Round 6
 |
Information
Round 6 saw the introduction of races.
Round Summary
Round 6 began with the widespread feeling through the universe that Furgion should be prevented at all costs from being allowed to stagnate the game as they had done in three out of the four previous rounds. A new alliance, Deus Ex Machina, emerged with the goal of ensuring that nobody was able to stagnate the game again as had been done. Deus took its members from many different groups, but a large number were ex-BlueTuba. Another new alliance, Titans, split off from Legion. This occurred primarily due to dissatisfaction on behalf of many of the members, who had remained behind in Legion after the Wolfpack split, with how the return of Wolfpack members to the fold was handled, as well as issues over the choice of Fury ahead of Elysium in the latter stages of Round 5. Initially Titans were set to join Deus, who had allied with ND and hirr, but with many strong links still in place with Legion, especially among Joy of Villainy, the Titans group re-allied Legion, leaving Deus, before the round started. This led to Agamemnon leaving Titans in order to join Deus, where he became the lynchpin of their war machine for the round to come.
After this Deus, ND and hirr looked for allies elsewhere. They found these in NoS, Wolfpack and CELL, joining together to form FoS, Fusion of Six, which later became Fusion of Seven with the addition of Guild. FoS aligned themselves with Xeta, consisting of Xanadu, Elysium, TFD and Silver, and prepared to take on Fury, Legion, Titans, ViruS and ToT, FLTTV. Although FLTV was highly organised they quickly discovered they were vastly outnumbered in a universe where whole clusters were dominated by FoS/Xeta. However, due to FLTV's organisation, they had set up large roid farms in order to boost their growth rates and their gals rose to the top of the rankings quickly. FoS and Xeta, instead of going after these top gals focused on pounding on the mid ranking galaxies. After initial debates within FLTV over whether to target Xanadu or Deus the block, under pressure from Legion to do so, went after Xanadu. Nonetheless the majority of FLTV galaxies steadily lost ground leading to their top gals becoming isolated. FoS/Xeta then switched their targeting towards the big FLTV gals who found themselves lacking sufficient support to hold them off. FLTV galaxies were methodically stripped of their roids and fell down the rankings as FoS and Xeta rose past them.
At this time both FoS and Xeta began eyeing each other, neither wishing to see the other block victorious and with Deus having their declared goal of avoiding stagnation. Hostilities between FLTV and FoS began to wind down at this time leading to Xeta pre-empting FoS and announcing the cessation of all agreements with Deus, hoping to isolate them from the rest of their block. The FoS block in return went to war with Xeta, with alliances such as Guild declaring so on AD, and contacts organised between FLTV and FoS led to both groups targeting Xeta. A notable exception here was the NoS/WP/CELL section of FoS which despite declaring war against Xeta sat back, partly due to large numbers of shared galaxies, and avoided out and out hostilities. Control of galaxies at this time was a key element in the progress of the war, with many galaxies split down the middle in terms of memberbase.
With the pressure off FLTV they grew rapidly in the last weeks of the round, tagging up their galaxies as [NOTDEAD], their destruction of Storebo of Elysium, then #1 planet, being a particularly noteworthy event. Deus came under heavy fire and Xeta, especially, lost many of their top ranking galaxies. Silver disbanded under the intense pressure they came under and merged into Elysium. As the round came to a close the top galaxy rankings were controlled by NoS and Wolfpack primarily, and FoS more generally. The round was not a decisive victory for any particular alliance though. While the NoS/WP Dragons galaxy finished #1, Xanadu, more specifically, LDK had the #1 planet, sliekas. They had sacrificed their other planets in order to ensure that sliekas finished as #1 and accomplished this in style with a memorable rearguard action. Given Deus' control of political events during the round and the re-emergence of FLTV at a time when FoS and Xeta were becoming exhausted it would be difficult to predict with accuracy what might have happened if the round continued. All in all, Round 6 went down as one of the more interesting rounds in Planetarion history.
Round 6 History by lokken
Prologue
Round 5 was a largely one sided affair. Fury, Wolfpack, BlueTuba, Elysium and Legion had blocked relentlessly and won the round with weeks to spare. However, victory came at a price for this strong block. BlueTuba disbanded mid-round under the weight of losing members to larger alliances in the group; Elysium and Wolfpack became politically marginalised as the strength of the relationship between Sid of Fury and Biggdogg of Legion became apparent, cannibalising their allies; members of Legion's own ranks walked to form Titans in disgust at the alliance's renewed corralling with Fury. It was this very discontentment, coupled with Xanadu's desire to gain revenge after a bitter defeat that shaped the very nature of round 6. What followed was arguably one of the most explosive and relentless rounds in Planetarion history.
The Protagonists
FLTV – Fury, Legion, Virus, Titans
Arguably led by Fury, this group was the remnants of the winning block from the previous round. Titans were widely expected to oppose Fury, but due to their ties with Legion and battle groups such as Joy as Villainy, ultimately walked away from a previously agreed relationship with a new alliance, Deus Ex Machina.
With two top alliances in Fury and Legion, a solid middle tier alliance in Virus and a small group of elite players in Titans, FLTV were arguably the strongest block and favourites at the start of round 6.
Xeta – Xanadu, Elysium, The Frying Dutchmen (TFD), Silver (Ag)
Xeta was Xanadu's chosen vehicle for reclaiming the Planetarion throne. Despite defeat in round 5, Xanadu were still a mighty alliance, particularly with their LDK and BULL battle groups. This allowed them to retain their capacity and expertise to stage the formidable wave attacks that won them round 4 so spectacularly. They were joined by a sister alliance, Silver and with a strong Dutch contingent, they were able to persuade TFD to join them Elysium, cast out from the Fury and Legion fold, found new strength and influence with their new partners. But most importantly, this allowed them to have a shot at revenge after being cannibalised by Fury and Legion during round 5's extended stagnation period.
FoS (Fusion of Six) – Deus, hirr, NewDawn, Wolfpack, Novus Ordo Seclorum, CELL
While Deus was arguably the most influential force within this grouping, FoS were less tightly knit than the other groupings. With such strong forces in the universe, it can be said that these alliance were together more out of necessity than any kind of particular love for each other.
In Deus, this block possessed the unknown quantity of round 6. Led by Rob, jester, AlbinoSquirrel, Lokken, Patrician and eventually QueenDax and Agamemnon, it could be said that their leadership was made up of malcontents and people who had done well in leading smaller alliances but who had never really led at the very highest levels of the game. This was also reflected in the membership – their ranks were largely disconnected players from a number of alliances and a large number of former Tubas. In the lead up to the round, they had made their intentions clear: to rid the universe of the stagnation of round 5, for their own benefit. This was accompanied by a widespread propaganda campaign on Alliance Discussions, something that would continue for the course of the round. Deus were closely tied to hirr and NewDawn, as the three alliances closely shared the same philosophy and outlook on the game. Patrician (Tuba), Lokken (Tuba), Barrow (NewDawn) and Duke Leto (hirr) had always been on good terms, thus it made sense for the three alliances to stick together.
However, for them to have any success against such formidable powers, three alliances was never enough. Wolfpack, NoS and CELL needed friends for their own reasons – survival and the ability to fly under the radar and accumulate asteroids. Wolfpack, while a name long established in the game were effectively under new management. With the original Wolf Pack returning to Legion's command in round 5 and a history of opposing Xanadu, they found themselves frowned upon by the two other major groupings. NoS, led by Dingo were in no mood to be shuffled around and play second fiddle to substantially larger alliances. CELL, although weaker than NoS or Wolfpack, found themselves in a similar position.
The War on FLTV
The beginning of the round was characterised by a universal war on FLTV, with Xeta and FoS determined to prevent a repeat of round 5. Titans not joining with Deus was viewed as a major blow to this effort. The only silver lining for Deus was their gain of Agamemnon, a highly capable BC who had helped to achieve a galaxy win for Legion in round 5. Despite Xeta and FoS' numerical advantage the start of the war was surprisingly even. FLTV had built their alliance on a large number of private galaxy strongholds, making them extremely resilient and able to ride out large amounts of incoming.
FLTV built their early success on these strongholds with their leading players able to easily effect defence to their own planets. On the other end, they actively went after major Xanadu strongholds, viewing them as the most dangerous force against them. This proved to be highly effective, leading them to hold most of the top 20 galaxies within the first few weeks. The logic behind this was simple: if the strongholds held out, ultimately their opposition would break, effecting the opportunity for the classic Fury mop-up operation.
In the face of this, Xanadu and Deus used a long-term strategy to turn the round in their favour. FLTV planets outside the strongholds and in Xeta/FoS dominated clusters became the focus of their attention. By shredding vulnerable FLTV planets which were more difficult to defend, they would end up removing any remaining support to FLTV's key galaxies. While time consuming partly due to the nature of the task and partly due to the heroic resistance of FLTV (Fury in particular), this strategy ultimately proved to be successful, putting Xeta in a position where they could mount their famous wave attacks and pick off top Fury galaxies, roiding them to the ground. Some of the top FLTV galaxies were not targeted initially due to the fact that Shiva and Betrayer of Hope, members of one of the biggest XETA galaxies Silvercity and Casablanca, had organised Galaxy NAP's with FLTV to protect certain XETA and FLTV galaxies from all three blocks at the beginning of the game. This deal was perceived as existing primarily for the benefit of various HC galaxies, something which proved highly contentious and led to a number of people joining the FoS block after the later XETA/FoS split.
This war also included some somewhat cynical play by the HC of Deus Ex Machina. On discovering that one of their members, Killmark was cheating, they threw him out of the alliance prior to him being discovered by the multihunters. Being fond of propaganda, they then used the opportunity to attack the large number of FLVT planets effecting reprisals on Killmark, thus making gains at the cost of a few illegitimate planets being thrown out of their alliance.
Operation Barghest
However, with FLTV fighting a losing battle and failing to make inroads on Xanadu, they trained their sights on Deus as a last ditch attempt to salvage a chance of victory in round 6. Focussing on Deus had actually been a considered option for FLVT at the beginning of the round, under the code name “Operation Barghest”. Zhil and Meth of Fury were behind the plan, having suggested that a political decapitation would be the most appropriate way of dismantling the enemy. The idea was that with Deus out of the picture, the efforts between Xeta and FoS would have been far less co-ordinated, making it easier to take them down. This plan was ultimately rejected, with Legion command particularly insistent that the block focussed on the biggest military threat first.
The implementation of Barghest trained a large part of the FLTV war machine solely on Deus and would provide Deus with its first real military test. The battle was bitterly fought, focussing most firepower within a short time period in the middle of the night, to overwhelm not just Deus' defence fleets but their capacity to actually process what was coming at them. Led by Lokken, Agamemnon and Queendax, Deus mounted a frantic defence, calling in political favours with newbie alliances to get defence fleets and sending counters to pin their attackers down.
A bad defeat would have ended Deus' hopes there and then, but Barghest had come too late for FLVT and Deus were able to stave off the attack. The battle was effectively ended by a failed Legion attack on Patrician and Lokken's galaxy, with Legion unable to send their full complement of fleets and Deus able to divert fleets from planets that were being hit earlier that night to defend one of their strongholds. Surviving such an onslaught proved to galavanise the Deus ranks and for the first time gave the rank and file real belief that they could be successful while achieving their anti-stagnation aims.
FoS switch sides
As the war turned decisively in Xeta/FoS' favour, the Deus HC were agonising over their next move. Opinion was massively split over what to do after FLTV were defeated. Often the HC would believe they could win one day only to conclude they were politically doomed the next. One point of view was that relieving any pressure on Fury would ultimately lead to them coming back to win and that given round 5, any Fury success should be prevented at all costs. Ultimately, the opinion to gun for Xanadu and their Xeta block prevailed, viewing a war with Xeta as only a matter of time. Co-ordinating the war with Xanadu had been highly contentious, with regular disagreements over targets, strategy and NAP breaches between the FoS and Xeta blocks. Conscious of their weak position, Deus propaganda targeting Fury waned in this period and began (some might say surprisingly given their reputation) to take a slightly more objective tack.
Politics in Planetarion were about to shift dramatically, as the Deus command viewed close working relations with Fury as their only path to defeating Xanadu, and ultimate victory. Deus' warming relations to Fury did not go unnoticed in Xeta and FoS. Many within FoS voiced discontentment that Deus might become closer to Fury than the rest of the block, while Xeta sensed an act of treachery was in the offing.
With Deus on the verge of persuading its block to side with FLVT, Xeta took the initiative and publicly served a 72 hour notice to terminate their NAP with Deus. This was an attempt to isolate Deus from the rest of FoS and it partially worked, with NoS, Wolfpack and CELL holding back from declaring war on Xanadu, making a conscious decision to let Deus take some damage before taking sides. ND and hirr immediately declared war on Xanadu on principle, despite Leto and Barrow harbouring their own doubts about Deus' plan for success.
Patrician, disgusted that his HC alliance colleagues would choose to work with Fury, left Deus in protest. His parting shot to Fury (and in particular their Executive, Cryptic) was to release information from the BlueTuba archive suggesting that Fury had manipulated the sign up procedure in round 3 and shared accounts to give them a favourable cluster position. This resulted in a bitter debate on Alliance Discussions as to Fury's credibility whenever they accused Xanadu (and in particular, LDK) of cheating.
However, this schism went beyond mere alliance politics; whole galaxies were affected in their alliance makeup. The 72 hour period involved many in Xeta and FoS galaxies shifting alliances to back the block they thought that was going to win and ensure political unity in their galaxies. Ultimately, Xanadu was probably the biggest benefactor of this process. With exchanges between Deus and Xanadu already occurring in violation of the 72 hour cooling off period, the second war of round 6 was ready to begin.
The war on Xeta
Xanadu once more hit the ground running, going straight for Deus as a quick kill would effectively end the round. It therefore came as no surprise to see Deus sustain heavy losses in the early stages of the round, with Deus having to work overtime to keep their alliance and their block in one piece. NoS and Wolfpack were content to sit back and watch Deus take the hits in the early stages, knowing that a weakened Deus would only strengthen any claim they could make to winning the round. As the war progressed, their involvement gradually increased but Deus' close co-operation with Fury had effectively ended any good relations beyond a NAP within the FoS block.
Fury were a major benefactor from the war on Xeta. While they had lost a lot of roids, they had kept their fleets and were far more resilient than in previous rounds, having learned from their hard beating in round 4. The chance to finally get at Xanadu raised spirits in the FLVT ranks and under their new banner of [NOTDEAD] they had become a viable military force once more. Indeed, the Deus HC (many of whom had worked closely with Fury and Legion in the past) felt more at home working with Fury, as both alliances were totally committed to war against Xanadu. With Xanadu being the most effective military force, FoS and FLVT were forced into a strategy of waging a long compaign against them, using their numbers to wear them down.
It was at this point in the round that Agamemnon, the Deus HC responsible for Battle Command came into his own. In Agamemnon, Deus had the benefit of a military leader who despite having a fiery temper, was able to identify the weaknesses in the Xanadu military machine and control his forces with a phenomenal level of commitment. Slowly but surely, FLVT and FoS were able to turn around the war, particularly with Fury once more having sufficient income to build competitive fleets and Deus scrambling one last effort to take their battered alliance over the finishing line.
Endgame
With the war settled and most of Deus command suffering from exhaustion and burn out the round turned its focus on the race for the biggest planet. Arguably there two main contenders for this spot: sliekas of LDK and Drivo of Deus, who had benefited from a reasonable galaxy in terms of politics to move into contention. FLVT and FoS consequently turned their fire solely on sliekas and LDK, however LDK were prepared to sacrifice everything to make sure their planet stayed in the #1 position. Ultimately, LDK ended up sacrificing their entire wing and whoever they could get to help from Xanadu to prop up sliekas, viewing it as a matter of pride. This made sliekas near impossible to roid and resulted in forcing Fury and Deus to give up due to the unsustainable cost of mounting attacks.
The galaxy race was largely considered a foregone conclusion. The leading galaxy (Dragons) was a largely WP/NoS stronghold, enjoying a formidable lead having not been a priority target in both major wars and benefiting from the political protection afforded by FoS. As such, no attempt was ever made to unseat them from their position.
The last week of the round was largely uneventful, with only low level mopping up activity taking place as most were looking forward to the round ending and returning to some sense of normality after a punishingly intense and long round. Fury did attempt to attack Drivo on the last day as they viewed him as a fencesitter, but they were thwarted by a server failure which prevented them from launching and landing in time before the round ended.
This left the result of round 6 as one of contention and being somewhat inconclusive. While Xanadu had the top planet, their alliance had been laid waste, while NoS and WP held the largest galaxy by largely sitting out wars and lacked any significant influence over political and military proceedings. Arguably the the Deus/hirr/ND group can claim victory as the one that was the most the dominant having defeated the two greatest Planetarion alliances and beaten stagnation while holding several top ranks and galaxies, but without a #1 rank in galaxy or planet, this remains a point of dispute. It is this level of complexity that defined round 6, which is widely regarded amongst Planetarion's more experienced players as a one of the finest rounds to have ever been played.
Consequences of round 6
At the end of the round, Deus chose to disband. This was largely because the HC felt that their aims had been achieved and simply that after a period of extended activity, they were simply not up to taking on such levels of responsibility. The majority of Deus HC ended up in Legion and Fury, indicating their preferences based on who they had worked with in the previous round. This also had the consequence of many Deus players joining them in these alliances, tipping round 7 heavily in Fury and Legion's favour before the round had even started.
Round 6 history of the Ðragonlands (5:24) From Jurgen
Before round start Jurgen and lizardking decided to make a galaxy of their own under the flag of Wolfpack with a Ðragons oriented theme. This galaxy was gathered from a number of different places and there were no players with high-profile histories in it. The players brought in were placed into alliances, first in Wolfpack (mainly), GLX and NoS and then later also in Xanadu in order to fight for a high rank. The GC of the galaxy, Jurgen, decided and organized a high percentage of the galaxy attacks in order to prevent any mistakes or failed raids and friendly fire. Planets ingal were only allowed to attack with attacks set by a galaxy-member.
During the initial days of the round 5:24 began to campaign to create a strong cluster alliance [5upreme]. With everyone except FLTV gals being friendly it was quite easy to map resistance in cluster. Cluster 5 turned out to be one of the toughest clusters, containing 2 FLTV stronghold galaxies and 1 support galaxy, and with few other organised non-FLTV galaxies. As protection came to a close Ðragonlands was ranked #7, the Legion stronghold galaxy, 5:16, containing military officers such as Xavi and Rids was #9 and Arfa's stronghold Fury galaxy 5:12 #11. When FoS and Xeta started their 'clear your cluster' campaign Ðragonlands went to war. The main target was 5:16, and they remained so for 7 consecutive days. Although they attempted to fight back, with assistance from 5:12, they proved unable to triumph. After those 7 days 5:16 was quite dead and targeting was switched to 5:12. The war ended after 2 weeks of constant fighting, when everyone was down. 5:16 took the heaviest beating ending up rank 230 and dying away. 5:12 was rank 184 and Ðragonlands dropping to an all time low of #168. After that Ðragonlands ran attacks twice a day, a real galaxy attack every morning at 6:55 CET and day raids for fleets left home and/or pulled during the day time.
When the dust settled on the first few weeks of the round the galaxy went out roiding intensively and in the ensuing days not a single real attack targeted 5:24. The cluster alliance, 5upreme, became the strongest cluster alliance, and the galaxy itself became the fattest gal by far and later also rose to #1 in the score rankings. At one point many of the players in 5:24 had twice the roids that the galaxy in second place had. After it was announced that the round would end in 2 weeks the galaxy decided to keep fleets home at night-time, defend when needed and cease attacking. Later they realized that there was only 1 galaxy (Silvercity) in the top 10 that wasn't present in the Ðragons BG channel #dragonlands. Jurgen personally decided not to participate in the competition for #1 planet. At the time it was common and accepted to farm roids from friends. Jurgen decided that he didn't want to waste his time farming his friends in order to get personal glory and turned down at least three dozen offers of free roids.
Behind the scenes FLTV had asked for retals or permission to launch on 5:24 a number of times. LDK also wanted to attack the galaxy at this point but overall relations to Xanadu were strong due to the presence of a couple of very good friends to Ðragonlands in the Xanadu high command, who held LDK in check. FLTV talked about and threatened to launch on 5:24 frequently and most of Wolfpack thought that they would launch a heavy assault during the very last days, but the galaxy was simply too big to attack by this stage and they had massive numbers of decent fleets on standby. Only a few fleets were launched in the end and those few attacks were defended by 137 fleets of 1337 ships as a show of strength.
Before the end of round the ingal NoS members in fact left their alliance due to arguments they had with Dingo, leaving the only alliance tag in the galaxy name as [Wolfpack].
Round 6 history From Marduk
Between the rounds FLTTV further known as Furgion set up their gals well. Five members of each ally (as a maximum) were placed in a gal to prevent that a single gal absorbing all defence from an ally. Signup and the start of the round was running as we prepared for. But after 2 weeks of building up and preparing for the first strikes almost all Furgion gals received heavy incoming and lost most of their roids. What happened was that fighting against 11 allies was proven nearly impossible. We were left with the chance of working hard to get at least some of our galaxies into ranking.
Suddenly, some weeks before end of round 6 XeTa and FoS declared war on each other. This was a diplomatic disaster for XeTa which declared war on FoS first. At this time FLTV was back in the game. With FoS as our new 'partner' we took down nearly all XeTa gals before havoc. The high amount of XeTa gals dropping down the ranks gave free slots for our own gals. ToT managed to get at least 2 gals into t20 ranking which was a great success.FLTV learned that we needed to communicate better and concentrate on r7. One of the highlights in preparing for the new round, ViruS and ToT linked their irc-servers and set up joined command channels for the new round. We are well prepared for r7 ! --[ToT]Marduk
