The story of one of the most famous provinces to ever exist. This wasn’t written by me, I just thought some newer players might be interested
Hel of Dim Forest (HoDF)
Hel of Dim Forest is probably the most famous province to ever exist. Hel of Dim Forest, or as was often shortened, HoDF, was a human province who resided in the kingdom of Ragnarok (10:9) on the World of Utopia server in Age 10. It was owned by the monarch of said kingdom, Queen Diana. She is infamous for creating the largest ever province, as well as suffering arguably the greatest ever gangbang and the highest ever landgrab.
Players from latter ages cannot even comprehend how she got to such immense finishing statistics, and are even more staggered when they hear she was almost twice that size a week prior to the end of the age. However, achieve it she did, and this article is intended to cover some of the information regarding how.
The growth of Hel of Dim Forest was based upon a loophole. However, it has to be said that the loophole was not obvious until this exploitation. The loophole was based around the calculation of fame for attacks; fame gains were based around relative land size. However, raze attacks (which then only destroyed some buildings) gave fame, but didn't alter the land size of the gaining province. Added to this, the fame system was quite different; for every 500 fame gained beyond the initial 1,000, a province gained the following bonuses: +2% population, +2% military strength, +2% income, +2% thievery effectiveness, +2% magic effectiveness, +1 vote for monarchy. To further imbalance things, humans in that age had doubled bonuses from fame.
The stage was set for the exploitation of this loophole. Hel of Dim Forest started the age by beginning to raze other provinces around her size, complimenting this with some growth, until she was at 1,000 acres. As she razed provinces around her, her fame grew. However, her land did not. The bonuses from the fame meant that she was able to raze larger provinces, causing even larger fame gains. This cause and effect circle continued for a while, until she had such a large fame she could raze anyone for fun, four times.
At her peak in this stage of her growth, she was at approximately 2 million networth on 1,000 acres, with something close to 200,000 fame. This huge fame meant she had immense bonuses; it is believed that at her peak for fame she had +5016% to population, income, military strength and magic and thievery effectiveness.
With these huge modifiers protecting her, and safe in the knowledge that she was untouchable, she abandoned her fame raping and entered the second phase of her strategy - the growing phase. Each day she explored acres and attacked provinces larger then her, until she had outgrown all the other provinces on the server. She then concentrated solely on exploring. At her height her province had over 100,000 acres, and simultaneously touched 100 million networth; the only ever province to break these two landmarks.
Now, many would have expected her to grow off into the distance, breaking even more milestones. However, army losses were also calculated differently back then. Provinces lost troops based on the number of troops defending as well as the number of troops attacking, biased more towards the former. With Hel of Dim Forest's immense number of troops (she had over 600,000 archers, and near to 6 million knights), this meant she lost huge amounts of troops for each attack on her.
Soon top provinces realized how to exploit the land gains formula, and a campaign grew among the top 100 for provinces to send 1 soldier attacks against her. Hundreds of attacks were launched against her on a daily basis, with each one killing thousands of knights. Her networth began to drop as a result; the top provinces thought that if they kept it up until the end of the age, she might be within their range. Efforts were redoubled to attempt to get as many provinces as possible to attack her, to lower her defense.
Soon her province was within range of the second largest province, Hully. Hully had copied her strategy and, unlike many others who simply kept concentrating on fame, Hully had also grown in size like Hel of Dim Forest. The two provinces did have an NAP agreement between them. However, Hully could see the chance of gaining acres and possibly even the top spot, especially with the added benefit of the surprise attack. His offensive bonuses were similar to those of Hel of Dim Forest, due to similarly large amounts of fame.
The resultant attacks were the largest Utopia have ever seen. The first attack was for over 16,000 acres; the second was for 9,000 acres, followed up by further grabs of 6,000 and then 5,000 acres. Overall, a grand total gain of 36,000 acres in under 5 minutes. I can safely say that grabs of this nature will never be seen again. The resultant fame gains were equally immense; over 100,000 fame changed hands due to these attacks.
However, it soon became apparent that Hully had effectively suicided, leaving his province with a minimal defense. The retals came in quickly, first from among Hel of Dim Forest's own kingdom, rocketing one of the provinces to finish twelth in the fame charts as a result of the fame gains from the grab. As other provinces noticed Hel of Dim Forest's sudden loss in acres, information was quickly spread about Hully's suicide. Provinces from throughout the world sought to gain from this, and Hully lost many of his acres, and with them a large amount of his fame. The resultant fame loss led to the loss of the bonuses, and for the rest of the age he was struggling to recover and keep his province together.
Hel of Dim Forest was untroubled for the rest of the age. The other provinces who may have been within her reach, Dream of Rain particularly, who ended up top of the fame rankings, did not attack her. Hel of Dim Forest explored back some of the lost acres and spent most of the rest of the time recovering and rebuilding her province. She ended the age top of the chart for both networth and land, and fourth for honor.
Hel of Dim Forest was one of the first leading provinces who didn't finish the age at her peak networth and land. The troop loss formula exploit affected her province to such an extent that others were able to breach the vast gap she had created between herself and the second placed province. To many, it would appear clear that if this bug had not been programmed, she would almost certainly have explored away into the distance, and reached 150 million networth, maybe even 200 million.
Here’s a SoT (formerly a crystal ball - CB)
http://i63.tinypic.com/vzy2t.jpg
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