Cooper_

In what way was there a security reason? We've been nothing but nice to y'all, and I know that Ben has gone way out of his way to appease you guys despite what happened during Duck Hunt. We had no reason to hit you given that the reason we're hitting Rose is unique to Rose and quite obvious: the secret treaties that only they activated and had lectured us before about during KF. I'd be interested to see the evidence of the threat TKR posed to TI. Iirc we were quite forward and trusting to y'all with our OPSEC, including our breakup plans and war intentions. I don't see how an enemy-aligned sphere would do any of what we did with y'all. Same story with TFP who has known us for even longer. There is no security interest besides what looks like a way to break meta norms and interfere in another war to damage another sphere. Having been in what was still the only real minisphere up to this point--chaos--y'all have not once made a minisphere. You do the same process, rinse and repeat, of creating a sphere and then filling it with tons of treaties that routinely makes you the largest bloc. Just because you recycle and renew treaties with various alliances, that doesn't make you moving towards minispheres. Despite all of your moves, you're essentially in a similar position as before give how other spheres have downsized too. Hollywood relative to Quack is quite similar in ratio to this version of Oasis to what it was pre-Mystery split. We can cut the grandstanding here because y'all haven't done anything more than anyone else. In fact, the only wars you have been in are dogpiles in your favor including the use of secret treaties, which does more damage for the meta than Quack, Oasis, or any largest sphere could ever do. Now, you enter into an unrelated war with no legitimate CB, and ironically 1.6:1 in your favor is the closest war in your alliance's history post-NPOLT. It's a bit ridiculous at this point, and you don't have legs to stand on to criticize others. And those others are doing something extremely dynamic for the game by choosing to work with what they considered to be their enemies just a month ago. We're the ones who have created new politics and changed up relationships. We expected things to change and for people to react. That's because we formed Hollywood (who ftr is not the largest sphere nor really uncontested in the upper tier). I can't say the same for Oasis. This sounds a bit like cherrypicking. I posted a tiering chart in one of my previous posts. We are significantly smaller in both nations and city counts than other spheres. At the C30+ range, we have 52, syndi has 47, and Rose has 45. I'd also point out that our alliance rankings would be lower if y'all didn't choose hide score in training alliances with members that we keep on the main AA. This is entirely disingenuous, and any somewhat objective viewpoint will tell you that Hollywood is a significant downsize from Quack and Oasis as well as not even close to the largest threat. Delta started the conflict with HM, Swamp gave out a free CB with intentions to hit our ally, TO, and Rose had made the worst FA move in years during Duck Hunt. The rationales for each conflict are clear. It doesn't seem like we're going around picking spheres at random. This is a moot point, and there's no call to action for a sphere simply responding to the politics in front of it and acting normally. If you do actually believe in multipolar worlds, I'd suggest that making it seem like y'all have a secret treaty or at least a relationship that acts like an effective secret treaty isn't that. No FA team who is concerned for the meta would even consider such a move because they'd know that if even if there intentions were in the right place, it'd be seen as something else. That doesn't even begin to touch on how wrong both narratives you present about Delta and Hollywood's size. I feel like we're missing the context of clear CBs for all of these wars. Sphinx leaked twice and then we had Swamp leaks. I suppose we could've let TcW and BK roll us during rebuild after Surf's Up, or just waited a few months to get rolled even harder during Duck Hunt, or let TLE try to hit our closest ally... This is just such a silly post that I can't take it seriously. If you're actually being straight-up here, next time TKR won't sit 9 months with you fighting NPO because it's the "TKR way." I'd suggest running tiering and sphere comparisons and looking at political context before throwing out that we're such a threat to y'all or that we're heading your way. We've been more than responsive with your leadership about our intentions not to mention that our tiering is not at all conducive to hitting you effectively unless you consider Tyrion's single nation to be your sphere.

Exact replica of top-50 treaty web based on M-levels, excluding VMers and members with more than 2 weeks of inactivity and including training alliances (Rose and TKR don't have training alliances so necessary for comparison), if applicable and not in top-50.

You'll get one response, but I won't deal with you beyond that. Yes, we outtier Rose, but not by much. We had the advantage, but the slightest one in years. Even the upper tier is quite competitive with 45 C30+ for Rose and 52 for Hollywood. To be clear, the C35+ advantage you mention is a grand total of 12 nations. It's pretty clear this is competitive with a slight advantage on our end. With Oasis, we win essentially no tier, and are much more badly outnumbered (doubly so) than with us v. Rose. As for the CB for TKR, it's in my post. Rose's actions last war, which were way out of line in using secret treaties to imbalance a fair war and hypocritical of their past expectations of us during KF. Meta infractions require that people be held to account. You'd know that CBs don't often get put into the DoW post if you took more time to listen to folks instead of acting in your normal capacity. In general, people enter wars they can win. No FA person will ever fight a war offensively that they don't think they'd have a good shot to win if they didn't have to fight that war anyways. That said, this was literally the closest war in 3 years. Also, I don't call it a dogpile. Rather, my point is that if we're calling the first war a dogpile, then the Oasis entry makes it a way worse dogpile but for the other side given that it's double the advantage. It's not Oasis' conflict. We've operated for years such that spheres uninvolved with a conflict and the rationales behind it are not allowed to enter. Y'all are breaking meta norms by entering. I'd also reread my chart about "bigger alliances" because the size issue isn't really apparent based on the actual data.

So if Hollywood is "megabloc", is syndisphere "supermegabloc"? What about Oasis? I kinda like the sound of "basicallymegabloc." Heh gotta have some fun with your bloc names. I respect it.

Hey folks, back at it again with the unsolicited WoT. Sit back, read, and enjoy a cup of tea! I think there's a few issues with the Oasis entry into this war. The foremost of which is the mention of secret treaties. To enter a bit of context, a primary reason for TKR's entry against Rose was actions that were done last war in the form of secret treaties that imbalanced a global war. These were secret treaties they maintained with Oasis and HM. Notably, Rose entered on those secret treaties while the other blocs were hit. Nonetheless, a secret treaty existed, which you can confirm here: From an objective perspective, it is suspicious that a previous secret treaty combination is repeating. Our stance on secret treaties is clear. They're destructive for the meta. Oasis is claiming that they entered based on HM's handling of Delta and dissatisfaction with the formation of Hollywood. For the sake of good faith, let's entertain these claims even if they may seem spurious. Even if there wasn't a secret treaty, any form of "friendship" or "agreement" if made without paper on the web is an effective secret treaty. The difference is semantics. Orbis norms have long been that coalition agreements can only be of offensive nature as the oA has always been seen as a universal for all alliances, but defensive pacts are not allowed. This was showcased in Knightfall where TKR suffered heavily for secret treaties that either weren't activated or well-known--not to mention changing the course of a global war by the same who used secret treaties later on to hit us in Duck Hunt. We made mistakes in the past. There's no doubt. Because of this, we've wholly transitioned our stance to transparency even when if it comes at political costs. Our friends in Oasis and Rose have not returned the favor. Next, folks like @Dr James Wilson talk about the size of Hollywood. First, the statistics they're showing are score, and not tiering charts. Let's rectify that with a chart that shows all top 50 alliances (I made this on mobile, so sorry about not doing smaller alliances as it was quite painful already to make) and members that have been active within 2 weeks: Hollywood isn't the biggest sphere by a wide margin in terms of total cities nor nations. The tiering of Hollywood is relatively even throughout with a slight advantage in the upper tiers, but largely comparable to both Rose and Syndispheres. At the same time, Syndisphere has a large advantage in other tiers and Rose is quite competitive despite being the smallest sphere. In terms of total city count, Hollywood vs. Rose was about 1.3:1. This was the closest war in more than 3 years, and nowhere near a dogpile. After Oasis' entry, this became a 1.6:1 in favor of Rose and Oasis. Ironically, Oasis' entry made more of an imbalance in both tiering and city counts than the war beforehand. Moving forward, let's only address using the relevant statistic: tiering. Score is useless, and y'all know this. Oasis has also presented claims about Delta's supposed mistreatment at the hands of HM. From my understanding, the outcome of aggressive actions on behalf of Delta was them escaping without reps. I don't love terms, but this seems like a slap on the wrist from a sphere that y'all clearly state has done and seen much worse. Further, if you had an issue with HM and wanted to use it as a CB, then you could consider declaring your own war when there isn't another one going on. The meta hasn't ever accepted interference in wars, so this is an extremely weak CB and borderline meta-breaking if you try to take this tack. The sphere size argument is moot with any reasonable observations about the current sphere sizes. The alternative argument for Delta treatment means that Oasis was planning to interfere in another war, amounting to at best a destruction of long-held Orbis norms. Thus, even if we dubiously accept there were no secret treaties, we're not left with much but an invalid CB. Simply put, this just continues Oasis' track record of secret treaties and wars stacked in their favor. It's disappointing. Alas, the die is cast and now we fight. Y'all have the advantage, but my members want the pixels. Let's see who wins.

You wound me so hard @Vexz. I want to get wrapped up in all of the fervor for war, but how can I get revved up to fight an alliance that makes a civ-themed DoW with a south park reference. I think you guys are awesome, and I couldn't be more excited to throw down with y'all. Best of luck. I know you will make this hurt P.S. @Exalts I hope this doesn't affect any eu4 relations. We still got to beat Aqua and Neon.

The only relevant statistic is nation counts at tiers because that's a direct reflection of a sphere's potential to project military power relative to other spheres. That's why tiering graphs are made to reflect this. Score is meaningless for comparison unless everyone has the same infra, projects, militarization, and city counts. This isn't the case, especially with the difference in militarization at the moment. Any person beyond low gov is aware of this. I know that includes y'all. I'd be happy to get into the nitty-gritty of actual military ability of all of the spheres and discuss the downsizing from Quack, but we can't do that with disingenuous arguments.

We are always proud to publicly announce all of our ties. My understanding is that transparency begets trust.

Good idea! I'll start. Zig smells bad. Pass it on.

Congratulations to the signatories. In other news, let me be the first to welcome Rose to the OWF! P.S. That's a really cool flag

Next Level Treaty.

Now now we all know that size isn't everything. You just got to learn to take advantage of what you've got and make the most of it, buddy. Confidence is key!

TKR world police back at it again telling poor @Denison what type phone he should have.

I don't see why it's such a problem for people to do more damage when they get dogpiled. If all this does is incentivize pixel-huggers to think more carefully about how not-so-easy their planned 3 vs 1 is, then it's doing the right job. If you win or lose, war isn't supposed to be painless. There's a large difference between "loser weapons" and wanting to hide scot-free at 8k score with full military and 3k infrastructure. You can rebuild like everybody else... Mechanics should be there to make wars interesting for all combatants, and they should allow everyone to make some ground if they're willing to fight for it. With all of the other changes making it easier to attrition a weaker opponent, this is among the mildest of tweaks that could've been made for a nation losing bc of out-tiering or dogpiling. Also, afaik Yarr/Pre are among the people who tend to hide at high scores, so this doesn't make sense that he's doing this from a personal motivation. The attacks I've seen seem to be in pretty bad faith. Frankly, I thought pre's personal interests would've resulted in him scrapping the results because of how close it was. I'm glad he went with the majority view.

The real topic of this thread is that Kev is back! ❤️

Note: Royal you Minispheres can't work unless you've got guiding principles though. Namely, that other spheres aren't engaging in paperless treaties. No amount of "proper FA" responds to the political incentives when you get even a few bad faith actors. The only thing that has changed in past iterations of minispheres is whether those same group of political actors puts their cards on the table or hides them in smokey back-channels. What's the point of having a small sphere if your potential enemies have a giant paperless web? Is there any incentive for you to just not make your own paperless web or blob your own sphere in size? The end result is no different from bipolarity as long as you can't trust other actors with some basic standards of conduct. I think the last few wars have showcased that pretty perfectly where we run through the perpetual gambit of one side slowly amplifying calls of hegemony and then proceeds to 3 v 1 said "hegemony." The "pseudo-minispheres" that you heavily influenced have mostly been a "do as I say; but not as a I do" where FA is determined by the secret ties you can scrounge from the people you knew since your time in CN. The worst offenders are usually the people who try to come off as the strongest defenders of minispheres simply because minispheres and the hegemony narratives are politically expedient for their interests. And it's part of why the past set of wars have been so uncompetitive and built on pretty weak narratives. Personally, I'd love to see a true multipolar, minispheres world, but the precedents we have so far are quite disappointing. Until we have a global understanding that minisphere doesn't mean free reign to paperless, we won't have a successful minispheres meta. That starts with the people who holler the loudest about minispheres and hegemonies who have also done the most to hurt it.

Three things here: 1. A flat reduction of 50% would actually make missiles a tiny bit stronger given that infra costs increase exponentially. i.e. two 2k cities losing 100 infra is more damage than a single 2k city losing 200 with a miss on the other 2. The damage reduction would still allow for resistance to decrease, so people can bait beiges and make it harder to get cycled. Currently you can only expect 4 resistance reduction per missile hit with ID. 3. I haven't heard that about ID before although I have heard people wanting to keep VDS as chance instead of flat reduction. I have discussed the ID idea externally with pretty decent responses. The nuke and missile military meta should not be looked at the same way. Nukes are useful in fewer situations, have less versatility, are riskier to use (saving up resources and MAPs isn't always easy), and have much greater destructive power. Having missiles as a guaranteed source of attrition you can afford with your daily bonus is pretty necessary here to balance the many buffs stronger opponents are getting to improvement attrition (requiring expensive infra rebuilding to counter).

Suggestion here to change the 50% chance to block to a 50% reduction in damage (keeping the improvement damage reduction above). Missiles are a great way people getting sat on can fight back and destroy improvements, but ID nerfs them a lot since half of the time they won't work. It's already hard enough being able to buy them without them getting destroyed by spies (which is now getting stronger) if you don't have them stockpiled, so a weaker missile is a good tradeoff for being able to more frequently attrition the enemy. This is especially true with the other changes that allow stronger opponents to do even more damage to improvements now. We're seeing a lot of changes that'll make it easier for the winning side to easily force a victory by sitting on their opponents. This would be a small tweak that gives the losing side some more space to fight back and have little ways to do some more damage.

Yes, it's called logic. I can't merge TKR with SK to form "@Squeegee Smells" and then be free of the NAP to declare on who I want. Treaties are binding when there is clear and non-conflicting continuity between the previous entities and the current one. Not really the time or place for a RebelMoment here.

Two parties, both under the NAP, that merged into a single entity are still under the NAP. The continuity here is quite straightforward.

Guilo bringing up his girlfriend unnecessarily: Guilo failing to make a logical argument and mentioning girlfriend for the 100th time: Also Guilo: Weird flex but ok...

As a minor point here, this has been standard TKR policy to have prots not sign external ties. We commit to them fully, and we provide FA services until they develop a reliable FA team (which isn't easy for most micros and a really common source of failure). We've got a pretty good track record, which TIm was a part of and Vader experienced personally. It's only natural for him to use a tried and true method versus the hands-off, sink or swim attitude a lot of protectors in Orbis tend to have towards their protectorates.

If growth was as easy as resigning the allies you already had, sign me up too.

These folks are British... It is Doctor Who to you. --- Excited to work with you folks. We'll spread the gospel of Free BBC!