Round 34

Round 34
Winner 🥇
Player:	Rio
Dominion:	Shut the f— up and let me die in peace
Race:	Spirit
Second 🥈
Name:	Swamp Fox
Dominion:	Semper Ubi Sub Ubi
Race:	Goblin
Third 🥉
Name:	Asanka456
Dominion:	Heaven's On Fire
Race:	Lycanthrope
General
Changes:	Round 34/Changes
Valhalla:	Link

Top 100 Results

Round 34 top 100

Round 34 - Realm #6 Win Story

Right, where was I?

The Draft

For this second draft, I was once again given the privilege of captaining a team and this time elected to select 8th (last) in the first round which would give me first pick in the second round and back-to-back selections every time after that. Back-to-back became something of a theme this round. With my first pick, I selected InternetFett and he was immediately useful as a co-captain as between us we were able to get a very decent index of most other players available in the draft. I was very happy with the team we were able to put together.

Pre-round

We had a mix of experience and strategy choices thrown around and ended up with a blend of different strat choices that would hopefully give us options throughout the round. I'd been thinking of a medium paced race and had thrown around my "final" selection of choices before Sly mentioned that the way I wanted to play was similar to Ivetza's spirit so then I decided to explore that race too.

Fast attacking:

• SlyPimp as Better Call Saul! - FW
• Downrightdave as Nerdiest Old Dude I Know - Liz
• cerbrus87 as I hide in plain sight, same as you - Halfer

Medium attacking

• Myself as Shut the f— up and let me die in peace - Spirit
• InternetFett as You brought a meth lab to the airport!? - DE

Efficient attacking

• Rompar as I will put you under the jail - Troll

Ultra-efficient attacking

• MeeSax as Scientists love lasers - WE

Converting

• Robert/rvv as I am the one who knocks - WE

Exploring

• Sloxxor as Hoo-Ha! Hey there sexy Momma!! - Gob

We were also joined in discord by jolliest_roger/dCLCp (DE) and GreyKoan (Liz) who both ended up being fantastic realmies when it came to difficult ops taking.

Early round

Our hope was that our fast attackers would be in the mix to take the lead early on. Cerb and Dave repeated their race choices from the round before where they were on top prior to black ops being available. With Sly joining them going fast there was a good chance that one of them would be able to get out on top. Rather than going all in on specs and mods, they concentrated a bit more on population buildings as that usually comes out on top if there are a lot of competing fast attackers holding each other in check. It was working out okay and Sly was top networth for most of the first week (meaning he likely held the best raw numbers) but unfortunately for all of them, there just weren't enough targets to go around and we didn't get the luck needed for our guys to get out ahead. After that first week, it was unfortunately obvious that they wouldn't be able to be the runaway so one by one they dropped back and switched to ops support. They didn't do anything wrong but fast attacking is such a roulette wheel and you just need that target luck to get ahead which they didn't have.

There were several fast attackers outside of our realm that could have gotten out ahead across realms #1, #5, #7, #9, #10 and #11.

After a number of key bounces and takedowns, the lead fast attackers were the #5 lizzies in particular Te futueo et caballum tuum (Wurstmeyer). Realm #1 looked to be their main competition and the two realms would later go to war several times.

Meanwhile, my own personal round started off somewhat to plan. I came OOP around 720 acres and with the help of my spell made a bot hit then several good sized player hits. When land arrived every 12 hours, I'd often be amongst the largest attackers and early on focused on pop buildings rather than going too heavy on mods as I hoped to rely on immortal OP to keep going. I saw that I probably wouldn't be able to compete for speed much longer and while my initial plan was to go to around 10k spec DP before making a decision on what to do, I decided to pull the plug early and switch to all efficient with just around 6.4k DP specs trained. I was on decent land size for the time as well as decent pop but the cost of going all elites meant I had to stop hitting players and wait for bots instead.

Black ops are go!

No wars happened initially despite pre-round threats and so those that went with zero protection could catch up a little on those who had invested in docks, FH and spies/wizards.

This difference in approach however did prove pivotal early on as realm 5 in particular were war-ready and able to utilise that for snare hits and blopping their fast attacker rivals - in particular realm 1.

I had to make sure that I always had enough spies to put off attempts at snare as I didn't want to overdo DP but it was a careful balancing act. Due to my strategy of low mods/high pop and all elite training, my networth remained quite high and I became strongest dom relatively early in the round which meant there would be no hiding my threat level.

As wonders started to fall, we decided to take the Factory of Legends as it's a decently strong wonder but not top tier so it is one that sometimes you can hold onto all round. That was not the case for us as when realm 9 lost their remaining fast attackers, they came for it and started the war off with a big FB and snare campaign on me. It was pretty damaging as they took me from 20k peasants to 10k (top fast attacker had around 17k at the time with most other attackers 10k to 14k) and I just barely survived the snare (went to about 37% wiz strength). Luckily for me, they didn't keep it up for long and instead swiftly took our wonder which we had no real ability to fight back, but it did slow me down quite a bit.

We would later war realm 2 and take the Altar of Heroes wonder from them in a relatively quiet war.

Following the realm 9 snare/FB scare, I took blops protection that little bit more seriously but was still able to continue my new strategy of training enough DP to defend top OP all in and just enough OP to hit bots as they climbed into range. The #10 spirit (lamb) was doing the same thing but was using nearly entirely spec DP so while he could train more quickly, his population never got off the ground. His OP was often much better than mine and at times I wondered whether I made the wrong choice but I stuck with what I was doing and it started to pay off.

My first big move

Around day 20 or so, the main fast attackers/converters (#5 liz/gob and #1 gob) had made a couple consecutive hits and their OP was completely blown. I'd also made a couple of hits recently but owing to immortal OP, decided if I pushed some OP mods while they were stuck building and reloading, I could catch up quite a lot. So that's what I did.

The bad thing for me was that given I was still top networth, lots of eyes were on me so there was no surprise push as everyone was keeping tabs and for about 2 days of almost straight OP pushing, nobody sent other than efficient people hitting bots where they could leave plenty of DP home. It was a big setback as my pop was draining and at the same time, the #5 liz had been able to build all his acres and finally get a larger pop than me. He was able to utilise that advantage as well as cheaper troops to all of a sudden threaten me all in as he went past his own DP and kept pushing more OP.

I was in trouble.

I had a few choices:

• go all PKs and hope he looks elsewhere
• go all DP specs to defend him and be safe but kill my pop and my strat
• push back with more OP and look to trade if he comes for me

I went with the third option but all the while hoped he'd find a target elsewhere and I could leave the hit trading for later.

Once again though, there were no hits for either him or me.

Eventually, the top bot (a sylvan - yuck for land types) came into my range. I could easily hit it but that would free up the liz to semi-sui me and he'd be pretty safe from all but a semi-sui back from myself. He still hadn't found a different target and the longer I waited, the worse my position would be so I sent on the bot on the very last second of the hour as I knew he'd send the same hour on me if he could.

He wasn't able to but sent on me a few hours later anyway. I hit him back.

So lots of discussion was had on this and frankly, it's funny that anyone thinks there was a definitive right or wrong answer on whether I did the right thing or not. First thing's first: should he have hit me knowing I could hit back? Almost certainly. Now, should I have hit him? In retrospect it looks like a good move, but the aftermath really was close to best case scenario for me. I did know that me not hitting him would have sent him running with 900+ acres advantage over me, significant pop advantage and I would spend the next couple of weeks just trying to survive all in. So the question was, would going for the hit be any better or would it make my situation worse? Here's my 5 part question:

• 1. Does it benefit or hurt me/my realm? This will likely hurt me as I'll get hit back at least twice
• 2. Does it benefit or hurt the main competition? It will hurt him a lot
• 3a. Does it benefit or hurt a 3rd party? #1 gob (Eating a big mac - Craghack) will be one of those hitting me although #5 gob (Semper - Swamp Fox) would also
• 3b. Is benefitting them good or bad? #1 gob getting a boost is good as it evens things out on top. #5 gob will too but is a lesser concern
• 4. Is it for revenge? Yep
• 5. Is it good for the round AKA is it fun? Definitely

So tipped over by points 4 and 5, I went for it. The two gobs hit me immediately which was to be expected.

My concern was that they would 9 hour me as well but neither did. #5 hit elsewhere (a war hit) and #1 just sat afterwards so it worked out okay. What really helped me was that despite not training any more OP, I was able to make 2 more immediate hits on #8 human and the smaller #8 woodie meaning I had hit 4 times back to back and massively closed the gap on #5. The two goblins were fairly even now with the liz, with me not far behind.

Here comes Apollo

1. 3 Apollo (4k converting goblin - Almezo) looked solid. Really solid with a ridiculously large pop, good improvements and insane training potential. Despite a few black op wars, he wasn't looking to be too slowed down and started his convert from a phenomenally strong position. On top of that, he also had a converting human (Hermes - ZachSmack) for company and between them they could take over the round.

Frustratingly for me, during Apollo's convert he pushed way more OP than he had any chance of sending but he put me in danger all in and I wouldn't be safe while I was still building that 800 acres or so that I had just hit for. It meant rather than going for homes, rax and DMs, I had to push a bunch of GTs to give myself some breathing space.

The good news was that because of all that OP but nowhere near enough DP, he delayed his hitting so long that his threat level dropped way down from clear favourite to just borderline. That gave the rest of us a chance.

The delays meant that when he did finally make his first hit, the rest of us were able to not long after and the ground started to even up a bit. This was even more the case as on one of Hermes' first hits, Semper #5 was able to make a clean hit on him which took Hermes out the picture.

Another person looking strong was #8 woodie (You Wanted the Best - Rury) however he sent out light one time and a fading Wurstmeyer made one of his last big hits on him. A couple days later it looked like Rury would take revenge with a big rezone hit on Wurstmeyer however #1 gob sent out on even less DP and Rury put the hit on him instead. He sent with plenty of time left in the hour and Apollo was able to follow for a big hit which essentially put #1 out of the picture for good. The rezone also cost Rury a lot of momentum so I'm not sure it was worth it. Wurstmeyer was on his last legs at this point anyway and would soon deconvert.

As all the remaining top attackers started making hits again, my immortal OP started to pay off as I was able to reload more quickly and could often hit back to back while others had to spend time between hits. This often meant that as many of the top OPs had sent out, 2nd tier attackers would take chances sending and I could pick them off and made a few timely double hits including one where I put another hit on Rury.

Bored yet?

Although that latest hit I put on Rury probably killed his chances of winning, he was still extremely dangerous. Thankfully for myself, my packmate rvv (I am the one who knocks) had finished up his conversion and had caught up with Rury in stats. At a similar time, Bored (#7 nomad - mdk) had suddenly appeared out of nowhere and came flying up the ranks. He'd doubled a couple of my hits fairly recently and with a lot of techs, decent imps and prestige plus the wild pop you get from barren land, his pop and training ability went through the roof. In a fairly short amount of time, he was suddenly challenging for top OP and likely a strong contender for the round. For some reason, Apollo had sat out of the previous round of hits and so in terms of attackers, there were 3 of us with similar OP (Semper #5, Bored #7, myself #6) followed by 3 a little behind (Wanted the best #8, Apollo #3, The one who knocks #6).

Then came the most interesting hit chain of the round. There had been a couple times when Semper was able to hit some of the many huge explorers but I had often blocked him as I had the flex to hit him afterwards if he did. His OP was often enough to hit me all in as well so therefore I made sure to be able to retal him and rvv was now able to start stocking plat to threaten a big rezone as well. Inadvertently we were really stifling Semper's chances.

Then came an opportunity he couldn't pass up. An ares drop on the top land in the game #11 gob 7 Gallons of Calpol (dayvinho) for over 1,000 acres. Semper would be unsafe vs both myself and Bored but we also threatened each other if we went for it. Bored had the OP and a ton of DP incoming so eventually he went for the hit which then left me deciding on whether I should hit one of them as well. Rury had enough plat to rezone and hit me if I went for either and Apollo had enough OP to hit me if I went for Bored but not if I went for Semper. rvv however could hit either of them if they went for me. I decided Bored was too strong to let live so in the final minutes of the hour decided to just go for him. Apollo did nothing but Rury did go for the rezone hit on me and rvv promptly followed on him

The hit chain

2023-04-26 00:00:06 Semper Ubi Sub Ubi (#5) invaded 7 Gallons of Calpol (#11) and captured 507 land.

2023-04-26 02:59:54 Bored (#7) invaded Semper Ubi Sub Ubi (#5) and captured 364 land.

2023-04-26 03:59:53 Victorious on the battlefield, Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (#6) conquered 363 land from Bored (#7).

2023-04-26 07:31:01 You Wanted the Best (#8) invaded fellow dominion Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (#6) and captured 426 land.

2023-04-26 10:00:34 Victorious on the battlefield, I am the one who knocks (#6) conquered 313 land from You Wanted the Best (#8).

Bored was however then able to make a hit on Cerb in my realm:

2023-04-26 11:25:23 Bored (#7) invaded fellow dominion I hide in plain sight, same as you (#6) and captured 215 land.

However I was able to follow up with a spell drop hit on his realm in return:

2023-04-26 16:01:42 Victorious on the battlefield, Shut the f— up and let me die in peace (#6) conquered 259 land from Cinnamon Colt (#7).

The fun thing about that hit is that I was driving home from work when Fett and rvv messaged on discord about the potential spell drop. I was using voice to text through my phone to relay the messages until they said it was worth pulling over for. I pulled over in front of someone's house and made the hit and it put me back in front.

No more war

Realm 9 had spent much of the round going for black op records. Occasionally they'd target threats but mostly seemed to be going for ranks. They did however come back around to our realm and both hit rvv and Rompar with FBs and also towards the end of the war decided to come for our wonder (Altar of Heroes). We had no intention of going mutual but had decided if they made a move for it, we would declare mutual war instantly so that's what we did.

They decided to finish taking the wonder but the mutual war while I was becoming close to top OP (with Bored) meant I would threaten their top explorer lyc (Liefanthrope Erikson - Saccora). It didn't take them long to undeclare war with their tail between their legs but by this point I was looking to chase down his DP anyway. On the back of my last 2 hits, I had a lot of rezoning and building to do. I'd put most of that into GNs and had a steady 30 or so per hour coming in. I also however had some swamps available as barren land and DBs so amongst all the GNs put in about 60 or 70 temples.

Apparently realm 9 missed that as Saccora wasn't training enough DP to cover me, and when I saw that he had FG recently cast, figured if I did a couple more hours of GNs then a few hours of OP specs, I could catch him out. I set that in motion and then with 8 hours to go before my OP arrived (when it would be too late for him to defend me) we took his ops and saw the hit was on. I made a nice big war hit on him for 900+ acres and then to make it even sweeter, Bored bounced on him 3 hours later. I was looking to hit Saccora a second time anyway but would have been tight defending Bored however with that bounce (and taking off DP from Saccora) I was able to make the second hit fairly easily.

Bored then abandoned 24 hours later.

The last big push

With Bored out of the equation, Semper had no chance of holding me off so decided he may as well do what he can to take 2nd. He sent out on a hit knowing that I could easily hit him which I happily did and this hit on him would take me a handful of acres out of range even with DBs. That then freed me up to 5:4 explorers so I hit the two largest that I could - Heaven's On Fire #8 - Asanka456 and 7 gallons # 11 - dayvinho. Those hits then took me out of EG range of everyone on around 11k acres so I spent a couple of days building all mods on useful land as well as maxing smithies (for pop and training potential) as my population reached 100k (including draftees) then 110k then 120k usually with peasant population of 75k to 80k. I then trained off 40k specs at once and Bottomfed a couple of times on the larger explorers that I could - Almost Human #8 - Zedijar and dayvinho again (sorry).

I was content with 12.5k or so but on the final day found one more hit on Make Friends With Your Nightmares #7 (Vovin) for a 13k finish. I think in the last 10 days I hit for 6.8k land.

As someone noted in discord, I only appeared in the top 10 land on day 37 or so.

Acknowledgements

This round despite initially looking to play a similar race (reduced casualties, no turtle, good flex for sui) it all played out entirely differently. Last round I felt I had way more control of what was going on and could dictate play or what I wanted to do.

This round felt much more like surfing waves and I had to react to what others did all the time. Realm 5 in particular did a lot of nice moves early on.

My draft team were all I hoped for and more. Selfless and stuck it out to give me any and every possible chance of success. Here's a bit of a "expectation vs reality" for them:

• 1. Fett - knows the game inside out and self-sufficient in multiple strats - got precisely that
• 2. Rob/rvv - former winner who has a different approach to me. Said he may not be active all round but could help with ops - he was even better than that and maintained top OP checks almost on his own most of the early round, then came in clutch for me with rezone potential late on
• 3. SlyPimp - one of the most underrated players out there who is great for strat talk - definitely got all that, but unfortunately his fast strat just didn't have the luck it needed
• 4. Cerbrus - great potential for fast attacking - again, the fast attacking didn't work out but he sprung up time and time again for tough ops help
• 5. Downrightdave - similar to Cerb with the fast attacking potential not working out - another who was up for deconvert immediately and was always available for ops help and wonder bashing
• 6. Rompar - Veto Corleone - there's a reason Merf and I both hold him to high accord. Completely selfless and would do whatever is needed for the realm
• 7. Sloxxor - quietly does his thing with exploring - he was on for a great finish until letting spells slip but still had a great round and was always in range of the top to help with ops when required
• 8. MeeSax - pretty much did his own thing - popped up now and again to help out but must admit we were on different pages all round. Still a nice player though

GreyKoan and jolliest_roger were both great help throughout so will be good to see how they do in future rounds

Now I am le tired and don't expect to be doing this type of write up again for a long time

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