DeletedUser
Guest
Hello UK6,
After seeing Gold disband today I thought I'd write a history of Gold from my own point of view. There were a lot of mistakes that were made in Gold and some real success stories and I'd like people to understand a bit about how a good tribe is run and how hard it is to make said tribe a success. These are all my views but I would like to pass them on and to try and make others aware of the pitfalls that are out there. I'd also like Gold to be remembered in a good way and not in the light it seems to have been portrayed in recently.
Timeline
The Creation of Gold and its initial aims and goals
Ruffus Created Gold as a K55 tribe, his aim was to make a continent tribe and for it to be fun and relaxed with very little diplomacy. I knew Ruffus from world 5 where I had helped him run Hmmm? with my good friend God Helldog until I quit TW. I personally had just been signed off work because of a serious knee injury so had time to kill! So I thought why not unleash my TW skills again :lol: So me and GHD joined along with a few other old faces like Jubblies and jptno7. I was happy just playing the game and enjoying the banter on skype but Ruffus had other ideas and appointed me Duke when I was out one afternoon! :icon_surprised:
Gold to rank 1
Unfortunately I have a personalty flaw when it comes to this game in that I really want to be the best that I can be and I pushed that concept into Gold. After chatting with Ruffus we decide to open up recruitment outside of K55 but primarily keeping it to the southern part of the world. So I got a few friends in and then added a group of skilled players from W40.net. This shot us up to rank 1, a rank that we held till yesterday some 3 and half months later.
The pros and cons to start up players and our first mini war
Now as on every world there are always few elite start up players who thrive on the early game competition. We added some of these players in Gold in the form of ALessonInPointWhoring, Admiral Phoenix, SperzFTW, Abdo, OverDose and Death Lurks. Managing players like these is very hard because they are individuals and they can be very selfish but the key thing is that they get bored very quickly and tend to quit. This is where most early game top ranked tribes fall by the wayside but we didn't because we managed to keep a good few of them interested and we continued to evolve as a tribe by adding fresh faces. We also got the start up players to teach the newer players on skype and this helped keep both parties interested. The absolute key to early game success is having little or no diplomacy and Gold very much enforced that. We had a mini war (mainly on the externals) with a tribe called GWAS who were at the time easily the second best tribe on the world. After they disbanded we recruited a few of there players and strength-ed our position as number 1 rank.
Transitional period in Gold and a change in leadership
Once nobles were flying around we started to show real dominance but this was mission accomplished for some of the start up players and they slowly started to quit. My ideas were going well in respect to recruitment as we added some excellent mid/late game players to our ranks but I wanted a more active co duke so Ruffus stepped aside and I appointed Fatalllllll. Ruffus is a great leader but he was very focused on W5 and not able to put in the time needed here. Fatalllllll wasn't my first choice because I wanted TheRiverStyx to be co duke with me, she pretty much did the job anyway but refused to take the role because she didn't want the responsibility. She did however recommend Fatalllllll and I was happy to go with her recommendation. Now I'm not going to slag Fatalllllll off in anyway from here on in, he had a big impact in making Gold the success it was I have a lot of respect for him as a person. So you can stop reading now if you want to read yet another "flame Fatalllllll" thread, he made some mistakes but they were all understandable. TheRiverStyx, Abdo and The Gettysburg Saint joined the council as barons. I felt very happy with this team, all of them had excellent knowledge of the game and I trusted them all 100%.
The Coalitions, tribe ops and the end of BA
As on every world we were getting attention paid to us by the huggers and they started to plan against us, unfortunately for them they had lots of untrustworthy people in there ranks who were more than happy to feed us info to stay "safe" and we pretty much dealt with every op we received. KPS were the exception to this as they planned and executed 2 or 3 excellent ops on us, especially BeardMk2 and Erdi505 who later joined. This was a really fun time in the tribe as we all had plenty of food to eat and there was a great amount teamwork going on. Maybe not on a tribe scale but certainly in small groups of local players. We also added some excellent players to the tribe from BA (our only allies) which disbanded.
A few mistakes and the rise of JBOX
We made a few mistakes with recruits at the time of BA falling apart. lewi192, coramoor, atillathefun and mitsnave all applied but I wrongly took a dislike to them and didn't allow there applications to reach the tribe vote. Also around this time Wokka failed the tribe vote on his application. In Hindsight these players would have greatly strengthened our position in key areas and I do regret not pushing there applications through. After our BA relationship was ended we looked at adding some new Diplomacy in the form of NAP with JBOX and a alliance with Hen a tribe formed by an old tribe member hypermobilty. JBOX and HEN were at war at the time so it allowed us to focus on locking down the core without looking over our shoulder at them.
The end of Hen and JBOX long game
Hypermobilty went inactive and JBOX took full advantage of this and really put HEN to the sword, forcing the end of HEN. This put us in a bit of a corner as several of the bigger HEN players wanted to join us but we wanted to respect our arrangement with JBOX so we came to understanding with them so that we wouldn't recruit in there areas but we could noble out some of the weaker HEN players in our areas. JBOX longterm plans were really starting to show now as they allied themselves with Titans and KOF which meant they had a strong presence to our south and west along with JBOX themselves to our east. Timmy and Chubbs also started to gain credence and a following on the externals which further strengthened there position on W6. We countered this by forming an alliance with RAC and making plans to take KPS villages to JBOX north. We also upgraded our relationship with JBOX to an alliance to buy enough time to lock down the core before JBOX released their cunning plan.
The way of the pear
At this point things started going wrong, the RAC alliance was a disaster. As we got to know them we realized that there were about 10 barons and dukes in charge and sure enough within a week Aces broke away and reformed and were fighting with RAC. Meanwhile JBOX were making good inroads into KPS and gaining a stronger foothold in K45. However the biggest mistake was not taking out Loom quick enough, we had them totally on their knees but failed to take them. This is one of the main reason why Gold failed IMO, locking the core down would have made Gold 50% stronger and much harder to defeat. There was always a reason for not taking Loom villages mainly because x player had quit and needed to be internally nobled or some barb muncher needed dealing with! It really became infuriating in the end after Fatalllllll and myself asked people to get involved time after time but they didn't.
My own situation
I personally went back to work after 3 months off and started to struggle for time to play the game. My co player Cory (MontyPython) said he would take a more active role on the account and would also become more involved in helping to lead Gold. This didn't work because he didn't have the required knowledge of the goings on in the world and I found it hard to step back from the tribe and my friends. So after some soul searching I choose to step down as Duke and hand my account to someone new, at the time the tribe was in a strong but slightly vulnerable position and the account was ranked 4th (1.2mil) but was sitting on 85 nobles.
The end of the JBOX alliance and after I left
Despite not playing anymore I still helped with advice for Fatalllllll and the rest of the council and it was my suggestion to recruit Dolas after JBOX recruitment of Naths. I felt it was a great opportunity to add a strong player who I had missed out on earlier in the game and JBOX really couldn't complain about it because of there act of taking Naths an obvious Gold enemy. Unfortunately this ended up being a catalyst for JBOX to end the alliance and put into place there plans and gain further external backing. Losing Mark (No Noobery) was a big loss as well but the loss of Chengez and Lord Adex was worse from a purely geographic stand point. Meanwhile internally TheRiverStyx stepped down from being a baron and another Key account (Kendoy) went inactive.
This all put Fatalllllll in a totally untenable position and a lot of his actions (KOF recruitment etc) ended up looking like knee jerk reactions when they weren't. Along with some excellent PNP by JBOX on the externals and some pounding by RK and JBOX in game GOLD fell apart. This was sad end to what I considered a great tribe.
The Key reason why Gold failed
1) Failure to lock the core.
2) TheRiverStyx stepping down from the council - she was the glue that held Gold together.
3) Me leaving and the timing of it - really couldn't have worked out worse.
4) Recruit Dolas - I stand by the fact it he was an excellent addition but we should have done it differently so as too keep JBOX alliance longer.
5) Poor external presence - Arrogance and ignorance portrayed by certain Gold members.
6) Failure to recruit players I listed above - Geographically would have helped.
7) Not being strict enough with certain players - I heard too often from certain players that we cant recruit x as they are in my expansion route. Players wanting to noble half a continent isn't realistic!
8) Too many people quitting - Really cost us dear in the end!
Congratulations anyone who has read all that! I wanted to end by listing a few people that I would like to give a lot of respect to.
TheRiverStyx - Styx is an awesome lady, the life and sole of the party and a great character to have around any tribe and a real friend.
Fatalllllll - Excellent player and person, very intelligent and could have been a great leader had he got the support he should have.
Mags (magnoliaqp) - Another great lady to have in the tribe, think she sat the entire tribe at one point or another a real gem.
Luca (YYY) - Best player on this world and good fun to chat with.
Chocolate Donut (Meechan10) - Cracking Kid, and a fellow spurs fan.
Dan (The Gettysburg Saint) - Good fun but wish you would tone it down on the externals!
IronBlev, Elena, Tracis, Dolas and AlwaysOnline - Very aggressive and skilled players.
Mallard and Tanky - Real tribal wars enthusiasts and good fun to boot.
Mark (No Noobery) - No hard feelings Mark, your a quality player and I respect your decisions for leaving and know it would have been different if I hadn't quit.
And Finally Timmy and Chubbs - Utmost respect for the way you have played the game, the art of PNP at its best. I wish I had the time to stand and fight you guys with GOLD but alas I didn't. I do feel sorry for you now as the world ended today!
After seeing Gold disband today I thought I'd write a history of Gold from my own point of view. There were a lot of mistakes that were made in Gold and some real success stories and I'd like people to understand a bit about how a good tribe is run and how hard it is to make said tribe a success. These are all my views but I would like to pass them on and to try and make others aware of the pitfalls that are out there. I'd also like Gold to be remembered in a good way and not in the light it seems to have been portrayed in recently.
Timeline
The Creation of Gold and its initial aims and goals
Ruffus Created Gold as a K55 tribe, his aim was to make a continent tribe and for it to be fun and relaxed with very little diplomacy. I knew Ruffus from world 5 where I had helped him run Hmmm? with my good friend God Helldog until I quit TW. I personally had just been signed off work because of a serious knee injury so had time to kill! So I thought why not unleash my TW skills again :lol: So me and GHD joined along with a few other old faces like Jubblies and jptno7. I was happy just playing the game and enjoying the banter on skype but Ruffus had other ideas and appointed me Duke when I was out one afternoon! :icon_surprised:
Gold to rank 1
Unfortunately I have a personalty flaw when it comes to this game in that I really want to be the best that I can be and I pushed that concept into Gold. After chatting with Ruffus we decide to open up recruitment outside of K55 but primarily keeping it to the southern part of the world. So I got a few friends in and then added a group of skilled players from W40.net. This shot us up to rank 1, a rank that we held till yesterday some 3 and half months later.
The pros and cons to start up players and our first mini war
Now as on every world there are always few elite start up players who thrive on the early game competition. We added some of these players in Gold in the form of ALessonInPointWhoring, Admiral Phoenix, SperzFTW, Abdo, OverDose and Death Lurks. Managing players like these is very hard because they are individuals and they can be very selfish but the key thing is that they get bored very quickly and tend to quit. This is where most early game top ranked tribes fall by the wayside but we didn't because we managed to keep a good few of them interested and we continued to evolve as a tribe by adding fresh faces. We also got the start up players to teach the newer players on skype and this helped keep both parties interested. The absolute key to early game success is having little or no diplomacy and Gold very much enforced that. We had a mini war (mainly on the externals) with a tribe called GWAS who were at the time easily the second best tribe on the world. After they disbanded we recruited a few of there players and strength-ed our position as number 1 rank.
Transitional period in Gold and a change in leadership
Once nobles were flying around we started to show real dominance but this was mission accomplished for some of the start up players and they slowly started to quit. My ideas were going well in respect to recruitment as we added some excellent mid/late game players to our ranks but I wanted a more active co duke so Ruffus stepped aside and I appointed Fatalllllll. Ruffus is a great leader but he was very focused on W5 and not able to put in the time needed here. Fatalllllll wasn't my first choice because I wanted TheRiverStyx to be co duke with me, she pretty much did the job anyway but refused to take the role because she didn't want the responsibility. She did however recommend Fatalllllll and I was happy to go with her recommendation. Now I'm not going to slag Fatalllllll off in anyway from here on in, he had a big impact in making Gold the success it was I have a lot of respect for him as a person. So you can stop reading now if you want to read yet another "flame Fatalllllll" thread, he made some mistakes but they were all understandable. TheRiverStyx, Abdo and The Gettysburg Saint joined the council as barons. I felt very happy with this team, all of them had excellent knowledge of the game and I trusted them all 100%.
The Coalitions, tribe ops and the end of BA
As on every world we were getting attention paid to us by the huggers and they started to plan against us, unfortunately for them they had lots of untrustworthy people in there ranks who were more than happy to feed us info to stay "safe" and we pretty much dealt with every op we received. KPS were the exception to this as they planned and executed 2 or 3 excellent ops on us, especially BeardMk2 and Erdi505 who later joined. This was a really fun time in the tribe as we all had plenty of food to eat and there was a great amount teamwork going on. Maybe not on a tribe scale but certainly in small groups of local players. We also added some excellent players to the tribe from BA (our only allies) which disbanded.
A few mistakes and the rise of JBOX
We made a few mistakes with recruits at the time of BA falling apart. lewi192, coramoor, atillathefun and mitsnave all applied but I wrongly took a dislike to them and didn't allow there applications to reach the tribe vote. Also around this time Wokka failed the tribe vote on his application. In Hindsight these players would have greatly strengthened our position in key areas and I do regret not pushing there applications through. After our BA relationship was ended we looked at adding some new Diplomacy in the form of NAP with JBOX and a alliance with Hen a tribe formed by an old tribe member hypermobilty. JBOX and HEN were at war at the time so it allowed us to focus on locking down the core without looking over our shoulder at them.
The end of Hen and JBOX long game
Hypermobilty went inactive and JBOX took full advantage of this and really put HEN to the sword, forcing the end of HEN. This put us in a bit of a corner as several of the bigger HEN players wanted to join us but we wanted to respect our arrangement with JBOX so we came to understanding with them so that we wouldn't recruit in there areas but we could noble out some of the weaker HEN players in our areas. JBOX longterm plans were really starting to show now as they allied themselves with Titans and KOF which meant they had a strong presence to our south and west along with JBOX themselves to our east. Timmy and Chubbs also started to gain credence and a following on the externals which further strengthened there position on W6. We countered this by forming an alliance with RAC and making plans to take KPS villages to JBOX north. We also upgraded our relationship with JBOX to an alliance to buy enough time to lock down the core before JBOX released their cunning plan.
The way of the pear
At this point things started going wrong, the RAC alliance was a disaster. As we got to know them we realized that there were about 10 barons and dukes in charge and sure enough within a week Aces broke away and reformed and were fighting with RAC. Meanwhile JBOX were making good inroads into KPS and gaining a stronger foothold in K45. However the biggest mistake was not taking out Loom quick enough, we had them totally on their knees but failed to take them. This is one of the main reason why Gold failed IMO, locking the core down would have made Gold 50% stronger and much harder to defeat. There was always a reason for not taking Loom villages mainly because x player had quit and needed to be internally nobled or some barb muncher needed dealing with! It really became infuriating in the end after Fatalllllll and myself asked people to get involved time after time but they didn't.
My own situation
I personally went back to work after 3 months off and started to struggle for time to play the game. My co player Cory (MontyPython) said he would take a more active role on the account and would also become more involved in helping to lead Gold. This didn't work because he didn't have the required knowledge of the goings on in the world and I found it hard to step back from the tribe and my friends. So after some soul searching I choose to step down as Duke and hand my account to someone new, at the time the tribe was in a strong but slightly vulnerable position and the account was ranked 4th (1.2mil) but was sitting on 85 nobles.
The end of the JBOX alliance and after I left
Despite not playing anymore I still helped with advice for Fatalllllll and the rest of the council and it was my suggestion to recruit Dolas after JBOX recruitment of Naths. I felt it was a great opportunity to add a strong player who I had missed out on earlier in the game and JBOX really couldn't complain about it because of there act of taking Naths an obvious Gold enemy. Unfortunately this ended up being a catalyst for JBOX to end the alliance and put into place there plans and gain further external backing. Losing Mark (No Noobery) was a big loss as well but the loss of Chengez and Lord Adex was worse from a purely geographic stand point. Meanwhile internally TheRiverStyx stepped down from being a baron and another Key account (Kendoy) went inactive.
This all put Fatalllllll in a totally untenable position and a lot of his actions (KOF recruitment etc) ended up looking like knee jerk reactions when they weren't. Along with some excellent PNP by JBOX on the externals and some pounding by RK and JBOX in game GOLD fell apart. This was sad end to what I considered a great tribe.
The Key reason why Gold failed
1) Failure to lock the core.
2) TheRiverStyx stepping down from the council - she was the glue that held Gold together.
3) Me leaving and the timing of it - really couldn't have worked out worse.
4) Recruit Dolas - I stand by the fact it he was an excellent addition but we should have done it differently so as too keep JBOX alliance longer.
5) Poor external presence - Arrogance and ignorance portrayed by certain Gold members.
6) Failure to recruit players I listed above - Geographically would have helped.
7) Not being strict enough with certain players - I heard too often from certain players that we cant recruit x as they are in my expansion route. Players wanting to noble half a continent isn't realistic!
8) Too many people quitting - Really cost us dear in the end!
Congratulations anyone who has read all that! I wanted to end by listing a few people that I would like to give a lot of respect to.
TheRiverStyx - Styx is an awesome lady, the life and sole of the party and a great character to have around any tribe and a real friend.
Fatalllllll - Excellent player and person, very intelligent and could have been a great leader had he got the support he should have.
Mags (magnoliaqp) - Another great lady to have in the tribe, think she sat the entire tribe at one point or another a real gem.
Luca (YYY) - Best player on this world and good fun to chat with.
Chocolate Donut (Meechan10) - Cracking Kid, and a fellow spurs fan.
Dan (The Gettysburg Saint) - Good fun but wish you would tone it down on the externals!
IronBlev, Elena, Tracis, Dolas and AlwaysOnline - Very aggressive and skilled players.
Mallard and Tanky - Real tribal wars enthusiasts and good fun to boot.
Mark (No Noobery) - No hard feelings Mark, your a quality player and I respect your decisions for leaving and know it would have been different if I hadn't quit.
And Finally Timmy and Chubbs - Utmost respect for the way you have played the game, the art of PNP at its best. I wish I had the time to stand and fight you guys with GOLD but alas I didn't. I do feel sorry for you now as the world ended today!
