Phoenyx

So, Global War 16 is over, but the reasons that brought it about are far from settled. Quack continues to insist that they were going to be attacked and most of the rest of the game insists that no, that wasn't going to happen, there were plans to counter Quack should they attack another sphere, but that was all. This is a theme that was brought up to some extent in the Benfro's peace treaty thread: The thread has since died down, but I think it's worth bringing that one point up. Time and again, many on the non Quack side have said that there was no plan to attack Quack first. I have said look, you want to settle what really happened, go to the information sources- Boyce, who made the prediction that tCW, HM and Swamp would attack Quack in December or January and Ronny's HM leader making his ambiguous statement about Swamp wanting to "counter Quack's growth", which led to Ronny interpreting it to mean that Swamp wanted to hit Quack first. Instead, as I think often happens when someone tells 1 or more people a truth that they really don't want to hear, they've attacked me in the forums and also in game (to this day- a peace treaty can't really hold back people who -really- want to attack, they'll just leave their Alliances temporarily). This is certainly something they can do. However, this way of dealing with things is kind of like an ostrich with its head in the sand. Just because Quack refuses to acknowledge the problems in its theories doesn't mean those problems will go away.

He just talked about this in the server, his words were taken out of context, also I suspect english isn't his first language. He's just saying that multis aren't allowed in our Alliance.

Sure, if by verifiable intel you mean that Boyce was saying that TCW/HM/Swamp was going to attack you in December/January, and Ronnie mentioning his belief that Swamp had been reaching out to hit you guys, full stop. Don't look behind the curtain though, because if you do, well, you may find that it in the case of Boyce, it was most likely all hypothesized in his mind based on some ambiguous statements from Sphinx, with Sphinx later saying he had no intent of attacking Quack anytime soon. In the case of Ronnie, pretty much the same, he is part of a conversation with an anonymous HM leader who tells him some ambiguous information regarding Swamp's plans, with Ronnie himself saying that he heard nothing more about this alleged attack plan.

Your condescending input lacking any experience behind it, is received and appropriately disregarded, thank you. As for the rest of your post, I have no interest arguing with a wall, I've said my piece. And you say -I'm- condescending -.-?

For anyone in the audience who's not aware, Boyce is one of the leaders of TEst. And yes, he was a former ally of tCW, but that's where our agreement ends. I hope I am not the only one who has noticed that Boyce has never come on the forums to defend his intel. I actually went out of my way to try to get him to respond, by asking someone fairly close to him to link to the thread I made on his role in this war. His only response that I could see was to downvote the thread. I hope that everyone here is aware that Sphinx has now denied having any plans to attack Quack first, in this thread page. Quoting from what he said to me: So where did Boyce get his notion that TCW/HM were going to attack Quack in December/January? My guess is he came up with it on his own, based on a flawed understanding of Sphinx' intentions, as well as a flawed understanding of HM and Swamp's intentions. By all means, point me to these logs that you believe imply that HM was on board to attack you guys. As to Ronnie's own statements, I acknowledge that he did indeed mention the bit about being on board to attack you, but that "if" is important. From what I can see, Rose never agreed to attack Quack first. What Rose -did- agree to do, and only in the last few hours before the attack according to Ronnie, was to -counter- attack Quack should HM be attacked. It was, and they did. Ronnie brought all of this up back at the beginning of November. Your side took the first 2 sentences in a paragraph, but ignored the last sentence and the paragraph that followed. Here is the passage I'm referring to: Yes, much of the rest of the game was united against you before you struck, but it is crucial to point out that they were united only if you guys struck -first-. In the case of Rose, Ronny points out in the quote above that their treaty with HM happened mere hours before you guys struck and may well have happened because they were concerned that -they- might have been your target instead of HM. Any port in a storm. I think all this focus on sphere size is the wrong way to look at it. The better way, which I believe Charles and others have been trying to point out, is that most of the rest of the game saw you guys as a threat that no single sphere could take on alone. So they agreed to band together in the event that any of their spheres were attacked by you guys. Had you guys tried to confirm if TCW/HM/Swamp were going to attack you first as you guys had feared, all of this might have been avoided. I understand your concerns that doing so might have triggered them attacking you first, but now that the war is over and pretty much is saying that no, they weren't going to do that, I really wish you guys would at least -consider- the notion that all these spheres are being honest with you. Here's a suggestion once this NAP is over- consider a little more work in the FA department. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

I'd argue that you guys really aren't aware of why you lost at all. In my view, you lost for the simple reason that you didn't try to defuse the situation that had built up. The situation: 1- You heard some rumours that certain spheres were going to attack you. 2- Instead of trying to confirm with credible authorities, plan to attack some of the spheres who you had heard were going to attack you first. 3- Attack some of the spheres, uniting most of the game not in your sphere against you. 4- Protest the fact that most of the rest of the game united against you and how they did so (treaties that hadn't been revealed publicly), also refuse to believe that the rumours you heard were exaggerations or outright false, also refuse to do a more thorough investigation as to the credibility of the rumours that you based your initial attack on. To be fair, our side could have done a more thorough investigation as well, at least when it came to the rumours of Swamp wanting to attack Quack. Ofcourse, it's not too late for both sides to do more of an investigation on that. What is found out might help both sides in avoiding this type of 'war via rumour' again.

That post is just gold in my view.

Don't see why it'd be suicidal, but I definitely don't think it's necessary. Like you said, I think Orbis will auto correct in its own way if there's too much of a power imbalance anyway.

I think a lot of what you said here is the type of thing I've been trying to say, though I think you've worded it better. You've certainly been around longer, so would make sense. Here I think you're on shakier ground- Partisan and SRD, at least, are heads of their Alliances. As to the others you mention, they may not be Alliance heads, but they're in gov and seem to honestly care about what they're talking about. One thing is backchannel diplomacy, but on a forum, I think it stands to reason that Alliance heads would be talking as well as those who are genuinely interested in the subjects and can live with any backlash they get from posting here. If people don't want to talk to -them-, they don't have to. Which brings us to your last point... If you don't think I'm worth serious replies to, that's your call to make. But clearly others have and, I suspect, will continue to. I think my major drawback is that I'm fairly new. This means I don't know a lot of the political nuances. But I'm certainly learning them.

I think it's things like this where the discussion gets derailed. It's so easy to call someone we disagree with a liar. What's much harder is to try to find evidence to back up our positions. I've already pointed out many times how it can be done. Boyce can be questioned more as to what got him to believe that TCW/HM/Swamp was going to attack in December/January, Ronnie could reveal his HM leader source in regards to Swamp and I imagine there are other things that could be done to help illuminate the truth as well.

I never said I was a "massive investigator". I've done my best to try to figure out the truth behind the causes of this war, for my own personal reasons. Essentially, I got into this war by default, my original Alliance being on one of the sides, and I have a strong code of ethics which necessitates me investigating whether I'm fighting on the right side of a given conflict.

I'm fine with knowing who they are, but I am a bit new here, would be nice to be given a little slack now and then -.-

What is it with you guys and your efforts to make a conversation harder than it needs to be? Anyway, I'll play your guessing game this time around. After a bit of looking, I'm guessing it stands for Advanced Syndicalist Mechanics.

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. Our definitions of credibility clearly differ. I tend to believe Alliance heads who are active here to say what they believe to be true. For this discussion, this works both to your advantage and disadvantage. It works to your advantage because I've always assumed that you believe that what you are saying is true. It works to your disadvantage because I -also- believe that what -other- Alliance heads who have been active here are saying what they believe to be true. So when Tyrion and Kaz say that their Alliances had no plans to initiate a first strike against Quack, I find those statements to be quite credible, just as I would if you were to say that you had no plans to attack X sphere. This doesn't mean that I wouldn't like even more corroboration, as my ongoing efforts to get someone to tell me who Ronnie's HM leader source was (with rather amusing results when Yang and Dryad managed to pull my leg on that one). But that's a sword that cuts both ways, and has gotten me to repeatedly ask you to try to find out how Boyce came to the conclusion that TCW/HM/Swamp were probably going to attack Quack in December/January. I think there is one thing we can both agree on- those in positions to help clarify the truth on all of this, namely Boyce and Ronnie's HM leader source, have not exactly been very active here since the war started. I finally made contact of sorts with Boyce, through a third party. He hadn't even heard of me, so clearly he hasn't been following the discussions here. When I passed along the thread I made with him in the title, his only response was to downvote it :-p. What we have is a lot of incomplete information. We have Ronny's HM leader source making an ambiguous statement: ** Time for a chat my friends. Swamp reached out to me and told me they are talking with TCW about joining together to counter Quack's growth. They are extremely uncomfortable with the idea that allowing Quack to grow and waiting for them to magically break up is a good idea. ** Immediately, questions come to mind: For starters, -who- in Swamp reached out to them? And perhaps most importantly, what did they mean when they mentioned Swamp "told [them] they are talking with TCW about joining together to counter Quack's growth?" I felt this was so important that I actually made a thread about it: 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. Saying you'd do something if certain conditions were met is not the same thing as actually doing something. If we are to believe Ronnie when he says that Rose only got on board on a -defensive- treaty hours before you guys actually attacked TCW and HM, then not only was there no offensive plans against you involving Rose, there wasn't even any -counter- plans involving Rose until hours before you guys actually attacked TCW/HM. A -counter attack- plan was acknowledged to have taken place, not a first strike plan. I'm not familiar with this post you're referring to, link? What does ASM stand for? In any case, to the rest of your sentence, a defensive coalition in the event that Quack attacked Rose or Swamp, sure, but I've never seen any evidence that Swamp was working on a first strike plan against Quack. On the contrary, this has been strongly denied by both Tyrion and Kaz. Sure, but the question is whether you were responding to a real threat or one based on exaggerated claims and false rumours. I think you know which type most non Quack Alliances think you responded to. Yeah, that was it. I open multiple windows to quote various parts and then go back to my original window to paste. So in my original window, the formatting was different and I didn't see what I'd seen before, thus thought you'd deleted that part.

I still think he deflated the balloon because he makes it clear that this alleged plan on Swamp's part, had it ever actually existed and not been a misinterpretation on Ronnie's part, apparently died out soon after its creation. I do agree with you on that point. But it's one thing to say "I'd be willing to go to war with Quack on these conditions" and quite another to actually start planning to go to war with Quack. 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. I see that you have deleted this last part from your previous post. Not sure what that means. I'll just proceed as if you still believe it even though it's no longer in said previous post and respond to it accordingly. I'm glad that you are at least acknowledging a possibility that doesn't involve Ronny lying. As with you, I have never found a point in time where I found Ronny to be trying to deceive. Anyway, I'd certainly welcome seeing any of this evidence against what Ronnie stated.

Sorry Prefonteen, but I think this is the key thing that you get so very wrong. I'm reminded of a post from Ronny you directed me to in what seems like ages ago, wherein Ronny says the words that your side later turned into an ad: While seemingly ignoring everything he said after it. I mean, immediately after the quote turned ad, Ronny deflates that balloon pretty quick: And perhaps more importantly, Ronny making it clear that these "under the table agreements" you seem to think were around long before your side initiated this global war were in fact only arrived at very shortly before the war and happened precisely because HM and the rest of the spheres saw that you were militarizing and no one wanted to get dogpiled:

Not true, but if you want to believe that, go right ahead.

I think I've learned that I can affect things, despite the many denials I've heard here. How best to affect things is still a work in progress.

A great deal. One thing for sure- haters' going to hate :-p.

At this point, I think I'm glad that I initially bought this bs from Yang if only for the laughs it's giving me now :-p.

Come on Ronny, what's so complicated about the basic gist of all of this? Quack thought TCW/HM/Swamp wanted to attack them, you concede that you had talked about it for a bit but that's as far as it went, they refuse to even consider this possibility, instead willing to believe that Boyce is telling the truth and everyone else is lying. What's not to get?

I don't agree that it's not relevant- your side and mine are still arguing over how things started, I think that speaks for itself. As to your other points, not something I'm all that interested in, other than to say that, like Quack, our side felt threatened, felt it would be best to group up to meet said threat and so that's what happened. Now we all have 4 months to build up and (hopefully) be a little more careful about getting into large wars based on questionable information.

Which -seemed- to show a clear and present threat. As mentioned elsewhere, fine, you felt threatened, you acted on it, we had this global war, it's done. But now that the dust is settling, perhaps it's time to take a look at that intel again, see if it may not have been as reliable as you thought it was.

Perhaps I did. You're welcome to try to explain things to me again.