Roughly three days remain before the final Conquest of the season. Are you prepared? Will your forces carry the day or be crushed by your opponents?
Conquest 101
Quick review for those who haven’t fought hard in a Conquest in the past:
Conquest is vastly different from the rest of the season. If you’ve only scratched the surface of these epic battles so far, it’s definitely worth it to dive in and fight for your guild. If you haven’t joined a guild, Conquest is one of many great reasons to do so. War is a team sport!
During the Conquest, guilds will compete for control of the 16 Ruins positioned around the map. Normally these can be explored by any player, but during Conquest they become positions that can be occupied. Guilds will plan which to attack and make large rallies to fight off the competition.
Guilds gain points for each second they occupy a Ruin, but they’ll also get a large chunk of bonus points every 30 minutes for the 90 minute duration of Conquest. After the first 30 minute period, the Ring of Ruin will open for conquest in the center of the map. This provides more points than each Ruin and is often a critical factor in determining the winner.
Points gained in Conquest are based on the rank of your guild, and each guild’s members will get a portion of those points equal to their contribution percentage, which is viewable on the “Share” screen in the guild menu. At the end of the season, 60% of all season rewards will be distributed to individual players according to their Conquest rank.
The Battle for Season 5
Now that we’re all caught up with each other, let’s break down where we’re at in season 5. SquareXII is firmly in the lead with their members occupying more than the top 30 spots on the leaderboard!
BTB isn’t going down without a fight though, and they’re not too far behind. EPx and GFX could still be players in the top ranks yet with some fireworks in this last Conquest.
Dome seriously dramatic action will need to happen to unseat XII from the Season 5 throne… but unexpected things happen in Conquest.
Conquest Tips
Let’s run down some quick tips and best practices for Conquest.
Even if this is the first time you’re going to join the fight, there’s more battles in the future. Season 6 is just around the corner. Give it all you’ve got this time to sharpen your tactics for bigger battles ahead!
All you seasoned veterans may find one or two things in here to improve your game… no captain knows everything!
Synergy, synergy, synergy…
War Synergy is everything in Conquest. Hunting Synergy does not count in PvP combat.
This is very important. This means your 9m power fire troop will be much less powerful than your 7m light troop with 40% War Synergy. Light and Dark are crucial in Conquest, and don’t mix them in your troops when possible.
No T1s
During normal gameplay, a lot of captains will mix in a few T1s with their troops to absorb any losses they may take. The lowest tier soldier dies first.
Don’t do this in Conquest. It lowers your troop power by a lot, but also your War Synergy. There are no light and dark T1s. If you are very short on high tier soldiers, use T6 light and dark. Make a pile of them the day before Conquest and mix them into your saved troops.
Follow the Leader
If everybody in the guild is doing their own thing, you won’t get very far. Designate rally leaders, then designate backup rally leaders. Listen to your rally leaders – argue about strategy before and after Conquest. Make sure you’ve got at least a few groups working on different goals at the same time, but coordinate them towards one greater goal.
At a last Conquest like this, most players will have at least three if not all four operational slots unlocked. That means you could potentially have your whole guild involved in four battles at once. Some of those troops will get locked up in Ruins scoring points though… be careful to not put all your power into holding ruins and not be able to fight back against attackers!
Defend the Rally Points!
A rally disbands when the rally leader’s fortress warps. This means that if you’re holding the Ring of Ruin solidly with only minutes to go, an enemy can make your rally disband by attacking the rally leader’s fortress.
Save some arrows for when those attackers come. Try to hide your rally leaders if you can. Iif the enemy knows who they are, make sure you can defend them!
In season 1, SXII created a signature strategy to hide their rally leaders!
Don’t forget you can support an ally’s fortress with your own troops! It takes an operational slot to do so and you won’t score any points for your guild from it, but if it saves an entire rally from disbanding it could be an amazing help.
For Elysium!
The battle is almost here. Good luck captains!
Of course Alex and Emma will be back to recap all the action next week. Get out there and give them something to talk about!
Miss the last conquest? Check out the recap below!
When the people of Rewban the Aggressor first colonized the planet of Cacus, they were prepared to forge a new life from the inhospitable terrain of the molten world. As they began excavations, however, it became clear that they weren’t the first to have this idea.
Large ruins were discovered all over the planet, and the new Cusans were more than happy to utilize this treasure trove. Little is known about the lost race that previously inhabited these vast caverns, but the Cusans of today are more than happy to pluck the precious gems from these deep places to trade with the rest of The Planetary Union.
Of course, the Tank Olympiad has found a home in these caverns as well. The heat of Cacus is the perfect venue for Spider Tanks mayhem!
Know Your Battlefield
Dragon Cave is incredibly symmetrical compared to most arenas. While this offers a definite advantage to keeping up your strategy while you’re on the move, it also presents issues for team coordination. A split decision between two Tank Pilots could lead to easy pincer attacks from your enemies.
There are four repair kits at regular intervals around the perimeter of the central ring of Dragon Cave. There are four distinct types of area, each repeated four times in a circle.
Area 1: Satellites
These four circles on the very exterior of Dragon Cave are useful as a sort of redoubt when in trouble or regrouping, but they can also be a cruel trap.
Each of these has three angles of attack clearly pointed at them. Attackers will come at you around the corners or shoot with a longer range weapon across the pit. If you’re playing a shorter range weapon, don’t use these!
These areas are, however, absolutely critical in Chicken Chaser. Make it a point to check the far edges of these circles regularly, as birds will commonly be stranded over here and overlooked by other players!
Area 2: Roundabout Pullovers
These four circles are in between and just inside of area 1’s circles. These are even more congested and wide open than area 1, but they are absolutely critical to maneuvering through the arena.
User these but avoid lingering in the middle of them. When standing in the center of these circles, you can potentially be hit from four different angles. Approaching the edges of these circles necessarily obscures attack from multiple angles due to the pillars on the four corners of these circles.
Consider these transitional places when possible. Stage attacks from here and pull chasing enemies through them, leaving them guessing which exit you’ll take.
Area 3: The Chasm Gap
The small strips between each lava chasm are absolutely critical for dominance of the arena. Each of these is protected by a narrow fence on either side of the chasm, providing a decent amount of cover despite being in the middle of all the action.
Depending on the match, these can either become hotly contested or major defensive bulwarks… and which could shift quickly according to the flow of battle.
Since these areas almost always play a role in how the match plays out, it’s fitting that the Command Point in King of the Hill will spawn on the north most of these areas.
Area 4: The Inner Circle
The inner circle is in theory the most exposed area in the map, but it enjoys incredible cover from the ancient dragon statue towering overhead.
Hugging these walls can leave you covered against half the map, and you can quickly race around the small circle to reposition yourself better than another tank can from any other part of the arena.
Poultry Pusher often becomes the most violent as the payload processes on either side of this area. Even in other game modes though, this will be one of the best angles of attack. With only a few seconds of movement from anywhere in this ring, you can get in position to threaten anywhere in the map.
Dragon Cave Best Practices
Cover Isn’t Always Reliable
Those big, sturdy pillars on the outside corner of the south and west area 2s may seem nice and cozy… but they can be easily shot around from the adjacent area 1s with tiny adjustments to positioning.
Even on the interior, the cover you find in the shadow of the dragon can be easily compromised if an enemy moves perpendicularly away from you instead of straight towards you. A clever bunch of opponents can make those angles close in on you when most of your cover is part of a greater circle.
Enemies Approach Quickly
Thanks to the many ways to wind across the relatively small battlefield, you can get anywhere in Dragon Cave relatively quickly, even with a pretty slow tank.
Get trapped on the satellites and you may have a bad time.
This means that enemies can come from out of view to on top of you fast, and that 8-second respawn timer may be all the delay you get before an enemy is back in the fight.
Mind the Enemy’s Weapons
The weapons that you are up against make a huge difference in any match, but even more so in Dragon Cave.
Here, you’re working with very narrow cover anywhere but the very center of the map. Artillery will follow you anywhere here, and melee weapons will have very little ground to cover before they’re tearing you to pieces.
Glorious Battle
Dragon Cave’s layout is fairly simple, but underneath that lies an incredibly complex nuance to positioning if you really want to excel in this arena.
That’s all we’ve got for this week, next week though we’re powering up for some almighty BOOMs as we dive into everything about the Railgun!
Today we’re announcing a new partnership with Coinflow, our newest credit card payment processor. This collaboration aims to provide our users with a seamless credit card payment experience, ensuring flexibility and reliability in transactions across our platform.
Expanding Payment Options
In our ongoing commitment to enhance user experience, we are finalizing the implementation of Coinflow as an additional payment processor. This strategic move will offer our users another option for credit card payments, complementing our existing service. By doing so, we ensure that our community has robust and flexible payment solutions, reducing potential disruptions and enhancing overall transaction reliability.
Our integration rollout plan with Coinflow has commenced with a wide variety of eligible purchases in the Gala Games store. All items that had Stripe credit card purchases as a payment option should now show the CoinFlow option.
This initial phase will allow us to test and optimize the new payment processor before extending its use to our broader range of products in Music and Film, and add support for Google and Apple Pay.
For the first days of the new Coinflow payment option, Coinflow purchasers will receive a special 5% rebate for a limited time delivered as $GALA at the time of fulfillment (rebate amounts may fluctuate). Enjoy this exclusive rebate as we celebrate this new integration!
Start of Coinflow Rebate: 1pm PT, July 30th
We are enthusiastic about this partnership with Coinflow and the added convenience it brings to our users. Stay tuned for more updates as we roll out this feature and continue to innovate within the GalaChain ecosystem.
Thank you for being a part of our journey. Together, we are reshaping the future of decentralized entertainment and beyond.
For the next two weeks, Aura is literally crawling with new opportunities for Hunters and OPs alike. Think you’ve got what it takes to clench a leaderboard spot?
The game’s current Mission Ready build is still 100% free and ready to play, but in order to access Premium servers with enhanced prizes and leaderboard competition, players must purchase a Premium Pass for 3 Core Chunks (LECC), which can be collected from successful extractions.
The event has now officially started, so Premium Pass purchases are open in-game. If you haven’t had a chance to collect the LECC you need, remember that you can pick them up on GalaSwap by swapping for $GALA. Get an early start on things today, the event runs through August 14!
By playing on a Premium server for the next two weeks, you might find:
New creatures to kill
Character Coin (Common to Legendary)
Additional XP Drops (Common to Legendary)
“Fire” Weapon Skins
Additional prizes (LEMIN, LEFC and more) for top 10 finishers on the Premium leaderboard
Upgrade to Premium
Node Operators (OPs) are invited to purchase an OP Premium Pass (for 3 LECC) to temporarily upgrade their server for this event. In addition to an extra 25% of LEMIN, LECC and LEFC from matches, all OPs will receive:
Craft vibrant Starlight Market Boxes with eco-friendly paper and paint made from Strawberries, Blueberries and Corn. Splash some color, go green with bamboo and paint your way to victory!
Sell Starlight Market Boxes
Trade Time: 20s & 1 Gasoline Biome: Forest E Edges: River N, Forest E, Forest S, Forest W
Check out the new recipe for Starlight Market Boxes 👇👇
Ingredients: 1 Red Paint, 1 Blue Paint, 1 Yellow Paint, 1 Eco Paper, 1 Wooden Box Made in: Boxing Facility Stored in: Warehouse Affected by: Nothing
New Standard Cash value: $71K New Standard Star value: 8329
This Week’s Cash Boosts 💵
Clay Lump: $300 👉 $900
Ceramic Bowl: $2000 👉 $6000
Honey: $7500 👉 $22,500
This Week’s Star Boost ⭐
Starlight Market Box: 8329 👉 50,000
You’ll find more information about the standard meta values of all crafts in Discord’s #cgw-faq channel.
Guild Upgrade
If you’re a Common Ground World Node operator, it’s almost time to convert your Node Workload NFT from V1 to V2 to enjoy the full upgradeable capabilities of running a CGW Guild!
Common Ground World Guilds are the most exciting new game feature, unlocking a whole new level of team strategizing and turning all Node operators into Guild leaders! With shared NFT libraries, special Guild competitions and more, you’re missing out if you’re not part of a Common Ground World Guild! Get connected in the #cgw-guilds channel in Discord.
Epic Stationary Shop
Craft without Water Drums and use half the crops for vibrant paints. Perfect for efficient, colorful creations!
Available on: Friday, July 26th Price: $199.99 Supply: 500
Don’t miss your opportunity to hear all the latest town chatter from your friends on the Common Ground World team, every two weeks live on Youtube! The last Town Hall took place on Friday, July 19th at 8am PT. If you missed it, watch the replay at the link below! 👇
Don’t miss the next Town Hall, this Friday (August 2nd) at 8am PT!
Gameplay Reminders
When using offline mode, you must log back in before the event ends to make fast forward happen. It is run by your computer currently, and if you do not load the game back up, fast forward will not take place.
If you use Fast Forward check in often, the longer you stay offline, the longer it takes to bring your town up to date.
Always make sure the game is the only tab in the browser.
Don’t fully cover the browser window with another window or program if you are actively playing. If you do, make sure to relaunch the game before trying to play again.
Summer Strong
We’re having a blast with all these summer vibes, with new players and some amazing competitions. As always, we’re glad you’re part of this awesome community and we look forward to bringing you more exciting updates in the weeks and months ahead!
If you’ve never played Common Ground World before, what are you waiting for? It’s absolutely free and played directly from your browser. It’s easy to learn but endlessly challenging to master. It’s a relaxing beauty of a competitive strategy game, and you can even win $GALA for placing in the weekly competition!
The world of poker has been in full riot the past week. The game of poker isn’t a stranger to controversy, and any game as old as poker is going to have some growing pains along the way.
The final table of the World Series of Poker this year was… divisive, to say the least. What happened on the felt wasn’t necessarily the big issue though. If you haven’t been paying attention to this controversy, let’s take a few minutes to dive into it together.
This is a very important moment in the greater world of gaming. How we use digital tools in games will be a topic that comes up over and over throughout the entire industry.
Spoilers: We’ll be discussing the final table of this year’s World Series of Poker Main Event. If you don’t want to be spoiled on the final table until you get around to watching it, don’t read further!
Solvers on the Rail
On Wednesday, July 17th, Jonathan Tamayo won the 55th annual World Series of Poker Main Event. He outlasted 10,111 other players and won the grand prize – a championship bracelet and a cool $10 million. He defeated amateur Jordan Griff in heads-up play to take home the championship.
Jonathan Tamayo is the 2024 World Champion!
Tamayo takes home the $10,000,000 top prize in the largest WSOP Main Event in history!
— WSOP – World Series of Poker (@WSOP) July 18, 2024
Tamayo is a great player. That’s not where this controversy lies. In his decade plus career, he’s proven time and again that he can sit with and beat the best.
Also, the main event of the World Series of Poker isn’t exactly the exclusive club it used to be with a few dozen tables featuring a few hundred of the greats. Nowadays five figures of players are getting in on the action. The main event has become a mental endurance test… a test that Tamayo passed with flying colors.
The real controversy was behind the table though, at the rail. Sitting on the sidelines, Tamayo’s friends rooted him on. Also fellow pro poker players, Tamayo would be crazy to not occasionally ask for their advice on a tough call within the game. This is pretty normal practice. Coaching is allowed.
The real trouble started when everyone watching at home could see what was going on at his friends’ spectator table. A laptop sat there facing away from the playing area. Clearly visible on the laptop screen was a popular poker simulation platform. As Tamayo told his friends about the hand pre-flop, they’d punch in the cards and determine his exact odds on certain calls.
I have to be honest here…if this really is the future of tournament poker I'm not interested at all. @PatMoorePoker 📸 This railbird team coaching stuff has to be curtailed it isn't going to grow the game we love it will only stunt the growth. Regardless of the stakes. pic.twitter.com/mkvqa5NxZ5
Tamayo claimed that he had no idea what his friends were doing at the rail… but in this picture captured by a spectator, you can clearly see both the stream and the solver pulled up and ready to go just as easily as Tamayo can…
For a seasoned pro, this isn’t a huge advantage. Most people who make their living playing poker can tell you exactly what the odds are for any hand pre-flop against random hands to two decimals… this is elementary stuff for competitive poker. Using AI and algorithmic analysis to verify and simulate this information against different hand sizes and differing chip stack sizes does give someone an advantage over just using their more fallible head math.
These poker problem solvers have been used more frequently both online and in person, with numerous pros having been caught sneaking analysis on their phones in recent years. Still, poker governance authorities are really yet to define the hard line on what constitutes cheating.
After this main event, they may have their hand forced.
How Far Is Unfair?
It’s important to note that Tamayo says he had no idea that his friends were going to bring a laptop. He claims he was asking for normal coaching and had little clue what was happening outside the rail.
“I mean, that stuff wasn’t under my control. My job was to play. Joe and Dom were giving me advice. I didn’t tell them to bring anything. You know, whatever was on there was on there. My job was to play. You have to be pretty narrow-minded when you’re playing. All the other external stuff is just wasted energy.”
This looks bad though. We have a professional player playing against an amateur in the biggest poker tournament in the world. The professional is not only getting help from two other professionals (one of whom is a previous main event bracelet winner), but also a dedicated computer program designed to solve poker problems.
The World Series of Poker has been clear about not allowing poker solvers in play. How does that apply to coaches on the rail though? How did it feel for Jordan Griff playing against not only a seasoned professional, but two sideline opinions with more experience than him backed up by AI?
All in all, Griff is handling what could be considered a $4m cheat with surprising grace.
Griff spoke to Doug Polk Poker’s podcast about the issue. He was totally unaware of what was going on at Tamayo’s sideline. He had assumed that if anything going on was nefarious that the WSOP floor team would step in.
“I’m sure in their mind if they knew they were doing something wrong they’re like ‘oh, well they’ll just tell us to put the laptop away’. I don’t think there was any serious repercussions people thought would come out of that.”
-Jordan Griff on Doug Polk Poker
Griff still walked away with $6 million, so not a week of work to whine about. As he discussed on Doug Polk’s podcast above, the most disappointing thing is that everybody is talking about someone trying to scrimp any unfair advantage they can get instead of the uplifting success stories that are always around in such a massive tournament.
Regardless of any double standard, many poker fans think that a solver isn’t an actual advantage for a professional of this caliber.
We don’t know exactly how they were using the solver, but there are ways that it could’ve clearly tipped the balance. Were they referencing the stream to see what cards Griff was holding each hand, then punching that into their sim? If so, they could’ve gotten incredibly insight into his tendencies over hundreds of hands that Tamayo never would’ve been able to glean on his own.
We’ll probably never know how much the solver helped Tamayo. In theory, however, Dominic Nitsche and Joseph McKeehen definitely thought that it would help their buddy. Otherwise, why would they even bother?
“You think you’re getting heads-up, and you’re playing against – you know – robots now,” Griff summed up. “Optically … it’s not what you want to see at final table.”
A Gaming-Wide Problem
What constitutes fair? Especially when we’re using technology to actually engage with a game, what level of human intellect is required to be considered “fair play”?
Far more poker happens online than in person. If they aren’t even hiding that they’re doing it at the biggest in-person table in the world, surely these programs are being used all the time online in big money games. What’s most interesting in this regard is that Jordan Griff is considered one of the biggest online players in the world. Jonathan Tamayo, on the other hand, is traditionally a live tournament player.
There’s a lot of big questions here and not just for poker. Due to poker’s highly mathematical mechanics, it’s typically more straightforward to build a program to simulate it than for more convoluted games… but that doesn’t mean robust tools won’t rise for other competitive games.
Let’s start with the obvious… would a casino put up with this behind a player at a blackjack table? Of course not! Would this be acceptable in competitive chess? Definitely not.
Let’s take it further. Think about strategy games you may have played, where addons and external tools are often ubiquitous. In this day of AI, where is that line between unfair help and fair help? Most ToS on video games specific one player to one account… if you’re using the abilities of tons of programmers in a tool, is that really one human player to one account?
These are big questions… and ones I definitely don’t have the answer to. The entire world of gaming will have eyes on The World Series of Poker and the Nevada Gaming Commission, however, to see what their next steps are. How they react to this controversy will have echoes across the gaming industry for years to come.
The Future of Gaming Aids
It’s important to discuss these things, because culture will decide in these moments what’s acceptable in the future. How we incorporate technology into play and competition will change the trajectory of the human race… for better or for worse.
Where do you think that line is? Do you have a hot take or a path forward from this issue?
Bring your opinions over to #gala-gold or #general-chat-gala so that we can all see multiple perspectives on this really complicated issue. There’s no easy answer, and discussion is the best way to form educated viewpoints and find real solutions.
This is also a great topic for some great table talk!
Hop into Sweep It Poker today to take down some juicy pots while you discuss it with your poker buddies at the tables!
