Round 7
Round Summary
Round 7 marked the last round for some of the most famous alliances in Planetarion as the overall size of the playerbase continued to decline. After this round both Xanadu and Legion ceased playing and moved on to new pastures. Before that happened though Round 7 marked the beginning of the decline of the major powerblocks that had characterised the early rounds of PA. Following on from Round 6 the two most powerful alliances within the Xeta block, Xanadu and Elysium allied pre-round with the two highest scoring alliances within the FoS block, NoS and Wolfpack, forming Newx. Rumours also abounded pre-round of Newx making arrangements with Auld, a more minor R7 block.
On the other side most of the members and almost all the HC of Deus had merged into the FLTV block following Round 6. Two new alliances, RaH and FAnG were set up, primarily with ex-Legion players, and also aligned themselves with FLTTV leading to the FFLTTVR block. Given the early announcement from NewX that they would be forming a powerblock after a round dedicated primarily to preventing the stagnation that powerblocks had led to so frequently the FLTV block was better placed to gather further allies from the universe. NewX worked with ROCK, Templar and G-II, who called themselves 'Core', and were in turn allied with Auld, although only Core fought with NewX against FLTV in the war to come.
Pre-round many imagined that these sides might be roughly equal in strength, given their rough equality in pure numbers, but for various of reasons this was not the case. Many alliances had weakened significantly from previous rounds, due to the decline in the number of players, and NewX also faced internal communication problems, with NoS remaining on their own IRC server. Despite some level of success in certain clusters within the first two months of the round NewX were largely killed off, with their galaxies being driven out of the top rankings.
With roids drying up and the opposition dead the winning block again began to turn on itself. Problems arose between a number of alliances in the block who lacked firm agreements with each other. Proposals to divide everyone up "fairly" in order to create some excitement for the round went nowhere. Authorised retals became a huge issue in a block bound by numerous agreements and lacking an external enemy to fight. In one of these cases conflict arose between RaH and ViruS after ViruS roided newer RaH members in galaxies where the level of protection was confused. As events escalated one of the larger RaH members, Sention, retalled and roided one of the top ViruS members, Singularity. ViruS wanted war with RaH but with most of the rest of the block, particulary Fury who were the strongest alliance of the round, unwilling to move nothing happened. Another major incident which affected the course the block took involved valy, who was a Wrath member who roided a Fury planet before joining Titans. Disagreements ensued between Fury and Titans over the course of action that should be taken.
At this point the block threatened to break asunder. Certain factions within both ViruS, unhappy at Fury's perceived favouritism towards RaH, and Legion, who were eager to roid FAnG and, led by Fred, disliked Fury, attempted to divide the block in their favour in an event that became known as The Consortium Incident. Rumours were spread that Fury, FAnG and RaH were going to attack the rest of the block. Titans, unhappy with Fury over recent events, were willing to join in the Consortium. However this attempt fell apart within 24 hours of starting. Biggdogg, Legion HC, who had been inactive up to this point returned and reasserted control over Legion's course of action. Equally pro-Fury elements within ViruS ensured that they backed down from the Consortium. Titans were left isolated. Fury dropped their agreements with Titans and Legion did so with both Titans and FAnG. Other FLTV alliances such as RaH felt forced to follow suit.
Titans and FAnG were outnumbered and outmatched. Although certain planets survived due to galaxy protection all un-protected planets lost large numbers of roids. Titans, now working with the only surviving element of the Newx block, LDK, launched a number of fleetcatches against their attackers including a notable one on Sandsnake, a Fury member. Despite some limited successes Fury were unquestionably the dominant alliance this round, claiming more T100 planets and control of more T100 galaxies than any other alliance. The end of the round was marred by "deletion wars" in the top gals, where players reported others for various illegal actions, in order to get their planets deleted, and the widespread breaking of many of the agreements that had made up the FLTV block. In the end the #1 planet for the round was Kileman of Fury, who survived attempts by LDK/FAnG/Titans to knock him off the top spot. The final #1 galaxy was a joint Legion/Fury/Virus gal.
Round 7 History seen from ToT (by Sonnenbomber)
After the various political refactorings in round 6, Xanadu quickly set about organizing a renewed resistance block to counter the FLTTV axis. Unfortunately many FoS and Xeta members were disillusioned with each other, leading to a fairly weak early block Newx, that was countered by a generally (but not unanimously) underrated FLTTV with reinforcements from FAnG and RaH.
ToT itself was still a very small ally, but altogether we had 60 active and combative members. We restructured our attack system and were able to involve a lot of FLTTV gals in our attacks so that also ToT was able to join the war of the top alliances. After 5 weeks of war, FLTTV had killed nearly all top - NEWX gals and planets. A 3 week take out of NEWX followed and all were arguing about the stagnation in the universe.
So it happened what every time happens in such situations, the winner block splits. Fury/ViruS declared war to FAnG and Titans. Legion declared war to RaH and FAnG. Through the good relation between ToT and FAnG command, we decided to help FAnG as much as possible without declaring war to ViruS, Legion and Fury because with our low membercount we werent really able to join the war of the top alliances which had 3-4times of our member count.
So the split of the block was big problem for ToT through losing control over a lot of FLTTV gals. Anyway we tried to stay neutral but after a lot of retals we had to declare war on our old allies from ViruS. We fought them till the end of the round and it ended in a tie. Except for one galaxy our enemies weren't really able to hit us. Good working defence and a lot of good battles made the round into a big success for ToT.
Nearly all our gals ended in the top100 and nearly all members in the top 1000 planet rankings. With the end of R7 a lot of old alliances also left the game. Xanadu and Legion were surely the most important of them. So the political situation for R8 was quiet interesting.
Final Rankings
