Desertion. . . aka Loyalty vs. Self-Preservation

Well, it seems that a lot of people are just full of hot air (unless they are on the winning team). A large part of the tribe has stuck in the fray even though it is looking dismal. Another large group started some attacks in the last few days.

Desertion in the face of an overwhelming army or force is an interesting thing. Players start thinking about personal survival instead of the survival of the group and that is when all remaining ties break down.

We have orders to start taking the villages of the deserters, however I do not think I will do anything to them unless they attack me first. I have enough on my plate to have to open a fourth front with deserters.

Ultimately, it does boil down to loyalty vs. self-preservation.

Winds of Change.

Ok, the war that was progressing slightly negatively for us has now taken a turn for the worse. It actually has some of my tribemates jumping ship. We were taking on one of the top 4 or 5 tribes in the world and now another of the top tribes has joined on the other side. Needless to say this does not look good for us. lol. I am hoping that the morale thing plays a large part of this next part or we will be in big trouble.

Producing troops and supporting the frontline as always.

Expansion, Expansion, Expansion. . .

In Tribal Wars I am in the expanding business. I started out slowly but have increased the growth recently:

Date - - - - - - - - - # of Villages conquered
23rd March 2008 - 3
21st March 2008 - 2
13th March 2008 - 2
11th March 2008 - 2
06th March 2008 - 1
05th March 2008 - 1
04th March 2008 - 1
01st March 2008 - 1
29th February 2008 - 1
28th February 2008 - 1
27th February 2008 - 1
26th February 2008 - 1
20th February 2008 - 1
18th February 2008 - 2
10th February 2008 - 1
07th February 2008 - 1
05th February 2008 - 1
03rd February 2008 - 1
02nd February 2008 - 1
29th January 2008 - 1
25th January 2008 - 1
24th January 2008 - 2
21st January 2008 - 1
19th January 2008 - 1
16th January 2008 - 1
12th January 2008 - 1
11th January 2008 - 1
02nd January 2008 - 2

Ultimately, whoever controls all of the villages wins. Tribal Wars is different from Travian in that you do not win and have the server end and reset once someone controls a Wonder of the World long enough.

Telemarketer Call

My wife received a telemarketer call yesterday that was pretty funny. Here is the script of what happened:

Wife: Hello?

Telemarketer: Is the Owner there?

Wife: I'm the Owner.

Telemarketer: Hi I'm calling today to offer you a interest rate check.

Wife: I'm not interested.

Telemarketer: No I'm not selling anything. This is a simple interest rate check to see if you are paying to high on your credit cards.

Wife: That's okay I'm not interested.

Telemarketer: So you are okay with paying more in interest?

Wife: Actually I have a pretty good rate.

Telemarketer: Really? What is it?

Wife: 0%

Telemarketer: (disgusted) I don't believe you.

Wife: Sorry, I don't care if you don't believe me. It's true.

Telemarketer: I want you to fax it over to me and show me.

Wife: I'm not going to fax over my statement to a stranger. You called me.

Telemarketer: No no you can cross out all your information, I don't need to see that. I want to see the 0%.

Wife: I'm not going to take the time or the effort to fax over a statement so a telemarketer will believe me.

Telemarketer: Click.

"The Best Free Browser Games List"

Well, I have found another blog that deals with all free browser games. I liked what he had listed so thought I would add it to the links on the side. You can find it there or here.

Major War going on. . .

My Tribe in Tribal Wars is involved in a large scale war. Currently, the sides are my family of tribes which include 3 of the top 20 tribes against a top 5 tribe and needless to say we do not have the involvement needed to really sustain a good front.

I think we have lost about 40+ villages to the enemy and have gained around 5. Not a good balance there. Being in the second level of the family tribes a lot of the members of this 90+ person tribe seem to just be coasting along and not supporting the front line players.

I have 37(increasing all of the time) villages and points in the 290,000 range. Not huge but not small either. I am supporting 6 or so of the front line villages with anywhere from 16,000 troops up to 50,000 troops in each of those villages.

Now that to me sounds impressive, but it starts to pale in comparison when the attacking player has 1.2 million points and who knows how many troops at his disposal.

The good thing about the game is that the attackers are limited by the size of the village farms. The farm maxes out at level 30 giving that village a maximum number of troops and building points of 24,000. Technically, you could have 20,000 axemen in one village but the majority of villages that I have seen have 10,000 - 12,000 points and that limits the amount of axes or other attacking troops to around 12,000 to 16,000 if they have any type of token defense for the village.

This means that each attack can only have that many attackers and you can stack villages with as many defending troops as you would like. It all boils down to how active the defending tribes are. If they all support each other and beef up the attacked villages they loose very little troops while they wipe out the attacking armies no matter how large the attacker is.

Also playing into this equation is the Morale calculation. A member of our tribe wrote the following in our forum:

What is morale?
Morale is basically how much your troops want to fight a smaller target, they may feel sorry for them or whatever. If your attacking a larger target, your morale is always 100%. Morale is not like luck which is random but it is a definite calculable figure which your simulator will happily calculate for you.
Morale Figures
Enemy 20% of your points, you have 90% morale
Enemy 17.5% of your points, you have 82% morale
Enemy 15% of your points, you have 75% morale
Enemy 10% of your points, you have 60% morale
Enemy 5% of your points, you have 45% morale
Enemy 2.5% of your points, you have 38% morale

And what does this mean in practice?
If morale was 100%, your losses are at 100%

Morale is 90% => you lose 133% troops
With morale at 90%, you lose 1/3 more. If this tips the balance of the battle it of course gets a lot worse-

Morale is 80% => you lose 150% troops
Morale is 67% => you lose 200% troops
Morale is 50% => you lose 300% troops
Morale is 32% => you lose 600% troops (32% is lowest morale you can ever have)

And for the record. Morale is calculated on your total player points vs. total points of your target.

So, if our smaller players get their act in gear we can decimate the attacking forces due to our smaller sizes and then retaliate.

All in all this is going to be a very drawn out war and I hope that we start to turn it around or get a bit more active.

You have to support your Tribemates as if they were you since it will be you someday.

If I had a time machine . .

I was sitting at work and my building queue's were full when I started thinking about what I would do if I had a time machine. Now of course I would go back in time and give myself information to make me a billionaire but it is more fun if there are rules. Here they are:

1) You cannot interact with yourself in any way. "Back to the Future" style or you will destroy all of time.

2) The regular laws of the land apply so no killing, maiming, or running amok.

I figured that I would go back in time and just watch stuff happen. Popping in and out of ancient world would be fun as well as seeing the Roman empire in all of its glory. I would love to see the American continent before the white man arrived and watch the sermon on the mount. I would hide in the mountains and see the real story of the 300 Spartans.

I would go back to the slam dunk competition where Michael Jordan dunked from the free throw line and be court side for that, as well as at the Superbowl when the Dolphins had their perfect season.

What would you like to do?