On the recent NAP between Mensa and BoC

[Spite]

 

 

Hello all,


I’d like to write today a little bit about the recent NAP between the Brotherhood of Clouds and Mensa HQ, my side of the story, a look at the events immediately leading up to it, and my thoughts on why this and not a more violent path was taken. People familiar with my writing will probably know this will be fairly lengthy and rambling, for the sake of brevity you can skip to the conclusion if you like, though you’ll miss a lot of the “whyâ€. As always, this is my opinion and doesn't reflect the official position of Mensa HQ, which you can get from Pfeiffer if you want it. 


The story begins shortly after the end of the conflict between Socialist International and Mensa HQ. We were evaluating just how bad the diplomatic fallout would be from that particular expedition when we began to be hit by spy attacks, with no known source. Prior to this we had been hit sporadically by nations, as I’m sure you’ve all experienced. There are a couple of ex-Mensa members who don’t like us, and we witnessed a lot of people being somewhat grumpy about the Mensa-SI war, so we expected it was related.


Being a somewhat young alliance (just under three months old) our spy numbers were small. Firstly because you can only build so many spies in seventy days, and secondly because since many of us had nothing worth spying on (no missiles, significant numbers of ships) people were lazy about building them. So other than a few players with 50+ spies, our people were overwhelmed pretty quickly. I myself lost my twenty-something spies in the first couple of days, starting on the 17th of April.


Obviously we immediately knew from the timing of the attacks and their intensity that it was not just random attacks anymore, but an organised strike on Mensa. We assumed two possibilities: firstly that a group of OWF players, annoyed by our actions in the last war, had teamed up to “teach us a lessonâ€. Secondly that there was an alliance out there actively trying to attack us.

 

 

As I said in my last article, we are a war-based culture, and a lot of people were angry about these attacks. However when you don’t have a clear target, it’s hard to call for war. “Let’s attack people at random until we hit the right one!†has never been a popular battle cry through the ages. With remarkable discipline for a bunch of rabble, Mensa sat it out and I didn’t see any accusations, demands or bluster on the forums through the whole week long spy onslaught.


In that time several people were caught, from more than one alliance. In each case we dealt with it diplomatically, speaking to leaders of the alliances from whence the attacks came, until it became obvious that the organiser of said attacks was Ashland, the foreign affairs minister of the Brotherhood of Clouds. His exact motivations remain unclear to me to this day- in normal (read: eRep) circumstances I’d see it as softening up an enemy for an attack, but considering the NAP went through with nary a dissenting voice I’m assuming that pecking at us from the dark like a rabid chicken was always his plan, and once caught he didn’t really know what to do.


In any case, once we found out it was him, we armed up for a potential full scale war against Brotherhood of Clouds. Obviously this would be a whole different kettle of fish to fighting SI. BoC are an established alliance with a strong core group at the top, and any war would be incredibly destructive to both sides. In addition, BoC has several allies who may join in the battle if pushed to it by a declaration of war. Mensa membership was all for a suicidal charge to cause as much havoc as possible before going down, but we were aware that our already stained reputation might not survive another mauling.

 

 

From there, the NAP. After talking to various players from BoC’s allies, Pfeiffer established that a peaceful resolution was possible. We’d get the money back in damages, we wouldn’t have to fight BoC (and possibly allies like UPN who we’ve always had good relations with) and there would be no more spy attacks for three months.


So with that conclusion in place, why the article? Well because really I have a few unanswered questions, and no doubt many of you do as well. What was Ashland’s motivation to bring his alliance to the brink of outright war like this? Why did he use spies as a weapon instead of just attacking honestly and directly? Should Mensa have responded to these threats with a declaration of war instead of a diplomatic resolution? What impact will three months of guaranteed non-aggression have on the development of both Mensa and BoC?


Ashland’s motivation and choice of tactics are a big question for me, and one which I’d personally like him to answer. From the beginning of the game, I’ve had no direct conflict with Ashland. He sent us some guides when we first joined, and personally looked over our early cities to make sure we weren’t doing anything stupid. He spoke to me a few times on IRC to give me pointers. Even in the SI war although several BoC members voiced objections, he was never actively anti-Mensa. Was the friendly face just a cover for his real opinion?


The extent to which BoC was involved is another question. Clearly they were to some extent- their interior minister blew up five of my ships for a start. But why did they get involved, unless Ashland convinced them that the risk of starting a war with Mensa was worth doing $20m worth of damage over. The cost of the operation must have been huge as well, spy attacks don’t come cheap, especially when a lot of the time spies were being killed in groups of 2 or 3. It occurs to me that BoC saw Mensa as a possible threat, and decided to take action against us before we grew too big. But why then not follow through with a hot war? All of this is ironic since Mensa had no beef whatsoever with BoC until all of this began.


Many people in the NAP thread argued that Mensa should have responded with war. The standard response to this sort of thing seems to be “mind your own businessâ€, but I’m genuinely interested as an outsider why war in this case would have been a good idea? Remember, casus belli and the like are of almost no interest to me, since all they are is excuses for doing something you wanted to do anyway. We didn’t want a messy and brutal war against a nation with some fifteen missile-armed nations, so an alternative to that was always going to be good. In fact, we planned to put all wars on hold for a while until we properly understood the network of alliances, and hopefully got ourselves some friends of our own.

 

 

To the many individuals calling for war, would you have got involved? From what I can tell, in such a war Mensa would have been standing alone. At least, that is the scenario I was planning for. If you aren’t going to get involved in a war, did you want it to happen just for entertainment value? I can understand that, but it seems to be contrary to the culture I’ve witnessed so far on these forums.


Finally on the question of peace, and what comes from it, all I can say is “si vis pacem, para bellumâ€. We have three months to build ourselves, promote our younger players into higher ranges, secure ourselves in our position. I’m just going to put this chart out there, showing our current rate of military growth since 7th March. As you can see, we have more than trebled our military power in around 45 days, and if the trend continues we will see around 750 points added to our military score each week.

 

 

This peace will give us the time to grow properly into our role and position as a top ten alliance. Right now we are here by virtue of having a fast growing but tightly knit community. In three months we will probably have members from outside that community, and will have grown into an orbis community. Hopefully by then Ashland’s motives for attacking us, whatever they were, will be buried.


Kind regards,


Iain

[Apeman]

The same fight was brought to ESA with indeed spy attacks from different alliances. Turns out !@#$ orchestrated that as well. ESA ended up getting rolled so the spy attacks were to kill our defences while causing panic. I believe Mensa was days away from this same outcome.

 

The birth on !@#$ was upon us, to go down in orbis history. 3 months is a long time Mensa, I suggest you prepare. Asslands slithery tongue and claws run deep in this community. Topple the cirrus and watch his goons run. A few weeks ago he actually had the nerve to ask why we were still mad. He got his earful and the door slammed on his heels. BoC is a good alliance with a lot of good people. I wish them the best. Just two I don't like and they won't be forgotten when the sky releases the nuclear holocaust!

 

O/Mensa

O/BoC

[Phiney]

I can answer why I was disappointed immediately, war maketh the man. You really see an alliance true capabilities, and can gain notoriety. In turn, notoriety gains you allies. War is the best.

[Pfeiffer]

Phiney, I love war too...but Colin says otherwise:

 

 

This was an excuse to use a Kingsman gif. Because Kingsman.

[LordRahl2]

I can answer why I was disappointed immediately, war maketh the man. You really see an alliance true capabilities, and can gain notoriety. In turn, notoriety gains you allies. War is the best.

 

Well, I think some of his other questions would need an answer.  Like would we have had to lose our good relations with UPN over this?  Would other alliances have jumped in?

 

If so, we would have been ground down and lost...not a productive thing for an alliances rep right?  I would assume that we would not gain allies from foolishly getting into a war we had a chance of avoiding.

[Wayne]

defo could have took em!

[Phiney]

Well, I think some of his other questions would need an answer. Like would we have had to lose our good relations with UPN over this? Would other alliances have jumped in?

 

If so, we would have been ground down and lost...not a productive thing for an alliances rep right? I would assume that we would not gain allies from foolishly getting into a war we had a chance of avoiding.

Who knows. It'd be fairly likely my membership would want to join in in some way, since we joined the game there hasn't been a major war (3 or more alliances) we wernt involved in that I can recollect (I'm not counting the tac beat down due to being asked not to join in by tac). Tbh, based on the past if it ended up a beat down it wouldn't look great on upn and deic. That's why I like war, who knows what would have happened.

[LordRahl2]

Who knows. It'd be fairly likely my membership would want to join in in some way, since we joined the game there hasn't been a major war (3 or more alliances) we wernt involved in that I can recollect (I'm not counting the tac beat down due to being asked not to join in by tac). Tbh, based on the past if it ended up a beat down it wouldn't look great on upn and deic. That's why I like war, who knows what would have happened.

 

That is a fair point.  I was looking forward to the fight actually.

[Buorhann]

Quite a few of us were looking forward to the war.  Iain's right, it was smart of us to look for alternative ways of handling the aggression considering the odds were against us due to the potential assistance of allies and the loss of good diplomatic relations with an alliance.

 

But we were all preppred to strike and willing to throw down once Pfeiffer gave the call.

[Hysteria]

Reps and Time 

 

Couldn't have asked for a better deal

[BeachBunny]

Gotta love time and reps...

 

But mah poor Spais didn't deserve that death!

[Anneal]

Honestly, seventy days is more than enough time to get a sufficient amount of spies, and honestly you should be aware that once you have a massive amount of ships and missiles, you'll be a big target for spy ops, added with the fact that you're a top 10 alliance.

 

Sorry, but being 700+ score with 1 spy isn't going to cut it.

[MMike]

Time to build up some spies now then

[PigInZen]

Honestly, seventy days is more than enough time to get a sufficient amount of spies, and honestly you should be aware that once you have a massive amount of ships and missiles, you'll be a big target for spy ops, added with the fact that you're a top 10 alliance.

 

Sorry, but being 700+ score with 1 spy isn't going to cut it.

 

Some lessons need to be learned the hard way.

[Spite]

Honestly, seventy days is more than enough time to get a sufficient amount of spies, and honestly you should be aware that once you have a massive amount of ships and missiles, you'll be a big target for spy ops, added with the fact that you're a top 10 alliance.

 

Sorry, but being 700+ score with 1 spy isn't going to cut it.

Firstly, we didn't join this game and join an established alliance. We're working things out as we go.

 

Secondly, many of us did have a lot of spies, but other people had more, and the strongest players were taken out fast. Nobody had 700 score and 1 spy before all this happened, obviously a lot of us don't have many now because of the constant spy ops for the last week against us.

[Ashland]

Wait... you didn't know it was us til we got caught? Are you guys retarded? You can't figure out who is spying you when they do it every day for fifteen days? Good to know.

 

We were planning for war. And there are logs of me working under the assumption that you guys knew it was us after the second day because it should have been so obvious if you even glanced at our spy counts each day.

[Anneal]

Firstly, we didn't join this game and join an established alliance. We're working things out as we go.

 

Secondly, many of us did have a lot of spies, but other people had more, and the strongest players were taken out fast. Nobody had 700 score and 1 spy before all this happened, obviously a lot of us don't have many now because of the constant spy ops for the last week against us.

I've been checking Pfeffier when he was 700-850 score, he only had 1 spy along with multiple missiles.

 

>_>

[Buorhann]

Wait... you didn't know it was us til we got caught? Are you guys retarded? You can't figure out who is spying you when they do it every day for fifteen days? Good to know.

 

We were planning for war. And there are logs of me working under the assumption that you guys knew it was us after the second day because it should have been so obvious if you even glanced at our spy counts each day.

 

 

Just speaking from my perspective of what I know.  I was aware of the trails from the attacks, but like Iain stated - we were unsure why it led back to you as you never came off with having a issue with us.  Lesson learned.

[Ashland]

No no no. What I'm saying is that had you even GLANCED at BoC's spy numbers each day, it would have been !@#$ing obvious it was us. And didn't you guys say you had a data scraper for spies?

 

So which is it: Does Mensa lie about having data scrapers or are they too incompetent to use them?

[Buorhann]

That I cannot answer.  Why does it bother you?

[BeachBunny]

Hes got so many feelz

Edited April 24, 2015 by BeachBunny

[Spite]

No no no. What I'm saying is that had you even GLANCED at BoC's spy numbers each day, it would have been !@#$ obvious it was us. And didn't you guys say you had a data scraper for spies?

 

So which is it: Does Mensa lie about having data scrapers or are they too incompetent to use them?

You're extremely rude. We knew that there were BoC members involved, but as I said we knew there were people from other alliances too. Ergo it wasn't certain whether it was an alliance initiative, or something private. It turns out it was a bit of both. 

 

What made you change your mind about attacking us? It would have been an unpleasant experience for you I can assure you.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Spite

[Ashland]

It doesn't bother me. It just astonishes me that with fifteen days of spying AND a data scraper you can't figure out what alliance is spying you. Now everyone knows that they can spy you constantly and there's only a 1% chance Mensa will find out. Incredible.

 

You realize that DEIC doesn't have a data scraper and after four days they were able to figure out a SINGLE nation that was spying one of theirs. You only had to find out which alliance when about a dozen ops were coming from that alliance each day for fifteen days.

 

Even without a data scraper that's like hitting the broad side of a barn. With a data scraper you have no excuse.

[Pfeiffer]

I've been checking Pfeffier when he was 700-850 score, he only had 1 spy along with multiple missiles.

 

>_>

 

I had nearly 60 when the hits on me started, just for the record.

 

 

No no no. What I'm saying is that had you even GLANCED at BoC's spy numbers each day, it would have been !@#$ obvious it was us. And didn't you guys say you had a data scraper for spies?

 

So which is it: Does Mensa lie about having data scrapers or are they too incompetent to use them?

 

I knew it was you then, but choosing to act on that required additional information, which you know.

[Buorhann]

It doesn't bother me. It just astonishes me that with fifteen days of spying AND a data scraper you can't figure out what alliance is spying you. Now everyone knows that they can spy you constantly and there's only a 1% chance Mensa will find out. Incredible.

 

You realize that DEIC doesn't have a data scraper and after four days they were able to figure out a SINGLE nation that was spying one of theirs. You only had to find out which alliance when about a dozen ops were coming from that alliance each day for fifteen days.

 

Even without a data scraper that's like hitting the broad side of a barn. With a data scraper you have no excuse.

 

 

I don't know why you're so persistent with this when a few of us have already mentioned that we knew where the attacks were coming from, we were looking for additional information ( Such as "why" and "who is all involved or will be involved", etc ).

 

Also, how long does it take for you to pull the trigger on going to war?  15 days is a long time to wait, or did you !@#$ out ( As Kastor put it in his wonderful prediction thread )?