The round so far

[Forest]

Disclaimer: I have my own ideas. I appreciate that some will be on the other side of 'war' etc and will have opposite opinions, that is fine. Would be boring if we all thought the same thing.

Blocks: These haven't materialised in the way that people have imagined they would.
TGV/APP have BP'd together and have a long standing agreement. It won't break and why should it. They have 20% of the active memberbase, which in any game is a huge percentage. With the ODDR/FI flack they have, that moves it up to well past 25%. That is before lame fence-sitters etc join in.
For the other side, its been a half arsed attempt by ND/FaNG, but they never really stood a chance.

Alliances:
TGV: A good effort this round, but I am doubting they are getting nearly as much incoming as they say. There just aren't the fleet numbers to cover all AND retal, even with app covering a fair bit of their defence. Time will tell, I look forward to end of round figures.

APP: Hit a bit early on, but again, due to lack of proper imcoming naps, those hitting them found no competion. They tried but no two alliances can take on 25% of the universe at the same time, not even 1up at the height of their power.

FaNG: Lacked imagination in attack and couldn't hold it together in defence in the face of a lot of incoming.

ND: Lack of committment. Supposedly hitting TGV atm but far too many fleets committed to hitting other alliances.

CT: Have stayed unusually quiet this round, with TGV declaring war things will change, but could be over very fast, with TGV grounding and APP/FI retaliating.

HR: I know nothing about what HR doing this round so will stay quiet.

MegaRock: Could have had a major influence on the war this round, but sadly played for planet ranks and went into vac mode at first sign of incoming from APP.

ODDR: A mess from start to finish with severe HC issues leading to 20% of the memberbase walking out. Hardly any targets due to being napped with just about everyone. Did try and take on MR, but the HC concerned just took all defence v MR and let the rest get roided. Should be MUCH higher up with the lack of incoming.
Allied with APP/TGV pretty much from start, only making it public when members had had enough of rubbish targets and tried launching on TGV.
Been pretty vocal in telling anyone who will listen that APP are scared of them and wouldn't dare to hit ODDR.

Fightin Irish: Attack a lot with APP, (no official confirmation but shared waves etc suggest that).

I won't name the rest as they are either a) too small to make a real difference or b) the likes of innuendo/pwned/ast I just don't know what they are doing politically.

That sums up alliances

Personally: As for my planet well, I know when I start a round I won't be able to do well, due to work commitments. The two weeks I was home, I got to top 5 fairly easily. However, a disagreement with my HC led to me leaving ODDR, knowing APP/FI would rape me silly. How I kept so many roids in that time, I do not know, but I am very grateful to my gal and friends out of alliance.
Why do FI hit me? I declared war on them for this round. I have ignored em to a certain extent, I don't hit FI and that's that. I wasn't expecting to be so big, nor they so small. They do come, fairly often, but always with 10+ fleets per wave (one wave was 23 fleets lol) and usually when APP come.
Why do APP hit me? Not really sure tbh, I know they have issues because of my political work in the past.
This round I have had just about nothing to do with politics though, so maybe they just fear me that much.

Conclusion:

A round that promised so much, was effectively over before it started, with a 'we aren't a block' block that really couldn't fail, which is a big disappointment to me.

Roll on next round...