I'll echo the thanks to LogicalTautology for posting pictures of the starts. Please feel free to do a summary report or tweet / blog about the games as they take place. I wish I had the time to do write-ups myself. (You don't want to know how many hours went into the writing last year...)
Hesmyrr, my thought was not to put the games on YouTube because the recordings are so long. A four hour recording gets chopped up into several pieces when it goes over to YouTube. It seems easier to link directly to the Livestream recording and save the extra step. Are people having trouble accessing the recordings at Twitch (?)
The one thing I can think of Sullla is that as far as I know the Twitch mobile app does not support VODs. So anyone using a smartphone/tablet wouldn't be able to access Twitch VODs but would have YouTube access. Of course, I make no argument as to whether that is enough to make uploading YouTube mirrors a worthwhile endeavour.
(February 25th, 2015, 20:34)LogicalTautology Wrote: The one thing I can think of Sullla is that as far as I know the Twitch mobile app does not support VODs. So anyone using a smartphone/tablet wouldn't be able to access Twitch VODs but would have YouTube access. Of course, I make no argument as to whether that is enough to make uploading YouTube mirrors a worthwhile endeavour.
Not a problem for me this time around, But from wanting to watch AGDQ that I missed, it is frustrating to not be able to watch VODs on mobile.
Now since your production is smaller, it probably wouldnt be a big deal unless a large amount of the players only watched on mobile after the stream.
Predictions + Explanations below in case anyone wants to see them publicly.
Winner: Stalin
Runner Up: Wang Kon
First to Die: Churchill
# of Wars: 15
Victory Type: Diplomatic
Win Date: 335
I really like Stalin's start and his traits are okay, I also quite like Wang Kon, who is financial, has a non-"Evil" civ to one side and a good start, with Protective for if Huanya comes at him early. Churchill surrounded on all sides by warmongers except the Wang Kon side and the start looks good for humans, bad for AI. No domination but Stalin gets decently close and then backdoor diplo because the AI is too dumb to dominate efficiently. Less wars than the previous game because I think AI will die faster, so less repeat and defensive pact wars.
Bonus prediction: Montezuma dies soon after Churchill from declaring war on someone stupidly.
Well, that was even more fun than I expected. I've never been much into sports, but it felt like a similar kind of atmosphere to when folks gather their mates around the TV to watch the big game. Nothing quite beats watching it unfold live, dissecting the blow-by-blow action and cheering on your favourite team.
To quickly recap for those who missed it:
The early game was a mess as Korea pointlessly marched its army halfway across the map to Russia, Boudica wasted her time fruitlessly attacking an Aztec city on a hill pre-Catapults, and both De Gaulle and Churchill failed to settle critical nearby resources such as Gems in any reasonable time. Monty had great land but failed to expand beyond 4-5 cities, while Stalin expanded into dangerous locations that would prove difficult to hold. Only Huayna played a semi-solid early game, but even he neglected to research his critical bottleneck tech of Calendar for a considerable time.
Korea continued to troll both Russia and the wider world as the game continued to the middle ages, sniping cities from Boudica and Churchill as both France and the Aztecs collapsed in quick succession following two consecutive AP votes for world war courtesy of Huayna. Wang Kon also stole at least half the wonders during the middle period of the game. Churchill did surprisingly well for himself considering his central position, making the most of Korea's trolling and other AI conflicts by picking up border cities here and there from Russia, France and the Aztecs. Boudica finally made some headway by capturing a lot of good Aztec and French land, including the French capital of Paris with the Mausoleum of Mausollus, and capitalized on her gains by a quick war with Churchill in which he went from having equivalent power rating to around 2/3 power rating in just a couple of turns. Meanwhile Huayna made some slow but steady progress in beating back Stalin.
As the age of Rifling dawned, Boudica made her push to capture the three troll Korean cities on her border after Wang Kon had moved his military out of position with yet another trollish war declaration on Russia. With those buffer cities between Churchill and Boudica gone, England didn't stand much more of a chance against the Celtic hordes - despite their crazy tech rate. Not to be outdone by Boudica, Huayna Capac finally polished off Russia with a new wave of more advanced Cavalry, and turned his eyes to Korea in the south. Huayna had been "pleased" with Wang for almost the whole game, but two foolish civic switches by Wang removed their shared religion bonus and Huayna's favourite civic bonus and brought him down to only "cautious". Inca wasted no time marching its advanced army into backwards Korean territory, chomping through land faster and faster as both Infantry and Tanks appeared on the battlefield.
It was a race between Huayna and Boudica to see who could eliminate their rival first. Huayna won the race with his superior technology, finally eliminating Korea by taking their last city of Pyongyang. Ironically this was the city with the Statue of Zeus, which had caused Huayna significant happiness issues during his war - he took every other Korean city before going for that one, go figure. Meanwhile Boudica made slow but steady progress against Churchill, not helped by a poor AI pathfinding decision which left her main 107-unit stack immobile for a dozen or so turns. England proved significantly tougher to chew on than Korea, having unlocked its Redcoats just prior to Boudica's declaration of war. Still, sheer numbers eventually won out, and Boudica finally eliminated Churchill from the game sometime in the early T300's.
From hereon in the game was a peacefest, with both Boudica and Huayna too happy with one another to declare war - helped by diplomatic boosts from several city liberations to one another following the demise of Korea and England. Both sides were too evenly matched in population and land for a diplomatic win, and domination was off the table, so at this point it was down to culture or space. As Huayna was pretty much a whole era ahead of Boudica and snapping up the Modern techs at an alarming rate, the game predictably ended in a space race victory for the Inca some 40 turns later.
All in all this proved to be quite an interesting game to watch almost the whole way through - with bizarre AI decisions leaving the playing field surprisingly even for a very long time, and Korea entertaining everyone with its constant trollish decisions. Churchill did remarkably well with his central position, and was a dark horse candidate to win in the midgame. If it hadn't been for Boudica he might have even pulled it off. As it is, he was eliminated so sadly we won't be seeing him in the wildcard match - nor will we be entertained again by the antics of Korea. (As Sullla says, survivors only!)
Final standings:
1. Huayna Capac (spaceship T348)
2. Boudica
3. Churchill (eliminated)
4. Wang Kon (eliminated)
5. Stalin (eliminated)
6. Montezuma (eliminated)
7. De Gaulle (eliminated)
On the online sheet, the formulas (for the second game) for winner and runner-up points seems to be wrong for lots of people (including me) who have 0 while they had one of the 2 scoring leaders. (While it was good on the live show, so no idea what triggered it).
Well, I suppose there's no longer a need for me to post the summary / major events log I wrote up this evening! Well on the plus side I won't need to take as copious notes during the game next time if someone else is willing to write up a quick summary
Thanks for the great game, Sullla. See you all next week for Game Three!
Please feel free to do a summary report or tweet / blog about the games as they take place. I wish I had the time to do write-ups myself. (You don't want to know how many hours went into the writing last year...)
Well on the plus side I won't need to take as copious notes during the game next time if someone else is willing to write up a quick summary 