Kiss of War, Part VI - Kill Event


Kill Event is the colloquial name for the tail end of a larger event known as Mightiest Commanders, and it involves all players trying to amass as many kills as possible during a 48 hour period. Clearly it is an event that is common among games of this genre, as the EGG leadership posted about it well in advance and warned everyone about the possible ramifications, the most dire being the possibility of being zeroed. Being zeroed entails the theft of all your base's resources and the death of your entire army, and this occurs when you can't defend yourself adequately against a raider, or a group of raiders.

There are five things of value in this game:

(1) Officer level, talents, and skills.
(2) Army quality and size
(3) Base tech level
(4) Resources
(5) Guild tech level

Your technical goal in this game is to steadily increase all of these items. Out of these five items only (2) and (4) can be affected by enemy players. Armies can be killed, and resources can be stolen - tech and officer levels, on the other hand, are forever. Once researched the effects apply for good. Your base defense can be reduced to zero, but never destroyed - all it means is that you are randomly teleported to another location on the map.


This means that the only thing that you can really lose in the game are resources and your army. Most people will not bother zeroing a base down to zero defense, because it is a time consuming process (between 6-7 hours, believe me I know how painful this is) that doesn't really achieve anything. The more common meaning of being zeroed entails losing all of your army and all of your resources at your base. Therefore the aim of weaker players during KE is to preserve these things at the lowest possible cost to yourself. Garages mitigate against army loss by saving a certain number of troops from death, allowing them to be brought back later at the cost of resources. Storehouses mitigate against resource loss by keeping a certain number of resources safe from plunder. Neither garages or storehouses can ever be big enough to protect all but a fraction of your army or your resources, so the solution to this is to hide your army as reinforcements in shielded bases, or to consume as many resources as possible before KE begins to deny their loss to a potential raider. Another way of preserving your army is to hide them in guild towers, fortresses or cities. These buildings are protected by the game's special rules, which make these structures ineligible for attack unless the attacker has adjoining guild territory. Our guild leader PPT created a special thread on Discord which displayed shield timers in order to allow guild members to hide their troops in shielded bases and keep themselves safe from harm.

At this point of my KoW life I didn't see myself as potential prey, foolishly believing that I would be one of the predators. I spent my first KE in naive anticipation, gleefully rubbing my hands together at the thought of the carnage I would wreak. Kreature kicked things off by teleporting to the hive of MNE, a Mexican guild located far to the south of our new hive in France. Kreature went there by himself, but not before advertising the fact to the rest of the guild. Kreature is an alpha personality of the old school, conspicuously helpful and courteous to all the females of the guild, but needing to assert dominance when it comes to interactions with males he doesn't know well. He has a good relationship with FeistyBanjo, but Hush and Kreature had a brief run in which led to Kreature quitting temporarily, and he was only coaxed back by PPT later on.

His foray into MNE territory was met with initial success, as he was able to torch a few of the smaller bases without any resistance. The MNE guild leader, ggnoob99, marched out to meet him, however, and by virtue of sheer numbers was able to keep Kreature somewhat at bay. Kreature could have taken his armies, but at a significant loss to himself, and so he was at somewhat of a deadlock. I took this opportunity to ingratiate myself further with the EGG leadership by teleporting to MNE territory and attacking MNE bases as well. Faced with two active players ggnoob99 backed down and turtled in his base, leaving the rest of MNE at our mercy.

It was at this point that our old nemesis, SayCheese, resurfaced. After triggering the war with Ruu she had joined a much larger guild called HWS. MNE responded to our depredations by posting our coordinates on zone chat, in the hopes of attracting bigger fish to the fray. SayCheese saw Kreature, and began spam scouting him from her location in the HWS hive. I have to say that Kreature's response surprised the hell out of me. He immediately teleported to the HWS hive and began attacking SayCheese, triggering a defensive response from HWS.

Kreature was one of our server's early whales (a player who spends significant real life currency), and so he was certainly in the top 10% of the server in terms of raw power. But he was attacking a much bigger guild, and they had whales of their own. Their guild leader (?) Reaper came out to meet Kreature, and there was a massive battle on the fringes of HWS territory. Hush saw the battle and teleported in to help Kreature. As for me, I stood on the outskirts of MNE territory with my jaw on the floor. I am ashamed to say that I did not join the fray. My desire for solidarity was outweighed by the instinct for self-preservation. There was no way we could beat a guild of that size, and Hush and Kreature were soon very hard-pressed, being hit by rallies organized by Reaper and his team. The person who did port in was a player we didn't know, a German living in the Black Forest who would become our guild's most formidable fighter in the future. Tom Mirror's appearance on Hush's right surprised the crap out of everyone, but his appearance bought the EGGs some time. He was already one of the biggest players in our guild, but he rarely spoke. Actions speak louder than words, however, and his appearance pulled Kreature out of his blind rage and made him think beyond his hatred for SayCheese (who had changed her name to EarthWind by this stage). A ceasefire was reached, and the three EGGs returned home to safety.


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