Satsuki Midori and bier

[flugendorf]

Skit that's been going in my head in the shower  for years, off and on:

A street festival. An identifiable American tourist is walking around gawking. Three very German men in lederhosen walk up to him.

One of the Germans says: "Hello. Vould you like some bier?"

In huge white glowing letters, the word "BIER" appears.

The American tourist looks down at the spelled-out word.  He smiles and answer, trying to match the accent:  "Heh heh.  Ja!  I *would* like some bier!"

Cut to:

Dusk. Atop of a cliff over the sea. The grim faces of the three Germans are lit by a roaring pyre, from which screams can be heard - "Aaaaaa!  Aaaaaaaaaa!  Aaaaaaa!"

The end message appears in glowing white letters:

"SPELLING IS A WEAPON"

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Heh.  The previous entry.  I was reminded of Age of Empires III by my writer, who really liked a strategic idea I mentioned while I was editing a passage in his book.  I answered that I could claim I got it from reading books on military strategy, but really I just got it from playing Age of Empires.  (Mostly true.  I've read some military history, but mostly I've just read people who've read a lot of it.)

So I remembered that one game session, and then I played the game a few times, for the first time in years.  And I did piece together exactly what I had done in that one strange battle to pull off the miracle (I may add it in a comment under this), but mainly what I realized is that... I don't play in that way at all.

When I learned to really play, I learned in a different way.  I don't play with a focus on tactics. I play with a focus on strategy.  I almost try to be bored, the way I play.  I learned to play so that I would probably win no matter what happened, no matter how each individual fight went, no matter what surprises showed up.  I focus only on that.  A very slow-heart-rate kind of play.  I half-ignore the battles while I go on focusing on the grand plan.  When I win, it's typically a situation where I basically won a half hour ago. 

Which is totally different than the drama!  the terror! of when I began playing.  I could play like that, I suppose, deep in figuring out how to win each particular battle.  And I'd enjoy it - but really I'd only start doing it if I were in an Age of Empires III class where I had to do it for class exercises for a grade.  What I do naturally is more like Moltke's "brilliant and lazy" officer.  

But I like the exciting kind of play!  And I remember that one game session years later!

But that's not the way my mind naturally tends.

 

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(Meanwhile I'm much surer that the lessons I'd learn from the exciting tactical kind of play would be... transferable. My strategic sense?  Honed against a really stupid, predictable AI.  After years of playing the computer, I figure if I ever tried to play a human being I'd just blink in confusion as I immediately got stabbed. For this reason I have absolutely no ego-pretensions about my strategy focus.) :-)

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When I finish editing this book I am going to try a flotation tank, I swear.  

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A kind of cucumber I grew last year has disappeared! Or maybe we ordered our cucumber seeds too late.  Satsuki Midori.  Named after a Japanese actress.  Never caught on commercially in the U.S. in the '60s because of the unusual Asian style and a short shelf life, but absolutely delicious in the home garden.  And I just couldn't find the seeds.

I did find mentions that it was "very rare". Which makes  me nervous. Very rare strains can still blurp out of sight and be lost.  If I'd known it was very rare, I could have been growing it to save the seeds!

Dang.  Gotta try to find it next year.

Comments

How I did that wacky save for my outnumbered troops (from last entry):

[flugendorf]

Because I was mulling it, and for compulsiveness...

I think the basic thing I was doing was using my archers, English longbowmen in this case, as bait for heavy cavalry.

Those were the heavy lancers of either the French or the Spanish empire, and, given that I remain convinced at least 90% it was indeed Napoleon who spoke to me, that would make them the fearsome French cuirassiers.
Archers are meat for those guys.
And the fact that I thought of deliberately dangling those archers, with no windup or time to think, proves that I should never be trusted with anything ever.

What I was doing - somehow timing the first time right (HOW?!?) - was swinging the formation of archers off to one side, where they were totally exposed, and having them rain arrows on the enemy.

When the enemy cavalry went for them, I darted my own *much* smaller contingent of cavalry in between and blocked them...

Blocked them just long enough for my heavy foot infantry to get in so that I could pull my overmatched horses straight back out.
My heavy infantry would have been some mix of pikemen and musketeers. They were better at holding the enemy cavalry, especially the pikes - far too few, but holding them for just a second...

Because meanwhile I had already told my archers to match over to the *other* side - too far to the side again - exposing themselves again - and shooting at the enemy.
Who broke contact with my heavy infantry and turned and lunged again - and my own cavalry darted in between - while my guys on foot rushed to catch up...
Etc.
All of which sounds like such intense engagement with the enemy that you'd imagine me going forward - but I did it in heels. I was going backward. All my moves canted backward. All the way home. Not all the way across a meadow - all the way across really two big meadows, with a little wooded transition between the two, as I recall. It felt like real-world distance. I nearly felt mud.
Those guys shouldn't have made it five horse-lengths.

It was like walking in a heavy diving suit on the bottom of the ocean - finding yourself face to face with a Carcharadon megalodon, that instantly attacks - and surviving by frantically waving your hands around so that the monster only takes dozens of little snaps at your fingertips.
The horde never absorbed me. It just kept turning.

I don't think of anything even slightly involved that fast.

And if I ever take it into my head to intentionally try doing that, my copy of Age of Empires III should have me court-martialed and shot.