Sisyphus

On one hand it's great seeing DB doing something. On the other it'd be great to see them do something of their own volition for once. I give this declaration a 1/1 because a 1/2 would imply they had other options.

Market TEsting is important to evaluate potential areas worth investment.

Not to be nitpicky, and I'm pretty certain I made the reasons very clear in private, but it wasn't all about my reputation (I might've trumped that bit up for drama but genuinely don't care). It was about The Syndicate's interests and ideals combined with House Stark's interests and ideals as I understood them to apply to the overarching integrity of N$O in general - I even did my best to consider the NPOs reputation as a factor, reach a consensus on goals and positioning before even declaring, and pretty blatantly told you exactly how it would be perceived if you entered. You keep acting like there was some lack of detail coming from myself and House Stark's leadership about the whys and the why nots that went into our initial rules of engagement. There's overt lying and there's lies of omission, and a lot of information was withheld from us by NPO until after we entered. Particularly about our agreed upon "goals" and the blatant conflicts of interest which were far removed from N$O proper, which would've been pertinent in discussion leading up to The Syndicate's entry since I didn't mence any words about my interests and was 100% forthcoming with you from the start. Some of that was definitely a result of Hilmes deliberately withholding information from his own government for sure (him ghosting has made it particularly hard to confirm many of the claims that have been made about him but I'm taking most of it on faith since it's at least consistent with his character as I knew him), but I can comfortably say House Stark seemed to be learning a lot of these things at the same time I and the rest of t$ gov were being brought up to speed after I took on FA. For the record: I've been trying to stay removed from this conversation out of respect for all parties involved but please don't evoke my name and my alliance's interests as a way to hand-wave and dismiss legitimate criticism of your alliance, I'll respect your sovereignty but that entails you owning the consequences of your actions too.

Tbf it's hard to trace something that moves around that much.

Nobodies ankles are safe anymore.

If you can't tell, the sarcasm is working. I've never been a member but TKR has a strong community and they certainly aren't the worst protectorate The Syndicate has ever taken on by a longshot.

The wiki did a good job of letting me know that the Fraggle Approved achievement is the only one that really requires any actual work to accomplish.

The The two*

My former wife and 2 year old son... what? He's 35 now?! My former, now remarried and deceased wife and 35 year old son as well as his 2 daughters and 28 grandchildren have asked me this question several-ish times over the last decade and none of them understand this meme:

I'm not gonna hold my breath on that one.

I think it is unfair of you to blame Partisan - a well-renowned TGH gov member - for all of this unfortunate confusion that is resulting from the civil unrest that is currently affecting all of the fraggle folk.

We're gonna need a bigger boat.

The most difficult aspect of whaling nowadays is finding a reliable boat. They don't make them like they used to.

I am biased but: IA first. If you can't get nations to join, learn, or interact you're dead. Econ second: people like growing, keeps them invested and clicking. If they click wrong scold them, if they keep clicking wrong that's what rebuild thresholds are for. MilCom third: If they don't exist, can't learn or interact, and don't know how to click properly you're dead. If IA and Econ held up their end you're in a good position to thrash some shit. FA last: If your people exist, are learning and interacting and have enough discipline to click properly (or at least accept the consequences when they don't) you're MilCom is probably... at least... okay. If they are interacting superbly well you've probably adopted a culture and principles and interests, too. So it's now FAs responsibility to not frick up all that great momentum and leverage it into as engaging, fun, and not disappointing circumstances as possible. Of course, if 1/4 of these doesn't hold up their end of the bargain you will have some serious problems but there are models for succeeding at different capacities. Depending on your metrics for "success".

I like this idea a lot. Makes both resistance and beige matter beyond simply existing to be exploited and offers more options for strategy. Balancing it properly is the real challenge.

When the board actually approves. God damn all this stifling bureaucracy.

I guess this would be a very convenient time for me to go inactive, huh? As if you could ever convince me to implode harder than I'm naturally inclined to anyway. ?

As Officer of Strategic Planning for the Syndicate, without confirming this with the rest of the Board of Executives at all, I'd like to say that whomever posts the 1,000th reply to this thread can consider that a diplomatic obligation from the Syndicate to declare war upon them, and I can conclusively assure everyone that nothing bad will come of this per our Charter.

>nebulous wording He said, omitting the details of the greater overall conversation that took place surrounding the decision and my clearly expressed intent to keep the war limited on our part and the effort I put into building a legitimate consensus on the expressed goal: which at the time was a strike at the upper tier consolidation. >tacit approval That implies tacit responsibility. If you had expressed your waffling conviction and conflicts of interest to me before I was committed to the war effort I would've never declared in the first place. I told you straight up it would be suicide if you declared. So don't act like your ass is all chapped now because I wasn't straight with you from the onset. I'm not the one who had to be so nebulous and vague about my goals that I can only refer to my commitment as "tacit approval" to maintain a shred of integrity.

And to think I just went over budget acquring a ton of kumbaya love train fuel, too. ?

Touche. It was hard enough getting through a few paragraphs I didn't even attempt to read the last two lines tbqh

What's hilarious is that you are so close to right you can almost taste it but then you can't help careening sharply off in the direction of being completely falsifiable before you're done.

Somebody wasn't paying attention to the air craft totals.

We were expecting to do more throughout the following counters but we had to start somewhere - literally had people who couldn't get slots off the target list from that blitz. I would've been happy to continue the war for a few rounds and systematically dragged you guys down for a while but then that leads us to the question: for what reasons and for whose interests? Trust me, I'm not exactly chipper about letting round one go (as we always do) and then being forced between choosing to let it all go or allow my alliance to be taken advantage of.

I made the rules crystal clear both publically and in private when we declared. I'm not the type to shift my stance out of convenience. That's all I have to say about this.