since last night. No idea when they will be back up, but hopefully soon!

The servers seem to be back up now.

@tomchick, did you get my PM? Just trying to figure out when you’re available this week and haven’t heard back.

Congratulations to Sharpe for taking me down. I’d like to say is was close, but he wrecked me. Good game.

I submitted the recorded game to Otagan.

Received it, and updated the bracket to what I currently have.

Sorry, just sent you a PM. Let’s do this! I’m happy to have at least one more week before receiving a thrashing from the Sharpe machine.

-Tom