Myths and Modern CN
The title is broad and you could probably write a decent sized paperback on it if you took the time, so I'm only going to address a few that crop up fairly often. They're the assumptions, generally commonly accepted things that are - in my opinion - founded on bull.
1) Disbandment. Might as well start with the big one.
The myth generally goes as follows; disbandment is immoral, because it's what Q did and it's done when you gang bang alliances with vastly superior numbers, and it serves no purpose other than killing the game.
The reality is, disbandment was around before Q and - usually - reserved for larger alliances that constituted more of a continuing threat [like NAAC, for example]. It was a legitimate war tactic up until Q got a monopoly on using it and pushed it on several AA's that could put up no legitimate fight; this sullied it in most peoples eyes as a bully tactic used by cowards.
The other big myth about disbandment is that it kills the game - not really true. A culture of kiss-ass-or-die did a lot more damage than disbandment ever did - this is a case of two things happening roughly at the same time in great volume, and thus being linked, even when they were unrelated. The two things, in this case, being the degradation of politics/leadership quality around the same time the use of disbandment increased rapidly.
It's important to make clear the two are not linked, though. The majority of uses of disbandment during the "Q Era" were done, not for the security of the alliances involved as beforehand, but for personal thrills. When you do anything for shallow reasons, it makes the entire process devoid of any point or legitimacy.
The decrease in leadership quality/general comes from the aforementioned kiss-ass-or-die culture that got held in place for a long time, along with a lot of old guard ending up apathetic [this is still going on] and not teaching newer generations of players what standards should be - although, not necessarily what they were. What's a good CB now is not what it would've been in 2006 and that's, despite what many would think, not the end of the world. Even then leadership looked for reasons to go to war and CBs were still their excuses to do it - as the game evolves, so do the excuses.
If disbandment eliminates a continuing and routine threat to your alliance - regardless of side, creed, etc. then you have every right in the world to eliminate the threat. "But it kills the game!" I can already hear, and not so. How many of you did time in prior alliances? I'd guess the majority. How many of the alliances you were in sucked? Total shells of inactivity and poor leadership?
We have roughly 140 alliances. There is no harm in weeding out a lot of them. Will some of their members quit? Sure - but the good ones, the ones who make for good members and good leaders will move on. And they will better the alliances they join. It has a positive domino effect. More than that, it means that leaderships have to actually take their jobs and decisions a lot more seriously - right now, there's a general assumption that the losing side gets white peace. I doubt that would be the case if the situations were reversed - I certainly don't think most of the Karma, BiPolar or PB sides would've gotten white peace had we lost, but it's become the 'standard.' But there's consequences to that being the case, namely, there's no incentive to think anything through. DoW whoever you want, for whatever reason you want - what's it matter if you lose? You'll walk away without a slap on the wrist. The really crap leaders never get their ass handed to them on a platter anymore, and we see a lot more of them as a consequence. Disbandment has it's upsides.
2) Karma. Hot point of reference as far as propaganda goes these days - "Guess we see what you're all really like when you get a little power" is a fairly common refrain now, and has been since the war ended to be honest - long before PB. There's a general sense that Karma stood for white peace, and changing how the game operated, and such. The thing is, people forget how many alliances were involved on the Karma side. 103, for the curious. Ascribing any one or two beliefs to 103 alliances is impossible - you can't assign a general belief set to most blocs, much less 73% of CN. I wouldn't even bother addressing this if I didn't think below the propaganda some people really felt this was the case - that Karma really did stand for those things, and that the actions since constitute hypocrisy or a betrayal of it.
For that crowd, you need to realize a few things about how the coalition operated - for one thing, it didn't. It was a fairly out of control beast, and most every thread Archon posted on the OWF [or LM, or whoever] was at best proofread/commented on by maybe 13 people before it went up. We had coalition forums; most people were either too busy, or too sick of arguing, to actually use them. And you couldn't keep up with every thread that went up anyway. Cram even 50 alliances onto one board in the middle of a gigantic life-or-death war and 'active' becomes a major understatement.
For another thing, there were a lot of disparate groups brought together in that side. The cultures weren't even remotely the same a lot of the time; much less the beliefs and policies every individual AA held to. Faces were unfamiliar, as well, for the majority. Archon was not the Overmind, nor was LM, they were just shepherds trying really hard to give some sort of direction to point an unprecedentedly large coalition in.
Now, I'm not saying it wasn't about 'changing the way CN works' for a lot of people involved - I certainly heard and saw it said plenty during the war, both in public and in the coalition chans. And I don't doubt the sincerity of those involved. All I'm trying to illustrate is that to take the loudest or most memorable ideology espoused by part of a group and apply it to all involved is disingenous - if you have 5 people in a room and 3 are Christian, you don't assume the other two are as well.
We all have different ideas of what's appropriate, justified, etc. and in Karma's case we had ~ 105 separate ones. People showed up to pile on Q while they could, and the one time they felt they had a chance of driving the last nail into the coffin, that is the only central motive/idea that can be accurately and honestly assigned to the Karma side.
Side-Note: As I'm often left defending disbandment to fellow leaders/allies/etc, it's often suggested that instead either harsh reps ought to be imposed, or otherwise all terms should be dropped because wouldn't it be fun to encourage more wars? It seems obvious. But I find it really disagreeable - I've paid reps before, it's a pretty shameful process - and ours only lasted one month or so. NPO's lasted, I think, a little over a year.
That's a long, humiliating thing to put any alliance through. Sadistic, to be honest. But at the time of deciding NPO's terms, that was deemed by the majority to be the more moral course of action - that disbandment was some unforgivable thing. And this confuses me, because it seems more honorable to give your enemy a viking funeral than torture/enslave them for a prolonged period of time.
I don't think no terms is the answer, though. There's a certain underlying arrogance in the suggestion that alliances - regardless of CB, regardless of conduct - should be given no terms that I find bothersome. It's the assumption that next time, you'll win. That because your opponents suck now, and are on the backfoot now - that they'll always be. Maybe there's a notion that a change from crap to quality coalition-wise happens over several wars - that you'll see the change coming, and adjust, but for now there's no danger.
This ignores a pretty fundamental feature of CN, though - randomness. So many actions that happen every minute of every day on this game are utterly unpredictable, even moreso when it comes down to alliance-wise decisions. There's no saying that an intelligent reformer doesn't take over your most vitriolic opponent and whip them into shape - no telling where the next FA genius comes from, or any other important variables.
But there's more arrogance, and short-sightedness, at work in that kind of thinking. Say you're hit by the same alliance in three separate wars. Each time that alliance hits you citing either a PIAT or even, nothing. You issue white peace every time, considering it 'good enough' that you've won, and happy for the chance to repeat the war. The fourth time, however, they put you on the backfoot - and they don't show any mercy as you've done. Here you have failed at the primary job of any alliance leader, or any alliance council - security.
Alliances exist as a means of communal defense, leadership exists to see to the construction of defenses [this is why we build nations and teach people how/when to fight, after all, as well as sign treaties]. If you allow arrogance to betray your alliances security, then you have failed at the premise your job is based on - in my opinion. That's why I've said a lot over the years that if I consider an action necessary to the long-term security of me/my allies, then I will do that action, no matter how horrific or abnormal it is for the period of CN it's done in, and sleep soundly having done my job. CN is full of humans and humans are not logical - nor is our culture the majority of the time. The right, logical, smart actions will not always - or even most of the time - be the actions that are most popular with the general public.
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