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I used to play Age of Empires. Its a real time strategy game where a common match is for two teams of three to try to kill each other. A feature of the game is

I used to play Age of Empires. Its a real time strategy game where a common match is for two teams of three to try to kill each other. A feature of the game is that each player can spend resources (gold, wood, etc) to reach new "ages". Players start in the stone age, and advance to tool, bronze and iron ages. Each new age offers better weapons, better technology, greater efficiency. Consider two games. In the first game, we observe that the players take on average 30 minutes to get to tool age, and only one player ever makes it to iron age before a team is victorious after about two hours. In a second game, we observe that the players average ten minutes to bronze age and all but one player makes it to iron age before the game is won after about an hour. All players invest in technology before fighting. Who are the better players?

pdpi 11y ago
I can only assume that the point you're trying to make is that there's not nearly enough information for a reasonable answer. It's certainly hard to come up with solid ideas without a clear understanding of the game's pacing. In RTS games, teching and building armies compete for resources, so I'd hazard guessing that Game 1 happens because somebody opted for early aggression, which forces everybody to spend money on units to fight off the early threat. Looks like a well balanced game where both teams kept the aggression level high, which justifies the long duration, and the low-tech end-game. Second game looks like there was little to no early-game aggression, which meant that everybody got to funnel resources into teching up early. I'm not sure if late-tech battles are more all-or-nothing, or whether one team was just clearly stronger than the other -- though if that's the case, why didn't they push for an advantage earlier? AoE is much more symmetrical than, say, Starcraft IIRC, so one team having a weaker early game but a stronger late game doesn't seem likely. I'm curious, though: how does this relate to the article?
- lowbloodsugar 11y ago
  Thank you for biting =) The players in the first game are likely experts and if a team from the first game plays against a team from the second, the game will be over in less than ten minutes. Its not merely that "someone opted for early aggression", its that when playing at the elite level all players opt for aggression. Its not rock, paper, scissors. Its a game of rock, paper. The point is that deployed features trump undeployed "it'll be great when its ready" technology. I'm happy for my competitors to opt for spending money attempting to achieve "good architecture" over "working code". Ok, so the analogy is kind of shitty. Unlike Age of Empires, spending money on "good architecture" is actually less effective at creating good architecture than writing working code.
- lowbloodsugar 11y ago
  Another point is that to the beginner, the second game looks like the better players. The experts would identify the first. The skill necessary to recognize the better strategy is the same skill required to implement the better strategy. The beginner lacks this skill.
regularfry 11y ago
The best* players are the ones who gank their opponents in 10 minutes using clubs and pointy sticks. *For certain values of "best"
- robmcm 11y ago
  It depends on the market conditions. If you are the only player you should spend your time investing so when the competition comes out with pointy sticks they can't get through your electrified Graphene perimiter. If you don't then there is a risk you get iPhoned, Facebooked, Googled etc.

pdpi 11y ago

I can only assume that the point you're trying to make is that there's not nearly enough information for a reasonable answer. It's certainly hard to come up with solid ideas without a clear understanding of the game's pacing. In RTS games, teching and building armies compete for resources, so I'd hazard guessing that Game 1 happens because somebody opted for early aggression, which forces everybody to spend money on units to fight off the early threat. Looks like a well balanced game where both teams kept the aggression level high, which justifies the long duration, and the low-tech end-game. Second game looks like there was little to no early-game aggression, which meant that everybody got to funnel resources into teching up early. I'm not sure if late-tech battles are more all-or-nothing, or whether one team was just clearly stronger than the other -- though if that's the case, why didn't they push for an advantage earlier? AoE is much more symmetrical than, say, Starcraft IIRC, so one team having a weaker early game but a stronger late game doesn't seem likely. I'm curious, though: how does this relate to the article?

lowbloodsugar 11y ago
Thank you for biting =) The players in the first game are likely experts and if a team from the first game plays against a team from the second, the game will be over in less than ten minutes. Its not merely that "someone opted for early aggression", its that when playing at the elite level all players opt for aggression. Its not rock, paper, scissors. Its a game of rock, paper. The point is that deployed features trump undeployed "it'll be great when its ready" technology. I'm happy for my competitors to opt for spending money attempting to achieve "good architecture" over "working code". Ok, so the analogy is kind of shitty. Unlike Age of Empires, spending money on "good architecture" is actually less effective at creating good architecture than writing working code.
lowbloodsugar 11y ago
Another point is that to the beginner, the second game looks like the better players. The experts would identify the first. The skill necessary to recognize the better strategy is the same skill required to implement the better strategy. The beginner lacks this skill.

regularfry 11y ago

The best* players are the ones who gank their opponents in 10 minutes using clubs and pointy sticks. *For certain values of "best"

robmcm 11y ago
It depends on the market conditions. If you are the only player you should spend your time investing so when the competition comes out with pointy sticks they can't get through your electrified Graphene perimiter. If you don't then there is a risk you get iPhoned, Facebooked, Googled etc.