DeletedUser14786
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The Rise and Decline of the Riot in Ithaca
I was reading back on some of the recent threads in Ithaca and had to laugh-- still talking about Riot after all this time? For an alliance nobody seems to want to give credit to, I think we must have made quite an impression! Although they say victors write the history, I figure I can add this to the cannon that seems to part of the discussion (or was). This may seem like a wall of text at first; and it is. It has taken me this long to tell the story because it's a long story to tell; and for the curious only.
I figure I may as well add to this story of Ithaca: After a long talk with petrika.Grosi it seems I didn't know the entire story even as it played out! This is a bit delayed, but I didn't have time to write out the events as they happened; in fact my lack of time to put to this server at that crucial stage was largely part of the collapse of Riot.
Riot crashed hard in the first couple weeks of April-- I am certainly to blame for this, although I think I'm also to blame for the fact that until April we had the second highest member average (in points), the second highest abp count, and when we coordinated conquests, we had excellent timing! Ask former members, I think they can and will confirm this. There were quite a lot of new players to grepolis that I turned into monsters with a little guidance. I got a little soft towards the end when I started feeling guilty about my kick and eat strategy with players that couldn't keep up to my activity standards, because I was watching too much Doctor Who at the time and felt bad about playing at "God" where I had the power to determine if a player could live in Ithaca or get eaten alive by former teammates for not keeping up. This softness made me lax on recruitment standards toward the end. With that said, my only regret is that I never completely figured out the most efficient way to run alliance squads, particularly because there was so little initiative among players to run them. This is my story:
I originally came to Ithaca because Gerrard13100, ray93 and I were screwing around on the rim of Delphi and gerrard suddenly decided that he wanted to found an alliance. We had high expectations (not)
but we came anyway. We quickly discovered that gerrard couldn't lead an alliance for beans,
so we tried to talk him into running operations, which he proved equally inept at:
And I only wish I had saved the screenshots I took of his Mass Mails for those first few conquests... I will only say that I feel mass mails are unnecessary for getting spy reports when you are pursuing a 2k city. I had a few days that could have been a scene from Mutiny on the Bounty-- How long do we put up with this? Do we wait until the storm to relieve Gerrard of command? After watching the end of that movie several times I decided I needed to act.
Cyprus64 -- your stay in Superium Legacy was the first day after I'd driven Gerrard13100 from power-- he had left a mess, to the point that we had a group of players that had already left the alliance, and one player that was angry enough at gerrard that he rimmed him. My point is that Superium Legacy was an awful alliance, to the point that I used my founder rights (when I finally got them) to disband it. I sent out a MM to the former members of SL, where I explained my actions and told them I was founding a new alliance for a fresh start. As many things as I corrected, I still inherited a few flawed players, spies etc that had slipped through gerrard's lax recruitment standards. A friend told me I had a "bad hand," but I didn't believe him and decided to play my hand as best I could.
Some Background on Riot------
Riot's location in o45, which filled last (as all the new servers seem to do) placed me in a position where Riot would need to expand into another core ocean once we'd finished expansion in o45. Given that the other two top alliances (Ile Basilike in o44 and DeB in o55) bordered us, we had limited options and accepted pacts early on with both alliances. Ile Basilike approached us with the intent to cooperate whereas DeB never gave us more than a chill reception. Riot's pact with Deb, which was more-or-less negotiated by gerrard and olddragon and inherited from SL. My assumption from the outset was that it was a NAP until we squared off later when easy targets where morale didn't kill us dried up.
Riot's only other pact was with Spectre, which gave us the unusual offer of being a mercenary alliance-- offering defensive support in exchange for dbp. As it would later turn out, I overestimated the activity of that alliance and the amount of support they would provide Riot. I figure I learn a little bit every day in this game-- and that is an important lesson that I will not repeat.
When Dux Vox offered to merge Ile Basilike to Riot, it seemed as though Riot's expansion problem was solved-- and with that merge, Riot inherited a claim on Ocean 44 and a war with Alliance of Taurus, which was a top 12 alliance at the time run by Petrika.Grosi. I also came to realize that we inherited a few player spies that were working for AoT and As Athens Burns. We started a war with Republica in o54 and pulled a lot of cities off that alliance. We lost two cities in total during this time to enemy alliances, and in both cases the cities were isolated and the players never asked for help. Nodcrush even approached me asking to fight together in a war against DeB long before we'd decided to do so, although I knew that a coalition with AAB meant that Riot would do 80% of the fighting even if AAB participated; so why even bother?
Petrika.Grosi later confirmed that Deus ex and AAB had been actively coordinating a coalition with AoT against Riot for quite some time.
Of course, the actual decision with who to go to war with was asked for quite some time. There was always the question of Deus which came up in the skype council meetings:
There wasn't any malicious intent... we needed room to expand and were considering our options. However, Dux Vox wanted to fight Deus ex Birema.
I was reading back on some of the recent threads in Ithaca and had to laugh-- still talking about Riot after all this time? For an alliance nobody seems to want to give credit to, I think we must have made quite an impression! Although they say victors write the history, I figure I can add this to the cannon that seems to part of the discussion (or was). This may seem like a wall of text at first; and it is. It has taken me this long to tell the story because it's a long story to tell; and for the curious only.
I figure I may as well add to this story of Ithaca: After a long talk with petrika.Grosi it seems I didn't know the entire story even as it played out! This is a bit delayed, but I didn't have time to write out the events as they happened; in fact my lack of time to put to this server at that crucial stage was largely part of the collapse of Riot.
Riot crashed hard in the first couple weeks of April-- I am certainly to blame for this, although I think I'm also to blame for the fact that until April we had the second highest member average (in points), the second highest abp count, and when we coordinated conquests, we had excellent timing! Ask former members, I think they can and will confirm this. There were quite a lot of new players to grepolis that I turned into monsters with a little guidance. I got a little soft towards the end when I started feeling guilty about my kick and eat strategy with players that couldn't keep up to my activity standards, because I was watching too much Doctor Who at the time and felt bad about playing at "God" where I had the power to determine if a player could live in Ithaca or get eaten alive by former teammates for not keeping up. This softness made me lax on recruitment standards toward the end. With that said, my only regret is that I never completely figured out the most efficient way to run alliance squads, particularly because there was so little initiative among players to run them. This is my story:
I originally came to Ithaca because Gerrard13100, ray93 and I were screwing around on the rim of Delphi and gerrard suddenly decided that he wanted to found an alliance. We had high expectations (not)
And I only wish I had saved the screenshots I took of his Mass Mails for those first few conquests... I will only say that I feel mass mails are unnecessary for getting spy reports when you are pursuing a 2k city. I had a few days that could have been a scene from Mutiny on the Bounty-- How long do we put up with this? Do we wait until the storm to relieve Gerrard of command? After watching the end of that movie several times I decided I needed to act.
Cyprus64 -- your stay in Superium Legacy was the first day after I'd driven Gerrard13100 from power-- he had left a mess, to the point that we had a group of players that had already left the alliance, and one player that was angry enough at gerrard that he rimmed him. My point is that Superium Legacy was an awful alliance, to the point that I used my founder rights (when I finally got them) to disband it. I sent out a MM to the former members of SL, where I explained my actions and told them I was founding a new alliance for a fresh start. As many things as I corrected, I still inherited a few flawed players, spies etc that had slipped through gerrard's lax recruitment standards. A friend told me I had a "bad hand," but I didn't believe him and decided to play my hand as best I could.
Some Background on Riot------
Riot's location in o45, which filled last (as all the new servers seem to do) placed me in a position where Riot would need to expand into another core ocean once we'd finished expansion in o45. Given that the other two top alliances (Ile Basilike in o44 and DeB in o55) bordered us, we had limited options and accepted pacts early on with both alliances. Ile Basilike approached us with the intent to cooperate whereas DeB never gave us more than a chill reception. Riot's pact with Deb, which was more-or-less negotiated by gerrard and olddragon and inherited from SL. My assumption from the outset was that it was a NAP until we squared off later when easy targets where morale didn't kill us dried up.
Riot's only other pact was with Spectre, which gave us the unusual offer of being a mercenary alliance-- offering defensive support in exchange for dbp. As it would later turn out, I overestimated the activity of that alliance and the amount of support they would provide Riot. I figure I learn a little bit every day in this game-- and that is an important lesson that I will not repeat.
When Dux Vox offered to merge Ile Basilike to Riot, it seemed as though Riot's expansion problem was solved-- and with that merge, Riot inherited a claim on Ocean 44 and a war with Alliance of Taurus, which was a top 12 alliance at the time run by Petrika.Grosi. I also came to realize that we inherited a few player spies that were working for AoT and As Athens Burns. We started a war with Republica in o54 and pulled a lot of cities off that alliance. We lost two cities in total during this time to enemy alliances, and in both cases the cities were isolated and the players never asked for help. Nodcrush even approached me asking to fight together in a war against DeB long before we'd decided to do so, although I knew that a coalition with AAB meant that Riot would do 80% of the fighting even if AAB participated; so why even bother?
Of course, the actual decision with who to go to war with was asked for quite some time. There was always the question of Deus which came up in the skype council meetings:
[3/23/12 9:47:58 PM] Downy: hey
[3/23/12 10:00:26 PM] Downy: r we still gunna war dues?
[3/24/12 1:44:26 AM] Nick- Ituralde: who is here?
[3/24/12 1:45:12 AM] CnoteG: I am here
[3/24/12 1:45:36 AM] Nick- Ituralde: I've been off skype for a few hours; had to get some work done
[3/24/12 1:46:03 AM] Nick- Ituralde: So now we've got squads, we're gearing up for war, and we just need to decide on our course of action and pursue it steadfastedly
[3/24/12 1:46:27 AM] Nick- Ituralde: *not sure if steadfastedly is a word
[3/24/12 1:47:14 AM] CnoteG: who are we going to war with first? Republika?
[3/24/12 1:48:41 AM] Nick- Ituralde: That's what I wanted to ask this council about. And I want to wait on a decision until we've had more than just 2 people for this alliance. I want to give people at least 24 hours notice whatever we do.
Originally we talked about deus on March 29, then decided it might be a good idea to go after Republica first until we can clear out a couple spies in our alliance. Also republica is easy to beat up for a few days, get some cities and prime territory in O54
[3/24/12 1:48:54 AM] Nick- Ituralde: If we're going to go after Republica, I'd like to have a list of priority targets from that alliance
[3/24/12 2:18:57 AM] Vox: theres no full war with republica
[3/24/12 2:19:01 AM] Vox: u havent fought them
[3/24/12 2:19:11 AM] Vox: u dont understand quit how badly incompitent they are
[3/24/12 2:19:13 AM] Nick- Ituralde: Welcome back mate. Would you say we're just taking cities from them?
[3/24/12 2:19:14 AM] Nick- Ituralde:
[3/24/12 2:19:21 AM] Nick- Ituralde: kk, works for me
[3/24/12 2:19:25 AM] Vox: i could cap a string of undefended towns straight across the ocean alone
[3/24/12 2:19:26 AM] Nick- Ituralde: I am slightly out of touch with that ocean
[3/24/12 2:19:31 AM] Vox: and they wouldnt have a clue what to do about it
[3/24/12 2:19:40 AM] Vox: yesterday a republica guy
[3/24/12 2:19:41 AM] Nick- Ituralde: Would you be able to put up a list or Republica towns that would be good targets for the squads?
[3/24/12 11:55:11 AM] Downy: i meant is war the plan
[3/24/12 2:53:56 PM] Nick- Ituralde: I wanted to ask you all the plan too
[3/24/12 2:54:26 PM] Lord Leif: KK what up
[3/24/12 2:55:16 PM] Nick- Ituralde: I've got gokilla on the line
[3/24/12 2:55:31 PM] Nick- Ituralde: 1. Do we mark republica as targets or just slowly keep expanding in o54?
[3/24/12 2:55:48 PM] Nick- Ituralde: 2. Do we declare war on deus, or wait longer for it (until the 29th or later)?
[3/24/12 2:56:02 PM] Lord Leif: Wait longer on Dues
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