I think the general public considers port scanning and brute force attacks to be hacking. At least the news reports it as such.
You wouldn't?
I mean it's the most surefire way to get into a system. May take a while but if you can set up an attack that no one notices, you've got all the time in the world to go work your job, spend time with the wife, work up that Alabi, etc etc.
People have considered much less to be hacking. Some think that when you use social engineering to discover the answer to someone's secret question to access their twitter account that it's hacking... At least a port scan is something you wouldn't know about if you didn't at least have a basic understanding of how computer networks work.
It's like saying "At least the local sports team had the decency to score more points than it's opponent before winning the game!"... Doesn't winning (or holding ransom) require points (dominant positon) in the first place?
They give the map with actual numbers, apparently, right?
I'd be more interested in what percentage of data that Google COULD get asked about is actually asked about.
I'm not sure Data would really work like that. How many times do you think google COULD be probed for information? Wouldn't that number be somewhere in the high googols?
Looks like you're one of those noobs who doesn't understand how much Religion maximizes production of hammers, gold, and food. A happy city is a productive city, maximizing food means you'll maximize population, which will always yield productivity if you place them anywhere near hills or mountains.
Priests by themselves give +5 hammer +2 gold, no other specialist comes close to that. Priests with a founding religion give +1 gold per every city with your religion. You found four, special building, it auto spreads. 10 of your cities x 4 religions you founded = 40 easy gold. Then when you add enemy cities having your religion, you get even more gold, and then you get the aded bonus of spies which tell you about your opponents city.
Seriously, nothing maximizes production and gold like religion, and you can forego all the effort of actually maximizing production once you reach the end game with 5 religions founded, you will literally be sitting on top of so much gold you can universal suffrage instantly produce armies. It's over powered.
"It feels almost as if someone described the concept of the renowned 19-year-old turn-based strategy series to a talented designer who'd never played it, and let him come up with his own version."
I don't want three blind men describing an elephant incorrectly. I want Civ.
Perhaps you missed some interpretations of the story, but 3 blind men describing an elephant could be a good thing. Civ thoughout it's entire lifespan has never been "Perfect". A completely different iteration of it might be what is required. Think of Civ1 as the leg, Civ2 as the trunk, Civ3 as the tail, Civ4 as the Tusk. You still do not know what the body of the elephant looks like - just like Civ has not reached perfection. Now, are you going to cling to the tusk and leg and claim that those are the only parts of an elephant?
For starters, you can't really compare AoE and Civ together at all, turn based and real time games can never seem to mesh in a comparative analysis. But seeing how I play both games avidly, I'll continue with countering your post.
Perhaps your opponents were not at the highest caliber - I've found AoE2 to be very balanced - and it's expansion Conquerors also was very balanced. I didn't play the first one so much because by the time I recieved it the second one was already out.
I've found the best counter to a mass priest army is Calvary Archers, as its very easy to hit and fade on that killing many more units than you will lose, especially in cost per cost: Since Gold is essentially the most saught after resource and Priests cost a lot of it, and the other units you can produce instead are far cheaper and easier to mass manufacture.
And also, none of the defensive towers are worth investing into, save for the outpost for its sight range. You are better off saving up the stone for another castle to pump out your races special units, and castles are great for holding choke points.
The ONLY time I have ever found a mass priest army to be of any good effect against my opponent is against persians, who usually just end up Massing elephants and try to steamroll through your base with their massive tanking ability.
What made AoE balanced was that a good mix of unit composition with some decent micro skills is better than any mass army anyone can come up with, even if it's the hard counters.
I usually play Britons because the Longbowmen is by far the most annoying defensive unit in the game and that allows them to establish map control once they reach castle age. I usually go with 2 full hotkeyed groups of Bowmen + 2 dozen knights + 5 priests + 1 full group of Halberders + 3 trebuchets (if possible). This is just the standard army that will change drastically depending on what my opponent throws at me. Like I said earlier, if I encounter mass priests, a bunch of Cavalry archers are making their way in there.
But for the most part, this group cannot be touched. Anything from the machine workshop will actually be taken out by the archers before it can fire - when you see the knights on the horizon you throw the spearmen in front. Your priests will be efficient enough to heal your bowmen from any other archers, and you can use your cavalry to flank any archers, catapults, or other ranged units that might have caught you off guard. You can also use the Cavalry as a shield should some footsoldiers manage to march their way up to the archers. The Trebuchets are just there to take out towers, castles, and walls from afar.
This tends to lose to only 2 massed armies: Persian mass elephants and Tutons Mass... whatever that special unit is, its like a champion with extra arrow resistance. Their melee units are slow and good micro around a good open part of the map will help your army stay alive, but you'll tend to have a rough time doing enough damage before your castles are taken out.
However, thats just the rock-paper-scissors aspect of it. Can't be TOO overpowered.
Try playing Age a little bit more like the pros play Starcraft, and you'll see a drastic change. Rush your opponent with Militia men before he reaches priests, and he'll QQ.
Well - yes - when playing with people I know, it becomes a very person very exciting experience, as no one is really in that "I NEED to win" attitude, its more of a "Let's have some fun and see what happens" kind of mood.
We never really did a drinking game - but we did drink while playing it. And yes - those games become quite hilarious. (Why do your archers spell out LOL in the landscape?)
Religion was horribly overpowered or over-abused in Civ4 - Most of my multiplayer game lobbies were a scramble to see who could get the civilizations with the Mystical starting research, so they could jump right into Buddhism and Hinduism. I mean, once the races were picked, then people would all research polytheism and meditation, then it was a cointoss on who got it first.
Eventually, as the games would progress on, whoever got the religions first would end up winning. It put you so far ahead of everyone else, there was no real way to catch up. The only way you got to Mega cities of 17 Population or more was mostly to do with keeping people happy, not so much about keeping them fed, and since Religion gave you an early burst in happiness, you had a more productive city than everyone else, so you generated more research, and were able to get a great person sooner (usually a priest! no doubt). Then they get to Monarchy sooner so they can just do that "military keeps people happy" civic and then they've got an a mega city that works because its so well defended. So then whoever gets the first priest ends up using the priest to get another religion. And Bam, before you know it, One person has founded 4 or 5 of the religions, and has an amazing economy because of it, has good culture to spread better than you can, and has the happiness available to use slavery to catch up on the infrastructure. If you attacked him early on you cripple yourself for everyone else to take you out, if you leave him be he wins automagically. You dare not attack him later because he's further in the tech tree than you (at least defensively) - so you ride it out. By late game, He still has 100% dedicated to research and is raking in over 100 gold per turn, and then when he feels like finishing it, he switches to universal suffrage, nationalism, and Theocracy, and pumps out an instant army and steams rolls each civilization 1 by 1.
I am glad they dropped religion, it ruined Civ4 multiplayer for me.
I'm hoping the Mutually Assured Destruction clause they taught me throughout social studies holds true in this day and age as it has throughout the past decades.
Worst case scenario though, recent video games and pop culture have taught me how to handle a post apocalyptic world. I mean, if I survive the blasts, I'm sure Book of Eli, The Road, and Fallout 3 have shown me that I can live with radiation.
Unless you work 6+ days a week you have time for a second job, simple as that, and "not having the energy" isn't usually an excuse, I can't imagine a condition that would let you work 5 days of the week but not 7, especially something as simple as a call center where you work 411 for your city or something.
Most of us, who seem to be doing alright, have less than 4 hours of "me" time a day, which is usually spent cooking and cleaning and not really on "me". There are those with much more hardships working 3 jobs just to get by with what you have - running on 4 hours of sleep a night.
Don't complain about having to live paycheck to paycheck if it's the type of life you choose to live. You want to go out, have fun, live life? Absolutely fine. Just stop whining about not having enough money then.
Microsoft sent out the gift packages, because Microsoft had more money to make off of Halo than Bungie did. Do you know that Bungie effectively terminated their partnership with Microsoft early because they didn't like the way they did things?
Get your head out of your ass and do some actual research before trying that shit.
That depends on the game you're playing, isn't it? Mario 1 and 2 and 3 for instance, a majority of the levels can be beaten by holding down the right Direction and timing the jumps, so your finer control needs to be on the right hand.
This perception that movement requires finer controls than your actions is a little skewed - Even games like Halo could have your movement in a DPad instead of a joystick, often its just mashing the direction you want to go where your aim is on the right, where the finer control is required.
I believe the DPad was put ont he left side to account for the growing popularity of WASD for movement controls on computers - as less people were using Arrow keys.
OR I have it backwards, and wasd came about because of the switch in DPad location.
Then again, people have been going after Nintendo for their non-left-handed controllers since NES/SNES/N64 controllers (despite no one having a solid controller for it till like 1998, and games not supporting it till 2000)
I think its that people wrote a glorious article way back which actually brought attention to the issue and it was mostly fixed. So when they want to relive those days so they are rehashing their article.
The DS and Wii are singlehandedly the most ambidextral systems to date.
How do you play Base10 and why does not having a left handed mode ruin it?
Even Rock Band/Guitar Hero was operable with Lefties before they added Lefty mode, you simply needed to associate colours to positions instead of directional left and right.
Perhaps where you are from that is the common sense, but where I am from, none of that is common sense.
I mean, my definition of common sense is the "Look both ways before crossing the road" - kind of stuff.
I was merely jabbing that it didn't take a bunch of research scientists creating a bunch of avatars to determine that women don't find flailing arms attractive.
Perhaps Common sense in this scenario would have been to simply ASK women what they find attractive in male dancing.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the general public considers port scanning and brute force attacks to be hacking. At least the news reports it as such.
You wouldn't?
I mean it's the most surefire way to get into a system. May take a while but if you can set up an attack that no one notices, you've got all the time in the world to go work your job, spend time with the wife, work up that Alabi, etc etc.
People have considered much less to be hacking. Some think that when you use social engineering to discover the answer to someone's secret question to access their twitter account that it's hacking... At least a port scan is something you wouldn't know about if you didn't at least have a basic understanding of how computer networks work.
Exactly.
It's like saying "At least the local sports team had the decency to score more points than it's opponent before winning the game!" ... Doesn't winning (or holding ransom) require points (dominant positon) in the first place?
Change the Posted editor from CmdrTaco to kdawson.
They give the map with actual numbers, apparently, right?
I'd be more interested in what percentage of data that Google COULD get asked about is actually asked about.
I'm not sure Data would really work like that. How many times do you think google COULD be probed for information? Wouldn't that number be somewhere in the high googols?
Man, you kids these days have really funky sexual innuendos.
Looks like you're one of those noobs who doesn't understand how much Religion maximizes production of hammers, gold, and food. A happy city is a productive city, maximizing food means you'll maximize population, which will always yield productivity if you place them anywhere near hills or mountains.
Priests by themselves give +5 hammer +2 gold, no other specialist comes close to that. Priests with a founding religion give +1 gold per every city with your religion. You found four, special building, it auto spreads. 10 of your cities x 4 religions you founded = 40 easy gold. Then when you add enemy cities having your religion, you get even more gold, and then you get the aded bonus of spies which tell you about your opponents city.
Seriously, nothing maximizes production and gold like religion, and you can forego all the effort of actually maximizing production once you reach the end game with 5 religions founded, you will literally be sitting on top of so much gold you can universal suffrage instantly produce armies. It's over powered.
Who is they? Google, or China? ...
Ah, trust, the foundation of Knowledge... Have you ever been to Kahzakstan? Can you confirm it's existance?
It could all be a clever ruse, you know. Everyone you've ever known could be lieing to you.
So you can Bleep while you bleep?
"It feels almost as if someone described the concept of the renowned 19-year-old turn-based strategy series to a talented designer who'd never played it, and let him come up with his own version."
I don't want three blind men describing an elephant incorrectly. I want Civ.
Perhaps you missed some interpretations of the story, but 3 blind men describing an elephant could be a good thing. Civ thoughout it's entire lifespan has never been "Perfect". A completely different iteration of it might be what is required. Think of Civ1 as the leg, Civ2 as the trunk, Civ3 as the tail, Civ4 as the Tusk. You still do not know what the body of the elephant looks like - just like Civ has not reached perfection. Now, are you going to cling to the tusk and leg and claim that those are the only parts of an elephant?
I Remember hearing about this months ago, but I can't imagine hearing it anywhere else but here...
For starters, you can't really compare AoE and Civ together at all, turn based and real time games can never seem to mesh in a comparative analysis. But seeing how I play both games avidly, I'll continue with countering your post.
Perhaps your opponents were not at the highest caliber - I've found AoE2 to be very balanced - and it's expansion Conquerors also was very balanced. I didn't play the first one so much because by the time I recieved it the second one was already out.
I've found the best counter to a mass priest army is Calvary Archers, as its very easy to hit and fade on that killing many more units than you will lose, especially in cost per cost: Since Gold is essentially the most saught after resource and Priests cost a lot of it, and the other units you can produce instead are far cheaper and easier to mass manufacture.
And also, none of the defensive towers are worth investing into, save for the outpost for its sight range. You are better off saving up the stone for another castle to pump out your races special units, and castles are great for holding choke points.
The ONLY time I have ever found a mass priest army to be of any good effect against my opponent is against persians, who usually just end up Massing elephants and try to steamroll through your base with their massive tanking ability.
What made AoE balanced was that a good mix of unit composition with some decent micro skills is better than any mass army anyone can come up with, even if it's the hard counters.
I usually play Britons because the Longbowmen is by far the most annoying defensive unit in the game and that allows them to establish map control once they reach castle age. I usually go with 2 full hotkeyed groups of Bowmen + 2 dozen knights + 5 priests + 1 full group of Halberders + 3 trebuchets (if possible). This is just the standard army that will change drastically depending on what my opponent throws at me. Like I said earlier, if I encounter mass priests, a bunch of Cavalry archers are making their way in there.
But for the most part, this group cannot be touched. Anything from the machine workshop will actually be taken out by the archers before it can fire - when you see the knights on the horizon you throw the spearmen in front. Your priests will be efficient enough to heal your bowmen from any other archers, and you can use your cavalry to flank any archers, catapults, or other ranged units that might have caught you off guard. You can also use the Cavalry as a shield should some footsoldiers manage to march their way up to the archers. The Trebuchets are just there to take out towers, castles, and walls from afar.
This tends to lose to only 2 massed armies: Persian mass elephants and Tutons Mass... whatever that special unit is, its like a champion with extra arrow resistance. Their melee units are slow and good micro around a good open part of the map will help your army stay alive, but you'll tend to have a rough time doing enough damage before your castles are taken out.
However, thats just the rock-paper-scissors aspect of it. Can't be TOO overpowered.
Try playing Age a little bit more like the pros play Starcraft, and you'll see a drastic change. Rush your opponent with Militia men before he reaches priests, and he'll QQ.
Well - yes - when playing with people I know, it becomes a very person very exciting experience, as no one is really in that "I NEED to win" attitude, its more of a "Let's have some fun and see what happens" kind of mood.
We never really did a drinking game - but we did drink while playing it. And yes - those games become quite hilarious. (Why do your archers spell out LOL in the landscape?)
Religion was horribly overpowered or over-abused in Civ4 - Most of my multiplayer game lobbies were a scramble to see who could get the civilizations with the Mystical starting research, so they could jump right into Buddhism and Hinduism. I mean, once the races were picked, then people would all research polytheism and meditation, then it was a cointoss on who got it first.
Eventually, as the games would progress on, whoever got the religions first would end up winning. It put you so far ahead of everyone else, there was no real way to catch up. The only way you got to Mega cities of 17 Population or more was mostly to do with keeping people happy, not so much about keeping them fed, and since Religion gave you an early burst in happiness, you had a more productive city than everyone else, so you generated more research, and were able to get a great person sooner (usually a priest! no doubt). Then they get to Monarchy sooner so they can just do that "military keeps people happy" civic and then they've got an a mega city that works because its so well defended. So then whoever gets the first priest ends up using the priest to get another religion. And Bam, before you know it, One person has founded 4 or 5 of the religions, and has an amazing economy because of it, has good culture to spread better than you can, and has the happiness available to use slavery to catch up on the infrastructure. If you attacked him early on you cripple yourself for everyone else to take you out, if you leave him be he wins automagically. You dare not attack him later because he's further in the tech tree than you (at least defensively) - so you ride it out. By late game, He still has 100% dedicated to research and is raking in over 100 gold per turn, and then when he feels like finishing it, he switches to universal suffrage, nationalism, and Theocracy, and pumps out an instant army and steams rolls each civilization 1 by 1.
I am glad they dropped religion, it ruined Civ4 multiplayer for me.
Vernacular. As in, why aren't you good at yours? trolololol
I'm hoping the Mutually Assured Destruction clause they taught me throughout social studies holds true in this day and age as it has throughout the past decades.
Worst case scenario though, recent video games and pop culture have taught me how to handle a post apocalyptic world. I mean, if I survive the blasts, I'm sure Book of Eli, The Road, and Fallout 3 have shown me that I can live with radiation.
I'm not a parent, nor do I plan to be in the immediate future, but my philosophy is this:
You show them how to do it once, you help them do it twice, then you watch it thrice, and you're done.
Unless you work 6+ days a week you have time for a second job, simple as that, and "not having the energy" isn't usually an excuse, I can't imagine a condition that would let you work 5 days of the week but not 7, especially something as simple as a call center where you work 411 for your city or something.
Most of us, who seem to be doing alright, have less than 4 hours of "me" time a day, which is usually spent cooking and cleaning and not really on "me". There are those with much more hardships working 3 jobs just to get by with what you have - running on 4 hours of sleep a night.
Don't complain about having to live paycheck to paycheck if it's the type of life you choose to live. You want to go out, have fun, live life? Absolutely fine. Just stop whining about not having enough money then.
You're just jealous I'm an uber hacker and I have more epics than you. Also, Gothmolly is a great handle, you should insist everyone call you that.
Are you a colossal idiot?
Microsoft != Bungie
Microsoft sent out the gift packages, because Microsoft had more money to make off of Halo than Bungie did. Do you know that Bungie effectively terminated their partnership with Microsoft early because they didn't like the way they did things?
Get your head out of your ass and do some actual research before trying that shit.
That depends on the game you're playing, isn't it? Mario 1 and 2 and 3 for instance, a majority of the levels can be beaten by holding down the right Direction and timing the jumps, so your finer control needs to be on the right hand.
This perception that movement requires finer controls than your actions is a little skewed - Even games like Halo could have your movement in a DPad instead of a joystick, often its just mashing the direction you want to go where your aim is on the right, where the finer control is required.
I believe the DPad was put ont he left side to account for the growing popularity of WASD for movement controls on computers - as less people were using Arrow keys.
OR I have it backwards, and wasd came about because of the switch in DPad location.
I know eh?
Then again, people have been going after Nintendo for their non-left-handed controllers since NES/SNES/N64 controllers (despite no one having a solid controller for it till like 1998, and games not supporting it till 2000)
I think its that people wrote a glorious article way back which actually brought attention to the issue and it was mostly fixed. So when they want to relive those days so they are rehashing their article.
The DS and Wii are singlehandedly the most ambidextral systems to date.
How do you play Base10 and why does not having a left handed mode ruin it?
Even Rock Band/Guitar Hero was operable with Lefties before they added Lefty mode, you simply needed to associate colours to positions instead of directional left and right.
I think I found it! Somewhere hidden in the benchmark they hid their getBrowserFunction!
function getBrowser()
{
if (navigator.appName == 'Google Chrome')
{
sleep(10000);
}
if (navigator.appName == 'Microsoft Internet Explorer')
{
alert("Seriously?");
}
}
function sleep(milliSeconds)
{
var startTime = new Date().getTime();
while (new Date().getTime() startTime + milliSeconds);
}
Perhaps where you are from that is the common sense, but where I am from, none of that is common sense.
I mean, my definition of common sense is the "Look both ways before crossing the road" - kind of stuff.
I was merely jabbing that it didn't take a bunch of research scientists creating a bunch of avatars to determine that women don't find flailing arms attractive.
Perhaps Common sense in this scenario would have been to simply ASK women what they find attractive in male dancing.