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A (Not So) Brief Note on the Narrative


Cooper_
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You all are just mad you can't stomp minispheres and micros you don't like out of existence so easily like you've done in the past.

I blame TKR personally for creating NPO/Opus Dei and their CB. It was TKR spheres fault trying to dogpile random opponents they deem worthy of crushing.

Now, everyone is sick of it and basically brings in Knightfall 2.0. Somebody didn't get the message the first time. "You ain't the world police, mind your business and be great"

 

 

 

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10 minutes ago, Deulos said:

You all are just mad you can't stomp minispheres and micros you don't like out of existence so easily like you've done in the past.

I blame TKR personally for creating NPO/Opus Dei and their CB. It was TKR spheres fault trying to dogpile random opponents they deem worthy of crushing.

Now, everyone is sick of it and basically brings in Knightfall 2.0. Somebody didn't get the message the first time. "You ain't the world police, mind your business and be great"

At first I was like "Oooh lets say something about world politics being stale for 2 years and 3 globals in a row fighting over 1 thing." But then I realised. This is probably one of the most honest answers from Hedge.  "We're just so pissed off we will always dogpile on TKR."

At least honest is honest. More than we could have seen in direct words in NPOLT 🤷‍♂️

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2 hours ago, Hodor said:

I've said as much before, but I think the main thing we take issue with isn't the CB but the justification behind the CB as has been brought to light later: the existence of unquestionably damning logs from Swamp(?). It's realllllly hard to have a serious conversation when lines like "as shown in the logs we've seen" or some variant gets tossed around so often. I mean, my super hot, totally real!!!, ultra-rich, girlfriend says she has logs of Smith saying he is actually a sleeper agent for IQ's eventual return, but I can't show you!

For your other parts, I'm not super invested in those arguments, and they are shit arguments. I do think there is too much haze for an old man like me to cut through and sort out the legitimate arguments from the propaganda (on both sides). That's part of what fueled my response here. I look to Cooper as a source of genuine information and discussion and I felt there was enough in this post which rang of propaganda (as call out threads often are) and not actually an honest attempt to generate discussion.

I actually followed that thread quite closely. I went back and read it to make sure my memory wasn't deceiving me and the people that elicited the response I am criticizing were Ronny making some pretty lulzy comments and only becoming a little more serious when you all engaged him like he was a demon and the sole spokesman of our coalition, Buorhann being Buor and not even being a member of our coalition, and Arkuryo who, yea, is a spaz, so your point there. A little late, Kev jumps in, also, not a member of our coalition. Finally the first actual accusation of being a potential Hegemon comes on page 4 by Lefty. By that time though, shit had already started flying and there was really very little participation by anyone from our side. Pretty much from then on everyone was a dick. But you've got Partisan parading some alternate realty where the immediate reaction in that thread was some spastic screaming of "IQ!" and "HEGEMONY!" and that's been the crux of his dismissal of any argument. I can literally quote them here:

 

 

I've also heard the shifting of goal posts argument nonstop. I don't think this is genuine and it's being used to dismiss any point of disagreement as if there aren't multiple ways to view an issue. It's why I've stopped engaging with Partisan after me actively calling HM+Swamp a blossoming hegemony was met with actual goal post moving.

I don't understand the bold part to be honest, despite you having a valid CB, you cannot call this a dogpile because you initiated it. I know that's stupid and it's borderline arguing semantics, but it matters. You can say we were potentially planning a dogpile but this is not that dogpile. That being said, every war is opportunistic and every propaganda war is opportunistic. Our job is to ignore the propaganda and focus our attention on a steel man representation of our opponent's stance so that we actually get to a point of understanding. If you want to understand, don't focus on the low hanging fruit arguments.

To end on one more Partisan quote:

  

 

 

Have you looked at camelot Dow yet? 😛

 

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39 minutes ago, Prefonteen said:

Have you looked at camelot Dow yet? 😛

Oooooh, I have not, I may just eat my words. Please hold the door.

On a side note: Camelot is trash and needs to be taken out.

 

EDIT: I read it. Akuryo makes a lot of the same points I've made in that thread (in Akuryo rage style) so that's good. Making me read Mayor and Adrienne argue for 3 pages makes my head hurt, but I'm pretty sure Mayor and Oblivion aren't the big players in this war... Maybe I read too quickly, but Aku and Mayor were the biggest posters from our side. Let me know if there was something in particular I was supposed to see.

Edited by Hodor
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2 hours ago, Hodor said:

Making me read Mayor and Adrienne argue for 3 pages makes my head hurt

I do try.

2 hours ago, Hodor said:

Let me know if there was something in particular I was supposed to see.

Parti's referring to the DoW itself here, I believe. Take a look at the tl;dr.

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39 minutes ago, Adrienne said:

Parti's referring to the DoW itself here, I believe. Take a look at the tl;dr.

Ah fair, I reiterate most strongly:

2 hours ago, Hodor said:

On a side note: Camelot is trash and needs to be taken out.

Truly can't say that enough. So have at them, but be specific you're tossing shit at them so I don't get my feelings hurt.

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22 hours ago, Smith said:

 A major part of the CB for that war was Sphinx logs and now we are being told by the same alliances and people that Sphinx logs in the exact same context are a bad CB. It's worth repeating. 

Sphinx logs in any and all context are bad CB, their just bad everything, Sphinx is a bad bad man, luckily I answer to new and improved socialist overlords...

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10 hours ago, Hodor said:

I look to Cooper as a source of genuine information and discussion and I felt there was enough in this post which rang of propaganda (as call out threads often are) and not actually an honest attempt to generate discussion.

 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.  

10 hours ago, Hodor said:

But you've got Partisan parading some alternate realty where the immediate reaction in that thread was some spastic screaming of "IQ!" and "HEGEMONY!" and that's been the crux of his dismissal of any argument. I can literally quote them here:

 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.

10 hours ago, Hodor said:

I don't understand the bold part to be honest, despite you having a valid CB, you cannot call this a dogpile because you initiated it. I know that's stupid and it's borderline arguing semantics, but it matters. You can say we were potentially planning a dogpile but this is not that dogpile. That being said, every war is opportunistic and every propaganda war is opportunistic. Our job is to ignore the propaganda and focus our attention on a steel man representation of our opponent's stance so that we actually get to a point of understanding. If you want to understand, don't focus on the low hanging fruit arguments.

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.  

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On 11/11/2020 at 12:48 AM, Kastor said:

I'll bite to this obvious bait:

 

Did you or did you not use paperless agreements with Roz Wei, Terminus Est, and other alliances that suffeciantly is covered in the TEst Doctrine of "Everyone having an ODoAP with everyone, because alliances can make up their minds in the moment" 

 

When you were leader of Hogwarts, did you or did you not sign paperless agreements with alliances in order to protect yourself?

 

The reason this is relevant is because you have CONSTANTLY engaged and fought wars on this action, you have constantly hinged and broken alliances over this, and now you wanna cry wolf that a few spheres came together to roll a common threat?

 

Lets be honest, the narrative you're pushing isn't clever or even solid. There's no evidence that these spheres are gonna "group up" and consolidate. They formed together out of need, not unlike spheres have done in the past. Did you think diplomacy died when NPO did? 

You mean the agreements which I literally announced for the public to see?

 

A publically announced agreement is a wholly different thing than what is being discussed here. Nice strawman though.

 

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10 hours ago, Cooper_ said:

 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 think that you have a point about secret treaties but I disagree on the nature of the agreement that you're referencing (HM-SWAMP). I don't consider an agreement between 2 spheres to stick up for each other in the face of another sphere's aggression as a paperless treaty on the same level as many that you might compare it to. It's really hard not to use IQ as an example, so you'll please forgive me for doing so, but by doing so I am NOT implying y'all are IQ. I think people have mentioned the KETOGG/CHAOS agreement, but say that that agreement was made pre-war because of an agreed upon understanding of a mutual threat. I don't see that the same as say, the paperless tie between BK and NPO which was not predicated on one situation, but would've been in effect no matter the circumstance.

I'd also say (I am at no point speaking about Rose-Swamp, I am not privy to that agreement), the SWAMP entry was not, in the end, needn't be triggered by any agreement with HM, but by y'all really trying to single out TCW.

Don't get me wrong, I think all in all paperless treaties are bad, but backroom agreements are not always "treaties."

10 hours ago, Cooper_ said:

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.

Fair enough. I am speaking only to my participation in these discussions on the forums and as an ordinary member. I'm aware of the tension post NPOLT from when I was CotL gov so that's not hard to believe.

10 hours ago, Cooper_ said:

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 was using an example of a straw man which became a straw man itself... How fun.

I agree with a good amount of this. There is, however, a tendency to project the feelings and opinions of a few onto a whole coalition, so that when people approach the situation from their own perspective they get shouted down, held up as an example of the cruelty and malice of the opposition, and written off. The fact is, there isn't a party line like NPO. A lot of people on our side have different reasons for feeling the way they did/do and the expression of those opinions aren't us gaslighting you or moving the goalposts. A prime example, Partisan made me read the Cumalot DoW (I am still in pain from it). If Mayor was the first to post for our coalition, you wouldn't seriously believe that his years old grudge was the source of our feelings of insecurity, would you?

Now, conversely, I understand the utility of only listening to the voices of those who wield power, but threads like this are often not aimed at those people. Call out threads like this, and made popular by Partisan during NPOLT, are usually geared towards appealing to the masses like me, and therefore shouldn't try to pin the opinions of leadership on the masses themselves. We are unique snowflakes who wanted to be treated speshul!

10 hours ago, Cooper_ said:

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 against 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.  

Okay this part is really confusing. So you either knew about the treaties (which was my assumption) and you were attacking pre-emptively as, if I am not mistaken, has been largely what I've heard (the logs in the t$ DoW implicate Swamp just as much as they do HM) OR you had no idea about the ties and were set to roll a sphere 1/3 your size... I am pretty okay with the first one, but the second one which you appear to be implying here smells like hypocrisy. Please clear this up for me.

Depending on the above, Rose's entry could or could not be considered a dogpile. Swamp's definitely not (cus y'all really wanted to hit TCW and I think that's what you're alluding to as their decent CB?).

The second bolded part I am in absolute agreement with and largely fueled my response to this thread. The calculus that led to HM and Co. seeing you as a threat isn't somehow going to be erased by call out threads. It seems that the sides fundamentally disagree on some basic premises and now that enough shit has been thrown, I don't expect any sort of honest concession like, "yea, I guess Quack wasn't as big a threat as we'd calculated" or "yea, I can see how you saw us (Quack) as a threat" so what's the next best thing? I can't think of it.

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1 hour ago, Hodor said:

Don't get me wrong, I think all in all paperless treaties are bad, but backroom agreements are not always "treaties."

Well, therein lies the problem. How can the party/ies which aren't signatories differentiate one from the other? Especially when a paperless treaty is inherently a backroom agreement?

I can only think of:

A ) A person with high enough clearance from one of those parties leaks the extent of the conversation/agreement (chances of happening below 1%).

B ) Taking what the signatories are saying at face value.

The issue with the latter is that, for starters, the inconsistent responses provided by the several parties throughout this debacle undermine the credibility thereof. I'm sure that different rationales are at play, and such is to be expected across different spheres. The issue is that the these different rationales manifested consistently as the previous one was contested (namely, Quack hegemony to Quack potential hegemony to simply Quack too big).

Said inconsistency, more glaringly, manifested even from the individual spheres themselves, where you would expect them to have a more cohesive line of thought, at least outwardly. 

And of course, responses like these do no favors towards the credibility/goodwill needed for taking such statements at face value.

And as for the statement itself, one can simply state "We had/have a deal" and be technically correct on such statement, while being (intentionally) vague on the extent thereof. That's what a lack of paper to refer to results in. You lack the concrete aspect to contrast it to.

So yes, you're correct in that not all deals are paperless treaties. But the only realistic way to "tell" one from the other are statements from the people who signed them themselves. And for the reasons I elaborated above, expecting these statements to be taken at face value is an unrealistic prospect.

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1 minute ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

Well, therein lies the problem. How can the party/ies which aren't signatories differentiate one from the other? Especially when a paperless treaty is inherently a backroom agreement?

I can only think of:

A ) A person with high enough clearance from one of those parties leaks the extent of the conversation/agreement (chances of happening below 1%).

B ) Taking what the signatories are saying at face value.

The issue with the latter is that, for starters, the inconsistent responses provided by the several parties throughout this debacle undermine the credibility thereof. I'm sure that different rationales are at play, and such is to be expected across different spheres. The issue is that the these different rationales manifested consistently as the previous one was contested (namely, Quack hegemony to Quack potential hegemony to simply Quack too big).

Said inconsistency, more glaringly, manifested even from the individual spheres themselves, where you would expect them to have a more cohesive line of thought, at least outwardly. 

And of course, responses like these do no favors towards the credibility/goodwill needed for taking such statements at face value.

And as for the statement itself, one can simply state "We had/have a deal" and be technically correct on such statement, while being (intentionally) vague on the extent thereof. That's what a lack of paper to refer to results in. You lack the concrete aspect to contrast it to.

So yes, you're correct in that not all deals are paperless treaties. But the only realistic way to "tell" one from the other are statements from the people who signed them themselves. And for the reasons I elaborated above, expecting these statements to be taken at face value is an unrealistic prospect.

 

I keep on going over all of this in my head and I keep on thinking that a lot of people here are focusing on the wrong thing. I think the biggest thing may not be whether or not a treaty is paperless, but whether or not an Alliance/other group is trustworthy and/or seen to be a threat to the interests of others. I am beginning to become more confident on my take as to what happened here- A lot of spheres came to think that Quack had become too powerful and too aggressive. So they made a paperless deal that if Quack were to attack another sphere again, they'd retaliate together.

 

On the other hand, it looks like Quack (or a portion thereof) acted on a false rumour that they were going to get attacked. Perhaps Sphinx dreamed that it would happen, but from everything I've seen, it wasn't going to happen. Perhaps near the end he came to the conclusion that -he- was going to get dogpiled and so left the game for a year. But while he may have decided that it was best to leave rather than get attacked for the forseeable future, he apparently succeeded in his goal of getting Quack into a nasty fight.

 

So, to the old question- who benefits from this war? Quack? I think not. Swamp/Rose/Grumpy/etc? Again, not seeing it. It looks like the whole thing started with a rumour. If this is the case, I think the best thing to do would be for Quack to say, sorry, looks like we got fooled by a false rumour, can we end this now? I think that might be more than enough to make it so.

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22 minutes ago, Phoenyx said:

 

I keep on going over all of this in my head and I keep on thinking that a lot of people here are focusing on the wrong thing. I think the biggest thing may not be whether or not a treaty is paperless, but whether or not an Alliance/other group is trustworthy and/or seen to be a threat to the interests of others. I am beginning to become more confident on my take as to what happened here- A lot of spheres came to think that Quack had become too powerful and too aggressive. So they made a paperless deal that if Quack were to attack another sphere again, they'd retaliate together.

 

On the other hand, it looks like Quack (or a portion thereof) acted on a false rumour that they were going to get attacked. Perhaps Sphinx dreamed that it would happen, but from everything I've seen, it wasn't going to happen. Perhaps near the end he came to the conclusion that -he- was going to get dogpiled and so left the game for a year. But while he may have decided that it was best to leave rather than get attacked for the forseeable future, he apparently succeeded in his goal of getting Quack into a nasty fight.

 

So, to the old question- who benefits from this war? Quack? I think not. Swamp/Rose/Grumpy/etc? Again, not seeing it. It looks like the whole thing started with a rumour. If this is the case, I think the best thing to do would be for Quack to say, sorry, looks like we got fooled by a false rumour, can we end this now? I think that might be more than enough to make it so.

The treaty being paperless absolutely matters. Paperless dynamites the foundations of multispheres, as Cooper and others have delved into plenty of times by now. Signing paperless as opposed to public paper is simply shifting your strength from the daylight to be concealed behind a curtain. Doing so while preaching about multispheres is a hypocritical exercise at that.

As I stated in the post you quoted, the strength was misportrayed, rather deliberately I'd say, and has been shifting as it's been challenged challenged. Our "aggressiveness" is bogus, as I already elaborated.

I didn't bother replying to the rumor statement you made in the other thread, as it was a response to Partisan, but since you're bringing it here; people were more than happy to utilize the logs of both Sphinx and TEst/Boyce in the past (the latter even in the war you were citing in that response). They're denying their credibility in this instance because it's politically expedient to do so. A concrete and rather elaborate plan of aggression isn't a rumor. It's an actual threat to be acted upon. Moreso than whatever random stray raids Swamp has seen fit to act on. A rumor is hearing from somewhere "Yo you're getting hit" with nothing to substantiate it.

And no, it wouldn't.

Edited by Shiho Nishizumi
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31 minutes ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

Well, therein lies the problem. How can the party/ies which aren't signatories differentiate one from the other? Especially when a paperless treaty is inherently a backroom agreement?

I can only think of:

A ) A person with high enough clearance from one of those parties leaks the extent of the conversation/agreement (chances of happening below 1%).

B ) Taking what the signatories are saying at face value.

The issue with the latter is that, for starters, the inconsistent responses provided by the several parties throughout this debacle undermine the credibility thereof. I'm sure that different rationales are at play, and such is to be expected across different spheres. The issue is that the these different rationales manifested consistently as the previous one was contested (namely, Quack hegemony to Quack potential hegemony to simply Quack too big).

Said inconsistency, more glaringly, manifested even from the individual spheres themselves, where you would expect them to have a more cohesive line of thought, at least outwardly. 

  By your definition, every single agreement that's not in ink is a paperless treaty. There is no way to organize a coalition except through back channel agreements. I'm not going to go to OWF and say, I've signed a one circumstance MDP with Swamp. At least in that case, I don't know the true intent, but if it's purely defensive, going to OWF may be beneficial as a deterrent, but if you also want to lure an opponent into a war that they will lose, hiding your hand is the better option.

As for the inconsistencies, I don't entirely grasp your point, but I've pointed to that as the fact that the grand conspiracy really wasn't a thing. Additionally, as I said in my post, inconsistently isn't a smoking gun for goal post shifting when it comes from different people expressing their different concerns. We are not a monolith.

31 minutes ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

And of course, responses like these do no favors towards the credibility/goodwill needed for taking such statements at face value.

  Everyone chats shit, especially in this war. I've touched upon that earlier. We can toss examples of !@#$ back and forth all day, but that's not productive.

31 minutes ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

And as for the statement itself, one can simply state "We had/have a deal" and be technically correct on such statement, while being (intentionally) vague on the extent thereof. That's what a lack of paper to refer to results in. You lack the concrete aspect to contrast it to.

So yes, you're correct in that not all deals are paperless treaties. But the only realistic way to "tell" one from the other are statements from the people who signed them themselves. And for the reasons I elaborated above, expecting these statements to be taken at face value is an unrealistic prospect.

I'm not gonna lie, I may have completely misunderstood your thesis, but operating with imperfect information is the entire FA game... if we all had perfect information and the same assessment of relatively subjective metrics, this would be boring as frick...

23 minutes ago, Phoenyx said:

I keep on going over all of this in my head and I keep on thinking that a lot of people here are focusing on the wrong thing. I think the biggest thing may not be whether or not a treaty is paperless, but whether or not an Alliance/other group is trustworthy and/or seen to be a threat to the interests of others. I am beginning to become more confident on my take as to what happened here- A lot of spheres came to think that Quack had become too powerful and too aggressive. So they made a paperless deal that if Quack were to attack another sphere again, they'd retaliate together.

On the other hand, it looks like Quack (or a portion thereof) acted on a false rumour that they were going to get attacked. Perhaps Sphinx dreamed that it would happen, but from everything I've seen, it wasn't going to happen. Perhaps near the end he came to the conclusion that -he- was going to get dogpiled and so left the game for a year. But while he may have decided that it was best to leave rather than get attacked for the forseeable future, he apparently succeeded in his goal of getting Quack into a nasty fight.

The only thing I'd disagree, from my point of view, is the bolded. There's no such thing as a false rumor when the logs exist. It's just debatable how much weigh the word of Sphinx, Vader, and Boyce hold.

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31 minutes ago, Phoenyx said:

I am beginning to become more confident on my take as to what happened here- A lot of spheres came to think that Quack had become too powerful and too aggressive. So they made a paperless deal that if Quack were to attack another sphere again(?????), they'd retaliate together.

Except the problem with this specific assertion is twofold:

1. If Quack had become too powerful (a dubious assertion), it had only become so via organic growth. To step back out into the meta for a second: by arguing that Quack has become "too powerful", the implication there is that recruitment, retention, and organic growth is bad actually, and the people who do it should be punished for it.

2. If Quack had become too aggressive, surely we would have seen signs of that beforehand, right? Consolidating more alliances into the sphere, rolling The Commonwealth with a huge numerical advantage, establishing secret agreements with other spheres ahead of a looming conflict?

Oh wait.

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1 minute ago, Hodor said:

 By your definition, every single agreement that's not in ink is a paperless treaty. There is no way to organize a coalition except through back channel agreements. I'm not going to go to OWF and say, I've signed a one circumstance MDP with Swamp. At least in that case, I don't know the true intent, but if it's purely defensive, going to OWF may be beneficial as a deterrent, but if you also want to lure an opponent into a war that they will lose, hiding your hand is the better option.

As for the inconsistencies, I don't entirely grasp your point, but I've pointed to that as the fact that the grand conspiracy really wasn't a thing. Additionally, as I said in my post, inconsistently isn't a smoking gun for goal post shifting when it comes from different people expressing their different concerns. We are not a monolith.

I'm saying that there's no clear way to delineate a temporary arrangement from a permanent treaty from one another. Which, there isn't. Coalition building is a different matter.

No, you wouldn't announce that you have an anti-insert sphere here MDP to the world. That'd draw the attention of said sphere. I meant elaborating as a post-facto, once the arrangement lost it's surprise value either way.

My point is that it is when it's done as a response to a previous statement being challenged, such as the one I mentioned, yes, it's goalpost shifting. I'm sure that none of y'all share Tyrion's rationale that our NS is/was too large, for instance.
 

12 minutes ago, Hodor said:

Everyone chats shit, especially in this war. I've touched upon that earlier. We can toss examples of !@#$ back and forth all day, but that's not productive.


Talking shit when you're expected to provide a reason for involvement isn't productive. Though, I had meant more as a general demeanor exemplified on a single response.

22 minutes ago, Hodor said:

I'm not gonna lie, I may have completely misunderstood your thesis, but operating with imperfect information is the entire FA game... if we all had perfect information and the same assessment of relatively subjective metrics, this would be boring as frick...


There's a difference between imperfect information and walking into a minefield.

 
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22 minutes ago, WarriorSoul said:

Except the problem with this specific assertion is twofold:

1. If Quack had become too powerful (a dubious assertion), it had only become so via organic growth. To step back out into the meta for a second: by arguing that Quack has become "too powerful", the implication there is that recruitment, retention, and organic growth is bad actually, and the people who do it should be punished for it.

2. If Quack had become too aggressive, surely we would have seen signs of that beforehand, right? Consolidating more alliances into the sphere, rolling The Commonwealth with a huge numerical advantage, establishing secret agreements with other spheres ahead of a looming conflict?

Oh wait.

This is it chief. 

Quack wasn't seeking global hegemony. If we were... we're pretty bad at it. We haven't been trying to tie in new alliances into the Quack Sphere. We passed on a chance to take an easy swipe at anyone in the Hedge-Swamp vs TCW beat down. All we've been doing is minding our own business, recruiting and growing our members, and working hard for cordial relationships with other spheres. 

Clearly, people have grudges from years ago that they've been bringing up in these threads. Need I remind you to just take a look at TKR for instance... the majority of our high government wasn't government when most of the past issues that have been brought up occurred. We don't want to rule Orbis, we just want to be good allies to our friends and run our stuff well. 

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The Knights Radiant 
Ghostblood Babsk of Foreign Affairs

Journey before Destination.

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Don't you think it's a little politically convenient that the largest and most powerful bloc in the game is against coalition building?

You used a conversation between Sphinx and Boyce, to attack a completely different sphere, one you are 3 times the size of, despite our bloc showing zero aggression towards you as far as I know.

Many of you have been saying that Quack has been going around talking to people to improve relations, yet I haven't heard much about them talking to HM.  I dont recall them ever spoke to me, even tho I have had working relationships and was a former ally of both Partisan and TKR.  Hell I liaised with Partisan during the war against TCW.

If you want to just go off of rumors, HM had been hearing rumors for months about how tS wanted to hit us.

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1 hour ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

The treaty being paperless absolutely matters. Paperless dynamites the foundations of multispheres, as Cooper and others have delved into plenty of times by now. Signing paperless as opposed to public paper is simply shifting your strength from the daylight to be concealed behind a curtain. Doing so while preaching about multispheres is a hypocritical exercise at that.

As I stated in the post you quoted, the strength was misportrayed, rather deliberately I'd say, and has been shifting as it's been challenged. Our "aggressiveness" is bogus, as I already elaborated.

I didn't bother replying to the rumor statement you made in the other thread, as it was a response to Partisan, but since you're bringing it here; people were more than happy to utilize the logs of both Sphinx and TEst/Boyce in the past (the latter even in the war you were citing in that response). They're denying their credibility in this instance because it's politically expedient to do so. A concrete and rather elaborate plan of aggression isn't a rumor. It's an actual threat to be acted upon. Moreso than whatever random stray raids Swamp has seen fit to act on. A rumor is hearing from somewhere "Yo you're getting hit" with nothing to substantiate it.

And no, it wouldn't.

I've now spoken to Partisan via DMs in Discord. I've revealed a lot. I can't speak that well about past wars- I wasn't involved in them. But when it comes to Swamp in this one, I can speak. Here's a log that will put anything Sphinx has said to shame:

**

They were fed nonsense information from somebody with a long history of igniting fires.   I run the alliance military and currently Swamp military.  There were no plans to attack them.   Kind of think I would be in the know about plans like that.

**

 

There you have it. It wasn't just a "top official" in swamp as I've been stating in the past. It was top dog for Swamp military affairs period.

Edited by Phoenyx
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21 minutes ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Don't you think it's a little politically convenient that the largest and most powerful bloc in the game is against coalition building?

You used a conversation between Sphinx and Boyce, to attack a completely different sphere, one you are 3 times the size of, despite our bloc showing zero aggression towards you as far as I know.

Many of you have been saying that Quack has been going around talking to people to improve relations, yet I haven't heard much about them talking to HM.  I dont recall them ever spoke to me, even tho I have had working relationships and was a former ally of both Partisan and TKR.  Hell I liaised with Partisan during the war against TCW.

If you want to just go off of rumors, HM had been hearing rumors for months about how tS wanted to hit us.

Didn't you say you were down to hit quack if Rose was?

EDIT: We even made an ad about it:
image0.png

Edited by James II

"Most successful new AA" - Samuel Bates

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20 minutes ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Don't you think it's a little politically convenient that the largest and most powerful bloc in the game is against coalition building?

You used a conversation between Sphinx and Boyce, to attack a completely different sphere, one you are 3 times the size of, despite our bloc showing zero aggression towards you as far as I know.

Many of you have been saying that Quack has been going around talking to people to improve relations, yet I haven't heard much about them talking to HM.  I dont recall them ever spoke to me, even tho I have had working relationships and was a former ally of both Partisan and TKR.  Hell I liaised with Partisan during the war against TCW.

If you want to just go off of rumors, HM had been hearing rumors for months about how tS wanted to hit us.

You've literally stated:


image.png.9b6b894c39b019de3f363357cbf898f9.png 

"If we had the whole game vs quack, we're down to roll them" is what this boils down to. The log was enough for us to act on. You validated it.

Friend Ronny... I  much prefer focusing on green prosperity with you.

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19 minutes ago, Phoenyx said:

I've now spoken to Partisan via DMs in Discord. I've revealed a lot. I can't speak that well about past wars- I wasn't involved in them. But when it comes to Swamp in this one, I can speak. Here's a log that will put anything Sphinx has said to shame:

**

They were fed nonsense information from somebody with a long history of igniting fires.   I run the alliance military and currently Swamp military.  There were no plans to attack them.   Kind of think I would be in the know about plans like that.

**

 

There you have it. It wasn't just a "top official" in swamp as I've been stating in the past. It was top dog for Swamp military affairs period.

...yes, people will lie if it's expedient; especially if the person being thrown under the bus can't argue otherwise.

 

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Just now, Shiho Nishizumi said:

...yes, people will lie if it's expedient; especially if the person being thrown under the bus can't argue otherwise.

 

I've been talking a lot with Partisan. And one thing comes to mind. Namely, the quote from Grump:

**

I get that. And that quote from Grump is good. However, the fact that Swamp would have been divided on it... I mean who knows, if you hadn't attacked, Swamp literally might have cracked in 2 if it came to a vote on this. But because -you- guys attacked first, it spared them any division Because while there are those like TFP who are very defensive in nature I mean because of them, that could have cracked that Coalition in 2. But because you attacked first, you apparently played right into the hands of those who wanted the war from the start. Ah and look what [Ron] said right after the quote in the ad: **After about a week, I assumed the plan died since I didnt hear anything more about it. My guess is that the whole thing died when someone high enough up the food chain nixed it. Apparently above ----- clearance level. He didn't even hear about it.

**

Anyway, I finally see who looks to be the main guy in the Swamp leadership- Tyrion. So I'm guessing that he, at least, would have heard of this plan and I'm guessing that he probably played a large role in nixing it.

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37 minutes ago, James II said:

Didn't you say you were down to hit quack if Rose was?

EDIT: We even made an ad about it:
image0.png

James when you coming back to our joint channel?  The rage quit was not very becoming of you, and we miss you. 

I have never seen someone so upset over declaring war on someone else.

 

Edited by Sweeeeet Ronny D
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