I was harassed for months in Ikariam (browser game) because I disagreed with a comment made in the internal e-mail of the alliance I was part of at the time.
I remember that the situation started more or less because a person was being punished for something, and I replied that I thought it was an exaggeration and unnecessary.
The leader of the alliance banned me, told everyone that I had provoked them, and ordered everyone to attack me. I tried to argue that I hadn't done any of that to other members and found out that most people online don't really care.
Details: The alliance leader even went to my profile on Orkut and started insulting the appearance of my girlfriend at the time.
Back to the game:
In Ikariam, things took quite a while to accomplish; it was an online browser game, so they used real-world time.
If someone from the same island as me were to attack, it could take about 20 minutes for them to reach my city. Coming from other islands, it could take up to 24 hours (probably more) if it was much farther away.
I was attacked by a girl who was on the same island as me; she sent some units to loot my city.
I used up all my resources, wood, wine, sulfur, etc., so she wouldn't have anything to steal. My strategy was to wait until there were 20 seconds left for her units to arrive at my city, then send everything
I had a rather modest amount of soldiers, but enough to breach the walls and steal from her city it if I wanted.
Note: The units don't cross paths along the way; they simply go or return from a location, and you can cancel to have them return, which also takes time. Since it was a browser game, the information didn't update in real-time, so doing this would ensure she wouldn't have time to return to her city.
After that, I received a message from the "general" of the alliance (yes, there are ranks). The game showed him when a member was being attacked. In the message, he DEMANDED that I stop my attack. I laughed and asked, "Why should I comply?" The guy cursed at me, and I simply ignored him.
I looted the girl's city and she got nothing from my city. Great.
The problem was that other alliance members were coming from various islands, some extremely far away. The time for the naval attacks ranged from 3 to 28 hours, just to give you an idea.
Note: In Ikariam, you first need to blockade the city with ships and then send the army to loot (this on another boat).
I had some plans to try to repel the attacks during the night; I even set an alarm to wake up early.
But something wonderful happened: The game was updated overnight. When the game updates, any of your units that were outside your city disappear for about 48 hours or so.
I woke up and checked, and there was no one coming to attack me anymore. Everyone was left without their ships and soldiers for this period, and I laughed a lot.
I was still threatened for a while, and they kept provoking. I remember a guy sending a lone ship, probably one of those who arrived late for the attack, about 20 hours away.
A few months passed, I joined another alliance, my cities prospered, and I discovered scripts that helped with better city management, and specifically one that attempted to find the coordinates of the islands where players had their cities (not 100% accurate).
I looked up the cities of the alliance leader and found him. He was far away from me, any attack would probably take more than a day to reach if it went straight. So I sent a spy there to check for defenses, and there weren't any.
Since the strongest members of the alliance were all together on that island, including the general, I figured the leader felt safe without an army. Great.
Around that time, the game added a new feature: You could conquer any city and send attacks from there. I checked a nearby island to see if anyone was at a low level. I found a level 1 city, messaged the owner saying I would take it for a day but wouldn't steal anything, and promised to give them resources afterward.
I sent my tiny army to conquer the city on the neighboring island. Once conquered, I waited until it was around 3 or 4 in the morning, and then sent about 5 or 10 soldiers (a ridiculously low number, the goal was to humiliate the guy) to loot the equivalent of what would fill up to 20 ships (the game's maximum).
Then I went to sleep.
The next day I checked to see if everything went well. The looting was a success; as there were no defending units in the city, my soldiers had a field day, and the alliance leader had activated the game's vacation mode.
The vacation mode is a feature where you can't be attacked while you're unavailable to play. The game's rules required that any player who activates the vacation mode is prohibited from playing for a minimum of 2 days. This was quite a humiliating feature to use; generally, it was for when you were receiving too many attacks and couldn't keep up with playing.
I laughed a lot and was quite pleased with myself.
