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Post by Dubber on Oct 21, 2011 7:20:10 GMT -5
Timelines and Discussions of the history of The Grid.
"In the beginning there was one square, and that square was Dubber." -Ourjake
There's a lot more ...
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Post by ioiooiioio on Oct 21, 2011 19:25:53 GMT -5
This is a (not so) concise compilation of my account of grid history after I joined:
Time 0 Situation: Squares had unit limits that could be increased based on farms. S1, I think quantumchaos had it, had 20k units. Jake had most of the top squares, Jes had most of the bottom squares. Jes was red.
Early events
Jake takes a hiatus Quantum takes control of all of the squares We are now able to spawn atop an owned square Quantum abandons everything and makes a sea of abandoned squares Quantum turns green-blue Igvy reduces the farms to nothing
Some time later --
ioi is in possession of S10, and uses it as a locus of farms and cities. It has 12k units on it, and Conciquentia spawns on it, taking it. Alpha takes it from him after he unwisely dilutes the units.
ShadowMech joins. ioi and Shadow coordinate devastating combination attacks that wipe greendruid and Igvy. Shadow also goes on to take Jes's squares. Dubber has also recently made his return to the grid, and Shadow tries to get ioi to help him remove dubber from the grid, as neither can remove dubber alone (most units on grid, 35k total). ioi decides to wait, and build up, as Dubber does not seem aggressive.
Dubber takes grid.
[APOC event] ioi uses 50k on burns ioi uses 50k on nukes ioi uses 50k on havoks ioi enters the grid, taking Dubber's final level 4 wall square, destroying the umbrella ioi ghosts again ioi uses the rest on the money on burns and havoks, totaling 250k [/APOC event]
Jake takes and abandons Dubber's now weakened squares
More time passes
Current day
--
I think everyone should post something like their version of grid history, so we can cross reference and get a better idea of the timeline.
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Post by succat on Oct 21, 2011 20:44:44 GMT -5
This is a very good start so far. I love the, "In the beginning there was one square, and that square was Dubber." bit. I don't actually remember who had the very first square. I know that shortly after I released the game I caused a database error that wiped out all half-a-dozen or so accounts that had just started playing, and right after that those players had to make new accounts and Nawglan immediately grabbed square 1. But, it could be that Dubber had square 1 originally before the wipe, so I'm relying on your memories now.
IOI has added some pretty nice details to the mix, and they seem to jive with bits that I remember. I don't completely remember everyone's original colors though, so I guess that's a bonus, but not a necessary detail.
My rough time line of history is as follows...
The Grid is born.
The Grid is almost immediately wiped. (my fault, roughly 6 or so players had to create new accounts again)
Ellipsis takes North Grid in a sea of blue.
Somewhere in here Deleted is growing powerful and MikeEB popularizes his own farming formulas...
Somewhere along the line Nawglan, Ellipsis, and someone else (OurJake?) are sharing North Grid together and have it separated from the south by a row of abandoned squares previously owned by QuantumChaos who is quietly gambling up thousands of gold and planning an attack. He coaxes a noob into annexing one of the abandoned squares so that he can across with his hordes of newly purchased units and that's how The Grid was wiped the first time by a player.
QuantumChaos gambles away the rest of his money, abandons all his squares, and The Grid becomes populated again...
Here's where it gets hazy... OurJake takes a break for a while and somehow QuantumChaos again wipes The Grid, but I don't remember how exactly.
Igvy burns and havocs The Grid, weakening it, and then it becomes populated again...
Dubber returns...
Dubber quietly builds his empire and then wipes The Grid.
Grid becomes populated again...
Present Day...
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Post by mikeEB on Oct 21, 2011 22:00:18 GMT -5
The most important moment in the history of the grid was the introduction of farms. This point separates the 'big money era' from the 'small money era'. Right before the farms was the cold age, when players beyond a certain size were effectively paralyzed by a lack of resources. The grid became too large for its players to occupy and most of it lay abandoned.
And before that was the age of alliances, where with no Bank command players would fund each others' expansion.
And before that was the mesocracy, where players who could hold a medium-sized chunk of squares made the first large armies by redeploying their reinforcements.
And before that, deploys cost 5 each and the advantage went to the small. There was a time when Ourjake, with access to all my funds as a small player, took 2 hours to wipe out Xade after quickly taking all but 1 square.
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Post by ourjake on Oct 23, 2011 15:07:26 GMT -5
the three players in the top of the grid were me, dys(666), and sappharos(who has been out since before most everyone on presently has joined)
In the beginning there was a square, and that square was dubber (that's who was on s1 when i joined).
Ellipsis, nawglan, miikeeb joined soon after (with a couple of other warlocks players). ellipsis and nawglan split the top 30 squares or so; eventually nawglan had a stronghold with in ellipsis' territory (top 60 squares) after expansion.
after some infighting, there were a couple of joint efforts (deleted was involved and i think dys, there were lots who were ready to break the wall) to wipe ellipsis out and take sq1.
Ellipsis had the first wall, since before farms the most efficient troops gathering mechanism was to redeploy troops, and he would just reinforce his lower row or two. i may have been the one to do it, but it wasn't held long.
after disposing of ellipsis, a new set of players divided up the top squares (somewhat peacefully). shortly after deleted had finished taking ellipsis' squares i set on nawglan, who quit shortly after, because he put in a lot of work to have it destroyed in his sleep.
somewhere after the farms began, i set about helping the newbs and getting my clout up (at the same time). eventually i tried to make a move against deleted and he came back as i was starting...only to kick me off and run me off of a lot of my squares.
after dys started, he and i hit it off real quick and began to do spiteful things to quantumchaos.
dys is eliminated and goes on a promoting spree, coming back with 150k i think (at a time when promote paid 2500 and nobody had ever seen over ~10k) dys comes back and chases quantum (only) down and eliminates him relentlessly for a while. quantum stops respawning and goes to gamble vowing revenge (at this point there is no way to see gold on the ranks page).
at somepoint, dys got drunk and succat showed up and changed his name for him to 666
sappharos joins up and we begin to divide up the top of the grid and expand downwards (stopping at a row of squares entirely abandoned by quantum). i'm still encouraging the newbs who show up, quantum continues gambling and talking mess.
a person named shlarl and this point has an outpost outside of our wall.
quantum comes back onto the grid with 1 mil (in an era, where nobody had seen more than dys' money) and wipes most of the board. eventually he notices that he can't get past our wall of abandoned squares.
eventually quantum is able to talk shlarl into annex/abandoning one of the squares preventing him from getting at us and goes on a killing spree, taking out most of our squares, then (apparently) getting bored and tapering off. quantum exchanges most of his units(?) and i naturally come and exact vengance on him and reclaim the top of the grid.
EVERYONE calls hax on quantum, to the point that there were posts complaining about it and emails sent to succat. succat comes on and posts verifying that quantum had been gambling like mad and, while he hadn't actually checked numbers, succat was pretty sure it was legit
for a time it is only i and quantum (other players are inactive)and neither of us do much but tend our territories, him with sparse outposts below the wall and me solidly above.
somewhere in here, i got bored and emptied all my squares, allowing quantum to take the grid basically unopposed.
sometime in the previous events farms came out at 1+k each, more expensive with each like now. and were too precious to let go.
slowly and surely players trickled in, and i gave them money from alliances and donations.
eventually there was a time when i had 74ish clout and nobody else had 20 and there was the great dead ally payout. i came out with like 17k from it and immediately set about fortifying.
i wish i had more to add, but if you want to ask any questions, i will probably remember the answer, but nothing else significant in particular comes to mind.
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Post by Dubber on Oct 24, 2011 7:53:12 GMT -5
As for relative dates, the " It's not Warlocks, but it's new and different..." thread lists the database wipe as April 3, 2011 - which jives with my vague memories. I think Succat PM'd several folks in Warlocks in late February or early March & I was the lucky first player to check it out. Once there were opponents, things got interesting... Succat do you have a sequential user identifier like Warlocks does? (my Warlocks identifier is 1348 according to the "refer new users" page) Similar to Nawglan, pre-farms, I had a tidy little demesne which I was happily fortifying as protection against my very acquisitive neighbors - which got wiped in the 8 hours I was asleep one night. After that, I bailed as real life got in the way. When I returned, I was not planning on wiping The Grid. #trufax I had my nice conservative set of squares, I heavily fortified them as I had learned from previous experience that my opponents really are savages. My return coincided with the time QuantumChaos would actively Havoc whenever there were more squares with >1000 Units than there were players on the board. This was an opportune moment for restarting and once we had all figured out Q's "rule" we survived quite well. I don't know if I was the first player to break 100K Units (others can verify) but my plan to add a row of 999 units per square whenever my current squares were maxxed at 999 was proceeding apace until about 10 days ago (check the timestamp) ... when I was playing right after work before going home on a Weds night. I had been playing about an hours a day for all of about 10 days since my return when Q , I thought, joked with me about wiping the grid. I was not very receptive until I ran the numbers & saw that it was, almost, doable on my current cash and units. So I went for it. I almost got it done over ~6 hours, but I had to borrow ~100K Gold from Q to finish it off. Knocking Ourjake off the North Grid was more expensive than expected, but I knew it would be a close thing. I wrapped it about 5am Thursday morning & started my day. I discovered that I really liked keeping The Grid "mine" - enough that I felt like a bully and I found this disturbing. So I stopped killing players as they spawned by 10am the same day. So a total of ~5 hours as the "Overlord" of The Grid. I could have kept going as Overlord for a long time as my Umbrella was still intact. I think The Grid was ~310 squares. Before I started my active run for the Grid, my Unit count was ~156K and I had ~800K in the Bank. After wiping the grid, my max Farm count was ~420 & my max City count was ~404. I was taking in something like 15K Gold each happy hour. Ah, the halcyon days of yore...
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Post by succat on Oct 25, 2011 15:39:13 GMT -5
That's a lot of good details...
Dubber, yes, every player has a unique number that corresponds to where they sit inside the database. It's basically their ID number, and it is sequential. It serves no purpose other than being used for back-end data transfer. I don't know if that's what you are talking about, though.
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Post by Dubber on Oct 27, 2011 8:14:14 GMT -5
Dubber, yes, every player has a unique number that corresponds to where they sit inside the database. It's basically their ID number, and it is sequential. It serves no purpose other than being used for back-end data transfer. I don't know if that's what you are talking about, though. I was just wondering if there was a way to discover one's post-wipe sequential number. Also fun might be a joined on date, but I doubt that kind of data is stored anywhere.
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Post by succat on Oct 27, 2011 23:54:44 GMT -5
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Post by ellipsis on Nov 8, 2011 1:35:06 GMT -5
Ha, the constant "So-and-so rule the Nothern lands for a time, and then was conquered by so-and-such" narrative reminds me distinctly of Chinese history (especially between major dynasties).
Also, a note on the early history with Nawglan, MikeEB, and I. We were all allied in the early game and shared the northern territories (most belonging to Nawglan for a while), but Nawglan decided, mainly as an "experiment" to invite us to attack him so he could respawn further down the map. So MikeEB and I split his territory in half and shared it for a little while. Then one day I backstabbed him after he'd spent his troops attacking someone else and took the whole north in one fell swoop. Those were the days.
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Post by Dubber on Nov 10, 2011 17:16:41 GMT -5
A little more on relative dates. - I restarted playing actively around 9/26/2011
- I got wiped off the grid on 9/30/2011
- I wiped the grid in the early morning of 10/14/2011 and mostly abandoned after some crushing of hopes about 6 hours later
- Ourjake & collaborators wiped me off the grid the following night
- I rewiped the grid around midnight of 11/10/2011
Busy camper, anyway.
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Post by xade on Nov 10, 2011 17:44:10 GMT -5
anyone else remember that L7Weiner character? What a weiner...
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Post by ourjake on Nov 10, 2011 23:06:32 GMT -5
i remember him. he was amusing. he was kind of a square...
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Post by succat on Nov 11, 2011 21:43:39 GMT -5
He's always welcome back. A lot has changed, and now he can gamble with a lot more money than before so everyone can sit around and watch him blow it all
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Post by ourjake on Nov 12, 2011 11:53:08 GMT -5
he did have kind of a problem didn't he...maybe that's why he never took off
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