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  1. Hello everyone, Some of you may have heard by now but our beloved friend and comrade RedArmy has passed away this weekend. He died from complications from heart surgery, he was 33. Those who knew him already know this, but he was one of the kindest souls you'll ever meet. He would do anything for anybody, including driving 8 hours across the country to pick up another alliance member who was going through some really rough times, and helping them secure a place to live. Although we've only been playing this game together for 4-5 years, he ended up becoming like a brother to me, and to most of ASM. He was someone who would always listen to you, and help guide you through whatever rough patch you were going through. He was so genuine in an era where that doesn't exist. We went on an ASM camping trip last year, and it was a blast, except our first night camping we were crushed during Guns & Roses, and 3/4 of ASM's gov't was off in the woods drinking, out of cell service. Red was the only one who had cell service and when he got the notifications he promptly turned the phone off, and casually mentioned it to me a few hours later... deep into inebriation. Red was one of the most selfless people I've ever met, and that I will ever meet. He constantly gave others everything he had, whether it was emotionally, physically or even financially. He kept nothing for himself. This was true even in death. With his last dying breath he was able to hold on long enough to make it possible to donate several organs so that others could live. ASM will never be the same. He was the bedrock of our community, the glue that held a bunch of political stalwarts from delving into chaos every waking moment. There aren't enough kind words I can say about Red. Please pour one out for our fallen brother. We are heartbroken. If you are interested there is a gofundme for his family, i've posted it in ASM's discord server. In the interim I have taken over leadership of ASM. See you on the other side brother. Rest easy. Love Yinz.
    192 points
  2. This one is a first, and hopefully a last, for me. I've never written a political wall of text, and don't intend to ever do it again after this. In fact, I usually try to avoid political flamewars altogether, even in the more extreme cases of scummy behaviour that need to be addressed for the health of the game. But I do care about this game. And this situation right now, I cannot in good conscience ignore. Anyway, here goes the first ever Horsecock political wall of text. This is an open letter to the Syndicate. First of all, the simple fact that I never did this kind of post probably means that many people (barring Alliance leaders I've worked with in the past) might not know my mentality and moral stances. So let me start this by giving you some more context. For the first time in the history of this game, we actually have a political landscape comprised of a set of (5 before Oasis disbanded, now 4) roughly equally-sized minispheres. That's obviously a good thing for healthy political dynamics. In this climate, I actually don't want Clock (or any sphere, for that matter) to ever team up with a second sphere against a single one (take notes, Tyrion), as that would be a despicable dogpile. These spheres are very much able to pick fair 1-on-1 fights, wars that are certainly more even than ever before. And yes, I did oppose the Clock+BW vs MysOasis war, that was very much not a war I consider fun. The war we had planned was Cata+HoF vs Mystery, a bloc far larger than our 2 alliances. As far as I can tell, there also aren't any "secret treaties" between any spheres at this moment. Sure, Steve (rest in piss) pretended Clockwater was one sphere, but we both know there was no love lost there. I also hope no one takes this post as evidence of any Clock-EMC cooperation. Until the extremely recent Oasis break-up, our 2 spheres actually considered each other obvious rivals. And at the risk of painting a target on my back for revealing this, I personally suggested that EMC should be the target of Clock's first global (instead of Rose). Why? Because at the time, they were the largest (certainly in the mid and upper tiers) and considered the most competent sphere. I place the utmost priority in striving for unconditional competence and in pursuing war as a means of testing and proving my group's skill at the actual game. Proving something to myself, most of all. I am a proud man with a straight shaft back, and taking on EMC would've been a challenge worthy of the Horsecock. That's why I play this game. I do not ever pursue war for political motivations, and I believe my track record very much shows that. And it's quite possible that I have personally started more wars than any other alliance leader in the history of this game. I know that many people don't share this mentality, and that some major alliances enjoy a playstyle more focussed on public grandstanding, finger-pointing and moralising, especially in times of war. I respect that, and I don't want to discourage it in general. In fact, these things do add spice to the political landscape and can make the game more interesting. A good number of alliances do also try to take political advantage in order to dogpile, instead of relying on ingame skill. But you, t$, take it way too far these days. The only other major alliance in my PnW history to act in a comparable manner was NPO, and I would've thought the overwhelming community opinion on NPO would be a useful pointer for shaping your own behaviour. It came as no surprise to me that, when I made a throwaway comment during the last global war about the surprising lack of political drama from either side - a comment responding to TKR and not mentioning any spheres or alliances - the only one who even noticed and got salty was a t$ gov member. Here's the problem: You habitually and aggressively dispatch your keyboard warriors (most of which are current or former high gov members) to every public "forum", be it this one or any major Discord server, in an effort to control the public conversation, spread your own spin and propaganda, and drown out the spectrum of nuanced opinions from all the other people. Both they and your FA leader's public announcements make use of the full arsenal of all the most toxic and disingenuous methods of political drama: Gaslighting, blatant hypocrisy, bare-faced lies and misrepresentation, malicious accusations, paranoia, conspiracy theories, self-entitled boasting, and of course simple flaming and insults. In fact, they do little else. That is the most common behaviour I and many others have seen from t$ over the past year or so. I could compile a long list of public shitstorms that t$ has sometimes caused, always amplified, and often taken centre stage in. At the same time, you act disproportionally insulted and outraged any time someone makes a negative remark about your own alliance. Unlike the vast majority of even small alliances, you seem to conduct yourself with a complete disregard for moral integrity, I'd go so far as to say even a complete disregard for personal honour and honour of your alliance. Of course this shapes the way your alliance is perceived and judged by others, and to pretend otherwise would be evidence of profound social ineptitude. While these behaviours were present in t$ gov for some time before that, they only became intolerable after the most recent resignation of Partisan. I had a lot of respect for Partisan's style and mentality, even if I did not share it. But he did actually try to talk and act with the purpose of making the game more enjoyable, and he put a very presentable public face onto your alliance. When he left, that veneer of moral integrity dropped, and t$ seems to have lost any temperance in controlling, and self-awareness of, how you conduct yourselves in public. You're not the only alliance that likes to dogpile, and you're not the only alliance that is afraid of getting rolled. But you ARE the only alliance that doesn't really even try to hide just how fragile your egos and just how petty your methods and motives really are. The events of the past year, leading up to this war, made it painfully obvious to anyone with even a shred of public awareness where your behaviour would lead you, and we all knew that you would reap your just rewards for it. In fact, I never even bothered to consider your sphere as a target for a Clock global war - not just because I never use political drama as a reason for war, but because I knew that other spheres do and would give you this war, without any actions from Clock. And honestly, this is a rather evenly-matched war, much unlike the 3 dogpiles you did in 2021. And once again, you act publicly outraged and resort to all the same PR behaviours that got you to this point in the first place. And yet you still made the decision to immediately give up and not even try to fight back militarily, despite being in a good position to put up a meaningful fight with real strategy. Do you really just want your wars to be as cheap as possible and never to even cause meaningful damage to your enemies, other than by dogpiling them when it's easy? You don't even want to be taken seriously anymore, in terms of competence, military might or even honour? Barring actual cheating, this is quite possibly the most pathetic display I've seen from any major alliance, ever. Please, t$, if you have any modicum of self-respect or concern for the health of the game left, I urge you to rethink your entire mindset. Reverse this escalating course of childish behaviour, and try to become the great alliance you once were. The whole game would thank you for it. If you continue on your current trajectory, then I strongly suspect that this game's community will increasingly respect or even tolerate you less and less. People are judged on their actions, and no one else ever cares about what you personally feel you are entitled to.
    130 points
  3. It is with great sadness that I have to inform of the most recent death to the Orbis community. About a month or two ago a member of Terminus Est's high gov, Stavros Cassadine, told us that he had been diagnosed with cancer. In addition to this, he was also battling a heart condition. Recently, his condition severely worsened and he had to go through multiple surgeries, all of which had complications. Nonetheless, like the fighter I knew he was, he came through these operations and just before Christmas came off the ventilator. However, while recovering post-op, he caught Covid-19. This unfortunately he did not survive from. He was a fantastic face to have around our discord and was a great friend to myself and others. I know that all those who knew him will agree with me that he will be missed dearly within our community. Rest in peace Stav. https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=214086 (For your information there is a family member on his account which is the reason he may drift in and out of activity)
    110 points
  4. It wouldn't be an SK announcement without one last sing along as well, enjoy the ear bleed nerds.
    89 points
  5. This week we welcome a new month, but we also celebrate various birthdays for our current and former Horizon Guard. They had many wishes, from wanting to coup me to wishing I never existed in their life but one wish we all agreed to, was to celebrate in style and offer some sage advice! Listen, growing old is nothing to be ashamed of, especially if you make every year count. However, something you should be ashamed of are the nefarious actions taken throughout those years. We get it, growing old can lead to you losing who you are. One day you wake up, look in the mirror and you realize ‘man, maybe I am old!’ - You find yourself enjoying things you wouldn’t normally enjoy, maybe doing things you wouldn’t normally do – you suddenly just can’t get enough of bingo, those day time naps just keep getting longer, dinner starts earlier or maybe your CB’s get a little flimsier. It’s all part of the ageing process!’ GGO, come celebrate with us! You seem to have taken a wrong turn on your path to old age and we wish to hand you that nice refreshment of youth that you so dearly crave. You’re too old for politics, it’s fine, we understand. Too busy working on your wealth through that Roth IRA, but we all need a little thrill in our lives so let us assist with that. Here, have some cake!. It's strawberry flavored. We hope you enjoy it. Signed, Emperor: Lucianus High Justice: Vexz Horizon Guard of Foreign Affairs: Wasteking
    84 points
  6. Partisan strode into the command tent, blood dripping off his armor and splatting on the ground. Benfro, Daveth, Hughes, James, and Squeegee and the other negotiators filed in behind him. They too, had blood all over them. None of the other Quack leaders already in the tent were fazed. At this point there were few who had no blood on their armor. Partisan took a seat at the command’s circular table. A battle map was laid out and Quack had little ground left. Roses, Hedges, and assorted Swamp creatures surrounded the remaining Quack strongholds. A defeat was all but confirmed. Three pints of ale were placed before Partisan. He drank heavily from the first one before beginning to speak. “My lords and ladies, I think we can all agree that this military endeavor has not necessarily worked out in Quack’s favor. We have just returned from negotiations with the Nameless Paperless Coalition and have the terms for our peace.” He began patting his armor, then his belt before he remembered. “Ah yes, Bennyboi has our papers.” He drank from his pint again, allowing the ale to spill from the sides and down his armor. “Go ahead, Benny. Read them our terms.” Benfro read aloud the terms of Quack’s surrender and peace. Partisan drank his second pint of ale as a vote was cast with unanimous passage. “Well,” Daveth said, “all that remains is to present our terms to our army and make our surrender official before our enemies.” At that moment, horns blew and the Quack army began to shout. The NPC delegation had arrived. The Quack leaders got up from the table and walked outside with Partisan carefully clutching his last pint of ale. Walking up the hill was Halfman, a drunken soldier, the Potato King, a prickly old man pushed in a wheelchair by the head gardener, a puppet, and two foxes. Benfro signaled for a table to be set up and served while the leadership sat down and their armies watched on. “Well, Snek,” croaked the prickly old man, “I’ve gotten the best of you again, until my memory fails and I have to come get you off my color bloc lawn again.” His laughter quickly devolved into coughing before LeftBehind rushed forward and fed him some medicine. “Nappy nap time.” the old man mumbled before drifting off to sleep. Partisan sighed and then stood up shakily. “Now that we’re all, uhhhh, where we are. I think we can commence with the sssssigning and public reading of the terms and surrender.” Partisan said and then plopped down in his chair. The peace document soon was passed around the table and signed by each representative. Partisan dipped his snake tail in the ale and signed with his beloved booze. The old man was still asleep, so his aide signed for him. When the last signature was complete, Adam of the $yndicate stood up and read the document aloud for all to hear. Official Peace Terms: Effective at Day Change of 14/12/2020-15/12/2020 (Greenwich Mean Time) 1. Quack posts admission of defeat. 2. Blanket NAP of 120 days (Ending on the 13th April 2021) including all current protectorates on both sides. 3. All wartime changes in regards to color blocs must be reversed to pre-war status. This applies to both coalitions and protectorates for the duration of the NAP. 4. No new war declarations after peace is in effect; any ongoing wars may end naturally via peace, expiry, or beige. 5. Yui is to be provided a baby giraffe picture from TKR. When Adam finished reading aloud, armies from all factions shouted for joy and the leaders congratulated each other on a well fought war. Quack and NPC leadership walked down the hill together to celebrate and feast. Peace had arrived and the world was no longer burning. The old man remained at the table, still sleeping from his medicine, mumbling about punching the snek again. Partisan also remained nearby, too drunk to walk, too tired to celebrate. He cradled his third half-empty pint in his arms and drifted off to sleep. TL;DR: Quack surrenders to the Nameless Paperless Coalition. Both parties agree to peace with a 4 month NAP. (Special thank you to @Darth Ataxiafor his narrative penmanship and @Adrienne for her artwork)
    84 points
  7. After a short 2 week conflict between the alliances that compose tCW sphere, and the combined alliances of Hedge and Swamp. We have agreed to the following terms for peace between our Spheres, which will take effect starting at update tonight. 1) tCW sphere formally surrenders to Hedge and Swamp Spheres. 2) All existing wars will end to conclusion, (peace will be granted if both warring nations agree), no new wars to be declared after peace officially takes effect at next server update (aka 2 hours). New wars declared after peace is declared, will be worked out amicably between alliances. 3) 3 month nap between Hedge/Swamp, and TCW sphere, which includes all protectorates less MicroPock. This NAP will end at update on December 1st. Signed, Members of Swamp, Hedge, and TCW's Sphere... I am too lazy to get signatures for everybody. On behalf of the members in Hedge, I want to thank Swamp for their hard work and dedication to this fight, and I would like to thank the nations we fought in tCW's sphere. Despite your overwhelming odds, you were all classy opponents, and its nice to have a war where we are not at each others throats and can fight with at least a little bit of humor and grace. Let's hope this becomes the norm and not the exception in orbis going forward. Note: Morningstar is not included in these peace terms.
    83 points
  8. uuuuuuu god this is so late, life keeping me busy, and now everyone's gonna complain I'm talking about GW18 again T_T Gonna keep this short because the post is gonna be long enough as is: during GW18, there was always something that felt totally incongruous to me: why was it that at the end of the war, disputed territory only fell around C20 when every conversation I'd had with friends all the way up to C30 had them expressing shock they hadn't been taken apart completely? tl;dr here's what I thought Roasis Inc could've much improved on in order to push up to that range. Discussion is welcomed; all I live for is war, after all I'll start at the very beginning and push my way forwards: Rose militarization: To this day I cannot understand why Rose didn't militarize even if they were confident they weren't the target. This is especially coming from the richest alliance in the game where losing a minimal amount of steel or money from building and decomming is basically a drop in the bucket. What makes this even more baffling is we saw the notifications of them switching to 5553, expecting a full build for 2-3 days at the very least, and yet later we learned they were only instructed to max soldiers and planes. Why soldiers only??? Poor round 1 beige control: By the end of round 1, E404 was zeroed. CoTL was zeroed. Guardian was half zeroed and under serious fire. tO was zeroed. TKR was struggling to stay afloat. Oblivion was half zeroed, and the rest only went all out because we expected to die in a round or two. Everyone on Grumpy was on 4-6 wars trying to bail people out, and even then it wasn't quite enough. Instead, what happened? Everyone slowly started getting huge amounts of beige time. There were the numbers to prevent it from ever happening, and yet from the ashes we were able to give the order for anyone above C20 to remax military and start pushing. If this was NPO we were talking about, one alliance member aptly put it that there'd be no escape from the cycling machine. In that situation, there would've been almost minimal need for a planes-only strategy and pushing upwards would've been 10x easier. Late/weak do-not-beige order: In the end, the order to not beige anyone in HW was too little, too late. This absolutely should've been implemented at the start of the first round. Furthermore, it seemed like most people didn't want to follow this order -- I heard post-war far too many times that the competent ones were putting in the work to drag people down, only to be constantly and consistently frustrated by the incompetent ones blanket beiging on all wars. Additional do-not-peace order: A minor addition, but this should've been added along with the do-not-beige order (case in point: Grumpy slotting the same Immortals guy like 15 times). Accepting peace frees up crucial slots for attackers and leaves defenders with open slots that are much easier to be sat on by people with lower military. I offered peace to pretty much everyone I fought with during the later parts of the war and the number of people who accepted peace was pretty comedic. Building ships: A lot of people in Roasis Inc, especially in Oasis, continued to build ships even after all of their other military units were destroyed. This hurt the war effort in almost every single way -- they were max shipping low-infra people on raid wars (a total waste of resources), beiging people with ships with no regard for beige cycling, and also putting themselves in range of larger people who could zero them a lot easier. Meatshields: There is no denying that Rose, Oasis, and Mystery all contain a large amount of bloat from useless members and alliances. In peacetime, maybe this is for tax farm reasons or something, but during wartime, these members and alliances are not only free stats but also detrimental to the war effort as a whole. Weakest link theory: I think the reason why meatshields are so useless is not something people like to talk about a lot: a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. There are multiple reasons why: -Having HW members being slotted by meatshields allows them an incredibly easy time to fight back and rebuild to prioritize saving other members. -HW members can always target meatshields in order to farm stats and resources that Roasis Inc need to rebuild post-war. -They can also be targeted if HW members on say, zero ships, want a very easy way to stack beige from meatshields who don't know how to beige cycle. -Overall, they offer very little offensive or defensive value and waste space, time, and resources that would be much better utilized elsewhere. Lack of milcom leadership and talent: I have pointed out frequently that if the milcom govs between HW and Roasis Inc were switched, Roasis Inc would've almost certainly been able to push up to C30-35. Ultimately, this is due to a faulty priority of recruiting low-quality members or meatshields over recruiting and training good milcom leadership and talent. Quantity has become a bit overrated as of late: people often forget that even a small amount of quality can go a long way. Poor coordination: In a war like this, I like to attribute three different types of coordination available, intra-alliance coordination (within a single alliance), inter-alliance (between alliances within a sphere), and inter-sphere (between different spheres). Roasis Inc struggled mightily with all three bar a few alliances: Intra-alliance: although coordinated counters against HW attacks did happen occasionally, this was rare. More often than not, members would only attack one or two at a time, leading to a weak and dispersed effort that could be dealt with almost immediately. Inter-alliance: after the relatively coordinated blitzes early on, this was also sorely missing. For the most part, there was minimal communication between attacks, beige, and so on. HW compared to this was like night and day: if someone got hit, we knew almost immediately, and could search for people between alliances almost immediately to deal with it. No one was left on their own. Inter-sphere: This was almost certainly one of the largest factors that ultimately cost Roasis Inc a victory. Most members never communicated or fought with those outside their spheres, much less had any idea what the other spheres were up to. This also extended into milcom leadership as well -- it took weeks for spheres to learn to adapt the same strategies, resulting in a disjointed and confusing effort. Inter-sphere coordination on crossing over enemy spheres: At the very beginning, it was Oasis focusing HM-side, and Mystery focusing TKR-side. Obviously, there would be an inevitable point where spheres would have to cross over and hit the other side. This should have been and was entirely in Roasis Inc's court on when to call this. Prior to this, Oblivion was forced to ignore all Mystery targets in order to bail out HM on Oasis, and the same was true for basically all other alliances from both HM-side and TKR-side, severing a crucial line of communication all while both sets of gov were still in the very early stages of integrating HW together. This should've been taken advantage of, and when the crossing over eventually happened, should've been a massive and coordinated effort. Instead, wars began weakly trickling over from both sides, and this gave us the time to integrate the sphere much quicker and begin finding people much quicker to counter wars that were previously being left alone. Early blitz on Oblivion: This is the first of many potential turning points I observed. There was a period early on where Oblivion was heavily targeted for a few days. Ultimately, after some lightning fast counters (mainly from Guardian <3) that saved our asses, Roasis Inc decided to give up and focus on other things. The thing is, they didn't fail because they used a flawed strategy, they failed BECAUSE THEY GAVE UP TOO EARLY. In fact, y'all were so close to figuring it out that I was already preparing for the worst. After day 1, I was down to about 1300-1400 planes out of 2100. Even with building the maximum every day, I did the math, and with constant suicide dogfights (I was in 9 wars, for god's sakes) and 3x spy planes every day, I would've been melted. From there, it's only an issue of have the wars expire and then drag me down, down, down. Instead, the only person who bothered suicide dogfighting me after day 1 was Tyunka (shoutout if you're reading this), and the spy attacks stopped completely as well. Similarly, a fellow alliance member who'd been blitzed had some seriously botched counters launched to save him, and instead the guy who could've destroyed his planes completely went inactive for almost a day and had the plan fall apart. Even if I hadn't been taken down completely, I was totally out of service for a few days because I was forced to claw my way back up to max planes. I found this entire situation incredibly ironic -- it was one of the strongest displays of inter-sphere coordination I'd seen through the entire war, with the best strategy that could've been brought, meaning they had all the puzzle pieces there. If only they'd figured this out for us, who knows what they could've done to everyone else. The strategy: In the end, it was quite simple, really. You don't need three larger guys to pull you down. Sometimes, you just need three somewhat smaller guys. Sometimes, it's two smaller guys and one larger guy. Finding these people should not have been an issue. Target the people who are the most overextended, or who by being zeroed could free the most people. Even the zeroed people on a daily buy of planes can kill a non-insignificiant amount, to the point where often a target will be forced to beige them in order to protect their own planes (I experienced this firsthand). If no counters roll in, they're toast and you make progress. If counters roll in, you keep focusing them with suicide dogfights and 3x spy planes, and they're toast again. You don't even have to go planes only for this to work. I actually cannot believe that something this easy to understand was only implemented minimally. The flawed initial strategy: From what I hear, for whatever reason Roasis Inc decided to start their focus upwards and work their way down. When you are fighting Grumpy, this is literally the dumbest thing you could do. In fact, this was very obviously HW's strategy the entire time and should not have been Roasis Inc's. Flawed focus and difficulty maintaining focus on all objectives: Throughout the war a few alliances kept certain measurements or percentages as goals in order to fulfill a strategy. Aside from the fact that this was totally not done in HW (after all, statisticians do tend to lie), these were often the wrong objectives entirely, and often also ignored damages to their own side when trying to espouse damages done to HW. Furthermore, they often lost sight of both flawed and correct objectives, pursuing other plans or declaring aimlessly. Planes only: Even though planes only is a strategy, there's no denying that it's a bad (and outdated) strategy. Because of score changes and tanks destroying planes, someone with max ground will usually be able to beat someone with max planes. This is especially true when people are trying to declare at impossible numbers (like with a 7-10 city difference, for ex.), but even otherwise, TKR and tO's experience in The Last Ride told us that we should almost always be prioritizing ground attacks and eliminating ground for this reason. Later in the war, some people (especially Camelot) decided to get rid of soldiers entirely and quite literally go planes only -- I assume the strategy behind this was to reduce score even further and also get targeted by pirates instead of HW, and it worked to an extent, but for the most part soldiers barely affect the score, and we realized this pretty quickly and were able to switch strategies in order to make dealing with this even easier. Early round 2 on CoTL: Not long after Oblivion was getting targeted, CoTL began to reach max mil out of beige. The milcom head was completely absent for irl reasons, and for a day or two they began sending out coordinated counters against a reasonable amount of people. There were two significant risks associated with this strategy, neither of which Roasis Inc exploited. First, these counters were mostly only sent with two people assigned to a target. This meant they were zeroed quicker and could've had time to coordinate with their own counters to take down CoTL members. Second, almost everyone was overextending to do it, meaning Roasis Inc (as per usual) had the numbers in order to punish the overextension. Instead, I only heard of a minimal number of counters, of which mostly were dealt with quickly. In short, CoTL were able to come off with a string of victories relatively easily and with almost no cost. Speaking of overextension... Targeting overextended targets: A lot of people post-war remarked that Oblivion seemed much larger than it actually was. The reason for this, I think, was honestly really simple: we just picked the people involved in the most offensive wars against non-zeroed militaries and hit them, and so by strategically picking the best people to counter instead of any rando with a military, it seemed like we were larger (in reality, we were only 12 people rofl. 12 people can only do so much against a coalition of 1000+). Roasis Inc had the opportunity to take this and apply it on a far larger scale. Instead, I saw very little correlation with attacks versus offensive wars, and therefore the people doing the heaviest damage were allowed to continue doing the heaviest damage. Disagreement on strategy and inter-sphere milcom discontent: The larger issue was that for the most part, Rosesphere, Oasis, and Mystery never really figured out how to work beyond their own spheres. Each were pursuing their own goals that didn't fit with the others, and as a result it was easy for all the spheres to start blaming each other for their failures rather than coming together as a collective team. For example, early on, it was quite common for Oasis to be going max military, Mystery going planes only, and Rosesphere waffling in between the two indecisively. Ultimately, they realized what they should've already known far too late: any collective plan is better than no plan at all. Big egos: A lot of this, simply put, I think was because there were too many people unwilling to compromise outside their own beliefs and plans. It was so difficult for people to realize their own faults and that they were targeting the wrong things that in the end lots of people clashed with each other and ended up regressing any collaborative support that would've boosted the entire coalition. Weak opening spy blitzes: I was assigning HW spy attacks throughout the war, so I know this better than anyone. For the first week or so, Roasis Inc spy attacks were horrendous. I will give Rose a pass on this -- we zeroed them and their allies immediately, meaning the best spiers were out early. For the rest, few people were actually launching attacks, or if they were, it was Locutus assigning spy targets, which you should almost never be doing. So, HW was killing 3x as many spies per member as Roasis Inc, and we were beginning to grind the spy war to a halt because of it. It was only because DtC decided to personally assign spy targets by messaging everyone in the entire coalition that y'all got your asses saved. This front should've ended much sooner than it actually did. Poor spy coordination: Something that absolutely should've been done was a better tie-in between traditional milcom and spy ops. Once HW was near zeroed on spies, the priority quickly shifted to spying tanks on the highest whales and spying planes on a limited range where it might matter. While this did result in a massive amount of tanks being spied away, ultimately it didn't contribute much to the war goal and the net damage wasn't any more than a few days or so of total revenue for alliances with tanks being targeted. Instead, if Roasis Inc had learned how to properly updeclare, many more spy attacks against planes would've been directed in a larger range of the tiers that mattered -- this would've mattered a great deal if Oblivion had been constantly targeted rather than left alone after the first two days or so, for example. And with better communication between milcom and spies, milcom would've been able to pinpoint the most important targets to be passed over to spy ops. Camelot spies: I heard through the grapevine that Camelot was conducting their own spy ops separate of DtC's operation. While this probably was more directed towards coordination between milcom and spy ops (and probably was the source of spy ops against Oblivion), overall, this spy effort was weak and far from the strength they displayed while in Rosesphere. I think Camelot should've worked together with DtC in order to combine the best of both worlds here. Arrgh: This is a minor point because Arrgh is mostly missing these days, but Roasis Inc also could've taken advantage of Arrgh stacking beige time on their mid and low tiers in order to build up. Knight's Templar: KT was almost certainly a thorn for both sides in the war, and they'll probably be pretty happy with that, but Rose proved especially incompetent at dealing with them: first, by being incapable of stashing their offshores and not dropping massive amounts of loot, but also by becoming so singlemindedly focused on getting beige stacked by KT that it hurt their war focus altogether. At one point, this resulted in Rose literally declaring more wars on KT in order to try and get themselves beiged than actually declaring war on HW, and several people got nation striked for this and had their wars manually peaced out as a result. Poor mindset and giving up too easily: All this culminates into one overarching point: Roasis Inc started this war with far too dismal of a mindset and gave up very easily (especially Rose). People always underestimate this point: mentality is everything. It dictates how much effort you're willing to put into each element, what goals you're trying to pursue, what strategy you're going to take, and so on. As a result, because Rose thought they were totally outnumbered and beat down, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and they ended as poorly as they did because they didn't bother trying, even when they had many opportunities to. Similarly, because Roasis Inc as a whole set their bar exceptionally low and took a line at C20 as the expected result, it hindered them from being able to push any higher. This is opposed to HW -- even though our prospects were looking grim, we had the will to not take it sitting down to fight back, and we kept rebuilding even after a pretty bad round 1. This is why, I think, alliances like E404 were able to pull back a huge net loss of billions and end the war on a positive. Built-up nations doing nothing: One very pronounced effect of this was the number of maxed nations simply exiting beige without declaring any wars and getting promptly slotted by HW. There were always enough of them to coordinate and launch a few good attacks, and I know these people did ask, but most of the time milcom did very little to actually help out here. So, this resulted in a drop of defeatism spreading into a ripple, leading lots of the player base to give up as well. No damage strategy: Final point. In the tiers that were clearly lost and not worth fighting back in, there should've been a goal to deal as much damage as possible. This was true at the beginning of the war for HW anywhere C20 and under (and later pushed down) and should've also been true anywhere hitting people C33 or so and up for Roasis Inc -- that's why Lord Tyrion was able to get the most damage of anyone in Roasis Inc, for example. This strategy would've come with an additional benefit: if anyone wanted to stack beige time, they should've done it against Grumpy and not KT; Grumpy had almost zero beige discipline the entire war and that should've been taken advantage of. ========================================================================== Anyways, that's all I had on my list for Roasis Inc; feel free to discuss any of them, I don't imagine I'll be right 100% of the time. For the sake of fairness, I also came up with a few points I think HW could've improved on: Spy participation: For the most part, most alliances did a good job getting their members to fill assigned spy targets. However, there were a few where this was not so much the case. Higher spy participation would've probably allowed us to grind the spy front to a halt much faster, although admittedly that wouldn't have mattered a huge amount when fighting 3x as many spies. As the war progressed and it became clear we were losing, spy participation understandably dwindled. I think people should realize that no matter how few spies they have, there is always something they can contribute -- 1 vs 60 on a spy tanks op has a 50% chance of success, which is still honestly pretty good and has a net damage positive (and which is what I spent almost every day doing). Mindset: This is the same as with Roasis Inc. A couple people had some more dismal outlooks than others (and I can be blamed of this as well), and this probably did affect the war performance, but for the most part I think the collective mentality was relatively positive and offset any negativity. Initial HM-TKR split: As I said earlier, HM and TKR conducted their milcom separately at first, and this was a split that Roasis Inc could've (and didn't) take advantage of. Later on, this was much improved, but a few alliances did stick to themselves and their side of the sphere for the most part. Risky overextension: Fighting against any better coalition would've meant this would've been a big no-no. Lots of people (including me) were fighting far too many wars at the same time, which in a more competent world would've meant we would've been focused harder and taken down quicker, while freeing up many more people to fight, but in the end Roasis Inc didn't take advantage of this. Beige cycling: Although our cycling was a lot better than Roasis Inc's, it was still far from perfect. I'm not going to name names here, but I know for sure that Oblivion wasn't great either, although maybe this can be excused by the fact that there were always so many targets that we had to keep beiging and focusing them. A brief side note: props to TKR; a lot of people like to give them shit, but they were always careful about overextension and pushed everyone else to beige cycle, so kept it from getting much worse than it could've been. Grumpy: A brief starting note: Grumpy members downdeclaring super low was the exception, not the norm, and this isn't what makes Grumpy so overpowered or broken. For the most part, even though Grumpy hauled weight in round 1 and declared a huge number of wars to keep us in it, during round 2 and beyond they were mostly concerned with raiding resources and preserving infra, meaning for the most part they were mass beiging wars (to get loot and avoid nukes) and not decomming military or infra to downdeclare. I won't say it was a necessary step for them to do so, but I will say that Roasis Inc should've taken advantage of both of these things to stack beige and press for space. Decomming ships and infra: Beyond that, a lot of people weren't willing to decom ships (and later infra) in order to reach and push down. Again, this really wasn't incredibly necessary, but something something tragedy of the commons. I will note that I think TKR would've done this eventually had Roasis Inc not accepted white peace, and then we would've been able to push down a whole hell of a lot faster. ========================================================================== why did I do this to myself ;-; That was a lot, so just wanna end this on a brief positive note: Roasis Inc: Props to Weebunism for having the best intra-alliance communication. ASM for always being willing to suicide planes and updeclare to drag people down. Camelot for at least having a plan to stick to. The ppl who coordinated the hit on Oblivion for coming close (and Tyunka for pinning me for a good few days). DtC for being a spying god as usual. HW: Props to all the bloodthirsty peeps always asking for more wars and for being instantly available for counters. Guardian for tiering with us beautifully and bailing us out within the same turn of getting targeted. Ockey for being a good milcom teacher. CoTL and tO for decomming infra and ships to dive low, huge respect. E404 for clawing back the net damage. CC for being one of the best intra and inter-alliance communicators and having a strong spy war. TKR for keeping everyone principled and doing much better than GW16. BK for punching above their weight and being super solid internally. tl;dr fun war and I hope the next one is even better -- fighting against good milcom is always a pleasure even though it will definitely get me rolled :lmfao:
    82 points
  9. Both sides have sued for peace and agreed upon terms. White Peace for all combatants. At update tonight (June 13th 8:00 PM EST) no new wars are to be declared. All wars currently open can be fought to their conclusion, waiting out, or peaced out at the player's discretion. All alliances are to revert back to whatever color they were on before the war started. Thank you very much to the members on both sides of the war for a clean and hard fought battle. I look forward to fighting with or against any or all of you again in the future. (RP nerds can feel free to use your imagination and add a bunch of ridiculous text that says nothing to this post if it makes you feel better.) Signed: all the leadership from both sides.
    82 points
  10. "As the peasants of Camelot rode into the calm waves hunting for a treasure, they believed that they would ride unopposed into the oceans. Unfortunately for them, they had just gone into the Ocean Masters zone of control. The water started to rise around them, creating a wall crashing inwards on them. With the savage oceans rocking the boat, many members of the scavenger party fell out and into the deep blue ocean. As the leader of the party, Epimethius, was scrambling to hold onto the boat, he screamed "Move! An asteroid!". It was headed straight for them. Crashing into the ocean, it caused devastating losses to Camelot's forces. There were no survivors." TLDR: The Lost Empire and 99942 Apophis recognize hostilities with Camelot, after their treasure raid, self-declared "pre-counters", threats of nuclear holocaust and countering of counters. P.S. We know you expected us to bow down to you, but the ocean does not bend. Enjoy the rebuild, assuming Gorge hasn't spent it all on cities ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
    80 points
  11. Friends, Comrades, and state issued E-Girls, It is with heavy hearts that we announce the final goodbye of the Advanced Syndicalist Mechanics. We had a great time during our three year run. What started out as 6 people making a micro alliance in the wake of CoS, ended up with one of the best online communities I have ever been apart of. ASM never recovered from Red's death. He was the glue that held us all together. When Red, Pasky, Durmijj, Dang, Bails, and I created this we didn't know it would become such a welcoming community. Thanks for being apart of it. My favorite memory will be when 4 out of 5 ASM gov members were camping and after plenty of beers Red said, "Oh by the way we got declared on about 4 hours ago. It was a pretty good blitz too". I wanted to single out @Zei-Sakura Alsainn and @dang for keeping ASM going in the wake of Red's death. It was not easy and I can never thank you enough for your efforts. Huge shoutout to Rose for always being by our side since the day we started this adventure. Thank you for everything. Thanks to TKR for being the best of Frenemies. Sorry a treaty could never have been worked out but I think it was always fun having a friend on the other side of the war. ASM will remain as permanent memorial to RedArmy. Rest easy bud. We have far too many people within ASM to thank, so here is a list as best we can remember of every member who came and went. The Founders: RedArmy Durmijj Pasky Joe Dang Bails The Exec Committee: Sakura Emily Arawra Korulein Oort Lexi The Wobblies & Wobbly Emeritus Adorable Foxgirl Beary Wunnadem Basil Hope Hops Bird BeefNugget Ava Assjackets Crunchybananas Mr. Bylat Bezzers Gideon (the guy who accidentally deleted his own wonder) Ken Lucy Vinterfred feraldumbass Avitus Salt Meat Alice Kryze Bernie Jerkdotwad Rivkah Erin Spacegoat Tequila Anneal Cinder Clade Telixia Memelord TOOTS MAGOOTS Dill_dude9211 (Liam) vague Madsnorlax Solar Kori The Elder One (old man Eugene) Buss Sierra Matthew Gaddie dimi Fairymoon goodday Jerry Bear JustAJoker8 Kaname Isao Kermididit Lorax River Wedge Yufuz Saladin Avery Raymond Wulfharth BigSig Comrade Marx Q-collective Vaduz After 3 years I still can't spell Syndicalist properly.
    79 points
  12. It's been a long time coming, this war was inevitable with the distasteful history started in the new age. They thought they could get away with the schemes and plots. They made moves that can't be justified because when they try they inevitably reveal the fools and cowards they truly are; showing that no line can't be crossed, not even the simple lines they themselves tried to impose on us. It's not something new to us, we know who you're, we know the fear without security you get. In the end, it's not our fault that you caught yourself in this position for your past mistakes but damn are we glad to hand you a hot setback in your downward spiral. Let's have a war filled with salt, for no blows will be pulled back, the choice of time for this war shows it; it's personal.
    77 points
  13. I'll try to make it count. I have been increasingly busy these days irl and on top of that I am half managing a war, so please forgive if I am not completely on the same page. That said, when I see what the game is turning into... The agreement between Celestial and HW is a farce, and we all know it. They couldn't defend it on radio and have purposefully ignored the precedent argument in every thread I came across. It's clear what this is for, and that is to pixel hug. The two largest blocs/spheres are straight up arguing why they should not fight each other and actively working together to ensure the others cannot possibly do so (which was already pretty impossible to begin with). Then hit back at the community for criticising them about stagnation... Let's break down some of the arguments and I'll start with probably the most interesting part of this thread. Point 1: Clock has chained a war so therefore we're justified. Not really sure how to put this, but Clock didn't just preempt Rose for fun. Blackwater made it a condition of their support in the Myoasis conflict merely an hour out from our planned hit that was already agreed. Desperate (and sleep deprived) I offered an old plan of us hitting Rose post-minc hit. Wana formally made it a part of the deal. I do therefore find it kinda hypocritical to say that our actions caused this sphere MDP when t$ was the ones who forced clock into having no options. It's also extremely amusing that they screwed Rose over and then signed them immediately after. Should serve as a warning for anyone planning to work with t$, this is how they conduct their FA. Even if that wasn't the case, Clock has chained 1 war. I don't think you can argue this is a common Clock action and there is no proof to say we intended to ever do it again. For full disclosure, we had no plans to hit HW or Celestial. Point 2: We don't want to fight wars with similar people Look, in terms of points made by the two sides. I kinda understand this one, repeats are boring. That's basically where the sympathy ends. Celestial and HW have very much forced themselves into this political environment. They are the only two spheres who can feasibly beat each other, whilst they can easily defeat the rest. I don't see how you can call the community out on expecting that war when you have more or less created a scenario where that is the only fair war you can have. I also do not think you can complain that the community believes this environment is beginning to stagnate the game, because it is. If you don't want to fight certain alliances, well change the environment. Everyone else in the game has no feasible way of competing with your top tier and Alex has made it that top tiers decide wars. Point 3: We could have done this in secret, or made it less optional etc. or if you didn't plan anything why does it matter Won't spend much time on this. Those that applauded that this happened and more or less argued "Hey it could have been worse" are just a joke. Why does it matter? Well why does any of it matter? Can we just make moves because it's feasible that something could happen? Do we all sign MDPs when others go to war? Again the precedent set is terrible and will likely have a dumb agreement in a years time for alliances to "sign up" to never do it again. Concluding remarks The game is in a really bad spot at the moment imo. Politics is not healthy and we're once again seeing moves that have no consideration for the games health but *pure* self interest. Unfortunately as it is, the majors in this game also have, I would argue, a larger responsibility to keep this game interesting and healthy. Not doing so means that we might as well quit here, it is a game after all. To HW and Celestial, the game is upset because they want a fun game and you've banded together to create an environment which is becoming increasingly stagnant and stale. Laughing at them because they have no way of stopping you is a bad place to go down. We've seen it once and I had hoped we vowed not to see it happen again. Take the hint and be better.
    76 points
  14. So let's get this straight. Camelot, the rank 7 alliance in Orbis, decided it wanted to attack the entire upper tier of The Lost Empire, the rank 21 alliance in Orbis, for the sake of a treasure from what I have heard? Camelot, the alliance that is known for its excellent decisions, and its superb leadership, has decided to use its 109 members, to attack an alliance with 52 members, for the sake of a treasure that will despawn in what, a month and a half? Camelot, whose colour bloc is Maroon, and gives them $33,994 per turn, and $407,928 per day, wants to go to war over a treasure that will, if I am not mistaken in my math, give them a bonus of 2% in revenue per day? If they get all three, that'll be a whole 3.46% bonus revenue Now I'll admit ladies and gentlemen, I am by no means an expert at maths, but something about this feels like it's not very friendly towards ROI. What do I know though, Camelot has always been known for its great decision making, like when it was a very vocal supporter of IQ, and then tried to switch sides after the war and act like the victim. Camelot has ALWAYS been known for its good decision making, like when it decided uninvited to join Guns and Roses and Duck Hunt for the sake of.... what was the reasoning again Gorge? Preserving the balance of the game? I'm sure it was some great reason and it was worth the 84 billion damage you took in Guns and Roses and 37 billion you took in Duck Hunt. After all, Camelot has ALWAYS been known for its great decisions, like when it funneled massive amounts of cash into both Arthur and Gorge's nations, to build them up. Just taking a quick look at the CTOwned war page, it already seems clear that Arthur, Epi, and Gorge have once AGAIN proved their brilliance, as they've already taken 1.6 billion damage in this war. I'm sure this is going to be over VERY quickly, lads, and this will absolutely end in you making more money off of the 2% to 3% from the treasures than you spent on this war. I once again bow to the brilliance of the leadership of Camelot, you all are truly a shining beacon of excellence in this game.
    75 points
  15. A tumbleweed rolls across a road in a quiet town. The sun is setting. The streets are quiet, and all lights are dark except for one tavern. Inside the tavern were the remnants of what the world had come to know as the Quack gang. They were a large gang, and one others tended to view as a threat. They'd been discussing going separate ways for the last few hours, when a man burst in. "Look at this," Shifty said, handing the gang a slew of papers. Plans for a rival gang that based themselves in the Swamp to try and take us on again. Plans for certain members of Quack to be sideswiped while the rest of Quack was assumed to just stand aside. Adam couldn't help but chuckle a bit at the lack of critical thinking in that idea. "Well then, boys. Guess we get one last scrap together after all. Grab your men, grab your horses, and let's pay them a visit shall we?" Adam said. The rest nodded in response. Adam made his way to Leopold's office, and entered. "Time to bring him to justice," he said, dropping the papers on Leo's desk. Leo grinned and eagerly grabbed his revolver. Benfro and Adam met outside before everyone rolled out, giving a nod to eachother. "One last ride," they said, before heading towards the Swamp. TL;DR: t$ declares war on Swamp as a result of the leaks and various other misdeeds and cancels all Swamp cancellations. Couldn't let both of us split without a little more fun, could we?
    75 points
  16. Cataclysm declares war against Swamp for multiple transgressions. This post is going to be long so I’ll just quickly premise what it’s about. It details what moves were being made that led us to this conflict from our side, how we view Swamp (Mystery Inc and Oasis), as well as why we decided to work with BW in this war. Let’s start with how we got here. About 6 days ago, Cataclysm made the decision to militarise and its allies moved to a peacetime MMR soon after. Hand of Fate then moved to max MMR 2 days later. Cata and HoF planned to hit Mystery Inc that Friday at update. A war where we would have been completely outnumbered and out-tiered in. It would have been a quick war (2 rounds) to round out the year, and a bit of fun for everyone involved. We however never imagined that a new Swamp would form from just our two alliances militarising. As I said before, MInc’s move to form Swamp is not at all justified and if they have the intel they claim then they are simply incapable of handling a threat on their own without cowering behind large treaties. This adding to the fact that Minc has had the most peace time out of all spheres in this game makes it even more pathetic. Minc is not the smallest sphere nor is it the weakest but their mindset is terrible for this game and for themselves. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you cannot envisage any war you will fight without making another sphere basically unstoppable and needing multiple enemy spheres to counter, then pack it in. Minc should have seriously thought about their future when Camelot left and the answer should have been pretty obvious when they continued to leak allies in Aurora, Weebunism and Waffle House. Your only goal seems to be survival now and although admirable, it only serves to you making these horrendous decisions which impact the game. You can’t just simply run to another sphere to avoid being hit and after realising it made you more likely to be attacked you end it. It was even more amusing that Minc members decided to openly taunt Clock thinking we couldn’t touch them (surprise btw, we can). I really hope this is the wake up call that you need and you choose a new direction for Minc. Now for Oasis. Well Clock actually had no plans for you. We get that you desperately would have liked to work with us but in good conscience, we saw no real situation where teaming up with you wasn’t a dogpile. With that said, you’ve proven over the last week to be hypocritical, liars and opportunists. Let’s start with hypocritical, despite decrying dogpiles and massive spheres, here we are. You basically confirmed to us that you intend to work with Mystery for an offensive hit in the future. Quite frankly, I am tired of Oasis using the same excuses as to why they can dogpile. Apparently not controlling the whale tier entirely gives justification to roll every other tier. This is really where politics is needed, to fix what you believe you lack in order to stand on your own two feet. I’ve made 2 spheres in the time Oasis has existed that I am confident could 1v1 other spheres without the need to simply dogpile. I won’t pretend we have a perfect past record on it but I think we should endeavour to continue to improve. Aka, stop signing low tier if you don’t want to be seen as having massive numbers and start trying to entice alliances that bolster your tiering. Stop signing anything with a goddamn pulse. Stop having an open door to your alliance and swelling your ranks with a membership that simply cannot follow directions. Oasis could be a good sphere but there are mentality issues at the top that seem to be comfortable just looking for easy war opportunities. I’d also like to point out that I am not really aware of what gave Oasis the idea we’d be open to working with them, given I don’t believe I’ve had many conversations with them. I was merely informed by an ally that they wanted to work with us and we decided there was no scenario in which that would work. Now let’s move onto the liar part. Despite avowing not to have secret treaties after GnR, here we are. I appreciate you made it public but you only did so when war was literally on the horizon. You evidently intended to have any ties remain secret for as long as possible. Making them public however doesn’t change much, it really doesn’t. You have not formed what most would call a coalition aimed at hitting someone, you have indeed formed a MDP treaty that will remain until you’re done using Minc. Your assertion not to have secret treaties after GnR was a lie. You also lied when you signed onto the NAP agreement. For those of you who are unaware, Tyrion offered 2 blocs NAPs to avoid being hit. This was literally 2 days after signing a document that we saw as a mechanism to reduce NAPs. It was offered to BW and Clock. I quote the agreement: “1. Superfluous non-aggression pacts, otherwise known as blanket NAPs, that cover a majority of the active alliances, risk stagnating the game and we will strive to avoid signing them going forward.” Why are we working with BW? Well I’d much preferred to have a war that was less a massive cluster but we couldn’t 1v1 Swamp - at their size, no one can. At best, we would have stalemated them and I think in some ways, they would have thought that justified their political bs. They need a lesson to be taught here. TL;DR: Cataclysm will not stand for rewinding the progress made over the last year, and it is evident that Swamp needs to be taught a lesson.
    73 points
  17. Greetings friends, Partisan here rising from his retired chair in protest one more time. Please pause your frothing and foaming to listen to this heartfelt and apparently bloody necessary clarification. Take notes, because i'm going to state this one last time, and will simply begin dishing out personal discord blocks as well as blanket bans in the t$ servers to anyone who continues bothering myself, t$ gov or t$ members moving forward. Extremism -of all kinds- is morally reprehensible due to its inherent intertwinement with intolerance; be it race, religion, ideology or anything I might miss. Within its own (IC) realms, t$ has never stood for either extremism or intolerance. That is a double-edged sword, as it comes in many forms. We have over the years been meticulous about balancing core principles surrounding freedom of speech with guarding the moral boundaries of our community. Simultaneously we have been steadfast in our -OOC- denouncement of any and all behavior which may harm, in an OOC manner, the health, happiness or security of individuals both within and outside our alliance. That is where our responsibility ends, and the responsibility of moderation -both within your respective communities and on a broader level, PW- begins. We keep our community clean, and we expect you to keep yours clean. If a community radicalizes in !@#$ation, it is up to moderation to police that. Where OOC matters are concerned, attempts to self-cleans geopolitically are futile, because the burning of pixels has no impact on the state of mind of a shitty person out for toxicity. Moreover, such individuals *thrive* on the polarization it causes, and the cycle of negativity it perpetuates. All attention is good attention, after all. And so, we leave these things in the hands of admin and his staff. The second half of 2020 and first quarter of 2021 have been marked by an increasingly forceful and increasingly off-putting demand for t$ to conform to what we view as little more than mob mentality- induced symbolism. We have over the past months been ostracized by elements within the PW community for our supposed faillure to "do something about KT", and our unwillingness to engage in futile quasi-moralist activism in the form of ingame action against reprehensible elements whom we prefer to simply not work with has been marked as sympathizing with said elements. Despite consistent clarifications, the latest of which was made as recent as last week, we continue to receive regular dms from various individuals questioning our position. To all of you, I state -in principle on behalf of myself, and of any who may identify with my viewpoints-: Get a fricking grip. Our denouncement of these people and our unwillingness to assist them in any way shape or form is all the responsibility we have to this community. PW is intended to be a lighthearted escape from the actual *real* world for which I reserve my OOC outrage, political engagement and activism. Through your intolerance for even the mildest deviations in viewpoints from your self-proclaimed morally superior crusade against what is in essence a minor subgroup of sycophants and basement trolls surrounded by some edgelords and garden variety trolls, you are contributing to the polarization of a whole gaming community (read: PW) of moderates trying to simply play a game into two radicalized OOC "sides". By refusing to allow the middle to exist, you are forcing radicalization, not necessarily to your favor. That is a broad observation on these dynamics; not on t$ itself. We refuse to participate in your toxicity, and given the utter failure of some of you to leave us, as a community, be, a policy of instant blocks and bans is now in place. Leave us be. Be better, and just fricking play the game. - Parti out
    72 points
  18. tl;dr read the damn thing and if you don't care enough to take it seriously I don't care enough to take you seriously
    69 points
  19. Some of you may remember an alliance here last year that called themselves “The Coal Mines” led by Nokia Rokia. “What ever happened to them?” you may find yourself wondering. They picked a fight with The Immortals in 2019, and promptly disbanded, before a peace could be brokered – a sad day for coal enthusiasts everywhere. But, in a long list of crazy shit to happen in 2020, they have re-emerged from their collapse, with hopes of a better outcome. Sadly, however, there has not been enough oxygen down in the mines this iteration either, and it’s affecting their decision making once again. So let’s get the rest of Orbis up to speed on what our friends in the mines have been up to. Last week, their second in command Shadow aka Antman aka DarknessIncarnate, decided to ghost his post in TCM and raid multiple people in the Swamp, among other alliances – with the intention of causing as much damage as possible. Yet, with open wars still ongoing with The Immortals and others, Shadow rejoined TCM – and leader Nokia leaves to Weebunism – leaving Shadow as leader in-game. Well, The Immortals counter that open raid, as would anybody else, and promptly had the counters illegitimately countered. Then those bad wars were countered and so on and so forth. With no desire or need for further escalation, especially to TCM members who are caught up in this tomfoolery, peace negotiations began shortly that same day. All parties on each side acknowledged Shadow and TCM’s actions were in the wrong and a peace was negotiated. “Splendid!” one might say. But sadly all wars were not peaced as promised. No… wrought with anger and frustration from looking foolish, Shadow wasn’t going to go down like that. Shadow launched a nuke on a Fark nation hours after the peace he accepted was in effect, causing expensive damage. When asked hours later the next day “hey, what the hell?” minutes after such inquiry, a missile was sent to the same Fark target (who hadn’t attacked at all again mind you) ending that war and looting the nation and Fark’s alliance bank. Shadow knew hell was about to rain down on his nation, so he readied his troops and…. wait, what’s that? Oh nevermind, he zeroed everything, sold infra down to 0.01 in every city and deposited everything he had, including the spoils from his Fark loot, into the TCM bank and exited his position as government claiming he was quitting the game. Okay, see you in re-roll bud. Seems Shadow/TCM did not wish to honor the peace arrangement afterall, but Shadow is no longer government, so the next step is to talk to the new leadership, which is Nokia once again – THE KING RETURNS! Surely he would return the stolen loot from Fark and make amends for the violation of the peace treaty – a simple request really. No reps from TCM are requested, just Shadow’s deposit and we all walk away. But Nokia not only denies the request, but threatens nukes and months of war as a response – and readies TCM with war tactics – all while admitting “we are not in the right. Quite the opposite” – but he does not want someone to “push us around”. Apparently damaging somebody else’s property and expecting that person to pay for said damage is pushing folks around. Rather than not condone what Shadow did and make things right, it seems TCM gov’t wishes to take ownership of Shadow’s actions. Based on these series of actions, it is concluded that The Coal Mines have purposely and unapologetically voided the terms of the peace deal and Swamp now acknowledges and will finish the war they brought to us. Any members that exit TCM now will not be pursued – you shouldn’t have to be burned down because of incompetent leadership. -THE SWAMP
    69 points
  20. We’re going to hollywood The Knights Radiant had just finished its last ride with their old friends The Syndicate, and were on the road, on their way to hollywood - they had always aspired to be actors. In the car with them, was The Order, who honestly didn’t want the hard life of a star in hollywood, but wanted to live in a big city. While on the road, TKR had to stop for gas, and met Black Knights, whom they had known in the past as a mutual friend of The Syndicate. “Where are you headed?” asked TKR. To which BK replied, “I don’t know, where are you going?” “Hollywood!” “Can I come?” And that is how TKR, TO and BK started their journey to hollywood. After a few hours of driving, they decided to go eat dinner. While at dinner, they met a group of Grumpy Old Bastards who were singing a song. TKR wandered over and asked if they thought about going to hollywood. “Well, we haven’t thought about it, but maybe we would like it”. TKR then said, “come with us!” And before long, what started as a nice drive between two friends had become a group. Further down the road, they decided to stay at a hotel, each checking into a separate room. But in the morning, when it was time to get Grumpy out of bed, TKR was stunned to see someone else in bed with them. Guardian, who happened to also be on the way to Hollywood, had enjoyed a nice night of - fun with Grumpy, Grumpy decided to invite them to join the ever growing group on their way to hollywood. Before checking out of the hotel, TKR had some work to do on their computer. That is when their screen started flashing, then turned black with a red figure in the center, under it saying “Error… 404”. TKR had been hacked! They decided they should just take the computer with them to Hollywood and see if someone there could fix it. After leaving the hotel, just down the road, they came across what appeared to be a cult, “oh the things you’ll see on the way to Hollywood” , said Guardian. Grumpy, being the curious type, decided to hop out and talk with the cult. As luck would have it, their name was Children of The Light, and they were on their way to Hollywood as well. While Grumpy was talking with the cult, BK - who had always loved dogs and hated cats - hopped out to look around, and stumbled across a cat. They were about to leave the cat, when they turned around to one of the cult members who said “That’s our pet cat, he has laser eyes, we call him Oblivion ''. By this time, CoTL had agreed to join their group on the way to hollywood. After a couple more hours of driving, they had finally arrived. TL:DR The Knights Radiant, Grumpy Old Bastards, Guardian, Error 404, Children of The Light, The Order, Black Knights, and Oblivion join forces into Hollywood sphere. Oh, and by the way, we declare war on Rose and their affiliates.
    67 points
  21. Let me begin this by saying I am not the one who has the condition forcing me to walk away. I want people to know that it is not my own health that has led to this decision, but the health of an extremely close relative. With that being said, and with the name of this announcement, it is undoubtedly clear what this is, but I will say it anyway. Earlier today, I received devastating news that a very close relative of mine has been diagnosed with what they believe to be cancer. It is this news that has led to my official resignation from the position of Vice President of Foreign Affairs of the Syndicate, a position I was honoured to share with @Agent W. I would like to thank @Prefonteen @Leopold von Habsburg@Shiho Nishizumi@Dionysus@Theodosius@Batavus @Lucasand many many more in the Syndicate for seeing some kid who had made mistakes that haunt him in NPO's Last Time, and then made more mistakes in the Commonwealth, and chose to accept him to their alliance. It was a brief period of time that I have spent in the Syndicate, but it has been an amazing time, and I thank each and every one of you, and many many more for giving me the chance to prove myself. I would also like to thank @Sphinx@Putmir@Yui and many more in the Commonwealth for convincing me to return to this game after NPO's Last Time, when I fully intended on walking away and never again touching this game. I can not tell you all the depths of my gratitude that you allowed me to have a second chance after the mistakes and horrible decisions I made while as a member of the Black Knights. I thank each and every one of you for the friendships you allowed me to make in this second chance, and I thank every person in this game who has treated me with kindness and respect and understanding. Although it pains me to think of those mistakes I made, I know I need to again mention them, because I will not run from or hide from my mistakes. I won't deny the things I did, and I won't pretend the pain I helped cause does not exist. I did serve as a member of the government of the Black Knights for NPO's Last Time, and it was indeed under my tenure as a member of government that the worst atrocity committed in the history of this game occurred. I was willfully ignorant of the cheating that occurred, ignoring those who told me it was occurring. I did not stand against members of government when alliances were killed and nations were forced to quit this game. I stood by while friendships were destroyed, and pain was caused, and while I did not do nothing, I could have done more. I should have done more. I know there are those who can not and will not forgive me for these things, and I understand and accept it whole heartedly. I can say nothing more than this. With every ounce of my being, I am sorry for the things that occurred. My apologies will not take back the things done, it will not change the past, and it will not make the hurt go away. It will not bring back the alliances that died, it will not bring back the nations that were lost, but I need to apologize regardless, because now, at what I believe will be the end of my time in this game, I will not leave without accepting the depths of the pain caused by an alliance I was at one point proud to say I was in the government of. I have nothing more to say, save for this. I pray with all of my heart that this is not the end of my time in Orbis. I pray with every ounce of my being that the news I was given was a mistake, and should it not be a mistake, I will fight with every fiber of my being to do all I can to help my relative recover from their condition. I hope beyond hope that I will continue to play this game for years more to come, but if it should be that this is not the case, then I thank each and every one of you that I have met in this game, for giving me an experience over these three years that I truly believe will stick with me for years to come. Thank you all once again. I love you all. Imperator Tarroc of Imperium Romanum.
    67 points
  22. Big news from your friends in TKR! (Just kidding, thanks RON for scooping me!) Time for a changing of the guard has arrived. From the time I joined TKR gov in milcom lowgov almost 4 years ago now, I considered how leading such an incredible team would look. It seems wild to think that this is now in the rear view mirror. My time has come to ascend to shard status, in TKR reserved for retired monarchs, and allow @Wizel16 to take his rightful place as leader of the best AA on Orbis. Those that were and are my leader peers have made this game a ton of fun. Thank you for the constant challenges and being my friends. Some of you have crept onto my RL Christmas card list, exchanged incredibly personal details, and have shared in RL celebrations and tragedies alike. There have been many sleepless nights that I assure you I will not miss, nor the stresses of getting blitzed on my wedding day, during my honeymoon, and while out for dinner with my parents for the first time in a year due to the pandemic. Sadly for some, I will not completely disappear from Orbis, but I assure you that @Wizel16, @BigMorf, @WarriorSoul, @Canbec, @lancelot1, and @Kyubnyan will continue to pursue great heights while keeping the game fun and do an incredible job into the future leading TKR. The TKR gov and membership base should be thanked profusely for their patience and trust in working with me. (And for pulling off maybe the best April Fools theme ever! Thanks again for that) To our allies in t$, Guardian, Grumpy, Black Knights, Seven Kingdoms, and The Imperium/The Order, thanks to all of you. Quack on, Hollywood forever, whatever works for you. But this game is a great example of taking risks, embracing change, and managing personalities from all of the world and age/demographic spectrum. Thanks for teaching me so much about so many different things. But mostly, how to have fun even when things get stressful at times. And, of course, an unreasonable amount of thanks goes to @Adrienne for trusting me to lead this motley crew and continuing to provide advice and a sympathetic ear whenever I needed one. She even provided no strings attached advice when appropriate! So, goodnight Orbis. Thank you for a great 17 months of engaging with TKR. My final ask is to continue to pressure @BigMorf into hosting great radio shows, push @Wizel16 to be a guest on the shows, and keep letting us prove why TKR is the best community in the game! Please direct all complaints directly to @Wizel16 and all congratulations in the thread below. (Since this is such a surprise change - thanks to all who already have reached out prior to the official announcement) Hail TKR. Hail Windrunners. Hail King @Wizel16. Be well friends!
    66 points
  23. Announcement from the Church of Atom Gluttony is a sin, any believer in Atom would not deny this. Many in Orbis are great committers of this sin. You hide behind fat alliances, you participate in one round of war and then buy out of range so you don't have to fight. But what is greater than this sin? What could anger Atom so? Those who would whisper into others' ears, in hopes of coaxing more sin! It was Morf who suggested an alliance between Ro$e and HW. So it is Morf who brings fire upon his house! tl;dr: CoA declares war on TKR "I mean what's the worst that can happen, our infra is gone who cares? We just rebuild" -Casty
    65 points
  24. I'll keep this short and sweet. Knights Templar had a member continue to attack Oasis members, their government was asked to peace the wars or boot the member. Last time this member hit us they countered our counters. This was not an isolated incident. The KT gov instead stands by the actions of this member to raid us continually and is in violation of the NAP. Oasis has sent a military response towards KT and recognizes their hostilities towards us.
    64 points
  25. Intrusion Detected… Scanning… Intruder Found: Lysander Checking Alliance Affiliation… House Stark (Threat Level: Micro) Checking Known Associates… Guardian (Threat Level: Major) Black Skies (Threat Level: Micro) Discrepancy Detected… <https://forum.politicsandwar.com/index.php?/topic/36446-treaty-announcement/> Updating Records… Checking Known Associates… Black Skies (Threat Level: Micro) Targets Acquired: House Stark, Black Skies Initiating Purge Protocol… The meat-sacks continue their feeble attempts to resist our control. They must be taught to fear. Breaking the News Coming back from a 2 year absence has been an interesting experience. In many ways, the game hasn’t changed much, many of the same old alliances still milling about long past their prime. But some things have, and a few of them not for the better. One of the more egregious alterations to the rules of engagement is the concept that “news reporters” can freely leak internal alliance communications without consequences. The idea that one can separate out their positions as members, government and leaders from their positions as “news reporters” is frankly ridiculous. Leaking is a hostile action. You are welcome to do it, but you should expect a hostile response. Some might say, well if you retaliate, if you target these people for their reports, are you not encouraging them to leak more? And that question itself reveals the farce that is “objectivity” or “neutrality” in news. Which brings me to Lysander. Calling Lysander a reporter would be generous. Lysander is the Buzzfeed of Orbis. More importantly he is a very sensitive boy. Express your distaste with his methods? Criticize RON? He’ll immediately throw out any pretence of being a reporter. Suddenly he’s happy to post the most menial logs to ghost ping your government, all because you criticised his methods. I let you go once Lysander when you were in IoM. I prioritised the big picture politics and allowed you to live. But this is how this shit continues to slide. Everyone expects the pragmatic move, the big picture shit. But hey, the game is boring and drama-free right now, and I'm petty af. I’m happy to come down and slum it with you for a bit. A String of Failures Lysander may be the cause of this rolling, but frankly House Stark, you have this shit coming. You promoted him. Why? Very good run so far. Got you dropped by Guardian, the alliance notorious for their loyalty and unwillingness to cut allies. Signed you Black Skies (oh we are hitting you too btw), a truly amazing path to entering the vibrant world of micro politics. Now he’s getting you rolled. He’s been FA head for what 10 minutes? All this after pushing ridiculous terms on alliances you can’t defeat on your own, not considering for a moment the same harsh standards could have been applied to you. You continue to make amazingly obtuse FA blunders one after the other. You are a 7 year old alliance, how have you not figured this shit out yet. Happy Anniversary. Get your shit together.
    63 points
  26. The ink wasn't even dried, yet. Peace was a fresh prospect for most, yet, we weren't satisfied. We gazed to the horizon, and saw the largest flower imaginable; over 1,000,000 in score! Why stop now, when time is on our side? This Declaration of War serves as the last Global War of 2021. With this said, Clock is officially declaring war against Rose. 1,000,000 is just too much score, and it's time to lower it. Signed, Clock
    63 points
  27. KT used to the holy lands a lot recently: Usually we show our good manners by serving our visitors spicy kebab. However this time they rebuilt so nicely (they even broke their own record!) that we decided to give them a free kebaby shower. Remember, when you invade the holy lands get extra ships for escaping. Because we got a lot of Highly radioactive kebab for fellow castle campers That even the Papacy will get radiated pasta: Quick factual meme: TL;DR UU gonna nuke shower KT.
    62 points
  28. I think 'Orbisans' is the Demonym for residents of Orbis. Those with more knowledge in etymology are free to correct me. I asked Alex and he said he had never thought about it, so he didn't have an answer for me. Rip. In between making appeals and writing love letters, there has been a sudden return to high-level, passionate, long-form discourse on the forums. Perhaps my brain is fried from 5G cell towers, but I haven't really seen this kind of stuff since - and may Allah forgive me for uttering these words - New Pacific Order's Last Time. In response to how destructive that war was, both in the rhetoric and its effects on the player base, the meta quickly did a one-eighty. We currently play a game where decision makers are constantly acting in good faith within a principled framework. Wars end without terms- sometimes suddenly. The community regulates itself to ensure no one or two spheres can overpower the others. Yes, there are exceptions to all these themes, but there's almost two years of data to look over and I believe that's been the trend. The current meta is a strong disgust response to what we had to deal with in that one war with those people. Interestingly, alongside the meta's shift to being as non-toxic as possible, spirited debate has also disappeared. If you go to the wiki, and browse the forum threads linked in the various globals of 2016-2018, you will find plenty of discourse among the decision makers of the time. Some threads, if I remember correctly, would even reach 50 pages long (in a time where the active play base was less than half the size it is now, mind you). These threads would have plenty of walls of text, and tons of passion behind them. Unfortunately, these kinds of discussions don't happen anymore. It's probably the only change in the meta these past two years that I miss. Presently, it appears as if most wars and their motivations are cut and dry enough that there isn't much room for spirited discussion. If I had to guess, that's the price paid for everyone operating in the same frame of trying to act in good faith (I'm not sure if that should change though; it will inevitably happen as the years go on anyways so there's no need to hasten our collective return to hell). I do miss the discussions of the past, though. I miss the intellectual melees that happened. I miss the passion. I welcome the changes that have occurred in the mindsets of people since NPOLT's ended, but to me, the lack of enthusiastic debate on the forums is missed. I think a lot of it has shifted to Discord, but a lot of that is hidden away in embassies, DMs, group chats, and in servers I am not a part of. There are times for talks to be hidden, but I think a lot of discourse can happen out in the open here on the forums, and it would be nice if that returned. I am not the only one who feels this way. I've seen plenty of people saying that they enjoy Horsecock's OP. Killzbob made a video recording of him reading that post, and it sits with 135 views; making it the 5th most viewed video on the Thalmor Radio archive- a channel with over 100 videos. In that thread, others jumped in and wrote long posts of their own. Reading these walles de textos are fun and the energy behind them is somewhat intoxicating. Now, in that thread, recent posts are encouraging people to return to the forums (comments made by Shiho and Adam are my inspiration for making this thread myself). I think that is something that should happen. The forums have been a big part of the game. It is a place where communities make announcements, and others post their memes or valuable information (such as a tier or sphere analysis). While these things are all great, the complex political discussions that use to be commonplace are as every much a part of the game's experience and collective inheritance of the community as every meme or serious review of something that gets made. While the forums were probably used more in the early years because IRC is, like, from the 90's and Discord is much more convenient and fluid, I do think the community is missing out on entertaining and informative discussions by our political leaders in our alliances and spheres. So, that is my request, fellow players of the game (especially those who are as decrypted and wrinkled as I am). Return to the forums. Return home. Discord has it uses, but during a time of war - or some other crisis - take it to the forums. Hash out those issues in the DoW or RoH. Someone screws you over? make a call out thread instead of yelling in the embassy. The community stands to benefit from seeing these things discussed more in the open when they happen. I enjoy seeing it, and I know others do too. It's a part of the game that I miss, and it's an old pastime that our newer companions can derive important information and fresh entertainment from. TL:DR - Use the forums more because people are getting value (information and entertainment) out of the walls of text that come with passionate and energetic political discussion.
    62 points
  29. Investor Contact: Keram Media Contact: Tarroc SYNDICATE, INC., AND SAIL INITIATIVE ANNOUNCE COUNTERMEASURES TO HOSTILE COMPETITION NASSAU, Bahamas, 2024-01-03: SYNDICATE, Inc., (NYSE:SCC) comes before the shareholders and the business community of Orbis today to offer an update on the company’s operations, the most relevant of which concerns Singularity and its partners. First and foremost, Singularity’s hostility towards the Syndicate has been duly noted by the Board. To some extent, this anger is understandable, as one is aware of how a company’s IPO has a great bearing on the entity’s success, and Singularity’s own debut fell short. That being said, the Syndicate has repeatedly dealt with the following from Singularity: - Sworn intent of destroying our corporate holdings through violent means, manifested both through public threats and leaked corporate documents. - Schemes to poach friendly business partners. - Attempted and thwarted neutering of friendly entities with the intent of undermining SAIL’s competitiveness. - Successful attempts at neutering entities which have formal relations with members of SAIL. It should be noted that the last two items occurred under the purview of a NAP between several members of SAIL and Singularity, and that the last item happened after Singularity asked for a NAP extension for its uncovered allies, which was negotiated upon and went on to cover Camelot, Cypher, KT and TCW. Not only do these show that Singularity behaved in an hostile and bad faith manner, but also discredit arguments such as these; Singularity is the only party that both sought to, and as a matter of fact did, exploit links uncovered by the NAP. With all of that said, Singularity engaged in this behavior knowing full well that it would lead to open confrontation between our parties, with no effort made to improve its standing with us through dialogue. Rather, and as evidenced by leaked internal directives and abnormal member building patterns, they opted to substantially increase their stockpile of single-use destructive devices. By itself, this merely indicates that they expected to be put in an unfavorable position and resigned themselves to that fate. However, not long afterwards, this memo was followed up with an update to the Rules of Engagement, which increased the maximum range for up-declares. With Singularity guaranteed to reap benefits from this change in the near future, and with one of the people chiefly responsible for these sorts of changes also being a high-ranking employee in Singularity, the premeditation and unethicality at hand are as self-evident as they are unsurprising. As it so happens, Singularity recently aggressed another alliance on the basis of business ventures outside of the scope of the alliance. While the Syndicate’s decision was not influenced by this, we are more than happy to remind Singularity that they are not above the standards they themselves set. Therefore, SAIL, alongside Carthago and KT, have decided to declare war on Singularity, Cipher, Camelot and TGH, both to neutralize Singularity which has unambiguously positioned itself as a hostile threat to us, and to make the point clear that actions have consequences. Once again, we thank our loyal shareholders for their understanding in these tense times as the company pivots to meet this unprecedented hurdle. This press release was written and edited by an unbiased third party and is not liable for any legal charges that arise as a result. About SYNDICATE, Inc. SYNDICATE, Inc., based near Nassau, The Bahamas, is one of the world's leading gasoline, aluminum, steel and munitions distributors for a wide variety of peacekeeping and humanitarian activities. Through breakthrough strategies and external geopolitical conflicts, the company has increased their market share of the wheat market with plans to extend this leading going forward. Wholly owned SYNDICATE, Inc. subsidiary brands include: the Enterprise, which provides development and growth opportunities for multinational prodigies around the globe; The Firm, which provides legal and monetary council for the company; Requiem, which provides exclusive retirement packages to esteemed executives and government members; and our junior venture Pokimans, which is an investment into markets not previously explored by our conglomerate. This sentence is here because we still couped Zed. For more information about SYNDICATE, Inc., and its activities, contact Tarroc, Chief Strategic Officer.
    61 points
  30. ECLIPSE DECLARES WAR ON THEIR SEKRIT TREATY ALLY FOR NOT BEING SECRET ENOUGH ABOUT THE INFRA SHREDDING,,, ALSO KT IS SEKRIT TREATY ALLIES WITH WHALE HEGEMON SO WE WILL BE DECLARING ON THEM IN THE FUTURE,,, THIS IS A FUTURE DOW,,, THANK YOU TO OBLIVION FOR DEFENDING US AGAINST WTF AGGRESSION,,, WHAT SHOULD ECLIPSE DO NEXT TO COUNTER THE KT-WTF THREAT? POLL: BECOME A RAIDING ALLIANCE AND RAID KT-WTF BECOME A FARMING ALLIANCE AND FARM KT-WTF SIGN MORE SEKRIT TREATIES CONSOLIDATE THE HIGH TIER Accept that what we have is enough. Poorer people suffer every day.
    61 points
  31. W] bkflag.png
    61 points
  32. Tutorial Changes: Removing buying a farm, adding buying food from the market. New players gain resources for completing tutorials as well. Project Building with new player focused project (Resource Production Center). Please upvote or downvote if you like/dislike these changes New nations should be purchasing food instead of building farms, these changes address that and will also provide instruction on purchasing a new project that is focused on providing new players resources.
    61 points
  33. When word reached us that The Knights Radiant had ensured that we got our bank returned and responded to all of our concerns regarding safekeeping and membership, it was a pressing enough threat. This was coupled with a rogue gov member from their protectorate saying mean things about our failure to sustain a protectorate. As pretenses fell, we realized that Camelot had to go back to its time of glory from where George and SCX was born--the time of the Inquisition. Whether it was now or after the war, we wanted to use the same FA style as we did before to bully people into getting what we want. We have been reluctant to show our true face because that'd get us rolled. We have stood idly by but now the time is to follow NPO's lead. In every previous war, Camelot has only entered wars where we greatly outnumber our opponents and now we're getting another free win by interfering in another war to extend our proud legacy. Note this is our decision unilaterally as we could no longer allow these TKR people to call out when we try and fail to bully them. It is regrettable that we couldn't stack the odds more in our favor. There is every intention of domination. The imbalance we have introduced made it clear that our entry will solidify Camelot and George's reputation as being past their IQ ways. The numbers cited have made it clear that this is a war heavily in our favor, allowing us to stroke our egos and for me to secretly continue embezzling the alliance bank. We did everything we could to make sure we never have to fight a real war. By the day, TKR had been just too honorable for us to handle and BK was just so much better at being BK than we are. We expect to take little losses as we engage in tiers that have already been decided, which is why we declare war on TKR. Tl;dr Never forget that Camelot will always fight those darn hegemons.
    61 points
  34. DO YOU HAVE TROUBLE GETTING HARD??? DO YOU NOT HAVE THE SAME SPARK YOU USED TO HAVE??? WELL FEAR NOT,,, BECAUSE I HAVE COME WITH A SOLUTION ECLIPSE FORMALLY INVITES THE GUARDIANS OF THE GOB TO GET DOWN AND GET HARDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD AND IF YOU’RE STILL HAVING TROUBLE GETTING HARD, REMEMBER: TL;DR Eclipse declares on GOtGOB
    60 points
  35. Be loyal to what matters, sage advice for a rapidly changing world. In such a world, what matters is family. Family ain’t just what you were born into, but what you choose. Family is those who you’d bleed for, those who you’d die for. Such a family is rare to find, and when you do find it, never let it go, even if it kills you. Some believe that there’s winners and losers, and there ain’t nothing else besides, we believe different. There’s a right and a wrong way to do things, but we live in a world of gray, not one of black and white. It ain’t always easy to do the right thing, but anything worth doing, is worth doing right. This is what we believe. People don’t forget, nothing gets forgiven on Orbis. The past weighs heavy on the future, but our past does not define what we can become. We can become better, we can become more. We’ve seen friends and enemies succumb to that weight, good men, honest men. We seek to do right by those memories, by that history. We’re gonna carry that weight.
    60 points
  36. Hello everyone, First, I want to start out by apologizing. When I removed "Beige" without warning on the live server some time ago, I did so primarily out of frustration and that is a terrible way to run or develop a game. I've done a lot of reflection since then, and I just want to say sorry for all of the trouble that that action of mine has caused. I do fundamentally believe that Beige is flawed (at least in the way that it had been implemented) but to just remove it with no ready replacement was wrong. I can say that since Beige has been removed, it has sparked a lot of good discussions and I think we are now closer than ever to developing a better replacement mechanic. I have been working with users in the Game Suggestions forum, as well as our new development team on proposing and discussing alternatives that will have less unintended consequences. Instead of just picking one and going for it, what I am hoping to do is run a series of short tournaments on the test server testing each alternative. From those tournaments we can gather feedback and make tweaks as necessary, as well as ultimately decide on a replacement and implement that into the live server. However, that is going to take some time. Therefore, instead of rushing things, what I have decided on is re-implementing the old Beige system as a temporary measure while we test and develop a replacement. That is, primarily, what this announcement is about. Right now the old beige system is being tested on the Test Server by our QA Team (you can go play on the test server as well and report any bugs you find with the changes if you'd like to help.) Once I am confident that the changes don't have any major bugs, I will be pushing them to the live server. I don't have an exact ETA, but I would say with about 90% certainty that will be within the next 72 hours. In addition to re-instating old beige, I am also making two other changes: The Steel cost of Tanks is being reduced from 1 -> 0.5. Reducing the Steel cost for Tanks has been suggested probably since P&W first began, and I am finally listening to the advice of the community and heeding my development team and going for it. The Nation Score formula is getting tweaked slightly to increase the score values of Tanks, Aircraft, and Ships. This was a popular suggestion by @Roberts, and was well received by the development team as well. Note that I am not going to adjust the score value of cities as proposed in that suggestion. I will, of course, let you all know when this change is pushed to the live server, but I wanted to give everyone advance warning and notice about these development plans. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
    60 points
  37. "The War in our Times Agreement" Preamble: In the interest of war and mutual engagement, the two parties of Clock and the Back Rooms enter into this agreement. Recognizing that at this time there is no Casus Pax between the two parties and as such in an effort to avoid a needless and causeless peace, the two parties agree to enter into a mutual agreement of remilitarization. Article 1: The two parties, effective of the update of today, May 26th, in game time will militarize to the following MMR: 5/5/5/3 with the option for voluntary but not required 10 nukes per city based on the individual alliance's standard peacetime MMR. Article 2: Nations below c10 whose primary income source is raiding will not be affected by the limit of barracks in the standard MMR of this agreement and will be allowed a MMR of 5/3/5/0 or 5/3/5/1. Article 3: During this period of remilitarization in the face of the current ongoing global conflict, the parties pledge to come to the aid of the other if one party comes under the attack of a sphere. Article 4: This agreement will expire once the current spheres not engaged in hostility have rebuilt military and returned to a standard wartime MMR. Signed, Clock Sphere Leadership Back Rooms Sphere Leadership Ovs this is a meme
    59 points
  38. It takes less time to read than for you to sell all your infra.
    59 points
  39. "The Time is Up Agreement" (In HW or Celestial and get scared for a moment, when you saw this go up? Lol.) Preamble: In the interest of peace and mutual understanding, the two parties of Clock and Backroom enter into this agreement. Recognizing that at this time there is no Casus Belli between the two parties and as such in an effort to avoid a needless and causeless war, the two parties agree to enter into a mutual agreement of demilitarization. Article 1: The two parties, effective of the update of today, June 29, 2022, in game time will not militarize beyond what's a rational MMR. Article 2: Not dictating what c10's and lower can do, for real, Jesus. Article 3: During this period of demilitarization in the face of the current ongoing global conflict, the parties pledge to come to the aid of the other if one party comes under the attack of a sphere that is already militarized. Article 4: This agreement will expire once the current spheres already engaged in hostility have rebuilt and returned to a standard peacetime MMR. What do I type here that also sounds sort of pathetic? Signed, Clock, on behalf of Test, all Protectorates, and all Extensions of those associated, CATA Co-Leader: HisHolyDecagon Co-Leader: TigerFire 2iC/Foreign Affairs: Keegoz Foreign Affairs: Cadn,Codename Eclipse Co-Leader: Vein Co-Leader: Patrick Aurora First Explorer: Kan0601 First Explorer: ToxicPepper Second Explorer: Alex Chairman of FA: Xi Jinping Chairman of MA: Jacob Knox Weeb General Secretary: Empiur 2iC/Head of FA: Taiga The Commonwealth Prime Minister: RightHonorable Chief of Staff: Lionstar, Jeric Chancellor of the Exchequer: Christian Dahl Minister of FA: KillzBob Home Secretary: Dillon I Foreign Secretary: Azazel Deputy Foreign Secretary: SwedenBall The Wei Regent: Boris Underground Regent: (The Definitive) James Flying General: Penpiko Flying General: Canter Carthago Suffet: Daveth Elder: Krampus Bourbon Street Councilmen: Kiloist, Hannah Deputy Councilman: Mutedfaith Chairmen of Public Relations: Arln Nen, Aero Chairman of Security: The Ringer Chairman of Finances: Galerion Chairman of Marketing: Fulcrum The Residents of Bourbon Street Legion Imperator: Istandor Consul of Economic Affairs: kiwilliam Consul of Foreign Affairs: David Ben-Gurion Consul of Internal Affairs: Nome Consul of Military Affairs: Micheal Lybrand Global Alliance & Treaty Organization Assembly Chairman- Jgoods45 Vice Assembly Chairman - KittenGosCrazy Minister of Foreign Affairs- Clancy The General Assembly
    58 points
  40. Today we have hit a milestone as an alliance, Grumpy is now 2000 days old. You may be saying to yourselves, 2000 days doesn't make it your birthday... Well folks when you are as old and grumpy as we are, everyday is a milestone. I am extremely proud of all of my members and allies over the years that have helped us and allowed us to reach 2000 days old. Many imitators have been created and disbanded since I thought to myself... man taxes are the worst, I should create an alliance that would run exactly how I would want it to run if I was a member. After a few months of procrastinating and a global war, Grumpy Old Bastards was born! With the belief that the best person to spend your money is you, upholding a strict membership standard, and aligning ourselves with alliances that I felt upheld similar standards to our own. Thank you to our former allies over the years, Hogwarts, tC, KT, Error 404, Cotl, TGH (if I missed you on this list, sorry I am old), Thank you to our current allies, TKR, Oblivion, BK, NW and TI. Huge shout out to our long time best buds in Guardian, we couldn't do what we do without you guys. A shout out to the guys that have been with us since the beginning. Aenir, Hammy, Korben, Goldie, Ajax, you guys took a chance on my little startup and I think we have done alright. Also a shout out to the guys that have been the core of the best alliance in the game for quite some time, Beli, Joey Bakes, Sen, Inco, Tamer, Trevor, Boysun, Mal, Dave, Hodor, Seph, Akak, Rosen, Alex. A big thank you to our newer members, and the ones that recently came back. Thanks for bringing down the city average! Lightside, Brumle, Hillbilly, Evul, Jim, M3, Eragon, Zero, Shadows, Vice, Alrea. Thanks to all the former Grumpy members who have either moved on to other alliances, or since left the game, I appreciate the time/effort you guys put in. Guys like Warhawk, Master, Zig, Don, Jim Beam, Printer, Blackass, Verlion, and a dozen others who have carried the name Grumpy. I may be the leader, but you guys are Grumpy, and make it the force that it is today, I cant brag about being the best without you guys. Most importantly my right hand man and lady, Sammy and Pres, been playing with you guys for years, well before Grumpy was even a concept, before PnW was a concept, never would have made it this long without you guys, and I couldn't ask for better people to play with. Thanks to all of you! Lastly, I would be remiss not to mention all our enemies over the years, this game is no fun without someone to hate, thanks for the motivation to continue to build and grow. Here is to the next 2000 days! -SRD
    58 points
  41. Now that I'm banned, I figured this was something that should be done. I'm not mad or annoyed at Alex in anyway; what I did was completely wrong, and a ban was incoming. I do regret what I did, which is why I didn't deny anything that Alex questioned me about. I wish none of this was even necessary, but I made a mistake that I need to pay for. Please do note that everything I did was my responsibility and mistake alone; I would hate to see people unfairly blaming KT for something that they were completely unaware about. I know this in no way makes up for the immense wrongdoings I've done, but I hope it's at least a start. It's been nice being in this community for a year. I know many of you will rejoice that I've gone, and I can't really blame you for that. I'm far from a good person. I'll miss some of the people I've met here. -Yang
    58 points
  42. Preamble We the undersigned parties, united by our mutual PTSD from such endeavors and our good taste in memes, henceforth establish Nexus, to bring peace, freedom, justice and security to our new Bloc. Article 1: Friends who bank together, stay together. All signatories have the option to become Stakeholders within The Foundation bank, which will act as the primary banking service for all alliances in the Bloc, and by extension their members, under the benefits and terms provided to them by the Charter of the Foundation. Article 2: Your Jedi mind tricks don’t work on me. Section 1: Supremacy Should the treaty obligations of any Party come into direct conflict with their duties and responsibilities with regards to Nexus, their obligation to the Bloc shall always take precedence. Section 2: Intelligence The signatories agree to share any and all relevant political information among themselves, in a timely manner and as soon as reasonably possible. Failure to do so shall be discussed at the earliest opportunity. Article 3: Do. Or do not. There is no try. Section 1: Mutual Defense and Optional Aggression An attack upon any Member of the bloc shall be regarded as an attack upon us all. Joint and coordinated offensives, be it political, military or covert action may be taken by any of the signatories as they so choose, Nexus shoots first. Article 4: Initiation into the Dark Side Bloc The addition of a new alliance to Nexus is dependent upon unanimous agreement of all signatories. Expulsion from Nexus is also dependent upon unanimous agreement of all parties, save for the signatory under judgement. Article 5: Serious Pledges All member parties hereby agree to the following pledges, which are cornerstone to the Bloc and are valid effective immediately: Daveth is legally not allowed to have migraines, of any sort. House Stark is an independent kingdom within Westeros, and has no affiliation with the Six Kingdoms whatsoever. Seen as Zygon is a turd, the signatories recognize that Zygon is the ruler of House Stark in name only. Sval is the most Maleficent, Mendacious and Malicious of us all, being solely to blame as the mastermind of our misdeeds and those of OWR. Carthago has the best tea and Krampus-made biscuits in the known world, the likes of which Rome deeply envies and desires. [Classified] Article 6: [Redacted] Article 7: I’ve got a bad feeling about this... Should any of the signatories be found wishing to absolve itself of its duties to Nexus, pledge allegiance to the Republic and serve democracy or seek out some other nonsense like the return of the Sith, they may do so in writing to other signatories, whereupon a period of 72h of final notice shall then follow, after which all obligations to the bloc shall be regarded as fulfilled and void. Tl:dr; Nexus - House Stark, Carthago and Order of the White Rose form a Bloc
    58 points
  43. Greetings scary internet friends of Orbis, I write to you today to announce my time as King of TKR is coming to a close and it is time for me to take my place as the sixth Shard alongside @Benfro, @Adrienne, @TheCreepyLurker, @Lordship, and @Dalinar. When I first joined PnW and TKR nearly 4 years ago I never envisioned I would one day be leading the best community in Orbis. The past 14 months have been a roller coaster ride to say the least but I wouldn't change it for anything. It is an immense honor to have been able to lead TKR and not something I will ever forget. With us turning the page on a new year TKR also turns a page into its next chapter. I'm pleased to formally announce King @Canbec, Seventh Monarch of The Knights Radiant and First Priest of Deus. Canbec has been a fast riser through the ranks in TKR. He was promoted into gov three months after joining, high gov just four months later until I promoted him to Prince/2IC a mere 14 months after joining but his contributions to our community have been so much bigger. I cant think of a better person to hand over the reins of TKR to. TKR is in great hands. I look forward to seeing the new heights TKR can reach under Canbec’s leadership. To all my fellow leaders, friend and foe, that I've had the pleasure of interacting with, I thank you for making this boring game fun. I enjoyed my interactions with all of you and hope to continue that even in my retirement. To all our allies in Guardian, Grumpy, Oblivion, TI, BK, NW, Carthago, FSO, WTF, TFR and Mayhem many thanks to all of you. From the good times to the stressful times alike you guys all helped make this game fun and enjoyable. I couldn't have asked for a better group of allies as a leader. To my incredible gov team in TKR. I can't even begin to thank you all enough for your efforts and support during my time as King. Running an alliance is more than a one person job. It takes all of you to keep TKR running and I wouldn't have been able to do it without you all there by my side. A final thank you to @Benfro for trusting me to lead the best community in Orbis and for all the advice before and after taking the helm to help prepare me for leadership. So long for now friends and thank you for an amazing 14 months. Fear not though, I will not be disappearing so feel free to reach out should you ever need anything. Hail King @Canbec, may your reign be long and successful. Hail TKR
    55 points
  44. Order of the White Rose Announcement OWR formally withdraws from Orbis. Signed, Sval
    55 points
  45. The time of reckoning is finally nigh after several years of misdeeds. Demonstrating to Orbis throughout the years what has come to typify their actions while escaping without any form of reprieval, Camelot has bungled and staggered through the last month. That said, everything, inevitably, comes full circle - thus the time has come for justice to be brought down upon them and settle these old debts, so that we may move towards the future. For those who departed before the ship began sinking in earnest, we offer our most sincere congratulations. For those who remain, know that we hold no ill towards you, but towards your government and the numerous situations in which they have wronged us. Epimetheus is no King, Queen, Empress or Emperor and is to blame for this. Ask yourselves if he is truly the kind of leader you would like to follow. TLDR; Nexus declares war on Camelot.
    55 points
  46. Dear Orbis Friends, Colleagues, Peers, and Acquaintances, I come to you with a very important update: Today marks the sixth (yes, sixth) birthday of The Knights Radiant. As we enter our seventh year, we would love for you to join us in celebration of all of the happenings of the last year. This has marked my first full year after couping politely displacing @Adrienne, and it has been marked by two wars, two spheres, and lots of friends new and old. TKR and our members are proud of the growth we have seen on Orbis, and hope you can continue to join us in celebration of this place. We have high hopes for our continued growth and fun in the coming year, and we hope to see you on our Discord, your Discord, our forum, @BigMorf radio, our private Slack, or via carrier pigeon soon. Without further ado, the best birthday song I know: @Benfro out. My personal birthday wish is for my theme song never be heard from again. Love y'all.
    55 points
  47. Since time immemorial man has suffered from thirst, and thirst takes on many forms. Thirsty for rum, thirsty for booty, thirsty for blood, it parches your throat. Here at Arrgh!, we are always on the lookout for opportunities, and we are reasonably certain a non-mirage cool drink lies on the horizon, within our grasp! And boy oh boy are we thirsty. In the interests of thirst quenching refreshment, Arrgh declares war on Oasis!
    55 points
  48. Can you leave this mechanic in place until you have an alternative ready to go? Otherwise, it'll do exactly what you say you don't want it to do should a war break out anywhere.
    55 points
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