Round 25

Round 25
Winner 🥇
Player:	Zedijar
Dominion:	That’s what she said!
Race:	Merfolk
Second 🥈
Name:	Neophyte
Dominion:	Big Slick
Race:	Merfolk
Third 🥉
Name:	Winterr
Dominion:	ANOTHER BRICK in the wall
Race:	Human
General
Changes:	Round 25/Changes
Valhalla:	Link

Round 25 started on the 28th of July 2021 and ended on the 16th of September 2021.

Round Win Story

So I guess I finally won a round, who would’ve guessed? I certainly didn’t when I started this round… But after 50+ rounds of consistently mediocrity in DC and OD I won a round.

TLDR version:

Decided to slack and explore with some techs and DM + masons. Kept growing while everyone was killing each other and all the Mexican standoffs that were going on. Passed the exploring #15 Lyc at some point, still expected attackers (mainly #11) to pass me but they didn’t so to my surprise I won.

Pre-round:

I packed with Nanne (Slice), Jaerock and we replaced Björn (Sommarhyda) with MeeSax because Björn went sailing so he didn’t play. After my failed atteching troll of last round I wanted to slack again so decided to go merf explorer. Figured I should get some techs but didn’t know if I wanted to go 14, 19 or 32 techs and decided to see how it would go. Nanne picked Sylvan attecher, MeeSax WE converter and Jaerock was gonna do something opsbitzy. Jaerock was however too late to sign up. We had memes as theme as an idea to spice up dom chat in case we ended up in GTC.

We landed in an active realm with Wellan, Martinum, LarsO, Vovin and Blafiora so that was nice. Mix of strats, fast attacking, slow attacking, atteching and converters but everyone was active.

Disclaimer:

Please note I have no clue what exactly happened during the round and what plays took place. You’ll have to listen to the Rio podcast for that ;-) I just looked at top OP that I could see and kept exploring as much as I could…

Early round:

Came OOP at 750 acres with some schools. Kept exploring and went for 300 schools ASAP. Everyone helped tracking top OP/high OP and we saw it shifting around between #5, #13, #14 and #15. Pretty sure I could’ve been hit at some points but just kept my head down and kept trying to defend them while growing and building DM (after I got my 300 schools).

Blaforia died with his Orc so he asked which wonder we wanted and got us Underground Society somewhere after 2 weeks which was nice to have against plat thieves.

Mid round:

Round played out, some attackers died off, others popped up and converters came into play.

I just kept exploring while defending them all (or I think I did, at least the ones I noticed). Went to 826 DM so I had 13k gems/hr thx to techs (bit more later with extra tech). Decided to keep my schools since rebuilding them as DM (my initial plan) or masons would be quite expensive and I didn’t mind getting some extra techs + merfolk has plenty of space. I ended up with 33 techs thanks to that (and was able to take 34th last day but didn’t take it).

After I was done with DM I was unsure what to build, should I go masons directly or not? I talked with Yami and JC and figured I should get my imps up a bit first so went with homes first to max out my peasants. When my imps were up (something like 35 mln points invested) I just dumped masons (and essentials, though I always had lumber issues so I traded a lot of gems to lumber). Threw in some GT now and then to get enough jobs since masons only caused unemployment.

At some point #9 took our wonder but we took it back right away, earning me 36 prestige.

Late round:

With like 2 weeks left I took a good look at the exploring #15 Lyc who was largest for most of the round and saw my eco was better and he didn’t have techs so I had a chance of catching up even though he had still quite a lead.

With about a week left we got warred by #6 to blop me, got hit with FBs and lost about 25k peasants (had the tech, 20+% towers and about 1% FH). Joined guard (thought about it earlier but never did it), trained a couple of hours worth of extra wiz, dumped extra gems into towers and build some extra FH but after the first wave it kinda died off.

Kept looking out for the attackers, gnome from #5, WE from #11 and Merfolks from different realms. With 2 contenders #11 looked strong so I was pretty sure they, or at least one of them, would pass me. Meanwhile I just kept exploring, focusing on hills to push to 20% GT so I kept on growing while defending everyone. I even was prepared for a big r/r from #11 WE which never came. This ment I was quite overdefended and had to train nearly no DP the last days, especially after the WE got hit.

Since I was on my way to and on vacation the last 5 days it was nice to be able to just explore and don’t have to worry too much about yuge spec dumps. Everyone kept locking each other up, #5 gnome kept pushing and #8 merf too with huge temples so #11 merf couldn’t really follow up right away after his first BF. Time slowly ran out for #11 merf to hit often/big enough to pass me while I just kept growing.

I went to bed before offensive actions got disabled and was paid to 7667 acres. Thought about taking the URG smash tech and destroy like 3k buildings (basically everything but masons, GT and farms) to get about 2 million plat which would give me 35ish extra acres but decided against it. Woke up to pee during the night and exploration was still not disabled so I explored some more to 7714 and completely against my own expectations of the first 48 days I won the round.

Thanks to my pack and realm for the help and the entertainment in the discord channel. Thanks to Yami, JC, Elei and Playt0i for the entertainment and answers to all my questions in our round 19 discord chat.

Random notes:

I was really happy to pass 300k plat/hr at some point during the round (new personal best), 100k peasants was my next goal I broke (and spammed the discord channel with). I peaked at about 110k peasants and 430k plat/hr. Was able to explore 10a/hr most of the round, well above 4K I fell down to 9/hr. When I stopped building the last days it fell to 7-8hr. I love surreal perception, fun to see plat thieves checking you out only to find out I spent it all before FG ran out. Underground Society is a great wonder too, think many people didn’t realize I had it judging from the plat theft attempts and their effort to trade 20+ spies/MT for small amounts of plat. It appears I have my best finishes when I try my least.

Statistics:

Overview
Ruler:	Success baby
Race:	Merfolk
Land:	7,714
Networth:	781,337
Peasants:	109,778
Employment:	100.00%
Prestige:	286
Infamy:	0
Spy Mastery:	0
Wizard Mastery:	0
Resources
Platinum:	6,014,109
Food:	153,659
Lumber:	113,565
Mana:	170,705
Ore:	0
Gems:	186,466
Research Points:	12,816
Boats:	0
Spy Resilience:	0
Wizard Resilience:	0
Military
Morale:	100%
Draftees:	1,936
Merman:	0
Siren:	9,000
Leviathan:	44,500
Kraken:	604
Spies:	6,251
Wizards:	2,670 (release 1464 of them last hr to get to 781.337 nw)
Archmages:	1,500

Building Type	Constructed	
Home	1,090	(14.13%)	
Alchemy	300	(3.89%)	        
Farm	391	(5.07%)	       
Smithy	135	(1.75%)	
Masonry	2,000	(25.93%)	
Tower	310	(4.02%)	
Temple	1	(0.01%)	
D Mine	826	(10.71%)	
School	300	(3.89%)	
LY      155	(2.01%)	
F Haven 115	(1.49%)	
Factory	63	(0.82%)	
GT	1,425	(18.47%)	
Shrine	1	(0.01%)	
Total	7,112	(92.20%)

Science +21.71% platinum production	31,000,630	
Keep 	+31.94% max population	30,002,040	
Towers 	+23.47% wizard power, mana production, spell damage reduction	10,002,516	
Forges 	+0.00% offensive power	0	
Walls 	+23.32% defensive power	35,001,337	
Harbor 	+14.80% food production, +18.50% boat production & protection	6,000,000

Total Technology Bonuses
+12.5	% boat production
-20	% construction lumber cost
-15	% construction platinum cost
-25	% draftees lost in assassination attempts
-25	% wizards lost in assassination attempts
-25	% enemy disband spies damage
-10	% enemy fireball damage
-12.5	% enemy lightning bolt damage
-1	black op spell duration
+15	% better exchange rates
-3	draftee per acre explore cost (min 6)
-50	% exploring morale drop
-12.5	% exploring platinum cost
-2.5	% food consumption
+10	% food production
-20	% Fool's Gold mana cost
+7.5	% gem production
-1	% platinum tax from Royal Guard
+1	Fool's Gold protects ore/lumber
-20	% lumber rot
+7.5	% mana production
+4	% maximum population
-3.5	% military training cost
+7.5	% ore production
+7.5	% platinum production
-5	% cost of self spells
-5	% cost of spies
-22.5	% spy losses on failed operations
+10	% resources gained from theft
-25	% resources lost to theft
-15	% cost of wizards
+5	% wizard power
+1	wizard strength per hour
+20	% wonder damage

Information

The production advisor tells you about your resource production, population, and jobs.
Population:	        176,239 / 176,239
Peasants:	        109,778 / 109,778
Military:	        66,461 (37.71%)
Jobs:	                109,778 / 120,440
Jobs Available:	        10,662
Opportunity Cost:	40,075 platinum
Population Bonus:	+39.828% (126,040 raw)

Resource	Produced	Stolen	Decayed	           Invested	        Construction	        Exploration	        Rezoning	Training
Platinum	257,086,873	317,657	--	           11 (0.00%)	        32,904,287 (12.36%)	170,191,183 (63.92%)	192,403 (0.07%)	62,976,098 (23.65%)
Food	        25,958,618	0	840,570 (3.14%)	   --	                --	                --	                --	        --
Lumber	        6,119,577	0	208,642 (3.30%)	   11,000 (0.16%)	6,686,330 (99.84%)	--	                --	        0
Mana	        5,938,481	0	1,234,595 (17.21%) --	                --	                --	                --	        0
Gems	        11,797,709	1,506	--	           9,361,064	        --	                --	                --	        0
RP              305,316	        --	--	           --	                --	                --	                --	        --

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