Sitting down with Stargate- Winners of Alvorsted (S39)

[limpid prism]

**1. About your team, how did it form, how much of it was formed before the round started? How was it composed?**Stargate was initially gathered by the one and only @steep forge. Recruitment started 4-5 days before the server started, as far as I'm aware, and we had a complete roster on the initial day of the server. We did rotate a few members alongside the entire server duration, which unfortunately included @steep forge himself, as he stepped down due to scheduling issues.
From there, we decided collectively on a theme, and that's how we ended up with "Stargate", and names referencing characters from the show itself.

**2. What were the key strategies your realm employed to secure victory in Arkheim: Realms at War?
**Well there were two key things that essentially paved our way to victory:
A very solid, constantly reviewed and updated tower-mastering. Thanks to the efforts of @vocal barn, and honorable mentions to @glad garden and @rough hinge, we already had a pretty solid foundation to snowball the game from, giving us an edge over other less-prepared realms.
An unrelenting drive to declaring war over our enemies until we basically had our victory secured. For most of i2/i3, we had the unofficial rule of "1 war a day", masterly organized by @warm cove making sure we snowballed enough until the rest didn't really matter.
Besides this, it was the conjoined effort from everyone doing their part and being active.

**3. How did your realm handle conflicts and disagreements among members?**We did have quite a few that even got heated. In the end, it's about remembering that our energy is better spent smashing troops on the enemy instead.
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4. Can you describe the hierarchy and organization within your realm? How did it contribute to your success?
**Initially there wasn't much hierarchy; it was simply @steep forge at the helm and that was about it. However, due to the aforementioned scheduling issues, some players inadvertently stood up and took the wheel on coordinating efforts. Roles like warmonging, tower masters, leadership, even donation analysts kinda fell naturally in the hands of some, and we just rolled with it.

**5. What were the most significant challenges your realm faced throughout the server, and how did you overcome them?
**Honestly, the biggest challenge was the enemy within. From very early on, we had what we ended up calling "the clown". One or more people appeared to be intentionally sabotaging the realm from within, sending warlords "on watch" far away (in a clear, intentional way) and even managed to "surprise" declare wars that we didn't mean to declare; they even managed to force our ascension from i3 to i4 by abusing sentinel rights.
This caused a lot of distrust amongst ourselves, and we had to constantly be changing and adapting everyone's in-game roles, which was a real nuisance. In the end, we're very confident that we correctly identified the account that was compromised and doing most of this damage; however, we also believe there was a second "clown" (a "copy clown" if you will) that was still doing some minor damage in the end.

If anything, let this be a call / feedback that we very much would like something like "sentinel logs" to be a feature. The simple ability to see which account did things like start a movement or add a warlord would go a long way. We had multiple people that were understandably very upset with what was going on, to the point that they were more than ready to just flat out quit the server. It was a real issue that can have a "rather" simple solution.

And it's not just a "keep the roles only to the very trusted members"... We did exactly that and still had issues... turns out, one account had unknowingly been compromised. It also becomes a real competitive problem when you have to reduce the permissions around the realm so much that you lose, for example, night coverage.

**6. Were there any pivotal moments or turning points that you believe shaped the outcome of the server for your realm?**The big decider was the diplomacy that brewed upon i3. We were already ahead at this point, so, understandably, other realms started to try and form an alliance to knock us down; to counter-act this, we started looking for allies too. It seemed that in the end the diplomacy talks went way more in our favor, and as we managed to gather a couple allies, the other realms failed to come to an agreement to join together and fight us. This could've easily gone the other way, and maybe it would have been a more interesting server.
However, it really did feel like in this case it was more our enemies stumbling over themselves than us doing anything major; Sovereign Blood fell off immediately after our war with them. Don't Panic, similarly to us, seemed to have a big struggle with their initial leaders availability (though to a much severe degree) which seemed to throw them off their early game. This combined with the "more casual realms" like **COVID **stepping up and actually holding their footing when threatened, something that you don't usually see, all contributed for a "smooth sailing" from there to the end of the server.

**7. How did your realm foster a sense of community and camaraderie among its members?
**We had some lovely people full of energy and love to spread around. Players like @rough hinge @fading ember would not let anyone go without good mornings and good nights! Us also think that the fact that we were declaring wars so often kept everyone engaged and actively participating. These things combined kept us glued enough to the end, even through the morale hits we took from the clown.

**8. What lessons did your realm learn from participating in Arkheim: Realms at War, both in terms of gameplay and teamwork?
**There's not a lot of takeaways from this specific server. Waring often is good for both a strategic standpoint and a teamwork / community standpoint. Having a solid base is half the way to being competitive.

**9. Can you share any strategies or tactics that were unique to your realm and contributed to your success?
**The previously mentioned unspoken rule of "1 war a day" went a long way to making things work.
We had a very interesting ark transfer in i4; we arrived about half a day late to i4, and we planned it so that as soon as transfers were ready (72h after ascension) we would move ark temporarily to one of the nearby forts; we lined this up with the timing of a building relic and pre-planned paths so that we would only lose access to the other side of the realm very shortly (with portal usage). This allowed us very very quick access to a couple rare supplies that otherwise we wouldn't be able to naturally take.

**10. How did your realm adapt to changes in the game's mechanics or new challenges introduced during the server?
**This server brought upon a few changes-rearrangement of troops so that there's no more defense bonus, the Eternal Obelisk was new for some of us, and the "ghosts now walk back instead of being teleported".
The changes to troops were very positive; Attack Bonus troops are much more interesting to use and play against than Defense Troops. However, there was a collective feel that they are too weak in their current state, very quickly (after the first week of i2) becoming mostly irrelevant.
The Eternal Obelisk and the change to ghost warlords was something that didn't have much impact on this specific server, and from which conclusions shouldn't be drawn; by the time it was relevant, it didn't make a difference at all.