Endgame

[Mikey]

2 minutes ago, Roquentin said:

The point of the break up they did was because Syndisphere was supposed to recipocrate. Syndisphere didn't have an intention to recipocrate. Joining contradicts the purpose of breaking up one side. I think Rose's homegrown talents like DtC are to be credited more with war prowess than outside intervention. It's also difficult to get good at war by joining an overwhelmingly large side. They also didn't have single digit blitzes before that. You're thinking of VE.

My criticism of durmij is his friendship narrative doesn't really translate into tangible stuff. It only enlarged and consolidated a dominant grouping and he continued doing so before Trail of Tiers and after. So when the main criticism of other people is now consolidation, it's a huge problem for him to throw that stuff out. I can get his perspective where always being conciliatory to your enemies is way better than pushing back on the OWF, but the main purpose isn't to win enemies over especially in cases where they'll have many deep-seated personal issues, it's to offer a counter-narrative so no one side dominates the discourse. He doesn't see that as desirable while it's the reason I post at all.

You're right, and I don't want to overly credit Mensa, or even credit them at all, with Rose's transformation. I don't know how it went down, just that one of their stated reasons for departure did pan out for them, so I would call that a choice well made personally. Regarding current complaints about consolidation, its as much about the attempt to hide it as the problem itself, though I can agree that some have more leg to stand on than others in terms of arguing against it for its own sake. Though arguing from a purely threat based analysis I think would be valid in either case.

[Roquentin]

1 minute ago, Mikey said:

Oh good, so you're finally admitting you were working with BK since the start? I mean, even the most cursory of glances at the treaty web will reveal the vast disparity between your two spheres and ours. Chaos or KETOGG alone vs either of your spheres would be utterly crushed. Hence why KETOG apparently came to you guys seeking support in a war against BK (unless I am misreading some of your earlier posts, and I might well be). The only way for either smaller sphere to fight against the larger ones, defensively or offensively, would be to work together. So your agreement to prevent any two spheres from cooperating, is basically an agreement that either of you can pick off whichever smaller sphere you want with impunity, but if they ever have the audacity to work together to defend themselves, IQ will get the gang back together to stomp them into the ground.

I suppose I can see why you claim to have truly supported the 'mini-sphere' world, if you define that as two mini IQs taking turns to stomp smaller alliances with impunity.

Where did I say that? They did their own thing and got a bunch of new treaties and did a lot of things we would have taken pause with.  The issue is you're looking at it in purely numbers and not quality, personal connections, and war performance. Numerically you could be right on purely paper. Something people keep conveniently ignoring is the individual ties these alliances have  that are not on paper. Rose in AC had few fa ties but was able to organize the coalition.  I don't see superiority you claim for BKsphere  as the case in reality, which we are  seeing right now. The main thing is more  to prevent anyone from being overwhelmed. So if we saw a different sphere being snuffed out by even one, then there'd a case for intervention.

[Mikey]

59 minutes ago, Roquentin said:

Where did I say that? They did their own thing and got a bunch of new treaties and did a lot of things we would have taken pause with.  The issue is you're looking at it in purely numbers and not quality, personal connections, and war performance. Numerically you could be right on purely paper. Something people keep conveniently ignoring is the individual ties these alliances have  that are not on paper. Rose in AC had few fa ties but was able to organize the coalition.  I don't see superiority you claim for BKsphere  as the case in reality, which we are  seeing right now. The main thing is more  to prevent anyone from being overwhelmed. So if we saw a different sphere being snuffed out by even one, then there'd a case for intervention.

I mean, if you want to ignore numbers for quality, we're right back to the old claims that syndisphere/EMC were consolidating the 'good players'. Personally, I find good and bad fighters on both sides of this war. But even if true, is your suggestion that we intentionally let ourselves be outnumbered on the hopes that skill level will even it out? In addition to being insulting to several of your fighting partners, its also just bad strategy. I prefer to go by in-game firepower and not handicap myself on the basis that my enemy might not know how to click buttons properly. Even if there is a skill disparity, can you really suggest any of us could have won this on our own? Because I highly doubt it.

My point is that a secret agreement to prevent cooperation inherently favors the two spheres that don't need to cooperate in the first place. The only beneficiaries of that policy are you and BK.

Now, had this war been unprompted, I could at least understand your claim to be defending the concept of multi-spheres from our ebil secret alliance. It still wouldn't be supported by the numbers, but there would be some logic to it. But in addition to having just fought each other (hardly secret ally behavior), we only turned to BK after leaks reveal they were plotting to get us both rolled! Whether we were right to judge them an immediate threat or not, it was clearly the driving factor behind our attack. Not some prior agreement to divide and conquer weaker spheres, as yours very much seems to be.

Painting your entry as some balancing act to even out the sphere counts, despite said cooperation being needed for the match up and necessitated by circumstance, is just absurd. Especially when your agreement with BK against 'imbalance' would have allowed them to roll us in a far more lopsided contest.

Edited June 28, 2019 by Mikey

[hope]

FOR ? THE ? LAST ? TIME ? NOBODY ? IN ? CHAOS ? WANTED ? TO ? ATTACK ? NPO ?

[Spaceman Thrax]

21 minutes ago, Mikey said:

I mean, BK right now is fighting Chaos + KETOG + Rose and even before your intervention wasn't dead, even if they were falling into an increasingly bad place. But that can be as much attributed to poor coordination and beige discipline in some of those alliances (it has not been hard to find begies to rebuild, when needed). Now, some of that goes hand in hand with managing a large coalition. And I suppose you could argue that Chaos/KETOG are actually consolidating active/talented players, as was argued against syndisphere/EMC in the past, though I would disagree with that. There are certainly good and bad fighters on both sides. But there was no way either Chaos nor KETOG would have survived a 1v1 fight with BK. I doubt we could have survived a 1v1 with you, either. My point is that a secret agreement to prevent any two sphere team-ups inherently favors the two spheres that don't need to team up in the first place. The only beneficiaries of that policy are you and BK.

Now, had this war been unprompted, I could at least see where you're coming from with the idea that we are unfairly ganging up on a third sphere, though I still wouldn't find it supported by the numbers. But in addition to fighting each other (hard to say we are secret allies after that), we turn our attention to BK after leaks demonstrate they were planning to attack us. Whether our judgement of them as an imminent threat was correct or not, it was clearly the driving factor behind our attack. Not some prior agreement to divide and conquer weaker spheres, as yours very much seems to be.

Painting your entry as some balancing act to even out the sphere counts, despite said cooperation being needed for the match up and necessitated by circumstance, is just absurd. Especially when your agreement with BK against 'imbalance' would have perfectly allowed for them to roll us into the ground, despite being far more lopsided.

Can I just quote this? Read it. That's it.

You maintained a paperless agreement with BK, making you the largest possible grouping in the game no matter what anyone else did. Then, you tried to maneuver, with some success, an ailing and sporadically active t$ government into joining your old grouping. Good try: probably would have been fine if you guys could fight better, or if t$ lacked the ability or inclination to course-correct.

Enjoy your war. You wanted it, not us.

Edited June 28, 2019 by Spaceman Thrax

[hope]

It's just so amusing that this whole debacle could have been avoided if BKsphere put effort into their blitzes. Former Vanguard tiered well against us but they all declared on separate days. You literally are fighting the alliances with some of the best milcom in the game (Guardian,  Rose, TKR, etc.) and you put the most minimal effort into your blitzes. I think Polaris declared like 5 wars? Everyone I've spoken to has been like "Man if they were competent and all swarmed us at once we'd been fricked." I guess you need so many alliances on your side since 3 of them equal 1 of ours.

You've dug your own grave, now lay in it.

[Roquentin]

1 hour ago, Spaceman Thrax said:

Can I just quote this? Read it. That's it.

You maintained a paperless agreement with BK, making you the largest possible grouping in the game no matter what anyone else did. Then, you tried to maneuver, with some success, an ailing and sporadically active t$ government into joining your old grouping. Good try: probably would have been fine if you guys could fight better, or if t$ lacked the ability or inclination to course-correct.

Enjoy your war. You wanted it, not us.

Where does it say that? A paperless agreement means  both sides assent to it rather than being a malleable thing that can apply to other parties as well.  They had no knowledge of dealings with Partisan while somehow many others did. I didn't try to maneuver tS into anything. It was simply agreed with Kayser we could intervene if there was a possibility of someone being significantly overwhelmed.  If you're just going to keep twisting my words into what you want to see, it's pointless to try to deescalate the rhetoric. If you want to try to "salt the earth" as I've been hearing, then let's see you try. The only hegemonic stuff I've been seeing is trying strong arm people into cancelling treaties and it's your side that feels it has the power and backing to demand such. I would have never asked anyone to bail us out. In fact, I was never expecting help in this. 

Edited June 28, 2019 by Roquentin
clarity

[durmij]

I'm tired of beating my head against this Roq, so I'm going to lay it out in very simple terms my criteria for signing paper with an Alliance.
 

1. We have a genuine relationship outside of game politics, even if it's very simple and rudimentary as this is just an internet browser game. Talking in discords, commenting on forum posts, it really doesn't take much. Do not show up, ask for an embassy, and assume you're going to get an MDP the next week. Looking at you Cornerstone.
    
2. Don't post, or have members post bigoted shit. We don't need ideological alignment in any way, just don't be an !@#$ or have your members be !@#$ without consequence. Not saying no one can frick up; I, like many of you, was 16 and liked Family Guy at some point in my life, but just acknowledge it, correct it and move on.
    
3. Be honest with me. Especially no lies by omission. Keep the information flowing, even minor shit, and if you have any concerns about my behaviour IC or OOC, tell me and we'll hash it out.
    
4. Be competent. You don't need to be an elite squad of people who have over 2 years in this game who turn down their partners for sex if their is a blitz on. Can I expect 50% of your members to attend the blitz, 30 if you're a mass alliance? Do you trim your inactives? Do you have some growth plan, doesn't matter if it differs from mine? When one of your noobs does something wrong in a war, do you correct them? Can I bring you a nation that needs countering and feel assured that you will try to find that counter and most likely succeed, circumstances permitting? Great, that's it.

These are literally all I ever looked for in an alliance. Pre Silent War, I was in three embassies as a diplomat. NPO, T$ and Mensa. NPO was kind of inactive/ there was no spark there, the T$ board was shut down by Keegoz over some big brouhaha involving Pubstomper and on the Mensa board, we cracked jokes and chatted shit. When I became Emperor of Rose, Mensa was the only alliance that fit those criteria. And I was hesitant to ask them because I didn't want to trade on our friendships to bail out an alliance that might not make it till Christmas. 

The only time I ever broke with the first point was when UPN wanted a protectorate, but Sketchy had a close relationship with them and I still new a couple of gov. Every other piece of paper, the ones I kept and the ones I cut, were dictated by this ethos.

And if anyone wants to know how solid of a bro @Buorhann is in game, I cut my VM short and came out of it with no buildings or mil. Got slotted, turned two wars but the third guy was giving me trouble. Log in this morning and his AS is gone, because Bourhann picked him up and was quite literally saving my ass. One hell of a hippo.

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

So is the claim now that BK/TC was getting overwhelmed by a force half its size, where 1/3 of said force entered the fight half dead?

I think maybe if that's the case, you should just let nature take its course.

[Roquentin]

21 minutes ago, Akuryo said:

So is the claim now that BK/TC was getting overwhelmed by a force half its size, where 1/3 of said force entered the fight half dead?

I think maybe if that's the case, you should just let nature take its course.

Yeah, they got hit first and most of the alliances weren't used to this level of pressure. Those that were most experienced with taking the lead on wars were the initial targets in TC/BK itself, so it left it to other alliances to enter and people even called them out not having much experience. The nature of the game is since it takes time to remilitarize then you can move from front to front and declare on more than your initial targets so it inherently benefits whoever can get the initial advantage even if they're numerically smaller.

It's more if the elite players aren't willing to self-limit and continue to work together, which is Mikey's implication even though this issue has been brought up a million times by other people than I, then there has to be a check. This issue has been brought up multiple times in the past and it's always the same thing.  People always say "I'm going with numbers instead' when you know the actual results. It's ordinary casual players in many cases on one side rather than varnished ex-govs and high octane players and the game's elite on the other.

Just to reiterate from before however, there exists no mutual agreement between us and any other sphere.

Edited June 28, 2019 by Roquentin

[Smith]

27 minutes ago, Roquentin said:

Just to reiterate from before however, there exists no mutual agreement between us and any other sphere.

I mean you can say this. But if you intend to help BK whenever they get in trouble, and if you are unwilling to ever fight BK, and if BK is going to rush to you when they need help, then there is a de facto tie even if you don't want to call it as such. 

Also you should probably address Mikey's post more directly since he brought up a lot of good points 

Edited June 28, 2019 by Smith

[hope]

34 minutes ago, Roquentin said:

Yeah, they got hit first and most of the alliances weren't used to this level of pressure. Those that were most experienced with taking the lead on wars were the initial targets in TC/BK itself, so it left it to other alliances to enter and people even called them out not having much experience. The nature of the game is since it takes time to remilitarize then you can move from front to front and declare on more than your initial targets so it inherently benefits whoever can get the initial advantage even if they're numerically smaller.

It's more if the elite players aren't willing to self-limit and continue to work together, which is Mikey's implication even though this issue has been brought up a million times by other people than I, then there has to be a check. This issue has been brought up multiple times in the past and it's always the same thing.  People always say "I'm going with numbers instead' when you know the actual results. It's ordinary casual players in many cases on one side rather than varnished ex-govs and high octane players and the game's elite on the other.

Just to reiterate from before however, there exists no mutual agreement between us and any other sphere.

maybe if they had all of their satellites and prots blitz us on the same day instead of having them all show up individually at different times like a fricking global war advent calendar they wouldnt have been so overwhelmed

Edited June 28, 2019 by chanel

[Roquentin]

2 hours ago, Mikey said:

I mean, if you want to ignore numbers for quality, we're right back to the old claims that syndisphere/EMC were consolidating the 'good players'. Personally, I find good and bad fighters on both sides of this war. But even if true, is your suggestion that we intentionally let ourselves be outnumbered on the hopes that skill level will even it out? In addition to being insulting to several of your fighting partners, its also just bad strategy. I prefer to go by in-game firepower and not handicap myself on the basis that my enemy might not know how to click buttons properly. Even if there is a skill disparity, can you really suggest any of us could have won this on our own? Because I highly doubt it.

My point is that a secret agreement to prevent cooperation inherently favors the two spheres that don't need to cooperate in the first place. The only beneficiaries of that policy are you and BK.

Now, had this war been unprompted, I could at least understand your claim to be defending the concept of multi-spheres from our ebil secret alliance. It still wouldn't be supported by the numbers, but there would be some logic to it. But in addition to having just fought each other (hardly secret ally behavior), we only turned to BK after leaks reveal they were plotting to get us both rolled! Whether we were right to judge them an immediate threat or not, it was clearly the driving factor behind our attack. Not some prior agreement to divide and conquer weaker spheres, as yours very much seems to be.

Painting your entry as some balancing act to even out the sphere counts, despite said cooperation being needed for the match up and necessitated by circumstance, is just absurd. Especially when your agreement with BK against 'imbalance' would have allowed them to roll us in a far more lopsided contest.

Per smith. Yes that was the case and Prefontaine called them out on it in the TEst-Pantheon DoW and later on. It was unpopular because that's who posts on the forums. You would have to be outnumbered if you're all together for anyone to have a chance. The alternative is more of a balance between elite AAs on one side and  non-elite on the others to balance numbers and hyperness.  Well, I'm not sure if you could have won the whole thing on your own. You could have stalemated at least and the tiering would be in your favor in some cases. KETOG/Rose is huge so even if there's no formal tie, the personal ties there mean a lot of firepower. There was a willing to collaborate before the KETOG-Chaos war between the two, which is why it was so weird. 

It's not a secret agreement between two spheres. It's between just people in one.

Okay, I'll return to the point of prior willingness to collaborate between KETOG, Chaos and Rose. I knew what they really wanted to do was hit BK in the first place.  People were asked to join in like you mentioned I'm sure they wanted the full house like with IQ. Did this get given to BK as a giftwrapped CB? No, BK, TCW, FR had their individual beefs with TKR and Soup. It's just the innocence play here isn't workable. So when you hit BK and I'm getting told we have a chokehold and we need to get disbanded and so on, that's a yuge problem when it's not going well for them. If we lose the only buffer between us and a bunch of angry guys with low infra, what's going to happen? Protecting our interests is a priority and maintaining a  balance of power so you can't all come at us alone is one of them. 

Edited June 28, 2019 by Roquentin

[ArcKnox]

No, no, dig UP stupid!

[Mikey]

1 hour ago, Roquentin said:

Yeah, they got hit first and most of the alliances weren't used to this level of pressure. Those that were most experienced with taking the lead on wars were the initial targets in TC/BK itself, so it left it to other alliances to enter and people even called them out not having much experience. The nature of the game is since it takes time to remilitarize then you can move from front to front and declare on more than your initial targets so it inherently benefits whoever can get the initial advantage even if they're numerically smaller.

It's more if the elite players aren't willing to self-limit and continue to work together, which is Mikey's implication even though this issue has been brought up a million times by other people than I, then there has to be a check. This issue has been brought up multiple times in the past and it's always the same thing.  People always say "I'm going with numbers instead' when you know the actual results. It's ordinary casual players in many cases on one side rather than varnished ex-govs and high octane players and the game's elite on the other.

Just to reiterate from before however, there exists no mutual agreement between us and any other sphere.

My implication was that there is not the imbalance of 'talent' that you are suggesting, but even if there was, its a stupid argument. We are supposed to just give our enemies a massive handicap every war because sometimes they can't coordinate well? Are you seriously suggesting we should be facing BK by ourselves, that Chaos would actually survive more than two days in that war, even if we were the super elite Game Fuel chugging 'elites' you think we are? Because what you're saying is we should just willingly get rolled, there's no two ways about it. Maybe when we even the numbers it becomes more favorable to our side due to better coordination, but without evening them, we stand no chance at all. Apparently it is ok for BK to actively plot the demise of other alliances, but should said alliances group together to fight back, that crosses the line. We should just let them pick us off one by one.

But of course, that's even if we did have some insurmountable skill gap with all the super actives on one side and inactives on the other. But we don't. Yes, there are shitty fighters on BK's side, clearly. There  people on our side messing up beiges, firing missiles when they have full air forces, stat padding rather than suicide into key battles, etc. Perhaps the difference is that we try and correct their behavior, I don't know. But you are hardly the only ones dealing with new and more casual players. There are are hundreds of players on the Chaos/KETOG/Rose side, are you really suggesting they are all ex gov who spend every 5 minutes checking their phones for the next MAP?

Lets look at Chaos, because I am intimately more familiar with my own bloc than others. We have TKR, with a competent milcom, yes, but also a mass recruiting alliances that has to deal with an intake of new players. The exact same argument used by BK the last time we had this skill disparity argument. CoS was suffering from inactivity, and for gods sakes Roq, you're talking to SK. It honestly pains me to say this, but we're not good. We ran around headless the past few wars with an empty milcom that is finally seeing its first new additions in three years. Soup is young and working out the kinks, but does have active players.

As for KETOG, they have their mix as well. Maybe they have a more lopsided % of active to inactive than we do, last war would bear that out. But once again your lumping the two of us into some big group! We were just fighting each other before BK directly threatened us, and for the last time, attacked BK directly after their plans to hit us were leaked.

 

 

 

Edit: to respond this nonsense:

Quote

I knew what they [KETOG] really wanted to do was hit BK in the first place.  People were asked to join in like you mentioned I'm sure they wanted the full house like with IQ.

They asked you, former members of IQ, to hit BK, because they couldn't have done it alone. That was refused and they chose to attack us instead. Somehow this implicates us in a plan to attack both of you?

Edited June 28, 2019 by Mikey

[Roquentin]

You guys already said it's all over so I don't really have anything more to worry about.

 

32 minutes ago, Smith said:

I mean you can say this. But if you intend to help BK whenever they get in trouble, and if you are unwilling to ever fight BK, and if BK is going to rush to you when they need help, then there is a de facto tie even if you don't want to call it as such. 

Also you should probably address Mikey's post more directly since he brought up a lot of good points 

It's not meant to be a blank check and there is no actual commitment. The stakes being raised puts us in a such position. It directly threatens NPO interests when the idea is to have someone keep us out to divide and conquer as that's what the information provided conveyed. When that scenario starts to play out, then it's  a problem. No one is looking out for us except ourselves, our exclusive allies, and  InfoWars.

[Prefonteen]

7 hours ago, Roquentin said:

You do realize that was at a time when people threatened to raid us regularly, when our treasure would get stolen by default because people knew we were isolated, and it was a real possibility they would constantly hit us or hire people to hit us if it would be worth it? This all while you were enjoying the safe comforts of the unipolarity you helped establish. So you suggest a huge capital expenditure for us at a time when we had severely limited capital and had to pay reps? How does that make sense?

Have I ever done  those low infra levels since ToT? Nope. Because I've had a measure of security for those periods. You've been attacking me since you became leader of Rose and probably before, so you have zero credibility here.

I would like to point out in hindsight, that contrary to popular claims, I never ordered *any* peacetime raids on NPO, covenant or its allies. We did employ mercenaries during wars as as part(s) of our coalitions.

It's a popular myth that we did employ guerilla tactics like that. But it didn't happen. Ever.

7 hours ago, durmij said:

I wouldn't shit on you if you weren't so bad. And, for the umpteenth time, I signed Mensa because I liked Buo et al. I despise real politik and always have. Which is just one of the main reasons I think you're a horrible player.

For perspective, Partisan insulted me to my face while thinking I was too stupid to pick up on it, lied to me, arranged to get my alliance rolled because he didn't like my honest FA style, then ran like a coward into NK when he got caught. And I still don't bear him any ill will because he didn't expect any pity party after the fall out and eventually copped to it.

You are the architect of the isolation you and by extension NPO endure. Your paranoia and perpetual victim-hood fuel this. People have been trying to get you to change your ways for years, carrot and stick approaches. But nothings going to change unless you want it to, and you do the work.

Im certain I probably tried to insult you to your face. That seems within the general ballpark of things i'd do. I suppose you can consider my HW antics "trying to get you rolled", although that was always going to be more a collateral damage than an actual goal.

When did I lie to you though?

6 hours ago, Cooper_ said:

Uh oh here we go again... Syndisphere, assemble!

PINK RANGER

3 hours ago, Spaceman Thrax said:

I don't intend to shit on you personally, Roq. And I think you're a very good leader, actually: the measure of a leader is if they represent their community, so my own opinions on your play style are totally irrelevant.

However, you have a nasty habit of deliberately pushing false narratives against my friends. People I know to be earnest, and not playing the game in the same way as you. When you do that, I'm going to push back, and I don't feel at all wrong to do it. Sorry: you don't get to act like a victim when declaring an aggressive war on TKR, again, for flimsy reasoning without me both trying to slap down your alliance, and your narrative. That's the whole game.

 

I'm a victim

1 hour ago, Roquentin said:

Where does it say that? A paperless agreement means  both sides assent to it rather than being a malleable thing that can apply to other parties as well.  They had no knowledge of dealings with Partisan while somehow many others did. I didn't try to maneuver tS into anything. It was simply agreed with Kayser we could intervene if there was a possibility of someone being significantly overwhelmed.  If you're just going to keep twisting my words into what you want to see, it's pointless to try to deescalate the rhetoric. If you want to try to "salt the earth" as I've been hearing, then let's see you try. The only hegemonic stuff I've been seeing is trying strong arm people into cancelling treaties and it's your side that feels it has the power and backing to demand such. I would have never asked anyone to bail us out. In fact, I was never expecting help in this. 

Friendly neighborhood snake pointing out that my dealings with pref/roq did not entail any maintenance of any ties to BK whatsoever. The removal of that tie (due to exactly the arguments being brought forth atm) was a prerequisite to any agreement. This was communicated by me on several occasions. It seems as if Hilmes diverted from that course and gave in on the one hard sticking point I had (all the rest was negotiable for me).

 

.... Please keep my name seperated from the consolidation monstrosity.

[hope]

so did NPO end up admitting they joined this war to aid BK?

[Roquentin]

6 minutes ago, Mikey said:

My implication was that there is not the imbalance of 'talent' that you are suggesting, but even if there was, its a stupid argument. We are supposed to just give our enemies a massive handicap every war because sometimes they can't coordinate well? Are you seriously suggesting we should be facing BK by ourselves, that Chaos would actually survive more than two days in that war, even if we were the super elite Game Fuel chugging 'elites' you think we are? Because what you're saying is we should just willingly get rolled, there's no two ways about it. Maybe when we even the numbers it becomes more favorable to our side due to better coordination, but without evening them, we stand no chance at all. Apparently it is ok for BK to actively plot the demise of other alliances, but should said alliances group together to fight back, that crosses the line. We should just let them pick us off one by one.

Chaos vs BK one one would be in your favor between TKR/SK/Soup/CoS/Valinor especially with lowered score due to infra loss. When a 2500 aircraft nation can hit a much lower one that's a big deal. I don't know who all you're including with BK there.  So the full Cov/Citadel/BK group? I didn't say you should gimp yourselves. I meant that we should work to avoid this perpetually repeating scenario. No one has been interested. It would eventually go to BK's favor but you'd do a lot of damage on the way down, hence the nukes mentioned in the Sphinx screenshot. They would have gotten trashed and Ripper and co would have done tons of damage. It's within your rights to do this, but it's problematic for me to sit idly by while you eviscerate them.

6 minutes ago, Mikey said:

But of course, that's even if we did have some grand skill gap, but we don't. Yes, there are shitty fighters on BK's side, clearly. There  people on our side messing up beiges, firing missiles when they have full air forces, stat padding rather  than suicide into key battles, etc. Perhaps the difference is that we try and correct their behavior, I don't know, but you are hardly the only ones dealing with new and more casual players. There are are hundreds of players on the Chaos/KETOG/Rose side, are you really going to suggest they are all ex gov who spend every 5 minutes checking their phones for the next MAP?

Lets look at Chaos, because I am intimately more familliar with my own bloc than others. We have TKR, with a competent milcom, yes, but also a mass recruiting alliances that has to deal with an intake of new players. The exact same argument used by BK the last time we had this skill disparity argument. CoS was suffering from inactivity, and for gods sakes Roq, you're talking to SK. It honestly pains me to say this, but we're not good. We ran around headless the past few wars with an empty milcom that is finally seeing its first new additions in three years. Soup is young and working out the kinks, but does have active players.

As for KETOG, they have their mix as well. Though its worth noting, yet again, that we are not a joint party! We were just fighting each other before BK directly threatened us, so any claims that we were somehow consolidating anything between the two of us is completely absurd.

 

 

Edit: to respond this nonsense:

They asked you, former members of IQ, to hit BK, because they couldn't have done it alone. That was refused and they chose to attack us instead, because that was a war they could take by themselves. Somehow that implicates us in a grand plan to attack both of you?

Not every, but TGH/KT/CoS/Soup have tons of ex-gov. Soup recruited the leader of Rose at the time, for crying out loud.  I know SK has issues since you guys have been around for a long time and people can start to lose interest.

KETOG and Chaos have previously been willing to collaborate and have connections via Guardian/GOB/TKR.

So they thought BK had tons of numbers and they wanted us, KETOG, Rose, and Chaos probably  for it to be enough and it wasn't just KETOG that had asked. If they then can beat BK with less than a full deck, then what can they do a minisphere or a single alliance that they say is killing the game? It's a huge red flag.

7 minutes ago, Prefonteen said:

I would like to point out in hindsight, that contrary to popular claims, I never ordered *any* peacetime raids on NPO, covenant or its allies. We did employ mercenaries during wars as as part(s) of our coalitions.

It's a popular myth that we did employ guerilla tactics like that. But it didn't happen. Ever.

Im certain I probably tried to insult you to your face. That seems within the general ballpark of things i'd do. I suppose you can consider my HW antics "trying to get you rolled", although that was always going to be more a collateral damage than an actual goal.

When did I lie to you though?

PINK RANGER

I'm a victim

Friendly neighborhood snake pointing out that my dealings with pref/roq did not entail any maintenance of any ties to BK whatsoever. The removal of that tie (due to exactly the arguments being brought forth atm) was a prerequisite to any agreement. This was communicated by me on several occasions. It seems as if Hilmes diverted from that course and gave in on the one hard sticking point I had (all the rest was negotiable for me).

 

.... Please keep my name seperated from the consolidation monstrosity.

I didn't say you did this time. I said people were willing to do it. Ogaden confessed he lied about the hit to imply it was you to create drama.

The final agreement with Hilmes didn't entail ties with BK either. It just gave us the ability to protect our interests. Given the war plan you signed up for as the first post sphere creation war that Prefontaine brought up, this situation would have never been an issue. It's not what was supposed to happen.

 

[durmij]

4 minutes ago, Prefonteen said:

Im certain I probably tried to insult you to your face. That seems within the general ballpark of things i'd do. I suppose you can consider my HW antics "trying to get you rolled", although that was always going to be more a collateral damage than an actual goal.

When did I lie to you though?

I'm just referring to the whole UPN thing in general, and the conversations around it. Nothing major.

For the record, I came to understand your position. I don't agree with it and would make the decision to give UPN the pro again, but your concerns about us consolidating in super sphere would have looked pretty confirmed. Probably should have considered that and communicated it better.

[Prefonteen]

1 minute ago, Roquentin said:

Chaos vs BK one one would be in your favor between TKR/SK/Soup/CoS/Valinor especially with lowered score due to infra loss. When a 2500 aircraft nation can hit a much lower one that's a big deal. I don't know who all you're including with BK there.  So the full Cov/Citadel/BK group? I didn't say you should gimp yourselves. I meant that we should work to avoid this perpetually repeating scenario. No one has been interested. It would eventually go to BK's favor but you'd do a lot of damage on the way down, hence the nukes mentioned in the Sphinx screenshot. They would have gotten trashed and Ripper and co would have done tons of damage. It's within your rights to do this, but it's problematic for me to sit idly by while you eviscerate them.

Not every, but TGH/KT/CoS/Soup have tons of ex-gov. Soup recruited the leader of Rose at the time, for crying out loud.  I know SK has issues since you guys have been around for a long time and people can start to lose interest.

KETOG and Chaos have previously been willing to collaborate and have connections via Guardian/GOB/TKR.

So they thought BK had tons of numbers and they wanted us, KETOG, Rose, and Chaos probably  for it to be enough and it wasn't just KETOG that had asked. If they then can beat BK with less than a full deck, then what can they do a minisphere or a single alliance that they say is killing the game? It's a huge red flag.

I didn't say you did this time. I said people were willing to do it. Ogaden confessed he lied about the hit to imply it was you to create drama.

The final agreement with Hilmes didn't entail ties with BK either. It just gave us the ability to protect our interests. Given the war plan you signed up for as the first post sphere creation war that Prefontaine brought up, this situation would have never been an issue. It's not what was supposed to happen.

 

That's fair. Oggy loved his drama.

With regards to BK, I don't have much of a bone in it beyond this. What hilmes did or didn't agree to is his business. I'm merely making sure that it's clear what I did and did not agree to ;).

 

Carry on!

1 minute ago, durmij said:

I'm just referring to the whole UPN thing in general, and the conversations around it. Nothing major.

For the record, I came to understand your position. I don't agree with it and would make the decision to give UPN the pro again, but your concerns about us consolidating in super sphere would have looked pretty confirmed. Probably should have considered that and communicated it better.

Fair dinkum. Welcome back by the way!

[Guest Elijah Mikaelson]

So many long posts that have tons of words and no meaning lets face some home truths, shall we?

1) KETOG and Chaos want everyone to play how they want to play, they want what 4 to 6 spheres and no large groups of alliances as they believe that's the best way to play. That's how they wish to play good luck to them.
2) BK and NPO want to have many links and many allies, As that's how they wish to play.

What you guys do not take into account and this is to all, you FORCE these things to happen, Look at AD who got raided by Arrgh and got no support, what good has it done them not to have allies, then look at Chaos who got hit by KETOG for no reason, before anyone jump on the whole its politics and war, I know that but it does not change the fact you force the game to be how it is.

I wonder how many Alliances or blocs would form if people agreed to keep the fighting fair, instead of the standard dog pile that we see in most games like this, how about those who do not wish to fight but simply want to grow but find they have to ally to BK or NPO to avoid being hit due to someone else being bored.

You want the game to change, then change how you treat people, I would love for Citadel to be a stand-alone bloc, Doing our own thing and not having to be allied to superpowers to avoid being run all over (No i do not see us being run over in this war, its quite fun in truth, I am learning a lot).

Only if Alex made the war system better and made a nation score based on cities and military more than infra Do believe it was Sphinx who was able to down declare by 17 cities, when the war first started I faced a 34, 32 and a 29 city nation with my 25 cities due to having infra and them having none, so with max military I didn't stand a chance, but if the war system was more balanced and people could not down declare by more than five cities then, you will find a lot more blocks form and the game will become more interesting.

 

Edited June 28, 2019 by Elijah Mikaelson

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

I feel no remorse for AD's situation because they chose to stay treatied to a micro and TuE when I know for a fact they had been approached with other options.

And while Roq goes on and claims this had to be done to protect I'd like to again remind him nobody had the dangerous mindset you're concerned about until N$O hit GG.

[Mikey]

22 minutes ago, Elijah Mikaelson said:

2) BK and NPO want to have many links and many allies, As that's how they wish to play.

I can appreciate you being honest about it, and OOC, I don't have a problem with people playing like that. I don't necessarily think its the ideal way to play,  but I don't think anybody is any worse of a person for doing so. There will, of course, always be people opposing this and that in the game - there has to be, for political reasons. And consolidating heavily is also going to make you a big target, by virtue of being the biggest threat. With BK being so large and intending to attack us, this war would have happened honesty or no. But I think a lot of the bitterness has been directed primarily towards NPO, with BK mostly receiving IC flack for its plans and the more traditional wartime arguments and shitposts. Granted BK leadership has largely dissipated from public sight, or I imagine they would be getting the same flak, at least if they espoused the same arguments as NPO.

Still, a big part of why NPO is getting so much special consternation is because of the lack of that honesty. It's not just about consolidating a mass of alliances, but the fact they lie about it at every turn and make up conspiracies to try and justify their actions, all while playing the perpetual victim. NPO and BK want to maintain ties and use a large treaty structure as a game strategy? Fine. I believe you, and I recognize it as a strategy. We may fight against it, but when the tabs close and we leave our game personas behind, its mostly water under the bridge. NPO is getting so much shit because they try to claim there is no cooperation or attempt to consolidate more allies. Because they claim they are acting purely defensively because Niz didn't use the right tone of voice when saying we don't want conflict, or because of some proof that only they have and can't ever show anybody. Because they insist they need - not want, I could respect that - but need to take out a sphere half their size. Because of some nonsense about hundreds of  'high octane former gov' who have plotted against them for years and can only be dealt with by overwhelming numbers.

People just get exasperated having good faith repaid with guile.

Edited June 28, 2019 by Mikey

[Buorhann]

@Roquentin - TGH/KT has fought against TKR and their allies technically 3 times before fighting BK (And Covenant) due to this plot they had recently.

Care to explain further what your stance is exactly?

(Just to clarify - 69 Day War, technically Knightfall with those you hired from us, and Surf’s Up)

Just saying, unlike those who claim it’d be boring to fight their previous allies, we fought TKR more than those who have a grudge against them in the past year.

I’m only using this as an example since it’s coming off that you’re arguing bias here onto us.

Edited June 28, 2019 by Buorhann