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Altheus

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Blog Comments posted by Altheus

  1. Of course Hoo was friends with Polaris after WoTC but this all happened before that. Still, you could well be right.

     

    I knew about your feelings about Polaris although to be fair you weren't on your own. That was the story of CDT though, we were all pulling in different directions. We kept it together until the BiPolar war just blew a hole and very publicly exposed the divisions for everyone to see.

     

    I didn't like noWedge because of the OOC relationship crap like everyone else, I didn't like Chefjoe because he was trying to dominate the Purple sphere, the 2nd affected me more so he was a bigger problem. Case in point, I only agreed to joining Poseidon because we were tied in via Legion and Invicta anyway and at least that way we could keep tabs on whatever bollocks Valhalla and mhawk were coming up with, but you already knew that right?

     

     

     

     

  2. Yep, Triyun was always friendly and I genuinely like him back, but it didn't seem like he was in charge. To be fair he didn't give us the impression he thought he was either. 

     

    Valhalla obviously didn't trust me and they were right to, because I was working against them. Nearly had them too, but Dawny screwed that up. There was a window, when they finally listened to reason and kicked NoWedge out, that I legitimately gave them a chance to show they'd changed, but Chefjoe proved worse, a different kind of awful and I spent the better part of a year trying to show the rest of the Purple sphere that, including the rest of UPN. It was damn frustrating, because outside of BAPS and some micros no-one in Purple seemed to actually like Valhalla but it felt like I was the only one who wanted to do something about it. 

     

    Actually felt a bit sorry for Ragnarok for basically kicking them out of CDT. They hated us for years after that and poisoned any good relations we had with Superfriends (which were tense anyway) We did it because we were pushing CDT to be more Polaris friendly and they were an obstacle to that (or so we thought, Hoo insisted afterwards we'd got it wrong and that they were ok with ties in that direction, seems unlikely but he might have been right) Anyway, it was a huge mistake and entirely my own fault, because I overestimated CDT's pull and ability to be a force independent of other blocs, but put my heart and soul into making CDT a player and it just didn't pan out. Too many conflicting interests.

     

  3. Interesting reading. NPO's pre-Karma foreign affairs department was terrible, a combination of paranoia in which we found out 2nd hand from others that we weren't to be trusted and incompetance in getting assigned a different diplomat each week who knew progressively less than the last. I wouldn't have minded except that my prefered position was to have no relationship with them at all, in the full-awareness that we were going to be on the same side anyway via Purqua, but the message we were getting from our allies was that NPO was uncomfortable with "friend of a friend" situations and wanted to have a direct relationship, so we agreed to Watling Street Compact to put everyones minds at rest. It was just paper though, no substance.

     

    If we were experiencing that I'd be amazed if similiar sized mid-tier alliances weren't getting the same treatment, a significant portion of which weren't as tied into a friend of a friend situation as we were. If it wasn't the reason for losing the Karma war I certainly think it didn't help NPO's case.

  4. "UPN supported DE's entry into CDT, for reasons I have still never been able to figure out, and I hated them"

     

    I was firm friends with them, especially the boys from Element. Also remember that in previous guises they had already been long-standing CDT members as HoG and BDC. Finally, I trusted Coolgreen, to keep them on the straight and narrow, as he was good leader. BAPS wasn't a consideration because I knew that push come to shove they would have picked Valhalla over either of us anyway so I didn't bother with them. 

  5. Interesting viewpoints. We used to talk to Dawny, Jorost and others more than yourself so we got a very different perspective of events in Invicta, but it certainly is interesting to hear it from your end. Although I must admit the notion of us allowing Stickmen into PEACE makes me chuckle.

  6. Kae joined UPN because she realised Invicta were never going to join the C&G side and didn't know enough about UPN to realise we weren't going to either. A lot of it had to do with us leaving Poseidon, which wasn't a political move, but a we hate everything Poseidon stood for move *. She basically got the wrong idea of our motives and left in a huff over a miscommunication in CDT about where we were going next. 

     

    * Valhalla saw that other Continuum allies had their own "subject blocs" and wanted their own. We should never have joined

  7. Hi Haflinger. Long time no see.

     

    It all feels like an age ago. I really loved Invicta, enough to turn down Dawny's suggestion of merging into UPN because I thought you all deserved more. We had great times, especially when we were pariahs post-Karma. They were the best times.

  8. The merger should never have happened as each alliance's culture beforehand was not one which would mix well with another. LoSS and NSF were not mixing cultures with MCXA and some GDA people.

    Exactly. Most mergers are doomed to failure because of incompatability and SNX definitely ws, it's not like we haven't been here before. Shame, I mostly liked the alliances that made it up.

  9. I'll bite, although to be fair a lot of what you say I agree with

    Democratic Liberalism, "Doom Politics"

    At heart these amount to the same. i.e. Elitists, which function due to high levels of activity. What separates them from "aged democracies" is that they're smaller and therefore %-wise have more people that take an active interest in the running of the alliance.

    Lulz

    Successful "Lulz" has never (imo) really been Lulz at all, but just another smokescreen for self-interest, in a similar manner to what you'd find in most alliances. At most, it's only ever been a way of exiting the game, dignity intact, when things are about to go wrong. (i.e. "it wasn't failure, it was deliberate. I was being lulzy, honest gov!")

  10. I don't think alliances need some sort of "higher purpose" to do well. Just having a good time and being part of a community with friends is enough for many. Like Icewolf said, being organised and staying active account for more.

    Besides, I'm a bit leary of the idea of imported concepts just being plonked into CN and expected to work. i.e. communism or nationalism in CN, what do they mean exactly? The economic realities of CN are based on tech trades, resources and aid, not any form of right-wing or left-wing economics.

    Although beyond that there (thankfully) is a lot of real (as opposed to imported) differences between alliances anyway, with very CN-centric axis, such as neutrality/non-neutrality, tech-raiding/non-tech-raiding, elitism/non-elitism, authoritarian/laidback alliance management etc.

  11. Up until that point the majority of wars had a meaning. Wars now are just dog-piles without any meaning apart from you might be a threat in the future so we're going to crush you now.

    I reject that that's a new concept. Dogpiles based on "get them before they get you" are as old as cybernations.

    So here we are... Nations have clustered together in the god tier together above a certain range to ensure that they are stable and defended if someone actually came to try and take them on.

    Citadel was an early attempt at pretty much the same thing,although Citadel was too big to keep it going indefinately. DBDC being so small (in terms of membership, not nation size) could play in their favour, provided they avoid the usual pitfalls of CN organisations. i.e. internal strife.

  12. I think a great many alliances have a set of core values and it is possible to find them. The trouble is that they don't come out much in the OWF because if you do express strong moral views you tend to get trolled. Most alliances keep their character slightly hidden away to shield themselves from this as it isn't too hard for trolling to become isolation. Isolation leads to defeat.

    That's exactly right. I find the cultures between CN alliances are actually wildly more varied than an outsider judging CN from the OWF would think. The OWF has developed it's own cultural norms and faux pas, which some alliances fit in with better than others.

    Unfortunately the alliances that don't fit in tend to shy away from the OWF, exactly because of the problems you mention and that creates a feed-back loop of enforcing a given set of standards and puts pressure on people to conform.

    However all is not lost, because away from the pressure cooker of the OWF, alliances thrive under the radar and successfully manage to do their own thing.

  13. CN is a game of stats and words, and both pillars are essential for success."OWF propaganda" (dressed/labeled as "moralism", or whatever) isn't everything, but it isn't irrelevant either. In other words, posting is already doing something.(The only way to really do nothing in CN inter-alliance politics is to be neutral. I should know about that... ;) )
    no

    Actually yes. If by posting you can bring people around to your way of thinking then that is inciting change without firing a shot. It's worked plenty of times in the past.

    Wars in CN are won before anyone declares war. The biggest deciding factors are politics and propaganda, not nukes and whathaveyou.

  14. I think a large contributing factor to the UJW was the antagonism the Unjust Path had towards alliances that otherwise would have been neutral in the conflict, but were grouping together with the remains of Aegis due to the perceived threat. That collective, but unnamed, entity became allied to NpO when it became clear that NpO would choose them over the UJP.

    So one could say that the UJP was actually it's own worst enemy, because it enabled NpO to create a Polar MDP web to defeat them.

  15. "Liberalism adversely encourages cooperation among states to further the goals of the world as a whole, generally speaking."

    I don't think that's necessarily true. Liberalism is a belief in freedom and equal rights. Whilst (like any other political belief) it can benefit from international cooperation. Equally it can also be the moving force behind war and conflict in the name of freedom.

  16. UPN hardly offensively declared on GOD throughout the war, we concentrated on iFOK, but did declare on R&R quite a bit too. Frankly (after the initial attack) GOD hardly declared much on us either so we spent most of the war fighting the other three (which was plenty)

    So if any figures are getting thrown up about how little damage UPN did to GOD or vica versa I'm not remotely surprised.

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