On this update in 2007, the Grand Global Alliance and its allies issued a "recognition of a state of war" with the Goon Order of Neutral Shoving. Within the next 24 hours, NoV, PoC, NTO, IRON, ODN, Illuminati, and FCO followed suit. Over the next few weeks, many others joined the fray.

I do not want you to argue. Don't argue about why it started, don't argue about why it ended. Arguing either accomplishes nothing.

I want you to think on the time since. Tell your story, read others' stories, keep your peace. I will try to set a good example in the following post.

On September 11, 2007, Schloss Eggenberg was already 7 months old, but its leader might as well have been born on September 10th. I had no idea what WUT was, I had no idea why we called this guy loldavi instead of his real name, I thought you could only buy 10 infrastructure per day, I had no idea why Anothony was the supreme UjP commander or why that was so funny. I was hardly a goon, only having a mask for Camp Meatspin (GOONS's academy subforum) I was all butthurt about no one from GOONS helping me get Construction so I could graduate, and I took Digiterra way too seriously (I still do).
But, if there was any way to make me come to Jesus, it was to wreck my little nation. I spied my little heart out on MHA, stayed awake until 2 and 3 AM every night for a month, and when Alastor told us it was time to get creative and either really surrender or "surrender" and keep in touch, I "surrendered." Since I had absolutely no knowledge of any alliance, I joined the first one I saw: Republican Organization for Liberty, a new alliance started by Nintenderek.
I got clearance from my IRON PoW Councillor DarkMistress to join, and since I had this totally awesome war guide written by Arcades057 just before he surrendered and joined NPO, Nintenderek made me Minister of Defense.
I registered as a Hidden Goon and began my dual-life. Oppressed former goon/manipulative subversive. I really was both.
A merger propelled me to MoD of Purge, a small and stumbling rebirth alliance led by a triumvirate of good friends. Because Purge was a member of TPF's Overlord's Protectorate Pact, I gained access to information of value. When TPF and Valhalla jumped BAPS, GOONS old and close ally, I felt useful. GOONS/BAPS needed TPF's target lists, and I was able to hand them over. GOONS knew Atlantis was dead meat before Atlantis knew.
When Purge's gov't collapsed after its merger attempts were discovered by TPF, I was able to hold things together by a thread, and along with Kharn420 we tried to rehab Purge under a TPF viceroy. When it collapsed, I went on to Browncoats where I tried to cool my heels for a while.
The Dark Vows had been signed recently then, and I needed a trade circle, so I went over to the Black Conclave forum. GOONS was still over 50 members then, and still had a Black Senator even though they had gone perma-peace. When CIS's Sharduke sanctioned the GOONS senator with the reason (something like) "Regards, NpO" the Hidden Goon in me went to work. I wrote a 2 page mega-flame against infringements upon Black, the CIS puppets, and generally anything else that might stir a Black response and piss off CIS. I learned a lot about what people in power do to shut up people that aren't then, and generally just from being a member of Browncoats.
When I left Browncoats, I went to ZI. I thought about destroying Schloss Eggenberg, but a friend (if a moderator can be a friend) assured me that that was a rather drastic response. So, I looked thigs over and figured that TOP (a) was an alliance I had never pissed off and ( had lots of former GOONS in it. So, I applied to TOP and hung out there for a while. All this time, GOONS dwindled, and time proved to be no healer of the wars of the Unjust War; not for GOONS, not for our enemies. I still held out hope, and reported every snippet of the least signifigance to the Hidden Goonerie. I cannot say how widespread the effort or hope was--none of us could see anything at the Hidden Goonierie except what we said ourselves, or what was said to us by gov. I played the odds and hoped that out of 1000 GOONS, many had remained dedicated like me.
TOP was a great place, but I had picked it without regard to its politics. Even things that seemed commonsense to me--like the suggestion that TOP make decisions based on its own interests, not NPO's--drew gruff replies from gov and made me uncomfortable there. I had to leave, and I did.
Not long before I left top, the last government of GOONS, Alastor and Sarafina, disbanded GOONS. The Hidden Goonerie was also immediately erased. With no purpose--no fight, no alliance--I destroyed my nation in August 08.
A few days later, the noCB War began.
If I've been called a troll, and I have, it's because I was. And as a troll, I couldn't pass up the noCB War's opportunities for some serious material. In order to regain access to these forums, I reincorporated Schloss Eggenberg so fast that I misspelled its name "Schloss Eggneberg" then proceeded to PM mods on the last active users list for an hour trying to get remasked. Later that night, I was asked to roll with other retirees in this goofy trolltrain Vox Populi.
Our genuine stance attracted thousands. Hundreds joined Vox Populi, thousandss more joined us in their minds. I had a reason to exist again, and I lived as I had not lived before. Not for revenge, but for rebirth. Not for something doomed to death, but for something bound to life.


In all this, I could not forget my origins. I have said often that everything I am is a creation of the UnJust War. The man before you is the result of just one more war that started 2 years ago today. In a matter of weeks, I went from a clueless meatspinner to an OWF junkyard bulldog and backroom dealer. I've done things I regret, but I cannot regret the sum of those things--I can't regret my being, the things I've accomplished, the things I've effected, the things I've created or killed. They are all part of a stream of time created on this day.

I made a lot of friends, I made a lot of enemies. But, as I grow older, I see more and more that even the most bitter enemy on Bob is a friend. I've felt my edge slipping as more and more of the old faces go. The names that once held so much power are greying, the new people don't seem to matter though they do.

What did the UnJust War create in you? Where have you been; what have you seen; how were you shaped; how have you shaped things?

As such, at this moment in time, Schattenmann does hereby issue recognition of a state of remembrance initiated by the UnJust War.

Unfortunately Inertia was not incorporated until January of 08 and I missed the fun. However I will watch this topic with interest as the time period interests me greatly. Thank you Schatt for that great post.

I cannot comment on the unjust war's personal effect on me, but Schatt that was a great read.
I am curious though, if GOONs disbandment left you with no fight, and no purpose to retain your nation, and then the NoCB war/vox populi brought your interest back because you could resume your fight, why are you still here now? Things are much better then when GOONs disbanded, and there is once again noone left to fight.

I am 100% certain there will be my friend. Every hero needs a villain.

Excellent read. I wish I would have been in the war myself. I narrowly missed it (OOC: Marine Corps boot camp) and wish I could have been a part of it. This war, and other events that took place in the three-four months before it, have left a nasty hole in my personal CN history books. I enjoy reading such fine prose as it helps me learn what happened during my absence... It always seems like I missed a lot in those few months. Well, I guess this is Bob we are talking about though.

Thanks for that though Schattenmann. I quite enjoyed it.

Excellent read Shantamantan, not having existed at the time, it is nevertheless a very interesting period of CN history for me. One can say that the old wars continue in some way to shape everyone, even those that were not around for them.

I enjoyed destroying UJP, glad to have helped the cause.

Meh. History proved that the UJP wasn't the real problem, it was a small group of individuals within specific alliances. As for the era that followed, it was no better and in some ways it was worse.

FYI: I always disliked the name "Unjust Path" because of the implication that anyone that opposed them automatically stood for the opposite, that being justice, regardless of how evil or unjust they actually were.

I've given my specific recollections about the war almost too many times, so I'll spare everyone this round. Suffice to say that there are some things that I did back then that I would do differently now, and some I would do all over again and for which I make no apologies.

The Holy Empire was founded the day after UJW ended.

OOC: You have no clue how many times I've been asked whose reroll I am because of that luck.

The Unjust War didn't really impact me at all. I was on ZI lists before it, I was on ZI lists after it. CIS was widely disliked and mocked before it, CIS was widely disliked and mocked after it. It was a war for power, nothing more.

On behalf of the Finnish Cooperation Organization, I gave the order to attack GOONS on this date, alongside BLEU and Nordreich. We were shortly countered by CMEA, a GOONS ally of equal strength.

I do admit I miss the old GOONS and I think the era that followed was nowhere near as interesting as the times before the UJW's end.

I was thinking 'I hope both sides can kill each other here', throwing together as it did the two alliances who were the closest thing we had to enemies (GGA and GOONS), and the silliness on both sides that led to a war. Shortly afterwards we were preparing ourselves to help TOP with whatever they decided to do, which was almost war with Brown. In the end the Unjust fell apart due to the infamous 'OOC attacks' (the first time that phrase was used widely), only one side was badly damaged and we had to put up with another several months of GGA.

Soon after the end of the war (the 27th Sept) Citadel was signed; at almost 2 years it's one of the most successful and longstanding blocs in existence, although we've had some slight changes in membership over that time. We also joined Continuum that December, which didn't turn out to be such a good decision; the history of our disagreements with much of the rest of that bloc have been well documented and I won't go into detail here, but from a personal point of view that year was mostly political frustration and material nation building (including some time as the head of Grämlins' tech import). We did have one major fight – Polaris – which smashed out some old hatred and resulted in much better relations in the aftermath (which have since cooled off again, which is a shame).

My history since leaving Continuum was pretty quiet until getting involved with a potential defensive coalition centred around VE during their cancellation/realignment drama in March, and then with what became Karma when that threat re-emerged in April. We all know how that piece of the story turned out.

My dear Shantamantan, you're awesome as usual. Good read.


As for my story of those times:
I and four valiant friends founded AHEAD (that had another name at the time) in August, 2007. My nation was less than three months old at the time, and I hadn't been in any other alliance.
In the first days of September we were having trouble with the Mushroom Kingdom, that had given refuge to a rogue nation that had been attacking mine; the MK was openly threatening to raid our entire (tiny) alliance, and in fact they probably would have, if we had been in range.
Then the UJW started, it quickly became evident that the MK was going to be flattened and we were just happy about it. Very happy (lolMK... )

Eloquent.

Nice post on the whole. I won't comment on its politics b/c I'm not sure where my new alliance stands on all things

0/ Schattenmann

At the time war broke, The SuperFriends was four days old. At the time, it consisted of Fark, RIA and ASC. When war broke out, we joined in on the side of the Unjust Path because of ASC's treaty with GOONS, among other less immediate reasons. I was still in a stint where I was out of government at the time, but I wound up stepping in to organize RIA's war effort anyway, along with Kaiser and with some assistance from C-zom and Emperor Whimsical. It was also the first war on the new forums so I thought I'd try my hand at saving clutter by taking all of the usual polls that pop up during war time and stick them in one topic with the multipoll feature so other people wouldn't make a million polls (it didn't really work, but the name I created in the poll for the UjP side, The Unjust Highway, stuck. I called the other side Blue Team for obvious reasons because they couldn't think of a name for themselves until ~ came out late in the war).

SF drew GGA as an opponent, one we proceeded to beat to a bloody pulp while sustaining essentially no damage ourselves, despite being on the technical losing side. That was one of the most entertaining matchups I've experienced. We managed to get out with reps so low they might as well have been non-existant and no other terms, an anomaly in a war filled with brutal terms across the board. Ultimately the experience cemented the fledgling SF and set us on the path we've taken ever since. It was hard not to take a lesson on the importance of trust and unity from that war and I think the timing of our birth had as profound an impact
on our guiding philosophy and subsequent success as a bloc as the initial membership did.

For a lot of people, the UjW represents the end of an era and is characterized by death, either of communities or enemies. For me it marks the birth of the entity that has given me the most enjoyment out of this world.

I joined Invicta directly after the Unjust War, as a result largely of drama that occurred in my first alliance during UJW. Some of those people are still around, so I won't go into details.

However, I supported tilde; at the time I joined Invicta, the alliance I had the most contact with other than Invicta was UPN, which was one of the lead alliances for tilde. That old friendship has had something of an impact on Purple history.

Cool story, bro. :allears:

Twofold: At the time I first deleted, I was still firmly a member of GOONS; nothing I did to that point was not influenced by my desire for a ressurection/resurgence, so, when it was given up, the rug was yanked out from under me. When I came back, it was temporarily, as it was for Doitzel and others who had deleted just prior to the noCB War. The evolution of Vox kept us around, and in that time I was for the first time playing for myself, with no secret guiding hand. With this rebirth into self-fulfilment and self-determination, my existence is defined by me. There is a lull now after the long war, and I have receded a bit myself (you'll also notice many other have, Doitzel, Sponge, kingzog, etc we've all put it on autopilot a bit since April). But now I stand on my own foundation, and I'll stick around as long as I've got something to keep myself busy.

Aw, Hal, be a sport! How'd your experiences then shape your course?

Beautiful.




In both of these stories, isn't it cool to see how the multitudes of single shifting grains amount to dunes over time? Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives. Very interesting, thanks.

I see you reading Tautology, where'd history take you when you left GOONS? It's a wild ride from GOONS refugee to RoK Triumvir, I imagine.

Back then, I was something of a mindless grunt who started seeing some specks of light during the NoCB war.

This war? It had my utmost and serious attention.

A good thread, and an interesting story Schatt.


My own was far less interesting. I was part of the NPO up until around the time MK was founded. It just happened to line up that they were founded around the same time Anthony was expelled from the Order. For months prior to this I had been feeling out of place as a part of the Order, and we all knew something of the sort would happen eventually, there were too many tensions in the upper ranks between Anthony and just about everyone else except Moo for it to not happen. In this time I had come to see the jrcommers as the Military Command at the time was called (don't ask) as my real alliance, and stayed primarily to help them. Remember, I was in military command during that time period where NPO was starting a war every month or so (or if not starting, participating in one), there was a significant workload for everyone pretty much constantly. But anyway, the point is I had told Anthony long before if he got expelled for any reason, I would be following him shortly. Most of the rest of the military command had made similar commitments.

So Anthony gets expelled. About 24 hours after talking with my friends in the alliance, I eventually follow through on my prior commitment and leave the NPO. Upon me leaving several others make up their minds and follow suit. However despite having been in the NPO I had had almost no contact with GOONS, I leave the talking to outsiders to others for the most part. Let's face it I am the least diplomatically inclined person I know. As a result, Anthony decided to go to GOONS but I didn't have any driving need to be a part of them. On the other hand, I had a friend from that other moon game, who had joined MK upon its founding. MK had been founded very recently (like within days of Anthony's expulsion). As at this point NPO was the only alliance I had ever been in, I took the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of an alliance, and applied.

Shortly thereafter, I'm working in Military command for the Kingdom, and just generally doing my own thing. Fastforward a bit, MK gets an upgrade from protectorate to MADP with GOONS, and becomes a part of the Unjust Path. We were all feeling pretty good at this point, having just forged the bloc, there was all the fun, the !@#$posting, everything you expect in the leadup to a major war.

Then the war itself hits, earlier than anticipated and with people on the opposing side that were expected to remain neutral or side with us. It's looking bad, but hey it's not absurdly bad odds yet, just mostly bad. Of course, then as everyone knows the cry of "OMGOOCATTACKS" goes out. The whole Bilrow affair blows up and into the UJP supporting OOC attacks. TPF pulls out immediately, getting white peace in doing so, turning the situation from bad to hopeless. That leaves everyone else scrambling to get peace as best they can.

I remember how surprised I was when as we were trying to get peace Archon asked me to join the peace talks. At this time GunneR was LHT, but was apparently mostly innactive, I had no place in upper government, I was just another military commander. I helped organize !@#$, but I had no special position. But when it came down to the peace talks it was just Archon and myself along with the NpO Government. Mind you, Ive said before I am the least diplomatically inclined person I know and am very surprised I didn't screw it up and get MK on EZI during these talks, but apparently I was wanted to help determine what reps would be payable by MK. Shortly following the conclusion of negotiations, I was promoted to LHT, and was left trying to organize an alliance that was just hurt pretty badly into rebuilding and paying reps.

And well, the rest is pretty much nothing. The leadup to and ending of the UJW signaled my personal transition from a Militarily focused individual to a banking focus. I stayed as head of the treasury up until RL caused me to have to take a break, at which point I resigned from MK, and got beat on by the NPO for a little over a year for my transgression of leaving them. As a result I more or less completely missed the NoCB war. I finally got off PZI just before the Karma war started, and have been semi-active since.

Firstly you missed the most important flag:

As for UjW I was getting blue balled waiting to enter whilst NPO, and finally getting the disappointment of going up against GOLD.

[OOC]Oh and I was churning out daily target lists on UjP and friends;

• Atlantic Shadow Confederation
• BANG
• BAPS
• FARK
• FOK
• Gen[m]ay
• GOD
• GOLD
• Golden Sabres
• GOONS
• =LOST=
• \m/
• Mushroom Kingdom
• OFS
• RIA
• R&R
• Scotland Forever
• TOOL
• TPF
• UNION
• We Are Perth Army

[/OOC]

Also had one of the best DoW's ever from =LOST=

According to those charts, the then members of SF had 349 offensive wars and 22 defensive wars between the three of us at the time you drew those up. That pretty much matches my recollection of how well the respective sides did on our front.

Also, King Penchuk being an MCXA member got a chuckle out of me.

o/ UJP

I founded the Alabama Nation about a month and a half before UJW. For a few days everything was ho-hum with the exception of Legion getting rolled. The first thing I really noticed about the greater politics of Bob was that the Initiative was dominant, untouchable, united, and permanent. Then the Moldavi Rebellion and "modgate" controversies happened. I had no idea what any of it meant, but I thought I did. I figured I could read the history books and stuff and just "get it." So I made a general fool of myself on the forums. Anyway, a month of tension, excitement, and verbal sparring went by. Since then I've been around for two years, and I've yet to see a month like it. The verbal sniping was everywhere, yet the leaders all hugged and proclaimed that there would be no war. Every few days a rumor of war would go around, and the whole world would stay up late for a night or two.

The war itself was almost a letdown after the suspense of the prologue. I rolled an IRON nation alongside Calderone and Cyber King... Poor guy was 17 inactive when we anarchied him. TOOL did great for a few days... We were a very low ANS alliance, and IRON's lower ranks weren't great. The big boys were occupied with GOONS and \m/. Myself and another TOOL were attacked one afternoon by an IRON nation who failed to anarchy either of us... We got him that night. But towards the end, IRON was able to divert more nations and aid to our front. Peron anarchied Calderone and me in one fell swoop (He ended up being Cal's boss in the Karma War, ironically).

Then the whole end-of-the-war thing happened. I must confess that I scratch my head when people speak of it as if it were the turning point. Let's be honest with ourselves now: We had lost. The war was becoming a rout, and even idiot newbie me could see it. It just would have taken a bit longer and everyone would've blown a bit more stuff up. ~ would still have had their way with the ones they really wanted to punish. \m/ and GOONS would not have lived happily ever after. Militarily, most of UJH seemed to be in disarray. \m/ was falling apart, though actions taken after the withdrawals certainly sped that up. Many GOONS government decided to destroy their nations and go out with a bang that was not of an explosive nature. They KNEW it was all over, and decided to go out with a bang. I've heard it said that UJP could have somehow pulled it out if not for the withdrawals due to some miraculous tactic or event that would have changed it all if the war had gone on for just a few more days. This is wishful thinking at best. Let's get one thing straight: On Planet Bob, the side with the numbers wins. The bigger the war and the longer it goes on, the more true this is, because isolated cases of succeeding against the numbers are swallowed up in the greater conflict. You do not come back from the kind of numbers disadvantage we were at at that point. It does not happen. The one shot UJP had would be for the same situation to happen in reverse, causing ~ to break up and withdraw. Even that would have been only a temporary respite, because UJP and her allies were whipped, and her foes would still have existed and been at full strength. I also cannot comprehend how the event leading to the withdrawal has been downplayed and even justified by some. But that's been done to death.

-Bama

[ooc]The dates are in the url's.[/ooc]

Those posted are the ones from either the 13th/14th typically I believe.

Also incase anyone wondered;

Red = Anarchy
Blue = Peace Mode
Orange = Near ZI

When looking at them you also had to remember that GOONS and a few others used multiple AA's at that point such as Stupid Sexy Flanders, so their stats will be off a bit.

44 Soviet Canuckistan 38466.486 4562.59 625.98 20 1:1 3:1 2 3

I am history's greatest warrior.

Everyone knows babyjesus grows up to shoot swords out of his mouth at the End Times. Can't really beat that.

The Unjust war was the most fun I ever had on Planet Bob. I was in RIA at the time, and had been for about 9 months. We at RIA had been hotly debating the SF bloc. I knew that I was personally against it at the time due to how ASC had signed a pact with GATO, then cancelled it and signed with GOONS like 3 days later. This made my not trust them, but soon I was working closely with them.

I was just a regular member at the time, but I remember Delta coming to me and asking me to help with the update blitz due to our War Advisor being largely inactive at the time. I didn't even know who are target was, but I soon found myself invited to #ggaint about 2 hours before update. We (being RIA, ASC, FARK and another small alliance that disbanded) talked for a long time about how to devide up the target. It was decided that because ASC had more upper nations, that they would take the first 3 pages of GGA nations, and FARK and RIA would alternate a page at a time for targets. This took about 30 minutes.

Then, I knew I needed help. I had to prioritize targets for about 200 nations and assign them attackers in an hour and a half. Me, Delta1212 and C-zom planned prioritzed all our targets in about 30 minutes, then assinged attacked to them in about 15. We tried to help GOONS nations that were being besieged, and I think we did a good job. I remember watching the blitz, and I was so proud to see something I had planned turn out so well. I haven't looked at the numbers, but I recall RIA having a good blitz for an alliance their size.

I remember the tension in RIA at the time. Superfriends was doing so good in the war, we were actually gaining strenght and absolulely crushing GGA. But day after day NPO stayed out of the fight. I knew that at any update NPO was going to attack us. I watched every night for a week the war screen, fearing the NPO blitz that never came. When they finally attacked GOLD, I was honestly shocked. It made no sense, we were the best front of the entire war. We were the only ones gaining NS, why didn't they attack us?

I now suspect that they didn't want to help NpO out, and joined the war only marginally for just that reason. I couldn't comprehend it at the time, but I was thankful.

That week long war was the most fun I ever had on Planet bob, and though I didn't sleep too much, if I could go back and do it all again, I would have done it the same.

Ever watch Goodfellas? Toward the end of the film, when Henry is reminiscing about the old times:

Henry Hill: [narrating] Anything I wanted was a phone call away. Free cars. The keys to a dozen hideout flats all over the city. I bet twenty, thirty grand over a weekend and then I'd either blow the winnings in a week or go to the sharks to pay back the bookies.
[Henry leaves the witness stand and speaks directly to the camera]
Henry Hill: Didn't matter. It didn't mean anything. When I was broke, I'd go out and rob some more. We ran everything. We paid off cops. We paid off lawyers. We paid off judges. Everybody had their hands out. Everything was for the taking. And now it's all over.
Henry Hill: [narrating] And that's the hardest part. Today everything is different; there's no action... have to wait around like everyone else. Can't even get decent food - right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I'm an average nobody... get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.

I think that sums it up pretty well...I miss the action. The PCs and the other raiding alliances today are nothing like \m/. They don't interest me. I think I climbed the ladder at Ragnarok all the way up to the top in some ways just to prove that my Triumvirate at \m/ wasn't a fluke. When Ragnarok started to become a bad night time drama I went to a place that reminded me of the old days. So I guess you could say that when you talk about the past two years and what motivated me, look to Henry Hill.

I was too young and inexperienced for the UJW to have affected me a whole lot, however it did affect me in a couple of ways. For one, I made a hidden goon my defense minister. The main thing I remember from UJW though, which seems ironic considering how things went, is Doitzel coming into #GOLD-CN to talk to GOLD government to find out if we would be declaring or not, and telling us we were dead if we did. As it turns out, not only was Doitzel right, but I joined an alliance he helped found a little bit later. It was called Vox Populi, perhaps you all have heard of it?

I'll give you that UJP was going to lose either way in the long run, however I blame this more on the mindsets of those involved, and the lack of organization on some alliances. \m/ in particular was a huge headache for me (as MK and \m/ were sharing the same targets, and \m/ did not seem to understand the meaning of staggering).

However numbers themselves do not win the war if it is relatively close. Had everyone in UJP acted optimally there would have been a chance for victory, I'm pretty sure on our side we had bigger warchests in general, and more active members. In a long term war this could have resulted in a stalemate at worst, a victory at best. But with the way things stood it looked like a losing war, and this led to the suicidal sentiment among many of the alliances involved, and the thought that any surrender was better than PZI of the entire alliance, thus leading to the cascade of surrenders.

Oh boy, the disorganization of wartime \m/. Something I would like to forget.

My favorite part was Virillus denying they were disorganized when I !@#$%*ed at him, and claimed that he knew of no overlying strategy involved with picking targets, insisting that doing things the way there were was actually helping.



Of course this is ancient history now. Virillus has assured us all he is a very competent leader in his current alliance.

So it goes with everyone who doesn't listen to me.

Ah, The Cleansing... It was the culmination of months of work and political maneuvering. It was the realisation of my political dreams (at the time), the traditional alliances of the world banding together to drive out the invading scourge. Seeing IRON, GGA, and Polar as the knights on white horses leading the charge against the GOONic scum was something we toiled ceaselessly to see. I regret the final outcome of that toil, but I do not regret what we did in that war. The only alternative would be the same thing happening at a later time, or else millions more NS tacked onto what became the Continuum / "the Hegemony".

Anyway... good times. 9/19 is a better date for celebrating, though, if you ask me.

This is about as boring as all my stories so I have the courtesy to provide a painless way to pass over this post.

Louisaland lost its communications system a day or two before the Modgate thing and so my country was under benevolent foreign occupation. Or, to put it in the local burkaninja language: a broken "computer monitor" forced me to hire a "babysitter". So, and because I was just a clueless little member, I missed the whole building up to the war, and also the start of it, with the "OOC attack" events etc (I still have no clue what happened there, but I can guess).

But then the satellites went back to business as a new "computer monitor" was bought, and Louisaland returned to native control after about 7 weeks, which was a week or so after the war started. And then suddenly I found that Louisaland was in war with five people that used to be allies a month before. There was no time really to ask why (also I was too busy trying to figure out the hilarity that had made me Banned in the GOONS forum while I was away) so I just sat down to fight, fight, fight some more. I have forgotten those things and am too lazy to check the Louisaland wiki but eventually after about 5 more wars IRON failed to stagger me and I built a Peace Mode energy field to shield my poor little ZI:d country.

And then the months passed and friends started disappearing from Bob until there was just two handfuls or so left, and then I came to our new forum one day and found that we had been disbanded. I stayed in my AA for a month or two (I have forgotten the dates because my old computer died this spring and I lost all those things) until some charming fellows from TOP seduced me into their wicked stat-collecting ways, and with that my year of war ended.

Moral of the story: buy a new computer screen as soon as the old one starts to flicker. Also buy a new computer as soon as the old one starts to smell like burning plastic. I wish that I knew that before and then I would still have my pretty little country.

251 Louisaland 21482.731 2833.68 280.29 0 0 0

God I was great when under babysitter control

/returns to retirement

Not that it matters anymore, but I was getting the same story from him. I was concentrating on getting morale up, got daily (sometimes more often) briefings and of course sat in the UjP leadership channel once I became a Tri.

FYI: I actually laughed when you said something about warchests. At best warchests were periodically yelled about at \m/ but few actually got serious about maintaining one and large warchests were rarer still. By the time of the Bilrow incident we had people already starting to run out of money (Virillus was working on trying to pull them back into peace mode to reload) and while we as fair number of us had pulled in some nice cash from ground battles, I don't know that we would have lasted more than another couple of weeks before being exhausted. I personally would have been ZIed or darn near had the war lasted much longer as I was heavily outnumbered in my fights.

That's another thing. \m/ by my calculations was outnumbered a bit over 3:1 in its fights. Our only hope was to knock out an alliance or two from off our backs and hope that it created a domino effect. There was no scenario where we would have "won", just fought our enemies to a draw. Not without help that wasn't coming.

Ha. Ha. We didn't and if you ask me there are other dates that are better celebrated. Like the day the NPO "gaming club" kicked you to the curb and the date they made sure you didn't get settled into Polaris. That one showed taste and good judgment.

See how comments like yours end up in tit-for-tat? Let it go.

Sponge was in charge of target assignments for UJW. He didn't care about GGA, as he has said in other posts on these forums. That's probably a simpler explanation.

Interesting post and thread schatt, I hope more people contribute to it in as honest and open a manner as you did.

I was a Feldmarscall in Norden Verein at the time, and was coordinating my divisions needs, (lots of battle reports, lots of aid, lots stuff...)

There's no denying that the mindsets hurt. I wasn't "in the know" at the time, but I've heard since then that GOONS in particular had consigned themselves to the scrap heap before the war had even begun, and resolved to go out with a two-part bang. It's also been widely admitted by \m/ folks that large portions of the alliance just didn't care and were only there for the raiding. The UJP alliances in general didn't take things that seriously, and those two supposed warrior alliances probably took things the least seriously of all.

After a few days it wasn't relatively close. People kept piling in on the ~ side, and nobody came in for UJH. Almost without exception, wars are won and lost before they start. The stats were fairly even for a couple days, but at that point ~ had tons of allies waiting in the wings, and UJH had none. The Big Bad said in his memoirs (OOC: they're in his blog) that UJP leadership wasn't willing to do the diplomatic legwork to win the real war, while Sponge was. That certainly seems to be right on the mark.

If a war isn't won and lost before it starts, it's won and lost in the first few days. Once the masses pile on one side, it's over. The only example I can think of where a much larger force was fought to anything even slightly resembling a standstill was GWI, and that was against probably the most ineffectual coalition in history. ~ was fairly well organized and united against UJP. UJP had more experienced warriors, but even if all of those warriors had played for keeps, it wouldn't have mattered. Experience, aptitude, and organization are important, but numbers win wars. If you've got overwhelming NS and nukes, you win. There's no such thing as winning a guerilla war. If you're good you can do a TPF and pay reps but survive with most of your active core intact... If you're extemely lucky, you can do a FAN and get off with white peace when your enemies kill each other. But you do not "win" a long guerilla war. If you've got good warriors with good warchests, you can do some damage on the way down, and maybe make it costly to keep you at war. That's the best you can do. It was even worse then before the MP.

If the numbers had stayed close and UJP had cared, who knows. But Sponge and friends did the diplomatic legwork to get overwhelming numbers on their side and keep people away from UJP. Polar was ridiculed for it's foreign policy that some said amounted to no more than "LOL U WANT TREATY?", but it won them the war.

-Bama

Okay maybe it was exclusively GOONS and MK who had warchests, which makes the situation quite a bit different.

\m/ was the shock troops. Fantastic for quadding people and in general picking targets to ruin. Individual fighters became near legendary in their ability to inflict damage against superior numbers.

Fighting over the long haul? That was a bit problematic.

I like to make the comparison between Valhalla and \m/. Both are/were arse kickers. Both conducted raids pretty regularly in the lower ranks (\m/ even the upper ranks). Valhalla however placed a major emphasis on individual warchests, even when NPO was there to back them up, whereas \m/ always figured on NPO for aid and was suddenly deprived of it. In two similar fights, \m/ in GW IV and Valhalla in GW VI (Karma War), each initially hit an alliance and then was radically counterattacked. Valhalla fought its enemies basically to a draw, \m/ did not. While you can talk about the motivation of the enemy forces in both cases as a factor (NpO wanted nothing less than \m/'s destruction), for me the decisive factor was Valhalla's warchests. We took absolutely appalling amounts of damage and was still dropping nukes on target from infra levels that were rapidly approaching ZI.

\m/

Total Nations: 360
Total Wars: 902
Total Offensive Wars: 269
Total Defensive Wars: 583

Yep, I'd say we were under heavy counterattack all right.

Fun times.

* Duncan King waves to Schatt.

On April 15, 2007, I founded an alliance called ICON. We were a byproduct of GWIII and the Initiative-Aegis divide that had divided the world at that time. Over the summer of 2007, we spread our diplomatic wings, making treaties for friendship and voluntary aid and defense with any an all alliances we liked. We were independent and basically neutral, as our charter banned the signing of military treaties.

Things went along okay until late August of 2007. Tensions were starting to heat up as the two poles that had developed, ~ and UJP, intensified their efforts to bait each other. Although we had been relatively free of attacks in the months before, being above the common tech raiding threshold of 5 members, we soon began to fear for our safety. The waning days of summer saw larger alliances like Golden Sabres and Order of Feudalistic Security make aggressive advances against smaller, unprotected, alliances, some times riding to the level of an all out war. ICON itself was bullied in this way by OFS when I was told by Gonzoczar, an old friend from GATO, that if ICON didn't merge with OFS, we'd be attacked. It was well known that the only reason GS and OFS could get away with this kind of conduct was GOONS having their backs.

Faced with the escalating tensions, we had to decide what to do. Did we become totally neutral and assume a GPA like existence with no treaties or did we compromise our independence a bit and become a protectorate? Although my personal political opinion in this world is very close to neutrality (although I love a good war), I knew that if we sat this one out, ICON, which was already beginning to die from inactivity, would probably stagnate more and become isolated in neutrality.

Once we decided that we would become a protectorate, the government of ICON set out to find a protector and to amend its charter to allow a protectorate. I sent requests to many alliances whom ICON had had contact with, among them MHA, LoSS, and NATO. NATO's offer was basically we could do whatever we wanted as long as we didn't embarrass them, so we went with them. As a protectorate, we were able to breathe a little easier, but I knew that it wouldn't last long as a war was still coming. Being a warrior sort when it came down to it and resenting GOONS for what their cronies had done, I knew that I personally could not sit out the war. After some soul searching in ICON, the government decided that if NATO asked us to help them fight against, we would be there for them. GOONS was one of the few alliances that I actually hated, so if NATO had fought for UJP, we would have likely canceled the protectorate and sit out the war.

Of course now know that NATO did join ~ and enter the UJP war against GOONS. ICON entered the war a couple days later at three in the afternoon because I had to work and the rest of the government was either out or in another time zone, making update impossible. I do have to say that the war was a blast. Our MoD, Lord Shazbot, did the target lists and was really good with them. We had very high participation in the war and soon began to shred small GOONs nations. We had something like half of our opponents go to ZI and several delete their nations. I fought a nation alongside Brian Reimer and we had our nuclear cherries popped together (neither of us were nuclear yet). We racked up quite a few POWs, a couple of whom jumped into peace mode, but most served their time and left. One of our most memorable opponents was Schatt, who we enjoyed jumping on.

Once the targets began to dry up, in third wave or so, we pulled out of the war and began to rebuild. Lord Shazbot was in charge of recovery aid but didn't actually believe in sending aid, so our fighters got very little aid from the government to thank them for our service. The remaining members of government did what we could, but the rest of us had fought and me and BR had been nuked. I never forgave myself for not being able to aid the fighters of ICON. I've always believed that good service in war should be rewarded monetarily.

With the singular purpose of the war gone, ICON again began to descend into stagnancy. Internal disputes that had quieted during the war flared and we had some more resignations. After a couple more months of limping along, I finally decided that I couldn't take it anymore and attempted to annex the alliance into NATO. When the annexation vote failed, I left anyway. Most of the rest of the government did as well and the alliance disbanded the first week of December 2007.

When I look back on that time, I regret very little. I was happy to fight GOONS and I'm not sad that they are gone. I do think that this world is better without UJP and that a world created by UJP would have been much worse. My main regret is that I went to NATO. I had a couple other offers that, in retrospect, would have been a much better fit (I was ex GATO trying to govern an \m/ spinoff, so my tenure in NATO was one of constant fighting with other members of the government and other members of the alliance). But joining NATO got me in with tC and allowed me to lead a top 20 alliance. It also allowed me to become Duncan King, someone you may not like but have probably heard of. I don't regret ICON disbanding and I firmly believe that it would have died sooner if it wasn't for the war.

In the grand scheme of things, my experience in the Unjust War didn't mean much. I was government in a small alliance and did not choose targets, assign waves, or do any of the diplomatic work. I was simply there. But now that the war was two years ago, fighting in UJW is something I am proud of.

The UJW was a mess for me. I was the MoFA of a mid size alliance that had mostly verbal agreements with our friends ( Neuva Vida and GOLD) and no real treaties besides a MASH MDP (I think). PLUS knew that it was time to decide which of the two spheres are the lesser of two evil and we thought that throwing our support behind "~" was the right choice. We could have sat it out and went along our merry little way until we died from inactive overdose but choose to defend NV no matter what. Although we only had a ToA with them at the time it was common knowledge to members of PLUS and NV that we will alway be there if the other asks. We were brothers at the time because alot of NV members joined PLUS after SyN disbanded and that we would attack any rogue that hit either of us when we were too small to really defend ourselves. So on Sept 12 we declared war on CDS nations attacking NV nations and GOD, GOD wasn't our main target just an alliance that we would be able to attack if we were needed. I didn't like how the whole GOD thing went down and I always felt bad about that one but CDS on the other hand was the most fun I ever had with CN. Godfrey was and is still one of my favorite people who ever played this game no matter what anyone says about him he was a very kind and understanding man and one of the best diplomats I ever spoke too. Honestly he could have sold ice to polar bear. I also had a lot of fun fighting with Mogar about how the war was going and who was more wrong.

After the war though PLUS went back to a very boring state and many of its government just wanted the title and to do little work. I don't blame them because most of them been in PLUS gov since the start of the alliance and it wasnt a easy task dealing with me and my BS. I can remember talking to Specto, Waldo and CK about what the world will be like without GOONS and \m/ and how we hope that we didn't just eliminate the only threat to NPO and company. We all thought some other group would rise up to counter them soon but we were mistaken. Now when I look back and think about it I still have the same opinion as before, NpO was the lesser of the two evils and defending a friend is more important than a political gain.

I was an independent when the war started so I didn't see much action. Near the end I joined ODN and saw a bit, so for one of the major events in CN history, it had little to no effect on me.
The only major war during the 3 years I have been a nation leader in which I didn't see a lot of action.

I hope so too. When I got up, I thought wow, way to point out that you've been a spy pretty much every day between August 07 through April 2009. But, I'm not afraid anymore. To me, the UjW was about fear. It said that if you don't operate like us, or think like us, or act like us, then you can't exist (or at least you can't have any infra). That system existed for a long time, and I operated under it, BAPS did too, and there's an argument to be made that it's still not entirely gone, but I am personally not afraid to say, think, or operate the way I want to anymore. If someone from, say, MHA wants to make an issue out of my spying during war from 2007, they're welcome to give it a go, but I think that just as time has cooled my hate of GOONS attackers, it has made some things discussable if not acceptable.