I started in the end of September 2010 in Eastern Ocean 67. I had started 2 other worlds with alliances I had founded, yet merged into larger alliances due to their larger, more intimidating players. This world I was determined I would not yield.
I messaged as many players as I could around me to join my new alliance. Only 5% would join as most either joined enemies or allies. After the 5th day, I had only 12 players. And one was about to lose his main city to Scads, a player of EM III. And I hadn't a harbor at the time. How daft of me?!? I committed to not letting that happen again; always be prepared and expand only as my support expanded. Lesson number 1.
Within a month's time, I had recruited 20+ players in Ocean 67 and neighboring Ocean 77. At that time, I was determined to build a coalition to help react and fight the academy that seized cities as they pleased in Ocean 67. That was October, and we were 10 times smaller than our foe, Myrmidon Elite III, much less pipsqueaks compared to their top 10 ranked brothers. We allied with the likes of The Slaughterers, Lion Gate, THE HIGH LORDS, Charlies Angels, and King Jonesy's bunch (my memory has failed me). We shared forums, but most importantly, the Atlantic forum. This support forum was critical to our success and I monitored it like a hawk. I built pegs and briremes as quickly as I could to help in anyway possible to stem ME III's advance east.
But eventually an ME III player named Roadtrash took a city just 20 min from my own. I knew that although our entire alliance hadn't a second city, we would need to fight. I stayed up for a few long nights writing my first ever strategy and Op, called Operation Foothold. We would attempt to divert Roadtrash's forces to 4 other cities, including egami's, while attempting to take his largest city. Long story short, the Op failed because my timing was 15 min too late on the revolt attack, but skapone managed to take one of their players, James. At about the same time, this XxSyLissxX character decided to attempt to take hendiddy's city (founder of Lion Gate). I sent my briremes and nearly all of them were destroyed. In the forums it was chaos that we'd have to fight both ME III and THE DEATH CRUSADERS. We appeared doomed, but 3 nights later while trying to plan another Op, I sent two messages that changed the course of this war.
One I sent to XxSyLissxX, a player with 5 more cities than my 1. I messaged him stating how I respected him, congratulated him on taking a ME III city, and asked if there was anyway we could earn their respect by fighting ME III. He said he was the "Grand Leader" of Ocean 67 and would have to bring it to CENOBITES and council. He also said he believed hendiddy to be a ME III spy and would rim him unless I could show some results.
The second I sent to Roadtrash and said hello and congratulated him on beating us to the punch. At the time we talked about the Bama game and other silly stuff. He finished the conversation by saying how he respected our coordinated attacks.
A few days later, we had our turning point. Roadtrash left ME III and in a few days, he joined us. The second Op was much more successful with us securing cities from hanzinho, angurai, and Peleg. But then, XxSyLissxX struck and took a city from Lion Gate's General Treskow, which was a huge blow to the coalition. Somehow I convinced Lion Gate and the rest that TDC would not attack them again while I revealed our success against ME III and future plans to XxSyLissxX, who forwarded it to CENOBITES. Eventually, they agreed to a NAP that guaranteed our sovereignty contingent on our fight against ME III. Soon after we got a pact with TDC, Lion Gate's leaders merged with us and King Jonesy's crew. And fight we did.
Through the New Year, we lost 2 cities while expanding west taking dozens from Olaf17, holt0307, Ancient Evil, and their hopeless diplomat, Krakoo. But soon we found ourselves in the spotlight in the South. Our victories woken Merc98, the leader of Eternal Myrmidon I (name change) and the leader of LEGION II and players in Athenian Hammer in O67. Even Ubuk with THE HIVE got involved in attacking us. This meant we needed to not just destroy EM III, but take the fight to all four allied families that dominated the top 12 at the time: LEGION, Athenians, Myrmidons, and HIVE all the same, just as TDC had been doing for quite sometime. And we weren't ranked in the top 30 yet
We decided to form a much larger coalition in early-January. While the likes of The Baslisk and the Olympians (another name change for the Myrmidon) formed the Iota Coalition resistance, we formed a smaller, tighter, more-trusted group of allies that shared a forum called 'SOUTH.' This forum had THE DEATH CRUSADERS, The Slaughterers, and at times, Little Brother, THE CIRCLE, Gaeltacht Rage, and some Delian League. From here, we coordinated Ops that removed Ubuk, madafrican, jpitre, ruudgame, and others from Ocean 67. We together helped TDC finally defeat the treacherous Blackguards in Ocean 57. There was only one direction to move: North.
In early January, I received communicae from leaders of LEGION & Athenians (just before the merge), that my days were numbered and I was to be taken out. Also, when the rest of Lion Gate merged, the leader HNTM invited a close friend of his in Vietnam to join us named minhduc. Days after, an Athenian leader threatened minhduc into leaving our alliance. Soon after, the SOUTH coalition embarked on rimming Merc98 of the Olympians, which we succeeded til he jumped to Evolution III for safe-haven. On February 5th, we declared war on Evolution and all of its affiliates by attacking en masse property and jpitre. From their accounts, we sent more than 100 attacks at once on their cities. We captured 8 cities in 48 hrs before they went into vacation mode. That was the beginning of our invasion of Ocean 66.
This process continued each weekend with my best friends in the game: skapone, surfero999, Roadtrash, egami, Krulnak, Notos, and Scads. And our awesome allies: CENOBITES, XxSyLissxX, gabigabi, Manu Forti, Raiden10, Vorrian, Chedog, CharlestheGrinningBoy and many others that I'm leaving out. We'd attack en masse, secure as many cities as we could before the player was in vacation mode. Before long, enemy players in Ocean 66 were taking vacation at random and progress slowed waiting for players to return from vm. When an alliance-wide vacation was taken when I stupidly hinted at another weekend Op on a shared HIVE forum, it was the final straw for my best attackers who left for more fair gaming pursuits. This was when Atlantic League lost its chance to win and the fault was my own.
We continued to make progress til late May when I burned-out while trying to coordinate amongst 6-7 other alliances with Ops that were only 50% effective at best since we no longer had our best and most active players. Once my planning partner in crime was banned, I left for a two month hiatus and left the keys with a husband-wife team that were working both my alliance and Little Brother. I returned in August when I saw the husband-wife team went inactive and found the alliance near dissolution into TDC. I salvaged what was left, started some Ops which met failure with lack of participation. Then we had terrible inactivity along with our allies and I attempted one last desperate merge as 'Bad Company,' our long-time moniker for Atlantic League, THE DEATH CRUSADERS, and The Slaughterers. Then my best friend in Grepolis, XxSyLissxX, left the game and me heart-broken. Only 2 players remained from the core group and I was just tired. Just queuing ships and sending attacks became a chore, and I never cared for 2.0 or World Wonders. So I moved who I could to THE DEATH CRUSADERS and said goodbye in November.
750 players passed through the walls of Atlantic League in just 13 months. In the first 12 months, we endured 0 name changes! LOL To those who I left and haven't returned to, I am deeply sorry. Countless friends, nearly all gone now, but not forgotten. There were so many more memories besides those mentioned above, but I can't fit that into a reasonable post. We had great times in the push for greatness, but in my mind, our dream was crushed long ago.
BBCue
Atlantic League
