Peacekeepers - same map, same start

[Mart]

It's not a typical challenge/competition. The big difference is, that I have the deadline, which in some aspect makes it easier for me, but on the other hand, I have to bend my playstyle to it.

[bvanevery]

My "advantage" is I bent a lot sooner.  Like over for Santiago.  Think I like doing that??  Maybe if I started as Morgan next to Marr and I actually got the chance to be threatened by him before being summarily attacked.  I've played a damn lot of games, I've used Scouts to beat human factions.  I don't know what crack BUncle thinks he's smoking that anyone would ever school me.  Tie me, sure, maybe even barely beat me, but school me?  Forget it.

Anyways, I bent early because I wanted to make sure I beat you.  If I end up having any fault in my play, it will be from resting on my early laurels and not taking the competition seriously enough.

You can win / lose amateur bar pool that way too BTW.  Sure the other guy's better than you, you keep missing.  But if he slacks off because he figures he's so much better than you, you can suddenly come from behind and put 3..4 balls in at the end. 

If I wanted to win super badly, like for money, I just wouldn't post a darned thing until everyone had said their games were finished.  Best to let opponents silently distract and kill themselves.  But it's far more fun to inform, and to do a little gloating.  It definitely makes a better read, and it's gonna get better play out of Mart, at the bitter end.

[Buster's Uncle]

Pete's experience against far tougher opponents trumps yours against the weakies you've been complaining about being, among other frustrations, weak. I could take you if I hadn't ruined myself with a decade of bad habits cheating at SP.

Let me take this from the top, since at this point I don't know if you're willfully refusing to understand, or just locked onto a different idea that you want to pursue. Playing multiplayer isn't the same game as beating AIs.

WOW.  I won't even pretend I'm not annoyed that you say that in ernest and have not been struck by lightning.  While you've been playing SP, I've been following TTTs for nine years seeing how MPlayers of any competitive competence leverage every niggling little advantage detail to the maximum against better opponents than the AI, learning against foes who have learned, and so on, which the AI does not.  I speak rhetorically when I urge you not to come into my house and claim you know its history and construction better than I from studying it from the woods out back while I listened to TOP ARCHITECTS talk it over for years.

I still love you, man, but really.  You gotta learn to listen and trust when I throws ya th' protips.

[Buster's Uncle]

Anyway, if I'm wrong -I'm not, but Mart could have bad luck- you get to throw. a. party now.

[bvanevery]

while I listened to TOP ARCHITECTS talk it over for years.

I still love you, man, but really.  You gotta learn to listen and trust when I throws ya th' protips.

Dude, I tried to write the next SMAC.  Get over yourself.  You don't know more about Single Player than someone who's been doing it as much as I have for 18 years.  Perhaps you have forgotten that I live out of a car, don't have a job, don't have a wife or SO, and didn't have kids.  That has given me a lot of play time in the Civ genre, with SMAC getting the lion's share.  There is a level at which you know as much as can be known, about a game with lotsa complexity and random components in it, and no more. 

Any great idea you might personally have about why you believe you're better at "AI races" than I am, has to be tested in the real world of whether it matters or not.  Anything else is dojo syndrome.  Your pet trick could be substantial, or it could be a minor detail in an overarching game design where stuff really doesn't matter.  Having enough "stuff" will win, one way or the other.  Minor details, the picky chrome, descends to the order of smalls.

I also used to do 3d graphics device drivers for a living, so pardon me when I say I've benchmarked things for money, to determine what is "better".  There is definitely a Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle in the real world of making claims, and you only know as much as you've actually benchmarked.  Which is time consuming and often not a profitable way to make the 3d device driver actually go faster.  It's usually better to get in there and write the assembly code, based on your "principled understanding" of how the hardware works.  If you do it well enough that your product succeeds in the marketplace, you're fine.  You only have to do better than your competitors.

My "principled understanding" of this game, is that my opponents lost when they failed to take the Monsoon Jungle early.  Soon we'll see if I was correct.

[bvanevery]

Anyway, if I'm wrong -I'm not, but Mart could have bad luck- you get to throw. a. party now.

BTW no excuses for "bad luck".  I had bad luck.  Luck management was part of the game.  We could do "bell curve - no random events" but we didn't.  Next time we'll probably think carefully about whether we want Cha Dawn, the Caretakers, and the Usurpers in the game.

[Mart]

Yeah, as the game is not finished, a lot can happen. I had bad luck and I had good luck in this game. I'm playing in 2309 and think of posting around 2310.

[Buster's Uncle]

[blinks]  I REFUSE to get into a no-life measuring contest on the innerwebs.  I know that hill really well, I have troops and entrenchments and top armor at hand, and tactical nukes on that hill, everyone trained & blooded, armed and ammunitioned and fed and fueled, and communications and backups secured, and excellent officers, all contingencies covered, heavy reinforcements on call close and ready, everyone crack veteran soldiers and all the logistics covered and solid battle plans laid - and you can have the hill anyway, that ain't nothin' to win just because I have no cops making me move on at 3:36AM.  It's no hill to hold -it has no strategic value.

I've played way more than most even here among the hardcore, and I've learned from the masters, but have it your way, you rool, Mart droolz; I'm done making it my problem.



Good game, to both of y'all! 

[Mart]

We might cool down a bit.

I will continue this game, but also have to prepare GOTM in like 10 days, making the game starting with Fusion Power, and I wanted to do it with factions developed in "natural" way. So I will not spend all my SMACX time on the game here.

bvanevery, the GOTM will be a scenario with "slightly" modified alphax.txt (MGM mod). What I found, is that if given more turns to play, AI can better develop its strategies, thus giving a player more challenge and also more enjoyable game for the player. It would be great to see your take on the whole thing, and hear your opinion on how this new gameplay looks like and feels. There are threads on GOTM and MGM in this section, Command Nexus.

[bvanevery]

I'm done making it my problem.

But will you, at some point, end your diet of cheating junk food and actually compete in one of these slaloms?  I haven't been eating junk food for 10 years, I've been eating Usurpers at close quarters.  I'm surprised you pooh pooh wiping those guys out in a 2 front war.  I know for fact, in many games I've played, that if you aren't ready on Turn 1 to deal with a probable Usurper threat, you will die.  That's why I intoned, loudly and clearly, about the dire possibilities awaiting everyone in this game.  One of my opponents (seemingly) wasn't ready and got killed.  The other didn't even have to face them.  Good luck for him.  He could have gone though Cha Dawn with Scouts.  Chose not to, think it will cost him the game.

[Buster's Uncle]

Naw, I'm chicken and lazy - same problem I had in chess club...

We might cool down a bit.

OKAY, Daad.

B, CMN means he's a manager in this folder and the boss of me here.

[bvanevery]

Naw, I'm chicken and lazy - same problem I had in chess club...

I find educating a neighbor kid on chess basics is somewhat good for the ego.  Watch out if his older brother shows up to advise him though, after you've sacrificed your Queen to make it easier for him.  I lost!  I need to find him a free chess program that has an "AI plays itself" mode, and decent animation / controls for watching that happen + replaying / jogging the game.

Need to find a way to get him back on the wagon with SMAC too.  Gonna be harder now that he's no longer next door.  They moved 20 minutes away.

B, CMN means he's a manager in this folder and the boss of me here.

Wonders never cease.

[bvanevery]

What I found, is that if given more turns to play, AI can better develop its strategies, thus giving a player more challenge and also more enjoyable game for the player.

I'll read up.  And I totally understand this not being your primary focus.  It was for me because I dropped the gauntlet of challenge to everybody.

[Mart]

It's not like I am going to diminish my efforts to this game. I mean, that I am not going to complete it in like 1-2 days, because it is campaigns in multiple fronts for my PK faction at this time. I have 30 turns to play, which are meaningful, and each of them is very eventful. I still have like 60 bases to conquer.

[bvanevery]

Ah, now I get it.  I've found a way to make the whole contest take longer.   You have such a difficult problem in front of you that you'll need more time to try to solve it.

Hmm I don't know how that compares to where I was at, because when I look at the map now, all the Alien bases are gone.  That said, I did have saved games in 2303 and 2320, so I'll see if I can count the bases up in a minute here.

enemy bases in 2303:
Cha Dawn - 15
Caretaker - 10
Usurper - 12
Believer - 16
Spartan - 20
Hive - 19
TOTAL - 92

enemy bases in 2320:
Cha Dawn - 15
Caretaker - 4
Usurper - 3
Believer - 10
Spartan - 22
Hive - 20
TOTAL - 74

enemy bases in 2335, when I tried to elect myself Supreme Leader:
Cha Dawn - 15
Caretaker - 0
Usurper - 0
Believer - 10
Spartan - 16
Hive - 10
TOTAL - 51

5 years later I reach the distant Hive bases and win the game.