Round 9

Round Details

• Unusually, instead of being one, the other or none, short traveltime was enabled both in parallel and in cluster.
• Private Galaxies were also enabled.

Round Summary

After Round 8 the last of the old powerhouse alliances, Fury, retired. As well as this the victors of the round, Titans and LDK, both disbanded. This left an immense power vacuum in the game. Into the void stepped a number of new alliances, alongside some old ones stepping back up. New boys Eclipse, primarily assembled from ex-Fury members, and Olympians, with a large number of Titans members in their ranks, appeared to be two of the main contenders pre-round. Initial indications suggested an alliance between the two was on the cards but Olympians moved away from Eclipse and allied ViruS and MadCows to form VOM. In response Eclipse allied Wolfpack, Elysium and ToT, creating WEET. At the same time a third block was formed between NoS, RaH, hirr and Auld, which became known as NAHR. Levels of resentment at VOM for forming the first block of the round, coupled with certain ties between alliances in the different blocks led to NAR and WEET NAPing pre-round in order to hit VOM, who formed galaxies solely out of the alliances in their block pushing the others towards this option.

Desperately outnumbered VOM recruited Vision and Ministry in an attempt to even the odds. Unfortunately this was too little, too late. Outnumbered, and concentrated in galaxies which were easy to find by simple virtue of the process of elimination in a shrinking universe, VVOMM came under massive pressure from the first week of the round. They effectively had zero chance of success under attack from such a large number of other alliances and many galaxies simply collapsed under the unrelenting attacks they faced nearly every night as the round began. Unable to gain any ground against NARWEET VVOMM was roided dry. With their opposition decimated WEET dropped the NAR NAP. As WEET launched their offensive against NAR many galaxies with members from both blocks either refused to take part in the war or left NAR for WEET protection. Many NAR members either quit or changed sides in an attempt to keep their roids and, despite attempts to get VVOMM involved on NAR's side, this led to a war which could have lasted a number of weeks being over in a matter of days.

As the galaxies split between NAR and WEET were attacked by different alliances within the WEET block tensions escalated. With NAR's roids mostly gone or protected in certain galaxies, accidental hostiles within the WEET block grew and requests for retals on planets within the block went up, primarily between Wolfpack and Eclipse. A Wolfpack BG, Dragons, launched attacks on a top Eclipse HC galaxy, 46.10, in response to perceived hostility. As events built up a head of steam Eclipse ended their agreements with Wolfpack. The block split down the middle as Elysium announced they would stick with their long-running allies Wolfpack and ToT stayed with Eclipse.

Wolfpack/Elysium versus Eclipse/ToT started as a fair more even war than any of the previous ones. Many planets which had been untouchable so far in the round were roided down on both sides of the conflict and other alliances took the chance to gain some measure of revenge. Initially slightly outnumbered Eclipse and ToT gradually started to pull ahead over the space of the first couple of weeks of the war. At this point momentum kicked in as activity declined in Wolfpack/Elysium and a number of their remaining top planets switched sides, a few had already changed over in the first nights of the war, in order to keep their roids. Within three weeks of the WE/ET split Eclipse and ToT were well on top. The last couple of weeks of the round consisted of Eclipse and ToT tightening their hold on the top rankings and as the round finished virtually every t100 planet belonged to one of these two alliances. The winning planet was sliekas of Eclipse and #1 galaxy was a joint Eclipse/ToT one.

View from a VVOMM member galaxy

I will tell only about start of the round.

At start i want to say few words about Eclipse, before round started i knew they have outstanding power and I forecast they win the round. As they got a lot of members from alliances that had fallen apart in Round 8 like Adelante, Fury, FAng, Titans, ie lots of best players from other alliances. Now about main thingie at start.. ppls saing that it was VVOMM (5 alliances) at war with WEETNAHR (9 alliances - 4 in WEET among them Eclipse and 5 in NAHR - A is Auld - itself 2 alliances), but actually it wasn't that way, it was way simpler VVOMM against the rest of the Universe. Let's see at start there no wars until tick 72, parallel alliances being formed, every galaxy in para geting accepted, as WEETNAHR have way more members, they control para, geting intelligence, figuring out VVOMM galaxies coords(very easy, as it's mainly only VVOMM and WEETNAHR galaxies). Soon enought after protection over, they start kicking VVOMM galaxies from para alliance (starting from weakest ones) and all para start bashing them(all not VVOMM, i.e. Universe) as they only targets allowed to be attacked in para, and we all know all attacks at first in para. We tried to defend as we could, but odds wasn't on ours side, one thing fight again 9 alliances, another - with rest of Universe, unable to get roids, as they get defence in para, others (not VVOMM/WEETNAHR) wasn't mind kicking others VVOMM (even top para galaxies) from para alliances, i think they just was gutless, really i can't blame them, poor puppets. :P Well, the rest is very simple standing against galaxy is impossible. What happened after in round? - I have no idea.

Round 9 History from Sonnebomber

Planetarion didnt die. A firm called Jolt bought PA and the old creators continued their work as employees of jolt. Short summary of the political situation - blocks:

VVOMM - Vision, ViruS, Olympians(old Titans, LDK core), Madcows, Ministry

NaR - NoS, Auld(hirr), RaH

WEET - WP, Elysium, Eclipse(Fury follower), ToT

NaR and WEET agreed to nap with eachother to get revenge on the LDK/Titans guys in Olympians and as revenge for WebAngels behaviour during the politic period of R9.

It was a 3 week take out and VVOMM was dead.

ToT itsself got a new international wing. Called LCH, it is the old leech alliance and played several rounds as BG for different allys. Together with LCH we played as one alliance and became finally a real topalliance with also an high membercount and able to fight each other topalliances in the game.

After the VVOMM take out, NaR and WEET dropped their nap again and a new 2 week take out of NaR happend. After 5 weeks, WEET had controll over the whole universe and a longer stagnation was the result. Finally the targetsituation became so bad that WEET decided to splitt. ToT went with their old friends and allieds from Eclipse and Elysium went with WoflPack. So at least the last war of this round was a fair one (2 vs. 2). A 3 week hard conducted war followed till Ecl/ToT won the predominance. Last 2 weeks of R9 were dominated by stagnation again. Altogether it was the most successfull round of ToT in our PA history. All top10 gals had ToT AND Ecl members in. ToT had 40 top100 planets. top100 of ToT were all in top250 of the planetranking. Our allieds Eclipse had a similar successfull result. I think the result speaks for itself. --[ToT]Sonnenbomber

Final Rankings

• Top 100 Planet Ranks
• Top 10 Galaxy Ranks