Imperium One - Off to a Flying Start

[Smegged]

Inferior! Avians rule ok!







Thanks for all the goodies :D



Meow! Hiss! Stupid felines.



Those damn cats caused this "accident". Cats must die!



You has got no chance! Surrender and death will be painless!



It's those damn cats again! They is causing all evils in the universe! Cats must die!



No galaxy shall be safe until the feline menace is destroyed!







Ooohhhh, more shiney things!



Gorra is mine! All mine! Did I mention that the cats must die!











Thanks for the pressies! Must be Christmas. No, wait, cats aren't dead yet, and flutes haven't been made from their bones. It'll never be Christmas until then!



Doesn't the galaxy realise that while cats exist, there can be no peace!?

[Zed-F]

RSI - there's one acronym that sticks out. Charis should be able to empathize with that one, though he still writes lengthy turn logs.

I agree that too many acronyms makes it harder to follow your report -- even if they are familiar to the reader, overuse of acronyms, like punctuation or capitalization, is visually distracting. It makes your report come out sounding like bureaucratese rather than prose. However, repetitive strain injury is a valid complaint; if that's a serious issue for you, and you find the use of acronyms necessary from that point of view, then I don't think anyone here will argue with it too much. We'll just have to accept that mining info out of your reports will be a bit of extra work.

[Smegged]

Birdies with ion cannons is strong. Floating space jelly is weak!



Geode's better looking brother shows up! He makes bigger 'splosion than his ugly sibling though.



Somebody set us up the bomb!



They do make good grit!



Cats not dead yet. No kitties allowed in my galactic imperium!



We is so advanced we don't even get a mention!





Oooh loook, some new toys to burn cats with!



Mmmmm those cats barbequed beautifully! I can finally make peace in the galaxy!



But first I'll squash some ugly bugs.



And pull the tails off some slimey lizards.



My generals said to bring overwhelming forces into battle!



My money is on the birdies.



Planet make big boom!

[Smegged]

My feathered people gain their rightful place in the galaxy!



I'm not ruthless. You'd better watch it or you'll get a visit in the night by the Deadly Birdie Assassination Squad!

-Smegged

PS I never lost a planet (as far as I recall), my ion fighters owned for most of the game (until I was ready for the huge ships at least). Fun game, but a pigeon too easy for my tastes. Oh, and game ended in 2614.

[Bam-Bam]

Originally posted by Selentine@Apr 27 2004, 08:27 AM
I would rather pack more information into equal space. I really can't figure out where I got ahead of people who were frugal reporting dates, for instance. People could figure out where they fell behind me, but I made it more difficult than I intended. Obviously my report scans fine to me.

Good call on the dates--I still am trying to balance how to play and report at the same time. My method for this game was to take NO notes, and rely on about 200 screenshots to jog my memory. That did not work out as wellas I liked. For Civ3 reports, I took notes in a notepad window accessed by alt-tab-ing out of the game. That process is a bit more of a pain with dos-box, but still doable. I may shift to paper notes in the future. Certainly noting the dates (which I have been neglecting) provides good level of comparability.

As far as your shorthand goes--it was a bit more difficult to follow, but I got the hang of it after a page or so. Your report DOES give lots of detail about the game, so for my money, it's worth a bit of extra time to decode your shorthand. Reminds me of a naval message in some ways. Not my preferred read, but well worth it when the content has proven value. Based on this report, I'd put your future reports into the "proven value" pile.

[Selentine]

in general, I like your style of reporting: Not just a pure log, as some others do, but instead focusing more on your thoughts and strategy while still reporting many details, to help me analyze your gameplay, and all that accompanied with many screenshots. Very nice!

Thanks. That was my intention.

But please...pretty pretty please...do not use so many abbreviations next time! I admit I stopped reading your report after the first page.

That was not my intention.

I jumped right to the end of your report and saw you won in 2473, but I wasn't able to find out how.  It sounded like you had eliminated all your rivals, but I'm not sure...

I sat back and spied until getting caught and attacked. I cut off the attackers with fleets, then moved onward to wreak vengeance. This made white very happy, and I thought I'd thus win by vote in 2449, but I had to kill everyone instead.

I can't edit my report because my jargon is transparent to my eyes. I attempted to autoexpand 70-odd abbreviations. Try this spelled out version. If it still reads like a tech manual, so be it. I'm not trying to entertain you but rather to make MoO more entertaining for all.

Selentine

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Your [Selentine's] report DOES give lots of detail about the game, so for my money, it's worth a bit of extra time to decode your shorthand.

I agree that the level of details in Selentine's report warrants some extra work on the reader's part. But I would like to point out (to Selentine and others) that people like me, for whom English isn't their first language, already have to do some extra mental work to understand English reports in the first place. I guess I could deal with such a high number of acronyms if it would have been written in German, but as it was, I was so busy translating and finding the meaning of the acronyms that after the first page, I found I had lost sight of the big picture. Which was too bad, since it looked like a very well-played game!

-Kylearan

[Bam-Bam]

That makes it much more readable. I bet that helps for those for whom English is not their first language (see Kylerean's response to my post above). I should have tripped to that, since I am trying to learn Arabic right now for a trip to Egypt.

Don't worry about the tone (tech manual vs. story). Some of us take storywriting to extremes at times. That makes for a variety of report types, which for me adds to the interest of a tournament like this.

Thanks again for playing, and thanks for the detailed report.

[Charis]

Selentine, thanks for playing, and for reporting. I think you're right that longer term folks will
be using many abbreviations, and that it does pack a lot more info in less space - and I especially
hear you on the RSI issue :wacko:

That said, as a n00b I couldn't make heads or tails out of your report. That's just FYI actually.
I don't mind a 'spread' in the type of reporting - just as you'll have to choose the games that
interest you, I'll have to choose the reports I can learn from. At some point no doubt there
will be a 'glossary' if there is a 'common' set of such abbreviations, and IF and when I decide to
learn the game better, I'll pore over such a list. But for now, I'm still trying to figure out if a Stinger
is better than a Hyper-V, or what on earth really happens with a bomb on a planet

The volume of abbreviations is just too much to have any fix, but something I hope others will
keep in mind - it's great to use a term once and have the abbreviation in quotes - at least once in a while
and for just a few of the terms. If everyone does a little of this, the overall effect would be pretty good.
For example... "I decided to max out factory production (max facs) on the homeworld." then later in the report something like "Debius now max pop, shifts to facs" makes sense to everyone.
I'm one of the worst offenders with abbreviations in Civ3 reporting, but I force myself to spell out a handful of terms each game, like Stack-of-Doom (SOD) or micromanage the city citizens (MM).

Stick with what's comfortable for you, and enjoy whichever Imperia you can :D

Charis

PS in Edit - Wow! Thanks for the 'translation'! That's more work than I expected. I've bookmarked this and as time allows will try to go over this in a lot more detail (and look at the first one to pick up some abbreviations )

[Bam-Bam]

I've bookmarked this and as time allows will try to go over this in a lot more detail [b](and look at the first one to pick up some abbreviations) [/b]

Nooooooo!!!! Not the RMCADs! (Rapidly Multiplying Charis Acronyms (alt.: Abbreviations) of Death)



Sorry, couldn't resist.