Name Your Best 8

[Realest]

much disrespect to the true all time greats, this thread is.

[UtopiaExpert]

much disrespect to the true all time greats, this thread is.

Trust in your former masters, misplaced may be.

[goodz]

If going with people who have played recently:
flogger
jdorje
zauper
petrified
asf
munk
elit
dirty

Im going to go with that group. If open up for all players ever then I'd pick a collection of retired friends who it would be fun to play with :)

[UtopiaExpert]

For funplay I'd also definitely select you Goodz.

[Meeni]

Once certain efficiencies were isolated they were followed until the reasons became forgotten.

Lots of strategies/tactics have been changed or introduced over the last 10-15 ages.

Some examples:

Shift from 1 bank, to 3, to 5+ large provs
Bounce play
Raze in war
Attacker-to-TM ratio
Homes pump
Politics

These aren't done as a result of lack of understanding, as far as I know. Lots of copycat activity when something is found to work, but new ideas continue to pop up if not as frequent or as radical as before

[StratOcastle]

Lots of strategies/tactics have been changed or introduced over the last 10-15 ages.

Some examples:

Shift from 1 bank, to 3, to 5+ large provs
Bounce play
Raze in war
Attacker-to-TM ratio
Homes pump
Politics

These aren't done as a result of lack of understanding, as far as I know. Lots of copycat activity when something is found to work, but new ideas continue to pop up if not as frequent or as radical as before

Yes. My exposure to other games make some of these common alternatives. The homes pump thing is funny because big egos can't give credit where credit is due. What I mean by that is some less popular players did the legwork. We should be humble enough to admit that we may have linked the bridge but someone else built it.

Everyone draws from influences, or I'd hope. I can see the chess parallel but that's incomplete. I keep my influences universal. T/m ratio by chess is one thing and by D&D is another. I combine these ideas fluidly.

Bounce play was never something I did mathematically, or anything else for that matter. I've used it against UB but this in a wild lower tier environment where followup was unlikely. As an avian I razed regularly in war along with other alternatives to trad march. I never feel like I know more about the game than others, but I do feel like a free thinker.

Yknow I like my Virtual Kingdom thingy. I like seeing some of those ideas come to fruition in the CR alignment this age. Was it flogger said the thing about faery sage? You'll note it wasn't an intelligent conclusion of mine. The Virtual Kingdom balance defaulted faery race to the sage personality.
So when I say dwarf tac I'm saying it because his periphery is covered by MA and CS. Unlike most who choose tac on undead. But in the restrictions of The Virtual Kingdom the choice is made to give total coverage to one rather than magic defense to one and theft to the other. The intel/stealth sacrifice is noted, but I'm not as into spreads as I am into stacking. Besides, it's not like tac is the most common top strat.

I guess the next thing is which is an exploring and which is a warring setup. I liken The Virtual Kingdom to simply being a kingdom. I'm messing around with explore on this age off for me. I could see going 3 faery sages up as banks. Similar to CR in a sloped nw approach. Unlike the recent explorers I'd concentrate on top feeding though. CR is the template I'm watching. I'm simply replacing certain CR provinces with Virtual Kingdom restrictions as a reflection.

[makeo]

Hey strat0.

I'll be honest, I think it's great you explore the game, and don't just have a blind ideology of how to play.
When it comes to homespump though, while most of us had a conception of how we could alter be for positive effects, the systematic way it was broken down in understanding and implemented was pure Pulse vs Rage from a while back. It was JSS and flogger conversations( iirc) that flogger then worked out the steps for.

Whether some people do the legwork in conception is, in my opinion, different to those who do the implementation.

I knew I could manipulate be for positive effects well before I saw Pulse drop it. However I could never have implemented it in the step by step awesome way they did. That to me separates the greats from the rest of us. :)

They can take influences and knowledge and systematically implement it. That those of us who are decent go "Yeah, that makes sense, why didn't I see that?"

[StratOcastle]

Oh I agree, just more from a spark to a system.

You must've come across my posts concerning the idea guys and the mechanics. The problem with a mechanically attractive game is that mechanical thinkers tend not to be idealists and they dominate the populace.
Why is this a problem?

Because with proven mechanics things only move toward making efficient. When an innovation comes along from an idealist it doesn't just take time to get the mechanics worked out, it's hard to find a mechanic that enjoys the puzzle.

In my observance of idealist in this game the 2 that come to mind immediately in my short stint is Monsoor and Realest. Both are classic cases. You can see evidence of this in octobrevs regard for Realest. His wording is spot on to convey an incredibly valuable player that apparently has mechanical shortcomings. By Realests own admission he never broke 4k acres. His creativity is in my YouTube favorites.
In the case of Monsoor I noted everybody complaining but I noticed he was a master of behavioral intuition. Even korp doesn't buy into this but I have a sense for these things. He essentially tricked everyone including his core all the way to a crown. It was an astonishing feat that threw mechanics on it's head. I believe he was in a zone.

Critics say the Monsoor crown was a one time thing, but Monsoor knew this himself.
Iaijutsu.

[Realest]

The most successful troll by Syntico/Cocktobrev is that I can't play a core province, ******s.

[makeo]

You gave them the ammo? :p