DKs Intensities in Ten Cities! [Winner=TX AG 90]

[Dukasaur]

My wife and I have plans for tonight that I am powerless to change, so I will be leaving shortly. It's still about an hour before I was supposed to release the C&F task for Cairns, but I won't be here at the proper time. I think it's better to be an hour early than to be about 8 hours late, so I will do it now.

Okay, with no further ado, here is the C&F task for Cairns. It's a three-part task, in order of difficulty.

PART ONE (ultra-easy, anyone who does it within the alloted 72 hours gets 1 point)
Answer this trivia question correctly: What cultural item did I refer to in the stop description when I said, "In San Francisco, we will hop on to Dwight's submarine and sail to the coast of Australia, and the beachfront city of Cairns."???

PART TWO (slightly harder, but not brutal. This will get you between 1 and 3 points depending on the judges' opinions, bringing your total to between 2 and 4)
Express some kind of intelligent editorial opinion about the item which was the answer to PART ONE.

PART THREE (I hope this one will separate the men from the boys, the true fans from those who just go look at Wikipedia. This will get you the maximum of five points, but ONLY if you are the FIRST person to answer correctly.
Answer this question correctly: "There were two possible answers to the question in PART ONE. Both were acceptable but one of those is more appropriate to our tournament than the other. Which one, and why?"

[WorldCup4James]

Dwight's Submarine is in the book and movie, "On the Beach." It's a submarine that tests radiation levels in a post-apocalyptic world.

[musteriuz]

The cultural item would be either the Nevil Shute book "On the beach" published in 1957, or the 1959 movie with the same title. Since I've never seen either, giving an editorial opinion would be a little presumptious, but from what I read in the summaries, it is clear that there was still a lot more honour in the world then than now. People were willing to die with dignity, a man honoured his family by not getting involved with another woman, even though his wife has died, and a captain still went down with his ship. I think that the book is more approprate to our tourney than the movie, because they actually do make a stop in Cairns in the book.

[GregDavidson]

The cultural item is either the book or the movie, On the Beach, the book released in 1957 and the film in 1959.

This story examines what happens when society ceases to exist due to nuclear war. Survivors are given then option of euthanasia, but the key character in the book strives to find life and civilization. In the end, the captain goes down with the ship. But the story explodes the myth of the winnable nuclear war. The reality is that with nuclear war, there are no winners, only a few survivors struggling to live or to find a way to die. No one wins a nuclear war.

The book is more appropriate than the movie because they actually do stop in Cairns in the book.

[Dukasaur]

The results of the tiebreaker are in: shakeycat won, wolfpack was second, and Mekii was first out and is thus out of the tourney. I'll start making Cairns games now!

show: players going to Cairns

[Dukasaur]

In San Francisco, we will hop on to Dwight's submarine and sail to the coast of Australia, and the beachfront city of Cairns. 24 players will arrive in Cairns, but only 20 will move on. (The map involved is Cairns Metro, just in case there was any ambiguity.) The creator of this map, cairnswk, suggested 6-play Escalating Sunny for this map, as well as for the Sydney Metro map where we are going next. I do think, however, that we should celebrate our time sunbathing on the beach at Cairns (or sunbaking as they call it in Australia) with a nice laid-back No Spoils game too. To prevent the No Spoils game from getting too relaxed, and lasting forever, we will make it a Terminator game, and give double points for kills. This gives people some reward for going all-in. We will also have a No Spoils Trips game. Of course all the games will be Sunny -- we wouldn't want our resort stay to be spoiled by Fog!

show: Phase Four, Cairns

show: Cairns game 1

show: Cairns game 2

show: Cairns game 3

show: Cairns game 4

[Dukasaur]

I want to thank you all for joining your games promptly! This tournament is still my favourite, but you people make it even better! Unless you've done it, you have no idea just how gratifying it is to have a such a responsible bunch of players who join their invites on the first try and don't need to be prodded. Considering some of the hassles I'm having in some of my other tournaments, I really appreciate how smooth this one has been.

I have no stunning announcement to make. I just really wanted to say THANK YOU!



ps. still 29 hours left to squeeze in with a C&F submission.. some of you that are close to elimination may really want to think about this easy-peasy way to get bonus points. The 5-point bonus has been claimed by musteriuz, but still plenty of opportunity to get between 1 and 4 points for the rest of you...

[Dukasaur]

The cultural item would be either the Nevil Shute book "On the beach" published in 1957, or the 1959 movie with the same title. Since I've never seen either, giving an editorial opinion would be a little presumptious, but from what I read in the summaries, it is clear that there was still a lot more honour in the world then than now. People were willing to die with dignity, a man honoured his family by not getting involved with another woman, even though his wife has died, and a captain still went down with his ship. I think that the book is more approprate to our tourney than the movie, because they actually do make a stop in Cairns in the book.

This was supposed to be a REALLY TOUGH question that only a TRUE FAN would be able to get. Instead, I have to give it to someone who admits he's never even read the book...

Damn Wikipedia for providing a boldfaced link to such a trivial detail! (I'm sure it wasn't there a couple months ago when I was first planning this challenge. Must have gotten in during the May 11th edit.)

Anyway, hope my bitching doesn't take away from your triumph. You won, fair and square!

Congratulations musteriuz!

For the rest of you, the 5 points is out of reach now, but you can still hope to get some points if you write a really good review of either the book or the movie...

[kiwi3]

The cultural item I believe you are referring to is the submarine from the book/movie One the Beach. The book was written by Nevil Shute during the years of the Cold War. The book took place in Melbourne, Australia. This site was not directly affected by the nuclear bombs that destroyed the Northern Hemisphere. But the characters knew that theta would eventually die of radiation poisoning that was moving down from trade winds. Mr. Shute wanted to alert the world that everyone would be affected by a nuclear disaster, not just the immediate countries involved. You said that the cultural item could have been something else. I think that this could have have been. The nuclear submarine the USS Sea Wolfe which was a nuclear submarine that was toured and taken out to sea briefly by Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower. This submarine was stationed for a time at Mare Island, near San francisco.

[musteriuz]

The cultural item would be either the Nevil Shute book "On the beach" published in 1957, or the 1959 movie with the same title. Since I've never seen either, giving an editorial opinion would be a little presumptious, but from what I read in the summaries, it is clear that there was still a lot more honour in the world then than now. People were willing to die with dignity, a man honoured his family by not getting involved with another woman, even though his wife has died, and a captain still went down with his ship. I think that the book is more approprate to our tourney than the movie, because they actually do make a stop in Cairns in the book.

This was supposed to be a REALLY TOUGH question that only a TRUE FAN would be able to get. Instead, I have to give it to someone who admits he's never even read the book...

Damn Wikipedia for providing a boldfaced link to such a trivial detail! (I'm sure it wasn't there a couple months ago when I was first planning this challenge. Must have gotten in during the May 11th edit.)

Anyway, hope my bitching doesn't take away from your triumph. You won, fair and square!

Congratulations musteriuz!

For the rest of you, the 5 points is out of reach now, but you can still hope to get some points if you write a really good review of either the book or the movie...

lol@Duka, thanks for the points anyway. It is amazing what one can find online these days.

[Dukasaur]

The deadline for the Cairns C&F task has now passed. Only four people posted promptly. { }
-- WorldCup4James, musteriuz, GregDavidson, and kiwi3.

[macbone]

Dang. I was just about to do it, DK. Sorry about that, old chap.

[DoomYoshi]

Sorry I missed the C and F, I can feel that GA medal slipping away, so I will make sure to post even more next time.

[Dukasaur]

Dang. I was just about to do it, DK. Sorry about that, old chap.

No problemo.

Sorry I missed the C and F, I can feel that GA medal slipping away, so I will make sure to post even more next time.

Ditto.

[Dukasaur]

The deadline for the Cairns C&F task has now passed. Only four people posted promptly. { }
-- WorldCup4James, musteriuz, GregDavidson, and kiwi3.

I guess we dropped the ball a bit on announcing the scores.

musteriuz, as noted previously, was the first person to answer part 3 correctly and gets the maximum of 5 points.
kiwi3 was the only one who dug up an interesting fact that I hadn't expected, and gets 4 points.
GregDavidson gets 3.
WorldCup4James answered only part 1 and gets the minimum of one point.

For those who haven't seen the movie or read the book, I strongly suggest both. They are both very powerful and moving.

[Dukasaur]

Well, the first of the No Spoils Terminators has ended.... there's hope yet...

[macbone]

DK, I think you should call the second No Spoils and reform it as an Escalating game. =)

[Dukasaur]

DK, I think you should call the second No Spoils and reform it as an Escalating game. =)

Well, if we got desperate that would be a solution. However, I really don't think that we're that desperate yet. Game 9421442 and Game 9421439 have already ended, and the two that remain Game 9421441 and Game 9421440 are in rounds 25 and 31, respectively. 31 rounds is not extremely long by CC standards... I've been in games that went 150 rounds, and there are some games going on CC that are over 4000 rounds now...

Still, in order for the tournament to go forward, it would be nice to get these wrapped up.

I think the real problem is that people are playing them as Standard games and building toward a final confrontation, instead of treating them as Terminator games.
From the original description of the city stops:

... I do think, however, that we should celebrate our time sunbathing on the beach at Cairns (or sunbaking as they call it in Australia) with a nice laid-back No Spoils game too. To prevent the No Spoils game from getting too relaxed, and lasting forever, we will make it a Terminator game, and give double points for kills. This gives people some reward for going all-in. We will also have a No Spoils Trips game. Of course all the games will be Sunny -- we wouldn't want our resort stay to be spoiled by Fog!

Each player will participate in the following:
One 6-player Automatic No Spoils Chained Sunny Terminator game. This game scores two points per kill, with no other bonuses for winning or for finishing second. ...

I hope I was wiser than people give me credit for. I knew that multiplayer No Spoils has a tendency to deadlock, but I intended that being Terminator would avoid this tendency. As it says above, there are two points in the tourney for each kill that you make in these, and no bonus for winning the game, so everyone has an incentive to go all-in, make a kill, even if it means that they will themselves be killed on the next turn. And of course, in CC terms the situtation is pretty good: if you score a kill and are then killed yourself, you might have (depending on the ranks involved) a small net loss or a small net gain. If you kill two people and are then killed, you will almost certainly have a net gain.

I think if people stopped thinking of these as Standard games and got more in line with the fact that they are Terminator, they would be over quickly.

And for those of you who really hate No Spoils and love your Escalators, there's a bright sun on the horizon. The next stop, Sydney, is ALL escalating!

I'll PM this post as well, to the 11 players left in those two games.

[Dukasaur]

DK, I think you should call the second No Spoils and reform it as an Escalating game. =)

I suppose in CC points this one is all downside for you, since you're the only Major in a game full of stripers you have a target on your back. I feel your pain...

That was just the luck of the draw; the other game still going has three Majors and a Lieutenant.

[whakamole]

Terminator or standard, I play to win the game. I get the incentive that's being placed, But when everyone thinks "as soon as X makes his move to kill Y, then I'll kill X", then its just a matter of waiting for someone to blink, therefore you get a lot of nothing, whether or not its terminator.

I don't mind that the tournament has slowed down, in my game I just voiced my annoyance because this is the way every no spoils game goes, and spending seven months playing one game is just stupid to me. I realize it every time I say "hmm, haven't done that in a while" and join a random ns, then punch myself in the nuts for doing so two months later when I'm quibbling with someone over the extra 200 armies he just forted to my border... which obviously he isn't going to use because doing so would mean death to him just as quickly as death to me.

[GregDavidson]

I'm fine if you want to turn it into an escalating game...this deadlock has been going on long enough.

[Dukasaur]

I'm fine if you want to turn it into an escalating game...this deadlock has been going on long enough.

Lol, Greg, you're precisely one of the ones that I was talking about.... stop treating it like a Standard game and play it like it's Terminator. With the troops you have, you could easily wipe out Pink and Red in the next 2 turns. Yes, after that you'd get killed yourself, but so what? You would have earned 4 points in the tourney and probably be ahead about 25 CC points as well.

[GregDavidson]

Well, that didn't work out as planned....

[Dukasaur]

Well, that didn't work out as planned....

[Dukasaur]

Only one game left, and it looks like it may end soon.

Unfortunately, this is one of those nightmare weeks for me and I don't know when I can compile scores... so we may be on hiatus for seven to ten days.

I'll try to get to it sooner but can't promise.