So the game starts out. As it turns out, neither of my opponents were newbies, both at least knowing the lumber bug. I started out in orange (top right). As you know, orange can be hit from the sea so I went farm, farm, mill and got a jugg out before anyone else. I took the patch under me, so that Sinbad, who was at purple (upper middle right), was deprived of oil and therefore lost the sea automatically. I built 2 shipyards and sent my first and second juggs scouting, while I foundry hopped to black (top left) and built a hall there. I found out that Hitler was at yellow (bottom left), and out-jugged him, taking out all his sea stuff.
By then I had gotten a transport with 6 lvl 3 or 4 grunts and had 2 opponents to send them to. I was just starting my stronghold upgrade so I decided not to wait for flyers (to see who had walled in towers). I sent my 6 footmen to Sinbad, who was closest. As it turned out he had like 5 walled in towers so my grunts were slaughtered. Ironically had I had sent them to Hitler I would have destroyed him and all of this would have been avoided.
Seeing that Sinbad would soon be a threat to me, I built 3 or 4 barracks, 2 sapper shops, and went to fortress. I got bloodlust and DKs with D&D. First I death and decayed a few of his guys from behind the rocks (while he blizzarded my peons, which I stupidly forgot to rebuild, my gold now coming from my expansion), then I sappered through and barged in with 9 bloodlusted ogres and a few death knights to take down his towers. He put up quite a fight, especially with his mages, but after my 3rd wave of ogres all his towers and peons were gone and he left.
With all this fighting I had neglected recon and did not know what Hitler was up to. So I pumped out a few flyers and went to look at his city and all its surrounding mines. My juggs had died while I wasn't looking.
I learned then never to neglect an opponent because he had 3 expansions, in red, blue, and aqua. Also he had retaken the sea with a bunch of subs. Crap! Not only that but he was going for gryphons, and had about 10 already. I knew my few measly DKs could not stand 10 dragons, but luckily he didn't have many flyers and didn't know he could attack. I hastily made more death knight places and pumped out 5. Also I made some guard towers in addition to my barracks in my expansion.
I had 3 or 4 transports, and sent some ogres and DKs to his expansion in aqua (bottom middle left), which had no towers or barracks yet. I met fierce resistance in the form of a pile of gryphons, and they killed all my guys, but not before I had destroyed everything on the island. After the gryphons had left, I sneakily sent some of my own peons to the island and set up a base there, which he never discovered until the mine was empty. Heh thats what you get when you have bad recon.
Well he built a billion gryphons, and I never managed to take down his first and second expansions until the mine was empty. By then my mine at black was empty as well, since it was quite well defended and he never got around to destroying it. I could not retake the sea because of all his gryphons and subs, and besides, I felt it was unnecessary as long as my transports got through. In retrospect, that was a mistake, becauseit would have stopped HIS transports as well. Anyway, I contented myself with emptying my second oil patch (he had difficulty destroying it because of all my DKs) and building transports that were almost always sunk after an attack. However I did build 3 destroyers which, at lvl 5, killed like 15 gryphons :)
We sent transports back and forth. He was aiming squarely at my main base, sending tons or gryphons, mages, and knights. Luckily he was using subs so he couldn't destroy my fortress from the sea. I managed to send 6 sappers to his main base, blasting his castle and a few aviaries to pieces. After that, I attacked white, which was his last expansion and the last mine left with any gold in it, not to mention where he had re-built his castle. So it was really the most important spot on the map.
My combinations of ogres and DKs were effective, but he had 4 barracks there pumping out knights and also hordes of gryphons, so he kept stopping my attacks. Luckily, I was also defending well against his own, especially since he kept throwing his gryphons straight into my D&D. Anyway, we sent transports back and forth for eons, each quickly reacting to the other's attacks, and we were both slowly running of gold. Finally I was left with only 1200 gold, 200 oil and a transport, so I loaded all my remaining army guys along with a peon in the transport, and set off towards white, while my old base went up in flames. There were still barracks at white, but I think he was out of gold also, with all his gryphons, and he stopped building troops.
I read some of your "And he thought it was over" stories, and thought I might do the same. So, with my last gold, I built a hall at white, out of sight of his remaining buildings. I then used my transport, which he still hadn't found, to send my peons from aqua to white. He had destroyed all my main base except 4 farms remaining from a blizzarded NaTe formation, and asked me why I didn't surrender. "I don't surrender till I'm eliminated" I said, or something to that effect. Meanwhile, unknown to him and his bad recon, my peons at white were happily mining away the last gold. I built two barracks and a lumber mill (for axethrowers, to stop dragons) while he attacked my empty expansions with his own last remaining transport. I started upgrading my hall, for ogres (I still had 200 oil) but then remembered at the last minute that I had no oil for a new blacksmith. I toyed with the idea of building a shipyard and an oil platform but finally decided it wasn't worth it. (getting ogres would have cost about 4500 gold)
After the mine ran out, I slaughtered my peons and made grunts until I ran out of food, using the farms in the NaTe formation he had forgotten to destroy for food (he might have won if it wasn't for those). When I had a ton of guys, I yelled "ATTACK!" and sent my transport back and forth from my base to his, ferrying 6 grunts or axethrowers each time. He was rapidly overwhelmed by the awesome force of my grunts :).
Even though it was impossible that I win, since he still had subs, I wanted to have my revenge so I attacked his first two expansions. He had lots of guard towers so most of my guys were killed, but I destroyed his first and nearly his second. Unfortunately he was pretty good with mages and used hit-and-run blizzards to kill my grunts. He finally sunk my transport with a sub, but I was still left with some axethrowers and peons at white, along with all my remaining useless buildings.
He destroyed the buildings with hit-and-run blizzard attacks, which I laughed at. Waste of mana. I guess he wanted revenge also :). Anyway, after all my buildings were gone, I set my remaining 2 flyers on the shore where he was most likely to send his transport, and kept my eyes squarely on my last remaining guys, so I would not be caught off-guard. I kept them moving in circles around the shore, so I wouldn't be caught by a magebomb.
After waiting a while, I saw him send his transport, which for some reason he had still kept visible, right beside one of my flyers, and unload 5 mages at the same time. I was like, YES! I immediately charged him with all my guys. One of the mages tried to start a blizzard, but it didn't have time to build up and I walked right through it. I quickly slaughtered all the mages and started whacking the transport. He finally came to his senses and ordered the transport to move away, but one of my guys threw one last ax that sunk it. "Damn" he said. Hehehe. And so it was a tie.
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Broccolist
