Round 15

Round 15
Winner 🥇
Player:	mris
Dominion:	Arcanine (#1)
Race:	Lycanthrope
Second 🥈
Name:	Yeeeoow
Dominion:	Hanselville (#11)
Race:	Merfolk
Third 🥉
Name:	ModusPwnens (Cheese)
Dominion:	Not worth the wait (#17)
Race:	Human
General
Changes:	Round 15/Changes
Valhalla:	Link

Round 15 began on November 14th 2019 and ended on January 3rd 2020. The start of the round was delayed to allow for additional development time to include the introduction of both Monarchy and the Global Town Crier.

Round Win Story

Before round we thought many people would play fast, so no runaway would have a good chance to win. Our strat was to play one account very fast to clear the way for three slower strats, to make sure no one else ran away before the first converters became strong.

We chose lycanthrope for the fast account. Gabbe and I worked out a nice sim for me, and Kong and Sarmis gave it some love of course before the round. If my round went sideways I planned on looking at bottomfeeding with shrines or just exploring and getting ops. Ideally, it would be a fun round for a few weeks while the WE and then trolls took over round.

I did well OOP keeping ahead of other attackers early (despite several sim mistakes that made me oop on 740a instead). Our realm strategy was to keep me off of spies and wizards early to give me an advantage and it worked out very well. The trolls also were doing quite well, even pushing near top op early at times. Unfortunately, they pushed too hard and couldn’t pump defense fast enough when the kobolds converted. We underestimated how much op the kobolds would be packing when they converted and the trolls paid the price - probably because they looked like the top threats to kobolds already.

As I was about to run away, realm 5 (Bobbo and Yami) doubled me with a sui from Bobbo to keep me from getting away. They didn’t realize I had ran out of mana and was going to be without ares a few seconds after Bobbo hit. The kobbos in 12 fed off of the sui nicely, but I was able to hit one of them all-in after their land came in because they decided not to cast ares call. Later on realm 12 suicided me as well when I wasn’t able to hit back, and a lot of other attackers were able to feed on that.

The pack had a lot of time to strategize op pushes and track top op with me after that happened and I was able to pull ahead of the crowd of fast attackers. There was a lot of dueling between myself and realm 5, 7, 12, and 13. I was able to hit realm 12 with a rat release for a scavenger dump to retal their hit on Gabbe which was a nice hit - I didn’t have any spies or wizards to release at this point so it was unexpected.

Eventually the kobolds in realm 5 and 12 died off leaving just myself and playt0i in realm 7 both playing lycs. I was ahead of him in military the whole time but he was a clear #2. During our standoff, he did a sweet 59:59 attack after I hit to get his troops home the same hour. Later, Michelangelo (Bobbo) sent and we calced that I could hit him safely. I tried to be clever and sent 1 troop at Bobbo at 59:54 or so to try to get playt0i to send out, but it didn’t pan out (realm 7 didn’t think I could hit safely so was not ready for it unfortunately).

Once Sarmis converted his WE and was out on an attack playt0i decided to suicide him which ended our duel. We recognized this could happen but that it would be for our benefit overall since it would get me clearly ahead. This was the first sacrifice Sarmis made for my account. It was obvious that playt0i didn’t have good prospects for the rest of the round, but this let me get ahead. It also severely hamstrung Sarmis, so playt0i did it knowing he would net positive land on the exchange and it would prevent Sarmis from pulling ahead since he was looking very strong.

I ended up 4200 acres after this hit. I hit a couple elite guard hits and then released my specs because I wasn’t likely to get any more hits soon. I hit Zero Wing from 5000 acres eventually. After this, I was 5600 acres. I trained for a while and then bottomfed to 7k acres.

The human in realm 17 (Cheese) sent out on 3450 acres and Sarmis rezone hit him. The human was by far the strongest competition I had at this point and Sarmis was not looking like he had a chance to win himself. We decided to sacrifice Sarmis’ strength for a hit on my strongest competition. It was a very expensive hit for both Cheese and Sarmis!

I had stopped building smithies at 2000 acres. I could have tried a shrine strategy, but that didn’t fit my overall strategy of covering for my pack while they took over. I had pretty terrible improvements (it was all about speed, baby!) but I got to 500DM once I ran away. I definitely should have built more DM, and spent more time calculating my farms/OM/LY - but since I usually was never sure when I would be attacking, bottomfeeding, and running away, it was very tricky!

After I finished bottomfeeding and got to 7k acres, I built everything. There was enough time left in the round that was definitely the best economical decision. It is possible I could have benefited more from leaving barren and trying to out-train the dominions below me and hit sooner than I did, but I decided to build. After building, I had 85k peasants on 7k acres. I trained all the way down to under 25k peasants over.

Realm 17, which had been obviously the strongest converting realm, was really close to winning at this point. MDK, the gnome Rock Hard, was pushing really high offense. With my garous I had to keep pushing defense to stay safe from a suicide squad push every morning after his fools gold ran out (not that he ever missed more than an hour or two of training….). I trained all the way down to below 25k peasants (over 60k peasants trained away!) while we were in a standoff. With no turtle, and gnome/human having so much more efficiency than me, I barely hung on at this point. They had me out trained in total military at the end of this standoff.

Yuki (playt0i) sent out on a little bottomfeed once I was close to 90% draft rate. Given his high casualties, I dropped guard and hit him. MDK decided to start a chain of attacks by hitting Zero Wing. Sarmis hit mdk, then Cheese hit Sarmis back. I hit Cheese expecting mdk to suicide me. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t have been able to hit mdk back because Oment (Astronomy Gnomine) would hit mdk with the 7k sui squads that he dropped, and both of them would be just outside my 75% range. We had calced all the permutations we could think of and I’d still have enough of a lead to win in this scenario. However, MDK either mis-calced or decided not to suicide me so he hit Sarmis instead.

At the end of the round Kong had trained a ton of spywiz and was getting full ops on even halfers for me if I needed to bottomfeed. He had starved really hard one night so he had no chance to train a decent 5:4 op. Gabbe was crushing brutes and had a few scenarios his 5:4 was useful. Even though their doms weren’t super impactful I can’t stress how much teamwork was going on with the four of us, we work great as a team together.

At the end of the round, Cheese decided to attack again which let me hit him since he gained a few acres in the exchange, so I ended up 8677 instead of ~8k. We were a little concerned that realm 10 would overtake us for top pack but the hit on Cheese sealed it. That is the only other rank besides top individual land that matters to me!

The round certainly did not end up how we expected (since I was supposed to be the helper, not the winner) but it was really fun to play a strong fast attacker. Usually, I try to play unique strategies that rarely work, but it turns out playing a more typical strat with a strong race is pretty fun too. This marks the fourth round of four attacking rounds that the biggest attacker is from our old orkfia group (Chris, Ed, Sarmis, and myself as biggest attackers and Kong, Gabbe, Slinzer and Dudi as the other players in that group) and that Gabbe and Kong have been in top pack. This round was a ton of fun and I hope the game keeps growing!

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