Yugo Wars

Yugo Wars

Romanian River Conference

Launch date	11 October 2019
Historical era	1990–2000
Map	Stongduke Balkans
Host	Onions
Length	2 weeks
Peak playercount	~70
Plugin	Towny
Map download

Iteration chronology
i29	i30	i31

Yugo Wars was a server hosted in October 2019 by Onions, the first of what would be a series of three servers made by Onions from 2019–2020. It was iteration 30, and themed around the 1990s Breakup of Yugoslavia.

Background

Onions was a previously unheard-of player who became heavily involved in the early development of i28 in May 2019, helping set up the Discord and even making the server map. Even at this time, his long-term aim was to set the community on a good course so that he could host his own servers sometime down the line. He shared these hosting plans to a few people, such as Jonathan. However, Onions joined the Navy (lol) and left a couple weeks before the Filicraft launch. When he returned from basic training 2 months later, i28 was long over, and i29 was a day or two away from launching. With the failure of that server within a few days and Fili's retirement from hosting, development of i30 quickly began under Onions' direction.¹⁾

Since the Discord servers for Filicraft and Filicraft 2 had been deleted, a player, Helias, had repurposed his i29 country's Discord, propositioning it as a new community hub. Onions was invited to take over this Discord; he accepted, and was transferred the ownership. A new “/int/craft Committee” was established within this Discord for influential community members to advise on the development of i30. Among these members were Jonathan, Itsame12, Stryker, Falklands, Stongduke, Nurse_Reno, roguelich, and Dab.

On 9th August, 1990s Yugo Wars was selected from a shortlist of possible themes. Runner-up in the vote was 2010s Middle East, which was left for a subsequent server. A few days later, the community was polled and the launch date set for 11th October. Actual server development was done mostly by Onions, with Stongduke enlisted to make the server map and gun/vehicle models.

In the weeks prior to launch, guns and features were tested on a very popular test server. A town and trench network on the map was built by Falklands. This part was copied into i34's test server, which was also used for i38.

“Onions” had actually been the host of i26 under his previous alias, epicfaillord. However, this information would not be widely known until after the iteration's end, and Onions himself continues, to this day, to deny that he is epicfaillord. It can be guessed that Onions created his new identity to avoid the negative reputation of the previous name after the failure of i26.²⁾

Pre-server politics

Like the previous Filicraft servers, the Discord had a role-react bot to let players pre-select their nations. The earliest and largest nations selected were Croatia, led by Itsame and Jonathan, who, with their new metagroup, were the “winners” of i29, and Serbia (FR Yugoslavia), selected by Stryker and his Strykergang. These two nations were expected to be in conflict. Onions positioned himself as leader of the NATO faction. Smaller numbers of reacts as compared to the first Filicraft led to expectations of a decreased turnout. However, because of the limited map crop, most of the available countries, and even some separatist/meme states, had claimants.

Launch

Early server dynmap.

Server pre-launch and launch went smoothly, although the promised vehicles weren't ready at the start. In addition to Croatia and Serbia, other large nations included Romania (led by Haan), Bulgaria (the bronies), Macedonia (polandcrafters and others), Russia (led by LeiteArts10), and Italy (led by manslay3r). The various nations engaged in widespread memeraiding against each other.³⁾

An interesting quirk (or flaw) of the server map was that the forests were made impassably dense; this led to the ocean, and, especially, the rivers, to become the main means of transport, and also led to some pyromania to clear the trees around some bases. Some nations, such as Croatia and Yugoslavia, took to blocking the rivers to impede each other, both within their towns' claimed land, and in neutral territory. The “Romani River Conference” was organized by Romania for the 18th of October, the Friday before the first weekend, with the aim to promote freedom of river navigation.⁴⁾

Vehicles were added on 15th October, but were really buggy at first. Most of the bugs were fixed, but some never were. Available vehicles were the Yugo car, M-84 tank, BOV APC (with autocannon that could shoot at planes, infantry, even tanks), Orao bomber plane, Hera transport helicopter, and a static artillery piece.

River Conference

The River Conference attracted widespread attendance from the nations of the map, including both Croatia and Yugoslavia. While the attendees were posing for a pre-conference picture, the Bucharest International Airport was attacked by terrorist suicide bombers from Monkeydonia, who were hostile to Romania, Russia, and others. These terrorists later made more attempts to disrupt the Conference as it was ongoing. Thus, the meeting, which was initially held to settle meme rp issues like freedom of navigation and free trade, now took on a secondary purpose, as the attendees were convinced to put aside their differences and declare war on Macedonia for the first war window.

The Treaty of Bucharest was signed at the conclusion of the Conference.⁵⁾

First war day

The first war period began, as planned, with the invasion of Monkeydonia and their vassal state, Greece.

The Monkeydonian War

Bombardment of Monkedonski.

The invasion of Monkeydonia was disorganized at first, and Monkeys defended their homeland. Yugoslavia only joined the attack at the first 1 hour after war start, and that point, the invaders had too many numbers to resist. Monkeydonia fell after 3 hours.⁶⁾

Siege of Zagreb

Unhappy with some friendly fire from Croatians during the Monkeydonian war, Bulgarian player VivianJames convinced the Bulgarian and Yugoslav Serbian leadership to jointly invade Croatia, specifically their capital, Zagreb. The invaders had more than 2:1 superiority in numbers, but had a long supply line. The Croatians also made use of tanks and artillery, which the invaders did not. After taking a minor foothold outside the Zagreb walls, the Bulgarians were killed off and did not return. The Yugos continued the attack, and made some progress after learning to place flags underground, away from artillery fire. A truce was called after about 2 hours of fighting.⁷⁾

Bulgar-NATO War

NATO had been providing aerial support for the Monkeys during the Monkeydonian War. The Bulgarians seethed at server admin Onions for this, and over the “buggy” and “broken” vehicles in general. They took out their anger by attacking USS Enterprise. The attack was unsuccessful. The war time was soon over, and the Bulgarians quit the server.

There was no war on Sunday.

Second week

Some Monkeydonian players joined Italy after their homeland fell, since Italy was one of the few nations that did not take part in the invasion. There were other tensions between Italy and Croatia, and between Italy and Yugoslavia, so the meme coalition now set its sights to an invasion of Sicily. A few chunks were claimed by the Yugoslavs at the tail end of the first war window, so a FOB was constructed here. There were small-scale battles during the week.

Just before the weekend, there was some drama as the Italians were revealed by one of their own to be duping items. Some of their stockpile was removed by Onions, but nobody was banned (?).

Battle of Sicily

In the second war day, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Russia, Romania and some others sent troops to attack Sicily. The battle was expected to be difficult, and the coalition spent much time planning. Part of the plan was to have a massive air-bombing campaign. This, however, was for naught, as the Italians practically conceded the fight by not logging in. The attack was only opposed by TheSpookyBone and some Monkey refugees. The result was a complete victory for the coalition.⁸⁾

Second Battle of Skopje

After the Battle of Sicily, war was left on. Most players logged off. Some Monkey refugees (along with some Italians, who finally logged on, and Onions) launched an operation to retake the former Monkey capital of Skopje, which was under Romanian occupation. The fort was defended by 3 Romanians and 2 Croatians, who made a last stand until, surrounded and trapped, they blew up the fort, along with themselves, with TNT. The Monkeys retook the remains of their town.⁹⁾

There was, again, no war on Sunday. The server died after the second war day.¹⁰⁾