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Author Topic: My first video!  (Read 4646 times)

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theory

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My first video!
« on: January 14, 2012, 07:22:08 am »
+1

Here's my first attempt at an annotated video a la WanderingWinder.



Let me know what you think.  Specifically, as I was commentating, I realized that there are many things that I am thinking that I have no time to put into the video if I want to keep up with the turns.  As is, the video is already quite longer than the game was. Should I:

1) Try to keep the videos shorter and more real-time, with more terse commentary
2) Add more commentary, at the cost of bloating the video length out
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Davio

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Re: My first video!
« Reply #1 on: January 14, 2012, 08:41:17 am »
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I think roughly 50% of a Dominion game is played before the first card is ever bought.
So it's okay to take some time before you actually start to explain what your strategy will be.

A lot of the times your buys will flow immediately from your strategy and they don't need much extra commenting, so you can keep up nicely with the turns. If you're going to switch it around though you obviously need to tell us about it. But a lot of the people who are watching your videos will understand why you're buying a Gold.

I found the pace of the video quite good as it was, but I don't mind it if you add more commentary as long as your opponent knows you are recording and thus take some more time than usual.
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Jimmmmm

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Re: My first video!
« Reply #2 on: January 14, 2012, 08:56:34 am »
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I quite enjoyed the video, I think the pace, commentary etc was good, and it also outlined some of the differences between how I as a level 32 and an elite player approach a game. The main things I got out of it were: I need to stop and consider each card in the game before I start, and I should pay more attention both to my own deck and my opponent's. Using the number of Golds (or anything else) my opponent has to help make decisions isn't something I've really done before. Anyway, thanks for the video!
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WanderingWinder

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Re: My first video!
« Reply #3 on: January 14, 2012, 09:04:18 am »
+1

Ok, a couple technical notes before I flood you with strategy/gameplay ones in a little bit (probably a separate thread on why militia is p2 advantage, also which cards are player vs player 2 advantage...):

1. I think the pacing is very nice. Your tone of voice is pretty pleasant, you stay calm, you explain things nicely.
2. I get what people are talking about when they say that can't figure out what I'm doing on the info box. You're lightning-fast too.
3. I found that capturing a smaller portion of my screen immensely helped the video quality, rather than grabbing the whole browser window. If this is possible, I would strongly consider it.
4. I love the pop-up text on the video, especially the stuff that's laying out the kingdom by cost before-hand. I imagine that's a bit tedious to actually put together though.
5. Did you record the voice-over later, or was this live?

Geronimoo

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Re: My first video!
« Reply #4 on: January 14, 2012, 09:27:57 am »
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I could barely hear you talk, even with all my Volumes at max. Otherwise, great!

The game itself, well, you're theory and I have huge respect, but you made some very big mistakes:

-you waste a turn to get a Feast with the purpose to get a Market which is a mediocre card in itself. On top of that it will collide with Militia. Just buy another Militia or a Silver
-Lighthouses were ignored by both players while it counters Militia just fine. Here both players should just stock up on Lighthouses over Silver
-Smugglers is a good open here as second player (even as first player) because the game will drag on with the attacks and Duchy dancing will happen for sure
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theory

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Re: My first video!
« Reply #5 on: January 14, 2012, 09:40:06 am »
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Thanks, all.

I don't think I can record any more videos until I go back to the US, so that'll be several months at least.  But hopefully this inspires some more people to make videos.  And maybe if this laptop can run Adobe Premiere, it can run Camtasia or something.

@WW: I'm consciously forcing myself to speak at roughly 25% of my normal speaking pace.  The annotation was slightly tedious but not terribly.  I recorded this retrospectively, not live.  I thought that helped me a lot, because I could plan what to say and not miss anything by mistake.

@Geronimoo: Feast was clearly the losing mistake.  I'm not sure that Lighthouse is the right response, since if you get hit while Lighthouse is in your hand on Turn 3 or 4 you're done for.  Smugglers, though, is a nice counter to Militia, assuming you can predict how good his hand is.

Also, the video is super quiet because I recorded it all with headphones on, before realizing how much quieter it is without headphones.  I recommend headphones.
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Geronimoo

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Re: My first video!
« Reply #6 on: January 14, 2012, 10:04:46 am »
+2

Lighthouses beat Silvers by a good margin according to the simulator and I trust its results here (no difficult play decisions).

Also, Conspirator is a viable strategy if the opponent doesn't touch the Lighthouses. Stock up on Lighthouses and Markets and you should achieve just enough action density (despite the 7 Coppers and 3 Estates). Crossroads will also help the deck when greening. If you open $5/$2 it's the clearly dominant strategy.
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jsh357

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Re: My first video!
« Reply #7 on: January 14, 2012, 11:41:08 am »
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You can probably use Audacity to boost the volume of your post-commentary and remove the microphone "ambiance."  (Not sure if there's a Mac version if you're on one) 

Not sure what program you used to record, but the video quality wasn't the best (possibly due to Youtube, hard to tell).  You can probably get good mileage out of Livestream Procaster even if you aren't streaming (it's free).  The video recording software for it is surprisingly good.  I used to use virtualdub to edit videos after I recorded them.  It was free, but had a lot of quirks to get used to.  Adobe might be superior to it?  Camtasia is a great option if you have access to it, for both recording and editing.

One tip is if you cut out the chat box and whatever white space you can from the recording window, you can get more of the important stuff in the resolution.  This is especially important with Youtube, as it's pretty much going to reduce the quality of your video no matter what you do.

Other than that, I enjoyed the commentary; shows how much thought often goes in to a very basic game. 
« Last Edit: January 14, 2012, 11:43:37 am by jsh357 »
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theory

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Re: My first video!
« Reply #8 on: January 14, 2012, 12:37:12 pm »
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The original video quality was actually superb, since I used Camtasia on high settings.  What's frustrating is that when I try to record over it with Adobe Premiere, the quality just turns to crap.  What's going on here?
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mangaguy

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Re: My first video!
« Reply #9 on: January 14, 2012, 07:18:21 pm »
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I liked the video, but I'm with the others on how quiet this is. You were steady throughout the video and clear, which I liked, and the annotations were great so I could try to figure something out myself. But yeah, I thought this was a great effort.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: My first video!
« Reply #10 on: January 14, 2012, 09:20:15 pm »
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Comments on the game itself:
'Lighthouse is not worth it' AKA reading this board. There's nothing spectacular going on. The best engine kind of thing at all is to open feast/lighthouse, grab as many markets and lighthouses as possible, 1 militia on the next $4, and roll up conspirators; eventually you may want crossroads and possibly even scout. But that doesn't look terribly convincing to me. So then militia dominates the board. It's definitely a more powerful card for as straight BM a game as this is than market. The buys market gives you won't be so important, because you're really unlikely to hit, say, $13. So, as militia is the most important card... it's quite reasonable to go after lighthouses, I think. Certainly they at least deserve serious consideration. They don't actually produce much less money than silver in the first place. And potentially you can use markets to pick them up and actually make that buy useful. Then there's smugglers, which is always something to consider, but... I think I'd prioritize militia here. Smugglers will be better early; militia most likely much better later on, but the question is which terminal do you want? And I think it's militia, though analytically you probably want to open with smugglers and pick those militia up later on. And then lighthouse also, in proportion to how heavily your opponent is going militia. Thing is, you can actually get a decent number of terminals in this kind of deck, for a couple reasons. One, if you aren't defending yourself with lighthouse, the militias of your opponent will take care of some terminal collision for you. Two, between extra buys and gains off smuggler, your deck will have more cards. Three, crossroads. But against you, you've got the cantrips presented by market, making your effective deck size smaller.
You buy a feast - for more markets? Which you (rightly) say aren't all that great? And again, militia is a really strong card later on in the game, and your opponent's militias reduce terminal collisions
You buy a smugglers because you're behind? Well, he's going to be provincing pretty soon... this is the point where I DON'T like smugglers that much anymore. I guess they can grab duchies... but you aren't terribly likely to be buying a province as well, if you do. And how many plays of it are you likely to get at this point, especially since A) if you're using it to poach a gold or market or something, you have to wait ANOTHER reshuffle to use that card; B) some of those potential plays of smugglers, you expect to get eaten 'cause he's buying province. I'd have preferred silver....
You say something about frisk buying duchy surprisingly early - well, on $5 exactly (i.e., you not on $6+, where you should still prefer gold a while longer), 6 provinces is generally where you want to start taking your duchies, unless there's some very nice 5s you want instead, and market clearly isn't nice enough. On the other hand, it was close to his reshuffle...
'Duchy Dancing' is something I tend to say when you're buying them over province, a la PPR, which isn't the case here. Here you're just buying duchies.
The last province buy for you... well, what're your other options? Duchy+Estate? In that case, you aren't terribly likely to make it back to $8 all that soon. Perhaps your crossroads make you better suited for a long, drawn-out green war? But also, in the only case that matters, where Frisk gets $10+ with multiple buys, if it were really a concern, he could double duchy in response, and again you'd be on the back foot pretty hard. In fact, you were probably just lost either way, so I'd endorse taking the gamble by buying the province.

HiveMindEmulator

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Re: My first video!
« Reply #11 on: January 15, 2012, 03:13:40 am »
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I'll pretty much echo everyone else. I like the format with the post-hoc commentary and the overlays. The volume was too low. And you wrote off lighthouse much too easily (it's good with *any* attack, since it's not that much worse than silver to begin with), and you bought a feast when you had even said they would be bad (though I guess you actually said that in retrospect, rather that actually at game time).
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