The Blog of Susanoo

Well the cat is out of the bag. Soshi Tenbin found me out this morning :)

.. which is perfectly ok, seeing as today was to be the day anyway. Actually I thought I would go ahead and make the jump, but funnily enough, and in typical Phil fashion all my planning and scheming amounted to naught due to an obvious oversight. I still only had one mercenary that was able to hold a defensive weapon, therefore when I went to buying defensive armor I could only hold one at a time. Funny stuff there.

So I waited until this morning and bought some more defensive stuff.

I also did my ninja training as usual (this time buying defensive mercs before training!)to find that I was still #2, which as of the last stats I had on Tobi-oni-taru, I should have pulled ahead of him this morning on ninja. After a brief talk with him over MSN I found out that he had in fact been passed by not just one, but two mysterious ninjas.. putting him at ranking #3 for ninja and #2 for shinobi. Which also told me that there was another factor lurking about and most likely that other factor was an upgrade ahead of both of us.

I settled for pulling off one successful theft mission of Tobi and decided that today was a good day to reveal my identity to the forums.

So in the end:
Strike Action 185,256 Ranked # 23
Defensive Action 76,823 Ranked # 45
(+25%) Ninja Rating 26,520 Ranked # 2
(+25%) Shinobi Rating 2,800 Ranked # 14

Current Rank: #17

... not exactly blazing into the top 10 as I once had dreamed, but I got the job done. Actually I am really suprised at how hard it ended up being to rank defensively. I had counted on going much further down the ranks than ended up being the case. I bought several decent defense armors and still ended only at rnak #45.

Now the real question is whether I will resurrect Susanoo or continue to play Tsuki... or if I will just rename Tsuki into Susanoo... decisions.. decisions. We'll have to see on that one.

Besides that, I will be signing off here and probably not posting any new endeavors until after the fact so as to remain unpredictable.

In the end, if I have demonstrated anything, it is that one good approach to the game is to pick a stat.. any stat, and make it your specialty. Only develop other stats as needed in order to compliment your primary, and no further. This is one of many ways to play, and it has gotten me into the top 20 in 15 days.

Well, on second thought today might be the day. :)

I got word last night that Tobi was moving into a new range of upgrades. He was supposed to start with units as of last night. If I know him, the second to go will be covert.. and probably will not take long to follow the units. I'm not sure if he actually did the unit upgrade, but even if he didn't that means it will not be long at all.

This could prove to make it near impossible for me to complete my plan as intended. I have actually moved into the #2 rank for ninja, so I'm probably not a terrible distance away from him, but if he gets another covert upgrade that will put me at another week or two in catching him. Hmmm ... decisions decisions. On one hand I would have liked to have caught him, on the other I think it is probably more important to post my mission to the forums. The downside is that after I post the link to this blog I will have to drastically change my strategy.

Im not an authority on the subject by any means, but I would say that the first rule of strategy is to be unpredictable. After I post this blog, I will have to change in order to accomplish that.

Still, right now my inclination is to go ahead and buy a few defensive armors and get into the top 20 in order to finish my mission there and then start moving towards some new long term goals. Of course, it still might be possible to overtake him ... :) .. I dunno.

I'll think about it for awhile before taking action, but this section of the blog may be about to draw towards an ending.

Yesterday I ended up ranked #3 for ninja after I did my upgrade. Pretty good :)

So this morning I started by doing some attacks and thefts as normal. I trained all my new ninja and waited for the turn to go round. And.. nothing. Didnt move up any more rankings in ninja ability. I wasnt terribly happy about that.

So instead of banking the money like I probably should have, I bought my first ninja gear! :D

It probably would be smarter to wait and watch and train like normal, but hey a guy needs some instant gratification sometimes. If they are that far ahead of me I will need everything I can get anyway. If they have another upgrade ahead of me I may have a long long way to go. So I have no idea what will happen when the turn fires, but I do know I have a kick butt ninja force. There are now only five players I can't see gold on...

If I can get that #1 ninja rank soon, I'll wait a few days and go ahead and move into the top 20 so I can post on the forums that my mission is complete. I should be able to do that fairly easily as long as insane attack and defense has not become the fad completely for the top players. With the little arms race that was happening when I left the top ranks, that may very well be the case.

But then, as I've already shown (I think) there are more than one ways to skin a cat. We'll see how it all goes.

Ah, after spending, training, attacking, and thieving my handy little spreadsheet tells me I am a mere 223016 away from the next covert upgrade. It is possible I will have it before the day is out although I still may wait. I would hate to waste turns if I cannot find good targets, and it *is* the weekend so the pickings may be scarce.

I can hardly wait. It will also be nice for the raise in shinobi. I've started making enough money now that I am a target. I was hit between this morning and last time I logged in for 80k. That would have trained 20 ninja or gotten me a little closer to the covert upgrade. Grrr.. but doubling my shinobi strength may cut that out. If that fails, I will finally have to put a little into defense.. which I would prefer to avoid.

I doubt that even with the new upgrade I will overtake Tobi Oni Taru, but I must be getting closer.

Oh how time flies.

It is now day 11.

I made the 80 unit upgrade yesterday as planned. This morning I did attacks and thefts as normal.

Someone has been busy with thier ninja ratings.. I've moved down to #6 over the night. No matter, when I get the next covert upgrade that will probably change again and probably put me higher than I was before.

After that, unit production 160. I expect that will take awhile, especially considering that I now have 80 ninja to train each day. That will probably slow me down for a bit as well.. but we'll see. If I'm lucky I will be able to open up some new targets and maybe speed the process up a bit. At this time I can see gold on everyone except maybe half of the top 20. Doesn't sound like much, but that probably means that they have more cash.

One thing I have learned in this game. The best way to defend your gold is to constantly reduce the number of players that are likely to get to it. The best way to get the gold of others is to always strive to multiply the number of players you can take gold from.

At this time it is starting to get tempting to go ahead and enter the top 20 so I can get this blog published. After that I won't feel the need to go solo and might enlist in one of the alliances. Tempting, but not yet .. I still want to make a big splash :) .. and I want to actually be viable to stay in the top 20 after I am there, maybe even work towards being viable for a #1 or #2 account again. I am still a long ways away from that.