[lokken]

Originally Posted by Zh|l

R6 - Deus Ex Machina form and bring a third block to the wars. They form a block called FoS. Xanadu form their own block called Xeta containing the previous Legion allies of Elysium and a new alliance called Silver. Fury/Legion remain with FLTTV along with ToT/Virus/Titans. War kicks off straight out of protection which is unheard of before, with Xeta launching against FLTTV. FLTTV suspends Operation Barghest (A word document for Fury victory written and discussed between Meth and Zhil - it outlined a plan to destroy Deus first and render the FoS block inert before moving onto the Xanadu block. Support surprisingly came from Titans more than Legion who were more worried about Xanadu than Deus) and attacks Xeta back. At a critical stage when FLTTV are looking to be winning, FoS join in alongside Xeta against FLTTV. Furgion are defeated for the first time in history. FoS then seek FLTTV help vs Xeta which is granted. Fury leader Synthetic Sid suggesting and implementing the tag of [NOT DEAD] which serves as a major morale boost - Fury recovers extremely well, yet just as a third possible resurgent war between FLTTV and FoS looks likely, the round ends. Wildly credited as one of the best topsy-turny round in history.

Round 6 is a round that needs a lot of detail to give any kind of picture and I don't think a paragraph suffices. This is my perspective on round 6, other Deus HC might disagree.

Deus Ex Machina formed in the latter stages of round 5, generally because Planetarion at the time was shit and we wanted some enjoyment (although specific aims vary from HC to HC) - we termed this as 'preventing stagnation'. Essentially some planetarion players with nothing better to do decided to make the game more interesting by exploiting the two blocks that existed at the time, the Fury sphere and the Xanadu sphere.

Our first (and most key) allies were hirr and ND. We designated these 2 alliances as 2 agreements we would hold sacresanct. However, we thought we'd need more firepower, so recruited NoS/WP and CELL on top to give us some kind of vague hope and chance. In its membership, Deus Ex Machina was a combination of some quality disenchanted players from a number of alliances complemented by a large bunch of hard working and reliable ex tubas. I thought we had a good balance, although we were still perhaps a bit weaker than Fury or Xanadu. On top of that we were determined to use the forums as a morale booster for our own alliance and to keep our alliance popular, which is never a bad thing. We had a fantastic set of forum posters during that round (3 of them became mods), and pretty much all of our opposition had a pretty unpleasant time on here.

Our first move was to work with Xeta against FLTV for two main reasons:

Reason 1: We thought they were weaker than FLTV.
Reason 2: We thought that if we attacked them first, they'd simply walk off and let us get killed by FLVT at a later date, while there was prospect of them being far more welcoming of an advance, as we had seen previously with Fury and Legion in round 4 and besides, we'd worked with large numbers of their command before.

Our campaign through the round was built around jesterina and Agamemnon BC'ing the operation. It was our political and military aim to have them dictate our campaign. Our general aim was to ignore the big galaxies (as they would always get defence) and leave them to other alliances (if they indeed wanted them) and hit the smaller planets they relied on for defence. By a good distance into the round FLVT had pretty much the entire top 20 galaxies.

For a while these galaxies looked pretty much impenetrable and for the earlier part of the round, i'd say there was a lot of paranoia and worry about our prospects in Deus command. Meanwhile FLVT were (as we'd hoped) chipping away at Xanadu. Little did we know it was Legion's shitness playing into our hands and preventing Barghest but as if we gave a damn. Eventually, to our relief, Fury's core galaxies gave up the ghost and they came crashing down, as they had no support. Quite honestly after giving it the big one on AD and being labelled a bunch of board spammers, to lose at this stage would have been total humiliation for us and seeing a block like FLVT come down would please any HC behind it.

This led to what I would pretty much term a last stand from FLTV - who decided to hit our core galaxies, with a particularly heavy hit on QueenDax's/Agamemnon's galaxy ending with a final sucker punch from Legion on the Shilham Empire (Patrician and myself). This was pretty much one of the most unpleasant (yet successful) nights i've had DC'ing in Planetarion. Fortunately for us, their final attack (as I was enjoying my breakfast, a fry up at 7am and pretty upset at the fact it was interrupted) wasn't as strong as they hoped and in the end I scraped enough defence by cross defending and placing backstop defence (you could attack for 3 ticks then, so defending on the 2nd or 3rd tick sometimes sufficed) on my galaxy to pretty much end their hopes. People go on about great DC's, but none of these great DC's talk about sweating furiously at 3am, nor do they talk about having breakfast interrupted. For me sweat and hunger are what it's all about.

Once they were defeated we realised we had to be true to our word and finish the job, i.e. by attacking Xanadu. This presented to us a new challenge: that of shared galaxies with Xeta and political control. What people need to realise was that this was more than just 'switching' sides but a more or less all out gamble on retaining the membership of your alliance. You may realise that this was pretty ****ing stupid. I think it was ****ing stupid, but it was what we had to do, so we did it anyway. The problem was that at the time there were quite a few players more intent on killing Fury than achieving our end aim - while some quit on principle (and that's absolutely fine), others quit because they decided that they would rather see Fury lose than have their alliance win, or their galaxy demanded it. We lost quite a few from switching along with a group/ally called nG, who seemed like a nice, capable bunch of lads. Later for some reason they formed FAnG - my view they'd have been better off running things themselves.

Xanadu caught us on the hop by about a day and declared the 72 hour notice period as agreed (although some of their people hardly observed it) but quite honestly, it made no difference as they needed to keep us off them for as long as possible to ram home their advantage. Once the war started, it was a bloody affair. NoS/CELL/WP decided to hold back for a bit, presumably to catch us up quite a bit and this was a wise and expected (if disengenuous) move. Even so, this was one of the most exciting times i've seen in PA. FLVT, a battered powerblock, with Fury/Legion defeated for the first time, working with an alliance who's HC were certifiably insane in their strategy (although we were OK with working with Fury/Legion command, who we were very familiar with), NoS/CELL/WP (disliked Fury as much as Fury disliked them), hirr and ND (although i can't say these last two liked the situation much either, even so they showed an unbelievable amount of honour and loyalty to us despite their irritation - they played planetarion the old way, and credit to them).

We took a lot of punishment for trying to achieve our aim and I'd say at the time, we had FLVT approaching what i would call a position of relative strength. Fortunately (and I won't deny we had a bit of luck that round) time was on our side in this respect, as if it hadn't, FLVT would have taken us to the cleaners. Xeta were eventually pounded into submission, especially after Aga played a few games with LDK and friends. Fury's recovery at the end of round 6 was fantastic; it was a fine example of resilience, they really took the war to Xanadu, I have to say. Xanadu however, did not stop. In the end it appeared they decided to defend their #1 player (sliekas?) and pretty much abandoned everyone else. This, to their credit, worked for them.

The key for Deus through the round at any rate was that while we didn't have the most active players in FOS, we could hold a mixed bag of players together and use them to good effect when we really needed them. We were willing to talk and work with anyone to achieve our aims and make their alliance useful to us, an analysis of in game politics to a level of paranoia, a military command that was tactically brilliant in attack and had a solid grasp of getting its alliance to defend in some fashion.

Zhil commented that there was a possibility of a second war with FLTV and FoS. This from my point of view is partly true. On the last night of the round, Sid openly admitted he was going to launch on our top player (#2 rank) for what he termed fencesitting, when from my point of view this player had no option until his galaxy came to a decision which side to go - I was satisfied with the player's explanation, Sid obviously had other ideas. He did it as he pretty much knew he could get away with it. Fortunately, Deus got what it deserved the last night of that round: the ticks stopped, the attack was aborted and we got a good night's sleep added with the amusement of Fury's luck deserting them. It was lucky, but I'd be a liar if I said I didn't enjoy that. From my point of view, had the round lasted longer, we'd have happily gone after NoS and WP with Fury and cemented a victory for ourselves. I'd perhaps argue that round 7 was simply a continuation of round 6, except with most of the Deus command playing within Fury and Legion.

The biggest question is who won? Some people say Deus, because of our aims and that 'nobody won' - I find this explanation absurd: achieving what people believed to be our aims does not amount to winning a round of planetarion. In terms of score, it's difficult to pin point, we have no measure of alliance scores and in a round so chaotic which was more like an unfinished symphony (if it wasn't for physical limitations round 6 could probably have lasted a couple of weeks longer with ease), I'm unsure if they could have been representative. In terms of dominance of galaxies we see perhaps NoS/WP having an edge with a top galaxy, but then you have Deus presence near everywhere in the top galaxies, Xanadu have the top planet and you also have Fury who were pretty much the only thing resembling a working alliance by the end of round 6. You cannot point to a number of statistics that obviously bestow 'winner' upon one alliance.

For me it's down to individual opinion who wins. I'd say Deus simply because we were the alliance who largely dictated the way the round went and we were allowed to push forward our agenda onto the universe at large and didn't lose at any point in the process. People are free to disagree. Even so, after what Fury, Legion and Xanadu served up in round 5, I think they got their just desserts in all getting beaten up quite severely. Regardless of this, there were some magnificent performances from a few alliances in round 6, it's the best game i've ever played by a long distance because it was tremendously difficult and nothing was ever certain, which in turn is exciting. I'd never want to play it again though, as the suffering involved and the time required to do well is just far far too great.

Round 6 was wonderfully ridiculous and while sentimentality might point towards round 1 and 2, I think this round was so much better, simply because we had entertainment coupled with a very high standard in the way alliances were organised.