Babidi R32

ROUND 32

Although this was obviously one of the most interesting rounds we've seen in a long while, for me and a large part of my realm, it was a pretty bad round, and collectively we did more to (unintentionally) enable the ultimate winners than we did to prevent them.

As always, if you're the kind of person that doesn't like reading or prefers books with pictures, there's a little TL;DR you can skip to at the end that summarises this round for me in a single image.

I was Babidi; I found myself once again in realm #11, my home from last round. The realm had one big pack, led by Sharkey, who said we should adopt the Dragon Ball Z theme he had going on "to show unity".

I've only ever seen one season of DBZ - the Majin Buu saga. Actually, I've seen the first half of the Majin Buu saga about six times, and the second half once. When I was a kid and DBZ was playing on the Sci Fi channel, it was always on when I got home from school, but Sci Fi only had rights to broadcast the first half of the season, so when they got to the mid-way point they would just loop it back to the start - without warning - and play it all again. The first time they did it I just assumed it was a mistake. As I kid I didn't know anything about 'broadcast rights' or whatever. Then they did it again, and again. I don't know how many times I sat and watched a chubby Majin Buu flying around turning people into chocolates, but even once was too many. Majin Buulshit I say!

Anyway, Babidi was in the Buu Saga, and he's a wizard. Looks a bit like a testicle with a face. Great gif material if someone broke my approaching 5-round streak of not being invaded.

I went nox again and just lazily recycled the same sim from the previous round. I knew - without securing top op protection - that nox would be quite a slow race, but they're still S tier for blops.

I was almost late to get through click through protection because I drove my car into a river, but that's another story.

WEEK 1 - THE TYRANNY OF SHARKEY

The realm had peacefully elected me as Monarch, but Sharkey - according to my sources - was quietly furious about this. Overnight, under duress, his pack obediently set their their votes to him, and usurped the crown from me. I brought it up in the discord and Sharkey slapped me down saying "this is a democracy brotha". He then changed the discord icon to a picture of Xi Jinping, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party. At that point I realised that I was clearly dealing with an unhinged despot.

The first week was quite eventful. Cerbrus87 (Prince Vegeta) was looking to play liz and fast attack. It seemed every man and his dog were looking to play liz and fast attack this round. We should probably ban nate. No player should be so good that their influence extends into the dynamics of the following round. I pulled nate's sim from the previous round and passed it to Cerby, and figured he'd either be a teenager in a ferrari or could dominate the early round until our converters were ready to slap.

Realms #2, #4, #8, #9 and #10 seemed to be similarly inspired by nate and ran fast attack lizzie strats with varying degrees of success. In the first week, four of the top 10 largest dominions were liz.

Wars came fast this round, an obvious rebound effect from last round, and a clear sign that the oppressed bloppers were back in action. For the first time in five rounds, I was not among the first declaring or declared-upon parties. #7 broke the seal by declaring war on #4.

2022-11-23 00:00:01 Drug addiction is a war (#7) has declared WAR on Dic tater ship (#4).

They were so fast to declare that they even beat the game to announcing a new wonder had been discovered.

2022-11-23 00:00:01 A new Wonder of the World has been discovered, the Astral Panopticon!

1. 4 were not best pleased. They had apparently assessed that Cerby was the biggest fast attacker threat and were shocked that #4 had gone after them instead. I got the usual DMs - same as last round - accusing me of colluding with #11, from people unaware that I was once again in #11. It was pretty funny.

The following day, #5 went after #9.

We Have The High Ground (#5) has declared WAR on Sticks and stones won't break our bones (#9).

...and #4 declared mutual on #7.

You really want it huh? (#4) has declared WAR on Drug addiction is a war (#7).

It did not go super well for #7, who fed the top lizzie, Two Buttons (Puntti) in #4 twice. But sometimes you just gotta take those risks. #4 seemed were quite vocal about how badly hurt they were by the blops and, despite the land gains, concluded that their round was over. #2 would go on to ably demonstrate that you can indeed still win despite being constantly warred, in a masterclass of determination.

For our part, we were looking at these wars from the sidelines. We had three wiz blackoppers in range of threats for the first half of the week, effectively reduced to two by FH ratios and EM alone (without accounting for the two hundred other ways to reduce blackop damage that there is now), and by the end of the first week just myself and Future Trunks (Tyrant King Sharkey) were still in range of the big guys.

But we weren't looking at #4 or #9. We were looking at #2 or #3 as the main threats. The two realms seemed neck and neck, and we didn't want to war one and hand an advantage to the other. We agreed that, despite our limited blackop capability, whichever one of these realms demonstrated that they had the clear edge, would be the one we targeted for war - and we'd just have to hope that another realm would join the fray... which is always a long shot.

1. 2 won that challenge with flying colours when Koopa Troopas Den of Questions ('Cobber' in the lifetimes, Poige to everyone else) invaded Cerby and put a nail in his coffin. We started to look at trying to train enough dp to defend against mutual war with #2, which was going to be rough. Was this a smart decision? Probably not. Was it motivated by revenge? Yup. Sometimes that's the only reason you need.

Meanwhile, people were striking Wonders in the TC. We correctly guessed that the Fountain of Youth was the likely target, and since we were already locked on course for war with #2, we hoped they would take it. And sure enough...

2022-11-26 14:59:42 Racing To Delete My Bowser History (MannoWrath) (#2) has attacked a neutral wonder! 2022-11-26 14:59:42 The Fountain of Youth has been destroyed and rebuilt by Red turtle shell (#2).

I saw Toothy and fett were giffing the Wonder in the discord, so I figured there was a decent chance they were realm #2 along with Merf and Bobbo. That meant mutual war was extremely likely if we came for them. This turned out to be wrong, but the mistake theoretically should have worked in our favour, because we prepared for war expecting the worst case possible scenario of insta mutual. The psychology of this game really does play a significant role when the playerbase is so small.

Cerby went super saiyan and started training nuclear suicide op while the rest of us got ready for a potentially prolonged war. A mutual declaration would empower Cerby and constrain #2's liz, while a one-way war meant bloppers like me weren't dicing with death on our lower dp thanks to pumping spywiz. We calced it, and we thought we could cover the liz.

We declared war after midnight server time. We picked the time carefully because meant that the other blackops realms wars would be ending around the same time, and could join in the fray, and also have a much better chance than us of securing the Wonder. We opened up with a volley of fireballs against Koopa ("so long, gay Bowser!"), but we only had two blackoppers and a handful of fireballs from our attackers to slap him with, and he had insane casualty reductions from building a tiny number of FHs. He had so few FHs (30) that it could easily have been a misclick and he'd just never noticed, but that was still a stonking 30% casualty reduction. Plus they generate lumber! And reduce spy disband and wiz assassination damage, because sure why not! What a crazy building. You can tell the gpc are mostly attackers eh?

Anyway, we smoked 6k of his peasants, which he recovered in the blink of an eye. I was in two minds about whether we should hit him with a sustained volley over the next 12 hours, and then switch to cycloning the wonder, or just stack mana to cyclone the wonder. But #2 took me out of the equation entirely by focusing me with snares.

Our early ops had indicated they were loaded on spies but weak on wiz. Usually that means you can stomp whoever you want, but #2 did something smarter than your average realm, and instead of just blackopping some of our easy mark attackers, they snared me into irrelevance. You don't matter as a wiz blopper if you can't cast spells. I was completely countered.

I'm still not sure why they targeted me over Tyrant King Sharkey though. He said to me: "Rush, it's because they sensed your peasant blood - they know not to trifle with the King" and then declared that he was going for a royal massage, and didn't want to be pinged for the next 8-12 hours. Just what exactly is a royal massage, and why does it take so long? It's a question I still do not have the answer to.

The other realms we hoped might be eager to join the fray did not. #7 did not disengage from #4, and #5, though they cancelled their war with #9, apparently had other things on their minds. Things that were not war. Which considering that realm turned out to have Saccora, Damdred and Cronel in it, in control of the Monarchy no less, is basically a crime.

After about 24 hours of war, things took a slight turn. We realised cerby was running out of steam, and wasn't going to be able to pin Koopa down for as long as we'd hoped. Once Koopa was confident he could defend cerby's 5:4 suicide, he sent.

2022-11-28 09:58:55 Koopa Troopas Den of Questions (#2) invaded Castle Anthrax (Danimoth) (#10) and captured 79 land.

With the disincentive to mutual taken out of the equation, it only took #2 a few hours to raise the stakes and really put us on the back foot.

2022-11-28 15:01:11 Banana! (#2) has declared WAR on The World Awakens (#11).

With the timings of our war declaration vs theirs, it meant mutual would be a minimum of 9 hours before we could cancel. That's 9 hours where top op in the game would have +10% op against us. We all started chaining dp in the training queue. I had nothing but an endless line of nightshadies incoming.

The 9-hour mutual stretch approached, which our realm referred to as...

WEEK 2 - THE TIGHT BUTTHOLE GAUNTLET

The six of us in range (in order of land - SlyD, Stevie Wonder, GoodJob, me, Sharkey) were watching Koopa like a hawk, but we knew we were all defended against what he could actually afford to send, thanks to one X factor - Two Buttons. Where cerby had gone super saiyan, this guy had gone super duper saiyan (that's probably a thing, right?) and without any war bonus was limiting Koopa enough that we were all safe. As long as no one fucked up.

Someone fucked up.

With about three hours left of the tight butthole gauntlet, SlyD announced that he had been snared. Hah, I thought - so what? He will have cast Ares to cover the 9 hours like the rest of us. No one enters a tight butthole gauntlet without a full Ares to cover their asses! I checked his magic advisor and saw that he had 2 hours left on his Ares.

shockedpikachu.jpg

2022-11-29 22:18:53 Koopa Troopas Den of Questions (#2) invaded fellow dominion Majin Buu (#11) and captured 125 land.

It's a horrible feeling when you go to war to try and do something to stop a runaway, and not only end up being totally ineffective, but you actually help create a runaway on steroids. Mutual war hits are massive for land gains and prestige.

SlyD didn't predict that this move would be chief among #2's options to hit one of us, and that he'd be their number one target as the highest land, even after I'd spent two days reporting that I was near-constantly snared despite having a pretty decent spy ratio, he would later argue that he had no reason to believe they'd snare him. He was the furthest ahead of any of us in terms of DP, and was so self-assured of his safety that he was the only one among us that had stopped training dp and switched back to exploring. But in his hubris, he met swift humility.

Despite bringing shame upon the realm, people were willing to gloss over it. Everyone make mistakes, after all. For his part, SlyD blamed our realm for Koopa's hit on him, and for the next day or so made bitter comments suggesting we'd screwed him over. I pointed out the hit was his own fault for not casting Ares to cover the 9 hour stretch, just to shut him up.

It did not shut him up.

Tyrant King Sharkey cancelled the war, and we learned learned via the podcast that it was a pretty timely cancel, as if we'd waited just a few minutes longer they would have hit SlyD again. We switched to cycloning their wonder, timing it to give them a short window to take it back - which didn't matter at all, since they took it back in about half the time left to them.

By this point, I think #4 and #5 realised we were fucking everything up and stepped in to try and do some damage. #5 had more blops power than us, but they were already out of range of the liz, while #4 had some strong attackers. I didn't keep too close an eye on the 3-way; we weren't involved for much longer anyway and would be licking our wounds for a while. #2 cancelled on us as soon as they took the wonder back, evidently not relishing the idea of being in a war with three different realms - I guess they couldn't very well snare every blackopper!

I wanted to permawar #2 at this point, just for the hell of it. But Tyrant King Sharkey simply said: "if there are no riches or bitches to be had, war has no value to the Sharkman". Tyrant King Sharkey had started referring to himself in the third person as "the Sharkman" a few days prior and would steadfastly ignore anyone that didn't use the title when addressing him.

Two days after the war with #2 was cancelled, Chi-Chi (GoodJob) sent out on a hit wildly underdefended. He'd been playing well up until this point, so his send just confused all of us. Koopa gladly accepted the offering.

2022-12-03 10:06:11 Koopa Troopas Den of Questions (#2) invaded fellow dominion Chi-chi (#11) and captured 99 land.

As did several others.

2022-12-03 10:46:39 Fully Cooked Keep Refrigerated (bigchris27) (#8) invaded fellow dominion Chi-chi (#11) and captured 106 land. 2022-12-03 12:56:13 Hitting Peach from behind with a banana (Erix) (#2) invaded fellow dominion Chi-chi (#11) and captured 90 land.

GoodJob then ghosted the discord and wouldn't respond to pings or messages asking what he was thinking - and we didn't hear from him again until a week later, when he popped up again to say he wasnt gonna read up on messages but that he definitely wasn't a farm.

It would later become apparent GoodJob just wasn't bothering to check the ops in his range (all readily available in the ops centre and discord channels) and was just sending on whoever he could hit. A farm, but one that really wasn't concerned with who took his acres.

WEEK 3 - THE PRECIOUS CONVERTERS

The pace slowed down to an absolute crawl while Koopa was slowly dying, but still had the dominant position. He couldn't find a hit for days, so most of us just set up camp an acre outside of his range and endlessly trained troops.

Eventually, #9's Squilliam Fancyson (DavetheGoliath) did the thing that all fast attackers love and adore. He strolled into range without looking and immediately ate shit.

2022-12-07 06:59:52 Koopa Troopas Den of Questions (#2) invaded Squilliam Fancyson (#9) and captured 110 land.

With so many players parked outside of range, it was now tactically sound for someone to make a move during the brief window Koopa was vulnerable, and #6 stepped up to the mark.

2022-12-07 13:53:23 Modern Warfare (#6) has declared WAR on Grumble Volcano (#2)

Koopa had let his forest havens he'd accidentally trained with a few careless misclicks wind down from 5% to 3%, so his fireball damage reduction went from "what a delightfully warm breeze, perhaps I'll take my jumper off" to "it's getting a bit bright outside, close the blinds dear".

If we didn't have our precious converters to consider, we'd have jumped in as well.

Ah, precious converters. Landing in a realm with them always drags down your war prospects for basically a whole month. It's like being handed someone else's baby - defenceless and shitting itself - and being told "now don't you take that newborn into war, Rush, that's not a nice thing to do!" Listen, if it were up to me I'd duct tape a knife to their hands and load them into a catapult. But apparently that's me being not being a team player.

Goku (Stevie Wonder), our currently defenceless baby human converter, was looking great - and provided nobody noticed him he could actually do quite well. Unfortunately realm #9 had noticed him, and Squilliam, when he wasn't chairing meetings at the Koopa Snacks Club, was permanently swarming and plaguing him, as well as stealing all his ore.

Stevie was sat in Koopa's range along with Cerby, so they kept us updated on ops.

The next day was a bad day - for me and for Koopa. After driving my car into a river at the start of the round (and okay okay, I'll explain: it was formerly a road that had spontaneously become a river due to intense flooding, and I'd made it through once already so I figured I'd be fine on a second pass), I'd just gotten it back from the garage, along with an expensive repair bill, and was driving to work when another driver flew out of a T-junction without looking and crashed into me. As I pulled into work in my banged-up car, which was now making troubling metallic-sounding grinding noises, I checked my phone and saw that Koopa had been smashed while his troops were out.

2022-12-09 07:59:19 Fully Cooked Keep Refrigerated (#8) invaded Koopa Troopas Den of Questions (#2) and captured 214 land.

I spent the next half an hour on hold to my insurance company. While I listened to their hold music on loop - which for some ungodly and inexplicable reason, was Mamma Mia by Abba - I decided to make my day a little better, and Koopa's day a little worse, and stole a ton of lumber from his stockpile right before his land came in.

1. 2 didn't let Fully Cooked's infraction stand:

2022-12-09 11:48:54 Hitting Peach from behind with a banana (#2) invaded Fully Cooked Keep Refrigerated (#8) and captured 162 land. 2022-12-09 16:07:56 Koopa Troopas Den of Questions (#2) invaded Fully Cooked Keep Refrigerated (#8) and captured 134 land.

And the up-and-coming goblin in #6 didn't let the opportunity go to waste:

2022-12-09 16:14:44 The Lord is testing me (Disco) (#6) invaded Fully Cooked Keep Refrigerated (#8) and captured 140 land.

GoodJob reappeared, and said he'd been out of the country with no discord, and wasn't going to read up on any messages. I just told him I figured there was no wi-fi from inside Koopa's belly. This started an argument, with GoodJob asserting that he wasn't Koopa, or a Koopa feeder. SlyD capitalised on the opportunity to continue complaining about us letting #2 snare hit him in the war over a week ago, and expressed solidarity with GoodJob now that they were both in the Koopa Snacks Club. Isn't it wonderful the ways in which this game brings people together?

Sensing the cohesion in our realm crumbling, Tyrant King Sharkey stepped in and said: "Listen fools, stop squabbling and let's focus on the more important things. Are there any ways we can improve the Monarchy in OD? I was thinking I should have the power of exile."

Towards the end of the week, Stevie was getting more and more annoyed with Squilliam's magical and thieving shenanigans, and wanted someone to give him some payback. I dusted off the old magic wand and saw he was really low on food, so put him on permaswarm. Then I targeted the top attacker in their realm and stole all his lumber. Squilliam, affronted, sent a bunch of spies and wizards to their death retalliating with swarms and plagues, and stole my mana to cast them. He should have stolen my food. I had so much that he could have kept me permaswarmed for a week and it wouldn't have mattered, whereas he was now facing starvation.

After 24 hours of swarms and Squilliam either having to steal or trade to stave off starvation, we called off the assault and left him alone. Remarkably, he left Stevie and the rest of us alone too. It's always refreshing when players 'get the message' and actually leave you alone instead of doubling down or seeking revenge later.

WEEK 4 - GOKU POWERS UP

It's fair to say the last few weeks have been pretty similar to my recollection of DBZ. The characters just spend about forty episodes powering up before they actually do something, and it's usually still not enough to stop the big bad. Stevie was finally ready to make his first hit. We waited with bated breath.

Meanwhile, Koopa hit two halfers within 24 hours. The first one was an Ares drop, I think. The second one just seemed to have comically low dp for his size.

2022-12-18 09:59:52 Koopa Troopas Den of Questions (#2) invaded Dope Fiend Dasher (Bobbo) (#7) and captured 178 land. 2022-12-18 23:58:41 Koopa Troopas Den of Questions (#2) invaded Gimme some of that good magic (Dayvinho) (#8) and captured 196 land.

Even after being hit, he was still bigger than me. Makes you sick eh? I assume he started training some dp after that, because I overtook him less than 24h later from a 100a disadvantage.

I was able to keep in Koopa's range after the first hit, but by the time that good magic land came in, he was miles ahead again. Nobody besides Koopa was even remotely close on breaking my dp, so along with Tyrant King Sharkey, I began the long climb back into his range again. At this point I wasn't even sure why I was bothering; it was getting to the stage where even if we dogpiled on a war dec, there weren't going to be any other blackoppers still in range to do anything, and #2 had already demonstrated they could neutralise us. Not that any of the wars really seemed to effectively claw him back into the scrum. My guess was that the warring realms must have focused on hurting his realmies. But it had seemed a few times this round that he was dying, only for him to launch into the stratosphere again with a good hit.

Anyway, Stevie finally finished powering up and prepared to make his move. His convert was really impressive, and we were all in awe of his potential.

2022-12-19 11:59:49 Victorious on the battlefield, Goku (#11) conquered 129 land from Maybe it's Because I'm Irish (TeFinete) (#3).

Then, paranoid that someone was going to poach his bot, having watched several of them get sniped just as he was about to hit, he frantically sent at the start of the tick, trying to 9hr, and miscalced:

2022-12-19 20:00:23 Sadly, the forces of Goku (#11) were beaten back by The Grean Peace Party (#0).

He immediately lost the momentum he needed to get into the game as a top player, and slowly died off after that.

Precious converters eh?! Should've strapped that knife to him and loaded him into the catapult after all.

With the TC just showing red whenever I checked it, I had no confidence in our ability as a realm to war anyone, let alone #2, so in a rare lapse of fervour I stopped agitating for war, concluding that we were more of a danger to ourselves than anyone else.

Meanwhile, Cerby dropped Ares just 12 hours after bouncing Freeze (Gothia) away, who only tried to invade him in the first place because he dropped Ares, and he got hit. Goodjob continued to send out underdefended, constantly feeding the competition and making no effort whatsoever to make sure he was safe. And Venom (Darthbong)! That guy donated hundreds upon hundreds of acres to just two players. But we could also see from the rankings and in revelations that he was blackopping our enemies, so at least his ledger balanced out a bit more than GoodJob's.

To rally morale, Tyrant King Sharkey declared that he was planning to submit a proposal to the GPC to institute a "tithes" system, which would see Monarchs receiving up to 10% extra platinum income from taxes levied on everyone else in the realm. "It will make everyone feel like part of a team, contributing to the greatness of their King," he explained. Later the same day, he asked us if we'd be interested in funding a Kickstarter for a 3D printed statue bust of his head, engraved with the text "We Served with the Sharkman in Round 32".

THE FINAL WEEKS

At some point, approaching Christmas and then into the New Year, I stopped following the moves at the top. The only reason I had for logging in at all was to stop ASS...CRACK...BANDIIIIIIITTT (Tidnab) (#6) from stealing my plat, since he was obsessively CSing me multiple times a day. I'm pleased to say that he only ever managed to steal a grand total of 210 plat from me. In the seven minutes between CSing me and getting round the actual thieving, I'd spent my plat and robbed him of the one and only chance he ever got to make the big bucks from me. But he did keep me active, so thanks Tidnab.

For my part, I spent my time running interference on the top players. Mostly Koopa, a bit of Chariots (Rury) when he was looking like a roundwinner menace and before he was suicided repeatedly, as well as Lord in #6. I'd run the ops, figure out what was most likely to disrupt them, and just focus doing that. For Koopa, it meant rapid-starving him down from 130k food to 30k in about 24 hours with swarms and food theft - but he got a hit in just before I could twist the knife and built farms. Koopa and Lord were both reliable sources of lumber for a lot of the round too, and I'd always time my thefts so I got as much as I could while their land was coming in, hopefully limiting what they could build right away.

Beyond that, I was just dealing with my own shit and not really paying attention. I was still driving around in a car wreck due to a combination of being snowed in and things shutting down for New Year, resulting in it not being taken to a garage. Shortly after New Year, my cat tried to burn down my house by turning on the oven (bypassing three different safety mechanisms to accomplish her feat) while I was out, and I came home to a house full of smoke from a melted plastic dishwashing basin that I'd left on top of it. I didn't have a New Year's resolution until then, but it certainly made me come up with one at that moment: to break the gypsy curse placed on me.

Do you know how long it takes to get rid of the smell of burnt plastic out of your house? Genuine question, because I sit here typing this almost a week later and it still smells like burnt plastic. And vinegar. Vinegar, because I read online that vinegar absorbs bad smells. If you ever decide to try it yourself, just know: it doesn't. All it does is add the smell of vinegar to the already unpleasant smell you're trying to get rid of.

If you take anything from this roundfail story, let it be this: cats are evil, and gypsy curses are a pain in the ass. It seems to me that it's not outwith the realm of possibility that my gypsy curse is the underlying reason the round went so badly for us. Sorry fellow realmies.

Congratulations to Poige and the rest of realm #2, particularly I'm afraid I just blue shelled myself (Thors Bjørn) for a stonking 8k explore finish. I think after a win like this, where you had virtually the entire playerbase at your throats for most of the round (except the peace-loving hippies in #10, of course), we should probably all just call it quits and declare you guys the winners of the whole game.

Thank you to my active realmies in #11 who, despite our many failures this round, were good banter and fun to play with - even through some of our spicy disagreements! I have painted a bit of a story of disharmony in covering the highlights of this round, but these were just moments in an otherwise amicable and entertaining 50-day round. Even Tyrant King Sharkey, the despotic usurper Monarch, had his moments where he displayed hints of redeemable humanity. And I swear I haven't exaggerated, embellished or straight up invented any of the Sharkman's behaviour recorded in this roundfail story for comedic purposes, just because he stole the Monarchy from me. I'm not that petty.

Scout's honour.

Until next time!

TL;DR

This round in a nutshell: https://imgur.com/a/3MNqJlC