Azaghul

The golden age of MK, crazy that it's 10 years ago! I was sad when you left.

This sounds right. I think James was generally over all econ, I was deputy for internal programs, and inst was deputy for finding (mostly external) tech sellers. While quirky about it Inst was good at it because he had the drive needed to do the great amount of busy work it required to do well.

On the contrary, CoBs duplicity and stonewalling made going public the only productive option.

This degree of stonewalling and gaslighting is unprecedented. The length of the delays is unprecedented. Demanding people "surrender" before negotiations begin is unprecedented. Demanding that people accept terms one by one before they even know what the other terms are is unprecedented. The refusal to include an alliance in the other coalition as part of negotiations is at least unusual if not unprecedented. As far as "privacy" is concerned, what isn't unprecedented is making public announcements about ongoing negotiations.

And the loosing side will always have leverage because prolonged warfare also carries high costs for the winning side. The terms may be "extremely reasonable" but the process BK/NPO are attempting to impose to get there is entirely unreasonable and unprecedented. Based on the degree of bad faith that has been shown so far we have little reason to believe that the proposed terms will be "extremely reasonable" and much reason to believe otherwise.

There's a lot of difference between a long war and 2 wars in a 6 month span. 1) The chance to experience a few months of peace to rebuild. 2) The initial rounds of a war are the most interesting and dynamic in terms of blitzing, tier dynamics, and people fighting all out to get control. 3) The chance for new politics, new treaties, new coalitions. Long wars ground most of the politics of the game to a halt. Blitzes are good. What's needed is more opportunities for counter blitzes.

Based on the quality of your posting it's not a surprise that you haven't hit puberty yet.

If you're looking for a "decisive victory" in terms of a very favorable damage ratio, you're never going to get it. Once you've taken out everyone's expensive infra and unit build ups, you've done most of the damage you are going to be able to do. You can't force anyone to rebuild units or infra for you to destroy. In the game of each side bombing rubble we are able to do about as much damage to you as you can do to us. Each round right now only has a very marginal impact on overall damage ratios. We're very long past the point where your "war style" to take down the upper tiers has played out. Unless your "war style" is keeping wars on for so long that you're trying to get players to quit, hoping that more quit on the other side than on your side. If so, that's sad. If it's not, as I said you've done what you're going to be able to do. We asked for terms long before week 20. There is ample evidence in this thread of Coalition B deliberately stalling.

This distinction is fair, but you're talking about a difference between around a 2-3 week war vs a 5-6 week week war. We're at week what, 25?

This is some serious gaslighting. The issue was never about being willing to surrender, as you well know, but agreeing to anything before seeing a full list of terms. The reality is you can't force anyone to spend resources later on into the war. So if "crippling" means left completely depleted, that's impossible. The overwhelming amount of damage is done in the first few rounds, where people lose most/all of their expensive infra and spend a lot more resources on military trying to win conventionally. The depletion of infra and substantial loss in resources is what I'd call "crippling". "Reasonable length" isn't just about in-game factors but how much enjoyment it brings to people. Fighting roughly the same type of wars ever week or so for months become monotonous. It can still be fun to some degree at least for some dedicated folks. I'm in that category... I was the top player in damage dealt last war. But it wears out and bores the general memberships on BOTH sides. Which is readily apparent from the diminished activity and number of war declarations on BOTH sides. I've been in enough of these wars in this world and others, on both the winning and loosing side, to see that it's not good for the community on either side. It's a lot more fun to fight a few weeks, rebuild a few months, than have another fight. The initial contest of gain control where people are generally fighting full strength is the most interesting and fun part for most players. And in terms of statistical dominance, it offers more opportunities to do substantial damage to alliances by creating more opportunities to destroy expensive infra build ups and push people to expend lots of resources in the initial fight for supremacy. On a side note outside of the purview of an "IC" forum, I do want to see game mechanics change with regard to warchests. The fact remains that long wars aren't a reliable way to wear down warchests because people can easily choose to fight in a way that's resource light and not dip into their alliance warchest.

Y'all are putting way too much stake on a post that was meant as a joke about GOONS influencing events even before they moved to this world. It was clumsy I admit, but it really wasn't meant to be about NPO. Also I'm far down on the list of TKR members whose opinion matters. IC mattered way more, but he's sadly/happily given up this world to better pursue RL opportunities.

There's "crippling an alliance" and there's keeping wars going for months because it gives you some very marginal advantage. Our "hegemony" never kept wars going for months and deliberately sabotaged peace talks while trying to blame the other side for it. The 'victim' isn't our side. The victim is everyone who cares more about having a fun dynamic world that doesn't stall into tedious 4 month+ wars. The general memberships of all sides who would rather fight it out, shake hands after a fight of reasonable length, and move on. No, this isn't just who is on top changing. This is new and unprecedented.

Well one of the reasons the TKR-NPO relations went bad is bad blood/mistrust between Roquentin and Infinite Citadel and I that largely began during a CN war where MK (IC/me) and Umbrella (Roq) were in a bloc with GOONS and how hard GOONS/MK were fighting compared to Umbrella was one of the points of contention. It was against NPO too.

This literally made me laugh out loud. Awesome.

Let The World Tremble!

I wish I was a fly on the wall seeing the governments of the other side trying to rationalize all of this to their memberships when their actions are so indefensible they aren't even trying to muster a defense in the public sphere. You know its bad when you can't even muddy the water.

72 hours

I don't know enougb about the server drag to judge if this would work. An approach I'd like to see is allowing people change when their daily update is, with limits on how long you can change it after buying units to prevent abuse.

It's sad that this world has degenerated into this style of play. Making wars last months for very marginal reasons. Not caring how much it hurts your community or how many of your players leave as long as you think it hurts the other community more. No concern for the health of the community as a whole.

Nizam addressed this. When? That's the talking point but most people here aren't that naive. I used the word "most", not "only". Having an opinion isn't claiming a monopoly on anything, but nice try at a deflection. I wouldn't expect an NPO member to "get it".

The irony of NPO complaining about TKR on this if it's the war that I'm thinking of is that it was BK pushing the contested terms within the coalition. The "we're just another member of the coalition" argument doesn't pass muster. 1) There's a history of more than a decade of NPO pushing for this procedure, I know because I was a part of it multiple times. And I've never seen any other alliance in any world do it that way. 2) NPO, outside of a brand new alliance, is the largest alliance in the coalition, and holds a lot more sway than others. 3) NPO is the most vocal on these forums defending it. What's happened in other worlds wouldn't be relevant if you weren't doing the same things here as you did there. Unfortunately, while NPO has some good people and things going for it, the fundamental approach to play is completely flawed. It's not about actually having fun.

Yet again your denial only serves to prove my point.

"NPO isn't leading this", "Roq was away for RL reasons he wasn't stalling". Might want to get your talking points straight. If this wasn't a turd you wouldn't be trying to distance yourself from it.

I've been playing these games since 2007 and NPO is the only alliance that has ever done negotiations this way.

If you were really willing to peace out and work on an agreement in good faith you wouldn't be such arrogant a$$ holes about imposing ridiculous processes on terms. I'm glad I'm not the one that has to actually deal with negotiations. NPO is utterly insufferable.