Age of Empires (Side Event)
Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2018 2:51 pm
I'm pleased to announce Age of Empires, a side event that will be available at some point in 2019. This tournament's subject material will be entirely drawn from time periods before 500 AD (exception: Americas content will go up to 1000 AD, to cover the entire era of Classic Maya and more Andean civilization, and you may get some post-500 sources on events that happened before). This tournament will be heavy on history due to the time period constraints, but other subjects will be represented as well.
Fees will be $12 per player. The distribution will be as follows:
12 History (this includes historians from the time period, e.g. Livy)
2 Greek and Hellenistic History
2 Roman History
2 Near Eastern History (this includes pre-Roman North Africa as well)
1 Chinese History
1 Other Asian History (excluding the Near East)
1 Other European History
1 Americas
1 Any History (other, mixed, or more of the above)
1 Latter-Day Historiography (the Edward Gibbons of the world)
12 Non-History
5 Religion and Myth
2 Arts (as artistically focused as reasonable, while incorporating cultural history clues as needed to smooth out world art topics)
2 Literature
1 Philosophy
2 Archaeology / Social Science (this category will be interdisciplinary like in Historature, and will feature questions on topics like historical linguistics, anthropology, and other disciplines used to reconstruct ancient societies)
After feedback from Historature which suggested that players of side events were interested in pushing the bounds of difficulty / having more "curveball" or exciting tossup answers, I intend to use a rough difficulty scale to ensure a wider difficulty in tossup answers. With this in mind, there will probably be some non-insignificant variation in tossup difficulty, but it shouldn't be too sharp and will be compensated with more generous powers on the harder answers. The set should still be playable by most people with a passing interest in the ancient world.
Easy - 30%
Medium - 30%
Challenging - 30%
Extra-canonical / Very Hard - 10%
I expect the final difficulty of this set to feel similar to ACF Nationals or CO-minus, but with a bit more wackiness, and a decent number of really hard answers. I plan on writing nine packets - eight will roughly conform to this difficulty distribution, and the final one will be tougher.
EDITED 2/11 to indicate that the set's projected difficulty has been revised up somewhat
Fees will be $12 per player. The distribution will be as follows:
12 History (this includes historians from the time period, e.g. Livy)
2 Greek and Hellenistic History
2 Roman History
2 Near Eastern History (this includes pre-Roman North Africa as well)
1 Chinese History
1 Other Asian History (excluding the Near East)
1 Other European History
1 Americas
1 Any History (other, mixed, or more of the above)
1 Latter-Day Historiography (the Edward Gibbons of the world)
12 Non-History
5 Religion and Myth
2 Arts (as artistically focused as reasonable, while incorporating cultural history clues as needed to smooth out world art topics)
2 Literature
1 Philosophy
2 Archaeology / Social Science (this category will be interdisciplinary like in Historature, and will feature questions on topics like historical linguistics, anthropology, and other disciplines used to reconstruct ancient societies)
After feedback from Historature which suggested that players of side events were interested in pushing the bounds of difficulty / having more "curveball" or exciting tossup answers, I intend to use a rough difficulty scale to ensure a wider difficulty in tossup answers. With this in mind, there will probably be some non-insignificant variation in tossup difficulty, but it shouldn't be too sharp and will be compensated with more generous powers on the harder answers. The set should still be playable by most people with a passing interest in the ancient world.
Easy - 30%
Medium - 30%
Challenging - 30%
Extra-canonical / Very Hard - 10%
I expect the final difficulty of this set to feel similar to ACF Nationals or CO-minus, but with a bit more wackiness, and a decent number of really hard answers. I plan on writing nine packets - eight will roughly conform to this difficulty distribution, and the final one will be tougher.
EDITED 2/11 to indicate that the set's projected difficulty has been revised up somewhat