A Snake's Tale: Surrender, Booze, and Peace

[Buorhann]

1 hour ago, Avatar Patrick said:

FA is overstated in this game and military might is understated.

Reverse that.

Literally any alliance worth a damn goes through a dogpile.  The only thing needed here is understanding why the dogpile happened and how to prevent from occurring again in the future.

Which is what's failing right now.

[Adrienne]

32 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

Reverse that.

Literally any alliance worth a damn goes through a dogpile.  The only thing needed here is understanding why the dogpile happened and how to prevent from occurring again in the future.

Which is what's failing right now.

We understand perfectly. They felt threatened (and/or just wanted to hand t$ a loss - let's be honest here) so they threw away their principled stance on minispheres and went for security but did it in such a way to make it appear as though they hadn't so they could make us out to be the villain and whenever we call them out on it, they throw out arguments of paranoia and victim narratives. It's pretty clear to us why this happened and how we got here. The failing of understanding is on the other side, who can't seem to grasp why we might be angry at them for their actions and instead continue to completely ignore our posts or belittle them/write them off, which is arguably the same thing.

Edited December 18, 2020 by Adrienne

[Buorhann]

Just now, Adrienne said:

We understand perfectly. They felt threatened so they threw away their principled stance on minispheres and went for security but did it in such a way to make it appear as though they hadn't so they could make us out to be the villain and whenever we call them out on it, they throw out arguments of paranoia and victim narratives. It's pretty clear to us why this happened and how we got here. The failing of understanding is on the other side, who can't seem to grasp why we might be angry at them for their actions and instead continue to completely ignore our posts or belittle them/write them off, which is arguably the same thing.

See, I don't think it's as cut and dry as that.  That's honestly a problem on your side.  You believe that you understand and that there aren't any other nuances that could be at play here.  You're pigeon holing yourself into that belief, but on the other hand, when it's one of the most verbal reasons - I can see why.

Usually when there's multiple parties involved, it's usually because of a variety of reasons.  What you've gotten from Grumpy folks is that your top tier was threatening, but what about the rest?

There was also that minor reason where your sphere alone would trounce any other sphere 1v1 by numbers/tiering alone, at least on paper.

I'm sure there's much more.  Just gotta dig it all out and see what compromises can be made on your side ("Your" used as a general term, not just Quacksphere here).  Otherwise you just say "frick it, we got rolled.  Let's rebuild and regear, and look over what we could've done differently in our war here."

 

As for the second part of your post, I don't think they lack understanding why you're mad at them.  Afterall, anybody being dogpiled would (And should?) be upset.  Kinda hard to not understand that.  What I think some of you are overlooking is the lack of trust while communicating.  There's a lot of antagonistic stuff going on that I hear about, and there's very little, if any, actual honest attempts of mending things (I think @Hodor and @Cooper_ are literally the only players who were attempting this, but I'm not privy to too much stuff).

I feel you folks on both sides have the wrong people talking.  There are people who won't trust Keegoz, Partisan, Akuryo, SRD, etc.

The other thing that I see a lot, and it's embarrassing to see it, are people seriously replying to that Phoenyx frick.  Like...  how stupid do you have to be to argue with him.  You're pretty much digging a bigger hole by giving a willfully ignorant player like that a platform.  That player was completely irrelevant, but when I log onto the forums - I see multiple players arguing with this kid.

Have you not learned from the times with Inst?  These players feed off of this shit because it stirs the pot and causes more problems than fixes.  As prominent leaders, you folks should know better than that.
 

[Adrienne]

2 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

See, I don't think it's as cut and dry as that.  That's honestly a problem on your side.  You believe that you understand and that there aren't any other nuances that could be at play here.  You're pigeon holing yourself into that belief, but on the other hand, when it's one of the most verbal reasons - I can see why.

Usually when there's multiple parties involved, it's usually because of a variety of reasons.  What you've gotten from Grumpy folks is that your top tier was threatening, but what about the rest?

Don't take my oversimplification here as a lack of understanding that different alliances have different motivations. That's the overarching one, however. Why they felt threatened are going to be for different reasons and I'm sure there are a few other reasons (like the other one I gave , for an example) why they wanted to join in as well.

4 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

As for the second part of your post, I don't think they lack understanding why you're mad at them.  Afterall, anybody being dogpiled would (And should?) be upset.  Kinda hard to not understand that. What I think some of you are overlooking is the lack of trust while communicating.

If they do, they sure have a funny way of showing it and your post doesn't show you understand either. The anger isn't purely over being dogpiled. The anger is over being lied to repeatedly, both in public and in private, and being accused of not trying when it's become increasingly obvious that all along, they've all been secretly allied for months. If you want to talk lack of trust, that's where it stems from for us. And that's partly why we're here, still talking about this. Meanwhile, all we're being met with is a complete unwillingness to discuss and engage with those frustrations, still have people lying and purposefully misrepresenting things, and are receiving accusations of paranoia and what amounts to "boo hoo, cry me a river", all of which is doing very little to help the situation. From our side, it's less about individual players and more about consistent nonsense.

[Buorhann]

Are you implying that your side has been upfront and honest while their side has been lying and dishonest?

[HeroofTime55]

1 hour ago, Buorhann said:

The only thing needed here is understanding why the dogpile happened and how to prevent from occurring again in the future.

Which is what's failing right now.

There is no failing on that matter.

[Prefonteen]

18 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

See, I don't think it's as cut and dry as that.  That's honestly a problem on your side.  You believe that you understand and that there aren't any other nuances that could be at play here.  You're pigeon holing yourself into that belief, but on the other hand, when it's one of the most verbal reasons - I can see why.

Usually when there's multiple parties involved, it's usually because of a variety of reasons.  What you've gotten from Grumpy folks is that your top tier was threatening, but what about the rest?

There was also that minor reason where your sphere alone would trounce any other sphere 1v1 by numbers/tiering alone, at least on paper.

I'm sure there's much more.  Just gotta dig it all out and see what compromises can be made on your side ("Your" used as a general term, not just Quacksphere here).  Otherwise you just say "frick it, we got rolled.  Let's rebuild and regear, and look over what we could've done differently in our war here."

 

As for the second part of your post, I don't think they lack understanding why you're mad at them.  Afterall, anybody being dogpiled would (And should?) be upset.  Kinda hard to not understand that.  What I think some of you are overlooking is the lack of trust while communicating.  There's a lot of antagonistic stuff going on that I hear about, and there's very little, if any, actual honest attempts of mending things (I think @Hodor and @Cooper_ are literally the only players who were attempting this, but I'm not privy to too much stuff).

I feel you folks on both sides have the wrong people talking.  There are people who won't trust Keegoz, Partisan, Akuryo, SRD, etc.

The other thing that I see a lot, and it's embarrassing to see it, are people seriously replying to that Phoenyx frick.  Like...  how stupid do you have to be to argue with him.  You're pretty much digging a bigger hole by giving a willfully ignorant player like that a platform.  That player was completely irrelevant, but when I log onto the forums - I see multiple players arguing with this kid.

Have you not learned from the times with Inst?  These players feed off of this shit because it stirs the pot and causes more problems than fixes.  As prominent leaders, you folks should know better than that.
 

All of what you're saying makes sense in principle. Adriennes post about already encapsulates the core of our issue. Speaking on the topic of trust: Cooper (and TKR in general) spend a lot of time diploing. They got spurned. The same occurred on my end with Swamp. HM, we never had good relations with because you came out of the gate determined that we were the next IQ. That soured us, and I think we've had enough conversations about that for you to know already.

With Swamp, and to a lesser degree with Rose, we were unaware of these apparently gigantic rifts, because they were not stated or expanded upon in diplomatic channels. In terms of feedback we've gotten, what we have is:

- Quack's grown too much and is too big (economic growth - red)

- Quack was always too big (this is more a perception than anything- it's disproven by the statistics of that period)
- Syndi antagonized camelot in the early NAP days - This one's a big lol. We were pissed with camelot for trying to you know, roll us out of the game. Rose took them under their wing. Epi kept shilling for IQ. So we gave them shit for it. They adjusted + rose requested we cut them slack. We did.

So aside from quack splitting up, I don't think there's much we could have done. That situation persists now, and where less heated discussions occur in backchannels, you're seeing some of it spill over in here.

The trendline is quite simple: Given what transpired, the foundation of trust on our end is gone. Can it be rebuilt? Probably. Nothing is definitive. Are we pissed though? Certainly. We have reason to be. Particularly when the same frame/lies that preceeded dogpile 1, are already being drummed up again in public. 

 

19 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

Are you implying that your side has been upfront and honest while their side has been lying and dishonest?

Yes. I imagine she would be implying that.

The stuff that occurred in backchannels leading up to this war sketches that picture perfectly. It's plastered all over the forums, though I do understand with the amount of spam going around it's hard to keep track of.

Happy to elaborate via DM.

[Adrienne]

42 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

Are you implying that your side has been upfront and honest while their side has been lying and dishonest?

Now who's doing cut and dry over-simplications? 😛

In terms of who belongs to it, our side hasn't pretended to be anything other than what we are. What you see is what you get. And they don't like what they see, that's fine, that's their prerogative. However, in the meantime, they've pretended to be invested in minispheres and accused us of being a hegemony/not even trying with minispheres when it's fairly clearly evident we have been. And I can accept the background chicanery to get people on their side because that's part of the game. The narrative building to others in private that we're a hegemony, the spreading around of graphs with purposefully inflated numbers for Quack/purposefully deflated numbers for the other spheres, etc. That's the politics game. So be it. That's not what I'm talking about.

I've been very consistent on what pisses me off the most personally, which is the hypocrisy (not to mention the blatant lying by several parties in the days just before this war but those are more individual complaints). It is one thing to form a coalition. That's the game, go for it. But forming a network of secret treaties between spheres that essentially turns you into a single hidden sphere double the size of who you're going after all while preaching about the merits of minispheres and complaining that t$-TKR is too big/powerful? That's bullshit and it's still being perpetuated, with half of them still lying about it even as others admit their existence - even within the same sphere! And when we bring it up - they sidestep, ignore, or ridicule. You only have to read up to see that.

So no, this isn't about normal political games, if that's what you're trying to get at. This is a very particular complaint and one that's done significant damage to trust levels with several alliances we previously believed ourselves to be on good terms with.

Edited December 18, 2020 by Adrienne

[Keegoz]

1 hour ago, Adrienne said:

Now who's doing cut and dry over-simplications? 😛

In terms of who belongs to it, our side hasn't pretended to be anything other than what we are. What you see is what you get. And they don't like what they see, that's fine, that's their prerogative. However, in the meantime, they've pretended to be invested in minispheres and accused us of being a hegemony/not even trying with minispheres when it's fairly clearly evident we have been. And I can accept the background chicanery to get people on their side because that's part of the game. The narrative building to others in private that we're a hegemony, the spreading around of graphs with purposefully inflated numbers for Quack/purposefully deflated numbers for the other spheres, etc. That's the politics game. So be it. That's not what I'm talking about.

I've been very consistent on what pisses me off the most personally, which is the hypocrisy (not to mention the blatant lying by several parties in the days just before this war but those are more individual complaints). It is one thing to form a coalition. That's the game, go for it. But forming a network of secret treaties between spheres that essentially turns you into a single hidden sphere double the size of who you're going after all while preaching about the merits of minispheres and complaining that t$-TKR is too big/powerful? That's bullshit and it's still being perpetuated, with half of them still lying about it even as others admit their existence - even within the same sphere! And when we bring it up - they sidestep, ignore, or ridicule. You only have to read up to see that.

So no, this isn't about normal political games, if that's what you're trying to get at. This is a very particular complaint and one that's done significant damage to trust levels with several alliances we previously believed ourselves to be on good terms with.

I mean, when I ask for proof for these secret treaties between HM and any other party. You provide random logs, sidestep or change the narrative. Most the time it's SRD saying he was offered to form a coalition and turned it down, which if that's the definition of a secret treaty then we can start going through your own.

The reason why most these people united was because of you and your size. Many had expressed their concern and you didn't take the concerns seriously, if you had then coalitions to deal with it would have died pretty quickly. I even noted that if Swamp remaind large after any split in Quack occurred then my focus would shift onto them, the difference there was that Swamp had already indicated they would be willing to do so.

Also, your narrative only moved to "secret treaties" when you worked out just how off-side you managed to get everyone. You thought you had this war in the bag and the only possible reason you can clamour together as to why it all went tits up is that we must all be in on an elaborate plot to take you down because we just hate you?

[Phoenyx]

2 hours ago, Buorhann said:

See, I don't think it's as cut and dry as that.  That's honestly a problem on your side.  You believe that you understand and that there aren't any other nuances that could be at play here.  You're pigeon holing yourself into that belief, but on the other hand, when it's one of the most verbal reasons - I can see why.

Usually when there's multiple parties involved, it's usually because of a variety of reasons.  What you've gotten from Grumpy folks is that your top tier was threatening, but what about the rest?

There was also that minor reason where your sphere alone would trounce any other sphere 1v1 by numbers/tiering alone, at least on paper.

I'm sure there's much more.  Just gotta dig it all out and see what compromises can be made on your side ("Your" used as a general term, not just Quacksphere here).  Otherwise you just say "frick it, we got rolled.  Let's rebuild and regear, and look over what we could've done differently in our war here."

 

As for the second part of your post, I don't think they lack understanding why you're mad at them.  Afterall, anybody being dogpiled would (And should?) be upset.  Kinda hard to not understand that.  What I think some of you are overlooking is the lack of trust while communicating.  There's a lot of antagonistic stuff going on that I hear about, and there's very little, if any, actual honest attempts of mending things (I think @Hodor and @Cooper_ are literally the only players who were attempting this, but I'm not privy to too much stuff).

 

I think a lot of what you said here is the type of thing I've been trying to say, though I think you've worded it better. You've certainly been around longer, so would make sense.

 

2 hours ago, Buorhann said:

I feel you folks on both sides have the wrong people talking.  There are people who won't trust Keegoz, Partisan, Akuryo, SRD, etc.

 

Here I think you're on shakier ground- Partisan and SRD, at least, are heads of their Alliances. As to the others you mention, they may not be Alliance heads, but they're in gov and seem to honestly care about what they're talking about. One thing is backchannel diplomacy, but on a forum, I think it stands to reason that Alliance heads would be talking as well as those who are genuinely interested in the subjects and can live with any backlash they get from posting here. If people don't want to talk to -them-, they don't have to. Which brings us to your last point...

 

2 hours ago, Buorhann said:

The other thing that I see a lot, and it's embarrassing to see it, are people seriously replying to that Phoenyx [insult removed]

 

If you don't think I'm worth serious replies to, that's your call to make. But clearly others have and, I suspect, will continue to. I think my major drawback is that I'm fairly new. This means I don't know a lot of the political nuances. But I'm certainly learning them.

[Prefonteen]

30 minutes ago, Keegoz said:

I mean, when I ask for proof for these secret treaties between HM and any other party. You provide random logs, sidestep or change the narrative. Most the time it's SRD saying he was offered to form a coalition and turned it down, which if that's the definition of a secret treaty then we can start going through your own.

I've been pretty consistent:

- Swamp admitted to agreements being in place before we militarizd

- ASM admitted to a Rose-Swamp agreement preceeding our hit

- You yourself have a) confirmed in the past that rose continues to maintain significant influence in what was then Swamp. You have also in the past stated other things that confirm similar trends. We know of this stuff because well, many in t$ gov were on good terms with you and shared gov (or a sphere) with you when half of that stuff was first pitched. The likes of Theo, Shiho, Adam etc. are intimately aware of your thoughts and movements. Your public pretense otherwise is a farce, keegoz.

These are the secret ties i've mentioned. The ronny matter is further circumstantial confirmation, *but* its severity lies in his admission that A) the approach was made to go aggressive on us and B ) he at the time essentially confirmed that he'd be in if Rose was in. That's not turning an offer down. That's setting baseline conditions for approval. It's step 1 toward war.

What exactly have you provided besides "WELL ITS NOT TRUE"?

30 minutes ago, Keegoz said:

The reason why most these people united was because of you and your size. Many had expressed their concern and you didn't take the concerns seriously, if you had then coalitions to deal with it would have died pretty quickly. I even noted that if Swamp remaind large after any split in Quack occurred then my focus would shift onto them, the difference there was that Swamp had already indicated they would be willing to do so.

Our size, which was structurally misrepresented by your alliance in graphs which excluded elements from other spheres and included the likes of Pantheon in ours?

Our size, which was matched at first by rose, then by TCW and later by Swamp, and is now again matched by Rose?

We also indicated our willingness -over and over again- to split if at any point we hit a position of dominance. Its a standing agreement Quack entered into when we came out of NPOLT and formulated our sphere. It's something multiple on your side have been aware of for months.

30 minutes ago, Keegoz said:

Also, your narrative only moved to "secret treaties" when you worked out just how off-side you managed to get everyone. You thought you had this war in the bag and the only possible reason you can clamour together as to why it all went tits up is that we must all be in on an elaborate plot to take you down because we just hate you?

My narrative moved to "secret treaties" when your coalition mates broke the party line you tried to erect and admitted to the existence of said treaties.

You have absolutely nothing to infer that "we thought we had it in the bag" from. My private conversations with swamp officials in the leadup to this war have me openly stating that I expect to be fricked over.

Frankly keegoz, you're coming up with the same type of crap you tried to peddle after last war.

[Buorhann]

1 hour ago, Prefonteen said:

The likes of Theo, Shiho, Adam etc. are intimately aware of your thoughts and movements.

This is an absolute bad statement to make.  Only one of those listed had any actual backroom experience with Keegoz.

[Keegoz]

1 hour ago, Prefonteen said:

I've been pretty consistent:

- Swamp admitted to agreements being in place before we militarizd

- ASM admitted to a Rose-Swamp agreement preceeding our hit

- You yourself have a) confirmed in the past that rose continues to maintain significant influence in what was then Swamp. You have also in the past stated other things that confirm similar trends. We know of this stuff because well, many in t$ gov were on good terms with you and shared gov (or a sphere) with you when half of that stuff was first pitched. The likes of Theo, Shiho, Adam etc. are intimately aware of your thoughts and movements. Your public pretense otherwise is a farce, keegoz.

These are the secret ties i've mentioned. The ronny matter is further circumstantial confirmation, *but* its severity lies in his admission that A) the approach was made to go aggressive on us and B ) he at the time essentially confirmed that he'd be in if Rose was in. That's not turning an offer down. That's setting baseline conditions for approval. It's step 1 toward war.

What exactly have you provided besides "WELL ITS NOT TRUE"?

Our size, which was structurally misrepresented by your alliance in graphs which excluded elements from other spheres and included the likes of Pantheon in ours?

Our size, which was matched at first by rose, then by TCW and later by Swamp, and is now again matched by Rose?

We also indicated our willingness -over and over again- to split if at any point we hit a position of dominance. Its a standing agreement Quack entered into when we came out of NPOLT and formulated our sphere. It's something multiple on your side have been aware of for months.

My narrative moved to "secret treaties" when your coalition mates broke the party line you tried to erect and admitted to the existence of said treaties.

You have absolutely nothing to infer that "we thought we had it in the bag" from. My private conversations with swamp officials in the leadup to this war have me openly stating that I expect to be fricked over.

Frankly keegoz, you're coming up with the same type of crap you tried to peddle after last war.

 

2 hours ago, Keegoz said:

I mean, when I ask for proof for these secret treaties between HM and any other party. You provide random logs, sidestep or change the narrative.

That didn't take long. Guess we elected to go with "sidestep". Building coalitions is not what you're accusing us of, you're accusing us of secret ties which you and I both know you have no evidence of. I guess you're hoping if you repeat it enough it might stick.

[Adrienne]

3 hours ago, Keegoz said:

I mean, when I ask for proof for these secret treaties between HM and any other party. You provide random logs, sidestep or change the narrative. Most the time it's SRD saying he was offered to form a coalition and turned it down, which if that's the definition of a secret treaty then we can start going through your own.

 

1 hour ago, Keegoz said:

That didn't take long. Guess we elected to go with "sidestep". Building coalitions is not what you're accusing us of, you're accusing us of secret ties which you and I both know you have no evidence of. I guess you're hoping if you repeat it enough it might stick.

 

This is a joke, right? Lmao. We've not done any of that, for starters, and any logs we've provided here or alluded to have not had anything to do regarding secret treaties, but rather other things and we've never said otherwise afaik. We've not needed to sidestep or provide evidence because we've been flat out told by people on your side this exists, both privately and publicly. Your own leader just talked about this earlier in this thread:

15 hours ago, Leftbehind said:

We have already told you about the Hedge-Swamp Defensive deal and why we felt it was right at the time.

 

Regarding Rose and Swamp, we've been flat out told by members of Rose/Swamp, not just ASM, that there was a deal there as well that existed for at least a month pre-war.

 

Good lord, Keegoz. Read a little.

Edited December 18, 2020 by Adrienne
Typo >.>

[Prefonteen]

19 minutes ago, Keegoz said:

 

That didn't take long. Guess we elected to go with "sidestep". Building coalitions is not what you're accusing us of, you're accusing us of secret ties which you and I both know you have no evidence of. I guess you're hoping if you repeat it enough it might stick.

I directly addressed you. As did adri just now. 

What the hell lmao

[Theodosius]

57 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

This is an absolute bad statement to make.  Only one of those listed had any actual backroom experience with Keegoz.

I'd say it's plenty. You'll notice he doesn't want to talk about that. However, playing dumb and being disingenuous in front of my face is not my cup of tea and certainly insulting my intelligence isn't either, so I've largely elected to not participate in this discussion and keep lowering my opinion about certain people. I hope it's worth it Keeg. Y'all keep going now, don't want to interrupt further.

[Prefonteen]

1 hour ago, Buorhann said:

This is an absolute bad statement to make.  Only one of those listed had any actual backroom experience with Keegoz.

Which again,makes him intimately aware.

[Shiho Nishizumi]

58 minutes ago, Keegoz said:

Building coalitions is not what you're accusing us of

We don't need to accuse you of it because you've already admitted to, at the very least, signing off on one (with there being more to it, I'm most certain).

We also don't need to accuse you (for the record, the "you" transcends HM) of paperless because they've likewise been admitted to. It's simple fact at this point. Unless if you want to argue that SRD and Left are lying, in which case, go ahead.

Edited December 18, 2020 by Shiho Nishizumi

[Prefonteen]

It's funny that backroom conversations have long moved past this after acknowledging most of these occurrences as fact, and expanding upon the motivation for both sides to move as they did. Discussions about the political implications of the war and our future build upon those acknowledgements.

And then there's you, attempting to gaslight us in your zeal to "prove us wrong".

 

 

 

"The fact that we built a coalition against you means your behaviour deserved it! quack man bad!"

- Keegoz, 2020, after ignoring logs and admissions alike.

 

 

Edited December 18, 2020 by Prefonteen

[TRM]

4 hours ago, Prefonteen said:

We also indicated our willingness -over and over again- to split if at any point we hit a position of dominance. Its a standing agreement Quack entered into when we came out of NPOLT and formulated our sphere. It's something multiple on your side have been aware of for months.

Out of curiousity, when you said the word dominance, did you mean dominance against the next strongest sphere, or the rest of the game?

[Prefonteen]

23 minutes ago, Orcinus Orca said:

Out of curiousity, when you said the word dominance, did you mean dominance against the next strongest sphere, or the rest of the game?

Rest of the game. Our standing policy has been to limit any expansion and to roughly match the next largest sphere. 

For a brief while that was rose, until they downsized. Then it was tcw until they got murdered. Then it was swamp. 

Dropping any further would've been suicidal given the rhetoric we'd already seen. 

Also small note: a lot of our prewar size was down to organic growth outpacing others. That's not something I can really base ad hoc fa policy on. 

Edited December 18, 2020 by Prefonteen

[Charles Bolivar]

6 hours ago, Prefonteen said:

Rest of the game. Our standing policy has been to limit any expansion and to roughly match the next largest sphere. 

For a brief while that was rose, until they downsized. Then it was tcw until they got murdered. Then it was swamp. 

Dropping any further would've been suicidal given the rhetoric we'd already seen. 

Also small note: a lot of our prewar size was down to organic growth outpacing others. That's not something I can really base ad hoc fa policy on. 

I'd argue placing artificial limits on your own expansion is suicidal in its own right to be honest. 

The game will, and historically has for that matter, corrected itself when imbalances in power occur. We are in our I suppose 4th or 5th era of a differing sphere being the top power and the result is always the same. An alliance or sphere gets powerful, acts as the ruling power before it all eventually falls apart. 

At the end of the day, it's not your job to curb your own influence and growth, that job belongs to the opposition and that is precisely what happened here.

[Phoenyx]

52 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

I'd argue placing artificial limits on your own expansion is suicidal in its own right to be honest. 

 

Don't see why it'd be suicidal, but I definitely don't think it's necessary. Like you said, I think Orbis will auto correct in its own way if there's too much of a power imbalance anyway. 

[Avatar Patrick]

12 hours ago, Keegoz said:

You thought you had this war in the bag

Uhh no we never thought that in fact Eclipse's DOW on hedge admitted we were recognizing hostilities from the other spheres even before they happened. 

 

49 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

I'd argue placing artificial limits on your own expansion is suicidal in its own right to be honest. 

The game will, and historically has for that matter, corrected itself when imbalances in power occur. We are in our I suppose 4th or 5th era of a differing sphere being the top power and the result is always the same. An alliance or sphere gets powerful, acts as the ruling power before it all eventually falls apart. 

At the end of the day, it's not your job to curb your own influence and growth, that job belongs to the opposition and that is precisely what happened here.

I agree that we shouldn't limit our growth but in what way did we act hegemonic? Despite our size we were very restrained, perhaps too much so even and never threatened war with anyone.

[Prefonteen]

57 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

I'd argue placing artificial limits on your own expansion is suicidal in its own right to be honest. 

The game will, and historically has for that matter, corrected itself when imbalances in power occur. We are in our I suppose 4th or 5th era of a differing sphere being the top power and the result is always the same. An alliance or sphere gets powerful, acts as the ruling power before it all eventually falls apart. 

At the end of the day, it's not your job to curb your own influence and growth, that job belongs to the opposition and that is precisely what happened here.

No disagreement from me. I view deviating from our historical M.O. to appease OOC-inspired (make the game fun!) ideologies as a strategic mistake on our part. It backfiring in both a loss *and* us framed as the ebil hegemon snakes regardless... pretty much has me concluding that I probably should not do that again :P.

Edited December 18, 2020 by Prefonteen