Vhalen

That would be a valid argument, if the seller had chosen to communicate such concerns, instead of breaking off all contact. Judging from the events as presented, it seems to me the war has no bearing on this.

Hey, now. alden's just using Vladimirian logic. It should be perfectly fine, if we ask KingEsus, an admitted fan. Disregarding the applicants, they've lost about 250 members between the war starting and now.

Gosh...because you say it, it must be true. I shall disregard my own senses and logic and take this as gospel. I'm not even sure what the comment about free speech has to do with anything. Is there a lot of censorship in this thread that I missed? I'd like to point out that the "No member of X alliance shall post in this thread" stuff has been virtually nonexistent since this war started. It's probably coincidence, though. Also, in science, we all lose. Only entropy wins. Again with the "it's fact because I say it" argument. And yet you accuse others of erronious thinking. See, there is an interesting distinction here that I think a lot of people don't make. I suppose I may as well talk about it here, since I've already started typing, and this thread's going so many different ways that this likely won't derail it enough to matter, anyway. I see things slightly differently: I would argue that when you join an alliance, you're signing on to defend the people within the alliance, not necessarily the nebulous entity itself. Blind loyalty to an amorphous mass of legalisms and treaties is a type of dehumanizing, harmful, corporate ant-colony thinking. Upon subscribing to this train of thought, it follows that an alliance would therefore be justified in disbanding under heavy duress if the situation they're place in would make things untenable for the membership, especially long term (such as indefinitely protracted war, utterly crushing terms, wide scale loss of sovereignty).* In such a situation, the alliance would necessarily sacrifice itself for the greater good. Basically, the name on the letterhead is less important than the people. An acronym is not the end all and be all of existence. This is not to say that everyone should run around disbanding willy-nilly (though that idea certainly has some short term amusement value), or upon fighting, or even losing a war. Instead, I postulate that if all choices are utterly unacceptable for the good of the members, then the continued existence of the alliance serves them no purpose. Given Vlad's essays discussing chaos, natural states, and so forth, this would seem to make even more sense from his perspective. (The alliance to which freedom has been given in exchange for security has utterly failed in its duty to its membership. Freedom has been given up in exchange for nothing but false promises. The paradigm breaks down. There is no logical choice but to abandon the failed structure and begin anew, and only an unreasoning zealot would persist solely for the sake of persisting.) *In the interest of heading off "but FAN didn't disband" and such, note that "untenable" is subjective, and furthermore that being justified in something does not make it mandatory. Edit: That last part ended up going a bit further than I thought when I started. If it turns out to want further discussion, I imagine branching it into a separate thread would end up being best.

Actually, I believe they say that peace term duration, not war duration, will increase.

Actually, I think it is to some degree. I imagine a jury would look worse upon a kidnapper who kept his victims for days and days in a desperate unwinnable standoff, than one who, upon realizing he'd made a colossal blunder, surrendered, turned himself in, and threw himself on the mercy of the court. In other pointless irrelevant analogy news, hotels usually charge by the day.

They have little to no excuse not to be holding out at least that well. NPO has fought largely wars where they were the aggressor, largely outnumbered their prey, wrapped things up quickly, demanded reps, and thus should not have had to significantly dip into their warchests. They should be rather large by now, wouldn't you think? Personally, I'd just put a hold on this after a week's accumulation...and state that 100% of the "penalty" stuff goes to OV. My personal, unasked opinion is that it'd be fitting for OV's aid slots to be kept full of 3mil/50tech for the entirety of the terms' duration, whatever that might be. Fact: Did you know that anyone can unilaterally dismiss something as irrelevant, just by saying so? Watch. I dismiss your above quoted statement as irrelevant. Now I can say it was brought up and dismissed, which makes the semantics relevant again, and additionally makes what I say more believable. *rolls eyes* This type of behavior is one of my biggest problems with how you present dialogue/essays/etc. Since you have zero facts, you've been put into a startlingly good position to assign probabilities, huh? Interesting. See above.

As if they need encouragement. Also, if they attack people over a long period of time, using increasingly vicious strategies, brutal peace terms, and questionable reasons....they will just get attacked. Didn't stop them that time, did it? Look, I'm not saying these terms are a great idea, but I am saying it's ridiculous for NPO to think they'll get white peace. If nothing else, this should serve as a slap in the face to break that illusion. Frankly, I doubt there's any intention of honoring this PM penalty to the letter.

Since the war began, the NPO AA has picked up about 150 (nice round number, I think it was higher) nations, mostly small ones from prior applicant status, I believe. When you consider this, the overall drop of 130 in total nation count is even more significant. There are also individual terms available. I'm not sure their overall morale is as high as you think, or they wouldn't have lost about 1/3 of their prewar nation count. I suppose their calculators take into account that a seige isn't a good long term recruiting position, nor does it encourage the less "dedicated" playerbase to stick around.

Hey, "a meaningful way" was never discussed! I can't believe you're so cruel as to want them to not enjoy the money. And here FAN is with open borders finally, and a surplus of hookers and blow.

Hate to nitpick, but what, you're saying they speed up an alliance's growth? Or they're a complete non-factor? Of course they slow it down. Maybe not significantly, but they result in nonproductive use of aid slots, and disposal of otherwise growth-related materials (money, tech). Hmm, maybe I don't actually hate to nitpick. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that the "crazy" part is encompassing the overall statement, particularly the second part.

Personally, I think it's your understanding of your metaphor that failed, but I'll leave the whole thing alone, due to sheer disinterest on my part.

Of course, the banker's friends and family are outside the glass, being beaten up, while he looks on and says, "Well, at least I'm safe. I'll buy them nice coffins if they die." Sorry, I don't follow what you've done here. Apparently wild flights of fancy came into play. So, you're saying that NPO nations not currently in peace mode are no longer being damaged? You're saying the alliance isn't losing members due to this ever-lengthening war? Apparently, since the coworkers are all dead, NPO nations are unable to rebuild after losing a war, as well. Your analogy completely falls apart because you present no middle ground between complete refusal to negotiate and complete destruction. I don't recall seeing, "Every PM nation will be PZId" mentioned anywhere.

Time passes more slowly deeper in a gravity well. What if one of these parties were below sea level, and the other on a high mountain? Discuss. *ducks and covers*

Yeah, I've gotta agree with Benji there. It's not even close. Perhaps the parameters were too vague?

Two prom dates?!? We've fallen into a sitcom episode! Someone do something!

Well, if you view the war as a whole cloth, then they were defending the aggressor, and thus their war could, in fact, be construed as an offensive war. Shh, he's clearly been conditioned. Only Spartans and their helots may have opinions now.

Glad to see most of the reps going to a "defending party," actually. If this trend continues, OV could end up with significantly more tech than infra. I think I see what you're driving at. They could've at least pointed those poor IRON members in the direction of some high quality alcoholic beverages, rather than have them wander out blindly into the wilderness, quite possibly to be mauled by the wild macro lager, and led astray be deceptive ad campaigns. For shame!

The most impressive thing is, GRL did it all without any treaties. With it steady at 5.00, I still see massive daily profits. The cap as it is now just makes nuclear winter a mild inconvience. *shrugs* I guess I see GRL as a mostly benevolent overlord.

I'll just accept your information rather than waste time investigating history. However... Given the bolded part, I'd say you should've been more capable of realizing that NPO had turned the corner on that vein. I mean, when every war you're in is a curbstomp, often with weak or fabricated CBs, maybe your friends have become what you joined them to avoid. I guess what I'm saying is, you have no excuse for complaining when other people opted to change their relations with that sort of power structure, and you didn't.

I don't know that it's ever occurred to me to bother. However, I could happily go with Holst's "Mars, the Bringer of War," as sung by Henchmen 21 & 24...or did you want serious answers?

That makes sense. It has been with you the longest, after all. Who's he? Furthermore, this topic is silly. NPO I can see the point of the PM comments, because quite a number have been in PM since before the DoWs started flying, and haven't ever come out. TPF's been doing a great deal of fighting for them, out of a (imo) misguided sense of honor, and probably would've been out of the conflict entirely by now if not for the same. I'd make some further comments about this, but I'd honestly prefer to see this thread wander its way into oblivion, so I'll try to avoid growing the conversation much.

Hmm, who got harsh terms recently? Polar? MK? I guess we could go to extremes, but I somehow don't think your point is "the only acceptable terms are 'you can't play anymore,' so it appears to be an exercise in futility. Plus, see my comments immediately below. One could use that to make an argument that the Hegemony is the most recent entity bullied by these chaps. Because massive reps stop people from rebuilding? Let's check with Polar on that one. They've been doing an excellent recovery job, despite massive reps from their top nations. IMO, harsh terms and massive reps just build resentment, and that came to a boil recently. Forced disbandments just spread it around. I imagine we could find quite a few examples of veterans of forced-disbanded alliances scattered throughout Karma. My opinion, drawn from the same givens you're using, is opposite, amusingly enough. I think this war shows that harsh terms DON'T work (especially from the aggressor in an aggressive war). (On a side note, I hope a tendency toward low reps for defenders and higher reps for failed aggressors comes out of this, but that's largely a matter of a sway in public feelings on reps and war. I'd say it's off topic, but glancing back, it seems like it's directly on the topic of responsibility.) Anyway, if you look at all the disbanded alliances, and assume their members spread out here and there, you can bet they take their feelings with them. If they do that, don't you imagine some of that is resentment toward the people who forced their disbandments or crippling terms? Would you be at all surprised that these feelings emerge at a time like this? I'd say strongarm tactics can work in the short term, but you'd better be awfully d***ed convincing with your FA, or in the long run, you'll likely lose the arm.

I used to be pretty good at that, but I don't think I've played in several years. Hope SC2 lives up to the hype...I was vastly disappointed in WC3.

[OOC]You're just looking at "someone" wrong. The casualty numbers show that it's pretty darn easy to kill someone. Now, nation leaders are much more elusive... [/OOC]

Actually, I think it's far less "a cult around the Emperor" than "a cult based on NPO's strength," though your point still basically stands. Despite all the quite obvious varieties in opinion, you somehow persist in the misguided thought that Karma is likely to immediately consolidate into a massive bloc and slide right into an empty throne. Even on the hegemony side of things, I think you're well in the minority with that idea.