End of Age Article: Age 51 Age of Domination
Age Over
Age 51 - The Age of Domination is over and this reporter is sorry that the article has taken so long to put together. Too many people with busy schedules and it has taken a long time to collect all the relevant information so that this article could be completed. There is a slightly different structure to this article than the previous end of age article from last age. The focus this time round is on the land, networth and honour crowns combined with the provinces that finished top of the server in their respective categories as well.
Heroes of HaLL finished top for land and networth with Stuck Inside my Head finished top for honour. Therock played Catalina Wine Pony of Franzia and topped all the provinces on the server for land and networth while Sasha played My Empire of Dirt of Stuck Inside my Head. This article will incorporate statements from all of those listed and it will hopefully provide some insight into their respective ages for our community.
The Kingdoms:
Heroes of HaLL
BlackBackBeagle, one of the leaders of Heroes of HaLL took some time to answer my questions and decided that the kingdom would release a statement about their age and the efforts that were behind them winning the land and networth crowns. The statement is as follows:
Each age, our overall goal is the same, aim for #1 land rank while maintaining warring capability. Last age, everything seemed to fall in our favor from the very beginning. We tried a new strat in protection where we focused on heavy growth for all provs rather than just one bank in order to secure high networth from the very beginning. This plan was working well. We also found ourselves on the same island with some allied Kingdoms and realized that the biggest threat to our goal would be Fluffylicious, on the island which we would see last.
Throughout the early age we remained wary of potential threats because we did not have NAPs with the majority of our enemy Kingdoms, but leadership remained determined to keep the acres coming in while there was still land to be grabbed.
Even once most of our NAPs were in place and when we were out of warring range of most kingdoms, we still made sure that our provinces were always militarily strong enough to take on a conflict if one presented itself. We did not want to be caught off guard. We constantly motivated and encouraged one another to remain active and logging in, never wanting anyone to fall behind in acres, and always wanting all of our players to realize that we could be presented with a conflict at any given time.
It seemed that many of the top ten kingdoms were occupied much of the time, warring and involved in active hostiles which did not involve our kingdom. This was beneficial to HoH and we took the opportunity to continue growing while our threats were occupied.
The conflict with Dreams was the most significant for us last age. After just having gained nearly 50k acres in their most recent war, the gap in acres between HoH and Dreams was quickly diminishing. Considering the recent success and activity level of Dreams, we didn?t need video orders to know that we could easily be overtaken by the kingdom if we gave them the opportunity to pump up and get a couple more wars or waves in before End of Age. Knowing this, we decided to stand in their way, putting our own acres on the line.
HoH leadership devised a clear cut strategy which we hoped would keep Dreams at bay while securing our #1 position in the process. They had the honour bonuses, but we spent much of our time pumping science and knew that it would pay off. So in combination with strong military and T/M capabilities, we used precise hits and timing to execute our strategy, assessing that they would not take the conflict to war unless we willingly gave them the upper hand with a full wave into them. After this conflict, we were pretty confident that we had secured the #1 land rank, but we never let our guard down, continuing to dice, train, and build until the last possible seconds of the age.
All of the HaLL of Heroes team were recognized for our efforts at the end of last age with the changing of province names to our own nicks. In the end, we were happy to have achieved our goal and will continue in our efforts for as long as we can tolerate one another and the sleepless nights of utopia. It's a team effort and everyone on the team knows who they are and what part they played.
Stuck Inside my Head:
Eowlyn-, monarch of Stuck Inside my Head was able to answer some of my questions about their age and their overall plans and how it ultimately finished. Her statement is as follows:
<eowlyn-> We were not out from the start of the age for the honour charts as our setup was never designed to reach for honour. The number of wars that we had along with the kingdoms we warred brought the honour with it.
When asked about the honour system and the amount of focus that it has had this age, Eowlyn- had the following to say:
<eowlyn-> I think most know that the honour system was a little 'off'. Though it was never our goal to reach the top of the honour charts, it was rather enthralling to see the honour numbers move as they did. We didn?t go into the last war of the age with the goal to end the age top of the charts, however as the war went on it did become more and more of a focus. It was a battle to the end rather it would be #1, #2 or even # 3. It wasn?t until the final update that we knew we had reached #1. We duly finished top of the server after a very close race and it has been a good age all round.
The Provinces:
Sasha
Sasha player of My Empire of Dirt in the kingdom, Stuck inside my Head, had the following to say after finishing top for honour:
<Sasha> Ultimately it was coincidence as we lost 2 provinces late in the age and another kingdom decided to war us. I can't really tell if it was their intention to go for honour or not, but it certainly looked that way and we ended up trading lots of honour back and forth. I ended up on top which was due to luck more than anything as we also had 4 or 5 guys in the kingdom that also bumped up and down around the 9k honour mark (Prince).
When asked about the honour fix and whether or not it had an impact on the province as well as the kingdom, Sasha had the following to say:
<Sasha> As eowlyn said, we never intended to go for honour, and we probably wouldn't even have ended up top 15 if it weren't for the 'fix'. This game change just made our style of warring the top notch way to get honour and being very close to EoA, we decided to go for it!!
There was also a lot of action for the provinces in Stuck Inside my Head as they started to take out of war razes, which was an attempt to kill off Sasha?s province.
<Sasha> Well, for me personally, it was the last war that made the biggest impression on me. It became a personal quest to keep my province afloat in the midst of a very brutal war, with the impending risk of getting 3rd party RK. Took around 35 or 40 razes to the face and was very near death. Luckily, I play in a very supportive kingdom and they all rallied to help me. Getting highest honour was more their (the kingdom) effort than mine. It all came down to teamwork and a little bit of ORCORC attitude. I deem myself very lucky to be in my kingdom, my teammates are all great!
It was a stressful age, fortunately I had vodka, water and syrup when I felt down!
oh and ps: bugulu owes me a bushel!!
Therock
Therock player of Catalina Wine Pony in the kingdom of Franzia had the following to say about his age after winning the individual networth and land crowns. The info that is in this article is from Judge, one of our reporters, who was able to sit down with therock and get information from him.
<therock> I had no ambitions to go banking this age. I started out playing a killer for fun with some kingdom mates. I actually made my first hit of the age on BIO's bank 3 hours OOP. We played killers for a few days until we ran out of food. I was in third place for land, behind Hall of Force and BIO, who I'd CFed after they razed me (the only time I was broken this age), with no targets, so I made the decision to convert and explore up. I explored to 3k acres safely, added some defence and then went about killing the pool. The only hiccup in my plan was when I caught hesus scoping me out for a raze, but we had a nice chat and I out-trained him and wasn't threatened for a while after that.
After that, my motivation was about having fun with my kingdom. It took them a while to get used to me dropping millions in aid on them, but they grew to love it. I always made sure to put my kingdom first, and I think they appreciated that. Most of our guys had fun and got to play at a higher level than they ever had before; fighting kingdoms they never would have had the opportunity to. The kingdoms of note we fought in wars were Insolence, The Keepers and Melee Weapons. We also waved a few other kingdoms, including Dopefiends, Vengeance and some others.
<therock> We beat The Keepers, we lost to Insolence with next to no acre loss and lost to Melee Weapons with next to no acre loss.
I had no ambitions on winning the province trophy this age. I started out as a killer and never really took heavy aid. I taught my guys how to trade soldiers and make it profitable for them, my TB was usually extremely positive. There's a huge misconception about activity and skills of players and how that affects their ability to play. Most of my guys were pretty new to playing this kind of thing, but I was nice to them and they were nice to me. I explained things regularly so they were in the loop and they enjoyed learning about it. We built a great community within our kingdom and had lots of fun, so it wasn't so hard to get things when I needed them. They also loved that they could dump their runes on me whenever they wanted and I'd pay them out in cash, so that was fun.
<therock> What message would I give people?
Have fun. This is a game. Enjoy what you're doing and do it with people you like doing it with.
Reporters note:
I hope everyone enjoys the article!!
