Vhalen

True freedom comes after 25 days inactive.

So, I was sort of skimming the thread and saw this: and then this: and, of course, I read it as "you don't have a keg to stand on." It made me a little sad to discover the truth.

I remember punching you a bit. I didn't get all that many rounds with TSO and Alchemy, though, as your NS got below my range after a bit. Mostly I ended up facing off against TOP. There were few inactives/turtles, but for the most part, quality combatants. If I had to single out one person, I guess it'd be Aesis. Had so much fun I had to come back for seconds! Most of you guys on our front were in a rough spot. Hats off for handling it with civility and class (at least from where I was standing.)

I think it's more that people have a problem with CO trying to be so boastful about giving said admission of surrender. I mean, when you come out of the blocks with "Sure, we surrendered, but that doesn't mean anything because we didn't have any terms put on us," and "Wait until next time," it puts the other side in this position where "next time" they're almost forced into demanding terms.

Yeah, with all the strays returning home, there should be a quick jump there. As far as buybacks go, that could make the gains jumping around a lot over the next few weeks as people hit their backcollections and polish up their ruins.

Unless they said it about me, and then they're wrong. Unless it was me who said it.

Needs more sigs.

Probably a wise move. Makes an order look less ineffective if it isn't followed, once it's optional.

Never mind. I guess one has to have standards first. :P

Remind me again, was this before DBDC declared any wars? No? Oh, dear, how embarrassing. Well, I'm sure you can retroactively date it. I'm pretty sure that's how everything works nowadays anyway.

Can't argue with you there. I don't think too highly of either. I think the practices diminish both politics and war, but I won't get into all the reasoning right now, on account of being lazy.

My guess is because, "way back when," people felt like it was an attack on nonparticipant nations, and depending on trade partners' activity, it could be terribly inconvenient. Nowadays, it hardly matters, what with resource-swapping.

I attribute this descrepancy largely to the DBDC AA, and before you go all, "Well, of course, they're upper tier nations, they do a lot of damage," what I mean is, it's because their roguing strategy allows them to ignore traditional war declarations and boundaries. By virtue of deserting their normal alliance and joining a new one (as DBDC has officially declared itself,) and mind you, an alliance with zero treaty ties to any at-war alliance, and a pretty piss-poor war declaration that can read however one wants it to, they allow themselves a ton of flexibility that hasn't existed in previous global wars. Essentially, they've chosen to abandon the "alliance/DoW" paradigm more or less entirely. (On a side note, it should be interesting to see how this is reflected in peace talks. One would think there'd be an interest in discouraging this sort of behavior in the future. I can think of a few things I'd suggest...so it's probably for the best that I'm not involved in peace talks.) I can't speak for every front, but there's been a ton of infra buybacks (and tech buybacks, for that matter) over in this neck of the woods. Pretty sure destroying 10k infra twice only counts as lost score once. ;) Furthermore, I see regular Umb arguments that EQ's side is all infra and no tech. If that's true, and infra evaporates so fast, %NS lost should be enormously in their favor, instead of 51% to 33% the other way.

I never claimed to be anyone's spokesman, and I've never seen myself as a mindless drone. I say whatever I want to say. In this instance, though, pretty sure GOONS has said they don't exactly do that anymore, and I doubt they ever saw it as a permanent setup. Besides, I don't think aid drops were under siege the whole time (which, as I've said, is a nasty tactic that hurts everyone in the long run, but one that would work.) Wait a minute, though. Wasn't it you who said EQ would risk giving DB/etc more consistent sellers by that tactic? If they already HAVE those consistent sellers, then what was that whole bit about in the first place? Or are you just talking out both sides of your mouth? ;)

Wow, way to focus on the throwaway line. At any rate, 100+kNS is a lot of "wiggle room," so I probably worded that somewhat poorly. And no, war weariness isn't the same across the board. Take two sides, give one a significant numbers advantage, and see which one notices the war more. The numbers side could easily have people taking a month off, with the other side never able to declare an offensive war. To make it more fun, let's also make it so the outnumbered side's biggest nations are in virtual peace mode, so they feel like they're being pummeled and you're not doing anything. Morale's gonna SOAR over the next six months, right? I DID say I didn't advocate this approach and it'd be bad for Bob, remember. I can delete everything except for the bits and pieces I cherry-picked to respond to in a denigrating fashion, too. I like how in your magical world DB's tech sellers never have to actually HAVE the money, buy the tech, put together an aid offer, or get it accepted. They're all perfect little puppets who sit there and take a beating for somebody else's gain, huh? Sure. There're hundreds of masochistic altruists out there, just dying to get their faces smashed in on a daily basis to no purpose of their own. And they're all so dedicated that they coordinate minute-to-minute on IRC to avoid attacks between accepting cash and delivering tech. Such dedicated punching bags you've found. That fits the human condition to a tee. "Competence" hardly sounds descriptive of your imagined utopia, though. Perhaps "Desperate Obsession" fits better? Seriously, though, there's a reason I specifically said I don't advocate gunning for tech sellers and young nations. It'd be bad for Bob, crippling the incoming population and driving out plenty of the old. You DID catch the part where I said I didn't advocate this and it would be bad for Bob, right? Oh, you didn't? Was that part of the "*words*" you skimmed over while searching for something to put a twist on? Let's be realistic, though. What'll happen instead is the same thing that always happens. This war will eventually fizzle out, politics will shift, nations will wander around, and in 6-12 months somebody'll kick a rock through somebody else's window and we'll all invent new nonsense names to group everyone into so we can insult them without the trouble of actual thought. Also you smell funny. ;)