Been playing AOE/ROR for a while now, as well
as reading these forums. Decided to get an ISP a couple weeks ago. Needless to say, I've only played about 5 zone games, staying mainly in the rookie rooms (trying to work on my techniques before declaring average status). Anyway, these games seem to fall into 2 categories: 1) the people don't chat at all and I never know what my partners are doing (until/if I research Writing), or 2 there seems to be a lot of name calling for no reason. Are the rookie rooms going to be like this, and would I be better off getting beat repeatedly in the intermediate rooms (Palatine, Quirinal, etc.)? The people in the forums seem fun (I even got on MiC_Slayer's list by accident), so where to you play most?
One more thing, is this an example of a
lamer resorting to name calling, or a real
violation of the ROR "ethics" (plus this
allows me to tell a story):
It was a huge, large islands 2 vs 2, with
unknown players. I was red, hittite, at 6, with my partner, orange, mace, at 9. Opponents were blue, assy, at 3, and green, mace, at 12. I started off ok, until my scouting found a blue transport leaving and a blue villie trying to build a archery. I quickly boned him and got a couple scout ships to take out the tranny. Quickly went
to bronze and upgraded to war ships, as well
as get some CA to take out the remains of the blue archery. Took about 7 war ships into blue territory and luckily didn't meet much resistance, finishing off his 2 docks as well as any villies near the coast. Sent 5 CAs (damn non-upgradable trannys) onto blue's island, and quickly hunted down villies, finding almost all of them. The second lot of 5 CA's finished off any blue CA defense, and a ST took down the rest of
blue's buildings while a villie expanded my
base onto the ruins (2 more gold pits).
Anyway, my boats found green triremes on the neighboring island, so I built a couple of nearby docks and cranked out fire galleys to take out the triremes, which worked quite nicely. After I was satisfied with the lack of green sea presence, I loaded 5 HAs (again, those limited trannys) and landed them on green's island. After finding a green farming community (and relieving them of their duties), a large group of 15 elles and 30 or so cents were found. Not liking those odds (plus not seeing any real defenses), the HAs just ran right through the middle of the 2 groups and found greens woodies, goldies, and the remainder of blue's relocated villies. This is when green started the name calling, things like "u fight like a wussy" and "stop running and fight like a man". Needless to say I didn't take his advice, and marched my HAs all around the island to check for any more missed villies. My boats found his attempt to relocate to another island, and took out as many eles and cents as possible by the coast. Blue resigned, and green resigned when I landed more HAs and cats. The achievements showed that orange only killed 10, so I guess he didn't look for green until the late, finding his relocated base same time I did.
Anyway, I assume I just got an opponent who is a bad loser, because I can't see how using HAs strength (their speed) and avoiding confrontation is grounds for name calling. Is it better to play more intermediate (and hopefully more mature) players and get wiped alot until I learn my mistakes (as I obviously only beat other rookies who need to learn more than I)? Or do I just put this game in the "there's always a bad seed" bin? Thanks for the vent time.
- Bearded_Tim