More (fun and) games with John and Tim (3/3)

That php thing didn't work so well, so I decided (foolishly) to make a program that would throw 10 sets of dice without revealing what the results are, and let the player blindly choose which one to be the official one. Surely this would cut down on the complaints about randomness, right? Yeah..........not. I mean, there are 10 choices up there (without you knowing what the choices are), but if you select the one with the only 7 on there, then it's really your fault that you didn't avoid it, right? Sigh...

In addition to the dice throws, however, I've finally implemented the (what I thought would be a) kryptonite for John: a chess timer! So each player has a clock, starting with 30 minutes. Once you "throw the dice," the clock starts to count down until you hit the "end turn" button. With John being so slow each time, surely he is going to make unnecessary mistakes in order to beat the clock... Yeah.............not.

What ended up happening was that a lot of 3s and 11s were thrown, all in John's favour. Several times, Tim said "next" too quick, i.e. after I have hit "end turn" for him, and he suffered greatly for that, like not using some of the resources or progress cards soon enough. Meanwhile, John used an all-too-cruel and nasty strategy of constantly activating the knight to steal from Tim, all just for a sheep... This made Tim angry (even though he invented this strategy). (Aside: A day later, I realized that this is an illegal strategy, since each knight can perform an action only once per turn...doh. And there are other uses of the knight which I wasn't aware of, which makes the game a lot more interesting...) Anyway, the story goes, John built too quick, and won the game with close to 7 minutes left on his clock. Doh...

Now they want me to do a program where each of the 216 dice throws is represented as a button...yikes. Yet another attempt to get a truly "random" game...which will never happen...

Final scores (time remaining): John 13 (6:52), Tim 5 (15:16), Me 9 (19:03). I'm always the fastest.

Painful gaming (2/2)

Worst game ever. Yeah. Anyway, it was a Sunday, and somehow John decided that he wouldn't sleep during the night...so that just shows how awake he was. Back to games, Tim was waiting for revenge from the game last time, so we played yet another game of Settlers Expansion (which is a game I simply don't want to play, quite frankly).

We used the php dice thrower again. This time, it seemed to favour a ton of 6s, hence John was able to build a metropolis almost right off the bat. John built to a quick lead while Tim and I were far behind. Somehow, though, John seemed upset, and this was especially true after he built a city that was almost immediately downgraded by the barbarian. And even though we warned him about that, he still got angry and complained about everything, and of course things didn't go his way because Tim and I were teaming up against him and stuff...I don't know, he displayed a ton of ridiculously negative emotions, even though he was winning. This is when I realize something: a game is played to have fun, when the game stopped getting fun, maybe we should stop playing. And that is probably what we should have done, just stop playing.

Not surprisingly, John won. Then he started smiling, and then he started to berate Tim and I for how bad our positions on the board were, and how his was so good, even though Tim and I knew that it's all because of the incredibly lucky dice throws that got him the win. That was just horrible behaviour from John. Anyway, that is that for the worst game ever.

Final scores: Me 6, Tim 6, John 13.

Painful gaming (1/2)

Horrific gaming...and that's only the start. So I've hastily made a php webpage (learning php at the same time...heh) which simulates dice throws in Settlers Expansion. Thinking that this might quelm the complaints that come from "real" dice being unfair. Well, think again, I say. The computer dice seem to like certain numbers over other numbers, or at least that's what we felt like. Somehow or another, this meant that John won the game. So then Tim and I complain about the dice...doh. All I remember was that it was so painful to play this game...but as I said off the top, this was only the start...

Final scores: Me 8, Tim 5, John 13.

Ah...I remember more now...this is the game where John built all three metropoli...had one defender vp, which he forgot, so he took the merchant...

Sunday evening: We were all full after sushi buffet, wanted to sleep but that would be bad for our bodies, so John and Tim came to my place intending to play a couple of games to keep us awake. John wanted to play Power Grid, Tim wanted to play Settlers expansion, so then John wanted to play ordinary Settlers and Power Grid... Needless to say, Tim won out this time, so we attempted a quick game of Settlers expansion...which...is never a quick game!

And it was especially long this time around. The lack of brick and sheet really bogged down the game a lot. We threw a lot of 7s, at very crucial moments, so we threw out a lot of resouces that could have helped us made progress. The barbarian also attacked many many times (at least 6 times, I think), and both John and I had to downgrade during two of those attacks, while Tim earned 3 victory points for having the most knights in 3 separate attacks. In any case, we all built up very slowly, Tim and I were pretty even mostly while John lagged behind. Commodities were also scarce, so only Tim built a metropolis. Throughout the game, I held the longest road, but John had two long segments which he could have joined anytime to take my longest road. Somehow John didn't want to do that, saying that he'll wait until I had 11 or 12 points before taking it from me.

Then there was that last round... Tim was at 11, I was at 10 (one from a victory point card!), John at 8. A series of very good throws meant that I received a ton of resources to use. It was my turn. I used a merchant card to trade some books and got myself a metropolis for 13 points. I was winning already, but I didn't know, forgetting that the merchant is worth a point. I then traded even more to build a city...heh...and I still got about 7 cards left... In any case, I won the game! Tim could have won in the next turn if he build one more road to take my longest road, but he didn't get the chance to do that. In the end, John should've taken my longest road earlier...heh. The game lasted about 2.5 hours, and I don't think I'll want to play this game again...a lot is dependent on the timing of the dice and the shuffling of the progress cards, and it's just too tiring...heh.

Final scores: John 8, Me 13, Tim 11.