Age of Empires (Side Event)

[Periplus of the Erythraean Sea]

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

[The Abydos Helicopter]

Extremely looking forward to this

[Fuddle Duddle]

where has this tournament been all my life

[Cheynem]

Are there questions on the "Photon Man"?

[Periplus of the Erythraean Sea]

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.

[Scipio]

LikeLikeLikeLOVELOVELOVELOVE

[Periplus of the Erythraean Sea]

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.

[Periplus of the Erythraean Sea]

I'll plan to have this ready by CO

[Pascal Plays Poker]

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)

[Periplus of the Erythraean Sea]

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.

[Periplus of the Erythraean Sea]

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

[Periplus of the Erythraean Sea]

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.

[Periplus of the Erythraean Sea]

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.

[Periplus of the Erythraean Sea]

The set is now about 60% done - I can confidently say it will be ready in time for opens on July 27th.

[Periplus of the Erythraean Sea]

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.

[Periplus of the Erythraean Sea]

All tournament sites for this weekend should now have access to the packets. If you don't, please message me! Thanks.

[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.

[The Billiards Fool]

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.

[Periplus of the Erythraean Sea]

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