Bigkats response (albeit without paragraphs) got me thinking a bit about the changes that occurred within frostbite this round, and how our dynamic was completely shifted from one of the dominant powers to something a bit more second rate. The following is merely my take on the matter and does not represent any opinion but my own.

Its odd, there really seems to be no middle ground stance on me. People either absolutely loathe me or think I'm cool *&$%. Put it this way, I definitely did not ask for power in FB, hell I'm not even part of FB in SE anymore. I signed up in the closing days of tLC where I was serving a government position. This was to be a grand military exercise for all of us should our SE team ever need to gear up for a serious conflict. Round start saw us involved in a major war right off the bat (which from what I've read, we really didn't want to be a part of). Through this time I was pretty happy to bumble along as a standard grunt.

Towards the middle of the round, I started to notice more and more inactivity from our government. It was at this time that I began to contact Actorbass and offer suggestions over strategy. He seemed genuinely interested in my take on matters but none of the policies that I suggested ever made it to our forums. Inactivity began to not only plague our government, but also our general member base. We began to bleed out numbers at an uncomfortable rate. Being frostbite, we didn't ever do any active recruiting of outside members. FB is, and always will be about FB.

Fast Forward to several weeks ago. Actorbass and I are having our usual convo on IRC regarding policy and the direction FB should take. In the middle of this chat, he basically says "I'm done with TE, frostbite is yours". From there he made an announcement on our forums and that was that. I was a tad surprised, but set to work. Our set government was inactive, and our forums were dead. Picking new ministers was out of the question as I couldn't tell who was active and who wasn't. So I went it alone, hoping that the general member base would accept the transition. Luckily they did and we moved on without too much issue.

This is where the policy clash begins to take effect. The day I took over was the day the @#(* hit the fan. Apparently Actorbass had crafted a deal with Black regarding an attack on MHA. I was not about to launch an attack with only a few hours notice, and no real way to spread the word fast enough (our mass PM list was a mess). So I stalled and started spreading the word to prepare for war. Honestly I had no intention of hitting MHA. I had been planning to play RE and MHA off against each other, so when Tiberius and I were talking about joint FB/Black strike on MHA I had serious reservations and sent out no attack orders even though I had given general acknowledgment to the plan. Not soon after this, TPF began pounding us and my fears were confirmed.

My controversial decision to attack AI/Echo was based off my deal with MHA/Fark/PU. It had nothing to do with "cowardice" as some people seem to think. The simple fact is that Frostbite is a paper tiger. We have numbers yes, but numbers are nothing when most of those are either absent from our central forums or inactive from the game for weeks at a time. I have a loyal cadre that helps to organize attacks, and fights like hell but at most they number 30... maybe 40. After TPF's ridiculous blitz, we were in no shape for a prolonged nuke engagement with the #1 alliance, so the honor for that attack fell to who it fell. Frostbite was given the task of covering the back door.

In retrospect, Frostbite is an amazing idea. Properly executed with solid leadership and a committed member base from the start, we could truly be a fearsome force. Sadly however, the reality of the round showed a general disinterest from many. However I do believe we have something to be proud of. Despite losing over 50 members due to inactivity deletes and other issues, we still have held onto a top 4 position for our first round.

To all the members who accepted my takeover, and who have helped me out tremendously with the task I was given, I give my thanks.


Caustic
Emperor of Frostbite

o/ Fight Club.

tl;dr?

Caustic nailed it pretty well and I must say did a good job with what he had.

o/ Caustic

Frostbite had it easy. The majority of members came from an SE alliance - a large, sanctioned alliance at that.

That is where you are wrong. Frostbite is 4 distinct AA's, each with its own leadership style and general tone. Mix them all together in a pot and there are some serious clashes of personality. I could pick out an NSO member from an STA member in IRC even without tags. Leading a group like that is definitely not "easy" nor is organizing it.

Try building an alliance from scratch, only being able to advertise. Now imagine that your alliance was ranked number one for several rounds. That, my friend, is a lot harder than anything Frostbite had to do. (In case you were wondering, I was speaking about Roman Empire.)

Why are we comparing? I never said FB was easy or hard to create/lead. That topic is most definitely not what this post is about.

I'm a relative newcomer to TE, and haven't gotten a chance to get to know a lot of people this round. This is my attempt to allow everyone a bit of insight into what makes me (and subsequently FB) tick. Take it as you will

And my comment to your wall of text that I gave up reading was that Frostbite had it easy. Mind giving us a single paragraph, or a 'tl;dr'?

Im sure your attention span can handle 7 paragraphs. If it can't... good god.

I skimmed the first half. Nah jk I read it through. Didn't do anything to improve my opinion of FB. It just seemed like something reminiscent of Tiberius' old " So this is why you all should respect me and my empressship." type posts.

Caustic, I wish you and Frostbite much success next round. You have a fantastic core membership.

Do you really say half the dumb crap that comes out of your mouth? I mean good god, you only started being active about 2 weeks ago. You have no idea who I am and why I do what I do. Very few people do.

It can, I would just rather sit here and argue than read something boring, no offense.



Case and point, boring.



I know you. You are a one eyed purple people eater!

Emperor_Stranger- If this thread is so boring, why don't you just bow out of it?

E-drama is fun.

I can't speak for all of TPF's gov, nor would I ever try. They speak for themselves quite well and quite often. However, I'd like to voice my support for the work you've done, Caustic. In the times where we've had IRC contact (rare really) I've seen nothing but good things, and I've heard nothing but good things. Gabryal speaks about how much he likes working with you, and it really seems like you're doing the best you can with what you've got.

You guys had very unique problems coming into TE. The four alliances in one thing, wow, that must be really difficult to deal with. That alone speaks to how much more concentrated on SE most of your membership is. It's also not like you started small and worked your way up either. You started off with 200+ members right away, and apparently very little government structure. You need a LOT of active, quality gov if you want to do things right with that many members. As TPF's membership has grown over the rounds, our own government has grown along with it. We've got the best roster I've seen yet, and it took a while to get here. You never really had that gradual opportunity; you went from zero to 200 right at round reset. Talk about thrown into the fire, hmm?

I'm hoping you guys stick around a while, Caustic. I don't even do SE, I only have time for one. TE is just much more fun, and I think some of your people are starting to realize that. SE is truly completely separate from SE (no matter how often people try to match the two together) and it's got more bang for your buck, as far as I'm concerned. This round was a huge learning experience, no doubt. You guys have only just started; even if you have less members next round, if that comes with better organization and a higher activity rate, it's well worth it.

Just keep up your good work, and don't let the weasels drag you own

Well said, ClashPoint.

i think clash hit the nail on the head.with a 200 member base from the go in your first round you lacked the gov base to do anything with it.when TPF blitzed you it showed how unready you were for te.but over all i think FB made a good show for its first round.i hope to see you all back next round with a stronger gov.you made the round more fun and got some new blood here.thanks for that.

Welcome to being a Gov member in TE Caustic, essentially most if not all the people who post on the OWF are Gov members or deputies of Gov members, it's what makes this thread so interesting, I've seen threads gain upwards 2000 hits, but as far as posters here goes? It's down to about 50 people, if that, that actually post here.

All I can tell you is that after a certain amount of time, once the hanger on's and slackers leave your AA, you end up with a strong core that while they may not love you, they respect you, and will follow you into anywhere, even into the mouth of hell itself.

Just in retrospect I'd like to point out that I led my Battalion, of about 30 nations, with a total nuke count of 11, we hit an alliance with 44 nuclear war heads. I knew as soon as we hit that nuclear anarchy was a given, I knew that and I did it anyway, and my Battalion did as I asked. Why they did it still remains a mystery, many ways in many places I've seen people follow a leader, for good and bad reasons. The important thing is that there is a reason for everything Caustic, some people will leave, some will come, but it's age that really adds stability to TE. It's hard to maintain an alliance after admin nuke, takes a lot of work. You haven't even had to deal with that yet, just wait. However I have no doubt at all that eventually Frostbite will have the same solid core of members that TPF has, and that membership will follow you or your officers into hell just as quickly. Whatever the reason is, you'll give them one, and if that core approves of your reasons over time, you'll become a solid, unshakeable, unbreakable alliance. MHA is a great example, TPF is too, RE took some hard knocks this round, and it's debatable which set of "core" players went where, and what that means. I do know that both Folger and Tibs got some of that hard core, and that split may cause problems down the road.

That might perhaps be the reason I hit those top nations in Priapism, I knew it would be 24 hours till my ruin, but I did it anyway. It's just a game, but real people play it, it's easy enough to read here how even the posters here, most of which have risen to Government positions in there respective alliances, get angry, hurt, annoyed, or actually on occasion lose it totally. Over a game. Real people can get hurt, at least a little bit, emotionally, if their nations are ruined or don't turn out as well. This is grown up lego's Caustic, and a lot of the people who play it aren't all that old, relative to me anyway. You ask a lot when you send a person's creation into war, a creation they spent two months on. If people can get obsessive about star wars figurines, they can get obsessive about this.

I think SE must be a bit different, in that it's unlikely that a person's nation will be utterly destroyed. What's more there is no time limit. No matter how "dead" your nation is, you have all the time in the world to rebuild. Not so in TE.

So I suppose the point of all this is that at the end of the day pick a couple of people you think are reliable, forget about the politics, and put them into positions of power, if they screw up, demote them and pick someone else. At the end of the day the Gov doesn't make the alliance. That core group of players does. That's what Frostbite needs more than anything, when I hear about "Four AA's in One" that's an idea that has to go straight out the window. You are Frostbite or you are nothing. In TE dual allegiances don't work, because you have to have that group of nations that will follow you into hell, otherwise you're just a leader in name, incapable of organizing anything more than a number on the alliance charts, and will eventually be nibbled to death by ducks as people get bored and drop out, change alliances, or a number of other things.

That's just my advice anyway, and for once I've abandoned my "Game Persona" and posted what I really think. Mostly I'm doing that out of respect for you Caustic, you and I got to know each other a little bit this round, and I think we both benefited. The other reason is to remind an often said, but nevertheless often ignored is that there is a difference between real life and a game, I'm not saying people can't get hurt here, they can. Hell we have a few cross overs from the utter freaks that populate World of Crackcraft and those people can go absolutely mental when their pixels get poofed. Point is that if people aren't having fun, they won't play, and the point of this game is that it's a social game, part of what Government for alliances does is make the game fun for others. Make TE fun for your members Caustic, and it doesn't matter what happens, what size Frostbite is, what you do, or what you don't. If you make it fun then you'll do fine, if it isn't fun, the Frostbite fails.

It all comes down to that.

PS: Yes, painkillers again, long $@! post

Something that folks need to understand is that FB started out with a strong govt. structure. For reasons that are certainly complicated and inter-connected to the point that makes detailing them too torturous to put in print, FB devolved. By the time Caustic assumed control, things were in bad shape. He deserves much respect in my opinion for simply holding FB together and making it thru round 7. Bigger and better things are on the horizon. Frostbite will walk away smaller, but stronger and more effective.

Though I rarely like peacefulness. (its annoying as no nukes are flying )
Caustic has earned respect and what gabs said is right, those hard working peeps that work with gov (the harder working peeps) is the backbone of any alliance, will go to Hell, back and straight down again for the AA knowing the Alliance is worth more than thier single nation
Gabs and Caustic, mind if I write some of these down in the quotebook with many others from Tibs, Folger, and BG? (Itsuki and Hisk too)

quote away

Well said Caustic! You are one of the few people in TE I really trust (no joke) and I'm glad we became friends. Good luck to FB in round 8.

First and foremost, Frostbite will not be coming back for round 8.

Frostbite started off as a way for our members to all get to know each other and gain military experience while coordinating as a bloc. I'm the one that basically organized the government in the beginning, which is funny since I'm not nor have I ever been Frostbite gov (in TE anyway, I've held many gov positions in the STA in SE).

In order to best represent the interests of the bloc, I came up with the 4 person council idea. The idea seemed simple to me at the time: each alliance would get one member to sit on a council. A vote of 3 members makes a binding decision. This of course was a disaster; people were busy at different times, discussions had to be made, etc. Also, as those members had different personalities and ideas as to how Frostbite should act, you would get amusing situations where your impression of how Frostbite would act depended on who you spoke to.

I kind of kept everything together up to and through the first war. I'm the one that ended up making the peace terms with Roman Empire and ended up in contact a lot with MHA and RE during that war. But after that, I became busy and stopped being involved. I assumed that after the rocky first few days everything would work itself out.

Sometime later, everyone decided the council idea wasn't working and to make a new government structure based on the imperial model that all Frostbite governments use. Fine. Problem is that there was so much apathy towards it in government that the alliance started dying from the top up.

We originally didn't have a TE forum. Each alliance was to maintain its own TE area of its own forum. The rationale was that if we had a centralized forum and asked everyone to go register, participation would be depressed. I envisioned that all discussions would take place on secured areas of Polar's forums and that when information had to be dispersed, each alliance liaison would transfer information accordingly. That never happened.

With the new imperial system, it was decided to move over to new forums. But a lot of people didn't move over and communication became even more fragmented.

The irony through all of this was that STA members in Frostbite were pretty well organized; we communicated often, our the TE part of our forums (for STA members) were very active, and military coordination was done well. We had no idea what the rest of Frostbite was doing due to lack of communication, but we seemed to be doing alright.

Sometime during the rein of Darth Actorbass or Caustic (I forget who) I get messaged by lonewolfe and tiberius concerning war plans and such. Lonewolfe went so far as to accuse Frostbite of being used by Roman Empire. I had no idea what they're talking about (since I wasn't gov and wasn't paying attention to what was going on) and I still don't think I fully understand what happened, but it looks like Frostbite ended up being drawn into the petty TE politics that I loathed from the beginning. We weren't supposed to do that; we were supposed to firmly stay out of politics and just have fun. Not to say that we weren't planning on going to wars, but we were supposed to leave the politics out of it. Bah.

Frostbite is dead. I'm not going to blame anyone in particular as I feel that it can all boil down to lack of communication and inability to organize our members better. We couldn't even maintain a working membership list ffs.

That said, STA learned a lot from this past round. A whole lot actually. I can't thus say that this round was completely useless. And I did have some fun too

I'm not sure if we reached the trust stage yet, I still have to fully gauge what level of devious !@#$%^& you are Caustic but then again that doesn't mean anything either, I lubs Hisk, and I don't trust him farther than I could throw him. tallah feel free to quote me any time any post.

It's only dead if it's members want it to be, and that's something neither you, nor Caustic can speak for or has control over. Just as Burning Glory nor Wiz nor I have control over whether TPF dies, if every member of the Gov left FB the members would pick someone new, create a new alliance under a different name and move on. Here's a real ironic statement, Tiberius did just this. RE Fragmented and he picked up all he could and started a new alliance. The same would happen under any AA under any system.

So would any alliance survive if it's members want to play TE, because in the end. It's fun, at least that's the idea.

The members did kill it. Polar and STA members are what killed it. I'm not arrogant enough to think that I can kill Frostbite.

STA will be having a presence in TE next round, and I've heard a few Polars will be joining us. We'll see how it works out.

That is not all completely accurate by any measure Jyrinx, but I agree that STA members were some of the best. And you worked hard and got little respect.

STA members were voicing significant dissatisfaction with the entire system and I was under the impression that Polar members didn't like it either, culminating in a Polar gov decision to end their participation. If that's not true, then maybe I misunderstood. Oh well, my apologies but I don't think it's completely relevant anymore

And thank you BigKat.

The system was broken when I inherited it.

There was no fix by that point, I did what I had to do to retain what stability could be salvaged.

I don't trust me either... I have no idea what I'm going to do next.

You guys had a few days notice to attack MHA. In fact, Black would not have attacked MHA if we knew you guys were going to bail out on us. How stupid would be we going 60 vs 200? Be realistic. You guys should have given us warning that you were NOT going to join us, but instead we were told to hit the first update, and second you guys would jump in. You guys bailing at the last minute in my opinion is cowardly. And TPF would not have hit you guys if you attacked MHA, you guys would have been involved in a war thats pretty much 1 vs 1, and TPF does not believe in curbstomps. They would have backed off.




It was extremely cowardly to hit these 2 alliances. AI was a 30 man alliance, in a war with a 200 man alliance. Be realistic, MHA did NOT need your help. MHA, Fark, and Purple Unity combined almost doubled RE. Fark and PU were meat shields, MHA had plenty of people left, and to think differently, you'd be wrong. You attacked a 30 man alliance with 160+ members. Not only that, but you told us that you did it to draw us to attack you. Now look at Frostbite, you've been stuck in war with 4 alliances, which means your alliance is useless at the end. Poor show.

This essentially. regardless of your talk of having only 30-40 people who were active, many of your members seem to be capable of following a chain or a pm it seems. not to mention the fact that hitting an alliance that is smaller than you means that your inactives get hit as well which means your actives don't take as big of a hit.

for example, i got a guy that is rather inactive and has yet to even attack me (or buy soldiers for that matter) so that means instead of one of my slots being used to hit someone active and actually hurt FB, i am hitting an inactive and doing nothing with that war. while FB is hitting pretty much all the active people in AI/Black/SOSB.

but yeah i agree, i like you but i will never trust you Caustic. Regardless of you not "knowing" of DA's deal with Black, you agreed to it and backed out like a coward. If you had told Randy or myself that you were not gonna hit MHA, we would not have hit MHA.

Ok, so it was a weird round and a lot of odd, crazy *stuff* happened…

Can anyone guess what I’m going to say next?






Cheers, Caustic!





Edit: *stuff* ... hahaha.

Sorry Dochartaigh, I'll throw some punches at you

FB did great for there first round. Good luck with next round if you guys come back.

*Tallah gets his Quotebook and starts vigorously quoting several very awesome quotes*
Edit: dont let what FB did hamper them next round, or at least the former members of it. It was thier first round (my first full one too) so they shouldn't be blamed for early mistakes ( I am guilty as charged ) nor should they not have to war next round. I believe in CBs for no reason on TE to be the best ones, and every single nation should have a war with at least 3 others next round, if you dont, we will find you and nuke you.

Basically what doch said. But to me, who cares if they had it easy. Also, so what if only 40 are active, it's a war game. You should just take those 40 and attack with them, no matter the outcome. Your pixels are there to be destroyed.

Regardless I had fun waring with you. You knocked me back a good amount of NS with your barrage of nations twice my size.

Decent for your first round in existent.

awwwww how sweet. <3 you. now it is an awesome fight.

@Infidel- <3 i had to reroll for this fight with FB. the first round of war i went 6v1 and got pounded. it was awesome. my first time ever rerolling in the middle of a round. (have never rerolled in SE on purpose)

I quietly rolled with Purple Unity. I did it mostly to clean the cobwebs off as raiding isn't exactly a profitable activity for me these days. Had a bit of fun. Will probably be back for the next round.

If I have any criticisms at all they would be OOC. I would *love* to see some of the ideas involving improvements to ground units, aircraft, CMs, etc. tested more aggressively over here. Hopefully that will happen soon.

I think Caustic hit the nail on the head. I'm sad to see Frostbite go, but to many members were not active. It was like having a lot of dummy targets, but not really knowing who you could count on.

Yay

Frostbite was a nice introduction to TE for some of our members and it was a nice wake up call for others. I don't really think it is a positive thing for the real Frostbite to have something like this causing issues for the real Frostbite.

It shall be interesting to see what we can accomplish under the banner of STA. Some of the smaller alliances here in TE were some of the best and really showed you didn't have to be the biggest to make a big dent in TE. Perhaps STA can be of similiar quality. We shall see.

I look forward to seeing STA in Round 8. Good luck.