Xrum - an inside Perspective

Heyho dear Arkheim players,

since the aggressiveness and resentment between the different "camps" on the testserver is constantly rising - and I might not be entirely innocent that it does - I figured I could also make the first step into the other direction. Maybe help to mend the hostilities by providing an objective (as far as that is possible as an involved person) war-report or rather... a summary about what we did, how we did it, and why we did it.

Luckily I regularly made a few screenshots, so I should be able to tell you a coherent story even though it has been weeks since most of it transpired.

_{Also, since I am not playing s6, I do have the time to summarize this action-packed server for the curious reader.}

Island 1

The first island only lasted ... 2 whole days. Not much happening on Island 1 you'd think, buuut...

A few hours later...

Even in Xrum we sometimes have to deal with... that kind of stuff. I mean, chances are high that those were only the "free to watch videos" but still. Apart from that island1 went very well so far.

But then something happened. We lost 2 accounts and it took us half an eternity to find replacements for them. An eternity at least judging by testserver-standards. The result was that we dropped down in WP even though we had more than 10% more supplies than the second realm.

Another reason for that was probably that all 15 members constantly rolled for t1 inf in all their supplies, so we had nearly zero PvP troops but on the flip side we were able to clean the camps on our first island to.. the 750k-1m one - combined with the fact that we had a lot of SR players in the realm the eco-boost of having cleaned nearly all the res-fields before Island 2 even started was one of the reasons for our later dominance in the WP-ranking.

But then we found 2 new accounts, Ketodex and Endtime if I remember correctly, and we were very glad about that. That's how island1 went from Xrum's side so far.

Island 2

We waited with ascension. We didn't want to be stuck in the first circle, not enough potential to expand. So we waited and took position #12 - the furthest out position on the second circle, making sure that we have a lot of free expansion-space and only 3 opponents in the worst case.

Sitting there on our nice position 12, we were watching our next-door-neighbor - chill and grill - and how they industriously raided their GTs:

What you don't see on this screenshot is, that someone donated a tower of theirs. So instead of having 4x250 orb towers, they had 1x1k tower. This is why it is so important to not randomly do stuff. Seeing that 1k tower gave us the idea to "finish them off before they could ally with one of our two other neighbors".

Purely by outward appearance, CnG had not only roughly equal WP with us but also had secured the second most supplies on island1. They were a real threat at that point.

So we timed our war. We declared war roughly at 8pm and then we set up an attack that arrived at their 1k orb tower (we only needed 1k orbs to win the war because we paid attention not to go over 4k orbs ourselves) at 4.30am.

They didn't have enough people online during the night/morning (even though some of them set their WLs on watch before they went to bed, well done) and so we won the first war on the second island as the first realm under the new "War&Peace" -System.

But before we could enjoy our additional supplies, three realms declared war on us.

The Horde, Hessenland and Originals.

(lovely bug :p)

The last war-participant was miiiiiles away and it was the first real drama of the server. Nobody from the leaders claimed to have declared that war, but a dev very fast told them, that one of them did and it was not a bug. I want to apologize to snow whom I had suspected to be the culprit - she wasn't the traitor, it was an old Titans member who lost against us on s1 (talk about holding a grudge). But we only figured that out later on island 4, so sorry again to snowshoe who was under suspicion from her own realm-mates partly because of me.

(I continue in my next post, because of all the uploaded pictures the forum is slooow and this site crashes regularly -.-)

The war started and we soon realized we actually had not 2 but 3 borders.

The Western one (against The Horde):

The Southern one against Hessenland:

And in a few hours, ChillnGrill will figure out that they can also attack us. Making it essentially a 3v1 on the second island already.

The problem with CnG was, that they could attack all our constructing towers and they did. That way we couldn't expand to the east or north and they even interrupted towers we placed in the South. And because it was still bugging by then, when they successfully conquered a tower in construction, it belonged to them.

A full day later (and when our wars were all over) Sarge fixed it:

But until then CnG did this constantly, probably still mad that they had to pay us tribute :p

---

The worst thing about this war against The Horde and Hessenland was, that we had no portals ready.

And when our Southern portal was close (I think you can only have 1 portal on i2) what did CnG do?

They started a gigantic attack against our portal. And they (rather easily -.-) prevented it from being finished. That put us under a lot of pressure to end the war before Hessenland's portal became active.

Short teaser: We were so much in the defense, busy with defending both realm's raids, that we weren't able to finish the war in time.

And since this was the first "real" war activity was high in our discord:

forum.arkheim.com/index.php?attachment/1230/

(Some people wonder how we are able to coordinate so ... flawlessly. And presume the leaders must have pw access. But actually, if you have a dedicated, active group and you can coordinate their efforts over voice, that is way better than having to do everything on your own :p)

So long story short. CnG prevented our portal from going up in the South, Hessenland pushed and we had to send reinforcements from our Ark.

But remember, it was the very beginning of island2, so troops were low. And because we started fighting before the actual war started, both realms were severely.. weakened when the war finally began.

Here you can see how Hessenland was able to conquer us because we decided to focus on The Horde first (normally you want to finish the weaker realm first, but posit-wise (and because Hessenland had a portal up) we had to take down The Horde first.)

And a bit later:

But then Hessenland made a critical mistake - or they couldn't do it differently because they didn't have enough troops left / enough players online. But they didn't continue to push. Only with roughly 5 players, they attacked us from this perfect position, and so we could focus more than half of our realm to make friends with The Horde.

And the W&P system was exciting. It was a close call. I have to say it here publicly: They fought very well. Not just activity wise but also intelligently.

They only needed to successfully raid 2-3 towers and we'd have to pay them tribute!

And they tried...

While CnG was doing some bug-using - ehm, testing. (In the beginning, you could set up the attack on a constructing tower and start the conquer after it already finished constructing)

We were able to raid some orbs from The Horde.

(What a stupid overlay... Blocking the view to your resources, I don't want to know how many res we lost because of that)

And then the war boiled down to fights like these. Everyone was excited because The Horde still had a good shot at winning.

Or this raid:

I think both were successful and that's how it looked at the other gate (the Western one):

They had already conquered... a lot of towers from us. Well, 2 to be precise:

But when you are Xrum, you don't just want to win the war by the skin of your teeth, you want to win and take their towers, so have even more space and more supplies.

In the end we were glad that we managed not to lose the war itself, and finished it without conquering a single tower from them.

I mean, at this point we were using our fully stacked Ragthans and Bilicis ... because we needed every last troop we had.

After that we had full capacity to deal with Hessenland, but we had to share with our friend AY:

I think they declared war because we asked them? I could be wrong. We had a Turkish speaking member in our realm so that was when we established relations for the first time. In the beginning of I2. And now I know why they didn't push us in the north, or only with a few players, they probably defended against AY!

A day after all the wars were done we finished the last fields in our city.

(We couldn't clean as many res-sports on I1 because of sapphire-shortage and because we played dwarf instead of elf... they did have quite the advantage for a few days)

We also had some miscoordination happening in the TG:

But overall, we were really glad how I2 went even though it felt a bit strange that all the action happened on the very first day of ascension and from that onwards we could only observe... Because we had a truce with all 3 neighboring realms until the end.

Island 3

Now the fun starts.

We spawn on island 3 and have our ally AY directly next to us. (what a coincidence! :p)

Our tower planners immediately doing "their thing" and when we talked with AY we even agreed to share the rare troop supply in the south of the gate. (the infantry-one (crazy generous in my opinion))

_{(not my markings on the map, that's from one of our towerplanners)}

Our other neighbor was the French Knight - a rather potent realm just from their WP. The X is where we want to place our portal.

And while we prepared our war with French Knights (that was over in ~4 hours once it was declared) our ally AY was already fighting RS:

If you notice their activity - they are far away from being able to move all their 120 WLs at this point. (As is to be expected from a [C] mid-tier realm)

They lost the fight but it was not a one-sided stomp. Watching that fight it was clear that RS more experienced and a bit more active. But we still felt good having AY right next to us because they were our ally and wouldn't backstab us, so we could figure on the really important conflict.

On I3 we had to fight ITF + WN and those realms were bursting from confidence and warpotential.
ITF (their leader to be precise) already made sure on i2 that he wants to fight us and WN ... well ... _{historically speaking realms that had GHED in their realm always only had one goal.}

That WN was closer to the Anvil (it's random which realms are closer and there is a fluctuation that makes it impossible to predict which spot you have to take to be closer) lead to this very unfortunate result:

(we are attacking French Knights portal because we figured they would be on WN/ITF side if they decide to join in. And take a look at WN. They are holding all 3 rare supplies!)

To recap. The situation right now is:

- AY is in a fight with RS

- Our ally who we brought from island 2 is doing exactly as we expected. (losing their fight against a realm that is significantly weaker than either ITF or WN but he blocks their path to our Eastern flank, so we are still grateful)

- We already beat French Knights (they didn't resist, so we don't gain any tributes, BH will get 20%) and are secure in our Western flank.

- AY and Xrum both have a portal close to Samuda but WN was faster and took all three rare supplies, even the one at our side.

- We know that ITF and WN have teamed up against us. (Well, we presumed it because of the ITF's leader comment from island2)

If you haven't played on the server, the next part will introduce some drama.

Because the last entry is already more than a day old, I will not presume you remember what you've read last time.

Xrum was working under the assumption that ITF and WN are working together, possibly with French Knights as well (who we have already won against so they can only interfere if we build a new portal)

We had AY on our side who were a little bit weaker than RS from the initial ~10 hours of fighting-observation. And how valuable they would really be against either ITF or WN was still another question since allies historically work harder to defend themselves/further their own goals than helping their partner.

---

And that was when a WN leader approached us. Per IGM (ingame message).

To make sure those pictures will not be taken down, I will have to remove the name(s).

I admit getting approached AFTER they have taken all the rare supplies right in front of our face felt a bit... mocking/taunting/cocky. And I told him so in the ensuing Discord conversation.

But apart from the fact that it was Christmas and people in our own realm also had RL-obligations (myself included), there were two IG-related reasons to accept their proposal. Firstly we were both building a portal right now and theirs was up faster. So they could attempt to prevent our portal. Secondly, if we wait a day, AY would be in a way better position to help us because the fight with RS would likely be decided at that point.

And if you have ever fought a 2v1, you know that every little bit helps that brings you "relief". So even if they only invest 20-30 WLs (we didn't expect more, realistic as we are) that DOES still help us.

So we talked it over and 30 minutes later (it was 10am on the 25th) we had our decision. We would agree to the NAP if we can make sure that we can help AY in the very unlikely event that ITF/WN know about our connection to AY and have used this "oh, we want a NAP because our players want to celebrate Christmas with their families!" was just a ruse. At this point, one Xrum leader knew one WN leader and so 'we' were relatively sure they wouldn't try something underhanded.

But since I was the one who did the negotiating (normally Lotte does the things that involve 'talking') I wanted to make sure and not rely on a gut-feeling of trustworthiness. As I said, we figured they don't even know about "us and AY" in the first place.

My point is. I wanted to clarify what exactly this NAP meant for both sides. That's why I (now talking with their other leader) asked this:

Now, I want to be crystal-clear:

When he answered I was reasonably sure that he did not consider us helping AY by raiding their towers. But the fact that he did not include any passage about helping other realms in the first place made me confident that they were actually negotiating in good faith. And really wanted a day off because they have so many US-Americans in their realm.

Long story short, 7 minutes after we ratified the NAP they declared war on AY.

We felt betrayed. Their explanation why that action was okay was twofold:

Firstly, the second leader didn't know what the first leader said to make us agree to the NAP.

Secondly, we didn't write it directly into the NAP-agreement that they were not allowed to attack anyone else.

What did our steadfast ally do the moment WN declared war?

They started de-constructing the closest 3!! towers (including their portal) - removing themselves completely from Samuda - so that they not only had no shared border with WN but they had quite the distance between them. (and no portal anyway)
(ITF was cut off from the Anvil anyway at this point)

And then they complained that WE betrayed THEM by making this NAP.

We told them multiple times that we could still defend them - and there was no reason whatsoever to deconstruct all those towers but they said they "had to focus on RS" and with that, we saw the 20-30 WLs that we were counting on gone.

---

AY is blaming us to this day that we let them down with that NAP. That we are untrustworthy allies (and that might even be the reason why they switched sides later, now that I think about it)

- while at the same time -

WN is telling us the same. That we broke our NAP with them by helping AY. Something they keep saying to this day.

And actually, this is the very reason I was writing the first parts in the first place.

You can either argue we broke the NAP to help our ally (which makes their subsequent betrayal even worse)

OR

you can argue that we didn't help our ally but then we also didn't break the NAP.

But hearing both allegations shamelessly next to each other is really unfair.

_OR

_{you can say we didn't do anything wrong. That's my position. But now you know the facts at least and hopefully, I won't have to listen to "you broke the NAP and didn't help your ally" any longer.}

You wouldn't believe how enraged the first leader (the one with the Christmas-approach) reacted when he realized we were prepared for their backstabbing (and how he insulted Lotte and me). 5 minutes after we told the other leader that a big reason we agreed to the NAP was that we didn't want to be complete assholes and didn't want to "win" a war by taking advantage that most of their players apparently aren't online, the entire conversation was deleted (luckily I had made a screenshot right afterward because we had to discuss their proposal).

Sorry for the few pictures. The next part will have a lot more of those since we obviously were now forced to react. And war ensued.