I’m sure that the chaos of the last week of CE3 is hard to understand in it’s entirety from a watcher’s perspective because it was difficult to follow even as someone handling a lot of the diplo. I’ll try to outline all of the plans and schemes I was personally aware of in a chronological order from when FLYD was killed by WSS.
Through the trapping and killing of FLYD, the era’s possibilities really opened up. FLYD was NA’s biggest army, and could 1v1 any other alliance save for ZEUS. WSS knew hat taking the battle would put us out of commission for the rest of the era in head to head battles, but it was an action that needed to happen, especially given we only lost armor.
With AM/PEPE causing havoc closer to the relics, the NA front entirely collapsed. Camp holders could no longer hold everything and allowed the invading teams to build sparse network through the continent. Around this time BD2/SM were closing in on Greenland with the stated intention of crashing into HINI to ruin their era. This is the point where every faction with either a relic or any influence reached out to others to try and broker a deal.
The factions were as follows: WSS (one relic), Asia (one relic held by TFI), AA (one relic held by SGC), HINI (two relics, on held by HINI, the other by BYZ), ATOM (4 relics), and ZEUS (one relic). Diplomacy for an end era deal was pursued by everyone, even alliances currently fighting each other tooth and nail.
HINI and WSS were of course in talks to end together with 3 relics as we had been allied the entire era. HINI wanted around 5 spots, would give BYZ 2 and WSS 2 or maybe 3 depending on if we invited another alliance with a relic into the fold. WSS felt very insulted by this, as WSS had led the assault into Greenland to break it with more activity than anyone else. At a certain point during the invasion WSS threatened HINI to break off ties and no longer be allies unless HINI actively moved their relic to the front and help the invasion. HINI has admitted that they were not active because at that point they thought the era was lost. Because HINI was not willing to compromise, they told WSS to pursue other deals, however leaving the availability of a WSS/HINI/BYZ merge still a reality.
I don’t know the exact depth of ASIA/AA/ATOM talks, but the original creation of these factions coming together was “People cosmin hates”. Milan was in this chat and was supposed to be part of the alliance at the end, however when SGC joined the chat they refused to win with Milan as part of the group. As these discussions progressed, at a certain point both Asia/AA realized they would really prefer winning without Neutron. Neutron created too much animosity towards him during the era, which led to rival alliances preferring a much riskier win rather than with Neutron. No one wanted to win with HINI either, as cosmin’s influence/financing of HINI on the era soured peoples perspective considerably on wanting HINI to win at all.
It was very very late in the era with very little notice that Asia/SGC made the plan that would eventually win the era, and invited WSS along to be the third relic for the win. The plan was to fake an agreement with ATOM to get them kicked and unable to join another alliance at the end. This part I am not entirely sure on the progression, but somehow the ASIA/AA/ATOM group agreed that for protection, AA/ASIA teams would launch their armies on ATOM relics, and once the merge happened then the squads would turn. BD2/smdT would be launching on one of the HINI relics, either taking it or forcing HINI to protect it.
WSS/AA/ASIA made the agreement so late that some teams were simply not in position to launch on the ATOM relics in time. SGC attacked an op that was subsequently razed, not allowing one of the more powerful armies to take part. GS armies attacked the ZEUS hawaii colony. Part of this plan was launching PEPE at the ZEUS relic so that ZEUS could not make a play on the ATOM relics themselves. PEPE was barely able to launch on the ZEUS relic in time. ZEUS didn’t move the relic for one tick, allowing PEPE to launch at max range. That lost tick of movement would have moved the relic from launch range.
At this point everyone dropped from their alliances. WSS decided on a full disband for skill points. Even though the ASIA/AA/WSS deal was confirmed at this point, so much was in the air that no one would know how things would exactly play out, or who would honor which deal.
GBBR became an issue on attacking the Asia relic. The plan was originally to pass the relic over to Energy, but with GBBR attacking the relic and clearly planning to land on tick 4001, TFI would have their relic holder join the winning alliance instead. At one point it was told to me that TFI actually wanted 2 spots, but eventually it was settled at one spot for the relic holder. These circumstances were handled in the last 24 hours.
ZEUS at one point had reached out to WSS for a possible merge deal. They said that they would just launch on the least defended atom relic and win with their enormous army. At this time I knew PEPE was launching on the ZEUS relic and has asked Crusnik, “So what happens if another army launches at the ZEUS relic? How will they defend their relic and take another?” Crusnik’s response was “Well that would be a problem”.
WSS at this point began moving our relic away from HINI’s as BD2/SM and smdT grouped up. At some point there had been a lack of communication with BD2, and they weren’t really aware of this new plan. As such, they decided that WSS would clearly be making a deal with HINI for the third relic and wanted to hit the WSS relic instead. HINI at this point had kept BYZ on a relic and had the BYZ relic holder join HINI alliance as well as stack several other armies onto their relics. Through this lapse in communication, iceman arbitrarily decided that he now had 0 faith in youssef and smdT, and believed that smdT would turn the last tick, allowing BD2 to die on their own. This was first in a long list of irrational actions and illogical beliefs from ice. BD2 wanted to suicide on HINI on their own originally, why change now? No one knows.
I will detail this story the most because I was the one who attempted to directly handled this situation, and this bonanza lasted the entire last 24 hours. WSS became aware of BD2’s intentions when we saw the BD2 armies bypass the HINI relics and head straight for WSS. This of course set off many alarm bells and we immediately reached out for clarification. Bilal at the time was the intermediary, and explained that iceman believed that WSS would end up giving the relic to HINI. We explained our plans to bilal, showing screenshots, adding bilal to the group chat so he could read everything. Several people tried reaching out to trigger finger (iceman), but iceman decided to block everyone who messaged him directly, only communication through intermediaries. Iceman said that ASIA was clearly being played by WSS, and no matter how many screenshots we provided, he refused to believe we would not make a deal with HINI because we hadn’t attacked them directly.
Eventually we reached out to players like Top Gun, and Felipe told me that the situation seems to be resolved or reaching at this point. BD2 had landed on their op, and now headed south, no longer directly towards the WSS relic. We thought the crisis was averted, but we were still very wary. A few hours later as BD2 landed, they again made a new op towards WSS. This was extremely frustrating as we had thought everything was explained, and this was jeopardizing the entire plan. We reached back out to bilal but he was asleep at the time. Felipe was trying to message others to reach him if possible.
At this point Elsa reached out to me on her own about what was going on. She was in SM. I explained the situation to her and she reached out to iceman. Iceman said that everyone was being fooled by WSS, and that it was obvious we would make the deal with HINI at the end. Beyond that, Moe could stab everyone and give HINI the relic even if the rest of WSS did not want to. There was nothing to change his mind, so I came up with a plan that would allow iceman control. I said originally that bd2 could capture the relic, and then when moe joins the merger alliance instead of hini, iceman moves his army off and lets us have the relic. This evolved into BD2/SM launching on the WSS relic, and when they were one tick away when Moe joins the merger alliance iceman would have his multis turn. BD2 also demanded a list of the people who would end up in the winning alliance in case they had objections. Knowing that iceman despised muha, we lied and gave him a list that did no include muha in it.
This was a more attractive plan to iceman, however he said that WSS needed to stop running the relic away from him, and move it close as a sign of good faith. BD2 and SM were already in range to launch and land 4001, so after some heated debate we decided to go forward with it. At this point we noticed that HINI was leaving their relic with 1000 squads, and were moving towards the WSS relic. They were still under the assumption that WSS would rejoin HINI in the end, and were moving to defend the relic. WSS was unsure if HINI would end up launching on the WSS relic to try to end with three, and iceman needed to be convinced we weren’t with HINI so we planted ops between HINI and the WSS relic, making it impossible for HINI to land on the WSS relic no matter where they launched to.
Eventually HINI turned back to their own relic once they either realized they couldnt get to our relic or that we didnt want their help. At this point we had our agreement with iceman, it was now 8am EST, and i decided to sleep for 3 hours. the TFI relic is secured, ZEUS can’t do anything because their relic is under attack, Neutron still believes his deal is going forward, and WSS should save their relic. Otherwise, there is still a scamble in alaska as squads are launched on colonies for xtals, while those colonies try to transfer the xtals back and forth to keep them.
When I wake up, there is only a few hours left in the era. Everything is still on schedule, except iceman again finds another conspiracy. His new question is now, what if Moe joins the merger alliance, then leaves and HINI wins on two relics and score. Now anyone above 60 IQ can find the obvious issue with icemans conspiracy. Simply put, if BD2 lands on the WSS relic, they are GUARANTEEING the same exact result of Moe joining the merger alliance and then leaving again. Elsa and Bilal say they cant convince him, and that iceman will make the decision the final tick. On top of this, he now says that he wants Moe to join in tick 3999, or that if Moe joins too late in tick 4000, he wont have enough time to turn all his multis/team members. Iceman states that if any of his members cannot turn, he will not leave them to die so we need to do this early. At this point we can see that iceman is just moving the goalposts farther and farther back while continuing a conspiracy that makes no sense, all while potentially wanting to land on WSS relic even if Moe joins the merger alliance because he might then leave the alliance.
This brings us to the final hour.
Icmans demands provoke me to push the ending groups to make everything happen as soon as possible. We have all non atom-members join in 3999, waiting for the ATOM members to join so they can be kicked and unable to join another alliance with their relics. At this point casper and soul eater have stabbed or left their alliance. Neutron used this as an excuse for why instead of joining 3999, he will join 4000. With iceman’s timeframe pushing on us, the coalition members then start pushing Neutron to join as soon as possible otherwise they will be suspected as stabbing. Internally we were deciding to have myself and Moe join 5 mins into tick 4000 if ATOM did not join. EOT in 3999, Neutron says that he is joining now, and is calling kazu on for him and saddy to join. We push the timeline back and eventually after 20 minutes in the era all three join.
Once they are all kicked and myself and Moe joins AGE, I am voted leader right away. By this point iceman has realized that muha is in the winning alliance. We are at this point considering kicking muha to appease iceman and get him to turn. Related to this, since casper had stabbed and prompted a defense from ATOM players, the relic under attack from AT and AM was now largely undefended. There were several AGE armies that would be landing with AT and AM, so disbanding AT and AM allowed for the relic to come under AGE control since they would be the largest controlling attackers. So even if iceman takes the WSS relic, we will still have three and win on relics. WSS had extremely disliked iceman trying to bully us while acting irrationally, and it wasnt a guarantee that he would turn anyway if muha was kicked, as well as the AA side really wanting to keep muha.
We were unaware that HINI had invited soul eater to their alliance and that he had been able to capture the relic.I am not sure how this slipped through, but it was not a consideration for any of us. In the last 5-10 mins in tick 4000 Felipe approaches me about kicking someone to get Energy into the alliance. I had heard some talk about Energy being able to be rank one if he joins. he had a lot of score and asia thought he had earned it. At one minute and 30 seconds left I decide to kick the PEPE representative DrBones and invite Energy. With 10 seconds left in the era, Energy joins AGE as the final member.
I was in a voice call with Alfie as the era counted down. We were pretty sure we had absolutely won, but we didn’t want to believe it until 4001 arrives and we had the final results. After the few minutes it took for the server refresh, I initially felt absolute horror when we saw that HINI had somehow gotten 3 relics. It had always been assumed that if we ended up with the same amount of relics as HINI that they would win on score, but amazingly we had been able to surpass them. I can’t describe the relief i personally felt. I had been slightly shaking for hours on adrenaline and caffeine combine with lack of sleep. All the bad guys of the era had lost. HINI was spited at the last moment despite being able to secure a third relic after offering soul eater $200. Milan had been exposed and cast out as a cheater and his winning streak was broken, and Neutron has snubbed in his final era from winning after playing the antagonist all of CE3, and iceman’s plans and pressure were useless after acting like a petulant child.
After celebrating with everyone and taking a closer look at the final results, I realized that if I had not kicked DrBones for Energy, we would not have had enough score to beat HINI. I’m sure PEPE feels very angry about what happened, but if it hadn’t happened we all would have lost.
There were so many small decisions and actions that led up to this result. Xtals being captured and transferred over to the right people, stabs at just the right time leaving the atom relic vulnerable etc etc. This was by far the riskiest end era deal that could have been achieved but it all worked out in the end. Feel free to add your own perspectives, add clarity or correct my understanding of certain parts.
