Game #897 | Top 8 game

Confirmed by Tussell

Confirmed by Ezekiel

This epic game came to an end in turn 96!

As I said, Jean and me decided to meet at neutral ground and do the fight, here is the video of the 2 fights. Highlight of the fight must be my leader soloing 3 Dreadreaprs before he went down to 6hp and fled the battle.

I think after i successfully managed to take Eskilds northern cities as well as Fist's cities, it was only going to be 1 outcome. I could then convert all the cities to Dwarfs and finish the monoculture, get cheerful cities and very good mana, research and cp.



I had a very good staring position, bottom left corner in the under ground. Surrounded by lava and mountains so hard to attack, even though Eskild came relativly close before he aborted his mission. By the way, it was a good battle with Eskild mid game when he was super strong after taking all Tussels cities.



Thanks for the game everyone, was nice to experience truly end game battles and spells!
Here is some screens of the scores for those interested:

Match has been reported, please confirm!

The end is near, me and Jean decided to bring our main units to a neutral place to fight it out.
So far on the battle field we have 10 armies of mine and 6/7 of Jean:

Sadly I only have recordings uploaded to turn 28 when my old computer died, there was many turns not uploaded that was saved on the computer that are now lost forever. 

I plan to make video/s of the last fight/s versus Jean where we bring all our armies to a neutral ground and do the last battles. Im afraid Manticores/Fallen Angels/Firstborns will fall short against Dreadreapers/Ghouled Dragons/Giants but should make for an interesting final battle.

And they were 2!... I didn't survive Jonny very long.

Very nice game and very strong players, was a pleasure to play it. Marcus, I hope you are recording your turns and I look forward to watching the turns I'm missing (and all the other ones). I'll start releasing mine after the game ends.

I'll be interested to play again a game like that in the future but that won't be before some time as I have many other games played already. So I guess will be playing AoW3 any more when I'll be ready.
Also, it will be interesting to bring some balance to late mid-game and late game with feedback from this game.

Yeah, it cannot be argued that the Impaler is uglier than the Troll guy! I'm outraged!!

Thanks Jonny, you probably knew I could reach with death march, and I cancel Global assault to get you 6v1.
BUT, how can you say the 2nd most ugly Dwarf? Who in the right kind of mind will choose this dwarf when there is only 2 left in the world?!! Looks more like a troll than a Dwarf

Although losing after a someones reloading seems to be dubious, but in this case i have no doubts about it. Poor Minty, his happy days of roaming around and plundering have now come to an end. Sad! 
Lost to the second most ugly dwarf in this game 

Sadly my game crashed, no notification, nothing, when I looked at the replay of the battle with Jonny's leader.
I attack with 6 Manticores vs his leader and lost one, and didnt get a notification he lost. I had already looked at the map to find other thrones, and could only find 2, so I was amazed he was still alive, meaning he or Hiliadan has either moved their throne in the middle of the land of Jean!

Before my Manticore made the last attack to kill him, the game crashed. When I made the battle again, the correct notification came up that "Minty" have lost.

I will play with debug mode on the following turns to avoid this, at least then I should have a crash report.

Edit: Sorry for the spoiler, but it was critical information to what I think caused the crash.

Im away at a business trip until Sunday evening, without access to play my turns, can you please turn off the timer?

I will be away from this evening to Sunday afternoon, meaning no turns from me until then 

I´ll be heading off for vacation early on this friday. I´ll be gone from there (the 13th) to the 22nd of July. In that period I can´t promise taking any turns.

Looking forward to have you back! As I said before, this game is one of the most interesting I've ever had. The 8 players, large map format is really interesting, even if it's hard to get a good pace. And obviously with all these great players, it makes for a very challenging game.

I would like to adress every participant of this game (at the current stage):

- Marcus
- Hiliadan
- Fist
- Jonny
- Ezekiel

and, first of all, apologize for having you wait so long for me. I had a very tough period in my life due to the tragic events in my family and decided to stop playing for a while, concentrating on work and trying to help the family as much as I could. I forgot about the game and didn't appear on this website for several weeks and later presumed that I had been kicked from this game (because it was obvious for me that nobody should wait for a player for so long) but it turned out that, no, I wasn't kicked and, what's more, nobody blamed me for not playing the turns. 
That's why I just want to thank you for it! You, guys, are incredible. Really.
I'm back in this game, I believe. I feel much better now and I have more time since I have finished my work project. I need 2 more days to finish every stuff at home, set the game (still not working without any vpn unfortunately) and I will be able to play again. I promise that I won't stall it anymore
Once again, thanks for your support! 
Yours,
Jean

Update: Jean told me he would be able to start playing his turns again very soon (this week I believe).
Hopefully we can pick up a good rhythm again.

Hi Jean,

I know you are not feeling so well and that playing your turns is not a priority right now, add to that the problems you have with connecting to the triumph PBEM servers, and it's not a very good forecast!

What is your plan going forward, will you attempt to connect via a VPN? I linked you a good free service, available for Chrome browsers, you could give that a try perhaps? Otherwise Hiliadan probably have a good alternative from his time behind the great firewall of China.

All the best,
Marcus

Didnt have to replay the whole turn, all progress was saved from just before the crash!

Sadly the game crashed for me, had almost played the full turn. Lost some battles vs other players (only scout battles) and won some. Will try to replay it in the same way, but it was some close battles so the outcome might be different, in that case I hope you will take my word for it and I will disband my unit/s.

Since I can't play with Debug mode since the latest update, all I have is a crash report and a screenshot of when I last saved the turn (from the PBEM game folder).

Vacation time´s up here as well - gonna be out of turns from 28th to the 4th (5th) of April.

@Fist: I cannot say much without revealing strategic info but I do not feel like there is any secret alliance any more. Sometimes what you see can be misleading and sometimes, it's not because 2 players are close and do not attack each other that they are allied or colluding. Because sometimes the players involved know that attacking each other would lead to mutual destruction so they keep watching each other but attacks at other locations.

@all: I would have attacked just like Marcus did and used the Watchtower to split armies. And I would have raged-cried against myself if someone did the same to me, because of my oversight. It's not nice but for me it's fair, and in this game, it is very dangerous to make any mistake.
I have to say this game is very nerve-wrangling because each turn I'm very concerned about what I will discover after opening the turn. It's hard to stay calm and not be emotionally affected, but that's precisely the reason why I like this game too! Each turn is very challenging and much more interesting than most of the games I played (outside tournaments at least).
Eskild, you're probably very upset now but after a few days, you'll probably see things differently. Also, let's retalk about what you posted at the end of the game when there is no more strategic stakes to discuss things.

Also it's probably a good opportunity to collect some elements to help balance late game, especially late game techs. So please note everything and let's discuss it at the end of the game.

I would like to share my opinion on this situation. 
The game continues to be a competition between extremely high leveled players. When we were discussing the problem of shadow diplomacy here I suggested we make this game non-ranking (and thus more oriented on having fun rather than on showing a good result) but nobody agreed. So we continue fighting for a quite big number of ranking points and the prestigious title of the very best player. Expect your opponents to use every legal option to win, be it strategic maneuvers, traps or whatever. 
From what I've learned and read here, I have concluded that I see no bad behaviour in this situation. In my opinion, Ezekiel misunderstood Marcus. Let me try to explain how I see all this. I myself am enganged in a confrontation with one of the players in the game, I'm attacking him and approaching his empire (I guess on this stage of the game it is no news to everyone). Of course, I expect some big battles with this player not only because I often like them too (that feeling when there gonna be a huge massacre on the battlefield!) but because I know that my opponent is clever enough not to let me attack his small army with all my stacks (and the result will be awful for him). Instead, he will retreat, make traps, organize unexpected attacks, etc. Only when he decides that the big battle if inevitable and he has chances to win it he will let me approach and attack his forces. Or he will attack himself. That's what we call strategic maneuvers in this game. At the same time this big battle might not occur at all. If my opponent makes an awful strategic mistake (no scouting, bad positioning on the map, etc), I will take advantage of it because it's a part of the game. When I played online ffa games several years ago, players often became tired after 7+ hours of playing and suggested we should end the game by meeting in the center of the map, bringing everything we had and organizing a final battle. It's a good and funny ending but it's of course not competitive at all. 
So Marcus might have believed that Ezekiel wouldn't let him overpower him easily and that a big battle was inevitable. Instead, it turned out this way. I feel really sorry for Ezekiel here but I think Marcus did everything right. It was absolutely correct to take advantage of this situation: Marcus is definitely one of the candidates to win this game and he shouldn't miss such opportunities especially when there is a chance to save a huge amount of units. 

Maybe you can do something about that, instead of calling me out?
The point is that i was committed to the attack, and would have attacked either way, thats all.

I accidentally miscalculated your movement ranges and did not take the watch tower in consideration. You took advantage of the situation. I deem that a good move but contradictory to wishing for a grand battle.

To call my comment hollow is quite a low actually. I expected more from you.
To wish for a grand battle - win or lose, I gave it my all - in turn 60 is not to exaggerate , to avoid such a battle to have a better chance to win the game is straightforward and quite realistic, or what do you say?

In the end it doesn't matter, but why you think I went to the effort to explain it in a post, to feel good about myself? No, i was sincerely sorry for how those 3 battles turned out.

Hi mister watch tower.

It´s perfectly fine. I was getting tired of this game anyway. I should have attacked you maaaaaaany turns ago instead of turning around to the other side of the map because of the reports from Hiliadan and Johnny Thunders about my scary undead neighbor.

Stating that you were hoping/wishing for a grand battle does though indeed sound quite hollow in this context as you did exactly the opposite of what one would have done if one was hoping/wishing for a grand battle.

I am trying not to rant here but am at the same time disappointed.

Hi guys

SPOILER FOR ESKILD


Before Eskild becomes angry, I want to explain what happened:

I feel really bad (honestly) about this, because I was hoping/wishing for a grand battle vs Eskild.
But when you place your units like this, its too good of an opportunity to win all 3 battles without heavy losses, which would be the case if I attacked 4vs3 the first battle. Placing 4 stacks behind a watchtower (and not standing on top of it) is a really bad idea.

I can show one screenshot, of Eskilds defeated armies, and how they stand to be able to attack 3vs1 the first battle, 3vs2 the second battle and 2vs1 the 3rd battle, but I wont do it before he gives a go ahead.

I spoke to a few players outside of the competition and they all agree that if you make a strategic mistake like this, its fair to attack, but Im sure Eskild will not be happy about this.

With that said, I have no hesitation thinking anyone would do the same to me, so here we are, I took advantage of the situation, but at the same time Im feeling bad about it, because its basically game over for eskild because of 1 small mistake.

".. try to play only on his own as much as possible .."

It's obviously not happening but I'm not complaing, I knew it would become this way.

Next time (if there will be one) I suggest either make a team game or if you want a FFA let players form alliances freely during the game.

As long as allied victory is forbidden you know those are not permanent and only one can win but at least things are transparent.

The way we are doing now there is people forming secret alliances and others who don't which only leads to those bad feelings you describe. If you cannot enforce a rule it's better not putting it in place at all imho.

I don't think it should be non-ranked because if it, nothing is at stake and we will not play to our maximum. The point of this game is to have (some of) the best players fighting each other to the maximum of their capacity.

Even if it's ranked, remember it's still only a game and there is no reason to have bad feelings (though avoiding tension or stress is going to be tough with all these crazy turns! but that's part of the fun, isn't it, otherwise we'd be playing AI). I believe everything should be fine if "everyone can be reasonable and fair and try to play only on his own as much as possible" while knowing what is allowed or not.

Hello, guys.
None of us made up his mind to clarify the rules at the very beginning of the game so, I guess, we all can be blamed for it. Now we have a good precedent for the next games. As to this particular game, let's try to play it in the most friendly way we can  We're all playing for good and positive feelings, I hope so.
I agree with Hiliadan, let's continue the game as it is. Still only one player can win this game, with no exception. 
I would also suggest we could make this game non-ranking to avoid tensions and bad feelings but it's up to you all to decide. I'm perfectly fine with both options.

I believed sharing info and ganging up on other players were forbidden but I don't know if that matters anymore at his point, maybe it was better to state it clearly at the start of the game. Anyway I'm not going to last much longer in this game so I'm not sure if my opinion should count or not :p

Hi all!
So, due to me not clearly defining what can be considered fair or not at the beginning of the game - really sorry about that, I thought I posted something but it was only in my imagination... -, we have had a few issues recently among some players. It's probably better to clarify the opinion of everyone and take a decision.

There are two types of things that can be contentious:
- non-agression pacts: two players or more agree explicitly not to attack each other, except if they warn themselves and break the pact.
- information-sharing: two players or more share information by message in game or outside the game (e.g. screenshots by email) about other players' strength, locations, etc.

Reminder: the fairplay rules of the BF states: "PBEM fair-play: negotiations and screenshot exchanges with a given player should be conducted only after in-game contact with this player."

So, my initial idea was that none of the two actions listed above was allowed for the top 8 game. However, it was not stated from the start, so both happened, and that's fair and normal, especially since the rules of the BF do not ban it, and even mention information-sharing is allowed after in-game contact.

So my opinion now is that both actions are not desirable and should be limited, because the idea of this game is not to see who can get the biggest alliance to bully other players, and we don't want everyone to ally against the strongest player. But, IMO both actions should remain allowed as the game was started and conducted like that up to now. Again, I hope everyone can be reasonable and fair and try to play only on his own as much as possible. Also, I think it's fair to provide false information to set traps, etc. For me, everyone knows there is a risk that information are false. For instance, if I tell: "I have a stack of Phoenyx led by a Master Illusionist and I'm going to take all your Thrones very soon", you can guess I'm bragging and trying to lead you to reinforce your Thrones to cripple your economies.

@other players still alive: what are your opinions?

Unfortunately that's the first time we have such a "high level FFA game" so we are making mistakes that won't be made if such a game is organised again.

Hi, I'll be on vacation for a week starting tomorrow (Dec the 3rd) so won't be able to play any turns till mext monday (11/12). Sorry about that

Sounds exciting Jean

The turns take a very long time now so make sense that you need to do it over several sittings.

Hi, guys.
I'll hold my turn for a while, I have several big fights there and no time these days.
Sorry.
Will finish it tonight or tomorrow. 
Thank you,
- Jean  

Hello Tussel, what's up? Are you alright? It's been your turns for a few days now.

well, I've looked at video and at the moment can't say anything in defence or offence  Unfortunately, the video is short (0:36 min) and doesn't show what happens after PC has been rebooted.

the video shows of freeze, where Marcus tries to move mouse, press different buttons on the wi-fi keyboard (namely Esc, Alt+Caps Lock, Win, some other) and then switches off the camera.


As I am given some degree of judging authority in the game (and I am also naturally very suspicious person ), in the future, I would ask anyone who posts of "freezes", PC reboots to keep recording until PC had been rebooted, and then repeat all the same actions - that would prove (to me at least) that all the devices are indeed plugged  either way, it would still be impossible for me to tell anything about the issue from video alone it might be a different thing if you are to invite me to the scene personally (flights and hotel booking is up to you ) to investigate  in theory, I could ask for windows logs, but then again, I get enough of that shit during my daytime work, so - senkjū, I'll pass



On the serious note, I'd just give Marcus a warning for reload and continue the game

Everything is alright, Marcus, it can happen to everyone (especially to my weak pc ).

I have to inform you, guys, that unfortunately I got a quite severe conjunctivitis and I'm recommended not to use pc at all till the disease is gone. So I'll make a short break in turns now. 
I'm sorry.
Jean

FYI video is shared with AIX