Lu Xun

If screaming and repetition is the only argument you have, I'm well-served by seeing you trolled. After all, when it's the big against the small, the many against the few, it's a victory for the weak to command more effort from the strong.

Technically speaking, the legalese does give DEIC the right to attack SK without violating the terms of the treaty. That doesn't hide the fact that DEIC did attack its treaty partner, but the fact that you spun it successfully out of DEIC's hands does not obscure its legal status.

Hey Clarke, a few words of advice. The word I want you to keep in mind while reading all of this is spine. Got that? Here's what your situation is. You are woefully, hopelessly incompetent. Your coalition managed to turn what would otherwise have been a sure thing fight, with 500k vs 350k, into a curbstomp of what was previously the most powerful bloc in the game. Not only that, throughout the entire war, you compounded mistake after mistake. First, you attacked the allies of your allies, then you directly attacked your ally trying to hide behind legalese to justify what otherwise would have been seen as the worst perfidy. Guess what, it didn't work. Then your allies alienated their own protectorates in what should otherwise have been seen as naked aggression against non-combatants, with the protectorates quickly begging their attackers to stop, them jumping off into the enemy coalition. The bank heist is your crowning glory, the most incompetent piece of work I've seen this entire war. How could you have expected that you'd be able to get away with it? Now, normally, I would recommend that you just throw in the towel, give the enemy the money, and resign. The problem is, your coalition is incompetent. Think about the next war. The current one almost completely crippled the power of your cluster; despite looking strong on paper, it turns out that BoC can't fight, UPN has incompetent FA, and DEIC has the worst leadership in the game. Where do you think you're going to go from here? If it were anyone else, you'd have a small, but reasonable chance of being able to strip off allies from the enemy power bloc, and turn the impending aggressive war into a narrow upset. But for you, the collection of dumb FA, dumb leadership, and incompetent fighters, this isn't going to happen. You are already isolated, you will become more isolated, and you are going to lose the next war. Hence, to cede to terms means that you will simply give the enemy what they want, and resign yourself to yet another beating a couple of months down the line. To accede is to cede. What you can do instead, however, is to rally the troops. Confess to all of DEIC your mistakes, take responsibility for your actions, and tell all of DEIC they are free. If they want to leave, they can leave, there's nothing binding them to the alliance, and you can even throw in a bit of spare change if they will surrender and leave the alliance. As to the rest, the situation is thus. DEIC has already been decimated. You have no top or mid-tier assets remaining, and your rebuild will be difficult if not impossible. The war is already going on into its third week, a new record, not only for damage taken by the losing party, not least to say the most incompetent execution of a war in PnW history (even Tenages et al didn't play their cards this badly, when they made a mistake, they quickly recovered, burnt off the incompetent leadership, and got somewhat amenable peace terms), but also for length of war; I believe the VE war took 21 days. The money, if you spend it wisely, can be used to fund lower-tier raiding. The enemy is as exhausted as you are, but they are not fighting for their lives. By careful targeting, you can make sure that you will deal comparable damage to the enemy. You won't win this, of course, but in every defeat there remains an attainable victory. Hence, tell the members that want to leave, to leave, but the members that do stay, should be prepared for the long haul, and to face almost insurmountable odds. What your enemy has shown they don't understand is that there is a certain dignity in fighting losing battles, in fighting battles that cannot be won in the flesh, but in the spirit. The longer you hold the enemy, the less time they will have to commit to rebuilding, the more fatigue their leadership will fall under, and well, let's say this, the longer they will have to deal with you as an insufferable negotiator. Of course you will lose the next war after this, but by winning this small battle, you will emerge in a far stronger position. Brotherhood can be fostered by shared suffering in ways no other experience can. In this scenario, when faced between sparing the axe in this war to face it again in the next, and taking the axe in both this war and the next, the important word is spine. And spine is something that no amount of pixels can take away from you. That said, you're a terrible leader and I doubt you have the guts to implement such a plan. I expect a long future ahead of you as a Mensa punching bag, or a retirement in disgrace. It is your small chance to emerge from the war as the least incompetent The Covenant leader, and you will not take it. -Inst

Anonymous reminds me of Twain, where a man insults and talks down a mob, simply because they are a mob and thus a bunch of cowards. Anonymous is less about delivering justice and more about finding people they can get away with abusing.

I got high on veterinary painkillers by accident a while back. Rather embarrassing, and also unpleasant.

This belongs in spam, but what do you think about wasting food?

I demand that moderation bake me chocolate chip cookies! I will pay Sheepy in creds for chocolate chip cookies at $5 per credit and: -$10 for chocolate chip cookies, labor included -$5 for comestible shipping container -$10 for shipping PnW chocolate chip cookies! 5 creds! I demand that this be a feature!

Let's leave this thread as their memorial. @ Synd, my condolences for your loss.

Quote (since your forums software borked), more specifically, but w/e.

There is something mildly distasteful about this affair, but it's not tS's death announcement. While it would be amazing to find out that it's a Moo-cows style massive troll, Digitizer's got quite a few friends who've linked and confirmed his identity, so it's something improbable right now. This community, in general, has a problem with cheap trolls, like Autism-chan, Kazy, the Islamotrolls, and if you'd to insist, myself.

What happened to Ibrahim?

@ Wayne: need fresh targets for the next war, huh? 11:20 pm Server 27 Oct tC: 239,752.68 VE 100,030.49 UPN 74,398.19 DEIC 40,780.73 NAC 15,705.30 EoS 8,837.97 Mensynd: 436,200.43 tS 54,160.98 Alpha 54,043.27 Mensa HQ 52,299.94 BK 47,133.68 SK 45,915.65 TKR 30,832.00 Arrgh 29,829.08 Guardian 28,107.05 teST 18,933.61 InGen 16,096.14 VI 15,275.29 TC 13,161.81 TKP 13,155.23 Noir 12,159.30 Utopia 5,097.40 Sort of a new record in most damage taken; it's not even 14 days into the war (war started on Oct 15th), and UPN has been reduced by half. That's worse than the VE war where it took weeks to cut Mensa et al below 50%. Let's see how further reduced UPN is before peace is achieved.

12:05 am Server 25 Oct tC: 273,943.52 VE 99,970.76 UPN 89,866.82 DEIC 57,948.91 NAC 15,741.36 EoS 10,415.67 Mensynd: 436,640.67 tS 54,590.31 Alpha 54,176.50 Mensa HQ 53,446.17 BK 46,325.16 SK 45,641.00 Arrgh 32,185.35 TKR 29,251.34 Guardian 27,584.84 teST 17,776.17 VI 15,856.50 InGen 15,574.64 TC 13,459.76 TKP 12,868.52 Noir 12,096.83 Utopia 5,807.58 Sorry about yesterday, I had a connectivity issue with this server. In any case, with BoC's withdrawal, the war seems to be moving towards its end-phases. While UPN and DEIC have been mostly destroyed, and it's probable that UPN will take a full 50% damage before the end of war, VE is mostly untouched. Will the enemy coalition bring its forces onto VE?

Normally, I would be appalled at BoC leaving the war like this, except for the fact that BoC is shit. We just have to be happy BoC didn't hit the delete nation button by accident.

Have the deletion rules been changed yet again? I checked the 2 months tranche of players, and roughly 80% of them are more than 2 weeks inactive. What's going on?

To note, one Trident nation raided one Mensa nation and dealt 0 damage. Are you seriously taking this as an excuse to raid UPN's entire protectorate bloc? Mensa's problem is that they generally have no concept of non-combatants and for them, the game is divided into people they can get away with hitting now and people they can get away with hitting later. This doesn't bode well for the long-term, and you are hitting GPA as well.

iacta alea est

11:40 pm Server 22 Oct tC: 314,392.27 VE 99,722.08 UPN 97,705.06 DEIC 63,251.40 BoC 44,107.95 EoS 9,605.78 Mensynd: 440,880.97 Mensa HQ 53,746.51 Alpha 52,463.77 tS 52,221.70 BK 47,137.78 SK 45,129.53 Arrgh 38,475.65 TKR 29,444.13 Guardian 28,226.95 VI 17,284.16 teST 16,849.13 InGen 15,585.08 TC 13,696.61 TKP 12,615.75 Noir 12,299.28 Utopia 5,704.94 Notably, at this stage of the battle, NS declines in Mensynd have almost totally be halted, with the exception of certain new entrants as well as Arrgh, which is being solo-targeted by VE. VE has also finally passed UPN in score. UPN has another 25000 NS to lose before they hit the halving point.

I see reading the NYROB hasn't done much for your literacy; it's less the colloquialism and more the meter, two syllables make it far less obvious we're talking about UPN; any decisive war could be called the u-pwned war.

This thread is about the limits to permissible speech, not about whether or not Islam is a good or bad religion. Please stay on topic or the mods will end up closing this thread.

@Goldie: Infiltration tactics (planted spy runs off with large warchest in wartime), subversion tactics (talk government officials into running off with the bank). It makes for a great show, but the sheer power of being able to completely run off with an alliance's warchest is excessive. And I appreciate your support, given that your alliance is the beneficiary of Arrgh's mishap. @RHouse: Has that worked well IRL? I have no problem with your government structure, but if you're going to depend on every alliance having a closeknit (and possibly incestuous) leadership, you're putting the barriers to entry to alliance building way too high. Beyond that, abuse is still possible with a security system; for instance, a rogue bank officer can block legitimate withdrawals at critical times, sabotaging their alliance's war efforts. However, that's a much more limited form of sabotage than the wholesale looting we're seeing.

Let me mention that attacking the protectorates of an alliance you're at war with, when they have shown their desire not to get involved in the war, is extremely low, but here we are, the strong do what they can and the weak do what they must. That said, if it were simply a matter of Mensa attacking UPN protectorates, that could be deplored by itself. UPN protectorates attempting to defect to Mensa to avoid getting rolled is worse, and the cherry on top is Robster attacking VI. People here apparently have no notion that if you're losing, you let your enemy commit the atrocities because your own "response" has no military or strategic value. And for that matter, UPN just got passed by VE in score, and UPN has taken 33% damage within the first 6 days of the war.

Think of this as similar to how ATMs will limit your withdrawal to $500 per day, per card, unless you specifically request the bank to increase the withdrawal limits and that request may still not be granted. For a given bank access level: Withdrawal Limits, 24 hours, how much can be withdrawn in a 24 hour time period Time Delay, time before the withdrawal is executed. In that period of time, any bank officer with the right to approve or prohibit withdrawals can cancel the withdrawal request. It cannot be accelerated, and if the member is thrown out of the alliance, the withdrawal is canceled. There can be separate Time delays per Withdrawal Limit level. Management Delay, mandatory and non-changeable delay before a given access level's permissions are updated, or a member's access level is updated. By creating more fine-tuned bank access levels, it's hoped that bank robberies will become less frequent and less severe. You can't necessarily stop say, Kastor in charge of an alliance from withdrawing all the money, but you can stop people at lower access levels from committing mischief, and theoretically Kastor could lock himself into 24 hour time and management delays.

Since we've had a high profile and highly consequential bank robbery as of late, perhaps it might be worthwhile to add bank security features. It would not be mandatory for all users, or all alliances, but alliance managers would have the right to set bank access limits, like how much a given player can withdraw in 24 hours, or setting a time delay, based on access levels. Not all alliances need this feature, but it would be nice to have to prevent total bank looting for newer alliances or alliances that have had a history of bank robbery.

Just a small update before the day ends. 11:45 pm Server 21 Oct tC: 327,202.78 UPN 104,598.51 VE 99,445.26 DEIC 67,018.16 BoC 46,168.54 EoS 9,972.31 Mensynd: 419,231.75 Mensa HQ 53,700.49 Alpha 51,477.96 tS 50,483.42 BK 47,907.69 SK 44,186.84 Arrgh 41,876.43 TKR 29,698.63 Guardian 28,837.30 InGen 15,845.74 tEST 15,759.66 TC 13,804.86 TKP 13,029.37 Noir 12,623.36 Big drop on the Arrgh front, as getting hit by an opponent more than twice their size takes its toll. On the other hand, its damage is only double that of damage taken by VE, so it's not that bad, on top of the bank robbery that occurred today. When will its allies counter? In more general news, tC is getting whollopped and we're hitting the point where even a Rose intervention couldn't make it even. We're not even into 1 week into the war, and UPN has taken more than 30% score loss since peak. How much damage will be dealt before this war is over? In other news, Mensa hit all of UPN's protectorates, who have made a travesty of themselves trying to renounce their protector as well as surrendering underneath 24 hours. Understandable considering the terms, but still a bad show. Until it's clear as to whether or not their surrender will be accepted, I'm not including them in the warstats.