Welcome Comrades to the 84th edition of the Dispatch Hippo is of gallivanting across the world, so I have the pleasure of presenting this issue to you, our dearly beloved readers.
Freestyle has the requisite Mafia column, with the intriguing Periodic Mafia highlighted. Saf also discusses a Mafia strategy that could aptly apply to Real Life as well, namely forgoing the use of something (a skill, money & whathaveyou) to gain an advantage in the long run. While his reference is related to the advantages of odd number of players in a mafia, I'm sure we can all see that it can sometimes be a worthwhile benefit to not expose your hands too early across all facets of life.
Masterli also goes into the interview room this issue, where he tries to avoid taking responsibility for the mysterious disappearance of our interrogator. The TPA3 design contest remains a highlight in the tournament arena, it's an easy way to participate in influencing future tournaments, and is pretty fun to boot! I'm also amazed at how much I can follow of DaveH's Tournament tips, it may seem intimidating at first, but when you look at the output scoring charts he produces, and the logical steps he follows in achieving them, it ends up being a breeze. And heck copy/paste still works if you don't have the head for code
In the Foundry, we are weaved a story of epic proportions by Qyu, while generalhead provides the lighter side to the critics corner! koontz also has an interesting discussion on the viability of taking Maps off the computer screen, and into your living room!
The main feature of clans, is on the CC3 Quarter-finals which are thoroughly deserving of their tag as the toughest battles on CC!
P.S. And lest I forget, just looked Foundry Competition, what a toughie! I could get the first 5 having played them all, but beta & foundry ones have me stumped!
If you would like to apply to join the news team, please visit the thread below for more details!
Hello again Freestylers. Masli is asked about KORT, family, and his nationality this issue. Also, we've got an ongoing question thread for our new admin El_Jefe here so please go drop him a question if you'd like to get to know him better. Otherwise, hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving and please enjoy the holidays. You Stay Classy, CC.
[spoiler=Interrogation of Masli]Q. Why were you chosen over #1_stunna?
I would like to know that 2
Q. Ass or breast man? Breast
Q. Isn't loes super sexy? I (Ace Rimmer) know that's really not a question but I had to say it.
Hehehehe, we only have superrr sexy girls in our clan. I have no clue how Bruce does that…
Q. Have you ever met loes?
I think once we where 1 mile apart from each other, but unfortunately we didn’t meet. I have only met 1 person that plays on CC that I know of. My buddy [player]sjnap[/player]
Q. Can I (Ace Rimmer) stay at your house if I visit the Netherlands?
Only if my GF is away with the kids
Q. Favorite teammate(s)? Favorite competitor(s)?
My favourite teammates are ofc [player]sjnap[/player] & [player]loes[/player]. We played so many games together… There are many more players I loved playing with, just don’t have the time anymore to play with them a lot.
Q. When is it my turn to get interviewed?
Yesterday, looks like you missed it.
Q. Where is the detonator?
Someone already used it to kill a conqueror
Q. Where is the isolator?
Look in the yellow pages.
Q. Where is the alligator?
Cows try to avoid them, we run away quickly
Q. How many alligators have you eaten?
No time to eat when running
Q. Where is the vibrator?
Ask your wife ducky.
Q. Do you keep it with the Mayo?
Nope, with the peanutbutter.
Q. When are you starting to work on Jr? or is it just practice runs so far?
A lot of practice runs, hahaha. We might start working on Jr after we moved into our new home next month.
Q. Did you shoot the interrogator?
IT WASN’T ME !
Q. Why did you answer stunna?
I don’t want him to start crying like a little baby(again…)
Q. Are you going to let Ace move in with you?
Hell NO !
Q. Why do you moo with some cows instead of joining a "real" clan, like e.g. the VDLL?
Did you ask this question before or after you started moo-ing
Q. How many times were you beaten in Whac-A-Mods back in the old days?
I have no clue, use gamefinder you laze bum
Q. Where did I (ManBungalow) put my keys?
In the door ?
Q. Did you jump or were you pushed?
Neither
Q. Do you miss been the clan director?
Nope, well… the 1st months I did, but it was a decision I made long before I left the mod team. I’m not as active as I was anymore, putting more time in my RL and that is much more fun for me!
Q. What was the most memorable clan war you seen?
Most memorable clan war is of course our own war vs THOTA. They had never been beaten before.
Q. Why could I (smegal69) not have my clan medal removed?
It was too far up…
Q. What clan do you hate the most?
Guests
Q. Is crack better smoked or sniffed?
I wouldn’t know, sry
Q. Are you or ?
I more
Q. In a war they kill each other, in a clan war they hug each other, should there be a lot more smack talk in clan war forums?
Would be great to have a hidden topic for both clan’s to do that so mods can’t interfere
Q. Where is Alaska?
Who cares ?
Q. If you were a pokemon what pokemon would you be?
pokemon ? Too old for that…
Q. What was the best Come From Behind Victory in a multi-partner game that you were part of? And who were your partners and opponents/map?
That’s an easy one : Game 5970669. It was a clan game in a war vs Brethren Fat Mermaid. Brann2006 already claimed victory in the topic for that game and started insulting his teammates after that. [url]http://www.conquerclub.com/forum/search.php?keywords=5970669&terms=all&author=&fid[]=442&sc=1&sf=all&sr=posts&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=98561&submit=Search[/url]
Q. Who is the BEST Dutch partner that is Female that you can think of?
Hahahaha, how much did loes pay you to ask this. (Oops… you can’t answer that anymore… so I don’t see the use in answering more of your questions)
Q. Describe your TeamCC experience.
I had a great time in TeamCC
Q. Do you think a moderator that disappears for weeks on time should be stripped of his colour?
Depends on the reason why.
Q. Why are Dutch so cool?
Because we are Dutch
Q. Why did you choose KoRT?
Many of my friends started that clan, after the clan I was in fell apart it was the most logical thing to do.
Q. Where is the interrogator?
Dunno
Q. Who will win CC3?
Kort ! Gonna be a hard fight, still have to beat OSA… and they are fighting hard !
Q. Who will win NC3?
Don’t care about NC
Q. Syrup, or Jelly?
Jelly !
Q. Now that its been a year and tempers have cooled, what would you say to people that think you cheated?
I never said I was good, I said I would kick your ass
Q. Are you as good at tennis as sjnap?
sjnap only plays with his own balls and he doesn’t know how to play sports.
Q. Why in the hell did you agree to do this interview?
Why not ?
Q. Is it my (#1_stunna) turn yet?
You don’t have any active games ducky
Q. Is being on Team CC a little like touring a sausage factory? Yup, hahahahaha[/spoiler]
Hello again my friends, and welcome to your favorite part of the Newsletter, "War Games", where you can find information about CC Tournaments! I have a couple of big things to announce.
First, there is only one week left to get your submissions in for the TPA 3 Cup Design Contest and show off your graphic talents! (Of course there are unfortunate souls like myself who have none, but for the other 90% of the population this is a great opportunity to shine.) Prizes, too!
Second, in this issue I bring you the long-promised interview with [player]Merch313[/player]. A number of people have asked me when I'm going to interview their favourite TO, and the answer is here. It comes at a very special time, when Merch rose past HighlanderAttack and became the most prolific tournament organiser of all time. A year ago, I don't think anyone would have believed that HA's incredible record would ever fall, but fall it has (and we mean no disrespect to HA, who's achievements remain spectacular!)
Plus, of course, we have our regular features from James and Dave!
[player]Dukasaur[/player] Tournament Executive
Meet the Tournament Organisers: Merch313by Dukasaur
Tournament Tipsby DaveH [spoiler=Terminator Tournaments]Some tournaments have points awarded according to the order that players are terminated. It can therefore be a laborious process to enter each game and note the orders so, even though it requires you still to enter each game, I'll show you a method of speeding up getting the results.
On each terminator game is the list of termination details:
The text from this list can be copied and pasted into a spreadsheet and if you look closely at the important termination details, say "2011-10-28 02:32:44 - JJ41375 eliminated morleyjoe from the game in round - 6" you can pick out the two player names as the first is after "- " and the second after "terminated".
There is a useful function in Excel that can find text, so =FIND("- ",C3,1) will look for the "- " characters in cell C3 which in this case holds the line of text from the game details. This comes back with "21" which is the character position of the "- " text. Similarly =FIND("eliminated ",C3,1) will come back with character position 31. We can therefore pick out the first player's name with the code =MID(C3,E3+2,F3-E3-2) which takes the middle text out of cell C3 starting at 21 plus 2 (which is the start position of the player's name) and the number of characters in the player's name is 31-21-2 i.e. start position of "terminated" less the start position of "- " less 2.
The formula to get the second player's name is =MID(C3,F3+11,FIND(" from",C3,F3)-F3-10) which uses the Find function again to get to the end of the second player's names.
So, we can get the two names in two columns of the spreadsheet using Excel functions. We now need to use a bit of Visual Basic to get rid of the two lines of text regarding points (unless your tournament uses these values of course!) so that we get the relevant lines of termination details.
This gives the terminations in the order they occurred and there are blank cells next to the names into which the Visual Basic code can put "scores" according to the tournament rules. i.e.
In this tournament's rules (Sonic goes back to school) there is a point per termination; and extra 8 points for the winner and points that increase in the order of terminations - as shown next to the player's names.
So, on to the coding used. Firstly let me show you the finished page of results, which gives you an idea of what the required outputs are:[bigimg]http://imageshack.us/a/img607/1639/term2.jpg[/bigimg]This has the game number on the left and the termination data for each game next to it. On the right is a summary list of all the totals in the order of scores and the far right column is a list of the unique terminations which was required in this tournament as there is a second medal for its leader. The two buttons trigger the two sets of code; the first "Rationalise" extracts the termination data and ascribes the scores and the second "Total" summarises the two columns of scores and terminations.
The coding for the two buttons is as follows (with descriptions within the code):
'Find the end of the list ListEnd = 3 While Cells(ListEnd, 3).Value <> "" ListEnd = ListEnd + 1 Wend
'Find the start of the last set of data ListStart = ListEnd While Cells(ListStart, 2).Value = "" ListStart = ListStart - 1 Wend
' Delete the non-relevant information i = ListStart While ListEnd <> i Rows(i + 1 & ":" & i + 1).Select Selection.Delete Shift:=xlUp Selection.Delete Shift:=xlUp ListEnd = ListEnd - 2 i = i + 1 Wend ListEnd = ListEnd - 1 'Select and paste down the Excel functions Range(Cells(ListStart - 1, 5), Cells(ListEnd, 9)).Select Selection.FillDown
'put in the values required by the tournament j = 1 For i = ListStart To ListEnd Cells(i, 10).Value = j j = j + 1 Cells(i, 8).Value = 1 Next i
Cells(i - 1, 8).Value = 9 End Sub
Note that this code will not work properly if a player is thrown out for missing his goes, as there are extra lines of non-relevant text in the list that have to removed manually before the code can be run.
'Find the last cell used While Cells(ListEnd, 3).Value <> "" ListEnd = ListEnd + 1 Wend ListEnd = ListEnd - 1
'Select the first two columns Range(Cells(ListStart, 7), Cells(ListEnd, 8)).Select Selection.Copy
'Paste special into the results column Range(Cells(ListStart, 12), Cells(ListEnd, 13)).Select Selection.PasteSpecial Paste:=xlPasteValues
'Also paste into the list of terminations Range(Cells(ListStart, 15), Cells(ListEnd, 16)).Select Selection.PasteSpecial Paste:=xlPasteValues
'Put in just 1 termination For i = 3 To ListEnd Cells(i, 16) = 1 Next i
'Select the second set of columns Range(Cells(ListStart, 9), Cells(ListEnd, 10)).Select Selection.Copy
'Paste on the end of the first set of columns Range(Cells(ListEnd + 1, 12), Cells(ListEnd + ListEnd + 1, 13)).Select Selection.PasteSpecial Paste:=xlPasteValues
'Select and sort by name Range(Cells(ListStart, 12), Cells(ListEnd + ListEnd + 1, 13)).Select Selection.Sort Key1:=Range("L3"), Order1:=xlAscending, Header:=xlGuess, _ OrderCustom:=1, MatchCase:=False, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, _ DataOption1:=xlSortNormal
'Select and sort the second set of columns Range(Cells(ListStart, 15), Cells(ListEnd, 16)).Select Selection.Sort Key1:=Range("O3"), Order1:=xlAscending, Header:=xlGuess, _ OrderCustom:=1, MatchCase:=False, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, _ DataOption1:=xlSortNormal
'Check for names the same - if so delete and add on the scores For i = 3 To ListEnd + ListEnd + 1 a = Cells(i, 12).Value b = Cells(i + 1, 12).Value If b = a Then Cells(i + 1, 13).Value = Cells(i + 1, 13).Value + Cells(i, 13).Value Cells(i, 12).Value = "" Cells(i, 13).Value = "" End If Next i
'Do the same for the second list 'Check for names the same - if so delete and add on the scores For i = 3 To ListEnd a = Cells(i, 15).Value b = Cells(i + 1, 15).Value If b = a Then Cells(i + 1, 16).Value = Cells(i + 1, 16).Value + Cells(i, 16).Value Cells(i, 15).Value = "" Cells(i, 16).Value = "" End If Next i
'Sort by score Range(Cells(ListStart, 15), Cells(ListEnd + ListEnd + 1, 16)).Select Selection.Sort Key1:=Range("P3"), Order1:=xlDescending, Header:=xlGuess, _ OrderCustom:=1, MatchCase:=False, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, _ DataOption1:=xlSortNormal End Sub Sub AddAll()
Dim ListEnd As Integer Dim ListStart As Integer
ListEnd = 2 ListStart = 2
'Find the last cell used While Cells(ListEnd, 3).Value <> "" ListEnd = ListEnd + 1 Wend ListEnd = ListEnd - 1 'Select and sort by name Range(Cells(ListStart, 2), Cells(ListEnd + ListEnd + 1, 3)).Select Selection.Sort Key1:=Range("B2"), Order1:=xlAscending, Header:=xlGuess, _ OrderCustom:=1, MatchCase:=False, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, _ DataOption1:=xlSortNormal
'Select and sort the second set of columns Range(Cells(ListStart, 5), Cells(ListEnd, 6)).Select Selection.Sort Key1:=Range("E2"), Order1:=xlAscending, Header:=xlGuess, _ OrderCustom:=1, MatchCase:=False, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, _ DataOption1:=xlSortNormal
'Check for names the same - if so delete and add on the scores For i = 2 To ListEnd + ListEnd + 1 a = Cells(i, 2).Value b = Cells(i + 1, 2).Value If b = a Then Cells(i + 1, 3).Value = Cells(i + 1, 3).Value + Cells(i, 3).Value Cells(i, 2).Value = "" Cells(i, 3).Value = "" End If Next i
'Do the same for the second list 'Check for names the same - if so delete and add on the scores For i = 2 To ListEnd a = Cells(i, 5).Value b = Cells(i + 1, 5).Value If b = a Then Cells(i + 1, 6).Value = Cells(i + 1, 6).Value + Cells(i, 6).Value Cells(i, 5).Value = "" Cells(i, 6).Value = "" End If Next i
'Sort by score Range(Cells(ListStart, 5), Cells(ListEnd + ListEnd + 1, 6)).Select Selection.Sort Key1:=Range("F2"), Order1:=xlDescending, Header:=xlGuess, _ OrderCustom:=1, MatchCase:=False, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, _ DataOption1:=xlSortNormal End Sub
What is then required for this particular tournament is to add all the scores together from the different "subject" sheets and publish them in the tournament thread.
(These "tips" are ones that I have tried to make it a bit easier in managing my own tournaments. I am sure there are different and better methods than these, so please let me know. Any queries on the above I'll be glad to respond to! Please note that I use Excel 2003, so there may be variation in the menu instructions if you have other versions of Excel)[/spoiler] TPA Wrapby DaveH
Another issue rolls around. Another set of articles for you to read. So what can we bring you today apart from the same? Well, apart from the usual Maps in development and competition (good luck by the way), Qyu has done a fantastic story for you. Personally, this I feel is one of the freshest things brought to you by the dispatch and is a must read for everyone. generalhead takes a poke at some maps bad/good ideas and how we all respond to them. I give you all something to do at home. Lastly, did you spot the maps in [player]thenobodies80[/player] foundry competition? If not, I bring you the winning image. Stay tuned for more competitions coming out of the foundry very shortly. Some big things are rumoured. This week, I am bringing you a new thing to think about as well.
Each issue, this cartoon will be here untill I choose a different one that is. If you can think of something that is funny and related to conquer club, send me a PM and the best one (IMO) will be on the next issue. [player]koontz1973[/player] -- Foundry Executive
Crunch time in Conqueror's Cup action, as all 4 Quarterfinals are as tense as a doorknob. All Comers Cup action has stagnated with the disappearance of DJ Teflon, while The Newcomers Cup is reaching the end of the Semi-final stage
We also have only 1 game left underway in the Clan League, and it's the biggie between Kort & AoC for the Division 1 Crown. Peddle for the Medal all the way folks!
Stay Tuned for the next issue of the ConquerClub Dispatch for an interrogation of [player]El_Jefe[/player]. Post any questions you may have for them here --> Interrogation with El Jefe
Submitting Your Own Articles
If you have a story you think the ConquerClub Community would find interesting, you can submit your articles to [player]Victor Sullivan[/player] and you may just see your article published in the Newsletter!
Subscription
Did you enjoy this Issue? Have you subscribed to the Newsletter yet?
If you want each and every issue of the ConquerClub Dispatch delivered right into your Inbox, then Subscribe Here!
Did I lose because I posted in the wrong place? Link where I posted Postby generalhead on Sat Dec 01, 2012 5:35 pm I wish there would have been a link in the article on where to post the results. If I didn't win Congrats to Swifte if he got them all correct.
Swifte wrote:Balkan Peninsula Mr Benn Feudal War gimil Middle Ages thenobodies80 Siege mibi USA Great Lakes WidowMakers
Classic Cities: Jakarta koontz1973 Dark Continent ender516
Tribal War: Ancient Isreal seamus76 Krazy Kingdoms dolomite13 Philadelphia RedBaron0
Well done Swift. Will send you a shiny medal as soon as I have got it polished.
Thanks! This one definitely was more challenging than last issue. Please send to [player]Swifte[/player], not [player]Swift[/player]. [player]Swift[/player] hasn't been on in a whille
I'm also amazed at how much I can follow of DaveH's Tournament tips, it may seem intimidating at first, but when you look at the output scoring charts he produces, and the logical steps he follows in achieving them, it ends up being a breeze. And heck copy/paste still works if you don't have the head for code
Thanks Leehar It's encouraging feedback and pleasing to know that at least one person is reading it!
or 
?
