The call to battle finally arrived and planning can begin for real.
We have the same hosts as previous years. International English and International Arabic, Russia, Germany, Turkey and France.
There are many domains and 12 are invited to dedicated servers. Which twelve differs a bit from year to year.
The ones that wasn’t chosen in the first unofficial lottery are welcome to International on .com 🙂
Last year .com was exciting and eventful from beginning to start with many unexpected turns and Greece won after a turbulent endgame.
I look forward to see what happens this year 🙂
The Arabic server is primary for the domains in the Middle East. Here we have a very strong ally that usually dominates the server. Their opponents chose to play on .com last year.
Group A: Host – Russia. Guests: Czech, United Kingdoms and Baltic. No one have ever been able to threaten Russia on the home server. The guest needs to cooperate if they wants to achieve something and not split over the whole server. The Swedish ally Def&Dest played on this server last qual and ended with nice rankings.
Group B: Host – Germany. Guests: Brazil, Hungary, Netherlands. All countries with experimented and hungry players. Diplomacy is the most important tool here if you wants to win the server.
Group C: Host – Turkey. Guests: Poland, Chile, Taiwan. There are always a lot of wars going on on this server. Guests will not have it easy here either. After several years of chaos, Turks have begin to cooperate and did good last Final. There is a rumor that TP will return to the Tournament. If so Turkey might have a surprise coming. But of course their sheer superiority is heavy weighting.
Group D: Host – France. Guests: Indonesia, Portugal, United States. France have the upper hand here but they have lost a past qual to Ukrainians. US is an unexpected guest and I think many of them prefer the .com qual, but we will see 🙂
China, Thai, Vietnam wasn’t among the 12 chosen this year. They played in different metas in Final. Will they chose .com and find new friends this round? And what will Dacia do?
New constellations is a good base for an entertaining Final 🙂
A question often asked is where it will be easiest to qualify. There are three different ways to qualify: by pop or by off points or by def points. 4-5 villages is enough on most servers or do as I did last year – I killed animals from my one-village accounts and qualified by off points 😀 It didn’t work on the Turkey qual – as I said – they loves to fight.
This year I will try to find accounts that are willing to host me on the different servers and only hold my own account on .com. I have enough of qualification medals (chuckle).
I look forward to meet both old and new friends