RB1 - Cuban Isolationists

[EMBX]

Hi all,

I was aways lurking these forums but signed up to say "Great game Sirian and Sulla, also not to forget the members who ask the right questions, something like this is far better then any manual

Keep it up!

EMBX

 

[Sirian]

I was going to ask if they would mind doing that as well Maybe shots of Havana, Santa Rosa and of San Roberto. Like in Roberto, what setup got you enough food to work all those hills?

What? Are you guys seriously claiming that we haven't posted enough screens of our cities and terrain? ... No, really. Is that what you are saying?!?

I've got almost 400 shots up in this thread. I know there are some showing the terrain and the plot improvements.


- Sirian

 

[Dopeman]

By the way, does anyone know what the record for the 'most views in a thread' and 'most posts in a thread' are in CFC?

Maybe this is the one?

 

[Own]

Pax Romana is still winning I think.

 

[The Condor]

I don't know but I will now make RB1 - Cuban Isolationists one post larger than before.

 

[Schben]

Pax Romana is still winning I think.

In posts, yes, but not in views!

 

[Own]

The avatar help thread is pretty large .

Isn't it about time for a new avatar help thread?

 

[madviking]

Nope, theres one iwth 786,000 views =D

 

[Joju]

this is probably the last place where I should ask this but, er, under the posting rules, it says I can't post replies but, I had to click on "post reply" to type this, so...can someone explain that to me?

 

[Mongoloid Cow]

For a while, I thought there was a succession game going on somewhere in this thread. Silly me

 

[Silvermink]

What? Are you guys seriously claiming that we haven't posted enough screens of our cities and terrain? ... No, really. Is that what you are saying?!?

I've got almost 400 shots up in this thread. I know there are some showing the terrain and the plot improvements.


- Sirian

ok, maybe there are plenty of posts (most city shots are from near the beginning - pre-lumbermill and biology). Might you be willing to explain a couple though?

I do pretty well, I am considering upgrading to prince soon. (winning cultural every time lately). This post should help me to win domination (space is too easy on noble). Is it possible to win conquer without turning off domination? My biggest uncertainty comes from what population to expect from my biggest cities. It is possible to really crank one up but most of the time I go for balance in each city. It looks like you more specialize. One(or many) cities for production. Some for Science/commerce. Some for great people.

 

[Sirian]

For a while, I thought there was a succession game going on somewhere in this thread. Silly me

There is, but it's on hold for a couple of days.

The drama is not necessarily over, however. The Hydra has set us on a course of conflict, and it remains to be seen if we can remove all of the infidels from Her world before some of them can escape our grasp.


Meanwhile, I've continued my "logistics calisthenics" with some puzzle games.

Here's a nifty puzzle called Star Collector:

You are looking at my first game on the hard setting. I managed to last a couple of hours, including some narrow escapes, but eventually I got squeezed.

You get eight pieces per hand, each with a color and shape. You have to lay them next to a piece already on the board that has either the same shape or the same color. It's kind of like an Uno board game. (You all played Uno as a kid, right? ... Right!) The stars are a specific color, and you have to play a marker of that color to collect that star. Collect X stars and you clear the constellation (you finish that round and get a new round.) There are also extra, invisible "mystery" stars that you can find just by luck of the draw, playing any marker on to their location. Some constellations are made up only of Mystery stars, although those are actually easier to solve, in my view.

Note that I got tripped up trying to clear a visible constellation!

You get three "reshuffles" per board, and often you have to use one or two of them just to get started. (If you have markers you can't play, you can discard the rest of your unplayed markers and reshuffle). You can earn extra reshuffles for placing a row or column of markers, unbroken, all the way across the board (and it will remove them).

One of those simple little games for those who enjoy tactical micromanagement.


Oh, by the way... EPIC ONE IS POSTED! You can download the save when the event opens on Monday. Anyone is invited. If you wish to play, make sure you read the tournament rules first, though.

If you don't wish to play, you may still want to tune in late in December, when the event closes and reports are posted. Sulla and I and the rest of the RB regulars will have something interesting for you to read.


- Sirian

 

[eldar]

That looks like a cool game... where can I get it from?

 

[Sirian]

That looks like a cool game... where can I get it from?

Hoyle's Puzzle and Board Games 2005. I got it from Amazon.com for $20 when I ordered Age of Empires III. I think it's a good value. (If you click through to Amazon from CivFanatics, I think they get a small commission? Not sure about that one. I confess to being lazy and using my own bookmark.)

HPBG comes with lots of classics (some of them a bit bastardized, though, such as "Yacht" instead of "Yahtzee", but still fun to play) and some I've not seen before, such as the game I showed above.

One of the things I like about the board games side of it is that the AIs have some personality. They will say funny things -- and each one has their own batch of quotes. I actually laugh at some of them. (You can adjust the frequency of their comments, too, or turn them off.)


Do you realize that this is the first time this year that I've gone five days in a row without touching Civ4? How crazy is that. Everybody else is busy playing one more turn and I needed a brief vacation from it.


- Sirian

 

[Sullla]

Well, as long as Sirian's posting a couple pictures on what's he been up to...

I'm a longtime Tetris player, and this is my best score ever on A-Type. I did this back in June of last year, but haven't been able to top it since. In the original NES version of Tetris, it's basically impossible to get more than 290 lines, since at level 29 the pieces fall faster than they can be moved to the sides of the screen. (I timed them and they take about 0.2 seconds to go from top to bottom of the screen.) So while I only managed to get 285 lines here, I wouldn't have been able to get much further anyway before hitting the 290 barrier, and I landed a ridiculous number of "Tetrises" (that being knocking out four lines at once with one piece) in this game to get the score I did.

This score is actually higher than the world record listed at Twin Galaxies; I don't think that makes me the best player ever (I'm sure there have been many outstanding scores that didn't meet the extremely tough submission standards they judge by), but I do think that it means I'm pretty good at the game.

And another score from an entirely different game... I've got a rarely-read section on my website for the Dance Dance Revolution games, and this is a perfect score on a very difficult song from one of those games. I won't say any more on the subject here, since I don't think this is something that most of our readers are familiar with, but in short, this was not something that was easy to do. Anyone who has played one of these games will know what I'm talking about.

Civ4? What's that? Epic One will be available for download tomorrow, so I encourage our lurkers to download it and try their hand at the game. It will be something to keep busy with while we're holding off on our turns here.

 

[knupp715]

Looks like a pretty nice Epic Tournament. I plan to join some in the future, but unfortunately not number one. I look forward to seeing all those reports December 20!

 

[ChrTh]

Hrm, I guess I'll be playing the RBC once I get my copy of Civ IV in 10 days ... I think limiting myself to 2 SGs, 1 RBT, and 1 GOTM should provide me enough Civ playing without resulting in divorce...

 

[Sirian]

In the original NES version of Tetris, it's basically impossible to get more than 290 lines...

Of course, the NES version isn't the original.

I have a copy of the original version for DOS (in Russian!), which ran on 4-color CGA graphics, and it has ten game speeds. You get to the highest speed before you get to 10000 points, and the score actually maxes at 65535. On the highest speed, you don't go for any more Tetrises. It's all you can do just to survive and to recover from the occasional unremoved line.

In 1992, I played for almost four hours more AFTER maxing the score.

The problem with Tetris, however, is what too much of it does to my head. If I play much Tetris, I start to dream about it. My mind gets locked on to seeing the various shapes and fitting them together, all hours of the day, even if I am doing something else. Takes three or four days of no Tetris to get the dreams and "seeing the shapes" to stop.

The 3D version, Blockout, is even worse! Tetris in 3D! With shapes that are one to five segments long, and twisty, and "pits" where you have to fill layers instead of rows. Much more intense! I think the last time I touched Blockout was 1996. It takes up to a WEEK to get those shapes out of my head after playing a serious bout.

I don't do Tetris any more. I also never owned any kind of Nintendo anything, so I don't know whether the Nintendo version is easier or harder (prior to the ridiculous "game over" phase Sulla mentions). Since you can go forever on the original, though, any comparison is rendered incongruous. The NES version sounds like a question of how many points you can score before line 290, while the DOS version is a marathon without end.


As for DDR... I've never actually seen one of those. Maybe I should get out more.


Here's one of my favorite "lucky -and- good" challenges. It took me more than five hundred tries before I beat The Box.

Most games are impossible to win, so you have to be patient, and very very stubborn, to keep trying and trying until you both get a solvable puzzle and also manage to play your moves correctly to solve it.

Here was my first win:

I've since beaten it a second time, out of a total of about eight hundred tries.


- Sirian

 

[The Fjonis]

I've since beaten it a second time, out of a total of about eight hundred tries.


- Sirian

You guys definitely have WAY too much time on your hands. I feel privileged every time I can play Civ4 for a few hours. These days, my exams are taking up all my time, so I won't even touch a computer game for another month...

Hope your hardware problems are fixed when you get your new hardware, Sirian. Can't wait for the next update!

 

[Sirian]

You guys definitely have WAY too much time on your hands. I feel privileged every time I can play Civ4 for a few hours.

Well, I'd say that a good 35% of tries at The Box are over within ten seconds. (Seriously.) So it's not uncommon to play ten or twenty at a sitting.

"Welcome to The Box. Please make your first move."

"Thank you for playing. Have a nice day!"




- Sirian