[Treaty] 'O Fortuna

[Pablo]

I can probably provide an insider perspective to The Syndicate, as I was a member and high gov for around five years, until like 3 months ago. 

The Syndicate is probably one of the best run alliances in the game, internally speaking. They have a very robust system, and have committed people that keep the place running efficiently. Very healthy community, they have probably the best tech in the game, and thanks to that they can maximize and optimize their processes and their money-making activities. @leonissenbaum props to you. They also have very strong books, and have a decent amount of people in tiers that matter.

Their main issue is FA, and it has been for a while. I sincerly think it has been in a negative trend, this year in particular imo. You can hardly attribute anything good to it, or at least I cannot see any real progress made, by any metric. Having lost two back-to-back wars to Hollywood (one selling down military right away and another one not even milling up), wrapping up Celestial without even going in offensive once, having the sphere chat leaked with damaging logs, and then the whole affair with Wayward.

I left with Partisan and a few others to found Requiem, I cannot speak for them, but at least one of the main drives I had was that I considered that the alliance was heading in a direction that was no ideal, as evidenciated by all the events I outlined above. I think I can sum it up as frustration with they way the alliance was being handled.

What did it for me, and probably others, was when we got blindsided by Hollywood, I was taking a nap at the time of the blitz and woke up to a mess, no one notified high gov or asked us for feedback on how to proceed, turns out leaders knew and decided against militarizing because it would had escalated the situation. Then no long after, the leaks happen. It was just too much to handle, and I decided to leave after 5 years.

I was hopeful about Wayward, competent allies, decent sphere size, I thought they would benefit from letting Ouro take the spotlight while they worked on improving their standing. Then when Midgard hits TKR, chaos ensued.

I concur with Buo in his assessment and points he brings up. 

On 12/15/2022 at 3:23 AM, Buorhann said:

Elaborate further on this part.

I would nitpick your assessments of the NPO involvement, but I'm not concerned on that at all here at this time.  But the quoted part, I'm most curious about.  Why would the public sentiment suggest that Syndicate has terrible FA/Milcom for you guys supporting an ally?  Also, stating that just screams lack of confidence in Syndicate's structure to me for some odd reason.

Yet despite all that, your chosen course of action was to bail on an ally (at the time - Cata) and literally sign the alliance that further stirred the controversy (Eclipse)?   But there was no concern about public sentiment attacking your FA ability there?

I don't know who came up with that idea, or how did they manage to process it in their minds to think it was the best course of action. But bailing on your ally and signing the alliance that attacked your ally is just nuts, for many reasons.

On 12/15/2022 at 3:39 PM, Agent W said:

As you and I both know, FA is way more art than science. What I told Cataclysm is that “we wouldn’t stop them” from entering the war. If that doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement, it’s because it wasn’t. Mind you, the decisions that happened came quickly. Cataclysm gave us a 30 minute notice on the fact that they intended to enter. Perhaps had they not been in such a mad rush, they would’ve thought through the consequences of making that decision.

With regards to your point about us agreeing to hit OB, our trepidation with that idea is well documented, and both Cata and Paradise were keenly aware of that. It was that trepidation that caused members of Cata high government to flame members of mine. We agreed in principle that if it came to a situation where we believed OB would blitz us, we’d be alright fighting them. Cata and Paradise were both sure they would hit us. It didn’t help that members of Cata were openly antagonistic to members of OB.

You can believe what you want to believe happened, Kev. Would you like to hear the truth? We sat paperless for several weeks as we meted out our options. During that span of several weeks, we explored the options available to us, and eventually decided to sign Eclipse. Other alliance leaders had the same exact opportunity to bend my ear during this period. It’s a shame some didn’t even bother to try.

The relationship between us clearly didn’t work. While Cataclysm has aired as much dirty laundry as they can manage, the Syndicate has opted to take the high road. As I told both Cata and Paradise in the channel that night, I’m not going to invalidate your feelings based on what happened. However I will continue to call out distortions of what occurred. Relationships are 50/50. Anyone who believes that either party was singularly responsible for how the relationship ended is either pushing an agenda or not particularly emotionally intelligent.

WANA I think you made the decision to sign Eclipse shortly after the thing started, I don't think any exploration was done. And I am not even speculating😛

Cataclysm's move was not well thought-out, and you weren't clear enough to them about how you felt about the hit. I think no one questions you for cutting the tie, but then not defending your MDP ally using controversial arguments, and then add to that that you decide to sign Eclipse right away is just bad optics.

Short-term it makes sense to avoid a rolling, but long term I think this severely limit you in terms of FA manouvering. Infrastructure can be rebuilt, but reputation is not as easily recovered, and I personally think this  will be a stain that will be hard to remove.

[Arln]

On 12/15/2022 at 6:37 AM, Zed said:

 

When I wrote t$ treaties, I usually would explicitly spell out non-chaining clauses. I also prefer to spell out oA clauses, even though we have had past treaties and writers who say that any MDP has an implied oA clause.

The articles in this treaty between t$ and Eclipse, in large part, do cover what happened with Wayward.

But I remember a day, long ago, when we told an ally - hey look, there is a conflict that we do not have any business participating in. Let us not do that. Said ally then proceeds to intervene in that conflict, with little notice or warning, because of some grand plan they figured they were concocting. That led us to break the treaty, and stop the actions we were undertaking at the time. It also led to one of the greatest forum threads ever composed here.

Now imagine that happening, again, years later. I doubt other people would be thrilled by it either.

 

On 12/14/2022 at 10:34 PM, Hodor said:

Non-chaining has been assumed for most of PnW's existence. I am guessing they may have spelled out some of these terms explicitly as a hint to their recent affairs, but these articles don't actually cover what happened between t$ and Wayward so maybe it's just a new trend of making treaties explicit and clear? Tbh that's a trend I support.

 

On 12/15/2022 at 9:24 AM, Darth Ataxia said:

Spelling out treaties in detail is definitely something that needs to be more of a standard. Non-chaining especially can create some interesting scenarios.

 

I’m also hoping that this is possibly a move towards more AA centric stances on t$’s end though that obviously remains to be seen.

I just haven't seen nonchaining in a while. Maybe I missed a few somewhere.

[Charles Bolivar]

On 12/16/2022 at 8:39 AM, Agent W said:

 

 Alliance leaders had the same exact opportunity to bend my ear during this period. It’s a shame some didn’t even bother to try.

 

Gee...I wonder why.