Age of Empires (Side Event)

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Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

I'm pleased to announce Age of Empires, a side event that will be available at some point in 2019. This tournament's subject material will be entirely drawn from time periods before 500 AD (exception: Americas content will go up to 1000 AD, to cover the entire era of Classic Maya and more Andean civilization, and you may get some post-500 sources on events that happened before). This tournament will be heavy on history due to the time period constraints, but other subjects will be represented as well.

Fees will be $12 per player. The distribution will be as follows:

12 History (this includes historians from the time period, e.g. Livy)
2 Greek and Hellenistic History
2 Roman History
2 Near Eastern History (this includes pre-Roman North Africa as well)
1 Chinese History
1 Other Asian History (excluding the Near East)
1 Other European History
1 Americas
1 Any History (other, mixed, or more of the above)
1 Latter-Day Historiography (the Edward Gibbons of the world)

12 Non-History
5 Religion and Myth
2 Arts (as artistically focused as reasonable, while incorporating cultural history clues as needed to smooth out world art topics)
2 Literature
1 Philosophy
2 Archaeology / Social Science (this category will be interdisciplinary like in Historature, and will feature questions on topics like historical linguistics, anthropology, and other disciplines used to reconstruct ancient societies)

After feedback from Historature which suggested that players of side events were interested in pushing the bounds of difficulty / having more "curveball" or exciting tossup answers, I intend to use a rough difficulty scale to ensure a wider difficulty in tossup answers. With this in mind, there will probably be some non-insignificant variation in tossup difficulty, but it shouldn't be too sharp and will be compensated with more generous powers on the harder answers. The set should still be playable by most people with a passing interest in the ancient world.

Easy - 30%
Medium - 30%
Challenging - 30%
Extra-canonical / Very Hard - 10%

I expect the final difficulty of this set to feel similar to ACF Nationals or CO-minus, but with a bit more wackiness, and a decent number of really hard answers. I plan on writing nine packets - eight will roughly conform to this difficulty distribution, and the final one will be tougher.

EDITED 2/11 to indicate that the set's projected difficulty has been revised up somewhat
Last edited by naan/steak-holding toll on Thu Jul 04, 2019 2:10 pm, edited 19 times in total.
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by Lake Winnipesaukee Mystery Stone »

Image

Extremely looking forward to this
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

:party: :party: :party:
where has this tournament been all my life
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by Cheynem »

Are there questions on the "Photon Man"?
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

Cheynem wrote:Are there questions on the "Photon Man"?
I was going to put in a trash distribution until I realized it would be way too predictable.
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by Scipio »

LikeLikeLikeLOVELOVELOVELOVE
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

The distribution has been modified slightly - I've moved Modern Historiography to the "History" section in order to make room for more Religion/Mythology. Note that there will be a number of time-period-appropriate questions on Christianity and Judaism.
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

I'll plan to have this ready by CO
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by Bhagwan Shammbhagwan »

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote: Wed Dec 05, 2018 12:29 pm I'll plan to have this ready by CO
Does this mean that there will likely not be a mirror at HSNCT or PACE? (Or online)
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

Pascal Plays Poker wrote: Thu Dec 06, 2018 8:01 pm
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote: Wed Dec 05, 2018 12:29 pm I'll plan to have this ready by CO
Does this mean that there will likely not be a mirror at HSNCT or PACE? (Or online)
There will definitely be an online mirror.

As for PACE / HSNCT, we'll see how productive I am. It could be moved ahead of schedule.
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

Unless anyone has any particular objections, I'd like to announce that I plan on running this event on CO Sunday, provided that rooms are available. I'll plan on having it be quads for now, since the material spans basically the entire distribution except for science. Sign up sheet is available here
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

A few updates:
  • This tournament is now about 30% complete! There are plenty of easy answers and fun new topics, so I'd strongly encourage playing it even if you don't typically think of yourself as an "ancient stuff" person.
  • Since this tournament is 24 tossups per round instead of 20 tossups, and since I'm putting a bunch of effort into it (compared with, say, Naveed Bork), I'm raising the fee to $12 - consistent with the $10 per round charged at SHEIKH (another ten-packet set) but scaled up. I hope folks don't find this unreasonable!
  • Depending on how the summer schedule shakes out, I may host a playtest of this tournament a week or two before CO weekend.
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

This tournament will be ready by July 27th so it can be played at side event weekends held on that date. It will also be mirrored at Chicago Open, and a Discord mirror will be held in mid-August.
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

The set is now about 60% done - I can confidently say it will be ready in time for opens on July 27th.
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

The final set is now going to be nine packets, due to some unforseen time constraints / conflicts / moving early. Hopefully this is still enough for all sites that will play.
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

All tournament sites for this weekend should now have access to the packets. If you don't, please message me! Thanks.
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by csheep »

I can only speak to the ~10% of the questions that I have any semblance of knowledge of, but this set was very hard, very real, and very fun. And, based on the reactions of others who played it/whom I read for, the other 90% is similarly excellent.
Last edited by csheep on Tue Jul 30, 2019 2:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by Votre Kickstarter Est Nul »

csheep wrote: Sun Jul 28, 2019 10:11 pm I can only speak to the ~10% of the questions that I have any semblance of knowledge of, but this set was very hard, very real, and very fun. And, based on the reactions of others who played it/whom I read for, the other 90% is just as good.
I’m very bad at this stuff and it’s not particularly interesting to me normally but this was a delight.
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

A discussion forum for the set is up - I'll make the discussion thread today and then start letting people in.

EDIT: it's up, feel free to enter
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Re: Age of Empires (Side Event)

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

This tournament is now posted!

I'm in the process of computing stats for the British online mirror and will update this. The tournament was conducted with a seeding round played on the first two packets, in which players could "buzz out" by scoring 30 points. After this, seven rounds were played.

Top Room:

Player: 15/10/-5, Number of Games Played
  • Oli C: 48/19/13, 7
  • Daoud J: 6/28/8, 7
  • Yanbo Y: 14/5/7, 7
  • Alex H: 2/9/0, 6
  • Claire H: 2/3/8, 5
  • Alex P: 2/4/4, 4
  • Nick M: 2/2/2, 4
  • Doug G: 3/7/3, 3
  • Andrew F: 1/3/0, 3
  • Clare J: 0/4/2, 3
  • Evan: 0/1/1, 1
  • Jeremy S: 0/0/3, 1
EDIT: Updated with Bottom Room stats

Bottom Room:

Player: 15/10/-5, Number of Games Played
  • Edwin: 6/9/5, 7
  • Max P: 6/12/10, 6
  • Edmund D: 1/5/2, 6
  • Evan: 1/20/10, 6
  • Andrew F: 6/13/15, 4
  • Alex P: 2/4/4, 4
  • Nick M: 5/9/0, 3
  • Doug G: 3/6/5, 2
  • Alex H: 1/4/4, 1
  • Claire H: 2/1/1, 1
  • Clare J: 1/7/2, 1
  • Jeremy S: 2/2/4, 2
A lot of extremely impressive buzzes all around!
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