How It All Started — The Memoirs of martial_ant #1

Much like Zalo-Ghur, it has been quite a while since my last article. His recent article reminded me of an idea that first came to me back in June, after we lost the war. At the time, I found myself wondering: how did someone who started playing this game as a favor to a friend end up becoming one of the people responsible for losing and conquering regions, shaping diplomacy, and starting world wars?

The idea was to write my memoirs, starting from Day 103 and continuing all the way to the present, looking back at the decisions and events that brought us to where we are today. Zalo-Ghur finally gave me the motivation to do it, so with this first chapter I am starting a series that will serve as a historical and autobiographical account of my journey through Eclesiar.

Day 103 – Start of journey

The day martial_ant was born. Since there wasn't much of a baby boom at the time, I probably would have been the most famous player born that day—if aduch hadn't decided to be born on the exact same day and ruin my moment.

The story began in RL at the bar of a local pub (where else it could start?) while we were getting ready to watch some football match. Omnihogar was sitting next to me, and at one point he pulled out his phone, opened some strange app, and clicked Work and Train.

He told me that SPMarine had convinced him to register so he could harvest wheat in his company. He handed me the phone so I could see what the game looked like, and suddenly the flashbacks started hitting me.

Q1 to Q5 food. Monetary market. Battles. Political parties, newspapers...

It all brought back memories from the late 2000s and early 2010s, when I was still a kid playing a similar game—the pioneer of this genre to avoid any rule breaking —and arguing in chat about exchange rates of currencies and battles we should fight. It took me about ten minutes to contact SPMarine, get a referral link, and register to help him out with his wheat and see what the game is about.

And what a welcome it was.

I arrived in the middle of the horrors of war. Slovenia, led by President eprofi, occupied most of Croatia and was preventing us from liberating our territory. World was in chaos where 4 alliances fought as 2 sides against each other, helped by many smaller countries. I didnt understand completely how diplomacy and wars work then so for rest of infos check wiki for more details about WW2

But my attention quickly turned elsewhere. The market in Croatia was somehow an even bigger mess than the battlefield. The spreads on the monetary market were terrible, the general market was practically empty, and this newborn baby, with barely any equipment and a very low level which made it impossible to fight decided to do what he does best.

Armed only with autism and far too much free time, within his first few days he had already taken control of Croatia's general and monetary markets. Croatia had only seven or eight active players at the time, so it wasn't particularly surprising that, during my first week, President Manga noticed there was a new player whose focus wasn't limited only to burning through enormous amounts of weapons and medkits. Apparently, the baby could also run companies and manage a market.

Sometime around Day 108, the baby became Croatia's Minister of Economy and Finance as my first role in this game. And that was the beginning of his political career. What started as clicking work for SPMarine in his company quickly turned into taking reigns of all Croatian companies and oversee production so war hounds could bite each other throats. (The exact day is unfortunately unknown, as the game doesn't preserve enough historical data about stuff like these)

To be continued...

In the next chapters, the story will focus on the liberation of Croatian territories and my first taste of war in WW2, rebuilding the country, the first major domestic and foreign-policy disputes, my growing involvement in shaping both Croatian and global politics, and, of course, the thing we all enjoy most:

wars—and all the drama that comes with them.

The premium edition of each chapter will include a screenshot or another memory from that period.