This game feels very impish

[The Black Sword]

Been trying to C+D Dreylin, but he started doing some weird stuff after his first settler. Currently the best fit I can get is that he's teched archery, before agriculture for his new wheat, and whipped an archer EOT34. I'll try to figure out a more likely explanation. But if that's the case

a) He might be settling aggressively soon.
b) I don't want to settle aggressively against him.
c) I should be able to outbuild him.

Also, if you Americans get to spam superbowl stuff :

[DaveV]

An interesting contrast from US players, who would already have donned their championship T shirts and baseball caps. I'm amused by the guy with the bloody nose.

On a more serious note, do rugby players suffer from CTE? They get bumped and tackled about as much as American Football players, but without the extensive padding.

[The Black Sword]

I don't think the long term effects of rugby have been studied in detail over here, though I don't follow it super closely so I could be misrepresenting things. I seem to recall some player recently agreeing to donate his brain to be studied after his death to try confirm a link. Over the last few seasons there has been some controversy over head injury assessments during games - players are required to leave the field and can't return if the doctor decides they've been concussed, but there were some claims of people playing on regardless. There's also some talk of limiting the amount of contact in underage games. I imagine they'll have to consider changes down the line as more information becomes available though.

Btw the bloody nosed guy is Johnny Sexton, who had an amazing last minute drop goal to win the first game against France.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOPE-F3lK4A

The whole play running up to it(not shown in that) is a great watch too.

[The Black Sword]

Met a new neighbour to the West. Superdeath can't be too far away if he's managed to find me with a warrior. This is not feeling like the sandbox the 220 tiles per player promised. From his posts at the start of the game he wants to be left alone for a while, hopefully he reciprocates to others. Still the warrior messes up my micro even further, stopping me hooking the copper, possibly making me chop more warriors. Couldn't he have found a better use for those hammers at home?

[Japper007]

On a more serious note, do rugby players suffer from CTE? They get bumped and tackled about as much as American Football players, but without the extensive padding.

This is going to sound counter-intuitive, but extensive padding actually increases risks of concussive trauma:

Since the force in contact sports like rugby and football is exerted by a human being, the tackler has to hold back somewhat to prevent injury to himself. This is less necessary with padding and therefore football players actually tackle with greater force (it's also why American football players are preferred "large" rather than athletic like in rugby). I don't have the article saved so take this with a grain of salt, but I read once that in a two sided push the two footballers create a combined metric tonne (1000 KG/cm ) of pressure on the contact point. If two rugby players exerted this pressure on each other it would result in broken bones and torn ligaments so they each instinctively, both hold back on, and roll with and redirect the force.

Think about this scenario: I tell you to knock over a brick wall by running into it, would you rather do this with or without padding? And in which case do you think it'll be more successful? 

I've done a lot of full-contact sparring sports (Muay Tai and also the unarmed and unarmoured part of Historical European Martial Arts) and the same thing applies there. A punch with a padded boxing glove has far more impact than a bareknuckle punch, since the guy punching doesn't have to worry about fracturing his knuckles or hurting his hand in another way. A bareknuckle punch cuts skin which is why it's not preferred in many contact sports, but it's far less likely to knock someone out (i.e. cause brain damage).

TL:DR Because humans hold themselves back somewhat, introducing padding to contact sports actually increases the risk of brain damage due to higher force.

[Mardoc]

One nitpick for Japper:

I don't have the article saved so take this with a grain of salt, but I read once that in a two sided push the two footballers create a combined metric tonne (1000 KG/cm ) of pressure on the contact point.

That number can't possibly be right, because neither tonnes nor kg/cm are units of pressure.  Possibly they meant to say a tonne of total force, at some instant? Except that would imply only about 10 g's of acceleration, and google suggests that a concussion requires something more like 90-100 g's.

[Japper007]

One nitpick for Japper:

I don't have the article saved so take this with a grain of salt, but I read once that in a two sided push the two footballers create a combined metric tonne (1000 KG/cm ) of pressure on the contact point.

That number can't possibly be right, because neither tonnes nor kg/cm are units of pressure.  Possibly they meant to say a tonne of total force, at some instant?  Except that would imply only about 10 g's of acceleration, and google suggests that a concussion requires something more like 90-100 g's.

You are right I was wrong, it's actually more :

Average contact per game

American football:

Average tackles per game per player: 4 with highest recorded at 4600lbs (by sports science), consistent contact away from the ball with downfield blocking with contact as severe as a tackle.

Rugby:

Average tackles per game per player: 16 - Average hit impact: 1600lbs. of force (recorded from members of the LA rugby team by sports science)

So football players tackle almost 4 times as hard as rugby players.

[The Black Sword]

How big is the difference in the variation between average and max for football? 3*16=48. And what sort of units are lbs? 

[RefSteel]

neither tonnes nor kg/cm are units of pressure.

I imagine he meant 1,000 kg/cm^2 (one metric ton per square centimeter) - or was talking about something other than pressure. I would also have supposed that the primary concussion danger comes from rate of change in acceleration (the way acceleration is itself the rate of change in velocity, which is the rate of change in distance) - I've heard this third-derivative rate called "jerk," but I'm not sure if that's the scientific term - it would presumably be recorded in m/s^3. I'm not competent to calculate the biomechanics of what kinds of impacts would produce high levels of jerk, but I doubt if pressure per se has much (directly) to do with it; the point is presumably the sudden change in pressure/force/etc.

A metric ton per square centimeter sounds like an awfully unpleasant amount of pressure to experience though, no matter how briefly!

(Also note that not all protective equipment is created equal: Helmets in boxing don't reduce the force with which people punch, because you don't punch with your head. Helmets in football apparently do, at least in leagues where rule-enforcement is lax, because linemen who can get away with it do punch with their helmeted heads. This is a big but largely-ignored problem in high school football in particular, according to my limited knowledge of the subject.)

[The Black Sword]

Back in civ news:



Superdeath's warrior is still circling around. I don't think he's going to declare war, if he was going to do so I think he would have done it 2 turns earlier rather than going the long way around. Still I felt I should chop the warrior to be safe. If he war decs I'd be forced to whip a warrior and lose a bunch of hammers in overflow. This chop was supposed to complete my settler this turn, instead it will be completed next turn instead. So he's delayed my 3rd city by a turn also, but the worker micro for the city is a lot nicer so I didn't think it was too big of a loss. Hopefully the extra warrior can go north and help defend the next plant vs Dreylin.

Speaking of Dreylin, his opening is looking very suspect.


He still has not hooked the wheat in Exxon, despite founding the city 10t ago. He just got culture in the city too, so either a monument or a barracks. But the city has nothing important to claim in the 2nd ring? I think my Cre trait might be spooking him out. I'm feeling pretty hopeful I can get the land I want here.

Btw, I've been trundling along on the bottom of the scoreboard for the last few turns, but I'm not worried. On the tech front I've been switching back and forth between pottery and AH as my micro plan keeps changing. I should have 1 tech worth of points extra right now, but I think I'll hit Pottery when I need to anyway, so there's been no real cost to this indecision. I've also invested into workers instead of pop points like other people. Workers are better value IMO but they don't give any score points. Once granaries go up then growing becomes a really good deal and score points for pop become a more realistic indicator.