11) Put the Cat in a Super Snazzy Suit

Round 36 started with a hodge-poige amalgamation of a pack. Manno, Rury, and I expected to be Poige and Volv- less, so we recruited Oment and initially Rio—- until Oment said he didn’t want to play with that good-for-nothing, so we added Mris, who had randomed into our realm as a late addition the previous round.

After a bit of simming and discussion, Rury decided he wanted to deviate from his typical late round juggernaut builds and try a FW, Mris was keen on Nomad, Manno was relegated to his ops role as a Human, Oment had planned on something else but then decided to play a Dwarf similar to one Rury had run a couple rounds before, and I couldn’t help but give fast Merfolk a try.

We landed with a 3 pack of MattyVanHalen, Slice, and Sommarhydda, as well as a few active randoms— Mcgeeal, Zar, and Jolliest Roger. The realm was fairly active and a cool group of guys, who were hungry to learn and played a great round.

OOP came and other realms were what we had expected- a lot of Gobs, and a scattering of fast attackers playing FW, Halfer, Lyc, and Liz. I attacked HR 1, Rury coming in a few hours later at +4, Zar as a slow attacking troll hit at +5, Mris at +11, with Slice and MVH making their first hits even later as a Nox and UD.

The first few days progressed nicely, I think after the bot I hit oop, I was hitting mostly players, attacking Neophyte and then a couple other random guys, consecutively. Growth wasn’t too much of an issue for Rury, Mris, and I, as we were all hovering around the top 10, with our primary competitors looking to be the pack from 13 who had a FW, halfer, and Orc who were all growing nicely.

Day 3 I found myself a nice hit on the newest member of the Hydra, SugarJon.

Victorious on the battlefield, 11) Put the Cat in a Super Snazzy Suit (#6) conquered 68 land from Incrementally increased weight of telephone (#4).

Mris followed up on this hit a few hours later and Rury got a nice sloppy seconds hit on Mithrandr.

Addendum A: Add an additional Adder (#6) invaded Peter Griffin (#9) and captured 75 land.

The three of us kept rolling with these hits- I think I followed it up with an invasion on:

Victorious on the battlefield, 11) Put the Cat in a Super Snazzy Suit (#6) conquered 59 land from We're gonna need a bigger boat! (#3).

Victorious on the battlefield, 11) Put the Cat in a Super Snazzy Suit (#6) conquered 67 land from I love you bro, NO Kobbo! (#12).

Victorious on the battlefield, 11) Put the Cat in a Super Snazzy Suit (#6) conquered 72 land from Skeleton White 1976 AMC Gremlin V8 (#2).

Victorious on the battlefield, 11) Put the Cat in a Super Snazzy Suit (#6) conquered 66 land from I am not a racist, I have nox friends (#12).

Victorious on the battlefield, 11) Put the Cat in a Super Snazzy Suit (#6) conquered 88 land from Play with my big Ken (#1).

Rury and Mris had strings of nice hits during this same time, so the 3 of us grew quickly. I believe the 3 of us were top 5 attackers—- then the crap started.

Trying to avoid some FBs we decided to take Ivory Tower:

2023-08-14 17:14:19 The Ivory Tower has been destroyed and rebuilt by (#6).

Which was a lovely, warm fuzzy blanket to have for the whole 4 days we got to keep it, and also lead to the first of three times that Realm 3 warred us:

2023-08-17 18:33:56 ̿' ̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=(◕_◕)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿'̿ ̿ (#3) has declared WAR on #12 Turn the milk into cheese (#6).

They promptly took our safety blanket, then spent the remainder of the round harassing people with blops.

It was also during this time that Rury started to pull ahead of the FW in 13 by a little bit— meanwhile Allegorical over in realm #10 had some nice sui potential and the halfling in 13 had been training crazy sui op as well. Due to op pushing from Rury, both the FW and halfer in 13, a couple others, everything started to stagnate and targets were becoming harder to come by (at least targets that you could hit without worrying about being sui’d). We finally found a good hit for Rury which would have put him 2 hits up on 13– but we had to deal with the Halfling’s op. Fortunately he was vulnerable to sinking as his docks were low, and he was running heavy specs so didn’t really have ratio defense.

2023-08-18 13:59:48 #13.5: Tip Over Rides and Mix in War (#6) has declared WAR on Feeling Youthful at the Theme Park (#13).

Unbeknownst to us, 13 FW had a hit lined up that was going to get him caught back up to Rury, which happened just seconds later:

2023-08-18 13:59:54 Salas of the Caribbean (#13) invaded Lord Ians Mighty Muscles (#0) and captured 87 land.

We couldn’t fully sink the halfling, but we were successful in limiting his sui op, which enabled Rury to safely hit the following hour:

2023-08-18 14:58:34 Victorious on the battlefield, Addendum A: Add an additional Adder (#6) conquered 92 land from The Art Of Ascension (#1).

This opened up a flood gate of hits, but the timing wasn’t great for Mris and I, as we had both started going more efficient with our builds, seeing that the chance of a runaway was virtually nil.

Since we were losing ivory tower to 3, and 13 had FOY, and we had war with them, it made sense to take it. 13 was having no part of that and warred us back as soon as we started hitting it.

Around this same time I was finally able to send again, having been worried about the sui op in 13, and I hit Meg Griffen in #9. Upon return of my troops the rest of our realm was hitting FOY, so I finished it off and undeclared. With FOY in our grasp, the Halfling appeared to be on his last leg, and the FW was starting to fall behind, so there was a glimmer of hope— however deep down we knew we couldn’t keep it as 13s timer was ticking until they could begin hitting it, and it was quite clear that they had thrown in the towel on any chance that their FW or halfling could run, and were focused on just stopping us. We kept FOY for 30 hours before it fell.

With 13 being slightly rejuvenated our chance of success was very low, but we kept pushing: 2023-08-21 22:59:38 Victorious on the battlefield, Addendum A: Add an additional Adder (#6) conquered 131 land from Take Mahomes, Country Roads (#11).

2023-08-22 22:43:04 Victorious on the battlefield, 11) Put the Cat in a Super Snazzy Suit (#6) conquered 103 land from Shrine of Huitzilopochtli (#0). (This was the first bot I had hit outside of OOP)—the fact that bots had got back into my range was evidence enough that the top had been slowed down too much.

Around this same time the quick converting goblins were starting to move and realm 12 was looking strong, as their Merfolk (Wurst) had been keeping pace with me for the whole round in terms of acres, but was doing so on substantially less OP- which translated into a lot more population, and subsequently crazy op pushes.

Rury went something like 4-5 days without a send, just trying to keep things from getting out of hand with realm 12, hoping that their path hadn’t been paved for late round domination between their merfolk, goblin QC, and spirit. He was trying to do anything he could to give our slower guys a chance, as we still had Oment’s dwarf, Zar’s troll, and MVH’s UD in the mix.

At one point I was given a free shot to send the hour after Wurst did, so I hit the spirit:

2023-08-27 13:14:39 Victorious on the battlefield, 11) Put the Cat in a Super Snazzy Suit (#6) conquered 123 land from Gotta Grab Her By The Acres! (#12)

By this point Rury was totally done, Mris’ transition into efficiency didn’t quite work out how we had hoped and real life (gasp) had a lot going on for both of them, so they settled into ops-type roles. Somehow I had made it through the op pushes in a reasonable position, though notably smaller than Wurst - being approx 1.5 hits behind him.

Meanwhile we had taken School Of War, so I was leaning pretty heavily into barracks usage, so while we didn’t have FOY, we still had a pretty nice pop boosting wonder.

Wurst had taken over as the top attacker and was growing fairly well, forcing me to have to wait him out for every send, but fortunately all this sitting had allowed some bots to grow into range, so at least I could find a hit when the window was open.

It proceeded like this for a few days, which felt more like a death march- as it was pretty clear that the goblins were getting exceptionally strong and a much larger pop than myself— but I proceeded to try and keep moving, while focusing more on maximizing op training instead of the largely full-spec training that Wurst had embraced.

12 looked to mostly be in control, with Wurst on top, their gob QC being one of the top 2 gobs (along with Gothia in 8), and their spirit still creeping along.

Their strong position didn’t last long, as somehow their goblin sent without checking Gothia, and got promptly slapped:

2023-09-01 19:59:33 Converters should stay in the kitchen. (#12) invaded Play with my big Ken (#1) and captured 141 land. 2023-09-01 21:09:54 Skyraider of Kher (5/5) (#8) invaded Converters should stay in the kitchen. (#12) and captured 224 land.

This wasn’t just a big hit, but it was a realization on my part that 12 wasn’t able to keep eyes on everyone… which would prove to be important later.

Around this same time there was a large goblin in realm 2 (Craghack) that was the top dom when he started converting, and it was unknown how strong he would be. Oment and I looked over his numbers extensively, projecting out population, offense and defense, but it didn’t look like he’d be where he needs to, to be competitive— the biggest question was what he’d do about mods, since the heavy shaman training he’d need to do would sap his economy. Fortunately it appeared that realm 2 didn’t do as much math on the subject as they probably should have, and made some choices that wouldn’t work in their favor.

This is where there were some claims made on the podcast about realm 2’s chances of winning, and what was going to happen to realm 6 (I think one of the hosts is a little obsessed with our pack— it’s kind of endearing):

Finally the goblin had finished his much anticipated conversion!

2023-09-04 03:09:47 Rangoon Red 1967 Shelby Cobra (#2) invaded Gotta Grab Her By The Acres! (#12) and captured 174 land.

2023-09-04 03:52:19 11) Put the Cat in a Super Snazzy Suit (#6) invaded Rangoon Red 1967 Shelby Cobra (#2) and captured 257 land.

Oops! At least the dream got to last for 42 minutes.

The good thing about hitting for so many acres is the population boost that comes with it… the bad thing is how long it takes to build when you don’t have a huge pop already. I sat for approx 4 days to recover from it.

In the 4 days that I just sat there building and training, there were a bunch of wars, blops flying all over the place, a few hits but nothing too extreme, and I just sat there training and training and training.

So by day 34, the competitive land scape looked something like: -12 merfolk (wurst) was top attacker, but not a great pop -12 goblin (CE) had decided to go crazy training sui op -8 goblin (Gothia)looked strong -12 spirit (Swampfox) had never really taken off (I believe he ate a lot blops) -11 sylvan (JC) had sneakily grown to be pretty strong and had a great pop -2 goblin (craghack) largely sank without a ripple -5 WE (rio) looked strong -13 UD (Calvin) was pretty large, but didn’t quite the op/dp - I was in a similar position to Wurst, just a few hundred acres smaller

So remember what I said about 12 not doing the greatest job tracking people? Well, we had been looking at Wursts all-in dp a day or two earlier, thinking that it didn’t look great. So I trained a bit more op- then Manno got the great idea to Rev him. And what do you know, Wurst doesn’t appear to be casting AC. Having very little turtle, that’s a bold strategy, let’s see how it pays off for him:

2023-09-08 22:15:03 Victorious on the battlefield, 11) Put the Cat in a Super Snazzy Suit (#6) conquered 333 land from Do You Even Sim, Bro? (#12).

After losses he was hittable by Gothia and JC— was like 900 acres lost over the course of 7.5 minutes. Nothing like some good old-fashioned EvW action!

Absolute chaos ensued- but I got another hit on Wurst like 20 hours later when he sui’d MVH (poor matty). I got approx 1k acres out of it, and didn’t get hit— this totally rejuvenated me and I built a ton of mods and was getting ready to train a wall of offense—-but I didn’t get away unscathed either. Realm 4 and then realm 3 promptly warred us and FBed me continuously for about 4 days— meanwhile JC had made it through the chaos with a billion acres and nothing come after him. So after about 4 days of minimal training potential, I was nearing the possibility of suffering the same fate as Wurst, so I was forced into deconverting and getting my DP up.

After that my round was over- I explored for a couple hundred acres just because, and trained tons of ratios- later we would declare on 13 again and sink their greedy troll since he was on 6k acres with 63 docks.

Overall it was a fun round, even though it didn’t end up like we had hoped. We had 5 guys reach 6k, finishing with 5 of the top 30- so not bad.

Props to the realm- MVH, Slice, Sommarhydda, Zar, Mcgeeal, Jolly, Oment, Rury, Mris, Manno.

There is no TL;DR, because if you’re reading the round story for someone who didn’t win, you’re hardcore and don’t need one.