I highly recommend playing a rated room. That way you can check your stats. I played my first four games a little while ago. The first one I was minoan, agaisnt, uh, something - think it was PHoenicen. Anyway, he never got out of Bronze, and died a horrible death - I went away with a HUGE ego and an inflated sense of self-worth. Then I started another game, also 1 vs 1, against Phoeny - it was _madwand_ I think. It was the best game I've played in a long time - enjoymentwise. It went on for HOURS. He started off controlling the sea, which hurt, because the sea went from one end to the other, with TWO squares of land on the sides. His elephants and such died to my minoan compies, heles, and heavy cats, and after he ran out of gold he started sending in scythes. AFter a while I too ran out of gold, and since Minoan has no good non-gold unit I was killed. HIs ruling the sea didnt help, as ther was a big gold min on the shore...
So, i left, thinking, - this must be one of the pros - I just wasn't lucky. And I started another game. Oneof my opponents was, snicker snicker, palmryan. I chortled with glee at the thought of what I would to the the poor guy with compies. Well, my starting position wasn't that great, but it was not big deal, and just after I get improved bowman there are palmyran chariots all over my base and war galleys shooting my ships. I began to realize that I wasn't that great....
I have a few questions on rate rooms, when you resign, do they count that as an imcomplete?
I have on imcomplete game, where the entire enemy team mysteriously was 'disconnected' at once, just after, by some strange twist of fate, my allies had ca's all over their base.