iamthey

I think you just spoiled the next thread they are posting.

Roll for Diplomacy

Anti-bibo war 2.0

Glad to see people dusting off the old lines, love to see it.

oh wow

What is wrong with being a girl dragon?

You are a war crime.

You can laugh, but your colleagues were the ones lambasting ftw for needing to call in allies, so yeah.

I don’t really hold any personal animosity towards you all, but this is kind of a tired cliche from wars past. There isn’t a whole lot for nations/rulers to do these days, why wouldn’t we jump in on this? I’ve been on the otherside of plenty of lopsided fights that lasted months and those were uneven for the same reason this one is: it is not an embarrasment to use resources wisely. FTW could take you on their own sure, but why should they, and why is that outcome desirable to those they are allied to? We would prefer to spread the pain and keep FTW relatively more healthy.

pm for peace

History is our diease.

No argent nation below the rank of brony may post in this thread.

Hartfw can't even imagine how relevant argent is now.

The people haven't earned a polar banner yet. They need to try harder.

Did they chug bleach after signing the upgrade...

I mean if you want to really dive into it then you have to remember that there was never anything that can be meaningfully be called a scheme, more a former gov member of sparta took the initiative to have a poorly thought out conversation with members of sengoku, then not tell anyone. After that a former government member of TOP was confronted on the sketchy conversation and was defensive, having no context. Mi6 had their own series of issues with Umbrella and Aztec, these were separate contributing events, coupled with convenience, that set off a cycle bad interactions resulting in a war. What separates you and us, is that we took the time to really think about what was happening on both sides of that communication while you continue to presume basic ill motive. We worked to resolve that enmity while you doubled down. This war has almost nothing to do with what happened before the last one, but like the last one it occurred because you neglected to address bad optics and resolve issues. You accepted the presumption that people were gunning for you, that you would inevitably be rolled, and rather than try to take corrective action you sat and basically did nothing. If you want to call me a lapdog or a stooge for thinking your approach was foolish and a waste of energy then by all means, I'm still right. I'm not asking you to own up to any offense, I'm talking about your basic approach to dealing with other people. Not explicit acts, your toxic manner in public and in private, which has turned so many off to you, has spoiled collaborative efforts in coalitions, and has created a stigma around even being attached to you. I'm talking about the things you have done that have contributed to your political failure. To this point you have accumulated all the vices of MK and yet you lack their ability to compensate with good high quality diplomacy. They didn't thrive simply by making a mess of the OWF, and being a political zoo internally- they had real diplomatic acumen and strong personalities that could clean up the many messes their abrasive elements created.

What are you even talking about? I'm just saying you guys need to learn from your mistakes, and yet you act as if everything you've done has been painstaking and deliberate rather than half assed and impulsive. You can blame everyone else for your problems, that's fine, but the cost of that self certainty is you'll be back here in another year.

Rather than blaming your problems on former allies, and external parties, you should consider what you all have done to get yourselves here. It is true, you are unfortunate victims, but victims of unfit candidates calling themselves your leaders. You know who I'm talking about, the sort of people that impress others with the notion that your alliance is composed entirely of tactless reprobates. Fix that problem, and change your approach. When founded, you guys presented yourselves as a bold experiment, well it pains me to say it, but so far it's a failed one- do something about it.

Oh look people falling over themselves to express faux outrage. Not hitting a former ally is a respectable courtesy, but it's certainly happened before. There are worse things you could do.

Every war is a cautionary tale, all have their lessons and mistakes to inform future actions. History is a helix not a circle.

You first ;p. Not much omni, just playing my part in wartime !@#$ slinging. I don't really care about the quality of the OP, or the expressed rationale for war- what really matters in a war is that people be motivated in some meaningful way. Wars of convenience are routine, wars with a story don't have to be. A solid cb with an uninspiring target can be meaningless, a nonexistent justification with a bitter underpinning can be fantastic. A war need not be balanced, or risky to be good- it only needs to be worthwhile to those undertaking it. I'd say this war has a story, and if it's worthwhile and meaningful to those undertaking it that's really all that matters. In the case of NPO-MK- I'd say the same applied. I was in NPO for that after all, and it was certainly a profound moment. That being said, what is dull and probably more harmful to the international community than this war (or one's like it), is the constant critique from the standpoint of its harm on the [ooc]game[/ooc]. At the end of the day that's really just a veiled threat to take your ball and go home, isn't it? Though I would posit perhaps we're thinking about it the wrong way, perhaps that's not a threat at all, maybe someone can aspire to finally [ooc]'win' cybernations[/ooc]?

But if people don't believe the reasons they develop for justifying the war, isn't the entire exercise of war reduced to annoying schedules, the compiling of statistics, and repetitive rote mechanical motions? Basically the fun experience itself is believing your opponent deserves it, not the instrumental task of war itself.

Let the crying begin!

Generally speaking I think there is a strong case to be made for the mechanics argument people have offered. That to rebuild and to grow a little more requires roughly 6-8 months. Long wars are often similarly explained in terms of time it takes to make a meaningful impact (mostly the time it takes to really damage a warchest and reduce tech levels). I think there's also a strong case to be made for just the timescale of our politics. We've had longer stretches between major conflicts, but overall it's a balance between the risk of going too early and the risk of waiting too long. Wars are important times of transition when consensus is built (or destroyed) and alliances assess who they want to work with and who they don't. Usually the target of the next war is also staged during a current one. If you wait too long to act on that previous work you risk that consensus going stale. Essentially you signal to your friends that "you don't want this war", and you introduce uncertainty into the structure of your allies. When everyone knows who is getting rolled, they can feel confident and certain that it's not themselves, when no such presumption exists the political model starts to fall apart and people begin to look around for safe bets (which might not include you). If you go to early you expend energy organizing people for a war they aren't necessarily 'ready' for, you waste political capital, perhaps you alienate people, and you have to invest yourself into then locking down the war after that. Managing these risks seems to be what drives the cycle of war and peace here. This assumes of course that you're one of the few alliances that has a real say in when a war starts though. On the other side of the coin, alliances that participate in wars but don't really manage them: the game is more about finding safe harbors, not making yourself a target, and lobbying up the food chain to ensure you're on the right side and not left out to dry. Alliances in this position usually also don't want war to be more frequent as its transitional nature leaves them more vulnerable. So we usually end up waiting a while between wars. Hoping for a new era where they are shorter and more frequent (or balanced) is honestly not worth the energy- wars are too costly not to do a thorough job, and they're too risky to be 'fair'. The goal isn't to settle a disagreement, but to cripple your opponent and put a nice lead between them and yourself. You can't make wars short and proportional to an offense if the offense doesn't matter, and the war must be total if it's fought like it is: purely to maintain advantage or out of spite. In so far CB's are just an excuse to get things going, it's hard to imagine an enemy not coming for you unless you break them first.

I mean you don't have to wait. You could always.. start the war?