3. The First Edition of the Screeps Warfare Championship

The First Edition of the Screeps Warfare Championship


  • To whom it may concern,

    From 22.04 00:00 UTC to 22.05 00:00 UTC the Screeps world experienced the first large-scale war fought in the name of friendship. Eight players from Undefined(UD), Thunderkittens(TK) and the Screeps United Nations(SUN) engaged in the savage destruction of each other's lands. More than 50 nukes were launched and over 5000 boosted creeps died with honor in a pointless struggle. In total, 14 rooms were breached leading to a final score of 8 to 6. The betting pool for the competition totaled 8.15m credits.

    The rules
    1. A one week sign up period.
    2. After the sign up all participants get randomly split into two teams.
    3. Once the teams are established 4 weeks of warfare take place.
    4. The goal is to place your team's tag on rooms from the opposing team.
    5. Once a tag has been placed, that room can no longer be used for military operations by the owner.
    6. The team to have tagged the most enemy RCL8 rooms at the end wins.
    7. There's a signup fee of min 250k or max 5m credits.
    8. The winning team will get all the credits redistributed according to the proportion of the original sign up fees.
    9. The signup fee will only be paid at the end of the game and can be paid in any reasonable form (minerals, sub-tokens etc).
    10. There are no specific rules of engagement, you may use any means to tag the enemy controller. (Nukes included)
    11. Tagging only counts if you have breached at least 1 wall segment

    The two teams were:
    - Team 1 (8 tags): Taiga, Seancl, Mordox, Davaned
    - Team Capybara (6 tags): Bonzaiferroni, Atavus, Sheeo, Andrwmorph

    The Wargame
    A quite calm set in after the official start of the games, the calm before the storm. Seancl was first to break the silence with an attack on Bonzai in E32S18. A flurry of attacks followed involving Seancl, Bonzai, Atavus and Taiga. Yet no one had dared to take the next step and launch a nuke. Taiga was first to release this seal and launched several nukes against Atavus in W4S31.

    In the following days, Taiga mounted numerous attacks on W4S31 with varying patterns and effectiveness. The mounting pressure combined with the nuke landings allowed Taiga to punch through and secure first blood for his team. Team 1 had secured the first tag.

    As the days passed so did the intensity of the games with attacks and nukes involving every player in the games. Tactics ranged from direct assaults to remote mining harassment to "safe mode abuse". Melee, ranged, heal, dismantle all saw the light of day. Open field skirmishes and long lasting sieges happened all over the map.

    On Day 9, Seancl managed to secure a tag on Bonzai E39S16. On Day 13 Taiga secured a tag on Andrwmorph bringing the total tally of the score to 3-0.

    At this point, the situation started to mellow out. Attacks and pressure continued to fly from both sides but meant more to maintain the status quo. Both sides were now feverishly implementing the lessons of the first half of the games preparing for the second wave.

    Day 19 saw the first tag for team capybara with Atavus grabbing E5N77 from Mordox (3 - 1). Now slowly the intensity started to mount again. Day 23 Taiga tagged Bonzai on E25S11 (4 - 1). Day 24 Atavus tagged Davaned on W58S55 (4 - 2).

    Heavy fighting all across the frontline followed from 25th to 27th with more and more nukes being launched pushing energy and mineral reserves to their limits. Starting with the 28th day the games approached their peak. Bonzai tagged Taiga E27S15 (4 - 3). 29th Bonzai tagged Davaned W65S63 and W55S63 (4 - 5), but Seancl tagged Andrwmorph E16S43, E17S39 and Sheeo E14S48 (7 - 5). On the final day of the games, Seancl and Bonzai managed to secure 1 tag each for their team bringing the total score to (8 - 6).

    A relatively accurate log of the championship can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/kaaq9jy . Bonzaiferroni has also made a more visual log of the events which you can find here: https://github.com/bonzaiferroni/bonzAI/wiki/Screeps-Warfare-Championships:-Gifs-and-Gaffes.

    Conclusions
    The games far exceeded the original expectations, both in terms of scope and enjoyment. We had originally feared the score would end up 0 - 0. We had originally feared it would not be fun or interesting. All was proven false. The experience was much closer to real warfare than anticipated without the toxic atmosphere we have come to expect and without pushing the participants into a burnout.

    We will be adjusting the rule set of the next edition based on the experience of this round. We will focus on bringing the rule set more in line with the circumstances of real warfare.

    The next edition of the championship is scheduled for 1st of July. Although it will remain invite only, I intend to broaden the scope considerably both in terms of participants and audience. If you are interested in taking part, please contact me in game or in slack.

    Kind regards,
    Atavus


  • Great write-up!