Mikey

Gee, just look at all that mutual respect and friendship. Between Grumpy calling for the destruction of CoS and open disdain for ripper, or Thrax and many of his alliance mates distaste for 'slursphere', or the fact that TKR has only ever been on the opposite end of the barrel from KT/TGH, its no wonder NPO thinks we've been working together this whole time! It's not like claims of historical friendship and cooperation apply far more to their side, where everyone has been directly allied and partnered for years. Or that one pair of spheres have actually fought while the other has openly stated they remain close and won't oppose each other... The only real historical ties within our coalition was us with KT, that one time, when we fought in the Ayyslamic crusade. But then, we've fought alongside NPO more than against it, and we haven't exactly been on speaking terms with Guardian since we bombed out of syndisphere. Sure, there are many members of the old Syndisphere/EMC on both sides. But so are there on yours. One just needs to look at the deep animosity between BK/TKR, or apparently now between former t$ members and each other, to see that having been allies once, years ago, is hardly a sign of future cooperation to come...

Remember when IQ banded together with other unrelated alliances in the face of what they considered a larger threat, just last war? Apparently NPO is allowed to do that and it's a legitimate temporary necessity. But when we do it in the face of an even more apparent threat, it's all a secret plot and a threat to the game. Nevermind that many of our alliances have not, in fact, been historical friends at all in recent history and the fact prominant individuals in both spheres (chaos/KETOG) share disdain for one another... By this logic everyone should have rallied to tkrs side in knightfall, because that coalition posed the biggest threat ever assembled.

So, we get logs that BK sphere is planning to roll us, preferably with N$O also taking out the only other sphere, seemingly in a resurrection of your old partnership. Then, despite strenuous denials from n$o, we hear that there is no tension between you and no intention to oppose each other, and now when BK feels the heat you actively bail them out. As a result we come to the conclusion that your groups are working together. You see two spheres engage in weeks of warfare, causing significant damage to chaos in both infra and military. Then, after explicit leaks about rolling us come out, we strike at BK despite being in a disadvantages position with chaos having no spies and most of us having only 30% air. Your conclusion is it's a massive ruse we've been planning for ages. And we're the conspiracy theorists? If we wanted to fake the war to catch BK off guard, we could have just done a half-hearted blitz and then turned around the next day with everyone fooled. We definitely wouldn't lose our most important units before trying to take on tbe biggest sphere in the game. As for the 'fun' war stuff, that was all in response to frawleys claim that wars without animosity aren't fun and we should never oppose people we like, leading us right back to the old two spheres. If losing our militaries and dealing 1/4 the damage of knightfall with a fraction of the nations and war time is a fake war, I'm not sure we can execute a 'real' one.

Why would we have turned around and hit NPO? The only thing that even brought our spheres together was the knowledge BK was trying to get both of us rolled in a war we would have no chance of winning. To our knowledge from the response to the leak, N$O had not accepted (or even necessarily received) sphinx's proposal, thus our attack was directed to BK. After that mutual threat was neutralized, we'd have no reason to work together again. Unless you're buying into the fake wear narrative, ignoring the huge damages - monetary and military - that we suffered, or the significant animosity between several alliances in our blocs. Grumpy's distaste for CoS is well known and well stated by SRD. CoS contains former TRF members and others who, shall we say, do not have the best history with KT/TGH, who themselves may harbor bad blood from their stomping by TKRsphere in the 69 day war. In fact, we seem to be the only spheres in the game that do have legitimate tensions with each other. BK/NPO should just own what they are. They are teaming up to wipe out the last vestiges of the game who dare to stand apart from your group, albeit in the most laughably incompetent way possible (your analogy about the hong kong action movies could not be more apt). If you want to dominate the game, then dominate it and be unabashed about your intentions and your goals. Some people will always be on the boards talking about hegemonies stifling the game. But in my opinion, they'd be a lot less stifling if they were at least open about it and creating an interesting narrative for the game, instead of hiding behind fake splits and playing the victim.

It was foolish to believe the leaks he says, as everything in the leaks comes to pass... Sure, lets assume that BK wouldn't have hit us directly after this war. So what? Now that we have hard proof N$O/BK are working together, the only target they could fight is us. Either sphere vs sphere with either of you having significant numerical superiority in any war, or both of you on the two of us, again with significant superiority. Since we have no choice but to fight this war, we may as well fight it on our terms while we're already in the groove.

I will forever be in awe of the sheer paranoia that manages to come out of NPO. To believe that a war between two spheres with mutual animosity between some of the participants, dealing huge monetary damages and crippling chaos military power, weeks before we even found out about the BK plot, was actually a cover up... We could all mass delete and move on to other things and some Pacifica would be here to explain how it's all a plot.

So t$ can bring in as many alliances as they want to hit Grumpy/Guardian while hiding behind daddy NPO to prevent their enemies from getting any help of their own. Watch out BK, you've got competition for most Brave and Beautiful! On another note, it's interesting how this has absolutely no relation whatsoever to the other ongoing war. Obviously it has nothing to do with the previous leaks suggesting your spheres we're working together which was strenuously denied. Funny how Grumpy/Gaurdian are such a big threat now that BK is feeling the heat, but weren't so when we were fighting them, or even before when your sphere could have attacked them.

I mean, I doubt they had concrete plans with a steadilly approaching deadline to roll you guys. But if they did and you found out, you'd have a CB. Like Ayyslamic actually, which I remember y'all (rightly) considering our leaks a very legit CB I mean we're not taking about contingencies here. If the leak was about drawing up ideas for how to deal with a hit from us or KETOG, that would be one thing. But it was a concrete plan to roll us this month, if possible in a gigantic absurd dogpile with N$O if you could get them on board. When it comes to CB's, it really doesn't get better than that

It's to loo late, he's discovered our super secret plan to beat BK by crippling our airforces and spies in a losing war against KETOG!

Did you miss the war we were just fighting with each other? If temporarily teaming up in the face of a larger threat somehow makes both sides a consolidated hegemony, then why isn't the knightfall coalition ruling the game right now?

I'm practicing alternative hygiene, and I'll have you know Tom is still proud to be my friend!

Then why split at all? It is increasingly hard to picture the IQ 'disbandment' as anything other than a smoke screen to cover growing consolidation. So genuine splits can only occur through serious internal tension, and there is no animosity or tension between you as stated in this thread. Seems like there isn't a real split then, as borne out by the fact that not only is there no maneuvering against each other, there were even thoughts of teaming up against the smaller spheres the moment you 'split'! Also, the idea that we need animosity for war is not healthy for the game.. So we can only work with people we genuinely like and fight people we don't? What happened to the politics side of politics and war? Set some political goals and use war to further them. You and BK are the two strongest spheres in the game, each standing in the way of the other achieving top sphere status. Why not try and claim the throne? There can be other reasons for war besides 'we don't like you.' That can be well and good, but wars purely over personal animosity get real toxic real fast. If that is all we can look forward too, well god help this game. It's a bit of a catch 22 isn't it? You have no animosity towards BK, so you can't fight them. You never fight or oppose them, so you don't sow any new animosity. How is a war supposed to start? How were wars supposed to start when the game was fresh and alliances were new? I was here and nobody hated each other yet, but we still managed to have politics... Still, if you don't want to fight BK right now, so be it. Why not try and fight us and KETOG together? Or some other combination of smaller alliances that combined would prove a challenge. Is the animosity towards TKR so great that roflstomping us along with BK is somehow more 'fun' than the current war? Which, for the record, has been as enjoyable as any war for many of the actual participants, even if the lack of OWF drama hasn't been a crowd pleaser.

Oh, I see. So it's not that you started planning this recently. Its that you started planning a joint war with NPO against the smaller spheres basically the moment you ostensibly 'broke up.' Gotcha. Hold my beer.

The only way to win is not to play.

The two biggest spheres in talks to join forces against the other two right after they finished fighting each other? Now that's dynamism!

To echo the sentiment, the cities absolutely need to be removed. Having their illegal resources deleted isn't a punishment, its simply being set back partially to the status quo. Their massive city growth is due in large part to that exploit, keeping that allows them to effectively keep a huge chunk of the illicit cash. If the only punishment for stealing was losing part of the stolen goods, we'd all be thieves. As for the NR government, I would again echo the sentiment that it is hard to believe they weren't aware. If I suddenly had 250bn flowing through the SK bank, or an SK member telling me he had that kind of cash to buy us cities, the first thing I would do would be to sit on the money and come to you to report the highly suspicious ammount. Only after getting confirmation would I spend it. I imagine almost any leader in the game would do the same. It is honestly hard to understand how someone could just accept that they were getting ungodly amounts of resources, enough to make the collective rest of the game blush, and not have any inkling something was wrong. Even if they had nothing to do with using the exploit, and had no idea what was actually happening, it had to be quite clear something untoward was afoot. Using obviously illicit money, even if you yourself didn't generate or understand how it was being generated, is not that much better imo. Every major alliance is going to get cheaters in its ranks at some point, even if only the most basic multi abuse. Most of us have procedures in place to look for suspicious behavior and work together to stamp it out, rather than willfully profit from it.

Since I've somehow been discovered, you can add Totally Not the SK Bank as an extension of sk on the stats. I thought I had hidden quite well too ...

I stopped at page 2 and have no idea what's going on in this thread, I'm just here for the rep. BK Bad, Dynamism Good.

Everyone here is missing the point. Supply and demand might explain why resources market is so low, but the man is asking about resssources. Something fishy going on with those, yes sir.

Chaos sphere kicked my puppy!

We're allying SK? I wasn't told of this!

But that's SK's thing!

At long last a proper theme! Who had even heard of Game of Thrones anyway? Now I can look forward to our eponymous series actually being finished ?

My magnum opus! And I won't even get to harvest the rep ? Time to make up for it in the comments.... Everybody: SK will never be back in the top 5 Me: