19 Apr Conspiracies, Clashes and Bloodbaths in the Paladin Team

This is my story of the game of Neptune’s Pride. We played this seemingly innocent game with 8 Paladins, and it turned into an epic bloodbath that lasted for weeks.

Neptune’s Pride is a strategic intergalactic warfare-game you play in your browser. All players are placed in a universe with dozens of stars to conquer. Only one player can win, and there are no fixed alliances. Each gets assigned a few stars and a number of ships and the battle begins. Build carriers to transport your ships and claim stars. You can then develop these stars on three different levels: Economy (earn more money), Industry (build more ships) and Science (develop technology, i.e. build stronger weapons, faster ships etc.). Players receive money every 24 hours.

As each player expands his kingdom and develops his stars he will soon reach the borders of other kingdoms. Your enemies’ kingdoms. At first this will happen accidentally because a fleet travelling from one star to the other takes HOURS (which causes a game to take weeks). And once the jump into hyperspace has been made, there’s no turning back. The journey must be completed to refuel on the destination. So there will be a bit of quarrel first over which star belongs to whom and what the borders exactly are. Once this has been established, strategy starts kicking in. Alliances are forged and epic staredowns commence.

In our server, there were 6 people new to the game (myself among them) and 2 seasoned players (Fabian and Tedo). Guido was so unlucky as to have been placed in the bottom left corner of the universe, under Fabian (who was placed left) and besides Tedo (who was placed at the bottom). He was soon consumed by the two experienced players. The second victim was Tijmen, he feigned to be my ally and attacked me immediately. I struck back with help from Fabian and Derk. He was destroyed.

Then nothing happened for a while. New borders were determined and old staredowns resumed. Meanwhile Fabian was growing stronger because he had consumend most of Guido’s stars and some of Tijmen’s. Derk (top left) and I (center of the universe) did not like the look of that and decided to join forces and attack Fabian. Thus ending my agreement with Fabian not to attack each other. Meanwhile, on the right side of the universe, Tim and Jens were fighting their own battle. Not bothering nor being bothered by anyone. Derk and I fought Fabian and captured some of his stars. At this point, I was the winning player.

This is what the server looked like then. Ignore the color of the stars, look at the circles I expertly drew with paint.These represent our kingdoms at that time.

Tedo = Yellow, Fabian = Blue, Derk = Dark red, I am the brighter red, Tim = purple and Jens = Green.

Then it happened. A conspiracy the likes of which the world has never seen. While I was in full attack on the left side of my kingdom, I noticed some sturring on the right side. Tim’s ships were popping up on our border. Then I saw that he WILLINGLY surrendered some stars to Jens to clear a path to MY stars. My ships were on the other side of my kingdom and it would take days for them to cross. Also, that would leave my left side exposed to Fabian. So, I did the only thing I could do. I sent Tedo money and better weapons (you can send each other technology) and asked him for help. Help to fight of the conspiring aggressors who, I might add, received a lot of advanced technology from Fabian. Tedo replied: “on my way”. I felt a bit safer.

Little did I know, Tedo wasn’t on his way to my attackers. He was JOINING them. He was attacking me as well, with the weapons I sent him! He was in on it. They all were. Fabian, Tedo, Tim and Jens. Only Derk chose not to take part in this conpiracy, which he later regretted because he too wanted a share of my stars as they were being divided. I was torn to pieces, sent what money I had left to Derk for being the only one not attacking me and quit.

I suppose I should have seen it coming. I was in the center of the universe and the only way anybody could get anywhere was THROUGH me. But such betrayal and backstabbery I never expected, nor suspected. But I shall have my revenge. Luck will have it that most of my attackers are avid fans of the Game of Thrones-series. And it just so happens to be that I read the books and therefor know what is going to happen. And I just might tell them… Maybe I’ll spoil it all. They deserved it, right?

Cheers!

– A bittered Peter

P.S. Tedo won the game after making a pact with Fabian. In the end, Fabian and Derk battled it out for second place, with Tedo focusing on the remains of Jens’ empire. Most of my attackers now regret ever attacking me. “We should have attacked Tedo” they say. It’s a little too late for that guys. By the way, do you know who is going to die in Game of Thrones?… >:-)