  | About the Game Date: August 2000. This game was from the quarter finals of the Clash of Titan's
an invite only tournament of the finest AoK players hosted by
DevilZ_Vasago and MFO. Both paranoia and Koven were recognized at the
time as top players in the world, so this matchup was eagerly
anticipated by gamers everywhere. | ** NOTE ** - you must use the unpatched Age of Kings to view this game, not Age of Kings TC Game File:  Commentary from _paranoia_ As
the day of the matchup with Koven came near, I got more and more
excited. Koven at that time was not really known by any non-Korean -
for most of us he was just the Mysterious Korean that no one could
beat. He was by far the best player in those days and so I didn't
really think I had any chance to win. On the other hand I had nothing
to lose and so I went into the game without any goal but willing to
play my best. As the games of the tourney were played on Random
Map, and we already picked Vikes the game before, we both decided to
chose Chinese this time. The map turned out to be Rivers, putting me in
a good mood, as Rivers had always been one of my favorite maps. I
assumed that he was going to get some early fishing up, so I decided to
do the same, hoping to reach Feudal fast to build some galleys to get
him off the water and then reaching castle soon afterwards to be able
to boom pretty well. My start was quite ok, apart from some
minor details, and I reached Feudal a bit earlier than he did.
Unfortunately, it didn't really get me an advantage, as he had no
fishing at all. I built some galleys to protect the shoreline and built
some extra farms early on to be able to jump to Castle soon after him.
Things were going pretty well at that point, but after some time I
realized that he built a TC near the shore in order to get some docks
up. To keep him from doing that, I built some extra galleys and as soon
as I reached castle trannyed some vills over to the small gold-island
to get a TC up right in front of his docks. After some time
though, I realized that he was getting up docks all over his shore and
so we both kept on pumping galleys till the end of the game. As I had
alot of stone, I tried to secure my own islands with some castles as
well as push forward into his economy with one. Meanwhile, I was about
to lose water again and - although I reached Imp some minutes earlier
than Koven and trebbed down some of his castles - I wasnt able to get
him off the water nor do any damage to his economy on land. As his
economy was better than mine at almost any point in the game, he was
able to mass resources and overpower me on water as well as push back
my attempts to attack his economy. He was even able to land on my
island with me not beeing able to stop him. Therefore, as I saw
my chances to win the game flow by, I resigned. In the end I think the
major difference between Koven and me was that his boom was already
near to perfection with about 160 pop at 31 min !!. Additionally I
myself didnt came near the population maximum at any time in the game.
Another factor was that I made some mistakes during the game, like not
getting up castles near the shore and also on his part of the map
early, as I had alot of stone early in the game already. Just
as Rahl said in his write-up, I want to say that the different
strategies were in those times not as perfected as they are today
(you'll see many mistakes that you will probably groan over from both
sides), and the game was much more based on improvising than it is
nowadays, as all of the perfected build orders and techniques had not
yet occurred. All in all though, a very exciting game that I really
enjoyed being able to play.
Screenshots 
Paranoia gets an early naval advantage | 
Paranoia accomplishes two things here - he gets gold and gets a forward base on Koven | 
Koven masses his own navy and strikes back. | 
Para has established a base on Koven's homeland as he hits the Imperial age | 
Both players are unwilling to give up the seas | 
Koven masses troops and starts to invade paranoia. |
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