Maxwell

We recruit everyone because we aren't an elitist alliance. Our "play style" is casual, and we like it that way. And you can "rather disband" all you want because you're not in the GPA so your opinion is, by every possible measure, entirely irrelevant. And we will get rolled in a year, I have no doubts about that. But we won't get dragged into wars by treaties 10 links long either, and that's a trade-off I'm willing to make.

I'm not concerned with what "everyone else" thinks of the GPA name. I'm concerned with the preservation of it. We won't be able to hold a treasure for 10 months, and 100 million is affordable. We lost half our membership for reasons other than because we decided to accept the treaty. And if ever the GPA disbands, it will simply be created again with the same name and the same flag, since disbandment is not an option.

The stupidity is all yours, my friend, because you're the one who doesn't get it. We are a casual alliance, but we care about our name. The two are not mutually exclusive. Let me simplify. It was a choice between GPA's survival and disbandment. We chose survival. That's all there is to it.

Our protection is more about raids. We will always be vulnerable to being beat down when multiple alliances target us, or when a single alliance that is much more stringent about activity requirements and military cooperation decides to attack us. We aren't an elite alliance, our members have lax activity requirements, our military standards are pretty flexible. We're just an open, casual alliance for the most part. Anyway, while this is humiliating, it was this or be zeroed and disbanded. This was the only way the GPA name continues to exist. I personally put that over everything else, so I'll take being individually humiliated over the GPA being disbanded. And it seems our alliance leaders thought the same.

Indeed, for anyone who previously agreed with that, they probably still agree. As for everyone else, I can't say it's likely that much has changed. But hooray for peace.

Nevermind that.

What is that supposed to mean? Are you implying that we're no longer neutral? If so, care to provide even the slightest bit of evidence?

Well, the entire appeal of the GPA is that we're neutral, so the people who came to the GPA for that reason would just leave and start their own alliance most likely. The new, aggressive "GPA" would be GPA-in-name-only.

How will our economies being huge give other alliances' headaches if the economies aren't being used to power war machines? I guess you could make the argument that we could begin manipulating the global market, but I doubt we could ever reach a point where we could really do that and succeed.

I can't say that I see what threat we pose when we grow massive. Unless you mean the hypothetical threat that we all suddenly and without warning turn un-neutral and start trying to dominate the game, which would never happen because the alliance would be disbanded the moment the announcement is made. It's better if admit that you rolled us just because. It's not something to be proud of, but I can at least respect the honesty in admitting that it's the real reason. We posed no threat, present or future, we had no political affiliation with your enemies, or anything like that. We were just there, and relatively helpless since we don't have allies, and you wanted to attack somebody.

You'll have to ask GPA leadership about that. I wouldn't be willing to do so, but I'm not leadership. I'm just saying that it was never an option to begin with so our hypothetical refusal can't be used as the official justification for war now.

That'd make sense if they had asked first and used the threat of war as a bargaining chip, like NK did but instead of trying to get us off green, they asked for money.

Not all games are competitions. You can view this game as one if you like, but I view it as a game where I can check in and nurture a nation and enjoy a friendly community with my alliancemates. We knew the moment we hit #1 at first a few months ago that it would make us a target, but there's not much we can do but sell off infrastructure or whatever. We just hoped that our neutrality would send a message that we're not a threat, there's nothing to worry about with us, and hoped that would be enough for people to leave us alone. Guess not, here we are. So be it, I suppose.

That's my point. We don't engage in politics because we want to avoid getting into wars. Mensa can't possibly have a political reason to go to war with us. They're just doing it for no real, justifiable reason other than "we want to", which puts them squarely on the same level as us when it comes to not playing the game "like you're supposed to". It gets even worse when you realize that we have no allies so they're picking on the one alliance that not only doesn't really prepare for war, but also doesn't even have allies to help it. It's just... sure, I guess, have fun, but it's not an accomplishment. Not at all.

A great apolitical reason to go to war, which is what I was getting at. This has no political cause, and is thus at least as antithetical to the game's supposed "purpose" as our being neutral in the first place.