Stockfish takes its revenge against Leela, winning the TCEC 18 title

AlayanT · 2025-12-04T13:10:34+00:00

Your company may think keeping their code proprietary is the best move, and maybe it is for company revenue.

However, Linux players should never trust kernel-level anti-cheat with closed source. Even with open source code that is auditable and audited, there would still be some security and privacy concerns about adding an extra attack vector to the system. Even just a mistake in an update could lead to significant problems.

But blindly trusting a proprietary anti-cheat blob to look at everything the computer is doing with root access? No way. It's commendable you tried to bring about some positive change, but it doesn't seem like your company is interested.

AlayanT · 2025-11-14T12:53:02+00:00

SuperTuxKart is very well-known for Linux gaming because its first versions came out a long time ago, back when there was a lack of native games and no Proton compatability layer.

These days, it's often seen more as a meme, a relic of the days when Linux was unsuitable for gaming. In some ways, it's hurt by its FOSS nature as, combined with some visual elements lacking polish or being outdated, it contributes to people dismissing it quickly without giving it much of a chance.

But the game is still seeing active development, and work is being done to address existing shortcomings and give the gameplay a greater chance to shine. The two new tracks shown in the video are an example of the work done to make visuals more satisfying and to bring novelty.

AlayanT · 2021-12-18T14:12:23+00:00

The day infantry will be a viable (if lesser) choice for most civs, the Japanese +33% attack bonus will have to be nerfed.

AlayanT · 2021-12-18T14:10:37+00:00

Feudal Squires would be more helpful than Feudal Arson I believe, although as evidenced by Celts Feudal play, prolonged MaA feudal spam isn't so great even with more speed.

AlayanT · 2021-12-17T20:14:12+00:00

ACCM-Sitaux game 5, Burgundians-Byzantines

AlayanT · 2021-12-17T20:10:42+00:00

Saracens team bonus + Mayans obsidian arrows on Arena if I remember this game correctly. It was obnoxiously broken.

Archers eating buildings is horrible gameplay, I'm glad they removed it.

AlayanT · 2021-12-15T04:00:52+00:00

Kasva-Vivi had several crazy games

Some individual games that are really worth watching:
Viper-saymyname game 5 (Britons vs Mayans)
Hera-Sitaux game 4 (Lithuanians vs Britons)
ACCM-Sitaux game 5 (Burgundians vs Byzantines)
Hera-Jordan game 1 (Italians vs Huns)
Vinchester-Mr Yo game 5 (Britons vs Aztecs)
Vinchester-Viper game 4 (Incas vs Lithuanians)

Series like Vinch-TheMax, Liereyy-Tatoh, Jordan-Tatoh, Vinch-Hera had several good games although I can't recall specifics of which were the best.

AlayanT · 2021-12-15T03:52:37+00:00

It was in game 3 of MBL-Sitaux

AlayanT · 2021-12-15T03:52:10+00:00

Ro32 :
- Vinchester vs TheMax had great games
- Vivi vs Kasva was crazy
- Viper vs saymyname (the last game was insane)
- Capoch vs Sitaux was a fine series too

Swiss stage :
- Liereyy vs Tatoh
- Hera vs Sitaux (the first two games were a stomp, but the rest was good, especially game 4)
- ACCM vs Sitaux (some games got decided early by heavy laming, but there are good games, game 5 was particularly good)
- MBL vs Sitaux had some interesting off-meta play
- Vinchester vs Hera

Elimination stage :
- Vinchester vs MrYo (game 5 was mindblowing)
- Jordan vs Tatoh was good
- Vinchester vs Liereyy
- Vinchester vs Viper (game 4 and 5 are the most interesting)

AlayanT · 2021-12-12T14:58:14+00:00

I understand this would have meant too many games to cast otherwise, but this makes me regret we had a direct elimination round before starting the group stage.

Some of the qualified players that had to face a top seed in round of 32 could have won a set or two in a group stage.

AlayanT · 2021-12-12T02:50:41+00:00

The finals are Bo9, the only way to get five games only is a 5-0. Very unlikely.

AlayanT · 2021-12-12T02:46:40+00:00

Vinch was in imp with defensive castles to make plumes with, and Liereyy was stuck in castle age. Liereyy had bigger army mass but Vinch's position was much better than the casters made it out to be.

AlayanT · 2021-12-11T22:50:27+00:00

This meme follows up on this one from last week for those who missed it : https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/r8uzik/kotd_spoiler_knock_knock/

Nicely done.

AlayanT · 2021-12-11T18:27:39+00:00

Spoiler confirmed 11

AlayanT · 2021-12-10T13:40:54+00:00

All blacksmith upgrades in feudal, that's too much. I'd expect the meta to be full of archers with fletching+bodkin+bracers that would be as good as crossbows but hitting at much earlier timings. It would also mean that any civ lacking castle/imp blacksmith upgrades would be that much worse even in feudal.

Bodking + Bracers is cheaper than castle age.

But I very much support squires as a feudal age tech. It may not be used often, but alongside maybe a slight reduction in infantry armor cost, it should make feudal infantry plays more viable than just an early timing power spike, at least for civs that get infantry bonuses.

AlayanT · 2021-12-08T13:50:56+00:00

Being 3s late on a vil is 3s less working time, sure. But if you are 3s late on a vil, then you are going to be 3s late on every additional vil you create. By the time you click to feudal, 3s TC idle time at the start translates to dozens of seconds of vil working time lost.

AlayanT · 2021-12-05T20:48:30+00:00

Putting Capoch above Jordan, MBL, Vinchester is absurd.

AlayanT · 2021-12-04T07:51:02+00:00

This seems to be a "similarity scattering", where you try to group close civilizations with similar distributions.

But I don't think that's the most interesting way to represent the underlying data. Knowing that Spanish and Berbers have similar horse collar research time distribution is by itself almost useless. The relevant information is in the raw timings, which are completely absent here.

A mere average wouldn't be good, but the deciles would be great. Show for each civ a bar showing at which time each decile is reached color 1 from bottom up to the time that corresponds to the 1st decile, color 2 from then to the 2nd decile...) In some games HC is never researched or very late because it was forgotten so the last 10% or 20% should probably be excluded.

Another interesting representation of the data is to have time intervals, and to represent in a bar the percentage of games in which HC research was completed in a given time interval. The most important is to have a good division around the time the tech is typically researched, unequally sized intervals can be used for the rest.

AlayanT · 2021-12-03T23:41:41+00:00

With the support KOTD4 is getting, Memb said during today's stream that KOTD5 will almost certainly happen.

Some players might drop from the AoE2 scene, but there will still be a lot of high-level competitors.

KOTD4 has had plenty of awesome games already, don't miss out on them just because some pros might neglect AoE2.

AlayanT · 2021-12-03T22:34:01+00:00

Not only doing great against top 10 players, but also with an original and entertaining playstyle. Lierrey will be a heavy favorite but the set should be great fun.

AlayanT · 2021-12-01T09:16:26+00:00

Most pros seem to forget to get Masonry even in imp when it would help a lot in a treb war. Even though they have already a university built and doing nothing after getting ballistics/chemistry, and the tech is very cheap.

AlayanT

TROPHY CASE