grr, I have a pic I will post later of this. I wasted a good 0:30-1:00 killing the lions so I could collect the berries safely.Well, I recovered somewhat, although a couple of enemies beat me to tool. I informed my partners that I was chopping wood like mad (in stone) and was going to go heavy on the sea. That was a good thing, as it turns out, since I was on an island.
I got to tool and collected 6 scout ships, and sent them off into the blackness, while building 3 more. Good thing too, because as they hit coastline 1/2 way across the map, a couple enemy ships appeared near my fish boats. Luckily the casualties were light.
My boats went down the coastline and met with little resistance, as I kept adding new ones as I attacked. I think I destroyed 3-4 enemy docks, and several ships. Unfortunately, stupid me, I didn't have good defense at home. Jaheed transported (I think) some units over and started wiping out my town, I started to build some defenses, but I got dropped before it was all played out. I think he had me though. Jaheed, you can expand on this.
I guess with fangr dead, rat and I were next on the hit list, so my inadequate defenses would have been shredded anyway.
Game 2, my start went a bit better, but this time I picked Assy so a slower tool for me. We were at a bit of a disadvantage, since our opps had a shanger and we didn't. My fault because I wanted Assy on the land map, and my partners didn't want to play shang either.The large map put us all fairly close together, and DOM and I, both Assy, were very close together. This worried me, because I didn't know how good he was, and I feared the worst. I noticed he stopped building villagers at 17 and had high exploration, so I feared a tool rush. Turns out (I think) that he was short on food, hehe.
Well, of course I walled up, but DOH, shang (Jaheed again!) built a barracks inside my walls. So I decided to wall in his barracks! I have a funny pic of this as well. I walled him in 2 deep, then assigned an archer to shoot at it. Hehe, it never did get destroyed.
Prior to walling in the barracks, I ran outa stone before I could wall in my area. A horde of Jaheed villies ran right into my area...DOH! If only I had more military. I think I had 2 clubbers in anticipation of a tool rush from DOM, but I wasn't expecting a shang villie invasion! I researched axes, and started hacking away, but DOH! again, shang axers showed up among the villagers. Luckily, the whole group ran away, with few casualties on both sides. Whew.
Of course, rat dropped. fangr dropped. Jaheed quit. And this time I was under attack by 2 opponents. To make matters worse, fangr's unsupervised woodies were chopping a hole through my forest near my wall! NOOO! I set him to enemy and started shooting at them so they'd go away.
None of this really mattered. I was slow to bronze, and was under attack, so the game was already over anyway.
Good luck DOMers in the tournament!