First of all I’d just like to thank everyone that has played this era, whether it has been against or on our side. This has been a very memorable era for me, and a very fun one as well in which I met lots of new people.

I wrote this summary so that when people in the future wonder what the Championship Era was like, they will have a story to read. There might not be many that do this, but I know I always like to read back about old eras. Remember that this summary is written from my point of view: Apocalypse/Senatus of Kong BD from VND.

We started the era in West Africa. One of the main reasons was that we thought the world would get filled, and Africa being central means it makes an excellent farming ground + easy to expand in all directions quickly. So when the world opened, all of us placed as soon as possible because we expected otherwise our spots would get filled up quickly by random newbs placing there.

Turns out, we were completely wrong on that. When ticks started Africa was deserted as far as newbs were concerned. Barely anything to conquer, barely any OPs to take. We had heard GML was coming and knew they would start in either SA or West AA, and had arranged for some of our allies to be spread strategically. LOST being the team that was in SA and that would have to try and stop GML from expanding as much as possible, with BEER spread between NA and SA and HaHa in NA to take that over as soon as possible. TFM, our only actual sub, started with us in Africa and HU, another ally, started just above us in Europe.



So when ticks started rolling, we as VND had a hard time getting income. All the resource OPs we could get to were already taken by either TFM or HU, so we relied purely on boosting and mass boosts. And obviously, that meant a lot of boosting. However, what we realized as soon as ticks started was that a very strong team had placed close to us. CBop had split up into 2 hives, one hive being in Italy and the other being a bit west of Central Asia. We found out who was in the team.
Kenny (Laughing Bull), Routhy (Radical Edward), Colin/Hannibal (Vincent Volaju), Damo (Mad Pierrot), Mark (Vicious), Valerik (Jet Black), Vru (Faye Valentine), John (Lin), Brent (Cowboy Andy), Buford (Spike Spiegel), Black (Udai Taxim), Garry (Ein) )
and decided they needed to be taken out. The general consensus from what I heard early on was that we were the top dogs, much of our roster was leaked and many knew that we had strong allies.

Therefore we could not afford to have both GML, SAGE and CBop build up and possibly attack us later.
And there our first war started. I believe the war between HU/VND vs CBop started around tick 10. HU had actually taken rank 1 that early on, they outboosted even us. As soon as we got to CBop, we had to start assaulting their Italy hive. Since most of CBop got shields very early and since of course we didn’t have nukes placed yet, this was a very slow war. We would attack CBop on a colony, they would move out, we would hit shield and so on. If we didn’t send enough, they would defend full force, we would turn. Meanwhile TFM had sent some accidental suicide attacks against CBop, most being suicidal because the members that sent couldn’t get on.

Big BRs were lacking early in this war, until CBop decided to try their luck by attacking one of our gates we had close to their hive. They got locked, and lost about 30 squads. After this, the war got even more stagnant. By now, HU’s lack of coordination was becoming more apparent. They couldn’t pull off multiple-member attacks, and focused instead on taking out CBop’s network and moving to their Asia hive. Meanwhile we had begun sending nukes at the CBop colonies and had also expanded east, effectively trying to cut the Italy hive off from the Asia hive.

How far we’d gotten tick 77


Since we knew we had to conquer them sometime, we started sending full army attacks at CBop colonies, with nukes as help. One by one CBop relocated to either the Asia hive or the India hive where they had found some subs in TLA/TLAs. In the end, the Italy hive was cleared and we moved on to the West Asia hive. HU had done a good job at taking out CBop’s network and CBop was effectively in a hive defense position again. We as VND started nuking this new hive as much as we could, and ended up sending full army at one of the colonies. At that point, what possibly could have been seen coming for a while happened. My hypothesis is that it was due to CBop getting tired (they really were dodging constantly). Either way, CBop decided to launch their full army at our origin OP, including 67 squads that had been nuked because Kenny forgot to ion. Of course CBop was outnumbered, but it wasn’t by all that much. They had done a fair deal of boosting as well and the amount of mass boosts was quite insane. So when they sent their full armies at our origin OP, we met them full on, 12v12, with approximately 25 ions from both sides. It was a 7278 soldiers VS 6432 soldiers battle, though of course CBop effectively had less due to a lot of squads being at 1 HP. This was tick 163.



And so ended the first great war of the Champions Era. CBop has lost quite literally every single unit they had, so now it was time to simply conquer them, nuke them, and keep them down.
Of course, that’s not what happened. We fully intended to do so, however a new enemy had presented itself. GML had entered South America in the meantime, and was fighting our allies HaHa, IND, BEER and LOST there with all their subs. We hadn’t at all recovered from the CBop war yet, as you can tell by the Battle Report we lost a lot of units (only 70 squads left) and we simply did not have the oil to get to South America. So we intended to wait at least a bit so that we could rebuild, since our allies seemed to be doing a great job at holding back GML and their subs.

However, our hand was soon forced. The reason we thought of GML of such a threat was the fact countless people had told of us their massive strength and coordination, and the fact that they had steamrolled great alliance like SYN over the course of only a few hundred ticks.

As Alexanderkitty said on the forums:



This plus the fact that in this round they had actually merged with ARM made them a formidable force to be reckoned with. And of course, GML started to show this. Our allies started getting pushed back, with hundreds of squads flying into South America and perhaps gaining confidence from this GML decided to attack one of our gates in South America. Of course we could not simply let this happen, so we gathered what we had and flew into South America as fast as we could. And so began our involvement in the GML war, with on one side VND + BEER + HAHA + LOST + IND, and on the other side GML + GMLx + GMLa + GML0 + PoZ + PHI + GMLr + xGML + GML2 + ARML. GML managed to lock down some of LOST leader’s units on an outpost, I believe it was 15 squads. They flew in to kill Choka with 120 squads. We couldn’t let this chance go by, and launched to hit 1 tick after they hit Choka. GML however kept going, and sent their full 120 squads into the lock after which we also managed to halve the HP on their tanks. We also locked another 150 squads going to the outpost next to it that we sadly did not have the troops for to kill. Due to Choka’s brave suicide, we had now killed 120 GML squads with only armor loss.



As you can see on this image, taken at tick 241, South America was looking impressive. I believe at that point there actually were times with 1500-2000 squads in flight, and that at tick 241.



After the 120 squads by GML were lost, it seemed GML’s morale had been at least partially broken. They were getting pushed back faster, and in what I can only describe as truly impressive coordination there were 4-5 teams moving down to the tip of SA in a coordinated, calculated, yet swift movement.

This fast movement continued until we reached the tip of South America and GML and allies fled, as you can see in this image shared by PoZ.



When we arrived there, we were faced with a rather daunting task. GML and their empire had effectively locked off Antarctica, with dozens of nukes and no single spot for an outpost unless we wanted to move ETA 9 or move into a nukefield with lots of units waiting.

So that is exactly what we did. We found a spot, and I take personal pride in this.. We managed to organize a 6 tick long complete jam on GML. Every single armed silo, every single gate that would be within range of our outpost was jammed for these 6 ticks, making GML unable to have nukes waiting for us when we landed.



So then, it was invasion time. And a beautiful invasion it was. We had all VND and HaHa (LoL) armies at the southern tip of South America. At the start of the tick, we (VND) planted a fake OP far to the east of where we planned to land, hoping to draw some attention to that outpost. That outpost is the one you can see in the screenie I posted. With 2 minutes left in the tick, we planted the outpost we actually planned to move to, and all 12 of VND sent to the OP. At the same time, HaHa planted an OP and sent 9 of their members as well.



When we landed, HaHa changed name into tGML and we started wreaking havoc. Meanwhile since GML was moving armies towards us to try and defend, IND had been able to get to the tip of AA and started attacking from there.



Many BRs followed, for which I’d like to refer you to this thread: viewtopic.php?f=414&t=23606&start=150. I tried to post as many as I could, from all the alliance chats I was in. GML seemed to be completely broken by this, and started losing army after army.

ADD IN ALLIANCE RANKINGS TICK 370-450

This kept going on for approximately 100 ticks, during which HaHa moved west into GML’s hive in West AA while we as VND went east to try and catch all the squads that were trying to flee to the new stronghold they were establishing in East AA. IND, VND and HaHa killed more units during this time, and the war seemed to be won. GML and subs were losing units consistently, many lost units while trying to move to east Antarctica. Others moved with ETA 2 OP hops as it should be, but when you have a good 40 ticks to hop that can get tiring and be quite a strain on your workers, so some failed there too. And like this GML was slowly but surely beaten, with our side gaining more and more squads there while GML kept losing squads. The epitome of the downfall of GML was best illustrated by Tigran TG of Armenia being made leader and him being banned only a few ticks later, then being unbanned only to lose his full army a few ticks later. I can only speak for myself here but up to that point I had barely been able to get some decent sleep, up at least 3 or 4 times every night. So just when we thought we could relax a little, just keep pushing GML and head to their eastern hive.. Relics dropped.

As relics always do, they made the whole game explode again. We took a relic in Northern Europe, only to have I (Fear), with whom we had a deal until at least tick 1000, launch at our relic with a large amount of force. So started the war with Fear/EVIL/II. We had also launched at a relic between South America and Africa, only to later find out that SAGE was landing with a larger force than ours 1 tick after we would take it. The first thing we did was to talk to Anthonymn, leader of SAGE. He however revealed they had no intention of turning their attack, so we took the relic and sent reinforcements. SAGE retreated their units to fly back to Antarctica, and started mass spamming our OPs. So started the war with SAGE, about 5 ticks after the start of the war with Fear. There was quite some outrage on the forums over this, as it was generally believed SAGE was one of the honorable alliances that would not betray their word and we had an agreement with them until well after tick 1000. This great war involved SEXY/TROL/BEER fighting Fear/I/EVIL, and VND/TFM/LOST/HINI vs SAGE/SOTF/DR/RAWR/SUB/CA. IND and HaHa stayed down in Antarctica to fight GML and subs.


Our relic being attacked by Fear

Sadly we had to give up a lot of territory during the first ticks of the war, as most of our armies were either flying back to land from either one of the relics or still in Antarctica where we were still actively warring GML. As the territory screenies show, we lost most of Asia during these first ticks because SAGE both had the advantage of having their troops ready and the fact that SAGE had spread spam units around on outposts to harass our network.

However, SAGE pulled a rather dumb move. To get their units back to Asia, they sent their 220 squads into South Africa (which they had taken), and did an ETA 6 move from there to try and get to Asia as fast as possible. We as VND took their origin while TFM took their destination, and what followed was this BR.



As you can see sadly TFM got the kill, I would have loved to have gotten it myself This of course caused a large drop in SAGE’s power. Meanwhile Fear/I/EVIL were losing ground to the NA coalition very fast, forcing them to flee with their relic to try and get to the SAGE hive in North-East Asia. The few EVIL members that survived the attacks in NA/Greenland got killed while trying to get to Europe, while Fear managed to get away rather unscathed while ioning a lot of nukes going to the relic on which they all gathered.

This was a rather difficult period for us as VND, SAGE had boosted back and was quite equal to us in power and had gathered all armies in Asia, while SOTF, SUB and RAWR had also gathered there. Our allies HINI and LOST were fighting in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the allies were still largely in North America. During this time we could mostly just defend and attempt to not lose too much ground, which surprisingly we managed to do rather well. During this time BEER was moving forward to help us out in Asia, while SEXY also moved forward into Asia but had NAPs with most of the SAGE alliances so could not help us out.

When BEER arrived, we were finally able to start moving again. Meanwhile Fear had landed on mainland again and started attacking again. At the same time HaHa was rushing eastward through AA to go for the eastern GML hive as we were afraid SAGE and all their allies would relocate there too, forcing us to face a monumental hive.

When BEER moved in, SOTF tried a rather desperate move. They sent a long ETA move into Africa, where LOST was waiting for them.



So there went a lot of SOTF’s squads. However as you can tell by the number of rounds, this battle quite hurt for LOST as well. Meanwhile we killed the last of the II units, some in rather amusing ways.



Our next move was to get ourselves locked down by SAGE.. On purpose. We had all sent out delayed, and some of SAGE stupidly flew into their own lock while most of them turned. Leaving mates behind is always a bad idea, as this BR illustrates.



A few dozen ticks later, Fear died to BEER.



However, not all was going that well. TFM sent an attack on DR which turned out to be a rather suicidal one. Since TFM was not able to get all members online, Andrei decided to break some records and dish out the largest ion action that has ever been seen on Battledawn. After an incredible 125 ions, this was the battle.



Yes, TFM lost the battle. Meanwhile VND and BEER kept pushing on, and were gaining territory. We were getting closer and closer to the SAGE hive in eastern China, but there were still quite some of SAGE’s subs in our way. With an 11-man attack (yes, I was in it), we managed to take down WWE.



As you can see, it cost us nearly all our armor and with the income being so low this Champions Era, we were forced to pull back a bit in order to rebuild our armor for more attacks to come. We even dropped to 4th place due to the massive loss of power. Regardless, I personally kept having fun by scoring R4/R5 kills with no armor loss, but that’s a whole separate topic. TROL and HaHa scored many more kills down in Antarctica, and we were entering SAGE’s East China hive.



While in the hive we managed to score quite some small kills while we simply took all the outposts, got up nukes around their hive and started slowly assaulting them. While we were busy in the East China hive, BEER pushed on and went towards their North East Asia hive. Again, being patient worked and SAGE started making mistakes.



We took out every OP we could find in their hive there while BEER did the same in North East Asia, however SAGE relocated to what would be their final stronghold.. Australia. All their subs were relocating and huddling up there, while CBop/ICG/TLA/TLAS had now also joined the war on SAGE’s side and were relocating there. Since Australia was such a stronghold, invading it turned out to be rather difficult. So we were literally just flying into Indonesia, when the next thing happened.. SEXY backstabbed us.

By this time, most of our relics and those of our allies were in the Pacific Ocean, and SEXY had two there as well. So when they backstabbed us, the first thing they did was to send at our relics. Considering the fact our relics were far out of range from land and that our units were literally half a world away, we could not defend them. HaHa’s relic however was just in range of west Antarctica, and they still had 3 members there from finishing off some last GML. These 3 headed up to the relics, defended them, and ultimately took them back. Meanwhile we had decided to use 5 of our members to go after SEXY while the rest stayed and would make progress with our allies in Indonesia. Since I was one of those that decided to go to SEXY, I rushed west with the rest. We managed to trap some of SEXY’s units when they were trying to save their squads that were left in Asia, and started entering Greenland. SEXY’s backstab was really poorly executed, and they lost their relic that they had in Greenland to us. From there, I had my own fun by being able to go Leroy Jenkins into North America while the rest seemingly wanted to get some sleep. We advanced through North America and arrived in SEXY’s hive, which they shared with TROL. Then, just as we were arriving in the hive, TROL started attacking SEXY and sadly got most of their crystals.

SEXY’s backstab was one of the most poorly executed backstabs ever, despite the fact they had quite some good players. Therefore this war didn’t take all that long, it did however cost a very large amount of oil as me and some others had to go all the way from Indonesia to Alaska and back again.

Meanwhile in Indonesia the war had been rather stagnant, to me it seemed like people were very tired and were happy to be able to just sit for a while. However once our Alaska team started coming back (me included) to the frontlines, we had enough units around to start attacking again. 4 ticks after I arrived back in Indonesia, we finally managed to kill Kestherboy who had been a target for a long time.



So now it was the slow process of getting up nukes and trying to advance OP by OP. We could of course not just attack any OP we wanted, we had to clear them from agents with nukes before we could safely land on anything. So all in all this was very slow moving. Eventually we managed to get onto the island just above Australia.



From that small island we entered Australia and finally it seemed the SAGE coalition had given up. We kept nuking them as much as we could, with about 1 tick per nuke hitting a SAGE coalition colony. This of course allowed me to have some more fun with my R5 whenever nukes hit, leading to awesome BRs like this.



But all in all, cleaning up Australia was a long and tiring process. Despite the fact the SAGE coalition seemed to have given up, they still had an incredible amount of units. SAGE itself had 300-400 left, NOVA had close to 350 as well, CBop had 250, CA had 200, DR had 300, SOTF had rebuilt some. Considering at first it was just BEER and VND in Australia, it was tough going. However when we started to take more outposts in Australia and were able to secure landing places for allies HaHa, IND, LOST, TFM and HINI. So they also managed to enter Australia. This of course took much of the pressure off of us.

What we as VND wanted was to have one final big battle with SAGE, to show off our now 650 squads. However SAGE seemed vehemently against this and ultimately lost their armies in a full-army suicide from TFM.



After that, it seemed the era was done. We as VND still had to take TLAs relic that they had in the middle of Australia. Considering by now I had a huge amount of R4 and R5 units, I would actually be able to take out TLAs units without losses if I could hit the same tick as a nuke. So, that’s of course what I tried. Which brings us to my most stressful moment of the entire era.





So after that we took the safe route for the relic, and attacked it with our full armies leading to this BR.



After we took that relic it has been only clearing up. I personally had quite some fun with my R4/R5, and ended hunted in Australia for a bit. Since at this point in time all our hostiles were quite dead and we had taken almost all the relics, we decided it was time to take the last of the relics that belonged to our friendlies and end the era.

 
WARS THAT WE WERE NOT IN

Since I’m trying to make this as complete a summary of the era as possible, I will write about wars that happened during the CE that we were not involved in as well.

HU vs CBop/ICG/TLA/TLAs

When we had killed the armies of CBop at tick 160, we kept nuking and attacking them to keep them down. However, as said we had to get to South America soon, so we made a deal with CBop so that we had peace with them. HU however continued the war and intended to keep CBop down. Meanwhile CBop had however found some subs of their own in TLA and TLAs and gained ICG as an ally who had been attacking HU for a while now and had managed to kill quite some of their units. Despite losing some units, HU managed to push back CBop to their new hive in India, and send their army at one of CBop’s colonies full force. In what can only be described as one of the worst mistakes of the entire CE, HU managed to lose their entire armies. SAGE sent nukes to the CBop colony that was under attack, and the plan was that CBop would relocate when the nukes were ETA 1 to a locked OP so that the attackers would be on a locked OP with nukes incoming ETA 1. HU could have avoided this by either all turning at the same time where TLAs was waiting for them with half their squads or by having a sat scan up to ion the nukes since CBop also had less units than them, however what HU did was to turn half the squads, turn some more the next tick and fly the rest into the lock, get nuked, and get killed. End result was that HU was completely dead, wiped off of the map, and effectively disbanded about 100 ticks after VND left the war.

CHAM vs CBop/ICG/TLA/TLAS

100 ticks after this, around tick 270, the war CHAM vs CBop/TLA/TLAs/ICG started. CHAM gained some early advantage and kills, and BEER soon joined in on CHAM’s side, however this was not for long as BEER had other battles to focus on. This was a very slow and cautious war, but CHAM slowly gained ground and soon began a massive nuking operation of CBop + subs colonies that were in range. Eventually CHAM managed to lock down CBop, resulting in this battle.



After this, CHAM continued their slow push towards the CBop hive, and managed to conquer some of them while continuing the nuking of them, meaning CBop was getting less and less workers. However, CBop managed to escape from being completely conquered as the SAGE coalition offered them + TLA + TLAs + ICG shelter in Australia, meaning they were now relocating and joined the war against the VND coalition.

BME vs PAIN

This was one of the early wars in the era. A PAIN sub member launched an attack at BME, and BME of course responded. At tick 153, BME started attacks on PAIN. Tick 195 BME managed to kill most of PAIN’s squads.



However, DR that had been friendly to BME so far trapped the entire BME armies on their return, leading to the slaughter of BME.



BME however did not give up just yet, and managed to kill some more PAIN members. Due to their low amount of squads they however kept being pushed back by the superior squadcount of DR + Pain + Pain’s sub. This eventually culminated into BME’s final stand against DR, leading to this BR.



After that, Simmen, leader of BME stated that BME would quit the era and focus on real life. And so BME went out of play on the Champions Era.

Excellent my friend !

too sexy

tht looks like it took ages to write and i doubt any1 read the whole thing

Took less time to write than you'd think actually

But it's fine if not many people have read it entirely. I just hope that in the future, if there ever will be a Champions Era again or when people look back on this era, they can use this thread to get some idea of what the era was like and see some screenies of it.

i applaud u on writing wat 1-3 hours worth on a fantastic era and idea but spoilt on that it as only like 1600 ticks

which is the main and biggest reason why I made the newspaper as well.

what did I learn from reading this? you can never ally yourself with the big boosters. having watched this, I didn't really pick up the big BRs, seeing them here was actually helpful, thanks dood.

Longgggg summary haha well done though. I couldn't write that, unless it was for school

V-