22Mar12 - Tournament Close

It is unlikely that SunStorm is sucking up to Harmless in hopes of an invite, as he is already a member. 

I do hope that Merpdarsh realizes there is no need for himself nor Turtie to tread overly cautiously in our presence.  Even if Turtie had been expressing some bitterness over the tournament outcome, it would be wholly forgivable so briefly following that disappointment.  We know other players truly hold a grudge, even while expertly hiding behind admirable poker faces (diplomacy at its finest, really).

SunStorm wrote: My jest regarding the generalization was that he said everybody missed the point but I had already posted that I agreed with him.  So obviously not everyone missed it.  (^_^)  That was all.

Ah, but then it is a generalization, making one or two exceptions wholly inadequate as counterexample.  Exceptions are allowed.

This was the first tournament in about two years into which Harmless could properly sink our teeth, and I'd be hard-pressed to promote any change that would diminish the scope of our opposition or room for ambition.  But I must admit that at least a couple or three league divisions would have allowed broader near-full enjoyment.

I can think of one good reason why this did not occur, however.  Smaller leagues would have considerable room for growth by adding members, which would have resulted in ganking in the lower leagues as opportunists joined up with whomever appeared best situated for local or league wins.  As a result, competition would have been substantially decreased and for many it would have either still been hopeless or turned into a sitting, waiting game.  As it was, for us it was just that sometimes.  The ganking problem may have been fixable, but in ways that would upset and exclude people and/or simply involved a lot of extra database-housed logic or complicated rules (i.e. no joining of alliances during the tournament, or limits based on league designation, or league assignment changes based on changing total population).  Such rules would in turn allow a lot of exploitation or letdowns as well (splitting alliances into regions to gank local competitions at lower leagues, accidentally getting stuck in an upper league level if it can't be lowered, etc.).

League divisions would theoretically be better, but a lot harder to do right and possibly not doable at all.

sunstorm, YMMV but there is no definite truth.

I think everyone is taking Turtie's remark way out of context. The whole "bully" comment is a playful jest merely to indicate that as a much larger alliance that already had a commanding lead, they could have just left a square for the "minnows" such as Champ and Path to fight over. Before we respond to this statement as a singularity, please let me elaborate. As a fairly young player in this game, it was mildly demoralizing spending weeks fighting over a square only to have the hordes of H come in at the last second to comically take it once and hold for the duration to win it out. 

I had fun and sadness and excitement and dashed hopes. This was a great competition and even though TLR won no prizes we learned some things and did a whole lot better than I figured we would at the outset.

Ursor was well contested. First VIC came at us and then Champs and then Peace and PATH. I assumed H? would be along in time to win it and we planned our final push just right to get enough time to take first before they got there. Well, it would have been just right if we had managed to keep the square but we didn't.

I have no complaints. I have nothing bad to say about H? I would have been happy to finish second to them in Ursor. They ARE huge and very well organized and intelligently led. In a year or so TLR could be as powerful, if we dedicate ourselves to growing as such. Any alliance can. 100 members with 100k pop each would be larger than they are now. Of course they wont stop growing either. Strategy is required to defeat a larger enemy. Sour grapes wont do it.

Edited by abstractdream - 27 Mar 2012 at 04:16