I have, but I don’t find it very satisfying. Then again, I’m a turtle by nature anyway, so I like situations that force me not to be.
One thing I’d forgot about RoN is that multiple people can use a rare resource. Had the AI doing that last night.
Yup. It’s a reason not to build in too close a proximity to rare resources, too. I’ve occasionally placed a building that unintentionally cut an ally off from being able to place a merchant.
Two more games. The 2nd video has probably got the highest level play, but represents what I love and hate about Age of Empires. House tricks, and boar laming. But still, awesome match up. The 1st video has some strange games.
The hidden cup is over, but as I mentioned before, I prefer to watch all the games on Youtube, rather than watch them in Twitch.
Hopefully Tristan is already planning HC3.
I’m surprised they didn’t bump the max population in the extended edition of Rise of Nations beyond the original 200.
Well, it’s really 250 (with future tech) and, really, more than that if you’ve got certain rare resources. Regardless, it’s as much a balance decision as anything else - raising it makes certain factions much more powerful, throws off the economic balance, and generally changes the game in ways not intended. Plus, it makes a largely micro-less game micro-ier.
Does future tech, bump it? I’m pretty sure last night I was still at 200/200 and I had all 4 future techs. I know Colossus and the peacock resources do. One thing I need to do is kill of the scientists if I don’t need to research any longer. That was probably 30+ pop right there. I was playing around with a 4v4 on the big huge map, and I’d killed off one opponent, but we were in a bit of a stalemate until one of the AIs on my side did the wonder victory.
I figured it would be difficult for them to do it because of it being tied to the military advances. People apparently have been modding in the rules file, but the way that ends up working is you have the same progression as normal until last tech level and then it jumps to whatever you set the max to.
Yup, I have that wrong. It’s just Colossus, Peacocks, and of course the Bantu bonus if you happen to be playing them:
So is there any particular reason why you’d want a bigger population cap? I often see people ask for this but I assume it’s usually because of juvenile fascination with everything big.
If you’d play 1v4 than theoretically you might feel crippled due to enemies being able to drown you in blood even if your economy is four times better than theirs (but it can’t be cause commerce cap), so I can see that this game might not support asymmetrical teams. Than again, what RTS does? And in your example you describe the solution to stalemate yourself - it’s a wonder victory. Instead of destroying the opponent you nuke his Hanging Gardens and build your Apollo Project and have a completely different game from the usual domination.
Sometimes I wonder how much of this design is intentional or accidental. Colossus is widely regarded as the best wonder ever. But apart from bonus to Wealth generation (+30%) and raising Timber commerce cap you won’t notice this population and Wealth commerce cap raise till late game. Well maybe Aztec care about Wealth commerce cap earlier than others. Instead you can build Hanging Gardens that raise Knowledge production by 50 and make economy upgrades 66% cheaper - and it’s huge. Or Pyramids give 1 more city and help with Food greatly.
Yet everybody wants their Colossus for the theoretical late game. Is it something psychological? Of course I’m not that good at that game, maybe Colossus is objectively mathematically better but to me it looks like it plays with your primal instincts of raising those caps.
I was went Hanging Gardens are Egyptians. The knowledge, especially in the first age really pushed you forward.
I usually play econ powers, epecially Egypt and Dutch, and always smack in to the wealth cap very early - even with the Colossus.
Which is not to dismiss your larger point, which is that people have a sort of pathological fixation with the population cap. And yeah, Hanging Gardens (or anything that helps with Knowledge) is a huge thing.
An interesting set of games. Some interesting mistakes were made.
The only reason I noticed it was playing on the big huge map. I took out the French opponent in the mid-game, but when late game armies were on the map it was hard to make any progress because so much of my pop was tied up in civilians and scientists. Like I mentioned above, I probably could have freed up about 40 pop from killing universities at that point, and that would’ve freed up enough to probably make a good push. As it was I’d only made minor advances into 2 of the other players, and the ai players on both sides weren’t getting anywhere.
In general people probably want more, because when you think of armies clashing you tend to think of rather grand battles.
Second to last game of the first round.
Is that the right link? Robin Hood - Attila the Hun was in the 1st round.
Sorry, phone typing. My fingers are so much slower than my attention.
Lots of good games throughout the tournament
That last game I watched just made me sad. Just sad.