SGOTM8 - Wacken

[grahamiam]

Damn look at them contemplating their strategy in relation to our finish date.

Tientsin is the key. If someone captures it for them, then they're set. If not, they're screwed (assuming they stop research after flight). Next set of 10 is key and I'll certainly be watching

 

[grahamiam]

EDIT2: Have looked through our main competition's threads. It looks like we might pull this off. If so, will we be allowed to continue as a team in SGOTM9? How many wins were you allowed before being split up, Wacken/Offa/Xevious?

Actually, I'm probably "retiring" from C3C SG's. Not 100% sure so I'll reconfirm before the next game.

I've preordered Civ4 (yeah, I know, $50 betatester ) so I'll probably want to focus on that after Oct 31st. Also, my ability and desire to play these games on time seems to be waning. Perhaps 2+yrs of lack of sleep is finally catching up Or perhaps playing against the AI just seems uninteresting and tedious, not sure.
However, things I am sure about is that the SGOTM competition is a great addition to this site. The Team Smackster/Wacken games were great and I'm glad dman & smackster recruited me for game 6 so I could eventually be involved with both. Many thanks The talent on this team is amazing and I look forward to reading what all of you dissect from Civ4

 

[Xevious]

I think this will be my last sgotm also. I'm constantly finding it hard to make time for them. I seem to take a long time agonizing over my turns compared to most of you and I just don't have that kind of time these days. I have greatly enjoyed playing with you guys and wish you well on the next one. I will probably continue to check in and see how things are going in the next game, but from the enviable position of lurker where I can watch everyones progress at the same time.

 

[dmanakho]

Let's face it everybody in this team is half-retired.

Wacken - retired but came back just for SGOTMs
Wotan - retired from everything but SGOTMs
Myself - practically retired only play SGOTMs and SGs once in a blue moon.
Offa - not sure about Offa though
and now G-Man and Xevoius announced their retirement too

I hope you guys will get bored by the time when next SGOTM starts and will be more than willing to come back to play for the team. I know i will, even after Civ4 comes out.
But then i am sure we will have Civ4 version of SGOTM in no time and wouldn't it be a good tradition to continue with the new game as the same team?

BTW, I haven't pre-ordered Civ4 but will buy it as soon as it appears on sale in Walmart/Target stores.

And to finish my post - there was only one major mistake we made in this game. We shouldn't have uploaded our last 2 or 3 saves. Team Smackster made exactly this mistake in SGOTM3 and Klarius pulled the one turn victory.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

To tell my story:

I have always been playing PC games very avidly. Starcraft, Diablo, WoW, Civ2, Ci3, etc.
I now swiched to something pretty different since there my talents at least come to use financially Professional gambling (I am far from a professional yet, but that should come with time)

I have semi-quit Civ3 quite a while ago now. Since then, i only played the sgotms. That is precisely enough for me, it doesn't cost me too much time. Most time i spend posting and thinking is done at work .

I am still unsure if i am gonna play civ4. If i am gonna play it, i will probably play it with the intent of winning the very first (s)gotm there is gonna be. I am still in doubt if i want to spend so much time on a game.

For the next SGOTM here, i will see if there are enough interesting and skilled people to join me for another victory attempt. If not i might do a training team.

 

[Offa]

I am really not sure about whether to play more. I have kind of lost the heart to fail to get top scores in GOTM, but my addiction is pretty bad so I don’t really know. I will definitely buy Civ4 and hope that I will like it. The succession games have been a blast, and it has been great playing with you all. In particular, Wacken who has played with me since SGOTM4, is quite brilliant, and if nothing else I hope I have persuaded him that just playing Sid games is not where it is at. Gozpel, who also played with me in sgotm 1 and 2 was great fun too, and I hope he is OK.

I note that team Klarius all introduced themselves at the start which I think was a nice idea. I don’t really know anyone in RL who plays Civ to any standard and would be very interested to flesh out my “virtual” friends a bit more.

For myself, I am a 41 year old doctor, working as a Consultant Radiologist, living in Oxfordshire. I am married with 2 daughters aged 10 months, and 5 years. I always feared that I would find computers too distracting and didn’t buy one until I passed my final exam (of many) in 1995.

Within days of buying a computer, I played one game of civ1 which I found incomprehensible but fun, then bought civ2 as soon as it came out and got pretty addicted. I played in a self taught fashion which I now see wasn’t that hot but I loved it. Back then my GF (now wife) used to play civ2 too. We used to play together or as an informal succession game. However, she hasn’t shown any inclination for years now, and would love it if I hated civ4. I tried civ3 as soon as it came out, but struggled so much that I looked for help on the web and fell into a deep addiction when I found civfanatics. I actually started lurking in gotm1, but didn’t start playing until gotm15, which is still a long time ago now.

I have never really played any other computer games with any real dedication, although I have tried many first person shooter (doom, doom 3, half life, medal of honour, max payne…). Like my efforts at Java programming these are just methadone for my Civ addiction.

I did recently flirt with the idea of playing online poker, but my wife vetoed that in a BIG way. So, Wacken it won’t be my money you will be taking. Knowing that people as clever as you are trying their hand at professional gambling make it even less attractive, I wish you luck though, I hope your obvious love of loud music won’t addle your brain. I used to play a lot of bridge 20 years ago: maybe I’ll try that…

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Ah offa, you will play, and if we are not gonna get a good team for next sg, we can do a training team together

BTW, my work is related to your job.
I work at Philips Medical Systems, i do the software on X-ray machines.

 

[grahamiam]

Well, I guess I can step up after that, offa

I'm a 35 yr old Mechanical Engineer working for Knorr Brake Corporation in Westminster, MD. It is owned by a German company called Knorr Bremse, based in Munich. I design hydraulic brake equipment for passenger rail cars like subways and trams. Typical equipment I design are brake calipers and hydraulic power/control units. I try to help out with brake discs and other items when possible.

I have 2 boys, now at the age of 2 and 5. In my 20's, I traveled a lot to East Asia (mostly Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan), and met my wife in Taiwan. She just became a citizen of the US on September 6th. I live in Hanover, Pennsylvania, which is a small town that makes a lot of pretzels and potaoe chips (Utz and Hanover Foods are based here). It's quiet and nice, and we were able to afford to build a new house 4yrs ago which was why we moved here. It's also only about 20minutes from work. Funny thing is, it's about 40 minutes from where Ronald works I also grew up in North Wales, PA, which is about 3 exits south on the Northeast Extension from Xevious via the Lansdale exit My parents still live in Montgomeryville, which is in that same area.

I've played Civ1 briefly and then Civ2 for about 1yr. Didn't really get addicted to Civ till this installment, and have been playing for about 3yrs. I started competing in gotm in Oct 2003, but then gave up earlier this year as I couldn't fit games within the 30 day requirement and do all the other stuff I was doing. Now, I'm just down to pbem's which are slow and require some different skills, but not too many.
My game list goes back to the early Atari 2600's, so I won't bore you with the whole thing (I actually can recall games of Adventure and finding the "easter egg" ). My favorite, more recent, games include X-Com1/2, Fallout 1/2, Doom 1/2, HL 1/2, MoO2. As can be seen from my list, I haven't bought a lot of recent games. Well, Civ3 has helped keep my gaming budget down (even with the expansions) by giving me 3yrs of fun so I can't really complain. Looking forward to the 4th installment and trying to finish HL2 before it happens

As far as gambling goes, I avoid it. No, wait, I invest in stocks, but that's not gambling. Or is it?

 

[WackenOpenAir]

stocks are the highest level of professional gamblim IMO
The difference is, i started playing poker without investing more than 50 dollars of my own money. That won't do much in stocks.

If i ever get together a decent amount of money, i will certainly have a look at the stock market as well

 

[Xevious]

You know, I was reading the intros on klarius' thread and thinking it would be neat to do that on our's and lo and behold, here it is.

I'm 35 (turn 36 next month), and am a customer service engineer for StorageTek, which was recently acquired by Sun Microsystems. I mainly install and repair tape libraries (silos) and tape drives attached to mainframe and open systems (Unix/Windows Servers), but also work on disk drives and various other large scale equipment. Since being acquired by Sun, I expect to be fixing Sun UNIX servers soon as well.

I'm married 13 years this past June, and have 2 girls, 8 and 10, and live in Allentown, PA, not terribly far from grahamian (maybe 2 hours?).

 

[dmanakho]

So...
You guys told everything about yourselves but what your names are...
Are you afraid of identity theft or simply prefer web site handles.

My name is actually can easily be guessed from my handle.
My name is Dmitry Manakhov, but years ago in the first unix system i worked with we had 8 characters limitat for user name. Hence it became dmanakho and i got so used to it (or may be so lazy) and no use it everywhere... (Oh no, my personal banking user id is different, don't even hope ).
I am 32 years old, married for 7 years. One son and we are expecting second child to be born in february. I am a computer network engineer work and live in Cary, NC. Nice, used to be small but quickly growing town and nice state with lots of hills and lakes. Although i must admit PA is also quite remarkable place, my aunt lives in Lancaster and i visit her often.

As for the games.... Well.. that's how i've chosen my career.... First time so a computer in high school back in 80th. Played games ever since. RTS games always were favorite starting with Dune II the first real time strategy ever.
Didn't play civilization at all until 2 years ago and quickly discovered this site.
Never developed a taste for the card games but love billiards.

 

[Offa]

So...
You guys told everything about yourselves but what your names are...
Are you afraid of identity theft or simply prefer web site handles.

No way will I reveal my secret identity. The supers can never let their disguises slip.

Alright then: Brendan Barry. If you follow names you might spot this as Irish and indeed both my parents are Irish. I was a bit vague about where I lived too: I actually live in North Newington, a charming little village 3 miles west of Banbury. I have been here 3 years, previously I was in Manchester, Nottingham, Birmingham with brief times living in Melbourne (Victoria, not Derbyshire), London and Southampton.

Offa is a great name though. I picked it as I love history, the dark Ages is a particularly fascinating time, and Offa was the best known Mercian king. He was actually based in Tamworth, a bit north of where I am, but Mercia undoubtably included Oxfordshire at the time. Offa is also particularly easy to type.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Arjen Smit

Eindhoven, the netherlands. For Holland it is a big city, for the world it is more like a big vilage ~250k citizens.

I studied computer science, finished that study 1 year ago. Since then working at the X-ray machines @ Philips.

 

[Offa]

Since then working at the X-ray machines @ Philips.

As well as other rival machines, I use a Philips fluoro unit, so I guess I am potentially one of your end users .

Back to the game, Klarius' gang, undoubtably goaded into changing their plan by our graph have a real chance of beating us. They are I think still researching though so their game is fairly legit ( if they ever read this).
If they do win it will be a big endorsement for gift-retake-extort as a tactic. Of course we also considered going straight to flight, but we lacked the overseas bases that they have. With their tech strategy they won't have to deal with infantry either.

Klarius et al were too tight to investigate the Chinese capital, but I didn't have any such scruples with their save: it had 7 reg spears, no barracks. They should all be redlined if the romans attack, but still it will require a big slice of luck for them to suceed. So lets all cheer on the Chinese.

 

[grahamiam]

yeah, I looked at thier save as well. doesn't look good for us. Hopefully, the Romans drop of a bunch of junk instead of decent units.

 

[Offa]

Actually, Klarius' team (at 1000ad now) will definitely beat us.

Even if they have to get advanced flight they could easily conquer before 1200. Because of their gifting trick they will only need 1-2 turns following advanced flight to finish, whereas it took us 10 turns. It seems a pity that we are going to be beaten (just) by such a cheesy trick, but we will just have to take it.

I still think that overall ours was the better game.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

We must have our revenge next sgotm then.

So delay your retirement everyone

Next sgotm lets simply not play ahead of our competition.

 

[Xevious]

I have to admit that if we lose this I will feel less inclined to quit.

 

[Xevious]

Seems like this game will be more proof that any graph of progress can be used to help change how you play in relation to other teams.

 

[dmanakho]

We must have our revenge next sgotm then.

So delay your retirement everyone

Next sgotm lets simply not play ahead of our competition.

It was SGOTM3 all over again. Will gladly stay and play for the team next time around.