Leaderboard

It seems that everyone wants to prove their bona fides on how they want the meta be dynamic, or multipolar, or anti-hegemony, etc. The rhetoric in these past few years has been sufficiently exhausted for nearly everyone who pays attention to the game. At the same time, these notions have become shallower and shallower and used increasingly as political props instead of as an actual belief and/or argument. It's really sad to think that most of the proponents care much more than using it as a byline in their narratives. Minispheres or any sort of similar political construction is only functional insofar as there is good faith in dealings with others, be they foe or friend, and that we respect norms set out in the meta. The whole premise is based on the fact that instead of seeking security, you should depend on ability and your FA teams to manage your position. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't, but the person who gets the short end of the stick is always evolving. The problem is that people aren't content to potentially being at risk within their sphere, so they either consolidate or make arrangements behind the scenes that betray any consistency with the principles they project onto others. It's effective because their enemies can be held to a double standard of "minispheres" while as we've seen time and again people maintain secret backroom deals. That's been entirely the case this war, and the hypocrisy needs to be pointed out. Exhibit A: Rose - Swamp "Secret Treaty" This one has been confirmed to exist by these parties (this has been confirmed privately on more than one occasion), and in this case, we have a legitimate example of a secret treaty that was signed AND activated by both Swamp and Rose. There's a decent bit of negative precedent behind secret treaties: my alliance was rolled just over the supposition of having one with a paperless party (even if it was never activated). I hope the same parties who were so vigorous before on this issue are as emphatic on this situation as well. Both Rose and Swamp continue to make claims about Quack's hegemony and how they wanted us to be smaller. It's ridiculous to pass Quack off as a threat when you've got a larger sphere and another sphere 2/3 the size (and Rose has the same ethereal "competence" as Quack) not only working together against the spirit of a multipolar world but also tied together by a treaty. The rhetoric and narratives coming out of these spheres can't be taken as anything more than a front. Maintaining the meta is impossible if people are going to work behind-the-scenes to create these kinds of deals. A large part of the initial crusade against NPO in NPOLT was because they also maintained a secret treaty with BK (SCX) and IQ never disbanded. It was also a critical reason for why the only true minisphere, Chaos, wasn't viable. After that war, we were supposed to move on and become better, but people are still pulling the same kind of bs as before. These groups have walked away from that commitment. Yet these same parties want to talk about how threatened they were by Quack and how destabilizing it was to everyone. Their arrangement was bigger and had way more firepower than Quack could ever hope to achieve. It's very hard to see any of these gestures having good faith at all. Exhibit B: HM For all of the talk about being against hegemonies, all HM has ever done is join in and plan dogpiles in coalitions much larger than any other single sphere even the one they label as a hegemony. They first rolled TcW with Swamp, going in at least 3:1. Now, we're in the same situation with Quack, HM riding in 3:1. They also dogpiled Pantheon as well as bullying both Camelot and TcW (Odin) into coughing up billions. At the same time, HM is on record saying they also agreed upon a secret treaty with Swamp, ensuring that at least there'd be a coalition who outnumbered Quack 1.5:1 (in reality all three spheres given the other secret treaty). It's hard to find any sort of consistency with HM, especially. From day one, they made Quack out to be a hegemon and even named their bloc for us despite the fact that we were always being matched by another sphere and their continual participation in backroom deals that made them anything but an innocent party. You can't externally push for smaller spheres and expect people to agree with you if your only action is to just roll people in unfair circlejerks. It's a bit ironic that the sphere who claims to care most about the meta has done more damage to it than anyone else. ---- This war was always a matter of if and not when. There is already enough treaties in place and evidence provided by Sphinx's leaks or 3rd parties to make that point incontrovertible. Quack's goal–as we saw it–was to try to create a more fair war by keeping Rose out and later Swamp (when it seemed that Rose's entry was inevitable). We had spent the past 9 months since NPOLT working on relations with both spheres, and this wasn't subtle at all to either party. We made our intentions clear. We should stop trying to pretend that this war was planned as anything but an opportunistic strike by Rose, Swamp, and HM. None of Quack's actions bear out the hegemony narrative nor does any of the opposing coalition actually make any good faith efforts for their claims of a dynamic Orbis. Make no mistake: behind the scenes there was a concerted effort to make this play out as it did. This came to bear in the blitz that was magically organized in minutes and the revelations coming out of peripheries after the war began. The hypocrisy and the corruption of convictions are the problem with ever achieving a true multipolar world. For the health of the meta, it's time to drop the act and come up with a new narrative, or at least own up to the serious and damning decisions that are why we struggle to see that vision come to fruition.

Player has Nazi imagery and quotes from actual Nazis on his page. 10/10 would do it again.

Left Wing Economy with a fascist society?

Your concerns about Rose, and other spheres in general, are wrong. Alliances can decide to join in or not depending on whatever reasoning they want. This isn't new, it was established by Prefontaine with the "TEst Edict" and used by The Syndicate against Alpha, thus allowing non-treaty paperless ties within Orbis. While this wasn't the first time it has been used, it is the most major of the first times, and used by YOUR LEADER to AID him in a war where they would have suffered heavy losses without help. So again, tell me where anything you said isn't precedent your side has used to order dog piles on your political opponents. How about another example, when your entire sphere + Grumpy(who, was paperless) attacked Terminus Est. You used the "TEst Edict" then as well, where were the posts clamoring on the forums for aid and how unfair it was people who weren't tied were helping each other? I know this is past stuff, but the point is, this has largely been done by your side, claiming the moral high ground here isn't good. Also, remember, you went OFFENSIVE. You are the aggressor. Remember that. Also, I know you're TKR, but when you ally Pre, he's your leader.

I mean what do you want from them. To admit that their CB was bad and they were going to hit Quack eventually? Maybe in a few years but no one is going to actually admit that they were weak and had to hold hands lmao either due to incompetence or failure to grow etc. people like to think they’re the best and are right. Neither side is perfect but holy shit it was so funny when people at the beginning were acting as if there was no collaboration whatsoever between spheres Some people just have thick skin, wish I could develop technology based on it, my army would be invincible. good luck trying to get them to admit that they had faults, you’ll need it.

While there are some superficial similarities, a paperless agreement with a paperless alliance is not comparable to an entire coalition (between distinct blocs/spheres) that hinges on multiple paperless agreements, especially considering they were actively plotting to attack us aggressively. When their best rhetorical talking point is essentially "you shouldn't have preempted us for plotting against you because now we can call it defense" it isn't a good sign for their narrative.

The solution is simple ladies and gentlemen - everybody leave their alliances and join Arrgh. Then split Arrgh 50/50 and war with each other *inserting :catno:* @Roberts

@The God Emperor of Mankind I wrote this guide over 3 years ago. It saddens me that this is a lesson that still needs to be taught. At least Sphinx understands.

How quickly people forget! Hodor. Can I ask you something? Why is the winning side always confused that the losing side doesn't just shut up? It happens in almost every war. The losing side never shuts up. Do you remember DDR? TGH did not exactly shut up. The only time there is an exception to that rule is when the alliance being rolled is so ostracized from the community they have no hope of appealing to public support. Like the recent dogpiling of TCW. Perhaps our efforts here are futile but Quack leadership fought a war a year ago with much of current HM leadership. A major part of the CB for that war was Sphinx logs and now we are being told by the same alliances and people that Sphinx logs in the exact same context are a bad CB. It's worth repeating.

Once again you move the goalpost a bit: We've dealt with months and months of "quack man bad" rhetoric, culminating in a weird, intense outburst of "QUACK MAN IQ QUACK MAN BAD". We engaged every single one of the points brought up, while also bringing forward legitimate gripes of our own regarding the contradictory stances we've encountered (and the restrictive impact those stances have had and still have on quack's diplomatic options and options to appease you). The arguments brought against us have been a mess, and we have yet to receive much of a response to things we've brought up beyond "quack man bad" (even now, in your post). I'm not sure why you're going on this spiel of "Well we shouldnt b discussing any of this because you're not going to convince us". That's lazy and frankly bad diplomacy. Interactions - both in private and on the forums - make up a significant part of the (political and general) game. I'm going to keep interacting in public, in my role as a public figurehead of The Syndicate. You are free to do as you please I guess.

@Zephyr

Every sphere is a threat to another sphere if you don't have a treaty, so maybe you're right given that the rest of the world was tied together so all that was left was Quack. But it's still a bad faith argument either way. I mean you were with TKR when we got rolled because of our "secret treaties" with a single alliance. We're talking about legitimate sphere-wide MDPs done in secret. The HM-Swamp deal is more hazy, but the Rose-Swamp MDP is very real and was activated. They've admitted that to us directly. I'd think you'd appreciate a want for fairness in how Orbis treats secret treaties, especially ones much more heinous than anything you or TKR were involved in. I take your point on the inevitability of the showdown with TcW, but there's no question that the decay of TcWsphere had a significant consolidating impact on the meta. The fallout was 3 steps towards bipolarity whether that's intended or not. The part that I find hypocritical (moreso your spheremates than yourself) is that the rhetoric they use regarding their vision for the meta does not align at all with their actions. I haven't known you to be as aggressive on that sort of narrative/ideology, so if you wish I can revise to "Exhibit B: HM - G/G." The point of this post is that none of the other spheres care any bit about minispheres. Their words ring hollow with their actions. Quack clearly isn't that big of a threat given this war, and your own allies are backpedaling on the hegemony narrative because they realize how untenable it is. We shifted from Quack being IQ, to Quack being run-of-the-mill hegemony, to Quack being smaller than Swamp but "competent," to Quack is a threat. Let's call it what it is: opportunism. And yeah, secret treaties are BAD. If you care about minispheres, that's not even up for question. It's why Chaos, why we, were doomed from the start. If the uniting is done by effectively tying everyone together, you've got consolidation and bipolarity. There were many choices here, and all of them were made since the beginning against any sort of minispheres meta. The reason I made this post is because I actually give a damn about this. I'm tired of hearing hypocrisy from the same sorts of people who continue to rattle on about it in their narratives and then just undercut it in their actions. It's why minispheres will never work. So Rebs... if you want to see a dynamic meta, tell your friends to cut the bs too.

The man Screamed into the void as he slowly turned into a corncob.

I mean, they're consistently full of it.

You are too big! No u! No u!

In all seriousness does the OWF no longer have moderators? Does there need to be a specific rule that players who quit the game years ago can't derail one of the games only active discussions?

That isn't what happened here nor is that how coalitions work. You form a coalition in response to an aggressive power. Quack was not that nor were they a larger sphere given Swamp. And we've got both Swamp and Rose admitting that there was a literal treaty in place. This is gaslighting. I mean I've been consistent in always wanting a multipolar world. In private and in public, my record shows that. I can point you to my months of post history against IQ while you left the game. I never gave up the fight, and I'm still fighting for it now. Minispheres will never work with the current set of actors who like to parrot it but never follow it, and it's even more disappointing to someone like me who actually cares as a matter of principle more than a political prop. If you want to take a step back and stop trying to spin my words, you'd realize that I'm telling you that minispheres will only work if people actually try to make it work. No secret treaties, work with good faith, don't consolidate tiers, and be ok if that means you get rolled or roll others from time to time. And frankly I don't think you want to get into a tit for tat because I've already displayed and can continue to display how every other sphere was demonstrably worse for a multipolar world than Quack was. Every decision of ours was carefully calibrated for the meta, and we made a lot of decisions that were largely helpful. We cut TI, Ampersand, Soup, etc. We also turned down entreaties by other spheres to get us to dogpile others (we had opportunities to fight just about every other sphere). And we kept up good relations and gave people a sense of security regarding our actions and intentions. We've been nothing but stabilizing and adaptive. I already talked about this in the OP, but it's a world where people stop engaging in grudge warfare hidden by several levels of narrative and spin and where people are forced to rely on FA and milcom to succeed. The winners and losers should always be changing. Politics should be challenging and War should be just as challenging. Treaties should be fluid with enemies becomes friends and vice versa frequently. If you want that, you've got to start respecting common precedents and norms set. Until that point, there will be not trust. There will be no good faith. Unless you do that, you also can't unironically claim to want it either.

Yes, and your silence speaks volumes. New facts have just come out about your secret treaty with Rose. It's in real bad faith to just ignore legitimate concerns about conduct that y'all and your allies have decried in the past. I do expect an answer to hypocrisy, and new information that directly contradicts your previous statements about there not being coordination between the spheres. And I think the innocent ploy isn't fair either given how y'all's manipulations are what Rose is claiming as a CB despite the months upon months of trying to get Quack to hit Rose.

Except they didn't own up to the risk, nor is the CB being taken as legitimate. So it seems like another 22 pages are in order. If I'm to be honest, the amount of scrutiny pertaining to it is as hilarious as it is insane, given what Cooper has listed, given that wars have been justified, waged, and accepted for far less, given the transparent convenience (for your group) in discrediting Sphinx as a legitimate source, etc. And given that the response to such 'shaky logs' has been a combination of people throwing each other under the bus, unsavory comparisons, the aforementioned rather baseless scrutiny, empty rhetoric, and when all else failed, ultimately silence; yes, that tells me that the logs aren't shaky.

I just hope their collective memberships will see them as the pretenders that they are.

A summary: Stop it, get some help.

I know you guys find this hard to understand, but just because we are at war, doesn't mean we cant work together for the greater good. In this case the greatest good aka, the Green Color Bonus.

Friend? I constantly clean your sphere for you. Work work work that's all Partisan is good for. And what do I get for it? "Partisan my bonus isnt 140%. Partisan theres people on my sphere" nag nag nag nag. I've never asked for much. A little appreciation. Maybe a candlelit surprise. But your stone age man-brain just can't comprehend I have needs too! And when my body and alliance are worn and torn from years of scrubbing your color, buried in in a cataclysmic dogpile, what do you do? You invite your friends to green and pretend I dont even exist! And then you wonder why I am not always happy-go-lucky around you. Ugh.

Hello Everyone, On this day, we celebrate the alliance that has become House Stark and the friends we share it with. Whether you are new to the game or have been here since the beginning, this is a chance to reflect on our relationships and stance as an alliance, and where we are headed in the coming year. While real life the last year has been difficult for all of us, we have been there for one another. We are nations helping nations, friends helping friends, all of us doing what we can to help get us through these turbulent times. And as we go through another war, while there may be many of us on opposite sides, we are all united in a common goal, to create a break from real life that is fun for everyone. House Stark's success is because of its members but also the friendships we have come to have over the last 4 years. People who encounter us know we strive to live up to our values of loyalty, equality, courage, and compassion, and know that diversity is our strength. What makes House Stark special is not the belief that this is the best alliance in Orbis – it's the knowledge that it could be, and that we will keep working to build that alliance. Because no challenge we face will be too great, if we face it together. Today, we celebrate the alliance House Stark and tomorrow, we look to the future and move forward, with all of you. And with that vision in mind, I am proud to announce the first ever Northerners Day. A day, not only to celebrate the accomplishments of the alliance, but to also celebrate the accomplishments of its own members, the friendships we have created, and the accomplishments yet to come. We wish everyone luck in the wars to come, and know that winter is here to stay.

I don't know... Looking at TKR's recent hIStOry, I think it's only a matter of time until they get dogpi--

You! We made it special for you and everything. Do you like it?

Rebel, for real? When we were Chaos, we declined to join up with KETOGG against NPO or BK's spheres because we felt that was against the spirit of minispheres and you're seriously going to sit here and tell me you think a coalition of 3-4 spheres against 1 isn't?

Drop em!

Fine, we'll call them Mutual Defense against Quack Pacts (MDQP)? Not sure what your point is. The pacts where there. The offensive coalition was there. The rhetoric on which your pact *and* coalition were based was absolutely faulty, and the degree of contradiction between your action and propagated ideology enormous. Yes. We brought evidence. People you're in-coalition with confirmed said evidence. You yelled "NAH ITS NOT OUR FAULT. QUACK TOO BIG QUACK THREAt". Don't make me drop the god damn logs. Your choice whether to force my hand. You can either take your innocent spiel into dm's, or we can have a public log review of your sphere's attempts at setting us up against rose, and failing that, beginning your preparations to coalition build against us.

Excuse me? You TI lot hold against us that we are "too big" a sphere. Simultaneously, you hold against us that we did not want to link up with TI and its entire sphere of allies in what would have been a genuine hegemony-size grouping. Pick one narrative, and stick to it. You're doing yourselves no favors here.

Looming threat of... us having cordial relationships with Swamp, agreeing to Rose's request to let Camelot be once asked to do so (and if I need remind people here, as they are seemingly pretending otherwise; we weren't the only skeptics pertaining Camelot), and doing nothing when Sphinx called for us to help him vs HM; help which, had we provided, would've given us both an opportune window to hit HM and secured us an ally for our so-called "hegemony". Right. These just being starters, of course. As Partisan told Hodor, we simply recognize that all of the above, done to accommodate for your (irrational) fear, have not been noted and have been ignored in your hollow, inconsistent and hypocritical spiel.

This is just another variant of the "we would have never attacked you if you hadn't preempted our plan to attack you" spin. It just doesn't add up at all. Swamp in particular has been specifically indicted in an attempt to pull HM into an aggressive plot against Quack. Maybe Rose got roped into things unaware/without the full picture but both HM and Swamp knew what the deal was: an aggressive attack on Quack. Stop with your willfully obtuse attempts at saving face.

Friend ronny, would you like to go over the tiering stats of that period with me? We can do a month-by-month analysis together. It will end up making you look old and forgetful though. You should really focus more on cleaning our color, and less on blaming me for the mistakes of people who ride your coattails friend.

You are not wrong. But you aren't on the money, either. There is an importance to historical context and precedent for sure but to skip back nearly four years and point to something (individual paperless alliances making paperless agreements) and skip over last year when most of our opposition were lambasting NPO for making a paperless agreement with BK to effectively blend their "distinct" spheres against a "common threat", which is way more relevant and comparable to the current paperless coalition that formed up against Quack is careless at best and straight up disingenuous at worst. So is historical context important? Certainly. Does bringing up something that happens in the past necessarily mean it's a relevant or the most relevant comparison? I'd say no. Not really.

I've personally spent 4 years trying to appease people about something I've had no control over. We've been rolled with it either as an outright CB or used as an argument against us multiple times. If people aren't satisfied with that by now they are never going to be and I don't consider it our responsibility to continue trying to satisfy those people. It is Sisyphean. Cooper has only been trying for two years so he's still got some spark in him but he's not going to be able to address it either since it happened years before he joined the game

Wait...are we the baddies?

Mostly the first point, yes. As a matter of principle, I don't like to log dump. I can give a brief accounting to what that evidence is: - The instant and well-planned counter blitz - Peripheries confirming that these plans weren't new and were told to plan for a November war - A secret MDP between Swamp and Rose - The coordination between HM and Swamp that never ended and manifested in an effective secret treaty - SRD's past statements admitting to a number of contacts that is inconsistent with Tyrion's and many others' accounts including Rose's story of deciding 2 hours before. - The two sets of Sphinx logs - The knowledge of the Sphinx logs instantly getting spread to all the spheres once one was made aware of them. I'm more than willing to admit that each part on it's own (save the logs) is circumstantial, but taken together it depicts a pattern of coordination that is much harder to deny.

Now I understand why your side is gagging y'all.

The problem is always the same, too many people think you can win in this game

Friend ronny, I think asking the parasites in tCW to start pulling their weight is a fabulous idea! I see no need to needlessly strain our impeccable relations over our shard backyard. If you would be so kind as to write the letter, I will happily undersign it. You always had a way with words. Must be your age and experience.

All I know is 3 of the last 5 wars Grumpy has fought in, we have been attacked by tS, and the 2 wars we didn't get hit by tS in, were wars tS wasn't involved in. What have we ever done to you tS? besides help you make more money on the green sphere? We make you more money and you thank us by attacking us over and over again.

thank you, it took us a very long time to do an operation this large and do it so well.

Beige Nations cannot spy or be spied upon, except for Gather Intel Isn't the whole idea of Beige, a safe harbour for nations to rebuild? Seems really odd to me then, that you can basically destroy a nation via repeated spy attacks, while they are Beige. Lower the cap for attacks I'm sure quite a few players have Spy Satellite now, which adds +50%. Even accounting for that, Espionage attacks do way too much damage. - Sabotage Tranks should not be regularly killing off almost 2k tanks. At most, they should be killing off 500 tanks (base, 750 with Spy Satellite). - Assassinate Spies should not be killing off over 1/3 of the maximum spies. This means within a single day, you can go from max spies to nothing. It should maybe be killing off at most 5-6 (base), per attempt. - The others likely need similar changes, but as I haven't seen them myself, I can't comment (and the Battle Sim seems to be outdated). Repeated espionage per day should decay Once an episonage attack is used, it should make subsequent espionage harder, until that nation's military reset. Put it down to the nation going into high alert. The only time this should not happen is if gather intel is used and no spies are caught. I'm not saying it should be much, maybe a +5% (for a total of +10% after 2 espionage attacks). EDIT: It seems that that are some changes that are already under development, so I'm happy to cross out the last two points ...

Congrats friends!! And... 4 MORE YEARS!

Dear @RightHonorable As a member of the Green Sphere, part of your duty as an alliance that hadicaps our bonus, is to make sure any and all small rif raf stays off of the Green Sphere, while tS generally takes it apon themselves to do this. We all recognize that after they attacked both of us and got stomped, their ability to keep Green is clearly negligible. So we need you to take up the mantle of protector of the Green and remove the micros so we can continue to make green while on Green. Thanks Sweeeeet Ronny D Leader of Grumpy Partisan Leader of The Syndicate