Help me decide: unlocking profile icon(s)

It’s time for a “just for fun” kind of topic. Please don’t take this to seriously.

So, as my forum profile pic may give away, I like heavy camels. Enough that I might want to set the heavy camel as my ingame profile icon if I had it. The problem is that this icon requires a player to win 500 games, which translates to around a thousand games played on the ladder, and I am just waaaaaay too lazy (or busy, whatever you want to call it) for that. Based on the previous year I could have the icon unlocked in a bit over a decade or so. (I tend to leave games for periods and then come back to them later.) But, it seems that these icons count single player games too, so I came up with a cunning plan.

I could create a custom scenario where the AI immediately loses or resigns, for instance because their king spawns boxed in by my castles. I could spend maybe two hours resetting that scenario and unlock the heavy camel icon. That should work right? Yeah, sure, it’s two hours wasted on a menial task to unlock a meaningless item, but I could call it an experiment in meta-gamification and it starts sounding more reasonable already. Plus by playing the scenario with a few different civs I could unlock several extra icons for my favorite unique units as well. (Except for the absent genitour (and other secondary unique units), the world isn’t fair.)

There are a couple of drawbacks to this method. One if that single player games also count for most of your ageofempires.com/stats stats. I kind of like the statistics on civilizations played and played against for instance. Adding 460 custom “games” to the mix is going to ruin the pretty bar graph. Another thing is that it might inspire opponents to act differently towards me. People might have less qualms about reporting me for instance. “There is no way he could have beaten me, and he’s an 900 elo player with the heavy camel icon unlocked, that’s an obvious cheater”. They might become more likely to quit the game early because they don’t feel like playing one of those people with way too many games played who are just set in their ways, or it might invite “you won 500 games just to die like this?” type comments. All of that is pretty minor and low odds, but it adds to the investment of two hours of meaningless play.

So, just for fun, what do you think? Should I semi-cheat to get the heavy camel icon, or should I just stay a boar and enjoy the game?

Should I cheese my way to the heavy camel icon?
  • Yes, go for it, this sounds like fun.
  • Yes, do it, just to show off it’s possible.
  • Who cares dude?
  • No, this sounds too boring to do.
  • No, git gut, this is not how the game was intended to be played.

0 voters

3 Likes

believe me i tried this with magyar red icon ( 100 wins with magyars ) and it was so boring! if u are under 100 wins distance u could try but over 100 wins away it is just a meanless thing to do

4 Likes

Well too bad the generic unit icons are all ugly grey/gaia colored or it would’ve been worth it maybe

4 Likes

Are you sure it works with SP games and with custom scenarios?
I believed that only the MP games count for that
It would be so easy, time consuming but easy

3 Likes

UU ones are unlocked by SP ones but for the generic ones you need MP for some strange reason

5 Likes

Really?

.

Okay, that’s kind of good, because I kind of didn’t want to go and do this for a few hours because a poll I made asking people to tell me what to do told me to. :upside_down_face:

That is weird though.

I might end up settling for the regular camel, which will become available in (if team games count) four wins.

2 Likes

Don’t spend time loading and quiting manually (your 2 hours). Just make an AutoIT script.

The purpose of a game is to have fun and enjoy. If cheesing your way into this icon provides you that, go for it.

For example the Steam achievements can be won like this for Age of Mythology, provided you have a savefile just before winning a game:

Sleep(1000)

Local $cpt = 0;

;AOM EE: load game
While ($cpt<9);(0>1);($cpt<8)
   ;main screen menu for multi
   Send("{F10}")
   Sleep(500)
   MouseClick("left", 1000, 380, 1) ;quit after win
   Sleep(3000)
   MouseClick("left", 1000, 570, 1) ;main menu: solo
   Sleep(500)
   MouseClick("left", 1000, 790, 1) ;load game
   Sleep(500)
   Send("steam achievement.svx")
   Send("{ENTER}")
   Sleep(7000)
   MouseClick("left", 900, 550, 1) ;accept defeat
   $cpt = $cpt +1
   Sleep(500)
WEnd
2 Likes

How does it work? Can it automate anything on PC?

2 Likes

Yes, in this example it’s just mouse moves & clicks + keyboard entries + some waiting times but you can do much much more AutoIt Scripting Language - AutoIt

2 Likes

This seems to have changed. It looks like I just unlocked new ones based on my total wins, single player included.

Edit: although it seems custom scenarios don’t count, or maybe just count the first time you play them or something. Either that or there is a little delay in the system.

Edit again: a savegame where you’re just about to win does work though. Takes about 6 seconds per victory, with a decent setup. The system can be gamed. Question answered.

Sorry for the forum archeology everyone, but that seemed like a reasonable addition to this thread.

1 Like

I see camels, I give little hearts.
I like camels, they are really nice.
Only gigantic machines of doom are imho better.

1 Like