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East Street Trader
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London, United Kingdom
Jun 2000 time: 05:15
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Well, the August tournament is done. I finished 160 I think, in the end. At least that was where I was when I logged out. But there were a few hours of play left so conceivably my country may have suffered multiple hits before the end and dropped a bit.
Thet don't seem to publish where everyone finishes - which is strange.
Anyway, I am now keen to play again in September's tournament. Finishing in the 150s means I go up from level 8 (where you start) to level 6. The leader of my clan says its easiest to win in 7. I suppose that must be on the basis that some skilled players returning to the game will be around in 8 (I only saw evidence of, maybe, one. But there were some impressive netgains going on among the half dozen top players while they jockeyed for the win over he last few houres. So I guess they were all players.) and those players will go from 8 to 6 or 5 or above. Anyone only going from 8 to 7 demonstrates that they are either very new or no good.
Anyway she hasn't said anything about level 6. The standard in A! is poor so I'm not expecting to be out of my depth.
In fact I shall be pissed off if I can't make top 100.
I'm going to play techer again - which I've decided is a disadvantage in tournament play. But WTH, I enjoy it and by honing my techer skills in the tourney game I will improve performance in the main game.
Starts at 6 am to-morrow, my time. I;ll be there.
Strange goings on in our war. Both the clan leader and I complained to the admin presenting evidence that our opponent is a "multi". That is someone who cheats by having multiple countries. Shortly afterwards two of the multis countries went into protection. Now you can do that if you go on holiday but I sort of think that the protection thing and the complaint are linked. Except that the admin is notorious among seasoned players for saying he will kick out multis but never actually doing anything.
Anyway, I'd be glad njow for the war to end. Fighting is pretty dull and I have a feeling that I will have bottomed it shortly. There is a range of attacks, a range of stock defences and, inevitably, information is the key.
Looking at what is said on the fora it is obvious the developer has had to fight a steady rearguard action against the power of the spy. It's pretty clear he's even descended to rigging dice rolls to try to curb them. But to no avail. Have a powerful spy network; get the detailed information this allows; some quick arithmetic and its mechanical from there.
The skill of the game and the fun unquestionably lies in the endless opportunities for diplomacy.
Anyway I'm going to have a look in the archives to see whether there was ever any worthwhile strategy discussion here.
The echo is back, I see. Rather damp, too.
Last edited by East Street Trader on 31-08-2001 at 20:38
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East Street Trader
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London, United Kingdom
Jun 2000 time: 05:15
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Well, DarkCloud I am now in a position heartily to endorse your comment.
A lot of time is right!!!!
I arranged the attack to start at 06:00 Game Time. Fixing the time was plainly critical and I had spent a week battling through endless language problems, time zone problems and personal preferences/limitations as to when I am on line problems. But all was fixed, everyone said they could be there.
I logged in half an hour earlier and had the considerable pleasure of watching the target (through the trade pact window he forgot to close) make a total pigs ear of his moves. It was obvious that his stockpiling phase was in the process of beginning and the bozo built or bought in 2 million turrets (to add to the already excessive 1.5 million he already had). And what did he do about his wholly inadequate 125,000 tanks? NOTHING that's what.
So all was well, everyone could hit as planned and the attack would go home with no significant problems.
I was jubilant. It was very curious to be able to watch this as it was actually happening.
Subsequently I have realised that I could at that point simply have called the attack off. The 2 mill turrets was not only fatuous as far as effective defence goes it was fatal to decent stockpiling. I could just have elected to beat him by peaceful means.
But that didn't occur to me and anyway, I would probably have let things go on out of inertia, a desire to see what I had wrought come to fruition and blood lust.
Anyway, controlling my jubilation I waited for my allies to log on. It felt like being the host at a party. No one arrives and you decide they are not coming and the whole thing will flop. But then the pubs chuck out, thirty people arrive together and you are off and running.
Except the damn pubs obviously all had special hours licenses cause no one logged on - and then still no-one logged on.
Except one guy - bless him.
He had 200k spies in a smallish country and so was due to go in first to demoralise the target. Which he promply did. WITHOUT WAITING FOR ANYONE ELSE TO TURN UP.
That committed us. He got three through plus a military spy - readiness down to 78%, excellent. But not so excellent that we were now totally commited - some of his spies were caught so his name would be known to the target as soon as he next logged on.
Well, I had been due to attack third but I could hardly leave this guy out on the limb totally alone so in went my tanks. Nearly 2,000 buildings went down and he lost tanks at 3 to my 2 (I had stocked up on all the military techs including weapons and medical). Which was needful as some of the smaller allies could only hit if his tank total went down enough.
And then I sat and waited for them to come and do their hits. And waited. And waited.
Well by the time I finally went to bed about three had drifted along.
The two most important came on line but one told me on ICQ that the game site was not letting him in (???) and the other would not speak to me.
And the trade pact window told me the damn target now had a cash pile of $120 mill.
I went to bed thinking I would wake up to a wrecked country and that the rest of the month would be spent staring at the ruins and working like mad to achieve any sort of respectable finishing position.
But happily not so. When I awoke, hey presto the others has finally arrived and done their stuff. One or two other enemies of the target took the chance to retal him and he finished up losing 8,000 buildings. He started with 13,000 so that is fatal to his chances of winning. And he did not even use the $120 mill cash pile to strike back with. He appears just to have abandoned his country altogether.
My principal ally is now at no. 1. His explanation as to being so late is a curious one. He says that he had to wait till his goods had sold and could not attack before. Now that is hard to swallow for more than one reason. And it certainly does not explain him sitting with his ICQ set to message and receiving one message after another from me without responding.
But who cares. He came in which is all that matters. So all his delay cost me was some nerves.
I learned a huge amount which made it worth doing. But God knows how many hours and hours it cost me to set up. Bloody endless.
Good job I love silly bloody games. 
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East Street Trader
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London, United Kingdom
Jun 2000 time: 05:15
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I brought off a 3,000 acre hit - which I thought would be my last before stockpiling - but the wretched victim, instead of rolling over and playing dead somehow managed to retal (partly by getting the benefit of declaring war). Of course he got a good bit less back because of all my tech but it is still irksome. I had cancelled out of two of my offensive alliances after the hit but that may turn out well. I am not sure it is well known but when an aggressor shares one or more of the victim's defensive allies that ally or allies are not taken into account in calculating the outcome of the battle.
So I have made offers to both this guy's defensive allies in respect of my empty slot. One of them has been courting me anyway and I will look like a gift from the Gods to the other. If they sign up I can attack the victim just me on him. Which will be a slaughter. I will stock up on weapons, M. Strategy and Medical before I make a PS.
Then I'll try to make a deal. Something like non-aggression for the remainder of the round if he pays me some reasonable reparations.
It is odd playing one set of turns (in tourney) with a 15,000 acre, 4,000 tech points a turn country; then immediately turning to play an early country in A1 with just 1,500 acres and less that 100,000 units.
I played in luck for a couple of sets of turns but I've just had a peek via Gamerstown and I got hit twice - both PS, ouch. So now I've work to do to recover. Still a promising start, though. The clan's doing OK also.
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East Street Trader
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London, United Kingdom
Jun 2000 time: 05:15
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Well, I didn't know anyone else was reading this thread - it was a sort of diary, really.
Anyway, for those interested, I squeaked home in last month's tourney game. 
It was very close in the end. I stayed on-line most of the last day. I put myself just in front - hoping to provoke the guy who was, by then, pretty well my only competitor, into making his last move.
In the end, he did. He sent his stock of missiles at me.
It is a weakness of Theo techer that you can only have 60% SDI. Well, every single one of his wretched missiles got thro'. ****. 
So now I was 700,000 net down on him. The bit I had saved up would bridge most of that gap but not all of it. But all was not lost. I still had my stock of missiles and, even if, by bad luck, not enough got through to pull him back I reckoned I could probably knock a lump off him with a PM attack supported by a declaration of war.
Well, I was very tired and it was about 4 am. And the best way to make my last moves would be to make them with about 10 mins to go before the end. That would leave him no time to organise any final throw of his own.
There were about two to three hours to go and I decided to take a nap. Ordinarily I can count on waking up at exactly the time I tell myself too. But this time the wheels came off and I overslept.
**** again.
So I went into the game only to find, as feared, that it was finished. And then I found that nothing tells you the result. Apparently Swirve send out e-mails but I think the one to me may have been screened out by my junk mail filter.
Anyway, the thing which turned out to have preserved the win for me, once I finally found out I'd won, was this. Just before going to bed I sent messages to my loyal allies telling them of the missiles flying about my ears and inviting them, if they felt like being friendly, to send some back.
Which seemingly they did, honest fellows all. 
And to such good effect that my first place was restored. 
A good way to win, I think. They had been very good allies throughout and I had done as much as I could for them whenever opportunity offered.
Anyway we are well into this month's game now. I am playing in 2B. The standard is a bit higher in that at least people play a recognisable strategy; but I am not too impressed otherwise. I lie handily placed in about 100th moving up reasonaly steadily. For a couple of sets of moves I thought I was losing too much ground to the leaders but tech prices are good (I am a Theo techer reseller again) so I think I'll catch up to them. I'm struggling to find fellow techers with whom to ally. If I could just find two or three we would definately figure in the shake up.
OmniGod - we (Berserk that is) have just signed a NAP with REDVirus. I'm a bit behind you, 2 and a quarter mill net at the moment. Happy to share information with you if you like. I could give you the details of two very easy targets right now, as it happens. I'm #843 in 1A; who are you?
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OmniGod
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Philadelphia, PA, USA --> Really Canadian
Dec 1999 time: 00:15
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Yes, yes you did Squire Furious. =) Althena gave me ambassador access to your site with the NAP inplace.... BTW... I shot up to 5.75M now =) Gotta love the dicta casher =) I'll be checking the berserk site if you want to ask questions, as some of your members have already done on ICQ. =)
And personally I think you should offer some reps for your retal after the signing of the NAP.... You hurt a good friend of mine, and the words of the NAP were that retals due were forgotten... just a thought...
Last edited by OmniGod on 15-10-2001 at 04:42
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East Street Trader
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London, United Kingdom
Jun 2000 time: 05:15
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I have yet, sir to see any proof that my retal was indeed after the time at which the agreement was reached.
From my perspective it was simple. I visited our retal forum, chose my hit, went in-game, spent a few minutes setting it up (10 mins tops), made the hit and returned to the forum to post the result only to find that the thread had been removed (seemingly with the other REDVirus retals which we have generously forgone ).
Now just maybe Althena took for ever and a day to get around to taking the retals off the forum after the agreement was reached. But I doubt it cause she is both keen and efficient. (Too keen and efficient, some might say, ).
I have seen no evidence to support your friend's contention that the retal was truly late.
Although, frankly, it's getting a bit ancient history, this.
Congrats on your progress. You must be getting close to being in contention, I take it?
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