[When your transcript makes you think of Neutrals and the Woodstock Massacre.]

The concept of a warchest has very much carried over into my RL with respect to emergency funds.

I've thought about it in the same way. You never know when you need liquidity for lawyer fees, medical emergencies and the like.

[An Apology]

Well, at least we all learned one thing here today. Alterego has no friends in CN. Shocker.

Wow, you missed the entire point of his post. If you've spent your time playing any multiplayer game it's plainly observable that relationships built on it are ephemeral, it's like trading friendly banter with a person on the streets you'll never see again. His post is actually quite insightful.

[Grim News From the 2011 India Census]

Ashoka the Great[/b]]You want to use education and 'empowerment' (a fluffy' date=' feel-good, liberal word that is basically meaningless) to change cultural biases that have existed for millennia? Good luck with that. Let me know how it turns out.[/quote']

I'm speaking from from anecdotal experience here, but growing up as a Chinese kid under China's one child policy I definitely observe a drastic difference in attitudes amongst educated parents who are of the socio-economic level to throughly educate their kids. Sometimes you hear conversations amongst parents that veer to debates on whether or not boys or girls are better to have. You end up hear many "pro-girl" things along the lines of "Girls are better because they keep a better/closer relationship with their parents as they get older" or "Girls are better because they are more studious in schools". My paternal great-grand parents strongly held to "Boys are definitely better" and they were uneducated and the one child law wasn't in effect. My grand parents who were also fairly uneducated held onto similar views (1 child was still not in effect). My dad was educated and wanted a girl (1 child was in effect).

So no, I would disagree that cutting off the avaliability to legal abortion is the best route to solve skewed sex ratio.

[My Proudest CN Achievement]

Hello there, my name is Goldie and I am an attention whore.

[Cost of Gaming?]

I remember people were complaining about the price of movie tickets that were like 11$. But adjusting for inflation the price of movie tickets have stayed pretty stable.

Plus taking a girl to a decent sit down restaurant costs at least 20 dollars, and you sh*t that stuff out a day later. Good luck reselling it. Alot of fun things in life costs money, deal with it.

[GOON Tears: The story of salithus]

I always confused you two up.

[Browser Based Games]

I wouldn't be surprised if CN died out in 5 years, the in-game mechanics show many vestigial appendages and is really starting to show its age. What drew me into CN was how seriously the community took the politics, but the way the politics is expressed in-game is absolutely a drag.

CN is an overly glorified stat collecting game, the outcome of every war is basically determined before it's even fought. There are no theatrics and maneuver of battle, it's going down a checklist of things: []Warchest? []Tech? []Update Blitz? []Staggering? The closest thing to that is pondering which side a stats filled alliance is going to fall on, but it's a poor substitute.

I honestly can't help myself from rolling my eyes when people congratulate each other on a fun battle: "You conducted your daily allowance of attacks like you were supposed to! Great success!" Yeah...

I've been getting more into Astro Empires, the politics are weak but the battles are spectacular (for a browser game anyway). The nuanced rock-paper-scissors mechanics ensure numbers are not everything, and tactics play a much larger factor in the outcome of a battle.

[Hair Stylin']

Get hair long enough for a ponytail

[On the (current) coalition war]

considering the fact that CnG had not entered by the time TOP/IRON DoWed them, then nope they never entered. it does not matter one iota what they may or may not have done. the fact is, when TOP/IRON DoWed, CnG had not entered the war. thus, they were uninvolved and TOP/IRON became the aggressors due to the fact that they targeted uninvolved alliances.

tl;dr, you're giving a long winded explanation on the technicalities.

so yes, technicalities mean a whole lot unless you wish to look foolish. by your own thing, the moment Polaris declared on \m/, NSO should have hit FOK because PC was going to enter and it was only a matter of "when" FOK would enter... that is the dumbest !@#$ i have heard. preemptive strikes are retarded

What world do you live in? The medieval European of rigid battlefield vainglorious honor and all that snazzy rhetoric? (hell even they weren't all that rigid)

What is wrong with pre-emptive strikes? War is about exploiting an enemies' weakness (i.e striking early). Take Pearl Harbor for example, where Japan basically decimated America's then-present fleet in the Pacific. A great opening move by Japan. Of course, longer term, America's advantage in resources overpowered Japan, but that isn't the point. America was going to enter sooner or later (America's policy in the 1930's in East Asia was always about limiting Japan's power) and that was the best course of action Japan could have taken.

because no one can honestly predict the future 100% (take for example peace between \m/ and Polaris within the hour).

By that line of logic, we shouldn't place serial killers behind bars for life because we can't actually predict 100% what is going to happen in the future

No %&$* we can't predict the future 100% accurately, but we can get damn close to that. If you've been paying attention to politics post karma, it's blatantly obvious TOP and CnG were on collision course.

but hey, don't let what actually happened fool you and stop you from playing stupid.

Good one hotshot.

First of all, by no means am I bawwing. On the contrary, I'm doing pretty well this war and am happily pounding MCXA and Echelon into the ground.

That's nice, I've been hearing similar stories from

Echelon doing the same to your nations.

Second, I don't believe it is a technicality. I feel this needs to be pointed out more often because there are people who genuinely believe (like Thorgrum mentioned) that they're on the defensive side of this war, which is total BS.

The treaty web is readable for those who know a lot about politics and how they work on Planet Bob. Otherwise it's a real nightmare.

It depends on how you define a pre-emp. strike. If someone raises their fist and is about to punch you, is it really being in the true spirit of being the "aggressor" when you kick him in the nuts first?

I certainly don't think so.

As for your point about CnG: no, I didn't expect them to join either side. They were in a tough spot, and everyone was able to see and acknowledge that. Most of all, CnG has worked harder than any of us to prevent (which failed) and end (which succeeded) the \m/ v Polar conflict. And for that they should be praised.

CnG and TOP are diametrically opposed. If TOP was entering in the war, CnG obviously isn't going to let its auxiliary allies be isolated and destroyed.

And don't you worry about me 'playing as victim', because I do not. I'm kind of wondering where you took that out of my post.

When you state TOP initiated an "Aggressive war" that implies your side is the victim of said war. Your side is not the "victim" in the sense of how a nation subjected to a tech raid is "victim". CnG was inevitably going to throw the punch, thus TOP are not in a true "Aggressive" war

I guess you just couldn't resist making a fool out of yourself.

I thought you were getting lonely being the sore thumb.

[On the (current) coalition war]

Oh god, more of the "baw you guys were the aggressors" crap. Again. Jeez, it's like you have a love affair with technicalities.

The treaty web is imminently readable. And you honestly believe CnG wasn't going to enter in the \m/ war? The two sides were well defined in this war, the timing of their engagement is a matter of "when" not "if". But I mean, don't let reality fool you and stop you from playing the victim.

[Please Don't Feed the Trolls]

No one "freaked out" over your forum trolling, more like annoyed responses to the usually inane comments you guys generally leave behind. Some of you guys are okay though.

However there were heated responses over the attack on CG, which was totally appropriate given the nature of the situation.

If you want really bad PR, you guys were really successful. Grats, I guess.