Tran Hung Dao

For history's sake, lets review: 1. Accept millions of dollars from DAWN and IRON, declare war on Gre. 2. Ten days later, when your aid slots clear, accept aid from Gre, stop attacks against Gre. 3. See GOONS declared war on CSA over aiding of nations at war with the GOONS. 4. Ignore all that aid IRON and DAWN sent you to fight Gre, send some of it off to CSA, provoke a war with GOONS via your actions and words. Also encourage CSA nations to flaunt the GOONS surrender terms* and just alliance jump. 5. Get ZIed, attempt to set up a flow of aid (via secret aid and public details). 6. Rebuild and lob nukes with some level of frequency at the GOONS. 7. Whine because you aren't being given white peace. ** I guess Step 8 is to be used as a proxy by people who have a problem with us, but are afraid to say it to our faces. So you become a pawn used to make indirect political points. At the end of the day, all I can is thank Methrage for introducing me to the GOONS and comment on the bravery of my fellow GOONS nations. Don't worry though, we're going to be a total pushover in war. I mean it wasn't like we had small nations waiting in line to get a shot at guy that had a MP and other military wonders and people eager to go multiple rounds and take multiple nukes from him. Just go ahead and declare, we'll be gone by the end of the week. Absolutely no staying power. *For the record the one guy who had really tough terms was the CSA guy who sent the aid. Everyone else just had to surrender and was then free to chill in GOONS POW until they found a new home / the war was over. Two CSA members are currently members of the GOONS and the others have moved on. The terms themselves were not significant, the infringement upon our sovereignty was the key issue. **Methrage's entire idea of negotiation was: Monday: Show up and whine about how your nation has been totally destroyed and you've suffered enough and therefore you should get white peace. Reject any terms or even the concept of discussing terms. Repeat "White peace" like a broken record. Tuesday: Get some aid, show up with a nuclear weapon in your stockpile. Demand you been given white peace or you will nuke someone. Claim this is not a threat. Fire nuke after being told the GOONS don't take threats well. Wednesday: No nuke, show up and whine about how your nation has been totally destroyed and is militarily useless. Repeat until the next batch of aid comes in. Repeat for 2 months, finally have your friends take pity on you and cover the bar tab you ran up.

[quote name='ChairmanHal' date='19 May 2010 - 07:15 AM' timestamp='1274274926' post='2303282'] Some would argue that you had as many opportunities as you did [i]because[/i] of NPO. I would argue that it was a mutually beneficial relationship for both parties, and both prospered as a result. Like all Mafia stories, it ended badly. [/quote] So the GOONS shall be the first against the wall when the revolution comes, because the old GOONS propsered under Pacifica? By that logic, Valhalla will be right next to us given the way you suckled on the teat of Moo during the noWedge era.

[quote name='Beefspari' date='18 May 2010 - 08:22 PM' timestamp='1274235717' post='2302777'] Methrage was given, I think, seven different term conditions which he turned down every time. That is, seven different chances for him to get peace by accepting terms. And due to the nature of the terms asked, they got progressively easier for him to fulfill, but he still said no every time. Methrage wanted a white peace. He didn't want to do anything we asked of him. It's not about fairness or opportunity, it's about Methrage being too proud to take peace and admit to any wrongdoing. Being so stubborn, he would've eventually been driven into the ground. But TOP decided to step in. They asked us flat what it would take to end it. We offered basically what we offered Methrage the first time, converted it into money format, and they accepted. [/quote] Yes, Methrage was talking out both sides of his mouth here. In front of an audience of just GOONS (OOC: Our forums or private query in IRC) he would cringe, cower and talk about how many times we'd ZIed him, how well we'd fought, how we'd taken all joy out of his life and he was considering leaving Bob, etc. Then in front of others he would talk about how the secret flow of aid would let him keep fighting for forever, bragging about how he was winning, how many nuclear weapons he'd fired off, how the GOONS would get sick of him and let him go because he was too difficult to contain, his plans to recruit for and expland his alliance etc. In the end peace hit a major roadblock he wanted a slap on the wrist. I theorize this was because if he'd had to pay any kind of meaningful reps it would have been a blatant contradiction to the "I'm winning line." We refused to let him go without paying something meaningful given his aid to CSA, the number of nuclear weapons he'd fired off, etc. On a slightly different note, I'd like to point out that in someways focusing on ZI has as a punishment is meaningless, depending on the wonders / aid flow a person has. In Methrage's case he would get dropped to a ZI or near ZI state, get some secret aid and build up to 1k infrastructure and grab a nuclear weapon via his wonders. Thus you can easily ZI someone multiple times without it crippling their nation. Methrage kept trying to play the ZI card everytime we had talks, ignoring the fact that despite all these ZIs, he was still getting his hands on a nuke at least once every ten days. End of the day, despite all the screaming over ZI, he could have been back at prewar strength infra strength in 45-90 days (assuming a fair aid flow in) and then rebuilt a warchest from there.

[quote name='Lord Rune' date='16 May 2010 - 02:00 PM' timestamp='1274040002' post='2300152'] Why not roll them for beach of terms? [/quote] They appear to lack the ability to get their top (read: most exprienced) nations to conduct regular movements of foreign aid. This suggests that attacking them would: 1. Be the functional to clubbing baby seals. A war is much harder to manage than aid, and they're pretty terrible at aid. 2. Result in a six month delay while we attempted to coach them through a second peace process. We don't have that kind of time on our hands.

[quote name='ChairmanHal' date='14 May 2010 - 07:59 PM' timestamp='1273888732' post='2298189'] Posted elsewhere... [i]goonbase is gone. You can thank your amazing leadership in the Pilot and CoPilot positions. Short version is I'm not going to spend my free time listening to cheap shots taken at my wife and getting accused of trying to stage a coup for not getting things done in a browser game fast enough for them. Hasta.[/i] [i]OOC: Forum admins (especially those with root access) don't get the "right" to kill a forum simply because they are pissed off enough to quit. First rule of forum administration: "do not harm" (rule 1a - if you broke it, fix it ASAP, anything else just took a backseat). So I will not excuse salithus' behavior in that regard.[/i] However, clearly there is more to story than someone maybe plotting a coup. Perhaps one day we'll hear it. I'm not holding my breath. Meanwhile, I appear to have hookers to round up...ones who can bowl. [/quote] I should go take down one my websites and put up a little note I did it because ChairmanHal said means things about my sister and my mother. I assume people will consider you may have done something to deserve it, since after all the theme of this thread seems to be "If someone typed it, it must have merit." It's not me being petty or trying to play the victim, since it was typed it must have a grounding in reality. Now that we've covered that, I'm late for my date with Kim Yu-Na. We're gonna go jump Apolo Ohno, Korean girls find that idea romantic for some reason.

This is likely just being pedantic, but for some reason I need to point this out: [quote] Each alliance has an (X/Y) * 100% chance of winning the first flag slot, and an (X/Y-Z) * 100% chance of winning the second flag slot, where: X= number of members in your alliance at the time you PM me back. Y = number of members in all alliances that PM me back. Z = number of members in the alliance that wins the first flag slot. 5) You should TOTALLY do this with your alliance. [/quote] The second flag slot should be: (X/[Y-Z])*100. If you follow the order of operations otherwise you'd end up with a negative in most cases. I'd bet most of us here got that, but you always have that one e-lawyer type. Plus I just enjoy being nitpicky.

I'm sure my family loved seeing: "Tran Hung Dao likes...Oppression, Negligence and Sadism" float through their status feeds earlier today.

So what's the time frame for payment of the technology and money should you win?

Reading over your charter, this is what I get: -President, appears to serve for life. No mention of elections or a removal process. The President appears to have broad powers (can deny applications on his own, kick people out on his own, suspend them, etc). -Lower Ministers, they appear to be appointed (I'm assuming by the President) and they serve until removal by the President. They have varying powers and duties. So how exactly is the proletariat represented here and what communist ideals do you uphold? Your charter reads a lot more like it is setting up an autocracy.

The more I see from Methrage, the more disgusted am I by his behavior. I was in 'Citadel' when he decided to take it to war with the Gramlins. No warning from him, no suggestion I want to get my military to DEFCON 1 or anything. When confronted by his, he had some lame excuse about "I thought I sent you a PM." It of course ever so easy to make a mistake in sending one person a PM prior to going to war. Luckily due to the fact I'm small and the Gramlins are a top heavy alliance, I was left alone and able to get out of town quickly. Had the Gramlins had smaller nations and counter attacked and hit me, I assume they would have managed to raid enough cash to cause me to default on a few tech deals and generally cause problems with my business partners and other uninvolved parties. The saddest thing was I only found out about the war because I keep upon international politics (OOC: Read the forums). If I didn't do that, I'd imagine my introduction to Methrage's stupidity would have come when the Gramlins finally rustled up enough small nations to hit me or when Methrage managed to annoy the GOONs enough to get them to strike against the Citadel AA. Methrage of course took the cash from IRON and DAWN for a war against the Gramlins, which he used for one round and then decided to go after the GOONS. Excellent commitment to your "friends" in DAWN and IRON there. As it stands today Methrage has interjected himself into an affair between CSA and the GOONs. CSA clearly contained some guilty parties (those aiding some of the old Neutral Shoving GOONs) and some parties that just happened to have the bad luck to be in the CSA when the balloon went up. He took a situation that was rather standard, the GOONS retaliating against the CSA for aiding people attacking them and has worked to escalate it with his commentary here. He tried to herd people from the CSA AA into his Citadel/Cobra/Nexus/I've lost count alliance, despite the fact that the community standard is you surrender to the alliance you are at war with you and wait till they release you before moving on to another alliance. Basically at the end of the day, he's going around provoking people and trying to suck other nations along with him. In a lot of cases he's trying to present it as a fait accompli, such as me waking to a Gramlins counter attack and my nation at war whether I want it or not or by provoking the GOONs with his comments and refusing to begin any kind of surrender process. If Methrage truly gave a !@#$ about anyone in his AA and helping the refugees from the CSA, he'd have worked out a surrender back when he still had some infrastructure and money left and his nation could help the smaller nations grow. Instead he continues to ignore his options in the peace process and bray like a donkey to the world community about these "injustices." Now I don't know why Methrage is doing what he does. One theory could be he is rather dense, but I'm not sure if I buy that one. A second one that occured to me, it's rather Machiavellian sadly, is he wants to run an armed prison camp of an alliance, and he's saving on guards by picking wars with other alliance. So he'll do his best to recruit newer and more clueless nations and then provoke a war with someone like the Gramlins or GOONS. Here he'll delay the peace process and keep the attacks going, while getting the joy of getting to be an "alliance" leader and posture in front of the world community. (OOC: He read Kim Jong Il's notes and decided to bring that in-game.) The third theory I'd advance would be he's bored. So basically he's decided to go around and cause trouble and amuse himself with interjecting himself into world affairs and serving as a troublemaker. Maybe he has delusions he can serve as a catalyst to trigger larger involved against the Gramlins/GOONS/his current flavor of the week. If that is how he choses to spend his time, that's fine, but the fact he's dragging in younger nations is just disgusting. The GOONS could have taken those CSA nations (the two small ones on brown currently in Nexus IIRC) jumping to Citadel instead of surrendering a lot worse and gone hard after them. Yet they didn't. Those nations are in prime range for GOONS strikes, yet they're sitting there in DEFCON 5, not in anarchy and enjoying life. His entire AA could be burning, if not for the fact the GOONs were conducting a limited reprisal against Methrage. So the 'evil' GOONS are actually the party that has opted not to escalate here. Methrage is the 'King' of Nexus and is at war with the GOONS, which makes his AA fair game. Instead they've been going 3 v 1 with Methrage and amusing themselves with some pysch warfare (James et al). At the end of the day I've seen people accuse the GOONS and tech raiders in general as having driven people out of the game. Yet they seem to ignore Methrage's modus operandi of 'sucker younger nations into joining up and then go start some stupid war instead of focusing on nation and alliance building.' So by all means, continue to amuse yourself with your drama and canned responses Methrage, but have the decency not to try to drag others down with you. At the end of the day you come across as the party that deserves whatever it gets.

[quote name='Hyperonic' date='29 April 2010 - 12:11 PM' timestamp='1272564668' post='2280052'] How To Investigate a Hacking By bros [b]Step 1) Warn the guy you are investigating ahead of time.[/b] Step 2) Constantly look into the wrong person. Step 3) If Step 2 goes no where, just keep defending Tilton because the RIA sucks. [/quote] So you guys run those kangaroo style courts where you come in, the evidence is all laid out ahead of time, you get no time to plan your defense and you're off to ZI before the day is out? Classy.

Y'all are doing this wrong. Welcome them in, let them expand their ranks and of course buy some of that juicy tech. Then take them out back and cull the herd. The problem makers will ragequit, while those who want to lead their nations will stick around and join established alliances. My understanding is that the /b/ of the Third Great War Era had a poor military showing. Given that this new /b/ has no established nations (with WRCs, SDIs, etc) it will be a long time before they're a threat to anyone. Let someone adopt them as a client state and they can get smacked down if they exhibit the feared /b/ehaviors. Seriousily though, change the name /b/. Using the name /b/ basically suggests a migration of ideology and if that occurs you'll find yourself ejected from Planet Bob by its combined military might and likely the divine hand of Admin and his Ninjas as well. Get a name that will hearken to your roots and help you recruit, but is different enough to make the point that this place is different from your homeland. Plus at the end of the day, /b/ brings up a lot of negative feelings. Whether or not it's fair to blame the newcomers is kind of moot, reality is what it is.

[quote name='Lord Brendan' date='20 April 2010 - 08:29 PM' timestamp='1271816925' post='2268604'] Do you have any evidence of this? [/quote] You've been around long enough to know that aid to a nation or alliance at war is considered a casus belli (as evidenced by the GOONS DoW on CSA). Another recent example would be the NPO seeking to suspend reps payments to alliances involved in the most recent war. The NPO has freely admitted in the PNN and other sources that they technically gave TOP, IRON and others a casus belli against them. Given that we all lack any kind of official history book around here, I can't exactly give you a page number and paragraph.

[quote name='Mr Damsky' date='20 April 2010 - 08:28 PM' timestamp='1271816898' post='2268603'] Fine attack us, I welcome it. That is, if you get the stones to do it. [/quote] I don't happen to be part of IRON or even part of a wronged party here, so why would I DoW anyone? I merely mentioned that people carry grudges around here and one should be careful. The history books show alliances have gotten rolled via much weaker and much more trumped up casus bellis. Odds are after this all wraps up, we'll see a whole network of MDoAPs between the people who signed the Easter Sunday Accords (that network is already there to a degree, but perhaps an official bloc, more treaty ties, who knows) and if they all have a grudge they might decide to amuse themselves with a good old fashioned curbstomp. Given the staying power of most people who signed the Easter Sunday Accords, I'd say the involved parties have shown themselves to have "stones". If you feel secure in your current political posistion and your treaty ties and figure you can get away with poking at IRON, more power to you and best of luck.

[quote name='Fernando12' date='20 April 2010 - 08:11 PM' timestamp='1271815858' post='2268572'] I posted in the Blackmarket several FAR tech sellers that needed deals. Many buyers sent $3mil to kickoff the deals. Every buyer in CN had the chance to get it in these tech deals. Gramlins happens to be one of many. Many alliances are tech dealing with Gramlins and IRON [url="http://www.cybernations.net/search_aid.asp?searchstring=Declaring_Alliance%2CReceiving_Alliance&search=Independent%20Republic%20Of%20Orange%20Nations&anyallexact=exact"](IRON AID)[/url]. This topic is pathetic and one sided. Bilrow, I'll give a poo when you post all aid IRON/allies have received. Post a Who Is Dealing with IRON and DAWN. [/quote] So I assume you would have no beef if I did tech deals with an alliance you were at war with? Generally one <i>suspends</i> dealing with any party at war. You don't take their money and run, rather you bank it and repay them post war. Actually it would have been your alliance's best interest to suspend the deal. You could have invested the money in the sellers nations, helped used it to cover a sled or a larger infra purchase at the end of a sled and grown your nations that much faster, all while complying with accepted standards. It would have pretty much been win-win for you to suspend the deals, as opposed to your current path. If nothing else, I'd advise keeping a lower profile. I doubt IRON was planning on hunting down tech sellers, but if you posture and scream enough they might decide to pay you a visit at some point. Like others have said, casus bellis don't seem to expire anymore.

Thanks for your comments, I'd say you don't need to apologize to myself or anyone in the peanut gallery here. After all back seat driving is a hundred times easier than actually doing it, plus it's easy to take a cold blooded view if you weren't the exploited party. Once you get personally involved and realize you've been had, I know my objectivity always starts to slide. I do want to thank you for taking the time to respond to the comments and of course clarify points like the MoI posting the IRC disbandment notice and so on. Of course that's not worth much, but it is the most I can offer. For what is worth, best of luck in dealing with this and getting your revenge on those who exploited your kindness.

[quote name='Adam Suttler' date='13 April 2010 - 07:38 PM' timestamp='1271209075' post='2259462'] I understand where you're coming from. However, put yourself in my shoes for a moment. If your ally, whose neck you just saved from total destruction, were to suddenly disband, without the slightest presentation of gratitude for your involvement, would you not take offense to the fact that your efforts were for naught? If you were ridiculed and mocked for your involvement, and your ally simply chose to cease existing, leaving you with the feeling of utter failure, would you not consider the action malicious, albeit unintentionally, to some degree? [/quote] Personally I'd get a list of the people who I felt used me, such as the leaders whose dumb rear ends you just bailed out of the fire (I'm assuming some of the leaders causes this threat of total destruction, not the rank and file) or those who just pulled up stakes and left and settle with them in a different manner than I settled with the rank and file. I see 8 nations in the Prussian Empire, with a a large strength drop between the 5th of March and today. I can assume that some, if not all of that strength drop was related to the leaders (the guilty parties) bailing out or their nations falling apart due to entropy (OOC: inactive). In the opening statement you mention that their disbandment was made public on IRC by a third party, not Prussian Imperial leadership. I am left wondering how many of those 8 have clue what is going on. Right now they might be checking out their forum or something and trying to figure out what just happened. I'll feel bad for them if tomorrow they're not only wondering what happened, but where all these tech raiders came from. Personally I would urge you to show yourself to be a better man. Uphold some form of protection over the innocent, if inactive, parties and find a targeted way to settle accounts with those who you feel used you. I'd imagine the community as a whole would squawk and prattle on if you used your own military to hit the leaders of your former protectorate, but you could also exempt people from your protection and let random raiders, or the raiders of an alliance you're on good terms with settle up with those folks. I doubt think anyone expects you to resettle these folk and roll out the red carpet for them, but it would classy to drop them all some kind of message that their alliance fell apart, give them some time to relocate and such before you totally yank the rug out. Also targetted and effective vengeance on those who exploited you is much better than just taking your toys and going home in a huff. Edit: For clarification I'm assuming the leadership that used you has already jumped ship and is in None or various Applicant AAs, while the 8 remaining are just 8 new recruits who were left behind. If those 8 in the AA are in fact the guilty parties, as opposed to innocents, then just ignored my ramblings.

[quote name='Adam Suttler' date='13 April 2010 - 07:18 PM' timestamp='1271207914' post='2259425'] Well, there are still nations with that Affiliation. We just want to make it clear that we are no longer protecting them. That's all. [/quote] So a smallish and newish alliance (I assume the newish part since they had a protectorate) falls apart due to leadership problems and you take that as a personal offense and opt to leave the rank and file membership out to dry. Not even 48 hours or anything? Just "Hey, we're personally offended you had bad leadership, tough luck"? I'd say never attribute malice where you can attribute incompetence.

[quote name='Aeternos Astramora' date='12 April 2010 - 07:34 PM' timestamp='1271122458' post='2258057'] Great question. Please answer. [/quote] My dear Aeternos Astramora, clearly you do not understand politics on the same level as an elite alliance such as the Little Green Evil Yoda folk do. Why on earth would you release fair terms that would be universally respected and increase the community standing of your alliance, when you could enjoy a long and drawn out discussion on how the founders of your alliance have left, give many of them a platform to voice their digust at how far you have strayed from your respecting principles and of course allow the community as a whole to work itself in a rage over the conduct of your government? Cleary the Evil Yoda folk have fair terms, terms that shall impress us all, but once does not simply release such terms, one milks as much political capital as possible from these terms as they are doing here. That is why they are elite and others are not. As a side note, in this discussion various Yoda types have boasted about the power of their Central Bank, their ability to rebuild any nations that go to war and so on and so forth. If this is the case, why do they need money from weaker and poorer parties? One would think they would simply seek a token amount as proof of victory and move on, as opposed to rooting through the couch cushions at the IRON Presidential Palace in search of change. Edit: Horrible, horrible spelling here and there.

[quote name='Methrage' date='07 April 2010 - 01:16 PM' timestamp='1270667772' post='2251921'] I thought I sent you a PM and that you would be rebuilt more than you have now afterward, but I guess you didn't get it? Don't worry about the tech since I'm at war and good luck. [/quote] I didn't get that PM, although to be honest it wouldn't have made much difference. Shortly after Dai Viet first incorporated we learned of tech dealing via a resource trade partner. Recongizing the value of foreign investment we've embraced the concept of tech dealing. However due to Dai Viet's lack of alignment with anything considered a major alliance we've had trouble finding customers willing to deal with us. As a consequence Dai Viet has worked hard to prove itself to be a reliable tech source, one capable safely handling its customers money and not losing them in pointless little wars. The rebuilding of Dai Viet would be miniscule. We've spent a million dollars tops on improvements, but the rebuilding of trade relations would be much more difficult, considering only about 1 in 40 nations we contact will even consider tech dealing with us. We take our business rep seriousily, so I'll ensure your money is held in reserve, either refunded to you one you get peace or returned as tech, as my slots allow. Feel free to contact us at any time to arrange for the conculsion of our deal. I wish you the best of the luck in accomplishing your objectives on the battlefield.

I appreciate the heads up on the fact we're going to war. No really, having one of the guys I do tech deals with send me a PM going "WTF Mate?" is a great way to find out the 'alliance' is going to war. Of course it's only a joke war, declared to make a political statement, and the only Gramlin who could hit me is currently in anarchy, but they it's the though that counts. I'll finish up this 3/100 deal I have you with Methrage, but after that happy trails.

The people that brought you Shark Week.

I have three slots open for tech dealing. Preference will be given to the best offers and those who are interested in repeating the deal. You can PM me in-game or on the forums if you prefer not to reply in this thread. Also, if your alliance is at war I'd prefer not to deal with you, it can just lead to drama.