Zed

My curmudgeonly opinion is that there should be more actively relevant alliances on the world scene. Micros usually do not contribute to this. Having 2 working gov members tops is, frankly, a sorry state for most relevant alliances. If you do not have a trusted government team, then that is a complete organizational failure. You could scoop up a bunch of these micro type alliances, merge them into each other (and that does not have to be all together, you could make a few decent alliances out of that), and be much more able to accomplish that. Sure, we do not have the playerbase now to have thousand or even five-hundred player alliances without resorting to illegally giving away Korean comics, and that is totally fine. But we have smaller blocs and "mid-level" alliances, and that is good. Not everyone is going to play in a Top 10 alliance. That would be a pretty limiting game. We are, however, too big of a game for randos to just gather up five people and try to have an alliance without knowing what they are doing. I completely agree that you can taken any given group of active people and turn then into a "competent" alliance through basic organizational skills. The major alliances can and should take interest in this, and I have been involved in those projects before. First paragraph got me to look through the list of alliances. Accounting for obvious offshores or single-player projects, it is a pretty sad list once you start getting into the triple digits. I wish that could get cleaned up a good bit. And as for micros who cannot take care of it themselves, that goes to my points above. Second paragraph is cosigned by yours truly.

People wanted more RP and fancy graphics. W has delivered them to us. Please clap. Disband your alliance and join MiG BK

/thread This is why "micro moment" is a slur which should be used with extreme prejudice.

My guess is that the instant conversational access of Discord has really driven the active player base there. Discord has several advantages over IRC in a rapid online environment. It is much easier to monitor multiple servers and rooms, there are integrated voice options and emojis, and a whole host of other benefits. Most alliances worth any salt require the use of Discord for members (or an alternative, like TKR with Slack). The downside, seemingly, is that because the game “gets played on Discord” as much as it does in the actual site itself, people have more of an incentive to hash everything out there. The news servers contribute to this as well. It strikes me as extremely curious that the PnW Discord is not the watercooler for most of the banter and posting among people from different alliances. Instead, on Discord, there are a host of other servers that fill this role. RON is probably the best known example, but radio show servers like Thalmoria and Morf Radio contribute as well. The socialization of people in game does not happen on the official sanctioned channels. Should it? The OWF really used to serve that town square role that is now not even on the PnW Sanctioned Discord so much as it is on a litany of other servers run by individuals. I am not arguing that this is good or bad, but it is not something that contributes to having public discussions on forums. Over the holidays I was watching the original Home Alone with some younger (grade school aged) family members. One of them asked me what the strange black box was that the main character was using to watch the TV. It was a VCR. I had to explain to them what VHS was. They just had no idea. In fairness, except for hipsters with fixie bikes and overpriced lattes, most people today are not choosing a vinyl record player over a streaming platform - the same is true for VHS and streaming. I use this as an analogy here too. The people who remember forums and IRC are winding their careers down and leaving, and people who do not remember what this was like are coming. They will use the tools and technologies they are familiar with to drive discourse. This is not some boomer yells at cloud judgement on the shift. It is just a part of what is happening with the cultures of this game. We do not have to trawl dozens of individual forums to do embassy politics, which is fine with me. I liked IRC, but I also like Discord and think that is has opened some new avenues for us too (and I use it in my professional life too, so take that Slack fans). I will also admit that I personally am fairly elitist about new player micros and the like. I think this has been documented a lot here, and I probably am not changing my opinion that most micros without experienced players really should not do that, and instead join a more established alliance (and there are several acceptable choices) to learn the game for awhile before making their venture. But I also probably would not post in those threads now telling those people to give up the ghost, because I feel it is not worth it. I would rather save my more limited posting energy to other threads, where some actual half-decent politics are happening. I know that runs counter to some of the narrative here about embracing the new, but I suppose there are ways to pick and choose where one expends their efforts.

What were you doing (or trying to do): During a war, facing Ground Attacks. What happened (describe thoroughly please): Five consecutive Ground Attacks were launched in a single turn. The max should be four. Link to page: https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=1188666

Sadly, the character limits were not fully tested by this post. I will add some lorem ipsum in next time if I have filler. We had some struggles in recruiting other FA, and Hilmes fit the mold at the time of the project underway. He just did not pan out. As an aside, he disappeared off the face of the planet when he left us, and it is one of my great wishes to know what he was actually thinking and doing when he outed us like that. I do not know what many others in t$ think, but my personal opinion is not that everyone who isn’t t$ should be fought. My own opinion is that narratives and challenges are what matter. Other alliances might think differently, and change what those challenges and narratives are, but the story is what we weave at the end of the day. For example - I cannot think of any real reason to fight Mystery now. In terms of a story or a narrative that is actually compelling, it does not move the needle. I guess we could if we wanted to say we spread the love around, but that is not worth a story. I do not decide our policy, so that may take some of the bite out of the words here, but I felt it worth detailing. Challenges are a better estimation of what an alliance should focus on, but again this is my opinion. Hitting certain metrics, pushing some mechanical boundaries, making major political moves, and the like. I would daresay the primary reason Partisan, Manthrax, and Theo left for their own projects is because they felt that t$ had too much baggage for them to continue on innovating. But new people come in. t$ has the look of a house with a few old pieces of furniture laying in the background that are a bit crusty and rickety (and do not ask what the smell seemingly from the subbasement is), but not all of the faces or things stewarding it in leadership are of the same vintage inside the house. I think W has commented further on what that might imply. There has been a lot of talk over our current strategy with military action, and you do reference that somehow we seem to drag out wars longer than anyone else. There is a disconnect in peoples perceptions of those two statements. I would not think it as some paradox to ponder in ones daily zazen practice, but it is something that bears some pointing out. You know, a family member of mine joined the Postal Service. Sometimes on rural routes get personal vehicles to drive instead of the familiar looking LLV. Well, I told them to buy a ute because they would not have to swap it over to left-hand-drive, and plus it would be like that El Camino their old man once had. They did! So now on his rural route you will see a ute, delivering the mail, and providing a bogan flavor to a redneck land. It is only a matter of time before I have a similar excuse. I do not believe that this statement even asks the correct question in search of a problem. And at the risk of a lot of unneeded backstory, I will just post some opinions I have about your statement. Back in the day of NPO’s First Time, I was MilCom Exec. We were working on a somewhat condensed timeline then, and Jess got a little overzealous. She more or less shoved me aside and drew up most of our war planning. Now, she did a better job than I probably was going to, but I let her go and did not really say much. Following the war, Roy asked me to step down as MilCom Exec and cede it to Jess, who would take over both MilCom and keep her current Econ position. I acquiesced. But Jess did not yank Sabriel around when she was leading FA. Maybe because we mostly banned her from doing FA in the same way we ban Partisan from IA/Econ, but fact remains. Jess wanted to do so many different things that Sabriel did not want. I replaced Sabriel as FA Exec, and I suggested some ideas. Jess was usually on board with all of them, or she deferred to my judgement. It was a major reversal from before. But I once again deferred to Jess when it came time to open the doors to new outside recruits, and change us from an elite invite-only alliance into a recruiting grouping. I was probably the last person refusing to make that change, and I finally relented. Just as I had very grudgingly allowed t$ to raid for the first time when I was MilCom Exec (before that we generally did not), I allowed the same again. The point is this. Jess saw problems in the game from an economic and military angle. Most of this is mechanical doings. She did not generally always know the best way to play the people side of things, or she was willing to let those Execs in those areas the latitude to play that. When we talked about going paperless, she told me that if I held up my end of the bargain with the FA, and did not do something stupid to get us killed, she would work out the mechanics however she needed. I have no idea what she would think of the state of the game now. If you made me speculate, she would probably be quite happy at a slightly more fluid environment, and she would probably think there were a few problems to solve. I think most of us in t$ miss her very deeply. But I can, very confidently, tell you this: I think she would still be thinking about all of our mechanical issues, and she would trust that our “people” people would drive her in the position where she could best do her thing. And if they somehow couldn’t, well, she would figure out how in the world to make that work anyway. We would know if if she were disappointed, as she could never hide it. I doubt this would be the case. I think we have well established that Kayser left us very much in the dark with what all he agreed to. There is a zero percentage chance that Sisyphus writes that epic whales thread if he knows for sure. We tried, in good faith, to break IQ because of game balance issues. I think a lot of people will agree that NPO turning on TKR when they did is probably one of the single biggest inflection points in this games history. Humble suggestion. For all those competing for the second sexiest voice in Orbis Academy Awards (I did not want to self-nominate as this would be unfair to everyone else), have them do something already outlined in this thread as their way to help others follow along without having to suffer the ignominy of literacy, and showcase their voice talent. $yndicate man bad! We will call out on forums! Why they reply back?

The people have spoken. The content god demands content. Walls of text have been demanded. People do not want radio silence! Just doing my part, friend.

Greetings, friend! I was told somehow that a post on the forums was intriguing. Being a bit elderly and occupied, it took me some time to write up a response. I also wanted to respond to other posts here, so I needed some more time. People wanted walls of text on forums! They will receive. Speaking of forums, it is my opinion that as of this time, among active FA leaders, the two sharpest and most dynamic are WANA and Keegoz, and they are ahead of the peloton. The short answer as to why is that the both of them are some of the few people who have a long enough history doing this, here and elsewhere, to remember a time before NPOLT. That is really some ancient history, mind you, but for many people in leadership now it is not that long ago. A time when things did get conduced on forums, and a time when, in-character at least, things were quite sharper. This is no insult to someone like Ronny. Ronny is certainly sharp enough to know how things operate. I respect Ronny for this; Grumpy is one of the few foreign servers I will entertain being in. There is one difference here with them, however. I will post a few recent comments from the forums here. Clock seems to indicate that they would be a bad matchup for the Grumpy/Guardian axis. The reasons are, more or less, for the same reasons outlined in the other post link. The mechanics of this game are such that dropping from above is usually the way to win at an easier rate, and it seems neither Clock nor Blackwater have the horses in the upper tiers where this matters. So what would Clock do in this 1v1 scenario? After all, the megawhale territory is on much more even ground among Clock and Hollywood. I think you will find that t$ has been remarkably consistent on this point. But… why? Frankly, when you have accomplished what we have over the years, you too might run out of peaks to scale. The G/G axis is strong enough mechanically that they do not have to be experts to use it, but insulting them by using a sporting analogy in saying they “have no bag” is simply false. No one believes that G/G are unskilled bloat merchants. And perhaps, maybe now, we should just decide that we will give this line of work a rest. I recall the goal of The Company, when it was founded, was to have a project that would rival Grumpy. It was to provide an alternative home for whales who wanted a different project and grouping. And it seems that The Company has grown. I think many of us in t$ were quite upset that such a project went off to do an independent thing. It is not the first time t$ has suffered a splinter of high-ranking nations that left us wondering how to regroup in those tiers. Despite the shifting fortunes of The Company and t$ relative to each other, and the differing positions we find ourselves in now, I still do not believe that we feel enough animosity towards you to have a conflict. It has been argued about good intentions regarding peace, and the bilaterally of that negotiation, all over these forums in the past few days. People may lament the state of CBs in this game. Sometimes I do. I do not know why we would have a reason to fight Clock at this time given that sentiment, and unless I am missing something do not see why you would want us either. An astute reader will remember the comment about mini-spheres, and then wonder why I do not seem to have mentioned them all. In fact, I seem to be focusing on only two others besides the one I reside in. Are the other spheres irrelevant? Well if we have active mini-sphere politics, then no. But remember, I have mentioned three prominent FA voices here so far in this thread among active people. But only three. t$ may not have the greatest love affair with several alliances in that grouping, but I imagine we simply do not care at this point to make an effort to come to blows. Even with some of these alliances, notably Ampersand, I imagine we have even made amends over past conflicts. I wish Rose and TFP well, but neither play this game in a fashion that seeks bloodlust, or to always be shaking the political game. This is fine; not everyone needs to do this, and both alliances have built communities in and around them that do put on some good behavior and friendly faces to others out there. If everyone did the same thing, people would feel like things were stale. But without this incessant drive, there just will not be a lot of political intrigue with t$ and those alliances. Again, this is fine in my opinion. Moreover, it really is not even warranted anyway. Yes, t$ has been generally alienated from much of the game between NPOLT and now. Yes, the narratives of the game seem to have not lived up to the hopes that many had following that conflict. What is new about that? Occasionally in real life (oh no, OOC attack), I teach statistical research methods to undergraduate students. One of my favorite examples to refer to is to talk about the department of Geography at the University of North Carolina. Did you know that in the 1980s, geography majors at UNC had a vastly higher salary upon graduation than any other major? $250k in the 1980s! How in the world did this small major have such earnings? Well, the most famous student of the program was a man named Michael Jeffrey Jordan. MJ, for short, is a very well known and famous geographer. In fact, he is a household name - I bet everyone here has heard of him, unlike most geography majors. But there is a catch - Jordan is really the only member of his class to earn a very high salary approaching that average. No one else is close. I bet he discovered something really great in geography, and that is how he made his money! Well friend if you believe that, then you may call me George Strait, because I have oceanfront property in Arizona with a free golden gate if you will buy it (all of my exes do live in Texas though). But when total nation counts say one thing, and the actual scores of those nations say another, basic statistical methods will lead one to some real truth of the matter. I do not need to go further, because the point was made above by others, and again, perhaps we ought to just let it go. t$ and Grumpy collaborate on Green Unity, and together have built the most economically stable color grouping in the game. It is a shame that there are other alliances which parasite off of the work that our alliances do to ensure this economic viability, without doing any of the work to keep and maintain that bonus. Does Clockwater need to be a thing just to fight this G/G axis? It could, but like I mentioned before why bother? People do not seem to like endless repeating war cycles. Both Blackwater and Hollywood have publicly stated on these forums in the past few days they prefer not to fight each other. So let us say that we will take each other at our words. Do I trust Grumpy/Guardian, and TKR? Yes, yes I do. I believe, and will go on public record, that their leaders have integrity to do so. I trust most of this game, in fact. Partisan has come and gone from our halls multiple times. Others have led, and often but not always (no names called out here!) done so capably. People will have different styles and approaches. As someone who has seen t$ nearly die multiple times, I have some perspective on things. WANA, Justin, Shiho, Adam, Theo, and others (I hope they do not hate me for omitting their names), have all done a remarkable job at helping us along. They all came to us with a different worldview, and a new set of talents. I have been very glad to see them all. Why would I not? Statpadding is not what wins coalition wars. Brilliant solo performances are not what win coalition wars. t$ has survived a great many challenges before, and I hope that as long as this game is still worth my time that it will continue to do so. Besides, despite claimed leaks to the contrary, I doubt you will see t$ sue for peace in fewer than ten days because we have not the will to fight a worthy opponent. I do not feel like I need to reiterate, again for those who live under a rock, why malal and t$ do not have the most sterling opinion of each other. I do not feel like I need to point out some of the undefendable things that have emerged from this thread either by some posting here; any reasonably neutral party will see them and call them out for what they are. Will the Court of Thalmor give us as entertaining of a trial as Peoples Court? Video unrelated - clearly not a representation of me: As someone who has been in t$ for awhile, it is my firm (no pun intended) opinion that some of the most recent executives to come through our halls are among the best we have ever had. Shiho and Jess are both superlative military commanders at the height of anything this game has ever seen. Theo and Justin both made major economic victories in this alliance to rival anything from previous eras. WANA is an original founder of t$ who has come back. Greatness still exists here, even by our standards. As for Adam, he unfortunately suffered from the same fate as myself, Chaunce, and Sisyphus (and even Manthrax to some extent) - someone naturally from an IA or adjacent department being pressed into FA work. This is, in part, why we like to joke about Lucas being our next FA Executive; the other part is because we find it amusing to consider the possibility. Even then, Adam was a fine IA executive relative to our standards, and I think he is too hard on himself regarding foreign affairs. After all, I do not think he really did any worse overall than I did during my near year in charge. Obsidian Order, a collaboration between two of our children, was something I took for granted as a stable thing when I came into power doing FA. I had absolutely zero idea that things were as bad as they were over there before their split. It was not good. They made a major drive to the narrative by joining Pacifica to form IQ. I tried to sign VE to ease world tensions, but that was hijacked and eventually we got quite a war. But I noticed that the peace negotiations from that war, at the time, seemed to be a bit nastier than normal. There was some real bad blood. I was told years later that Curu following that had a real hatred for me and t$, because of how that war turned out. I really wish I knew why. I noticed that in the state the game was in at the time, things had become extremely calcified. IQ and their other friends were not going to break apart. The grouping of EMC was also hardened in their resolve. Almost everyone was aligned on one side or another. KT was out in the third space, as were our splinter children Hogwarts and Church of Spaceology, but they did not have the numbers to really pull things apart. I felt personally responsible to do something to try and break this, but I did not have the foggiest idea about what that was. So I decided, with the blessing of Chaunce and Jess, to extract us out. We would be the largest alliance to go paperless in quite some time. Our friends in EMC were pretty shocked at this turn of events. I do not remember what IQ thought, but we never had any real serious dialogue in the time we were paperless, and they never really sought us out. I talked to the other unaligned nations, but nothing really progressed too far and I kept some distance there. That move did the very short-term thing I intended. The sauna that was world politics at the time cooled significantly. Success! But I did not do more about it. I had no idea what I could do! I did not want to look like I was turning my back on EMC, like others did. I did not want to fight IQ again, and I do not have to explain that. What would have happened if I joined a “third sphere”? Well there was a risk there, but I did not take it. I say all this because I believe that much of the perception of t$ now is based on those years as the point of genesis. I believe that I may not have explicitly failed in my time as FA Executive, but I left an impression of an era that felt hollow. When I read the opinions of people here, this is the furthest era they cite as to how they perceive us. That era was under my watch, and it does not appear that the overall perception is very healthy. It is not based on a year like 2015 when we mostly fought defensive undermanned wars. People like to talk about how we only fight “dogpiles”, and forget that much of our old mentality is forged from having to be under the gun for that long. It is part of the shock that haunted me from Git Gud Friday and wanting any way out of the madness. It is not also a perception based on the creation of Treasure Island, Ground Zero, or surviving an 8v1 throw the kitchen sink hit during Git Gud Friday. And even then, Partisan took Hogwarts away from us. Manthrax took Church of Spaceology away from us. Jess nearly led another group away, and I even considered a breakaway; either of those would have probably killed t$ at the time. Theo led The Company away years later, and there have been other splinters still. People have left, and so sometimes have ideas. I outlined earlier that t$ has crested many mountains. Alliances reinvent themselves constantly if they want to survive for years. Guardian is a prime example of an alliance that has done this. t$ has done the same, and repeatedly. We are still doing it to this day. t$ would not be here today without the new ideas and people from the KT/TGH exodus. I also outlined that there is a seeming dearth of narratives in the game currently. From our perspective, both are true. t$ took a major chance with signing Pacifica. We found out that was a bad chance. But what other real chance is there to take right now? This is an alliance that has a particular pride in being innovative and groundbreaking, and we have done that many times over the years. By our standards, I look around the world now and see something relatively flat. If I am being honest, the way things stand now, I see exactly one real powerplay move we could do - maybe a second, but that is a lot harder for me to think about people accepting. Such a move is not my decision to make, as I am not in charge. People in this game are still in a shell from NPOLT regarding behavior. If I made some statement like, t$ has a valid cause to Eternal ZI those people wanting us to disband forever in NPOLT that are still playing, and specifically singling us out compared to many others, well people now would be extremely upset. I remember a bygone era where such an action would have been no problem to levy, and no one would have thought twice about any seeming hypocrisy on our end. But times have changed. I will clarify that t$ does not have intent to do this, but I wanted to put out some rather extreme normative behavior from earlier generations as a hypothetical to talk about community mores. Things have been worse before. I am glad to see that things did improve, at least a bit, in two years. I would like to continue that. If the rest of this community, writ large, would like to have some normalization of relations with t$ for supposed unnormative behavior, I believe that would be welcomed by us. Nexus of late has had a chance to make moves on their own accord, and not always moves we would steer them towards if we truly drove their policy. TKR has already stated on their own that we did not treat them with disdain; I hope that was true during Quack and I can tell you from firsthand experience it was true in an earlier era. I was thrilled to see BK not take their own advice to disband and join Bee Kay when they had a cleaning out, and was glad to have them back as allies. This statement is just patently untrue. The only real time I can remember that we had major problems with an ally was NPO. I do not need to elaborate on that one. Quoted post edited to reflect my true and factual opinion. On a more serious note, Hilmes was an utter and catastrophic failure as our FA Executive. Your tenure was not anywhere in the area of such a disaster, and I personally admire your service to our alliance.

Fear not! The Monastery awaits pilgrims.

Damn, I wish I would have disbanded when I had the chance five years ago. Oh well. Maybe one of these days I will know the answer to why there is not a Skynyrd album of just guitar solos/jams, and I will be a free bird.

Nice find. People do love that movie. It is unfortunately showing its old age however, as WANA was named the biggest snake in the game.

I cannot imagine. Who would do such a thing?

clock and ball torture is a war activity involving torture of Alex's Game mechanics this may involve directly pain activities such as farming, bloating, and meat shielding Real talk, the servers did not go down like potatoes this time, so I commend Alex for not subjecting us to further clock and ball torture.

10/10 theme; way to stay in character.

Daily reminder to disband your alliance and join Bee Kay

Dirty Dancing will also be acceptable.

As an individual who lives for the dish depicted below, I want to wish good luck to all parties involved.

I expect to see a Brown Color Treaty rise from this agreement.

I hope y'all had this conversation over an All-Star Special at 4 in the morning after watching your cook come back from their smoke break early because y'all showed up for whatever reason in the dead of night. Also, as others have posted, I fully expect a Waffle House Index to be posted for global events and wars now, please.

heavy drinking bad

It is a campaign slogan, not a historical document. Don't let your memes be dreams.

As the Good Shepherd of t$ during our time as a paperless alliance, and boasting a undefeated and untied record as a t$ Executive in two tours of duty in those roles, I hereby submit my application to be viceroy of Camelot. I promise I will Make Camelot Great Again.

Since some radio commenters kept calling Blackwater Bollywood, I vote that the word Bollywood is used somehow.

Daily reminder to disband your alliance and join ayy lmao.