Prefonteen

brb, querying Manthrax to point and laugh

Hello prefontaine.I expect you to make this alliance succeed and am therefore giving you attention. I'm looking forward to seeing what you'll do.

I for one, welcome our new Avansian overlords

Thank you for taking your time to respond, sheep. I'd unfortunately missed your earlier explanation when I posted. Fair enough. It came across as if the change had perhaps been initiated or at least heavily influenced by the trustees in question and the complaining player. This provides a more nuanced perspective which I'm content with. Glad to see that you decided to take the criticism provided in this thread seriously and found a compromise. I do think that the majority of players agree that the concept of the nerf is a step in the right direction. If only I had a treasure to benefit lel.

Just a quick base-touch: I definitely agree that a nerf was necessary (frankly, I always preferred color stock over treasures and never quite understood why you decide to implement treasures anyways when color stock had been a significant cause for political tension on multiple occasions in the past - exactly what it was intended for- ). Ideally, i'd like to have seen a removal of treasures. I have probe you on this explanation though. According to this post, a player insisted that treasures needed to be changed because it 'kept the top at the top'. Okay, fair enough. Treasures were unbalanced. Did the player complain to you before or after his treasures was forced off of him? The player's insistence on power disparity making it impossible for him to do *anything* is in itself disingenious. Having been in both the underdog and dominant position while leading a major player, I can confirm that powerstructures are always more fragile internally than they externally appear, and any event or action can have the potential to snowball into a permanent change of the status quo. Especially if external actors with hidden agendas are placing political pressure on "weak" links in the dominant alliance. So what I do not understand is why you decided to initially tell the player to handle it on his own with ingame means, indicating that you did not believe there to be an issue, only to flip flop and investigage when the player in question lost his treasure to a larger alliance. In this case too, I will note that politically speaking, might has always made right to an extent, and alliances will at times bully smaller parties for reason A, B or C. Nerfs to exploitable mechanics do not change this. They only move that problem elsewhere. Hence my puzzlement at muscle-flexing by a dominant party being a catalyst for your investigation. You then conversed with a couple of players whos judgement you trust. Fair enough. I have to admit that I am curious whether those players are the same players who advocated and/or supported the proxy war rollback, the arrgh nerfs and the initial treasure implementation. You do not have to answer that question as I respect opsec. Your very last (bolded) statement is a huge, huge red flag to m. You directly contradict yourself and outright stated that a motivating factor for this nerf is to setback one group of alliances. That statement in light of the rest of your post is a faux pass and frankly disturbing. Sheepy, I'm okay with changes and nerfs. Its your game. But there has been a precedent of many of your major changes and decisions putting one set of alliances at a mechanical disadvantage. Though I am confident in the demonstrated ability of these alliances to adapt (as they have historically) to your changes, it's discouraging to once again see this hypothesis confirmed. I'd be appreciative if you could provide us with a more in-depth explanation here- be it in public or in private. tl;dr: treasures were shit and needed to be removed/nerfed. I do question motivations based on what I'm seeing though. EDIT: will read up. Seems I dropped my post right when sheepy posted. Now I feel stupid

Eumirbago

I are come fight you. Activate DEIC NAP. Urrr no betrayal. I surrender

I take this thread about as seriously as I do the U.S. elections.

Where do I apply for enrollment?

I grabbed my sword alright

My walls of text are at your disposal

But...who does Eumir troll now?

You got me. I'm a sick man Got to admit I also ran into some difficulties while dealing with the Covenant during my days. Clarke was a special highlight for me in terms of hairpulling. The pidgeondude is pretty cool though.

Coo Coo!

I read this thread and all I can think about is how happy I am that I don't have to deal with this kind of stuff anymore.

Turtst

Good luck lads

You are a good man.

Who summoned me

I swear you people always vote for the *worst* names.

I, Partisan, first of his name. Mother of Protectorates. Breaker of Blocs. Bane of the Hegemonic. Slithering Snake in the Grass. Writer of Walls. Weaver of Webs and Rightful Heir to the Orbis Throne have considered your claim and determined the prudent action to discard it as the uneducated drivel of a mad, lowborn muggle. Your astoundingly incompetent and selfrighteous regime is unfit to rule your own bathroom, let alone an empire as vast as my domain. Remove yourself from my sight.

Again incorrect . We hit Alpha because we had been presented with plenty of reason to believe that Alpha was actively trying to isolate us (and, if placed in a position to do so, roll us. I understand that opinions are split on whether this was actually the case. Personally? I continue to believe that it was. It makes little sense to rehash that though as it does not matter: Alpha moved in a way that we perceived as a threat to us, and therefore we acted. The Roz Wei/SK matter in the previous war was the catalyst to our initial fallout and our cancellation. Stuff occurred after that which would prompt us to actually attack.