Ashland1

Given our history I'm pretty disappointed to see that you feel this way. Your attitudes are destructive to the game and the community in the long term. We'll talk face to face once that ivory tower you're on gets knocked down a few levels, bud.

That's probably why you puff your little chest out with pride about growing your nations inefficiently with your Sweet Ronny Newspeak: "large nation friendly environment "= Elitist. New Nations need not apply. "So you can complain about about how big we have gotten" = Laugh with derision at your whaling, pixel hugging, and inefficiency "huge ass nations" = Pixel hugging whales; to be reviled and discouraged at every opportunity. "you have prevented them from growing with exorbitant taxes" = Reinvested the alliance's resources most efficiency to maximize long term growth and revenue. SRD, do you understand the lofty concept of 5% being bigger than 4%? " the way you run your alliance is not very welcoming to large nations " = Not having things like THIS in our alliance page: " Contact Sweeeeet Ronny D if you are interested in joining. Tho before you do, ask yourself, would you be a good fit for an alliance that averages over 30 cities per member?" In SRD's bizarre, Martian logic not going out of our way to actively discourage newer players means we are "Not welcoming to large nations". This is, of course, patently absurd. Oh, we also don't charge a 10 million dollar up front fee for joining. How elitist of us. You see, the strategies and growth tactics of GoB are so backwards and inefficient that they have now had to invent their own little orwellian vocabulary to even attempt to justify them. They can't justify their idiotic concepts using actual logic and normal phrases so they've had to make up their own.

I had heard he had an arrangement where they were free somehow. I could have misheard. And fair enough. I still think it would make more sense to have these calculations run at a different time of day if they run at all.

I'm going to go ahead and say the biggest problem with this is it is adding more work to be done at update which is already horribly overburdened (as we saw) and will just exacerbate our issues because Alex is too cheap to move off of free servers.

LAWL

PnW has always had a boring victory problem. Once you start winning a war, your victims frequently just lay there and take it, removing all fun from destroying them. If you’re like me, you like it when they struggle. I hate to say it, but it actually makes sense to spend all your time on the OWF because your victims are just sides of beef. This is, in my view, the biggest problem with PnW. Sure, long-term, you should be able to get some joy out of beating the senseless, inactive corpses of your enemies. But short-term… it’s kind of boring. It should be possible to have motivated players who base their entire existence on something other than their alliance rank to stick around and actually do something. One way to fix this is to give them some sort of incentive after the war is said and done to stick around during the war. For every day that you are in wars and at less than 15% mobilization, you get a Tough Kred Receipt point, or TKR point for short, for each day you log in and use your MAP’s. These Tough Kred Receipt points can be converted into infra depending on how much infra you had before you got them and how much infra you have after the fact. So if you lose more infra, mercy rule gets you a bit more back. Another way might be to remove information! Because why let everyone have information when you can just have alliances that bought scrapers from Taiwanese coders for $500 have that information and everyone else can suck eggs? We need to give more advantages to large alliances, preferably the large alliances that are ranked #1! Or, well, at least the ones that used to be. That’s totally what this game needs to be more exciting and fun: Further disincentives to create smaller alliances. So fun, you guys. A third way might be to implement map based declaration, which would just make boring wars impossible because war itself would be pretty much impossible to ever do. EDIT: To be clear, when we start OUR next offensive war, these changes should be eliminated and anyone who complains is just whining because they’re losing.

A precondition to any peace negotiations will Inst taking tasteful videos of himself in a baby's bonnet saying "Waaaahh! Waaaah! Waaaah!" repeatedly for no less than thirty seconds; no more than four hundred seconds.

But the thing is, we're certain they went into vacation mode. We're certain as to when they did it (in many cases, conveniently right before the war!). As I said, on its face it's an exceedingly fair assumption that they did it to avoid the war due to what they did and the highly unlikely timing of all of them doing it around the same time at just the right time. Two people showing up at a party wearing identical outfits is a coincidence. What if it's three people? Four people? The more people who do the exact same thing at the exact same time, the more unlikely it is that it was just coincidence, right? So the fact that you had a litany of nations all do the same thing at the same time, which was coincidentally also the time they needed to do it to avoid a war, is a bit convenient. A reasonable person (in this case any reasonable person not in TKR or TCW) would obviously assume what we're all assuming. You've been dispelling that by saying "Well they had reasons." to which the obvious response is "Really? So you're saying we won't be able to find any evidence that that's not the case for any of the members in question?" And you've been uncomfortable answering that question. And I think it's pretty obvious why.

I actually think that's reasonable. Okay, so you're saying it's entirely possible that of the people who went into VM around when the war started plenty of them did it to avoid the war. The thing about uncertainty is that you don't get to claim it only when it would benefit you. If you can't answer my question about accounting for your members in VM with certainty you can't say with certainty that those who went into VM around when the war started didn't do it to avoid the war. On its face, that's precisely what they did.

If people VM'd in my alliance during a war that would definitely be accounted for. Their blood pixels would be poured out like water. I never said I had logs. But if TKR is actually telling the truth those logs couldn't possibly exist, right? That's all I'm asking. Pretty simple yes or no question. Why do you guys dislike yes or no questions so much?

None that you are aware of... Have you accounted for all your nations in VM or not? Because if you had accounted for them all, obviously you'd be able to say "No, those logs do not exist." So I guess let's start there. Have you accounted for them (in which case you can give a definitive answer to my question) or have you not (in which case you have no basis to claim that they didn't VM because of the war)?

None of your long term VM nations started due to the war? So you're saying that there are no logs of any of your VM mode players openly admitting that that is the case? Do I understand you correctly?

I nearly spat out my coffee when I read "Don't delete your nation! Go into VM!" from TKR. You're cementing your alliances' crappiness. If you don't change the oil in your car ever all that will be left is sludge. Cars need oil. Sludge hurts them. Getting rid of the sludge is good. These people are your sludge. If someone in GoG was contemplating quitting the game over being attacked, I would click the f***ing button for them if I could. Good riddance. Honestly the most devastating impact of this war will not be to your infra, it will be you rewarding members who bailed and giving the ones who stayed a slap in the face by doing so.

You had me at first. I was like "Oh wow, good to see Prefontaine is still as arch as he was when I left." Then I lol'd.

The War to Decide Which Coalition Takes 5% More Damage.

First of all... obligatory GOB bends the knee! Second, y'all have more vacations than a f***ing timeshare salesmen's convention, bro. You're going to roll the s*** out of the people who come back, right? Your bloc can't allow its members to think this is acceptable. They fear your enemies more than they fear you. If you let that continue you're screwed long term. When they come out of VM, you either show them that they were stupid and should have feared you more or you're basically just done. I look forward to your decision.

I don't get the level of crap you're getting for this. Okay, we can clear the air. Let me jump in here to help an erstwhile ally. Look, was Godfury vital? No. Are they particularly helpful? Well, no. Would we be fine without them? Obviously. Are they maybe even hampering us slightly? Sure, maybe. Maybe a little. But this was a low stakes way for them to get experience which makes them (theoretically) more valuable later on. So maybe next time they will be some combination of vital/helpful/not getting in the way. Big picture, people. And what's most important to remember is that, Godfury, if you beige targets you are not supposed to, I will burn you to the f***ing ground, eat your ashes, and s*** them onto your Godforsaken alliance.. Yay, friends! \o/ *cue veggie tales theme song*

Actually, I'm technically not even in gov. Also starting wars is FA. Something tells me calling it "reconnaissance in force" won't go over well. "How do we know those planes aren't just DECOYS without shooting them?"

Ughhh. Tell me about it.

You couldn't last 7 more days?

Ok, but now post a link to edgelord teenage feeling-music to prove what a tough, introspective man you are.

You mean to tell me that the #1, #2, and #25 alliances defeated the #46 and #34 alliances without any help? Well.. Impressive.

I'll pay for you. But you're putting out. @Tim: Ilu2.

Underlord linked me to this. I was super surprised that I was mentioned after disappearing two years earlier. You guys deserved an explanation as to why I just kind of disappeared. It was partly because I was at a low point in the game, but primarily because I no longer had the need that Politics and War fulfilled as I had gotten a real job. I've realized that I can't not have a job/purpose in life. If I don't have one, I find or make one. Politics and War was my job surrogate while I was in college. FFS I even made a bank in game just so I could work with spreadsheets. I'm now an analyst IRL which is far more lucrative than in-game analytics. Conroy, Jodo, Fistofdoom, Goomy, Arkiri, etc. you guys were all awesome. You were what made PnW fun for me while I needed it. And even my erstwhile adversaries in Mensa did that too. I love all you guys. And if you're ever in Philadelphia, get underlord, Tim, Pubstomper, or Saeton (if any of the last three are still around) to put you in touch with me. I'll get you shitfaced. Also, obligatory: 1: Adama is sexy af. 2: Sheepy still has not given me shirtless pics. 3: Disregard females, acquire currency. 4: Mensa sucks, Dio sucks, Pfeiffer sucks. 5: PEW PEW! THUGNIFICENT! Hugs, Ashland