The KGB Oracle Forums The KGB Great Hall of History (ARCHIVE) Darkfall Members Forum Learning from TRA's mistakes.

A zerg alliance can issue one command.... Charge and attack.. at that point all of its troops do that and dont stop doing that.. they chase.. over extend... arent focused on the same targets.. and are the easiest thing to trap and flank...

WARNING.. LOTS OF TEXT.

I am sure I will get flamed but thats ok.

There was never a post explaining how and why things went down the way they did when Yssam was being challenged by Cairn/Ruby, Brutality, Fatality, BKS and their crew (pain train and w/e other guilds they had living in Marshrall) Nemesis and a few other random guilds trying to hang on the balls of the big boys.

The amount of game time I had before NA was minimal. I played in EU for 4-5 days where I would try to kill goblins. I was so noob that I was convinced I was going to be an archer and only an archer heh. The reason I bring that up is to show why I was not involved in the early politics of Yssam. Apparantly VG and DIE were hommies and wanted to be roomates, the rest of the guilds just happened to be on the island and the alliance formed.

When I began going to these alliance meetings Dxun and Its Hyp were primarily leading these meetings. Our goal at the time was to build up our cities, toons, wealth for EU transfers because that was our major threat. Our first wake up call that shit was gonna pop b/4 transfers was when Cairn runestoned on Talpec and destroyed some gates and the bank. That started the Cairn/TRA war. Cairn leaders and TRA leaders got together and slowed down attacks b/c it was taxing on our members.

I got directly involved after this conflict. I, as well as Dim Mok, pushed for consolidation 2-3 months before transfer b/c we saw how weak we were. Nobody listened. Dxun and Hyp said that nobody would give up their city and we didnt need anything like this. They kept saying "just wait" we are ok. It was hard for me to do this b/c if Isee a problem in game or irl I go and fix it. I dont wait for it to get bigger. Oh SHIT.. the sink is leaking.. fuk it when the house is flooded then we will fix it.

Fast foward, Scarebear and Icon decide to fk with TRA and we respond defensively. Not much happened here other than myself and a few others continue to push for consolidation. Nobody wanted it.

About a month before transfers, Dxun goes mia, Its Hyp is completely out of the leadership position he once was due to rl n such. I now start demanding that guilds who can't defend their city from 5 intruders move into another city or guild so that we can fortify the island. Still nothing. At this point, Dim Mok and myself are running the alliance completely. We have scrub guilds who wont defend their own city in the alliance demanding they keep their cities b/c they would be butthurt if they lost it.

Instead of being a dick and booting them out and taking their shit, like I shouldve I decided to see how it played out.

TRA did fare well on one saturday. With Dim Mok and myself leading the seiges we won 4/4 seiges that day. After the epic fight at Talpec we went on to win 3 more. I dont know of another alliance who has accomplished anything close to that.

I find out by a lil birdie that TRA was going to get hit by a force bigger and much stronger than the first Talpec seige. The night before the Talpec loss, I get an offer from the attacking force to sell them a city on Yssam to save/protect Talpec. They explained that they only wanted a city on Yssam to PVP. We had currently 2 cities not even populated. Cbay and Zag were empty. Carnage was supposed to be merging to Sick Bastards so Cbay was open and SB inherited Kvit when VG merged with them so Zag was empty. I entertained this idea b/c it would bring pvp to the island and DIE would continue to live in Talpec. I was hoping that the pvp brought to the island would fk up the scrubby guilds leeching off of the alliance. This is another time I shouldve had some balls and said, "fk you scrubs who havent done shit in 3 months!" and done the deal.

On the day in question we were double seiged, Kvit was seiged by SF and Talpec was seiged by BKS crew when they had vamp and nemesis with them. I led the raid and gave instructions to try to kill the shard holder. At the same time there were to be a grp going to niffle to take out Scarebears holding. I game planned that if we could quickly take out niffle we could get back and have a huge standoff at talpec. I figured Talpec was lost but atleast we would try.

Well what happens, scrubby fuk guilds port to niff and get their fkn portals destroyed b/c he decides to place it at a HAMLET next to enemy Hamlet. The other grp gets wiped in a village b/c they are too fkn dumb to log out as soon as they zone in and remake grp once everybody is there. It takes fkn 3.5 hours to get everybody on Niff which was a fkn joke. We beat the clanstone after a fight and save Kvit. There is no way we are going to make it to talpec in time now and we lose Talpec.

90% of the time enemy came to or near Talpec for a fight we would always give them one and 8/10 times we would wipe them. Ask those who would come and gank our carebears on the thains how much harder it got to get away with all the lootz.

It is not that we didnt want to try. Who gives a shit if we lose, at least we fight. It was my fault we lost Talpec. I stayed in a scrubby alliance, I didnt make a deal to bring pvp to Yssam and looked out for the alliance when deciding to go after kvit first instead of Talpec.

To say DIE was the biggest failure imo is not accurate. We were the most active pvp clan in TRA alongside SB and DL. It was either a DIE grp and SB grp or DIE grp and DL grp ALWAYS playing police the island. 90% of the time enemies came to or near Talpec for a fight we would always give them one and 8/10 times we would wipe them. Ask those who would come and gank our carebears on the thains how much harder it got to get away with all the lootz. I failed my guys by not grabbin my ballz and doing what needed to be done.. not again.

Now, we hold 2 hamlets and have morphed into a pure pvp guild. Our goal is to have 25-30 active pvpers and nothing more. We have strict requirements, absolutely do not open recruit, and are cutting all who dont meet the posted requirements. I would rather have a 7 man guild who are competent and above average pvpers than 50 scrubs like what was in that alliance we were in. Don't get me wrong, I liked TRA, just hated the annoying selfish guilds who thought they were so fkn cool and would send 3-5 to any major conflict

I think a large reason of the collapse was because you didnt do any casual PvPing.. Since Piddle Fiddle's exit, DiE completely fell off the radar. TRA had tons of people helping build a few different cities.. This only really could have strengthened you if you consolidated early on and maintained the interest of your hardcore PvPers (with a good amount of small scale). I told Grey Tits this during a good brisk chat after I 1v4d DiE west of the city. When my scrub ass pulls that off, you have seriously 'par' characters and really need alot more focus on your skills.

Also your cordination always seemed like sheer poop.. This isnt you or anyone's failure specifically as I can imagine you all werent on the same vent or making smooth joint attacks in any fashion.

I personally ran into this problem myself, during my lead on Blade/Alber sieges... And while its easy to say "The scrubs didnt do this" its also easy as shit to say "I didnt tell the scrubs to do this". Expecting people to know the deal, is always the first failure in any pre-planning of a big battle.

Give groups of people specific objectives and keep them alert by asking them to give reports. Also you yourself personally watch your big boy map while in their groups or get really ass specific with zone/cords.

Setting up the chess peices is almost as important as their actual strength, during seiges.

Shit.. Apollo willingly played the cannon fodder on alot of fights... There are times where you hold your ground to every last one of you are dead.

I ALWAYS seen line breaks in TRA's battle formations and you may think it laughable, but it always turns into a morale hit.. Same as a real big fight would be. If yah see a few go down and lots of folks running.. Yah run, almost instinctually, sometimes. This is the moment where a fight either becomes a slaughter or a damn good fight, when they push or flee.

There were times (Grief City, Cairn for instance) where over half your forces went down to back shots while scrambling. Or Bladethorpe, where alot of TRA got caught away from the main forces. And it was two big advantaged fights, instead of one big fair battle.


Anyway, im not trying to knit pick you, this was just observations during the course of being an active enemy of the alliance. Alot of you are good players and if ex-TRA floaters would suck it up and merge somewhere.. They would see themselves making a bigger difference then ever before.

Good luck and I think you guys did a helluva job making some extremely fun DF moments. Hope to see you back on your feet and fighting large scale again.

I think everyone who loses their city should join Cairnuby.. Then we would start witnessing some epic seiges and battles.

Fact is TRA got their shit pushed in...

nah... what it leads to is basically shitty leadership both on the battlefield and off... It was pretty obvious on the battlefield.. TRA was very very un organized unless within enclosed areas which pretty much didn't leave them a choice but to stay huddled up and some what organized. Not saying it was all your fault. but a ton of it was. TRA had to be a lot more organized to take on the merc guilds that were VERY organized.

What I've noticed is the adaptability merc organizations have to fights that are much more flexible than zerg alliances with no organization.

A zerg alliance can issue one command.... Charge and attack.. at that point all of its troops do that and dont stop doing that.. they chase.. over extend... arent focused on the same targets.. and are the easiest thing to trap and flank...

the Organized large scale PvP and organized merc groups I have noticed basically can adapt on a dime. Yes some of their characters are nicely skilled but in reality a lot of us laugh at how many of us in fact have shitty skills and stats.

Im going to use nemesis for example. Do you know that a VERY large portion of our merc guild in fact have pretty shitty stats because most of us, Like I, quit back on EU for a couple of months til NA servers and the game got better... A shit ton of us canceled our subs and only came back after the long break when the NA servers popped up again, and others when this expansion came out. The difference is though, is our organization... Which I have to give a good portion of credit to Black Dragon... the guy has called some of the best commands on fly notice I've seen before.

But basically we can as an organized group, change our fronts, do a 180, or just focus on a specific front then crumble it from the middle as it is divided into two seperate forces. Lets take example of the nifle siege that occurred where we killed pretty much everyone. People don't realize how many times we were flanked by both the defense force that was to our front and the attacking force that was coming up behind. When he called for a "global" change in fronts, and to focus in a complete opposite direction, we turned on a dime and did it.

Another example is the sea towers.. I believe it was 420 and some of their allies that tried a good strategy, rune stoneing up to the middle of the sea tower, then running a shit ton of people up the south east tower at the same time. I remember Rivers global "If your in the SE tower get the fuck out or your dieing... I want everyone focused AE on that SE tower" Immediately when that command was given (mind you our forces are pretty much spread out through the four corners of the tower, everyone dropped what they were doing within reason and focused on that SE Tower.... Ive never seen 15+ drop so fast in my life... we then returned to the other stragglers throughout the tower. In that brief moment we were able to adapt on a dime to easily take out 15+ of the attacking force.

Thats the type of organization needed on the battlefield...

Off the battlefield.. well you need the support of your troops to want to consolidate and not hold cities with a 3 man active clan... etc

I think a large reason of the collapse was because you didnt do any casual PvPing.. Since Piddle Fiddle's exit, DiE completely fell off the radar.

I remember seeing piddle in trade & race chat on EU. Have you gotten any hate tells Romeo?