TechChariot

After all these years, you finally got your wish, Dave. 🥲

What’s a scene where every technical aspect came together perfectly?

Which movie scene is musically scored perfectly?

Today is "Mandatum Monday", where we explain the origin of a rule or "mandate" for Alchemy League Maps. For today's installment, we will cover "general rule changes". By default, maps provided to Alchemy AOE Competitions must be devoid of them -- let's talk about what that means. It is possible using random map scripting to change general game rules. You want to double feudal-age cost for a forever dark-age militia war? You can! You want to make the spies technology available at the Town Center in dark age? You can! You want to give players +1000 starting gold to make sure they can afford any dark-age technology? You can! But just because you can do all these things, does not necessarily mean that you should ... These rule changes may have a fun application in casual settings (such as diplomacy or FFA), but in more competitive environments, every second counts, and players become grumpy if they have to spend time learning new rules. Sometimes a thematic but modest rule change is okay for a competitive map, if it is minor and documented early...but for the most part, it is hard to justify. Players come because they love Age of Empires II, not any one map-maker's "interpretation" of it. In the past I experimented with rule changes for a competitive tournament, with limited success. On EIRE_Tara, there was a "King's Tax", because the map featured a holy coronation site (with large kingdom-wide upkeep costs). Players lost gold at a trickle equivalent to three relics, and the only way to stop it was to capture three relics (thus zeroing out). On EIRE_Achill, players received a small trickle of wood, simply for existing, and then there were other counter-intuitive ways to get wood, like trickle from trade workshops and converting gaia farms. These rule changes were all constructed to tell a story about how Achill island has no trees, with fuel and building materials supplied by peat instead. Despite extensive publication of map rule changes before the tournament, probably most people who played them didn't know. Players just don't read, sadly, and you can't expect them to. Best you can do is strengthen your position if you do change the rules, by publishing the minor changes early and exactly. I am also guilty of object-related rule changes, but that is a topic for another post. Suffice it to say -- if the players cannot click and see it displayed by their game somewhere, it is a rule change. Alchemy League's policy going forward is this: if there would be a rule change, it will apply to all maps of the same pack, for ease of uptake. This allows us to use the rule-changes as "thematic" (instead of just because the scripter wanted to). We try to teach a little bit of history during Alchemy League, and as long as we are careful, it will be a lot of fun!

Fun idea for AOE2DE that will never come to pass: Adjust new building cost/train time depending on foundation distance to other completed buildings under your control. Let's face it. One of the biggest missed opportunities in Age of Empires II is the base building. Sure, we've got some pretty building artwork, but you never see cute medieval towns outside of scenarios, low-elo legends, or high-effort random maps. For the most part, the towns we build are ahistoric. A new mechanic like this could provide another layer of complexity that would be healthy and provide more game variety. There's only so much you can do by adding more civilizations. How many words can a language have with an alphabet of only 4 letters? Buildings that could cost MORE if built closer to the center of your town: - Farms - Outposts - Camps, etc. Buildings that could cost LESS if built closer to the center of your town: - Towers - Walls - Castles - Docks - Markets, etc. Buildings mostly unaffected: - Houses Some civs could get bonuses or biases to this town spacing factor -- I'm looking at you Huns and Mongols for less "spread" penalty. It would also nerf tower rushes or castle drops, so that these units could be a bit stronger and worth building defensively, without being overpowered instruments of offensive resource denial or map control. Literally no empire snuck up a castle on an enemy gold mine, EVER. People noticed that kind of thing. Lastly, and most importantly, maybe we could see more wonder victories. The wonder would become cheaper and easier if its foundation were surrounded by castles/towers/walls. Think about it -- it makes sense the longer you do. Unfortunately, change is usually too expensive, but we can still dream!

Having been a few years since I last tried seeing what kind of build orders LLMs spit out, I was wondering whether today's stronger models would be better. Turns out not so much. Opus 4.7 gave me this interesting archer rush, with guarantee to reach 1100 elo (if 16:30 feudal!)

Physicist Michio Kaku suggests dark matter isn’t matter at all. It is gravity leaking from a parallel dimension.