The beauty of big “free for all“ aka how i got destroyed by a naval fleet on black forrest (as the wikings) and the persian douche takes it all.

Warning: long post. This is the story of how deathmatch (no teams) saved our group games by being the trolliest game i've ever seen:

Setup: We've been playing a few games of 3vs3 and 4vs4 in our gaming group and were starting to figure out who is at what approximate skill level. But we never really managed to figure out balanced teams so we basically said fuck it -DM it is. To make the thing a little bit more beginner friendly we picked black forrest and since i had the most hours ingame (still shit compared to actually good players) i agreed on having them assign me my civ. I got given the wikings.

So first thing into the game i immediately run into the second most experienced player (light blue- from now on reffered to as LB). We shortly consider a truce/alliance but conclude that it would make the game boring and since we also couldn't really move our armies with the other in our side that meant we had to deal with each other rather fast. Also on a sidenote : I found a small pond of water (basically a puddle) next to LB sparking this short dialogue (on TS) :

-“K i found water“ ~“As the wikings? We're doomed-now he's gonna assert world domination from there“ -“It's just a small puddle- black forrest doesn't really have water in any significant degree“ ~“ You're still gonna do it using the water somehow“ Keep that in mind for later.

So- whilst me and LB fight amongst each other, the persian player (grey) at the other end of the map decides that it would be a good idea to persian douche in a DM with 7 players. He then decides to not be s complete douche and refrains from finishing off his poor victim (red) who has probably never faced the strategy before. Out of gratefulness in reds behalf, they establish some kind of peaceful coexistence in what used to be reds base. The spanish player below the persian player doesn't realize any of this (despite us all being on the same TS channel) and instead of walking in there, starts walling up and booming in what i assume is a rush for gunpowder. The persian player then starts building up his economy mostly undisturbed and amasses a considerable army of elephants&paladins. I can hear him talking about killing the orange player to the other side of my base - away from where i'm still fighting with LB.

With orange walled up and me still fighting a war that is turning more and more in my favor, i don't really get to scout through oranges wall and instead start building up some castles in oranges general direction with some garrisoned crossbows. My thought process being, that i would be able to fend of orange long enough to shift my army away from the LB front and back home + even get time to build appropriate counter units.

Surprise: it's not orange coming through these walls- it's the persians. Weakened by the fight with blue i don't have enough units to defend and i hastily start putting up dozens of barracks (too much wood saved up) and a little later some monastaries. Sadly- even this horde of anticav units cannot properly defend my old base (no halbadiers :-/ ) but only manages to slow down his flood which is destroying TC after TC for long enough for me to rebuild and shift my ECO in LBs base who is still not dead yet- holding on to a small corner of his old territory right next to the small pond with a small castle, towers and a tc (and unbeknownst to me a small mining camp in the middle of the map).

From the other side of LBs base, the so far innactive yellow player starts expanding into LBs base as well- claiming to not be interested in war with my right now. Running low on gold (having mined all of my gold + parts of LBs), i can't really do anything aside from spamming more pikes. Meanwhile- LB starts spamming ships into the pond to defend his small town which is so close to my tc that they occasionaly snipe villagers straying too far away from it. I can't even really afford trebuchets because i can't mine gold or stine and the wood&food prices are both at their 14 cap. I just barely manage to mix 1-2 in there between the pikes and keep them far away from the battle at the back of my town. Enter Bert- Bert is a persian paladin. Bert is a very special man. Independently from persians micromanagement (at least he told me he didn't actually go for it himself because my trebs weren't doing all that much to his cav anyways) Bert slithers through the wall of pikes in front of him and, with the determination of a anti-treb- crusader, makes a beeline for my treb which i just sent to deal with LBs castle from out of his ships range. So much for this plan.

Now...LB sees my trebs and thinks to himself: I can do this as well! Inbefore... trebs covered by ships shooting one of my 2 remaining TCs and taking it down. Also: Yellow bulding his base into mine, dropping a castle in the process. I tell him to delete his castle (in range of my buildings) there, or there would be war. ...He decided for the second option. What followed was a 4 faction battle with LB ships, yellows paladins, my pikes and the persian deathball.

The persians eventually pull out on top and the rest from there is just cleanup. Only thing left to mention is LB being the last player to die despite being the first to have his town destroyed and almost cutting an escape path out of the forrest (and off the map) before the persian player finally manages to take him out.

So yeah...the unbalanced teambattles were kinda boring but the equally balanced deathmatch was top-meme 10/10 would rogan again!