Defeat Tastes Bitter
This Sunday’s gaming was shite. Guess it was the first game that really put me in a bad mood. I was winning, despite popular opinion and resentment, and my computer slowed down to the point of it being unbelievably slow. I get it when there are too many units in the game. I’ll fix that with a small investment in RAM and hopefully it will solve the problem. I was about to win with a wonder in four-way match-up with Anton, Ning and Robert. I managed to defend myself very well, and would have done a much better job if my computer hadn’t slowed - in fact, if my computer wasn’t slowing down, I would have gone on the offensive much more than I did. Anyway, I got dropped eventually and it was a real pain ’cause this would have been a very satisfying win.
Someone has the audacity to suggest that I don’t build so many buildings and units…he shall remain nameless. Someone suggest to me how to get a good sized army together to defend against three possible threats with just two barracks??? With 15 barracks, I can get a good sized army together with two presses of a mouse button - if my original army is defeated, then I can quickly put together the counters for the army. Dealing with one opponent, this might work with a few barracks…but three, it’s necessary since there are a multitude of attack permutations - 9 basic attacks to deal with and 18 2-combination attacks to deal with and 36 3-combination attacks to deal with (okay, my maths may not be accurate, in fact it might be wrong, but you get the idea), 15 barracks is a small price to pay. And getting armies of 30 units or more out in quick succession is not cheap, hence the economy needs to be able to back up the demands of the army. So I make no apologies for the size of my base, my army or my economy. For those of you who want to criticize my defensive behavior, when I get more RAM, you’ll feel it.
So, this all left a sour taste in my mouth. I was denied a victory because of a stupid computer. The next game with Anton and Ning was pointless. Somehow I think they felt they needed to avenge their ineptitude in the last game. So lucky me was the candidate for both of their attention. Although I could give them the benefit of the doubt and say that I was sandwiched between the two, I know their style of play, and it was definitely something suspicious. I decided to quit in disgust.
Tried a random game with some stranger while I sulked. The guy I played was competent and fast, but I think he lost his connection. This gave me a win, but still felt unsatisfactory about the win. This all changed when we convinced Robert to come back for 2v2 team game - great stuff. Random teams and Ning and I were paired against Anton and Robert. To be honest, Ning and I work well together…I think. He takes the offensive pretty quickly and it can be crippling. Unfortunately, he leaves his base undefended and I’ve seen a few situations with Anton and Ning where they’ve held knives to each others throat by building forward bases at each others base. So in the previous game where I played with Ning, he left his base undefended leaving me to the defending. It worked well and its the basic principle that we work on. Luckily, in this team game, I managed to build a good infrastructure in place to be able to take the fight to Anton while Ning dealt with Robert. It even let me deal with a late little surprise from Anton without too much concern. I should have finished the evening there.
But I somehow let Ning talk me into a team game with two other people. It took us an hour of drops and connection failures to finally end up playing a 1v1 rather than 2v2. Even that was unsatisfactory, as Ning beat me soundly..three times. Tiredness (no excuse, really) and boredom with the game, meant that I wasn’t playing my best…and experimenting when you are knackered, isn’t too smart either. So I look forward to replaying Ning…and see if these excuses are valid. I beat him before and dammit, I’ll beat him again.
