I didn't do anything for most of the era, so please correct me if I get anything wrong, I probably will. But here is what I have perceived to have happened.

Seems like at first it was ALEX (Simmen), DW, and HTTO against NN. Other than PLO, NN didn't seem like they had very good players to me, yet it still took those 3 teams about 1000 ticks to beat NN, and it seemed that they only managed to make good progress after DW, the sub/brother of ALEX, became heavily involved.

After NN was in their death throes, and DW had seemingly won ALEX's war for them, DW was suddenly disbanded, with their leader just happening to move over to ALEX. Around this same time, PLO, probably the only good player in NN, was revealed to have been spying on NN for ALEX, he then left NN and joined ALEX.

Many of the pissed off remnants of DW then joined NN and seemed to be giving ALEX a hard time, at which point CAT (Malice), who was planted to "troll" (planted to go for the win if it was easy, or just build up and wait for an opportunity) decided to attack ALEX, probably figuring that ALEX was fairly scattered trying to fight NN and that they could take a significant amount of territory quickly with little opposition. The leader of CAT seemed pretty confident that ALEX was overrated, which made sense considering ALEX couldn't do much against the noobs in NN without help from their sub/allies. Malice sent me this message just before they attacked... http://prnt.sc/djf9x1 ... seemed pretty confident.

However after only TWO DAYS of war they had not done much to damage to ALEX, so they decided to quit (very high quality "trolling") because they didn't want to spend the time fighting.

Did I get this right?

So it seems here that some of these same players that love to go on about the quality of competition in the game and the battlehugging problem were perfectly happy to

1. use a coalition to win a war against previously unsuccessful players (Simmen)

2. disband their sub which did most of the work when it seemed they were no longer useful (Simmen)

3. take in a spy/backstabber from the team that they had already seemingly beaten but couldn't finish off (Simmen)

4. plant and build hoping for minimal competition and/or to backstab their ally for a win with minimal fighting (Malice)

5. after two days of war surrender when it was apparent that war wasn't going to be as easy as they had hoped (Malice)

And again, these are the same morons that like to sit around and talk about "the good old days" and how there aren't enough good players left? What pros, surely they like to fight, have a lot of skill, and are very brave.

BD deserves this after all admins are the ones who supports battlehugs

I don't think a single thing you said there was accurate...

Sorry, but ARF has a point here

NN was NOT a bad team, however by the amount of times you've called me noob (@adam/ikillu) , you should have stomped them switftly

His points are accurate though, why take PLO in when he was on the TEAM YOU SPENT THE LAST 1000 TICKS FIGHTING. Also malice just... gave up? Where's the fun in that

Only Rob respected HTTO out of you all, and I'm only supporting you all because of him.

This era is fun to watch but fr make it fun to play people!

-Carter

Care to explain what happened then?

Almost everything is wrong honestly.

NN was the best team on the map in terms of play. They outplayed UNDR, DW and ALEX without a doubt. They lured, spied and killed countless armies. But they weren't good with picking allies, something that ALEX excelled at. The biggest issue was DW was heavily boosting and ALEX was extremely cautious. So DW could afford to suicide and rebuild and ALEX could stall until they did so. Rinse and repeat and you have a tired NN getting pushed back ever so slowly. PLO didn't even plant until the NN vs. DW & ALEX war was halfway done.

In terms of me. I planted originally to attack ALEX. Fluffeh was the original leader and ALEX was meant to be a training alliance for newbies, however, friends of friends kept inviting experienced players in. So it wasn't really newbies anymore. My intent was to build up and solo fight them to test them without letting them know who I was. After the NN vs UNDR war was underway, ALEX decided it wanted to go serious and so Fluffeh left the team as he couldn't commit the time to play at the serious level. He ended up joining me and we decided we would no longer troll ALEX as they were going serious now. Instead, we decided we'd poke around and see if anyone attempted to attack us (all who joined my team at this point). This included things such as telling DW to raze all OPs within 12 ticks of our hive. Expanding into NN territory and telling them tough luck when they asked us not to. Bringing in previous players whom they had warred prior, etc.

The DW team you saw playing was over half different players. from the original team. Antrax, Karl, Q and Gamias I think were the only original left. They swapped many many players as the era continued to make up for their activity. They got caught by many traps and lost many armies while fighting. First they attacked UNDR with NN when UNDR seemed to have the upper hand. At that point in time, it was DeK, UNDR and TFO vs NN only. NN held Africa and got a big kill on UNDR to push them out of Europe. DW entered the war at this point and ALEX attacked TFO. DW and NN took over SA and NA in the meantime while ALEX took over AA.

DW then made arrangements to end the era with a merge with NN as they felt they didn't have the activity needed. Half and half merge. At this point, Wolcott of ALEX joined DW instead and the NN merge was broken. ALEX and DW launched a joint attack in Africa and Russia against NN. DW was lead by Raag at this point. NN held Africa and EU for probably 200-300 ticks into the war against both teams. Killing multiple DW members along the way as they continued swapping the inactives with more active players. ALEX played extremely cautiously, never taking any battles they weren't fully in their favor aside from a small mistake here and there (such as Simen getting spied and not noticing due to all the notifications he had). CAT (CIS at the time) stayed out of all the wars aside from the usual troll probing. Majority of the time, against DW due to their proximity.

My team used this war to expand into Russia and force DW to raze territory under the pretext we would join NN in attacking them if they did not give into my demands. About 200 ticks into the war, we decided to continue expanding throughout Russia and AA. Eventually, we picked up a previous UNDR member and had access to SA as well and expanded. It was at this point, we decided we would attempt a new goal. An era ending without a 10 relic win. We had hoped to pit NN and ALEX/DW into a stalemate and would assist whichever side got an advantage. Then TwF attacked us. Rumors spread, some saying they did it for NN as they were allies. Others being that Eddie was just drunk and didn't think. My team decided to continue and finish the war fighting them. It was then we realized how active our team actually was for a troll team. While we were busy warring TwF, ALEX and DW got the upper hand on NN and had begun breaking through in both GL and AA against NN. My team wanted to finish TwF before starting anything else. This is where my own judgement came into error.

TwF was attempting to hide behind NN in GL with relocation OPs. We started making OPs in GL as well to prevent this to which NN told us to get out and that they would force TwF to raze or take the OPs themselves. I trusted they would do this. They did not. TwF started to relocate out of our reach and we had not prepared anything. All the while, NN was requesting that we help them and PLO began taking TwF OPs in AA to keep us from getting them along with their relic. At this point, we were mad and told NN we refused to help them until TwF was finished. It was here that I basically shattered my plan from working (eh, I get petty too sometimes).

At this point, we realized we needed to figure out a game plan. We attempted to reach out to DW members to try probing them to go for 1st place. The DW leader didn't want to go for it, so some DW members talked about leaving to make their own team, requesting that DW stay neutral. Psi and Antrax left to do this. Knowing who would follow, Wolcott relocated her colony on top of Karl's army and had a lock down done with ALEX attacking. Then disbanded DW so Karl was unable to put SP or do anything. 2 locks in a row later, Karl's army died.

Guarav attempted to merge the remaining NN and DW members into 1 team. However, ALEX knew everything we were doing as PLO was feeding them information in our chat and ALEX proceeded to kill off those named who would help us in our fight before they could join the necessary teams. PLO had left NN saying that he might rejoin the team if it looked like they could pull it together. Then you all know the rest. He joined ALEX instead and it became very apparent how ALEX knew who to target and kill while they prepped to join the new team.

NN's goal was to go for the win with the new set up. Mine remained the same. To reach tick 2000 without a 10 relic winner. Alex already knew my team was involved with NN through the chats that PLO was feeding and so, ALEX took the first attack knowing that my team had not yet recovered resource wise to get armies back into Asia, This effectively spread our armies out. 2 in AA, 2 in SA, 2 in GL and 2 in Asia. We had 1 member we had no way of contacting (random we pulled in) and 1 who was new and had no real army yet (Pant). Pant was also ratted out by PLO as he was nuked and attacked prior to joining us.

HTTO put a majority of their forces in SA to block us from joining AA and SA groups together. Africa had heavy ALEX activity and we lost most of it pretty quickly to full squad spams. Asia was held due to R4 and R5 units killing off the initial full squad spams. NN was currently in discussions with ALEX at this point due to PLO asking for ALEX to give NN 2nd place. The original NN members sat on this decision for a day while CAT warred. Fluffeh and I took over a good chunk of Asia. SA was being held by 1 member. GL was at a standstill for the most part. And AA had 2 trapped members moving around stalling for time until we could break through in SA (which meant breaking through all of HTTO's armies with 2 members). After 3 days of warring, talks of the holidays came up. Originally, we were contemplating discussing a ceasefire for just the holidays on all sides.

It was here I realized I had asked my team to give up their holidays for a troll era and I started having second thoughts. I know I didn't want to give up mine either for that matter. Members had begun to boost for my troll era, myself included. So I pulled us out before anymore damage was done on my behalf. Perhaps it was a bit selfish on my part not to fully get my own teams full responses on what they wanted. But I didn't want anyone to spend the next month not sleeping and spending $100's for me to achieve my troll era goal in which I told every one of them, we weren't going to play serious when they joined.

Don't get me wrong. I am still very much against Battlehugs and dislike everything about my ceasefire. It was truly a stain on my BD reputation, but I'd rather have a bad rep for doing this, than have my members spend the next month of their time and their hard earned money for my silly goal. If it was a serious era that we had decided to go for the win for at the beginning, I wouldn't hesitate for a moment, even for the holidays.

So Arf - To statement #4, you can believe what you want. I had zero intentions of winning, zero intentions of looking for an easy win. I hate blues. You can ask just about anyone who knows me well. I always try to give up my rank at end of era to someone else so they can have the blues. If I go for the win, I'll buy reds. Blues aren't needed.

To statement #5, technically true. With NN dragging their feet deciding if they wanted to take the 2nd place deal (yes NN, I did know you were contemplating it the entire time. Thanks for turning it down eventually though. Sorry to disappoint you in return). The war wasn't going to be a quick one. I never intended for us to win it. I intended for us to survive. That was it. With PoZ deciding they wouldn't enter the war, our chances to break into Europe or Africa again became very very slim. The same tactics as NN vs. DW/ALEX would occur. At best, we had 600 ticks to break through Africa/EU AND have to break the fortress that is Aussie against a team that is overly cautious with every battle they take. So once again, that meant, me committing my team to playing over the holidays and spending money on a troll era. The ONLY way to take ALEX out of the top rank would be to conquer colonies or kill their entire army. There is zero chance to knock them out of 1st place by tick 2000 otherwise.

So Arf, as I said to you before. If you wish to, you go ahead and start boosting for this era if it's that important to you. I am fine being called a hypocrite in this one instance, even if it means losing the respect of the majority here. I won't make my team waste anymore of their time or money for my silly goal.

Sorry I doubted you malice, everything on your end is cool I know people have lives they need to deal with.

this era had me stressin cuz it was at the same time as exams tbh.

I was wrong on your part, but I still stand with the fact its stupid ALEX took in PLO.

Let me chime in as a HTTO member on what we did for ALEX

1) Block 100+ squads from entering GL and NA to help the rest of NN.
2) Hold 2 CAT armies in SA (altho yeah I'll admit we did get inactive at this point in time due to irl issues)

and PLO wants Simen to give NN 2nd for having a good war

I'm no token-whore (:roll:) but sounds a little silly to me.

I learned a lot from playing this era thanks for that,

-Carter

What Malice said is pretty much all accurate. I just want to add a couple points from my POV:

1. We were also spread very thin. I think at the point of CAT surrendering we had armies spread between Africa (fighting ex Dw members who joined NN), GL (fighting old NN and CAT members), Asia (fighting Fluff and Malice), and AA (fighting NN members).

2. The point about PLO spying; this is why you don't have mass chats with everyone you're working with. We realised this too, when we noticed among others Fluff was still in our main chats while war with CAT was looking increasingly likely. It also helped that some of the players Josh tried to recruit were friends with our members, so we got to see some of the messages he was sending out.

3. I like how neither of the top 2 teams came right now came into this era trying to win. I also like how 5 teams this era have legitimately stood a good chance at winning.

Edit: I'd also like to add I feel this era would have been more interesting if real life issues didn't raise their ugly head for people on both sides. That includes the coming holidays

Josh's wall of text got me hot and bothered, that is all

Oh yes Imma fap for days trying to get through that. But on a serious note, I do appreciate the post malice, like I said, I wasn't really paying attention early. I learned a lot. I would have at least suicided rather than literally bend over and spread my cheeks after 2 days of war, but w/e.

Also, I didn't mean to imply that NN did not play well, they clearly were the best team in this era, but I don't know those players, they seem somewhat unkown, those aren't the guys I see talking crap about lack of competition before they gang up on someone and use a spy/backstab to finish them off.

I would like to get Simmens side of the story if he has the spine to post in here. I'm curious what happened with the disbanding of DW and why he struggled so hard to beat NN when he had them so badly outnumbered and overpowered. Does not find it kind of shameful and pathetic that he needed PLO to spy on skype chats in order to win?