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I'm halfheartedly arguing it because in my head it would be cool You wouldn't do a "run" like we do now. The entire strategy would be different. But ya, we'd have to actually /make/ match games before such a debate would be relevant.

Well that depends on what the end conditions of a match are. It could be that you're trying to destroy your opponent, in which case we'd have to change things to make that easier anyway. But I also think that this kind of thing would be better if it were made for mobiles because people would want to take turns throughout the day.

I insist that we should try it at 1t and bump it up if it's too slow. The pace is dramatically slow, but only in contrast to what we're used to. I know this is a bit of a RWL taboo (especially post-3.0) but I think it would be fun to try something dramatically new. At such a pace, it would be a completely different game.

I've played words with friends, and it is annoying waiting for the other player to move, but that's why you play like 10 matches at the same time.

I'm stuck on campus all day, so I have no choice. However, I have found (and keep secret from any local friends) a few exceptionally clean washrooms, and I will go well out of my way to use them.

Lol, you're hopeless, Dan.

[smelting]

You're right that iron was common during the iron age but not because they were smelting it.

Not that the particular dates are important, but I think it's important to get the transition right. Before the collapse of the bronze age (Greek), iron swords were very difficult to make. Back then, furnaces weren't hot enough to melt the stone out of iron. They were using ordinary downdraft kilns, which couldn't get hot enough. Even using charcoal, when you add more charcoal to a downdraft kiln, you lose heat out of the chimney because you're producing more flue gasses.

The problem is that air is only one-fifth oxygen. When carbon burns in air the resulting carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide is very hot at first, but then it loses most of its heat to the nitrogen that makes up four-fifths of the air and hence most of the flue gas.

So iron was rare, and only an elite class of super warriors (aristocrats) could afford iron weapons.

The solution was to blow more oxygen into the furnace through a tube (a tuyere). The incoming air captures heat from the flue gasses, then carries it back into the centre of the fire.

It was this advancement, around the 13th century BC that made Iron more easily available. But it's not because they were "smelting" the iron, as you say, it's because they were able to melt the rock part of the iron ore. The iron metal was left as a spongy mass that could be beaten into a shape.

THIS is what caused the transition. Iron became cheap enough that ordinary citizens could afford iron weapons, and warfare changed completely. It wasn't just the Romans, all over the Mediterranean warfare changed. Beforehand war was a sort of political sport practiced by small group of aristocratic warriors (the hereditary class of warriors who could afford iron swords). Battles were free-for-all melee combat (besides the odd archer), involving very few people. No formations, no armies, no troops.

By the 7th century BC, iron was cheap enough that anyone could fight in battle. They realized that if you make a long line of unskilled soldiers, they can overwhelm any seasoned aristocratic warrior. Numbers became more important than skill. Thus begins army-style warfare. You mentioned the Romans, but Philip II of Macedon was one of the first to create a professional army (lead by those aristocrat warriors). During the Iron Age just about everyone fought like this.

Now, you mentioned smelting. I say this is wrong because they couldn't smelt until they started using blast furnaces. Europeans didn't master this technology until, like I said, sometime between the 2nd and 5th centuries AD. This was the first time they could heat iron ore hot enough to melt the rock (slag) AND the iron. Slag and iron don't mix, so when they drip down to the bottom the slag floats on the top of the molten iron, and the two liquids can be drained off separately.

Lastly, steel is an iron alloy, and because they couldn't smelt iron, they couldn't make steel until they started using blast furnaces. A very tiny amount of steel has always been available because of the rare nickel-iron meteorites.

That's a very convincing sweat English lady costume, did you buy it or make it yourself?

That's a great question, we'd have to figure out some good endgame conditions.

We could try it at 1t, then do more if it's boring. Or we could let players set the turn rate for each match. I think that yes, very little happens in 1 turn, but you'd be thinking 100 turns ahead, and seemingly insignificant things will become important.

Well you'd have to make all 2 turn things into 1 turn things.

What do y'all think about this...

1v1 Match games:

You can start a match and invite your opponent. Turns are used 1 at a time, back and forth (like chess). If the other player takes a long time using their turn, you get an extra turn.

It would be a very slow paced match, but only relative to normal RWL gameplay. If you really think about it, this kind of game would mean that every single turn you use is important. Everyone would have to be thinking way ahead, and will have to micro like crazy.

You could be playing more then 1 match at a time.

You could also do 2v2, with 4 players, or with 2 players and 2 NPC's.

And it might also help if we designed a mobile version of RWL so people could play match games when they're out and about.

I made my daughter Arya a sword for her second birthday. All I did was take a scrap bit of plywood and sand it down with a powered hand sander (I also tried using my metal grinder, but it was a poor substitute for a table sander). I haven't painted it, nor have I made a hilt... And so far she has to grow into the sword a bit.


So basically, all you'd need is scrap wood and a sander (ask your friends/dad, someone oughta have one).

Windy's right, you can use reflective metallic spray paint. But you might want to make a point of trying to match the colour to iron or bronze, rather then steel. During antiquity (which was the time of ancient Rome, which went right up to about 500 AD depending on how you look at it) most weopons were made out of bronze because it was cheap, but the best warriors (the aristocrats, who were social elites trained in combat) could afford iron, which was very expensive because they didn't have blast furnaces in Europe till sometime between the 2nd and 5th centuries AD.

Here's a quote from a class I just took:

... iron is harder than bronze so if you are using bronze weapons and armour
you cannot hope to win against someone using iron weapons and armour. Hence only
a small elite, those who could afford iron, were able to fight in battle. And that had
tremendous social and political consequences; rule by kings, and a social system
dominated by a hereditary warrior caste called aristocrats

We had 2 lectures on metals, and a later two on war technology. If you'd like a copy of the notes, or even the lecture video's I can send you them. This class was awesome, and it is a university class so I'm sure it'll give you the edge up (assuming you're in high school?). The prof was a bit technocentric but I'm totally over it.

Four quadrillion, nine hundred ninety-two trillion, five hundred two billion, two hundred  million, four hundred eighty thousand networth.

Congrats man, I can't wait to do the same next year (not double majoring though, that's crazy).

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