Review of last round being late because I have been procrastinating on writing this - mostly due to last round being pretty boring - but got to write it down now, before I forget about everything.
After the initial tussles where over, the ranking looked like this:
WN - Madagascar
xPTx - Alaska
H1N1 - Eastern Sibiria
FEAR - Western Antarctica
SoLD - New Zealand
S0LD/So1D - Northern Norway
War with H1N1 (part I)Our first big fight was vs H1N1, who went all out berserk all the way from their hive at the edge of the map, through Japan, China, Indonesia till Australia. However, in doing so, they picked a good lot of enemies, so they ended up with more on their hands than they could handle. All big Australian alliances joined hands with us to push them back till Japan. We would have continued to push for their base at that time, but H1N1 were granted a long respite (from us, AuAu and ReV kept fighting, and kept H1N1 busy all the while till we came back) by the next two wars that distracted us:
Right when H1N1 started to push into Australia, some smallish alliance there made a *huge* suicide attack on our defensive position on a gate there. No doubt inspired by H1N1, this was the biggest setback of the round for us.
The fighting was not just in Australia but took place all over asia up till europe. This is a battle report from So1D vs H1N! (one of the H1N1 subs) in Norway.
War with PNCPENG (later renamed to PNC) was a sprawling mass noob alliance in eastern antartica, just below NZ. We initally made peace with them, not wanting distractions in our war with H1N1, but had a clear agreement that we would get all relics spawning in the area.
PNC used our war with H1N1 to set up a sprawling empire (I remember PNC, PNC2, PNC3, but there must have been one more) all located in eastern Antartica. Of course, such sprawl can only be achieved by inviting every player, regardless of skill, but it seems that PNC was convinced of their own strength. So convinced, that, when the relics started spawning, instead of leaving the relic in eastern Antarctica for us, they took it themselves and launched a surprise attack on SoLD. The result was a reasonably quick war and the dismemberment of the PNC alliance. 2 of their subs made peace with us once the war went our way. Shows the value of hastily formed subs.
Some PNC war footage.
But even with PNC done, we could not get back to our war with H1N1, since meanwhile a second war had started.
War with WNWith the relics spawning, all big alliances started to move in for them. In particular S0LD and So1D each secured one relic in Europe and started moving them towards Australia. WN, the number one ranked ally, had other ideas. Backstabbing despite our NAP, they launched a surprise attack on the So1D's relic.
What followed was one of the most pathetic experiences I have had in battledawn so far. WN was the number one ally (take a look at the scoreboard above), they had the moment of surprise on their side (managed to kill one army right on the relic, several others bary escaped) and they simply imploded. We killed 6 of their player's armies on the first day of the war! Check
viewtopic.php?f=88&t=7620 for more details. I don't even want to grace WN with more words here, since they don't deserve them.
War with H1N1 (part 2)H1N1 had used the break in our war to set up an array of sub alliances in front of their hive, but their biggest offense had gone no further than subduing ReV in Japan.
Once the WN war was over, we went there and pretty easily finished the job by breaking up all their sub alliances and then H1N1's hive.
FinalIn the meantime, FEAR had killed xPTx and taken their relics, the round was basically decided in a race to the last relics which SoLD won. Us having accumulated more, FEAR bowed out and handed over the remaining relics for a full early victory.
All in all the round was a very successful one for SoLD, but it was also not a fully satisfying one, since the war with WN, which was supposed to be the "big thing" this round turned out to be over in a matter of days.
Shouts:
FEAR - Our closest and best allies, honorable as always
AuAu - You guys came a long way this round, doing a really good job against H1N1's initial offensive
PNC - You went the way of all bad noob empires: They crumble under the slightest pressure.
WN - Worst number one ally I have seen yet on E3. No tactical skill at all.
H1N1 - Best opponents we had this round, but still a league away from the challenges posed by players like GRR.
- Xeeron