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You know, Pre, Leo, and Ripper have basically said all that I was going to, so I merely submit this interpretation of our term. Being rolled for being outrageous douchebags is basically all of IQ's wars though ?

No, I simply saw your page of incompetence and noted it as such. But by all means, go through all of my posts. I encourage you to actually read them (though apparently that is a difficult task for you) as you might just learn something.

Since there seems to be so much discussion and debate on why we walked and what exactly it is we take issue with, allow me to clarify a few things just to give you all a better understanding of where we stand at the moment. Contrary to some of the statements presented here, our coalition went into these talks with the understanding that we were not on the "winning" side and we would have to accept terms we "didn't like". Per that understanding, when talks first started and we were presented the terms document, our coalition accepted four of the eight terms nearly immediately. It wasn't until we reached discussion on the fifth term that we really started to have issues. The term I'm referencing immediately starts off by insulting our members and directing what we do with "war dodgers". War dodgers have traditionally been defined by this community as individuals who have an established pattern of behavior in avoiding wars, either through VMing or deserting. This is something we all recognize as an issue in the community and, per that belief, we each have our own internal methods for handling war dodgers. Our issue with this term is that, given our knowledge and understanding of our members, we fundamentally disagree with the opposition that all of the members they specifically outlined in their terms were true war dodgers. If holding war dodgers to the same standard as their non-war dodging alliance mates was the goal, no research was done to determine if there was a historical reason to classify those members as war dodgers. Additionally, given that the opposition has accepted war deserters from our side into their alliances and sent messages to our members to try and encourage them to desert, we believed the perceived intent behind this term to be misguided and hypocritical. Based on that viewpoint and despite our feelings regarding the opposition's actions with our war dodgers/deserters, a counter to the term was suggested, which outlined our plans for dealing with our actual war dodgers. It ultimately got rejected. Following the rejection of our counter offer, a significant amount of time and energy was put into trying to understand the opposing coalition's viewpoint on this term and why they wanted it, so that we could work on presenting a new counter offer that addressed both our concerns. Every time we thought we finally understood what it was they were trying to achieve with this term and started trying to work on a new counter, another opposition representative chimed in with something that contradicted the prior stated goal and we were back to square one. There was no consistent message being presented and every effort we made to understand was being met with derision and/or trolling by nearly all the opposing coalition representatives. We didn't hold much faith the discussions on the other remaining terms would fare any better if that was the environment we were going to be met with. In the end, we felt the opposition made it very clear they weren't willing to negotiate on terms in good faith. After three back to back days of discussion on this one term, we were no closer to settling the term or even figuring out what is was they hoped to accomplish. With that viewpoint in mind, we decided to step away from the discussions. If the opposition wishes to continue this discussion enough to try and spark a debate here on the OWF, we encourage them to return to the server and start up a conversation with us there. Until they decide they are ready for us to return however, we're happy to continue fighting.

So a more serious breakdown of why the VM needs to happen in the opinion of our coalition. Start by taking look at these links: TCW TKR GoB TCW obviously loses the most in this arrangement, and its obvious these VM nations are the rebuild plan for their side. Allowing this to happen is simply unacceptable when addressing the economic disparity of sides. Those TCW nations can generate over 300 million a day for TCW's rebuild, something that we won't allow to happen. You can argue some of the VM is legitimate reasons, but the simple fact is it doesn't matter. We don't care if it's legitimate. I fully agree that it's their responsibility to decide if they want to keep deserters in their alliance or not. However, this occurs after we equalize the damage dealt to them, not before. The argument is we are "punishing" them, which is flat out wrong. Lets start with the definition of punish: Punish VERB Treat (someone) in an unfairly harsh way. Their VM nations are not being treated in an unfair way relative to their alliance mates. All members still fighting are below 1k infra, or on their way there. In fact, most are substantially below that so VM nations are being treated less harshly. Then the argument that the winning side should do the same is also frankly ridiculous. This isn't a Global Summit building a player consensus, this is a war they lost and that's the demands for peace. We are holding their members accountable, since we don't trust them to do so. The winners can deal with their own, and owe nothing to those who lost in the most complete loss in a global since NPO's first time. Sure they can stay at war, but it's a lot harder to maintain a losing war than a winning one. If they want to keep going so be it, but it is easier to sell making sure perennial war deserters lose their infra to the winning coalition's members than protecting them to the losing side's members. Ultimately it will come down to their membership to deciding when they no longer want to protect pixel huggers at their own expense.

Why the horse always gotta be white? Somebody call Kosmo, quick.

I think that the "intentions" part has been discussed a lot already, so I will skip it. The reason we also added the option for war-VMers to sell their infra was to cover all options and let your side have another way out of letting your members get hit. We understand that you may not want OoC non-war-dodgers to just sit there and get hit by others. So, we just added the selling infra option. The thing that I still cannot understand is this, at least for TKR: If you have 2 nations at 1,700-infra builds in VM, what's the reason they cannot sell their infra and then get rebuilt (or not, if you don't think they deserve it)? Why are you against this option exactly? Does it have to do something about pride (e.g. you don't want others to "make" your members do anything, no matter how little, that is against their or your will)? Does it come down to the fact that you want to save that little infra as you say and don't want to pay for their rebuild? What's the reason you cannot accept getting nations to sell down to an X ammount of infra and then insta-rebuild? I think that's the question that has been dodged more than it should. The same way you are asking about our intentions I think it's fair to ask for yours.

When I first heard the peace terms I was 100% opposed to any peace and I still am (If our peace representatives choose to accept them, I'll respect that wish but my own thoughts on this peace are so follows) I've got no problem with Article's I - IV, but Article's V on-wards are complete rubbish. I'd like to tax the war-dodgers for as many days as they spent in VM not fighting, now obviously you don't want this as it will go to help our rebuild. So instead of writing elaborate posts trying to explain this "logic" behind your reasoning you could've just summarised it as your side wanting to inflict as much punitive damage on our sphere as possible, whilst hiding behind a veneer of "punishing the war dodgers", and breaking our so called "monopoly". Additional many of the so called "War-Dodgers" are in VM for legit reasons, I understand that you wouldn't know the exact details of why a person is in VM, but to tar all of those in VM as "war-dodgers" isn't acceptable. From tCW's perspective with -$45b in net damage we've been pushed down the stairs and now you just want to stab us to make sure we're as dead as we can be. Likewise Article VI is probably the most illogical article in the entire "peace treaty", as its babysitting IQ for when they make mistakes. If Alex ok'd the bot then stop complaining and just maybe you should teach people to double check their trades. I've personal messed up trades and had others take advantage, but what I do in that case is message the person to see if they would be willing to refund both parties, if not (entirely within their rights to choose to not refund them) then I must eat the loss. Article VII is probably the most egregious of all, since you don't get to choose our FA paths and whomever in our sphere chooses to sign or not sign with. And that Arrgh article is also garbage. If you hit us in a pirate raid expect a response which may or may not include assistance from other alliances in our sphere. I'd really like to know what kinda drugs the person was on who wrote that article.

Pre touched on this but with such a diverse coalitions you will have many different reasons for certain actions, that term is a coalition term that reflects its will. So while many people may have different reasons for why they want it, they all want it nonetheless. The "War Heros" remark was simply a facetious comment on the excessive E-Lawyering occurring in the peace talks. At the end of the day it doesn't matter why they didn't fight only that they did not take damage they would have otherwise taken. You are completely right in that it is your responsibility to find the real ones, but that doesn't excuse the legit ones from taking no damage in a war.

This was one of the examples of the switching goals thing. I asked you all specifically which one was your goal - damage parity or making an example of "war dodgers" and I essentially got a non-committal "we're too big of a coalition, there are too many goals/expectations/intents" as a final response. First, Leo/Ripper stated that the goal was to get everyone under 1k infra, as Leo said above. When that was said, we thought we were starting to understand what it was you were looking for and were discussing it. Then, the next day, we get a different answer that one of the goals is "setting a precedent for strategic use of VM" or making an example of "war dodgers", which we have issues with for the reasons stated above. I can only speak for TKR when I say this but I was willing to discuss and work on something to address the damage parity/rebuilding concerns in spite of the somewhat silly implication that two 21-city nations with 1700-infra builds would be able to rebuild TKR. However, I will never agree to label the nations you wanted to call war dodgers as such, given their contributions to TKR over their time with us. They neither fit nor deserve the title. And your side's gibe that we can call them "war heroes" and the accompanying trolling rewrite of the term during the talks only reaffirms my point about your unwillingness to work with us.

This is actually well worded, and I can definitely see why you folks would have an issue with it. If a side is going to punish war dodgers, research needs to be presented to make sure that they are effectively war dodgers and not legitimate vacation mode players. I can understand punishing leaders, regardless, but regular players - that's... detrimental to the overall community and game here if we're going to start setting this precedent. So basically the hang up is pretty much on both sides on how to deal with the VM'ers, whether or not they're actual dodgers? These two statements contradict you.

You reject terms because there's too much to read? You realize this is a text based game, right? You realize that the politics part comes from reading, right? I weep for any alliance that might have you as gov.

I mean everyone hates IQ? Like thats the usual prevailing topic at hand 90% of the time lol.

I just want to make sure folks know this War has not been easy on those of us in BK (and I am guessing the rest of our side as well) either. No one who is not suffering through it with us will ever truly appreciate how hard it is to find an Open Slot. You need to be seriously On The Bounce to be able to get a spot. The moment someone TKR, GOB, etc... comes out of Beige there are bunches of folks eager to take a bite. So sad there is only room for three at a time.

Tsarist Russia > Communist Russia - Prove me wrong.

If only my private negotiations had come through, we would've had peace, but alas. My gracious terms were rejected, shown here in an re-enactment.

Alot of you guys seem to not understand the point of a winning a war. The fact that IQ can and should exercise greater vigilance in trading isn't relevant. They were part of a force which won an absolute victory over your side, if this were EU4 it'd be 99% warscore, only because 100% here is impossible. Alex might allow the bot, but he also allows alliances to make whatever peace terms they want. You're in fully within your rights to refuse a refund, but IQ is within theirs to take whatever action they desire against you for it, including this. So I say to you what you say to them; get over it. This time you're the ones who lose and get screwed over, deal with it. It's no less unfair than the bot is. The part about arrgh isn't saying you can't counter them. It's saying you, specifically TKR, cannot constantly and endlessly Target arrgh unless arrgh is raiding them. Kinda like Polaris is doing to me now. I have no offensive wars, theyre just bored and figured I gave then trouble before so why not. That's what that article addresses. I don't honestly think you can in the good faith you're all talking about say you don't get their preference to not be mercilessly hunted down for a perfectly valid playstyle that doesn't harm the game a bit. If you honestly think that crap about VM nation's is punishing I have to wonder why this has gone on for 8 months. Frankly I view all of this as weaksauce anyway, as I am thoroughly with shifty on the subject of peace terms in general, beyond this war.

Are you sure that wasn't your damage received? As in you got damaged so badly your nation ceased to exist?

We're a group of collectives. Those collectives have different goals, and even inside of those collectives there are different goals as well. There's more than one reason behind it, and depending on whom you ask you'll get a different reason. In the quote of mine you have I even said "for me, maybe not for everyone". It's the main reason I'm in favor of it. If you ask me why, that's what you'll get. If you ask someone in IQ you might get "so you all take x damage" etc.. etc.. You can call them whatever you like. The classification is irrelevant, they're under the same blanket regardless. As I previously stated whether the VM was legitimate or not they're all subject to the same result. Since there is no differentiation between actual dodgers and the ones you don't wish to see labled as such, there's no need for a differentiation is our classification of them; the result is the same. It'd be like saying all people who have last names starting with the letters A-M get $50 and all people who have last names starting with the letters N-Z get $50. We're just saying all people who have last names starting with A-Z get $50 because there's no reason to separate the two as they are beholden to the same outcome. It is your alliance, you are free to keep them at war as long as you want to protect yourself from labeling those nations as war dodgers.

Our point is that it does not matter if it is legitimate or not. They would have been reduced to 1000 infra if they had been present, and they were not. They are not being singled out in more so than the average member, who is at a similar level of infra. It is up to TKR and their side to determine whether they will continue to house members who avoided the war, but that is irrelevant to the act of ensuring they were damaged as if they had participated in the war.

The winning side doesn't have to negotiate in good faith, that's what the war was for. dodge /däj/ verb 1. avoid (someone or something) by a sudden quick movement. So, did they not avoid the war? EDIT: I believe we offered to call them "Heroes" to make you feel better in the negotiations.

Daily Reminder to disband your respective alliance and join BK

Quoting the terms served to TGH/KT at the previous war, terms that your alliance and TKR within the coalition of that war supported: "- CB Validations (recognize their legitimacy to pursue this war) - Thalmor apologizing to Queen M (for OOC reasons) - Buorhann apologizing to Felkey - TGH flies a flag by custom design of TCW for a month (Without us knowing, TCW got a similar term in this war!) - KT flies TRF war flag for a month - Knights Templar place 2 pictures on their alliance page for a month (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/464071431974551571/470625344983007252/image.jpg, https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/464071431974551571/470625371939799050/image.png) - KT puts TRF war flag on their alliance page for a month - KT puts up a text "Revolution was here" on their alliance page for a month - KT puts an image on their alliance page of TRF pissing on the KT flag on their alliance page for a month - KT/TGH write a glorifying story about TRF and Queen M on the OWF" I thought you liked ending wars with white peace. Probably that's the case only when you are losing. I didn't know about the terms till yesterday, but now I am not surprised at all that your side did accept Articles I, II and III, at least at the beginning of the negotiations. Such kinds of terms were already familiar to you. Although ours are less "punishing".

Buy me city 24 and I'll buy up nukes and nuke 'em post-war. Shifty is a butcher for sale. Also my boi Leo/Thanos dropping truth bombs like a B-52 over 'Nam. The losers are losers and have zero say. Drive the knife in deep and twist. TKR sphere deserves this. "Omg but you're making this CN 2.0." "Omg, you're making bad enemies and bad blood." TKR needed their ego and teeth kicked in. Guardian is smug, but they ain't that bad. (Exception) TCW, who cares about pissing them off? They can't fight their way out of a paper bag. GoB had it coming. Tesla is basically dead and proved to be a useless offshoot of The Chola/Zodiac. Statesmen, Nova Riata, Silenzio, and any other micros are irrelevant and should just be tossed to the raiders anyway. Idk who the frick came up with this idea that this game doesn't need drama. Your stagnant shit filled minds keep coming up with ideas on how to kill any fun and conflict. Y'all rather have passive aggressive, "listen here pal" wars that end in nothing instead of salt filled, humiliating, and punishing defeats. The weak should fear the strong. Shifty says what's on everyone's mind, but they're too afraid to say it because they're playing model UN. Prove me wrong Protip: You can't.

Fark and WTF at the beginning of the war

I would like more something like this So I don't have to open their nation page to see their units

is it too late to add No Fat Chicks to Article III?

A misclick is usually fixable on trading just simply deleting right after after it's posted. With the bot, they don't have that option and it's constantly retrieving the information. Point of the matter is, we don't like it and we're rectifying it. You're free to continue posturing against IQ but I don't care. Your analogy is trash as leaving your bike unattended doesn't excuse the theft. Feel free to make the thieves into the good guys. It's totally not transparent.

Bye Partisan, glad to see things went out on a high note. Good luck out there.

So the quality of life problem that I have with the war screen is that there is no timeline link to the war on your war screen unless it's finished. Now, this isn't a mechanic or a necessary change, but it just makes it a lot more convenient and saves time, rather than having to click on every nation you're fighting individually and check the timeline for your stats for that war. So all it would do is have that timeline link at the end somewhere next to your current wars so you can check out the stats for the wars you're currently fighting straight from the war screen. I can't be the only one that would get on their knees for this addition.

Here we go. I've been pinged and DM'd enough about this, and things are starting to slow back down for me for now so I have time for this. Topic: Foreign Affairs, Alliances, Politics When: Thursday, Dec 6th, 7:30pm EST US time Who: Epimetheus from Camelot Where: The Great Fire Discord ( Link: https://discord.gg/Z2gPsKM ) Pretty sure I got it down now. Length: 1 hour to 2 hour, depending on guest. Apparently quite a few people keep commenting or asking me about Foreign Affair advice or "to learn from me", so I might as well slay this topic out. I'll also address some of the Alliances out here and how they make their approaches from my perspective, and finally we'll discuss political moves and how certain ways of approaching situations can either make or break it for you. I'll also address any questions sent my way beforehand. We'll also have a guest, I'm just waiting to figure out who. So if any of you micro/small/new alliance leaders want to talk - hit me up. Specifically those who have participated in the conflicts here. My only request is to make sure you have a good quality mic. (This is actually the reason why I haven't already picked one out. I'm more than familiar with most of the well known community and who has an actual good mic to talk) So come join me and have some s'mores.

Bots that take action for players are strictly against the rules. However, I know a number of players have devised bots that do things like alert a Discord server when a war is declared, or a lucrative trade is offered. So long as the script isn't actually accepting the trades, but just serving notifications, I don't have an issue with it (there's really nothing I could do to prevent it anyway, unless you all want captchas on every page.)

@The Mad Titan: The objective of this war is destroy TKR-sphere power. A big question mark is whether the TKR-sphere has enough warchest to just press "refloat" post-war and bump all of its cities back to 2k infra. Then, it's like this war never happened and it'll be up to SynDIQ to do it again, or more likely, just fall before TKR-sphere power. Taking out VM nations makes this possibility less likely, because VM nations that avoid infra-destruction reduce the total cost imposed on TKR-sphere nations to rebuild, as well as increase the income generation of these VM-ed nations and enhance rebuilding in the short-term

I joined tCW part way through the war and had no input on the terms. For the record I pretty much always favor white peace, win or lose, unless someone does something truly egregious. I was out of beige for several hours before my slots were full this last time, you need to do better.

While I agree with your other points, I would just like to point out to you that it wouldn't just be you looking through those cases but instead, several, both from your side and TKRsphere, since they are likely to investigate why their own members VM'ed during the war too. No hard feelings, just pointing out that the logistics of figuring out who legitimately VM'ed would be relatively simple.

We haven't enough offensive slots to occupy you all. Sorry. We'd like to, but we can't accept your surrender. Was there anything else?

I say let the War rage... well... sputter... on. There are plenty of folks in BK who are Slot Starved and would be happy to keep on grinding.

It's not contradictory. Punish would imply they are being treated harsher than the average member, when it is simply demanding they match their fellow alliance members infra levels. Determine the legitimacy is on their side, but that occurs after they are damaged not before. Missing the war does not entitle you to no damage regardless of why you missed it. "Burn them all, TKR will know their own"

I think this would be a very valid response if "War Dodging" was an internal affair. It isn't, its always been a global one. Coalition A has every right to want to continue to hit the people who are "hiding" in VM to avoid damage, and you have every right to drag out the war to try to stop them from being hit so they can rebuild you. But that's a very valid reason for them to continue fighting. For a long time, your side has taken in people who didn't want to fight or get involved with the war efforts. Now those same people VM'd on you to avoid losing this war. That isn't acceptable. Everyone gets rolled. They can either sell down or get beaten down, however they want to go out, but they don't get to avoid a war. Especially a war that war fought over hitting and destroying those guys. Sadly for you, the CB fits the Reps.

yeah don't steal, the tsar doesn't like the competition

Taxation is theft!

I like where this is going... When do we launch Tsar 2.0 with the Joseph expansion?

And you could add a timeline button in the Data/Type column.

looks around whispers We can arrange something.

No one expects them to merely submit without whining about it properly.

No one is going after them. They have the option to sell their infra, as you can see in the terms. If their alliance loves them so much, they can just rebuild them with their own funds. Sell down to 1k and then just rebuild. That easy. I see no reason (from an IC point of view) to let nations again and again VM and then get "punished" by their alliances by getting taxed. These taxes are used to rebuild faster the alliances that were hit. Believe it or not, some alliances want to cause as much damage as possible to the opposing side and having VMers coming back post-war to rebuild the rest is not really appreciated. Also... these nations are not punished. They get exactly the same treatment as their team-mates. The non-VMed TCW nations are at 1k infra level. The VMers will get to that level too. "Punishment" would imply that they get special treatment and worse terms than their team-mates, which is not the case.

From The Desk of Uncle Traveling Matt The Best Nation Ever, Fraggle Rock Greetings!! This peace accords is trash. Many Hugs, Uncle Traveling Matt

So, IQ wins eh?