- How did you do?
Well, besides being a bunch of murderous lunatics mercilessly slaughtering the weak for extra points, I mean. But everyone was doing that. What else did we do to deserve this?
However, what you may miss, if you only knew of us through our conquerors' bragging of having defeated us, is the battles that came before then. One in particular stood out, against a faction that called itself The Centro Social Alliance, which had a grudge against us for some reason. The faction text kind of suggests that we were guilty of defeating the player in the previous nuclear war, and he wanted revenge, though I didn't actually ask and don't remember the details. Whatever the case, though, this faction had been lying low and avoiding picking fights with anyone except us, at which points the player used a swarm of puppets to send thousands of nukes at us in one go. That gave us quite a fright, and we panicked thinking we'd be doomed for sure. However, we had more puppets, and we managed to deflect every single nuke as fast as the enemy could send it, without taking a single hit, then retaliate with a sustained barrage of our own that put the enemy faction into the ground. It was epic. And it made us feel really good about ourselves and made us feel like we were invincible. The Atomic Rainbooms would never die.
Was a bit of a shock, then, when we later died.
- How did you do compared to last time?
But then, on the other hoof, we weren't all brutally annihilated at the end, so we still managed a fairly respectable #17 on the high score table. (Shame the official table in the news post only listed the top ten.)
- How did your faction do?
Well, I could actually play the game, due to having filed a GHR for captcha exemption. That was a step up.
But aside from founding the faction (I'm a regional officer, and the only one who tends to show up on time for these kinds of things) and occasionally taking a leadership role (you'd think ponies would be easier to herd than cats, but no), I really wasn't the main attraction here. Sure, I used a few nukes and shields here and there - I had 150 strikes to my name - but since I'm one of those boring people who likes to play actual nations rather than legions of generic faceless puppets, and who would find constantly logging in and out of different puppets every minutes insufferably tedious, my contribution was really more symbolic than anything. This is a puppeteer's game, and our region's Puppetmaster-in-Chief, the aforementioned secretary of offensive atomic munitions manufacturing and deployment, was the one who did 99% of the real work.
This may have given me a sense of inadequacy, as I was watching my tiny production trickle up, or of guilt, as I was constantly pushing another player to do the things I wasn't willing to do myself (do people enjoy juggling triple-digit puppet armies, aside from that it gets results?). But there was also a sense of camraderie as, however much or little each individual contributed, we were still ultimately in this together, and we had the same goal, which we'd reach or fail together. It was still exciting watching the numbers wander around, showing how well we were doing, even if I wasn't the main influence on them.
- When and how were you destroyed(if at all)?
- Did you like or dislike it, and why?
- How do you think you can improve next time?
You could try joining in with an existing big alliance rather than one that actually has any meaning to you, but that would be selling out.
- Do you have any advice for new nations next time?
Or any of a number of similar things that's totally obvious except to the people who actually need the advice.