Mercy Killing - Mercy vs. Monument
Background: Players of a war game
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The vast throne hall was hushed except for the pitter patter of steps reverberating down the hall. The messenger walked briskly across the dim hall towards the throne. It was dusk. The air was heavy, hot and humid, despite the many windows lining the hallway that looked out upon the vast expanse of the Monument Kingdom.
The messenger arrived to the foot of the throne and knelt, in a show of reverence to his leader. The monarch of Monument was an imposing image on the equally imposing and opulent throne. He glanced down at the new arrival.
"I did not call for you, go away." The monarch absentmindedly dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
The messenger hesitated, but decided to brave a few words before he turned to leave.
"Sire! I carry news of attacks from the provinces of Mercy." He blurted. He handed the papyrus scroll to the advisor, hidden by the opulent throne, and left in a hurry.
The Monarch hadn't anticipated their attacks, but he did not seem surprised.
"So Mercy greets us... We will accept the challenge"
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The kingdom of Monument
A group of old top KD players completed with some new players. Created for 1 reason: war, but in a more relaxed style. No more 4 a.m. alarms. A war plan is built around that.
The kingdom of Mercy
A group of relaxed players, some from top kingdoms, some from the ghettos, built to enjoy themselves and have fun.
Neither kingdom is a stranger to war, and both have, in one shape or another, met before in battle. This battle was going to be a match of wits and tactics.
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The first wave...
The monarch of Mercy loomed over his war room table, studying the map of the world. The kingdom craved for another war game. The map of the world gave him an bird's eye view with details such as networth, land size, relative power. He could pick and choose at leisure, and new lands would be his.
The generals gathered around the table, expectant. After deliberating for a few more minutes, the monarch slowly lowered his hand, index finger landing heavily on the map.
The ring on his finger glowed for a moment before he spoke.
"The Kingdom of Monument. Attack."
The generals snorted and saluted, obviously pleased at the choice. Their grins showed they had anticipated the monarch's choice.
"Excellent choice sire, we shall move at once."
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Hostilities
Hostilities began with Mercy's wave on Monument . The networth and land gap between them was large (~2.1 million gc and 14k acres) due to a large bank in the kingdom of Mercy, but once you take it into account, the relative sizes of the kingdoms offered a perfect match for war.
Including bank:
Monument 53K acres, 9.2M NW vs. Mercy 66K acres, 11.3M NW.
Without bank:
Monument 53K acres, 9.2M NW vs. Mercy 52K acres, 9.3M NW.
Monument quickly realized that they needed to take control of the huge bank in Mercy before they started war. They set their 4 goals for hostile:
1. Control their bank
2. Take down their top 3 Faeries.
3. Stay out of dragon range.
4. Rebuild their orc provinces to strengthen them.
To have enough time to do this, they had to take control of the button. They did this with a mix of hits inside and outside their hostile, raking in resources from outside. It was a delicate balance, but it paid off.
Monument got the bank under control with heavy ops and spells. It was an expensive ordeal, the bank defended itself well and the fail rate was high (over 90%), but they stuck stubbornly to task and got it under popped and with negative income.
They continued to pelt the bank and to monitor its resources and kept to their plan until war start.
Mercy's initial impression and intelligence on the enemy was that the enemy orcs did not look pumped. Additionally, Mercy counted no rogues among the ranks of Monument. They continued to wave the enemy kingdom and rake in acres.
Mercy also realized that their big bank province would come under fire from the enemy, so they heavily fortified it, which accounted for the successful defense against 90% of the ops. However, sheer determination from the enemy meant that the bank was heavily hurt before war began. Even so, Mercy banked on recovering soon so they could count on aid from it.
They held to this strategy until war start.
Hostile summary:
WAR
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The mage gathered up runes in his hands and threw them on the mystic circle. They began to glow as he began to cast the spell.
Far away in a province of Mercy, a peasant looked up from his work on the field as he wiped his forehead. It was going to be a hard day of work, but thankfully the humid weather had come and gone. Now there was a cool breeze.
Suddenly, he dropped his tools and began to run. His face showed terror... for above him in the heavens there were flames... and they were falling towards earth.
The fireballs crashed like meteors around the land in a ceaseless batter. The lucky few who survived did not dare to go outside for days. The crops had been ruined, and the only thing that they saw now was the misery of the months ahead.
The wizard dropped his arms as the last runes were consumed and turned wearily to the Monarch.
"It is done, their lands are burnt." He groaned.
The monarch of Monument gave a curt nod and grunted.
"Done?" He shook his head. "The apocalypse is just beginning."
Shadows dancing before the flames in a nearby fireplace gave a malevolent cast to the monarch's blazing eyes.======================
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June 23 of YR7 We have declared WAR on Mercy!
War broke out with a flurry of punches. Monument landed some big traditional marches in order to get within networth range before they could declare, and then they pressed the button.
Monument's general war plan revolved around using networth gains to their advantage in war. They decided to create a networth rift between the provinces of Mercy by hitting in the middle, maximizing the differences between the small and large provinces of Mercy. Monument picked targets carefully to keep their provinces close together in networth. They began with long, deep chains, and then switched to semi chains and ops to keep the rift open.
Monument took advantage of provinces that used war spoils and chained them aggressively to overpopulate them. Around 8 hours into war, they noticed that the chained provinces began to aid the ailing bank, and due to the high op fail rate on the bank they decided to switch to targeting the aiders. They kept several provinces under control with fireballs, making draft more difficult, but Mercy was quickly able to bring back its bank into play with the aid it received, restoring it's peasants balance and production capability.
However, the networth rift grew quickly, with Mercy divided between large provinces and small provinces.
Mercy decided to counteract this strategy by using large aid packets to retrain the provinces that were being chained. With the help of the bank, Mercy's chained provinces began to make heavy use of land lust, regaining a lot of acres lost to the chains. In the end, this land lust was the main reason why they were able to net as many acres from Monument.
Mercy's bank also helped to put out an emerald dragon. By sacrificing offense specialists to drop networth, they got into networth range to send a dragon. The Monarch of Mercy noted that "it (the emerald dragon) helped quite a bit." Monument decided to keep the pet. Even with it, they had quite a bit of momentum in the acre race.
To break Monument's momentum Mercy chained the high offense provinces. They hoped to break those provinces and lower their offense.
Mercy also started trying to create unbreakable provinces with their aid. Mercy wanted to use their big unbreakable provinces to take control of the war, gaining 'free' acres. They aided their extremely hit provinces and the plan seemed to work, though some deep chained provinces reached ridiculous amounts of aid tax.
At the same time, Monument started their own, albeit smaller, aid plan operation. They tried to increase the defenses of their orcs to prevent double taps. They succeeded to some degree, especially when Mercy's dwarves couldn't keep up their offenses.
Monument's monarch later commented that Mercy did not follow through well or fast enough on their chains, taking provinces down but not out. This allowed their orcs to wave three times before being taken down properly, and to rebound once aided.
The monarch of Monument commented that the strategy Mercy was employing was "a LOT of wasted resources", with lots of aid packets destroyed by his TMs and chains when the recipients "didn't use the aid right away", and also because of the "large taxes" being incurred by Mercy's attackers. He thought this aid plan would not successfully help Mercy close the networth rift they had created.
One other thing that worked in Monument's advantage was that they chained Mercy's faeries early in the war. Mercy did not hit Monument's faeries as hard, and Monument held the upper hand in peasant-controlling ops all through war.
24 hours before withdrawal things livened up quite a bit in the fronts. Mercy said: "the end was actually very exciting" and " probably the best part".
Within these last 24 hours, Monument prepared and took down another of Mercy's bigger attackers.
While Monument was busy chaining, Mercy made the most of their grabs to obtain maximum gains. They regained a lot of lost acres, but the monarch of Monument chirped in: "it was a bit late."
Hours before withdrawal Mercy noticed a small respite in the ops and hits from Monument. They realized that Monument was getting ready to take down another big attacker.
Mercy considered their options. While they had been doing better in the last 24 hours, taking lost acres back with hits and extensive land lust, they realized Monument was getting close to the offense needed to break their unbreakable provinces.
At this point they only had 6 provinces within useful networth range, versus the bulk of Monument's brutal orcs. As Monument had planned, chaining would be slow and ineffective due to the big networth rift.
The monarch of Mercy arrived to a conclusion, admitting:"ultimately we realized that we had no way regardless of aid to get the middle viable again, we had a huge NW separation between the large provinces and the chained provinces and literally nothing in the center left.
So while we were up in acres we'd reached the point that we could no longer effectively chain, so continuing the war would be a net loss for us and so we withdrew ahead."
April 21 of YR8 Mercy has withdrawn from war.
War Summaries:
The End Game
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After the dust settled and the fields stopped burning, the new frontiers were agreed upon by the warring kingdoms. Now the only thing left was to rebuild, upon the ashes of former fields and the bones of dragons slain... two kingdoms were now changed, for better or worse. They will grow and once strength comes back, will they seek once again the deadly touch of war?======================
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Monument takes a victory this round and puts their record at 3/3, while Mercy sits with 0/3. The war will definitely close the networth gap, once both kingdoms rebuild.
Monument 65K acres, 7.2M NW vs. Mercy 75K acres, 9.1M NW.
Net result:
Monument +12K acres, -2M NW vs. Mercy +9K acres, -2.2M NW
This war was a great display of war plan use and tactics. Both kingdoms formulated a plan and stuck to it. We saw the great use of networth based gain mechanics and a great effort of bank use and resource sharing.
One kingdom took the win in this war, but I will leave it up to you to decide who had the better plan. What would you have done?
Also, please comment on the style of this report... do you want future reports to include a story like this to create atmosphere, or did you not care for this? Please comment!
This reporter thanks both monarchs for their candid interviews and the time they took to answer my questions. I look forward to seeing both kingdoms in future wars. Best luck to both.
Credit for the creative article title goes to my editor.
Final comments
The monarch of Monument chose to make the following comment:
The monarch of Mercy chose to make the following comment:" It started with Wonka making some condescending remarks, comparing their bank with Mr. Garrison. In reply they sent us a homemade video of girls enjoying a snack, which had a remarkable effect on our German kid. As retal, Domo chased them, Charlie bit them, and Bro tasered them. Honey Badger didn't care, but Philosoraptor wondered whether we should we show Mercy mercy, since they couldn't even count to potato. Finally we asked our Ninja, and he suggested that Chuck Testa finish them in a rectilinear flask with a tube insertion until they say "whatwhatinthe" and pray to RaptorJesus for salvation from their socially awkward assailants who rode in on little ponies. As we charged in, informing them that all their base are belong to us, our reserve slapped on some old spice and laughed, wondering what pear we were going to throw at them and their numa numa dancers inducing a chocolate rain as they finally withdrew. Then we hit them in the ass with a taser on their way out and put them to bed with a turtle and a girl no one could understand, dreaming about internet porn."
" Thank you Monument for an excellent war. And most of all, thank you therock for letting me sit your prov, and have the honor of getting you chained."
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by TheRock
It's different. As long as it gets written about, I don't see a problem with it. But <3 you're face. :P
