hidude45454

I'm still here; don't worry Do with WU what I couldn't, and long may it continue o/

This will likely be one of the last (if not the last) posts I make on the forums. I'll never have to visit this place again :3 In my memory please vote me as worst forum poster, thanks.

I haven't really commented much on this yet since I'm more or less done with the game, but I'll give my best shot to try and be as unbiased as possible. First, while IQ are telling their members who to vote for, this doesn't constitute putting a gun to their heads and forcing them to vote against their will. Anyone from IQ can still vote for whoever they want, and if they do so they won't get caught. There are still probably a fair amount of IQ members who have done this, and I don't fault them for believing what they believe. Second, for the IQ members that are vote brigading, while distasteful this is still a fair strategy. I don't see this as any different from real life, where avowed Republicans will always vote Republicans into office and avowed Democrats will always vote Democrats into office regardless of how well they actually know the candidate. Similarly, in the UK in the House of Commons it's frowned upon for a party member to vote contrary to the party, and in the US Congress much the same thing happens (albeit with a few more deviations). If EMC cares so much about winning at least a few of the categories, then they can just adopt the same strategy IQ did and fight a voting war of sorts, at least to release steam from not actually having a war in-game. Being a democratic poll, we should respect the results because that's what a democracy entails. However, third, I think that IQ needs to understand that their brigading extends beyond their supposed initial intent not to take many of the categories seriously. Bezzers and the rest of AIM worked their butts off to make sure that the voting would proceed smoothly, and the level of disappointment this has caused combined with a total lack of appreciation for the work they've put in disappoints me as well. And seriously AIM - thank you so much for making it happen this year, I was just excited as everyone else waiting for this to happen and I'm glad that it could still continue this year. In addition, the total lack of civility in these threads is detracting from the inherent purpose of these awards itself - to provide an additional boost of confidence and motivation for those that need it to succeed - and there are still voters out there that want this to happen, such as Buorhann and myself. Finally, fourth and most importantly, the voting highlights some inherent flaws found in every democracy. No matter what, there will always be uneducated voters who are unable to observe the world outside a limited scope, and there are always those who internalize beliefs that others tell them to believe. Indeed, there are probably many in IQ who genuinely believe that who they voted for is the right choice, but there are also those who don't really know what they're voting for or why they should be voting for a certain candidate over another candidate. IQ's argument seems to be resting on the fact that we can't know what their members think and that they voted using their own free will, but the fact of the matter remains that IQ did push a list of candidates to vote for and that there are people who voted for candidates that were not serious choices or that they don't exactly know why is the best choice. I don't blame IQ for this, rather democracy itself, so as said before, as long as there is a winner they should be accepted without so much anger towards IQ. However, what bothers me is what I perceive to be the results of the awards, which are, in and of itself, propaganda. Throughout history, while slightly modified, there's been a phrase that largely remains the same - if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. Disregarding whether these results are lies or not, there are inevitably going to be those that voted along with the horde in order to be part of a group, and as a result of any cognitive dissonance they have as a result, adjust their own opinions to fit with the rest of the group until you could swear that it was their own original idea in the first place. Inherently, there's nothing wrong with adopting the opinions of others, but I suppose you could say that this isn't exactly the best way to go about it. To those brigading for any candidate, including those from last year's Syndisphere, I sincerely hope that you explore beyond your own sphere and come to your own independent decisions about PnW in general beyond a list or just what you're told by others. And for the current situation, no matter how you portray it, IQ isn't the best at everything, and people shouldn't vote nor act based on those beliefs. Although I'll accept the results of the polls, they don't mean very much to me, but I genuinely hope that overall PnW will become a much more exciting place in my absence and that these polls won't cause hurt and aggression beyond what's happened so far. Anyways, I'm probably gonna get a lot of tl;dr's and people generally mocking me for bothering to write something this long and stupid, but I guess since I'm going to be gone from forums from now on I just wanted to put some effort into expressing my feelings about all of this.

Someone add images of the war flags so people can actually decide lol. RIP Dayne for forgetting to include this beauty though:

Alright, here are the results, thanks to the 35 people that submitted legitimate guesses! The winner was @Thalmor, who made the second guess of the entire game with the number 5 - I've already sent you a trade offer. Interestingly enough, someone could've guessed 4 and won anyways. Here's a quick chart I made, stylized after the Greed Control chart in AoPS, if any of you know what that means And here's a spreadsheet with all the guesses, as well as a sorted list if you're that curious: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lP2iAq4mF0vZ1q0Jitjqp_P1g7DD12MVo2UDO7cCcIw/edit#gid=789403475 I can continue these in the future if any of you are interested, just let me know and hopefully more people will trust the links next time >.>

Without the blockade this is so easily exploited; if you need money in your nation quickly or want to hide your resources and you're blockaded, then you can just declare on a friend and immediately send/receive money and resources. So if this becomes a thing then there should probably be a timer for how long the war can go on before this happens, at the very least.

Zeebrus, if I knew how I would transform your writings into an audiobook to be preserved forever. In the meantime though, keep fighting on CoS! o/

I still hesitantly wish you the best of luck, although attacking every major alliance in your DoE and already getting involved in micro drama isn't exactly getting off on the right foot...

Let's be real, no one who is so low that they can declare on people half their size has the capability to buy 300k soldiers and 12.5k tanks at double buy. Plus, only a 30 city nation with enough population can build that much at double buy, so that's kind of an exaggeration. There are only two foreseeable scenarios where I can see your complaints being applied, with pirates and during global war when members have been rolled so thoroughly that they have to declare on smaller nations in order to have a chance. With the first scenario, pirates will generally declare on you if you have some weak point in your military. If your minimum military requirements suck or you just aren't building up to them, then that's why pirates have such an easy time double buying. And most of the time, the nation's warchest will suck, so pirates don't even have an incentive to double buy most of the time. And if your warchest requirements are worth double buying for, well, then you should stop being overconfident and take measures to deter a double buy from happening. With the second scenario, then any change you're proposing suddenly makes it so that losing nations are given less of a chance to fight back, which just makes war all the more boring. I for one don't want wars to just end in curbstomps in one or two rounds, and although the current war system isn't perfect either (see: 3 months of pain) this system wouldn't make it better.

2 days until I get out of blockade; I guess I'll post the results then. In the meantime, I would appreciate some more inputs

Isn't half of this treaty old news? Congrats regardless Kastor and co.; although I'd appreciate if you don't take AO in the same direction as you did Lordaeron

Well someone nominated me, and I would consider it a momentous victory if I managed to snatch that title away

HAHAHAHAHA THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THESE ARE TEARS OF JOY I'M CRYING

You've come a long way Epi, congrats and good luck on the bloc! If anyone asks now though, you can deny being a sphere on the account of being a circle