One side effect of this is that I've got about 50k troops left over from the old structure that I no longer want, mostly in small numbers. Rather than just sacrificing them to Her Great Spikey Floralness, I thought it'd be amusing to make a quick post here and see if anybody wants to hire them for their own purposes.

Now, this can be for any purpose your dark little heart imagines. Want me to launch them at a dear friend of yours? As you wish. :) Care to have them harry a foe or support a siege - that works too! I fully don't expect these troops to survive wherever your whims may send them, and if anyone who you direct me to attack gets pissed at me...well...they need to chill. :) Naps and/or confeds will be signed during these operations, so you can treat these troops pretty much like those of any ally.

Here's how its gonna work - this will be a silent, private auction for the next several days that will end at midnight server time on the morning of April 24th. Just send me a mail with the number of the army (listed below) and an offer of gold for its use. If I get multiple offers for one or more armies, I will either post them on this thread or contact the lower bidder so that if someone bids higher, you'll know and can revise your offer if you want. Note that all those making offers will remain anonymous during and after the auction.

When the server clock strikes midnight on April 24th, whoever has the highest bid for a given army will be notified that the army is theirs to order as they wish. Don't wait until the last minute, offer ridiculously low bids, or offer a bid that's only just a smidge higher - I reserve the right to ignore such silliness.

Once I've confirmed that you've won, and your gold is en route to any of my cities, just send me a mail with the coordinates of the square you'd like hit, the server day/time you'd like it to be hit, and the order you'd like me to use (e.g. attack, reinforce, etc.) along with any other details. I will time my launches to fulfill your order as best I can (even waking up at odd hours, if needed). If anything survives to return to me after the order completes, then I will have that to do with as I please - you get one order...so make it count! :)

Also, again, all orders given will be held in the strictest confidence, especially who gave them. So, feel free to use this to troll your friends or weaken an unsuspecting and now newly paranoid rival! :D No matter the bribes or threats, I won't tell anyone that it was you. :P

Lastly, I have a variety of commanders I can use with these armies. I will choose the best one to accomplish whatever goal you set for me, though you are welcome to suggest the qualities you'd like to see in your commander. I may combine these forces into a single army, if you hire multiple armies from the same city and want them to strike the same target at the same time. If multiple naps or confeds would conflict, then whichever side has made the largest total offers will win and I'll ignore conflicting offers from the other side.

Here are the armies available for use, grouped by type, including their home and number of units.

#1: Mafrovia - 7,000

#2: Afrovian Dreams - 5,200

#3: Afrovian Heights - 400

#4: Afrovian Pastures - 3,200

#5: Afrovian Peaks - 2,200

#6: Afrovian Watch - 7,250

Total: 25,250

#7: Mafrovia - 2,000

#8: Afrovian Dreams - 2,100

#9: Afrovian Flow - 2,500

#10: Afrovian Pastures - 1,100

#11: Afrovian Peaks - 1,350

#12: Afrovian Pulse - 100

#13: Afrovian Watch - 2,500

Total: 11,650

#14: Afrovian Heights - 7500

Total: 7,500

#15: Afrovian Flow - 1,000

#16: Afrovian Heights - 1,000

#17: Afrovian Pulse - 1,000

Total: 3,000

#18: Afrovian Flow - 1,000

#19: Afrovian Heights - 500

Total: 1,500

Your mail to me can be as simple as:

100k gold for #12

If you send me a mail that says something like "10 million gold for all your pikemen", I will treat it as a bid for each such army, evenly distributed across all such armies based on the number of units in each. In this way you may win some of the pikemen armies, but someone else who bid higher on a specific army might win just that one.

I'm curious to see what happens here...if people jump on this idea or ignore it...if it's used for "serious business" or just for a bit of fun. I look forward to seeing your messages! :D

Yours,

Mafro

As it's been 24 hours since my original post, I thought I'd quickly answer the most common questions and comments I've been getting.

Mafro, what if someone retaliates against you?

Yeah, could happen, though I'm not really worried about it. I'm getting rid of these troops because I have too many...so...if someone sends attacks against me in retaliation, so be it. If this turns into a full-on, siege-Mafro-out-of-the-game scenario, then frankly someone is taking things a bit too serious.

Mafro, can I have you send these troops against me, myself, and I?

Yes, though you, yourself, and, er, you are rather weird.

Mafro, can you post links to these operations so we can watch them hit?

You don't get out much, do you. I suppose that wouldn't violate any anonymity and might increase the fun factor a teensy bit for those that care. Sure, I'll do that if the buyer doesn't object and if I remember to do so.

Mafro, this is such a cool idea...hope it works out for you!

Thanks. As they say, boredom is the mother of all inventions...or was it the Darwinian compulsion to procreate? Something like that.

Mafro, are you becoming a merc?

Naw...this is most likely a one-time event, just to get some amusement out of getting rid of some troops that no longer fit my battle plans. Well, unless I make boatloads of gold from their deaths...then who knows!

Mafro, if you make boatloads of money doing this, then I'm totally going to do it too!

Good for you, sparky.

Here are the current bids for these armies...as you can see, they are going cheap...!  If you'd like a small military force to do your bidding, drop me a line with a bid that's reasonably higher than one of the ones below!

Two additional bidders have joined, who I'll be referring to as "Buddy" and "Assistant Principal Dunbar". However, as Assistant Principal Dunbar outbid Buddy and everyone else for every army, that will be the only name on the list below.

To address some new questions/comments....

Mafro, can I target other players or is this only for NPCs?

Yep, you can target anyone.

Mafro, is there a time limit on when I can use these troops?

I dunno...I probably should've set one. Dammit, yeah, I totally should've set one...the upkeep for a week is more than any bid so far...lol, oh well. So, please, at least start them marching within a week or two.

Mafro, are you going to offer more troops later?

smilee wrote: Given the gold cost of items to make a knight the current offers ought to be considered dumping... *ponder*

Yeah, no kidding...cheap bastards....

Pffft.

The trolling is real.  (And the answer is "yes".)

While trolling appears to be the main planned use for these armies, I've also heard of the following:

Cheers!

Mafro

So, at this point, please just mail me your "final" bids and whoever gets the highest bid in before midnight server time will get these armies.

Cheers!

Mafro

Yours,

Mafro

There's been a fair amount of interest in what happened, so here's what I can share:

On one hand I consider this a smashing success in that it was SUPER FUN! The sheer amount of intrigue, hidden grudges, etc. in this game is awesome. For those of you who confided in me - don't worry, your secrets are safe, even if you didn't end up winning any of the auctioned armies. 

It was also fun to engage in various military maneuvers and see their impact. I'm pleased to say that one of the winners of the auction was even able to use the armies they acquired to bring an end to an undesired conflict by forcing their foe to surrender on favorable terms. All without the time or ongoing cost of having to build or use their own troops, and with minimal risk if it failed - now that's smart.

On the other hand, I lost gold on this, mostly because I structured the auction poorly. In particular, players waited to bid until the last minute, and then several bid just a little more than the last amounts I had published. As a result, most underbid, failed to win any armies, and later told me that they would have bid much more had they realized they had been outbid. The result was that in some cases I didn't even cover the basic production costs of the troops, and in no cases did I also cover their upkeep for even the single week during which they were in use. I also completely neglected to consider the cost of resurrecting dead commanders.

That said, the sheer fun factor here made it totally worth the cost.

In addition, in a mixed blessing, most of my armies made it out intact, which was unexpected. In fact, I only lost about 5k of the 50k units. The bad side is that I still have the upkeep costs for them, which I thought would've been much more greatly reduced. The good side is that this affords me the opportunity of doing a second auction, which I am highly motivated (by my gold burn) to do. And maybe this time I'll figure out a better structure for it.

Thanks for reading and taking part in this experiment in game play! Please note that I won't be sharing anything with anyone about who won what, etc. If those that won armies come forward, I will validate that they did so, but I will not reveal anything to anyone outside of that validation.

Look for a new thread on my second attempt at auctioning my troops, coming soon...bye for now!

Yours,

Mafro

If you'd like to follow the 2nd auction, here's a link to that thread:  https://forum.illyriad.co.uk/2nd-military-auction-in-bl_topic10626.html" rel="nofollow - https://forum.illyriad.co.uk/2nd-military-auction-in-bl_topic10626.html .

Cheers!

Mafro