Round 36

Round 36
Winner 🥇
Player:	Jcinnz
Dominion:	Two Girls, One Kupp
Race:	Sylvan
Second 🥈
Name:	Mithrandir
Dominion:	Peter Griffin
Race:	Goblin
Third 🥉
Name:	Gorgh
Dominion:	Underwater
Race:	Merfolk
General
Changes:	Round 36/Changes
Valhalla:	Link

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Round 36 top 100

Round 36 - Realm #11 Win Story

It was a cold winter's morning in New Zealand when an overly happy Playt0i said hey JC, I heard you are a legend and a God amongst plebs - Can you make Sylvan work? I said it might be hard, they are the weakest race in the game statistically so I would truly be a God if I could pull it off. But really - The only other previous Sylvan that even had a shot at winning was my rd 24 one. Sylvan has a lot going against it - especially late game it massively underperforms compared to most races so it took a lot of balancing to keep the momentum going especially before I pulled a lead.

Preparation

So going into the round I knew I was going to be a little busy and the rest of the pack wanted to naturally be a bit faster so it kind of worked out well with wanting to go slower myself. This was also confirmed by how the realm looked once we all got chatting after placement. So because of the terrible start time the rest of the pack went various QC’s - Yami on Gob, Toi on Merf, Temple on Dorf, then Cents as ops. Ended up landing with Gorgh, Lieke, Freeze and Margoose (Muggistan quit early due to life). So I looked at recent successes of people who just hit bots all round and decided why not I’ll do it also because that's the easy do nothing strat. Perfect, gameplay sorted. Fun fact - I actually missed no less than 10 land bonuses and a little over 24 hours of midas this round!

So I’ll be honest I didn’t pay attention at all to what was happening at the top for like the first 15 days. So here's Yami to fill in the blanks:

Early Round: FWvFW

Early round played out much as we expected: FW was the most popular attacker but all the standard races were represented with a healthy amount of competition. Once the dust settled #6 Adder (Rury) had developed a lead with a fast merfolk, Snazzy (Erix) and a nomad, keyboard (mris) close behind. They were looking really strong but not too far ahead with #13 Salas (Chunk) keeping pace.

Before long we hit the first major stall of the round. Erix and mris swapped to more efficient builds leaving just the two FWs and 13 did an excellent job leveraging slightly higher build efficiency and the Fountain of Youth to prevent much growth. Without any significant land gain at this point it was clear that we wouldn't have a fast attacker runaway so it was time for the midspeed strats to shine.

First up to take advantage of the stall was #12 simbro (wurst) with a high pop, spec-heavy merfolk and #8 Skyraider (Gothia) with a standard 400-DM QC gobbo just focused on growth. While #12 pushed stats it wasn't translating into a significant land lead and when bots started entering range we started getting pretty sure that the spec-heavy build wouldn't last and that things may open up down the line.

It was around this same time, approaching day 20, that we started to notice JC's Sylvan really picking up steam. While the top attackers were hovering around 3-3.3k, he had made a big leap to ~2.5k acres and was really closing the gap on doms that were previously his top OP but were now stuck in the stall. A few days later, as we were in the middle of taking FoY, he'd 9hr again to 3k putting him just 1-2 hits behind the top contenders with the most efficient build of anyone up top.

For when JC came online, I’ll pass it back to him to talk about his own round:

Mid-Round: Chaos

So around day 20 we had a team meeting and realised our best shot was to go all in on me since the others doing QC strats had started to fizzle out. This literally was the turning point in my progress. Having 4 pack members + realmies willing to get ops left me with an absolute ton of freedom and ability to grow. This started to really culminate with wonders. So the next day we warred #13 for FoY. Day 24 we took it with myself dealing the final hit for a nice prestige boost. Day 26 #2 warred us (and #13 warred us again) sinking our Dorf (Temple) and partially sinking myself at times forcing me to send on targets I really didn’t want to hit. End of day 28 #13 got FoY back. I ended up gaining 4-5 days of FoY bonus for the extra speed so my pop exploded for the stats increase. But because of that growth it was becoming obvious that my biggest weakness was being sunk, there was no way I was going to be able to protect all my boats + give me the freedom to grow. As soon as #13 took FoY back, we started discussing next plans and settled on going after Underground Society a few days later which turned out to be one the best moves we did. At this point my pop was massive and the only other person with pop even remotely similar to mine was Gothia. It felt like only a matter of time before we took over due to the constant stalls.

While we were fighting for wonders #12 Simbro (Wurst) had pulled a lead over everyone and looked strong. But the round encountered another stall period. This stall period basically killed Simbro as his usage of specs/mods and no imps left him with nowhere to go and no pop lead and he wasn’t far enough ahead to actually break free of the tail end of the fast attackers, who were all on their dying last breaths, or the more efficient attackers/converters.

Day 31-33 was the major turning point for me. I had just managed a double 9hr so my population exploded. It was at this time when I first started to become a threat. I quickly trained my op back and it was just in time also because the round changing event was about to happen. Side note: It was around this time that it seems realm #12 may have tried to slow the round down on purpose for their Spirit (Swampfox) to gain some momentum with undying OP. But he never gained any speed and through a combination of war and getting hit all in multiple times - he couldn’t keep up with Gothia and myself who were severely out training him.

Day 34 - I was considering sending on the wonder to bring it down faster, when we suddenly noticed #6 Snazzy had just hit #12 Simbro ALL IN and #8 Skyraider (Gothia) had followed up - turns out it was an ares drop! So quickly got ops.I ended up being slightly short so Yami/Toi did some quick assass for me and a few minutes later I was able to follow.

   2023-09-08 22:15:03 	11) Put the Cat in a Super Snazzy Suit (#6) invaded Do You Even Sim, Bro? (#12) and captured 333 land. 
   2023-09-08 22:18:59 	Skyraider of Kher (5/5) (#8) invaded Do You Even Sim, Bro? (#12) and captured 282 land. 	
   2023-09-08 22:22:33 	Victorious on the battlefield, Two Girls, One Kupp (#11) conquered 276 land from Do You Even Sim, Bro? (#12). 

What followed was 24 hours of sheer madness. I sent knowing Simbro could hit me and potentially #12 Converters (CE) - it was really close borderline dp vs his sui. Within 30 seconds of me sending Converters was getting my ops and I was really expecting the sui to land on me but instead he chose Gothia who was larger than me and - at the time - the biggest threat.

   2023-09-08 22:29:44 	Converters should stay in the kitchen. (#12) invaded Skyraider of Kher (5/5) (#8) and captured 318 land. 

By the time Simbro woke up, he had starved a few ticks and with the combination of being hit all in and losing kraken - had lost too much OP to retal on me. Part of being a round winner is luck and this was my lucky break right here. If I didn’t hit Simbro after #6 and #8 I wouldn’t be writing this story most likely so it was a gamble I had to take and we did our best to make it a calculated one. I ended up hitting him twice - the second hit being his farm out to all the top doms - and #2 gobo back to back to back. In those 4 - 5 days or so I had made 6 hits which just catapulted me forward into the top tier of attackers.

Once the smoke had settled I was a hit behind Skyraider and basically every other threat was non-existent having spent their OP in the hitting frenzy. Meanwhile realms #3 and #4 had warred and FB’d Snazzy, ending in his deconvert a few days later after falling behind on pop and stats. At this point I had a huge efficiency advantage over Skyraider and it felt like just a matter of time before I took over. It was at this time that the Podcast dropped talking about who benefitted the most from that exchange. Two dom’s were mentioned which instantly drew heat to them - myself and the #13 UD. While not much could be done to me (wiz race + US), it’s amazing how much extra failed ops you get once a giant arrow gets pointed at you. This left basically all the attention on the UD. We talked about sinking him because he was running a super greedy build and his 5:4 could be an issue. But we never did, with his constant spec pushes his pop never grew at a rate that we were worried about. But we never need too because other realms decided to go after him. So soon after he was being FB’d and sunk. He most likely wouldn’t have become a threat as he was still behind myself and #8, but it at least secured that idea that even remotely there won't be undying competition later. Basically from then until day 44 or so, Snow White was basically partially sunk so his 5:4 threat to me was lowered.

Late Round: Endgame

We all sat for 2 days and I restocked my OP, I knew I had to hit before Gothia could reload and I was easily able to do it hitting #6 Matlock (Matty) who I found out later had some thought that someone would hit me if I sent on him and then he could hit them. Sadly for him I had plenty of DP (shoutout to Freeze who assassinated an absolute ton of Mattys drafts) and fully defended all sui’s so I got a free hit on him. I could’ve 9hr’d but #5 WE Red haired one (Rio) decided to stock plat which (for the second time) prevented me from hitting. But it was nice of him to limit his growth for a second time which made it easier for me to fully defend his 100% r/r later on.

This was when I first became top op. Once my land was in I hit the next tick on the explorer I planned to 9hr since Rio decided to spend his plat and I was again free to send. After my land got back I was just relaxing building. I was now a hit ahead of Gothia who had a lot of defence incoming so looked like he was preparing to send. But to my surprise he sent 3 hours after my army returned and he sent 30 minutes into the tick which meant that I could hit him same hour and not even have to worry about 9hr. Because of how exposed he was, we seriously thought it was a trap. We took ops on literally every decent attacker in my range doing all the 5:4 calc’s and we couldn’t see anyone who could retal on me. Gothia is usually a cautious player so it took the full 20 minutes from his send to mine to get over the paranoia of a trap. But we couldn’t see anything so I went for it.

   2023-09-14 05:38:57 	Skyraider of Kher (5/5) (#8) invaded We're gonna need a bigger boat! (#3) and captured 226 land. 	
   2023-09-14 05:57:53 	Victorious on the battlefield, Two Girls, One Kupp (#11) conquered 351 land from Skyraider of Kher (5/5) (#8). 

This was basically the end of the round. At this stage I had no threats left, especially once Gothia abandoned soon after (I was worried he was just going to sit and train 5:4). I had to train a bit of defence over the next few days to defend potential suicides from #6 Dorf Quetzalcoatl (Oment) and #13 UD when he wasn’t partially sunk. From now on it was just a game of can I chase down the #9 Gob explorer Peter Griffin (Mith). If I remember right, he still had about a 1k acre lead on me at this point. But with not much OP around it was always going to be hard for him to keep a fast pace without needing to defend my 5:4.

Two days later #13 who at this stage was BFing every 12 hours kept BFing and wasn’t checking me as often as he had to. I had stocked up a lot of drafts and spec dropped about 5k spec op for this hit to also defend his 5:4.

   2023-09-15 03:52:10 	Snow White's Necromancy Wish (#13) invaded CIA Agent (#4) and captured 73 land. 
   2023-09-15 14:58:26 	Victorious on the battlefield, Two Girls, One Kupp (#11) conquered 353 land from Snow White's Necromancy Wish (#13). 	

Then two days later he sends light again on a retal and I’m able to easily hit him. This hit allowed him to net gain + make another hit while being out of range which allowed him to stay alive a bit longer. At this stage I only had #5 WE as an attacker in range and he had previously r/r’d all his smithies so he wasn’t going to threaten. So I started to begin training 5:4. Two days after my hit on Snow White, I managed to spec drop #8 Kob explorer Rograkh (loki) which turned out to be my last hit of the round and put me little over 1k acres over the #9 Gob explorer which was day 43. From then on I only had explorers in range until #3 Human jumped in who was within about 20k from being all in’d.

If I was almost any other race I probably could’ve all in’d him but that is the sad part about being Sylvan, I was forced to be extremely limited in my mods and had to go high homes + specs strat. But I would’ve way preferred 6% more temples than homes. Since the attackers got stalled so much the explorers were all huge and had massive pop so with the lack of mods there was no way I’d ever catch them since they could simply out train me.

Acknowledgements

Overall huge ups to my realm who I wouldn’t be here without. Sorry Gorgh - I couldn’t chase down the Gob to try get you into second =(. Cents and Temple for making the chat hilarious. Even though they keep bringing up fantasy football, I hate fantasy football. Fun fact - I didn’t even know what my dom name meant until the final 10 days. I just thought it was a regular play on words about that… special video we all knew and loved 20 years ago. Cents is a selfless packie, constant ops bitz for the boys and never complains unlike myself. Also hate that Temple goes away to Rhodes and brags about it in chat. Special love to Playt0i and Yams who stayed up late with me multiple nights to double check calcs and to get ops and keep me sane. Plus for the frantic whatsapp calls for my last two hits because I wasn’t at my PC. Super fun round which compared to a lot of rounds had a lot of people trading places at the top throughout which really made it interesting.

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