COMx2 Underway

Hey Guys Steve here,

As you may know Comx2, the 'Championship Qualification' started over a week ago and I thought now would be a good time to do my first update, I won't be looking into individual alliances at this point as it's way too earlier to predict if an alliance will survive, the only thing I can say is most of them will cease to exist in the coming weeks as the server gets into the middle stage.

As to actual gameplay first I'm going to have a look at the population tables and talk through them:

Taken at 10:49 GMT on 23/07/10

As you can see from this screenshot 5 people have already reached their second villages and have begun expanding them. The first to reach their second villages was 'The Crazy Team' who picked a 100% 15c which was 3 squares away from their spawn village, although some people believe this is not a great choice of a place to settle I believe it makes sense, it allows them to build up a base in one central area and make sure no one can take that 15c and threaten their dominance of the area. Plus as they were so quick to settle they always have the choice to quickly move on to getting a third village which can be a 150% 15 further away, however that is a decision for them to make. 'uranium' was the second to reach a second village and chose a 125% 15c further away (around 8 hours settler journey from spawn) however they have said it works with their strategy and will place them close to a Unique Artefact when they arrive.

Now let's have a look at the weekly statistic tables:

As you can see from the 'Robbers of the Week' and the 'Attackers of the Week' tables above only four of the top attackers feature in the top robbers list, normally on a server I tend to see about 6 of the top attackers placing on the top robbers. I think this shows the fact that there has been a lot more competition on the server so far and will continue to be so as people clambour for the best farms and to knock out their early game opponents. I'd also like to point out that a couple of the 'Attackers of the Week' maybe be there just because they enjoy destroying troops and not necessarily because they are playing with a certain strategy in mind.

What I'd expect from this server:

As the admin 'Phanttis' has correctly commented on the forum this server has seen many more attacks and troops deaths along with higher raiding totals than many servers at this point of the game and I think this will remain so for the entire server. However I think it will slow as many farms are going to begin to be deleted over the next few weeks, which I think will mean that raiders will have to risk losses in order to take out bigger players to farm. We'll also see quite a few players being defeated by these raiders or deciding that this server is not really for them and deciding to delete of their own accord. I think once the artefacts arrive the server will be done to about 8000 active players who will be competing for the elusive 3000 places, although this may be a bias I have to believe that being a part of those 3000 players won't be a major challenge for any experienced player and I think we'll even see a number of newbes claiming places. I have a feeling the wars will slow down for the middle game, regaining some flair during the artefact arrival but then slowing down again, however when we reach end-game they'll be lot of movement as people unleash hammers. I have a feeling the end-game will take longer than expected as people will be much more focussed on defending themselves and making sure they don't fall out of the ranks then they would otherwise be.

Anyway please comment and leave me your ideas of what is going to happen, either here or on my thread in the .COMx2 subforum.

Steve