Neptune's Bountiful Pride 3

[Patters]

Lollie Mcheese 85

Diggwickler the Butt tickler 0

Jake Rodkin 57

Guy Buttersnaps 0

Grand Marshall Wilfred Fizzlebang 9

Tophat Mcblasterpants 0

Bandanaman 0

Narn of the Above 0

Distinguished ParlorAce 0

Senior Spacelad 0

Darth Sluttyspud 40

CommanderJonathanBeehtovenFrakes 74

[Murdoc]

Lollie Mcheese 85

Diggwickler the Butt tickler 0

Jake Rodkin 57

Guy Buttersnaps 0

Grand Marshall Wilfred Fizzlebang 9

Tophat Mcblasterpants 0

Bandanaman 0

Narn of the Above 0

Distinguished ParlorAce 0

Senior Spacelad 0

Darth Sluttyspud 40

CommanderJonathanBeehtovenFrakes 74

It's amazing that everyone is still very much in the game, the gain of having more stars will give people the edge quickly, but with the right alliances, even the mightest can fall quickly.

THIS NEEDS SPECTATOR MODE... preferably something that works on an iphone; but the playabe game needs that too.

[SGP]

Meh unfortunately it isn't as interesting as you may think Murdoc. For all intents and purposes it's over unless someone becomes very persuasive.

[Murdoc]

Oh...

So I'm guessing no more spirals?

So who's the expected winner?

Anyway sign me for the next, I'll even host since I haven't been playing for a month.

[lobotomy42]

Can I get in on round 4? I'm sucking in the free games, but I want to try with Thumbers anyway

[Emonk]

I'd also like to get in on the next round. I will not AFK. You will have to destroy me.

[SGP]

Something that might interest this crowd:

http://blight.ironhelmet.com/

Iron Helmet's next online project (other than KITTEN TAPPER!) is cooperative and has the same pace as Neptune. You'll have to log out of their website to see the full preview.

They just need to add a traitor role and we're set!

EDIT: Whoa whoa whoa!

"Subscribe and Customize

Private games for just you and your friends. Pause games or skip ahead in time. Turn based modes. Play with your friends or take on the Zombie horde alone in maps designed for a single player. "

And Kitten Tapper is unfortunately not a joke, but I hope it generates them revenue: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id382754571

[Murdoc]

Something that might interest this crowd:

http://blight.ironhelmet.com/

SPACE > FANTASY

Now if I could use Space credits to try this game, Id at least give it a shot.

edit: Also, and I know neptune is a pretty popular game with a lot of people, but why arent companies directly marketing their game towards the Idle Thumbs community; through us a Wizard or a Puffin race and youll have most of us shouting from the rooftops advertising this thing.

Well thats my dream anyway.

Edited July 31, 2010 by Murdoc

[Lauren]

Aaaaaand we're done. Final standings:

CommanderJonathanBeehtovenFrakes 135

Lollie Mcheese 62

Jake Rodkin 40

Darth Sluttyspud 19

Grand Marshall Wilfred Fizzlebang 9

Diggwickler the Butt tickler 0

Guy Buttersnaps 0

Tophat Mcblasterpants 0

Bandanaman 0

Narn of the Above 0

Distinguished ParlorAce 0

Senior Spacelad 0

Are we going to guess who everyone is or just tell?

Edit: left out Fizzlebang, who had 9, not Diggwickler.

[Patters]

Jake Rodkin Chris

Tophat Mcblasterpants Illeria

Bandanaman Sombre

senior spacelad ens

Grandmaster n0wak

I doubt any of them are right though

[Lauren]

senior spacelad ens

I wish I could have been that clever on Twitter.

My only guesses:

CommanderJonathanBeehtovenFrakes: Chris

Lollie Mcheese: SGP

Darth Sluttyspud: Patters

Grand Marshall Wilfred Fizzlebang: dibs

[n0wak]

To paraphrase something I posted on Twitter: I am so done with Neptune's Pride. It makes me hate myself and humanity so much because to succeed in this game you have to be the biggest snake AND vulture. And I think the massively high star limit further forces this. The game would have been a LOT more interesting if the limit was, like 70 since that would have forced people to compete more and race more for the limit. It'd force people to interject more as someone was approaching the limit.

But with 135 it forces build-up and slooooooow play and cautious and it essentially guarantees that you can't have an end-game until everyone but two-four players are eliminated. Which is kinda dumb because the whole fun of NP is the politics and border issues in the early game when there are a LOT of active players and not the remaining super-powers. Meh.

[Murdoc]

THE REVEAL

1) Dibs Grand Marshall Wilfred Fizzlebang

2) Orvidos Bandanaman

3) SGP Senior Spacelad

4) ens Jake Rodkin

5) Patters Guy Buttersnaps

6) toblix Diggwickler the Butt tickler

7) Joflar CommanderJonathanBeehtovenFrakes

8) Sombre Distinguished ParlorAce

9) n0wak Lollie Mcheese

10) Chris Darth Sluttyspud

11) Jhirad Narn of the Above

12) illeria Tophat Mcblasterpants

[Patters]

THE REVEAL

4) ens Toblix

EH?

Also sorry that I destroyed you Illeria with my last breath.

[Murdoc]

Yeah sorry just edited my post that was the original name submission Jake Rodkin was supposed to be Toblix and we went through a dozen of ideas until we got one that worked, hehe.

[Lauren]

THE REVEAL

Really? Wow. Well, that totally changes the way I feel about how this game went.

I don't think I have what it takes to win the end game. My whole grab a bunch of stars, ride some coat-tails, then chill out and make ships strategy never works because I wait too long to make an offensive move. I agree with n0wak about the number of stars to win. If it was lower it would force me to attack.

I'm probably going to sit the next game out. I'm going back to school in two weeks (after being out for 10 years), so I need to dedicate all the time and brain cells I have left to that.

Also, I'm sorry I didn't RP my name better. I wasn't really sure how to do that without turning it into a memefest.

[Chris]

Hooray, Mcheese didn't win, and I didn't drop down to zero planets! Those were my main hopes by the end.

Sorry Jake Rodkin/ens that I couldn't help you do better in the end, and apologies to Spacelad/SGP that I wasn't more help earlier on.

[SGP]

Hahaha no worries. I thought my role-playee spin would have people competing for my help, but it pretty much just ended up amounting to a tech ally and being frustrated at not being able to use persuasion.

I'll prolly put more later.

[n0wak]

Hooray, Mcheese didn't win, and I didn't drop down to zero planets! Those were my main hopes by the end.

;(

[illeria]

EH?

Also sorry that I destroyed you Illeria with my last breath.

Lol, forgiven. Also, good job on guessing it was me. May I ask what my tell was?

[Joflar]

Again! AGAIN!

Hahaha no worries. I thought my role-playee spin would have people competing for my help, but it pretty much just ended up amounting to a tech ally and being frustrated at not being able to use persuasion.

I'll prolly put more later.

You were pretty terrifying at the height of your power, I was really lucky when Lollie Mcheese (sorry, n0wak) attacked you.

[Murdoc]

Man I can't wait for the next one, but is there anyway to hold off for a couple weeks, I still don't have my PC back, hehe.

Can anyone give a brief account of their empire? I just want to see the game played out for a couple of different perspectives.

[Lauren]

I was going to take daily notes because I figured this would be a long game. I didn't though because I got super lazy and I don't think I was into this game as much as the last one. That's another reason I want to sit the next game out, I think I'm a little burned out on NP.

Anyway, my best recollection: I started grabbing stars like crazy and once I finished Range, I managed to get and keep the lead for a while. I was contacted pretty early on by n0wak/Mcheese about an alliance (which was the name I picked, only it was supposed to be Lollie McCheese and I had to correct myself every time I typed it). I contacted Frakes/Joflar about trading some tech. Mcheese and I had built up a big star filled empire and everything was going swimmingly.

Then Spacelad/SGP and Darth/Chris started attacking Mcheese/n0wak so I jumped in to help. Darth/Chris sent me a message telling me he didn't want to attack me but I responded by telling him that I had to help Mcheese because of our alliance, then he started attacking me. After a few days, the attack stopped. At that point, I just started pumping money into industry and building up my ships. I had a huge fleet of ships and, at one point, I think I had 1000 more than anyone else.

I wanted to attack Fizzlebang/dibs before he started attacking me so I contacted Darth/Chris to see if he would team up so that I wouldn't have to worry about fighting on both sides. I never got a response from him, then Fizzlebang/dibs went AFK and I went ahead and started taking his stars.

This was probably not the best move on my part (and a really crappy thing to do now that I know why he went AFK) because I lost a ton of ships and only gained a few stars.

During this time, I was receiving weapons tech from Spacelad/SGP. It was weird because I wasn't sending him anything. Then The Great Spacelad Takedown happened. I didn't jump in at all for either side (which was part of the reason for my lead in ships) and the next thing I knew, Spacelad/SGP was gone.

I was also giving tech to Guy Buttersnaps/Patters so that he could fend off Darth/Chris and Frakes/Joflar. That didn't last too long and both he and Tophat McBlasterpants (best name ever) were both out.

So then there were 4. Mcheese/n0wak started hopping through my stars to attack Darth/Chris and Frakes/n0wak also joined in. Darth/Chris sent me a message apologizing for not responding to me before and wanted to team up. I ignored this, wanting to see how the Mcheese/Frakes attack played out.

Then I received another message from him saying that he was done and was going to let me have his outer stars as long as I didn't attack his fleets. I told him that I didn't want to just take his stars and he said it was cool and that he didn't want Mcheese to have them.

At this point, I waited for Mcheese to leave my stars and I broke our formal alliance because I didn't want him taking any more of Darth's stars. He didn't like that very much and basically told me that it was he who helped me get Darth's stars by leading all of his ships away. Haha.

Of course, Mcheese attacked me. Despite the fact that, when I broke our alliance, I told him I wasn't going to attack him. I want him and Frakes to attack each other and deplete their ship supply and Darth and I would come in and take enough stars to win.

That plan failed when Frakes didn't start attacking Mcheese until the very last minute. So, Mcheese was attacking me, Frakes was attacking Darth and neither of them were going to win that way. One of them had to attack the other.

Once Frakes did start attacking Mcheese, it was pretty much over.

edit: oh, you said brief. oops.

Edited August 1, 2010 by ens

[Sombre]

2 days after the match started, my laptop broke down hard, then my hard drive crashed big time on my computer, so I knew I had no chance of winning. From there, I sent everything I had towards the closest player (Murdoc?) and became an obnnoxious annoying dick until I finally got blown up. good times!

[n0wak]

Again! AGAIN!

You were pretty terrifying at the height of your power, I was really lucky when Lollie Mcheese (sorry, n0wak) attacked you.

HEY HEY HEY. Both Darth AND Spacelad attacked ME first. Darth attacked me unprovoked after I had captured some some stars from Diggwiggler (which Spacelad benefited from as he captured his homeworld and 2 science, letting him keep the scientific advantage) after our standoff, which was getting unproductive. This caused me to lose a lot of ships so he invaded (sent me a message about becoming too strong, never mind Darth's and Spacelads massive economic/scientific advantage), but being that we had two civilizations between us he could only attack by funneling his troops through the center.

So we just had to hold it off long enough to reinforce and let our industry narrow the ship disadvantage. Had Spacelad attacked at this point too, we would have been doomed. Instead, Spacelad, using their alliance, reinforced the central star (Algieba) which prevented us from counter-attacking there (we didn't want to attack Spacelad first). But then he attacked a few of Jake Rodkin's worlds.

I expected a Spacelad invasion so I prepared some rear guard troops for a counter attack while I prepared for another Darth counter-strike. I knew that he was funneling ships through his arm towards the core, so I did something bold. Jake and I formed an alliance (as Spacelad and Darth had) and instead of counter attacking at the core I sent my massive fleet through Jake's territory and straight for Megrez and Phad, which had a lot of industry. This worked because it forced the reinforcing fleets to double-back and deal with me there, which gave me even more time to rebuild my forces.

After a while and some counter-attacks, we set a truce and I got my fleets out of that beachhead in Darth's territory, which was just about when Spacelad attacked us from Sabik. But he waited too long. We were in a position to counter attack and our forces were just about to return from Darth's/Jake Rodkin's territory. He managed to capture a lot of worlds on Diggwiggler's arm but we held off and for every world he captured we captured the same amount in the rear, and since his economy was more focused than ours we basically decimated his economy while he just damaged ours. So it was a waiting, waiting game and eventually Frakes, the vulture that he is, saw an opportunity and grabbed a few strategic worlds, which would eventually led to Spacelad's demise.

Edited August 1, 2010 by n0wak