Blackatron

All these things are problems regardless: The Shortage of sellers exists as long as the number of new nations is shrinking, regardless of the rate. The Gap between alliances will grow anyway. If TTK were to switch to 6/200 and 9/300 deals today it would make very little difference in helping us keep up with, for example, NPO. They have the number of active people and the organisation to deliver 6 slots of free tech to dozens of their fighting nations, the majority of alliances can't come close to matching that. Honestly I don't know that I agree that lower tech rates decrease the rate at which nations go from sellers to buyers, I don't believe that a sensible ruler should be going from buying to selling until they have essentially all of the wonders they can acquire as sellers, which takes a couple of years without donations. A lower tech rate can increase the time taken for a nation to get to a sufficient infra level to get the wonder clock moving, but ultimately that can only add another couple of months to the time taken if they are determined, all it does is slow the early growth and potentially mean players are lost in the boring part.

For new nations rates of less than 6/100 are rather unfair, slowing their (already slow) early growth considerably, when tech deals are their main source of income. For somewhat established nations with some wonders and at 3k+ infra it shouldn't really matter, the majority of their income is what they collect in taxes, they should be able to afford to give tech away for free if they really want to. Of course starting off with a higher rate then changing to a lower rate isn't likely something many would be particularly happy. To put figures on it 6/100 deal offers ~2.2 million profit per slot per ten days, 6/200 deal offers ~1 million profit per slot per 10 days.

[OOC] I don't like being in this type of discussion so will not post any further replies on this matter. I am also unsure as to why this topic came up, though it seems to be your own comments that first implied it. Your statement that "defending that would be wrong" was read by me as meaning that any military defence of Scotland by SNX would be defending TOS violators, meaning that that was the reason for the attack in the first place. [/OOC] I find your role of "encouraging peace" confusing, for some reason you seem to have taken the side of Minc despite no formal ties and hostility in the recent past, that you were surprised that Junka took offence when his ally was asked to apologise for doing absolutely nothing under threat of war until disbandment is also quite baffling to me, how did you think he would react? How would any semi-decent alliance react?

May I know which of the following alliances Minc and Sengoku have a problem with for buying tech? Doombird Doomcave Old Guard Knights of the Round Table Supernova X ROMA Fellowship of The Wolves [OOC] This is absolutely ridiculous; people attempting to punish others for alleged TOS violations by attacking them in game, if you believe that there are TOS violations then report them, if you have no evidence to back up your claims then the principle of innocent until proven guilty must surely apply, thus using it as some kind of CB is equally ridiculous [/OOC]

You're a real slimy bastard Hitchcock. I know that your alliance is populated primarily by people who don't care if their nations get curb stomped into nothingness, which is why all of you are in the lower tier, but most alliances aren't and as the leader of SNX Junka has the responsibility to protect his membership, which means getting those fighting against untenable odds into peace mode.

I think the larger point is that multiple members of SPATR/MONGOLS are current or former members of Doombird Doomcave; Bones obviously was, and has been referred to as a member by TBRaiders long after last being on the AA, Commander Bean was obviously on the DBDC AA until recently, Timmehhh is/was obviously DBDC, given that his sig as "Minister of Wealth Redistribution" was on most things published by DBDC over the years. Zxcsd was also a Doombird at one point, and so were you, though obviously the last time your were on the AA Cuba attacked you for raiding the wrong person, so perhaps you are not on the best terms with them. Given these connections, you must surely see why many see SPATR/MONGOLS is seen by some as sort of a splinter group of DBDC.

I'm slightly curious about this, what is the background of the "The Thunder Down Under" title? I noticed it come up a few Imperial decrees ago, though it appears to be a fairly recent phenomenon.

Forced to stay in an alliance he chose for a arbitrary (but relatively short) period of time; Tyranny! Micro of young nations threatened with disbandment by a micro of older heavily wondered nations; Interesting.

Well his ally is being threatened, apparently with your alliance's involvement, so it is his business. I would also point out that you have agreed to not act aggressively towards SNX's allies, this may be out of date but it is still on your forums: http://animalz.freeforums.org/snx-animalz-agreement-t20.html

Well apparently defending oneself from an alliance of rogues is now "terrorism".

Nope, not allowed.

Thanks for the insight, I think we tend to notice the outliers too much just because that's how human psychology works, looking at the ratio of hits:thwarted, it's always over 2:3, which makes sense because not everyone has an SDI.

If this was some supertier nation that could do a ridiculous amount of damage after restocking nukes, collecting, and then jumping back into the fight it would be somewhat understandable that they would be very cautious, but this guy is what? 20K NS? Worst he could do is shave some infra off a tech farm. Not that it matters because he was already in peacemode, so could build up his nukes anyway, no need to change AA's if he wanted to continue to fight Oculus. I would assume that surrendering to an alliance or bloc would include a promise not to engage in aggression in any of the ongoing conflicts, if a nation were to break that promise that not many would defend them if harsh individual penalties were to be inflicted onto that nation. My point being, if Oculus has had some problems with PoW's in the past that is really just being used as an excuse at this point, or did they think there would be no genuine surrenders after months and months of war?

As for how the conversation should have gone, I agree 100%, but Alex didn't seem to want to try very hard and Auctor clearly wasn't going to let Mic go, or at least he implied that no other conclusion other than Mic continuing to get beat up long term was satisfactory. You are incorrect about the application part though, the standard question is "are you in any active wars?" and "are you any any other alliances ZI/PZI list/do you have any outstanding debt to another alliance/et cetera?" Mic was not in any active wars, as far as I am aware nations can only war against other nations, not against alliances. Mic was not on a ZI list, Sengoku has no reason to want to go after him as an individual, he was just part of an alliance they were at war with.

Certainly valuable to an alliance, I mean I have supplied mine ~30,000 NS in the 200 days, but you can't really say that individually they are significant or a threat as the post I responded to implied, nor can you hold a tech bank responsible for the actions of their receivers. Surely if a nation was hit after being accepted that would be an act of war, no? TTK has had people we've needed to hit for various reasons over the years, sometimes they went and hid in other alliances, we use diplomacy and in the large majority of cases we got what we wanted. Bob may be dying, but still there is not really any rush in such matters, even if they were adamant that he had to be hit (which they didn't really have any reason to be, as I have stated before) there is no reason not to leave things a little while, it is not as if he is going to gain 100k tech and become a threat.

Long term tech farms are significant now? Yay! My 13K NS nation is significant!

I don't know if this is necessarily comparable, I don't know the situation surrounding Masterchief777 but presumably he as an individual had antagonised SNX, thus SNX understandably wanted to hit him, GATO understandably didn't care to defend someone who severely pissed off his previous alliance, so there is no need for conflict. In this case Emperor Mic just happened to be on an AA at war with Oculus, he fought some defensive and offensive wars against Oculus, then escaped into peace mode, and a little while after that changed AA's. Understandably some people in Oculus might be concerned that this tactic might be used to rebuild and then jump back into the fight, but there is no reason why a more diplomatic approach could have been taken, could Sengoku simply not have asked Mic, or TSC on his behalf, to confirm he renounces his membership of SPATR and withdraws from the conflict, or something along those lines? Auctor acts as if Sengoku now permanently hates all past and present members of SPATR, all for the actions of the leader who didn't even consult the rest of the leadership, let alone the regular membership. Considering the number of alliances Sengoku was already at war with (active wars with Sparta, NADC, and MI6, in a state of war with NEW, SPATR/MONGOLS, and possibly others) I don't see any good reason why they couldn't let 20K NS and 12 wonders quit the fight, once a suitable agreement had been reached, other than that they were warmongers who just want to "hit" someone else at any provocation and let their blocmates do most of the work despite easily being able to deal with TSC themselves. That isn't necessarily condoning of TSC or Alex in this instance, there doesn't appear to have been much an effort to reach a diplomatic solution on Mic's behalf, and I agree that it is against convention to accept him in the first place, though I don't necessarily agree with that convention in this case. Regardless once Mic was attacked on the TSC AA it's not as if Alex had much choice, not defending someone on your AA who is under attack means you pretty much cease to be an AA rather quickly.

Why is(are?) a Pacifican and an NpO member criticising a former Umbrella member for being part of the ruling hegemony which beat down whoever they wanted to when all 3 alliances are now part of the ruling hegemony that beat down whoever they want?

You know this is !@#$%^&* Auctor, I haven't heard of a single case of Oculus allowing individual surrenders, in fact multiple people have stated that it is never been allowed, correct me if I'm mistaken on that point. Frawley made it abundantly clear that the war with SPaTR/MONGOLS won't end until BONEs is at 0 tech, so you're essentially claiming any nation on an alliance led by a person who, whilst on another AA, sanctions a member of your alliance must endure being curbstomped for months. [OOC] Then you claim that Oculus is in no way damaging the game [/OOC] TSC was pretty reckless here, but Alex's reasoning not unsound, Sengoku nor anyone else in Oculus has any rational reason to be pissed here, other than just wanting to beat on alliances that have no hope of fighting back.

When people (who I believe has recent come out of inactivity) and switch AA's to avoid attacking or being attacked by your allies, you have no problem attacking them for being absolutely no threat to you: http://www.cybernations.net/nation_drill_display.asp?Nation_ID=555412

I sense the Polaris nations your declared war on are $%&@ed. I never understood the logic of building nations up to fairly high levels of infra when they have essentially no wonders, though to be fair to NpO maybe the guys you attacked are just the sort that don't follow any advice. o/ to anyone that wants it.

I agree, though Dark Templar obviously doesn't given their history with Doombird Doomcave.

Mogar appears to have gotten it. If you brought the Wonder today it would have cost you $426,400,000, so obviously there is no mistake, the extra cost was appropriate given your NS at the time.

Yes, and I believe they have a very high aid slot usage, though they are rather lacking in military wonders.

FTFY