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.