Hello everyone
I swor I'd never return here again, but after a good long break I thought I'd check in, just to see what's going on.
The early stages of Psi has been mentioned here and since I played back then I thought I'd share my experiences.
I fought the LOD alliances in O53(+O43) who later joined 4T, on my own more or less. Early on in the game I sent a few thousands of LS and some troops everytime I planned an attack, but as they had 8k biremes on constant call within 2 hours, it wasn't easy. I did manage to take a few cities and I've never lost a single one. LoD(4T) turned into turtles even tho' I was the only one fighting them(FACEPALM), which should underline what 4T did to this world, by mass recruiting and hard turtling..
I was also fighting on all other fronts, as much as I could from the west top corner in O54, but time had it's toll and when I finally had moved into all 4 core oceans(and a lot closer to OR/wargasm), I had to quit.
About RE and TUQ. A lot of tension was going on and everyone was wondering who would hit first(that was some of the best time I had on Psi), as the war machine SF is, we took the lead and ran straight through most of them. We've never lost a fight, but our opponents had a thing for turtling up or pacting when we came nocking, this got tiring, to say the least. Not that I blame them, I would have done the same, propably, maybe... depending on things ofc.
I remember one day I had a little fun with DrDim, I cleared most of his cities from all navy and troops, dang I wish I had 40 extra slots back then
Now why didn't SF expand beond the core oceans? Many of You who weren't in SF keep asking this question and I'll let You know a few reasons.
1. 4T had a rather big collection of branches and they were mostly turtles, so cleaning the core oceans, which were our main priority obviously, was bit of a hazard, one might say and a triviel one at that ^^
2. When You are placed in the core oceans, You have enemies or potential enemies
all around You, this usually isn't the case for big rim alliances. (We sadly ended up in a small war, which I still think started on a communication error, with our friends in BE, but that just proves the point). ORCA grew cuz there were no threat to them, same with wargasm, and we let them grow cuz they were no threat to us, same with wargasm, and we had plenty of targets already, but actually a big lack of city slots at that time, cuz we grew so fast. (and we didn't get any DBP, cuz everyone turtled after a short time.. or just never attacked us.) We expected world war after rimming RE and adding some good TUQ members to our crew, but it never happened, which amazes me till this day.
3. You see, being in the center means you're expanding all around your border and that takes a whole lot of slots to do so. Coordination also takes a big effort, because Your are sending offense and defence in all directions. Wargasm, 4T, OR/CA never had that issue for real.
My comments to the different alliances:
4T : Damage control party = turtling (they covered an area from O53 to O33 and down to O34/35? and more? lol?)
Wargasm : wasn't anything big when I played(, but doing ok it seems.)
OR : Simmers (and from what I could tell, no teacher, to learn people how to play.)
CA : They were on my radar early on, as they seemed to be the only serious alliance, but they were still far away.
BE & branches : Respect.
SF(1&2) : Biased obviously.
Oh, and to comment on one "mud throwing" comment i read on here, I'd like to say, that the one playing the rekoor acc right now, is very far from being a bad player. I've had the big pleasure to play with him myself, so I would know.
I hope You all have fun, that is hopefully still the main motivation for all of You.
PS. (Best player on Psi = Psiclone
p), nah. (tho the original one was good tho). I can't point on a specific one, SF had and have so many great players. I'd like to say Thank You to all of them. I sure had fun!