Discussion

[PeLlE]

Yay lets all get random scientific looking graphs to explain nonsense. And hell yes I always measure player speed in m/s.

[Captain Nemo]

Why spamming is good:

What's amazing to me is how people in a RTS game like this use the word "spam" in a negative sense. Of course, spamming may seem like a waste of time, or waste of eapm (effective action per minute), but then why does every SC player higher than diamond spam like crazy in the beginning of the game?

Samuel talked about "warming up", and yes, spamming helps on warming up. But then again, when Samuel is warm and cosy, lets say his 5th game in a row, he'll still spam like crazy in the beginning of the game. The reason is quite simple when you get the idea. Basically how I would explain it is "getting ready" for the mid-late game.

Example:

Velocity-Time-Graph-Changing-Acceleration.gif

The picture above is obviously not 100% correct, but you get the idea. The game starts out slowly and the speed builds up over time. In the end of the game the "velocity" or "playerspeed" needed is a lot higher than what was needed in the beginning.
Now, what spammers do is they start with around the same speed they will be needing later in the game. Using Samuel as an example he would start out with a 4-5k PS, with lets say 95% spam. Then he would throughout the game transition into a more and more accurate gameplay, and in the end he would be using his full potential.

samuels ps.gif

The black line showing his PS throughout the game, hitting the "PS needed" graph. Funny thing is, I often don't feel the moment where I hit the "PS needed" graph. It's all just a smooth transition. Suddenly I go from a 30% accurate gameplay to a 80% without feeling much difference. This is why spamming is good for you.

Now, why not just follow the graph, be 100% accurate and never spam?
Reason is we won't be able to. The PS needed explodes in games, sometimes in a period we would think was more "relaxed". Lets say you suddenly get attacked from two places while you were attacking your opponent. Here you immediately needs a big boost in your PS, something you (at least all players I've seen so far) won't be able to do.

Why playerspeed is needed:

Since commonly Samuel/Pope of Dope is the examples used in the "playerspeed needed" debate, I'll be using Pope here.
Yes, Pope will play at a very high level with a below 400 PS no matter the setting. He'll often have around same boom, army size and micro as another good player. The real difference between a low PS and a high PS player is a high PS player will have significantly better 2 group micro. I'm not saying Pope of Dope can't control 2 groups. What I'm saying is he'll miss out on something if he's forced to do more than what he normally does. If he actually controls those 2 groups good, he'll be having a worse economical growth then the high PS player.
Not to mention a low PS player will have a bit worse timings on everything. From citizens production to army production. Then again, this might not make a great deal in most scenarios, but sometimes it can be the factor that makes the game go in the high PS player's favor.

Basically, if you're a high PS player you don't let a low PS player be left alone. Go aggressive on him from the start of the game. The more actions you force him to do the more likely he will make mistakes. Obviously you can make mistakes too, but it's less likely since you're used to playing on a higher speed.

I think sometimes u are confusing PS with a player's actual speed. Because you have a slow ps and don't spam does not mean u wont be able to handle several armies at once, or do many things in general. It just means you only push when you need it, and perhaps use mouse more than hotkeys. You up your speed when it's needed, and perhaps u've never seen this phenomenon, but I've seen it alot. Fastes dropoff? Cause you'll buy your stuff JUST when u have ress for it, cause u keep pushing untill u have it? Well when u deposit your ress manually, that goes right out the window there.

Im not against spamming, cause w/e works for ya, idc. But to say you need to keep warm in the quiet stages of the game is to me wrong. What SC players do is no concern to me, this is EE.

[eeralf_]

man thanks, i learn many here, hahahaha

my first hotkey is H than i need a gulp of beer, after i press fast CCCCC (not shift C cuz iam too lazy lost my mouse) after i need smoke on my zigarette and damn lost my mouse, and so on

grrrrrrrrrrrr in early i tried play perfect but now i give a shit of it, its must be fun and also i try fast wirh beer and few hotkey's now, and? , long life EE, espacially Mid

Prosst!!

[Lancelot5]

Playerspeed is pretty confusing its better to Post the APM. I am arround 60-80 APM which is pretty bad to be honest compared to other games like starcraft where Top Players need over 200+ AMP at least.

There 2 reasons for this:
first is that the hotkeys are very bad placed
2nd and main reason is that u not face that strong players which are forcing u to micro that hard.

I think u only as strong as the players u facing in a game and thatswhy i dont understand why u guys always flame sets because they too easy or say that one set is pretty hard etc. The Players of a set making it hard or easy !!!

[[-Ts-] Tricky]

by eeralf_ » Tue Jan 08, 2013 5:01 pm

my first hotkey is H than i need a gulp of beer, after i press fast CCCCC (not shift C cuz iam too lazy lost my mouse) after i need smoke on my zigarette and damn lost my mouse, and so on

LOOOOL ralf thats legend lol

[Arntzen]

I think sometimes u are confusing PS with a player's actual speed.

This may be true, but I think of PS as a general guideline to how fast a player is playing.

Because you have a slow ps and don't spam does not mean u wont be able to handle several armies at once, or do many things in general. It just means you only push when you need it, and perhaps use mouse more than hotkeys. You up your speed when it's needed, and perhaps you've never seen this phenomenon, but I've seen it a lot.

Having low PS is to me an indicator that the player is "less skilled" at doing multiple things at ones. Multitasking efficiently in high speed comes with practice. I've learned this time and time again, that players with lower PS than me get generally less things done, and people with higher get generally more things done.
The players I play with today generally has the same PS every game. If it's a 10f11 long game or a 60f11 long game. I think that if players "upped their speed when it's needed" their PS would grow over time, since there would be more speed needed. Maybe you can answer this, cause I might be wrong.

Anyway having a stable PS, aka spamming in start of the game, has helped my gameplay a lot.

PS: Pelie smd.

[PeLlE]

I think sometimes u are confusing PS with a player's actual speed.

This may be true, but I think of PS as a general guideline to how fast a player is playing.

Because you have a slow ps and don't spam does not mean u wont be able to handle several armies at once, or do many things in general. It just means you only push when you need it, and perhaps use mouse more than hotkeys. You up your speed when it's needed, and perhaps you've never seen this phenomenon, but I've seen it a lot.

Having low PS is to me an indicator that the player is "less skilled" at doing multiple things at ones. Multitasking efficiently in high speed comes with practice. I've learned this time and time again, that players with lower PS than me get generally less things done, and people with higher get generally more things done.
The players I play with today generally has the same PS every game. If it's a 10f11 long game or a 60f11 long game. I think that if players "upped their speed when it's needed" their PS would grow over time, since there would be more speed needed. Maybe you can answer this, cause I might be wrong.

Anyway having a stable PS, aka spamming in start of the game, has helped my gameplay a lot.

PS: Pelie smd.

Can't take the truth?
I thought measuring PS in µm/kg would be a good idea. And a sinus would look pretty neat on your graphs.
But maybe you can explain how you got such reasonable seeming data about playerspeed

[Arntzen]

The truth is I went to Google, searched "accelerating graph" and took one of the first I found. I used graphs to explain my point a lot easier. The truth is you found one thing in my post that had nothing to do with anything and used it in a silly effort to "destroy" my whole post. I welcome you to discuss in a more appropriate manner, if not don't expect much of a response to your posts from me.

[BigRon]

How to get playerspeed:

logic tells me it's (hotkeys*x+mouseclicks*y)/time = PS .... but

It's not that simple. I believe it also includes how fast you do certain things. Let's say in a 60 seconds period you do 100 hotkeys. Next game you do all the 100 hotkeys in 30 seconds, then stay idle the next 30. If I remember correct you'll get a higher PS in the second game.

Why spamming is good:

What's amazing to me is how people in a RTS game like this use the word "spam" in a negative sense. Of course, spamming may seem like a waste of time, or waste of eapm (effective action per minute), but then why does every SC player higher than diamond spam like crazy in the beginning of the game?

Samuel talked about "warming up", and yes, spamming helps on warming up. But then again, when Samuel is warm and cosy, lets say his 5th game in a row, he'll still spam like crazy in the beginning of the game. The reason is quite simple when you get the idea. Basically how I would explain it is "getting ready" for the mid-late game.

Example:

Velocity-Time-Graph-Changing-Acceleration.gif

The picture above is obviously not 100% correct, but you get the idea. The game starts out slowly and the speed builds up over time. In the end of the game the "velocity" or "playerspeed" needed is a lot higher than what was needed in the beginning.
Now, what spammers do is they start with around the same speed they will be needing later in the game. Using Samuel as an example he would start out with a 4-5k PS, with lets say 95% spam. Then he would throughout the game transition into a more and more accurate gameplay, and in the end he would be using his full potential.

samuels ps.gif

The black line showing his PS throughout the game, hitting the "PS needed" graph. Funny thing is, I often don't feel the moment where I hit the "PS needed" graph. It's all just a smooth transition. Suddenly I go from a 30% accurate gameplay to a 80% without feeling much difference. This is why spamming is good for you.

Now, why not just follow the graph, be 100% accurate and never spam?
Reason is we won't be able to. The PS needed explodes in games, sometimes in a period we would think was more "relaxed". Lets say you suddenly get attacked from two places while you were attacking your opponent. Here you immediately needs a big boost in your PS, something you (at least all players I've seen so far) won't be able to do.

Why playerspeed is needed:

Since commonly Samuel/Pope of Dope is the examples used in the "playerspeed needed" debate, I'll be using Pope here.
Yes, Pope will play at a very high level with a below 400 PS no matter the setting. He'll often have around same boom, army size and micro as another good player. The real difference between a low PS and a high PS player is a high PS player will have significantly better 2 group micro. I'm not saying Pope of Dope can't control 2 groups. What I'm saying is he'll miss out on something if he's forced to do more than what he normally does. If he actually controls those 2 groups good, he'll be having a worse economical growth then the high PS player.
Not to mention a low PS player will have a bit worse timings on everything. From citizens production to army production. Then again, this might not make a great deal in most scenarios, but sometimes it can be the factor that makes the game go in the high PS player's favor.

Basically, if you're a high PS player you don't let a low PS player be left alone. Go aggressive on him from the start of the game. The more actions you force him to do the more likely he will make mistakes. Obviously you can make mistakes too, but it's less likely since you're used to playing on a higher speed.

Fastest setting:

I know little about Mod DM, but it's quite obvious to me it's the fastest "known setting" there is. (Of course Nano DM would be faster...)
When it comes to the Mid SH versus Liga debate I find myself having around two times more PS when playing a Liga 1vs1 game than when playing a Mid 1vs1 game. The reason for this is I forcefeed more and longer in Liga. Another reason is since Liga has less stone there is worse defense and I'm able to play more aggressive. Where as in a Mid 1v1 game I find there is too many "dead periods". Where both players basically can't attack/do damage to the opponent and just sits tight and booms. One example being waiting for a Hero-push. Another thing that makes me more active in a Liga game is that scouting is so much more important. Normally in a Mid game your 6 first swords scouts their whole base and from that point on scouting is not a big deal at all. Where as in Liga you need to be a lot more active with scouting throughout the whole game to read your opponent so you can make the right decisions.

Does this make Liga a faster setting than Middle? I don't know, but at least I play it faster.

Liga strategies:

When Samuel says he can play a 2settle WW1 Strategy 30 different ways, he's right. But when me and him are discussing the games, we talk about it as "doing a proper 2settle" or "doing the best 2settle". This may be something as simple as having 6 on wood instead of 5 in Mid Liga, or 6 on food instead of 4. To make it simple we're countering what the enemy is doing. So we'll play it different every time, and nothing is "standardized". Obviously, my knowledge on this is tiny compared to Samuel's.
This is only against really good players who we actually can read. We would however just play it safe and "standard" against someone doing what I call "random shit". Like Warrior in GameRanger who ONLY does crazy all-in's.

I'm sure if you tempt Samuel, he'll write an incredible in depth post on exactly what he's thinking throughout a game. I think analyzing Krass is his strongest skill, and IMO he's the best at it.

Fixed.

[Lancelot5]

I thought measuring PS in µm/kg would be a good idea. And a sinus would look pretty neat on your graphs.

The graphs are logic and ok like that. There is only 1 little mistake. Due to the limit of population the exponential increase of velocity would reach a maximum.

[PeLlE]

The graphs are nowhere near logic. There are 2 ways:
1) You try an scientific approach, then you'd actually need data and proofs
2) You don't.
And as for the graphs: If so I'd guess it would be more of a root than an exponential function, but that is just a wild guess as the behaviour of exponential functions doesn't really make sense in that case.

[Omega]

Player speed is not important. Actions per minute is what is important. Player speed is an indicator of actions per minute, but not a perfect indicator as the efficiency of the player can make drastic changes to the measured player speed; some players may have a player speed of 800 and have the same number of actions per minute as a player with a speed of 200. I will define an action as something that causes a change in the game which will later manifest in terms of something an observer could potentially see. For example, moving a unit, or queuing a unit to build (which is evidenced by the unit actually building). Because of the relationship between APM and PS, the PS of a player can actually go DOWN as their APM increases, although if we assume constant efficiency, their PS should increase as their APM increases.

Additionally, it's not entirely actions per minute that matters. After all, telling a citizen to mine 15 gold, then mine 15 wood, while you send a citizen mining wood to mine gold, is a few actions, but the net number of actions there is effectively zero, and for those wasted actions you've actually lost resources due to travel time, and lost effective actions as well.

Furthermore, we can break actions per minute into starting actions per minute, sustained actions per minute, and burst actions per minute.

Starting actions per minute are the number of actions per minute (stAPM) at a player has during an certain time frame (which will vary significantly by the setting) at the start of the game. during the stAPM window, there are typically only a limiting number of actions that can be performed that have value, after which, any additional actions are worthless. Players who are capable of exceeding the maximum effective stAPM may have widely divergent player speeds, and might be less or more efficient with their actions, but there's really no need for them to be faster, but instead being smarter is what would improve their playing. Players who are under the maximum effective stAPM need to get faster, and probably need to play smarter too. To illustrate this concept, let's use the example of grenwars TL on a premade map (i.e. a gren tl scenario), where everyone has a completely identical map. There are only so many actions that can be undertaken effectively in the first 3 f11 of the game, and for any civilization, there is only one set of actions which is maximally effective towards a certain goal (let's assume that goal is getting a 1-settlement gren out as soon as possible, as that's fairly "balanced" in terms of play). For that objective, let's say that one needs X number of actions per minute. If you're below X number of actions per minute, your start must necessarily be sub-optimal. If you're at X actions per minute, your start can be optimal, but only if your actions are ideal. If you're above X actions per minute, your start is necessarily sub-optimal, and this is the case because of how I defined action above. If you're looking for a set of players where stAPM is generally too high, you can look to *certain* highly skilled liga players, and you'll notice that some of them tend to "bounce" their citizens around to various resources, even though the net effect can be achieved with far less "bounces", or in some cases just by rallying new citizens more effectively... Generally, the total harm of this is pretty small, a few seconds f11 on getting a unit out, for example, but it's still suboptimal and illustrates the point I'm trying to make.

Since people were mentioning starting player speeds in reference to setting, it's definitely true that from TL to DM, PS generally increases, and it's really obvious that APM needs to increase too. Probably the most obvious example of this might be from 1 cit SL to mod DM.

Sustained actions per minute (sAPM) are the number of actions per minute at which a payer averages throughout the game, approximately, but not including stAPM. Including stAPM is a misleading thing to do, because there's an upper limit on the maximum effective stAPM that is generally pretty easy to reach, or at least come close to reaching, and over the course of a typical game this could artificially lower the sAPM. Generally, sAPM will equal stAPM in the case where the player can't attain the number of maximum effective stAPM or better, and exceed the stAPM in other cases. I say this because unlike other games where the start involves a lot more actions than average gameplay, it seems to me that the start in EE generally involves a lot less actions than average gameplay, regardless of the setting you're looking at. A player with a higher sAPM has a distinct advantage over a player with a lower sAPM; they can do more effective things in the same unit time, although that doesn't mean that they necessarily WILL be doing more effective things than the other player.

Burst APM (bAPM) is something I included because sometimes, there will be intense fits of micro that require a player to dramatically increase their APM for a very short window, and the increase can't be sustained by the player throughout the game. I think everyone who plays or has played mod DM at a relatively high level will know what I'm talking about, and realize that this happens every single time they make a big push, or their opponent makes a big push. Being capable of a higher bAPM again gives a player an advantage in such situations, but again, it only does so in the case they use it wisely. I'd say many players totally fail at the using it wisely part, because I've seen a lot of people in all settings where CA (chariot or cav archers) are used have a micro when they try to "step it up" that's actually less effective than the default unit behavior. It's an extreme example, but it's pretty obvious when it happens.

As for what playerspeed is, it's basically some function of: Clicks, Hotkeys, Time between clicks/hotkeys, and Time

Not a very good predictor of actions per minute. Not even close. This is why Pope of Dope is still pretty good with a really low PS, because he has about the same number of APM as other players, he's just a lot more efficient. I will say though, that his burst APM is substandard though, as I'm sure most people have noticed.

---

As for spamming "warming you up", it's just a placebo effect. It's not to say that placebo effects aren't real, because they are, but it's not that spamming is doing it. You're tricking yourself into doing it, by thinking that spamming is somehow effective. You could get the exact same effect if you thought that wearing a certain "lucky" pair of socks was equally effective as spamming. You could probably get an even bigger effect if you had a giant sugar pill that was so big it was hard to swallow, and did that before your games. You could get an even bigger effect if you injected yourself with (sterile) isotonic saline solution before every game, and thought that would somehow be effective, even though it wasn't actually doing shit. Heck, even if you give someone a placebo and tell them it's a placebo, there's *STILL* an effect. It's actually pretty cool, and pretty interesting.

Regardless, you'd all get much better results by starting a forearm exercise regimen...

[herik]

As for spamming "warming you up", it's just a placebo effect. It's not to say that placebo effects aren't real, because they are, but it's not that spamming is doing it. You're tricking yourself into doing it, by thinking that spamming is somehow effective. You could get the exact same effect if you thought that wearing a certain "lucky" pair of socks was equally effective as spamming. You could probably get an even bigger effect if you had a giant sugar pill that was so big it was hard to swallow, and did that before your games. You could get an even bigger effect if you injected yourself with (sterile) isotonic saline solution before every game, and thought that would somehow be effective, even though it wasn't actually doing shit. Heck, even if you give someone a placebo and tell them it's a placebo, there's *STILL* an effect. It's actually pretty cool, and pretty interesting.

Regardless, you'd all get much better results by starting a forearm exercise regimen...

Stop trying to sell/promote drugs ,

Anyway nice post, hope a few more people can understand PS.

[Omega]

Actually, I would like to state that I will sell anyone here a lucky pair of socks for 50.00 USD, plus shipping and handling costs.

You'd easily pay that much for dinner and a movie, so why not pay that much in order to potentially improve your Empire Earth skills?

Disclaimer: Any improvement in your Empire Earth skills is solely due to the placebo effect, or due to your own efforts. I am in no way liable if your skills do not improve, and this does not entitle you to a refund of any kind. I am also in no way liable if your package fails to arrive, or fails to contain the socks, and you are not eligible for a refund in this case; in such an event, contact the shipper for further inquiries.

[herik]

Are they new socks or 2nd hand? because never heard of anything lucky that isn't 2nd hand lol