Conquer Club

In San Francisco, we will hop on to Dwight's submarine and sail to the coast of Australia, and the beachfront city of Cairns. 24 players will arrive in Cairns, but only 20 will move on. (The map involved is Cairns Metro, just in case there was any ambiguity.) The creator of this map, [player]cairnswk[/player], suggested 6-play Escalating Sunny for this map, as well as for the Sydney Metro map where we are going next. I do think, however, that we should celebrate our time sunbathing on the beach at Cairns (or sunbaking as they call it in Australia) with a nice laid-back No Spoils game too. To prevent the No Spoils game from getting too relaxed, and lasting forever, we will make it a Terminator game, and give double points for kills. This gives people some reward for going all-in. We will also have a No Spoils Trips game. Of course all the games will be Sunny -- we wouldn't want our resort stay to be spoiled by Fog!

[spoiler=Phase Four, Cairns]Each player will participate in the following:
One 6-player Automatic No Spoils Chained Sunny Terminator game. This game scores two points per kill, with no other bonuses for winning or for finishing second.
One 6-player Automatic Escalating Chained Sunny Standard game. Scoring will be 5 points to the winner, 4 points to the 2nd place finisher, and so on.
One 1v1 Automatic Escalating Adjacent Sunny Standard game, 3 points to the winner.
One Automatic No Spoils Unlimited Sunny Trips game, 5 points to each member of the winning team.
5 points awarded for the "colour and flavour" bonus.
Maximum possible: 28 points[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Cairns game 1]There were 24 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Game 9421442
1. arno30
2. perchorin
3. DoomYoshi
4. jricart
5. geko
6. Muzzel


Game 9421441
7. moudy
8. shakeycat
9. GregDavidson
10. macbone
11. MattiWacklin
12. WolfMist


Game 9421440
13. WorldCup4James
14. kiwi3
15. TX AG 90
16. whakamole
17. ckyrias
18. Faro


Game 9421439
19. scatt
20. Shai
21. wolfpack0530
22. mcshanester29
23. GreenBaize
24. musteriuz

Timestamp: 2011-07-17 17:23:33 UTC[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Cairns game 2]There were 24 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Game 9421481
1. TX AG 90
2. ckyrias
3. musteriuz
4. WorldCup4James
5. moudy
6. perchorin

Game 9421479
7. Muzzel
8. DoomYoshi
9. Faro
10. wolfpack0530
11. GregDavidson
12. GreenBaize

Game 9421477
13. Shai
14. kiwi3
15. macbone
16. geko
17. shakeycat
18. whakamole

Game 9421476
19. WolfMist
20. mcshanester29
21. MattiWacklin
22. scatt
23. arno30
24. jricart

Timestamp: 2011-07-17 17:23:49 UTC[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Cairns game 3]There were 24 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

1. wolfpack0530
2. macbone
3. WolfMist
4. scatt
5. Muzzel
6. geko
7. whakamole
8. WorldCup4James
9. musteriuz
10. Faro
11. mcshanester29
12. TX AG 90
13. DoomYoshi
14. perchorin
15. kiwi3
16. Shai
17. ckyrias
18. shakeycat
19. GreenBaize
20. jricart
21. GregDavidson
22. arno30
23. moudy
24. MattiWacklin

Timestamp: 2011-07-17 17:23:16 UTC[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Cairns game 4]There were 24 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Game 9421949
1. kiwi3
2. perchorin
3. wolfpack0530
4. WorldCup4James
5. Muzzel
6. geko

Game 9421948
7. arno30
8. whakamole
9. Faro
10. GreenBaize
11. WolfMist
12. scatt

Game 9421947
13. mcshanester29
14. TX AG 90
15. macbone
16. musteriuz
17. moudy
18. DoomYoshi

Game 9421946
19. ckyrias
20. GregDavidson
21. jricart
22. MattiWacklin
23. Shai
24. shakeycat

Timestamp: 2011-07-17 17:22:46 UTC[/spoiler]

I want to thank you all for joining your games promptly! This tournament is still my favourite, but you people make it even better! Unless you've done it, you have no idea just how gratifying it is to have a such a responsible bunch of players who join their invites on the first try and don't need to be prodded. Considering some of the hassles I'm having in some of my other tournaments, I really appreciate how smooth this one has been.

I have no stunning announcement to make. I just really wanted to say THANK YOU!



ps. still 29 hours left to squeeze in with a C&F submission.. some of you that are close to elimination may really want to think about this easy-peasy way to get bonus points. The 5-point bonus has been claimed by musteriuz, but still plenty of opportunity to get between 1 and 4 points for the rest of you...

musteriuz wrote:The cultural item would be either the Nevil Shute book "On the beach" published in 1957, or the 1959 movie with the same title. Since I've never seen either, giving an editorial opinion would be a little presumptious, but from what I read in the summaries, it is clear that there was still a lot more honour in the world then than now. People were willing to die with dignity, a man honoured his family by not getting involved with another woman, even though his wife has died, and a captain still went down with his ship. I think that the book is more approprate to our tourney than the movie, because they actually do make a stop in Cairns in the book.

This was supposed to be a REALLY TOUGH question that only a TRUE FAN would be able to get. Instead, I have to give it to someone who admits he's never even read the book...

Damn Wikipedia for providing a boldfaced link to such a trivial detail! (I'm sure it wasn't there a couple months ago when I was first planning this challenge. Must have gotten in during the May 11th edit.)

Anyway, hope my bitching doesn't take away from your triumph. You won, fair and square!

Congratulations musteriuz!

For the rest of you, the 5 points is out of reach now, but you can still hope to get some points if you write a really good review of either the book or the movie...

The cultural item I believe you are referring to is the submarine from the book/movie One the Beach. The book was written by Nevil Shute during the years of the Cold War. The book took place in Melbourne, Australia. This site was not directly affected by the nuclear bombs that destroyed the Northern Hemisphere. But the characters knew that theta would eventually die of radiation poisoning that was moving down from trade winds. Mr. Shute wanted to alert the world that everyone would be affected by a nuclear disaster, not just the immediate countries involved. You said that the cultural item could have been something else. I think that this could have have been. The nuclear submarine the USS Sea Wolfe which was a nuclear submarine that was toured and taken out to sea briefly by Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower. This submarine was stationed for a time at Mare Island, near San francisco.

Dukasaur wrote:

musteriuz wrote:The cultural item would be either the Nevil Shute book "On the beach" published in 1957, or the 1959 movie with the same title. Since I've never seen either, giving an editorial opinion would be a little presumptious, but from what I read in the summaries, it is clear that there was still a lot more honour in the world then than now. People were willing to die with dignity, a man honoured his family by not getting involved with another woman, even though his wife has died, and a captain still went down with his ship. I think that the book is more approprate to our tourney than the movie, because they actually do make a stop in Cairns in the book.

This was supposed to be a REALLY TOUGH question that only a TRUE FAN would be able to get. Instead, I have to give it to someone who admits he's never even read the book...

Damn Wikipedia for providing a boldfaced link to such a trivial detail! (I'm sure it wasn't there a couple months ago when I was first planning this challenge. Must have gotten in during the May 11th edit.)

Anyway, hope my bitching doesn't take away from your triumph. You won, fair and square!

Congratulations musteriuz!

For the rest of you, the 5 points is out of reach now, but you can still hope to get some points if you write a really good review of either the book or the movie...

lol@Duka, thanks for the points anyway. It is amazing what one can find online these days.

The deadline for the Cairns C&F task has now passed. Only four people posted promptly. { }
-- WorldCup4James, musteriuz, GregDavidson, and kiwi3.

Dang. I was just about to do it, DK. Sorry about that, old chap.

Sorry I missed the C and F, I can feel that GA medal slipping away, so I will make sure to post even more next time.

macbone wrote:Dang. I was just about to do it, DK. Sorry about that, old chap.

No problemo.

DoomYoshi wrote:Sorry I missed the C and F, I can feel that GA medal slipping away, so I will make sure to post even more next time.

Ditto.

Dukasaur wrote:The deadline for the Cairns C&F task has now passed. Only four people posted promptly. { }
-- WorldCup4James, musteriuz, GregDavidson, and kiwi3.

I guess we dropped the ball a bit on announcing the scores.

musteriuz, as noted previously, was the first person to answer part 3 correctly and gets the maximum of 5 points.
kiwi3 was the only one who dug up an interesting fact that I hadn't expected, and gets 4 points.
GregDavidson gets 3.
WorldCup4James answered only part 1 and gets the minimum of one point.

For those who haven't seen the movie or read the book, I strongly suggest both. They are both very powerful and moving.

Well, the first of the No Spoils Terminators has ended.... there's hope yet...

DK, I think you should call the second No Spoils and reform it as an Escalating game. =)

macbone wrote:DK, I think you should call the second No Spoils and reform it as an Escalating game. =)

Well, if we got desperate that would be a solution. However, I really don't think that we're that desperate yet. Game 9421442 and Game 9421439 have already ended, and the two that remain Game 9421441 and Game 9421440 are in rounds 25 and 31, respectively. 31 rounds is not extremely long by CC standards... I've been in games that went 150 rounds, and there are some games going on CC that are over 4000 rounds now...

Still, in order for the tournament to go forward, it would be nice to get these wrapped up.

I think the real problem is that people are playing them as Standard games and building toward a final confrontation, instead of treating them as Terminator games.
From the original description of the city stops:

... I do think, however, that we should celebrate our time sunbathing on the beach at Cairns (or sunbaking as they call it in Australia) with a nice laid-back No Spoils game too. To prevent the No Spoils game from getting too relaxed, and lasting forever, we will make it a Terminator game, and give double points for kills. This gives people some reward for going all-in. We will also have a No Spoils Trips game. Of course all the games will be Sunny -- we wouldn't want our resort stay to be spoiled by Fog!

Each player will participate in the following:
One 6-player Automatic No Spoils Chained Sunny Terminator game. This game scores two points per kill, with no other bonuses for winning or for finishing second. ...

I hope I was wiser than people give me credit for. I knew that multiplayer No Spoils has a tendency to deadlock, but I intended that being Terminator would avoid this tendency. As it says above, there are two points in the tourney for each kill that you make in these, and no bonus for winning the game, so everyone has an incentive to go all-in, make a kill, even if it means that they will themselves be killed on the next turn. And of course, in CC terms the situtation is pretty good: if you score a kill and are then killed yourself, you might have (depending on the ranks involved) a small net loss or a small net gain. If you kill two people and are then killed, you will almost certainly have a net gain.

I think if people stopped thinking of these as Standard games and got more in line with the fact that they are Terminator, they would be over quickly.

And for those of you who really hate No Spoils and love your Escalators, there's a bright sun on the horizon. The next stop, Sydney, is ALL escalating!

I'll PM this post as well, to the 11 players left in those two games.

macbone wrote:DK, I think you should call the second No Spoils and reform it as an Escalating game. =)

I suppose in CC points this one is all downside for you, since you're the only Major in a game full of stripers you have a target on your back. I feel your pain...

That was just the luck of the draw; the other game still going has three Majors and a Lieutenant.

Terminator or standard, I play to win the game. I get the incentive that's being placed, But when everyone thinks "as soon as X makes his move to kill Y, then I'll kill X", then its just a matter of waiting for someone to blink, therefore you get a lot of nothing, whether or not its terminator.

I don't mind that the tournament has slowed down, in my game I just voiced my annoyance because this is the way every no spoils game goes, and spending seven months playing one game is just stupid to me. I realize it every time I say "hmm, haven't done that in a while" and join a random ns, then punch myself in the nuts for doing so two months later when I'm quibbling with someone over the extra 200 armies he just forted to my border... which obviously he isn't going to use because doing so would mean death to him just as quickly as death to me.

I'm fine if you want to turn it into an escalating game...this deadlock has been going on long enough.

GregDavidson wrote:I'm fine if you want to turn it into an escalating game...this deadlock has been going on long enough.

Lol, Greg, you're precisely one of the ones that I was talking about.... stop treating it like a Standard game and play it like it's Terminator. With the troops you have, you could easily wipe out Pink and Red in the next 2 turns. Yes, after that you'd get killed yourself, but so what? You would have earned 4 points in the tourney and probably be ahead about 25 CC points as well.

Well, that didn't work out as planned....

GregDavidson wrote:Well, that didn't work out as planned....

Only one game left, and it looks like it may end soon.

Unfortunately, this is one of those nightmare weeks for me and I don't know when I can compile scores... so we may be on hiatus for seven to ten days.

I'll try to get to it sooner but can't promise.

Hey, Duke, how did your nightmare week go? Are you about ready to set us on our journey to the next city?

musteriuz wrote:Hey, Duke, how did your nightmare week go? Are you about ready to set us on our journey to the next city?

I'm hoping to make Sydney games on Thursday and publish a new C&F task on (next) Sunday.

I'm really sorry for the slowness. This new job has meant I rarely get anything done during the week. I try to make up for it on the weekend but then there's stuff to do at home that's fallen behind also.

Cairns scores (unsorted)



Cairns scores (sorted)



Greg Davidson remains in the lead. Geko has made the biggest gain this round, bringing in 16 points and jumping all the way into third place. Congrats to Geko on a stellar performance!

Everyone from DoomYoshi up (inclusive) has won a right to go to Sydney. However, Muzzel, who has done very well and is in 8th place has apparantly vanished from CC, so ckyrias and scatt will play a tiebreaker to see who gets to have his spot. The tiebreaker game has been made and invitations sent.

I should be able to start the Sydney games this week.

Ok, scatt hasn't shown up for his tiebreaker game, and hasn't been on CC much lately anyway, so that makes it easy.

Welcome back to Intensities in Ten Cities!

I hope everyone enjoyed their summer! We kind-of lost the momentum for a while: first there were those no-spoils terminators that seemed to last forever, and then my new job turned out to be absolutely brutal and kept me from staying on top of things and compiling scores. But finally all that is behind us now: the terminators have terminated, and while my new job continues to be very demanding I've gotten some breathing space here and there, and the Cairns scores finally got compiled...

(Cairns scores)

Today we move on to Sydney, and as promised, all you escalating lovers will get your reward: nothing but escalating in Sydney!

Dukasaur wrote:Phase Five, Sydney
Okay, we leave the relaxed beach-bum life behind and head to the big, busy city of Sydney. Here we will pick up the pace to Big City level and definitely use Escalating as our only setting. We will also play more games and get fewer points for each, to simulate the daily grind of working class life.

Each player will participate in the following:
One 5-player Automatic Escalating Chained Sunny Standard game.
One 5-player Automatic Escalating Chained Foggy Standard game.
One 5-player Manual Escalating Chained Sunny Standard game.
One 5-player Automatic Escalating Adjacent Sunny Standard game.
One 5-player Automatic Escalating Unlimited Foggy Standard game.
All of these Standard games score 3 points to the winner, 2 points to the 2nd place finisher, 1 point for 3rd place, and nothing for 4th and 5th.
One 5-player Automatic Escalating Chained Sunny Assassin game.
One 5-player Manual Escalating Chained Foggy Assassin game.
The two Assassin games score 4 points to the winner.
Max 5 points awarded for the "colour and flavour" bonus.
Maximum possible: 28 points

Twenty will arrive in Sydney, but only sixteen will move on to Hong Kong, so those of you close to the bottom of the list had best be trying your hardest now!

[spoiler=sydney, game 1]There were 20 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Game 9870133
1. GregDavidson
2. TX AG 90
3. macbone
4. mcshanester29
5. geko

Game 9870134
6. whakamole
7. kiwi3
8. DoomYoshi
9. perchorin
10. ckyrias

Game 9870135
11. moudy
12. Shai
13. WolfMist
14. MattiWacklin
15. arno30

Game 9870136
16. GreenBaize
17. musteriuz
18. Faro
19. jricart
20. WorldCup4James

Timestamp: 2011-10-06 15:55:23 UTC[/spoiler]

[spoiler=sydney, game 2]There were 20 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Game 9870138
1. GreenBaize
2. Shai
3. WolfMist
4. TX AG 90
5. Faro

Game 9870139
6. kiwi3
7. moudy
8. jricart
9. MattiWacklin
10. musteriuz

Game 9870140
11. arno30
12. macbone
13. WorldCup4James
14. whakamole
15. GregDavidson

Game 9870141
16. mcshanester29
17. geko
18. ckyrias
19. DoomYoshi
20. perchorin

Timestamp: 2011-10-06 15:55:44 UTC[/spoiler]

[spoiler=sydney, game 3]There were 20 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Game 9870146
1. kiwi3
2. ckyrias
3. macbone
4. moudy
5. whakamole

Game 9870147
6. GreenBaize
7. GregDavidson
8. MattiWacklin
9. perchorin
10. Shai

Game 9870148
11. musteriuz
12. geko
13. arno30
14. WorldCup4James
15. jricart

Game 9870149
16. TX AG 90
17. mcshanester29
18. DoomYoshi
19. WolfMist
20. Faro

Timestamp: 2011-10-06 15:56:02 UTC[/spoiler]

[spoiler=sydney, game 4]There were 20 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Game 9870150
1. MattiWacklin
2. ckyrias
3. musteriuz
4. GregDavidson
5. GreenBaize

Game 9870151
6. macbone
7. DoomYoshi
8. WolfMist
9. whakamole
10. Shai

Game 9870152
11. arno30
12. geko
13. WorldCup4James
14. TX AG 90
15. kiwi3

Game 9870153
16. moudy
17. perchorin
18. Faro
19. mcshanester29
20. jricart

Timestamp: 2011-10-06 15:56:25 UTC[/spoiler]

[spoiler=sydney, game 5]There were 20 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Game 9870154
1. WolfMist
2. GreenBaize
3. Faro
4. Shai
5. mcshanester29

Game 9870155
6. kiwi3
7. GregDavidson
8. WorldCup4James
9. arno30
10. jricart

Game 9870156
11. musteriuz
12. whakamole
13. moudy
14. perchorin
15. ckyrias

Game 9870157
16. MattiWacklin
17. DoomYoshi
18. TX AG 90
19. geko
20. macbone

Timestamp: 2011-10-06 15:56:41 UTC[/spoiler]

[spoiler=sydney, game 6]There were 20 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Game 9870169
1. ckyrias
2. GreenBaize
3. WolfMist
4. Faro
5. kiwi3

Game 9870170
6. moudy
7. macbone
8. GregDavidson
9. arno30
10. musteriuz


Game 9870171
11. WorldCup4James
12. whakamole
13. TX AG 90
14. geko
15. perchorin


Game 9870173
16. mcshanester29
17. DoomYoshi
18. Shai
19. jricart
20. MattiWacklin

Timestamp: 2011-10-06 15:56:51 UTC[/spoiler]

[spoiler=sydney, game 7]There were 20 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Game 9870178
1. Shai
2. mcshanester29
3. kiwi3
4. WolfMist
5. perchorin


Game 9870179
6. GregDavidson
7. jricart
8. geko
9. TX AG 90
10. whakamole


Game 9870180
11. ckyrias
12. GreenBaize
13. DoomYoshi
14. WorldCup4James
15. macbone


Game 9870181
16. arno30
17. musteriuz
18. MattiWacklin
19. moudy
20. Faro

Timestamp: 2011-10-06 15:57:05 UTC[/spoiler]