DoC Member's Elimination

Barbuesque - 5
BenZL43 - 5
blizzrd - 8
Royal Tenenbaum - 5
Tachywaxon - 3

Barbuesque - 5
BenZL43 - 5
blizzrd - 8
Royal Tenenbaum - 6
Tachywaxon - 0

Barbuesque - 6
BenZL43 - 5
blizzrd - 8
Royal Tenenbaum - 3

Barbuesque - 3
BenZL43 - 6
blizzrd - 8
Royal Tenenbaum - 3

Can't believe I survived so far lol!
Wished the RNG was more favorable to me in RL than just on an online game...

Come to think...wasn't the purpose of the game to vote for the ones who contributed the most? I guess the result would end up the same each respawn of the game.

And it's hard to separate people who contributed by ideas from those who contribute through extensive (and good) playtesting.

EDIT: Yeah, I should vote and devote too, but I can't help to dislike take people down, even with the random app reason back up.

Barbuesque - 0
BenZL43 - 6
blizzrd - 8
Royal Tenenbaum - 4

Well, this has been going on longer than I was expecting.

BenZL43 - 6
blizzrd - 5
Royal Tenenbaum - 5

Tachywaxon said:

Come to think...wasn't the purpose of the game to vote for the ones who contributed the most? I guess the result would end up the same each respawn of the game.

Click to expand...

It's whoever you like, based on whatever factors you deem to be worth anything.

Not limited to:

-quality of contributions
-likeability
-skilled play
-memorable posting
-cute avatar

Etc.

Wow, we're down to the final three... Who shall survive? Dundunduuuunnn

BenZL43 - 3
blizzrd - 6
Royal Tenenbaum - 5

BenZL43 - 4
blizzrd - 3
Royal Tenenbaum - 5

BenZL43 - 1
blizzrd - 4
Royal Tenenbaum - 5

Link to video.

lol. I honestly surprised I survive this far... but being #2 is enough for me ^^.
You, my friend, should be the winner, Royal :suicide:

BenZL43 - 0
blizzrd - 0
Royal Tenenbaum - 6

YAAY! We have a winner!!! ^^
Congratulation~

Congratulations to Royal Tenenbaum!

Congratulations! Royal Tenenbaum is the most popular user on the subforum.
I checked the forum rules for any mention against this,
but seeing as there isn't any rule against giveaways,
you also win a Steam key for LIMBO, courtesy of me!
Should you accept it, I will PM you the code.

NOTE: I won't always be doing this; everyone I know who would want it already has it,
and I have an extra key on hand that's just rotting.

I will update the opening post.

Now.

Do you guys want to continue with a second round,
play a second round as a normal or variant game,
or just leave this be with Royal Tenenbaum being known
henceforth for posterity as the most popular DoC member?

If people want to put this to rest, I want to take to opportunity
to write a "tell-all" post concerning strategy in regards to this type of game.

Second round!

Since I'm retired and just hosting this game now, also seeing that my teammates are no longer active on the subforum, I'd like to share the story of how the DoC Faction Wars were won.
The first three victories in Royal Tenenbaum's game were actually planned out and coordinated.
dmitrytrue, iOnlySignIn and I had formed a syndicate to see our favorite civs to victory.
I hope you all pick up some very valuable tactics from this anecdote,
and I encourage you to utilize them yourselves, although when more people know about these things, the metagame invariably changes.

My Tell-All Post:

I started playing Royal Tenenbaum's game with a sneaky approach.
I wasn't going to directly upvote my favorite civs but instead operate from behind proxies.
Of course, I was annoyed to find that most of my favorite civs had been wiped out by the beginning of the game.
So with nothing to lose, I begun walking the road to Meifumado.

I began to scan the players for their habits.
Pretty early on, I could establish who everyone wanted to win.
Royal Tenenbaum wanted Japan.
FirstThunder wanted Rome.
blizzrd wanted Greece.
civ_king wanted Tamils.
merijn_v1 wanted Dutch.
dmitrytrue wanted Russia.
They were pretty out in the open.

I contacted dmitrytrue and told him he would have my unconditional support in getting Russia to victory,
if he could help me in a future round, and we made a pact to work together.
However, I wasn't going to support him directly at that point.
I would be wreaking havoc among the more visible players and taking any heat off of Russia
and I would show my full support at the end, where it really mattered.

So I selected Japan as my proxy and proceeded to exclusively target Rome.
Pretty soon, some of the supporters of the Roman camp started to attack Japan
back in retribution and I knew Royal Tenenbaum wasn't going to take lightly to that.
The results were two-fold and far-reaching.
1. Japan was made the most visible target by its enormous score.
2. I had redirected the aggro between the two greatest threats, instigating a war between them.
Eventually, I quietly abandoned Japan to boost other targets,
content to know that the war had solidified and didn't need my involvement anymore.

The top scores and the bottom scores are the most dangerous places to be in a Hurt N' Heal.
The middle, or the bell curve, is the safest, as you are not in danger to die or a large threat.
Therefore, dmitrytrue & I worked quietly to keep Russia in the middle as the game went on.

But the end stretch was still looking bad without some help.
So I appealed to iOnlySignIn, while asking dmitrytrue to probe his interest;
I didn't think it was a good idea to ask him personally considering I was the one
who offed England early on and I knew England was iOnlySignIn's favorite civ.
At the same time, I knew he loved Russia so it was worth a shot.
After testing the waters and neither dmitrytrue nor iOnlySignIn showing their hands
in their correspondence, I decided to take a gamble and approach iOnlySignIn with an offer.
We would all work together to help Russia win the first round, a civ of my choice in the second round
and a civ (likely England) of iOnlySignIn's choice in the third round.
He agreed to the Russian cooperation, but said he would go his separate ways in the second,
so I raised my offer and said he would have both dmitrytrue and my full support in the second round for England.
I couldn't accept any less than unconditional and guaranteed support so it was worth it,
despite the knowledge that the third round would always be the hardest.

Thus, the syndicate was formed, and we soon abandoned our proxy of Vikings, and put full steam ahead on Russia.

We won the first round.

By the second round, we quickly established roles for one another.
dmitrytrue was the anchor. He was the one who established little presence and usually no one besides ales_ targeted
anything that dmitrytrue boosted, so he had the role of boosted our intended victor more frequently.
iOnlySignIn had his Historical Wars and Battles thing, and he usually made it appear that his targets were randomized,
so no one typically suspected him, from our PoV.
I played the role of the instigator. My job was to provoke and illicit reactions from other players
and draw fire to either popular civs or proxy civs.

England was the intended victor in this case, and dmitrytrue chose Iraq as the primary proxy.

In the first round, I had almost exclusively upvoted Japan and downvoted Rome; this time,
I switched around and focused all my energies on it, hoping to lure Royal Tenenbaum's fire against my proxies.
It definitely worked although Royal Tenenbaum was not as prone to retribution as FirstThunder was.
After his fury was spent and he no longer retaliated despited my assaults, I proceeded to upvote Iran exclusively
to keep the top score high.

Top 10 round went underway and we were at a critical juncture.
The sweet spot for our syndicate to begin pouring in full support on England sat in between 8 and 6 remaining civs.
8 can be too early and 6 is the most ideal. The golden rule though is that once your chosen civ gets its second attack
in the lightning round, that all pretenses are off, and you have to start fully supporting it to win.
A big part of our strategy as well, was to manipulate the flow of the game so that the lightning round would start
when most players were sleeping. dmitrytrue was immune to this because of time zone differences, I wasn't sure about iOnlySignIn,
but I'm a night owl, so we were able to coordinate perfect attendance and make attacks while people were sleeping as a result.
blizzrd eventually figured it out by the second round and stopped posting, to stall us out, but English victory was inevitable.

God Save The Queen!

The third round was fraught with difficulty.

Right from the onset, China nearly died immediately, if it wasn't from a timely intervention from SouthernKing, we wouldn't have made it.
Mongol hordes under the command of AdrIener and Royal Tenenbaum were threatening the Chinese border and we were suffering attacks at every turn,
forcing us to show our hands and upvote China.
We were in desperate straits and I had to do something, so I went on a diplomatic mission to rally support.

I contacted Lennon789. I knew he liked the Moors, so I offered my support in helping him in a future round
if he could take control of a proxy civ and redirect the aggro onto him.
He actually volunteered with no desire for reciprocation and took Corea as a wildcard pick to attack the Mongols,
causing the Mongol advance to stop to focus on this new threat.
Lennon did an amazing job of provoking a response too; per my estimation, he made an even better instigator than me.
Not only did he take all the aggro off of China onto Corea, but he even got magzhi to upvote China and downvote Corea in retribution!
Lennon and I were seriously rofling when we saw that.
Mighty Mongolia was eaten alive by Little Corea and it was probably my best diplomatic achievement to date.
We had taken a lot of heat off of China though and gained a lot of breathing room, making the middle portion of the round a lot smoother.

My favorite exchange from that episode:

Royal Tenenbaum said:

Alright. So I asked you for peace, and you slaughter my people. I move my armies, and you slaughter my people. I ask people to help me fend you off, and nobody comes to my aide.
And people call the Mongols barbarians.

Click to expand...

Lennon789 said:

Korea stronk!

Click to expand...

By the end, a second great crisis appeared in the form of FirstThunder.
He smelled that we wanted China to win and started downvoting it right out the gate,
so we were forced to put all our votes into China to maintain an even score.
After awhile, FirstThunder finally saw the writing on the wall and boosted China himself.
The round remains the highest scoring round in that whole thread, but it was well deserved.

We faced the most adversity that round but came out swinging!

With all of us securing a victory of our choice and possessing a 100% victory rate,
we retired and put the syndicate behind us, making our mark on the Hall of Fame.
We later returned from "retirement" to get the Moors to victory at the end of one round but that was about it.

Some players won't want to invest that much into it, but that's okay. Play as you've always been playing.
But for the rest of you, think of finding a buddy and putting some of these tactics into practice.
Playing the game with some strategic depth is definitely a lot different than playing the game raw!

Well, I have one vote from baseballpie:
1 Second Round
0 Second Round with Variant Rules
0 End the Game

Any more?

Now that is a classic example of overthinking a game.

Second round with variant rules.. preferably that increase game speed