Thanks @BelSon for the game! Yeah, I’m not sure how you got such a decent lead in the economy seeing as I held significantly more stars. That was worrying me until that final set of moves in the east the cleared you out of the northern section.
Getting @Solfyre to worry is already formidable, well played.
This win starts the two-week countdown for the two remaining quarter-final games:
@DarkDragonwing vs @HULK & @Dr_Gaming vs @spymort
With fast submits my game shouldn’t take that much longer
The 14 days are up and while it still looks like @HULK and @DarkDragonwing’s game (70-62 in stars after 366 ticks) could go either way, I have to call a semifinalist now for the tournament to progress in a timely manner. Based on the stats, Hulk will move on, but we look forward to a definite result from the battlefield in that QF game (for the world rankings).
- @Solfyre [US-1] vs. @HULK [US-4]
-
@plug [GB-3] vs. @spymort [AU-5]
(countries and world ranks as per July 19 in brackets)
Use the game links I provided for you in @Dysp’s tournament tool and join your games by July 24 latest.
If you win your game, please update us in the forums accordingly. When one game of this round has concluded, a countdown of two weeks for the remaining one will start. Affected players will be pinged.
@DarkDragonwing and I have had quite the spirited game - it’s a good map that has played well.
In the opening moves I lucky to get to (and activate) a Warp Gate first so was able to jump to the matching one that he was en-route to and grab that also. Ideally this should have been a decent advantage, but @DarkDragonwing fought hard to nullify that … but that has given me a few more stars in the center which accounts for the 70-62 difference.
In terms of spend, Dr. Banner usually won the “funding battle” with the HULK … so I ended up going BIG in Science (104-85) … and that is reflected in the stats where I currently lead 13-11 in Weapons and 5-4 in Manu - we are even elsewhere except he is up 3-2 in Banking.
The tradeoff is he is ahead in Indy (107-96), but with the extra Manu, I’m (currently) able to match his ship production, although he has more with 4902-4552. We are basically even in Econ (152-149) which is pretty amazing since I made a HULK SMASH move several cycle ago where I took out his core (which he quickly re-captured), so he lost that 20 Economy there.
So I’m pretty sure I can win this game, although a “wounded” enemy is the most dangerous … and @DarkDragonwing has talked about researching Radiation to match my Gamma-Ray enhanced SMASHING power! 
HOWEVER, I found out less than 48 hours ago that I’m leaving on a (fun) trip to Canada tomorrow for a week+ … and I’ll have limited Internet during this time. So while I can (hopefully) make submissions in this game (albeit at a much slower pace than I have been), there is no way I can start another game until August 1st.
So I decided what the heck, I’ll just do an ALL-IN HULK SMASH move and basically attacked with everything I had. Those ships are currently enroute … so I’m actually curious to see how @DarkDragonwing responds to this. A risky strategy, since the safer approach is to play the “grind-out” strategy … but the HULK rarely plays it safe as he gets ANGRY and just wants to SMASH!
So that’s my situation … and my “read” of the situation - I’m curious how @DarkDragonwing sees it from his side.
I realize @Trucriot you have a tournament to run, so if you want to move forward with the semi-final game against @Solfyre by July 24th, I would understand/respect your decision to have @DarkDragonwing advance instead of me. He’s a worthy adversary … and if I hadn’t gotten lucky in that opening move, we would be dead-locked right now … or maybe the HULK would have gotten SMASHED!
P.S. I looked at those semi-finals maps (including @plug and @spymort) … those are crazy dense - well done generating those.
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Agreed on the maps @HULK - plenty of stars to aim for… Big thanks to you @Trucriot for organising such a good tournament.
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Even though the star count is very close, I do not have any real chances to still turn the game. The Weapons gap is real tough and I am no longer in a position to launch attacks succesfully. The Science gap is a problem, too. I don‘t think that I am able to close any of the two gaps.
So it is highly unlikely for me to win the game against @HULK from the current position. Plus, I am not able to block his huge attack he just launched the other turn. It will be just a matter of time from this turn on until @HULK will capture the win by stars. The game is lost.
That‘s why I decided to concede the game. It was tough, challenging and fun to play. I tried my best, got a bit bad luck in the beginning, fought bravely and almost had the chance to strike back for an even star count. But @HULK did better through the entire game and was always able to put enough ships on his stars at the very border. Well played!
I think he fully deserves to play the semi-finals and if you ask me, you should wait for him to be back from his trip! Would not feel right to let me play the semi-finals…
I am happy to wait if that is everyone’s wishes. I can go with the flow…
All things considered, let’s give it another week then so Hulk can join the semi finals. Solfyre will have other games starting too in the meantime
I logged in and finished my game against @DarkDragonwing.
Ditto what was said earlier about how some bad luck for him (good luck for me) at the start was the main decider in this game. he held out much longer that I would have been able to do if the roles had been reversed.
@Solfyre and @Trucriot - assuming flights, etc. work out, I should circle back on August 1st. Thanks for waiting … and in the meantime, I’m getting daily Gammy-Radiation treatments to increase my HULK SMASH power to stand a chance against @Solfyre … who seems to just be destroying everybody!
Sounds good, @HULK. Its been too long since I’ve had the pleasure of the SMASH! So, I’m looking forward to it.
I’m back … and (at least so far), haven’t come down with Canadian Covid!
I just joined the game against @Solfyre - all I see is a bunch of rocks!
Which means probably a bunch of resource 49 stars right on our mutual border that we’ll battle for.
Not sure if I can plot out my initial moves by today, but hope to submit by tomorrow and go quickly after that to try to catch up to @plug and @spymort who are 78 ticks into their semi-final game.
@spymort and I are ticking along steadily - very close between us. Looking forward to seeing how your game shapes up @Solfyre and @HULK.
To be honest, I thought I messed up badly at the start of the game but I think I’ve been able to hold it together so far.
Looking at the stats at Tick #84, @plug is leading in Stars 58-55 and Science 18-16 … but @spymort is ahead in Econ 62-53 and for Indy is wayyyy up 43-33, so 562-474 in ships. Plus 25-15 in Carriers. So looks like a pretty even battle using different strategies - I would expect no less from two grizzled veterans.
@Solfyre and I just finished our first cycle - I was prophetic when I said I initially saw a bunch of rocks - there’s even more of them! I only built 2 Science in the first 24 ticks and @Solfyre didn’t even build any - Dr. Bruce Banner is NOT happy!
However, a number of those rocks are “shiny” - i.e. with Warp Gates. So this will make for some real crazy game play as there will be possible WG jumps galore (left, right, center) as there are no “voids” in this map … plus some high resource stars right at our border.
I think if I played a 100 games against @Solfyre (and @Trucriot), they would win 90% of them - those guys just play at a different level. However, since this map is so unpredictable, that might increase my chance of winning from 10 to 20%. I would be very surprised if this game turn into a 400 tick slogfest.
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TL;DR - I’ve conceded my game against @Solfyre
I went into the game with intentions of playing the long-game … being patient with spends and focusing on Economy - plus be careful with initial carrier spends. Dr. Bruce Banner ran his super-computer calculations and decided on 16 carriers at the start versus @Solfyre 11 … and LOL he ended up with more stars than me around the end of the 2nd cycle. Clearly Dr. Bruce Banner needs to better calculate his opening moves.
Furthermore, Dr. Bruce Banner insisted that Science needed substantial funding … and once the HULK got wind of this, he demanded it be focused on Weapons.
As @Solfyre said, “Range, scan, then weapons? Wowza! Who needs economy?”
Needless to say, because of the snowball effect, this rapidly put me behind - as I wrote back: “Pretty sure you already outplayed me in the first couple of cycles as you are building an insurmountable lead in Econ, Indy, and Ships … and my Science (and transient Weapons advantage) is not going to count for much.”
Which it did not as @Solfyre correctly predicted HULK’s angry rampages and (with defensive advantage), the net effect was capturing ONE Resource 20 star which he just took back. My last message to @Solfyre was “What a debacle for the Jolly Green Giant … :-(”
So this game is a lost cause - no reason to extend it out. Bummer because it was a really good map … so sorry @Solfyre I didn’t play this better and give you at least a sporting game - you deserved better. Hopefully you’ll get that in the Championship.
Well, that was exciting and fast. Just how you predicted it, @HULK . I’m not usually one to play so defensive and economically minded in research, but once I realized you were going all out war, it didn’t make sense to do anything but hunker down. Build a infrastructure lead and TRY not to lose too much ground while Hulk had the weapons advantage. The lead I built meant he only had a couple opportunities for attack before it was too late. They didn’t pan out as Hulk mentioned.
Thanks for the game @HULK ! It was fun even if it was short. 