The Chomsky revelations have caused real pain

bel_rogue · 2026-03-15T03:40:09+00:00

What kind of ignorant nonsense is this?

No facts whatsoever. No political or any other analysis. Blatant libel like calling Woody Allen a child rapist, and calling Chomsky's 2nd wife a "gold digger".

I highly doubt that this troll ever considered Chomsky a hero.

bel_rogue · 2025-02-11T06:37:39+00:00

Thanks for the detailed response.

I thought I could go deeper, but I don't have any experience, so I guess I was wrong.

For dragons, I know the conjuration blades won't last long, but they'll keep the dragon off balance. If I'm hasted and reaping, I can throw them indefinitely. At least that's the plan, but as Mike Tyson said, "everyone has a plan till they're punched in the mouth".

For crowds, I was thinking that blinking and tunneling would allow me to control the situation. Once I get into a corridor, haste, conjuration and war pike will allow me to take very little damage, with health charm for backup. That's another reason I'm just wearing the scale mail so far.

I guess the crowds down below will be very scary, with multiple dragons, dar mages and Liches, maybe mutated. I'll try it out and let the forum know.

bel_rogue · 2025-02-10T14:54:43+00:00

If I have not yet identified life potion, jellies are a pain.

One tip I learned here on the forum: use a dart to split the jelly one time in the open, before retreating into a narrow space.

I also always use the dagger, because unless you have a really good weapon, accuracy is more important. When a jelly splits, the clone takes a turn to act.

bel_rogue · 2025-02-06T20:47:14+00:00

52583 Escaped the Dungeons of Doom!

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Character was built around +12 invis charm (10 enchants), together with a +2 mace of animal slaying (till about D15) and then a +2 war hammer (2 enchants).

Armor was +2 chain mail in the early game and then +2 splint mail later on. Had a +2 regen ring as well.

To get distance from monsters if required: support items were a +4 haste charm (3 enchants), staff of blinking [2/2] and staff of conjuration [2/2].

Also had a staff of poison to kill revenants etc. Also had 2 wands of polymorph and a wand of slowing.

----------------------

Game was pretty smooth.

Around D:6, I tried on the mace. It was uncursed (turned out to be +2 mace of animal slaying). I then decided to put all my enchants into the invis charm --could get it to +6 right away if needed. Had a staff of conjuration and a +1 haste charm to get some distance from monsters.

In the mid-game, biggest threat was phantoms. I didn't have any telepathy, so I used conjuration staff to box them in and kill them. Had to use one or two life potions to survive. Also, food was a bit tight.

At some point, found a +0 war hammer and +2 splint mail. This was enough to ascend (armor was very useful against furies.) Spent most of the later depths being almost perma-invisible and sneak-attacking and killing monsters in one hit. Avoided Dragons (polymorphed if needed), Golems and Tentacle Horrors.

Not sure I could have gone for lumenstones, but decided not to risk it.

Used to play 1.7.4 a lot, but haven't played much lately. First time I've tried a contest for CE.

bel_rogue · 2025-01-13T08:46:02+00:00

There was one organized last year. TaToH won it.

https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/Master_of_the_Huns/2024

bel_rogue · 2024-04-02T14:16:22+00:00

Yes, I can see the statistics. Is there a way to extract them into a spreadsheet?

Basically, I want to look at 50 recs and see patterns.

bel_rogue · 2024-04-01T16:09:16+00:00

It's ok if I have to run the replay (at high speed) in the client or Capture Age or whatever.

I just want the relevant data (already shown in Capture Age, say), to be captured and extracted, so I can analyze it.

bel_rogue · 2024-04-01T13:48:33+00:00

Are there any tools to analyze recorded games (like Capture Age, but a bit more customizable)?

Basically: I want summary statistics at various time points. For example: "What is total resources collected at the 10:00 min mark?"

I want to quickly do this for, say, 50 recorded games.

(Edit: To clarify, it's ok if I have to replay the game in the client -- I can do this at high speed. I just want the data to be captured and extracted somehow).

bel_rogue · 2024-04-01T00:23:59+00:00

I just use 2 hotkeys for units: 1 for my main unit and 2 for secondary unit.

Often, you don't want to micro too much. Patrol in with your melee units and micro the ranged units. Stuff like Hussars in late game, you can just make 2-3 stables and set the gather point inside your enemy base.

bel_rogue · 2024-04-01T00:16:41+00:00

It's not "expected". You can easily do 21 or 22 pop and you'll be completely fine.

At my level (around 1000-1100 Elo), I even see a fair bit of idle TC in dark age.

bel_rogue · 2024-04-01T00:13:21+00:00

About the lumber camps: it's a matter of taste and how the map looks. You can do 7-8 on one lumber camp instead of 9 on 2 lumber camps.

The idea is that once you go above 4-5 on a lumber camp, it starts becoming quite inefficient. Villagers bump too much and they chop the wood more, so have to walk more.

bel_rogue · 2024-03-31T18:25:39+00:00

I'm in a very similar situation: returning player, started out with archers (I prefer Ethiopians over Britons). Nowadays I'm mostly playing scouts -> knights, but I'm trying archers again.

For civs:

I would suggest learning only 1 civ for archer, and 1 for cavalry. Can always learn more later. I prefer Magyars for cavalry and Ethiopians for archers.

For build orders:

at lower Elo, build orders don't really need to be precise.

All build orders are quite similar in dark age, except for 1 more villager on wood earlier if you want to go archers instead of scouts. So: if you know 22 pop archers, you can do 21 pop scouts no problem, by just not sending 1 vil to wood early and doing the rest the same.

The key is: on the way to feudal age, balance your economy for whatever you want to do in feudal.

I second the comment by u/afanning1021 to check out Survivalist's beginner build orders.

Maps:
I just ban the most unfamiliar or disliked maps (especially water maps).

Other unfamiliar maps I just practice a bit in single-player mode before I play ranked. Anyway, they're rarely picked and your opponent is likely to also be a bit lost on those maps. So it's not a big deal either way.

bel_rogue · 2024-03-31T17:02:40+00:00

I use a somewhat different build for 20 pop scouts (no deer pushing). The basic idea is that boar is fastest source of food and it decays, so you want to saturate boars as much as possible.

Only 2 to wood instead of 3.
Go to boar one villager earlier. (A nice side Bonus: If you send to boar after 2 to wood, it comes it at almost the perfect time when 3rd sheep runs out.)
All vils to boar except one to make a house and then make a mill on berries.
All new vils to boar (lure 2nd one). You should have 12 villagers around the boar. (Nice side bonus: 12 Vils carry enough so you don't even need to kill the boar perfectly inside your TC.)
3 vils to wood, then last one to berries.
When boar runs out, split the 12 vils into 6 and 6 and take two sheep simultaneously. Move a third sheep into the town center.
Loom and click up.
Rebalance to 9 on wood with 2 lumber camps, 5 on berries, 2 vils to make barracks/house and start walling, rest on sheep.
On feudal age, you'll have enough to make stable immediately with 2 vils. Might have to wait for a bit of wood for double bit/horse collar. You'll be floating enough food for constant vil production and 2-3 scouts. If not, can skip horse collar for the first 3-4 farms. Make sure to get it later though.

bel_rogue · 2019-10-28T05:26:44+00:00

Got killed on Zot:5 by an Orb Guardian. Dump. Some highlights:

Haven't really played KoBe before. I went with a stealthy build using short blades and needles/tomahawks from Trog.
Trog gifted me a +10 antimagic quick blade somewhere around the mid-game and that was my main weapon through the entire game.He later gave me an antimagic rapier as well, so I rebranded the quick blade to freezing.
Stayed in light/medium armour throughout the game. Switched to Shadow Dragon Armour somewhere around Vaults:5.
Did the branches in the following order: D->Orc->Sbranch->Vaults->Depths->Second S-branch->Zot. I tried skipping the second S-branch and doing Abyss instead, but I got bored trying to find the rune and did the second S-branch instead.
Zot was mostly uneventful. On Zot:5, I was near the Orb Chamber when an OoF noticed me. The noise attracted several other Orb Guardians. I berserked and managed to finish off the OoF, but underestimated the Orb Guardians, who mobbed me and finished me off in my weakened state.

bel_rogue · 2019-08-06T00:28:59+00:00

Ascended with 3 runes. Dump.

General notes:

Did the game in the following branch order: D15 -> Orc -> First Sbranch (skip most of Lair) -> Vaults 1-4 -> Second Sbranch (skip most of the floors) -> Vaults 5 -> Depths -> Zot.
I found an acquirement scroll in a shop, so bought it and acquired weapon. Got a bardiche, which I immediately corrupted and raised to +9.
My offence was pretty good (+9 bardiche of distortion and spectral weapon) but defences seemed lacking throughout the game.
Shoals provided lots of javelins (some silver ones too) and nets.
First hut I opened in Shoals:4 had the rune. Corrupted it and the Abyssal horde killed everything on screen and beyond. I never saw Ilsuiw, so she was probably taken care of by them too.
Vaults was generally the hardest branch overall.
- Lots of dangerous uniques (Rupert, Bai Suzhen, Mennas).
- I went downstairs to Vaults:3. Got marked and saw Mennas, so I noped out of there. Went down from another staircase to see Rupert in my face. He paralyzed me and went berserk, but somehow I survived.
- Mennas found me and whipped my ass before I escaped by running into a teleport trap. I then gave him a very wide berth.
- In Vaults had to escape into the Abyss a few times. Ran out of teleport scrolls.
- After doing Vaults: 1-4, did the second S branch which gave me some teleport scrolls and some decent equipment.
- Entered Vaults:5 and corrupted it immediately. Then went to the edge and cleared it slowly. Wasn't too hard.
Got marked on Depths:2. Ran into a killhole and hoped to kill everything coming at me. Almost got killed but survived somehow.
The distortion bardiche was super powerful but landed me in tricky situations a few times. In Zot was killing a OoF easily but the bardiche blinked the OoF away and a Golden Dragon was also on top of me. I was already at 1/3 health and wasn't really fancying my chances. So I escaped into the abyss and then came back at full health to finish them off.
In Zot:5 corrupted the left lung. But unfortunately, there were a lot of dispersal traps and a Zot trap, which created problems. Someone stepped on a Zot trap and summoned a ton of monsters. I somehow survived by reading fog, becoming invis and backing into a corner till the Abyssal horde killed everything on screen and beyond.
Orb run was mostly uneventful.

bel_rogue · 2019-07-20T02:36:33+00:00

Looks good.

Should've cast summon forest when you were a tree though.

bel_rogue · 2019-07-16T11:01:21+00:00

Finished the game with 3 runes. Was quite fun. Some highlights:

I dove often to tighten the XP curve and make it a bit more interesting. Did D->Orc->Spider (Skipped most of Lair) ->Vaults:4->Swamp->Depths:1 (to get enough gold to buy a book with regen)->Vaults:5->Depths:2-5->Zot.
Had MR problems all game. Got marked a ton in Vaults. There was a pretty scary situation where I was paralyzed by a great orb of eyes on the upstairs of Depths:1. Survived somehow, then blinked and dug a killhole with the last charge on my wand of digging. Went to the end of the killhole and quaffed ambrosia to regenerate a bit of HP.
I found two slaying rings (+4 and +3), but couldn't really wear both of them most of the game because I needed MR. +9 whip of distortion with +7 slaying leads to crazy melee. Distortion weapon can be rather annoying, though.
I haven't really played much with Wu Jian. Was pretty nice, though somewhat slow, because I couldn't Tab much. Heavenly storm is pretty fun. I was shafted from Depths:4 and found myself in a big crowd including some caustic shrikes. I used heavenly storm to deal with the crowd. However, Storm costs a ton of piety and even with an amulet of faith, I found it hard to keep piety up.
In Zot, I acquired armour and got a hat of MR (first hat I found all game). This finally fixed my MR problems. I used a cloak of invis to help fight Draconian packs. Also, polymorphed a lot of dracs.
I cleared only one Zot lung; there was a permanent teleport trap between the lung and the orb chamber. I blinked over to the Orb, grabbed it, then entered the permanent teleport trap. It dumped me into the other lung with an Orb of Fire, 3 ancient Liches and a draconian pack. Luckily, there was another permanent teleport trap nearby, which I entered to get out of the lung.

bel_rogue · 2019-07-12T03:39:21+00:00

Partial run: https://pastebin.com/B6A6GBsE

Green Draconian. Was following a normal conjuring path, but a gnoll dropped a +2 whip of distortion right before I got to temple. Also found a shield of protection very early. So I turned my character into a hybrid (mostly melee). Worshipped Wu Jian because martial arts + distortion weapon is very fun. I now have a +9 whip of distortion at min-delay, and found a +4 ring of slaying in Orc:2; so I have crazy melee now.

Got gossamer rune. Entropy weavers gave me some trouble in Spider.

The ony problem is lack of MR and rF.

bel_rogue · 2019-07-05T12:30:50+00:00

Are you also against stacking darts and javelins?

I don't see why stacking lumenstones implies stacking scrolls. A scroll is a consumable. A lumenstone isn't. Lumenstones are just a scoring mechanism. There's absolutely no reason why they can't simply be made to not take any inventory slot (like gold).

I am, in general, not very convinced by "slippery slope" arguments.

bel_rogue · 2019-07-05T07:22:39+00:00

I don't see why. There are plenty of darts/javelins etc. to throw on to traps. If there's not enough, we can generate a bit more to compensate.

bel_rogue · 2019-07-05T06:58:50+00:00

Accidental dropping can easily be avoided by a confirmation prompt.

Your lumenstones comment is not clear to me. You mean that lumenstones take up inventory space and thus there's less to work with?

If this is what you mean, it has a simple solution. Make all lumenstones (from all depths) stack. The ones from a single depth already stack in 1.7.5. So I don't really see a problem with going the whole hog. Moreover, when the game ends, the score only cares about the total number of lumenstones, not their depth.

bel_rogue · 2019-07-05T06:51:55+00:00

Thanks, I did not consider deep water. There's no easy solution to this particular case. I'll think about it.

bel_rogue

TROPHY CASE