Me(Alfred_Bester), my pard Iron_Helix, and another decent islands player Ancient_Ray were going to rematch Very_Mysterious, Sam_Deathwalker, and House_Atreides at DM Islands. We get into the game, and House won't play unless we play a abominable random civs game first. "Hey," I say, "Random civ islands games stalemate a lot." (Stalemate being when everyone is stuck on their respective islands without being able to get off.) "Ha! Scared?" House_Atreides sneers. Spouting ignorance, Helix pleads "C'mon dave, we'll slaughter em." "I don't care." Sam_Deathwalker says. "We can play anything." (Then again, he never cares what he plays or who he plays with, so that's not suprising.) At this point, ego won the raging firefight with the sane portion of my brain. "Ok, " I say. That was a huge, gigantic, bumbling mistake. Little did I know the evil this would lead to... We get Hitite(me), Yammy(Iron_Helix), and Minoan(Ancient_JFF). They get Persia(Sam), Palmy(House), and Babs(Very_mysterious). The real problem with this combo is that their is very little offense on either side. Persia, Yamm, and Minoa all get juggs, which gave our side an 2:1 naval advantage(Firegalleys or tris don't do much in Islands DM). Unfortunately, they stink. They aren't enough to destroy HCats or any other serious defense. We decided to use my superior hittite hcats to break the enemy defense, as that was the only real solution that didn't lead to stalemate, even if it was a marginal one(since it depended on me being able to get HCats on or near enemy islands.). Just as we decide this, I get a super-bad case of mouselag. It took me five minutes to move my mouse to the Diplomacy screen, and an additional 15 mins to trib my wood... I am watching the game for quite a while with the aid of the keyboard, and then suddenly I get a brillant idea. "Hey," I think, "let's close some of the eighty bijillon internet explorer windows I have open." It works, but I only had half a forest left on my island at the time, thanks to my pards. I am only able to build a couple HCats, and the enemy defense is too Baby/Palmy-HCat/Tower/Ele/Priest defense is entrenched too land troops near, even though we had complete control of the seas. I am fairly irritated by this, so I suggest that we simply use their tactics. We figured that it was best to only defend at one island; otherwise, it was inefficent. We picked mine, as I had the most groundpounders(land troops), and an already large collection of B-towers. We commenced a rather impressive defense: The last of Yammy/Minoan Juggs guarding the edges, a few hit Hcats, ~ 75 Elephant Archers, ~ 25 Armoured Elephants, Yammy HHA, and a ton of towers. Eventually, after we had pretty much strengthened my island till our resources were exhausted, they decided to attack. They besieged Helixes island first. Given that there was not actually any resources left there, we were not particularly worried about it. Sam hit with a surprisingly large force of Persian 'remes that we apparently missed in our naval conflict. (Doubtless sam was holding back, letting the ground forces doing most of the work. It was a mistake on our part. We were used to using mostly Phoen Juggs, which maul ground forces with much more efficacy. Fortunately, sam was about to commit the same mistake) SDW engaged the yammy HHA remaining on helixes island... While he did that, a small fleet of minoan juggs completely destroyed his navy. They then sailed back to my island to await the final conflict... Predictably, Sam and House landed bunches of AE on helixes island. He ignored them, and focused on killing the trannys. He got a couple of them(which would be important later), but they completely destroyed his island. They took JFF's island next, with little losses, as all he actually had there was one stonethrower that he made earlier(dunno why he did not upgrade... he probably changed his mind and decided to go all boats.) At this point, we knew the game would last a while longer. I offered a tie, and Sam says they can still win. House trash talks us for a minute, and they both forgot to set chat back to allied, which later provided us with the most interesting part of the game. Our 7-jugg force and their 8-jugg force play tag(retreat, engage, retreat, engage, dance, retreat, etc.) for a while. Eventually, it was reduced to 2-3, their navy being slightly in the lead. During this skirmish, we can hear them preparing to launch an transport invasion. They have used almost all their wood on five trannies full of AEs. They decide to go all out. They hit our island with juggs. We lost all our juggs and went down to 1 hcat, but they lost all their juggs. Next, the fun moment: I saw 5 of Sams trannies pulling up the shore. They sat their, stuck, unable to unload their cargo because the shore was packed with Elephant Archers. All the trannies died in a fiery halestorm of death and destruction raining from our Ele arhcers and B-towers. Of course, even if they DID land, our forces could have taken them easily, but they did not know that. House then says "SAM WHAT ARE YOU %*%^*^@ DOING!?!? SAM WHAT IS YOUR *@!%@%(*$! PROBLEM?!?! SAM YOU ARE SUCH A @*#$(*#(@*!" He was NOT happy. muhahah... Poor sam. Anyway, they had exactly enough wood for 2 tris, 1 jugg, and 1 tranny. Dunno why he didn't build 3 juggs and a tranny, but anyway... Sam loses the Jugg to tower fire, and decides to kamikaze the tris looking for landing spots. He then reports that "The WHOLE ISLAND is towered off. There is no where to land." At this point, House was... not enthused(sp?)... to say the least. I'll skip his conversation with us, to save embarrassment and to avoid undue wear on my #, @, %, and ! keys. Eventually, they all resigned. We only got nine points, unfortunately. Total game time was 7.5 hours... Very, very long game. Most of it was simply waiting for them to attack. The moral of the story: Never play random islands. David J Berube