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Global War Peace Terms - Discussion


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24 minutes ago, Azaghul said:

Drama is good but do you know what else is good?  Having major wars more often than every 6 months to a year.  More wars = more drama.  Long drawn out wars = the same stale shit.

I fully agree with you on this, and would upvote you if I hadn't run out of reactions. It's a lot better to have 3-4 major wars a year that are only a month or so than this ridiculous 100 day shitstorm.

@Nizam Adrienne your own members are saying it. They're tired of this insanely drawn-out war. Swallow your pride, accept peace, and end this war. It'll make things more interesting in the future, I can guarantee that much.
 

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8 hours ago, Prefontaine said:

 

You can blame TKR-side leadership for a lot of the slow down. There's been a plethora of times where there has been no activity in the peace talks channel for weeks at a time. They've also accepted terms, and then gone back and said no they don't accept those terms without anything changing from there. It's been made clear several times that the terms are not going to be removed, and the things which have held up talks the most are effing ridiculous. Protecting the "honor" of VM-ers because you're such a delicate pile of garbage that you don't like them being labeled as "war dodgers" and want to protect their VM-protected infra while sacrificing rebuild time/resources of hundreds. Wanting to keep your trade bot active and still requiring art for to return trades because of "tradition" is a bad joke. If TKR was not in these peace talks I'm confident the war would have ended at least a month ago, if not 2.

 

The fault for all of this rests on Adrienne. You're largely inactive in peace talks. Days and weeks go by without you making further effort. You cling to trying to protect your trash while doing disservice to the rest of the members. You're alliance has never really lost before, and are apparently incompetent as to how it works. As someone who has played these shit games for way too long, there are no harsh terms in the original surrender. Honestly the GoB one was the harshest of them, but even the child like reasoning skills of SRD were able to find a solution working with Ripper. But not Adrienne, you god damn dumpster fire of a leader. Step down. Give someone else the charge, you have 97 other members one of them is bound to have a brain because you sure as shit do not. 

 

To Justin's point you can assign blame to either side, and while I might be biased some there lies a major issue. This is IQ's first time winning, really. Lets say they flinch and give in to white peace after making such a point about terms, it shows anyone can just stick it out if they really don't want the terms. You  can claim the same is TKR's side can be shown to give in to terms, but that's a part of losing. There was a hiccup in the TEst-Guardian term where we wanted them to write a couple paragraphs about something deity-flavored, they decided they didn't want to do the cosmetic/joke sort of term so we offered them 5B to get out of it or they could present a counter option in flavor with what was originally there. They simply chose to go with the original term. But that shows how quickly some of the speed bumps and stops can be resolved. Honestly it could have been done in a day or twos time should leadership been more active about it. 

 

tl;dr Yes it's stupid things have gone on this long. The fault largely rests with TKR. I hope their allies leave them to burn in the trash heap they've left them to burn in for extra months. 

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Someone predicted that people would have gotten tired of their war around the 3 month point. Seems to be true, we're 3 months + 1 week. I was expecting this to end in the 3-4 month span, maybe somewhat closer to 5 months depending on how it went. Combination of morale and resource depletion.

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3 hours ago, Theodosius said:

I see those brownies finally kicked in

May have been the tequila shots and a shitty mood. But the brownies certainly caused this.

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[11:52 PM] Prefontaine: But Keegoz is actually bad. [11:52 PM] Prefontaine: He's my favorite bad leader though.

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52 minutes ago, Akuryo said:

The point of your post was whiny garbage about how TKR was all nice and merciful. Sounds like your alliances typical honor bullshit, so I repeat: shove it.

Especially since it's verifiably false given the reasons you're being rolled right now are primarily for the little white sins you committed.

Global wars about 6 months apart is normal isn't it? What's abnormal is having an opponent that's such a whiny full-of-themselves !@#$ that they won't just accept they've lost and move on for 4 months.

You may not have demanded reparations or terms in prior wars, and stood by the Allie's who did, but the irony of doing that is that you became complicit and supportive of those terms. The irony is; you would've done better for your philosophical view by spending the political capital and taking a stand.

 

Better to spend it on that than another DDR/69DW shitstorm. People *MIGHT* respect you for the former, at least. 

Congratulations, you can't even follow your own rules that well. You played yourself. Now stop choking the entire goddamn game for months because it makes you sad your enemies don't have your sense of honor. A snubbed hero turned to the dark side is far more fascinating anyway.

So quit the philosophy rambling, you don't even follow it yourselves very well and no one else is buying in.

Doesn't help when they've got no infra and can't afford to repair it to much of anything. I'm talking about people I personally know, and you can't repair 20 cities to... Much of anything with the cash stack your mentioning. 

You really should work on your anger issues.

And learn the difference between a personal OOC opinion and an official alliance position.  I've been a part of TKR since the beginning and most of the times I've been involved at all (which isn't much for the last year or so), our alliance hasn't pushed terms.  I never claimed that was always the case and what TKR has or hasn't done is tangential to my point.

As for getting rolled, I'm happy for the change of pace and the chance to fight a good guerilla war in an underdog capacity.  It's the most fun I've had in this game in years.  I really don't care about or follow global politics much at all these days.  That's not a dig on those who do, I'm content to just maintain my nation, fight hard, and do some econ work for my alliance.  I'm much less bored of this war than I am of previous wars that we won where peace negotiations dragged on.  It's more fun to be on the side where there are always open slots and you have little to lose, and to find ways to do a lot of damage in spite of the uphill fight, than to be on the other side playing whack-a-mole against hard to find targets who don't have much worth destroying.

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In the words of Hunter S. Thompson: "Buy the ticket. Take the ride."

Or perhaps

Kurt Vonnegut is more appropriate: "Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why"

 

 

 

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 Registered slot thief

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

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3 hours ago, Akuryo said:

Stop bullshitting inst. ODN didn't continue because "lol we have the excess", they continued because they didn't want to be seen as an NPO meat puppet and figured that was a decent way to show it.

Don’t take Inst serious.

ODN didn’t “hold out”.  They were just target practice during that time.  Think only one member of theirs kept trying to fight.  The rest just got farmed while being nice in our Discord.

2 hours ago, Azaghul said:

I've been a part of TKR since the beginning and most of the times I've been involved at all (which isn't much for the last year or so), our alliance hasn't pushed terms.  I never claimed that was always the case and what TKR has or hasn't done is tangential to my point.

TKR pushed terms over the summer and were quite adamant about it till the Sheepy/Queen M log went public.  Then all TKR wanted was a AoD.

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44 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

TKR pushed terms over the summer and were quite adamant about it till the Sheepy/Queen M log went public.  Then all TKR wanted was a AoD.

For the record, TKR's only term was for you to reveal which of our members was leaking information to you. The term you're referring to was TRF's, which they chose to drop.

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12 hours ago, Azaghul said:

(OOC)

Please do.

I've consistently pushed this view within TKR and while I am only one non-FA voice on the matter, I know there are others that share my view on it.  As far as I know, TKR usually, if not always, doesn't ask for any terms when the coalition it is in is putting together a list of terms to give to the other side.   More often, we've stood by allies who wanted to demand terms, rather than fracture the coalition with a separate peace or burn lots of political capital trying to get them to drop their demands.  But that is not the same as being one of the parties within a winning coalition pushing to impose terms.

There's a reason I labeled this OOC.   This isn't meant to be partisan or a dig at IQ, but something I would say to all players of the game about future wars.  I've had the exact same thoughts about previous wars where TKR was on the other side.

It's actually not even really about this war because the genie is already out of the bottle.  The winning side has asked for terms and that can't be rescinded as if they were never asked.  It's already at that point where the terms themselves aren't really what people care about, but pride and saving face.  My point is that from a OOC perspective these kind of standsoffs aren't fun for most people involved and are bad for the game.  In an ideal world, we'd avoid them entirely because we would go back to the norm of winning coalitions not asking for anything except maybe an admission of defeat.

(/OOC)

 

Fair enough. The notion of TKR not pushing terms though, is not really true, even under a usual circumstances, given how in numerous global wars, TKR has signed of on infra caps, reps and other such terms. Thats where folks find it funny that TKR members are now claiming these are especially harsh terms. Its where I think folks are coming from when dissecting your arguments. 

At the end of the day, we're here allegedly "choking" the game since your negotiators have failed in their job of turning up for negotiations requested by them, or even attempted to negotiate in good faith, which is their call. But thats not on us to go back and try to request for peace when we are fine continuing the war. If y'all want peace, you know where to find us and what's the starting point. If y'all don't want peace, thats not really on us, and we don't really have to go out of our way when folks are content with continuing the status quo. 

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What do you mean "Allegedly" lol. Do you live under some delusion that a majority of the active game bombing each other for 3 months is anything but choking the entire game in every single way?

You've got 3/5 minimum of the game covering each others backs right now, so, yeah, literally everything is coming to a grinding ass halt because of this. The fact that it's on the defeated who've too much pride and not enough sense to swallow it and move on does not absolve you of your role. You've kept it up so long that by the time it ends it's gonna take the world a minute to realize you're being serious and it can infact breathe normally again.

 

 

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4 hours ago, Edward I said:

I fundamentally disagree. Peace terms are an essential part of the bridge between politics and wars. Without delving into the fact that, yes, TKR has had a hand in imposing terms on numerous alliances in the past, your basic premise is wrong for two main reasons.

1) Wars establish or reinforce grudges and rivalries.

The Mensa-Rose rivalry is probably the most famous so far, and it was built in part on peace terms. Rose signing a treaty with Mensa had more significance because of the $1 billion in reparations Rose paid Mensa when it surrendered in the Silent War.

A lot of the Article III terms were added because alliances in TKR's coalition successfully imposed similar terms on alliances in our coalition in the past.

The Article IV terms are about rivalries in naming color blocs. No one is going to go to war over the name of color, but that doesn't mean that Acadia, TCW, SK, and TKR aren't slightly annoyed that their preferred color names aren't always chosen.

These aren't bad things. They make politics more interesting. I don't know if there's evidence to support your claim about driving players away, but there is evidence that public arguments like these are the most politically engaging parts of the game for most players. Consider this: the two topics with the most views and the most replies in Alliance Affairs are this one and Rose's Surrender from the Silent War, which is where NPO and BK had a 30-page argument about the reparations BK was trying to (and did) impose on NPO.

2) Peace terms are the most reliable way to establish and enforce informal rules.

The precedent on reparations, for example, is that only aggressors should be forced to pay them. This was the case in the Great VE War and in the Silent War, and was cited as a justification for reparations in both.

The terms surrounding Arrgh after UPN defeated them, after Syndisphere defeated UPN's coalition a few months later, and in Article VIII here are attempts to curtail or protect Arrgh's brand of piracy. Arrgh's success - and, by extension, the viability of full-time raiding - is partly built on Arrgh's ability to make major alliances willing to help Arrgh via peace terms.

The terms in Articles V, VI, and VII are our coalition's attempt to set precedents regarding war dodging, trade bots, and secret treaties. Article V has a partial precedent in Rose's surrender in the Silent War - Belisarius and Oblige were subjected to additional wars because Rose's opponents felt they hadn't been damaged enough. Trade bots aren't illegal, but we dislike them; so, we're trying to get rid of TKR's bot. Exposing GOB's charade about being "paperless" is in keeping with both traditional and paperless alliances' conception of treaties: regardless of their formality, we feel all treaties should be made public.

Part of the reason for the war was the power that TKR-sphere derived from bloat - massive warchests from bloated nations that hadn't fought a difficult war in years; power from maintaining treaties off the books with GOB, t$, or others despite public claims that they'd removed their FA bloat by "cancelling" most of their EMC treaties. If it's somehow unacceptable for our coalition to alter this status quo with peace terms, why was it acceptable for TKR-sphere to engage in these practices in the first place?

 

The solution to displeasure with the current political dynamic is to change it, through force if necessary. The solution isn't to say that we should remove political consequences from wars, especially since wars are fought to address problems other than those posed by unchecked military power.

(OOC) [forgot this in my last post]

1) This is a good point and a positive.  But I think, from an OOC perspective, that it is vastly overshadowed by the negatives.

2) This is very marginal.  The terms very rarely have a fraction of the impact that the war, or the war continuing, has.  Things like the trade bot and war dodgers might have the impact of a couple of days income or losses from fighting on an alliance level.  It's almost always mostly more symbolic than substantive.

To be clear, I'm not making any of these points to make the case for anything about this war.  Nor am I making an argument about the ethics of terms or whether or not it is "acceptable".  This really is an OOC perspective based on my experience in many wars both in this world and in that other world many of us have experience in, this war is just the latest example.

Now for the negatives.  And keep in mind I'm talking about long wars generally, this isn't about this war specifically.

1) It becomes monotonous and tedious for most players on both sides.  Yes, I know everyone has to put on a political show of not being bored with it or wanting it to be over.  And of course, the most active people who would be on the forums may be more interested and more willing to fight a long war.  Hell, I'm still having some fun, but I know I'm a minority and this isn't my normal experience or the experience of most players.

2) It exasperates tier separation.  Very often, one side dominates in one tier and the other side in another tier.  Or if not, the losing side can come to dominate the lower or middle tiers because of an influx into those tiers from higher tier nations.  Some people end up fighting a lot, and others very little.  Often the people fighting very little are a lot of the alliance leaders because they have older and thus bigger nations.  Those big nations keep growing after 1-2 weeks of fighting, while the smaller nations keep grinding it out for months.

The bloated nations you are talking about (of which I was one) in large part came about because the wars before this were longer.  Short wars hit bigger nations harder because they have the most expensive infra to loose in the initial rounds.  But once the nations that they fight are knocked down into lower tiers, they can generally take it easy and almost treat it like peace.  While the smaller nations in EMC and their opponents were fighting it out for months, the larger nations in EMC were largely left alone and free to rebuild and restock after the first 2 rounds of war.

This gets even worse when the winning side wants to do a certain amount of damage and can't hit certain nations due to tiers or peace/vacation mode, so those they can hit get hit extra hard to get the overall damage in that they want.

3) Both of the above two factors drive players from the game.  This may be to the advantage of one side or the other, but it's bad for the game as a whole.  And even for the winning side, the tedious experience of wars that last for months can make people tired of the game and give them a reason to quit later.

4) The wars themselves put a damper on new political developments.  People rarely think about or sign new treaties while at war.  It delays the point where people can really start preparing for the next war for most nations and alliances.  People might smart in small ways (rebuying infra, etc.), but not at the level that they would in peace.  So while the fight over terms can create drama, it is precluding other types of drama.

5) It makes rebuilding take a lot longer and forces people to build larger war chests, which makes the peace between wars a lot longer  People generally don't go to war until they have war chests that they think will get them through the next war.  If they expect the next war is likely to be very long, they feel like they need bigger warchests and wait later to go to war.  Or to take actions that might lead to war.

6) These extended war cycles that can last 6 months to a year give new players less reason to stay around.  Who wants to play a game where the next major action isn't likely to happen for many months?  Who wants to sit around just collecting resources for months?  The people active on this forum and/or in their alliance in other ways can amuse themselves with the politics and everything else.  But that doesn't entirely make up for it and it doesn't necessarily matter to a lot of players  Our experience (I'm in that camp) tends to be disconnected from the experience of more casual players, which I think can create a disconnection between the political/leadership class and the more casual players.  We live in the age of the internet and smart phones, where games people play operate on very short time frames and people have short attention spans.  From the perspective of the average person casually joining this game, it is extremely slow paced.  

Edited to bold and to say: My hope is that in future wars, we don't see the winning side ask for terms, regardless of who wins.

Edited by Azaghul
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1 hour ago, Azaghul said:

(OOC) [forgot this in my last post]

1) This is a good point and a positive.  But I think, from an OOC perspective, that it is vastly overshadowed by the negatives.

2) This is very marginal.  The terms very rarely have a fraction of the impact that the war, or the war continuing, has.  Things like the trade bot and war dodgers might have the impact of a couple of days income or losses from fighting on an alliance level.  It's almost always mostly more symbolic than substantive.

To be clear, I'm not making any of these points to make the case for anything about this war.  Nor am I making an argument about the ethics of terms or whether or not it is "acceptable".  This really is an OOC perspective based on my experience in many wars both in this world and in that other world many of us have experience in, this war is just the latest example.

Now for the negatives.  And keep in mind I'm talking about long wars generally, this isn't about this war specifically.

1) It becomes monotonous and tedious for most players on both sides.  Yes, I know everyone has to put on a political show of not being bored with it or wanting it to be over.  And of course, the most active people who would be on the forums may be more interested and more willing to fight a long war.  Hell, I'm still having some fun, but I know I'm a minority and this isn't my normal experience or the experience of most players.

2) It exasperates tier separation.  Very often, one side dominates in one tier and the other side in another tier.  Or if not, the losing side can come to dominate the lower or middle tiers because of an influx into those tiers from higher tier nations.  Some people end up fighting a lot, and others very little.  Often the people fighting very little are a lot of the alliance leaders because they have older and thus bigger nations.  Those big nations keep growing after 1-2 weeks of fighting, while the smaller nations keep grinding it out for months.

The bloated nations you are talking about (of which I was one) in large part came about because the wars before this were longer.  Short wars hit bigger nations harder because they have the most expensive infra to loose in the initial rounds.  But once the nations that they fight are knocked down into lower tiers, they can generally take it easy and almost treat it like peace.  While the smaller nations in EMC and their opponents were fighting it out for months, the larger nations in EMC were largely left alone and free to rebuild and restock after the first 2 rounds of war.

This gets even worse when the winning side wants to do a certain amount of damage and can't hit certain nations due to tiers or peace/vacation mode, so those they can hit get hit extra hard to get the overall damage in that they want.

3) Both of the above two factors drive players from the game.  This may be to the advantage of one side or the other, but it's bad for the game as a whole.  And even for the winning side, the tedious experience of wars that last for months can make people tired of the game and give them a reason to quit later.

4) The wars themselves put a damper on new political developments.  People rarely think about or sign new treaties while at war.  It delays the point where people can really start preparing for the next war for most nations and alliances.  People might smart in small ways (rebuying infra, etc.), but not at the level that they would in peace.  So while the fight over terms can create drama, it is precluding other types of drama.

5) It makes rebuilding take a lot longer and forces people to build larger war chests, which makes the peace between wars a lot longer  People generally don't go to war until they have war chests that they think will get them through the next war.  If they expect the next war is likely to be very long, they feel like they need bigger warchests and wait later to go to war.  Or to take actions that might lead to war.

6) These extended war cycles that can last 6 months to a year give new players less reason to stay around.  Who wants to play a game where the next major action isn't likely to happen for many months?  Who wants to sit around just collecting resources for months?  The people active on this forum and/or in their alliance in other ways can amuse themselves with the politics and everything else.  But that doesn't entirely make up for it and it doesn't necessarily matter to a lot of players  Our experience (I'm in that camp) tends to be disconnected from the experience of more casual players, which I think can create a disconnection between the political/leadership class and the more casual players.  We live in the age of the internet and smart phones, where games people play operate on very short time frames and people have short attention spans.  From the perspective of the average person casually joining this game, it is extremely slow paced.  

Edited to bold and to say: My hope is that in future wars, we don't see the winning side ask for terms, regardless of who wins.

Pretty much everything you're talking about is the result of bad mechanics. The ability to grow forever, the ability to build massive warchests, the long wars and the even longer war cycles aren't the effects of peace terms. They are the result of nations' ability to grow forever and to stockpile resources and money forever. If you want to remedy this, hard ceilings on growth, warchest sizes, or both are necessary.

Your proposed solution is to diminish wars and, by extension, politics, to a glorified game of king of the hill. The point isn't that the material effects of peace terms are marginal compared to the destruction caused by wars; it's that wars are about more than doing damage to your adversaries. Many of the terms proposed now or accepted in past wars have no material affect whatsoever. You said that the only peace term you didn't mind was an admissions of defeat, but admitting defeat has been a sticking point in past wars.

Poor mechanics aren't a good reason to suck the life out of other aspects of PW.

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3 hours ago, Edward I said:

Pretty much everything you're talking about is the result of bad mechanics. The ability to grow forever, the ability to build massive warchests, the long wars and the even longer war cycles aren't the effects of peace terms. They are the result of nations' ability to grow forever and to stockpile resources and money forever. If you want to remedy this, hard ceilings on growth, warchest sizes, or both are necessary.

Your proposed solution is to diminish wars and, by extension, politics, to a glorified game of king of the hill. The point isn't that the material effects of peace terms are marginal compared to the destruction caused by wars; it's that wars are about more than doing damage to your adversaries. Many of the terms proposed now or accepted in past wars have no material affect whatsoever. You said that the only peace term you didn't mind was an admissions of defeat, but admitting defeat has been a sticking point in past wars.

Poor mechanics aren't a good reason to suck the life out of other aspects of PW.

This is just the latest of several wars that would have ended a lot earlier if there wasn't a dispute over peace terms.  

The mechanics are definitely flawed and a major factor, and something I want to see changed.  But this is a major factor as well.  And it is doing a lot more to suck the life out of the game than anything that it adds.

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2 hours ago, Azaghul said:

This is just the latest of several wars that would have ended a lot earlier if there wasn't a dispute over peace terms.  

The mechanics are definitely flawed and a major factor, and something I want to see changed.  But this is a major factor as well.  And it is doing a lot more to suck the life out of the game than anything that it adds.

 

I think theres a cultural issue with regards to peace terms, and that is folks don't seem to like losing tbh. Wars are won/lost, and thats the point of the politics. Take your defeat, move on, the rest of the terms in Orbis today revolve around joke terms and/or pranks. None of the terms are designed in such a manner that have been repressive from what I've seen, and are enforced to completely destroy or neuter an alliance comprehensively.

 

Nevertheless, it adds a valid political process, which can lead to better outcomes, both internally and externally. I mean a bunch of members of our present coalition, have paid reps, had infra caps and treaties to be nullified, including previous peace agreements, and wars have ended much sooner. Especially when folks were willing to work within the political process to achieve an outcome. Take the defeat, find a mutual point on the peace process which does not involve the constant changing of minds, and continuously negotiating in bad faith, and you wouldn't be here. The problem really isn't with the idea of peace terms for the most bit tbh. 

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On 1/26/2019 at 11:20 PM, Nizam Adrienne said:

For the record, TKR's only term was for you to reveal which of our members was leaking information to you. The term you're referring to was TRF's, which they chose to drop.

TKRs only term was OOC. So, thanks for clarifying that. Now we know.

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16 hours ago, Shadowthrone said:

 

I think theres a cultural issue with regards to peace terms, and that is folks don't seem to like losing tbh. Wars are won/lost, and thats the point of the politics. Take your defeat, move on, the rest of the terms in Orbis today revolve around joke terms and/or pranks. None of the terms are designed in such a manner that have been repressive from what I've seen, and are enforced to completely destroy or neuter an alliance comprehensively.

 

Nevertheless, it adds a valid political process, which can lead to better outcomes, both internally and externally. I mean a bunch of members of our present coalition, have paid reps, had infra caps and treaties to be nullified, including previous peace agreements, and wars have ended much sooner. Especially when folks were willing to work within the political process to achieve an outcome. Take the defeat, find a mutual point on the peace process which does not involve the constant changing of minds, and continuously negotiating in bad faith, and you wouldn't be here. The problem really isn't with the idea of peace terms for the most bit tbh. 

I've seen NPO refuse a peace offer for weeks and even months holding out for better terms several times both in this world and in others.  And be a lot more stubborn about it than most.

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So, you're trying to outstubborn someone you've acknowledged as extremely stubborn? Or is it the hope that the opposing coalition will fall apart soon? As is, the total war damage is 250bn (ignoring infrastructure) on your side of the coalition, not including damage inflicted by players that have just quit. TKR proper has lost 40% of its members (to the alarm of some contacts on the opposing side of the war). Where exactly is TKR-sphere's red line? When you dropped to 89 (94 including VM), you definitely dropped below my red line for acceptable damages. Or is your intent to keep this war going until you disband, in a sort of "improved dolphinplan"?

 

I'm starting to worry that you have no exit strategy in the event that you break before the opfor breaks. I was hoping you'd be able to reach 29bn in net damages soon so that you could have "peace with honor", but at some point your resistance goes from "heroic" to "suicidal". I sincerely hope that, if you begin to approach the point where resistance becomes impossible, you have a plan for making sure that TKR and its allies survive in the long-term.

Edited by A Boy Named Crow

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2 hours ago, A Boy Named Crow said:

TKR is now down to 89 members on the main AA. This represents roughly a 40% loss from pre-war numbers. If they were to peace today, I wouldn't be surprised to see them at 75 members within 2 months, or even less.

Shhh they're catching up, we're almost out of resources, and T$, IQ, and CoS are all ready to fight each other.

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On 1/27/2019 at 4:47 PM, Edward I said:

I fundamentally disagree. Peace terms are an essential part of the bridge between politics and wars. Without delving into the fact that, yes, TKR has had a hand in imposing terms on numerous alliances in the past, your basic premise is wrong for two main reasons.

1) Wars establish or reinforce grudges and rivalries.

The Mensa-Rose rivalry is probably the most famous so far, and it was built in part on peace terms. Rose signing a treaty with Mensa had more significance because of the $1 billion in reparations Rose paid Mensa when it surrendered in the Silent War.

A lot of the Article III terms were added because alliances in TKR's coalition successfully imposed similar terms on alliances in our coalition in the past.

The Article IV terms are about rivalries in naming color blocs. No one is going to go to war over the name of color, but that doesn't mean that Acadia, TCW, SK, and TKR aren't slightly annoyed that their preferred color names aren't always chosen.

These aren't bad things. They make politics more interesting. I don't know if there's evidence to support your claim about driving players away, but there is evidence that public arguments like these are the most politically engaging parts of the game for most players. Consider this: the two topics with the most views and the most replies in Alliance Affairs are this one and Rose's Surrender from the Silent War, which is where NPO and BK had a 30-page argument about the reparations BK was trying to (and did) impose on NPO.

2) Peace terms are the most reliable way to establish and enforce informal rules.

The precedent on reparations, for example, is that only aggressors should be forced to pay them. This was the case in the Great VE War and in the Silent War, and was cited as a justification for reparations in both.

The terms surrounding Arrgh after UPN defeated them, after Syndisphere defeated UPN's coalition a few months later, and in Article VIII here are attempts to curtail or protect Arrgh's brand of piracy. Arrgh's success - and, by extension, the viability of full-time raiding - is partly built on Arrgh's ability to make major alliances willing to help Arrgh via peace terms.

The terms in Articles V, VI, and VII are our coalition's attempt to set precedents regarding war dodging, trade bots, and secret treaties. Article V has a partial precedent in Rose's surrender in the Silent War - Belisarius and Oblige were subjected to additional wars because Rose's opponents felt they hadn't been damaged enough. Trade bots aren't illegal, but we dislike them; so, we're trying to get rid of TKR's bot. Exposing GOB's charade about being "paperless" is in keeping with both traditional and paperless alliances' conception of treaties: regardless of their formality, we feel all treaties should be made public.

Part of the reason for the war was the power that TKR-sphere derived from bloat - massive warchests from bloated nations that hadn't fought a difficult war in years; power from maintaining treaties off the books with GOB, t$, or others despite public claims that they'd removed their FA bloat by "cancelling" most of their EMC treaties. If it's somehow unacceptable for our coalition to alter this status quo with peace terms, why was it acceptable for TKR-sphere to engage in these practices in the first place?

 

The solution to displeasure with the current political dynamic is to change it, through force if necessary. The solution isn't to say that we should remove political consequences from wars, especially since wars are fought to address problems other than those posed by unchecked military power.

I do think one important distinction between the wars you're referencing, and this one, is that in those wars, the loser was the aggressor, and wanted pre-mature peace before our side had a chance to take out their whales through submarine warfare (this was at a time when our side was outnumbered about 3:1 in the upper tier). In the wars that did not end in white peace, the additional terms were essentially in exchange for sparing their whales' infra and tanks.

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TBH at this point I am tired of hearing the big egos over on one side blaming the big egos on the other side as the reason there's no peace. Both sides are equally to blame for the lack of a peace. one side refuses to accept white peace cuz they want the other side to bend over and take in the you know what... the other side claims whatever.... in the mean time you see more and more people either zeroing and sitting it out, CMing or just leaving the game in disgust over the whole sorrid mess. both sides, swallow pride, take a white peace and move on... TKR side got their asses kicked yay for IQ side (it only took 5 ot 6:1 odds for you to do it), IQ side, you got what you wanted, TKR dethroned, be happy with that and move on. You have all the top spots now, be happy with that -- But noooo.. both sides are all like

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I don't think you know how coalition peace deals work. It just comes off as the whole 'why cant we just nuke the people we don't like' schpiel. Uninformed and naive

There is a wide range if grudges in play here, from the trade bot, to mensa, to non-true paperless alliances. A white peace isnt going to resolve those issues. In all honesty, TKR would be wise to accept the terms as they are, to resolve the the grudges where the can rather than further inflame those grudges. But I'm just from an irrelevant micro, so what do I know.

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