How I learned to stop worrying and love inactivity

Well, there really isn't much to tell. I came, I played, I stopped playing, I spammed the forums...and then I kept spamming. Well, there's a bit more to it.

I first came to Fun Authority because I was investigating online games for an assignment I was planning for a couple of trainees at work. They were supposed to design a simple game to demonstrate their programming skills. Anyway, they wound up building a completely different type of game, but something about the strategy/simulation of conquest and the sense of community on the site made it seem interesting. One of the trainees later told me he got into Earth 2025 because I'd pointed him to the FA site. Then he ridiculed the smaller FA site. I think that the size of FA has been one of its strengths. The earth site didn't interest me because I got lost in the crowd.

After starting an account I decided to join a clan. TNSF looked as good as any and I joined them. After a week, I had no idea who was in my clan, or who my clan leader was. The clan forum had no activity, so I left and looked for another clan. Precision Tool was my next choice - but after about 2-3 days...they disbanded! I suddenly found myself unclanned without any warning. I wrote to Milkman and asked him what was going on. He didn't know I'd been in PT but said...oh well you might as well join AoE. So I joined up and started to use strats that Milk showed me. Things were going quite well there, and there were quite a few interesting people. Among them: flacky, Dunner, Anraulevan Emperor and Chronic Wolf (Later to become Timberwolf). We were a merry little clan. Then after a couple of sets where we kept getting into minor fights with little clans because we would LG them...Milk decided to take on Dogz...just before his computer went down for a couple of months.

AoE started getting caned both in the game and in the forums. Milk sent a message telling me to lead the clan, but we didn't actually need leading we just kept building and rebuilding (with tBr providing moral support and slings) fighting a losing battle against a far superior force. Randy gave us the ultimatum - they would fight us until we disbanded the clan. Milk sent a second message to say that we should do as Randy suggested. To our credit we all stuck it out - not one AoE member left the clan to avoid the constant beatings. I was offered a position in tBr and I decided to take it up, but only once the conflict with Dogz was resolved. Funnily enough, I was also offered a position in Dogz - MarcoPro wanted to train me.

Once I joined tBr I started learning the thief strat. Back in those days you could attack or scout your own countries which made it possible to shift wealth from a number of treasure producing countries to a single scouting country. Within a couple of sets that strat was eliminated by PB making it impossible to scout anyone in your own clan. I think I suggested that we should make an alliance with another clan and then just scout each other OR split the clan into two temporarily and have a planned 'just for fun' war between the tBr members. Unfortunately that never happened - partly through inactivity and partly through being attacked by other clans.

It was about that time that I got a bit bored with the game. I now tend to do a fair bit of recruiting for tBr. I've only played a few sets since that time. Instead I spam the forums...battling the forces of evil with words instead of nukes. :) I've visited a couple of other clans including Reese/Smile as Bwa mentioned...but I really didn't do much to help. I joined Dogz for a set too (just for fun) - but inactivity meant that Randy kicked me out just before the end of round clan standings were recorded.

So above we have eire on the left and prettygurly on the right. This was taken at my (pg's) 21st birthday in De Burgos pub in Galway which is where we live together. So since eire has been here longer I'm going to let him start off the blurb and then I'll tell you about me at the end...


I've been playing Conquest nearly 5 years now, I'm one of the old school gang from the PCPowerMall days, but I played under a different name back then. I suppose I first became known around a month after the change to FunAuthority when I joined Scon/Vega in CP. We fought DogZ for ages and of course that led me to be recruited by Randy into DogZ. I stayed there for over a year as we pulverised nearly every clan in the game, even tBr once I think (sorry bout that). I can't remember exactly what I did next, but somewhere along the line I was invited to tBr and I gladly accepted. Like Pluckerman I occasionally get wanderlust and quite often myself and P end up in the same clan like GW. Of course I will always take credit for the second downfall of the bullying DogZ clan when I led legend clan TNB The New Breed. One of the best collection of players ever assembled in my view. We had a newish Dunner, flacky and TimberWolf along with myself, Milk, P-man and Winner4eva. I enjoyed that little foray.
In real life I am sports mad, especially football (soccer for you Americans) with Manchester United as my team. I play a bit (think I'm decent enough) and play the management game Football Manager 2006 a lot. Still unbeaten this season as Man Utd manager. I'm back in University again studying French and Irish and hopefully going to France next year.
I met Lucy (PG) under a tree in University at a cricket training session, I'm sure the women find that romantic. We're still together over 2 years later and still happy. I think that's it for now, I know I left out a lot about my political persuasions and other things like alcohol and drugs but hey there's loads of space for writing more.....


So I'm prettygurly, aka Lucy. I cant remember the first time I logged into somewhere as prettygurly but on everything that I chat on I'm known as prettygurly so I would just get confused if I changed it now with me being blonde and everything.
I joined Conquest by accident about 2 and quarter years ago. I'd been looking over eire's shoulder for ages when I finally registered myself to see what all the fuss was about. At first I thought Dunner was dualta which was pretty funny at the time but it all got cleared up in the end. So I made my mark in FA by being a bit outspoken and a tad anti-american...but you have to understand! its only the government that are driving me mad and in recent times I've made a big effort to chat about what's going on in Ireland cos we're not so wonderful either!
Anyway, back to FA and Conquest. So I played my first countries about 6 months after I joined and did alright for a newb and totally flabbergasted eire....thats always fun :) So now I've stopped playing countries again due to trying to get my degree in Environmental Science finished and having too much on already without tying myself to the internet everyday! But I'm sure the crowd in FA will be a great support to me when I'm in France with eire and no one to talk to! I haven't done anything particularly spectacular except preventing nutso having a clean sweep of the first page one set..cant remember which!

This is me, Karl aka Pluckerman immediately after my marriage to Kristi aka Bwa. Finding me with a smile on my face is an extreme rarity, but this day brought the widest smile I've ever had.


I'm one of the few remaining players left from the old PCPowermall days, where Conquest was first created, 5 years ago. Originally, I started off as a quiet but frequent quirky poster in the old forums. My ambitions back then was to merely hit the first page of each set I played in S/A. H/A was never my cup of tea.

After my first couple of sets I began making the first page in S/A with relative ease, this gained me unwanted attention from EE and OTA and other minor clans all wanting me to join them. I politely refused them all. My first friend in CQ was ratch13. We'd regularly have a laugh with each other in the forums and the country to country messaging systems, never knowing who we were talking to, until the set had been finished. Once ratch and I began getting closer as friends, we started sharing strats (which appear to have helped me more than him). Then just as CQ moved to a new domain (FunAuthority) I created my first clan (The Hidden), which was an invitation only clan, mainly used for friends and foes that Ratch and I picked up playing CQ and TroopWars. Our members included Onfire, Silverion, JeffLizard, Jockstrap, Phyr, Ttreat and a couple of others that I can't seem to remember at this time. The Hidden was a short lived (about 3 sets) but successful clan, we won H/A average NW twice and overall once. At the end of our third set together, I had a country lurking in the depths of H/A, using a tactic known now as the farmer strat. Onfire created this strat, but I tweaked it into a strat capable of winning not only H/A but S/A too. Anyway, I cashed in all of my food and leaped from the bottom of page 23 straight up to first place, overtaking either one of Tippers' or Mpm's countries along the way. They scurried with the last few turns that they had and pipped me to the post and won H/A.

Almost immediately after this, both Tipper and Mpm started sending me messages asking me to join tBr. I ummm'd and arrrrrrrr'd about it for a day or 2, and gave them an ultimatum. That anywhere I was to go, Ratch would have to follow. They agreed. So the Hidden clan was no more. I packed my bags and headed for tBr and ratch followed a day or 2 later.

I immediately settled into tBr. All of the original members were very easy to talk to and communicate with. I made good friends with Fubar and Spatuli, as well as Mpm and Tipper. It felt like a home from home. I made several recruitments, our 2 German members Leeroy and Chiron. Ttreat also followed me into tBr.

Ratch and I occasionally got a little restless in tBr though, so every so often we would leave for a little while and create clans together. IQ was one of first clans together. Groinwarmers is slightly more memorable though, not only because of it's name but because of who we recruited as well. Eire, Rarerob and Murphy all became 'nanas.

Other excursions from tBr have included TNB (the New Breed) with Eire, and WoP
(Window of Opportunities) with Milkman, both newbie training clans.


~~to be continued and probably edited several times on a later date.....

~Karl