There was a time where MMO browser-based strategy games were popular. I spent time playing two of these games, OGame and Ikariam. I recently went back to Ikariam for a quick hit of nostalgia and although the game is clearly dead now (US server with ~10 people online? Almost instantly top 100 score?) I found great fun attacking a neighboring player which resulted in my own siege of Masada story.
To catch you up, the siege of Masada happened in the year 73 or 74 CE where the Romans sieged a fortress on a very steep mountain cliff. As they spent weeks moving the earth to make a giant ramp up to the fortress the defenders hurled stones, shot arrows, and yelled insults and the Romans. Finally, the Romans completed their ramp, rammed down the wall, and entered the city but they were denied the satisfaction of enacting revenge on the defenders. You see, almost all of the defenders chose to leave the Earth on their own terms instead of being a Roman slave or being executed by the Roman attacks. Now that you understand the reference, let’s dive into Ikariam.
My intention with revisiting the game was simple, I wanted to attack a town and win. That was it. If you are unfamiliar with these browser games you gather resources and build different buildings that take real world time. The same with researching different technologies and all of this can take days. You can talk to your island mates and there was some discourse between players and one of them I didn’t care for much. I ended up getting impatient and sent out an attack too early and it failed marvelously. My troops were gone, eventually the guy attacked me although I had already quit at this point and my account eventually went to an AFK server.
A few weeks passed and it nagged at me that I didn’t actually win a battle. So, for some reason I went back to the game but this time I was laser focused on winning an attack. I was able to get my account back to my original server and island and now there were only two people on the island, me and the guy who defeated my initial attack a few weeks earlier. At this point he was 4x-5x my score but he had a relatively low military score meaning his army was small. You have to remember, this game is basically dead so most people aren’t attacking. I should note although there are only two people on the island, he does have two cities on the island and I only have one.
So I started plotting. I needed to get some research done to get better troops and I needed to get a new colony settled that could feed a special resource, sulfur, for more powerful units. This took a few days but eventually I had everything set up and the other player still had the same military score, that was good as he didn’t perceive me as a threat. At the last minute I decided to wait 3 more days for research to get Catapults to take down some walls and then I’d attack. Finally, I was ready.
With an army ready to go I unleashed my first attack early in the morning. Success! The town I hit had his army stationed there and I was able to completely destroy his army and loot 6,000 crystals, score! Armies do have travel times and so from my city to his, via land, it took 15 minutes to get there and 15 minutes back. Also, battles have rounds and each round is 15 minutes. Depending on how many units each side has the battles can last multiple rounds. But we’re looking at almost a 1 hour travel time there and back if we consider battles and even looting takes time.
Once my troops were back I hit his second city, no defenders but so much loot I couldn’t even carry it. There was 50,000 marble available and I could only carry about 15,000. So I hit that town, over and over, until I had all the loot. I had also sent a small navy fleet to his vineyard colony on a different island because you need this resource to keep your citizens happy. That port was now blockaded.
Everything had went smooth. His army was defeated, his loot was mine, his port was blocked, I was triumphant. Then I waited to see his next move. I had noticed the night before his gold count was going up rapidly meaning he had stopped production on some towns and he might have been AFK from the game.
However, this game does have a spying feature that is very important. You can infiltrate a town and try to succeed at different missions like troop production, available loot in the warehouse, fleet movement, and online status. Eventually I recalled my ships and later that night he freed his port so I spied him and indeed he was online. Now it was a chess match, I had played the opening moves and it was his turn to respond.
The next day I send some probing attacks but don’t score any meaningful loot and didn’t kill any units. Then he did something unexpected. Remember, I haven’t played this game in 15 years so I’m sort of learning tactics as I go. He sent a small army of 200 troops to my town to… defend it. Yes, to defend my town. Why? Because there is no way in the game to kick out troops from your town if they are defending it. That’s bad game design but essentially his army was safe.
I was pretty annoyed at this point. He was using this tactic to build his army until he had enough strength to fight me head on. Remember, he is basically 3x my score still (I did gain some score preparing for all this) and eventually he’d rock me. So I had to think of how to resolve this. The one thing I noticed was there was a timer, 8 hours. Interesting.
To learn more about defending a town I sent 1 defender to his town. It didn’t give me any access to his town, I didn’t learn anything, but I did find out you can send defenders for up to 8 hours and once that timer is done they automatically return to their original town. This was the key.
I knew based on his units that it would take him 15 minutes travel time to go back to his town from mine because he sent Archers and a Ram, the ram takes 15 minutes. So if he let the timer run out naturally then I’d just send to send my army as soon as he leaves my town, since it also takes 15 minutes, and I’d be able to snipe his army with mine. The issue is that you can recall defensive troops at any time so surely he is going to recall his troops randomly to pull them back, right?
I waited and waited. 1 hour left, 30 minutes left, 15 minutes left, he’s really not going to recall them? So I wait, refreshing the game, thinking surely he is going to be online to recall those troops. He doesn’t. This is my opportunity to strike, two seconds after his troops leave my town I send my full army to his origin town. Success! My army lands right after his and I take out almost everything except a few rams (this game’s combat is weird and it’s hard to fully wipe out an army). I check his military score and it drops significantly again.
I must admit I was really happy about that. He was being cute with defending my town to protect his people, which was a good strategy, but he poorly executed the return. Now it was time to stay on top of him as I knew he was actively trying to resist my attacks. Let the spy games begin!
I only have 5 spies but I threw them at the enemy hard and lost a lot but quickly recruited more. I didn’t need to care about being sneaky, I failed a lot which means he knew I was spying, but although I had more failures I just needed to succeed a few times and this is where I really out played my opponent.
I saw a spy mission called “Spy troop production” or something like that and so I did it. After a few failures it worked and I saw something amazing. He was doing very large batches of troop production. In his first town there was a batch of 600 Swordsmen being produced, for reference each one takes about ~2 minutes depending on barracks so this was taking almost a full day to make. The good thing about the spy report is it told me exactly when this would be finished, more on that to come. After the Swordsmen were some other units and a navy letting me know he really wanted to crush me. This was only a report for one town, I needed the other town.
After recalling my spies from Town 1 I sent them into Town 2. Many failed attempts and hours later I succeeded in spying the troop production of Town 2. Man, 500 Hoptiles were coming, these took ~3 minutes each, and were the main force of an army followed by other units hours later. However, this was good new because I had the full picture of his troop production.
So I did what any normal person would do, I compiled these two spy reports to create a timeline of unit production and gave it to Chat GPT to convert server time (CET) to my own time zone (ET) so I could figure out the exact time to launch my attacks. Given the 15 minute travel time I needed to deploy troops 15 minutes before completion. The issue? His troops were finished at 4:20am. What was I going to do?
At this point I had already come up with the Masada storyline for myself and so my plan was always to deny this player the satisfaction of defeating me but my question was always when do I walk away? I had to always be aware of the changing tides and to understand when the scales tipped out of my favor. So I started weighing my options.
On the one hand, I could let his units come out at 4:35am and then I could have my ambush ready for the Swordsmen at 6:55am, forcing him to reinforce that town with the Hoptiles and having the head on battle I wanted. However, I didn’t like the idea of the 500 Hoptiles being out there where I couldn’t find them. I had the intel I needed and I wanted to continue my strategic advantage leaving no room for error, making my exist all the more enjoyable. So, I had an alarm set for 4:20am.
Yes, I got up at 4:20am and walked to my computer, watching the clock count down to 4:20:28am and sent my full army towards his town producing the Hoptiles and went back to sleep. I either timed it well or I didn’t, I’d find out later.
Another alarm goes off and now I’m up at 6:30am because I need to send off my army at 6:40:28am to hit those 600 Swordsmen. I check my combat log and because I was on the wrong page thought I had missed the army and now there were 500 Hoptiles out there I couldn’t find. This was also because his military score was climbing. Come to find out my attack was successful and I took out 200 Hoptiles and won the army (again, I couldn’t fully wipe because this game has bad combat).
As my army marches across to his town I spy his online status and after a few failed attempts see that he is online, watching my incoming attack. Will he defend it? Will he move his troops out in time? Will he try to attack my defenseless base? Nothing unexpected happens, my army arrives exactly as planned and hits his 600 units as they exit the barracks. I took down 300 and won the fight.
My issue is that I didn’t completely wipe out his units, they are still there, and his combat score is climbing. His combat score was around 1,000 and mine was 1,500. I knew he still had some Hoptiles and Swords so I sent more attacks at his bases to try and catch them, nothing. I sent 1 unit attacks to keep his military warning on and recalled them before they arrived to keep pressure on. I sent spies in and looked for troops and there were 0.
The night before I had told myself my exit was after the second attack. Yes, I could have sniped some more units like catapults but I needed to move on from this game. These types of games can consume me because I enjoy the strategy so much. I had succeeded in both morning attacks so it was time to take stock.
At this point, somehow, his military score was equal to mine at around ~1500 and he had no troops on the island. He had two other towns on two different islands, one was on a Sulfur island so he could easily produce troops. What it looked like was he had sent all his troops off the island so I couldn’t attack them and he had finished building troops from his other towns. I had also caught some of his spies that morning and had seen him upgrading his Hideouts (spy buildings) so I knew he was trying to play catch up. The scales were tipping out of my favor and I knew it.
This could have went on for days or maybe weeks. Each of us trying to out play the other but that’s not what I intended. I had a specific vision, to win an attack and I did. After getting spy reports I saw an opportunity for some more fun and took it, sniping two of his big troop deployments. I also had an exit plan, to deny him the satisfaction of defeating my army and to leave him with a ghost town. It was time to exit.
I deleted my army and my navy. I reduced all town production to 0 and made sure all materials were below the safe levels in all towns. This means there is nothing to loot and there won’t be, even after days because my towns aren’t producing anything. I also renamed my town to “Siege of Masada” and added a bit of information in my player info in case he checks. I thought about adding a message to the island in-game chat area but that would deny the ghost town attack.
I set out a plan and executed it to the best of my ability and it worked. I won all attacks, I was never attacked, and I knew when to get out. I placed #3 in Offensive Points on the server (remember, dead game) and my opponent was #9 in Defensive Points, you’re welcome! Even though they will have faced what the Roman’s did after all that preparation I hope my opponent still enjoyed a brief moment where a dead game was brought to life by someone who wanted some nostalgia but ended up making new fond memories.
Update:
I checked back in to see if I had any messages and I did. The player messaged me and it was a very positive and terrific message. I responded with a lot of details and they replied once more. We both enjoyed the two days of combat and he understand my reasoning for what I did and respected the decision. He is a great player and if I wanted to get back into Ikariam him and I would have made a great team. This was a great way to end my time with the game.