[DrunkenViking]

Someone cares, someone does not, here's the account from Ultores' perspective nevertheless..

Ultores spent the aftermath of the summerround idling and never set up anything proper. In the end we went into the round with less than 40 members and an attitute of "whatever, next round maybe". Xerxes and agar3s spent the weeks before the round proclaiming that they'd be busy in respect to sorting defence during the round, so an alternative plan would have to be in place.

We randomed around untill two weeks into the round where we realised that we had 50+ members and were #2 on sizerank, without defending. Earlier we had set a defencive deal with bows till around pt500 and one with p3ng till pt 600, in order to not get targetted by what we imagined would be the main competitors. With no proper DC's, keeping roids became key in regards to pols.

We soon added a deal with unsullied to limit incs further, and planned to add a deal with either norse or ct to limit potential blocks. We still had no DC's at this point so defencive deals became critical to maintain decent value. CT stalled and norse opted to accept a defencive deal around 3 weeks into the round.

At this time we were "comfy", but knew very well that we had deals expiring at shitty times(midround is usually when ct blocks vs ult for those that haven't noticed"). We tried to get a deal with either Ct or Nd, since we knew we were very vulnerable if we ran into pt600(the time where p3ng deal expired) with no deal with either of the 3. We preassured to get deals overlapping the p3ng deal in order to avoid a block, but neither Nd nor Ct would take it, in desperation, knowing we still had no DC's, we offered p3ng an extention aswell. Noone accepted.

As a result of the uniform replies to previous political talks, we knew a block were coming, and suddenly we recieved word from bows hc that "they had to start hitting us". A quick headcount told us that we had a minimum of 3 allies and now suddenly bows in addition lined up to hit us. We played the "wtf, have you forgotted what we've done for you lately" card and bows changed their course and renewed their deal. They however forgot to inform nd and ct, whom launched at us fully. Then out of the blue the next day p3ng and ct accepted previously offered deals, which left ult with few options but to hit nd.

At this point we were about #1 for score and #1 for roids. Since tickstart we had a few old members show up, and some members who were ment to play with Apprime decided to play with us. So at this moment we were sitting on 60 members, and xerx and agar3s were showing signs of life the past week. Suddenly we realised we had to play for win(which in all honesty had not been a goal so far).

We never wanted to hit nd, as they were skinny, and not competition, but that was what politics left us with. The only way out was by breaking deals, which we don't do, so there we were. We had an expiring deal with p3ng, so as soon as we could, we swithed to p3ng(who were still within 20 mill and a contender) and offered nd a deal. Later bows asked us not to hit p3ng, since p3ng might turn on them, but it was too late for us to do anything else since nd had already accepted the deal anyway.

p3ng dropped fast, since norse was also hitting them at the time. We decided not to coordinate with norse, simply because we didn't want to "block", which ment we piggied and went at them very inefficiently. But in the end p3ng faced two alliances and dropped from the competition for tagwin.

Again we faced deal expiration, this time the overlap of deals were not as well organized. We had originally planned to switch to targetting ct to a certain degree, but were now hearing rumours that bows were coming. We poked around and found that at least bows/p3ng/ct were definately coming our way. About time! Time to ground! agar3s and xerxes had been eased into it by this time, and we were ready to fight off a block. We still gave bows a lot of shit for breaking their deal, which was pretty sad considering half the hc didn't even know they had made a deal with ult.

Incs came rating between 200 and 285 fleets per 24 hrs. To our surprise we found rather big waves from asc and hr in there, which made us question our targetting the first 600 ticks. We had certainly pissed someone off unintentionally. Everyone stepped up and we got the job done with rather low losses all things considered. When we realised there were no way bows would catch up, we offererd Ct a deal in order to not having to gound the rest of the round. At this point the win was given, but we wanted some fun at the end. Ct took it, and p3ng soon dropped from targetting us leaving bows alone vs ult, something forces in both allies wanted. Then the round ended as it will tomorrow! I'm off to the mountains to catch some trout!

Thanks for an interesting round!