The following was going to be a podcast, but as my computer keeps getting more and more cantankerous and as it's too late to properly record and edit all this verbiage, and as all this verbiage stands to go stale very quickly, here it is in blog form. Enjoy!
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It’s been a month since my last podcast episode and Crown of the Gods has come from a game barely playable through the course of an uptime of a few days to one where a competitive event has been able to be held for the first time.
We have this past weekend completed what will hopefully be the first of a number of Alpha Smackdowns. This Alpha Smackdown was held from Noon server time on Friday 7 March 2015 to Noon server time on Monday 9 March 2015 and was a regular (non-Castles) server, with 10x resource accumulation, 10x building and recruitment speed, and 10x transport and storage capacity.
It was restricted to first Beta keyholders only, the winner being the one with, at the end of the 48 hours of the server, the highest empire score, it being the total number of levels of all one’s cities’ buildings combined. For example: I build a level 3 building, and by doing so, my score increases by six - one point for the lvl 1 build, two for the upgrade to lvl 2, and another three for the upgrade to level 3. Were I to upgrade to lvl 4, one’s score would increase by 4. And so on.
Going into this weekend, I knew I would not have the time it would take to win. My only goal was to finish in the top half of all accounts competing. I played a little on Saturday afternoon, but was not really able to get into things until about 8 pm on Sunday evening, finding myself in about 110th place out of about 125. At this point, 62nd place or better would do it for me.
However, I was at an impasse. Having spent my Charisma on low-level construction time boosts, I now found myself with one city and little prospect of expanding to a second one. However, I did have enough Charisma for three 1000-cost boosts.
I also noticed I had a lot of level 3 & 4 buildings, which immediately translated to me as gimme points. I went on a building spree, which included the building up of my farms which were at level 2 still. My food per hour was very low, and I was way behind on food for the first title-advance research.
I had to spend one Charisma boost on 10000 food. This gained me a full hour. But I was behind in my Temple upgrade. It was still at level 6, and I had not been good in my afk time about upgrading this building. I did not have a lot of good planning, and the only way to make top half was going to be a long all-nighter.
But the building spree was beginning to pay off. The system would update scores, and I found myself in 105th place, then 100th, then 98th, and so on…
I used a second boost to get through an hour of temple building, which helped immensely. I got the building to level 10, and had a choice of using my last Charisma to either speed up the enlistment of my Steward or to build more buildings faster. I did not speed up the enlistment, opting in the end (I think) to boost building speed. Time was short with, at this point, server downtime in less than twelve hours.
The Steward was enlisted at last, and ten minutes later, he got to a spot right next to my city, which thankfully was located in a somewhat-isolated part of the northeast of C22 (where everyone was). The second city was a reality, and with it, my chance of getting the additional two-thousand or so points to make top-half.
Thanks to my substandard farm estate planning, I would not get a third city in time, but I could still do some damage. It may have been at the point I used the last of my Charisma for that building speed-boost, but I’m not sure. Now that I think about, what I did was use two Charisma items for getting the two hours of Temple building in my first city done quickly.
I turned the building councillor loose, upgrading everything in sight, making sure to upgrade cabins manually if necessary to speed up building time even more, though the time spent in building up cabins might not have been offset by time savings with other buildings…
I slowly climbed the ranks and was astonished to see myself getting to the 90s, then the 80s, and then the 70s! Good grief, I could get top half before I get to bed! There came a point where the guys in 64th and 65th places were tied in points, but were placed according to how their alliances were faring; their respective alliances were not tied in points.
I found myself at 68th place, needing 64th place by this time as the accounts playing had increased to 128. And I quickly leapfrogged over the mid-sixties and at the next tick or two of the system score updation found myself in 64th! At this point, I went to bed - a good night’s work done, but wondering how many people come sunrise would start working on their empires, knocking me down who-knows-how-many places!
I woke up in 68th place and got to it again. My charisma build-up had allowed me two one-hour building boosts (or three??), and I used them accordingly. There would be no third city for me. My job simply was to in the short time I had left build as much as humanly-possible. It was 10:00 am Central, and I had but an hour to make something happen.
And roll, I did! I left the 60s behind and dumbfoundedly found myself in the 50s! Could placing in the 40s be in the cards, perhaps? Probably not - needed that third city for that, but press on, I did, and when the last few seconds of the Alpha Smackdown ticked away, the final score update had not yet ticked and I currently found myself in 54th place, but for a half-hour before that, I was pretty much assured I would finish well in the top half with much elation on my part. Congrats to the winner were all over chat at this point along with the heady feeling of us all getting through this first-ever competitive event for Crown of the Gods with nary a server glitch or game-breaking difficulty.
In the end, a total of 129 accounts contested this Alpha Smackdown with the winner being hammrbone h-a-m-m-r-b-o-n-e of the OrganizedChaos alliance with 25966 points and six cities. In second place was RapidRabbit of The HIVE with 23120 points and six cities. And in third place was Davicof of Pact of Gods with 19574 points and six cities.
Damien69 of Wolfpack(GER) with 18506 points was fourth overall, but placed first of those with five cities. A full listing of everyone who competed and how they placed can be found at www.crownofthegods.com
Monday morning, I had the presence of mind to found an alliance, Podcast Deorum, which finished 8th of the 10 or so alliances which competed. Pact of Gods finished first, I know for sure, but the Dev team has not posted a list of how Alliances have placed yet.
Of everyone who had two cities, majmajor of The Hive with 9663 points finished 1st and in 35th overall. In 2nd place was Silk of AO Steel with 8256 points and 43rd place overall. In third was informerator of Pact of Gods with 7555 points and 47th place overall. In fifth was Want2Bme of The HIVE with 6734 points and 51st place overall. And in sixth place of all those with two cities was yours truly with 6719 points and 52nd place overall.
Other notables were 9th place overall MiahTheZ of The Wolf Pack with 16658 points and three cities, 10th place Lord Soth of Pact of Gods with 16567 points and three cities, 15th place SmoothMonkey of The Wolf Pack with 12258 points and four cities.
GM Gordy came in 34th place with 9762 points, and joined no alliance, nor did he found one. In 53rd place was Druss of Pact of Gods with 6638 points and 4 cities. Adiera came in 73rd with 4435 points and 3 cities, GM Alakazzzam who was not in an alliance was in 89th with 3421 points and 2 cities, optical of The HIVE finished in 95th with 2968 points and 1 city, jketzl who was not in an alliance with 2630 points and 2 cities in 98th, Polgara of The HIVE finished in 99th place with 2477 points and 1 city, and of everyone who had more than the minimum three points possible was AusJonny who was not in an alliance. This player had 26 points with 1 city. With 3 points and 1 city, Capella was slotted by the game system into 125th place. And in last place with 3 points and 1 city and in no alliance, the system put mmv1069. Not sure how the system is resolving ties - LOL!
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hammerbone won by doing everything right. He clearly had the time to put into 48 hours of intense gaming this weekend. And he doubtless was using the old Lord of Ultima city optimzer at www.louopt.com.
He clearly had in his mind, I think, this was a two-day event and taking out a single resource node would use one forty-eighth of that time. Using sleep and other away time to kill off resource nodes instead of having the building councillor auto-build was for me a huge mistake.
Equally-galling was my lack of real awareness at the Smackdown’s outset of the existence of the full panoply of Charisma-cost items such as one that boosts a particular city’s build speed by a certain amount of time. The whole thing was a bit overwhelming to me, not the mention the particular mindset of actual Lord of Ultima-esque competition vs. building for building’s sake. I wasted early on most of the 15000 Charisma with which I (and everyone else) began with half-hour construction-time boosts. It was not until it was way too late that I realized I could have probably boosted my first city’s building with a minor build-basilica-to-level 5 or something like that. I certainly could have used such a boost for my second city!
Not bearing in mind the precise costs of everything was something else I did not do: the 50 of each refined resource for the first title research - oh, I need to build up the Sorceror’s Tower. And I need plenty of carts and 25k in food and iron, each plus 100k of wood and iron each. I didn’t build up farms early on as I should have prior to going afk on Saturday night and Sunday morning-and-afternoon. I was not too bad about forums, but I did not use Saturday night or away-time on Sunday to build up that Temple.
Flying by the seat of my pants until late Sunday night and just building for the sake of building, I failed to take up many opportunities to boost things here and there and optimize time and resources. The only thing I did somewhat well was keep cognizant of forums and my need for 250 carts. I was very good about building up enough carts for trading between my cities which helped greatly to build up the second city.
Lastly, I did not join an alliance. I founded my own alliance, but I should have seen if Pact of Gods was recruiting. Or The HIVE, maybe… Who knows.
Had I had my brain turned on, I could have easily had at least four cities and finished in the thirties and maybe even got lucky enough to be in the top fifteen places who will receive a small something from Gaming Addict Studios for their good work.
Still, though, one learns from their mistakes, and while I was disapointed in myself, I still achieved my goal of finishing in the top half and came out of this grand experience knowing something. I am very happy.
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Gordy, Alakazzzam, and all the Gaming Addict Studios team must be on cloud nine right now, and they should be. The product of their last year of blood, sweat, and tears, Crown of the Gods, is not, I believe, by any means ready for a full game-world of beta testing, but it is playable to the point a simple two-day competitive event is able to be held with no server or database issues and no game-breaking problems. While not beta-or-release-ready, Crown of the Gods is nevertheless operational.
I’m recording this on the evening of Tuesday 10 March 2015, about thirty-something hours past the end of the Smackdown and the taking down of the game server, and from this past weekend, I expect the team has learned more than it has before what works and what doesn’t and is in the throes of the most-intense week of detail-ridden bug-fixing the game has seen since the first week of game testing in late January.
With Gordy’s taking the server down at the end of the Smackdown on Monday at Noon server, we enter what promises to be more than a full week without Crown of the Gods’ being online for playtesting, but what we will see next week or so will be, I think, a far-better experience than even this weekend was. I can’t wait for what is next in-store for us, and I can’t wait for the next Alpha Smackdown!
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