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A (Not So) Brief Note on the Narrative


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5 hours ago, Hodor said:

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.

Food for thought on the last paragraph: On the flip side you could say the same; our decision to hit tcw is irrelevant due to the pre-existenve of the swamp-hm agreement. That's something that's been brought to me in private a good few times.

I think shiho noted how we assessed it at the time already: We anticipated HM and TCW to be 100% involved, and our plans revolved around a highest likelyhood of 2/3 of the spheres entering.

For perspective: The idea of hitting *just* HM was floated briefly as well. It would have been a more convenient way to force any such coalition to choose between revealing secret treaties or steering clear. It would also have been a dogpile and a shitty war.

We chose not to, part for ideological reasons, part because it'd be inconsistent with our CB (the log). I personally regret that now :P.

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

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.

  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?

A post by mayor is different from an official alliance stance. Similarly, hearing the same thing repeated in discord channels and threads (in different words) is generally indicative of a general consensus among an alliance or side.

The thing is, that every time we bring up statements that contradicted earlier statements (from leadership), or graphs to counterpoint claims of our size, we're thrown another argument inspired by well, little more than feeling or perception I guess?

 

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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!

Are you certain cooper is not calling out the leaders who made these deals?

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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.

As noted above and by shiho: Our reasonable estimate/expectation was 2/3 entering/being true. Fewer and more were possibilities we obviously had contingencies for, but the 2/3 was the expectation (or hope). At least, when we made the call to militarize.

The logs suggested HM/TCW were aboard for sure. Swamp/Rose were still both more ambiguous, and so we had to rely on our own assessment. Though our expectations were met (and suspicions confirmed) we did not have *that* benefit of hindsight when we made the call.

I'll note that as the week went by, we increasingly viewed 3/3 as a likelihood. By the time we pulled the trigger, we were 99% certain both rose and swamp would enter (based mostly on deduction and assessment of posture + movements).

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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.

Screen Shot 2020-10-31 at 2.18.09 AM.png

Im not sure what else to say Hodor.

Edited by Prefonteen
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1 minute ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

what is there to say here? you are clearly the largest and strongest sphere in the game.  I dont know why noone in quack seems to want to admit this.

idk man. Your whale hegemony looks like it could beat our top tier pretty well if you got the first shot off.

 

That aside; I don't think we look like the hegemonic horde you seem to be reading into this.

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3 minutes ago, Prefonteen said:

idk man. Your whale hegemony looks like it could beat our top tier pretty well if you got the first shot off.

 

That aside; I don't think we look like the hegemonic horde you seem to be reading into this.

So what I am reading here is that you still cant admit your sphere is the strongest in the game?

Cool Cool Cool.

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3 minutes ago, WarriorSoul said:

So you agree that your coalition was trying to bait us into a war so that they might dogpile us?

No. I've been doing a lot of digging. What I've found out- Tyrion has publicly stated that he had no clue about this idea to attack. So did a high level official in TFP. Those are the 2 biggest Alliances in Swamp. I just spoke to Grumpy, who said he has clarified that he hadn't actually spoken to anyone in Swamp- he'd spoken to someone in HM. And it -looks- like the whole idea of an "attack" was not actually an attack per se. More like: "If HM/Rose/Swamp/TCW is attacked by Quack, then the others in this group will attack Quack". Tyrion has also clarified that he thought that his treaty with Rose, at least, had been up. Some debate on that, but that is what he said.

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18 minutes ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

what is there to say here? you are clearly the largest and strongest sphere in the game.  I dont know why noone in quack seems to want to admit this.

IT clearly shows Swamp is objectively the largest sphere in the game, before the three of y'all merged into a mega sphere.

"Most successful new AA" - Samuel Bates

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1 minute ago, James II said:

IT clearly shows Swamp is objectively the largest sphere in the game, before the three of y'all merged into a mega sphere.

So what I am reading here is that you still cant admit your sphere is the strongest in the game?

Cool Cool Cool.

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Just now, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

So what I am reading here is that you still cant admit your sphere is the strongest in the game?

Cool Cool Cool.

It's an objective fact we were not....Swamp was/is.

"Most successful new AA" - Samuel Bates

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1 minute ago, Phoenyx said:

No. I've been doing a lot of digging. What I've found out- Tyrion has publicly stated that he had no clue about this idea to attack. So did a high level official in TFP. Those are the 2 biggest Alliances in Swamp. I just spoke to Grumpy, who said he has clarified that he hadn't actually spoken to anyone in Swamp- he'd spoken to someone in HM. And it -looks- like the whole idea of an "attack" was not actually an attack per se. More like: "If HM/Rose/Swamp/TCW is attacked by Quack, then the others in this group will attack Quack". Tyrion has also clarified that he thought that his treaty with Rose, at least, had been up. Some debate on that, but that is what he said.

Cool, so based on your research, it seems that Swamp, Hedge, and Rose were determined to peacefully coexist together with Quack in a constant state of war-less bliss, despite the numerous people from your coalition on this very forum(!) explaining how Quack's size was an obvious threat. Am I getting that right?

Please tell me I'm not the only one seeing the dissonance here!

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Just now, WarriorSoul said:

Cool, so based on your research, it seems that Swamp, Hedge, and Rose were determined to peacefully coexist together with Quack in a constant state of war-less bliss, despite the numerous people from your coalition on this very forum(!) explaining how Quack's size was an obvious threat. Am I getting that right?

Please tell me I'm not the only one seeing the dissonance here!

 

I never said the above :-p. I'm saying that it looks like Sphinx either was mistaken about the nature of the treaty between Swamp/Hedge/Rose/TCW or he outright lied- so what was in fact a defense initiative got twisted into somehow being an offense initiative. I don't know Sphinx well enough to make a judgement call on whether he just misunderstood or was being deceitful, but the more I read, the more I think that one way or another, he got it wrong. 

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1 hour 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.

Nice! I didn't know that bit about you hearing rumours about tS. I hope that Quack learns one thing after all of this- rumours aren't good. Even if the parties behind them are honest, they frequently suffer from the broken telephone effect- someone says something who then whispers it to someone else and by the end of it, the truth can be pretty mangled. 

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3 minutes ago, Prefonteen said:

I have learned nothing this war, but that you are all cowards and I need to be less nice.

Oh come on Partisan, don't be like that :-/. I just ask you to consider, what if Sphinx was wrong? It sure would change things, wouldn't it. 

10 minutes ago, Adrienne said:

Whether you deem us the strongest or not, that chart very clearly shows that you didn't need everyone you all intended to bring along. Coalition building against a perceived threat is one thing. Building a coalition that consists of the entire rest of the game to intentionally dogpile the remaining sphere while claiming you want minispheres is another.

I guess we could continue to debate as to whether Coalition against Quack is too big. Or we could debate how we could bring this war to an end? 

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4 minutes ago, Phoenyx said:

Oh come on Partisan, don't be like that :-/. I just ask you to consider, what if Sphinx was wrong? It sure would change things, wouldn't it. 

Sphinx isn't a general member, he was leading the alliance. It wasn't a "rumor", it was planning.

5 minutes ago, Phoenyx said:

I guess we could continue to debate as to whether Coalition against Quack is too big. Or we could debate how we could bring this war to an end? 

It's not even been two weeks and I have a record to achieve. We can't end things yet! ;) 

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6 minutes ago, Adrienne said:

Sphinx isn't a general member, he was leading the alliance. It wasn't a "rumor", it was planning.

It's not even been two weeks and I have a record to achieve. We can't end things yet! ;) 

 

About Sphinx, so I think he was the leader of Commonwealth? Anyway, that's not Swamp. And I'm wondering if he got mixed up. I think the key may well lie with whoever Ronny talked to. He says he talked to Hedge, not Swamp. So talking to whoever he talked to in Hedge might be able to clear things up. 

 

Anyway, as to having a record to achieve perhaps that's the type of thing that Tyrion was thinking about when he told me that he wasn't seeing the signs that peace talks were ready to start :-p. 

Edited by Phoenyx
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3 minutes ago, Phoenyx said:

 

About Sphinx, so I think he was the leader of Commonwealth? Anyway, that's not Swamp. And I'm wondering if he got mixed up. I think the key may well lie with whoever Ronny talked to. He says he talked to Hedge, not Swamp. So talking to whoever he talked to in Hedge might be able to clear things up. 

 

Anyway, as to having a record to achieve perhaps that's the type of thing that Tyrion was thinking about when he told me that he wasn't seeing the signs that peace talks were ready to start :-p. 

Actually TCW was inducted as a full member of Swamp, so your info is out of date.

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10 minutes ago, Leopold von Habsburg said:

Actually TCW was inducted as a full member of Swamp, so your info is out of date.

Alright. More and more though, I'm thinking that this may have just been a confusion of the -type- of attack. There are 2 types. Aggressive attacks and -retaliatory- attacks. I'm thinking all of this was that, but Sphinx (who was the leader of TCW at the time? or something else) got it mixed up. Really find it strange that he'd have dates for it though. Anyway, it seems unlikely that we can question Sphinx about it, but Ronny knows who he spoke to in Hedge. That seems to be the only investigative path available that I can see right now. 

11 minutes ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

At this point, tCW's status within Swamp shifts based on convenience.

There may be some truth to this. I wouldn't know, having never been in TCW. What I'd really like to know though- when Sphinx wrote his famous quote to Boyce, was he leader of TCW?

Edited by Phoenyx
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7 minutes ago, Phoenyx said:

Alright. More and more though, I'm thinking that this may have just been a confusion of the -type- of attack. There are 2 types. Aggressive attacks and -retaliatory- attacks. I'm thinking all of this was that, but Sphinx (who was the leader of TCW at the time? or something else) got it mixed up. Really find it strange that he'd have dates for it though. Anyway, it seems unlikely that we can question Sphinx about it, but Ronny knows who he spoke to in Hedge. That seems to be the only investigative path available that I can see right now. 

There may be some truth to this. I wouldn't know, having never been in TCW. What I'd really like to know though- when Sphinx wrote his famous quote to Boyce, was he leader of TCW?

Yes he was. He only stepped down 2 days before the war broke out and threw himself into VM. The timing is certainly convenient.

Edited by Leopold von Habsburg
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