You should all know I have no life. Early this spring I had SEVERAL weeks over 40-50+ hours on the Zone. I played every night from 9 to 2 (sometimes even 5 A.M.) and on the weekends it was Saturday 10 A.M. to midnight or past, only taking breaks to eat while waiting in rooms to play. Sundays were like 3 P.M. to 10-midnight.
When I wasn't playing on the Zone, I was sleeping and dreaming of the game, or figuring strats out at work. Every morning my eyes kept getting darker, bigger rings around them as sleep deprivation was starting to show.
I downloaded all 1000 taunts, I had a binder with any and everything I could find about the game off the internet. That binder (which I haven't seen for months) had over 200 pages of strats/ideas/guides/ingfos. I read everything I could, and played with anybody that was good that I could learn from.
My wife thought (knew) I was crazy. She kept telling me I oughta go work as a game programmer/tester or something and make some money for this obsession. She watched me play a few games, and even played a game or two on the Zone trying to see what it was that could get me like this.
Now I am glad it is just a game to me. I play it often, but don't freak out when I play dumb and lose. It is a great game, and I wonder if I will ever come across another like it.
It is funny to look back and see my progression through the game. I played single player forever before Zone play. I played Islands only because I hated getting attacked (lol). I played some games on a network at work, but we didn't understand the game yet.
My first game on the Zone I played a kid who never got out of the Stone Age. I beat him and thought I was the greatest player on the planet, I really did. My very next game was classic....I played a pro who made a maze out of half the map complete with a wonder and tons of ballista towers. It was a reality check. I lost my next 10-15 games on the Zone, and was amazed when the fog was lifted at the end of the game to see how everybody grew so much.
I then found a little niche as Yamato on Highlands in AoE. I managed to be able to compete with high resources and reveal map. That was the setting I played every game.
In RoR, my Yamato tactics gave me some good victories on Hillz, but then came the Medit days...... full of fishies, huge navy battles, and an accelerated game pace. I had a lil strat that once I perfected I won like 99.9% of high resources, reveal, no tool attacks settings. I played hundreds of games with these settings and was starting to be a "Rook Powerhouse". I was reluctant to move on because I could actually win with these settings, and I was used to getting crushes so much early on in my "career".
Once I was getting bored with these settings, I started experimenting with the "no reveal" thing. Learning to explore brought a whole new dimension to the game, and it took me a while to get it. I played Conti, Hillz, and Medit.
Hundreds, maybe even thousands of games later I feel like I have seen and tried every tactic I can think of. The thing that is funny is I keep playing the game, trying to get better...smarter, and still think there are new strats out there.
Anyways sorry for the babbling.