Boudica

The video made it apparent that the healer is actually sliding on the ice. I guess the fix will be putting some spikes on his shoe model.

This one is not new, but I saw it somewhere and thought @Seleucids might like that. Would you agree that it's not that easy to predict what anyone would consider funny? Do you ever actually laugh when watching funny images? Best I can really do nowadays is smile, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't appreciate good attempts at humor. Perhaps it's hard to come across something conceptually new and original as you get older. I thought I'd add a little more context for the non-technical people to better understand the joke, but it's a really big spoiler:

Yeah, he especially has "connection issues" when losing. I don't need your invite to call your lies. Maybe it's hard to recognize but I'm not discussing anything with you.

Congratulations, you've got like 70% progress towards getting the joke. The title was used here as a symbol for ignorant know-it-all geopolitical thinking, giving one the confidence (but not the knowledge required) to draw generalizing conclusions. This joke wasn't based on the stereotype (what you thought was funny), but rather on the use of stereotypes in making jokes that don't end up sounding as witty as one might think. No... ? The meme didn't say or imply anything about making a progress. Please press F5 to reload the forums, you might be OOS. You might not be realizing what kind of picture you're drawing of yourself by presenting a game like that as your triumph. Let's play the usual bingo challenge for a JC's "winning" game: ☑ No early game from JC. ☑ JC's pocket player had the best score of all the players. ☐ JC himself scored the lowest on his team (not sure, I'll leave this unchecked but probably shouldn't). ☑ The enemy front opposite to JC has lost and resigned before JC took out a single player. ☑ Best partial JC's result achieved through hero dance. ☑ The game balance would allow JC's team to win entirely without him. So, here we have it. A game where JC started building a fortress under my outpost, which would have been a fatal blunder making him shout "1v2" if we both had a similarly ranked pockets. Unfortunately, I got ignored for 30 seconds by my ally who had moved units nearby and thus made me misjudge his understanding of the situation. JC didn't get punished for his mistake, which allowed his pocket to come and push us back. In conclusion, congratulations on destroying one CC before our other front resigned... ? It's getting ridiculous bringing up years old games as some kind of proof of your skills. During the years you say I was "gone", I just kept beating you and making you repeat the same ridiculous excuses for the 100th time. I even said I'd do 1v1 when you actually can win a TG (without a "Bingo!"), but it's been months and I just haven't seen a pro game that you'd win as the MVP. And yet, you are trying to feed your illusion of me being somehow "silenced" while you carefully only use unspecific claims that won't immediately be ridiculed. If I was ever silenced, it was by boredom and predictability of the outcomes.

We have a rather fitting proverb that comes to mind: "He who won’t take advice can’t be helped". Maybe this trick better stay exclusive to players who can appreciate it (and follow simple written instructions). So, mind telling me which part it is that you got stuck on?

That name does ring a bell indeed! Looking at the solved crossword, it seems it should have been easier than it was. It was a fun one, thanks! So... what is the secret message we were working so hard to find here?

That's the meaning I was looking for to put there. Maybe I was looking at the wrong spot, not sure.

Now I am really questioning why I didn't get this one earlier. You remember how on the wolf map you didn't really have to actually fight the wolves (like when hunting deer), but you'd just somehow kill them instantly? It's been years since I last played that map, but that was when I learned about this type of sorcery. Who'd have thought back than that that piece of knowledge would become critical years later? We've been doing it figuratively by champion cavalry, yet I forgot that you can quite literally just do it.

I thought it would be about something represented as a damage type internally that wasn't really damage in the original sense. Maybe something about capture defense when garrisoned. Or something with auras, healing, building or farming rate, gathering (but that one is separate I think). There also was poisoning and setting something on fire, which would seem like good candidates to possibly cause a lot of damage, but I don't see them fit. Then there used to be this damage dealt by fire ships when they were destroyed, but I don't see it used now. And the only word that I can think of as fitting the letters would be "clustered".

That one seems too short. What a random answer! Look at my spoiler-hint.

That's because we haven't 1vs1 today.

[20] There use to be a charge attack (doesn't fit). I guess they really are good and not letting me know. [19] Useless? There would need to be a comma in the legend. I thought it could be something about either blocking the way or preventing capture, but nothing that would fit. [12] Is that a new name? Diagonalo suggested it could be someone's full name. A high performing dev won't have much time playing or talking. [16] Already three letters filled. Someone please help!

Shame on them! I thought it's metaphorical though. Well, sometimes going to the destination is your destiny. Alright, I'll take one more guess on [4]. But first please gimme a minute while I...

I see, so it was more like a destination for the trader! That got me confused. I actually had a nice idea for "a trader's other destiny", which would be a spy. You know, using the never ever researched tech. That would be a nice answer, but it didn't match. Yoddhas, of course! It starts showing I haven't been playing much recently. Only clubmen came to mind, but I knew I was missing one other infantry type. Also the question wording made me feel it would be a unit that is easy to underestimate, so I wouldn't guess champion infantry (even champion swordsmen are a threat to buildings after all). I would guess the fire cav because they can possibly be confused with regular javelins. I see the question only spoke about their dimensional size though, not their greatness. Enough talk though, I think can do [4] now:

Oh, I get it now. It's gonna be the "siege tower" written with the space for the [17]. But it really used to be that they did nothing on their own, so it seemed to fit with the [9].

Oh, did I?

Who'd have thought that @diagonalo would do well here when the words are all just vertical-o and horizontal-o. Anyway, I think the missing words are still the main part of the challenge.

I like the cryptic style of the captions for something well-known, rather than using words people don't know. That makes it challenging, but (hopefully) doable. I was curious to try ChatGPT, but oh boy, it failed so miserably. So I thought it would at least help me put the words back into the picture, but it had problems matching the numbers and a whole forest was burnt down in the process to power all the GPUs. So here is my WIP. Can anyone add more? Teamwork makes the... "3v1 gg" messages come sooner.

Good point for the game resign at pause. That really happens quite a lot. It must be so disappointing for the player who rage resigned not to see other people's reaction before he leaves. I know we don't re-download the full replay on rejoins, but I only mentioned the game reload because it would be required to have that feature to allow rewinding the game in the cases when you do have the full replay. I was only talking about allowing you to replay what you have already watched while spectating.

Actually, building onto that first idea, if the game can now get delayed, it might also be cool to be able to pause the replay just for yourself when spectating. And when there is now a multiplayer game reload, couldn't the game just make an auto-save every minute (or less) and then let you rewind to those points? And then perhaps there could also be the feature to skip your delay a reload to the most recent state. So a lot like a YouTube live-stream. If these features aren't planned, they sound to me like something fun to vibe code into a mod. What do you think?

I've been playing around with the graphics settings, so I got to test how the delayed observer stream works. I've got two tips to share. It's quite possible that these are obvious and that this whole topic is thus useless, but we'll see: When the game is paused (which is quite often) and my replay stream is delayed, it would seem cool to let the simulation continue for me, so that I can catch up with the players. When the host is closed, I don't get to see the game end when delayed, because it just ends there for me too. Not sure how easy it would be to improve there. Anyway, the feature is cool. Today it saved like 30 minutes in total from just one game and my lag others didn't have to wait for.

Thanks for letting us know about the experience, but don't forget to reinstall soon, otherwise it will count as a win for the hard bot. Oh wait! Did I get that right that it made you angry that the hard bot was... hard? It seems funny that you made it a lot about "the gullible people", but I'd see the requirement for non-challenging gameplay as a similar issue to focusing too much on the flashy visuals you mentioned. They are the reason why many of the big titles aren't even fun to play anymore. Because that's what people want. To look at pretty pictures and have their ego stroked for absolutely nothing. Wouldn't you also prefer to have a payment option to skip to the "fun part" in the game? Right, those gullible people. Why are they all like that?

How hi are you? I wish you luck for the 0 AC challenge! This summer doesn't seem to be extremely hot, so I believe it's doable.