It's done! The age is over once again! The winners of Age 55 - Veil of Shadows are now known!
Below you will find a short interview with players from The Largest, The Most Powerfull, The Most Honorable & The Most Warring kingdoms as well as the overall Top Provinces in the World for Land, Networth & Honor!
Kingdom #1 Land & #1 Networth
Kingdom: The Pulsing Trollfags
Total acres: 467,517 Acres
Total networth: 83,306,583 Networth
Interviewee: flogger
So flogger, how do you feel after winning the kingdom land and networth charts after quite an impressive age?
Most of all, tired. We had to win quite a few fights, some of them back to back. We also had to win them convincingly against prepared opponents, which is not easy to do.
Did your OOP go as planned?
No, not at all. We did not expect to be warring right OOP but that also had the unintended consequence of allowing our kingdom to pump fairly deep so early in the age. Our kingdom was able to get the ceasefires required to grow quite fast. The fact that we had good players making smart hits to grow fast was also very helpfull in our aim to grow as fast as possible.
How did you get stuck in a war OOP?
Sanctuary of Absalom was only an island away from us. They went with a super aggressive, nearly all elite and no defense specialist, maximum growth build. They would have been #1 within a day with their setup but as they had little to no defense, we waved them and it ended up in a war.
You ended up having 3 more wars. Can you shortly describe how you felt about each of those 3 wars? Did everything go as planned or are there things you would do different if you could do it all over?
Our next war was our first war with Mercy of Absalom. We were somewhat caught off guard as we did not pump nearly deep enough. As we dragged out the hostile, we managed to turn the tide with Meteor Showers. I am not sure why we did not have Meteor Showers on us most of the conflict, but I think that made the difference. Otherwise it was an even fight with even land exchanges.
The other two wars were against Rage of Absalom and then against Mercy of Absalom again. We thought we had won the age already after the first war against Mercy of Absalom but as both Mercy and Rage did do well in their wars, they were able to catch up with us. These two wars both went better than we planned as we were able to chain more effectively and our kingdom had insane activity to do alot of damage by doing small things like droughts, soldier blocking and monarchy switches.
I don't think our opponents were never really able to muster up the same level of activity on these small things. I know from dealing with it from the other side, that it can get discouraging quickly.
Any final comment you want to make, like greet or thank someone?
I want to thank the whole kingdom for doing such an amazing job the entire age. That allowed me to get another crown while being lazy and barely logging on this age.
I'd like to thank the whole kingdom for doing such a good job that I could get another crown without barely logging on this age,
I also want to thank Bishop for implementing the option to reset a province so I could reset my province in year 8.oh and add that I still hate them all
Lastly, I would like to thank Absalom for agreeing to fight us 1 on 1 and give us time to make it fair fights everytime. I certainly enjoyed the level of civility at the top this age.
Thanks for commenting flogger! Best of luck to you and your kingdom in the new age!
Kingdom #1 Honor
Kingdom: FS aka FREEAKSTYLE
Total honor: 139,468 Honor
Interviewee: Loiso
So Loiso, how do you feel after finishing #1 on the Honor rankings?
I guess I am more pleased about us generally having a nice age. We had some interesting wars and alot of fun. Getting the honor crown is a nice bonus, I'm happy
Was it your primary goal to try and win the honor charts, or was it just a result of successfull warring?
Our main focus is always warring. Honor is something that comes with it but for us it's more of a side effect.
We also got lucky with our last war against Rusty KLA with their "FSU style EoA warring" that gave us 15-20,000 additional honor.
What setup did you run and how did it work out for you?
We used what we call "semi faery circle setup". Half of our kingdom played faery and the other half played undead. It worked out to be a very nice mix for us.
As we had half a kingdom of faeries, we decided to put up the name "Semi Faery Circle" just for fun. We received a taunting banner from The Faery Circle that displayed a certain lack of originality. There was even a thread about it on the forums where Palem discussed ethics of using kingdomnames from other kingdoms. Despite TFC being smaller, they hit us and we went to war. The war itself wasn't very hard or interesting itself but the comments on the war forums where fun!
Another enjoyable fight was against Rusty KLA. We figured they wanted to take our honor when they did a bunch of learns on us, followed up by a number of massacres. Since they had a few provinces less than us but also more total land and networth, we had to drag the hostile before declaring. After a long hostile we declared and managed to gain quite a bit of honor, which placed us on #1 of the kingdom honor rankings.
Any final comment you want to make, like greet or thank someone?
Thanks for fights to all kingdoms we have warred against. Especially The Faery Circle. It was quite amusing they came for us for stealing their kingdom name
Also thanks to Rusty, for their generosity, kind words and overall good spirits.
Thanks for commenting Loiso! Best of luck to you and your kingdom in the new age!
Kingdom #1 Most Warring
Kingdom: The Revolution
Wars played: 8
Wars won: 8
Ranking rating: 7.93
Interviewee: NapoleonBonaparte
Congratulations NapoleonBonaparte on winning the warwin crown with your kingdom. How do you and your kingdom feel about winning it?
We feel great about finishing first! We put alot of work into it and tried hard to fit in 8 wars for this age. To win them all was outstanding.
Our final war was a bit though as we received hits and ops from the kingdom Gangnam (The #2 on the ranks) throughout the whole war. In the end we managed to collect our 8th win though.
Was it your goal this age, to try and go for the #1 spot as most warring kingdom?
Our initial goal was to get 7/7 but when we saw that was not enough for the #1 spot, we made a final push for getting another war to reach #1 as sitting on the #2 spot just wasn't as satisfying.
How did you get these 8 wars? Did you just wave kingdoms? Messaged and asked for war?
We would message every kingdom in our Networth range. We had 5 wars that where accepted after sending them a message. The others came from simply waving the kingdoms who replied "maybe" to our question if they wanted to war.
Any final comment you want to make, like greet or thank someone?
I would like to thank the kingdom Hookers for an amazing hard fought war. Our 4th war this age was against them was very difficult but also fun. It gave us confidence that we could take on and beat any kingdom to take the #1 spot.
Thanks for commenting NapoleonBonaparte! Best of luck to you and your kingdom in the new age!
Province #1 Land
Province: Godly is n00b - JSS FTW
Finishing acres: 31,239 Acres
Finishing networth 5,120,214 Networth
Kingdom: The Pulsing Trollfags
Interviewee: JohnSnowStorm
So JohnSnowstorm, you have won the province land crown and finished #1 on the province land rankings. How do you feel after accomplishing this?
Pretty good, at least I didn't have to finish in Vacation Mode like Godly.
What are you referring to?
I believe Godly often touts his Age 47 province land crown. He sat the age out in Vacation Mode the last few days of the age.
Ahh I see.
How did you accomplish finishing nr1 on the land charts? Did you attack? Explore?
Well, my province was just a core province in our kingdom and I got very lucky. I did not explore at all, except the +/-80 acres in protection.
In our back to back wars against Rage of Absalom and Mercy of Absalom, I managed to go from 10.000 acres up to 31.000 acres.
Before our war with Rage, I had the highest WPA of all the core provinces. Seeing as I was running 6 TPA and TDs in that fight, I managed to slip away without receiving AW from Rage's rogues. Against Mercy it was just luck of the draw on which core provinces would receive Landlust from Mercy. I was not one of them.
Also: Thanks to jonc for clearing all my Meteor Showers!
Its not uncommon for the #1 Land to finish #1 Networth. You're quite far behind. How come the difference was so big?
Well, all my land came in the last couple of weeks through warring. Our strategy required receiving aid packets the tick before our armies would get home in order to pay wages. As we were all deeply drafted, we had very few peasants left. At the start of our war against Mercy, I had only 150 peasants left. By the end of the war I had about 6000 peasants and -10.000.000 trade balance. With just 3 days to go, it was clear that I wouldn't get a chance to take the Networth crown against either Nick_mi or the humans in my own kingdom. For that reason we elected our chances to try and have one of our humans take the Networth crown for provinces.
We did manage to outpump Nick_mi but we could not outpump the massive amount of soldiers he was receiving in the last hour before the age ended. His kingdom lost 18 million Networth by releasing their armies and aiding soldiers to Nick_mi.
Alright. Any final comments you wish to make? Like say hi to your parents or something?
I would like to say thanks to everyone who played with us in Beastblood BKE this age. It made it probably the most satisfying age I have ever played.
I would also like to add that the mechanics and the politics this age conspired to make the province crowns a bit of a crapshoot.
Thanks for commenting JohnSnowstorm! Best of luck to you and your kingdom in the new age!
Province #1 Networth
Province: Nick_mi
Finishing networth 7,484,064 Networth
Finishing acres: 28,123 Acres
Kingdom: Infinity
Interviewee: Nick_mi
Nick_mi, how do you feel after winning the province networth crown?
It feels amazing after coming so close last time I played a cow province. I reached 47 million Networth back then but I had messed up my 114% pump. I did not receive any soldier aid or I would have been able to reach the #1 Networth of all time. To be able to do it successfully the second time feels awesome.
Can you give us a short summary of how your age went?
We started the age with 3 killer provinces. Migz, Miker and myself played these. We held the #1, #2 and #3 position on the charts around 48 hours into the age. As a kingdom we started feeding these 3 provinces and started hitting other killers. As we hit the first one, we received hits from several other cows who had a 4 cow alliance together.
We went into war and doubled up in the EOW CF after the war. We started hitting them back after coming out of EOW CF, when we got hit by Beastblood. They forced us to NAP them as well as the cow alliance for 3 weeks or they would raze us.
We warred the kingdom Anno after that. We withdrew from that war after they managed to take down one of our killers, Migz. It was just Miker and myself left. After the EOW CF we started fighting the cow alliance 1 by 1. While doing so, Miker lost some land and I ended up gaining quite a bit. One of these cowfights got us into war, with Insolence. I managed to get out of war at around 21,000 acres.
16 hours before our EOW CF from the war with Insolence expired, we trained our soldiers. Since our Networth dropped alot and we saw the danger of Simians killers rising, we started a dragon against them and used this to force a NAP with Simians.
Beastblood was then able to pass me in Land in their war. We went for a 115% military pump and had the kingdom aid me all their soldiers in the last hour of the age.
At some point in the age you were the #2. You saw what happened to the #1. How did you react, did you fear suffering the same?
We sat around for a bit not doing much, when we saw Simians take down csarmi who played the province "No need to argue". He was the #1 Land province at that time. As I had a NAP with Simians, I did not fear to suffer the same as csarmi. That changed when they lied about giving back his acres. I was fearfull at that point. It made me unable to run a lower draft and pump harder.
With just an hour to go, you were roughly 200k behind in NW. How did you manage to jump from under 7million to over 7.4million networth?
We had been planning this. Most of the kingdom was highly drafted after we left our war with Simians. Everyone in my kingdom released their army and sent me their soldiers. My trade balance was very high so I was able to take alot of aid.
Alright. Any final comments you wish to make? Like greet/thank someone?
I could not have done this without my kingdom. To crown our first age was nuts. We went through a lot of players but everyone played a part.
I also want to thank Dorje and AquaSeaFoam for advice throughout the age.
There was a lot of turmoil but at the end of the age, we crowned and have an extremely solid 25 players for next age. So watch out for Infinity!
Thanks for commenting Nick_mi! Best of luck to you and your kingdom in the new age!
Province #1 Honor
Province: Valhalla_
Finishing honor 12,253 Honor
Kingdom: The Great Machine_War
Interviewee: Hill
First off, congratulations on finishing as #1 on the province honor rankings. How do you feel about achieving this?
Thanks. I feel it has more come to me than I have seeked for it, apart from the last 2-3 days of the age. I feel great about it though and it is a nice achievement.
Yea, I noticed you and a few others were quite close together. What did you do different these last 2-3 days of the age when you compare them with the rest of the age? Purely honor gaining ops?
Throughout the age I was purely helping the kingdom as much as I could but in these last 2-3 days it was purely focussed on chasing the honor crown. I was only doing spells and thievery ops that would give me good honor. Roughly 20 seconds before End of Age I suicided on a faery prince
Did your kingdom support you in this race or did you have to do it on your own?
I had full back-up from my kingdom to go for it. I think the whole kingdom appreciates the level and mentality in my play the entire age. They more or less ordered me to get that crown.
That is a great reward from your kingdom!
Yes it is. I am in a very good kingdom.
Alright. Any final comments you wish to make?
I would like to add that after an age of ups and downs for my kingdom, I'm thrilled about how it all turned out in the end. For me, personally, to crown but more importantly for my kingdom to get settled so well for next age with 24 good players. This has not been easy but I feel really positive and we are looking forward to race for kingdom achievements next age!
Thanks for commenting Hill! Best of luck to you and your kingdom in the new age!
Reminder! If you would like a war report to be written for a war from your kingdom, please join IRC and contact a news reporter!
If you want to be a reporter yourself, please join IRC and contact a news reporter!
IRC details: server irc.utonet.org - channel #utonews
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by lastunicorn
