Icewolf

Bloc treaties generally overrule NAP treaties-probably the main reason those treaties stop existing was people began to regard treaties as having a hierarchy, therefore they don't have to follow NAP when they have an MDP. Or more likely the relevant parties forgot it really existed.

Fox Fire, I am aware I have no authority over you, but as a longish standing member of I hope some regards within IRON, I hope you pay attention to this. Do not post another word in this thread.

Cybernations is a world with many complex dynamics. One of the more interesting things is how players engage in self regulation-they have established a system of rules as to how alliances may conduct themselves. A common standard has been established, which can be referred to as the norms of the world. Effectively, we reach the point were even if you have no knowledge of the rulers of an alliance, you can assume that they will act in a certain way because they are playing by the same guidelines as you-you need a reason to declare war, treaties will favor defense over offence, alliances have the right to expect to be free from aggression etc etc. More interestingly increasingly these develop to such things as, alliances outside the core political reasons for a war get white peace, alliances will chain into wars because their friends are in them not because they are involved in the reasons, war slots of rogues belong to the defender etc etc. Some of these make sense. Aggression is considered bad and normally punished. It is considered bad form to attack small alliances, even if you have the military capacity to do so. The community tends to impose limits on behavior. The simple reason for this is that no one wants to live in a world were bad things are done to them, so they make sure that nothing too bad happens to other people. It is for this reason that reperations are not enforced anymore. People know that the merry go round of politics is such that there may come a time when they are losing a war. In fact it is a very high likely-hood that that time will come. So if you have the norm of reperations, you will have to pay them. This is quite different to the past when New Pacific Order were at their Zenith. They did not play with the assumption that they would lose. So reperations were a good thing as far as they were concerned a world with reperations as the norm weakened their opponents, increased fear of them, and generally supported their role. I am sure that to many of you the above is not controversial. Cats hunt mice, mice eat cheese, non-core alliances get white peace after a respectable period of time. Why am I bringing this up then? Well effectively it has created a world of caged sheep. People have decided to follow a strict set of actions because its the "norm" and do not consider if this is actually to their advantage or not. I am sure we are all familiar with the modern pattern of war. Wait for the chain to reach you, hope that you are on the winning side, fight just long enough to feel you have done your bit, if you are losing either by turtling like a little !@#$%*, or waiting until you are knocked down far enough to win everything, sue for peace, and claim that as you did not technically "surrender" your military was exonerated. No point in fighting too hard as that just weakens you for next time where for sure you will get to go after your true objectives (read you hope that random luck brings your opponent to a place in the chain were you can hit them). Why do this? Well its fairly simple. The World turns. One day it may turn on you. One day you may find it advantageous to be in a situations were it is expected that after the "reasonable time" has elapsed you can walk away, and you find it advantageous that people will chain into whatever stupid thing you did this time, when your attempt at being "smart" at politics ended with a firecracker rammed were the sun shineth not. Because then those that chained in for friendship reasons, with whom the enemy does not really want to fight, can be used as chips to lighten your peace negotiations. The problem with this? Well firstly it guarantees irrelevance. Whilst you and your alliance obey the normative rules they will never really lose, but you can be damn sure they will never win either. If you follow them you are predictable, and if you are predictable you are controllable. Much as dislike them, how much would Doombird be cared about if they obeyed the norms of cybernations? How powerful would NPO have been back in the day had they followed the rules they said applied to others? How many powerhouses existed by following the same basic rules? So either stick to an OWF praise for chaining in for a friend of a friend and fighting just enough to reach a "respectable" white peace or actually go out and carve a destiny. Your choice.

White Peace/Surrender has a very distinct implication in CN. Because admitting defeat (no matter how well you fought) is such a taboo and performance in wars is analysed to death, people want a white peace. Surrender is seen as a humiliation. So White Peace gets used by the victors to denote those they do not want to humiliate, in effect a declaration that the war was one of short term tactical necessity and not a long term strategic goal. Those that they wanted to eradicate get asked to surrender. This has essentially become the norm in CN because everyone expects to eventually chain into the losing side. So everyone wants to make sure that when it is there turn they get to have the white peace label rather than the surrender. Result? Well expect various people to use their white peace label with pride, despite the fact that they barely went through the motions of fighting "because it was necessary" and offered peace almost immediately after the announcement despite being inactive for days. I appreciate that is not all alliances or even all members of certain alliances or even a majority, but it does seem to me that increasingly people care more about their rating on an arbitrary scale of OWF "wording" than actually standing their ground and fighting it out. "Yay....I launched no attacks for a week but was active enough to immediately nail home my peace offer...but it was a white peace not a surrender so I can hold my head high." /vomits

give me a minute to leave anarchy and I will begin contributing again.

He is correct though. In this game all are created equal-the weak are weak because they have not outplayed the strong.

Because you and a group of hypotheticals yet to contact you consist enough to a force to conclude your ideas time has come?

Equally foolish to assume that they exist.

So where are they do tell?

The nation of Icicle City duly notes that the nation of Eragon was not 3 days before this conflict began carrying out offensive operations of its own against sovereign states. Therefore it is our considered opinion that you have declared yourself unrestrained by the international norms of peace and security and may not avail yourself of those norms when the tide turns against you. If you do wish to beg for the undeserved mercy you seek it would be advisable for you to ask your alliance leadership to interject upon your behalf with the attacking nations. However I do not have faith that they will necessarily be able to given their somewhat underwhelming military state. Further, we wish to warn you that the good lord Admin who presides over this meeting place has the power and desire to punish all those that come here under a false flag. -Icewolf (OOC: Go to the moderation sub forum and request your forum name be changed to match your nation or ruler name, as required by the forum rules, or you are liable to be banned by a moderator)

Total NS in the world is 319 million NS The sanctioned alliances alone make up 100 million of that. You only need the top 26 alliances to hit 160 million NS-more than half the games strength. So who is going to bring down these elite?

Micro's do not have the military organisation to take on the sanctioned alliances. However your fight against the upper crust would be a war on DBDC.

Obviously. Guns are not powerful. Guns don't make revolutions. People with guns do. And people with guns are controlled by ideas. It is hardly a controversial or complex statement.

There is one niche that blogs fill, and that is discussing things that can be construed both IC and OOC. Alliance announcement s are IC and the OWF is not allowed to have IC debates. If you have a topic for debate that has both elements (say conduct that is both poor IC and OOC) or discussing how an OOC action (such as suggestion box things) impacts on someones IC character, it is a useful place to have those discussions without ending up getting a warn. For me my blogs are generally things that I regard as more academic and less suited for rough and tumble debate-the AA and OWF are more like a news site, whereas blogs tend to be more like an academic journal.

This seems very typical of a Friday satire-only funny though the standard layer of beer and boredom. Unfortunately I have neither to make it funny.

Sorry guys, but as you know this is a non-chaining treaty and we will not be taking up the option to support you in the next war, you cool with that?-conversation had quite a while ago.

As a former diplomat to NPO I am sad to see this announcement, just as I was sad when we cancelled our MDP with you. Friends cannot always march together and it shows great maturity on your side that you recognise that and can accept it without bitterness.

Alliances can sign non-chaining treaties. However the moment you actually use a non-chaining clause, no matter how much you warn people for months you will use that clause, you apparently are not a good alliance. People are desperate to have the domino effect because it reduced the political work needed to form a coalition.

They don't owe you that explanation.

Did I criticise Non-Grata's actions last war? No. But it seems like there is some guilt over the DBDC-would you like to let it out?

Its an undefined term in a treaty. We could debate back and forth how to interpret it but the bottom line is that there is a direct causal link between Non-Grata's actions that were in obedience to another treaty and this result, and we also worked to stop this war. Non-Grata chose then to continue military action effectively insisting that IRON join its side. That cannot possibly be within the spirit of the treaty. And he left months ago after making a total bollocks up of the end of his term.

The conversation in the IRON embassy stated that it was a full withdrawal without hitting Non-Grata or a direct ally of Non-Grata again. Without wishing to go and drag quotes of a private forum, Non-Grata's response was that was unacceptable to you as they would still hit other parts of your coalition. Have you bothered to read the relevant treaty? Of the many things that can be said about it, detail is not the word that springs to mind. I appreciate that you want to paint me in the worst light possible but accusing me of lying for pointing out that a treaty, which doesn't provide a definition for any of its key clauses, is not written in any detail is taking that to desperate extremes. This entire war arises out of Non-Grata's treaty with NSO. So how is it to go against the spirit to state that it means IRON does not remain obliged to defend Non-Grata from the result of the activation of that treaty? We were in opposite coalitions last war after Non-Grata made a similar determination regarding its treaty obligations. The standard procedure is to reach a mutual understanding about how this thing is going to go down and get on with life.

Well first point to this is at it is a non-chaining treaty. Ok I know its not on the wiki (all thats there is an outdated ODP which was later upgraded-oops by some of the standards declared in this thread I guess it doesn't exist?) but it states clearly that it is no chaining. Non-Grata know that it is non-chaining, and they also know that if effectively renders it an Optional treaty when they go to war on the basis of a treaty with another alliance and are attacked on that basis. They are informed that IRON will not elect to enter on an optional treaty in this war several months ago. As for Loss, these standards of treaty existing debates are not something I have ever seen raised in the last two years so I really struggle to see how it can be said there is a community consensus on it. Cybernations treaties are not written to any level of detail (something that should change in my opinion) but it is heavily a matter of opinion as to whether the treaty is valid or not, and I suspect those that are screaming hardest that it is not valid would rapidly change their views if the situation was reversed. Be that as it may LoSS was immediately prepared to pull out of the war. It had agreed to leave both Non-Grata and Non-Grata's allies out of the war. What advantage is there then in IRON entering? We are told that it isn't fair to let them go off and attack other members of the coalition and Non-Grata won't do that to its other coalition members. Fair enough. But IRON is not attached to this coalition. We are not obliged politically or treatywise to those other members of the coalition. Their defence is not a reason for IRON to enter into the conflict. Non-Grata's decision to continue the war is based on its involvement in the conflict to which we only hold ODP obligations towards, and can be effectively characterised as acting in defence of their other treaty ties. I do not see how it can possibly be within the spirit of a treaty that is expressly non-chaining to say that IRON must fight for that coalitions entire defence for the entire war and must immediately commit all its resources to that coalition.

It would be manifestly unfair to allow you to reverse the purchase for two reasons; -Firstly it would allow you to have hidden your warchest out of reach of spy attacks and ground attacks for the period. This is unfair on the nation you are at war with as cash lost in these attacks is calculated on the basis of cash held in hand. -Secondly, your spies are present as a force in being. It is possible that people have decided not to carry out attacks due to the presence of spies in your nation. To then hand back the cash to you would be unfair on nations that allocated resources on the basis of how you had spent your money. In future you should always use the confirm transaction or calculate totals button before clicking perform.

If TOP have such a good military where was it for the last two years?