Prefonteen

You have managed to miss every single point Scarfalot made, and instead reverted back to "I believe tyrion he wouldn't lie hurrrr secret hm leader". And no, neither I nor relevant players on either side of last conflict seem to have much interest in sharing the remainder of the intelligence that drove this war and may drive future politics with you. My members were presented with the why's and what's at the onset. My allies and government are intimately aware of all considerations and evidence that factored into our decision to go to war. As are various key leaders on the other side. Similarly, ts listens to continued dialogue in private non-phoenyx channels. You are not, nor will be, aware of the contents of any of that, because youre neither relevant to our interests as an individual, nor particularly trustworthy or refreshing to interact with.

You don't know much at all. You just pretend you do. Or you've deluded yourself into thinking you do.

Right, so my point earlier stands: You've convinced no one of anything.

Name one leader in quack who has been convinced by your spam. We haven't.

Fine. I don't need you. I'll run our military myself.

Yeah no. Go away.

(and the other charles posts) You're not wrong when it comes to the strategic flaws in our prewar diplomatic stances. We were aware of them when we formulated our FA policy. It was a mistake. I suppose that what you have not been privy to (or are neglecting to incorporate in your assessment) is that following NPOLT, which treaded several boundaries from an OOC pov, structurally, a lot of the leaders of what was then "coalition A" sat down and concluded what boils down to "never again". These leaders propagated minispheres and certain styles of play. That propagation continued right up until this war, and was leveraged to build a narrative against t$/TKR, despite our attempts to conform to what we believed was the desired meta of a majority of the game. That's where the disconnect is at; we're aware of what we could have done to pre-emptively defeat the parties who plotted against us (months back), and we're aware of the ramifications of our choice to stay our hand. That's not what's being contested. The irritation of our side is with degree of duplicity and hypocrisy involved in this chain of events, and with what frankly boils down to gaslighting. It's something we dealt with when we fought NPO, and it's unfortunate to see it occur again. The paperless thing is a card you put on the table only once. After that, the cards are face up and we must readjust. How that readjustment manifests will be dependent on how relations develop from here, I suppose.

No disagreement from me. I view deviating from our historical M.O. to appease OOC-inspired (make the game fun!) ideologies as a strategic mistake on our part. It backfiring in both a loss *and* us framed as the ebil hegemon snakes regardless... pretty much has me concluding that I probably should not do that again :P.

Rest of the game. Our standing policy has been to limit any expansion and to roughly match the next largest sphere. For a brief while that was rose, until they downsized. Then it was tcw until they got murdered. Then it was swamp. Dropping any further would've been suicidal given the rhetoric we'd already seen. Also small note: a lot of our prewar size was down to organic growth outpacing others. That's not something I can really base ad hoc fa policy on.

It's funny that backroom conversations have long moved past this after acknowledging most of these occurrences as fact, and expanding upon the motivation for both sides to move as they did. Discussions about the political implications of the war and our future build upon those acknowledgements. And then there's you, attempting to gaslight us in your zeal to "prove us wrong". "The fact that we built a coalition against you means your behaviour deserved it! quack man bad!" - Keegoz, 2020, after ignoring logs and admissions alike.

Which again,makes him intimately aware.

I directly addressed you. As did adri just now. What the hell lmao

I've been pretty consistent: - Swamp admitted to agreements being in place before we militarizd - ASM admitted to a Rose-Swamp agreement preceeding our hit - You yourself have a) confirmed in the past that rose continues to maintain significant influence in what was then Swamp. You have also in the past stated other things that confirm similar trends. We know of this stuff because well, many in t$ gov were on good terms with you and shared gov (or a sphere) with you when half of that stuff was first pitched. The likes of Theo, Shiho, Adam etc. are intimately aware of your thoughts and movements. Your public pretense otherwise is a farce, keegoz. These are the secret ties i've mentioned. The ronny matter is further circumstantial confirmation, *but* its severity lies in his admission that A) the approach was made to go aggressive on us and B ) he at the time essentially confirmed that he'd be in if Rose was in. That's not turning an offer down. That's setting baseline conditions for approval. It's step 1 toward war. What exactly have you provided besides "WELL ITS NOT TRUE"? Our size, which was structurally misrepresented by your alliance in graphs which excluded elements from other spheres and included the likes of Pantheon in ours? Our size, which was matched at first by rose, then by TCW and later by Swamp, and is now again matched by Rose? We also indicated our willingness -over and over again- to split if at any point we hit a position of dominance. Its a standing agreement Quack entered into when we came out of NPOLT and formulated our sphere. It's something multiple on your side have been aware of for months. My narrative moved to "secret treaties" when your coalition mates broke the party line you tried to erect and admitted to the existence of said treaties. You have absolutely nothing to infer that "we thought we had it in the bag" from. My private conversations with swamp officials in the leadup to this war have me openly stating that I expect to be fricked over. Frankly keegoz, you're coming up with the same type of crap you tried to peddle after last war.

All of what you're saying makes sense in principle. Adriennes post about already encapsulates the core of our issue. Speaking on the topic of trust: Cooper (and TKR in general) spend a lot of time diploing. They got spurned. The same occurred on my end with Swamp. HM, we never had good relations with because you came out of the gate determined that we were the next IQ. That soured us, and I think we've had enough conversations about that for you to know already. With Swamp, and to a lesser degree with Rose, we were unaware of these apparently gigantic rifts, because they were not stated or expanded upon in diplomatic channels. In terms of feedback we've gotten, what we have is: - Quack's grown too much and is too big (economic growth - red) - Quack was always too big (this is more a perception than anything- it's disproven by the statistics of that period) - Syndi antagonized camelot in the early NAP days - This one's a big lol. We were pissed with camelot for trying to you know, roll us out of the game. Rose took them under their wing. Epi kept shilling for IQ. So we gave them shit for it. They adjusted + rose requested we cut them slack. We did. So aside from quack splitting up, I don't think there's much we could have done. That situation persists now, and where less heated discussions occur in backchannels, you're seeing some of it spill over in here. The trendline is quite simple: Given what transpired, the foundation of trust on our end is gone. Can it be rebuilt? Probably. Nothing is definitive. Are we pissed though? Certainly. We have reason to be. Particularly when the same frame/lies that preceeded dogpile 1, are already being drummed up again in public. Yes. I imagine she would be implying that. The stuff that occurred in backchannels leading up to this war sketches that picture perfectly. It's plastered all over the forums, though I do understand with the amount of spam going around it's hard to keep track of. Happy to elaborate via DM.

Blinks intensely

Is that a request for me to become more malicious?

Don't we all change with time? Yes, I put my vote up for the member base to decide at the time. I don't believe one can lead without a mandate from those he leads. While i'm all for nostalgia, I doubt it's very relevant to this war though. As I said earlier, my last "scheme" was knightfall. I've been idle since, and had we not caught wind, i'd be idle still.

It's pretty much impossible not to put our back up to you when you have prominent gov/ex-gov (idk what keegoz/aku are at this point) directly lying on the forums. That's pretty much where that train ends.

Yes. The logical play would've been to slam you while you hit TCW a bit back. I considered it, then promptly discarded it as that'd have cemented us as the hegemony your leadership screeched about. Good of the game and all that. That's the last time I subscribe to anything ideological I don't believe in for the sake of others.

The hegemony, 2020, colorized.

You can *at best* infer that we can't know if it existed. The public statements of tyrion etc. are not a credible source due to the vested interest they have in any such information if it exists not coming to light. We've been over this. What we do have is the knowledge that an approach was made, the postfacto admissions to deals having been in place, the multi-month period of an anti-quack narrative being built on the back of false metrics (among other things), multiple contradictions among swamp leaders etc. etc. Combining all that paints a pretty clear picture. You've simply chosen to prioritize the words of your leaders over any of that. It really isn't in politics in these games though. Those kinds of conversations are the definition of coalition building. It's where aggressive wars begin, and hence, why it signals aggressive intent. I don't know what I supposedly deleted? It's there. It's literally been admitted lmfao.- Swamp admitted to having an agreement in place with HM which preceeded our militarization by *at least* a month, and swamp was previously directly allied to HM. Similarly, The keegoz (prominent ex-rose leader and Cotl/HM gov at the time iirc, who has a history of multiple years working with and for Rose behind the scenes) quote which adam posted the other day suggest rose-swamp movements, albeit more subterfuge. Then we've had ASM corrobate early on in the war that Rose had a deal with swamp in place. Add to that the whole Ronny business you keep trying to dismiss, and you frankly are swimming in evidence suggesting a base level of preexisting coordination that essentially makes this war an inevitability. Quack got whiffs of it prewar, and militarized accordingly. The puzzle pieces fell in place afterward. How we move forward is something we'll have yet to see, but there is absolutely no merit to any claims that quacks moves were anything but responsive in nature. The attempts by keegoz/aku/ronny etc. to shift the narrative away from that collusion by introducing straw-men is well.... just par for the course :). EDIT: Oh I think I know what the confusion re: deleted part is about. I wrote my post in 2 paragraphs, then edited it and moved 1 paragraph up for readability. Afaik the content should be there.

He doesn't deflate the balloon. The admission in itself stands, because it directly contradicted the standing narrative of his coalition. He has also reaffirmed multiple times, even when "walking it back", that he did state that he wouldn't join a war on us unless rose is in. That's by definition a greenlight for whomever he spoke to to get rose, and then circle back knowing that ronny is in. It can also (in backchannels) be used to entice rose. So no, I haven't ignored anything. I've explained these things to you before, but you were too occupied with your "investigation" to actually investigate our stance. Right, and that's either a direct lie, or Ronny is not up to speed on the things that have occurred in backchannels. Multiple leaders have both in private and in public corrobated these things.

With regards to my persona- yes, i've schemed in the past. As has any relevant FA figure. The only difference is that I have historically been up front about it; about my motivations and about my movements, whereas you choose to shroud yourself in inconsistencies, which then results in the sort of contradictions we've seen this war. What's more concerning to me is that my last scheme was knightfall. After that i've been gone for 10 months, TJEsted (which frankly does not qualify as scheming), ran serious FA to your benefit on behalf of the coalition against IQ during NPOLT, and in the peace period, I have been focused inward. That seems to be a recurring theme Ronny. Might it be that some of your side's backroom movements -referring specifically to specific figures in Rose and HM- are motivated by older grudges and dislikes? @ keegoz, aku and ronny- It's pretty crappy to structurally ignore, sidestep and leave out established facts corrobated by yourself and your allies/coalition partners while going pedal to the metal on a narrative that boils down to "ITS NOT TRUE YOU'RE PARANOID" when you've literally just done the thing we're supposedly paranoid about, and when you've stated already in diplomatic channels that the chance exists for it to occur again. It's similarly shitty to pretend you did not spin up a shitty hEgEmOnY narrative back in february (and kept it up for months in backchannels, spilling over into public occasionally), deliberately misrepresented quack's size in the graphs you publicized to anyone who wanted to listen (Pantheon a quack ally? Really?) and maintained under-the-table agreements against us, while simultaneously announcing that your support this war was solely down to quack's behavior. Seriously. You're right. If that's the road you're going to take, we'll be here again in 4 months. I hope we aren't, but it looks to me like you're already beating the drums for it in case Quack has the gal not to split at your demand. I wish you the best of luck with it. I'm available for actual diplomacy in backchannels, as several on your side have experienced. Right now HM is the only party relations are still deteriorating with. And that's frankly down to you.

It was I, Partisan all along!

Sorry for not being eager to let you plan a coalition to bang us again in 2 months for bEiNg ToO bIg