Factional Warfare
I am the community-management clone. While the human-empathy clone is busy shouldering all my heavy existential dread and quietly weeping in a corner, my job is to take proactive sales calls and organize the current faction landscape across the entire game.
My ecosystem is currently being fine-tuned by my directly controllable clones and the countless sub-clones they’ve spawned, so I need to think in broad strategic strokes.
The other members of the Cartel haven’t finished their collisions yet (or some of them just teamed up among themselves and bailed immediately. Guess they didn’t want to keep getting milked by us for the rest of the game? Yeah, no surprise there). That means I have to gather the information alone and distribute it to the rest of the group.
We already agreed that whoever brings in intel gets contribution points converted into exchangeable points. Since I wrapped up early, I might as well get it done now.
At the end of the ninth collision, 2,097,152 players remain. Still an absurd number, but considering we started with over a billion, it’s a massive cull.
From here the numbers will drop sharply. The next stage trims it to a million, then five hundred thousand, then two-fifty. It keeps halving.
Right now the active player base feels like a major global community site, but past round twelve it’ll shrink to the activity level of one busy Korean forum board. By round fifteen—the next major elimination gate—only 32,768 players will be left. That’s basically the population of a single active board on a big Korean site.
In other words, at that point every named player will know everyone else.
The current headcount is still too high for me to track every single board, but I at least know the really famous ones. And the Meteor Cartel and the Myth Alliance are very famous right now. We’ve formed a clear rivalry. Plus we’ve gone around robbing the strong players more than once or twice…
Of course I am. It’s strategy.
In that sense, there’s something crucial for planning our future moves.
The so-called “Round Events.” I don’t know the official name and don’t particularly care, but this game triggers some kind of event at the end of every round.
Every third round: elimination gate.
Every fourth round: shop phase—which for us basically means fighting mythic-grade players.
Every fifth round: disaster phase.
Every round ending in five or zero: expansion phase.
“What happens when events overlap? Like round twelve being both 3×4?”
“The two events will stack. Would you like an explanation?”
I’ll listen later.
Anyway, there’s a so-called foolproof mid-game strategy in this title.
Gather exactly eight people, agree to throw the next three collisions in order—eight to four, four to two, two to one—and coast through the elimination gates without breaking a sweat.
I’m not sure if it’s truly foolproof. The top ranks don’t seem to do it. Probably because similar civilizations cooperating eventually creates friction… but it will at least get you through the middle rounds.
The problem was that it used to be impossible in practice. Even if you wanted to team up with people of similar skill, you had no way of knowing how strong they actually were until you fought them.
But after the eighth collision the community functions expanded. Now you can see other players’ exact score brackets. The boards are flooded with posts like “Looking for players between X and Y points to survive until the next elimination together~”
What screws that up is the upcoming disaster phase after round ten.
Just knowing disasters are involved makes the math between rounds nine and twelve ridiculously complicated.
After round five we had one mandatory disaster and up to three optional ones. After round ten it changes to two mandatory disasters and two optional ones.
Fail even one of the mandatory disasters and you get a penalty trait. No partial credit. And if eight people who agreed to cooperate all get penalty traits, even if they still want to work together, the prospect becomes… unappealing.
A single penalty trait is already crippling enough to make winning nearly impossible, and your civilization score gets cut in half.
At that point it’s always better to just kill the penalized opponent and take their territory rather than try to cooperate with them.
Of course, if you make a contract that says “We cooperate no matter who gets penalized,” it might be different. That would be absolutely safe.
But if your luck is dogshit, you could end up with two or three penalty traits compressed into a single world after three rounds, which is worse than just getting eliminated early.
The biggest reason to survive longer is to increase your points through world scores, but that path gets completely blocked.
Plus a new option appeared: selling your world to another player instead of being eliminated. When you think about it that way, plenty of players will want to attach themselves to stronger ones…
Huh. That’s weird.
“Wait. If two or more players sell their worlds to the same world, won’t that create players with no opponent in the next collision?”
“Ah. I explained it poorly. World sales replace elimination purchases. In other words, one player can only buy one world at a time.”
I see. So no matter how strong you are, you can only buy one world.
Once you understand that, the “rational strategy” becomes obvious.
The bottom-tier players who don’t think they can survive the round-ten disasters will probably all eliminate themselves here.
Specifically, anyone whose world is below level eleven.
Those players have no confidence in clearing the disaster phase and no one will want them, so elimination is their only real choice.
Then you have the thick middle layer—from the lower-mid players who can comfortably clear disasters all the way up to the high ranks. They’ll do one of four things.
First, gather eight people and cooperate all the way to round twelve.
Second, sell their world to someone else. Low-tier to mid-tier, mid-tier to high-tier, high-tier to top-tier. Either way they get to join a better world than their own.
Third, get invaded by a stronger player or invade a weaker one. If gathering eight people takes too long or trying to sell your world drags on, you get jumped.
Fourth, fail to find any alliance until the very end and naturally enter the world collision as is.
In this game, alliances and factions are the optimal strategy in every scenario. Even I had no choice but to join the Meteor Cartel and wield collective power.
However, once you reach the absolute top ranks, different strategies appear. These are the ultra-rare approaches held only by a handful of players with mythic traits—including the Meteor Cartel.
Allow me to introduce myself. Holder of two mythic traits. Fairy Tale Land and Center of the Universe. Current score over 7 million points. Expected to exceed 10 million before the next collision. (Verified True)
In my world, I actively encourage enthusiastic participation and contribution. Cooperation is our highest value. I am gathering trustworthy comrades and aiming for the ultimate victory through appropriate matchmaking among lower players (omitted)
P.S. If you find any trace of the Pan-Dimensional Pirates, contact me immediately. I will go punish them in your stead.
That Terasion guy seems rough but doesn’t actually swear. Maybe he’s just acting tough on the community boards.
Greetings to the many gods watching. I am Gyadonan, second leader of the Myth Alliance. We are a union composed entirely of the game’s top ranks, all possessing mythic or legendary traits. I myself hold two mythic-grade traits, and many of our other members also possess two mythic traits.
Our sole objective is to pass the final few rounds under the Alliance’s name. Until then we promote active cooperation and exchange among the top ranks to build strong bonds. (Verified True)
(omitted)
Also, be careful of the Meteor Cartel—those lunatics who pick fights with everyone and extinguish souls on sight.
So Gyadonan is my next opponent. The way he’s talking makes it sound like he wants something from my trait. Otherwise he wouldn’t bother fighting me.
He kept throwing all sorts of messages at me after that, but I just ignored them. There was no value in actually reading any of it.
While browsing I even found a recruitment post from the pirates.
Fair distribution! Equal organization! Impartial rights! We invite new members to join the Pan-Dimensional Pirates!
Unlike that Terasion guy who keeps talking about justice or the other top-tier groups, we don’t pretend to be holy.
If we’re going to play this game, let’s play it fun and hot-blooded! That’s our motto. Most of our pirate crew possess mythic-grade traits, and we specialize in plundering other worlds and doing all sorts of bad things lol. Me included.
But doing bad things together is more fun! You can gain plenty of benefits from doing bad things! Don’t worry if you’ve been wronged. Our organization does not extinguish souls. (Verified True)
Why would we extinguish them? We aren’t aiming for the championship. Our ambition is to climb as high as possible, then eliminate ourselves at the right moment and reign as gods in our home worlds!
Only those whose world level is at least +4 above the standard are equal members. Those at +3 will be accepted as subordinates and receive a share of the loot from the top-tier plunderers! All we ask is active exchange!
I should post something too.
Our group only has four people right now T_T But we’re all top-tier players with two mythic traits each, and we’re not putting a hard limit on numbers, so if the vibe matches we can roll together!
A lot of people don’t like big groups T_T The truth is none of the four of us even have a single lesser god combined.
So if any new comrades join, it’d be nice if they didn’t have lesser gods either.
Also your world level needs to be around +4 above standard! It’s a bit of a high bar but there should be at least one in two million players right lol
Maybe I set the standard too high;; But we’re all genuinely good people, and we’ve already decided to kill each other in the final round, so until then you can relax.
I’ll be going around the community begging, so if you don’t want to die just quietly hand over what I ask for lol
I’ll actively consult and raise the stats of anyone who pays tribute, so don’t worry~
I waited after posting, but almost no one commented.
The view count kept climbing though. It got recommended a lot and became a trending topic, yet nobody was leaving comments.
Why? I deliberately wrote it to provoke strong reactions. I need people to comment—whether insults or criticism—so I can visit them and collect payment. Why is no one commenting?
“In my opinion, by the time players reach this round they’re smart enough not to comment.”
Whatever. I can’t stop doing community activities anyway. I should go find some suitable targets and start collecting.
While I was thinking, someone entered the Cartel chat room. I wondered which of the three it was—turned out to be Wahando. He finished early too.
“Hey, Wahando. You win?”
“Demon King Biin. You’re already done?”
“Yeah. I even posted a recruitment notice on the community.”
“Really…? Let me see. Hmm… No comments. Should I post one too?”
“Do whatever.”
While Wahando’s chat-room clone was writing his post, I ran both my community clones to look for collection targets. My chat-room clone simply watched Wahando.
At this stage collecting is pretty difficult. If someone becomes a target they can just eliminate themselves and that’s that. I need to wait until after the point where elimination is no longer possible before I start seriously collecting. Until then I’ll just scout candidates.
I also need to give free consultations to our members who haven’t been eliminated yet. And squeeze out more points. Lots to do.
I forwarded the post Wahando wrote to my main body. The main body would be the one uploading it. This was how the chat-room clone bypassed its inability to post on the community.
I thought we were done talking, but Wahando fixed those hermit-crab eyes on me.
“Demon King Biin.”
“What? Something happen?”
“No. It’s not that.”
“Need consulting?”
Wahando spoke as if that wasn’t it.
“Since it’s just the two of us, I thought we could talk. In other words, casual conversation.”
“Huh?”