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


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2 hours 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.

This post is correct, and very clearly outlines the mistakes we made post-NPOLT.  I am wondering if you think we will make them again?  We found micro-spheres preferable, but the rest of the world decided we couldn't have that.  Get ready for the future of this game, it's an ugly one.

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1 hour ago, HeroofTime55 said:

This post is correct, and very clearly outlines the mistakes we made post-NPOLT.  I am wondering if you think we will make them again?  We found micro-spheres preferable, but the rest of the world decided we couldn't have that.  Get ready for the future of this game, it's an ugly one.

I don't see what's so hard to understand. Yall were fine with minispheres, but decided to grow into the strongest one, by far. 

For that, yall got slammed. To a degree, I can understand what Pre and Adri talk of, but I don't think that this is it.

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4 hours ago, Avatar Patrick said:

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. 

 

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.

The perception of power, even without it being exercised, often leads a fear that it may be exercised in the future. Any good FA person worth their salt recognises this and prepares for it accordingly. It's why I don't see the big deal about this fuss that various alliances in "our" coalition prepared for such a possibility to occur which did eventually come to pass. Any good FA person recognises this principle and utilises it.

We can of course say tS declared because they got wind of the coalition "forming" but then it becomes a chicken or egg scenario when the truth is simply much simpler.

It's the rules of the game. Conflict between competing power spheres is inevitable along with the formation of coalitions based around roughly similar interests. It's always been that way and it always will be that way.

And tbh, if you want to act hegemonic, do it. If you don't, then don't. Hegemonies via the exercise of hegemonic power often create the very dissent which brings them down, potential hegemonies are often nipped in the bud before they reach a more authoritative level. The exercise of power, of the perception of power in certain instances, invites challenge. 

Defeat is inevitable in this game at the end of the day. So do what you can to delay the inevitable if you have the ability to do so 🤷‍♂️

 

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4 hours ago, Prefonteen said:

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.

Creating little spheres each with their carefully regulated boundaries with the same leaders and alliances in charge which go to war every so often rehashing very same arguments over and over is the the very nature of boring.

I'd rather take on and defeat a hegemon instead. That's way more fun.

Why did you deviate though? 

 

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3 hours ago, HeroofTime55 said:

This post is correct, and very clearly outlines the mistakes we made post-NPOLT.  I am wondering if you think we will make them again?  We found micro-spheres preferable, but the rest of the world decided we couldn't have that.  Get ready for the future of this game, it's an ugly one.

I don't know if you will make them again. That's up to you lot, you might make entirely new ones after all? 🤷‍♂️

The issue with microspheres is that people get caught in a trap of arguing for or against their merits when the truth is much more simple. "Planned" microspheres are nothing more than foolish delusions which have no logical basis on reality since any divisions between the spheres are artificially created and therefore aren't real. For a true multisphere system to arise, spheres have to be seperated by deep ideological differences which no common cause can unite across, which is extremely difficult I admit. It's possible but unlikely in my books.

People can argue about planned multispheres all day if they want, they might as well argue about unicorns, the lochness monster or other fantastical beasts if they prefer because it's entirely a waste of time. They are simply illogical at the end of the day 🤷‍♂️

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5 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

I don't know if you will make them again. That's up to you lot, you might make entirely new ones after all? 🤷‍♂️

The issue with microspheres is that people get caught in a trap of arguing for or against their merits when the truth is much more simple. "Planned" microspheres are nothing more than foolish delusions which have no logical basis on reality since any divisions between the spheres are artificially created and therefore aren't real. For a true multisphere system to arise, spheres have to be seperated by deep ideological differences which no common cause can unite across, which is extremely difficult I admit. It's possible but unlikely in my books.

People can argue about planned multispheres all day if they want, they might as well argue about unicorns, the lochness monster or other fantastical beasts if they prefer because it's entirely a waste of time. They are simply illogical at the end of the day 🤷‍♂️

I would argue that if the ideological interest in microspheres is genuine, then the artificially created divisions between spheres are genuine by virtue of ideological agreement rather than dissent.

The issue is when that ideology is advanced in bad faith, then it becomes lying. If you prefer to be that way, then that's a much greater problem than hegemonies or power spheres, and indicates a much more fundamental flaw in behavior that needs to be corrected before any improvement, of any sort, can be made.

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40 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

The issue is when that ideology is advanced in bad faith, then it becomes lying. If you prefer to be that way, then that's a much greater problem than hegemonies or power spheres, and indicates a much more fundamental flaw in behavior that needs to be corrected before any improvement, of any sort, can be made.

Yep.  You either genuinely play the game and get spurned as my alliance has time and again, or you put up a front and take advantage of those who play by the rules.  It takes little effort to throw up some secret treaties and show only a few treaty lines on the web while you call out anyone you don't have secret deals with a "hegemon."  I mean even NPO was able to pull that one over on us.  The fact that it happened again isn't surprising, but it is disappointing.  

Can't say we didn't try though.

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1 hour ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

I would argue that if the ideological interest in microspheres is genuine, then the artificially created divisions between spheres are genuine by virtue of ideological agreement rather than dissent.

The issue is when that ideology is advanced in bad faith, then it becomes lying. If you prefer to be that way, then that's a much greater problem than hegemonies or power spheres, and indicates a much more fundamental flaw in behavior that needs to be corrected before any improvement, of any sort, can be made.

So you would be ok with your leadership willingly allowing your alliance to be rolled in the pursuit of maintaining an "artificial" multisphere when it could make common cause with potential allies against a common foe?

I think not. If I was a member of an alliance and my FA leader said " hey, we could have teamed up with so and so to combat the enemy but we said no, because we wanted to keep multispheres because of my own personal ideology and that is why you are all rolled," I'd be asking for that FA leader's resignation. 

Any divide between multispheres has to be ideological to the extent that they refuse to assist each other at all. It's possible but unlikely, hence why the notion of multispheres as its currently portrayed is inherently flawed. 

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9 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

So you would be ok with your leadership willingly allowing your alliance to be rolled in the pursuit of maintaining an "artificial" multisphere when it could make common cause with potential allies against a common foe?

I think not.

Dude. Who do you think you're responding to?

Hell yes I am okay with my leadership letting me get rolled, for the right cause.

Aren't you?

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16 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

Dude. Who do you think you're responding to?

Hell yes I am okay with my leadership letting me get rolled, for the right cause.

Aren't you?

So you regard the creation and maintaining of multispheres to be a greater cause than the wellbeing of your own alliance ?

Would you willingly allow your own alliance to be rolled solely due to maintaining an artificially created minisphere?

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11 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

So you regard the creation and maintaining of multispheres to be a greater cause than the wellbeing of your own alliance ?

The flaw here is the question.

For me, the point of my role in FA is to create a fun environment for my communities.  What many political actors in the game don't understand is that winning isn't the same as enjoying the game.  From my own experience, the finest moments of my community have occurred at our darkest hours at the times of greatest challenges.  That isn't to say I want to lose all of the time, but people have got to be ok with putting themselves at risk if they want to achieve anything.  And here's a news flash: if you fight well, the end result of a loss or win at war doesn't look that much different at all.  Points to Pantheon.

My alliance has put a lot on the line to achieve its ideology, including getting rolled, but there's value in having principles and goals.  If you want to just win every time, then what are we really simulating here?  What's the challenge?

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1 minute ago, Charles Bolivar said:

It's also incredibly naive.

I don't disagree. It's obviously a rather considerable commitment which people have demonstrated to be unwilling to go with. Being frank here, it's not something that I can say to be surprised having seen people dip out on.

What I'm (more) surprised about is the manner in which it happened, and some (albeit not all) of the behavior associated to such way in which it happened. 

 

 
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1 minute ago, Cooper_ said:

The flaw here is the question.

For me, the point of my role in FA is to create a fun environment for my communities.  What many political actors in the game don't understand is that winning isn't the same as enjoying the game.  From my own experience, the finest moments of my community have occurred at our darkest hours at the times of greatest challenges.  That isn't to say I want to lose all of the time, but people have got to be ok with putting themselves at risk if they want to achieve anything.  And here's a news flash: if you fight well, the end result of a loss or win at war doesn't look that much different at all.  Points to Pantheon.

My alliance has put a lot on the line to achieve its ideology, including getting rolled, but there's value in having principles and goals.  If you want to just win every time, then what are we really simulating here?  What's the challenge?

I suppose we have differing thoughts on what good FA is 🤷‍♂️ I view it as maintaining the collective security of an alliance and placing the alliance in an effective position to achieve its goals. You apparently believe FA's goal is creating a fun atmosphere by placing your own members in losing conflicts by creating unnecessary risk.

The goal is to minimise risk, not walk blindly into it and just say "hey, we are being rolled but this is fun right?".  You can do that as an ordinary member all you want, but as a member of an alliance gov ( a gov I was once a minor player in before your time for that matter), you simply can't place the collective wellbeing of the entire AA at risk over a whimsical wish. 

Least I think so anyway 🤷‍♂️

 

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34 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

So you regard the creation and maintaining of multispheres to be a greater cause than the wellbeing of your own alliance ?

Would you willingly allow your own alliance to be rolled solely due to maintaining an artificially created minisphere?

I, personally, am indeed very much happy to get rolled for the cause of a better game environment. I have standards, see: my standards include that when I say something, I mean it and when I fight for something, I believe in it. If I believe in something enough to fight for it, then I am 100% willing to die for it. Yes, the cause of minispheres and a multipolar game environment is absolutely more important than my 'wellbeing', whatever the actual hell that even means, and I genuinely believe that as a point of honor. I also consider being honorable in that sense to be much more enjoyable than acting in bad faith.

Besides, alliances that survive a rolling are invariably and immeasurably better off for it. Always. So there's yet more benefits to being the honorable one, even when one's opponents choose the quick and dirty path.

 

5 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

I suppose we have differing thoughts on what good FA is 🤷‍♂️ I view it as maintaining the collective security of an alliance and placing the alliance in an effective position to achieve its goals. You apparently believe FA's goal is creating a fun atmosphere by placing your own members in losing conflicts by creating unnecessary risk.

The goal is to minimise risk, not walk blindly into it and just say "hey, we are being rolled but this is fun right?".  You can do that as an ordinary member all you want, but as a member of an alliance gov ( a gov I was once a minor player in before your time for that matter), you simply can't place the collective wellbeing of the entire AA at risk over a whimsical wish. 

Least I think so anyway 🤷‍♂️

 

The goal is to have fun; if your idea of "effective security" is to consolidate up a hegemony and take no risks then that runs counter to the more important goal.

You do realize that you've been complaining about the last war more than everyone on our side combined, right? Surely that tells you something...?

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1 minute ago, Hime-sama said:

The alternative of only pursuing self-vested interests creates an incredibly toxic environment.

 

You mean a toxic environment like the last few conflicts which were steeped in the failure of creating multispheres without the faintest shred of success? 

The notion of minispheres is much akin to the outdated notion of 19th and 20th communism in that sense. In an ideal world it makes perfect sense, but we don't live in an ideal world sadly. We live in the real world governed by human personality, and the human condition precludes the notion of an artificially created multisphere system.

Now if we had a multisphere system which developed out of genuine beliefs and feelings where alliances and spheres refused to work with each other out of genuine ideological divisions, that would work. But like I've said now, whilst possible, it's possible but also unlikely. After all, we were just in a coalition which included the commonwealth after we attacked them only a few months earlier, I would have fully expected commonwealth to refuse to assist us in any manner whatsoever but hey, a common cause against a potential common threat temporarily united us.

If that doesn't act as enough evidence to support the notion that artificially created multispheres  is a foolish concept then I don't know what is.

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9 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

You mean a toxic environment like the last few conflicts which were steeped in the failure of creating multispheres without the faintest shred of success? 

The notion of minispheres is much akin to the outdated notion of 19th and 20th communism in that sense. In an ideal world it makes perfect sense, but we don't live in an ideal world sadly. We live in the real world governed by human personality, and the human condition precludes the notion of an artificially created multisphere system.

Now if we had a multisphere system which developed out of genuine beliefs and feelings where alliances and spheres refused to work with each other out of genuine ideological divisions, that would work. But like I've said now, whilst possible, it's possible but also unlikely. After all, we were just in a coalition which included the commonwealth after we attacked them only a few months earlier, I would have fully expected commonwealth to refuse to assist us in any manner whatsoever but hey, a common cause against a potential common threat temporarily united us.

If that doesn't act as enough evidence to support the notion that artificially created multispheres  is a foolish concept then I don't know what is.

There is a non-zero chance of success if we continue to try and a guarantee of failure if we simply give up.

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19 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

I, personally, am indeed very much happy to get rolled for the cause of a better game environment. I have standards, see: my standards include that when I say something, I mean it and when I fight for something, I believe in it. If I believe in something enough to fight for it, then I am 100% willing to die for it. Yes, the cause of minispheres and a multipolar game environment is absolutely more important than my 'wellbeing', whatever the actual hell that even means, and I genuinely believe that as a point of honor. I also consider being honorable in that sense to be much more enjoyable than acting in bad faith.

Besides, alliances that survive a rolling are invariably and immeasurably better off for it. Always. So there's yet more benefits to being the honorable one, even when one's opponents choose the quick and dirty path.

 

The goal is to have fun; if your idea of "effective security" is to consolidate up a hegemony and take no risks then that runs counter to the more important goal.

You do realize that you've been complaining about the last war more than everyone on our side combined, right? Surely that tells you something...?

Read what im saying. I said minimise risks, not take no risks. Read, ponder and comprehend 👍

You are confusing pointing out  faults in logic with complaining. Whether accidentally or deliberately I don't know. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it was accidentally. What reason do I have to complain about after all? We won by simply employing a better FA strategy. One which I hope tS will return to moving forward given it did to a large extent guide its first few years of existence. Quite successfully too I might add.

Like surely you have to be wondering why you lost? You can't just lay the blame at our doors and accuse us of being nasty lying so and so's. We amassed greater numbers across a coalition with widely varying beliefs in an attempt to curb a potential threat which did us all a favour in attacking a few of us in the end. That's our role in this, you need to consider your own role in this too, however, and think on the reasons why such a coalition was able to be built in the first place. 

Reflect on the reasons for the loss, ponder on options moving forward and implement solutions.

Or don't 🤷‍♂️ 

 

 

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1 minute ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

Signing paperless is very much not "better FA". 

Treaties, whether they exist on paper or not, act only as manifestations of the FA work which occurs behind the scenes. 

It's the relationship between two alliances what counts, not the presence of a visible or invisible agreement or treaty. Alliance sovereignty 101 right there.

 

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10 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

Like surely you have to be wondering why you lost? You can't just lay the blame at our doors and accuse us of being nasty lying so and so's. We amassed greater numbers across a coalition with widely varying beliefs in an attempt to curb a potential threat which did us all a favour in attacking a few of us in the end. That's our role in this, you need to consider your own role in this too, however, and think on the reasons why such a coalition was able to be built in the first place. 

Reflect on the reasons for the loss, ponder on options moving forward and implement solutions.

Or don't 🤷‍♂️ 

It was already elaborated earlier in the thread how we're well aware of why we lost, and it's deeply saddening that the opposition have abandoned the same convictions they tried to smother us with during the preceding peace period and proceed to project it onto us and try to make us out to be the hegemonic power here.

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