33rd lecture in the course engineering electromagnetic. In the lecture today we continue our discussion on the general properties of electromagnetic resonators and then continue to consider the properties of transmission line resonators. You would recall that last time we considered the example of a parallel resonant circuit and we were able to make some conclusions of general significance which would be applicable to resonators of various types and shapes that are going to be required for work at different frequencies. Continuing with that illustrative example of the parallel resonant circuit what would be the effect if the resonator is coupled to an external agency. Normally the resonator is required to do some useful work it will be coupled to some outside agency which will load the resonator in some way. So what is the effect of this loading or how are we going to take this into account that is what we consider first. And as I said we will continue with our illustrative example of the parallel resonant circuit. In the parallel resonant circuit we have L and C and the loss in the circuit in the circuit elements or the rest of the circuit is taken into account by connecting resistance R in shunt which for a good quality circuit is going to be high. Now if the resonator is connected which is the case in practice to some external agency or some other loss mechanism for some other purpose is introduced in the resonator then that loss because of the additional loss that we may have introduced or because of the loading effect of the external agency can be considered to be represented by another resistance in shunt which we may give the symbol R L. And therefore recalling that for the parallel resonant circuit the quality factor was given as R by omega naught L. Now the R that is going to be required in the numerator in this expression for the quality factor will be the parallel combination of the resistance R representing the losses in the circuit itself resonant circuit itself and the effect of loading that is the resistance R L. So that it will be the parallel combination of R and R L divided by omega naught L which we may write as 1 by R plus 1 by R L whole inverse divided by omega dot L which we could rewrite in a different manner as 1 by Q equal to omega naught L by R plus omega naught L by R L. Now to indicate that the quality factor that we are talking of now in the presence of loading is going to be different from the quality factor in the absence of loading we should use the subscript L here the loaded quality factor which continues through. And now the two terms that appear on the right hand side can also be given different names. For example the first term can be called the unloaded quality factor say 1 by Q sometimes one would use the subscript Q naught or Q unloaded to signify that this term represents the quality factor of the resonator in the absence of any losses right. To keep the notation in the same form the last term on the right hand side which represents the effect of the loading due to various reasons can be considered to be the external quality factor if the quality factor were to be decided only on the basis of this loss resistance and the intrinsic loss of the resonator were absent then what would be the quality factor of the resonator that we call the external quality factor. And represent this by 1 by Q E and therefore we have this general relation which holds good for resonators of various shapes that 1 by Q L is equal to 1 by Q plus 1 by Q E the significance of this expression is that the loaded Q and the unloaded Q they can be measured by measuring the resonant frequency and the frequency separation between the 3 dB points right. And therefore the characteristics of the loading R L due to whatever reasons it may be can be made out. And therefore when we use resonators for testing materials or for some other checking purposes then this relation comes in very handy. While this kind of resonators based on lumped elements can be utilized up to let us say frequencies which are 100 megahertz we have stated earlier that as the frequency of operation increases beyond this there appear problems in using this form of the resonant circuit. The problems are of different types for example because of the parasitic reactances it may be difficult to correctly estimate the behavior the losses may also increase. And therefore as we try to have resonators at frequencies higher than this we have to change the configuration of the resonator change the shape in which the resonator is going to be obtained. And then as we stated earlier we can use what to call the transmission line resonators. It was stated earlier that the transmission line resonators can be operated efficiently over a frequency range which extends from 100 megahertz to roughly say 1000 megahertz and as some of you may be familiar short circuited section of a transmission line of an appropriate length acts like a resonator. The section may look something like this the section is open circuited at one end and is short circuited at the other end. It has a length L which for the sake of illustration we take as lambda by 4 we can generalize this length later on. And let the phase shift constant on this transmission line be beta with an associated velocity of the waves phase velocity of the waves as v. Now how are we going to see or show that such a section acts as a resonator. We should be able to show that under certain conditions under appropriate circumstances there is a resonant build up of voltage or current possible. If we can show that then we can say that yes this section can act as a resonator. So, for this purpose let us connect some time varying source and let us connect it somewhere close to the short circuit with the help of a probe and let us connect a voltage v naught which is varying sinusoidally with time. So, that in phasor notation it may be written as v naught e to the power j omega t. And let us consider the time varying behavior of the circuit for such a such an excitation. Let us say that at t equal to t dot the voltage that the probe provides is v naught e to the power j omega t naught. We have assumed that the probe voltage is connected very close to the short circuit. The short circuit must maintain a 0 voltage condition across itself. And therefore, going through the arguments which should be familiar to us a forward wave is going to be initiated to satisfy the boundary conditions at the short circuit. This forward wave may be represented as v plus where v plus should be equal to minus v naught e to the power j omega t naught which is going to travel to the far end the open circuited end. And let us say that takes a time capital T which is l upon the velocity. So, that at time instant t equal to t naught plus capital T as this forward wave reaches the open circuit that is going to impose its own boundary condition. Namely the total current through the open circuit must be equal to 0. As a result of which we must have a reflected wave v minus which as we all know should be equal to v plus itself that is minus v naught e to the power j omega t naught which reflected wave is going to arrive back at the probe close to the short circuit at time instant small t equal to t naught plus twice capital T. And now let us see what is the total voltage at the probe attempting to be like. And that will be v naught e to the power j omega what will be the probe voltage now it will be t naught plus 2 t because the time instant is changed. So, its phase has to change accordingly this is the probe voltage in addition there is a reflected wave which is come which is minus v naught e to the power j omega t naught. This is what the total voltage at the probe tends to be which is going to be of the nature v naught e to the power j omega t naught plus 2 t we take this factor entire factor is common. And therefore, we are left with 1 minus e to the power minus j omega what is the value of this factor omega 2 t or twice omega t that one can make out twice omega t we write in terms of the phase shift constant beta realizing that v is equal to omega the radian frequency divided by beta the phase shift constant. And therefore, omega is simply let us replace capital T in terms of l and v. So, that is twice omega l by v and then omega by v is going to be equal to the phase shift constant beta. So, that it is twice beta times l beta the phase shift constant is further replace in terms of the wave fling. So, that it is twice into twice pi by lambda into l which let us say is lambda by 4. So, that this is equal to simply pi radians which is going to happen this kind of value of pi omega t equal to pi is going to occur only under very special conditions at a particular frequency and for a particular length of this section. But under those conditions this is going to be equal to pi and therefore, this is going to be twice v naught e to the power j omega t naught plus twice capital T which the short circuit here has to counter to maintain its 0 voltage boundary condition. So, this twice beta l equal to pi does not depend upon frequency. How do you say that? Because l is lambda by 4 is sufficient. Yeah it is lambda by 4 at a particular frequency all right if you want to put it that too as long as the section is lambda by 4 where the frequency is automatically taken into account l is lambda by 4 is for all difference. How can that be? It is lambda by 4 at a particular frequency all right and therefore, the short circuit is going to force a second time around forward wave called v double plus which is going to be equal to minus 2 v naught e to the power j omega t naught plus twice t all right. At t equal to t naught we had a first time around forward wave which was minus v naught of magnitude v naught at t equal to t naught plus 2 t we have a second time around forward wave which has a magnitude twice v naught. We can continue this argument and see that at t equal to t naught plus 4 t we will have a third time around forward wave which is likely to be 4 v naught e to the power j omega t naught plus 4 t and therefore, as we consider this particular instant t naught and as we consider its increments by twice capital T 4 capital T and so on. We see that the voltage on the transmission line is going to increase and since this time is rather small since the frequencies are high the voltage is going to rise in a resonant fashion. For how long is the voltage going to continue to rise till the losses in the transmission line the conductor loss and the dielectric loss match the power fed by the probe to this resonant circuit all right. And a voltage step up of several hundred volts is possible for a good low loss resonant section. One can also see that it is not necessary that the length is exactly lambda by 4 it could be any odd multiple of lambda by 4 also. So, that we may generalize that L is equal to an odd multiple of quarter wave length. So, this is the way we can show that such a section such a quarter wave length short circuit section of a transmission line acts as a resonator. And for a modest voltage connected here they can be a fairly high voltage generated on the resonator which is limited by the losses in the resonant section. Till the losses in the section counter the power that is fed by the probe once they become equal the further rise will be inhibited all right that is this that is the steady state condition. Having seen that such a section can act as a resonator now let us work out the other properties for example, the input impedance and how it behaves as a function of frequency. And we look at the short circuit section in a slightly different way just as we considered transmission line sections actually. This is the short circuit section with primary constants of the transmission line being R L C and in fact strictly speaking G also. But the role of G is going to be relatively minor compared to the role of R. And the secondary constants which would be say the characteristic impedance Z naught and the propagation constant gamma or the phase shift constant beta and the attenuation constant alpha in general. And let us consider the input impedance of this section which is of length L which at resonance we consider to be equal to lambda by 4. But as we deviate this deviate from this resonant frequency the length in terms of wavelength is obviously going to check. As far as the input impedance of a short circuit transmission line is concerned we write this as Z naught the characteristic impedance times tan hyperbolic of gamma L where gamma is the complex propagation constant. So that it is Z naught sin hyperbolic of alpha plus j beta times L divided by cos hyperbolic of alpha plus j beta L which sin hyperbolic and cos hyperbolic function can be expanded further to give us Z naught equal to sin hyperbolic alpha L and j times sorry there is no j here we simply have cosine beta L plus cos hyperbolic alpha L and here it is j times sin beta L divided by cos hyperbolic alpha L cos beta L plus sin hyperbolic alpha L j times sin beta L. Now at resonance beta L as we have just seen is equal to pi by 2 so that as far as the resonant condition is concerned the cosine beta L terms are going to drop out and the sin beta L terms will become simply 1 and we are going to have let us call it Z resonance equal to cosine hyperbolic alpha L divided by sin hyperbolic alpha L with a factor Z naught in front. Now for a good low loss resonance section alpha is going to be small it will cause a small attenuation of the fields per unit length and therefore we can use this small argument approximation for these functions giving us the approximate value of the input impedance at resonance equal to Z naught upon alpha L as long as alpha L is small alpha L could become large for very large lengths for example. So as long as alpha L is small this is the value of the input impedance at resonance which is going to be quite high for low loss sections. What is the value of alpha? Alpha in general is equal to half R by Z naught plus G Z naught but to keep things simple and which is also practically quite alright the second term is quite small compared to the first term and therefore one can use the approximate value of alpha that is R by 2 Z naught. This is the value of the input impedance at resonance what we want to make out is how this input impedance varies as a function of frequency as we change the operating frequency by a small amount around the resonant frequency. Therefore just as we considered such a behavior for the parallel RLC circuit the same thing we are going to attempt here. We say that let F be equal to F naught plus delta F where delta F is typically small particularly for a good low loss resonant circuit. So that the beta L value that we are considering beta L is written as omega by V times L and omega is twice pi F by V times L and now we replace F by F naught plus delta F. So that it is twice pi L by V into F naught plus delta F which is equal to value of beta L at the resonant frequency plus a correction term. The correction term is simply twice pi L delta F by V and the first term the value of beta L at resonant frequency we have already identified is equal to pi by 2. And therefore the sine and cosine function that we have are going to become as follows. Sine beta L will go to cosine of twice pi L by V delta F and similarly the cosine beta L will go to minus sine twice pi L by V times delta F which values of sine and cosine functions can be substituted in the general expression for the input impedance. Carrying out this process we have Z in equal to Z naught then sine hyperbolic alpha L and cos beta L which goes to minus sine twice pi L by V delta F and then we have plus J cos hyperbolic alpha L and sine beta L which goes to cosine of twice pi L by V times delta F that is as far as the numerator is concerned. And the denominator becomes minus cos hyperbolic alpha L sine twice pi L by V delta F and then the last term here becomes J sine hyperbolic alpha L cosine twice pi L by V delta F. And can compare this with the previous general expression for the input impedance and satisfy oneself that no mistake has been made. Now realizing that the arguments of the sine cosine and the sine hyperbolic and the cos hyperbolic functions are small particularly for a good resonator. The attenuation constant and therefore alpha L will be small and the frequency deviation will be small only around the resonant frequency we are going to get some output. And therefore this is going to be approximated as Z naught and then we have here minus of alpha L times twice pi L by V delta F. And the second time in the numerator is simply J the cos hyperbolic and the cosine functions being approximated by 1 in the small argument approximation. And then we have minus twice pi L by V delta F and then J times alpha L. As far as the first term in the numerator is concerned it is a product of two small quantities and in comparison with the second term its magnitude is going to be quite small. And therefore can be safely neglected and on that basis we get the value which is Z naught. We ignore this term in comparison with this and then divide the numerator and the denominator by factor J which gives us Z naught upon alpha L plus J times twice pi L by V times delta F. From where at resonance that is when delta F is 0 we get the same value of the input impedance as we have obtained before that is Z naught upon alpha L. Now therefore we normalize the input impedance with respect to this value at resonance giving us Z in by Z resonance equal to 1 upon 1 plus J 2 pi delta F by V and alpha. Now recalling that V is equal to omega by beta this factor twice pi delta F by V alpha is twice pi delta F and then V gives us beta by omega and alpha which may be written as delta omega by omega and beta by alpha. And now recalling the form of the input impedance as a function of frequency that we got for the parallel resonance circuit. If we write this as 1 upon 1 plus J 2 q into delta omega by omega. If we compare this with this expression then we see that q is simply beta by 2 alpha. In terms of the secondary constants of the transmission line the quality factor the selectivity comes out as beta by 2 alpha where beta is the phase shift constant and alpha is the attenuation constant. This kind of behavior of the input impedance is exactly the same as for the parallel resonance circuit. And we should also notice that at resonance the input impedance value is high Z naught by alpha L where alpha L is small and therefore the resistance the input impedance at resonance is high. This is the distinctive feature of parallel resonance circuits. If one consider the series resonance circuit then we will find that at resonance the input impedance is small and the input admittance will have this kind of behavior. So, therefore by comparison we are able to say that the quarter wave short circuit section that we are considering as a resonator behaves like a parallel resonance circuit. This expression appears in a slightly different form but if we put in the values of beta and alpha in terms of the primary constants of the transmission line it will come out in a very familiar form. For example, we will have q equal to beta which we write in terms of the primary constants as omega naught into square root of L c using the low loss approximation for the transmission line divided by 2 alpha where we neglect the contribution of the dielectric loss in the attenuation constant in comparison with the conductor loss. And therefore alpha is R by 2 Z naught which is going to appear in the numerator in this form using the low loss approximations. And therefore you see that this is equal to omega naught L by R. Now this expression for the quality factor has come out in a slightly different form from the expression for the parallel resonance circuit where we had R upon omega naught L. But if we compare the two carefully then we would notice that R upon omega naught L involves a resistance R which is a shunt resistance and is a high value for a low loss circuit. The R that is appearing here in the denominator is a small resistance indicating the series loss resistance in the transmission line. And therefore the quality factor remains high although it appears in this form. One can see easily that if one were to consider the dielectric loss related attenuation constant then one will have an expression which is quite consistent with R upon omega naught L kind of expression for the parallel resonance circuit. And therefore we find that even for the transmission line resonator we have the behavior which is quite consistent with the illustrative parallel RLC circuit that we had considered earlier. The quality factor can be considered in an alternative manner also. We had written the quality factor in terms of the stored energy and power loss also. So let us apply that concept and see how consistent results we get. Now for a short circuited transmission line let us consider the behavior of current as a function of various locations on the transmission line. It is going to be a standing wave and therefore the current can be written as I equal to some current magnitude I naught times cosine beta z and let us say e to the power j omega t in phasor notation. So that at z equal to 0 which let us say is the location of the short circuit the current is maximum and otherwise it varies in a cosine sinusoidal fashion as the z parameter takes on increasing values away from the short circuit. On this basis now it will be possible for us to calculate the stored energy and the power loss. Let us see how we are going to do that. But first let us put down the definition of the quality factor which will be omega naught W upon P L which is the resonant frequency of the power loss. So this is omega naught times the energy stored in the resonator divided by the power loss in the resonator. And as we have been saying for this kind of expressions earlier both numerator and denominator should be calculated on the same basis either average or P and as a matter of practice if we calculate average values we have less chances of going wrong. The energy stored is calculated as follows. Let us consider the energy stored in the magnetic field associated with the current alright and the energy stored in the magnetic field in this form over a small length d z of the transmission line is going to be 1 by 4 times omega naught times the inductance associated with such a section times i i star. This is the average energy stored in a in an infinitesimally small length d z of the transmission line. So that the energy stored in the magnetic field average energy stored in the magnetic field which should be an integral of this and of this from 0 to lambda by 4 can be calculated. And this gives us an expression which is L by 4 and i naught squared and then integral of cos squared beta z over the limits 0 to lambda by 4. And therefore, one gets lambda by 32 and i naught squared this is the energy stored average energy stored in the magnetic field. What we require is the total average energy stored there will be energy stored in the electric field also. But as we identified last time the total average energy stored w is equal to w m plus w e which is equal to twice w m which remains fixed and distributes itself in varying proportions as a function of time between the energy stored in the electric field and the energy stored in the magnetic field. And therefore, this need not be calculated separately although that can be done by considering the associated energy stored in the magnetic field voltage and then the energy stored in the electric field. And therefore, this is equal to lambda by 16 i naught squared times a. In a similar manner we consider a short section of length dz consider the resistance associated with it and the ohmic loss caused by that resistance. And we ignore the loss because of the dielectric if it is present then it can be taken into a cup. And if we call this loss in the small section as d p l then this is going to be half r dz times i i star. So, that the total average power loss in the resistance is an integral of this or of this from 0 to lambda by 4. The integral is straight forward and the result that we get is lambda by 16 i naught squared r. So, that when we substitute these expressions for p l and w in the expression for the quality factor we get an expression which is quite familiar by now q is equal to omega naught l by r the same expression that we had got by considering the input impedance of the short circuited transmission line section. Now, it is not that it is only an open circuited short circuited section of a transmission line which is lambda by 4 or an odd multiple of lambda by 4 which will act as a resonator. Those of you who have worked on a transmission line demonstrator would recall that one can have other conditions also, but then the length is changed appropriately. For example, open circuited transmission line sections which are half wavelength long would also have similar properties. Analytically they can be looked at in an analogous manner and they will have same kind of properties. For example, the input impedance will be that of a parallel RLC circuit and it will be high at resonance. So, these transmission lines sections which show a behavior input impedance behavior which is analogous to that of the parallel resonant circuits are given a separate name. These are called anti resonant circuits and as you may guess the circuits which behave as a series RLC circuit would be called resonant circuits. The major difference between the two will be the behavior of the input impedance at resonance. The anti resonant circuits have a high value of the input impedance at resonance. Because the resonant circuits have a low value of this impedance at resonance they are rather difficult to use. It becomes difficult to couple sufficient amount of power in a resonant circuit which behaves as a series resonant circuit. And therefore, this kind of circuits which behave as parallel resonant circuits are more useful and you would find that these are applied much more often in practice. The way the quality factor is appearing in terms of the primary constants of the transmission line L and R when we have ignored the shunt conductance G. If you want to estimate the quality factor of the transmission line resonant circuits we will need the values of these parameters in terms of the geometrical and the construction parameters of the transmission line. And therefore, it will be useful to list the values of these primary constants for some commonly used transmission lines. The commonly used transmission lines would be the parallel wire transmission lines and the coaxial transmission line for which we have given the expressions for the primary constants earlier but for the sake of ready reference they can be given here also primary constants. The one commonly used transmission line is the parallel wire transmission line using two identical conductors separated by a certain distance. The separation is called capital D and the diameter of the individual conductors is called small D. And we list the characteristic impedance and the resistance R per unit length for this transmission line. The characteristic impedance for such a transmission line has the value 1 by pi mu naught by epsilon naught epsilon R prime where epsilon R prime is the real part of the relative permittivity of the dielectric medium whole square root times cos hyperbolic inverse of capital D by small D. And similarly the resistance per unit length is twice R m by pi D capital D by small D and then we have D by small D whole square minus 1 and then whole square root of the denominator. The other common transmission line is the coaxial transmission line consisting of an inner conductor and an outer conductor where the radii of these two conductors are B and A. So, that the diameters are 2 B and 2 A. In terms of these parameters the characteristic impedance comes out to be 1 by 2 pi and once again mu naught epsilon naught epsilon R prime whole square root which is simply the intrinsic impedance of the medium the dielectric medium filling the region between the two conductors times natural log of B by A. And the resistance R per unit length is R m by 2 pi and then 1 by 2 pi. 1 by A plus 1 by B and you will recall that R m is the surface resistance we have used R S symbol also for this which is equal to omega mu by 2 sigma whole square root. What we are going to require are the inductance in addition to R for being able to estimate the quality factor. And that is related to the characteristic impedance in the following manner L is equal to mu naught epsilon naught epsilon R prime whole square root times Z naught. If we require the capacitance C per unit length that also has a similar expression, but not exactly the same it is mu naught epsilon naught epsilon R prime whole square root in the numerator. And then in the denominator we have division by the characteristic impedance Z naught. The characteristic impedance expressions are here and therefore L and C can be calculated and hence the quality factor can be calculated since R expression is also given. In practice the quality factors that one can achieve using these transmission lines can range from several hundreds to even up to about 10,000. And this is where we stop today in the lecture today we have considered the behavior of transmission line resonant sections. Thank you.


So, the other game, which is a more traditional to the modern era of indie games game, is Food Chain Magnate. I can see why, I mean, this is a real game, right, like a quote-unquote real ortho game. It has a kickstarted aesthetic. I don't think it was kickstarted. I don't even know. The aesthetic is actually kind of cool retro kind of sound. Oh, look, the game is beautiful. Yeah, it's not beautiful. Except for the board. I think the board is kind of bad. I don't like the design of the board. The board is bad, and it's like slightly unpolished, but it has that sort of retro fifties diner style. I'll put it this way, Scott. The issues that we have with the design, like the aesthetic design, are down to the level of those four things should be colored differently. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, but, and I can see why people like this game a lot, because it's like a real game. It's a high-skill game. It's an ortho game. There's very little randomness. This is a Puerto Rico style. Yeah, there's like no luck whatsoever. If you lose, you made bad decisions. Right, but I don't like this game. I don't want to play it ever again. Yeah, like, so, and remember, we played... Just because it's a game of skill doesn't mean that I want to play it, and it's enjoyable. Now, full disclosure again, we played like 10 turns of this game before I was so fed up with that.  I hate the game for very specific and narrow reasons, and Scott hates the game to a degree that actually frighten me.  Like, we start playing the game, and I'm like, all right, so I'm going to make a decision here, but I take issue with the way this goes. I feel like there's going to be a snowball that I can't come back from already. Like, I feel like the decision I made this turn, round two, literally ended the game for me, and it's over. Right. And this very specific...    Right. So, much like Age of Steam, right?   Unlike Age of Steam, and unlike fast food franchise, food chain magnet, you don't get eliminated.  So, the main problem with this game is that on the right side of the board, there's all these bonuses, right, that let you upgrade your abilities. Everyone starts off on even footing, but... They're all crazy permanent powers. There's crazy permanent powers that are super strong, and you basically upgrade yourself for the rest of the game. Like, I am better at this now than everyone else for the whole rest of the game, because I got this thing. So... And there's a million of them. There's a ton of them. So, obviously, everyone's going to get a different set of them, and that's going to guide their course through the rest of the game. Yeah. You know, and that is a perfectly fine mechanic to have, right? It's like, aha, I will be the guy who's better at A, and I'll be the guy who's better at B, and we'll take different strategic routes to build our machines and build different machines and see who has the most money in the end. That is perfectly fine. Now, the way you get these things, and I'll let Scott go apeshit on why he's so mad about it, is that there's things you can do in the game. Like, a million things. There's lots of options. You've got all these different actions you can choose on your turn and different employees. You can basically choose which employees are going to work every turn that you've hired, and you can also hire more employees, and you can increase your capacity of how many employees can work per turn, and that sort of is what you do on each turn, right? But this mechanic, full disclosure before Scott goes crazy, it is a very clever mechanic that in a vacuum I actually really like, but applied to this specific game, I dislike it. But I want to make it clear, this mechanic has merit. So the way the mechanic works is if you do a thing, like every power has a condition. So one of the powers gives you like a ton of pizza or whatever. And its condition is if you are the first person to put a pizza billboard out on the board. Something like that. If you're the first person to hire a pizza boy, you get the super pizza upgrade, and no one else gets it. Yep.  And the way this works is if you hit the milestone, everyone who hit that milestone, the turn that anyone hit the milestone. Right. So that's a perfectly good mechanic, right? Because now you don't have a turn order situation. Like, oh, Rym went first and he snatched everything out. They figured that out. That's great. Right? It's like, okay, we'll give it to whoever does the thing first. But if everyone does it on the same turn, everyone gets it. And then after, if you do it on a turn lap after that, well, you don't get it. Yep. So if you do the thing, if me and Scott get the thing, because we both like advertised on the first time, no one else can get those powers for the rest of the game when you flip them over. Now that could be cool. Right. That's fine because obviously if someone didn't get those powers that we got, they're getting other powers, right? Because basically every turn someone is going to be doing a thing that gets them one of these powers, especially early in the game, right? Where everyone doing everything is the first person to do that thing, right? And if you see, you know, you can sort of tell what other people are maybe going for and you based on different things and try to choose things that they don't choose. But obviously if you choose the same thing on the same turn, that's perfectly fine. Yep. Because you're going to get it too, right? So it's like whatever direction you push in, you're going to be able to push harder in that direction. And the game among skilled players would be very clearly because there's no real luck in this game. Yep. Scott pushed in direction A and I'm pushing in directions B and C. So the competition is, is the direction we're pushing enough to overcome each other. Like you're specializing in the thing you're doing. Right. And then, you know, the game will actually come down to more specific decisions like which spot did you put your advertisement on the board and, you know, like you can really get. Did you anticipate that Scott was going to push B three rounds and then swerve and push C a little bit that's diversifying crazily? Like did you anticipate that? Could you counter it? Which is similar to what happens in non-luck games like Puerto Rico where did you anticipate that Scott was going the factory route and set yourself up to capitalize on that while you go the other route? It's like, aha, you were planning to, you pick trade. You thought Scott was going to craft, but actually, nope, he didn't pick craft.  Good luck. So Scott, it regale me with why you don't like that mechanic in this game. So the main problem is that if you fall a turn behind under any circumstance, you're basically just fucked, right? So what happened was is I misinterpreted some of the things in the game. Partially. I think Scott misinterpreted them because he's dumb. Partially because I'm dumb, but also partially because there's some issues with the design of the thing. There are a few cards that need, they really need to be a different color. There are a few things that need to be a different color and there's a few things that could be worded better, right? But I still, I just messed up. I didn't realize something. So I made a decision where I thought I was going to get a thing and I didn't get it.  So I couldn't get any more upgrade abilities and I was pretty much just done. And now this is no way and there is no, because everything is first come and that's it. There's no other way to get stuff. I couldn't catch up. So why was I still playing this game? It didn't, the game is a long game. I would have to keep playing the game itself. What they say on the box, quote, this game can be played by two to five serious gamers in two to four hours.  And now and as soon as I was afterwards, I realized it within like, you know, immediately like, oh, that's not the thing that I should have done because of that, but it was too late.  Now my rather complain and then leave the game. It was a little more narrow in that the game's a snowball game. What the way I describe this game is everyone starts at the top of a mountain and they make a snowball and snowballs are all the same size. And you pick what direction to roll that snowball off the map. And they just accelerate and accelerate and accelerate. If you like, drop your snowball. If your snowball hits a rock or something. Yeah, well, if it hits a rock, it was your fault. Yeah, but it might split into, you know. Yeah, but you might, there's all these if you make any mistake whatsoever, right? And the thing is, you know, I made a mistake of a beginner who didn't know the game early, right? You know, and early is like, it's the worst time to make a mistake, but you can make a mistake in this game at any time. You could be really good at this game, right? Not obviously, if you're incredible at the game, you're not gonna ever make a mistake, right? But you could be in a situation where like, you're good at the game, you understand it, but say midway through the game, like after hour one, you make a mistake and now you're just fucked. But you already invested an hour in the game and but you can't win, but you still have to keep playing. Now it's not over.  Like if Scott has three extra dollars left over at the end of over round, he fucked up and didn't optimize for the last five turns. And like, that's the fiddly, tiny decision that means he loses.  In this game, that happens immediately. So if I had to describe what this game is really like and who would appeal to, if you like Twilight Struggle, you like this game because they're games where you have to commit to being very good at the game and navigating the simple, cause they're not complex, but highly divergent heuristics of the game. They are not intuitive. You cannot play this game by gut. It's like the difference in chess and go. If you just kind of feel your way through chess.  You're gonna lose, but you'll do okay. Like if you know the rules and like you have some basic knowledge of chess and a little like you watch some people play. You'll try to take more guys than the other guy takes, right? Yeah. But if you play gut, like, and if you play the chess in the long, long run, the attractors in chess are slow to feed or else a draw. In go, the attractors as the game tree expands out into the void are all losing. If you go in semi random directions, you just lose. Yeah. And it's not, it says that like in netrunner, this happens a lot too, where there are certain types of play, certain lines of play that your opponent can have. And it's like, okay, I see that I'm losing this game, but I'm still doing stuff, right? It's like, you know, I still got stuff going on. You know, like in rarer tycoon, this is a big thing that happens, right? Where it's like, okay, I see I've lost the game, but I'm still moving cubes and I'm still building tracks and I'm still putting trains and playing cards. So I'm still enjoying myself and doing things, even though I know the best I could do and have a second place, because look what that guy did moving 10 cubes or something, right? Yep. There are certain things that happen. And in this game where it's like, not only did I know I was going to lose the game after making that one mistake on like turn two, but I pretty much couldn't do anything effective. I couldn't sell even one food, right? It's like, I literally could not do anything meaningful on my turns anymore. Like I, if I played the best I could play from that point on, it's like, literally, I've done nothing. I've made no money. I can't get any more stuff. I can't do anything. I'm just like a locked. I'm not even, even if I continue to play and try to enjoy it, it's like I can't build trains or put cubes or I'm just sitting here doing nothing, making meaningless decisions. I can't move. Now I'm going to say something. This is a good game. It is a well-designed game. But, and while I struggle is a well-designed game for what it is, those kinds of games. But this is the kind of game that because of these complex heuristics, well, not complex, because of these simple, but surprisingly diversion heuristics. And because of the harsh penalties for failure and because all of the attractors in the game tree are ridiculous failure.  If you are good at games in general, that will give you almost no assistance in being good at this game unless you do what I was doing until Scott and Chris and Anthony yelled at me to stop. This game also can suffer from extreme analysis paralysis. I could have navigated that heuristic tree by sitting there for literally five or 10 minutes of my time.  Yeah, and you know what? I did better than you. Yeah, I'm not going to put in that kind of effort, especially if I had a convention, right? I'm not looking to, you know, right? But I'm saying this game, the only way to be good at this game is to play it a lot, to be good at it, or to study it and do a lot of analysis and calculations slowing the game down, which explains why they say the game takes two to four hours to play. Much like Twilight Struggle, you have to play it and be good at it because it has a whole bunch of name cards that do very specific things and the game's only interesting if you know what all those cards are and what they do.  So you can only play this game. Yeah, if you play this with a bunch of people who've never played it before, you could all make mistakes and still maybe not, you know, have a problem because you all made mistakes. But then you still have to force people to not spend a long time on their turn because if someone does think longer, it's like a choir. If you actually calculate out, you could play this game very well the first time and it's gonna take the full four hours to play the game. And this game has another problem, which is one I've noticed in a lot of games before, one that always comes to mind when I think about this is Quarriers, which is the Dice Dominion. That game feels like it should be so good, but it's not. And that problem is basically big stuff never used.  And from what I could tell is if you were to play this game to completion, you would maybe get one of those cards, like on the final turn or second to last turn maybe, maybe you would get one of them and maybe use it like once and the game would be over at that point, right? It's like in Quarriers, you get like one fancy super powerful dice and maybe roll it once and the game will be over by that point. It's like, dudes, if you're designing a game and you got big powerful stuff in that game, right? At least let people use it like in Civ 5, at least let me use the Death Robot for like 10 turns. Hearthstone is actually a good example. It's like in Hearthstone, you can play and put out big, amazing legendary creatures and actually use them a bit before the game ends, right? You can actually get to use the heavy hitters and enjoy the fun of using them. As opposed to Imagine the Gathering where if you got one of those like legends, golden dragons of three colors out on the table, like good job, good job getting that dragon out there. And then, yeah, and you've probably lost the game before that happened. Or you won a long time ago.   It's like if you, the top level equipment in your, whatever game you make, right? The top level most powerful stuff, right? The big buildings in Puerto Rico, right? Whatever is the biggest, strongest stuff should be able to come into play, say between 75 and 80% of the game's completion, right? And then after that, there might be bigger stuff, but that stuff should be victory points only. It shouldn't do anything. In that way. You don't feel bad. You didn't get to do it. Like you buy a big building in Puerto Rico. Oh, it doesn't give you points. It's like, it's not a big, you know, but you get a university, which is like the biggest building that can do something and you'll get a lot. You can get that and use it. Yeah, you can get the wharf in Puerto Rico and use it, you can get it, you know, 50, 60% of the way into the game.  The card game. You played it at PAX. I don't remember. I bought it or I bought it. One of us bought it. Oh, my goods. Yes.   So you've built the crazy building at the end. You get to use it like multiple times at the end of the game, rewarding you for having it. Like there's ways to get around that problem that. Yeah. Whatever the biggest, the biggest, funnest, most awesome, powerful thing there is in your game, players should be able to get that thing if they play well, obviously, right? At least 20% of the game remaining so that they can actually use it a bit and have a bunch of fun with it. And then the game should end not, you know, you don't want to give it to them too early. If you get that stuff halfway through the game, then it's like, oh my God, why isn't it over yet? Right? Yeah. But like with 20% or less of the game remaining, you should be able to get the biggest, strongest, most fun thing and use it three, two to four times. Right? Get some uses out of it as the finishing blow. Yeah. Right? That, you know, if this game, it's like you could never get the most powerful level stuff.  Just remove that top level of powerful stuff. Just not have it in the game. And that way, the funnest, most powerful stuff is stuff that's, you know, get a book, right? It's like just cut away your top level and now make the second to top level, the top level. And that will now become simply because it's at the top of your tech tree. Like in place of five, you can't actually get and use XCOM dudes, right? I have used them in long wars. Only if you continue after the game ends. No. I've used them in long wars to win the game. I've never gotten XCOM dudes before the timer was up.   Well, obviously we're having a science victory already thing is I could have just taken out his capital and had the domination victory, but I never was getting domination victory. Right. But I mean, you know, whatever your top level of stuff is, should come into play before the end of the game. Yeah. But anyway, I mean, we didn't play the game enough to give you like a deeper review than that, but suffice it to say. Unless you like being punished, right? Don't play this. Or if you like games like Twilight Struggle that are serious, luck-free, long. Twilight Struggle has some luck. Yeah. But heavy analysis requires significant investment in that specific game as opposed to games in general. I can think of a lot of kinds of people who would really like this game. Jared. I am not one of those people. No. This has been Geek Nights with Rima and Scott, special thanks to DJ Pretzel for the opening music, Kat Lee for Web Design, and Brando K for the logos. Be sure to visit our website at frontrowcrew.com for show notes, discussion news, and more. Remember, Geek Nights is not one but four different shows, SciTech Mondays, Gaming Tuesdays, Anime Comic Wednesdays, and Indiscriminate Thursdays. Geek Nights is distributed under a Creative Commons attribution 3.0 license. Geek Nights is recorded live with no studio and no audience, but unlike those other late shows, it's actually recorded at night.