War Report – #45 vs. #36
#45 World Dominance VS #36 The Bears
It was inevitable, it cannot be avoided, the great wars between 2 great alliances are again at hand. The legendary generals and leaders of humankind are again facing grave threat from the…Bears. Their paths had crossed several times in 2 ages, killing, ravaging each other, trying to inflict damage that could leave the other half dead
Now again that time came, their path will clash soon and the humans rallied their forces and readied their armaments, all leaders responded with hungry eyes and raw determination that this will be their time to win.
Operation B.I.A.T.C.H.E.S Intels
Our malevolence elder, Adolf Hitler considered to be one of the cruelest leader the world has ever known ordered Martin Luther King, our spymaster, disguised as a black civil rights leader, to procure blueprints of all Bear’s tribes building construction, but in order to get it, our spymaster knew he’s in for a ride since the Bear’s intelligence agency the B.I.A.T.C.H.E.S is always on the lookout.
But then since MLK disguised as a black man, he went boldly to their agency and simply asked for the blueprints…simple but cunning our spymaster was, he knew the Bears cannot say no to his request otherwise they can be accused of racial discrimination. So they gave it to him willingly.
Operation B.I.A.T.C.H.E.S intel – done
After our Fuhrer got the blueprints, he studied the weakpoints of each tribe with his co-elder Hannibal of the Alps, a legendary general of Carthage, together they formed a swift but deadly plan utilizing the alliance’s best tribes…practically all of them 
Hannibal sent the word of WAR thru his swiftest elephants to each of the leaders, asking for their commitment and support for the war. And all of them replied with confirmation of support.
Every tribe was aware of the importance of this war, so they geared up and ready to go. The total destruction of the Bears is about to begin…
Hitler signaled the KT, at 6:55 ST, the World Dominance is online to its biggest tribe to the smallest, we are all online except to one who has an emergency. We are there to wreak havoc and conquer Bear lands for our own.
The PLAN
- 1st Target primary – Bearing My Teeth, a 4600 SPIRIT with low mage defenses.
- 1st Target secondary – Lovely Bear, a 1700 acre SPIRIT with low mage defenses.
- 2nd Target primary – Shadow Bear, a 3800 acre DARK ELF, with low thievery defenses.
- 2nd Target secondary – Bear Ass, a 2500 MORI HAI, with enough mage defenses.
- Optional Target – Barbearic BuBu, the Bear Leader, a LIGHT ELF with very good mage defense and a whopping 8000 acre tribe.
Hitler started the war by opping the 1st target with his dm’s, at the first volley he already burned 700 homes which sealed Bearing My Teeth’s tribe to dust with no help from his members, now that Bearing My Teeth’s fate sealed with our 10 tribes still waiting for orders, it was a very good omen for us, Humankind will score another win against its enemy, the Bears.
At the same time Hitler was burning Bearing My Teeth’s homes, his co-elder Hannibal, Crazy Horse, the legendary Indian leader, and our Spymaster, Martin Luther King fervently opping Shadow Bear. But before they can burn him, the great leader, Napoleon Bonaparte along with his famous cavalry pushed Shadow Bear’s defenses to its limits by destroying and burning thru Blasphemy Crusade, a huge portion of the Bear’s mage defenses were smashed to the ground. Hannibal, Crazy Horse, and MLK threw all their magery and thievery powers at Shadow Bears.
The 3rd target being opped at the same time was Lovely Bear. Our young allies, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt the famous US Presidents, Karl XII the Prince, Alexander the Great the Conqueror, and the Renowned Jules Cesar attacked and opped Lovely Bear.
07:00:07 and 07:00:13, the leaders looked upon the crumbled kingdom of Bearing My Teeth and Lovely Bear. They didn’t withstand the damage inflicted of those who invaded their Beary Lands.
But then Shadow Bear managed to live for another hour for his good magery defenses, he managed to deflect most dragonmages casted upon him of those leaders assigned to him. But his survival did not last long…at 08:00:03 he joined his fallen comrades after an hour of their deaths.
Bear Ass was next to the kill list so we prepared…after 2 ticks of the war we received war bonus manas to actually kill him after 2 ticks so we planned to kill Bear Ass in 10:00 ST..Abraham Lincoln managed to raze 100 buildings off Bear Ass, making it more easier to kill him..all those who still had manas opped Bear Ass that same tick and he went down fast and hard on 10:00:02 ST
Everyone was in high spirits when they killed 4 tribes in 4 ticks, together they slowly felt the bond in every tribe, the unity and coordination that every alliance needed was slowly being forged in every kill…
After Bear Ass, they only needed over 3k acres to win, and the Bears got several tribes fitting that requirement and were easy kills but no…Hitler wants to crush the Bear’s spirits by killing their top tribe which happens to be their leader Barbearic BuBu, Hitler gave the signal, 13:55ST will be the deciding tick of the whole war…but BuBu already went to defensive mode and at 13:00 ST his churches will arrive, the Human leaders must act fast and hard before his defenses will put in place.
So Hitler, Hannibal and Crazy Horse decided to lead the offensives way early before the scheduled KT, they opped BuBu with their last manas, and Luther King also had to leave the battlefield for some emergency at home so he opped early with all his remaining TP…and they did fairly well considering BuBu already got ml25 and his tribe buffs…overall they burned about 3k acres of BuBu’s buildings but its not enough to kill his tribe, then maybe luck is not in our side BuBu went online and saw that hes the target…he got around 97k citz left and we expected him to release his troops to ensure his survival but he did not. I guess luck didn’t totally abandoned us.
13:55 arrived and the leaders gathered once again to talk about the offensives…we only needed to burn 210 homes to kill the Bear’s leader. But then the 3 top human tribes got few manas left to really ensure his defeat. Napoleon Bonaparte, a 4k acre nazzie decided to go suicide by going all out and will raze an 8k Light Elf just to ensure victory…so it was decided and they went into action…Bonaparte razed BuBu’s buildings and got 188 homes, that finally sealed BuBu’s fate. And all other tribes supported Bonaparte by opping the huge tribe…all of the world’s leaders opp BuBu to its biggest to its smallest tribe they went at him, and after the tick BuBu’s citizens went down to 587..and so all fireballs went down to finish him off sealing victory to the World’s Leaders.
~ Mordred
Note: The opinions expressed here doesnt nessecarily represent the opinions of The Orkfia Portal.
The History of Orkfia (Part III)
During this period in ORKFiA as more players became inactive, those remaining began to merge together to form new alliances from the embers of their former glory.
One such alliance was CORE which was made up of players from several former top alliances. Martel was one of these players. He had joined ORKFiA originally after hearing about it through his friends at school in Sweden and had played in many alliances before finally settling with fellow old timers Airro, VC, Wheelie amongst others to create CORE.
Describing that period in the game Martel said “it frustrated me a lot, bugs ruined my age several times”. Despite Martel’s obvious love of the game, at this time he was not involved with staff and hardly knew Skathen or fRoSt. He was an active member of the player community however and spent a lot of time in the #orkfia IRC channel.
After each age change he took it upon himself to create a printable guide so that people could compare the races more easily and a lot of players relied upon Martel for this.
Earlier in 2002 American player Scarlo had joined ORKFiA at the invitation of his younger brothers. Scarlo had not really expected to find much fun in a text based game but found he was pleasantly surprised. Rather than playing ORKFiA just to have a connection with his brothers who lived two thousand miles away he found the game stood up on it’s own merits.
He became an avid player and an active member of the community surrounding the game. After playing a few ages he was recruited by CORE and after the initial settling period that all new alliances go through. Scarlo and Martel emerged as co-workers, they worked together as the active elders of the alliance teaming up to devise strategies for the alliance in war and peace time.
Their partnership continued into staff as both Martel and Scarlo were invited to become staff of ORKFiA. Game Admin fRoSt had realised he needed to organise the staffing of the game so he set up divisions of moderators called resorts. He recruited a leader of each resort and those leaders in turn recruited extra staff to help them.
Martel had not initially been a popular choice for staff it seems, as after fRoSt initially approached him to invite him into staff, someone must have disagreed with the choice as Martel’s invitation was withdrawn. Martel still does not know to this day why this was or who had objected but it didn’t really matter as soon enough he was invited again to work in two of the staff resorts.
Over time Martel found himself more and more involved in the day to day running of the game and as fRoSt took even more of a backseat in ORKFiA things took a natural progression as Martel was made a co-Admin.
Martel was still supported by his friend Scarlo amongst others but he was finding it difficult to keep up with improving the game code, developing race changes, fixing bugs and of course resetting the ages.
At this point the idea for losing the age resets came up as players were unhappy with waiting a week for the game to restart every six weeks or so, it was reasoned that with no age resets this could free up time for actually improving the game rather than just maintaining it at the same time as providing more fun for players, and killing two birds with one stone… “ORKFiA Infinity” was born.
Infinity went live to players in August 2006 and whilst some loved the idea of no boring “inbetween ages time”, others longed for the ORKFiA of old with the excitement of beginning a new round and the bloodbaths that ensued to get to the top of the rankings at the end of age.
What remained of ORKFiA’s players began to divide into two camps – those for Infinity and those who preferred the original ORKFiA.
Scarlo had continued supporting Martel as an active staff member but the game was being taken in a direction he just didn’t agree with and he felt his concerns were not heard. Around the time Infinity began, Scarlo who at that time was Head of Marketing, deleted his staff and player accounts and left the game along with the Head of Development Airro.
A few months later Scarlo returned to see how things had turned out and decided to give Infinity a fair chance, he created a new player account and soon his alliance was dominating ORKFiA.
Despite holding the number one ranking he and his alli mates yearned for “old” ORKFiA and made the decision to quit.
After talking with a number of the old players Scarlo realised he was one of many who preferred the game style of the original ORKFiA and he began trying to think of ways to bring it back – if this version of ORKFiA was not prepared to change then the only solution was to get another version online.
Scarlo did not have coding knowledge himself but he knew there had been a past Admin named Natix who may be able to help, the trouble was that Natix had quit the game and disappeared from orkfia sometime in 2003 around the era when the game had begun haemorraging players.
Natix was a professional programmer who had been involved with ORKFiA throughout much of it’s history as a coder/Admin working in the background, he had even hosted ORKFiA in the beginning for a short time when ORKFiA had been kicked off sourceforge due to being too “resource intensive”.
In 2003 Skathen and Frost had given Natix the task of re-writing the code of ORKFiA as the buggy old code was to blame for a lot of the crashes within the game since it had not been designed to serve so many players. Natix had taken the task of the so called “ORKFiA 2″ and used many hours of coding time on it but unfortunately that version was never completed as, in Natix’s own words it was “too little, too late”. When the majority of his friends left the game in 2003 he too got bored with ORKFiA and quit.
Scarlo knew that even if Natix was not interested in ORKFiA at all anymore, he at least had a copy of the code which would be a start, so he decided the best hope original ORKFiA had was if Natix could be found. The trouble was that the only contact anyone had for Natix was an old email address which they were not sure if he even still accessed.
Call it fate or luck but even though Natix usually could go for months without checking his old MSN account, within a week of Scarlo’s call for help Natix read the request and got back in touch with Scarlo.
They spent many hours catching up over the following days and it turned out Natix is now a senior programmer in his native Canada and runs his own consulting company.
After hearing what Scarlo had to say Natix felt he wanted to help, with his coding knowledge having improved since his last foray into the ORKFiA code he decided a programming language called Python would be the best to use for the new “old” ORKFiA and he began the task of coding the game from scratch.
The new partnership named this version of the game “ORKFiA Origin” and set up a forum at the beginning of this month so that players, old and new could discuss ideas for the direction of the game.
As with Infinity there are no clear cut answers and everyone wants different things for the game but it certainly sounds promising.
And so we are up to date on the history of ORKFiA. Whilst there have been peaks and troughs in the game’s popularity, the community have always managed to keep the game alive. We are all involved and all responsible for the future of ORKFiA.
Whilst Martel and his team of staff in Infinity are striving to keep ORKFiA moving in a new direction, his past cohort Scarlo is separately breathing new life into the ORKFiA so many knew and loved.
Whichever style you prefer, the choice will soon be there for all of us, as players of this game things are only getting better as we move into the future of ORKFiA.
~ By Jamzi ~
This was the last part in a serie of three where Jamzi described the ORKFiAn History up to the point of Aug 28 2007, next I’ll try to write down whats happened since then.
Stay tuned for Part IV.
History of ORKFiA (Part II)
As MoDo and C4lv1n left the game, the reins fell to two other dedicated players Wish and Reaver. The pair had their work cut out as the code was very buggy and there were multis springing up everywhere bringing the game into disrepute.
It was a fight against time trying to delete the multis and keep some modicum of fairness in the game to prevent the regular players from becoming too disillusioned and quitting.
The community was still going strong though and the two admins vowed to fight against the cheaters and whilst Reaver continued fixing the code Wish was in charge of finding multi’s.
Wish was successful in finding multis but unfortunately for him he wasn’t pleased with what he found… Reaver was one of the players cheating.
This was a massive blow to the community to discover someone who they trusted could abuse his power and Reaver was removed from the game never to be heard of again. Wish was left on his own to tend to ORKFiA.
At this point a very active player volunteered to help Wish out. Australian Skathen worked in IT and had PHP coding skills which he offered forward. Skathen had been playing for some time already and didn’t want to see the game crumble.
Wish accepted his offer and Skathen began coding the next day. After less than a month Skathen became Admin and began becoming more active as the face of ORKFiA.
Wish was not around very long and within an age he lost interest in ORKFiA as he became busy elsewhere, thus Skathen became the sole Admin of ORKFiA for 2 ages following..
Around Beta 3 he called on long time trusted friend fRoSt and another experienced player Bekkar to help him in running ORKFiA.
fRoSt has continued to maintain the server from his native Germany to this day.
Editorial note: this was up to 2007
This was the core team for a few years although further additions in the Admin and mod team came and went as each age passed.
ORKFiA was more and more owned by it’s community as so many of them got involved.
In 2003 active tribes in the game were thought to be around 2300 (figure quoted taken from an interview with Admin Vince in May 2003). Another former staff member, DamadMoo put the figure around 3200 at ORKFiA’s peak.
People were recommending the game to their friends, it may not have had sophisticated graphics or be able to rival the latest console/PC games but the thing that was important was the community feeling in the game. This was ORKFiA’s main drawing point and what made it stand above other games.
Although that appeared to be the heyday of ORKFiA it was by no means perfect. Just like now there were plenty of heated arguments amongst players and staff always. The passion for the game was high, but like all flames it started to burn out for one reason or another and the player base began to drop again.
Where there had been consistency for so long, staff members were changing rapidly, bugs seemed to crop up everywhere.
Age resets due to bug issues were becoming common and players started leaving faster than new ones were joining. The staff in the game, including Skathen, fRoSt and Bekkar became less and less active.
Again speculation abounded as to whether ORKFiA could survive…
To be continued..
~ By Jamzi ~
Editorial note: This article was first posted aug 18 2007.
The History of ORKFiA… The Stories Behind The Game (Part I)
Hey there, we will here on the portal in a serie of articles try to describe the stories behind the game that became two, the first three articles is written by Jamzi and takes us up to around the part where Scarlo started looking for a way to launch a classic version of ORKFiA.
But lets start from the start and here is part one.
The History of ORKFiA… The Stories Behind The Game (Part I)
ORKFiA has been in the hands of many different people since it’s birth seven years ago and the behind the scenes history of the game is just as dramatic as the goings-on in the game itself.
The idea for ORKFiA came from a successful Utopia player named Kadagar.
Achieving “celebrity” player status in Utopia left him with a thirst for a game faster, more bloodthirsty and more friend orientated than Utopia.
Although the idea was Kadagar’s, creating a game was not something he had all the necessary skills for and so he concluded he needed help in realising his dream.
Through the Utopia player community he met fellow Swede C4lV1N who offered to design the graphical interface and Canadian MoDo who came forward to help with the programming.
With the new partnership formed the three set to work, with Kadagar coming up with the ideas and his two helpers putting them into practice.
MoDo later said their ambition for ORKFiA was “to start a small, personal, community type game. Just a game for serious players to have fun playing without worrying about mass inactives, multis and commercialisation.”
Unfortunately not long after the initial burst of ideas, Kadagar decided to lay down his ORKFiAn dreams and in an unexpected twist he left the game completely to pursue his career as a Ski Instructor.
Meanwhile C4lV1N and MoDo continued to build up ORKFiA. MoDo took on the public-facing role and hosted the server and C4lV1N was in the background learning his coding skills as he went along.
Both men had busy careers in the military and found they spent most of their free time working on bringing ORKFiA to life.
The game started to attract players – not only people who were close friends of the creators but also outside people who had heard rumours of a game faster than Utopia where you had real things to do every four hours instead of every sixteen. In a time when Utopia had tried to put a stop to people choosing which Kingdom they played in, invitations to regroup in ORKFiA, where you could play with your friends again spread like wildfire.
ORKFiA became a victim of it’s own reputation and the game which was intended to only be tested by a small number of close friends and Utopian Kingdom Mates of the three creators suddenly had people flocking (in their fives!) who wanted to try it for themselves.
With an overload of people putting pressure on the server it was becoming instable and slow. Bugs were being found and reported in such numbers that the pair of coders were finding it hard to keep on top of things and the reputation of the game began to drift from “whats hot” to “whats not”.
The duo realised they could not keep up with the demands of ORKFiA and came to the decision to quit.
They didn’t want all their work to be for nothing though and a strong community had already built up around the infant ORKFiA. They decided the right thing to do would be to leave the game to the community by leaving it open source. This meant the code was there, free for the taking, by anyone who cared.
They hoped this would protect their work but still make it possible for someone to help ORKFiA survive. They then left ORKFiA for good.
To be continued..
~ By Jamzi ~
Next part will be posted in a day or two.
Editorial note: This article was first posted Aug 11 2007.
War Report – #36 vs. #45
Orkfia News Network
Good morning Orkfia! Nothing unusual going on considering almighty Martel (All Hail martel!) decided not to implement new age changes seeing everybody is happily growing and killing each other. The evil robots at #17 are still dominating the charts after Death Note took a turn and decided to start a new leaf (no pun intended). The police (karma not sting) are still slowly climbing up the charts again hoping to claim their old glory taking care to tread and grind whoever they come across. We see a new alliance with big templars holding the number 2 spot seemingly obliterate the warm and fuzzy Bears in a 7 tick war. Poor Bears, I hope nobody misses his teddy tonight. In other news…..zzt..what?!
We interrupt this program with breaking news that the Bears have come full throttle and decide to give payback to the Great Leaders! I will now patch you up with Ray Porter at Ground Zero.
Ground Zero
We are here live with alliance #36 who just declared an all out war with #45, the alliance bent on worldwide domination. Seeing as WD just recently fried their furs, the Bears woke up from hibernation and smelled blood from their kin staining the ground. WD has a 2 big-ass templars who totally owned the Bears during their previous skirmish however, these two guys are close to old age and might kick the bucket any minute!
Delta one do you copy?
Bearing my teeth was the one who first smelled bloodlust. War orders were cascaded, a KT was set. Declaration of independence was at 02:55H. Close to the KT, the alliance channel was still empty save for Bearing my teeth slapping P for being the only guy there. at 2:15H, the encrypted Bear channel was seeing more activity now with the Bear elder and his Co-elder Sugar checking in. A trap was set for the Carthagian Emperor and his elephants and it had nothing to do with Dumbo. Since sweets decided to go to work, the Bears prayed to the war gods for good health and good luck. And with Korn blasting the airwaves, troops were mobilized at 2:30H. With the help of S.W.A.B. (special weapons and bears), Bearing my teeth was easily able to penetrate the cover of Hannibal, rigged a spiderweb of explosives under his sewers and blew a total of 600 homes for his initial salvo. But Hannibal, being a brilliant tactician, choose the strong flank tactic and saved a few more citizens in h! iding. The Bears fell short in destroying his army for the first tick. Since time is of the essence, Bearing my teeth quickly took out his poke-ball and said “Pika Bear, I choose you!” Summoning the cutpurse was enough to seal the fate and draw firstblood at 3:00. Hannibal never stood a chance.
Soldier down!
Following the demise of Hannibal, the main bulk of the Bears was sent into forced march towards the lands of Crazy Horse. However, with cloud and smoke obscuring the hillside, most of the furry creatures got waylaid. Some mistakingly wandered into Abraham Lincoln’s ancestral domain, while others followed the trail of Adolf Hitler’s sweet meat pie. In doing so, the returning troops of Bearing my teeth were left without backup on the battlefields. This gave time for Sun Tzu’s army of Taoists to trace and cast the cursed seal of “Page cannot be displayed”. With Bearing my teeth knocked out cold from last night’s revelry, his troops were easy pickings from the crazed scholars. The Bears were forced to watch as his troops were skinned alive and their furs sent packing to China in crate boxes. We can only assume that they’ll turn out as new rugs bound for Alaska. with the last of his brethen gutted and stripped, the Bears watched as Bearing my teeth’s tribe crumbled in ruins.
Operation WD
The Bear elder quickly contacted the chief of staff of B.I.A.T.C.H. (Bears intelligence agency tactical combat headquarters) and ordered the Bearttalion to regroup. With the dust settled, and after the animals ate the last of Hannibal’s elephants, they marched steadily into the lands of Crazy Horse. The order of “set claws from stun to kill” was given and soon bodies from the Oglala Lakota leader’s headhunters littered the landscape. One headhunter tried to sneak up on Megalomania’s squad leader and almost decapidated him with one blow from his tomahawk (which was purchased from Best Buy) but luckily, his Polar brethen spotted the assassin and with a huff and a grunt, scalped the indian with one big slash. Following up with a roundhouse kick (matrix-style) gave the white bear just enough momentum to pirouette and throw a dragonmage edition grenade at the center of Crazy Horse’s last remaining troops which ended the bloodline of the famed Indian chief.
Karl XII
After the death of Crazy Horse, the Bear elder ordered his army into a forced march towards the lands of Charles XII. Not used to cold weather, most of the animals were fighting of the temptation to hibernate which resulted in a little military losses. Upon reaching the Viking’s land, the elder gave the coordinates of Trodheim and called for another round of artillery. Sugar Bear fired the initial salvo taking out most of Karl’s turrets and with no heavy artillery support, his trooops were slaughtered again by Smokey, Bear ass and Mega. The three troops combined to rain fire and brimstone on to his lands and were about to enter Karl’s fortress but they were pinned down by Karl’s royal guard. Ultimately, it was Polar Bear’s troops who, perfectly camouflaged by the landscape, sneaked in from the back and ended the life of the Swedish General.
Gold team Aqua
Gold Leader Kodiak, who was supposed to be part of the main troops but did not make the initial deployment, just checked in! Apologizing for his delay, with the reason that their HQ was bombarded with biological weapons (he was logging in from a friend’s house because his basement was being repaired and paint fumes were everywhere), he requested for a target. Coordinates were set and he was ordered back into the lands of Hannibal, who being the tactician that he is, was able to quickly rebuild and regroup his troops in 8 ticks. Mega bear spearheaded the #36 infantry but with most of the Bear’s ground troops out and exhausted from the previous forced march, Mega could not penetrate Hannibal’s fort. Mega could only watch as every citizen that his troops killed from raids, were just recovered and regenerated by Hannibal’s drug (codename: MRiver). Finally, with Gold Leader on board, their combined troops were finally able to penetrate the protection cast on Hannibal’s lands ! by the Orkfian Gods and Hannibal was laid to rest a second time.
The aftermath
With only 360 acres for the war win remaining, the Bear elder patched everybody on the encrypted channel and gave orders to revisit Alexander the Great. A KT was set, and war orders were cascaded to each Bear talon. Exhausted from a near lack of sleep (and with his missus threatening to throw his laptop in the dustbin), the Bear elder signed off and the Bear army replenished their supplies. Unknown to them, Napoleon Bonaparte already planned his return from Elba and having discovered that World Domination was in a state of war, quickly mobilized his troops. Team Gold Leader woke up to find that a fair-sized chunk of his army was already overrun by the frenchmen. Crying foulplay, he ordered an eat-n-run at Napoleon’s retreating army taking out a couple of Napoleon’s troops. At 12:00H, the Bear elder got back online and nearly dropped his jaw with glee. Napoleon was hasty with his actions and forgot to notice that only 100k frenchies remained in his four thousand acre king! dom. Ordering a recalculation of data (click start->run->calc), the Bear elder knew that Napoleon’s fate is sealed. However, Napoleon was quick to retaliate from the initial airstrikes on French soil, and ordered his army to disrupt vital communication and supply lines at Sugar Bear’s army, killing hundreds of precious equipment. He created more damage by ordering 1,800 of Sugar Bears commies to the guillotine. In retaliation, Sugar and Polar Bear called forth another coordinated airstrike on Napoleon’s troops and since his army was still out, Napoleon’s fate was sealed. The last green line appeared on the B.I.A.T.C.H. screen and at 16:00H, almost 48 ticks before declaration, the Bears won the war.
by BladetheWicked
How to: Execute a protection strategy
Hi there
One of the more difficult things for a new player is to do a proper protection, there is alot that could go wrong and the outcome has big impact on how competative your tribe will be. In this article Im going to try and write down the basic way of creating a decent/good strategy for your first 48hours ingame, also called the Protection Period.
First of you will have to decide which race, what class and what kind of main strategy you wanna go for (attacker, mage, thief, explorer). The choices you make here has great impact on how you should go about creating your protection strategy.
The main thing that race pick effects is exploration cost, this has to do with how cheap/expensive your specific basic soldier is, the cheaper the earlier and more acres will you be able to safely explore.
Sage is the one class that makes the most difference for your protection strategy, the extra income can really be a nice boost for your acres and army.
Now regarding if you are going attacker or an exploring mage/thief. Regardless direction you want to gain acres. But while explorers can focus to explore more acres and only train def attackers on the other hand has to get some offence aswell.
There are a few vital moments during a strat, first one is the explore section taking place during the first 24 hours, big misstake newbies do is that they do several small explores, the key is to make one big. The second vital part is the last 8 hours of the protection, here is where you train your basics at update 40 and at update 44 train them into defence (and offence if being an attacker).
Here is a basic strategy:
- Update 0
- Raze: 14 homes, 10 farms and 6 guilds.
- Build: 137 mines.
- Explore: 20 acres.
- Update 4
- Build: 20 homes.
- Update 11
- Train: X amount of basics, explained below.
- Update 15
- Explore: Max amount of acres that you can.
- Update 19
- Build: 5-6% farms, if you can’t build all your acres then the ones you cant afford should be going into homes, this is more explained below, whats not farms nor homes goes into mines.
- Update 20->
- Build: If you couldnt afford all your acres then keep building homes here.
- Update 40
- Train: Y amount of basics, explained more below.
- Update 42
- Raze: 20 mines
- Build: 10 guilds and 10 hideouts.
- Update 44
- Raze: If you are going for ml5 then now is when you should build them, raze 5.5% mines.
- Build: 5.5% academies.
- Train: Z amount of military, explained below.
- Update 48
- Out of Protection!
- Standard Attack: Try to find some free acres here, some people mess up their strategies and comes out of protection with no or low def. Can be a proper smorgasbord.
X: Here you need to do a quick calculation to see how much acres you can afford to explore 4 ticks later. The calc goes like this: (Current cr + (current income – ~14000)) / (1350 + Basic soldier cost * 10). This might look little bit complicated maybe but what you do is making a rough prediction on what your total amount of cr is gonna be the tick you can explore. Those ~14000 is a rough guess on how much you income will lower once you train your basics, you can be much more precise, just have in mind, each basic you train means a 2.2cr loss (one citizen produce 2 cr plus the income selfspell Quanta).
Generally this amount comes down to somewhere between 5800 to 7800. Big Note: If you know you have a high cost basic then you can wait 1-3 more ticks. Your main goal should be to end up on 850 – 1100 acres, you shouldnt wait anymore then 3 ticks, the later you explore the later will you have max citz to gain some proper cash, also dont explore earlier then tick 15, thats when you earliest got max citz and you need to have max citz or you’ll lose vital income later on
Y This one is kinda the same as X, what you do is that you take your current cr + the coming 4 hours of income, have in mind that you will have your income lowered due to trained basics so dont over train.
You want to make sure that you have atleast 60000 raw defence for your 1000 acre tribe, if you are around 850-920ish then you can maybe get away with things like 55000 raw defence but with this small playerbase you’re living on the edge, a proper Oleg Hai can come oop and grab anything at all due to their harpies. Dwarves can come oop with around 60-70k sendable mod offence, Ravens around 55-60k sendable.
If you are an explorer then this should be kinda easy to reach, some races even got the possibility to do a second explore around here, Wood Elf and Eagle both got the possibility to reach 1450 acres 4 ticks after oop the latest easily if only training defspecs. My general advise is to train so you have around 64k raw defence, having that said if you know there is no early attackers like dwarves, olegs, ravens and even high elves then you can lower this amount a bit.
If you are an attacker then its a little bit more tricky, you need the defence just as the explorers but you also need the offence to grab acres with, key here is not to explore to much, never explore above 1k, most attackers can settle for 850-1000 acres, if you have the offence but not the defence then you wont be able to hold your acres so dont go that way.
Z this amount is pretty much already covered in the Y section, train the defence required, you can also train a few thieves (like maximum 500), to get higher chance to succeed on gathering intel.
This strategy thats been explained above is just a general strategy, it can be finetuned for each race, but there is a few exceptions amongst the races.
Dragon, due to it low amount of citz you wont be able to explore that much, aim for having a total of 350-450 acres OOP, and they should be explored as early as possible but in sections.
High Elf, Uruk Hai, Mori Hai and Brittonians, these all have various citz bonuses or restrictions, have that in mind when you do your explore. For example Mori Hai, run them with 30% homes in the start and after your big explore just graduatly add the homes up to 45%, they wont do you any good if your citz is still recovering after the explore, have them in mines at first.
A note about the farms, since some races requires more food then other dont be to strict on the razing 10 at the start, this could resort in food shortage which is a big no no in running a protection period.
Always have your selfspells running, always, no exceptions, the difference between running a protection strategy with and without selfspells are huge
I think that pretty much covered the basics, there is several schools in how to do a proper protection strategy, some people releases military to either explore more or to release into citizens for more citizens, I havent included that here just to have it little bit more simple.
If you think I missed something or got questions about something here then either comment on the article or send me a email @ admin[at]orkfia.biz or contact me on irc.
Cheers
~Acwder
War Report – #17 vs. #45
War Report: #17 vs. #45
Having survived countless horrors of the 20th century in the form of drugged-up hippies and crazy scrapbook scribblers – not to mention the fabled millenium bug which apparently shouldn’t exist but nevertheless made life difficult for everyone – the mighty Decepticons emerged from the rubbles shaken but not beaten.
Under the iron-fisted rule of their courageous leader Megatron (and his loyal constructicon Bonecrusher) the Decepticons once again attained power reminiscent of their former glory. Peace came at last, but alas, the fierce warriors were not made to settle for the menial normality of machinery maintenance and lube abuse. They were made for war, and war it was to be. They toyed with the idea of naming the campaign a “pre-emptive strike in The War on Terror” but decided it was just not cool. They only had one thing in mind: world domination. and cheap beer. but that can wait.
Frantic preparations ensued as the blood-thirsty Decepticons scurried about, bristling with eagerness. Not everything went well. Ravage in his sleep-deprived-examination-prep state forgot to get barracks. Skyfire took a mental stroll as he deliberated over the cost-effectiveness of getting barracks, and came home a few minutes too late to secure guilds in time. In the meantime everyone (tried to) cross their shiny metallic fingers for #45 to remain in range. Nothing however, could stave off the fervent enthusiasm of the Decepticons, and nothing did.
While there wasn’t any plans to plan, planning nevertheless took place. 19:55 was set as the initial time for elven scouts to prepare the battlefields for what was to be the main strike at 22:55. Megatron thundered out battle orders before leaving on a quest for cheap beer. He left an ominous message: “I’ll be back…… (at 16:00)”
16:00 came and went, and there were no signs of Megatron. The rest of the cons sat around and twiddled their thumbs nervously, all the while glancing surrepticiously at #45′s ailing leader, Adolf Hitler as his breathing became increasingly laboured. Leaderless and out of patience, the cons started feeling sorry for themselves and reached once more for the lube. It was not until the daring Bonecrusher stepped up that the cons regained their focus. “We shall strike at 18:55,” he thundered, and sounded the war-horns. A wise decision it proved, for it was revealed later that Adolf Hitler accidentally shot himself in the throat hours earlier as his life slipped away in his hole of a bunker, alone and unknown to all.
The scouting-party – Soundwave and Bonecrusher (Buzzsaw was still intoxicated from too much cheap beer) fired the first shots. The target was the mammoth Leonidas I who was rumoured to have skin of iron and ***** of steel. (jesus what do they feed you in sparta?) Indeed he proved well-defended, but his fate was sealed – he would be the first to fall. It wasn’t long before the scouting party exhausted their ammo and retreated to regain their stamina as they waited for the main strike-force to arrive.
Things were going well, the only resistance on behalf of the Earth elite was a feeble BC on the cons’ budding owl (this choice was to puzzle historians for aeons to come). However it was clear by then that something, somewhere was seriously amiss…
Where’s Megatron?!?
A vicious rumour began circulating that he in fact ran off with Lepel’s sister, but the Decepticons were not to be distracted by such awful thoughts. The main army joined the scounts on-time at 22:55 and unleashed their wrath upon the hapless earthlings. Leonidas I, proved in the end merely a brute with too much facial hair, as Quintessons struck a vicious blow to soften him up.
It wasn’t long before the mighty cons realised that enough homes (tents? iono) had been burnt, and left the eager Skyfire bewildered as he ran around looking for a place to dump his full load of ammunition. Bonecrusher was quick to point them in the right direction, as the rest of the firepower was diverted to the next target: Genghis Khan.
23:00ST: double kill. As the Decepticons surveyed the battlefield in satisfaction, Ravage and Quintessons felt safe enough to retreat to their sanctuaries and binge on their well-earnt supply of cheap beer. The war soon ended 2 hours later as King Arthur became the last to fall.
The triumphant Decepticons celebrated their victory with reservation. They congratulated themselves and divided the war-spoils, carrying home years of supplies of beer which as it turned out, didn’t last years at all. They drank, they slept and prayed in their sleep to the OrkfianGods for Megatron’s safe return.
And return safely he did, with heroic tales of escaping sabotage attempts, rendering him without internet access for the best part of the day. He may have missed the war, but his spirit will always be with his fellow Decepticons (for all the good that does).
Long Live Megatron! Long Live the Decepticons and may the age of no-crazy-hippies-and-weirdos-with-black-books last forever. Amen.
Final score
Gangsters 3 – 0 World Dominance
~ Halcyon #17
Orkfia Classic – Age Changes – Age 41 #2
Hello there again
Last night Ive covered the race changes and game changes.
Now its time for the Layout changes.
The goal with these changes was to try and bring Orkfia Classic forward in the design bit.
Here are four screenshots from within the new layout.
There is a new notes to this new layout, for Age 41 this will only be available for the old classic blue color scheme, the patterns etc will be added for the other color schemes for Age 42.
Headlines – This is a new section of Orkfia Classic, basicly it shows the news from Orkfia Portal, Orkfia Portal Forum, Orkfia Classic @ Twitter and Orkfia Classic Global News. You also have the option here to filter between what feeds you want to see, Orkfia Portal Forum is by default turned of to avoid to much spam.
Footer – Here is now quicklinks to the advisors, communications and your own personal quicklinks, when you first logon it will consists of links to options where you can set your own links, a current flaw is that it displays the actual link as name of it, this will be fixed once I figure out how^^.
Rounded Corners – Due to different standards for different browers the rounded corners is only available for the latest versions of Firefox and Safari, the rest of you will have to wait until css3 is properly launched or your own browers adds its own rounded corners standard.
If you would happend to find anything which seems to be wrong please contact me, its unfortunatly easy to miss something while trying to get everything to work for most browers ( ie5 and ie6 excluded).
Id also generally advice you all to always use the latest version of your browser, main players in Orkfia uses firefox 3.x.x which I think personally is really good, but there are a few players out there running browers that are 4-6 years old, if you happend to have a old browser then be aware that you wont have the most out of the experience.
More information to come.
Cheers
~Acwder
