Cooper_

The flaw here is the question. For me, the point of my role in FA is to create a fun environment for my communities. What many political actors in the game don't understand is that winning isn't the same as enjoying the game. From my own experience, the finest moments of my community have occurred at our darkest hours at the times of greatest challenges. That isn't to say I want to lose all of the time, but people have got to be ok with putting themselves at risk if they want to achieve anything. And here's a news flash: if you fight well, the end result of a loss or win at war doesn't look that much different at all. Points to Pantheon. My alliance has put a lot on the line to achieve its ideology, including getting rolled, but there's value in having principles and goals. If you want to just win every time, then what are we really simulating here? What's the challenge?

Yep. You either genuinely play the game and get spurned as my alliance has time and again, or you put up a front and take advantage of those who play by the rules. It takes little effort to throw up some secret treaties and show only a few treaty lines on the web while you call out anyone you don't have secret deals with a "hegemon." I mean even NPO was able to pull that one over on us. The fact that it happened again isn't surprising, but it is disappointing. Can't say we didn't try though.

I couldn't have explained your contributions any better myself. Well done.

Excuses? I might be reading this wrong, but poking a jab at my alliance for not taking risks is laughable. Since early 2018, we've been choosing the unsafe options. Although you won't ever find him around anymore, it was TCL who first wanted to end EMC. Then after KF, we joined Chaos dropping all of our allies and forming an isolated small sphere. During NPOLT, we signed TI, a new alliance without much background, and T$, an alliance we felt betrayed by and who we felt was vacillating on enabling NPO. None of our choices were easy. All of them were risky. Also, TI and TFP aren't alienated from most of Orbis at the moment. That's a poor comparison. I can further go into how I've think CoTL hasn't been at risk at any point in the post-NPOLT period, but that wouldn't be productive. That's only true if you assume bipolarity, which is your assumption not mine. Yes, I fully hoped that some of NPC would go to war with each other because that's exactly what we need to see happen given the secret treaties. We don't have a good reason to trust that you've broken your secret ties. Even if you have, what's to say they won't be brought up again when it's convenient? That's the problem with operating in the dark without transparency. There's no trust. Maybe that means that Quack or Post-Quack elements get the chance to roll one of the post-NPC spheres, but that's a hypothetical and that's also ok. No matter what side I'm on, I'd like to see the guy who just got rolled to pick himself up and win the next one. That's what the meta is about, and it's the Orbis I hope to see. No one "wins," but everyone is eventually a victor AND a loser if they play the game well. This is a false equivalency couched into a more agreeable 'coming-together' statement to seem reasonable. If we're going to put this war down to Sphinx and Boyce plotting, Occam's Razor wants a word about Hedge's anti-Quack rhetoric since day 1. I'll agree that there's blame to go around, but I won't welcome conspiracies on clearly established truths. My understanding is that secret treaties are categorically invalid at least that was what your own coalition's constituents (and your own government) told my alliance during KF for treaties that were never even activated. If we're to move on, this is the point that needs to be acknowledged and addressed. It's likely your words won't move the needle enough, so I'll look towards your actions.

I tend to agree, which is why @Benfro was at one point specifically requesting a Quack-only NAP. We had taken the damages, and we needed the diplomatic cover to assess or perhaps reassess our FA position. After KF, you guys experienced what it's like on the other side of a dogpile, and it's not always pretty. Having a few extra months to figure thing out and mend relations for Quack is frankly a good thing if you want to avoid a rote repeat. However, Ben had to drop that point, despite my insistence, because of your side's requests to that effect and focus on negotiating only on the length. Given my M.O., this is a bit unfair. Our choices have never been about security. We strongly considered a few different options after NPOLT. One of which was G/G, but post-KF we're always wary of the upper tier consolidation argument. We've been told we're a hegemony no matter what we do for more than 2 years now, so we're a bit sensitive to returning to a place where we've been called a hegemon. Although I will contend that almost all claims (absent Opus Dei and maybe 2018 EMC) of hegemony are more rhetoric than reality and that in our case it would've been unfounded too, it was still a concern. At the time, Quack was weaker/smaller than TcWsphere, so our choice to stick with T$ wasn't a super bloc nor did we consider that any more hegemonic than tying with G/G. When TcW started to fail, internal pressure ratcheted up to downsize Quack a bit to match the next strongest spheres. This manifested in a few cuts notably Aurora and determinations about some peripheries. Then, Swamp formed and grew enough that we felt somewhat satisfied with the cuts as our sizes were comparable although there still was an informal end to any non-passive growth. I'll also note that throughout this period, we received credible offers from a bunch of different alliances to leave T$. The reason we haven't is because we've found an ally we trust and like to work with. That's very valuable to us as our FA approach is entirely focused on relationships. There was no overriding reason in the meta, so it made sense to stick with Quack.

A Quack walked up to a lemonade stand And he said to the swamp, running the stand "Hey! (Bum bum bum) Got any infra?” The man said "No we just sell tanks. But they’re nice And it's pixels And it's all steel-made. Can I get you some GA?” The duck said, "I'll pass". And he drained the Swamp. Drain, Drain, Drain… till the very next day bum bum bum

Nuff said.

Echoing on this, it'd be nice if there was also some way to increase updec range. I think it kind of defeats the purpose if a large chunk of the enemy coalition is able to stay nice and comfy at 8k+ score. It's a tactic that the mechanics have reinforced with the score changes to tighten tiers, which paradoxically not only helped reduce downdecs but also gave a hidden bonus to the bigger guys. Buffing score on missiles/nukes, or having some project in the mix to accomplish, would be nice. I don't think anyone should be able to survive a decently-long global (say 4+ weeks) with 2.5k+ infra and no real opportunity cost.

I had come to hold TFP in high regard due to my past friendships with both Harry/Alfred and Quichwe. My expectation is that y'all would conduct yourselves honorably. This, @Kaz, just isn't it. Disappointing.

I don't think I made any claims that aren't true here. I always try to be as genuine and consistent as possible. It's the only stuff they feed me in Ben's basement. In all seriousness, I have legitimate concerns here given the injustice in how my own alliance experience the secret treaty argument and how others choose to conduct themselves. Many on your side, particularly those in HM and Rose, were quite willing to dogpile TKR for even the hint of a secret treaty with paperless parties. We suffered massively for it, and I'm willing to change my viewpoint and agree that secret treaties shouldn't be tolerated in the meta, especially bloc-to-bloc treaties. It was the stance I took throughout the NPOLT conflict, and it's the one I'm taking here in accordance with the principles set out with the very people who are now making their own secret treaties. That isn't propaganda to me because I genuinely believe there's a lot of hypocrisy here and on a meta-level this is damaging for any sort of multipolar environment. I can't claim to speak for Partisan, but you and I both know he's not a stupid snek. To me, those comments seem reactionary, and I made a post along those lines decrying that same narrative that Quack had become IQ. We went about it differently, sure, but I don't see a real difference in purpose. I'll also add that there's a bit of backroom tomfoolery that added to the reactions that many of us had. Put simply, lines were crossed and bridges were burned that even straddle some of the OOC/IC lines. I won't go into that here, but I think it's hard to make the claim that the salt started with us. This doesn't even mention the more than half of your coalition that just refuses to say anything because they know they can't defend their actions (i.e. a certain DoW that took 24 hours to post and further refusal to engage in a good faith public conversation when prompted). Also, I find that to also be a bit of a strawman? If you look to my posts and even the content in Partisan's posts, you'll find that there's a convergence in both of our posts in legitimate content. I personally generated numbers and tiering diagrams. We had a debate on the idea of "competence." We then went through Quack's actions and compared them to the claims. I think that was a lot of the impetus in why the goalposts shifted. I mean I've had people come personally to my DMs to talk about how Quack was "a potential hegemony" after they had called us a hegemony just a day beforehand. Maybe not all of the posts were conversational, and I get your point there. That said, there was a lot of substance, and I think we're at a much different spot than we were on Day 1. I covered the bold part above regarding the hypocrisy of secret treaties. That is semantics. A dogpile is defined by the numbers, and that's the case here. I guess the one alternative scenario would've been that we actively attacked all current war participants, but that would assume we knew about the secret treaties in place and it would be extremely dumb on our part. I can assure you we didn't, and the secret treaties wouldn't be secret, right? The dilemma we butt up agains is that we either consider Rose and Swamp's (moreso Rose because I think Swamp externally had a decent CB) actions defensive via secret treaty action or that Rose's counters were aggressive. Neither case is justifiable under the current meta, so both become dogpiles. The semantics here boils down to however we want to consider Swamp and Rose's entries, but from my perspective the result is the same. Also, ofc you can't make claims with 100% certainty, but you're aware that FA is probabilistic. Decisions are made given the available evidence and in a way that balances risk and reward weighted by likelihoods in some intuitive sense. The revelations we've had since are further confirming the basis of our decision where we suspected coordination between enemy spheres. I've adjusted my tone in my posts to account for the increased confidence we've in our claims.

Maybe it's because you started engaging relatively late, but this isn't how I remember it. We laid out our CB, which was based on precedent we all shared and had previously agreed. The immediate response was "Hah jokes on you for trying to roll HM and TcW," which by no stretch of the imagination was ever the case nor our intention. Not a lot of good faith there. Since then, we've shifted y'all's goalposts from Quack being IQ to Quack being a "potential hegemony" and some vague notion of a threat (who didn't do threatening things?). I think we've made progress on that front. Also, I think you and I both can agree that the point I'm making in this thread is a bit more nuanced than "liar." More accurately, it would be "stop being hypocrites, or pick a new narrative to always go for." I'm personally just so tired to see the people who clam to believe in something just trash those principles time and again. The good faith just isn't there if people aren't willing to respect political norms. I have a hard time responding to the argument "if they can do it and are doing it yet they say we can't, why should I trust them...?" The double standards on secret treaties are pretty immense here given the pushback TKR has personally received and been rolled for in the past. I hope you can understand why I'm at a loss in understanding the motivations here as anything but opportunistic. This is low-effort. You can speak to me, and not some ghastly remnant of TKR 3 years ago when my nation wasn't even made. I know most of Rose's high-gov quite well, and they can tell you that I'm sincere in what I say even if they disagree. I've been in contact with them probably more than any other alliance these past few months, and we've been nothing but transparent with them. You're right though, don't believe me. There's a pretty objective definition of aggressive that you can google. As for coalitions, I present the entirety of the threads devoted to the meta in the past ~2 years regarding minispheres AND 3 years of EU4 experience, including play with Rose members and gov, on my belt. Which CB are you talking about? First, we were told it was because of T$' treatment of ASM and Cam (which was mostly resolved or not even communicated). Then, it was because Quack was too big and strong. Then, it shifted to Rose wanting to make the war better? Finally, we got a shift to Swamp's chicanery. As I've said in private to your leadership, the fact that you didn't even come and ask us after the 9 months of good will and trust we built invalidates the underlying ideas set forth in such a CB. But the finer point here is my original response to Vexz's DoW where I outlined how your approach on the meta is absolutely at odds with your internal actions. As for the T$ tie, your gov was made explicitly aware about what we felt. There was no way we would even consider dropping T$ before we fought a war with them. We're TKR. We believe in honor. I don't think that's surprising. And if by that chance, you mean the offer made to us to tie Rose, I don't see how that resolves this issue that you're claiming. Rose is just as powerful as T$.

That isn't what happened here nor is that how coalitions work. You form a coalition in response to an aggressive power. Quack was not that nor were they a larger sphere given Swamp. And we've got both Swamp and Rose admitting that there was a literal treaty in place. This is gaslighting. I mean I've been consistent in always wanting a multipolar world. In private and in public, my record shows that. I can point you to my months of post history against IQ while you left the game. I never gave up the fight, and I'm still fighting for it now. Minispheres will never work with the current set of actors who like to parrot it but never follow it, and it's even more disappointing to someone like me who actually cares as a matter of principle more than a political prop. If you want to take a step back and stop trying to spin my words, you'd realize that I'm telling you that minispheres will only work if people actually try to make it work. No secret treaties, work with good faith, don't consolidate tiers, and be ok if that means you get rolled or roll others from time to time. And frankly I don't think you want to get into a tit for tat because I've already displayed and can continue to display how every other sphere was demonstrably worse for a multipolar world than Quack was. Every decision of ours was carefully calibrated for the meta, and we made a lot of decisions that were largely helpful. We cut TI, Ampersand, Soup, etc. We also turned down entreaties by other spheres to get us to dogpile others (we had opportunities to fight just about every other sphere). And we kept up good relations and gave people a sense of security regarding our actions and intentions. We've been nothing but stabilizing and adaptive. I already talked about this in the OP, but it's a world where people stop engaging in grudge warfare hidden by several levels of narrative and spin and where people are forced to rely on FA and milcom to succeed. The winners and losers should always be changing. Politics should be challenging and War should be just as challenging. Treaties should be fluid with enemies becomes friends and vice versa frequently. If you want that, you've got to start respecting common precedents and norms set. Until that point, there will be not trust. There will be no good faith. Unless you do that, you also can't unironically claim to want it either.

I think you mean artful cuts without context from a private conversation.

A) The Rose-Swamp secret treaty B) The non-subtle play to force Rose's hand (Don't take this as making Rose innocent bc they're not)

Yes, and your silence speaks volumes. New facts have just come out about your secret treaty with Rose. It's in real bad faith to just ignore legitimate concerns about conduct that y'all and your allies have decried in the past. I do expect an answer to hypocrisy, and new information that directly contradicts your previous statements about there not being coordination between the spheres. And I think the innocent ploy isn't fair either given how y'all's manipulations are what Rose is claiming as a CB despite the months upon months of trying to get Quack to hit Rose.

Every sphere is a threat to another sphere if you don't have a treaty, so maybe you're right given that the rest of the world was tied together so all that was left was Quack. But it's still a bad faith argument either way. I mean you were with TKR when we got rolled because of our "secret treaties" with a single alliance. We're talking about legitimate sphere-wide MDPs done in secret. The HM-Swamp deal is more hazy, but the Rose-Swamp MDP is very real and was activated. They've admitted that to us directly. I'd think you'd appreciate a want for fairness in how Orbis treats secret treaties, especially ones much more heinous than anything you or TKR were involved in. I take your point on the inevitability of the showdown with TcW, but there's no question that the decay of TcWsphere had a significant consolidating impact on the meta. The fallout was 3 steps towards bipolarity whether that's intended or not. The part that I find hypocritical (moreso your spheremates than yourself) is that the rhetoric they use regarding their vision for the meta does not align at all with their actions. I haven't known you to be as aggressive on that sort of narrative/ideology, so if you wish I can revise to "Exhibit B: HM - G/G." The point of this post is that none of the other spheres care any bit about minispheres. Their words ring hollow with their actions. Quack clearly isn't that big of a threat given this war, and your own allies are backpedaling on the hegemony narrative because they realize how untenable it is. We shifted from Quack being IQ, to Quack being run-of-the-mill hegemony, to Quack being smaller than Swamp but "competent," to Quack is a threat. Let's call it what it is: opportunism. And yeah, secret treaties are BAD. If you care about minispheres, that's not even up for question. It's why Chaos, why we, were doomed from the start. If the uniting is done by effectively tying everyone together, you've got consolidation and bipolarity. There were many choices here, and all of them were made since the beginning against any sort of minispheres meta. The reason I made this post is because I actually give a damn about this. I'm tired of hearing hypocrisy from the same sorts of people who continue to rattle on about it in their narratives and then just undercut it in their actions. It's why minispheres will never work. So Rebs... if you want to see a dynamic meta, tell your friends to cut the bs too.

The Swamp-Rose MDP is and was the largest configuration in the game if we're basing it on possible threats. This framing doesn't even consider that Quack took no aggressive actions during the entire timespan and was entirely open and transparent to both Rose and Swamp about our friendly intent. The only reason why HM wasn't included in that was a consistent pattern of showing hostility to us. I think we agree on the point that the context is clearly missing.

Mostly the first point, yes. As a matter of principle, I don't like to log dump. I can give a brief accounting to what that evidence is: - The instant and well-planned counter blitz - Peripheries confirming that these plans weren't new and were told to plan for a November war - A secret MDP between Swamp and Rose - The coordination between HM and Swamp that never ended and manifested in an effective secret treaty - SRD's past statements admitting to a number of contacts that is inconsistent with Tyrion's and many others' accounts including Rose's story of deciding 2 hours before. - The two sets of Sphinx logs - The knowledge of the Sphinx logs instantly getting spread to all the spheres once one was made aware of them. I'm more than willing to admit that each part on it's own (save the logs) is circumstantial, but taken together it depicts a pattern of coordination that is much harder to deny.

No one doubts that you knew we were going to war. Y'all already had time to get out in front of the sphinx leaks as everyone already knew by the time we got around to talking about them in our back-channels. The question is mostly surrounding the frameworks for coordination between spheres. We've received a steady pile of evidence regarding the cooperation that had existed and was ongoing in the run-up to the preempt. Each piece of evidence may be circumstantial by itself but together it paints a pretty clear story that best explains the timing of the blitz. Rose wants to make it seem like they decided 2 hours beforehand, but the evidence just doesn't support that. Swamp also wants to imply that there was no coordination, and that they're guiltless in any planning. Your post makes it seem like the coordination was definitely there between multiple spheres. It also makes you wonder why that sort of coordination was happening that far in advance if there were no serious plans to follow-up on the Sphinx leaks.

It seems that everyone wants to prove their bona fides on how they want the meta be dynamic, or multipolar, or anti-hegemony, etc. The rhetoric in these past few years has been sufficiently exhausted for nearly everyone who pays attention to the game. At the same time, these notions have become shallower and shallower and used increasingly as political props instead of as an actual belief and/or argument. It's really sad to think that most of the proponents care much more than using it as a byline in their narratives. Minispheres or any sort of similar political construction is only functional insofar as there is good faith in dealings with others, be they foe or friend, and that we respect norms set out in the meta. The whole premise is based on the fact that instead of seeking security, you should depend on ability and your FA teams to manage your position. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't, but the person who gets the short end of the stick is always evolving. The problem is that people aren't content to potentially being at risk within their sphere, so they either consolidate or make arrangements behind the scenes that betray any consistency with the principles they project onto others. It's effective because their enemies can be held to a double standard of "minispheres" while as we've seen time and again people maintain secret backroom deals. That's been entirely the case this war, and the hypocrisy needs to be pointed out. Exhibit A: Rose - Swamp "Secret Treaty" This one has been confirmed to exist by these parties (this has been confirmed privately on more than one occasion), and in this case, we have a legitimate example of a secret treaty that was signed AND activated by both Swamp and Rose. There's a decent bit of negative precedent behind secret treaties: my alliance was rolled just over the supposition of having one with a paperless party (even if it was never activated). I hope the same parties who were so vigorous before on this issue are as emphatic on this situation as well. Both Rose and Swamp continue to make claims about Quack's hegemony and how they wanted us to be smaller. It's ridiculous to pass Quack off as a threat when you've got a larger sphere and another sphere 2/3 the size (and Rose has the same ethereal "competence" as Quack) not only working together against the spirit of a multipolar world but also tied together by a treaty. The rhetoric and narratives coming out of these spheres can't be taken as anything more than a front. Maintaining the meta is impossible if people are going to work behind-the-scenes to create these kinds of deals. A large part of the initial crusade against NPO in NPOLT was because they also maintained a secret treaty with BK (SCX) and IQ never disbanded. It was also a critical reason for why the only true minisphere, Chaos, wasn't viable. After that war, we were supposed to move on and become better, but people are still pulling the same kind of bs as before. These groups have walked away from that commitment. Yet these same parties want to talk about how threatened they were by Quack and how destabilizing it was to everyone. Their arrangement was bigger and had way more firepower than Quack could ever hope to achieve. It's very hard to see any of these gestures having good faith at all. Exhibit B: HM For all of the talk about being against hegemonies, all HM has ever done is join in and plan dogpiles in coalitions much larger than any other single sphere even the one they label as a hegemony. They first rolled TcW with Swamp, going in at least 3:1. Now, we're in the same situation with Quack, HM riding in 3:1. They also dogpiled Pantheon as well as bullying both Camelot and TcW (Odin) into coughing up billions. At the same time, HM is on record saying they also agreed upon a secret treaty with Swamp, ensuring that at least there'd be a coalition who outnumbered Quack 1.5:1 (in reality all three spheres given the other secret treaty). It's hard to find any sort of consistency with HM, especially. From day one, they made Quack out to be a hegemon and even named their bloc for us despite the fact that we were always being matched by another sphere and their continual participation in backroom deals that made them anything but an innocent party. You can't externally push for smaller spheres and expect people to agree with you if your only action is to just roll people in unfair circlejerks. It's a bit ironic that the sphere who claims to care most about the meta has done more damage to it than anyone else. ---- This war was always a matter of if and not when. There is already enough treaties in place and evidence provided by Sphinx's leaks or 3rd parties to make that point incontrovertible. Quack's goal–as we saw it–was to try to create a more fair war by keeping Rose out and later Swamp (when it seemed that Rose's entry was inevitable). We had spent the past 9 months since NPOLT working on relations with both spheres, and this wasn't subtle at all to either party. We made our intentions clear. We should stop trying to pretend that this war was planned as anything but an opportunistic strike by Rose, Swamp, and HM. None of Quack's actions bear out the hegemony narrative nor does any of the opposing coalition actually make any good faith efforts for their claims of a dynamic Orbis. Make no mistake: behind the scenes there was a concerted effort to make this play out as it did. This came to bear in the blitz that was magically organized in minutes and the revelations coming out of peripheries after the war began. The hypocrisy and the corruption of convictions are the problem with ever achieving a true multipolar world. For the health of the meta, it's time to drop the act and come up with a new narrative, or at least own up to the serious and damning decisions that are why we struggle to see that vision come to fruition.

For anything lasting longer than 4 hours, you should see your doctor.

By my calculations, this was 3 TKR Hegemony narratives back. I'm just trying to focus on the current "TKR Hegemony." Thanks for understanding, man.

I don't know you well enough to make any real judgements, but I can understand wanting to speak the truth. I've based my FA style off of the principles of being honest and honourable, and I disagree that you can't do FA and stick to your guts (or even a raging idealist in my case). I've also dealt with Batavia enough as my direct ally and still have never experienced what you suggest. That said, I'm a bit skeptical about your claims with regards to Pantheon's decision-making. I'd contest it based on your actions that war with regards to our protectorate, Nova Riata. Am I happy that you didn't decide to take advantage of TFP? Sure, but I don't think you deserve brownie points for the doing the right thing, especially with the context of you clearly doing the wrong thing with Nova in that same war. Consistency in principle is the only way any set of morals can be exercised in this game. And bringing this back into the context at the moment, it's been clear that multiple parties have acted duplicitously. We were lied to, and it we're seems still being lied to. The point here is to determine the truth by giving people basic logical standards to uphold their words. There should be consistency in the things you say and it should accord with what others say for it to be true. Clearly, someone has to not be telling the truth based on the evidence in this thread.