I didn’t notice this on the first stages of war, but now that my adversaries are more proficient in the game, I’m feeling a huge handicap on the Levyr race. The reason is simples: it’s easy for Utopians and Renegades to build a cheap fleet that will cause great damage on a strong Levyr fleet.

• If you are Utopian, take a fleet with lots of Samurai and Raptor and clean up the very week Levyr light units. Without cannon fodder, you’ll only need some other unit to take the win. Build lots of Krill (cheap and with no rare resources) and if you don’t win you’ll surely cause huge casualties
• If you are Renegade, build lots of Toxic. Toxic are an easy to get light unit and I usually go against fleets with 500-1000 toxic, that will easily obliterate any Levyr unit. Combine with panther to remove cannon fodder and another unit for zone control and you’re done

There’s no harm on having this kind of behavior, the problem is that the game is unbalanced. Utopians and Renegades can’t build a fleet specially designed one for another. And Levyr can’t build a fleet specially designed for any race. I believe that we need some adjustments on the Levyr race… we have to think about it.

It seams that although some have predicted the supremacy of Death Squadron, things are still quite on dispute. Relic Wars is on a new stage, no rest for Orion’s Belt troops out there. It seams that a major coalition had being formed to attack Death Squadron. A major fight is being held at a relic:

Death Squadron still hold the 12 relics, but how long will it take for them to loose one? One of the major strengths of DS is their ability to organize themselves. I have never seen other alliances with this degree of organization. I believe that the main reason is that managing war takes time, and the majority of players want to play the game at a slower pace. They want to participate, but want others to manage the logistics. I’m one of those.

There may be a lack of management, but I still want to help. I’ve made several attacks on DS on the past, but I’ve been left alone for a while, and that was great for rebuilding my armies. Now I want to help the resistance, and with some degree of success. I may play well on the board, but my latest offensive was futile, and made little damage. New war tactics are forming up each day on Orion’s Belt, and I didn’t adapt. My armies were crushed down by simple fleet combos and devastation.

Well, I won’t make that mistake again. It’s clear that it’s not a good idea to be on the universe with a big fleet. Big fleets can be slowed down, have their light units destroyed and fall down without handing damage at all. They may also be intercepted and target with a devastation. My strategy will now be different: I’ll create several small to average fleets. I’ll be a dangerous opponent with any of these fleets, but I may be crushed against a bigger fleet. Even so, instead of one opportunity I now have the ability to target several opponents.

And while doing that, even playing solo and not following the main war, I’ll give DS just another problem to solve, and more resources to allocate to another front. Time will tell if my brave legions will be successful or not.

I had an arena match were I only won because of cannon fodder. At a given time I was only with a 27% chance to win. At that time I focused on destroying my opponent’s light units, and after they were gone, using a lot of lights and 31 Krill, I destroyed all of my adversary units. This also shows that sometimes the victory percentage isn’t everything, you should always have a clear picture of the end game, and save what you need for that time.

Here’s the match:

From my point of view Relic Wars had several stages by now. First, it started by alliances getting them as fast as they could. Then System Lords betrayed all their allies and fought for the relics, getting to 8 relics at a time. After that, System Lords were attacked by several alliances, the most notorious one being Death Squadron. The DS won the last stage… they became the most powerful alliance. They are big, they have lots of resources and members, and are well organized. And they managed to force System Lords into hiding in the shadows.

A couple of days ago the DS started to attack the last relics that they are missing. The major target are ALPHA, the other alliance with relics. This is a major threat against the free world, and we could face a scenario where DS have all the relics and win the major prize.  This will mean that DS will become the supreme force on the universe, making the game completely unbalanced.

A rebellion against the DS is forming. The best independent players are joining forces against this threat and I’m guessing that this current stage will last for a long time. I hope that this stage will significantly weaken the DS, but it will be a very hard battle.  Even so it’s very interesting to see how things are forming up… New tactics will emerge from this situation, and I’m very curious to see how things will proceed.

Sometimes we put ourselves on a situation where we are getting threats on two sections of the board. Usually, we need to spend more movement points protecting, than our opponent needs to attack. This is a serious disadvantage, and I found myself like that on a battle with Principe Valente. Take a look a the fight, turn 20:

At that time I persisted in defending for about 9 turns, hoping to catch some break to strike my opponent. But he plays well, and didn’t give me much chance.  At turn 29 I was at face of defeat, completely helpless on the two sides of the board. What can we do on these kind of situations? Usually if we have two groups and we can’t save them both, we need to choose one and sacrifice the other. And that’s really the only way, and that’s what I did.

And hopelly for me, my opponent didn’t handle well my aggressive move. Two turns later I knew I had won the match. Even so it wasn’t easy, the battle lasted to turn 90! great skirmish!

Just lost a great battle against vulpecula09. Don’t know were I lost control of the game, but at a certain time I knew I had lost. Great game by my opponent. Interesting is the final part, were I managed to escape my opponent’s threats for many turns.  In tournament matches we have to earn as most points as we can. And even after I knew I had lost, I managed to destroy Doomer and Spider, while  helpless on my corner.

Lesson of the day: never give up. Lesson number 2: watch out for all the excellent players out there!

Finally our intel department got hold of a picture of the well known reborned. You now have his picture and will be able to tackle him if you meet with him face to face.

Just had a great game against cfrag. I had never played him before and I thought he was a rookie, but I was mistaken and he already has good knowledge of the game’s perks. On this game I made a mistake and on his first move I lost my 50 Vector. That’s a huge blow, especially against a good player. I managed to win simply because cfrag didn’t properly choose his priorities!

Here’s the match:

When you see the game, you’ll see that we were on the middle, I with my Scourge and him with the Vector. It was clear to me that the one the one of those units that prevailed would win the match for the owner. And I concentrated on that. But cfrag spent a lot of time and energy focusing on a part of the board that was not important. I’m talking about the place where I had my Taurus and Scarab. They were completely out of play, I wasn’t even thinking on using them, because they were so far away from that hot spot with the Vector and Scourge. Even so cfrag focused on that and that allowed me to take his vector away.

This is a mistake that I see a lot on new players. For example, wasting moves to attack that Crusader on the far end that won’t be any useful for the rest of the game.

Even so, it was a great match. I’ll be on my guard the next time I face him.

Historically speaking, I don’t know of any empire that lasted for ever. There are always the rich times, filled with richness and glory, and down times, with less resources and defeats. On Orion’s Belt this also happens. Those familiarized with Orion’s Belt History already know that. Even on this new version we can see that. At one time or another there were an alliance that ruled the universe. We can remember CUS and Cosa Nostra from the old days. And on this version Prophets of the Revolution, ALPHA and System Lords have been on front and quite powerful, and have fallen to lesser positions.

This weekend, while the System Lords admirals were not at the command of their fleets, two of the System Lords officers turned against them and joined the Death Squadron and attacked the only System Lords relic left. This is specially interesting because these two traitors were an important rebel force against the Death Squadron. I dare to say that at this moment the Death Squadron alliance is the most powerful ever seen on this version of Orion’s Belt. System Lords can’t really complaint about their members, seen that the alliance has a history of betraying its allies. And now, an alliance that once had 8 relics, now fights for the last one…

The balance of power may seam on Death Squadron’s side. They are a lot, very well organized, and with great zone control. But every time that one alliance becomes two strong, it has to deal with several problems:

• Internal problems: many members means a lot of stuff to handle; it’s hard to keep all the members happy, specially when there’s bounty to share
• Being the first means that all the alliances focus on that one alliance

It may be difficult to reach number one. But it’s even more difficult to stay there for a long time.

After writing Waza’s Journey I went to the database and searched for the fleets that the been trough more battles. When a fleet is destroyed we erase it from the DB, so we have this data but we don’t have the name of the fleet. Here is the information per fleet and the owner, of all fleets that survived ten or more battles:

• Ashis, 21
• Ashis, 17
• Agni, 16
• Dark_Websterr, 16
• LaCrux, 14
• Eladamri, 13
• James, 13
• xpto1051, 13
• edisms, 13
• kulen, 13
• JBarata, 12
• rgcaldas, 12
• dragongr80, 11
• Sasuke, 11
• Mawhrin-Skel, 11
• Ashis, 11
• Yo-kun, 11
• stoneage fan, 10