Apr 22, 2022
Apr 20, 2022
My First Final...
I'm keen to improve. Not improve my rating but improve my gameplay. Rating is just a by-product of improved gameplay so that is where I am focused.
As such, I've signed up to quite a few tournaments and I have spent most of my weekend playing these. On Friday I played my first set in the Nomad Wars League (hosted by Paradox303). I love Nomad. I think it is a fun map and really important for players that are focusing on improving as it forces you to adapt.
That being said, it is a weakness of mine at the moment. I am not playing well on Nomad (in 1v1s). My water builds have been poor and my decision making has really let me down. I am not getting the balance between water and land right, I commit too heavily on one and don't do enough damage on the other. So counter-productively, I promptly sign up for a Nomad tournament and proceed to pick different home maps avoiding Nomad!
My first round I play against a player rated 100 above me. I manage to get Water Nomad as a neutral G1, African Clearing for their home map and Steppe as mine. I played Water Nomad perfectly (or exactly as I intended with more idle time than is ideal but still how I wanted to play it), fast up into Galleys. I completely overwhelm. Next up was African Clearing. I can't remember the civs, but I know I played very passive. I did very little positive in that game, it was not good.
The final game was on Steppe, I picked Mongols, my opponent picked Chinese. Both are good civs here and knowing that we start with a horse, I go greedy and mill deer. I got up to Feudal Age fast, faster than my opponent and started getting archers out. I went double range, continuing to take deer around the map. I had a decent lead, both of us were producing from three ranges in Feudal Age. But with the deer I get up to Castle Age first. It is then that I threw the game away. Knowing I have a military advantage, I committed to stone and came to castle drop their gold. This alone wouldn't have been catastrophic for me but I stopped producing Crossbows for the Mangudai switch. I fell behind in numbers and can never catch back up. They expand their economy faster than me because I had gone so heavily on stone. They trebbed back my castles and the game was over.
A forward Siege Workshop at the start of Castle Age and I would have won. But this is another weakness of mine. I am not very good with Mangonel micro. It means that I don't think about it as an option too often (or Monks for that matter). Improvement here will only come from getting out of my comfort zone and practicing these things. Cleaner build orders won't help in anyway, it is only practice that will develop my skills in this area.
My other tournament games were impacted by my illness over the weekend. A return to some teaching has meant being around more people than I am used to so I have picked up some sort of cold. Despite that, I managed to make it through to the final of Explorers of Hyperrandom.
In the semi-final, I played someone I had played in the group stage. I knew I needed to be on the front foot against him. I did and despite some tough games, advanced with a 3-1 win. This will be my first ever final. There is no prizepool but that doesn't matter to me at this stage. I am focused on improving and being able to compete, even in these lower level tournaments, is a chance for me to do that. I've been able to identify at least three areas that I need to improve on from this week of tournaments alone. I encourage more players at all levels to sign up for tournaments, it is a great community with so many people putting in the time to run these events. Go into them with the right mindset, looking to improve in a competitive environment. Take something away even from losses.
I'll be streaming my POV for the final of Explorers of Hyperrandom at https://www.twitch.tv/jbr_aoe starting from 18GMT on Tuesday 15th March.
JBR
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