Jeez talk about peeing in someones cheerio's.........A team pvp's 0,0 and there always has to be one person trying to ruin the achievement and fun for those involved.
Well now back to the party!
![]()
Jeez talk about peeing in someones cheerio's.........A team pvp's 0,0 and there always has to be one person trying to ruin the achievement and fun for those involved.
Well now back to the party!
![]()
I say the comforting change is a step in the right direction, I argue facts and real ongoing situations of the matter...You dream up ideas that don't exist and STILL blame botters and STILL feel it's fair to have something forever in a war game...
@ Tony - thanks for the support - but no one can ruin my fun over this. On my first server I was forced many time to eat my cheerios with a little urine flavoring. Apparently it made a man of me though for NA32
@Gamble You don't think a mech defense based on 44 million scouts is well defended? There were also plenty of other troops in his Account - but as the after action report will show (almost finished) the guys morale broke and he simply caved. He dismissed 40 million archers from his associated accounts when he quit. Perhaps not the numbers I'm seeing on the NA1 battle for 0,0 but that server is 2 years older than ours...and we cleared 0,0 on at least 2 previous occasions prior to this visit.
Greengiant is reviewing my draft of the after action report before I post it bu I expect it will be up in the next 4 hours.
Aldruic
Last edited by Alduric; 10-08-2012 at 07:07 PM. Reason: confused Tony and Tipp lol - still tired must be
PRELUDE TO BATTLE
This would be our 4th visit to Atlantis.
On our first occasion we forced the original capping account (MooBoo) out of Atlantis by targeting not only 0,0 but his other cities, including two 12's and a 14. Note that the original Player (MooBoo) had moved onto other servers and the defense was run by the player who would ultimately inherit Atlantis. On this occasion we caused enough damage to the MooBoo account that the current owner decided to swap in his personal account from then on.
Our Second attempt saw this Player with his main account in Atlantis. For the purposes of this write up I will simply refer to it as the Atlantis account. On this occasion we spent 3-4 days in hard combat at 0,0 and there was some attempt by Atlantis to fight it out - toggling gates, bringing in Reins, and having allies port in to distract our war cities. In the end, constant attrition against the Atlantis account caused the player to close his gates and start running a comfort defense. We attempted to target other cities in the account, that tended to port away or comfort, and the Atlantis player simply told us we would never take 0,0 that he would comfort forever and that his bot ran on his work servers that never shut down. After 7 days, we were burned out and called off the assault.
Our Third visit the Atlantis account was supported by 24/7 NPC building fields, one city blockers and alts, the same as it had been on the precious two visits. The Atlantis account had also moved a support city in range to run layers into 0,0 at his convenience. We capped some NPC's and moved in, attacking 0,0 simultaneously with the support city, using the broken gates strat on both. We were able to clear the support account and a good chunk of 0,0 before the strats ran out and Atlantis shut up shop. We were almost into the rams before the gates closed on us. Once again the Atlantis account said he would comfort forever, and never opened gates when we were able to clear walls and collapse his mech defense.
Planning for the fourth (and as it turns out final) assault began about a week prior to the comfort change. We knew we had very little chance of taking Atlantis, but decided to try to hound all of the Atlantis accounts cities and alts - basically forcing the player to repair his alts and recode his bots as cities ported or were stripped of resources. The goal was to make him spend the time saved by botting his account and his alts repairing and rescripting to make it not time-cost effective for him to continue.
When the comfort change was announced we got really excited - now we could actually cap those alts, causing even more damage. We might even be able to force the gates open if we did enough damage. Our plan was to hit 0,0 hard and if we did not break through continue against all of the Atlantis player assets. This is what we were up against.
The Atlantis account was the main account, supported by 2-3 combat effective feeder accounts and perhaps 2-3 more food storage and farm accounts. The combat accounts were in the same alliance - while the food stores were placed in alt alliances. The Atlantis account player also ran a combat account in an allied alliance that held one of the enemy 16s. In the month preceding the battle the Atlantis Player had divested himself of all HC except for the 18 and the 16 in the allied account. He also took advantage of the last city zeroing change to circle Atlantis with cities from his main and combat accounts. We were able to pick up a few spots as well after this change and Skirmished a bit with the Atlantis support cities taking their measure (when they were not in suppression from allied accounts or truced). Enemy alliances kept 3-4 cities nearby Atlantis with food, reins, spam and in range counterattack capability (one of these cities held 8 million archers at the time of our assault)
OPENING MOVES
We Started 72 hours prior to our assault by directing cav spam from the entire alliance and training alliance on to Atlantis and the associated 16 in the second account. We knew that the Atlantis player liked to fight in mech defense primarily and tended to build in excess of 17,000 abatis in many of his cities. We needed to chip away at the walls before making a concerted push.
Over the next three days, various players and allies were directed to the area of the 16 as a feint. We had had another 16 in that alliance under siege for some time, and wanted to apply some misdirection. These porters cleared cities from the sea of red around the 16 and ran loyalty down on one city grays to allow them to be capped and cleared from range, freeing up flats near the 16 if needed. At least 9 red cities surrounding the 16 were capped and NPC'd in the three day period, opening up many flats closer to the state capital. This was in addition to the regular porters in the alliance causing havoc having nothing to do with preparations for Atlantis.
At Atlantis we ran loyalty on one city grays in preparation for the main attack. The Atlantis account was setting up his support cities, and suppressing them. By the time we attacked we had a rough idea of his suppression schedule as we included those support cities in our cav spam targeting.
You can see the Troop counts of Atlantis and the support city in my post above (page 3 I think) - but the important piece of information at the start is that the abatis had been knocked down from 17k to 3700 by d-day.
THE ASSAULT TEAM
Four War Cities and one cav spam support city made the initial penetration, capping loyalty reduced one city accounts and reclaiming spots seized after the one city cap change and held by keeping the filler cities in suppression or truce 24/7. About 1 hour into the assault one additional war city ported over.
Initial Penetration: War Cities: GreenGiant, Alduric, BQ, Saltwater
Cav Spam city: Xenye
Reinforcing War City: Malcom
GreenGiant also ported in a second city to replace his archer count more quickly once his initial complement was burned.
While the War Cities were getting situated, GreenGiant, as first on the ground, poked around at the support cities, actually colonizing two, and breaking the suppression on the others. Once all five cities were in place, we began cav spamming. The First Cities were on the ground at 08:35. The First Cav Spam hit 0,0 at 08:40.
BATTLE FOR ATLANTIS PHASE ONE 10/5/2012
08:35 War Cities Port to 0,0
08:40 Cav Spams from all Cities in Theatre - Target - 3700 Abatis
We lost a bunch of heroes during these attacks - the Atlantis FH was very empty and dismissed heroes as soon as they were capped. During this portion of the attack and subsequent clearing waves, the only way to keep our halls full was to have a constant stream of reinforcing level 100s from back area cities enroute to the war cities - as heroes were lost a rein would soon take its place. Having a dedicated cav spam city with junk heroes and level 10 inn helped a lot - but poor Xenye was bored out of her mind tossing wave after wave of cav spam.
09:22 Walls Down - First Tradefire waves hit Atlantis.
As soon as the walls were down, we dropped at least 2 fleet feet on each war city in the area. Then we launched 10 waves at a time - a small layer clearing wave followed by tradefire waves. Normally the Atlantis Player bot closed when gates were down, so the use of a broken gates strat allowed us to engage. The Fleet feets were used to take full advantage of this opportunity. After a few minutes we switched over to tradefire all the time, as the speed of the attack was paramount. When the bot built back an abatis, a tradefire wave would splat, but kill the abatis - letting the next 9 through.
09:35 Spam and Scout Bombs from enemy alliances begin to hit Allied War cities in theatre.
09:45 Atlantis Player Logs into game
The first indication we had was him announcing in WC "Thats it, I quit!" At this point we had cleared most of the city and were getting reports. Atlantis was down to 30M scouts, transporters and rams - and whatever baby layers the bot was feeding in. It took us a further 7 minutes to clear the city, and we don't think the Atlantis player got any of his troops out of the city and into his support city - the ferocity of the attack must simply have stunned him. In the end, the combined attacking war cities spent approximately 16 million archers in tradefire waves (at 65% heal means an effective 48 million archers to clear the city).
09:52 Transporter waves sent in to Clear resources
Transporters, preceded by reverse archer bows and tradefire waves, and with the cav spam city continuing to suppress walls begin pulling resources out of Atlantis. From 09:52 to 10:22 no reinforcements were sent into Atlantis that could be determined - but again the speed of re-launching waves and at this point swapping out energy burned heroes kept us from checking war reports. Some of us were not even paying attention to incoming spam - just letting it hit. In the end we pulled out most of the food, res and gold, but stone still showed as maxed (later it would be determined that there was still 20 billion stone left in the city at the end of our Phase one Transporter waves - which would continue until about 10:45)
10:22 Broken Gates End - Gates closed - Reinforcements begin to shift into Atlantis
For the next 30 minutes we continued to run transporters, preceded by attack waves. The Atlantis player toggled gates and managed to catch a few 100 k waves. The six of us (Malcom had joined by now) were fried and disorganized, and the intensity of our attacks slowed a bit.
10:40 Atlantis player ports War City from his account holding the 16 on Greengiant.
GG had moved a second war city over to shift archers to the attack once his original complement was gone. The Atlantis player ported on this city with his second account to try to distract us. We had prepared for this: three other alliance members were ready to port, and Saltwater had a second war city on standby. The three new alliance mates, along with Saltwater ported on the 16 held by the Atlantis player secondary account. By the time GG had rearranged his defense, the War city sent from the second account ported out as its 16 came under attack. The player had 2 primary targets now under siege. The bot continued to defend Atlantis and we poked around for another hour or two, but eventually got frustrated with the toggling gates. The Gates closed on mech hits when we allowed them to build up some walls, and closed when walls were down. With energy low, and a bit battle fatigued, We decided to support our alliance mates porting on the 16 and one other Atlantis player city. By 13:00 we figured our primary objective of knocking him back had been accomplished at 0,0 by destroying its troops and settled in to work on the other cities in his accounts.
11:15-17:00 Varied attacks across the board
With our primary war cities engaged and skirmishing at Atlantis, we vectored other alliance mates to the 16, and to other Atlantis city accounts. We took some time to reorganize our war cities and heroes and GG began to prepare for a suppression battle against the Atlantis players support city, which was put into suppression at the opening of the fight. During this time the Atlantis player was in conversation with GG and BQ, saying that we should save our troops - he was going to move his heroes and NPC Atlantis. This obviously did not occur during this 8-hour period.
At Cairo, the 16 under assault, a few enemy Players ported to attack our alliance mates there. A Running battle occurred around the 16, and the sea of red there, but in the end, when the abatis on the 16 were destroyed, which would have allowed tradefire waves to engage the ranged within, the Atlantis/16 players closed gates. There was not sufficient force in theatre at Cairo to pull resources in an attempt to force the gates open, so the attack team there concentrated on the reinforcing cities and general sea of red around the 16. As noted previously 9 reds had already been capped around the 16 but there were still plenty of targets. To keep the Atlantis/16 player guessing, we did keep the walls suppressed on the 16, although attacks on Atlantis had ceased, and 0,0 was back running on the bot.
END OF PHASE ONE
Some Thoughts on the first portion of the battle:
1. Its possible to enjoy the game even when playing against bots. You just need to figure out how to engage them. Many people have figured out how to beat them mechanically and our group certainly knew how to do that. But what has been most intriguing to me in the past year of trying to defeat botted accounts has been keeping myself interested in the game. Greengiant made the same comment to me the other day as we were discussing the attack. I kept my interest by looking at what the bot provided my enemy, other than the frustrating auto comfort. For a while we entertained ourselves by looting food from fully stocked bot cities. Very satisfying to pull billions of res out of them. Occasionally we would find one not programmed well and we got the troops as well. Then we began to ask - "what if you could strip an entire botted account at the same time? Could you destroy the food chain and stop the comforting?" Without a doubt the new comforting change makes it possible, but we were already headed down that road as you might see from our grand strategy above.
2. Which leads me to #2 - the bot can make a player complacent. The Atlantis player relied more and more on his bot and multi accounts to feed and defend, especially as his alliance degraded over time, as people left the server or the game. He did not foster real friendships or team play with the remaining players in his coalition. The bot isolates a player, in a game where the health of an alliance or coalition should be a primary concern. A healthy alliance mean people reinforcing, porting in to mess with war cities, and generally offering moral support when you are getting slammed. This final attack was the last in long campaign designed to break down the players morale. So when he came on and saw himself getting hammered yet again, its somewhat understandable his first reaction was to throw in the towel.
3. Morale is Key. The Atlantis Player had 7 minutes to get his rams and about 30 million scouts out when he logged in. He could have gotten most out. His big complaint was that we had used the broken gates strat on him and that we were attacking him 5 on 1. If he had kept his head, he might have saved a good chunk of his army that started in Atlantis. But lets address the broken gates strat. On that subject I have this to say: just as the defender used every means possible to keep us out of 0,0 including the illegal comfort and gate toggle bot, we used every available means to kick him out. The broken gates strat is a legal strat, and we had used it on him before. Perhaps he should not have had such a large portion of his account in the highest priority city in the game. And honestly, I personally don't mind the comfort defense as long as a real body is on the other end of it, staying up 36 hours and working the defense (GG disagrees with me on this lol). Then its either me or him, or my team or his team and the endurance they bring to the table. I have been on the other side and know that its possible to break someone's morale when they need to set an alarm every 60 minutes to click comfort. As to the 5 on 1 comment. This game is a team sport. Its not 1 on 1, but 100 on 100. The strength of your alliance matters. Had anyone in his coalition ported on us and launched a real cav killing wave they would have severely hampered our ability to take advantage of the broken gates and tradefire attacks. As it was all we were being hit with was long range spam, and mostly we ignored it. To close our gates against cav killers would have risked suppression, and to spend time moving cavs in and out would have slowed us down. But this goes back to number 2 above - the bot can make you complacent - make you feel as if you can stand on your own. That is the way to oblivion.
4. A defensive war can only lead to a defeat. To be fair - Our coalition had the enemy coalition on the defensive for a long time. They were unable to rally any significant response against us. If they hit our smaller players we ported on their war cities and hammered them, or ported on their HC and drew them off. We kept them loaded with honor, to the point that they were sidelined during key offensives. Each time we went to Atlantis fewer and fewer ported in to help. If you are on the defensive, you have to find a way to make some counter punches or diplomatic moves. You need to think outside the box, as we were doing when we were looking at hitting multiple cities at the same time across many intertwined accounts in order to take the target we really wanted.
BATTLE FOR ATLANTIS PHASE TWO 10/5/2012
16:45 Greengiant suffers setback in a suppression fight
GG had put the Atlantis players support city into suppression in the early portion of the fight. We decided to mess about a bit with the suppression battle to try to get a huge tradefire wave to kill much of his ranged in the city, thinking that walls do not come into play during a suppression fight. GG was willing to risk a good chunk of archers knowing he would get back 65% on the heal. We lost. GG lost 5 million archers and got back 200k on the heal. He killed 1 million on the other side. Stunned silence in our chat channel (we use teamspeak to coordinate hits in real time). At first we thought is was a glitch, but after some poking around on the web GG found a discussion that suppression heals are programmed against huge waves somehow to discourage them. Don't really know what's up with that but it put a damper on the party to say the least. It was almost as if Evony was taking revenge on GG because he had his 15 set and had not had to star up in a while - so he must be in need of a bit of abuse (joke of course - we really dont know what happened). The Atlantis player was at least still under the impression that GG got the 65% heal and was asking him if he thought the million archers was worth the 1.7 GG must have lost after heal. GG was willing to make that trade (1.7 to 1), but between us, the loss of 5 million certainly bummed us out. We decided to pack it in for the moment and see what a new day would bring. GG shifted more archers over in preparation for the next day.
17:00 - 18:30 Alliance mates hit coalition reds near the Atlantis players associated accounts 16
The team kept hammering away, although most of the battle was against the red around the 16, not the 16 itself. At some point the Atlantis player must have logged for the night and turned on his bots.
18:30 I start messing about Atlantis.
Had had a chance to break for a bit, eat some food, visit with family and then start poking about 0,0. Saltwater was still messing about Cairo (the 16). A couple hundred walls at Atlantis had built back, so I wanted to experiment with a few mech hits to see what would happen, expecting to nibble away at some ranged and the 3.6 million warriors Atlantis currently had. There were no scouts in Atlantis so I was able to see what I was doing. I believe we had killed so many scouts in the account that the Atlantis player did not want to risk us dropping massive Scout mission barrages during the night, which we had done in earlier battles. My guess is he had about 15-20 million Scouts left on his account, based on some reports from scattered cities we had collected during the day. But for whatever reason, no scouts in 0,0 and gates were closed in the support city, which was in suppression again. So his knickers were totally exposed for my viewing pleasure.
18:47 Mech hits Atlantis - gates stay open
I landed 6 reinforced Archer bows (with minor pults ballies and some rams) followed by a 30/60 pult/ballie wave and preceded by a few sword/pike/cave clearers (we call them reverse archer bows). The Gates stayed open, so I tried it again. I had killed about 190k archers on the mech hit cycle. Not a great trade - but It seemed like the thing to do - to keep testing and probing. This time the gates closed. I had also asked Saltwater to drop an ambush on Atlantis to keep it from camping layers out and recalling. At this point I wasn't sure if a player was in the account or if it was the bot. The second sequence cleared most of the walls around 19:03.
19:02 The Battle Winner (But I didn't know for another 2 hours)
While the second mech cycle was inbound I asked Saltwater to ambush the support city to keep it from sending layers over to 0,0. I had forgotten to have him do it when I asked for an Ambush on Atlantis. When the mech cycle completed (forcing gates closed and killing most of the walls) the Atlantis account was in truce. It took me until the next day to realize that the truce was a bot reaction, activated by the mech cycle clearing the pike and sword layers in 0,0, something that I had seen bots do on many occasions. At the time I figured the Atlantis player was going to sleep and trucing for the night so we couldn't hit the support city when it came out of suppression. But I realize now he was already gone.
Over the next 2 hours I stripped the city of resources, forced the gates open and killed the garrison, and the support city never once sent food or reins. One of two things must have happened: The Ambush must have contributed to the inability of the support city to move food it or the counter was played by the bot (if that is even possible) and the Resources in the support city were stripped as well (after being moved into 0,0).
19:03 - 20:09 Atlantis stripped of Resources
At this point I didn't really know what was going on, but Xenye had come back after a dinner break, and there were not many walls after the mech hit, So we decided to see if we could strip out the rest of the resources in preparation for the continuing destruction of the Atlantis Players economic base. Over the course of the next 55 minutes, we suppressed the walls, which meant the bot kept the gates closed and I ran 300k transporters in preceded by reverse bow to kill layers and tradefire waves just in case. 7 round trips later I had pulled 20 billion stone 1.5 billion gold and another 2 Billion food out of Atlantis. The Loyalty was also 12 when I cleared the last of the stone. Its possible the Resources from the support city were stripped as well.
20:09-20:45 Mad Scramble
Loyalty 12....No Resources....I thought to myself - what if we can keep the city from getting 10 million food to comfort. Could I force the gates? So Xenye kept suppressing the walls (also mixing in some worker waves to pull res) while I kept hitting with everything. I sent reinforce archers bows, worker waves, cav waves, scoutbombs, regular archer bows. Varied the times and kept scouting in between hits. The loyalty kept dropping. I thought we were stripping out resources as they landed, but I realize now most of the res was production. At one point we pulled out 940k food, so maybe a scout train got in from somewhere - but most of the other plunders were under 200k. No new troops were being moved in. The troop count stayed exactly the same.
20:45 Loyalty 5 gates open
When Loyalty got to 8 I started to get jazzed - Saltwater and Xenye were still with me in teamspeak and Raven had just gotten home for the Evony Night Shift. Salt and I hounded Raven to get it in gear and be ready to get over to 0,0. I knew I would need help from both Raven's and Salty's War city to clear the garrison if the gates somehow opened at 5. I was expecting the bot to speech text or some such. It didn't seem real until loyalty hit 6. Caracarn was also able to port over as a last minute reinforcement
In any event at 20:45 the gates opened and Salt and I already had Tradefire waves inbound. It took Raven another 8 Minutes to get to 0,0 and with the help a fleet feet from another alliance mate, her being a bit further out did not matter. She was able to keep up with us. The Garrison at Atlantis when gates opened was:
workers: 1
warriors: 3.68 M
scouts: none
pike: 2500
swords: 2500
archer 1.9 M
trans 2k
cav 2k
phract 2k
Ballies 165k
rams 275k
pults 107k
The support city held (from an SR at 18:50 - remember he had truced at 19:03)
workers: 10k
warriors: 276 K
scouts: 3.4 M
pike: 1.18 M
swords: 2.3 M
archer 2.3 M
trans 36k
cav 3k
phract 13k
Ballies 10k
rams 36k
pults 3k
21:00 We start getting reports from tradefire waves
21:03 People notice what we are doing - start to spam us and send Scoutbombs
Truly - the whole time Xenya and I worked 0,0 clearing res only 6 spam waves were launched at us. Either the alliance was asleep or they said "Never mind the bot will raise loyalty". But at 21:03 with loyalty 2 they noticed. They would have been much better served scout training food into 0,0 but they scout bombed us instead.
21:08 Hitting Rams with tradefire waves - I had a ram hit inbound to try to dig out the last of them but we cleared the city before they hit.
21:14 Atlantis Empty Loyalty 1
Only Raven and Xenya had a City slot so they both sent 10 waves while Salt, Caracarn and I kept sending tradefire. The Loyalty had continued to drop while we were clearing the garrison, as grievance was long at 100 (I even tried to inundate at one point - forgetting he was in truce - curses!). Caracarn killed the last of the rams at 21:14.07 and pulled 5 million food out. Someone must have sneaked a bit in there - but after that constant hits kept any more food from getting in there until
21:15:27 Scout report shows Atlantis loyalty 0 700k food
21:15:40 RAVEN CAPS ATLANTIS
Someone asked me why we decided to let Raven get Atlantis. My reply was simple: She had a city slot open. It was a team win...Raven just happened to be on the field at the time.
FINAL THOUGHTS
We should not have capped it. The Atlantis player was part of a coalition that held governor. I can only speculate that complacency let everyone to believe the bot would handle things, even with the comfort change that had been introduced and exploited leading up to the assault.
Where was the rest of the Alliance? Ignoring war reports. They didn't do anything until Loyalty 2, and the first thing should have been to call for a governor raise (the governor was apparently out drinking but I'm sure some folk had the logs). What about besiege, ambush and anything to send capping waves home?
Why did the bot not Speech text? Perhaps the failure was in the scripting of the bot itself. Does the bot have the ability to speech text?
Why did the Atlantis Player not Reinforce more heavily? Perhaps the beating he took earlier made him gun shy, but had the forces in the support city been in 0,0 we would not have cleared the city in time. We did not have enough firepower to get to the rams fast enough. Too many people were sacked out.
Its really an example of a dedicated, focused and deliberate team that took Atlantis down. It did not take us one day to take Atlantis...it took us eleven months (and a few long needed adjustments from the Evony developers). From the time the coalition lines were drawn, BOB attacked 0,0 twice then merged with PHNX because they were most in keeping with our style of play and because BQ ran a stable and tight ship (with people we wanted to game with) that would allow ALL of us together to seek and grasp the Brass Ring - and have a hell of a ride along the way.
Alduric NA32
PHNX
Dam.....awesome read, thx for giving the play by play. Playing along side you guys up until a few months ago, I couldn't be more happy for your success. Nothing like knowing 0,0 fell after the all the previous efforts. Props for accomplishing it.
Makes me wanna log in and smash more reds right nowSeeing as the old account is still packed with troops (cant believe I haven't been zeroed tbh). I'd be lying if I said I haven't been considering it......
EDIT: I thought I was hot sh1t when sweet, drak, and I took Berlin.....now I'm jealous thanx....
Last edited by xTONYx; 10-08-2012 at 07:52 PM.
I say the comforting change is a step in the right direction, I argue facts and real ongoing situations of the matter...You dream up ideas that don't exist and STILL blame botters and STILL feel it's fair to have something forever in a war game...
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