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Mar 28th, 2012 at 21:44:54 - Fencing (epee) (Other) |
As mentioned in the last gamelog, this gamelog is about a fencing tournament that I attended recently.
In most fencing tournaments, there are two distinct stages. In the first stage, fencers are randomly assigned to groups called “pools.” Each fencer within a pool will fence every other fencer in the pool to five points or until three minutes elapses. The second stage of the tournament is the direct elimination stage. This stage of the tournament is made up of a series of single-elimination matches, each to fifteen points or until nine minutes worth of fencing is up. Based on how well they do in the pools, fencers are assigned a position on the bracket. The bracket is constructed so that, initially, the fencers who did worst in the pools will end up fencing the fencers who did best in the pools.
When I arrived at the tournament, the foil event was already in progress. The tournament was being held in a gym containing roughly eight fencing strips constructed from tape. The tournament was also slightly behind schedule, so once I paid the entry fee, I got a chance to stretch and warm up a bit before the epee event started.
Eventually, the organizers posted the pools, and the tournament began. Fencing in the pools occurs at a relatively quick pace. The challenge, in pools, is for fencers to quickly adapt to their opponent’s style. I did reasonably well in my pool, but not as well as I would have liked. I ended up winning three of the five bouts.
Once our pool was done, we milled about and waited for the rest of the pools to finish. This took some time, as several of the other pools had fencers who were participating in the foil event. In the end, though, all of the pools successfully concluded, and we all waited for the direct elimination bracket to be revealed.
Of course, we were not waiting in a complete vacuum. As time passed, most of the fencers would wander around and take a look at the bouts currently in progress. Often, groups from specific clubs would form up and talk about how The Club was doing in the tournament. This significantly helps to keep the edge off of any boredom and to make the tournament more interesting overall. It also provides another level of motivation for winning; knowing that you’ll have significant bragging rights is always a nice motivator.
Finally, the tournament organizers revealed the direct elimination bracket. This was accompanied by a throng of people investigating the bracket to see who they were fencing. I was paired with a younger chap who hadn’t done as well in the pools. For the sake of brevity, I’ll skip over that bout, which I did end up winning, and move on to the next bout I fenced, against Abigail.
Since direct elimination bouts are rather long, they are usually split up into three different periods. Each period of fencing lasts three minutes and in between each period is a one minute break for both fencers. During the first period, Abigail was caught off-guard by my style and lost quite a few points to some of my more aggressive attacks. The first period ended with me ahead, 10 to 5. I was feeling pretty confident and, once the break ended, I went back to attacking relentlessly.
Only this time, Abigail was more prepared for my attacks. She had adapted a much more defensive style of fencing to counter my aggressiveness. Because I thought I had things well under control, it took me a while to notice that I was losing rather a lot of points. By the time I took proper notice of the situation, the score was 11 to 9, my favor. Immediately, then, I adapted a more defensive strategy myself. Instead of regularly attacking, I waited for Abigail to attack. We spent most of the rest of the period like that, waiting for the other person to make a move. I was entirely comfortable not attacking, because, if worst came to worst and we exhausted the remaining five-odd minutes of the bout, I would still end up winning, as I was ahead.
Near the end of the second period, I did launch one attack, mostly to see if Abigail had dropped her defense. We both hit simultaneously, so we both scored a point, leaving the score at 12 to 10. During the break between the first and second quarters, I resolved to continue to wait Abigail out. As I mentioned before, I didn’t risk anything by not attacking. Also, in forcing Abigail to attack, I was effectively forcing her out of her comfort zone. During the third period, Abigail became significantly more aggressive. However, this mostly served to give me some openings where I could safely attack. The bout ended soon after that, 15 to 10.
The next person I fenced, surprisingly, also had a super-defensive style. All I had to do was to repeat my previous strategy and force my opponent to attack, and he began to lose points quickly. The bout ended in the second period, 15 to 3, my favor.
Finally, by this point, I’ve made it to the finals, where I get to fence the #1 seed, Peter. Peter and I are both very familiar with each other’s styles, since we regularly attend the same fencing club. As such, when fencing Peter, it is very hard for me to trick him. It also doesn’t help that he is exceptionally good at fencing. However, Peter has been having something of a rough day, and, so, perhaps I shall triumph. Either way, I’m going to make sure that he earns any points he scores on me.
We start off fencing rather cautiously. We both keep just out of reach, as much as possible. As such, most of our early points came from quick, precise attacks to the hand, which is the best target to hit in epee, as it’s the closest to the opponent’s blade. Of course, it also requires a lot of precision to hit the hand in epee, as it is covered by the sword’s bell guard, a rounded plate of metal directly in front of the hand. Fencing out at full distance, with only the occasional aggressive attack, allows me to do relatively well. By the end of the first period, Peter is ahead by 8 to 5, but I’m still in the running.
Toward the middle of the second period, Peter begins to fence rather more aggressively. Unfortunately for me, his attacks are well-timed, so that I don’t have much of any opportunity to defend or launch my own attack. I make a few more points during this period, but, in the end, Peter triumphs handily, 15 to 8.
As you can see, fencing can be quite an intense sport. Determining why fencing is such a compelling sport, however, is something of a difficult question. Certainly, its emergent complexity and the mental discipline it requires make it a highly strategic sport. On the other hand, its physical nature can be appealing in an era in which many strategy-heavy games are completely divorced from physical exertion. And, of course, the thrill of competition is another significant factor. However, I suspect that one of fencing’s most compelling components is its sense of flow. When you’re fencing an intense bout, you become lost in the bout. As part of the process of becoming good at fencing, many of your fencing reactions become almost subconscious. While you still may maintain a conscious strategic idea of the bout, most of the action of the bout is second nature and doesn’t require conscious thought. As a result, fencing produces an impressive sense of flow, one of the best of any sport or game that I have played.
This entry has been edited 2 times. It was last edited on Mar 28th, 2012 at 21:48:29.
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Mar 27th, 2012 at 13:16:01 - Fencing (epee) (Other) |
So, this gamelog will be about modern fencing. Fencing, if you do not know, is a sport where two competitors “fight” using swords. To do this safely, fencers are required to wear certain protective gear: a plastron (a padded garment that looks a little like a half-vest), a fencing jacket, a glove, and a mask. Of course, even with these precautions, it would be foolish to fence with actual, sharpened weapons. In fencing, each weapon is blunted and not sharp; generally, this keeps serious accidents from occurring. (In fencing, most serious accidents are caused by broken blades. When a blade breaks, the broken edge is sharp and significantly more dangerous than a whole blade. This is why fencing requires a plastron to protect the chest-so that any broken blades will not be able to pierce the skin.)
Enough about that. The sport of fencing is broken up into three distinct weapon types: foil, epee, and saber. This gamelog will mostly discuss epee, as it is the simplest weapon to quickly understand. In epee, the object of the game is to score a touch on your opponent before they manage to score a touch on you. The entire body of the fencer is target area, which means that touches can be scored on an opponent’s foot, hand, chest, or even their back. If two fencers both manage to score a touch within a small window of time, they both receive a point for the touch. Finally, a director regulates and controls the action of the bout, ensuring that all the rules are followed.
In a typical match, both fencers will salute their opponent and the director. The director will then start the bout, and the competitors will fence. After a touch is scored, the director will state what happened and what the score is, and the fencers will return to their original positions. At the end of the bout, both fencers will again salute their opponent and shake hands before leaving the strip.
The strip is where the action of the bout takes place. It is a long, rectangular area, roughly 2 meters wide by 14 meters long. Both fencers must remain on the strip when fencing, and, if a fencer steps off the strip with both feet, he or she is penalized. The dimensions of the strip are designed so that fencers can move back and forth with ease, but fencers who consistently lose ground to their opponents are at a disadvantage. Also, while the strip allows some lateral movement, it doesn’t allow fencers to circle an opponent. Fencers can end up running past each other without actually scoring a touch, but, when that happens, the director calls a halt, and the fencers return to their appropriate sides. There are some other situations, too, for which directors will call halts. If fencers run into/ram each other, if a fencer drops his or her weapon, if a fencer falls down, if a fencer turns his or her back to an opponent, or if a fencer engages in some sort of unsportsmanlike conduct, the director will halt the action and, depending on the violation, penalize the appropriate fencer.
To examine some of the more important gameplay elements of fencing, I’ll analyze one of the bouts I fought. In this bout, I fought a fencer named Hannah who has exceptionally long reach. For me, this means that I have to stay farther away from her to avoid getting hit. If I get too close she can, and will, lunge forward and hit me. On the other hand, if I want to get a point, I have to move in so that she’s within my range and attack. Of course, if I miss or fall short, this gives her the opportunity to hit my arm and score a point. On the other hand, if I let her attack, and she falls short, then I get a nice opportunity for my own attack.
This brings up another important aspect of fencing: timing. Timing is the difference between a well-placed touch and a wildly errant attack. If you can catch your opponent in a moment of indecisiveness or while they are off-balance, you can often score a point before they can react properly. On the other hand, if you attack at just the wrong time, you can sometimes manage the neat trick of throwing yourself onto the other person’s blade. In my bout with Hannah, timing and distance were both critical. As we were both familiar with the other’s style, strategic considerations were notably less important.
While at practice, I learned that a fencing tournament was going to be held nearby, on the next day. I thought that this would be an excellent opportunity to examine fencing from a more complete standpoint; since the tournament will include quite a few people who I don’t often fence, it will give me a chance to delve into the more strategic aspects of fencing.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Mar 28th, 2012 at 21:46:12.
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Feb 5th, 2012 at 20:39:19 - Alpha Centauri (PC) |
Here is the continuation of the story from my first Alpha Centauri gamelog:
As promised, now I shall discuss secret projects. These are much like the Wonders of the World in the Civilization games; once a secret project is completed by an empire, no other empire may build the same project. Secret projects confer special benefits to the faction that builds them, some of which are more important than others. For example, there is one secret project, named the Supercollider, which doubles research at the base at which it is built. Another project, which we will encounter later in the gamelog, is called the Neural Amplifier and boosts the psi defense of all a faction’s units. There are quite a few other secret projects, many of which can easily tip the balance of a game.
Now, back to my account of my gameplay experience:
As you may recall, I was fighting a war against CEO Nwabudike Morgan, using my mind worms against his conventional units. I had also recently met several of the other faction leaders, including Chairman Sheng-ji Yang of the Hive, who I resolved to defeat, one way or another. This, then, takes off from that point.
After my initial difficulty conquering Morgan’s territory, I finally take a city on the edge of his domain. By this time, I have a rather large number of mind worms swarming into the area, and the other nearby cities also fall quickly. This helps me in several ways. First, and most obvious, conquering Morgan’s cities means that he has fewer cities at which to build or buy troops, limiting the number of units he can produce per turn. This also means that I can start training my own military units at my newly conquered cities. Second, each time I conquer one of Morgan’s cities, I get to steal one of the technologies that he has researched and which I do not possess. As a result, several of Morgan’s other cities fall to me, one after the other. Finally, I send my troops to his capitol and take it, with surprisingly little trouble.
At this point, Morgan is no longer a significant threat to me. He still has a couple of cities and a fair number of military units, but my cities now surround his on all sides. When Morgan again begs for a cease fire, I accept it, wanting to concentrate on preparing for a war with some of the other factions, namely the Hive.
Shortly after signing the ceasefire with Morgan, Yang (of the Hive) contacts me and demands several key technologies from me in return for letting me live. I refuse, and he declares war on me. Fortunately, Yang is already at war with just about every other faction (Including, as I later find out, Morgan). Unfortunately, most of Yang’s bases are on an entirely different continent, which means that if I want to get to him, I’m going to have to build boats, and, if I want to be even mildly effective, I’m going to have build lots of strong, defensible boats.
I never do get around to properly building my boat army. Before I have a chance to build more than one or two cheap transport ships, Yang has conquered one of Morgan’s cities, right there on my continent. Sensing an easy way to strike back at Yang without building large numbers of boats, I gather up all my mindworms that aren’t in defensive positions. With this rather impressive force, I attack Yang’s newly conquered city. Unfortunately for me, I had neglected to consider several facts before I attacked. First, all of Yang’s bases, whether built by Yang or conquered from someone else, contain the Perimeter Defense structure. This structure doubles the defensive power of all units within a base. Second, Yang owns the Neural Amplifier secret project, which increases his defense against psi attack by half. Taken together, these two factors make a significant difference in the effectiveness of my units. As a result, my attack fails miserably and does not manage to kill even one unit within Yang’s base.
After my failed attack, while I am outgunned in just about every way imaginable, I continue to try to beat Yang, lost cause though it may be. Instead of attacking his units inside their bases, I wait until they leave to attack them. This goes much better for me, though my units still take heavy losses.
And then Yang defeats Morgan. As unflattering as it is, Yang clearly had not been devoting a great deal of attention to fighting me; once Morgan goes down, Yang becomes much more aggressive against me. I find out, the hard way, that Yang could build air units. Like their analogues in reality, these air units move long distances quickly, do devastating damage, and then disappear like smoke on the wind. While my psi units are better equipped to deal with Yang’s jets than most other units would be, even they don’t really stand a chance. My armies, already spread thin by my aggression, cave in rather quickly under the combined might of Yang’s ground and air units. After my last city falls to Yang’s forces, a cinematic sequence plays in which I hear my faction leader screaming as he is interrogated by the Hive, and the game ends.
Reflections:
Even after this exploration of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, there is still much more to discuss. This gamelog reflects a single playthrough of only one of the six SMAC factions and, even then, is only a very basic overview. The depth of play in this game is deeply impressive. However, there are also other important elements that this gamelog did not discuss. The various sounds throughout the game serve to both immerse the player into the gameworld and to inform the player of what is happening. Quotes from the various faction leaders and from various famous people also help provide background, immersion, and something of a personal feel to various elements of the game. The game’s cinematic sequences, while made with hugely outdated and graphically unimpressive technology, still remain impressive. (If you’re interested in an example, you can search youtube for “Alpha Centauri Self Aware Colony.”) Of course, one of the reasons why these quotes and cinematic sequences are so effective is that they build on the faction leaders’ established personalities and tell a story about how each faction chooses to cope with the challenges of surviving on Alpha Centauri. These two attributes, depth of play and personal story, and the quality with which they are executed are a large part of what makes Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri so compelling.
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Feb 5th, 2012 at 20:38:51 - Alpha Centauri (PC) |
First, here is a brief summary of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri:
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (SMAC) is an oft-overlooked game. SMAC deals with creating your own empire by building cities and military units, exploring, researching new technologies, and dealing with other empires. SMAC does all this in much the same way Civilization II does. However, SMAC also incorporates new elements into the classic Civilization mixture. For one, the game occurs on a distant planet and, as a result, most of the military units and technologies are the stuff of science fiction. Naturally, this means that there are some units that can do things that modern science has not yet discovered or explained. Also, unlike the early Civilization games, the player’s faction of choice has a massive impact on gameplay and strategy. Each faction has their own unique bonuses and deficiencies. For example, one faction’s military units are twice as effective when attacking, but that same faction also has vastly reduced research capabilities. Additionally, as the player advances through the technology tree, he or she can select one of several “social engineering” choices in the areas of politics, economics, values, or future society. Like the initial faction choice at the beginning of the game, social engineering choices have upsides and downsides. As an example, free market is one of the social engineering choices in economics; it increases the monetary and scientific production of an empire, but also increases ecological disruption and makes cities harder to control for that empire. Each of the game’s choices can be combined to give an empire a unique set of advantages and disadvantages, which further leads to a wide variety of effective play styles for SMAC. Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri stands among the best of the Civilization games and, certainly, provides the most depth of play within the series.
Now, here is my first SMAC gamelog:
So, I begin playing SMAC. At the start of the game, my first major choice is which of the six factions I want to play. I select the Gaians, a group of people who are defined by their ecological sensitivity. They choose to adapt to the native ecology of Alpha Centauri and look down on empires that choose to exploit or disrupt the native ecology. In terms of gameplay, playing as the Gaians gives me two advantages. First, the Gaians are more effective at training and capturing native lifeforms, called “mindworms.” When captured or trained, mindworms can be used like any other military unit; however, instead of traditional combat, they engage in psi combat which ignores all technology-based combat bonuses. Second, the Gaians are more effective than other empires at managing large numbers of cities. Since I fully intend to develop a massive empire, the Gaians seem like an ideal choice.
The game begins with my ship crash-landing on Alpha Centauri, on the edge of a small continent. This leaves me with one city and a couple of units with which to begin exploring the planet. I spend the next several turns building more military units to explore the continent and some economic units to build more cities and to improve the cities I already have.
All this is going swimmingly until I encounter CEO Nwabudike Morgan, leader of the Morganites. As his title implies, he is the leader of a faction that prioritizes wealth above all else. As a result, his cities tend to be both fabulously rich and poorly defended. I decide, then, that it would be a fantastic idea to separate Morgan from his money, and I immediately declare war on him. Unfortunately, for me, Morgan has a bigger and more technologically advanced military than I do and handily trounces all the (admittedly weak) units I send after him. Seeing the rough shape my army is in, I contact Morgan and request a truce, which he is quite willing to accept (for the right price, of course). I haven’t finished with Morgan yet, but my ambitions can wait until my military is strong enough to finish the job.
Shortly after signing the truce, I unlock the ability to train mindworms. As mentioned previously, mindworms ignore technological combat bonuses, meaning that they will do just as well against Morgan’s more advanced troops as they would against other units. This plays to my faction’s strengths and will give me something of an edge against Morgan next time around.
Once I am satisfied that I have enough mindworms, I contact Morgan and demand that he transmit some of his research data to me. Predictably, this enrages him, and he declares war on me. We once again start fighting, and my units clearly have a significant advantage, winning most individual fights. However, Morgan has a significant stockpile of troops, which keeps me from conquering any of his cities for some time. Also, due to his faction’s economic strength, he has plenty of money with which to rush the production of his military units, allowing him to build units much more quickly than I can.
It is during this second war with Morgan that I encounter several of the other factions. After trading maps with one of the factions, the Believers, I find out that I am alone with Morgan on a medium-sized continent. All of the remaining factions are scattered about on three large continents. I also find out that the faction that’s currently in first place, the Hive, has significantly more cities, technology, and Secret Projects than any of the other empires, including my own. I resolve, once the war with Morgan ends, to “deal with” the growing power of the Hive. In the next gamelog, I will provide some background on Secret Projects, finish my war with Morgan, and confront the Hive.
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