Round 19

Round 19
Winner 🥇
Player:	BEKOBEH
Dominion:	Worian (#9)
Race:	Dark Elf
Second 🥈
Name:	visloq
Dominion:	Pepe Silvia (#5)
Race:	Firewalker
Third 🥉
Name:	rvv
Dominion:	Grumpy McSnapface (#15)
Race:	Gnome
General
Changes:	Round 19/Changes
Valhalla:	Link

Round 19 began on July 11th and ended on August 27th. This round saw the maximum pack size increase from 4 to 5, but with the caveat that 5-packs must select unique races. Additionally, the maximum amount of packed players per realm was increased to 7.

Round Win Story

The pack and choosing races

It all started in the test round for round 19 in which I tried my LDA concept. With Blafiora (2 times DC round winner) we started discussing building a team, and he chose to play Spirit attacker. Since we had players disappointed with the previous round who did not want to join the new one, we had to find "new" ones. So we dug up old contacts and renewed rusty acquaintances.

Ivetza (1 time DC round winner) found himself in the UK and after a week of hesitation decided to get involved by taking Lizardfolk to attack.

Lubo (several times runner-up DC) another veteran was very pleasantly surprised to hear us on the phone after so many years and decided to play Halfling explorer.

TheExpert (2 times DC round winner) tended to play an explorer with the clear task of being an ops "farm” with Icekin.

My (BEKOBEH) choice was Dark Elf LDA:

• Immortal elite unit 6/0 i.e. after returning with the conquered land, my DP remains the same and I am a good target for land / RP (no need to send out).
• I can calculate my target without draftees - with less OP I can make more attacks.
• I can invest all platinum remaining after rezones in immortal elite troops.
• Can't BF because Spirit Warriors die below 75% range.

Protection

I took a break from poker and started with the simulations. It can be said that I was the technical person of the team during this part and after a fruitful discussion with the other members I prepared a simulation for each of us. I came out of protection on 422 land. I had 2.4k DP and 5k immortal OP. Managing DP is key to my concept; it determines how good a target you are for others and how low they will hit you. You don't want to fall below 420 acres because your economy will suffer. I had homes, alchemies, smithies, and schools - without factories and temples - so that I could train additional attackers in the next phase. Ivetza messed up, and was late with protection so lost a day waiting (he had warned he didn't have much free time, but we didn't expect it to have an impact so early).

LDA phase

On day 4 (OOP) I made 11 attacks for 6766 RP. Hello LDA! You were beaten back! It was a great start with the very first attack a bounce, along a second beaten back on the first day OOP.

By day 5, I was already recognizing the other LDAs. A "friendly fight" between two other LDAs caught my attention, and instead of reporting, I took matters into my own hands. I waited for one player to strike at his friend, and when he finished, my attacks on the former dominion began. He became extremely small, and the loss of buildings proved to be enough to break their habit of exchanging blows mainly with each other. I made 13 attacks this day.

By day 6 I had already learned to rezone even more efficiently; after each hit on me the price dropped and I was rezoning to keep the buildings important to me in stages. This was only possible if I was online while I was being hit. A further 16 attacks were made.

At the end of day 7, I took my 13th technology. Platinum theft also began - spies became an important unit for me because, by the end of the middle game, they were bringing extra platinum into my economy. My spy ratio was about 1 during this period. I did 20 attacks.

Day 8 became a record for collecting RPs, generating 18,360 on that day alone. Everything was already working smoothly, although I continued with at least one bounce every day. It usually happened when I was most tired and because I was sending on the edge (1-2 points above) the risk of making a mistake was high. On that day, I made 17 attacks in 24 hours. To achieve so many attacks, you can't send any extra OP for sure, but you have to count precisely.

This was also the day realm #10 warred us and snared Blafiora (our king), and kept him snared for the next 3 days. In reality, we only had two attackers, excluding the late lizard of Ivetza, and they successfully stopped the growth of the biggest. Our team game at that time was lame, we had no contact with the rest of the realm, we only communicated through the council where top OP was posted. In other words, the war caught us unprepared.

The end of day 9 brought my 21st technology. With these last 12 attacks, the LDA phase ended. My speed was good and the advantage I gained was enough not to worry about any of the other LDA players until the end of the round.

Total: 90 attacks for 78k RP

Converting period

My goal in the previous period was to be faster than the other LDAs, and to take advantage of the fact that they had low DP when I started to switch to a normal game. I was already beating them for land, not only RP, and although I lost 70-80% of what I had conquered, I managed to grow a little while training defense.

For the next 4 days, I swam in the third level of Hell. If anyone had a weird idea for a strategy that couldn't keep them at the top level, it was right in my range. You can meet all kinds of freaks in this belt of players.

On day 13 I was attacked by Wyrd (sylvan) - this was supposed to be the last hit on my account for the rest of the round.

Characteristic of this period were my repeated conversations with the Blafiora. He convinced me to bet on economics instead of rushing ahead with WG. He was trying to prepare me for the late phase of the game. He reinforced that no matter how hard it is now, eventually you will attack, and others will have to watch you grow without being able to do anything about it.

Normal play

In the following days, I began to feel the advantage that DM brought; I attacked once per day, and after each hit I had a larger population despite the fact that my army was also growing. The training of Spirit Warriors continued until I made nearly 14,000. Very rarely did I need to supplement my attacks with a few Adepts. No one in my range could hit me anymore, and my attack force was immortal - I grew without loss of resources, but only slowly at this point because I trained elite troops. The flexibility of the mix of combat units in attack was one of the main advantages for DE in round 19.

At the beginning of this period, I was still training Adepts with only 20% WG, and my goal was to make as many as possible before screwing my economy with 40% WG. This was the essential difference between me and the other DE LDA in the round, who chose to build maximum WG earlier, which slowed him down to the point where he was forced to continue by bottom feeding.

Middle game

By this point I was still out of range of the strongest realm (#10), and converters were already starting to train OP. My Adepts completed the fifth year at the academy (7/9 with 40% WG) and began to take an active part in the battles. It happened exactly as Blafiora predicted: I grew quickly and smoothly, still far away from the top attacker's range.

The WAR(s)

If you want to win a round, you have to either report the top contenders for cheating if you think they are playing dirty, or fight their realm directly with everything available. We chose to fight and this was another epic part of this captivating game.

Like me, one of the converters (Dark Vader) was significantly ahead of all other converters and this caught our attention. We already believed that my DE had the potential to win. However, the top attackers hit two of our Merfolk - although we refreshed the information about TOP OP, they somehow made a mistake. Our pack made a quick decision and declared war on the strongest realm at the moment. We accused the Merfolks of being farms, which turned out to be a hasty conclusion. There was an apology from us, after which we asked them to join the war. Of course, we realized that these players are pure and simply rookies - we apologized and started to turn them into an active element of the war. We showed them that they had strong weapons against the insolent attackers. This was the turning point that would turn a hitherto dominant realm (10) into a total wreck. A total of six people from our realm coordinated black opping their Human (Kongb) and keeping him at 7k peasants for 3 days. At the same time, we sank their troll (mris), who calmly continued to train smashers. No chances would be taken, we took advantage of being small (out of range) and started to build good coordination amongst our realm.

Later I put on a master class (at least in my eyes it is) hunting Gabbe, their DE, for more than 20 hours (who was also the biggest DE at the time):

Victorious on the battlefield, :beginner: Worian (#9) conquered 257 land from The Encephalitis Lethargica Pandemic (#10)

After this hit, we canceled the war in the hope that I would be able to keep my plunder:

2020-08-07 00:00:39 The Antonine Plague (#10) invaded fellow dominion :beginner: Worian (#9) and captured 204 land.

I spent exactly 39 seconds in the range of the top attacker and he sent me back down again! The time was barely enough to take fresh ops. Despite this, things were still under control: I had a strong economy, led all the converters, and continued to train mostly Adepts, all the while staying in range of the second strongest attacker Lizardfolk (Pasi).

I had just built my land and was actively training an army when Pasi sent out, giving me an opportunity to take him out of the competition but with a high risk of being hit at least twice. It was a risky and surprising move from him, and perhaps a desperate attempt to run out of range of what was about to happen to him (fireballs). There was no one on the team online to run fresh operations and I had given up when Discord flashed and The Expert asked if he should take the new ops.

I had talked on the phone with Kenshiro a few hours before. I explained to him what the situation was and he advised me to make this hit on Pasi, because these were the last strong days for Lizardfolk, especially if he hits a second time - he would break his attack power and it would be fatal for him. As for the TOP OP lycanthrope (Sarmis), Kenshiro was adamant that there was no chance for him to win the round with his economy screwed the way it was (high mods and specs).

I remember the moment I pressed invade with the clear awareness that many hours of insomnia could be in vain. Blafiora was furious to see that I had made that hit. He must have been right that without this risk I would have succeeded, because the DE we created together was a monster, and with the support of the whole realm, the days of competition were numbered. I had docks, regenerated wiz strength at 9 points per hour with a high spy ratio - there was nothing they could do to me. We hardly spoke to him for the next few days, he was so angry with me!

Declaring war again on #10, the Lizardfolk (Pasi) was burned and left on 10k peasants with broken OP from his previous hit. We were again out of the range of Sarmis while destroying their next strongest player, and the top OP couldn’t touch us without leaving the EG.

This war lasted 11 days and if anyone thinks it's easy to break some of the most experienced players when they are on the crest of the wave and with only one active attacker in range and a few explorers let them try, and then we'll talk. The experience of our round winners as well as the support of TheThing plus the additional assistance of Guapo and Blade were invaluable in this war.

After the elimination of the Lizardfolk (Pasi) came the turn of the last and still most dangerous dominion of the round so far, Sarmis, who had managed to escape by growing shortly before we entered his range with 4 people at once. But we caught up with him again, and when they declared war to carry out another snare in the round, three of us entered his range before their planned attack happened (we saw when their target was Ares' off) and the sinking began. I also found a target and went for the second and last time into the range of top OP. Surprisingly, Sarmis broke his guard and hit earlier to try and avoid the sinking, which turned out to be even more fatal for him because he was burned (fireballs) by all of our players in range. This spelled the beginning of the end of a successful lycanthrope.

In the ensuing panic, #10’s Human (Kongb) decided to send out as well, which baited the biggest troll (Mdk) into invading:

Sadly, the forces of Dark Vader (# 10) (Kongb) were beaten back by American Pharoah (# 6) (InternetFett). The Big and The Ugly (# 13) (Mdk) invaded fellow dominion Dark Vader (# 10) and captured 297 land.

Tired of attacks, I almost missed this invaluable opportunity, but TheThing (our biggest merfolk) was insistent on figuring out what the troll had sent, and it turned out to be a good opportunity for me to hit the next most dangerous dominion, which put me in the lycanthrope's range:

Victorious on the battlefield, :beginner: Worian (# 9) conquered 250 land from The Big and The Ugly (# 13) (Mdk).

As soon as Sarmis’ troops arrived home, the inevitable sink followed so that he could not hit 5:4; all the explorers in the realm took advantage immediately, while my DE was already training Adepts and 4/0 specs. As you can guess, one of the most used tools in the game from the group of realm #10 - snare - was also used by us, which allowed me to hit the lycanthrope (Sarmis) all in without Ares':

Victorious on the battlefield, :beginner: Worian (#9) conquered 506 land from The Antonine Plague (#10) (Sarmis).

Late game

From here until the end I had to be careful of two Wood Elves (Kakadrea, Parfittron), one Gnome (rvv), and one Troll (Mdk), not giving them any chance to hit me on a suicide.

I did 5 more hits over the rest of the round, cleaning up some old relations along the way...

Victorious on the battlefield, :beginner: Worian (#9) conquered 354 land from T Minus 10 Till Blastoise :turtle: (#17). The reason was I needed land and earlier in the round they made a few hits on our realm.

Victorious on the battlefield, :beginner: Worian (#9) conquered 267 land from Slim pickings (#5). The reason was extremely low DP without Defensive Frenzy - thanks to Lubo for finding this juicy target.

Victorious on the battlefield, :beginner: Worian (#9) conquered 360 land from T Minus 10 Till Blastoise :turtle: (#17). The reason was that I can. :)

Victorious on the battlefield, :beginner: Worian (#9) conquered 350 land from I want it that way (#14). The reason was their halfer suicided on me earlier, plus biggest prestige gain potential.

Victorious on the battlefield, :beginner: Worian (#9) conquered 404 land from :crossed_swords::crossed_swords:Gnomish Mining Machine :crossed_swords::crossed_swords: (#12). The reason was a Halfling (alison) from their realm did some plagues and insect swarms a few times earlier.

Thanks

Special thanks to Blafiora, who took a lot of his time to make this Dark Elf a winner.

The Expert for the coordination of all black ops.

Lubo for the priceless Halfling, from which no secrets (spy ops) were safe. And for his invaluable sense of humor, which entertained our chat.

Ivetza, who successfully blocked one of the slots on our pack. I'm kidding, of course, he often helped me in the early stages with ops.

TheThing, man you are a pure support war machine. Thank you mate. And thank you for helping me to translate this short story. ;)

Guapo and Blade, your support was timely and appreciated. I will be glad if you managed to feel the magic of this game and see you even more successful in the future.

Lorian and his DC 55 round story were a useful part of preparing my concept.

Congratulations to all competitors that made this round so interesting and dynamic. It was a real challenge to compete with you.

New battles are yet to come. BG POWER (BeeeGeeees)

P.S. Thanks for the calculate button, you must have noticed that I was experiencing some difficulties and you have made it much easier for me! Continue to develop the site and this maniac community.

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