Limited results for RoN’s random nation RNG in 1v1s

A few years ago I heard that RoN’s random RNG was bad, and that each nation only had a handful of possible matchups in a 1v1. I wasn’t able to find any documented testing on this, and nobody I talked to was able to say what the matchups were or confirm the details with certainty. So, of course, I sat down and ran 165 1v1 matchups and recorded the results.

Back then that was enough to complete the primary objective: to see whether the nation RNG only allowed for certain matchups in 1v1 (true), and I lacked the skills to parse the data to find out what each of those matchups actually was in a time-efficient way. Now I don’t, so here are the results of a not-quite-large-enough sample.

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The Curious Case of Mongol UUs

The Mongols have four unique Ranged Cavalry units: the Nomad (II), Steppe Nomad (III), Horde (IV), and Golden Horde (V). Their listed benefit is that  “they’re particularly effective against enemy Light Infantry” and “effective against enemy Musket Infantry”. The game confers these advantages by giving all four units a +60% damage bonus against Light Infantry and a +45% damage bonus against Gunpowder Infantry.

In reality this ends up being a really weird bonus to have. Not only do they still normally lose in fights against those units, but those same units are supposed to be counters to Ranged Cavalry, making these bonuses unintuitive for both the attacker and the defender.

Yes I know the units aren’t quite centered, please don’t bully me.

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PC of Theseus v2

Quoting Wikipedia, “the Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment about whether an object that has had all of its original components replaced remains the same object.” The PC of Theseus is a system that had almost all of its components replaced, and we just gave it another round of upgrades to dial the existentialism up even further.

As before, the cool PC building photo isn’t mine — we aren’t even doing any RAM or storage upgrades here. Image credit: Heliberto Arias via Unsplash.

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Michael’s Gaming PC v2

In December of 2016 I helped Michael put together a build I dubbed The Silent Whisper: a high-end gaming PC that had SPCR-level acoustics.

Towards the end of 2022, Michael was looking to upgrade the entire system, so I put on my PC building hat once more and gave him a hand.

If we wanted the best photo we would’ve taken this from the other side of the table for more natural light.

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